Opening a Magic Academy at the End of the World [Yuri, Transgender, Book 1 Complete]

. . . What an unbelievable night. Barakat would have never expected anything like this to happen. Some student conflict was to be expected. Yet . . . This? On the first day of instruction?

So here he was, in the girls’ dormitory, banging on a washroom door.

“Sanya!” Barakat demanded. His fist beat the door a bit more.

Barakat twisted the doorknob. Nothing.

His heart pounded. His breathing was intense. Sweat dripped from his brow despite the cool caves.

“Sanya!” He tried again. Bang bang bang.

Okay, she was unresponsive. He couldn't get through the door this way. He needed another technique. He shifted his weight and took a step back. He pointed his staff at the door—

He caught something out of the rim of his vision. He looked down. A crimson liquid crept out from under the door. Blood.

Barakat cursed.

“[Zephyr Press]!”

A brute force of air slammed against the door.

The door rattled. It did not give way.

“[Wind Slash]!”

A concentrated blade of wind flew towards the door.

It did not get scratched.

Barakat turned to look down the hall. “Someone go fetch a thermal mage! For Heliux's sake!”

Barakat saw a girl poke her head out from a room. She nodded and took off down the hall.

The blood pooled further outward.

Barakat cursed again.

He continued blasting spells at the door. He continued banging on it with his fist.

Nothing gave.

It took only a minute. The girl came back, running, with Of-Salama in tow.

“Melt the doorknob! Melt the whole door if you have to!” Barakat shouted, stepping back.

Of-Salama nodded. She turned to the hinges and incantated a spell. Notably, neither of the two options Barakat had suggested in the heat of the moment. Yet, the smarter, easier, and safer option, probably.

Each hinge melted. Hissing, a pool of molten metal gurgled at the floor, burning blood as the two met.

Barakat stepped forward, careful not to step into the molten metal. He took the doorknob and pulled back with his steps.

The door fell forward.

The three of them stepped out of the way before it could fall on them.

“Cool it!” Barakat ordered.

The girl gasped. Of-Salama froze.

“Cool i—” Barakat saw it.

A girl, torso lulled forward, head down, once sitting up against the door. Her staff lay on the ground, slipped from her grip. A razor covered in blood in the palm of her left hand.

Barakat's heart sank.

“Cool it!”

“R-right!”

The molten metal cooled.

Barakat dashed forward, fallen door rattling. He tossed his staff aside and picked up Sanya.

He turned and ran towards the infirmary.

“Better to let that monster die,” Barakat heard the girl mutter.

☆ ☆ ☆

Barakat knocked on the door to the academy's infirmary, situated directly across the hall from his classroom. He came back to check on the students, to see if they were all doing okay.

In one hand, he held his staff. In the other, a bouquet of cavernous flowers he had picked from the academy's gardens.

The contracted nurse, Dima, opened the door.

She did not look happy.

“Master Barakat,” she bowed. “Please, come in.”

“You can keep even the second headmaster away if you don't think they should have visitors,” Barakat said.

Dima cleared her throat. “U-um. It's not a ‘they.’ It's a ‘she.’”

Why did she say that? There were supposed to be two students in here right now. Barakat would have Dima know, Barakat had not once disrespected the way in which a student wanted to be addressed.

“What do you mean?”

Dima pulled the door open fully and gestured for Barakat to step in. Why did she remain silent?

He swallowed once. He walked into the infirmary. Maybe Barakat should press the matter more?

Dima closed the door behind him.

The infirmary was a cave—of course. It was wider than long. Six beds lined the room, divided by bookshelves of stone for privacy. Stone slab of a frame. A mattress that tried very hard to compensate for that previous fact. Institutionally white sheets.

A copious amount of llumifruit strings lit up the infirmary, giving it a generous glow of light and cuddly warmth. It had the nice rough walls and ceiling of a cave. The floor had been mostly leveled out and smoothed at some point, like walking on polished tile.

One of the beds had a girl laying in it, blankets up to her neck. Asleep. Long, black hair with bangs. Olive-colored skin. Thicker eyebrows than a normal girl, a larger nose. Someone had shaved her face.

Another girl had pulled up a chair next to it, her face was buried in her hands, sobbing. One of her hands’ fingers were wrapped in what appeared like an entire roll of bandages. With that, Barakat could not tell how many fingers she had left and how much was left of them. She did not look up. Not once.

Another bed had the sheets completely pulled over. They covered some sort of form—human. No movement. Not even a shallow up and down of breathing.

Barakat smelled antiseptic and too many flowers.

He knew what the smell was like underneath all of that. Blood . . . and something far worse.

The decay of death.

A ton of different emotions assaulted Barakat, none of them good. The situation came crashing down on Barakat as he took in the sights.

“Oh Heliux,” Barakat gasped.

The flowers and staff slipped from his hand.

Dima looked down at the floor.

“This is the second day of classes,” Barakat whispered.

Technically, both of these had happened last night.

He—what did he even do with all of this? His thoughts ran. Yet he also had no thoughts at all.

The second day of school, and they would have to put on a funeral and figure out what to do with a very problematic and tortured murderer.

Barakat sighed.

“Is she awake?” Barakat asked.

Dima tilted her head at him.

“Sorry. That was stupid. Has she awakened at all?”

Dima shook her head. “She could still be sleeping normally—she lost a lot of blood. Give her time to wake up.”

“Did you try waking her up at one point?

Dima paused. “If she would wake . . . She probably would have by now, from treating her, and all the talking.” She nodded at Mai.

“I'm surprised she's still next to her. After all that happened.”

“I can hear you,” Mai choked.

Poor girl. She deserved better than this—the harassment, her hand . . . She deserved better than Sanya.

A knock came at the door.

Barakat turned. Dima opened it slightly and peered out.

“It's Headmaster Nur.”

“Yes,” Nur said. “Tell Barakat he has a class to teach."

“Barakat—”

Barakat turned away from the door, arms thrown out. “How can I teach a class . . . when one of mystudents was murdered, another cut open, and a third student of this academy crossing into death?”

Nur sighed. “We need to figure out what to do with Sanya when she wakes up.”

“Okay. She murdered someone and assaulted a second. We expel her. That's it–it is simple,” Barakat snorted.

“Barakat,” Nur paused. “We need her.”

“No. We don't. We have enough.”

Having one individual as strong as Sanya shouldn't matter. They had sixty-eight other students now, with Thamina dead. There had to be enough mana power in all of that to complete their task. Sure, her innate magic connected her with the other dimension easily, and she was showing a ton of promise. She would be able to find the spell or be able to cheat her way into that dimension. None of that mattered when she was an unpredictable, turbulent, murderer!

“Fine. She acted out because multiple students have been harassing and bullying her. She stabbed Mai out of stress and emotional turmoil,” Nur argued.

“That excuses nothing. Students that are normal in the head don't go murdering and stabbing.” Barakat turned to Dima. “Dima, shut the door all the way.

Dima pushed the door closed, Nur pushed back. In the end, the door stayed slightly ajar.

“Normal students don't harass and bully,” Nur countered.

“They're kids! It's what they do!”

“Maybe then, this was Sanya harassing and bullying. She had a much better justification than Thamina, or Aaliyah, or Ismael, or Zain.” Nur listed off the known individuals who had harassed Sanya at one point or another.

Seriously, with so many people bullying her, wasn't it her that was the problem at that point? No one bullied Esmat or Malak, the non-binaries. No one would touch poor little Mai if she wasn't connected to Sanya.

Barakat laughed. “Ah yes, thwacking and stabbing is justharassing and bullying. It's on the same lines of name-calling, or teasing, or a little push, or a little trip!”

“Barakat, students are staring. We should continue this in my office," Nur said.

“No! This needs to be settled—now.”

“Shut up!” Mai screamed. She finally looked up. Dark rings rested under her eyes. She hadn't slept all night. “Stop having this conversation right in front of me. I can hear every single word!”

Barakat ignored her. Nur ignored her.

Nur sighed. “You are downplaying it. She—and Mai—got called slurs multiple times. That and the pushing and the tripping all cause real pain.”

Dima stepped away from the door and crouched down next to Mai.

“They brought it upon themselves by being so openly close.”

“Barakat.” Nur did not take the new opportunity to push open the door.

“Yes?”

“You disgust me.”

Dima tried to give Mai back and shoulder rubs. Mai slapped Dima away with her good hand.

Barakat almost laughed again. Barakat disgusted Nur. Ha . . . What about Nur's powerful friend? The one he really shouldn't have? Nur wanted the strongest individuals here so they could accomplish their—his—goal easier and get rich. Ha! Nur was the despicable one, gross and slimy.

“You just want Sanya here so that she can make you and your buddy rich! It seems you have been ignoring what your buddy has been doing behind the scenes too! You're turning a blind eye in hopes you can profit greatly in the future. You disgust me!” Barakat ignored the scene in front of him.

“I don't like what he's doing either,” Nur admitted.

Barakat laughed again. Nur . . . Oh, Nur. He didn't like what his buddy friend was doing, yet continued to stand by it as if it were nothing! “So stop him!”

“I can't.”

Barakat snorted. There it was. The innocent “oh I can't do it!” What a bunch of camel-poop. Cowardly. Non-confrontational. Complacent.

“Then stop receiving funds from him!” Barakat said.

“We can't. Not until we find another source. He provides too much. He let us have these students, too. None of this would be here without him.”

That . . . that was . . . valid? Almost. He was convenient. That didn't mean they had to go through him. They could have gotten money and recruited people the hard way. They could have gone through a non-secret plan of attack. Barakat bet they could get donations for a public school.

“No!” Barakat barked. “I can't believe you. Go away and teach your students how to reduce the homeless population with rituals and murder! Show them what's really backing this school!"

Mai looked up, face red and ravaged from crying. “W-what?”

“Barakat!” Nur warned.

“Asterisk on the murder part, since you seem to love it so much! ‘Ooh, let me protect this cute little murderer! Swoon!’”

Nur turned. Barakat heard his footsteps.

Barakat wasn't done. “Why don't you come back here and have a nice session with Sanya? You can even murder her after, like that Heliux-forsaken Prince! Then sap her life fo—”

“T-the Prince?” Mai paled.

“Barakat!” Nur warned, his footsteps stopped.

“—rce. She's already got a foot—and another foot, and two arms and, like, everything—in the grave!”

“You—! . . .” Mai's face contorted. “You're nasty! Barakat, I hope you die! Go away!” Mai shoved her face back into one hand, the other thrown out in a “shoo” gesture. Her crying continued.

Ouch. Barakat flinched.

Barakat paused. He opened his mouth to speak before he thought the better of it. His face was red with anger. Anger towards Nur. Towards the Prince. Towards . . . Sanya? And towards Mai for yelling at Barakat like that . . . No, Mai was just a broken kid caught in the conversation.

Maybe Nur and Barakat should have gone somewhere else for this . . . He slowed his breathing, he turned the storm into something with a bit more control and a slower tempo.

He left the infirmary, shutting the door behind him.

Suffice to say, his class was canceled for the day.