A/N: This is a transitional chapter, but I thought I should make something of it: so I'm dedicating this to the world's teachers.

Haven't you ever wondered what it's like to be employed by a demon…? Now, as a child of two teachers, I grew up hearing what school is like behind the scenes: foremost, I got to hear what teachers really think of their students – and superiors. I had tons of anecdotes to pick from, so this might pull in all kinds of directions, but I try staying as true as I can to the original statements and quotes here. I hope it can spark your imagination regarding this largely unexplored aspect of AnE (in other words, I hope to make people write fics from the TCA-teachers' perspectives so I can read them 83 ).

I do not own or profit from any of what Kazue Kato has created.

Shiro had never been on good terms with his history teacher. He wasn't quite sure if it started with her dislike for his bleached hair, or that time he had been caught folding origami animals out of his history test. He thought he sat safely at the back of the classroom when he did that, but Maki-sensei was the kind of woman whose eyes somehow seemed to get better with age rather than worse.

All things considered, he found it very strange that his Ansei period essay was returned with a coupon for the school cafeteria stapled onto the last page. That had to be a mistake: but you don't look a gift horse in the mouth, and the cafeteria certainly served classier food than anything he could cook in the dorm kitchen.

Shiro had no gift for English. It was a sad but undeniable truth that he had accepted and moved on from. Akuri-sensei was well aware that he spent his English classes wishing for the buttons in her shirt to pop off: or so he had to assume, since she had unbuttoned two of them today and actually smiled at him when she walked past and… bent forward… to inspect his writing… or something like that dear god she had boobs the size of honeydews and something about the difference between g and q in minuscule lette-

Akuri-sensei appreciated that he had turned away to avoid getting nose blood on her white shirt, and told him he could keep the napkin.

"How are you, Shiro-kun?"

It's the small things, the small everyday things, that really hurt when they're taken away from you. How was he? He was far away, living by proxy to keep up the pretence that he was-

"Fine. You two?"

He heard himself speak as if it were someone else. Well, wasn't it? The skin he wore may be the same, but the Shiro in it was different. A prodigy, a paragon; a hero statue coated with a bronze surface to cover the cold stone from which it was hewn.

They sat in the cafeteria between classes, Sen and Midori with their bento boxes and Shiro with the most expensive lunch he had eaten in years. He didn't tell Sen to stop asking when they met like that, though. It hurt, to be treated like nothing had happened; but it helped him act like nothing had. It helped him remember how to act like a normal human being.

"We decided Midori will visit my village over summer", Sen said as if speaking to daydreams and dust motes. She constituted a strange, lonesome little island in the chattering ocean that was the cafeteria.

"That sounds great. Wish I could have a proper summer holiday, but I'm gonna stay here and study."

"I want~" Midori exchanged looks of fevered passion with his food, and didn't seem to notice a word of what had been said. "Do you really like girls, Shiro-kun? Or you just like girls to hit you?"

Then again, it was hard not to notice the rolls of paper sticking out of his nostrils.

"It was my teacher, and she didn't- Well, you could say she hit me. Figuratively." Not the reply the old Shiro would have given. Not the smile the old Shiro would have smiled. "Caution before comfort", he reminded himself grimly. There were a lot of people in the cafeteria. A lot of people he could hurt, if he didn't guard his heart well enough.

What he had done to Saburota yesterday was proof he couldn't trust himself. He didn't even need to be possessed to cause harm: all he needed was a hint of weakness to wake the predator in the dark corners of his heart. Guard his heart, guard his tongue, guard the people arou-

"Shiiiiirooooo-kuuuun~?" Midori resorted to flicking the cross on his glasses string to gain his attention. Yes, sometimes she was too much like Mephisto for comfort. "Can I taste your food?"

"Oh, sure. Just leave some for me, it's the only time I'll have the chance to eat such fancy stuff."

As if. Midori could eat twice her own weight every day – or something like that. Her table manners were like a vanishing act at the circus, accompanied by a variety of chirping and humming sounds that had Shiro thinking of Mephisto's content purrs when he was being brushed. He had suggested once that maybe she was half hamster and not half fox.

"How come you buy cafeteria food now, suddenly?" Sen asked, taking small, small bites of the contents of her bento box.

"It's the teachers: they like me." And not just the teachers: besides the food, he had been given a lavender pannacotta topped with Scandinavian bilberries on the side, with no explanation whatsoever save a smile and a wink from the cafeteria lady. "No teacher has ever liked me, and now they buy me food. I don't get it."

"What did you do for them, then?"

"Nothing." He cautiously sliced the creamy dessert, trying hard to make his aching fingers hold the spoon. "I improved my grades, but they hardly give stuff like this to every student that puts some muscle into studying. I'm thinking they could be ganging up on me for some practical joke."

It was a possibility. Technically, it was only a month until he graduated; if they were ever going to get revenge on the school's most notorious prankster, they would have to make their move now.

"Shagow of min-g can cova de shun", Midori managed to say through a mouthful – really, a mouth full – of food. "Maybe dey jusch wang ko make Shiwo-kung happy?"

Maybe. All Shiro could think of was how she chose just the right words: the shadow of mind can cover the sun. Did she even think when she said it? Or did she act on the same kind of instinct, inherent in demons, that he had felt? She worried for him, he knew that, and still…

Shiro looked at her stuffed cheeks and content eyes: a mask. That he made her wear. To make it easier to wear his own.

It's the small, everyday things that really hurt. Pretending… hurt.

His maths teacher didn't chew his ass off for the 70% he scored at the test. The hastily written physics report he had handed in last week came back with a not-very-good-but-better-than-it-deserved grade. And when Shiro was about to exit the classroom after demonology class, Kohu-sensei discreetly passed him a small paper bag.

"Sensei, what is-?"

"Why don't you come to the teachers' break room when you finish for the day, hm?" she suggested, her smiling eyes framed by merry wrinkles.

"Uh…?"

That's it: it was some sort of payback the teachers had planned for him. And yet it was far too obvious to summon him to the break room like tha- What if he'd gotten intro trouble somehow? What if somebody had ratted on him for something he'd done back in the daywhen he had time to be a nuisance? No; why would they be so strangely kind to him if that were the case…?

Meanwhile, Kohu-sensei left him with his paranoid musings and the smell of homemade daifuku from the paper bag. Shiro fumbled to get the door open without dropping his crutches, to hop after her and ask what this was all about, but ended up almost colliding with his Aria teacher instead. Shit. Goggles-sensei may be an Aria but she had a very "hands on" approach to students that didn't pay attention.

"S'cuse me, sensei, I need to-"

"Is it true?"

It was always difficult to read Goggles-sensei's face, or what was left of it: but this time the lidless, staring eyes matched her speechless voice perfectly.

"I don't think I know what you mean, Go- uh, Nao-sensei", he confessed with an unsteady little hop to get his crutches in a better position.

"Did you make Sir Pheles wear a… a suit to the personnel meeting?"

"Oh. Well, yes." That's right: Mephisto would be wearing normal clothes now. "For a week, that is."

"Just a week?" she said absentmindedly, and the goggles she was nicknamed after moved as her forehead crinkled. Then she hurried along, mumbling something that sounded like "I need to borrow a camera".

He would not believe it. He would not believe that this… that all these weird things and teachers suddenly liking him, was because Mephisto was wearing something that didn't look like he had stolen it from a circus.

…but curiosity won't be stilled by anything less than certainty. The teachers' break room was a place he had, for natural reasons, avoided at all costs. He had some remote idea that alarms would go off the moment he set foot inside the door, triggered by lingering karmic traces of all the things he had gotten away with over the years.

No alarms went off, and he successfully managed to ease the door shut without sound. It could still be a prank. Shiro used very small, very careful hops to transport himself inside the antechamber quietly.

The room wasn't very big. It contained one rack for outdoors shoes and one for slippers, and the entirety of the left wall was covered by a large set of named lockers for teachers to leave notes and documents for each other. The opposite wall had an equally large notice board, where Shiro spotted several yellowed newspaper articles about the school, and photographs of the staff taken at jubilees and graduation ceremonies. There was also a calendar, in which someone had marked today's date with a bright red circle that did nothing to put his suspicions to rest. Something was up.

"Teaching would be a lot more enjoyable without students." That was Futotsuki-sensei's voice from behind the door to the actual break room. He sounded unusually… dejected. Not like his calm, reassuring self.

"Anything we can help you with, Futotsuki-kohai?"

And that would be Kohu-sensei, the demonology teacher.

"You can help me hang them from a washing line by their eyelids", he grumbled.

"That class again?"

"That class again." His sigh was punctuated with the sound of papers being tossed on a table. "What will become of society when our generation is gone, Kohu-senpai? What will become of Japan when we leave the reins to blockheads that can't even draw protective circles?"

"With any luck, we'll be dead before we find out", she replied, and Shiro couldn't really tell if it was a joke or not. "I won't mind: I lived long enough to witness a miracle. Sir Pheles in a suit. I still can't quite believe it."

"Neither can I." Gokuro-sensei sounded far from his usual, stammering, stage-frighted self in P.E. class. "For the first time, I left salary negotiations with a smile on my lips!"

"Though not with raised salary." Watanabe-sensei, Shiro's maths' teacher…? Everyone was there?

"Raised salary? Why don't you have your graduate students calculate the probability for that on the spring exams, Watanabe-kohai?" Maki-sensei butted in with a smile in her voice. "Or is it more than five decimals from zero…?"

"If I do that, my salary will be more than five decimals from zero", he chuckled. Shiro had to hop closer to the door to be sure he heard that right. Maths teachers could chuckle…?

"I wouldn't have cared if he had cut my pay in half", Gokuro-sensei continued in a voice that bordered on religious rapture. "So many times I've wanted to stuff that cravat into his mouth…"

Muffled laughter from beyond the door agreed unanimously to the statement.

"At least you can blink." Goggles-sensei's strong voice was, for the first time Shiro could recall, tinted with amusement. "I have to stare at that hideous getup whether I like it or not: if it were up to me, I'd shove those tights right down there with the cravat."

"No matter what comes out of your mouth, Nao-senpai, all I hear is different ways to get Sir Pheles' pants off", Ando-sensei said in the driest, most disapproving tone Shiro had ever heard from the Dragoon instructor.

"Well, you can't deny he's a handsome devil – not after today's meeting", she laughed. "For once I was glad I can't blink."

"Goggles-sensei…?" Shiro would have to severely re-evaluate his thoughts on his Aria teacher.

"That's a very inappropriate way to speak of one's superiors – not to mention a demon", Ando-sensei said curtly. "What kind of values do we teach students by saying such things?"

"Oh, come now, Ando-kohai! Had it been a Lady Pheles you would have said the exact same thing!" Kohu-sensei teased merrily. "Let women have their unattainable dreams: we're merely crinklier versions of the teenage girls we tutor, after all."

…Shiro would have to re-evaluate his thoughts on his demonology teacher, too.

"Teenage girls? More like hens around a rooster. Did you even notice that you agreed to another two hours of unpaid extracurricular work per week? Or were you too busy admiring his waistline?"

"Well, Ando-kohai: did you notice that you agreed to cut down the budget for practice range ammunition with five hundred thousand yen last month~?" said Toshio-sensei with a deceptive sweetness that was very unlike the strict Knight. "What did you admire that had you so distracted?"

"Admire? There's a reason we use bullets and not words to negotiate with demons", he grumbled. "And I could put one right between that smirking clown's eyes."

"And that's not an inappropriate way to speak of your superiors?" Goggles-sensei jabbed with a chuckle.

"An ordinary bullet", the Dragoon instructor clarified. "He would regenerate that. Then I could shoot him again: sooner or later, when I run out of bullets, he will have to buy more."

"I doubt it would make him inclined to buy you any more ammunition, but I do like the idea. While you're at it, see if you can get him to approve a purchase of new course literature in history: time doesn't stand still, even if Sir Pheles appears to think so."

"Speaking of time, Maki-senpai: are you certain Fujimoto-kun will come?" Akuri-sensei was the one asking that? Something stirred in Shiro's closed heart that told him it might pay off to try harder in English class. If he could make her say his name with that kind of voice again he just might suffer another nosebleed.

"He will", Maki-sensei confirmed with a kind of dry, humorous note in her voice. "As surely as civil unrest follows famine, that blonde delinquent goes wherever he can stir up a ruckus."

"He has improved greatly, though", Toshio-sensei – of all people, Toshio-sensei? – joined in. "Both in sword technique and in character." Then he chuckled. "I wonder, could it be that it takes one demon to tame another? I'm quite sure his change came about after Sir Pheles began tutoring him."

"One evil cancels out another? Maybe. I wouldn't mind if that kind of change began to show in Sir Pheles, too. I really do hope to get a week's vacation – proper vacation, not vacation with paperwork attached – to visit my grandchildren."

"Good evening, Fujimoto-kun." The voice came from behind, and made Shiro jump where he stood. When he turned around, his Anti-demon pharmacology teacher had just entered the antechamber.

"Good evening, Matsuri-sensei." He began the endeavour of untying his shoelaces and pretended he had just arrived. "It took a while to get here. I-"

"Let me help you with that. It's the least I can do." It was more surprise than gratitude that made him surrender the task of getting his shoes off to her. "I didn't believe you were the one behind it, at first, but then I remembered your Esquire exam in the Hakkoda mountains, and it occurred to me: who else could pull off something that outlandish?" She cast a quick glance and a smile up at him. "Exorcising a naga from a wok pan: has me smiling every time I think about it."

When Shiro entered with Matsuri-sensei, he found that he was surprised to see his teachers there. He had heard them through the door, sure, but part of him had believed it was strangers impersonating their voices. Really, Goggles-sensei had a thing for Mephisto?

The break room was classy, as everything about True Cross Academy was. It featured a smaller version of the panorama windows in Mephisto's office, and furniture that was dressed in lush, mauve leather that complimented the white walls and gave off an air of sophisticated cleanliness. Shiro couldn't remember feeling so out of place since he had testified at the hearing in Headquarters over Christmas. Even more so when Akuri-sensei approached him in the downpour of thank yous and handed him a flower bouquet the size of an akita.

"Thank you, Akuri-sensei." He tried to get a good grip on the flowers without dropping his crutches, but that was no easy thing. "Thank you everyone", he said through the thick smell of carnations, dahlias, and some yellow flower that seemed dead set on getting swallowed.

"I think it's better if we find a vase for them, Aki-chan", Matsuri-sensei said with a smile. "Fujimoto-kun has his hands full already."

An adorable blush crept up on Akuri-sensei's cheeks when she remembered the crutches: crutches that Shiro was awkwardly supporting in the crook of his arm. She hurriedly excused herself and took the bouquet back, more or less hiding behind it. Both female teachers left for the staff kitchen to find a vase and, after a quick reminder from Futotsuki-sensei, brew some tea.

"How is your nose, Fujimoto-kun?" Kohu-sensei asked with a knowing smile once the English teacher was out of earshot. Why did she smile like that? Wasn't she, like, 64 years old? Were 64 year-olds allowed to insinuate things like that…?

"Um…"

"It was probably worth it." Maki-sensei joined her colleague in the smiling as the awkwardness of it all painted the tips of Shiro's ears red. "I'm sure you would pay attention in my class too, if I were younger and better equipped."

One of the few joys old people have left in life is to make young people uncomfortable; and by the age of 60, they have all the experience they need to make the most of it. Enough to make the red heat spread from Shiro's ears to his cheeks.

"Not bad, to make young men blush at your age, Maki-kohai", Kohu-sensei tittered merrily and patted her approval on her colleague's shoulder. "Ah, poor Fujimoto-kun: it's not easy to be a man."

"So many drawbacks right from birth", the history teacher concluded with an impish glimmer in her eyes that completely jammed Shiro's speech mechanism.

"That's why we call them the yokai yakuza." Toshio-sensei appeared behind the two old ladies with a wide grin and a tray full of teacups. "She was just as bad when I was a student", he informed, nodding his head in Maki-sensei's direction. "But prettier to look at."

An incredulous smile grew on Shiro's lips as Toshio-sensei retreated from the mock slaps and began laying the high-legged, Western table for tea. Teachers were completely different when they weren't teaching…

"Now, regale us with the tale behind this miracle", Watanabe-sensei said as they all seated themselves while Akuri-sensei poured them tea. The humongous flower bouquet spilled over the edges of a deep tureen on the middle of the table, and the shorter teachers almost disappeared from view behind it. "How did you convince Sir Pheles to wear sensible clothing?"

"Well, he's a demon: he loves gambling. I bet that I could go longer without smoking than he could go without manga, anime and games. No way he could win that."

A tidal wave of giggles and snorting chuckles – and a weird, hiccupping laughter from Matsuri-sensei – swept through the break room.

"I knew it! Hahahaha! With all those children's toys he keeps on his desk!"

"He keeps-?" Akuri-sensei, who was by far the youngest of the teachers, looked from one to the other in confusion. "I thought they belonged to his children…?"

There was an abrupt silence, punctuated by each and every teacher displaying a face of deep, heart-freezing terror.

"Miniature Pheleses: god help us all…"

"Imagine their chattering."

"Imagine their clothing."

"Imagine the extra hours of unpaid babysitting."

"Look at it from the bright side", Goggles-sensei grinned, painting the picture of a maniacal killer on her damaged features. "Great practise for the students."

When all tears were wiped and all cramping stomachs at ease, Akuri-sensei shyly returned to the matter:

"But, if he doesn't have children…? I'm sure I saw little children's drawings on his desk once."

"Don't you know, Aki-chan?" Ando-sensei said, wearing a much brighter look on his face than before. Figured. "Sir Pheles always draws on the back of the protocol at meetings: that's why he looks so concentrated."

Akuri-sensei looked even cuter with laughter tinting her cheeks pink – and her chest bounced in a most inviting way. Unfortunately, the sight of her now conjured up images of Shiro's history teacher. Yokai yakuza indeed...

"Still, he was a lot more concentrated than we were at this last meeting", Goggles-sensei chuckled into her teacup and took a sip. "You did a great job there, Fujimoto-kun. He should wear clothes like that more often."

"He really should. For forty years I've seen him wear nothing but that ghastly clown costume: I never thought I would witness something like this before I retire."

"There is another tale behind this miracle that I would like to hear." Futotsuki-sensei always looked, and sounded, so very calm: Shiro couldn't quite fuse that impression with the irritated hanging-blockhead-students-by-their-eyelids-sensei he had eavesdropped on. "And that is the tale of how a teenage boy earned the respect of a centuries-old demon."

The statement was met with a chorus of low hums and nods, and Shiro instantly wished he were someplace else.

"I don't know about respect…" He scratched the back of his head and tried not to squirm under their eyes. "Most of the time we just get on each other's nerves, and make sport of it. That's how the bet came about. That's how most things come about. I figure…" Shiro wet his lips, not sure what words to put on it. "I treat him the same as I would treat anyone else, and he- Well, obviously, I don't know what he's like around other people, but he pretty much acts the same towards me as I do towards him. If anything, we share a mutual disrespect for each other. We seem to…" Shiro fumbled for words as if they were windblown leaves. "…fit together." Wrong words. "I mean, we make odd friends, but good friends. That's it", he concluded awkwardly. "That's the tale behind the miracle."

They all looked at him as if they hadn't understood a word. Well, he wasn't sure he had understood explanation himself.

"That… is something I never thought I would witness before I retire", Kohu-sensei said with soft amazement, cup forgotten in her hand halfway to her mouth.

"Me neither: Futotsuki-senpai, are you sure he isn't related to your clan?"

"I'll be damned." Toshio-sensei's large, calloused Knight's hand landed on Futotsuki-sensei's shoulder. "You were right: a demon charmer he is."

"A what?" The reactions around the table did nothing to settle Shiro's unease. Astonishment is easy to recognise, but it's harder to determine whether the cause for it is something good or bad.

"It is what it sounds like, Fujimoto-kun", the Tamer teacher said with a reassuring look. "Someone with a natural talent for handling demons. I said it the first class we had together, remember? You have the makings of an excellent Tamer, and an exceptional exorcist. What I saw between you and Sir Pheles at the meeting with my clan was nothing short of a miracle. In six semesters, you have come closer to him than we have in twenty, thirty, or even forty years. We", he gestured at the staff of teachers, "teach what demons are, what they do, how they can be fought; all from a human perspective. But you", he leaned towards Shiro with a proud smile, as if sharing a treasured secret. "You understand demons as a demon would, and that makes you exceptional. That makes you someone even Sir Pheles would respect, and makes you unlike any other student we have at True Cross Academy. It is a gift, a true gift, and an asset that exorcists worldwide will envy you."

Each well-meant word was a bullet ricocheting with jarring dissonance against the truth he kept shielded in his heart. Fujimoto Shiro, Satan's vessel: unlike any other student at the Academy indeed.

"You honour me, Futotsuki-sensei", he said through an empty smile, steeling his façade against the admiring gazes that shone on him: shielding the shadow of his mind against the sun. "You all do. Thank you."

A smile is a dagger: a slow dagger, slipping in between your ribs, not noticed until it strikes your heart.

"I just never thought… the smile would be my own..." The weight of loneliness is heaviest in a crowd of people, and heavier still when the crowd applauds the act you put up to hide it: heaviest of all are the corners of your mouth, when you keep the act going. The slowest death is the smile that kills you every time you wear it. "Does everything you say come true, Midori-chan?"