Story Title: In the Eyes of Angels
Disclaimer: Still don't own Yu Yu Hakusho.
Author's Notes: We're in a small section of my outline where it just says "and then stuff happens". There's still a road in front of us, and I know where we're going, but it's foggy out and visibility isn't great. It took forever to decide what the first scene was going to be to set up what first. I ended up starting out at an entirely different place, but funny enough, I wound up getting an idea that I had to add. It doesn't change the end result much, but the road to get there is a lot more fun.
Now if only work could leave me alone long enough to get anything done, that would be peachy. I did wind up cutting the chapter into halfsies because the chapter was projected to be huge with the added scenes and writing was taking longer than I expected.
Thanks to mircheto for reviewing and to everyone who faved since the last update.
Special thanks to Sami_Delirium for being my beta!
-o-
Chapter Twenty-Eight: The Devil Is In the Details
-o-
Father Iwamoto was awake. He was not a man usually plagued by demons of insomnia, and yet, here he was, awake well past the midnight hour.
He sat in the dark, save for the light of the television, and weighed his thoughts carefully. Occasionally, he nursed a cup of coffee. It was cold and bitter, but it was a sin to be wasteful. Probably. Iwamoto didn't know for sure. He hadn't memorized all the sins when he was in seminary school. Otherwise, he'd still be there. As his father used to say, "You can't swing a cat around without hitting a sinner", though oddly enough swinging a cat around wasn't a sin. Or maybe it was. Not that it mattered to Iwamoto—he hated cats.
His soul was still shaken, and his mind disturbed by his meeting with Minamino hours prior. He was not afraid of Kurama Minamino, but he was afraid of the Devil, and it was the Devil that had stood in his very apartment, wearing Minamino's skin. He never would have noticed if he had not looked into the boy's eyes and seen their dark depths, the promise of violence and his rich delight at the thought of inflicting Iwamoto pain bleeding through.
That boy, that...whatever it had been had not been Kurama Minamino. He was not a vengeful, blackmailing hellspawn, his mind twisting and shaping machinations of evil. Minamino was a child, a mere student. What actual influence did he hold over the Academy? Sure, he was popular, well-liked by his peers and the faculty, and had the kind of looks that could get any priest accused of immorality. Even Iwamoto felt pride at having the boy at the Academy. He was a real golden apple amid a bland crop and an untreated rot growing in its fruit. Kurama was kind, helpful, and never missed a church service or refrained from volunteering.
Iwamoto swirled his coffee around in his mug and made the last swig dance around in the cup. He then chugged it down and grimaced at the bitterness.
...That had been true until Hiei Jaganshi arrived.
Poison, Jaganshi was poison. He had spread rot and blight into the core of their golden apple. After all, it only took one bad apple to spoil a bushel, and Jaganshi had more than enough rot in him to spoil an entire orchard.
Father Iwamoto saw exactly what was going on here—Jaganshi had corrupted Minamino through his infernal ways and left him vulnerable to the Devil's possession. The poor boy was a sacrificial vessel for Lucifer, and the Devil planned on using Minamino to damn every soul at Sacred Heart. Minamino's smile could get him out of trouble when he was out past curfew or secure him an extra dessert, but the Devil's forked tongue speaking out of Minamino would be enough to bring down the Academy.
It was all clear to him now. The Devil had threatened to get rid of him and all because of what? Because he had harmed his most faithful follower? No, because Father Iwamoto had seen Jaganshi's wickedness from day one and knew the Prince of Darkness walked among their students. And Father Iwamoto would not be defeated by evil.
Iwamoto set his empty cup on the kitchen counter. His hand was still shaking. Not out of fear, not anymore, but out of anticipation. He returned to his seat on the sofa to plan.
It was now three in the morning. The Devil's hour.
-o-
On the rooftop of the Science Hall, Hiei sat on the floor by the door resting his head in his crossed arms. Yusuke and Kuwabara were there as well, playing cards a couple feet away. They had invited Hiei to play, but Hiei didn't want to. They were all cutting class. It was Hiei's third day of skipping Iwamoto's class. He didn't want to see his ugly face. He didn't know if he would try to punch him the moment he saw him, but he thought it wise to not chance it.
It was Kuwabara's turn to take a card from Yusuke, and he was taking too long. Yusuke flicked his cigarette ashes into the wind.
Kuwabara frowned. His hand wavered over Yusuke's fan of cards. "Why are you smoking again? I thought you quit."
"Nah, it's just been a pain getting any," Yusuke said. "Smuggling a pack in is hard enough, but Keiko keeps finding where I stash them. ...Geez, pick a damn card already!"
Kuwabara picked a card and made a godawful screech when he saw his choice. Yusuke grinned. It was the Joker. But the game wasn't over yet.
Yusuke had offered him a cigarette earlier, but Hiei had declined. He had nothing against smoking, but he wasn't a fan of the smell. It reminded him of the Director blowing her cigarette smoke out a tiny attic window and of every time her clothes had smelled too much of perfume. It was a reminder of all the trouble he had caused her—more than a fair share of the orphanage staff had cited him as the reason they were quitting, causing shortages in care for the other children. It wasn't all his fault, but things could have run more smoothly if he hadn't been such a temperamental bastard.
"You hear the man in charge's morning announcement that Halloween parties are prohibited this year?" Yusuke asked.
"It's a big bummer, but it makes sense," Kuwabara said. Yusuke peered up from his cards and raised an eyebrow. "Catholic school, Halloween parties, the two don't mix."
"They always let us party before," Yusuke replied. "We'd put up some goofy decorations, stock up on candy, and dress up. It ain't like we scared anybody or summoned demons."
"Last year, they let us redo the haunted house from the school carnival. That was kinda scary," Kuwabara said.
"Oh wow, one jumpscare after another, how spooky..." Yusuke replied dully. "I bet Father Koenma's a big baby and just doesn't want to be frightened."
Now that was a thought Hiei could get behind. "Sounds like a challenge to me," he said.
Yusuke grinned. "I like how you think, Hiei."
Kuwabara waved his hands dismissively. "No, no, it's a bad idea!"
"How so?" Yusuke asked.
"'Cause anything that comes out of that twisted brain is a bad idea," Kuwabara said, pointing at Hiei.
"Coward," Hiei said.
"No, I ain't!" Kuwabara squawked.
"Yeah, you are," Yusuke said. "Kuwabara's afraid of ghosts."
"I'm not afraid! I get the tingles and sleep paralysis, that's all." Hiei wished that his experiences were limited to tingles and sleep paralysis. And Kuwabara was being a big baby complaining about experiences he hadn't had once all school year. So what if Kuwabara had a bad night of sleep once every few months or whatever? Every night was a bad night for Hiei.
"You always scream the most when we watch horror movies," Yusuke said.
"'Cause they're scary and that's what you do!"
"So you're saying that Yusuke and I should test out all our ideas on you," Hiei said and shared a dark laugh with Yusuke.
"Assholes, the both of you," Kuwabara grumbled. His foul mood quickly brightened after Yusuke found himself with the Joker card again.
Yusuke noticed Hiei getting up. "Hey, where are you slinking off to?"
Hiei didn't say. He continued on down the stairs.
"Restroom?" he heard Kuwabara suggest.
"Pee over the side of the roof like the rest of us," Yusuke called out.
Hiei regretted not kicking away the door jamb when he had the chance.
While resting in the sunlight with only the minor irritation of Yusuke and Kuwabara playing nearby hadn't been the worst way to play hooky, there were other places he could be where he had more important matters to take care of. Not that Hiei was particularly excited to start his therapy. He still wasn't comfortable with the whole idea, but he didn't like being scheduled, so he was showing up on his terms.
Hiei made the familiar walk through the Science Hall to the basement labs, to a place he technically didn't have to be until tonight, but he was welcome to pop in anytime if her door was open. The door was ajar. Hiei swung it open with his foot. The door hit the wall with a loud crack. Reverberations rang through the basement.
Doctor Pai was at her desk, and she didn't look up or flinch at the loud noise. She was quickly typing away on her computer.
"Shouldn't you be in class?" she asked. Her glasses reflected the flickering computer screen, but Hiei was too far away to read anything in the reflection.
"Didn't feel like going," he said as he headed over to the chaise lounge and sat down.
Doctor Pai stood up from her seat and turned off her computer monitor. "So you thought you'd pester me for a spell?"
"Clearly you're swamped with unfinished work."
Doctor Pai smiled. She picked up his file from the filing cabinet on her way to the front of her desk.
"Is there anything you wish to talk about first or should I just spin the wheel?" she asked, opening his file.
Hiei refused to respond to her glib answer. Even if she wasn't wrong... Where could she even start with him? He was pretty sure his birth was a divine clerical error. If not, then it was definitely human error.
"This was a mistake," he said, bolting for the open door.
"Not even a minute in, and you're already running," Pai said calmly.
Hiei stopped at the threshold. He looked back over his shoulder. "I'm not running."
"Sulking away then," she amended. Hiei snarled. "What happened to putting in the hard work?"
Hiei looked away. His arms hung rigid at his sides. He recalled agreeing to something like that.
"There was something you wanted out of this. What was it?" she asked.
Hiei glared back at her. "You already know."
"I want you to say it out loud."
He didn't want to say it aloud. He wanted to keep it locked and hidden away in his ever-shifting puzzle box heart. Her expression and the tilt of her head indicated that her request had a reason behind it.
"...To be more normal. To get out of the man's basement," Hiei said.
"An admirable pair of goals. Worth sticking around and working for, right?"
Hiei laid down on the chaise lounge. He crossed his arms and grumbled to himself. Pai closed her door.
"So what should we unpack first? Growing up in an orphanage?"
"No."
"Just leap right into the deep end with the basement then?"
"NO."
"Minamino—"
Hiei sat up quickly. He grabbed onto the edge of the lounge. "Shut up!"
"He's very pretty, isn't he?" she said. There was far too much delight in her smirk.
Hiei threw himself back onto the lounge and faced the wall. He refused to look at her. She better be half as good as she said she was, or this was going to be their first and last session. If he'd wanted his emotions and motives poked and prodded at, he would have gotten Kurama out of class.
"All right, let's get a few questions out of the way," she said, bringing out and clicking a pen. "Have you ever consumed alcohol?"
"Twice, at the orphanage. Stole it from the staff. I didn't like the taste, and it didn't help." Pai asked what it didn't help with exactly. "The nightmares, the flashbacks." Getting drunk had only made his nightmares weirder and worse.
Doctor Pai wrote down notes. She asked him if he smoked next. Hiei didn't. He started to wonder if he should.
"Have you ever done any illegal drugs or taken any pills not prescribed to you?"
"No. Would it help?" Hiei asked.
"Not in the long run. You'll still be messed up but with a crippling addiction to boot. ...It's like treating a grease fire by splashing baby oil on the blazing pan."
"How else do you get the oil out of the babies then?" Hiei replied sardonically.
Doctor Pai smirked and continued writing.
"Okay, moving on—"
"Wait, if you're running through the vices, why didn't you ask me if I was having sex?" Hiei asked.
Without pause, Doctor Pai replied, "We both know you're not having sex."
Fuck, he'd walked right into that one. Hanging out with Yusuke and Kuwabara beforehand might have been a bad idea. Apparently, stupid was contagious.
"Are you having suicidal thoughts or harmed yourself recently?"
"Not really, and don't have to."
Lifting her pen off the paper, Pai paused from writing. She appeared perplexed.
"Elaborate on the latter first," she asked.
"Teachers are permitted to use corporal punishment on students."
"So I've heard," she said. "And about the suicidal thoughts you're not really having?"
"Does it count if you don't care if you live or die? I'm not a death seeker, but I have no future, so neither matters to me. What do I have to live for?"
"Is that what you're seeking from these sessions?" Doctor Pai asked.
A knot twisted itself in the pit of his stomach. He tilted his head down. "I don't know. Maybe," he grumbled.
Hiei didn't want to die. He just expected it to happen one day. It seemed inevitable with his kind of upbringing. He had started on the ground and didn't see himself making it far up the societal ladder. Call it the way of the world, or just his lot in life, but doors closed on Hiei, not opened.
"I don't see the point of living. Why do people do it?" he asked.
"For some people, they live for their family or their work. For others, it's a calling to service or a personal mission. They have a passion or a goal in life to accomplish. Depends on the person," Doctor Pai said, positioning her pen to write. "What do you want from life?
"I don't know..." Hiei said. Family, passion, goals… He didn't have any of those. They had all left him or been taken away from him before he had a chance to know what any of those were.
"It's understandable that you feel aimless. Roads have opened up but you can't see where any of them go. The uncertainty is scary. You don't want to make the wrong choice and wind up hurting yourself."
Hiei turned and looked over his shoulder at Pai.
"You're going to have to make choice after choice without knowing the consequences beforehand. This is life, and life moves on regardless if you move with it," Doctor Pai said. "Otherwise, you'll be stuck in your little box in the basement. And we both know you don't want that."
Hiei nodded slowly in agreement.
"For your first bit of homework, I'd like for you to consider and write down potential reasons that would keep you living, things you want from life—"
"The friendships I have," Hiei said. Kurama mostly, but Yusuke wasn't the worst person to waste time with. But keeping Yusuke around meant dragging Kuwabara into his social circle too. ...Well, if he had no other choice, he guessed Kuwabara could come along too.
Doctor Pai presented a tiny smirk. "Yes, that is a high priority one. I would also like for you to consider things or experiences that don't involve other people. Even if you consider the thought silly or trivial. Selfishness is not a sin."
Hiei was positive it was. Was it under vanity? Probably. Anyway, there was no way selfishness wasn't a sin.
"So how often are you having nightmares?" Doctor Pai asked.
"I don't want to talk about that," Hiei said.
"Most, if not every night, then," she said aloud while writing.
-o-
Kurama Minamino realized that he had not volunteered his time in a while and sought to rectify the deficit by helping out the Beautification club with their autumn tasks. The repetitive physical labor of raking up fallen leaves was exactly the sort of busy work he didn't mind doing while his mind was occupied elsewhere. There was no problem in particular he wanted to solve. He just wanted to let his thoughts wander and see what was on the forefront of his mind.
First came Iwamoto. His game was already in play. There was no need for Kurama to intervene at the moment. Kurama pushed those thoughts along before they soured his mind any further.
Losing all his research had unforeseen consequences. Kurama had grown accustomed to a defined schedule and rigidly planning his hours around his experiments. Now, his system was broken, and Kurama found himself with an abundance of personal time. It was not as freeing as one might believe. Although he did not enjoy being without it, going back to his research was out of the question. Not while Enma's shadow loomed so heavily over the Academy.
"Minamino!" said a boy and then he whistled sharply. "Earth to Minamino."
Kurama left his thoughts and paid attention. He was still idly gathering up his leaves. The same pile of leaves he had been gathering for five minutes.
He was working alongside two upperclassmen he didn't know very well. The boy that had called to him had a bit of a weasel quality to him, both in facial features and actions. The second boy had the face and build of a boxer and had been scouted to join the boxing club, though he had been too nice to actually punch anybody. Their names eluded him.
"You thinking about someone?" the weasel boy asked, sporting a knowing smirk. It reminded Kurama of Yusuke in its particular blend of humor and arrogance, but the boy had none of Yusuke's charm.
"Hardly," Kurama replied, with a bit of a smile.
"Come on, a man doesn't lose his head over nothing. Who's the lucky girl?"
"It's not Kirasawa, is it?" the second boy asked, pausing his struggle to get all his leaves into a non-compliant trash bag."I mean, it's okay if it is… She's pretty cute."
"I assure you that I was not thinking about Kirasawa or any other girl. Just a bit of wistful thought."
The weasel boy drew out a loud sigh. "You have the pick of the school and can't choose one or a few to go out with. ...Man, I wish I had your problem."
If he could transfer his female admirers' affection over to him or any other boy, Kurama would gladly have done it. "If there's a girl you have in mind, I encourage you to ask her out."
"You don't think any of the girls are cute?" the second boy asked, tying up the trash bag.
"A girl's cuteness is irrelevant when I have no interest in dating any of them."
"Really?" Both boys said and then the weasel boy added, "Not even Aomori? Hibiki? Yamamoto? Her dad has three Ferraris."
"Even if I wanted to date, the tutorial program doesn't allow it."
The second boy looked up from his work, surprised to hear that. His long gaze held a measure of pity for Kurama.
"None of them, huh..." the weasel boy said, resting his hand on his hip. "Then what were you thinking about?"
"Homework," Kurama said.
The weasel boy laughed, either believing Kurama's reply or thinking Kurama was joking. "Man, you're weird."
The three of them fell back into their work rhythm. Kurama made sure to maintain a greater focus on his task.
He supposed it was unusual of him that he was uninterested in dating. Even without the tutorial program's vague rule prohibiting relationships, Kurama didn't see himself a Casanova wandering from girl to girl. He was at the right age to start dating, but it had never been the right time. A relationship would have stood in the way of his research. It would have been an unnecessary chaotic variable.
He had more time for himself now, yes, but he still had no interest in dating. Asking a girl out now felt more like giving into peer pressure and societal expectations. The very idea exhausted him. He couldn't think of a single girl at the Academy he wanted to ask out with even the most fleeting romantic intentions. Sure, he could see a girl's cuteness and attractiveness. Sure, he had offered compliments and kind words, but he had never sincerely flirted with anyone. He had no desire to be paraded around as the victory prize on the arm of a gloating female admirer.
He, the boy viewed through the most sparkling, rose-colored filter, was ironically not that knowledgeable about romance. He understood it in theory, but he was lacking in practice. Honestly, he didn't want to spend his free time trying to court a girl he had little in common with and was never going to open up to when he could be spending his time with Hiei.
And Yusuke and Kuwabara, of course. They were always welcome. Except when Hiei preferred it to just be the two of them. And imagine trying to divide his time between Hiei and a girl! Hiei would terrorize the poor fool to assert his dominance as Kurama's favorite. He estimated his girlfriend turnover rate as one every three days. A week tops, for the most willful and headstrong.
Besides, it was just as common for a teenage boy to want to hang out with his friends as it was for a teenage boy to want to date. One might consider the two equal priorities for most boys—Kurama simply preferred his friends. Feeling close enough to someone to call them a friend was just as new to Kurama as it was to Hiei. For years, Kurama had gone on pretending, but never connecting with his fellow classmates as he had with Hiei.
One might say their friendship was a kind of miracle. Not the divine sort, but a miracle nonetheless.
If someone had told Kurama on Hiei's first day at the Academy that this scowling boy who had told him that he attracted flies was going to be the second most important person in his life, he would have told them that gossip spreads farther if there's a kernel of truth to it. Kurama had neither foreseen their friendship nor predicted its depth. It had been a game at first, a trivial amusement for him, until the familiar shadows in Hiei's eyes had shown Kurama his vulnerability and a commonality he did not share with the rest of his classmates. For all his rage and sharp-tongued wit, there was at his core a lonely young man who had experienced little love and affection until Kurama.
"Ah, come on, Minamino!" the weasel boy called out in playful disbelief. "That's a thinking-about-a-girl smile!"
"I assure you that I'm not," Kurama said.
"You can tell us. We swear to the Almighty to keep it secret. ...Wouldn't want to start a violent uproar among the girls."
Just the insinuation that he was dating someone could get Kurama accidentally torn apart by an overzealous mob of girls trying to find out who. "'It seems to stupid me/that hell is like this/late autumn'."
"What?" Both boys replied.
"Bashō," Kurama replied. "Didn't you say you had a test tomorrow?"
"Don't remind me..." the weasel boy grumbled as the second boy smiled at him in commiseration.
Kurama offered to take the bags of leaves to where the sweet potato roast was being held—the roast typically lasted for about a week or how ever long the supply lasted. At any point in the day, students could snack on freshly-roasted sweet potatoes, but it was popular to hang around the fire in the evening and stargaze late into the night. Or it had been popular until the curfew had been put in place.
Also Kurama was not literally walking away from the conversation. He also had not changed the subject to a topic he knew weighed heavily in his classmates' minds. The fact that neither boy had called him out on it, and were too busy stressing over their looming test, while Kurama left was an convenient coincidence.
Romantic relationships were important, yes, but it wasn't as if he had a deadline. His mother had not met his father until college, and clearly she found love again after his passing. There was time for him. At home, his mother and the man she had married politely inquired if he was seeing anyone, however they never pressed him beyond that, recognizing that he rarely had the time.
Would they press now that he had more time? Perhaps, however, they might be more curious about why he had abandoned his research? Kurama had never detailed the subject matter of his research to them, and explaining Enma to them carried its own risks.
A thinking-about-a-girl smile, what did that even mean? A smile implied happiness. Inattention implied a longing to be where they were. Therefore, a thinking-about-a-girl smile denoted joy and longing, a mind lost in thought centered around a particular girl. Except Kurama had not been thinking about a girl.
He had been thinking about Hiei.
Wait, no, pause on that thought...They were friends. Of course, he felt a great measure of affection for his closest, dearest friend. It was perfectly reasonable that he thought about him when they were apart and preferred his company to that of his prying classmates, who badgered him about girls and whatnot. It was presumptuous to think that a happy smile while thinking about Hiei meant he held some sort of romantic feelings towards him.
And yet, why had Kurama jumped to that conclusion first? Because it was what he figured other people might assume first. Right? Yes, he was sure.
Kurama didn't know how he felt about Hiei and certainly didn't know how to put it into succinct words. Love was one of those words, but the nature of that love was unclear. It was a complicated matter in an already complicated matter, which was not made any easier by Hiei's aversion to physical affection.
He didn't want to have to talk to Hiei about this. They were just friends. Kurama was fine with that. They were both fine with that. It did not make any sense to cause trouble between them—why rock the boat right after a storm? It seemed unnecessary to make any changes to their friendship over some ill-defined feelings that might be a smattering of romantic love, or it might just be a deep platonic love.
They didn't have to talk about this yet. Kurama could put off talking about feelings and such for a while, and by then, it might not even be an issue anymore. He was a smart boy. He could logic his way through this. Matters of the heart were complicated, but Kurama Minamino had not yet encountered a problem he could not solve with time and deductive reasoning.
-o-
Iwamoto was acting strange, and Hiei didn't like it. Strangeness was a warning to prepare for some bullshit coming his way. Hiei knew he should not have came back to Iwamoto's class. He should have let Iwamoto fail him, or cut some deal with Father Koenma to complete his work without attending the class. He supposed pride had dragged him back to his seat. He wanted to show Iwamoto that he wasn't afraid of him, and more accurately, that Hiei could keep himself from beating the shit out of Iwamoto day after day. (The last class on the last day of the school year was going to extremely tempting, but Hiei hadn't decided what to do yet.)
According to his classmates, Iwamoto's strange behavior had begun a few days before his return. It had started when Iwamoto started carrying a large steel thermos with him. Yusuke joked that it was filled with booze. Hiei found out it was filled with coffee from the stale stench on his breath. The thermos was large enough to hold an entire coffeepot's worth and never seemed to run low.
The bastard was twitchy. His handwriting on the board was squiggly. The bags under his eyes were darker and more prominent than they usually were. Was something haunting him at night preventing him from sleeping? Good. It was the least the bastard deserved. Hiei hoped it was Minamino and the ghosts of all the lab mice biting and scratching him.
Hiei was done with the assignment and the homework and was reading Paradise Lost, a book he had started once as a kid but had taken to using it more as a prop to be left alone than anything else. The Academy's copy had a striking picture of Lucifer speaking to his fellow fallen angels on the cover and more illustrations inside. He had side-eyed Kurama's supportive recommendation at first, just on the principle of not being in the mood to read something biblical, however he had assured him that he might find some entertainment if he continued reading.
He still had the school's copy of Frankenstein with him—this week, it was checked out under Kuwabara's name. There was no limit to how many times he could renew the book, but he and Kurama had added Yusuke and Kuwabara to the check-out rotation for a fun change. It was the only book title under Yusuke's name.
The bastard was making his rounds down the rows. He was sure to yell at him for reading in his class yet again. Really, this same song and dance was getting old. Hiei readied himself. Iwamoto's eyes widened upon seeing the cover of his book. There was a mad look in his eyes, in both sense of the word. He slammed his hand onto Hiei's desk and bent down closer to his face.
"I know what you are, Jaganshi," he growled. "And I won't let your master win."
Hiei tossed him a look that said he had no idea what the hell he was talking about. Because he didn't. It was a weird thing to say to anyone, much less a kid in your class. Equally weird was that Iwamoto didn't give him detention. He walked off with the stride of a man with a purpose. Hiei wondered what that was all about. Iwamoto with a plan worming its way through his brain definitely did not bode well for Hiei, and he didn't like it.
Hiei did like cake, however, and there was cake and single-serving ice cream cups for the Halloween party near the end of Kurama's tutorial class. Students were prohibited from throwing their own Halloween parties outside of class hours, but the rule said nothing about teachers (or tutorial students) holding parties during class time.
Kurama's lesson was a special topic for the holiday as well. He segued effortlessly from forest decomposition to human decomposition. For the first time, Reiji looked wide awake and was taking notes. Kuwabara and the girls wrote notes sparingly, their squeamish expressions making their thoughts on today's lecture clear. Hiei didn't see what was so gross about rigor mortis.
After listing the factors that affect the rate of decay both on the board and aloud, Kurama turned toward the class and paused midway. He was angled toward the classroom door.
"Oh, Father Iwamoto, what a surprise!" It was hard to say whether or not his surprise was genuine.
Most of the class turned to look. Hiei refused.
"I'm sitting in your class today," Father Iwamoto said, and in the same gravelly tone asked, "What is all this?"
There was a black and orange tinsel garland draped along the top of the whiteboard and two purple holographic bats pinned at the top two corners. Kurama had let Reiji draw a zombie on the whiteboard for additional decoration. His zombie bore more than a passing resemblance to Father Iwamoto.
"Just a bit of Halloween fun," Kurama explained, with a smile. "We're doing a special lesson on decomposition."
"I didn't approve of this," Iwamoto said, with visible and audible disdain.
"Actually, you did. It was in my weekly class syllabus," Kurama replied. Iwamoto had probably signed off without reading it.
Iwamoto grumbled to himself as he squeezed himself into a desk in the back row. He noticed the minimally-decorated table where the ice cream cups and a jack o' lantern-shaped cake awaited the class at the end of the lesson.
"Cake?" Father Iwamoto asked, with equal parts confusion and disapproval. The next words out of his rancid mouth had better not be "You can't have cake!" thought Hiei acridly.
"Yes, what is a Halloween party without a little treat made and decorated by our own Emi?" Kurama said, nodding in her direction.
The girl slid farther down into her seat. Attention from Kurama still made the girl flustered, but she was equally afraid of Iwamoto punishing her for her participation in an illicit Halloween party.
"You're welcome to have a slice," he added politely. "...It's Devil's food."
Iwamoto fixed a cold stare on Kurama. He took a gulp from his thermos of coffee.
Kurama resumed his lesson.
Hiei stewed in his seat. Why the hell was Iwamoto here? Iwamoto had already done a review a couple of weeks ago, and Kurama hadn't mentioned anything that would necessitate a follow-up review. Hiei couldn't think of any logical criteria the bastard could have found fault in Kurama's class, unless all student tutors were being reviewed more frequently. Or Iwamoto was being a dick. Both were possible.
Hiei was leaning toward Iwamoto just being a dick, as he sat in the back breathing noticeably heavily, as if he had chased after Hiei and run out of breath a few yards in. Hiei didn't want to look back at him, but sheer curiosity (or disgust) had gotten the better of him. Hiei wasn't the only one—each student tossed him a look. Some were even concerned looks.
Iwamoto's hands were shaking. His whole body was, really. He was sweating. No amount of dabbing his forehead and wiping his face could dry the wet sheen on his unusually flushed face. His skintone was typically somewhere around rotten squash, but right now, Iwamoto was at mealy red apple that not even the deer would eat. He rubbed and blinked his eyes frequently, as if trying to clear his vision.
Hiei heard him fidgeting all throughout the lesson. He didn't know what his play was. Was Iwamoto acting sick so Kurama would end a lesson he didn't approve of? No, if the bastard wanted to throw a fit based on moral grounds, he would have already stopped the lesson. Iwamoto stayed until Kurama announced it was time for cake. He scuffled loudly out of the seat and rushed out of the classroom without saying a word. No one wondered aloud if he was okay. They were more worried he was going to come back and end their class Halloween party.
But still…
Iwamoto was acting strange, and Hiei didn't like it.