Chapter Text
Ash growled and kicked at his table before standing up and stalking out of the room with a tense and ferocious aura surrounding him.
His classmates watched in frozen silence, eyes wide as he cursed his way out of the room. When he was clearly gone, they started whispering frantically amongst one another. They always only whispered about him, too afraid to do anything else.
“He’s so scary!”
“Why are we in his class?”
“I never want to get on his bad side!”
Ash Lynx was their school’s delinquent and even the teachers didn’t try to berate him. This was mainly because his legal guardian – Dino Galzine – was a major sponsor of the school and one of the wealthiest men in the country. He had a lot of influence and despite rumours of how he abused and treated Ash roughly, he seemed to favour him and fired staff who tried to get him kicked out. Even students were forcefully transferred if they had been called into the principal’s office with Ash because of a grumble.
But Ash did have friends – or, at least people he talked to. The other students referred to them as his gang and that included Ash’s closest friend, Shorter Wong. Shorter was the person who Ash gave the most leeway to and who he trusted completely. Though they were in different classes because of how Ash was the smartest in his grade and Shorter – though sufficient enough – was not the brightest, they always met up and went to the canteen to buy bread for lunch together before eating behind the gymnasium with some other guys. There were rumours that they smoked and traded drugs behind the gym but nobody really knew if that was true or not. What was more important to the students, however, was the fact that Ash was dangerous and needed to be stayed away from. And so they knew to leave him alone if they didn’t want to be scratched or bitten by their school’s wild beast.
This, however, was not common knowledge to Eiji Okumura, the class’ new transfer student.
He had happily and shyly stood at the front of the class with an innocent smile when he’d said his name, his star sign and had told them about his keen interest in pole vaulting. He hadn’t even noticed the sudden anxious air of the entire class when the teacher had motioned to his seat and table – right beside Ash’s.
As he walked up to the table, Ash crossed his arms and watched him with a sharp gaze.
Eiji took a seat, placed his bag on the ground and glanced first away from Ash and to the other desk where he greeted his desk neighbor – who greeted him happily – before he turned and met Ash’s narrowed eyes head-on.
“Hi, I’m Eiji.” He said quietly, smiling warmly.
There was a sudden silence from the entire class and Eiji blinked and glanced around curiously, aware of how some of the students were glancing back to watch him. He started wondering about what was going on before he heard a noncommittal grunting sound from Ash.
“Ash,” was all he said. Eiji beamed brightly at him. Ash glanced at him once more before turning away.
Eiji Okumura was all that anyone could talk about for the rest of the day and he was officially whispered about as the wild beast tamer.