Soulay's Academy for Humanities and Magical Studies for the Betterment of Monsterkind and Humanity.

There was only one place in the entire world where that name was written out in full. Where the commonly-agreed-upon parlance of Soul's School had not arrived.

Above the entrance to its main building.

Decided as such so that even the largest monsters could attend within its brick-laid walls. The name was derived by both the Monster Royals as well as the monarchs of Hjearta. The unveiling took five humans and five multi-limbed monsters just to make sure the large purple and yellow colored fabric wouldn't suffocate the audience as it fell. Afterwards the fabric was raised as a proud banner in the lobby held up by its own weight-supporting column with magical ropes that hummed a calming light that warmed both monster as well as human souls alike.

Even though they're more different.

Underneath the banner was the entrance to the Main Lecture Hall named as such to contrast with cold logic against the varied emotions that were taught inside.

If you'd ask the walls inside the Main Lecture Hall they'd tell you of the magnificent displays and heartfelt lectures held within their boundaries. Even if you peeled back to look behind them you'd find the same. Just like the charred, cold, and stinging smell that was impossible to air out even after a wind-focused lesson the teachings had permeated the walls through the wooden planks and into the very foundation of the building.

It was those walls that a wide and watery-eyed human once looked up on from her strewn parchments and papers. Her deep-green colors darted across the slits between the planks to maybe, just maybe, siphon some of the magic that's just as much a metaphoric girdle holding up the weight of the importance the joint establishment meant for the world as it was a main ingredient to the mortar between the bricks behind the slits.

However, she could not ask the walls, despite her heart's and soul's desire leaking out as thick drops out her eyes. For that would've been cheating.

Two humans and one monster had already been thrown out for conspiring together via notes and leaning too much against the wall. A second monster had received a warning for trying to ask to be excused for the bathroom, imitating a human's voice and everything. It was understandable to a certain degree. The quivering in its voice that told about how it was so afraid and alone. Naked, almost. Not that it mattered to it physically, but emotionally it was just as flush with anxiety as a human would be if physically naked.

In a way the humans were naked too with the final exam. No sleeve was allowed. No monster memories to warm the soul with comforting nostalgia that flushed the emotion-fueled magic traveling safely along the embroidered fabric. Only short-sleeved uniforms given by the university were allowed during the exam for humans so that their soul and aura would stay inside them and them alone. Even with the nullifying effects it still bled out anxiety and hard-thinking panic into the room like steam escaping a slightly ajar lid.

The steam from the rolling boil of worry boiling inside Cter's pot almost lifted her up from her assigned seat.

"Two hours left," informed the lizard monsters heading the exam from behind his sturdy desk at the bottom of the large hall. "Are there any questions?"

Yes, there was. Cter had many. So many! Tens! Hundreds! Thousands! But one loomed above her with such weight that she could only hold up her head with both her hands.

How was she supposed to answer the remaining four questions on this damn exam if it took her that long to answer just one?

The single scribbled answer that was most likely wrong, and became even less legible from the drops of tears that fell from the closed-up eyes as if rain from the mulling cloud above her head. Two hours left… The day before Cter had been in a slight state of quivering anxiety at the thought of spending five whole hours on a single exam. The fastest three hours in her life had then slipped by her faster than it would've done in her sleep. Two hours left with essentially the entire exam to do after her tears had fallen off, and she could see a mistake she made in her answer that was so obvious that even she spotted it!

DAMMIT!

At least she could suppress her aura enough so that the entire hall wasn't turning her way. If anyone would've looked or shifted their focus from the exam to her though she would have been screaming with her hand over her mouth, for screaming too was against the rules. Be it eyes or focused aura-feeling, her distress was obvious. Had she not feared that she would nullify the brilliance that had accumulated inside the walls, Cter would've wished she'd meld inside them never to be found.

Maybe she'd find that one ghost monster that dropped the class early-on inside, who knows?

And there her mind went wandering off away from the exam again. It was like her mind just shut down and wandered off leaving her to fend for herself with the questions. Everything Professor Leraull had said during the four years Cter spent under his tutelage to become a mage pooled on the floor underneath her like leakage from a colander. She felt so sorry and so angry at herself as she again read through all of the questions in the fifth, vague hope that this time it would be enough to stir her mind that was probably halfway to Xoff at that point. As her forehead hit the table with an audible impact Cter's spine began tingling and curling in on itself as she felt the angry eyes and auras shoot at her for disturbing the others.

Well deserved, she felt.

Could she have studied more? Yes. Was it possible for her to have studied more? No. All the fruits of her efforts have only allowed her to barely scrape by with each course. Cling on with the last digit on her little finger each and every single time. Worse still is that she enjoyed her time learning. Learning wasn't what university was about though. Inside she could feel that she had the grips on the subjects, that her aura grew and that she could produce more complex magic, but showing it to others? That was where she failed. It wasn't enough to just learn, she had to show others that she had learned too, and it was that which had her stumbling and only catching herself with the tip of her pinky finger.

The walls were closing in around her as Leraull informed the remaining monsters and humans that one hour remained with a voice that carried a slight melancholy to it as he let his gaze run across the students left. For a brief moment Cter lifted her head to show at least a semblance of composure, but that composure folded right back down as Leraull met her eyes. It didn't take longer than that for her to realize that she'd just wasted his time all this years…

Another wave of disgust washed over her. The scaled lips that had smiled when she finally came into his office not to ask a rudimentary question, but to show that she could finally produce a fireball were now tugged back and thinned into a neutral frown held hard as to not fall into disappointment and resentment. That he held it towards her only furthered Cter's heaving sigh down into her knees. Had he smiled her sigh would've sent all of her papers and parchments flying, so to that she was ever so grateful.

It would've been enough to snuff out the small fireball she'd managed to produce a week or so before the exam. A week less than the four years it took for her to make something practical out of her magic where other human students were already juggling it with monsters after a year or so. Maybe two, if she was going to be honest rather than down-putting. Cter was a good-ideas gal with the others since she didn't have to think about her own weak aura and soul during those afternoons spent in the grassy fields with her course-mates discussing the day's lessons. Making the others laugh as they fell apart trying to conjure up her suggestions did do good for her in that she could laugh with the others' failures rather than cry to her own, for that she did plenty on her own each time she saw her grades. It was her only way to get any grades at all. Secondhand learning was her only saving grace. If she could make the monsters and humans around her smart then they could explain the lessons to her better.

It worked, but only barely.

One might even say that she was friendly out of necessity, and that did indeed keep her up a few nights after the end of some courses where she'd again be surprised that she had to actually demonstrate that she'd learned. Rubbing the pain out of pinky finger all the way up to her shoulder. Those nights she would again realize that the only reason she passed was that the others in her assigned group were compensating for her. She didn't even drop the ball as she couldn't even pick it up to begin with…

With the final exam though it was everyone for themselves. It was said at the introductory course, and repeated with each year, increasing in seriousness with each year that crept closer. The same words repeated by Leraull and written harder and harder on the blackboard with his mouth-controlled chalk.

"Learning human as monster and monster as human together to be able to express it together as human and monster. To further the future one must be able to express this cooperation firstly from within and then outwards with others."

But just like how Soulay's Academy for Humanities and Magical Studies for the Betterment of Monsterkind and Humanity was always abbreviated to Soul's School so was the quote shortened to something actually useful.

"We're together until the end. 'And including' comes from you."

'And including' includes passing the final exam…

Cter, among the others in the lecture hall, shot their eyes over to the first monster standing up from the too small a seat given to its bee-like body as it tapped the papers with its answers together into a neat pile which it then flew down with to Leraull's table. With an approving nod from Leraull the bee was allowed to leave on good terms, and its overjoyed buzzing snuck inside the closing door and echoed between the brick walls. The sound was absorbed into the wood, becoming a permanent part of the building.

"Half an hour left," Leraull spoke just as a bear monster stood up. Ten seconds later a human did. Cter knew both of them, and for a brief moment she was just as overjoyed as the bee was that her friends stood up so casually and relaxed. The sudden discrepancy hit her directly afterwards though, and she again sighed down as quietly as she could without disturbing the students around her. Well, disturb them as little as possible, to be honest.

Should she just hand it in blankly instead of just making clumsy attempts at the remaining answers? Hell, at all the answers! Not to waste Professor Leraull's time? She'd already done it for four years though so what's another minute or so before he discards her dribble as the garbage it is!

Again the sparse writing she'd managed smudged into an unreadable whirl of ink as Cter's head again slid down into her hands. She couldn't even think past holding her aura in at that point. The last half an hour was to pass with Cter tensed both physically and mentally. All she wanted at that point was to go back to her room and...no, not even go back to her room. Just find a carriage that would take her home, and just go. Pass by her family that were a few weeks or so away from Soul's School so that she could cry out in her old bed alone. Or just stop at Maerg on the way and–

"Cter?"

She didn't even have time to dry her eyes before she raised her head in reflex.

"Pick up your paper next to you, please."

"S-sorry," she answered meekly as she reached down to pick up the paper that she must have pushed down while she leaned down on her elbows. With a subdued sob she put the paper on top of the other blank ones and…

It took a couple of eye-wipes with her flowing school robe before she began believing them. It was...it was answers. Not to all five, but to three at least. That would be enough for a passing grade. The answers seemed reasonable as well, not that she'd known. Where did they come from? It's not her handwriting, but Leraull addressed it as hers. None of the other students around her were looking for something either. Did it…

Did it come from the wall?

The slits weren't wide enough for a parchment to slip through without any sound or for it to be obviously visible. Magic then?

Again...not that Cter would know…

It would be cheating though, wouldn't it?

She wouldn't be furthering the future if it wasn't with her own answers. That's why she wanted to become a mage to begin with. She didn't know how difficult it would be though, and she's worked so hard but stumbled at the finish line. It wasn't fair to her having made friends and progress only to be rejected because she offered herself to others more than she did herself, right?

No...it wasn't right…

She was just trying to justify cheating!

"Fifteen minutes left!"

Fifteen minutes… It would take her at least ten to copy it all down onto her own parchments. Walls! What should she do? Answer her! From her very soul Cter pleaded with the walls that held so much knowledge and arcane wisdom. Of course she'd look panicked with fifteen minutes left on the exam that would determine her future! Surely other students had done the same as her, right? The walls had ears, but did they have a mouth as well? Did they have souls and hearts too that could bleed for a student down and almost certainly out.

Well, one out there was…

But again, could she even live with it? Outside as a mage she would be alone. Would it even be worth risking being found out that she had obviously cheated if she couldn't even conjure a proper fireball even with the amount of fire she'd bragged about in her heart? She'd have a purple stamp and a signature on a piece of paper, yes, but she could wave that prestige around all day without as much as a second glance if she couldn't dazzle with her magic to back it up. The purple stamp meant that she was to be able to make all gasp from atop of Mt. Ebott with her magic, so how would she ever live up to that?

But again again, she did have the answers written down already by someone else. Technically she had the knowledge necessary, it was just written by someone else. Like with the course books? If not, then it is cooperation, like how all the courses had been about! Maybe it was a monster too that dropped it? One that passed by on its way out since it was finished.

No, no, it was a human's writing for the human questions. The monsters had different questions for their final exam. They already knew magic, and the humans already knew humanities. The humans went to Soul's School to learn to view the world through a magical lens whereas the monsters attended to learn how to see the world through a humanities lens. One side helping the other throughout the years.

Cooperation.

This though, what Cter had in her hands, it was a different kind of cooperation. One not of helping to forge a new lens, but to see through another one's lens. It was still Cter seeing it, right? It was still her writing down the answers on her own exam. Not someone else's exam! It was her eyes through another one's lens, so it was still hers!

Right?

"Ten minutes!"

Walls! Please say something!

…

No?

…

That's an absence of 'no'! That means 'yes', no?

…

Yes!

A different kind of aura began seeping into the slim slits as Cter practically threw herself over an empty parchment and began writing with a hand, arm, shoulder, torso, and head so tensed that when Professor Leraull finally ended the exam with a shimmering wave of magic that rolled up the designated answer parchments and sealed them up with a thinner rope glowing the same as the ones holding up the banner outside the lecture hall, Cter had to use her other arm to pick it up.

She took her place at the end of the queue leading down the stairs between the rows of weathered seats with her heart still pounding like a drum. Looking down on her left arm twitching and turning a deep plum from the amount of blood in it she could do nothing else but to clench her teeth and try to keep her breathing and aura in check. It felt as if her arm wasn't hers, but merely something else hanging off her shoulder with how numb it had become. Her fingers had no sense of touch to them as she ran them against each other.

As the queue neared Leraull bowing and wishing each student handing in their rolled-up scroll a good rest-of-the-day in one quick breath however, Cter felt her own breathing and aura surge out from her more and more. Had it not been for the other humans being just as stressed-out as her she'd be the lone shout in the night instead of the lone shout in the middle of a busy market blending in with the others.

Three excruciating minutes later the large green chitin in front of her moved to the side, and as Leraull's head angled up to meet the next student, Cter froze up. Her right hand clutched the rolled paper like herbs crushed to release their flavors. The way the scales on Leraull's orange-brown forehead began to scrunch together into deep folds told that he indeed caught the whiff of something.

But of what?

He leaned forward over his desk, his thick tail raising behind him to counter his balance. The flat and half-circled spikes running from his head down his back looked sharp as spears as his eyes narrowed on Cter, and his mouth opened slowly.

"It's over."

It's…

It's over…

No.

No!

She's been found out!

He knows she cheated! He saw it! It was a trap! He knew Cter wouldn't pass so he made a trap to make sure she was expelled and never to be allowed back for a re-exam!

Cter's eyes again began watering, and her entire form heaved with each sob she tried so desperately to hold in behind her shut teeth exposed into a pained smile. In a way it was relieving. At least now she didn't have to worry any longer that she'd be found out.

Silver lining…

"It's over," Leraull repeated, but...softer? "I know it was difficult, but it's over now. Give me your answers and enjoy the rest of the sun for today, okay?" Yes, definitely softer. The same voice he used to explain with smaller words to Cter what the day's lesson was about. The same smile he'd have afterwards when she'd again apologize for not understanding. Again he would just smile back and say that he very much enjoyed those talks with her. Explaining something simpler means that one understands it better, so he learned something as well from their talks. "Just put it there next to the others, Cter."

Others…

Was she...one of the others too now? One that had a chance to pass? One that could finally become a mage? Did...did she succeed? Did she?!

"Thank you, Pirra, and enjoy the rest of your day," Leraull said to the monster behind Cter reaching over her with one of its furred arms and putting its answers onto the pile held neat and upright by Leraull's stasis magic. Without even sending the thought to her arm to move Cter placed her own answers on the pile. Her eyes followed the movement of her arm as if it wasn't her own. As if it was just copying what the monster had done before her. It was an alien feeling, but not as alien as what began radiating from the empty feeling in her hand.

Hope.

Happiness.

Pride!

Relief!

"Thank you, Cter, and enjoy the rest of your day."

She nodded.

And stood there.

Until Leraull gently nodded to the side to get her moving.

Which she did.

As the lecture hall doors swung to a close behind her Cter again looked down on her left hand. Its plum color had subsided to her more pale hue shared with the rest of her body besides her blossoming cheeks, which then were blossoming more than she'd ever felt them do. All the way into her chest, into her soul and heart. She didn't need an inscribed sleeve to feel the overwhelming joy flow out to her hands which she clutched hard and threw above her as high as she could. "YES!" she screamed alone, her voice echoing throughout the large lobby and almost causing the enormous banner to flap with her shout.

It didn't take long before her skin again took upon a reddened hue the same as her flaring cheeks. The embarrassment crashing against the inside of her bones like flu had her arms falling down her sides and slapping her legs hard. Perplexed monsters and humans from both the lobby and exiting the lecture doors from behind passed her by with craned-back necks, those who had.

Another lone voice rung out from across the lobby with a sarcastic "Whoo!" which prompted several similar ones, and some genuine ones to boot. Most likely monsters and humans who'd also taken the final exam that day. It passed just as quickly as it began though, and as the final sarcastic cheer died out after misjudging the energy of the lobby, Cter felt control return to her body. With that she allowed herself to smile again, a smile that wouldn't leave her until the day after, even throughout the night.

For that's when the results came back from the final exam.

And even worse…

When her family arrived early to share it with her.