"Ah! Sensei- Sensei!" Kikari, looking quite excited (but also the slightest bit nervous) rushed up to Herscha with a small plastic bag in hand filled with homemade chocolates of various shapes. On the bag was a fox themed Valentines card that read out, 'What does the fox say? Happy Valentine's day!' "Sorry I didn't give this to you yesterday... um... I got caught up in some things."
"I'm sure I don't have the slightest interest in what you were doing. What's the actual purpose of this?!"
Sharply furrowing his brow, the irritable biology teacher snatched the items out of the young girl's hand, and held them at arm's length as though they were biohazardous waste, a barely-disguised murmur of disgust curling his thin lips.
die hand die verletzt (the hand that wounds) ☆ closed for beautiful-txrgets!
It was a fairly dismal Monday evening - as dismal as a school as eccentric as Hope's Peak Academy could ever manage to be, that was. It was true the school seemed to exist in almost a sort of vacuum separate from the law, which was certainly useful for a certain biology teacher who had come to use the facility. Herscha smoothed down his long ponytail almost in irritation as he leant over a small bookcase in order to reach the book he was looking for, more for personal interest than anything. It was one on Unit 731 and their eugenics; there was not much Herscha didn't already know, but he may as well have something to fill the gaps in their irritating teachers' meetings.
"For the love of-"
Herscha's gasp of indignation seemed to come from nowhere, but that was not the case. The time had clearly passed quicker than he'd expected, and the sound of a door locking startled him from his search. Immediately Herscha strode over to bang his bony fist against it and demand that the person on the other side of the door open up.
"Open this door right away, do you hear me?!"
However, it seemed the soundproofing silenced his protests. Seething with rage, Herscha winced ever-so-slightly as he jammed his elbow against the door to no accord. However, it seemed Herscha was not alone in being locked in the library seemingly overnight. Only then did he remember that he'd briefly seen another teacher in the room, the man from the Arts corridor he hadn't particularly interacted with, and turned around to face the blonde man, who had his arms filled with various art history books and a look of slight surprise etched onto his features. Clearly Michio knew nothing about their predicament, but that didn't stop Herscha from taking out his frustrations on him.
"Oh, mein Gott, this is the last thing I need. Ugh. This better not be anything to do with you, do you understand me?! The door is locked, you wouldn't know anything about that, would you?"
[TEXT TO: unknown number]: Do you really think your clumsy attempt at seduction will have any sway over me, you miscreant?
[TEXT TO: unknown number]: Although you're unidentifiable by your anatomy alone, I'll have you know that if I ever discover you, I'll re-familiarise myself with it by having you castrated. Will that suit your needs?
Send me ☼ to hear what my character thinks of yours!
"If I have to hear one more lurid tale about one of Maeda's former conquests, I will eviscerate him. And if he insists on giving me a nickname or continuing with any more of his irritatingly carefree behaviour, I will make his life a living hell.
Still, despite his lecherous perversities and his ridiculous habits, he is one of my more bearable co-workers. At least there are some similarities between the two of us.
...But that won't save him from decimation if he tries to engage me in one of his grotesquely invasive conversations again."
Kyung Hyun starts and wakes up on the gurney in a nauseatingly mint-green hospital room. His body is uncomfortably posed, stock-still and rigor-mortis stiff. The joints in his limbs ache and fail to move properly, although that may be, as he has since realised, because his body is strapped down and his legs in stirrups. Just as Herscha had planned.
It’s probably a discomforting sight, to realise you’re gagged and pitifully desperate, and even more disturbing to have your former biology teacher looming over you as though you were a helpless insect caught in his web.
"I thought you could at least manage to be a good boy and lie down willingly, but it seems you couldn’t even handle that. I don’t know why I expected anything from you.” His voice is fraught with exhaustion and, of course, irritation, and muffled by his surgical mask; Herscha is standing in front of the stretcher. The room is dark but he’s illuminated by the overhead lamp, and it adds an even more ghoulish touch to his gaunt, spiderlike frame. It would be creepy even without the hypodermic syringe he’s cradling almost lovingly in his gloved hands.
"I’m the one who suffered, you know." Wringing those hands together, the bioterrorist snarled. He had a rather fearsome expression tightening his sickly skin further; despite his relative youth, his work had taken its toll on the dark-haired man, who seemed on the verge of mental breakdown. "Forced into the role of an - ugh - educator, which made my research - so needlessly difficult-" his breath is coming in laboured wheezing, amber eyes narrowed in hatred "- he must consider me- such a disappointment. How I can call myself his assistant-“
Eyes gleaming, Herscha brushed down his labcoat, and climbed atop the stretcher until his frail body awkwardly straddled the taller boy, one jutting, bony kneecap hitting Kyung in the ribcage. Herscha swung his long, dark ponytail over his shoulder and coughed into the confines of his mask, harsh and sickly. His former student’s eyes were wide with fear and he squirmed and jerked in discomfort and terror, but frail as he was, Herscha was able to hold him down, thanks to the confines largely keeping him in place - and the effects of the drug he’d administered earlier making the younger boy’s head loll in slight drowsiness.
This was the closest he had ever gotten to a test subject in physical means, and his skin was crawling already; he longed to disinfect himself, but not until he had finished with Hyun.
"I suppose for you, this is an act of mercy, Hyun,” he scoffed, pale lips curling in scorn. “You don’t have to thank me.” Stabbing the empty syringe into the boy’s collarbone, Herscha’s bony hands closed around his neck. Kyung’s eyes widened, glassy with the beginning of tears, and he tried to thrash against the bioterrorist. Even Herscha found it pathetic, really, how someone as physically frail as himself could have him like an obedient dog with just the help of a simple chemical.
He tightened his hands, bright veins and yellowed, long fingernails and all, and tightened his grip with a squeeze to his windpipe, carelessly, cutting off Kyung’s air supply so abruptly that his throat hitched and made a strangled noise reminiscent of drowning. It didn’t take long before he was limp, collapsed against Herscha, who pushed him away roughly, clambering off his corpse.
That wasn't his intention; Herscha supposed he had lost his composure, but he could still salvage it. Corpses could be used in tests, too, provided they were fresh - and then there was an incinerator waiting for the hollow shell of what used to be Kyung Hyun, SHSL Escape Artist, now trapped forever.
Usually either bent over his desk working on paperwork no-one dared disturb him during, or else patrolling the classroom with the air of a military sergeant and a terribly intimidating aura flanking him, he rarely addressed or even made eye contact with his students, unless to berate them loudly.
However, Herscha happened to be particularly irate that morning, and without his respirator to calm him, he took to exercising his explosive temper on the students. The victim of choice was selected at random - as his eyes scanned the rows of students, they were met with that of one student - a neat-looking girl with a calm, stoic temperament. She wasn't one who had particularly ever bothered Herscha; but that wouldn't stop him.
"Is there anything I can help you with?"
The words were nothing out of the ordinary; surely any good teacher would want to assist a prized pupil as best they could? But of course, it being Herscha, they were tainted with a more sarcastic tone, his lip curled into a sardonic sneer. One bony hand came to rest on the tabletop with a loud slam. It was a wonder the man's skeletal knuckles didn't shatter like glass, but his expression didn't change.
"Or are you just going to waste your time aimlessly staring at me as though you've suffered a lobotomy?"
