As the sun rose on a new day, Ginji slowly opened his eyes, trying to will himself awake as he in no way felt ready to get up this early.

The German Shepherd was so used to getting up at a normal hour for junior high that when he read through the school handbook and saw the times that classes normally started, he briefly thought that there was an actual typo in there.

Sadly, that was not the case, and with Ginji not being a morning person, it was quite an adjustment for him. Thankfully, he'd had the foresight to start getting up early around a week or so before he left home, so it wasn't all bad.

After rubbing some of the sleep out of his eyes, Ginji rolled on to his side, about to reach for the curtain and pull it open, when he was suddenly met with a face full of shaggy fur.

"Hey Ginji, it's time to get up!" said Collot, smiling as the two of them were nearly touching noses.

"Gah!" yelled Ginji, flailing and accidentally banging his head on the ceiling as he was frightened out of his morning stupor.

As Ginji clutched at his head, his face screwed up in pain, Collot's face fell, realizing he might have done something wrong.

"Oh geez, I'm sorry, Ginji. I just wanted to help you out so you're not running late."

"Thanks, big guy." said Ginji, waving off his concern with one hand as the other continued to massage his aching head. "I think I've got it covered, though."

"If you say so."

Collot stepped away from the curtain, shrouding Ginji's bed once again in darkness.

Sighing heavily, Ginji pulled the curtain open before his eyes could readjust to the darkness, slightly wincing from the bright sun in the window.

Luckily, the ladder was still in the same position he left it in last night, so after grabbing his uniform shirt and slipping it on, he climbed down the rungs only to find that he seemed to have been the last one woken up, which while slightly disappointing wasn't a surprise.

However, as he scanned the room while stretching out his back, he couldn't help but notice that everyone was standing in the middle of the room except for a certain grey wolf.

Looking over towards Legoshi's bed, he was surprised to find the wolf in question diligently taking care of a small stag beetle inside a plastic cage.

"Man, whoever said first impressions were everything were lying through their teeth." thought Ginji as he watched Legoshi work.

Jack quickly noticed the attention that Ginji was giving Legoshi's pet, and walked over to his side, leaning over as he whispered in the German Shepherd's ear.

"Don't worry too much about Legoshi, Ginji. He's liked bugs for as long as I can remember. He's had Beetley for years." he said, gesturing towards the cage with a nod.

"Wait, Beetley?" said Ginji, the name suddenly registering in his mind. "Who names a bug Beetley?"

"Don't ask. Legoshi never told me why either."

Although puzzled, Ginji decided to listen to Jack and drop the subject. Walking over to Legoshi's bed, he kneeled down and gave the bug a small wave.

"Hey there, little buddy." he said, trying to be nice despite still thinking it was a bit weird.

Legoshi was so focused on his work he nearly dropped the beetle as he jumped slightly, but thankfully Beetley held on tight.

"Oh, hey." he said, looking over and seeing Ginji next to him.

"So, Jack tells me that you've had this bug for quite a while."

"Yeah, I found him back when I was a kid. Almost stepped on him, but I picked him up and decided to take him home with me. Have you ever watched a bug crawl around your hand?" asked Legoshi, twisting his long and bony hand around as Beetley did just that.

"Can't say I have." said Ginji.

"You should try it. It's hypnotizing."

Ginji didn't answer, but he filed that offer away in the back of his mind for later.

"So, I hear you're joining the drama club." commented Legoshi, catching Ginji off guard due to the sudden change in subject.

"Yeah, I guess I am. I didn't expect to get in. I never really was that much of an actor." he said, thinking about the second letter he got notifying him of this.

"I wouldn't worry too much about being an actor." said Legoshi. "Louis's very strict about who's in the pool. I only got to go on stage because he broke his leg and had to get Bill to replace him. I took Bill's old part."

Despite being incredibly confused at the new names being thrown at him, Ginji caught the fleeting look of guilt on Legoshi's face, but it immediately switched to one of puzzlement as the wolf noticed Ginji's confusion.

"You'll meet them later. I should really be getting ready."

"Wait, if Louis doesn't think I'll be good enough for the actor's pool, then what am I going to do? And why did I even get in the club in the first place?"

"You're probably going to be on the art team with me and some others, I imagine. As for why, I'm not sure exactly, but Kai told me that apparently everyone that the drama club scouts has a dark secret in their past. Apparently, it helps them 'channel their grief into their acting'." he said, throwing up air quotes for emphasis.

Ginji couldn't help but be a little annoyed at getting another name he didn't know thrown at him, but at a look from Legoshi, he kept his mouth shut, knowing that he was going to see him later as well.

With the conversation finally finished, Legoshi pulled himself out of his bed, his posture slouched as he shuffled over to his closet.

As Ginji watched the wolf dig through his closet, he couldn't help but notice some more blood had seeped through his bandages, slightly staining his undershirt.

"You know, you really should get that checked out, Legoshi." said Jack, having noticed it as well. "That doesn't look too good."

"Yeah, I know." he said as he pulled his shirt on and slipped on his shoes. "I was going to do that last night after I left the auditorium, but I was so worn out I decided to just go to bed and do it in the morning."

Ginji could very clearly understand Legoshi's point despite the dangers. With how vicious he was when he was attacking Bill, he wasn't surprised that his energy would be completely sapped.

"Well, it's the morning now, so go!" he said, lightly pushing Legoshi to the door despite the wolf's protests.

"Wait, I didn't shower yet!" said Legoshi, but he was cut off when Jack shut the door on him.

Dusting himself off, Jack turned back to the others, only to pause as he saw Ginji staring at him puzzled.

Clearing his throat nervously, Jack stuck his hands into his pockets, rocking back and forth on his feet.

"So, uh…you should probably get ready, Ginji. First class is pretty soon."

Although still a bit confused after seeing the way the wolf and retriever interacted, Ginji decided it was best to leave well enough alone, so he shrugged before heading over to the closet.

Luckily, since he was told that uniforms were required in all areas of campus, he didn't really need to pack much else in terms of clothes, so it didn't take him very long to put everything away.

After brushing his teeth and taking a leak, he joined the others as they headed out of their room and out of the dorm into campus, each of the others separating as they made their way to class until it was just Ginji and Jack left.

However, as they headed up a stairway and passed by a certain room, Ginji's attention was caught by bright yellow police tape covering a door, the doorknob smashed inwards.

Jack hadn't noticed Ginji stop, so he'd already took a few steps forward before he realized that there was no one standing next to him.

Looking behind him, he saw Ginji looking downwards into the hallway.

"Something up?" he asked, puzzled.

"Who's that on the picture?" asked Ginji, pointing towards the floor in front of him.

Taking a few steps back to join him, Jack looked towards where Ginji was pointing, only for his expression to falter as he saw who it was.

"Oh! Um…that's Tem. He's an alpaca, and he was a friend of Legoshi's in drama club."

Judging from Jack's tone and the flowers and style of the picture frame, Ginji could infer what happened to him, but he'd always had a tendency to ask for too much information without thinking, so before he could stop himself, he turned towards Jack.

"So, what happened to him?" he asked.

"A carnivore ate him inside that lecture hall." said Jack, pointing towards the destroyed door.

Ginji suddenly felt sick, his mind conjuring up some pretty gruesome pictures of how he imagined it happened.

Shaking his head vigorously to remove those stray thoughts, Ginji quickly turned around, keeping his back rigid as he did not want to look back and be reminded of his morbid imagination.

However, as he rejoined Jack and continued on his way to class, Ginji decided the next time he saw Legoshi, he was going to ask him about Tem. While he didn't want to think about how violently he died, he could feel that Tem was a nice kid and he wanted to know more about him.

Thankfully, the first half of classes went pretty smoothly for Ginji outside of Seaspeak, which the German Shepherd didn't seem convinced was even possible to do (plus, there was this weird hen sitting next to Legoshi that was giving him the side eye every so often, and it was very distracting).

Once the class was over, though, both Ginji and Jack joined Legoshi as the wolf pulled a small package out of his backpack, opening it and pulling out an egg salad sandwich.

As he took a bite into it and smiled happily, Ginji and Jack traded looks before Jack spoke up.

"So, you sure do like those egg salad sandwiches, huh, Legoshi?"

"Oh yeah, especially on Wednesdays. They're so much better."

"Wait, why Wednesdays?" asked Ginji, confused. "Don't all egg salad sandwiches taste the same?"

"Hardly!" said Legoshi, catching Ginji off guard with how forceful it was. "The eggs are so much fresher on Wednesdays. It tastes so much better!"

"Okay, I see your point." said Ginji, taking a step back as Legoshi had nearly gotten out of his seat with how defensive he was getting about the eggs.

As they spoke, none of them noticed the hen standing off to the side, a knowing smirk on her face.

After rejoining the rest of his roommates, Ginji entered the academy's cafeteria, only to stop when he saw just how big the place was.

"Wow. This place is huge." he said quietly.

"Well, it's got to be a big enough place to fit all these animals at once." said Miguno, lightly bumping shoulders with the German Shepherd.

"But still, it looks like it'd take someone small a good while to get to the other side of the room."

"Well, there's nothing we can really do about that. Now come on, you're holding up the line."

Ginji looked behind him and jumped when he saw that there was indeed a fair share of animals standing behind him.

"Sorry!" he apologized before quickly moving towards the kitchen and grabbing the assigned carnivore meal for the day.

Room 701 all ended up sitting together soon after, and Ginji greedily dug into his bean steak, having not eaten much at all since he'd gotten there due to a bit of nervousness.

However, his eager wolfing down of his food was interrupted when the entire cafeteria's attention was caught by something happening dead center.

"Hey, you stepped on my tail, you idiot!" said a hyena.

"I said I was sorry!" said the fox next to him.

Everyone watched as the two animals continued to argue before the fox suddenly reared back and bit the hyena on the arm.

"Ow, you bastard! Get off!" he said, shaking his arm roughly as the fox held on.

Ginji watched as the fox continued to sink his teeth into the hyena's arm, but what happened next was something even he didn't expect.

"ENOUGH!"

Ginji looked to his side and saw that it was actually Legoshi who had yelled, as the wolf quickly clapped his hands over his mouth, his expression showing that even he was surprised that he did that.

"What the heck is up with you, Legoshi?" asked Jack in a loud whisper. "Seriously!"

Unfortunately, the lab's question was ignored, as Legoshi's attention was on the fox, who stepped forwards to meet the wolf.

"What the heck are you yelling at? Do you think you can beat me just because you're bigger?"

"What? No way!" said Legoshi, waving his hands as he tried to defuse the situation he created. "You've got it all wrong!"

"Oh, I do, huh? Give me your neck. I'll bite it nice and gently."

It looked to Ginji like the fox was about ready to attack Legoshi, but they were luckily interrupted by girlish screaming coming from nearby, revealing none other than Louis the red deer walking up to join them.

"As much as I would like to see this, I'm afraid Legoshi is very important to the drama club, so I cannot have you fighting with him."

The fox looked like he was about to just ignore Louis and go for Legoshi, but after a brief moment, the fox scowled heavily.

"Fine. I see how it is. Throwing around your special rich kid status, huh?"

Louis didn't answer, his glare not faltering in the least.

"Alright! I'll leave him alone."

Throwing his hands in the air, the fox finally left, and chatter soon returned to the cafeteria as the situation was successfully defused.

As for Legoshi and Louis, the former sat down slightly embarrassed that it got that far, while the latter walked over to where Legoshi was sitting, leaning down so that he was eye level with the wolf.

"Consider us even." he said before taking another few steps over to where Ginji was sitting.

"You're one of the new members of the Drama Club. Ginji, right?"

"Uh, yes." said Ginji, not expecting to be spoken to by someone of as high a stature as Louis. "That's me."

"Good. You're going to be working with the art team while you are a member of this club. I expect great work out of you, Ginji."

Although not surprised (considering he was already told about this by Legoshi), Ginji was a little disappointed that he couldn't have gotten a chance to audition to get into the actor's pool.

"I'll do my best." said Ginji, causing Louis to nod in satisfaction.

As Louis left, Ginji looked over at Jack, who shrugged, and Legoshi, who didn't notice him leaving.

Puzzled, Ginji decided to leave the subject alone for the moment, returning to his food as he finished off the last part.

Soon after everyone was finished, Jack and the others went off to do their own thing while Legoshi and Ginji changed into their tracksuits and headed off to the auditorium for Drama Club.

Once they arrived, Ginji stayed with the group while Legoshi went up into the rafters. The German Shepherd took a few moments to look around the room at all of the others animals, including a mongoose, a sheep that kind of reminded Ginji a bit of Tem, and a female grey wolf, who had on a similar getup to him which made him think that she might be a first year like him.

Ginji walked over to try to introduce himself to his fellow carnivore, but before he could reach her, he ended up accidentally bumping into something large, orange, and striped.

Looking up, Ginji's eyes widened in fright as he saw the tiger he first saw tearing holes into Legoshi's back last night.

However, despite his intimidating appearance, as he looked down and saw the smaller German Shepherd in front of him, he smiled, scratching the back of his head with his claws.

"Hey, sorry about that. Guess I wasn't paying attention to where I was going. I'm Bill. Who might you be?"

Bill looked down, only for his expression to falter when he saw the frightened look on Ginji's face.

"Hey, you okay, bud?" he asked.

Ginji somehow managed to force himself out of his stupor, shaking his head as he returned his focus to Bill's face, the black eye he received from Legoshi still healing.

"I'm fine." he lied, not wanting Bill to ask any more questions. "My name's Ginji, by the way."

Luckily, Ginji telling his name successfully managed to sidetrack Bill away from the way he was acting.

"Well, good to meet you, Ginji! "said Bill, laughing heartily as he clapped Ginji on the shoulder, sending him stumbling a few steps.

"Why is everyone clapping me all of a sudden?" thought Ginji to himself, slightly annoyed.

Unfortunately, Bill held him up just enough, that by the time he finished speaking and let him go about his business, Louis stepped in with a pelican as they officially started the meeting.

Slipping off, Ginji climbed up the ladder and joined Legoshi in the rafters, as well as the mongoose, who must have also slipped off while he was busy talking to Bill. As he listened to the meeting, his mind was swimming as he was having trouble reconciling the friendly Bill he just met with the pissed off tiger he saw on stage.

"You must be one of the new guys, huh?" said the mongoose quietly, looking over as the German Shepherd sat down next to Legoshi, his legs hanging off the railing, slightly jumping as he realized he was being addressed.

Ginji nodded before looking down and noticing that he had his hand stuck out towards him.

"My name's Kai. Used to be in the actor's pool, but Louis over there kicked me out and put me up here." he said, looking over at the red deer below, a flash of anger crossing his face.

Although somewhat interested to hear some of the reasoning, Ginji didn't say anything, instead simply introducing himself and shaking the mongoose's hand.

"Hey, don't think that you're going to have a hard time here, Ginji. There's a lot of hard work involved, but it's fun work all the same."

Ginji nodded again, but as he was about to turn to focus his attention on the meeting going on down below, he was suddenly reminded of something that had just happened this morning.

"Hey, wait. Legoshi told me about you this morning."

"He did?" asked Kai, his eyes wide in puzzlement.

"Yeah, he told me that you said apparently everyone in the club were scouted because they had some dark secret in their past."

"Heh, yeah. I guess I did."

"Did you ever find out what mine was?" asked Ginji, suddenly nervous as he really didn't want anyone to know about what happened to him.

"Well, I literally just met you, so no." said Kai, causing Ginji to inwardly sigh in relief. "Word travels, but not that fast."

Satisfied, Ginji nodded before looking back down, causing Kai to give him a weird look before looking over at Legoshi.

"Was he always like this?" he whispered as he leaned over towards the wolf.

"Dunno." said Legoshi. "He seems okay so far. Then again, I only just met him yesterday."

Throwing his hands up, Kai gave up on trying to get some answers, leaning his head on the railing as he listened to the meeting, bored.

Not long after that, though, the animals in the actor's pool dispersed to do their own things, except for Bill, a bald eagle, and a panther, who were following the pelican close behind as he gestured for the three of them to come down.

"Now, I know you three probably didn't hear me, so I'm going to quickly run through what's going on." said the pelican. "We've been invited to assist with the Festival of the Meteor for the second year in a row, so we've got a lot of work ahead of us."

As Legoshi, Ginji and Kai looked on in surprise, the pelican continued talking.

"Legoshi and Ginji, you two will be joining Bill, Aoba and Tao in the city as they attend a meeting at the city council about the festival."

"Hey Sanu, I thought you said that this was only for the second years." said Bill, puzzled.

"I know I said that, but I feel like it'd be best for Ginji to join you guys considering it's his first day on the art team and this would be valuable experience for him." said the pelican, who Ginji now knew to be called Sanu.

Although still confused due to the mixed messages, Bill shrugged before walking over and placing a large hand on Ginji's shoulder, causing the German Shepherd to become suddenly nervous.

"Well, looks like you're going to be joining us in the city, huh, newbie?" said Bill.

"Why is he calling me a newbie all of a sudden?" thought Ginji to himself, a flash of annoyance crossing his face.

Bill simply chuckled, giving Ginji a few light pats on the shoulder before moving back to where he was originally.

"Hey, what about me?" asked Kai.

"Oh! Dom told me he needs some assistance planning out some of the details on the decorations. I'm sure you wouldn't mind giving him a hand, right?"

"I guess so." said Kai, agreeable despite the slight disappointment in his tone at not being able to go to the city.

Kai headed out of the room, most likely heading towards where Dom was located.

As for the rest of them, Sanu decided to step away to keep an eye on the dancers, while Bill took the lead leading the group of carnivores out of the room and out of the building, heading back to the dorm. But not long after they exited the auditorium, they were stopped by Louis, who was standing just outside, seemingly waiting for him.

"You all are going out to the city to attend that meeting, correct?" he asked.

Bill nodded. "Of course. We don't want to be late."

"Good."

Louis then began to walk off, leaving everyone quite confused. However, he soon stopped a few feet away, turning his head towards them.

"One more thing. Never set foot inside the black market."

"The black market?" thought Ginji to himself, confused. He looked around to try and get an answer out of one of the others, but everyone looked just as confused as he was.

Unfortunately, Louis had already left by the time he looked back at the deer, so with a whine of irritation, he gave up on asking and decided to move on.

Ginji stayed close to Legoshi as the two of them followed at the back of the group, the German Shepherd turning towards the large wolf as he spoke.

"So, sorry to ask, but how can you and Bill be so chummy after what he did to you that night?"

Legoshi didn't answer immediately, thinking about what he wanted to say.

"We…just worked things out. That's all."

Ginji wasn't entirely thrilled with the vague answer, but he really didn't want to end up causing a scene by trying to get more info out of him, so he sighed, deciding to move on.

"How are those scratches, by the way?" he asked.

"They're doing better." said Legoshi. "The nurse cleaned them out and replaced the bandages. She did them much tighter, though. Kind of hard to breathe fully, but I guess it's helping."

The group soon came up on the dorm, and after separating temporarily, Legoshi and Ginji entered their dorm and changed into their casual clothes to prepare for the journey into the city.

For Legoshi, he had on a simple red long-sleeved shirt, tan pants and his normal boots, while Ginji chose a black shirt and jeans with his normal shoes.

With their essentials ready, the two of them exited their room before rejoining the others as they headed through the front gates of the academy, Ginji somewhat eager to take in the sights of the city.