Chapter Text
Shichiro was excited to substitute for Dali’s Netherworld History class. It was the first years, after all, which meant that he hadn’t met many of them before. It would be an excellent opportunity to connect with them, get a feel for where they were at and… get them used to him, before they would have consistent classes with him in the future.
…He was aware of the effect he had on people. He was working on it.
As expected, he did have to restrain the students to keep them from running away, but that was fine. Some of them did escape, but it was their own grades that would suffer, he supposed. The rest of them were actually very good, after that. They settled down fairly quickly, once they got over the shock, which was a very good sign! This group might be easier than usual to handle once they properly got to his classes. That would be nice.
He was also excited that he had been allowed to teach about his favorite thing: Imaginary creatures. It was technically history, the history of imaginary beasts and their impact on the netherworld as a whole, even just the ideas of them, were very important- but first you had to understand the basics of the lore surrounding imaginary creatures themselves in order to understand the rest of it. Some of this would actually be on their end-of-terminus tests, so they had better pay attention.
He was having a great time. His students… Well, they were adjusting. It was fine, by the end of class they’d realize they were perfectly unharmed, and they would be less scared the next time they saw him. It was a good plan that had worked before.
His good mood ended abruptly however, in the middle of his lecture about humans. He’d been explaining the necessity of wings in demons, and how humans' lack of them would make them vulnerable to a harsh environment such as the netherworld. It was something he’d talked about many times, and just like all those times before he was drawn to physical examples of his thought process. That was just how he worked. It was something else his students had to get used to.
When speaking of wings, he reached for wings. He wandered up to one of his restrained students as he spoke and, almost on auto pilot, began feeling for their wing roots, gently touching their back. Only…
His train of thought was brought to a screeching halt, and he trailed off mid sentence. He had touched many, many demons in his time alive, and especially while teaching at Babyls, so he knew what he was looking for, and he knew he wasn’t mistaken when he hadn’t found it. He pressed slightly harder, rubbing the student’s back in vain, searching for what he already knew he would not find.
This student had no wing roots.
He froze, staring at the student as hard as he could, trying to take in any aspect of their outward appearance that might allude to the oddity being hidden under their jacket. He was small- both thin and short, with fluffy blue hair and bright blue eyes to match. He wore the standard uniform very neatly, buttoned up right to the collar. Something about him pinged as familiar in the back of Shichiro’s mind, but the vague familiarity wasn’t nearly as important as his discovery.
After all, there were not many reasons for a demon to be lacking wing roots. In fact, off the top of his head, he could really only think of one, and it was not good.
Without even a moment of hesitation, he made the executive decision that this was an emergency. He mentally commanded the plant holding the student to release him, and threw him over his shoulder the second he was able, before booking it out of the room. Other students, probably ones who knew the one he had just carted away, called after them. They couldn’t move though, so he didn’t have to worry about being interrupted.
Shichiro needed support, he needed expertise wider than his own, he needed other teachers. Thus, his destination was obvious: the staff room. There was always at least one faculty member in there, in between their classes, so there was a good chance there would be someone with the capability of helping with this situation.
He burst through the door, not wasting time with something like ‘opening it properly’, his call for help and explanation already falling from his lips.
“Excuse me! Someone!” Shichiro called, slowing his pace somewhat now that he was actually in the room. The couple of teachers within looked up at the sudden, fairly loud noise.
“What’s wrong, Balam-sensei?” Robin-sensei asked, blinking at Shichiro and his impromptu companion, the clipboard in his hands forgotten.
“It’s an emergency! This boy, he doesn’t have wings!” Shichiro explained, as succinctly as he could.
“He doesn’t have wings?” Momonoki-sensei said curiously, joining Robin-sensei in the growing circle as Shichiro released his captive, letting the student once more stand on his own two feet. Though, he still kept a firm hand on one of his shoulders.
“Oh come on! There’s no way he doesn’t have wings!” Robin-sensei waved away his distress, a playful smile appearing on his face, as if this were some kind of joke.
“Aren’t they just tucked away?” Momonoki-sensei posed, looking down at Robin-sensei. At least she was still being serious, as he had come to expect from her.
“No! He doesn’t even have wing roots!” Shichiro elaborated, in an almost pleading tone. He watched his colleagues' expressions shift in a single moment, from joking and curious, to horrified.
“He doesn’t have roots?!” They both exclaimed, in unison.
“You can tell by touch,” Shichiro said, grabbing the back of the student’s collar, who had started trying to run at some point. He pulled him back into the middle of the circle, under the gaze of his concerned instructors.
“Iruma-kun, show me your back!” Robin-sensei ordered, but it didn’t seem as if the student, Iruma-kun, had heard them.
“Let’s take this off,” Shichiro nodded to the other two, and they worked together to remove Iruma-kun’s jacket, under which his lack of wing roots should be much more obvious. Robin-sensei pulled up Iruma-kun’s shirt, and-
Oh… oh no.
Many demons had scars. The world wasn’t so kind as to let one live with unblemished skin, Shichiro knew that better than anyone. Iruma-kun however, wasn’t just scarred, he’d been completely brutalized. His back was a patchwork of marks, of all shapes, sizes, and types. He could see the evidence of burns, lacerations, punctures, and several things he couldn’t identify. Some of them could be explained as accidental, maybe, but many of them could not.
The star of the show was a scar going down the top half of the Iruma-kun’s spine, perfectly straight, and pulled taut as a sign of its age. It had been there for a long time, hiding maliciously just out of sight, the pain it symbolized invisible to all but the person it marked. While the purpose and stories of the other scars could be anything, this one was horrifyingly clear as to what its origin was.
This student, this child… had been grounded.