...
"Hey, Suzaku, did you watch the news yesterday?"
"About the villain that robbed a store near here? Yeah, I saw it on the TV. He got beaten up pretty badly by that hero"
"It was really cool!"
"Hmm? Oh yeah... Very cool"
"What's with that lack of reaction...? Well, whatever. It's just like you to act like that"
"What do you mean it's just like me? I am the most expressive person you can find"
"Yeah, sure. Says the guy who has not changed his expression even once during the entire evening aside from your usual yawnings in class"
"Give me a break. It's not my fault that math is the most boring thing that can exist in the world"
"Says the guy who always gets full marks in the math tests..."
"Hmph, that's just because I'm awesome. Still, that doesn't make math any better"
"Well, I can't help but agree with you on that"
'Finally, someone gets it...'
Nodding my head as a slight smile appeared on my face, I turned to look at the clock on one of the walls, before my eyebrows furrowed slightly upon seeing the hour.
"Oh come on... The break is already over? Does this school want us to die from exhaustion?" I clicked my tongue. Tired already of being at school, even though this was still just the second period.
"Stop exaggerating... Besides, now we have the Quirk Counseling class, it's the best!"
"For you, it may be, for me, it's the 2nd most boring class..." I planted my face on the table, dejected at being subjected to this torture.
"How can you say—"
"Everyone, go back to your seats"
As my friend was about to say something, suddenly the teacher appeared at the classroom entrance and told us to sit. Fortunately, I was already on my seat, so I didn't have to do anything.
It took a minute or so before every one of my classmates went back to their seats. After that, our teacher left his things on his desk and immediately began writing something on the blackboard as he talked to us.
"Very well, we will start from where we left it in the previous class... So, tell me. What was the last thing we saw... Err... Suzaku?"
'Oh, come on!'
Cursing mentally as a wry expression appeared on my face, I stood up from my seat and began telling the teacher what we had done during the previous class.
...
Or at least, what I remembered of it.
...
"We, uh, we saw something about the reasons why using our Quirks to harm other people is bad... Probably"
Obviously, I muttered that last word.
"Yes. Now, can someone tell me the reasons why using our Quirks at our convenience is wrong?"
As the teacher began asking the typical questions of this class, I just closed my eyes and made sure to give my glasses a slightly darker color so he couldn't notice that I was going to sleep.
Why did I find this class so boring, you may ask? Well, it's mostly because I just couldn't give a damn about the indoctrination that they were trying to do with the kids here.
I wasn't saying they were brainwashing the kids or anything like that. Rather, I thought that this class was pretty good for preventing at least a few future villains from popping up in the future. Also, it gave the young children a pretty good view of what is good and bad, which may come in handy depending on the environment in which the child is growing.
However, for me, an adult who has already come to terms with my own values and principles, this class had no point.
I guess the only reason why the kids like my friend liked this class in the first place, was because the teacher often made us draw ourselves as superheroes, or think of cool phrases that a cool and righteous superhero would use. Making us slowly but surely hope and imagine a future in which we would become good people.
In fact, that was exactly what he was going to do now.
"Alright, everyone. Why don't you draw yourselves doing something good as heroes?"
'Here he goes again... Well, it's better than math, at the very least...'
Scratching the back of my head with an annoyed expression on my face as the teacher told us to draw something again, I groaned in a low voice before soon shaking my head as a helpless expression appeared on my face.
'Whatever, let's just draw anything...'
Thinking that, I picked up a pencil and immediately began drawing whatever came to my mind.
It took me a minute or so to complete my masterpiece. Which, not to the surprise of my classmates, was pretty well drawn.
I might be a kid now, but during my previous life, I had some pretty decent skills at drawing... However, they weren't anything extraordinary either.
And knowing that, most of the kids immediately came to see what I had drawn. This was not the first time that the teacher asked us to draw something, after all. And they were accustomed to a certain extent to my drawings being pretty good.
"Woah, hey Suzuki-kun, what's that?"
"That little thing looks cute, what is it?"
"I like how he is punching a bad guy despite being so small"
What I had drawn was a picture of a crewmate from Among Us punching your stereotypical image of a thief. You know, a man with stripped clothes, and carrying a bag of money on his shoulder.
I had made it without minding too much the details, but it looked pretty comical to see a crewmate punching a thief without apparent context.
Of course, none of my classmates had a clue of what the crewmate was.
'Heretic fools, don't you know that what you are seeing is an image of God?!... Though, now that I think about it, God is actually an impostor, not a crewmate... Well, either way, amen.'
"What did you draw Suzaku?"
'Hmm?'
Hearing the commotion that my classmates were making as they glanced at my drawing with curious eyes, the teacher soon walked up to my seat and eyed my drawing with an interested expression in his eyes.
So, knowing that he was expectant of what I had drawn this time, I answered him with what he had asked.
"I drew myself as a hero stopping a thief…"
After answering that without thinking too much about it, soon I heard my teacher mutter in a low voice "That's you as a hero...?", before eventually seeing him look at me weirdly for a second.
However, after that, he simply nodded and went back to his seat. Probably not wanting to deal with the complicated imagination of a kid.
'Ah, benevolent Impostor, thank you once again for allowing me to rest on another class. Please bless my food, and let me live a good new life, Amen...'
Doing a small prayer inside my mind at the drawing while no one watched, I smiled slightly, before then I leaned back on my chair and went back to trying to sleep.
Now that I knew that the Impostor was the True God, it was obvious that if I was going to use his image I had to at least offer a prayer.
Who knew what he would do to me otherwise?
"..."
-Chatter-
-Sigh...-
After that, I kept trying to sleep for quite a few minutes. Hoping that the class would end rapidly.
However, with all the noise that the kids were making as they talked excitedly about what heroes they would become, it eventually became hard for me to fall asleep.
Thus, knowing that sleeping was probably not going to work this time around, I passed on to the next activity that was surely gonna keep me occupied during the next hour or so.
'Hmm... If that lamp were to fall... Who would die?'
I began thinking about which one of my classmates would die first if the LED lamp hanging above us were to fall.
It was a trick that always worked when one wanted to while the time away.
...
°
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°
|A few minutes later...|
...
"Finally... I was so bored that I thought of every possible way for that lamp to fall on each of us... Who would have thought that a lamp would be so dangerous"
Stepping out of my classroom as a relieved expression appeared on my face, I glanced around the hallway with both of my eyes squinting slightly, before then I decided to go and eat something at the outer part of the school. Where my classmates would not see me.
Today I brought a snack with me. So if I wanted to enjoy it, I had to stay away from those hungry harpies in the form of children.
So, after sneaking away successfully while my classmates continued chattering among themselves inside the classroom, I somehow made it to the outer part of the school after a few minutes and sat on a bench that was still unoccupied.
After that, I looked carefully at my surroundings, fearing that any of my classmates might have followed me here, before I sighed relieved when I noticed that none of them were around.
'Good, let's eat'
Thus, seeing no obstacle in my way, I rapidly took out a bag of chips from my backpack and began opening it.
-Schrkrkrk...-
As I opened the bag, a lot of crackling noises came from it as I looked for a chip. Fortunately, it didn't take long before I found one that looked good, and took a bite with a satisfied expression on my face.
-Crunch...-
'Finally a relaxing mome—'
However, my joy was pretty short-lived.
"Hey Suzuki, what's that?"
"Suzuki-kun, can you give me some?"
"Give me some chips, plebeian"
"The teacher said that sharing is a very good thing... Don't you think so, Suzuki-kun?"
"Oh, I know those chips. They are very good! It would be great if someone would share some of them with me..."
'... Greedy little goblins, I bet they can sniff the snacks from kilometers away...'
Groaning inside my mind as most of my classmates suddenly spawned out of nowhere, I let out a curse inside my mind, before I proceeded to move the bag of chips away from me and place it on the bench where I was sitting earlier.
Of course, not without taking a handful of chips for myself before that.
After I did that, all of the greedy bastards threw themselves at the bag of chips like hungry beasts and began arguing with each other about who should take more and who should not take any.
I, of course, just watched from the sidelines with a haughty expression on my face.
'Watch as gluttony consumes you all, mindless beasts... This is what your filthy desire brings to you all...'
Scoffing at them inside my mind, suddenly I felt a tap on my shoulder and saw a boy of my age with slimy black hair looking at me with a grin on his face.
"Your expression is too obvious Suzaku"
"I don't know what you are talking about"
The kid in question was called Morikawa Arata... Or just Arata if it was too annoying for you to remember his whole name. One of the few kids I actually considered a friend and someone who seemed to be as lazy as me when it came to school matters. (Which was why we got along so well)
Though, his laziness was innate. While mine, I only developed it after I died.
Well... Maybe I was a bit lazy before that, but it definitely got worse after I died.
Anyway, back to what I was talking about. His Quirk was called "Dynamic hair", and it allowed him to control his hair to a certain extent as if he was moving another limb, and be able to make it harder, turn it into liquid, or make it adopt a gaseous state as well.
He was also able to extend the length of his hair a little bit, but not too much. Only to about a meter or so...
Aside from that, his quirk also made it so that whenever he was not controlling or altering its state, his hair would be in a slimy state, just like right now.
It was a pretty cool Quirk, in my opinion. However, when considering that every Quirk seemed amazing in my eyes, as a previously quirkless human, I didn't know if my opinion was worth anything.
He was also the kid who I was talking to earlier in the class. And as you may have noticed from our conversation earlier, despite his disliking for school, he still seemed to find heroes cool.
"Come on, let's leave while they are busy fighting each other"
"Oh"
Nodding my head as I ignored the heated discussion of my classmates, soon he and I began walking away as I handed him some of the chips that I had taken for myself earlier. Something he accepted with an excited expression on his face.
Both of us became friends as soon as we entered the school.
During the first day, this kid was groaning out loud about how annoying school was, unlike what his parents had told him, so I also began complaining along with him.
Things developed pretty quickly after that. Having a common enemy really did make it easier for us to get along. However, the reason he disliked school was very different from mine, as he was what you would call a genius, and because of that, it seemed like school was a tad boring for him.
Really, this kid learned most of the things that the teachers taught pretty quickly as if his brain was some kind of sponge. Though, it wasn't perfect, as he still made mistakes from time to time.
On the other hand, I disliked school because I was just repeating the same process all over again, without the real need to do so.
But despite these differences, we got along pretty well.
He at least made school somewhat more bearable.
"Hey, Suzaku, wanna go play at the arcade after classes? I heard they put a new game there"
"Really? What is it called?"
Though, honestly, being his friend was making me strangely paranoid.
Why? Because I found it strange that I was able to become friends with a six-year-old.
Was it because the children in this world were smarter than in my previous world? Or was I slowly becoming more and more childish as I passed time among them?
I didn't know the answer... But hopefully, it would be the first option... Otherwise, that would mean that I was immersing myself too much in my role as a child.
Which was something that sounded terrifying.
"... I think it was called "Jumping Heroes". In there, you have to jump on top of villains in order to defeat them, and there's some kind of final boss with a Dinosaur transformation quirk after a few levels that is pretty hard to defeat. It has gotten pretty famous after people started competing with each other for the best high score"
"Sounds like Super Mario..."
"Supah Mario? Who's that?"
"No one, I was just talking to myself... As for going to the arcade, I can't. I have something to do after classes"
"Well, that's new. What do you have to do?"
"I have to—"
-Noise-
""Hmm?""
Suddenly, as me and Arata were talking, the sound of some voices laughing creepily and mocking someone reached our ears and made us look around with confused faces.
"Where is that coming from?"
Muttering that with a confused expression on my face, I then turned to look toward the back of the school, which was a few meters away from where we were walking, and began moving there with a suspicious expression on my face.
Seeing that, Arata just followed me as well without saying anything. Seemingly curious about what the ruckus was as well.
'Surely, it will not be some horny teens that are taking advantage of the few people that come to this zone of the school so that they can perform the sinful deed, right?'
Hoping that the teens in this place had at least a bit of integrity and a sense of shame, I shook my head for a brief moment, before I glanced sneakily at Arata.
'Well, I can just cover this kid's eyes if it really turns out to be "that". Can't have him develop some kind of trauma, or become a closet pervert because of something stupid like this...'
After developing a small plan of action, I arrived at the place where the voices were coming from and furrowed my eyebrows as I saw how three kids at least four years older than me were beating up a kid of that same age. Probably a classmate of theirs.
'Huh, so that was it'
I was a bit impressed by the view. After all, this was the first time I saw such blatant bullying here in this school.
Normally, the bullying that I had seen (As in this world it seemed to be pretty common) had just been something more about downplaying others because of their quirks, rather than getting physical with them.
But well, I guess those types of cases still existed, even if I had not noticed them before.
'Talk about old school... Well, anyway, the mystery is solved. Let's leave and tell a teacher'
After making up my mind, I turned around and prepared to leave.
Sure, I could try to intervene and help the poor kid. However, knowing that I didn't know how to handle kids with enough emotional problems that they had to bully another kid, and that most probably if I tried to reason with them they would get violent with me instead, I simply thought that it was better to tell the teachers about it and get done with it.
That way, they would later call those kids' parents, and tell them all about what their children did. And believe me, there's nothing more fearsome for children than seeing their parents angry.
However, as I was about to leave, suddenly I noticed that Arata was not beside me as he had been earlier, and furrowed my eyebrows as a bad feeling struck me.
'That kid... Don't tell me...'
Turning to look back at where the group of kids was, I saw Arata running toward them with an upset expression on his face while he yelled at them to stop.
'For being such a genius, he is pretty dumb sometimes...'
Facepalming after seeing him run toward them, I groaned in annoyance, as I knew that things were not gonna end well.
But knowing that I just couldn't leave him alone, I walked after him.
-Sigh...-
'... Alright, let's just try to solve everything peacefully. I mean, I'm an adult. Handling a bunch of brats that like to bully others can't be that difficult, right?'
...
°
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°
|A few minutes later...|
...
"Listen, madam, I called you here today to tell you that today, during lunchtime, your son got into a quarrel with some students, and beat up all of them until they were left crying"
"Suzaku, what do you have to say for yourself?"
"They started"
...
-To be Continued-
°°°
(A/N: Omnipresence in its fullest meaning)