Izaya entered the class.
His class teacher sat at her desk, a picture of poised confidence. Her striking crimson-colored hair flowed down her back, catching the light and adding to her undeniable charm.
Her sharp features and piercing eyes gave her an aura of authority, while the faintest trace of a sly smile danced on her lips.
She was in her late twenties, a woman of intelligence and mystery.
Despite her reserved demeanor during lessons, Izaya had caught glimpses of her outside the classroom that made her seem unexpectedly human—perhaps even fascinating.
During class, she had a habit of effortlessly answering Izaya's often unrelated questions, ones that had little to do with the topic at hand.
It was as though her knowledge extended infinitely, and she responded to him without hesitation, like a machine programmed to know everything.
To Izaya, who had once seen her secretly smoking on the terrace, she seemed like a mix of a scholarly, refined teacher and a casual, rebellious spirit. The image of her adjusting her glasses with one hand and holding a cigarette with the other lingered in his mind. It amused him how different she was in private compared to her polished public persona.
But of course, she wasn't smoking now—doing so would have her expelled. And Izaya, being as considerate as he was, kept her little secret to himself.
"Good morning, ma'am," he greeted her as he entered the classroom.
She glanced up from the book she was reading, her glasses sliding slightly down her nose, revealing her striking eyes.
A curious smile spread across her lips as she leaned back in her chair.
"Oh, so you're back from your trip, Izaya," she said in a casual, melodic tone that seemed almost too relaxed for a teacher.
"Yes, ma'am," Izaya replied simply, his tone neutral.
"So, how was it? Fun?"
"Yeah, it was..."
A brief silence followed before Izaya asked, "Anything else, ma'am?"
"Huh? No..." she replied absentmindedly, her attention already drifting back to the black-covered book in her hands.
Apparently, whatever she had wanted from Izaya was no longer her priority. Something else had captured her interest entirely.
Izaya blinked at her for a moment, bemused.
She's really weird, he thought before moving on to his seat.
Izaya went to his assigned seat, which had changed yet again.
The seating arrangement in the classroom followed a peculiar rule: students had to shift to the previous seat every day. The room had four neat rows of desks and chairs, all meticulously arranged.
After settling in, Izaya exchanged greetings with his friends and chatted briefly. Soon, the first bell rang, and the school day officially began at 8:00 a.m.
Time passed differently for everyone. For those who paid little attention to the lessons, the day dragged on endlessly, leaving them bored. But for the ambitious ones, eager to absorb knowledge, the hours seemed to fly by.
Finally, at 2:30 p.m., school ended for the day.
As Izaya was putting the books and copies, which were actually useless to him as he possessed this knowledge already, back in his bag, he completely focused his senses… and sensed a cursed spirit roaming in the school.
Izaya was on a break of one week from the school as he went on a trip to Matsue[AN: Matsue is a city in Japan] with his parents to celebrate his father's promotion.
And when he returned, he was shocked to see a cursed spirit, which omitted a very strong aura to casually roam 'inside' the walls of his school.
Izaya didn't hear any cases of people disappearing or anything like that and breathed a sigh of relief.
Thankfully, the cursed spirit hadn't done anything.
He decided to exorcise the spirit when the school would get clear, mostly.
Most of the students, workers and teachers left the school.
And only some remained.
He went to the floor where the curse was currently present and unconcealed his cursed energy. He thought of this action as an effective method of intimidating his enemy.
The unfortunate curse's instincts rattled.
Izaya's strong cursed energy resulted in a physical pressure which instilled fear in the cursed spirit.
It panicked, came out of its hiding and rushed at Izaya in a nearly instantaneous speed.
It took its true and hideous form which occupied space when it reached near Izaya who was himself running towards it.
It raised its huge, sharp and frightening right claw high in the air and brought it down on Izaya as if granting him death.
The air rippled between the closing claw and him.
He watched it slowly coming down at him with an unnatural lack of fear and panic in his cursed energy infused eyes.
He might as well be looking at a day to day occurrence.
Cursed energy flowed through Izaya's feet and infused itself with a big piece of floor on which the curse was.
He activated an extension of his technique and consequently, the piece of floor was manipulated to turn into sharp, absurdly long stakes that nearly reached the ceiling.
The loud sound of tiles and rocks rubbing with each other.
The concerned part of the school building shook.
The result was the grotesque and cruel impaling of the now-frozen cursed spirit.
Purple blood flew from the impaled areas of the curse.
Reinforced stakes could be seen sticking out in different directions from its body.
It let out a gurgling and distorted sound.
Its end came as its body started disappearing into the air.
And finally, it vanished from the hidden side of the world.
Izaya had the desire to 'play' with the cursed spirit and ultimately crush it.
But he didn't wish to damage the school property in his playful battle and decided to take the fastest route, which resulted in him instantly killing the curse.
He understood it as his responsibility to kill the curses that threatened human life.
He had never encountered a cursed spirit which could fight with him on equal ground, his technique was just that powerful.
There was the first cursed spirit that overwhelmed him but in the end, he killed it too.
Despite living in Tokyo where the amount of curses are more than in the countryside, he had never encountered a fellow sorcerer.
So he hasn't any knowledge about the Jujutsu system more than he knew from the anime.
As for his strength, he had grown strong, at just the mere age of 12.
He has honed his cursed energy control and fought curses over the years.
Usually, he would sense the curse looming around him, go to that place and kill it.
The places he went were generally abandoned buildings or deserted factories from where all the machines had been taken out.
He has applied his cursed technique in many ways and using it was interesting as hell.
He could use his power to change his body parts into the parts of any animal. He can even change himself to an animal as a whole! He could manipulate any matter, be it metal or stone and convert them into anything he wanted, like stakes which he had just made.
He could manipulate body matter of another person too, he can alter their body's shape and size, and is capable of killing them in an instant or leaving them to suffer.
Though he hadn't fought a human… not yet anyway.
He has reached the level where he can easily crush through walls, jump high upto buildings and travel short distances in the blink of an eye.
It feels so damn good when he senses incredible strength coursing through his veins. He feels like he can do anything..
However, that is just an illusion, that's why he doesn't let it get over his head.
'Man, this is the worst part..', he thought, somewhat sulking.
Remember the stakes that he had made from the floor? He was manipulating them back to the floor to make the floor normal.
It wasn't that of a tedious task for him, he was just using his technique to do the task, easily.
However, just the action of actually reverting back what he had just done seemed to bore him, thus making him sulk.
As he did that, he started hearing the sound of footsteps resonating in the corridor.
It seemed that the teachers and maybe workers were coming up to check what the hell had just happened to make the floor shake and send vibrations through their feets. They also heard that loud and illogical sound.
Izaya thought that it would be troublesome if they saw him alone on the floor and decided to escape.
He quickly manipulated the floor back to normal, rushed to the nearby class, opened a window and jumped.
As he was upside in the air, he casually slapped the window shut with his right hand and fell from the third floor.
As he was falling through the air with a completely relaxed and flat look on his face, his bag swinging from his shoulder and hands in his pockets indicating a chill posture, he thought of a completely different and unrelated thing that brought a sheepish smile on his face:
'Pudding'.
To put simply, he just loved the delicious pudding made by his mother. His mother promised to him that she will make it today.
'Heh..'
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