(A/N) I started reading the Rosario series in it's budding stages, and have only recently gone back to finish. I'm super glad I did, it was a decent ending. Definitely above most other harem shows, I think. It still has a ton of problems that just irk me to no end, and I think some of those frustrations have bled through in this fic, but a lot of those problems are just anime/manga problems in general.
After that, I thought I'd come here, because I said to myself, I said "Self, you need some Rosario fanfics in your life. Let's see what other people think about the series!" Self agreed. But what I found was... not what I hoped for.
There is a weird number of fics that are centered around original characters or self-insertions, and they're usually the worst. People come to these stories to read about the characters they have come to know and love, not useless extra people.
But it gave me an idea. What if a decent, readable OC/self-insert fic could be done? Could I make the environment vivid enough that it's not physically painful to sit through? I'm a firm believer that anything is possible, so I took that thought as a challenge.
Consider this story an experiment. An attempt to make a readable story with a new character's perspective. Whether it has worked out or not, well, that's up to you.
Let's give it a shot.
I am Man
Youkai Private Academy: Sophomore Year
It's been a year now since enrolling into Youkai Private Academy. So much has happened in that short amount of time, I hardly even remember how it started. Everything just seemed to happen all at once.
Over this last vacation period, I had a tough time deciding whether or not I should write this journal entry on it or not. It seems silly, especially since no one is really meant to read it. But, being the ever-careful one that I have become, I figured it would be for the best. If I truly don't make it out of here by my graduation date, at the very least, maybe someone else like me will find it and take comfort from it.
I suppose I should just start at the very beginning. I'm a foreign student, born with a deep sense of adventure. I climbed mountains, camped in the snow, travelled at every opportunity to anywhere I could. So of course, when I was told Foreign Exchange was a thing, I had to look into it. There were many opportunities, but making my choice is where I made my first mistake.
I picked a country I am not familiar with whatsoever. I could have chosen a European country, with a language I have vaguely studied beforehand, but my excitement was far greater than my capacity for logic at the time.
Getting into the country was the easy part, but then I made another mistake. In my papers, I was quite sure the school name read: Youkai Academy. I did not bother to look up what that meant.
Of course, come to think of it, even if I knew what it meant at the time, it probably would not have fazed me. "Monster" could have just been the mascot, as vague and uncreative as that sounded. Why on earth would I have guessed otherwise? Just assuming the school was riddled with actual monsters because "monster" was in the name would have been a huge leap in logic.
So, I took the bus, driven by a soft-spoken, friendly man. He asked if I was ready, and sounded like he knew more than anyone has ever known. Perhaps realizing that the bus was otherwise completely empty as well should have tipped me off that things were... off. Even going through the large tunnel and seeing the new landscape at the end of it wasn't frightening. It had already been a cloudy, dark day, and anything and everything around me already seemed surreal and unusual.
It started out pretty much how I thought it would. I would get my room and board, be given a uniform, attend a ceremony. It all went about as well as it could have. However, it was only the next day, where I would learn all about what I had just gotten myself into.
I woke up at ass o'clock in the morning, got all ready and packed up my books and materials. Then double checked it, and triple checked, and then arrived to class nearly a half-hour early.
While waiting for class to start, I did not strike a conversation with anyone, nor was I approached. I did listen to other people's conversations though, as a way of practicing my still-subpar language skills. I remember catching some weird remarks about how "it smells really good in here today," and numerous complaints of suddenly being hungry. Even so I was excited, feeling all prepared and accomplished just for sitting there. Then the teacher started talking.
He went on a long spiel, one that he had clearly went on numerous times in the past. He almost seemed bored, as he explained why my life was about to become a living hell of fear and paranoia. It would have been hilarious, had I not been the butt of the joke.
Throughout the whole announcement, I thought I was losing my mind. I got the gist of the speech, about how humans and monsters must learn to coexist, and how the school was just as much a normal school, as it was training for living among people in the human world. That was a nice thought, except he went on to say how humans were never allowed in the school. Ever. I would rather not remember in detail the consequences of a human being found out in the school.
On the way to my dorm, I tried to convince myself that I just have to work on my Japanese. Surely I was mistaking something, a quirk of the two languages merging. I understood that that could happen sometimes. In the dorm, I picked a language dictionary up and looked up one word, Youkai. You bet your ass I studied like hell after that. Books were practically flung all around my room, in my panic to understand and make sense of what was happening. I felt an awful, gut-wrenching feeling that, up until that point, I was not very familiar with. I was homesick.
Why on earth did I have to move so far away? How would I explain any of this to my family? Would I see them again? Why isn't my cellphone getting a signal? Thoughts like this ran through my head as I fruitlessly tried to sleep. I've never had an easy time sleeping, and that night, when I heard more sniffing and complaints about appetite, sleep was but wishful thinking.
With the stuff of fairy tales suddenly a grim reality, life went on anyway. Life is hard anyway, but you have not lived until the fear of your classmates eating you is suddenly a very real concern. I figured out quickly that they could smell humans, that would explain the complaints of hunger and the pleasant aroma that everyone other than myself noticed. It seemed they could not pinpoint where the smell was coming from, but that didn't stop me from promptly picking up a new habit.
I became obsessively clean. I don't mean the actually-bother-to-make-the-bed-every-day kind of clean either; more like the gather-every-stray-dust-particle-I-could-find-and-burn-it-at-all-costs kind of clean. I have become a mad man by anyone's standards with my cleanliness. I have a tiny vacuum for picking up dust on any given surface. I have more deodorant than the rest of my floor combined, which I use very, very generously. I avoided touching things, even wearing gloves when they would let me, so as to never touch anything directly and possibly leave my scent. My clothes, sheets, everything are washed multiple times a day, and my normally shaggy hair is combed until every stray hair is taken out. I also now wear it in a ponytail, something I have never done before that point.
Of course, I have been caught in the middle of this strange behavior. Sometime in the beginning of the year, I was in the bathroom, washing my face and hands all the way up to my elbows. I would have gone up to my shoulders, but the damn uniforms are so constricting. A man no older than myself was just going about his business, briefly washing his hands next to me. I guess he and a few others couldn't help but notice my rather enthusiastic embrace of the practice.
"You know, washing for that long and with that much soap probably isn't necessary." It was likely just an off-handed comment that didn't mean anything, but at the time, it scared me shitless. I was thoroughly convinced that he and everyone in the room would, quite literally, tear me a new one. However, I have always prided myself in my ability to seem under control, even when I'm freaking out and panic-shitting on the inside. I consciously stood taller.
"Cleanliness is next to godliness. Right?" Mercifully, he only shrugged and didn't question any further. "Whatever, man."
There is another quirk of being a frail, weak human in a school full of powerful monsters. My P.E record was exceptionally terrible. Still is, actually.
Even back home in middle school, I was just an awful athlete. At my worst, it took me twenty minutes to run (more like walk/limp) a full mile. Nowadays, a mile takes me about seven minutes on a track. Not bad by human standards, but the only reason I'm not still the slowest person in the class is because slug monsters are a thing.
How and why the drastic change? The short answer is that I didn't really have a choice. A mile is practically nothing for the average monster student, and the physical tests included distances closer to five miles, and that was the light stuff. I decided that if I'm going to keep up with these super strength assholes, I would just have to put much more work into it then anyone else did.
In my free time, of which there is surprisingly little in Japanese school life, I went into the gym to exercise on my own. Whenever I wanted to give up (which was embarrassingly often), it helped to imagine the dumbbells I was lifting as little kids being rescued from a fire, or running away from attacking hordes of classmates on the track or treadmill, or remembering the face of that jerk Steve from school while using the punching bag. Fucking Steve.
I did everything the hard way. I brought all of my books with me to every class, even the unnecessary ones, all by hand and not by backpack. Alone in my room, it was a parade of manual labor and exercise, standing in squatting positions while reading or doing push-ups just for the hell of it. I'm almost up to a hundred.
All that work added up to being able to squeak by on the charts. There was one exchange I had with the P.E teacher after one of those tests, closer to the end of the year. Panting and keeping my distance, as I was still worried that deodorant would not dull my scent for much longer, he gave me a brief rundown of my progress. "Well, you're still on the bottom of the list in your class."
I tried not to let that disappoint me, after all the work I had done, but he continued. "However, you are definitely the most improved student I've seen in a while. Good job." I managed to keep my sudden joy under wraps and gave my thanks. It seems even monsters can appreciate hard work.
As an aside, have you ever tried to be in the best physical shape of your life, sweating like a pig everywhere you go, while also being as psychotically clean as I think it's necessary to be? Because it's bullshit.
I did manage to make some friends though, to varying degrees of friendliness. It turns out that in some Japanese schools, joining clubs is mandatory. There was a whole event centered around finding clubs to join. It would be this way that I was forced to actually speak to people. In fact, it's how I met one of those aforementioned slug monsters. He hung around the photography club, and the poor guy was looking short on both friends and enthusiasm. Thinking I had nothing to lose, I said hi and asked about the club.
I didn't end up joining, but I stayed on speaking terms with him for about a month. Perhaps it would have been longer, if I hadn't happened to get a peak at his bag one day. One of his photos he was so proud of was left hanging out in the open by accident, apparently one of the ladies in our class. Upon "accidently" digging a bit more, I found a ton of pictures of half-naked students. I'm left to assume that getting those pictures was the only reason he joined the club, as the school will give anyone a quality camera. I haven't talked to him in a long time.
Throughout this past year though, nothing ever made me as happy as finding out that I was not the only human in the school. I don't think I'll ever forget the man's name. Aono Tsukune. I met him in the same way, walking around outside to see a group of people advertising the newspaper club. At the very least it seemed less scary then everything else, and I did enjoy writing about things that, in the grand scheme of things, probably didn't matter that much. The blue-haired girl in the group gave me a paper, and I applied shortly afterward.
Needless to say I got in, if only because they were grossly short of members and, for whatever reason, not a lot of people wanted to join. Each of the members were in their senior year at this point, save for one, so they were happy to get a greenhorn in the group.
I didn't know at the time how big of a commitment the group would be. I only joined because it was a requirement. My lazy-ass brain just figured I would get a topic and then write about it on my own time. But no, each of us stayed in a single room to write and bounce ideas off of each other. We also had to go out and find our own topics to write about, but that wasn't the hard part. No, it was the time-investment with this group of people I had never met and suddenly had to try and support for our work.
I seldom spoke when I didn't have to at first. It did not help that my speaking and charming skills are just not that great. "Yep, that grass sure is grass, ain't it?" When I wasn't typing, I was watching and listening. This group of friends had obviously been through a lot together, and the dynamic between them was easy to pick up on. The newspaper club consisted of precisely two men, and the rest were women. Supposedly they had another man in the group, a werewolf, but he had just graduated. Normally, I would have liked that ratio, except all of the women were nuts over the other guy. I tried not to let it bruise my ego, mostly by remembering I was supposed to be hiding and keeping a low profile.
It also helped that I was never terribly interested in any of them. Yes, all of them were incredibly pretty in their own way, but let's be honest, everyone in the school looks good. Can I just get that out of the way? There are almost no unattractive women here! I mean, one would think it'd be quite the opposite, but no! Is there something in the water here? Has my brain been bombarded so hard by hideousness that it has decided to take pity on me and instead I'm seeing beautiful women everywhere?
Maybe it's because athleticism is a given for most monsters. Being able to run for miles and lift incredible weight like it's practically nothing, it would make sense to have a nice body in their human form. Or perhaps, since monsters can shape shift and look human, maybe they can change the way their body looks as well? I may never know for sure.
So I've been sitting on that rant for a while. Sue me.
Anyway as I write this, I now realize that Tsukune eventually caught on to my secret, but he did not let me know right away. I just had a feeling that, over time, he developed this knowing look on his face toward me in the conversations we had. He was easily the most talkative of the bunch toward me, even if just to half-heartedly try and include me in general conversation with the group. Maybe part of him was glad that he wasn't swimming alone in an ocean of estrogen.
Inevitably, we became acquaintances over time. It took some doing, but he got me to talk about myself a bit. I told him much of what I had written down already, being careful with my words. But he began dropping hints about himself, saying things like "I haven't always been what I am now," as if he knew I had more to tell and was coaxing me to admit it.
It was months before I worked up the nerve to confess. My body was more built, my mind was clearer, and very slowly I could relax more and more. I felt good, and I realized over time that there was no way I would make it out of here without at least accidently making friends. And besides, wouldn't it make my experience much more interesting than just hiding in plain sight forever? My former adventurousness was coming back, and it was getting the better of me.
I had the good fortune to catch him alone at one point, and confided. He listened to my short rant about what an idiot I thought I was, to have gotten myself into this place. He only smiled, and caught me up on some of what him and his harem have been through.
Him and I got comfortable and we talked quite a bit after that. He gave me all sorts of advice for surviving, of which I'm extremely thankful. Not for the advice necessarily, but because just knowing I had someone I could trust was a Godsend. I would be even more thankful if the advice was actually helpful.
How that man survived his first few days, I have no idea. According to him, he did none of what I did and instead was constantly freaked out and being picked on. Well, I mean, I was always freaked out and picked on too, but at least I could act calm. No, Tsukune was the type to wear his heart on his sleeve, whether he was afraid or whether he was telling one of his ladies why they're special to him. He survived solely because he bumped into one of them, that same girl has since given him some of her blood, making him something other than human. That being said, his advice only worked for someone with these exact circumstances.
"Just be really, really nice!" is not advice! As much respect as I have for the guy, his pep talk was just useless. Anyone can just bump into someone and be really nice to them! Besides, I am quite the opposite personality-wise. Sure I agree with what he says, and I like to think I'm a good person, but real life is just a little more complicated than that. I, am a little more complicated than that. That man isn't lucky just because he has loyal women. He's lucky he isn't dead a thousand times over.
After the few months it took me to get comfortable enough to really start making friends out of this group, it took even longer to actually become friends with the girls. They did not like me very much at first, even after finding out I was in the same boat as their beloved Master had once been in. It was a topic of interest for maybe a week or so, before they gravitated back to Tsukune completely. I'm sure they didn't appreciate my relatively foul mouth either.
Many conversations with them were spent trying to convince them that yes, it is entirely possible to have a good time with someone other than Tsukune, despite a lack of romantic feelings. Or no, that isn't a form of cheating and how could it be anyway? Or seriously, I don't care how amazing the dude supposedly is, there is more to life than the one guy. I swear, none of those girls had a life of their own. Good lord. It took the entire year to get on speaking terms with all of them.
And now, here in the present, Tsukune and most of the girls have graduated. I am left alone, except of course for the younger vampire Kokoa, but I had the foresight to actually try and meet some people closer to my grade. It's actually quite easy to make friends around here. All I did was help one girl pick up some contents spilled from a box, and she still doesn't shut up about how it's the nicest thing anyone has done for her. Huh... maybe Tsukune's advice wasn't so bad. Basic kindness seems to be in drastically short supply around here. Anyway, thanks to that, this next year won't start from scratch with a near-empty club.
I can't help but wonder though. How are the girls and Tsukune doing now? They all seemed almost maniacally obsessed with the guy, how would that play out after school is all said and done? What if Tsukune picks just one of them, what would the rest of them do? Where would they go? I almost feel bad for them.
I won't lie, I have thought about becoming a monster as well. I wouldn't be the first to do so. Hell, I wouldn't even be the second. If Tsukune's story about his transformation is to be believed, than something similar could happen to me if I somehow convinced Kokoa to do that. I'd probably have to beat her away with a stick (not that that would help much) to get her not to bite me, if it weren't for my scent-erasing habits. I saw how her silver-haired sister was.
But I've thought about it a lot. Tsukune and I have taken very different paths so far in such an uncertain scenario. He was a lucky bastard in many respects, but I played it much safer. Though he may have power, I still have a chance to earn a claim to fame. I may not be the only human to be enrolled in this school, and I wouldn't be the only one who isn't a shameless pervert and/or douchebag either. However, I can still be the only human who stayed human.
Why on earth would I want to do that? It's not so hard to figure out. Humans are pretty great. I don't care how much shit we get around this place, we rule the world, baby! The apex predators are vampires, who can tear buildings apart as if they're swatting flies? Bullshit, put that same creature in a public pool and they're screwed. Wear a cross. Eat lots of garlic. It is insane how many weaknesses the "apex predator" has.
If monsters are so strong, why are they not the ones who rule the world? I think I have that answer. Humans don't survive and thrive because they're the strongest, nor even the most intelligent. But we are the most adaptable, able to fit in most any environment. The work I have done is a testament to that. I have survived up to now, and one could even say I have thrived. And when I graduate from this school with a big, fat, sincere smile on my face, I will know that I have won. The rabbit that was caught in the lion's den, but lived to tell the tale, is one hell of a fucking rabbit if I do say so myself.
Maybe if I get some serious feelings for one of the ladies around here, I would rethink that decision. There's no telling what i would do to protect those I care about. Maybe I would be just as big an idiot as Tsukune was, and there surely would be consequences. But I look around now and I figure I'll let that moment come if it will.
If I were to give any advice to some other hapless human to come into this world and somehow get their hands on this journal, it would be this. Find comfort anywhere you can, and make full use of it. My own personal comforts included the cleaning and exercise, but it also involved taking a lot of walks. Once I was bold enough to leave my room when it wasn't necessary, I often walked into the woods.
I know that seems stupid, putting myself out there to be attacked like that. But it was better being afraid with some fresh air, and seeing the meager sunlight through branches then just being afraid in my small room, you know? As it turns out, the woods around here are not that different from where I came from. Even the perpetually cloudy, eerie weather is not much of a stretch.
I suppose you can follow some of Tsukune's advice too. However, even if I was confident in my ability to do so, I would not start my own harem. That shit looks stressful as all hell.
Ah, and do your best to remember that being human does not mean you're weak. As it stands, I am already the most frightening creature anyone has come across. Something tells me that I will see Tsukune again, very soon. When that day comes, he will meet a better man.
That's right. I am man. And no matter what the monsters may do, they cannot take that away from me.
Now! I should get back to what I was doing in the first place. It's the beginning of the year and already things are happening! Someone beat a cow monster with nothing but two porcelain figures, and that "Nic Nac Paddy Whack" article ain't gonna write itself.