6 Chapter 6: I'm in Beastars!?
3.34 p.m
In a locked soundproof a room of a Reptilian Café, Zebuth (Name of 'The City' where cannons happen)
Mamoru POV
"So, how has life been treating you?", I calmly asked the big middle-aged komodo dragon in a grey shirt, black pants with a hole for his tail and wearing blue sneakers sitting in front of me, looking gloomier than usual.
His reptilian eyes looked down directly into my own, making me flinch instinctively with how intense it was.
"She killed herself.", he simply stated in a low hissing tone with a hint of self-blame.
"…", we continued our staring contest for the three longest seconds of my 36 years of life, until I darkly realized, 'His daughter, Leano finally snapped and committed suicide. She was depressed when I met her 6 years ago but I didn't believe she would have done it, what did she think, she had a son for Ceto's sake.'
His claw loudly scraped the table, muzzle starting to secrete venom making the table below melt. Uh ho, I need to do something before something bad happens.
"Are you alright? Gosha-sama do you n-", he interrupted me by cleaning his muzzle of his venom with those special handkerchiefs in panic before putting his grandfatherly persona back on and saying with a strained and tired smile.
"Sorry, I can't control my venom glands when I'm too emotional. It was 4 years ago. Everything is alright, everything is fine. Sorry, I'm only telling you now and you must be angry at me but you don't have to worry about anything.", he said before clearing his throat with a fake cough.
'Well yes, I'm mad at you! But I can't blame you for doing this. This must have been a horrible experience to lose your daughter, may she rest in peace. Just imagining my baby larva doing the same things, makes me feel despair. And there is obviously something bothering you!', he stopped my line of thoughts with good news.
"I'm happy to announce that your son will join as a freshman in Cherryton Academy High School this year.
Gon-san was more than delighted to be able to welcome the first-ever amphibian and student of a sea-scholar into his Academy.
He also said having an amphibian would help broaden the other students and your son's horizons, and he wishes to meet him one week before the start of High School to get everything in order.", he finished then sipped a mouthful of this abomination they call black tea.
I sighed in relief, one less thing to worry about and it's the school where his grandson is studying.
"Hope your relationship with him is less strained. Speaking of. How has it been since the last time we met?", he finished, the mention of my son-father relationship making me tense up.
"Well, um uh, not good but better since he knows he will be able, for the first time to see other beasts soon, I think he felt and still feel like a caged animal and I didn't acknowledge it until 2 weeks ago, I'm such a horrible father, Surya would have hated me.", I muttered in sadness and self-blame.
I felt the green scaly hand of Gosha-sama on my shoulder which snapped me out of my daze to see my friend and saviour smiling reassuringly at me.
"Shhh, we all make mistakes. The thing that really matters is not making them again and fixing what can be fixed.", he said softly and with a conflicted gaze in his reptilian eyes, as if he was talking to himself, strange, then continued with an exaggerated wave of his claws.
"I assume you didn't tell him about his and Surya's family. I understand that you won't tell him, you want him to discover it by himself, it was one of your wife's crazy wishes after all.", he said with a frown.
"Eh, pot calling the kettle black. He doesn't have to worry and be distressed about something he can't do anything against right now and in the foreseeable future, ignorance is sometimes a blessing.
And if worse came to worse and he was found out now.
Cahaya's grandfathers, the current Duke of Naja are insane, manipulative, cunning and bloodthirsty, but they would choose to die ten times over than break their twisted code of 'honour', and their 'noble laws' that thankfully let 'bastards children' be protected by them IF they LIVED more than 15 years.", I recited with a hint of sarcasm and disgust at 'LIVED', they hunt and kill them.
"My son is 15 years old, so they won't do anything to him, I bet 'fathers-in-laws' are even going to protect him from worldly politic and legal problem.", I replied with utmost confidence.
We then continued to talk for 30 minutes about out everyday life and the current state of the world.
"All of this was possible because of your kindness, I can't express how thankful I am, you saved Cahaya's life and for this, I will forever be indebted to you, thank you, Gosha-sama.", I finished my heartfelt gratitude with a deep bow.
We later left, paid and were on our way to our respective homes.
_______________________
Two days after Mamoru came back home.
Cahaya POV
I was currently in the middle of the forest training my aim by spitting venom on targets, placed on top of trees by yours truly.
I stopped training and thought about how familiar the name of the school sounded.
I didn't pay attention to it before, with how euphoric I was. I was going to leave this ivory tower that has imprisoned me for 15 years and simply being able to talk and interact with people, other than my Dad, was something that I wanted, and I painfully wanted it.
It was driving me nut to only be with one animal for so many years if we exclude fish because most of them are too dumb to even know basic Seaspeak.
And my Dad who seemed oblivious to my discomforts and problems, until too recently, even though I explained them to him multiple times and it hurt me to have my only family member act like this.
He is at least trying to help our father-son relationship, after realising his 'blunter', not like my human father.
One of the reasons for my excited state, is that I am going to rediscover so many things since as time passed most of my past life memories have gotten more and more blurry, how do legs feel, again?, I'm so used to my body, that I filtered those kinds of thing out instinctively, and that not only thing that changed. Honestly, that initially terrified me, to become more different from who I was, years after years.
I simply had to accept the change, nothing could be done, even if I wrote my memories and memorized them, and it's not like I recalled everything in the first place.
Most of them that I remember are more or less obsolete, but I need to remember at all costs that I was human before, had another family, another life, to at least save a part of my past self.
I already acknowledged that I'm not Charles the human anymore and that I'm now Cahaya, not only the hybrid but I consider myself a new species, a Naga, like the mythological snake, a cobra with a humanoid torso and a part of themselves human, tied to water and immortality.
I flicked my bifid tongue, "Wait, I will go to Cherryton high school, isn't it the name of the school in this manga called umm Best something, ah remember it's Beastars!", I said happily, my gills flapping in agreement together with my finned tail thumping the ground.
I then slithered next to a tree, easily climbed it and coiled around the middle of its trunk.
"And the characters were anthropomorphic anima… Oooh, I'm such a fucking moron to only realize now that I reincarnated in a fucking manga like in those fanfics!", I hissed in anger at myself for being a moron and squeezed the tree harder, the splintering sound of wood could be heard but I didn't care at the moment.
"The only thing I remember about the first chapters are a creepy wolf, a deer, a rabbit and a murder case in some sort of drama club?", I muttered.
'That doesn't help me to know the plot, except for the murder case, but when did it happen? And who was killed?
It's foolish to worry about the plot, I only read the start anyway and I don't even remember most of it, hmm aren't I squeezing this tree a bit too hard? Sorry, not sorry Mr Cinnamomu.' I uncoiled myself and climbed down calmy.
*CRACK*
"*Whistle" Damn, crushed a tree in half and without much difficulty, at that, I need to be more careful in the future.", I started slithering back home, *boom* I felt the vibration of the tree hitting the forest soil with the ventral scale of my snake half and a smile appeared on my snout.
_______________________
8 days before the start of High School.
Third POV
"Hey, Cahaya! Did you take everything you need?", the axolotl called out in impatience, to his son who was confined in his room, for the last three hours.
Said son was checking for the third time if he hadn't forgotten anything, he was beaming with excitement and nervousness, just like a normal teenager would.
Cahaya at 15 years old, is presently slightly muscular, 9,4 meters (~31 ft) long, from the tip of his snout to the tip of his tail, and when he is slithering normally he is less than 1,5 meters (~5 ft) tall but he can just adjust his height by using his snake-half and he also weighs approximately 270 kilograms (~595 lb). So he is quite big and intimidating and he didn't even finish growing up.
He was wearing a green shirt under a long grey hoodie and his trusty but slightly worn waterproof waist bag around his waist. His dorsal fin retracted for the shirt.
His bottom half was bare of any clothing, like usual. Animals on land like snakes, turtles and some other species will be considered clothed if they simply wear accessories like a hat or a tie.
Simply because their genitalia and buttholes are hidden.
In Cahaya's case just like all male snakes, his hemipenes, yes he has two dicks and his anus, were hidden in the cloaca all of this, behind the vent, a scale hiding everything, situated somewhere below his pelvis adding to that his balls were inside his snake-half, totally hidden and protected from the outside world.
Moving around butt-nacked was practically second nature, even if most of the time he preferred to wear a top.
That also weirded him out and somewhat pleased him when he discovered that he was mostly snake-like down there.
Ending our little lesson on herpetology, he finally paid attention to his Dad, "Coming!", he said with his changing voice, deeper but still a little childish.
He slithered down the stairs and looked at the black and midnight blue-coloured salamander dressed up, for a change, his Dad like most marines animals didn't give a fuck about wearing clothes, he was in a yellow t-shirt, blue jeans and black hiking shoes.
"You remember the rules, first never tell you're a hybrid to anyone you can't totally trust, if animals ask for your species tell them that you're a naga, the species you like to call yourself, say it's a rare breed of amphibian, most of them didn't actually see one in their lives, and it's true.
Second, call me Sensei outside, I know it's tough and that you don't like it, but they mustn't know I'm your father, you are mature enough to understand why.
Third, you mustn't show your fangs unless absolutely necessary or flick your tongue too much in public, animals even big carnivores get unnerved in contact with snakes.
Fourth, you mustn't blah blah blah…", he continued to retell their rules to his son for the umpteenth time.
"Understood?", Mamoru finished with a serious expression on his snout, Cahaya nodded while looking bored out of his mind, he already know the rules and realized their importance to be followed long ago, but that doesn't mean he liked them and wouldn't bend them if he so desired.
"Yes, 'Sensei', I understand!", the naga said with fake enthusiasm.
_______________________
After 5 hours of hiking in the forest, they arrived at a clearing, a grey metal box with four tires that Cahaya recognised as a car and a tall komodo dragon, that he recognised as this 'Gosha-sama' his Dad talked about during their little walk-slither here, and he was their saviour and the friend of his father, and the one he did his annual outing.
"Good afternoon, Mamoru,", he greeted his amphibian friend, then looked in awe and compassion at the hybrid in front of him and thought, 'He has the same big lavender eyes as his mother, full of life, curiosity, wonder but something feels… extremely unsettling, bah must be my imagination, I'm getting too old, the only thing that I'm sure of, his life won't be easy, society isn't ready for beasts like him, just like my daughter.', he finished his thoughts with a throb of pain in his heart.
"Nice to finally meet you in the flesh, Cahaya-kun your father always talks so much about you. You can simply call me Gosha", said one of the most dangerous species of lizard in the world, with a grandfatherly tone, accompanied by an amiable smile.
