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Touji went into teaching roughly ten years ago.
Roughly ten years ago, Touji decided to spite his family by becoming a teacher. Not just any teacher, mind you, but a teacher at the prestigious, solitary, near unknown, one of two of its kind Tokyo Metropolitan Curse Technical College he wasn’t allowed to attend because he didn’t have cursed energy, and therefore no potential to be of any use at all to the sorcerer world.
Not that he wanted to attend, mind you. It’s the principle.
And he really showed them, didn’t he. Ending up there against their wishes and to their endless mortification.
Touji is a chump.
When it comes to pissing off your shitty elitist family who couldn’t care less about you, there are better methods than feeding into the system that kept you down in the first place. For example, cutting the cord entirely, dropping off the radar, and using the skills you refined on your own to stick it to them from afar by… he doesn’t know. Not sparing a single thought for them for the remainder of his life, for one.
For another thing, he wouldn’t be surrounded by bright eyed sorcerer brats day in and day out.
What, is he going to pretend he’s poisoning the roots by telling the brats in his class year after year that sorcerers are shit, the clan system is shit, and they’re being brainwashed into becoming servile child soldiers?
No.
Well. Maybe a little. There’s some petty satisfaction in that, he can’t deny it. The buildup of doubt on their faces is good. So is refuting all the weak arguments routinely fed to them by their shitty clan parents. Plus, if the kid is a Zenin, bonus satisfaction for Touji. Fuck’em.
Taking the sorcerer world down a peg or two while patting himself on the back for his own reasons. That’s living life at least halfway to the fullest. Where it’s truly lacking is the pay. Seriously. Sure, he doesn’t have a degree or anything, but a degree wouldn’t qualify him for this shit, anyway. The salary needs to be higher for a position with such slim pickings. By the time necessities are out of the way he’s got barely a pocketful for bets and excesses.
Every day he’s this close to calling it quits and taking up the first assassination gig that catches his eye.
Why he never has is anyone’s guess.
It sure as hell isn’t out of affection for his students. Never was, and it only seems to wane with every passing year.
This year is the worst batch yet. He thinks that almost every year, but it’s especially true this year.
Touji thought it the moment he found out this was the year the Gojou brat was enrolling.
Touji thought it when he found out a second special grade was enrolling, and they were putting him in his class. How the hell does that happen in the first place? Who approved that shit? He doesn’t care if they don’t have enough students to make two classes. Take the Gojou brat and throw him in a storeroom with a textbook or something. He’ll be fine.
Touji thought it on the first day of school when not one, not two, but three pairs of nearly lifeless eyes stared at him. What the hell’s wrong with kids these days?
Touji thought it this morning when he arrived twenty minutes late and found Ieiri smoking outside their building.
As he approaches she only watches, not in any rush to finish her cigarette or flee the scene. That’s the level they’ve made it to, he guesses. Out of the three of them, she’s the only one with a head screwed on straight, which says both a lot and next to nothing, considering sorcerers in general and the other two especially.
“Fushiguro-sensei,” she greets, inclining her head and blowing out smoke to the side.
“What are the idiots doing today?”
Ieiri flicks ash to the ground. “Arguing.” She frowns, considering. “I think they’re arguing anyway. It was something stupid.”
“When isn’t it something stupid?” He extends a hand, palm up.
Ieiri stares at his hand. When it doesn’t go away she sighs, pulls out a second cigarette, and presses it to his palm.
Touji rolls it between his fingers, eyeing the paper critically. “This shit still? How many times do I gotta tell you this foreign crap is overpriced and tastes like shit?”
“If it’s that bad give it back.”
“Hell no. I’ll take what I can get.” Touji lights it up and takes a slow drag, savoring it. Awful.
If only he had the spare funds to waste on the occasional pack. It can probably be considered a personal low point that he’s been left to bum off a high school girl with terrible taste.
“Don’t have any shame, do you,” Ieiri comments, so disinterested it can’t even qualify as judgmental.
“Kid, adults don’t have time or energy for shame. Especially when they have brats like you and the other two on their ass every damn day.”
She looks him up and down in blatant appraisal. “They really didn’t have any options left when they hired you, huh.”
“Yeah, yeah, save it, Ieiri. Let me enjoy this for a sec.”
Ieiri takes a drag from her own cigarette in answer, and they finish up in something like companionable silence before heading inside.
Hopefully this time those two didn’t destroy the classroom. Every time they fight it’s like they’re in a competition to see who’ll cause the most property damage and inconvenience. If they were someone else’s responsibility it’d be hilarious, but since they’re Touji’s it’s a perpetual headache. A couple months into the school year and he’s already lost count of how much extra paperwork he’s had to do because of them.
The classroom is mercifully intact. The only regretful thing about that is it means he can’t start the school day by putting them to work cleaning. Ieiri slips into her seat next to Getou. For a moment he considers seating her between them, even though it was an utter failure the first time.
Maybe the solution is to space out the desks, but he can already visualize Ieiri sneaking out while his eyes are elsewhere. The other two would be throwing shit at each other across the room, he bets. God, kids are the worst. They aren’t junior high kids but they might as well be.
Gojou and Getou are sitting at their desks with too much nonchalance to be believable. They’re trying to downplay the fact an altercation occurred even though it’s obvious. The desks aren’t lined up properly. Getou’s hair isn’t pulled back as impeccably as usual, his bangs aren’t as straight as they should be. Gojou is so keyed up it only makes his display of indifference look uncomfortable and awkward.
Once, this kid was unsettling as could be—the white haired version of those creepy little girls in horror movies. Puberty, however, has transformed Gojou into an embodiment of overcompensation. It used to be that his existence simply exhausted and vexed Touji, but now embarrassment has been thrown into the mix and he has no idea what to do with it.
He points at both Gojou and Getou. “You two. The hell is this?”
They stare at him. Playing dumb. Touji should be teaching fourth years.
Of the two of them, Getou is quicker to admit fault, but he doesn’t do it unless actually caught and called out. He likes to pretend he’s an obedient little sorcerer wannabe, but Touji is on to his ways.
Then, there’s Gojou.
Gojou ignores what he’s said entirely. His hand shoots up above his head and he says, “You’re late, Zenin-sensei.”
Before anything more can be added to that, Touji takes an eraser he had prepared and chucks it at the kid’s head too fast for him to react. The force of it almost makes him fall backward, but he catches himself and slams both hands on the desk as he rights himself. The sunglasses have fallen forward just enough to see his eyes startled wide before they narrow into a glare.
“Something wrong, Young Master? Need me to call your mommy so she can file a complaint with the school?”
Both Ieiri and Getou laugh, muffling the sound with a hand and a cough respectively. Since Getou is the only one in reach, Gojou kicks him, and it’s so hard Getou flinches and leans over his desk while Ieiri smothers more laughter.
Getou’s fingers tense, dragging down the desk as they curl. Glaring at Gojou from the corner of his eye, a black void opens in the space between them. From the infinite depths of it a bulging eye peers out, accompanied by half a dozen smaller, beady eyes. It blinks, lands on Gojou, and Touji swears he sees a curve to it.
Unfortunately, that’s where Touji is gonna have to call it. For some reason, no one has bothered to establish any procedure for this kid yet. Doing that sure as hell isn’t Touji’s job. So, if Getou’s going to summon his cursed spirits, he needs to do it when Touji isn’t around to be blamed if it goes to shit.
Touji flashes his hand between them and snaps until it breaks Getou’s attention and the void disperses. “Hey, none of that. Save it for after class.”
“Are we actually having class today?” Gojou mutters, smooshing his cheek into his fist morosely.
“We have class every day, brat.” He’d throw something else at him, but the kid will be on alert, now. “Today we’ll start with a scolding, you two, quit the pissing contests or whatever it is you’re doing every other day.”
“It’s—”
“Don’t wanna hear it. Don’t care. You’re developing habits. Amateurs are already more likely to die as is, by showing off and one upping each other you’re only increasing the odds.”
Gojou scoffs and rolls his eyes so emphatically it doesn’t matter that it can’t be seen. “Maybe if we actually went on missions.”
“You sure are eager to die for those higher-ups who don’t give a shit about you.”
Gojou rolls his eyes again.
“I wanna hear nothing about your special grade bullshit. Can’t even handle an eraser thrown by a non-sorcerer like me.”
Gojou throws his hands up. “You cheat!”
“Not being a sorcerer doesn’t make it cheating, and it won’t matter if it’s cheating when a cursed spirit tears you or Getou or Ieiri in half.” Touji claps his hands together. “Now that we got that out of the way, let’s move on to class.”
They proceed with class. In a manner of speaking.
While Touji lectures and writes on the board, his three students alternate between sleeping, zoning out, staring at the door, and messing with their cellphones. Gojou is the biggest offender of all three, but Getou and Ieiri aren’t much, if any, better. Getou takes notes, but Touji can see half of them don’t have anything to do with what he’s talking about. Ieiri doesn't bother to hide how bored out of her mind she is and compulsively checks the time.
In the span of two hour and a half hours only three questions are asked. Gojou interrupts him to ask how what he’s talking about is applicable to actually exorcising cursed spirits. Ieiri asks to use the bathroom and doesn’t come back for twenty minutes. When she does return, she asks if she can go to the infirmary because she feels faint.
The girl who already has a near mastery of reversed cursed energy feels unwell.
Right.
Gojou jumps at the opening and offers to escort her. He drags Getou, who makes not even a token resistance, with him to the door.
The three of them exit the room without ever actually getting his permission to leave. They take their non-academic belongings with them, sending a very clear message about their intentions.
Already, he can hear their chattering and laughing echoing down the hall.
Touji walks over to their desks and takes the cigarette Ieiri left beside her textbook.
These three are his worst students yet, but in a way, they’re also the ones that suit him best.