AN: Today was my last day of finals. I watched PMMM: Rebellion a few days ago, and this just kind of became a thing after a conversation with my friend. Obviously, don't take it all too seriously.
It was eight in the morning, and the students shuffling into the lecture hall looked either not awake enough, or had the wide eyes and sharp, frantic movements of people awake for far too long. They pored over books, paged through notes with the attitude of martyrs. Some simply buried their faces in their hands and waited for the end.
It was, without doubt, the scene of a class before an exam.
So caught up were they in their shared misery that at first, they didn't notice the cat-like creature sitting neatly on the desk at front.
"Excuse me!" it called out, and disbelievingly, the first few rows looked up and at the small animal perched there. Noting their classmates' distraction, eventually the back rows also looked – and beheld something far too cute to exist during exam week. It stared at them, red eyes unblinking. "All of you have a wish right now, don't you? Make a contract with me, and I'll grant it!"
They were desperate, addled from too much coffee and too little sleep. Kyubey said nothing as they all wished fervently for their survival of this one last exam. The contracts were made, the soul gems assigned – and then, as the class gasped, the knowledge needed to pass perfectly pouring into their minds, Kyubey asked innocently, "But don't you have another semester still?"
The roar of one hundred and fifty witches manifesting at once would have been deafening, if Kyubey had stayed to appreciate it.
He licked a paw, considering the next scheduled exam.
Really, it might have been a time-sensitive period, but harvesting emotional energy this way was almost three times as productive as a full crop of magical girls. There were many things that could be said about the irrationality of humans, but their adherence to systematic testing for their young was really convenient. Completely unsustainable, of course, but that just made it even easier for him.
Good – the next exam in the nearest campus was Engineering. The class would be larger, and even more prone to despair.
Kyubey trotted away as in the distance, a haze of paper, ink and the wailing of the tormented descended upon the university he had left behind.