As she stepped into the classroom, the first person that she saw was a young woman sitting at the teacher’s desk. After looking at her over the rim of her glasses, the woman turned and smiled at her. She couldn’t have been past her mid-twenties. Arcene was a bit surprised by this, from what she knew about the school, all the teachers were highly trained with years of experience.

‘She must be really good if she’s working here so young…’ thought Arcene.

Arcene nodded her head in greeting before heading straight for the back of the classroom. She decided to take the seat closest to the windows and the furthest back.¹

She looked around the classroom. It appeared that she was the first to find the class. Since it was just her and the teacher, it occurred to her to try to make conversation with who she assumed to be her new teacher, but when she turned back in her direction, the teacher had already forgotten about her. The older woman was busy reading a book. Arcene couldn’t help but notice the large yellow octopus with a large grin that was featured on the cover.²

‘What is she reading?’ Arcene idly wondered.

Before she could ask, she watched as the teacher pressed the book to her ample chest and twisted from side to side in her seat, all with a goofy, lovestruck grin on her face.³

‘Perhaps it’s better that I don’t ask…’

She looked out the window. It was early September so many of the trees still had their leaves. The day was warm and a few fluffy cumulus clouds dotted the sky. It was the perfect day to welcome a new school year.

‘If this was a book, this would be around the time someone unusual comes in and the meeting changes the main character’s life forever…’⁴

Arcene felt a shiver run down her spine and she whipped around. Out of the corner of her eye she spotted something, but before she could focus on it, it was gone from sight. Arcene rubbed the base of her neck in an attempt to warm it up again. She continued to look at the empty classroom before turning her attention back out the window.

‘Of course no one’s there. I’m not the main character type anyway…’

She turned her gaze back out the window, but couldn’t shake the feeling that there was someone else besides the teacher and herself in the classroom.

Thoroughly bored, she laid her head on the table and closed her eyes. She knew it was a bad idea to stay up all night reading. She didn’t realize she had fallen asleep when she heard her name being called.

“Arcene Gray?”⁵

She slowly lifted her head to see the teacher standing up in front of the classroom.

“Is there an Arcene Gray here today?” she asked.

Arcene lifted her hand. “I’m here”

The teacher locked eyes with her and Arcene, out of instinct, looked away from her chocolate brown eyes.

“Good,” she said as she checked Arcene’s name off of her clipboard. “However, please pay more attention next time, Ms. Gray.”

Arcene nodded and put her hand down.

“Kol Jaëger?”⁶

“Here.”

Arcene looked at the boy who had responded. He was a few seats away from her but for some reason she found it hard to look at him. As she strained her eyes to see his features it was like him image was distorted. She blinked, all she could make out of him was shaggy, dark brown hair.

The teacher continued with the names.

“Aerith Magnolia?”

“Present.”

“Lyra Nightingale?”

“Here.”

“Allen Noble?”

“Present.”

And so one and so forth, but every time Arcene tried to look at her classmates, her eyes only saw the same distorted images.

“Now that that’s taken care of….,” she said, “My name is Babe-Miyahara, Aiko.”

“Babe?” someone murmured.

“But you may call me….”

She whipped off her glasses and struck a pose. “Babe-sensei!”

Arcene mentally quirked an eyebrow. From what she knew, that sensei was only used in martial arts and Asian movies.

Babe-sensei wrote her name on the board and turned back around to the class.

“Before we get started, a bit of helpful information. If you happen to be having trouble looking at each other, try squeezing your eyes shut, and opening them.”

As Arcene has this issue, she did as she was told and when she opened her eyes, she was surprised at what she saw. Before her classmates seemed like normal people to her, consisting of dull hues. Still more vivid than her own colors ,but not the level of her sisters.⁷ However, that was normal for people she was seeing for the first time. They had normal hair colors: black, brown, blonde, and maybe red or ginger, but now, as Arcene looked at the backs of their heads, they proved to have a lot more…variety.

She turned to her right to see a slender boy with long silver hair staring at her. One eye was covered with a long bang but the other icy blue one seemed to peer into her soul.

Arcene froze like a deer in the headlights.

“Hmph.”

After staring into her eyes for a few moments, he turned away.

With his gaze off of her, Arcene was able to breath again. She turned to look at her other classmates.

Across the room she could see a girl with long green hair hanging over the back of her seat. Arcene could tell that if she stood up, the hair would reach to her knees.

Arcene’s eyes moved to the boy with the shaggy hair she had seen earlier and was shocked to see a pair of large dog ears sitting atop his head. Arcene couldn’t believe it until she looked down and saw the furry wolf tail swishing back and forth behind him.

The boy, Kol, if Arcene remembered correctly leaned over and spoke quietly to the girl next to him. Arcene looked at the girl, only to see her silvery white hair, pale skin, and….bunny ears.

Arcene watched as the girl’s short, fluffy tail twitched.

‘W-what’s going on here?!’ Thought Arcene frantically.

She continued to look around wildly. Another of the girls had green skin, pink hair, and antennae. A different one was scratching her neck. When she moved her hand, Arcene could see blue scales and gills there. To add to that, her hair was dark blue!

Arcene felt a chill run down her back and looked at one of the boys. Apparently he had been staring at her because as soon as their eyes met, he jumped and right before Arcene’s eyes, he faded out of sight.

‘What the heck, what the heck, what the heck-‘

She spotted a girl who had a large sword sticking out of her backpack, a boy wearing a large hood and cape over his uniform, at least two kids with gun filled holsters at their sides, two that had even larger ones poking out of their bags, and…..teen idol Lyra Nightingale.

“It’s a new school year and a chance to make new friends. I’m your Special Ed. teacher and will be instructing you in Math, Science, History, English, and Sex Ed ,” said Babe-sensei.⁸

‘Special Ed.?!’  thought Arcene.

“If you ever need any help I am available after school. I have NO…little…some tolerance for foolishness. I’d like you to have both an educational and fun freshman year, so let’s all get along.”

The teacher smiled brightly and gazed at her fresh brood, eager to pull them underneath her wings.

“How about we play a game to get to know each other?” she suggested.

The whole class was made to stand in a circle. The game was a pretty typical one for meeting new people, you each give an adjective that describes you and your name and each person had to remember the names of all that came before them. Nothing odd.

Babe-Sensei closed her eyes and pointed in a random direction. Her finger pointed directly to Arcene.

‘Might as well get it over with, not like they’re going to remember it though‘ she thought.

“Average…Arcene,” she answered.

After four or five students, Arcene couldn’t recall her name being said.

………………..

“May I ask you all a quick question?”

The students looked up at their teacher

“Are you familiar with a young man by the name of Dinari?” she asked, tapping her pencil on her desk. Her glasses were on, seemingly to signify her now serious demeanor.

The students stayed silent, but she saw the spark of recognition within their eyes.

“Raise your hand if you know him,” she commanded.

The students looked around at each other before one of them, a boy with neat black hair in the front row raised his hand. Slowly, one by one, the 18 students, 9 boys and 9 girls, raised their hands.⁹

“Good, good, well as a request from this young man, I am in search of someone with silver eyes. I was told that I’d know the person as soon as I see that one feature. I have no other description of them. I don’t know their gender, their height, skin color, or any other distinguishing feature. I am also going off the assumption that they’re human,¹⁰ but you know how assumptions can be. They can make an “ass” out of “u” and “me”. It’s possible that the majority of you are in a similar position as myself. To resolve this, I request that whoever has made a wish on Dinari step forward.”

Within seconds, nineteen seats were empty and all the students stood before her. None of them had the silver eyes she was looking for.

“Well isn’t this a predicament…” she muttered. She spoke out loud. “However, seeing as you all know Dinari, I’ll stick to the assumption that at least a good part of you are here at the request of Dinari. Those that are, raise your hand.”

All of them raised their hands.

Babe-Sensei sighed. “I really hope he didn’t put us in the wrong classroom. Anyway, here’s your syllabus. It has all the information you’ll need for the school year for your core classes. Read it. Sign it. If you have a parent or guardian, have them sign it as well.”

………………..

Arcene leaned against the wall opposite to the classroom. She had gone to the bathroom and washed her face. She wondered if she was losing her mind. It was hard to believe the things she had seen. What she had seen was strange, weird, unusual, no, straight up bizarre was the better word.

Yet somewhere inside of her, she felt a bit of excitement begin to grow. Such weird and unusual classmates, it was like something out of a book or tv show! Perhaps this year would be something worth looking forward to!

A smile was creeping upon her face, but was quickly snatched away by an unwanted thought.

‘But they’ll never be your friends. They won’t remember you exist. You won’t be able to join in their fun. What interest would they take in you when they can find better company in each other?’

Arcene grimaced. She didn’t like that voice in her head, but it was the only person that seemed to enjoy, let alone acknowledge and remember her company. She, however, could not deny that the voice was often right.

She fingered a pleat in her skirt and tried to push the thought out of her mind.

‘Why am I in Special Ed.? I don’t have any learning disabilities. More importantly, why are there TWO special ed. classes?!’

Arcene recalled what she knew about the school’s structure. Each grade had fifteen classes with names such as 9A, B, C, and so on with the fifteenth having an S instead of a O. This because the fifteenth was usually special ed. A-C classes were for those who had prodigy levels of intelligence and could handle college level work. Classes D-H contained honors kids who were academically proficient ,but not on the same level as Class A-C kids. Classes I-N were for “average” kids, who usually excelled in other areas outside of the core subjects but still did pretty okay in them. Those with averages lower than a C weren’t permitted into the school.¹¹

The reason why Arcene’s class didn’t make sense to her was that on her way to the bathroom, she recalled seeing another sign mentioning a different special ed. teacher. And when she had looked through the classroom window, she saw kids she knew from the year before that had been in special ed.¹²

That meant that there was an extra class. And she was in it. But the question was why?

Arcene’s imagination went wild.

‘Is it a conspiracy?! Does no one else know that there’s an extra class?!’ she pondered.

Once more she felt her heart race with excitement ,but yet again, her own thoughts came to take her away from happiness.

‘Or you could be in an incredibly dangerous situation. You saw what some of those kids had!’

Discouraged and somewhat conflicted, Arcene made her way towards the door of the classroom. She placed her hand on the door’s handle, but before she pushed it open, she looked at the sign next to it.

Ms. Babe
Special Education Teacher
Room 101

And right next to it was a yellow star. Arcene placed her hand on the star. She hadn’t seen anything like it on other teachers’ signs. Ever since she met Dinari, yellow stars always brought him to mind. She took her hand from the sign and stepped into the classroom. When she came in, her classmates were taking syllabi off the teacher’s desk. As she walked past Babe-Sensei and took her syllabus, she realized something else off about her class.

Each core class usually had two teachers, yet there was only one desk in the room and Babe-Sensei was going to teach them all four subjects. A class with one teacher in a school that usually had two. Something was definitely up with class. But what was Arcene going to do about it?

Just as she always does. Sit by the sidelines and see what happens. It wasn’t like she was a main character after all.

1. I made her sit in the back next to the window because it’s the “anime protagonist seat”.

2. This is a reference to the Assassination Classroom manga, one of the inspirations for this story.

3. I wanted the teacher to idolize Koro-sensei from the series since he colored my perception of the “ultimate teacher”.

4. Leaning on the fourth wall

5. I wanted her last name to be Grey but because I originally used an iPad to type this, it kept on getting autocorrected to the US spelling.

6. I want to change Kol’s last name. Though he’s not from this world nor is he fully human, I pictured him as vaguely Native American. Thus, the German surname doesn’t fit despite its meaning being “hunter”.

7. This line gives me mixed feelings because of the level of admiration it shows.

8. I need to verify how Special Ed. classes actually work.

9. Including Arcene, there are 19 students.

10. I wanted them to be unable to identify Arcene so they’d ignore her at first, but honestly, the lack of details on Dinari’s part doesn’t make sense.

11. This is way too many classes. I may have to reevaluate the school’s structure.

12. Again, I need to rethink Arcene’s school history.