The alarm on his phone rang out a few hours later, waking him up from a deep sleep that was filled with a parade of enchanting creatures, each more strange than the last. He groaned softly as he sat up… finding himself alone once more. Sometime in the night Athise had snuck out of bed and left him asleep. He spared a thought to her well-being as he made his way to the shower, hoping she was okay. He had learned a lot about her last night and had grown a little fond of the woman as a person as they spoke.
The water of the shower ran over his body, the heat bringing him back to life bit by bit. Slowly the excitement of his first day crept into his system. He wondered what kind of girls would be his students and what would they be like. What unique things would be in their lives that were completely foreign to his understanding? The mere thought of how much there was to learn at the same time as teaching filled him with a giddiness no alcohol could ever reproduce.
Drying off out of the shower he went to his sparse collection of clothes… how did he want to come across… first impressions were so important. He laid out a suit and tie… A formal look but too much? Jeans? Did he want to look like the cool teacher… be their friend? One thing is for sure, he would need to buy more clothes if he didn’t want to be repeating outfits in a matter of days and that likely would not send the right message at a prestigious school like this. Finally, deciding on a semi-casual look of dress pants and a button-down shirt but no jacket or tie he headed off to class.
During the day the campus was a completely different animal. Thousands of girls of various ages wandered the paths from building to building, chatting animatedly among themselves. As he walked towards his class he caught the occasional glance his way, some outright staring… plenty of whispered conversations followed by embarrassed giggles followed him every step.
Following the map the President had given him he found classroom 6-B easily enough… it reminded him of most classes he had been in before. Lines of desks for students with a wooden desk at the front in front of the chalkboard. There were a few computers in small stations at the back of the room for student use but not enough for an entire class to use them at once.
He walked around the room in a sense of wonder… this was going to be his class. It wasn’t anything fancy, no, and to most people, it would appear rather plain… but it was his, given to him on the merits of his work. Taking a deep breath he returned to the front of the class, writing his name in large letters across the board and taking a seat at the desk as he waited for the students to begin trickling in. The first to enter the class was what appeared to be a girl shaped entirely out of pink Jell-O… she slid across the floor before even noticing him at his desk. Her eyes widened and her entire body shifted to a darker red color as she quickly backed out of the room the same way she entered as if someone had pressed rewind.
There was a commotion outside in the hall, excited whispers and chattering that Dana couldn’t quite make out. Then, one by one, the heads of girls… being the very epitome of subtle, would poke through the door and look at him before vanishing again. This continued for several minutes as the first bell of the day ticked ever closer and Dana came ever nearer to losing himself to laughter with every attempt at not being seen. Finally, one of the girls entered the room completely… a pale, bedraggled girl with shining platinum hair stumbled through the door almost as if pushed. She looked back through the door, fury evident on her face a moment, before turning to him.
“Good morning…” Her voice was lyrical, musical with an otherworldly sound to it that made him feel strange. Mentally he guessed she was a banshee or some kind of creature along that line. He smiled and gave her a friendly nod as she made her way to one of the seats and sat down. The slime girl from earlier came in next, followed by a pair of girls dressed in dark reds and blacks that moved in a way that all attention in the room would be focused on them. A blonde with her hair chopped short, dressed in ripped jeans and a plain t-shirt entered next with a cat-girl following her, tail wagging from side to side with every step.
“Just take a seat anywhere… we’ll get started as soon as everyone is here.” Dana got to his feet as the rest of the class came in and got themselves settled, their whispered conversations and glances towards him making him feel extraordinarily self-conscious. Finally, the first bell rang, signaling the official start of the day. “Greetings, ladies… as you can see my name is Mr Wilde… I will be teaching you over the next year about humans and a bit of what you might expect should you venture out into the human world.”
The class let out a murmur of non-committal agreement as he crossed in front of his desk, leaning his weight down on it and crossing his arms in front of him.
“Before we get started, are there any questions you have for me? I want to be clear in this classroom you are free to ask me anything about anything, don’t be afraid of being curious and I will always do my very best to answer you honestly.”
A girl with red skin and horns in the front row shot up to her feet her eyes wild with a mischievous grin. “You are human, right? Like full blood normal not special in any way human? How old are you? Are you single? Looking not to be?”
Dana laughed softly to himself as she rattled off question after question. “Are you a reporter with all those questions?”
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“I’m Akuji Batibath, and yes, I write for the school paper.” She winked at him, holding out a pencil like a microphone in front of him. “So, care to comment?”
“Yes, I am human born and raised… don’t know how normal that makes me but I guess we will find out the more time I am here. I am twenty-five for three more months and yes, I am single but in no rush to find that special someone quite yet.
Murmurs rippled through the room as Akuji sat back down in her seat, scribbling in a notebook. “Anyone else… and maybe let’s try to keep it to one question a person or we’ll be here all day.”
A girl towards the back of the class raised her hand. She was mostly transparent, allowing Dana to see through her to the wall behind. She wore her pale hair in a medieval-style page cut and seemed to be dressed in some sort of padding you might wear under armor.
“Yes, in the back… and please for the sake of me getting to know each of you tell me your name and if it’s not too intrusive what kind of cryptid you are.” The girl stood up silently… her movements making no noise whatsoever.
“I am D’arcy Green… I’m a ghost as you can see.” *She waved to herself with a little smile* “A lot of us are wondering why you chose to teach monster girls in the first place?”
“Well D’arcy, first off I am not that happy with the term monster girl… yes, thanks to anime it has a more cute feel to it these days but I’m not a fan of terming anyone monsters that are not one.” Dana looked over the room, meeting the eyes of each student as he spoke. “Some of your species have violent pasts or legends… even stories where you use humans like me for food. Humans. Similarly, eat animals to survive but we aren’t monsters… well, not most of us anyway. There is, of course, the argument of intelligence but we can argue semantics another day. Simply, calling someone a monster, even being cheeky just sets the wrong precedent from the jump.”
“As for why I took the job teaching here… from a very young age, I was fascinated by what most called supernatural. From watching old horror movies to reading every story I could find I was near obsessed… once I grew up I just kept learning about them. Got a doctorate in Mythological Studies and Ancient Religions… but I always suspected there was more truth to the stories than we let on. Even wrote a book about it… Feel free to purchase a copy, it won’t be part of this course but it warms my heart whenever someone purchases one.”
“Given what this place is…and how much I could learn here there really was no choice in taking the job or not. I just had to take the chance.”
The blonde girl in the ripped jeans raised her hand, standing once she was called on. “Sally Mae, Lycan, is your obsession with monster girls just more pervy fetishized junk that is always getting posted on the web?”
“Not entirely sure how to answer that, Sally Mae, but my interest in cryptids and supernatural creatures is not limited just to you girls. It’s just circumstance that brought me here… it… well, it stems more from an old friend. As for pervy stuff, that’s not really appropriate here… not to mention a touchy subject. Do I say yes and get dirty looks from everyone as long as I teach here, or do I say no and try to deny the fact that the women here on this island are all extremely attractive… something I think anyone would see as a lie pretty plainly.” More hands shot up almost immediately.
“What friend, Mr Wilde?”
“That’s a bit of a longer story… growing up it was my mom, my sister, and me in a tiny little three-room apartment. One of hundreds in the building. Mom was always working, trying to provide us the best life she could so she wasn’t home a lot… I started exploring. That’s where I met Lucy. She was older than me by a few years but she was nice and friendly and we became fast friends almost instantly.”
“It was about a year later my mother was taking me to talk to professionals about my imaginary friend, Lucy. People in the building kept seeing me talking to no one and they told mom that it was creeping them out. Turned out Lucy was not, as they thought, imaginary. She was a ghost, a little like D’arcy there but she seemed fully solid to me. She passed away decades before tore the building that was in the lot there to make room for the apartments that stood there now. She had been haunting the place ever since.”
“After learning that talking to Lucy in public was going to get me in trouble, I kept it more to myself and we kept playing. I was still just a kid so I could fit into areas no one else could and Lucy would love showing me all these secret places that no one had been in for years. Found all sorts of treasure… little knick knacks and things that I kept to myself.”
“What happened to Lucy then, sir?” The cat girl from earlier asked.
“I don’t know. After insisting she was real to my mom over and over… she put me into some programs designed to combat my delusions but the doctors could never find anything wrong with me and sent me right back home. About a year after this began Lucy just… stopped showing up. I hope that that means she figured a way to move on to whatever afterlife waited for her but something doesn’t feel right about that.”
“I actually keep this with me to remind me of her.” Dana pulled on the chain around his neck, fishing out an ornate emerald scarab decorated with an intricate web design on the back. “A lot of the stuff we found exploring turned out to belong to other people but this was one of the first things we stumbled on and no one ever stepped forward as an owner. So as long as I have this I feel like she’s somewhere, keeping an eye on her old pal.”
“You must miss her a lot.” The pink slime girl chirped up, a slight dreamy tone to her voice. “Did you love her?”
“Lucy vanished around when I was twelve… so in as much as a kid understands what love is, yes, I loved her very much.” Dana smiled, his head tilting as a memory hit him. “I still miss her sometimes… I just hope whatever happened she is doing well.”
The girls continued to pepper him with questions until class ended… asking him everything from his plans for the course to more cheeky innuendos to see his reaction. The two girls dressed like sex incarnate, who turned out to be a vampire and a succubus respectively, led the charge on those leading questions and he never quite got full control of the class again. All in all, he learned a lot about his students, they were friendly, intelligent, and welcoming… though many of them were looked down upon by others in the school for not being as high class as those in the fancy dorms.