september-leo - Tumblr blog

september-leo · 20 days ago

Text

It’s arts-and-crafts show-and-tell day at Infinity Kindergarten, and Muzan-sensei already has a headache.

He has to start with some classroom control of the little demons in matching blue smocks. One of them is back at the door again. With more exasperation than patience, Muzan-sensei says, “This isn’t your classroom anymore, Kyougai.”

“But I want to show you what I made,” frowns the demon peeking through the door.

“Go on out. This is the Twelve Moon class. You're interrupting their show-and-tell.”

Sadly, Kyougai closes the door and turns to face the chaos of the rest of the school. They are not supervised and the triplets are taking forever to show off their collection of hair trinkets and some other child is screaming, ‘this is my ball, wanna see my ball?’ and Kyougai hates it here and he wishes he could be good enough for the Twelve Moon class where he could get Muzan-sensei's attention.

“What a loser,” Kaigaku whispers to Nakime. Kaigaku is the new kid trying hard to look cool, but Nakime does not respond. After all, that kid has a pile of dirt on his desk, and she has a diorama made of her own hair. The chasm between them is obvious.

Every child in the Twelve Moon class has brought in a piece of art they made, or at least they were supposed to, but Kamanue, Mukago, and Wakuraba have not prepared anything. They know they can probably keep getting by without their lack of results being noticed.

“Let’s begin with you, Daki,” says Muzan-sensei.

“Yes!” she replies. Muzan-sensei likes that she is always eager to please, but he can’t get it through her dumb head that she must do things on her own instead of always getting her brother to finish her homework. Unsurprising, when she struts up to the front of the room, Gyutaro is right behind her. “This is a doll we made. I used the prettiest silk, with the brightest, flashiest patterns for it!” she announces with natural stage presence, for she thrives with the eyes of her peers on her. The doll she holds up is recognizably in the shape of a human, draped in layers of silk, and wearing a crown of sequins. “It’s a very special kind of doll,” she says, still smiling and very proud of herself.

“I see,” Muzan-sensei humors her, “Is it some kind of princess?”

She displays disgust. “No! It’s an ugly, gross man!”

“So her brother?” Wakuraba whispers to Kamanue.

Said brother pretends not to hear them, but smiles in such a way that Muzan-sensei is certainly he heard. He’ll let them deal with it later on the playground, because for now he just needs to try to get through as many children as possible before half the class is crying for one reason or another. “And what makes this doll special?”

Daki is back to all smiles. “It’s a voodoo doll. Oniichan!” she says, bracing herself and holding the doll out. Gyutaro grins and rips the cloth doll with a sickle.

“Teacher, he can’t have a weapon here!” says Kaigaku, raising his hand, but Kaigaku pipes down when Kokushibo gives Kaigaku a look. Rather, six looks. Kokushibo is Muzan-sensei’s favorite. Kaigaku is awash with the realization that weapons are, in fact, allowed and encouraged.

“Thank you, Daki. Thank you, Gyutaro. That was a well-choreographed performance.”

“But I was going to do performance art,” mopes Enmu. He frowns while the mouth on this detached hand grits its teeth. All of his fingers, detached or not, are wearing finger puppets of little families and some people that look a bit like animals. “I was going do all 200 roles myself, too. Those Upper Moons are always stealing my thunder.”

Muzan-sensei ignores him. “Gyokko, would you like to present next?”

“I very much so would, Muzan-sama—ahem, ahem!—Sensei!” says the little freak of a child as he goes to the front of the class. He holds up a fish bowl, inside which there is a dead fish that has been skewered many times. “Behold! A statement on the hubris of genius! Not my own, of course. The fish thought itself too slick, but then once deprived of precious air—”

“It doesn’t need air,” says Mukago.

“The genius did! Not the fish! The fish is representative of the genius!” Gyokko huffs.

Muzan-sensei rubs his aching head. “Gyokko. I usually love displaying your art in the hallway. But this time you have disappointed me. Why would anyone want to look at a decomposing fish?”

“Aha! That is where my genius comes in! Muzan-sensei, you love things that are eternal and unchanging! I, Gyokko, have listened and present you the final element of the art piece. It will filled with epoxy! The fishes’ tormented awareness of its last moments are captured in an unchanging moment for eternity!”

A few of the students begin clapping, and Muzan-sensei smiles. “I see. I do like unchanging things. Very good.” Gyokko’s stark white cheeks turn rosy and he returns to his seat, so Muzan-sensei calls the next student. “Hantengu? Your turn.”

“Yyyyyiiiiii!”

“Hantengu. I’m not playing games. It’s your turn. Go to the front of the class.”

“Hnnngghhhiiiiiii,” mutters the crying child, trying to cover his face as everyone looks at him. Muzan-sensei wonders if Hantengu is tormented by the gazes of others because he knows how disgusting and strange it is for a child that small to have a face that looks so much like an ragged old man. “I… I made wood carvings.”

“Alright. Let’s see them then, Hantengu. I’m sure they’ve very good.”

“I think I misunderstood the assignment. I did it wrong. These hands did it wrong.”

“It was a very loose assignment.”

“You all made art of other people,” Hantengu says, pointing around the room. Kaigaku looks at the pile of dirt on his desk, shrugs, and nods that Hantengu is right. Hantengu covers his face again and cries. “I made self-portraits. I made lots of self-portraits!”

Rokuro audibly gulps and tries to hide his array of very normal looking ceramic bowls and vases. Gyokko sneers at Rokuro, for he already saw and has warned Rokuro over and over to stop copying him.

Muzan-sensei tries to keep an even keel in his voice. “Would you like to show us your self-portraits?”

“Hiiiiii!” Hantengu cries and cowers. He then crouches so low that it seems he is trying to make himself smaller. This is getting them nowhere, so Muzan-sensei allows him to return to his desk, and he calls Akaza up next next.

“I made an action figure!” the boy announces. He is, as Muzan-sensei would charitably describes him, energetic. He’s often engaged in sports so that he has somewhere to channel his pent-up energy. He doesn’t usually like being in the classroom, but at least he shows some willingness to talk to his classmates today.

All is not well, though. Muzan-sensei’s nose snarls as he asks Akaza, “What is that made out of?”

“Sweet potato! First, my dad cooked them. Then I mashed them up! I punched them until they were really soft, like clay, so that he can move around in any direction. He can do anything! And he’s really strong.”

“He’s rotting,” says Daki, mirroring Muzan-sensei’s snarl.

“What? No, he’s not.”

“Sweet potato won’t last,” says Kokushibo. “It’s already falling apart.”

“No, it’s not! He’s—ah—he wasn’t this floppy before—he was so strong yesterday!”

“Aw, Akaza,” smiles Douma, “That’s the nature of things. They grow old and die, unless you give them eternal life.”

“Or epoxy,” adds Gyokko.

Akaza is starting to lose it, and the first full-on crying fit of the day is coming. “No!! He was never supposed to be weak like this! You should have seen him yesterday!”

“That’s enough, Akaza.”

“He was really strong and really cool yesterday!”

“Akaza.”

“I was gonna play with him forever!”

“Akaza. A-ka-za.”

“He’s the strongest, you’ll all see—”

“Akaza—”

It’s too late. As Akaza holds up the action figure, he squeezes too tight around the figure’s chest, and it squishes between his fingers. The child stares at it in horror, and the rest of the class watches in silence, waiting for Akaza to start wailing. Once the wail begins, Hantengu covers his ears and screeches too.

“Enough, enough! Akaza, go sit down. Douma! Your turn.”

Douma, also a natural in front a crowd but with none of the elation Daki exudes, has a calming presence over the class. They are also (mostly) quiet and captivated as he holds up a plate with a cover over it. “This is my art piece. I’m very proud of her.”

As he removes the cover, the children all gasp. There is a lovely woman’s face, with elegant curls, dainty eyelashes, and gorgeous, translucent pair of butterfly wings pinned in her hair. It is clearly a severed head.

Muzan-sensei can already hear the PTA outcry. They can’t display that; the smell will be horrendous. “Douma. Is that—isn’t that—why do you have—”

“It’s cake,” announces Douma.

The children let out a sigh of relief, but some also groan.

“She came out really well, if I do say so myself! I had to spend a lot of time on the fondant. It wasn’t working well at first, so I mixed it with, you guessed it, epoxy!”

“…Isn’t that poison?” asks Gyokko.

Douma goes on. “She’s flavored with lots of sugar—like flower nectar!—and some lemon and raspberry. So I’m sure she’s very sweet, if a little tart! There’s just one problem. A bit of a philosophical one,” Douma trails off. He’s still smiling, but there is something uncharacteristically bothered in both his eyes and his voice.

“What is it?” asks Muzan-sensei.

Douma’s face wrinkles at the edge of tears. “I can’t have my cake and eat it, too.”

Muzan-sensei hurriedly tells him to return to his seat, for he’s got to get at least one more child though before they hit the threshold of how many crying children Muzan-sensei can stand at once. “Kokushibo!” he calls upon his favorite child, perhaps a bit too desperately. “Come show the class what you made!”

Kaigaku whispers to Nakime, “That guy taught me how to do the same things he can.” Nakime ignores him.

Kokushibo, the child with six eyes, slowly reaches the front of the classroom. Then, he turns around so fast that no one can keep track, and he is holding a model figure of a young swordsman. The young swordsman has long hair and sleeves sweeping behind him as he is caught in a single moment of action, passing his blade through clouds of mist. The children all gasp and stare. They would accuse him of having bought an expensive figurine to pass off as his own work, if not for the fact that this is Kokushibo, and everyone fully believes he is capable of anything.

That does not stop Gyokko from one accusation, though. “Hey!! You stole my subject!”

Gyokko is ignored by all except Hantengu, who cries and begs for him not to antagonize Kokushibo. Rui, meanwhile, is very quiet as imposter syndrome sets in, and he hides his model younger sister Nezuko under his desk.

“It’s not finished,” states Kokushibo.

“It’s not? You had time to finish your homework, Kokushibo. I don’t want excuses.”

“I have… no excuse,” say Kokushibo, but that is a lie. He has an excuse. He was working on a different piece first. Of a different swordsman. It was truly perfect. So perfect that it inspired a fit of rage in the child, and in his momentary tantrum, he broke that perfect swordsman to tiny pieces.

“It’s not that cool,” sniffles Akaza. “It can’t even move.”

“It’s not… supposed to…” answers Kokushibo. “See—”

He demonstrates by wiggling the left arm of the swordsman figure, and it snaps right off.

The children, and Muzan-sensei, all shared a horrified gasp. Kokushibo does not need anyone to tell him he failed his show-and-tell, so he stoically returns to his seat. One he gets there, though, a teardrop escapes him. Then another. And another. And another. And another. And another.

Not Kokushibo now too. Muzan-sensei rakes his fingers down his aching forehead and dismisses them all to go play outside. They do as they are told; four of the demon children run outside and then turn to piles of ash in the sunlight. The others hesitantly excuse themselves to go play in the gymnasium with the other demons.

48 notes · View notes