Kuchiki Byakuya hated his job.
He was now in his ninth year of school—fifth year of postgraduate work. After this semester, he had only his comprehensive exams to face, then after that, a dissertation to write. In addition to all that, he taught classes five days a week, earning less than the janitors who came to empty the trash cans in his office suite.
As a student, he was both admired and hated. He wrecked the curve of every class he took and always used PowerPoint for his presentations. On the days he gave his presentations, he wore a suit—and nobody laughed. He had no friends. He never went to the end of the semester parties and never spoke to anyone who shared his office suite.
He was generally assumed to be arrogant.
His family had abandoned him for his career choice. He had never given a reason for why he refused to pursue a medical profession, to follow in the footsteps of his parents, his aunts, his cousins, his grandfather. He would have been considered the black sheep for sure, had his sister not stolen that title from him two years ago when she married her high school sweetheart—against their parents' wishes, of course. Byakuya had been the only one in their family to attend the wedding.
So what made him get up every morning at 7 am sharp, proceed quickly and efficiently through his morning routine so that he could arrive at school at promptly ten minutes to 8? He no longer knew. It certainly wasn't the 10,000 a year stipend he was given to teach introductory literature courses to snoring, insipid college freshmen. To be honest, it scarcely even qualified as a job. But he knew that if he stopped now—if he quit—if he stopped turning in flawless papers and receiving flawless student evaluation forms and giving absolutely flawless presentations before speechless, inwardly seething classmates—that something would happen. He wasn't entirely sure what would happen, but he knew that he might not recover from it. No more than he could seem to recover from the painful stomach ulcer that kept him visiting and revisiting the campus infirmary on an almost weekly basis.
He hated his job. He really did.
Maybe that was the real reason he finally ended up being late one morning.
"Late" meant all the graduate student parking spaces were full, so he had to park in Lot 17, an entire block away from his building. He walked briskly, briefcase in hand, one hand absently smoothing invisible wrinkles from his suit. The building was cold, his little office suite empty, the other teaching assistants already in class. It was 8:05 when he opened his briefcase and pulled out his grade book and the stack of graded essays. It was 8:10 when he finally stepped into the classroom.
The hush died down immediately, a few quiet groans remaining as students reluctantly got out their books and slouched back into their chairs. Professor Kuchiki hadn't been late all semester. If he'd walked in five minutes later, he'd have walked in on an empty classroom for sure.
"I have your essays graded," he announced calmly, stacking the papers without looking up. "I will hand them back to you at the end of the hour."
This elicited a collective mutter, which he naturally ignored.
He bent to pick up another stack of papers, each freshly printed with fill in the blank questions. "Do not open your books yet. We are going to take a quiz on the reading."
The hour droned on, monotonous as usual. He had long since given up asking students to read aloud in class. They made Shakespeare sound like an idiot and couldn't figure out that some sentences in a poem continue on to the next line. He stopped asking questions, too, stopped trying to milk them into class discussion. They didn't read, and when they did, they didn't understand what they were reading. So he gave quizzes, lectured, then assigned homework. None of them ever spoke up during class or asked to see him afterward. He suspected they were afraid of him. Possibly, they hated him.
"Yo! Professor Kuchiki!"
Byakuya looked up in surprise at the student hurrying down the steps of the lecture hall and approaching his desk. He recognized him only because he was the type of student who was rather hard not to recognize. He was tall, with bright red hair, usually kept tied tightly behind his head, a scarf haphazardly covering the tattoos on his forehead, vivid black marks that trailed all the way down his neck and presumably his shoulders. Byakuya had once lain in bed one night at the beginning of the semester, wondering just how far down those tattoos went. When he realized what he was doing, he turned around and tried to suffocate himself into his pillow.
"Yes?" he asked, not giving any indication that this was the first time a student had actually addressed him this semester.
The redhead grinned. "I dropped your class."
He found it difficult to contain his annoyance, wondering why a student would sit through the entire hour of class just to tell him he'd dropped. "I see," he said, bending again to collect the quizzes.
"Yeah," the younger man continued, shifting his backpack and scratching the tip of his nose, "I just thought you should know."
Byakuya felt his brow furrow, but he said nothing, only continuing to neatly stack the roll sheet on top of the quizzes and leftover essays.
"Anyway," the student continued, apparently unperturbed by his unresponsiveness, "I'm in a band, sort of a pop punk metal kinda thing. We're playing tonight at Cujo's. You should come."
This time Byakuya did look up. "What?"
The younger man chuckled, one eyebrow disappearing under his scarf. "I said I'm in a band. We're playing tonight. Cujo's. You should come."
The room suddenly felt hotter.
"Why?" he asked.
"Why, what?"
Byakuya averted his gaze, frowning down at the stack of quizzes. "Why should I come?" He'd never even heard of Cujo's. Was that a bar?
The redhead laughed. " 'Cause I'm inviting you, that's why." He shifted his backpack again before raising his arm in a two-fingered salute. "So, see ya tonight, right, Teach?"
Byakuya watched his student—former student—saunter off, then blinked, realized what he was doing, and frowned. He took a longer than necessary time to gather his things, then made his way out of the room, turning the lights out as he left. There had been a departmental memo last week in his box about leaving classroom lights on.