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Demons were not particularly compassionate, nor kind creatures. At best, apathetic towards others not concerning them; at worst, someone who visibly took pleasure in those suffering. The Netherworld, for all its advancements since the chaotic times, still struggled with this problem daily. And it was seen not as a problem to some; it was fine. It was nature — how they simply operated.
Tsumuru, since he was a little boy, had been called compassionate. Perhaps it was because of his bloodline ability to sense others emotions, or maybe being more naturally perceptive; either way, he was seen as different.
Luckily, difference didn’t seem to matter to demons too much. Eccentricity was certainly a factor in survival of the depths of demon society, but still, rank was the absolute determiner. Most of the Crowns were all deemed weird by the masses anyway. One could even say that eccentricity was necessary. Eccentricity meant standing out. Standing out meant attention. And attention meant potential rank-ups.
However, caring more for emotions, more so than other demons, could’ve very well been translated into weakness. And weakness was a fatality in the Netherworld.
So of course, Tsumuru didn’t exactly have the best childhood. He was teased a lot for his compassion, and even a bloodline ability relating to it; his clan was seen as among the weakest. Even though Mood Ring could be useful for reconnaissance, the base of it was to read emotions, a skill that wasn’t necessary in a demonic world where those not close to you did not matter.
It was a surprise, and a proud one for his family, that he managed to become a Zayn and even a Bablys teacher. If there was one position the Netherworld was desperate for, it was therapists and psychologists; especially so with the youth. Not only did the fact that demons seldom cared for strangers make the position hard to fill already, demons were reluctant to show weaknesses and so therefore the job wasn’t an easy one. A demon’s own emotions were also hard enough to regulate, and strangers’ emotions was hardly a thing they needed.
These psychologists needed to take care of themselves very well. They needed to be emotionally intelligent, needed to recognize when they needed support and help.
Usually, Tsumuru wouldn’t let anything bubble over. Both the Board of Demonic Psychological Welfare and the school had mandated therapists for him, and he made sure to spend time for self-care.
However, after HeartBreaker, every teacher had been busy. Tsumuru himself had been in charge of interrogating Shiida along with Balam, as well assessing the various students’ mental states to make sure they had been alright, especially the chosen twenty-six along with the Misfits. Between all of this, he barely had time to sleep, never mind allowing himself some downtime. So, self-care had been one of the things that burned in the back of his mind but never brought to the forefront.
He knew that wasn’t a good decision.
-
The Gaap household was known throughout the Netherworld for having one terrifying trait; their hideous faces, capable of breaking minds at one glance. They had the potential to become a powerful clan, but they hardly ever used their faces as weapons. Most other Clans in the Netherworld were wary, but did not hate them.
It helped that the Gaap clan were honorable and fought fairly, by using their gifted powers from the Wind Deity, rather than using their natural defenses.
The thing was, Bablys had agreed to accept all kinds of demons. Many were from aristocratic and high-ranked families, and their powers could very well destroy the school if needed. Or well, they would, if the teachers weren’t in place.
There were thousands of students admitted each year, with their profiles stored safely in the school’s archives. Several were marked if they had a “special” condition that they may accidentally unleash. Gaap was put into the Misfits class for this very reason. He and his family had insisted. So, who were they, as a school who recognized the students’ best interests, to reject that?
Of course, Tsumuru had double-checked the files and he knew of Gaap’s special trait. They had all gone through the student’s files prior to the HeartBreaker.
So when he saw pure black smoke rising through his Mood Ring after he had popped one of the first year’s balloons, his mind automatically went to damage control. Both first-years had seen it, but he’d quickly put them to sleep.
He himself though?
He wished he could.
That face…it was awful.
Tsumuru had no time to think about it. He cast several spells to keep himself calm, and that was it. The students — they were first priority. Nothing was more important.
Unfortunately, the first thing any psychological spell-user learned about the spells they were using was that the effect was temporary. The spells were not permanent in any way, and they were no substitution for actually solving what was plaguing the user at the moment. A delayed panic attack could very well come back several hours later if the cause wasn’t vanquished.
And from his experience, it only grew worse and worse the more spells you layered upon it. Once the spells vanquished, should the root of the problem not be gotten rid of, the problems only piled on.
And that’s exactly what happened.
-
Tsumuru was in a pitch-black void, floating.
He knew there was nothing, not that it was simply dark. Demons could see quite well, even in pitch-black. The speculation was that thousands of years of evolution had combined heat-sensing, sonar, and maybe some other sixth-sense into night vision. They didn’t have to use light.
Afterall, why would a creature who was the exact opposite of its sworn element need it?
So no, there was nothing.
There had been nothing, at least.
All of a sudden, some…presence made itself known. Tsumuru didn’t know how he knew. It was a sense; a bad feeling, an ominous wind. Like hell-rats darting off before an earthquake.
Years of training and natural instinct made his hand lift up to his eye, forming a ring with his finger, activating his bloodline ability, as he whipped his head around to assess the threat.
And he froze. Ice encased his spine, creeping up like a serpent, sinking its icicle fangs into the nape of his neck.
Blacker mist curled up in the already-black void, something Tsumuru could not comprehend. How could he see it? Yet, he witnessed the obsidian fog slithered around itself, blanketing out like miasma.
His fingers still around his eye in the tell-tale shape of a ring, he could not move. Paralyzed. The snake still had its icy bite buried deep where his spine met his skull, rendering it impossible to attempt to do anything.
However, the red-haired realized he did not want to move. He had only ever seen that black mist, in one place. A place he did not wish to remember in any way.
The accursed hallway, of which Gaap showed his true face.
And when it happened, only a small amount of dark smoke had been shown. For there to be this much…
His eyes widened in primal fear.
If he let go of his Mood Ring, which only showed black mist and no other information, then it would leave the creature in full view. It was only thanks to his bloodline ability that he could not see the monster ahead of him.
“Now, look.” Soft words, coming from the serpent. He could feel the icy teeth detach from his spine and coil downwards. His limbs felt like they were covered in honey, dripping black honey, as they felt loose, cottony, and out of his control.
He was still wearing his red undershirt and long pants, which he went to sleep with. They were usually soft, and comfortable, but right now they felt like coarse flour sacks, twisting, scratching his skin.
“Come on,” the snake giggled. It brought its freezing body to his arm, the one activating Mood Ring, bringing it down.
Tsumuru panicked, but the serpent had his arm in a deathly cold grip, quite literally. He could feel the white scales against his bare arms, digging in like metal blades. He was forced to deactivate his ability. A strange, quiet alarm sounded in the back of his mind, telling him that usually the ring-shape made by his fingers was not necessary for the smoke to appear, but…
He was too busy being blinded by panic and fear to notice.
When he saw the deadly, deadly face that Gaap had possessed, it was only a glimpse. A mere snapshot; it was not the whole thing. He had quickly put Gaap to sleep, then basically stunned himself into blocking the view behind a mental barrier. The psychologist had no time to face himself; he hardly had time to take care of the students.
And the students always came first.
Unfortunately, and regrettably, he knew the consequences of using spells like this to barricade his own emotions behind a cool wall. Maybe if he faced it sooner, it would’ve just nipped him and been done with it. Nothing he couldn’t handle.
However, against his better judgement, he had shelved those emotions up in a dusty, dusty corner.
And now they weren’t going to just nip him. Or even bite him.
They were going to full-on tear him with their fangs, hang on like a hellhound, and they weren’t letting go until they were satisfied.
The ominous black smoke dissipated, and Tsumuru was once again reminded of the Gaap’s clan’s true defense mechanism.
The thing about Gaap’s face was that it wasn’t merely ugly. It wasn’t unpleasant to look out. Oh no, it was more than that, it had to be far more than that, to be mind-breaking.
Firstly, Gaap’s face made little sense. The very placement of their eyes, their mouths, their noses, any features, simply were in an arrangement that failed to be understood. It wasn’t that it was completely random; it was in a particular order that seemed specifically tailored to nip at the viewer’s sanity. The very pattern was not unsettling nor creepy; it simply frustrated the demonic brain. It defied all sense of reason.
That was only the first thing. The second were the eyes.
The eyes were deep. Looping. They represented every demon’s worst nightmares. They flashed rainbow; they spiralled eternally, like some hyponic toad’s. The irises were a very particular shade of terrifying yellow, like used teeth, as default. Sometimes they flashed neon green. Sometimes the worst shade of a sickly white. Sometimes, they seemed to be transparent, no color at all.
If the arrangement wasn’t already mind-bending, then the eyes tended to grab attention and it was enough to make a demon lose their mind.
Thirdly, the skin. The skin itself was a mess. However, it reminded the viewer of sickness, of plague. Tsumuru found it hard to describe, but the very thought of the face reminded him of horrible mental parasites, working its way into his mind, whispering the most appalling horrors of demonic society.
It made him feel like his psyche was only a very, very thin sheet of glass. The glass sheltered everything, his memories, his loved ones, in it. What Gaap’s face essentially did was gently slam into it, creating cracks but not shattering it. Then, it slowly applied perverse pressure, pressing into the center of the cracks, and let it run through the entire structure like veins of some horrible monster. When the cracks spread completely, it ever-so-gently added pressure, making the glass bow under the weight, then finally shattering. The shatter was not clean though; not, remnants of glass were left, some even standing, some stabbing into the precious things it had been guarding and now making it slowly bleed out, drop after drop, and some simply tethered by a string. The strings were then yanked this way and that, but never snapped.
That was what he currently felt like. His innermost thoughts were being poisoned, by sweet, warm, black slime. Like tar.
He screamed. Before, he had only seen a glimpse. However, right now, the entire figure was much bigger, much worse, and whole. It terrified him how there was nothing else in this black void. He could look away, his mind allowed that, but the screaming black almost drove him insane instead. Tsumuru had to choose between the glass-shattering madness or the horrifying mind-breaking emptiness and nothing.
The teacher would much rather die than face this decision again.
Worst of all, he could move. He could fly. He was not paralyzed like before.
But, perhaps that was the most mind-breaking thing. He could move, but he could not escape.
-
So, see, one (1) Ipos Ichou was in a dilemma not too long ago.
The tall blonde had a crush on his co-worker and his best friend.
And problem had been, said co-work and friend, whom he was not going to name, almost certainly knew.
Said friend , who may or may not be able to read emotions, almost certainly used his certain abilities to read every single one of his co-workers. It was easy to tell when he was doing so (his pupils turned into squares like a goat’s; it was actually painfully obvious), there was nothing much they could do about it. He could turn it off quickly, before the other demon noticed.
The thing was, Murmur had caught it. One day, he had walked past him, tail cheerfully waving, and he teased, “Ah, Ipos, you in love with someone? Your mist is bright pink!”
Ichou coughed and quickly exited the room while his friend cackled behind him.
The dark-eyed had always assumed that Tsumuru knew about his crush, and was just teasing him.
Unfortunately, that was sort of disapproved a few months ago, on a rather chilly September day.
Ichou sometimes drank coffee, and he liked his more black then sugared. All the staff more or less drank coffee, really, especially Orias, who made up for his alcohol intolerance with the black liquid. So, the coffee machine in the staff lounge was crucial. It ran twenty-four seven, and whenever it broke, it was in the interests of most of the staff to quickly fix it.
This was one of those mornings. It was a Sunday, but it was late, so most teachers were in the dorms. Dali’s security-devil was attempting to fix it with some complicated spell that just led it to explode. Suzy tried to use some plant juice as a replacement for superglue, only for it to make the machine start fizzling so she just started to munch on caffeine-producing leaves instead. Ifrit had attempted to burn it and meld it back together, using a very, very thin fire. It did next to nothing but melt the exterior of the coffee machine. Marbas even brought over a few of his pliers and modified them to use as tools. Still, nothing.
Suzy started to just profit off of the caffeine-leaves, giving out three leaves about the size of Ipos’s palm as a sample and selling them in packs of ten. According to Suzy, there was only a little caffeine in each leaf, so about twenty leaves were necessary for a cup of coffee.
Ipos would not put it past Suzy to lie about this, or even if the caffeine-leaf’s effects were real, but he trusted Balam enough and his Buzzer hadn’t rung. So he begrudgingly took the three leaves as samples and munched them, then bought two packs of ten from Suzy.
“Hey.” The signature twin ponytails bounced as the Murmur slid up besides him, holding his own packet of leaves that he munched.
“Did you have your turn trying to fix the coffee machine?” Ipos asked as he boredly munched on caffeine leaves.
“What can I do?” Murmur snorted. “Check the machine’s mood?”
An awkward squawk in the background that came from said machine suggested that might actually have been a decent idea.
“What about you?” His friend asked, messing with a lock of curly hair. “You know plenty of spells.”
“I tried Grand Fractal,” the impala-horned said. “For some reason, Ifrit suggested that the pure mana might ‘shock’ the machine back into working.”
“How did that go?”
“I almost obliterated the machine.”
“What’d they expect?” Murmur chuckled.
Some screams and Marbas’s jolly, pleasant face that often accompanied his torture sessions suggested that they didn’t really know what to expect anymore but were desperately trying to not rely on Suzy’s coffee plants.
Ipos just shook his head. “How they haven’t destroyed the coffee machine at this point is a mystery.”
Murmur laughed. He then stared ahead, a bit lost in a thought.
“Say, Ipos, who do you have a crush on?”
The blonde sputtered. “What?”
“You have pink smoke so often these days,” the red-haired continued. “I’m curious.”
The tactics-teachers, at this precise moment, wanted to bury his head in his hands. On one hand, he couldn’t help but think Murmur was incredibly idiotic. Seriously? On the other hand, he felt quite relieved.
Just as Ipos was about to figure out what in the name of Delkira to answer, a loud bang and a lot of rainbow-colored smoke went bang .
-
A while later, Ipos found Murmur on the roof.
“You know how the question you asked earlier?” he said, breaking the silence after staring at the sunset for about two minutes.
“Mhmm.”
“It’s you.”
That was the precise moment Ipos realized he hadn’t really thought it through.
-
Either way, things worked out in the end.
That brings up an interesting topic.
After a couple months of dating, they had agreed to keep their relationship a secret. This was for several reasons, such as their debatable efficiency, and so on.
Also, they would never live the teasing down.
However, tonight, both caved. Murmur was bored, and so he invited Ipos over to sneak over to his dorm. Ipos agreed, and brought some work over. Eventually, Murmur went to sleep, followed by Ipos, who basically just got into bed next to his boyfriend.
With no thought. Again. Like many things that seemed to happen when a certain red-haired teacher was involved.
And that was how he happened to end up next to Murmur, definitely not sleeping. Let’s see.
Simping
(v.) To simp
When you allow someone to take over your mind and cause you to do things for them that you wouldn’t normally do.
So said the dictionary.
Which was what he was currently doing.
That was, until Murmur screamed. And bolted up.
Ipos whipped his head over.
The psychology-teacher was staring at the sheets like they were death incarnate.
“Uh…Murmur?”
The red-haired blinked and then smiled awkwardly, but he avoided eye contact.
“What happened?”
“Nightmare.” Murmur didn’t elaborate. He still had the awkward smile on his face, but he seemed distracted.
Ipos was silent for a moment. “You want to go get something to drink?”
The black-horned nodded.
-
They both got water in the lounge.
The ride down the elevator had been quiet. Not silent, quiet, as Murmur had been shuffling around, his boots occasionally making small clicks in the marble floor. Ipos’s white pupils had been glowing in the almost pitch-black darkness.
A ding indicated that they were on the ground floor.
The lounge was empty. It was close to midnight, and although he often saw Ifrit or Dali up, they didn’t seem to be here today. Ifrit must’ve turned in early or was on his late-night security rounds, and Dali was probably doing who-knew-what in his room (frankly, Dali’s room was terrifying. Who knew what was going on in there? He’d occasionally heard devil-wolf screams from inside there and a cackling sound).
Ipos got Murmur a cup, which had a devil-cat’s pawprint on it, of hot water. He joined the red-haired a couple seconds later with his own cup of water. Murmur sipped at it, eyes blank. The blonde also drank his cup of hot water, making sure not to scald his own tongue.
“I dreamed of Gaap.”
His boyfriend raised an eyebrow. But he stayed quiet.
“His face,” the red-haired elaborated.
“Oh.”
It was at this moment that Ipos attempted to deduce Murmur. A good tactician could read any battlefield and make a decision quickly. Though battlefields didn’t exactly translate one to one when it came to reading emotions in demons, observations were crucial.
This happened to overlap in the imaginary Venn diagram between reading emotions and strategizing.
The impala-horned only knew a bit about psychiatry, since it was somewhat necessary as a tactician since predicting how demons acted on the battlefield played a huge part in a win or lose. And while demons had never been particularly compassionate, tacticians especially so. The only way emotions belonged on the battlefield was to be manipulated.
As such, the blonde did the only thing he could think of him: distract him.
-
After Murmur finished the warm water, Ipos decided to lead him up to the rooftop of the school. They sat there in silence for a while.
“Ipos?”
“Mhmm?”
“You know about Delkira’s star?”
“No.” He did actually. Some who had older parents told them this story sometimes. But Murmur needed to talk.
“Well,” the black-horned said, “You know about Demon King Delkira. He loved exploring. And one day, he ended up in this gorge, lost. The entire Netherworld threw an upheaval, and he was lost . The demon king, lost in a gorge .” He smiled, small but genuine.
That was good.
“And then?” Ipos asked, chuckling.
“Well, Delkira could’ve done a lot of things,” Murmur continued. “He could’ve asked anybody — they couldn’t refuse the demon king himself. He could’ve asked any local for a map or compass. Heck, he could’ve used teleportation magic.”
The blonde only smiled, and tilted his head slightly, waiting for his boyfriend to keep telling the story.
“Instead, Delkira decided to use Astronomy to get home. He wanted an adventure. The demon king became the king to make things better for the world, that is true, but not at the cost of his freedom. And instead of using the Red Star, which is what most Astronomy-based navigation used, he was determined to create his own. He chose a random small star in the sky and mapped just using that star. He observed the star day after day, making sure to mark it.”
“And which exact star?”
“That one.” Murmur pointed to one just barely visible with the glaring halo of the moon. It was purplish, and quite insignificant. It used to be part of Lilth’s Heart Constellation, but it was taken out some five hundred years ago.”
“Interesting.” Ipos nodded.
“Mhmm. Delkira took, what, about five months to get home. The Netherworld had been panicking. They’d gone everywhere to look for the missing demon king. They had been ready to declare a state of emergency. Then, one day, he just waltzed back into the tower like it was nothing.”
That concluded the story.
“That was nice,” the red-haired said, stretching, the cold wind blowing in his face. “But it’s kind of getting cold,” he added, shivering. He was in a rather thin piece of clothing.
“But it is such a nice night out,” Ipos sighed. He turned around, opened his mouth again, probably about to say something, only to find a very familiar teacher with a very familiar tail.
“So,” a certain teacher with flames on his tail and two forehead horns said, arms crossed and looking rather annoyed, “It is currently two a.m. Mind telling me what you two are doing up on the roof so late?”
Both of them froze. They looked at each other.
“Uh…”
“Why are you here?” Murmur shot back quickly.
“I am the school’s security guard. I guard the school.”
“But what are you doing on the rooftop?”
“I come here to smoke after I’m done and before going to sleep.” Then the Djinn raised an eyebrow. “You guys, however.”
“I couldn’t sleep,” Murmur lied, “And I found Ipos on the roof when I went up here to get a breath of fresh air.”
“Uh-huh. Sure.” Ifrit clearly did not believe them. “Yes. Now mention the part where you guys were just sitting there and staring at each other for a full five minutes.”
“We were?” Ipos said.
Ifrit looked like he wanted to bash his head against the side of the wall. Ipos decided this was a good time to hightail it down the stairs and back to the dorms.
He grabbed Murmur, using an advanced Cherusil spell to turn Murmur small, pocketing him, and then used an Acceleration spell to dash past his supposed friend.
“Hey, wait!” He could tell that behind him, his coworker had summoned Ifrit, the massive horned beast made of flames, and was currently using him as a steed as the creature managed to fit between the stairs.
“Oh come on!” Murmur’s tiny voice could be heard, almost like a squeak, from his pocket.
“I don’t know about you, but I don’t want Ifrit finding out. He’s going to tell Dali, and then we’re never living everything down.”
“Agree with you on that, but I can run on my own?’
“You’re kind of slow, and also, this is faster. The stairs are narrow.”
Ifrit’s yell from behind them only confirmed this.
Ipos ran quickly through an observatory they had, and bounded down the men’s dorms. He was halfway down the hallway that led to the hallway their room was in when Ifrit suddenly appeared in front of them, blocking their way. “Stop.”
The blonde did a full one-eighty and wheeled the other way, only to nearly crash into Orias, who was coming out of his room.
“What is with the ruck—ahhh?” Orias’s annoyance turned into utter confusion as the tactics teacher realized there was no other way and released his wings, vaulting over the Astrology teacher with a singular flap, Murmur still in his pocket.
“Sorry,” he yell-whispered, and charged down the other way down the corridor.
“Ipos!” his boyfriend full-on yelled, not even bothering to whisper, “Let me down!”
“Fine, but keep up!” the dark-eyed basically just tossed Murmur into the air and allowed him to turn back into his regular size.
“Wha—” he hit the ground running, his boots making a very distinctive thumping sound against the soft carpet floor.
“Where do we go?”
The tall blonde next to him let out a sound akin to a frustrated growl. “Janitor’s closet?”
“...May be the best idea.”
The pair, who had gotten to a wider area where they could run side-by-side, quickly leapt into the gigantic elevator. Murmur frantically spammed the close door button, and the door closed just in time for him to get a glimpse of Orias being dragged by Ifrit (the beast), while his master was on top of him, and somehow, both Suzy and Momonoki had joined in.
The elevator started to move downwards.
“What floor are we going to?” Murmur panted, apparently not used to exercise.
“I thought we agreed we’re going to the janitor’s closet?”
“Yeah but Ifrit and the others aren’t dumb. They are going to press the elevator like two floors below us to stop it.”
“Shoot.” Ipos scratched his horns.
“You’re the tactics teacher!”
“Uh…you know what to do now?”
Murmur facepalmed. “Listen.”
Somehow, they ended up with both of them on the top of the elevator, with Murmur glued to the ceiling with some magic and Ipos using a Fractal spell on himself to cling onto Murmur. They were close to the top of the door of the elevator.
So, when the elevator inevitably dinged, and the entire crowd that had amassed by now rushed in, they were confused.
“Where did they go, yis?” Suzy asked, a perplexed expression as her plant-tail curled in.
“Here!” Murmur cackled as he dropped down from the ceiling, using Ifrit (both the beast and its master) as a wall, pushing against it to allow himself to speed up.
“Murmur…” The security teacher burst forward, hell in his eyes. “I’m going to get you for this.” Ifrit roared behind him.
This had become one gigantic game of hide-and-seek-tag.
They rounded a corner and stayed quiet as an entire stampede went past them.
“We should…be…safe…” Ipos said, out of breath.
“So…” a cheerful voice that they definitely didn’t want to hear right now made itself known. “Care to explain why you are here?”
The ominous cheery face of the head of teachers came into view. Fangs fully present in the smile, eyes murderous, ice pick in his right hand. Yup. They were doomed. They must’ve wandered into the Annex, where Dali lived, by accident.
So: Murmur did the only reasonable thing.
Scream.
“AHHHHH!” This time Murmur grabbed Ipos and went barreling down the hallway, vaulting over Dali. He hightailed out of the Annex, and nearly vaulted himself straight down a set of stairs, before remembering he had wings and actually doing so. Then, he slammed open the unfortunate door of one (1) sleeping March Marbas.
“Huh?” The torture-arts teacher grumbled.
Murmur dashed straight into the room and put Marbas right back to sleep with a spell.
“You just knocked a teacher straight out,” Ipos whispered.
“Yeah, yeah, I know,” he said in full volume, digging through his coworker’s drawers. “Ah. Wonderful.” He threw a pair of detection-warding glasses at his boyfriend and current partner-in-crime. Put them on and let’s—”
“Not so fast.” Dust clouded the doorway comically, and when it cleared, several glowing red eyes were visible. The leader of them was Dali, followed by Suzy flanking left and Ifrit flanking right.
“...”
Murmur grabbed a second pair of glasses (who knew why Marbas had so many detection-warding glasses?), shattered the glass of the window, jumped out, Ipos in tow.
“Are you insane?!” Ipos yelled as the pair flew past the window and several others also extended their wings and gave chase. Both of them jammed their detection-warding glasses onto their faces.
“As soon as we disappear out of their sight, we should be safe.”
“Yeah, if Dali doesn’t catch both of us first.”
“Can we still go to the janitor’s closet?”
The red-haired just nodded tiredly and shattered another window (which happened to be Ifrit’s window) with a kick, then diving down the hallway, flung open the door to the janitor’s closet, grabbed Ipos, and then slammed the door shut.
Not twenty seconds later he heard stomping and stampeding, as well as Dali’s battle cry. Murmur thought he would probably cry if he heard that as an actual enemy. Dali was terrifying. So terrifying.
“So,” Ipos said. “Remind me why we’re the subject of a manhunt.”
“You brought me up to the roof, and Ifrit saw us, and we didn’t want to be found out, so we thought we could escape, and somehow that triggered the manhunt,” he replied without missing a beat.
The tall blonde sighed. Well, at least he managed to accomplish what he set out to do. Murmur seemed to have forgotten about the nightmare altogether.
“You think it's safe to go outside?” The red-haired peeked through the crack in the door.
Someone else’s eye was staring back at them.
“AHHHH!” he screamed.
“What the hell—” Ipos slammed the closet door open.
“Hi~” It was Marbas, holding pliers.
The last person Murmur wanted to see right now the torture-arts teacher had knocked out with a spell.
“So~ I heard you put me right back to sleep with a spell~”
“Uh…” The black-horned stuttered, tail nervously whipping back and forth.
“Now, that wasn’t too nice, was it?” The man menacingly advanced forward into the closet.
“It was an emergency,” Ipos said quickly.
“Mhmm. Luckily, Dali was just~ nice enough to wake me up.”
“We’re going to die aren’t we?” Murmur whispered.
“Yup! Painfully, in fact~”
Murmur looked at Ipos.
Ipos looked at Murmur.
And they came to the collective agreement of abandoning their morals at this moment.
The blonde gathered mana in his palm before reciting “Flash Bang!” and somehow blinded Marbas with a very bright light. Which affected Murmur at the same time, because he was in a close vicinity.
What he didn’t expect was for the blue-haired to dodge.
“You expect to hit me with the same attack twice?” Marbas looked downright murderous by now, all smile but hellfire in his eyes.
Ipos should’ve really known his friend was smarter than that. He was a Zayn, same as them, afterall.
“Ah, good job, Marbas.” Dali came up behind him, the rest of the crew with him. “You found them!”
Ifrit came up by them, a very familiar footprint on the side of his clothes. His eyes gleamed. “Two broken windows, knocked out a fellow co-worker, trespassed the Annex, and used another fellow co-worker as a wall ,” his voice stressed that last offense, “And caused general chaos. What do you have to say for yourself, Tsumuru Murmur and Ichou Ipos?”
“Er…” Murmur stuck out his tongue playfully to the side. “Sorry?”
The entire staff looked at them for a moment. The pair-in-question looked at each other, nodded, and used a silent Acceleration spell to wheel along the closet wall and vaulted above them.
They ended up having to go between floors and barrel themselves outside several times. The unfortunate couple had enraged the entire staff between rampaging, yelling, and the murderous demons were soon hot on their heels. A lot of the demons that had joined the fray really just wanted them to shut up.
Eventually, they made it back to Murmur’s room and cast a quick spell that basically warded detection for the entire space.
“I’m exhausted.” The shorter threw a blanket over his face, as he was out of breath. “And it’s almost four a.m.”
“You do realize we’ve got classes tomorrow?” Ipos asked, brushing his hair as it had started flying when they basically charged down the hallways trying to dodge their fellow coworkers.
“Ugh, don’t remind me.” He faceplanted himself further into the mattress.
The room remained silent for a moment.
“Hey, Ipos?”
“Mhmm?”
“Thanks for the distraction.” He smiled. “I got more than I bargained for, but…”
-
Tsumuru hadn’t really known what to do after he had woken up.
The face, no matter what, was terrifying. Nobody would deny that.
But he had seen the sympathetic looks on his coworkers’ faces, and maybe just a bit of confusion.
Afterall, he seemed perfectly fine.
To tell the truth, Tsumuru didn’t know how to feel. Gaap’s face had been said to drive demons insane, because they try to figure them out. So, he thought he would be fine if he didn’t try to figure the face out. If he just forgot about it.
But it was so hard to forget.
He would’ve taken time to wind down, to figure out exactly how to mentally make himself accept the form, but there was a little time. No other teacher took a break; why should he?
So instead, he did one of the worst things, which he knew not to do, and allowed himself the fatal exception just once.
To ignore it. To hope it would just go away.
He knew it wouldn’t.
Yet, as they said. Denial was a river in hell.
And when he woke up, he was ready to tear his own hair off. His brain had attempted, like many demons, to understand the face. He couldn’t. It drove him insane.
He supposed that was the point.
Tsumuru had screamed when the face lurked closer and closer, to the point where it was less than an inch away. He was terrified at this point, stressed, and probably ready to launch himself into an Evil Cycle.
So when he woke himself up, all he saw was Gaap’s face on his blankets.
The horrible neon eyes. The tentacles. The skin.
-
He was endlessly thankful that Ipos had been there. He didn’t know what would happen without him.