Chapter 8: My name is...

5th, April of 409

Third POV

Students of all sizes, ages and species could be seen walking around, males in white shirts, indigo vests, dark grey ties, grey pants with a darker vertical line pattern, brown loafers and females in white dresses with a small bow-tie, a long, knee-length skirt, a yellow belt, white socks, and black Mary Jane shoes.

Small animals like muridae were walking close to the walls, so as to not get squashed under someone else's foot. Female and males were gossiping about the rumours of a new amphibian student. 

"Hey, do you know that one of the new freshmen is an amphibian, the headmaster is crazy to let one of those freaks become a student! I even heard my Daddy say that they eat their kits! They are mons-hmm what is your point-", whispered loudly a junior female harlequin rabbit to her friend, a tanuki, she was so absorbed she didn't notice her friend pointing her claw, horrified at what was behind her and that silence now reigned the big corridor.

She looked behind, her ears flopped down, her eyes turned to pinprick, her fur stood on end and finally, she froze in abject horror.

Behind her was said amphibian hunching over, black and dark blue scaled-skinned arms behind his back, his large snoot accompanied with his smiling jaws, his head all covered in pure black scale and skin, his lavender-black eyes looking at her playfully with a hidden sadistic glint in them that pierced her very soul.

His four-set of blue scaled gills covered his scaleless neck like a mane and he only wore a top consisting of a white shirt, indigo vest, a dark grey tie and a green blazer with the school's crest on its left breast pocket.

Adding to that his long serpentine-like body, with one big black, scaled stripe covering his back and the top of his neck, olive green ventral scales and in between the two, two dark blue-skinned stripes all of this ending with an extremely long green finned tail.

*Cough* "Good morning senpai, I am a new student, so I'm a bit lost hehe. Could you please tell me where lecture hall 3 is?", while saying this, Cahaya was abstaining himself from strangling the bicolour bitch, while still encircling the two birds with his long body, blocking any escape route.

The green one was on the verge of fainting, her friend decided to 'help' this new student with his query.

"Y-you, you just n-need to go to, to th-the end of the this-s corridor and tu-turn right.", said the tanuki while stammering and looking at her shoes, her instincts telling her that she needed to run away from the thing in front of her.

"Thank you, senpais, we must help each between 'herbivores', after all.", he said politely with a worried frown and did a small bow, turned his back then slithered away.

The tense atmosphere disappeared just after, resulting in two students being scared out of their wits, this fact mostly unknown to most not present at the scene, and multiple new exaggerated rumours about Cahaya.

He passed his first year of high school, it was a new experience for him, the first class started and it was math, the teacher was an old skinny human male and the first real human he saw in this world, he was a bit creepy but seemed nice overall. 

Later, he ate alone at the mixed cafeteria with the special herbivores menu, simply more insects than vegetables, animals staring at him for different reasons, the usual. They will get used to him or he will make them used to him, by force if necessary.

He was also insulted directly and behind his back by students, the majority of them being herbivores, he told himself to not brutalize them too much; they are only teenagers who believe whatever their parents and friends said, they are malleable and can change easily. 

That doesn't mean he was passive, he politely told them to go fuck themselves or if they were too dull to understand, simply ignored them, for him it was simple; Do you feel insulted/offended if someone with an IQ lower than that of an oyster looked down on you for simply being different? No, you will only feel pity for the oyster being compared to them. 

This was his current mindset.

However, if it comes down to physical bullying, well they would have at least tried, he doesn't consider himself the strongest physically in terms of pure arms or jaws strength in comparison to big carnivores and herbivores but he can crush medium-sized trees with his snake-half and he won't shy away from using his venom on them if need be, needless to say; he will use just enough to make them spasms on the floor not kill them.

Not all of the students had bad intentions, in fact, the bad ones were the minority but they were way noisier.

Some asked innocent questions like; What is your name, species and age? Can you really breathe underwater? This kind of thing.

The really rare ones were the ones worried about the fact that he will be bullied and ostracized. They wanted to help him, but he gently declined their offer, too much socialising for him to this day already, he was still an introvert after all and living in isolation for 15 years with his Dad didn't help much.

He was currently sipping an antshake while slithering on his way to the dormitories, they were made up of four big buildings several stories tall, two buildings for herbivores and the other two for carnivores.

His room, room 976 where he will sleep alone since rooms are composed of species of the same family, canidae with canidae and felidae with Felidae, etcetera. His being the only amphibian in school makes it self-explanatory.

He suddenly heard, "Amphibian-kun!", in an arrogant and extremely rude voice coming from behind him, he already knew something was behind him.

'Not again…', he thought, already tired of this. He looked behind and saw a young adult deer with a slim build.

"Yes, what would Mammal-senpai want from me?", he looked up then lazily mimicked the older boy's tone of voice, superior expression and posture.

"You're funny and interesting. You're just like the other students said, you made yourself known with what you did today, you know. I'm Louis, a red deer and your senpai a third-year student.", he introduced himself the same way as before, still cold, arrogant but not as pompous.

"Oh, so you are the model student Gon-san always talked about, you must already know my name but it will be rude to not introduce myself to my senpai, I'm Cahaya a naga and first-year student. Excuse me if I'm a bit untactful. What do you want from me?", the deer nodded as if he had expected this outcome, it wasn't a pleasant experience to be predicted like this for Cahaya.

"Good someone direct for once. For me, as I said before, I found you interesting. I don't know much about amphibians but I know that they are rare, new species of them even rarer and on top of that one going to study in a school on land, something that nearly never happens. 

You are a living mystery and I have a feeling that you will be someone extremely important.

I simply wanted to meet the new student, you.

For the true reason, the headmaster proposed to Sanu-san to invite you to be part of the drama club, and I proposed myself to be the one to inform you of it. So are you interested in being part of the drama club?", he proposed while getting into way to much in Cahaya's personal space, it clicked in the hybrid head the arrogant deer in front of him must be one of the main characters of Beastars.

Nevertheless, it won't change how Cahaya treats him, he is a real individual for him not some 2D character, and he still found him punchable.

Cahaya, bothered by him so blatantly invading his personal space, made himself taller than the red deer by three heads then tilted his head down, and said without hiding his interest. "Yes I would like to join, talked a lot about it last week, it's a club where all species are welcomed, but only special cases can actually join and it exists to promote coexistence between carnivores and herbivores, right?", Louis nodded again but with a small crack on his mask, shown by a twitch of his ears and noticed by the hybrid.

He now truly realized the difference in size between the two of them. Cahaya could if he wanted to put the tallest of students to shame, he simply slithered close to the ground making him look smaller than he is.

"Indeed, it is… Goodnight Cahaya-kun, see you this Friday after class at the drama club.", the deer said with his smug smile back on, Cahaya said goodbye and they parted away.

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During this week, Cahaya started getting popular, he was polite and approachable, he didn't look threatening, with no claws, horns or anything that would look dangerous at first glance. 

This cost a jealous male caiman a claw and three weeks of suspension, the reason, most reptiles consider Cahaya cute and handsome with the myriad of different vibrant coloured scales he has on his body and black-lavender eyes and the shape of his head, he was exotic.

The freshman had a good idea to insult Cahaya, get angry because he was promptly ignored by him, and then punch him in the middle of the corridor for all to see.

The 'victim' who had felt 'threatened', slapped the offending claw with his tail slightly too hard, and the genius didn't dodge like Cahaya wanted, resulting in a more than broken arm.

A resounding sound of bone breaking, ripping of flesh and a manly shriek of pain was heard in the corridor this day. Poor Cahaya also broke his tail but it was as good as new 15 minutes later. 

The next day he makes the headline of School Waves for 'courageously' defending himself against a 'dangerous' carnivore and winning 'triumphantly' against said carnivore.

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It was Friday morning, Cahaya was slithering to the cafeteria, when he heard a male voice shouting, " Extra!", then again, "Extra here!"

He then heard a donkey girl close to him gasping and then announce while reading the school newspapers of the day, "Devoured?"

He paused to listen more carefully, 'Did something happen?'

"Did you hear? It was Tem from the drama club.", darkly replied her cervidae friend.

'So the murder happened, sorry for not being able to save you but I won't guilt-trip myself for something I couldn't stop.', was the cold conclusion of the hybrid.

"No way.", replied the donkey doubting her friend.

The green parakeet between the two said, "Els, he was in your club."

"We rehearsed together yesterday." said the white angora sheep girl in disbelief at the reality of the situation.

"The killer has to be one of the carnivores-", and he zoned out the rest, he continued to slither inside the cafeteria.

Inside the building, he turned his head to the right, where a big shadow could be seen, he flicked his tongue out and said in amusement, "Wolf-senpai could you stop staring at them like a 'sexual' predator? Animals would get the wrong idea, you know."

"AAH! S-sorry!", the shadow cried out in surprise then started to panic, tail tucked between his legs and ears down, while looking left and right.

The hybrid rolled his eyes and simply put himself at the eyes level of the tall hunched over grey wolf, earning another yelp of surprise, "Nice to meet you, the name's Cahaya. You don't seem really aware of your surroundings or dangerous at all for that matter.", he said with a chuckle, the big grey wolf finally calming himself down, "What's your name?"

"Um, uh. My name is Legoshi, I'm a sophomore and a drama club member.", he mumbled while scratching the fur on the back of his neck with his left paw.

"Hm. See you later this afternoon at the drama club Legoshi-senpai.", said the half-amphibian with a wave of his webbed-nailless hand and slithered away.

He could barely hear Legoshi's stupid 'huh' of surprise, 'He smells strange compared to the other grey wolfs I have met… he has a smell similar to Gosha… he is his grandson isn't he?', he wondered internally in disbelief he switched his thoughts to something else, 'Well the plot might or might not have started, meh, I won't stop myself from living for 'the plot' that I don't even know.'

_______________________

After class at the entrance of the drama.

A white pelican wearing thin glasses could be seen scribbling on his notepad, he started to talk sounding depressed, "Tem died devoured alive by a carnivore. And this just after the suspension of one for attacking a herb-" his monologue was interrupted by Louis, "Speaking of the devil and he appears.", he said, clearly also affected by the white alpaca's sudden death but he was just better at hiding it.

Cahaya slithered in front of the two, reading the mood, he said, "My heartfelt condolences for your friend's death, from what I heard he was kind-hearted and open-minded with carnivores. I would have wished to meet and maybe become friends."

"I'm grateful for your consideration, but you don't have to worry about us. Oh! How impolite of me, I'm Sanu the drama club president and you must be Cahaya-kun our newest member.", spoke the now-named pelican, Sanu.

"Hello to both of you, umm where is Louis?", questioned Cahaya.

"Don't worry. He is going to a meeting, come, there's a lot of things to do right now and you also need to meet the other members.", Sanu said, Cahaya nodded in response and Sanu opened the double door.