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Iruma spent his formative and adolescent years doing things no child should ever go through. The sheer amount of danger he went through, most people would not even encounter their entire lives. There were four things he learned during that time though.
One, he had what was essentially Achilles' heel in the form of three sentences, “I beg you”, “Please help me”, and “I’ll leave it up to you.” The number of times he succumbed to these phrases should have killed him but fate seemed to like him enough to keep him alive.
Two, he loves his parents, even for all the danger he went through because of their whims, but that was because he had no one to turn to. Every time he stayed in a place long enough to begin to form relationships with the locals, his parents would drag him to their new location of adventure. Yes, he may resent them to some degree but that was only after grandpa adopted him and he learned what actual familial love was.
Three, his treatment during his childhood qualifies for every form of child neglect, child abuse, child endangerment, child abandonment, child slavery, human trafficking, and so many other forms of illegal actions that can happen to a child. He was at least grateful that for all the bad people he’s met and worked for, none of them had sexual desires for minors.
Four, for all his hardship he came out stronger from it. He’s learned to trust his instinct to ensure his survival. His instincts have been trained to their pinnacle and it's to the point that they feel more like a superpower than human ability. His instincts even branched out to other facets of him, his ability to tell whether something is edible even though he’s never tried it, his ability to dodge anything, and even his physical strength and agility. All of them were above what is expected of a baseline human. He was honestly relieved that his capabilities were average for that of a demon, he was considered a freak to some in the human world but his skills let him blend in with other demons.
Number four…number four changed a lot in Iruma when he came to hell. Balam-sensei once said that humans were primitive versions of demons due to their living in peaceful environments compared to hell. Demons had to evolve to live in their very dangerous ecosystem and on many levels this was true. But what Balam-sensei went over was the physical differences between “imaginary beings” and demons.
Iruma knew the differences were not just surface level though. Iruma knew that psychologically, as individuals and as a society, demons are much easier to read than humans. For all the complexity demons had physically, humans made up the difference mentally.
Demons were said to be selfish beings, their only concerns were their rank, their power, and their desires. Demons accomplish their goals in what Iruma considered the most straightforward and honest approach. Their tendency for violence was high, and your chances of seeing demons fight were so likely that you could take a walk in the street and see a fight happening in every alley. But the chances of having demons act for their ulterior motives were one in every hundred, and often times it was not even well done.
Humans though, Iruma has learnt that humans were rarely outwardly violent because all of them have ulterior motives. Iruma’s personal experience statistics were flipped when he came to hell. Humans were violent, Iruma experienced this closely with his run-in with debt collectors, yakuza members, and underground illegal folk that his parents kept dropping him in front of. Those members of human society were the closest to demons behaviour-wise or at least the best Iruma could liken to. But those members of the human world also had their “normal behaviour” such as family and friends, day jobs or school, or even just going grocery shopping. For all that they were dangerous, they had their other half in behaviour. They were just like demons with their desires and their power. They were straightforward in what they wanted and they will enact their power to achieve what they want as long as you were not in their way or a threat to them, they will not see a need to act hostile towards you.
But for all that those humans were seen as the “stain” of society to humans, Iruma always saw the “normal members of society” to be much worse. Normal members of society will smile at you, pleases and thank yous constantly being thrown around, greet you with a wave, and offer to help you, but all of them have had their moments of ulterior motives.
All those normal members of society have mastered their masks to hide who they are on the inside so that you could never know what was on the inside. Even the most kind-hearted people have their moments. These normals were the people who had more layers than an onion and were the ones who had the capabilities to be the most dangerous. These were the people who hold their emotions behind their masks and filter out what was acceptable to be seen. These were the people who hold all their intrusive thoughts on the inside so that others would not be able to tell how messed up they were. These were the ones who had warring forces in their minds that eventually mix and the ticking time bombs they have will one day explode outwards in a magnificent and dangerous form of violence that even the “stains” were not capable of. These were the ones that have the capability of hurting the ones they love, the ones closest to them.
Of course, some had better masks than others which were why the crime rate in the human world was relatively low, otherwise, you would have people snapping left and right. Some people were so good that they got the chance to live their whole life without snapping and these were the people who die with people giving eulogies that make everyone cry but also smile in remembrance of them at their funerals. Those whose masks were not good enough were called psychos and killers and freaks, these are the people who people scowl at on the street and don’t even get funerals when they die because people don’t think they deserve it. And for all the exceptions there were in the world, to simplify the complexity of humans would probably result in people doing it being disgusted by humanity as a whole and just giving up on what they were doing.
What made the human world dangerous was not their ecosystem but rather the inhabitants because as bad as a carnivorous plant or a monstrous bird the size of a mountain was, humans are capable of mentally torturing a person to the point of choosing death and not even giving them the mercy of ending it all.
But back on topic. Of the four things Iruma learned in his fourteen years in the human world, one of them was reading people. He would like to say he was good at it. He may have had a blind spot with his parents but since he started to live in hell, he’s begun to expand his horizon. He’s learned to be objective when he reads people, even with his new family and friends, but he has also learned to separate what he objectively read from them and what he thinks of them as his friends and family.
Which was why he knew that the tutors Kalego-sensei introduced them to were complex beings, some of them even close to human levels of complexity.
Lady Vepar. Timid, she’s been crying non-stop since she’s been here and shows no signs of stopping. Outwardly she gives off the feel of a crybaby and someone that people would pick on because she seems like an easy target. Iruma sees her as someone with strong magic abilities. She’s been crying continuously and her tears have been flowing but her clothes are dry and only the immediate area around her are are wet, not even a trail from where she came from, and from the little water spheres around she has the ability to manipulate water, one that she’s trained to the point where she can seamlessly and unconsciously control it to manage her tears.
Mister Hat. Presents himself as a gentleman, poise and grace ooze from him. People probably think he’s an aristocrat, but at the same time, some of his mannerism shouts follower. He is nothing like some of the aristocrats Iruma has met, even though the ones he did meet are Azz-s mother and grandpa. If anything Mister Hat gives off the same vibes as Opera-san, a butler who is capable and can keep his cool no matter the situation, and if this man is anything like Opera-san then he must be the pinnacle of his specialty.
Raim-sensei. A teacher at Babyls that teaches a girls-only class on seduction. Her actions make Iruma wonder how there hasn’t been a lawsuit for sexual harassment but he knows. He knows that for all that Raim-sensei is flirtatious, every action of hers is a calculative and manipulative one. Iruma has seen this happen in the human world during the times his parents went to the big city thinking their next great thing was going to be making it big. On those nights Iruma was not allowed to sleep in their apartment or in the hotel, he would wander the streets at night and would run across men and women in sparse or scandalous clothing, subtly posing under lighting to enhance their figure and their face to attract people. For all the people they attract there were people that they would reject and there were others they would accept. It was from these people that Iruma learned how to start distinguishing between people with good masks and those with bad masks, those that it was dangerous to approach and those that would at least leave you alive. Raim-sensei’s eyes were every bit as analytical as those men and women out during the night that Iruma saw in the city and Iruma had no doubt that she had the ability to take everything from someone she saw as her target.
Robin-sensei, the newest addition to the Babyls staff and one that is too happy. Iruma questions whether that happiness is genuine on most days. Robin-sensei is a member of the staff despite his childish ways so he must be strong enough to meet Babyls’ standards and grandpa would accept nothing less from a member of his school. He’s seen humans do similar things. There is a chance that his actions are to hide how strong he is so that he can appeal to others more. It’s a method to make himself more approachable thus gaining more people who will take his side should doubt about him ever come. But that’s just Iruma’s assumption since Dali-sensei also acts friendly and students love him but he is the Teaching Supervisor and the most senior professor at the school. Dali-sensei does not act remotely as childish as Robin-sensei so it can be assumed that one does not need to act like a child to appeal to children.
Balam-sensei, visibility intimidating due to his height, his muscles, and his mask. The rumours surrounding him do not help how intimidating he is due to his capabilities in magic and his passion for his research making him sound manic at times. He has shown that he is fully capable of kicking ass and taking names without even a hint of violence. Of course, Iruma now knows that Balam-sensei is more than that though, he is the walking definition of a gentle giant. He is very friendly and will use every bit of his intimidation factor to protect those he cares for. He kind of reminds Iruma of those bar bouncers he’s seen that can scare underaged teens away from bars but will also whoop the ass of every person unwilling to take no as an answer in that very same bar. They are scary, they know it, and they will use it to protect even if it means they have to attack. Everyone under their protection trusts them because they are scary.
And General Furfur…
Physically, he is every bit as intimidating as Balam-sensei due to his tall stature and his muscle mass. His being here as a teacher shows that he is strong and capable. He did appear friendly due to his friendly smile but Iruma’s instinct was screaming alarm bells at him. Something about him didn’t feel right.
…
Iruma thought about what to do with General Furfur. He was to be the mentor for Jazz and Allocer, he was brought by the school to help them so he couldn’t be that bad but at the same time, Iruma trusted his instincts. They’ve never led him wrong, he would have been dead long before he made it to hell if he didn’t follow them. But he didn’t want others to think he was nosy for butting into business not his own. He actually went home for the night and spent the night thinking instead of sleeping. Everyone was to start training with their mentors the following day after classes. Eventually, Iruma just decided he would warn Jazz and Allocer and let them decide what to do with it. It was up to them whether they wanted to listen and stay away from General Furfur.
The morning training was to start, before homeroom began, Iruma approached his two classmates and asked to talk to them alone.
“So what’s with this? Normally, you are within five feet from Clara and Azz.” Iruma leaned against the wall of the hall outside the classroom with Jazz and Allocer standing across from him.
“Azz and Clara don’t need to know this. This is your business and if you feel the need to share it with anyone it's up to you, but I want to warn you.” Iruma wasn’t smiling and his arms were crossed, it made Jazz and Allocer straighten up with how serious he was. “It’s about your mentor, General Furfur. I don’t like him.”
Jazz and Allocer shared a confused look. Jazz raised an eyebrow when he turned back to Iruma, “Really? He seemed pretty friendly when we met him yesterday.”
Iruma shook his head, “He seems friendly and he might actually be that friendly but my instincts are screaming at me to not trust him. I haven’t had this feeling since I started living with grandpa.”
“Instinct?” Allocer sounded doubtful and it wasn’t surprising. There was no proof to support Iruma’s claim after all.
“Yeah, are you sure?”
“I’m only warning you because they’ve never been wrong before. I’m not trying to change your mind about him but please be wary. It’s up to you guys to decide if you want to tell a teacher but I don’t think he’s as simple as he looks.” Iruma straightened up at the bell signalling the start of class and left Jazz and Allocer to follow him.
…
At the end of that day’s class, the mentors came to pick up their students and it was the last time anyone saw Jazz and Allocer for three weeks. After the initial happy message, the texts got shorter and shorter before resulting in that ominous keyboard smash around the two-week mark. It’s been silent for a week now and the Harvest Festival was due to start tomorrow.
Jazz and Allocer did not show up until the meet-up for the Harvest Festival and they looked like they were psychologically tortured but made it out with the rage of a thousand burning suns.
…
It was after the Young Kings' crowning and the award ceremony. The mentors of the Misfit class were gathered around their mentees in celebration of their success. Azz got a scolding from Balam though for losing his cool during the event. Jazz and Allocer got tied up for General Furfur to laugh at because they didn’t get promoted and Jazz got disqualified during the event.
The celebration the school threw for everyone was amazing and everyone was having fun. It did get a little rowdy when Iruma was summoned Kalego-sensei but things kind of calmed down when people started going home. The members of their class stayed as long as they could and members of the staff stayed to supervise them to minimize further havoc.
“How did you know?”
Iruma had gone to enjoy the food after the initial raid of the food table happened so that other members of the student body were able to get some before he began enjoying himself. He was interrupted from eating another drumstick by someone behind him.
It was Jazz, Allocer, and General Furfur. It seems that his two classmates had blown up during their time with General Furfur and said they should have listened and told the teachers they wanted a different mentor. This of course made the general curious and now introductions were being made. The general was leaning over his two mentees’ shoulders and was grinning at Iruma. He was still setting off Iruma’s alarms and Iruma tried to step back but the food table blocked his way. His escape attempt actually made General Furfur’s grin widen.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“My two labourers here let it slip that you told them not to trust me before the training started, said your instincts told you not to. I want to know what gave it away. These two haven’t been able to read me for the three weeks they were with me but you were able to with that short amount of time we met. It probably wasn’t even 20 minutes and you already learned to be wary of me.”
“You want to truth or do you just want to satisfy your curiosity?” Iruma’s alarms quieted down a bit. He didn’t talk to the general when he met him the first time but this short paragraph gave him a better read. For all that the general had a shit personality, he wasn’t completely dangerous. For all the hard work Jazz and Allocer went through with him, their lives were never at risk and General Furfur was with them for all of the three weeks in case they were ever in any actual danger. Iruma felt he wasn’t a danger to anyone and decided to go back to his food.
“What if I’m curious about the truth?”
Iruma hummed around his food, making a show of thinking about his answer before he swallowed his food and wiped his mouth.
“Jazz and Allocer has only spent the past three weeks actively learning to read demons. They might have occasionally and subconsciously done it but their time of practice and their sample size was much smaller than what I had. I spend almost 14 years, almost my entire life being dragged around by my parents on their whims and adventures. I’ve been left to fend for myself while following their favours for as long as I remember. I’ve done everything from being forced to survive in the wild to forage for rare ingredients to being abandoned in cities so that they can try their shot at fame to being forced to do illegal jobs so that there was money in the bank, food on the table, and a roof over our heads. I’ve been hunted by collectors, forced into slave contracts, worked under the table, and trafficked. When you’ve gone through everything I’ve been through, your instincts get honed to their finest and your sample size grows to the point where you have a statistic for any possible event in the adult world. I’ve been navigating adult life before I was even five. You are one of many in my experience and it was easy to tell you were not who you made yourself out to be.”
The silence in their little group was deafening, the grin on the general’s face was wiped clean off. The noise around them was muted in their gathering and prevented others from hearing in. Only those close enough and actively listening would hear the bomb Iruma just dropped.
“I was actually surprised I didn’t recognize what my instincts were telling me since it was a feeling I had my entire life. My time with grandpa must be making them rusty. It’s been a while since my alarms rang as loudly as they have. Walter park came close but there were too many bells ringing for me to think clearly.”
Iruma let out a smile as he grabbed a drink from the table, “The last people who rang for me not to trust them were my parents before they sold me to grandpa for money, but I never realized that until well into two months after grandpa adopted me.”
Taking a sip from his drink, “If the truth has satisfied your curiosity, I must thank you for taking care of Jazz and Allocer during their training and not putting their lives in danger. It seems I misread you a bit when I first met you but it appears that you at least have some capacity of caring for those that rely on you. If you’ll excuse me, my friends are calling for me.”
With a wave, he left the mentor-mentee trio behind him as he made his way to Azz and Clara. Iruma felt raw on the inside and he wanted to be with his friends to recover from digging at an old wound.
…
“Wow, your classmate is the walking definition of trauma.” Jazz and Allocer snapped out of their state of shock to stare at their teacher.
“You guys are still wet behind the ears but I’m pretty sure your classmate over there has Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and trauma experience. I saw it a lot with soldiers and veterans as well as abuse and assault victims. You can sometimes see them in their actions when you know what to look for. Mainly trauma responses, coping mechanisms, other mental disorders and general habits that might be abnormal from how they present themselves.” The grin from before has yet to return to General Furfur’s face and he was actually looking around for something or someone as he talked. It actually disturbed Jazz and Allocer.
“Your buddy just trauma dumped on us and from the way he was eating before, I would assume he also has an eating disorder. The fact that he has shown no signs of being on the road to treatment and recovery is concerning meaning either no one cares or no one sees the problem. Ah, there’s your teacher. Kalego! Balam!”
…
Did Iruma ever expect to be in the nurse’s office when he was physically unharmed? No. But did he expect it to happen after his trauma dumping the night before? Yes. After all, he knew General Furfur was capable of caring when it was important, he had expressed as much during the party.
It was a bit awkward for his grandpa and Opera-san to take him to the nurse’s office first thing in the morning when General Furfur, Tsumuru-sensei, Kalego-sensei, and Balam-sensei were there. He doesn’t think his grandpa has stopped crying since last night and there’s been a trail of tears following them that had at one point flooded the living room since grandpa did not want to let go of him and they slept on the couch no matter how hard Opera tried to have them separate.
Iruma sat in the little chair opposite the nurse's desk with Tsumuru-sensei across from him. All the adults in the room were talking in a quiet tone with each other, leaving Iruma to sit and smile.
When the whispering lasted half an hour though, Iruma decided to interrupt. Trauma and mental disorders were nothing to scoff at, Iruma’s seen enough harm they can do to know that they are very serious. But the fact that the adults have talked for 30 minutes and have not even decided on what to do shows that there are either no procedures set in place about what to do if one of their students were in need of help or there was never any need for such procedures to be set in place for students since children were seen as precious in such a dangerous place such as hell. Says a lot about the overall state of humanity, doesn’t it?
“Excuse me…” The adults turned to Iruma, who still had his usual gentle smile on his face which threw them off quite a bit.
“I don’t mean to interrupt but if I may say my piece. I know why I’m here and if it would help, I can tell you what I know so that we may go forward?”
“You know why you are here?” Tsumuru-sensei asked as everyone turned their full attention toward the child who has yet to stop smiling.
“Yes, it has come to your attention that I have suffered ‘hardships’ in the past and they are having a negative effect on my daily life. As my teachers and guardians, it is technically your responsibility to do something about it. But seeing as demon children are treated preciously in hell, no such protocols are in place for my situation. There was probably a suggestion to have me undergo treatment and recovery following a plan that would be implemented for an adult but seeing as I am a minor, there is some disagreement going around.” Some of the adults are unnerved at how he saw through them but Iruma was not surprised.
“There isn’t really a need for following the standard protocol of diagnosing and treatment/recovery. I have undergone an unofficial diagnosis of PTSD, binge-eating disorder with the tendency of food hoarding, depression, anxiety, paranoid personality disorder, and Insufficient Sleep Syndrome. I also have chronic pain, night terrors, flashbacks, and several incorrectly healed bones. I had malnutrition and vitamin and mineral deficiency but since living with grandpa and having a reliable food source, I have been recovering from it. If you find it necessary, I find no problem in undergoing a full physical and mental evaluation.”
Iruma searched through the bag that he had left next to his chair when he sat down.
“I was expecting this and came prepared this morning. The people who gave me my cumulative unofficial diagnosis also gave me treatment plans should I ever be in a place safe enough for them to be enacted. Seeing as I have been removed to a safe place, it looked like the time has come so I wrote everything out.” Iruma held out a stack of papers. This was his only physical copy since he had nothing but the clothes on his back when he came to the demon world but he has long since had it memorized and could write out a new one should it be necessary.
Tsumuru-sensei and General Furfur looked over the papers, they could see that there weren’t medicinal sections but they noted the diagnosis and the treatment differences between child and adult. “The entire section for medicinal care is missing.”
“During the time of my diagnoses, I made sure to tell them that I could not guarantee access to medicine due to cost reasons and due to the treatment not being implemented immediately they had no way of knowing whether medical advances would impact whether medicines were available to the public anymore or if there would be a new option that would be a better option. At some point, I just told them to leave it out since I did not always have access to information sources that would allow me to keep up and make changes when needed. The diagnoses and behaviour treatments were easier to keep track of since they didn’t really change and it was just a matter of keeping a list.”
“Iruma, how long has this list been accumulating? This is a substantial amount of information.” Kalego-sensei took the papers from his colleagues to look over them and the details in the report spoke of dedication to research.
“I think the first time anyone talked to me about this, I was six. But I was never diagnosed with anything until I was eight. They were a licensed psychologist that was working in law enforcement and they took me to the station because I was walking in the streets around 3 am. I probably should have stayed with them but since my parents skipped town before the warrant was approved, no one could do anything. I started doing my own research when I had access to the computer because my parents didn’t want to do their taxes anymore and made me do them. I’ve had a long time to accept this and was mainly just biding my time until it was appropriate to bring this up.”
“Chairdemon, please tell me his parents are dead.” Surprisingly Balam-sensei said that. The avian demon was visibly shaking in rage. His knowing that Iruma was human probably made this reveal even more frustrating with his fascination with humans.
“Worry not Balam-kun, I made sure nothing like this could happen again when I took in Iruma.” Grandpa placed a hand on Balam-sensei’s shoulders and it was as if the action drained the anger from the teacher.
…
Following the Harvest Festival was the Music Festival and it was a whole stress fest that did not help with Iruma’s recovery. It did spark the develop his new hobby and potential coping mechanism. The near-continuous supervision from Kalego-sensei did at least help mitigate the bad days and prevent too many step-backs from happening though the riding crop might have been a bit much.
If therapy was not happening alongside their Music Festival preparations, Iruma might have still been playing his food story with Lilith. But his subconscious food thoughts aside, now that recovery was the active goal, there were some steps forward. Iruma’s found that meditation in the morning and before he went to sleep helped him center himself and allowed him to process this trauma rather than suppress it. He hasn’t gone through all of them, some were still too difficult for him to think about. But he would have scheduled visits with Tsumuru-sensei and surprisingly General Furfur to have make-shift therapy sessions.
It was a bit weird to talk to General Furfur but his status as a general was not for show and he is actually qualified since he's the field therapist for his soldiers. He is a shady person off-hour but seeing as he is also a soldier, coping mechanisms were not to be judged.
Iruma’s road to recovery was long and it started late, but better late than never.