With Axel sick and sleeping, Demyx didn't have much better to do than start wandering though the castle again. This time, instead of the Hall of Empty Melodies, he found himself in the library. It was a beautiful place, and unexpectedly warm and comfortable considering the cold austerity of the rest of the castle. And it seemed totally unoccupied - an excellent place to while away a few hours. He started scanning the shelves, not looking for anything in particular, just looking at all the long rows of books he'd never seen before about subjects he'd never even heard of before. "What's algebra?" he asked musingly, taking a book off the shelf and reading from its cover.
He got the sudden sensation that someone was watching him, and he froze. "Nine, when did your formal schooling end?"
Demyx looked around nervously, but didn't see anything. "Um...where...are you?" Who are you? he wondered and didn't dare ask. Something flickered at the edge of his vision, and suddenly a short, silver-haired man was standing where no one had been a second ago. "Oh...um...hi, Zexion...is there...um...something..."
Zexion eyed him in mild irritation. "The question, Nine?"
"Oh...um..." Demyx could feel his face turning red. "Um...four years ago or so..."
Zexion stared at him. "How old were you at the time?"
Demyx stared at his feet. "Eleven," he mumbled.
Zexion continued to stare at him, looking awed and a little horrified. Then he seemed to snap out of it. "The gaps in your education must be absolutely appalling...something will have to be done about that...come with me..." Zexion led him to a large table in the middle of the library or thereabouts, sat him down, and proceeded to quiz him relentlessly for almost two hours, including math questions that made him stare in helpless horror and feel a little sick to his stomach. What sort of person put letters in a math problem? Math was supposed to be all numbers!
"So...what do you think?" he asked nervously when the questioning was apparently over.
Zexion pored over the notes he'd taken, looking less than pleased. "...Your current level of knowledge is approximately what one would expect of someone whose education ended with elementary school. Extensive tutoring will be required to bring you up to an age-appropriate level."
Zexion never used a small word where a huge one would work, and he had a magical way of making Demyx feel about six inches tall. "...Meaning...I'm about as dumb as a cardboard boat and I need to go back to school?"
Zexion snorted. "Knowledge is only a measure of how much education one has received. Intelligence is a measure of how readily one learns, not of what one has learned thus far."
"Oh..." Demyx's gaze was continually directed at his feet. "So...um...what does that mean for me?"
Zexion shook his head. "As previously mentioned, extensive tutoring will be required, the sooner the better."
"The sooner the better...you mean, like, right now?"
"It will never get any sooner..."
AN: Moar Zexion plz. Also, oww. Poor Demyx. :P
Disclaimer: I don't own Kingdom Hearts, got it memorized?
