Chapter Text
Once Mikasa parked her car in the parking lot of the school, she made her way to the entrance of the University with her head held high; even as she entered their classroom. The moment her feet stepped into the classroom, she squinted her eyes a little bit at the messy classroom, and her noisy classmates—who were doing whatever it was that they were busying themselves with.
'Templates. Ah, I see. They haven't finished it yet.'
Mikasa shook her head at her classmates' tardiness, and made her way to her seat.
She looked to her left side, and she saw some of them desperately looking for some of their missing materials. She could also hear some of them groaning in frustration everytime they made a mistake, and had to redo the whole thing.
Mikasa shifted her eyes to her right side, and saw how some of them already crying because they had to repeat it all over again each time a sweat or a little dirt was imprinted on their work.
They couldn't pass it to their terror Professor or else all the efforts they put into their project would go to waste, because it'd be just a piece of crap based on their Professor's unreachable high standards. So high that once she saw their work with its current state, she'd either throw it into the nearest trashbin or worse, she'd rip it into pieces right in front of them.
'You're only making it even harder for you to fix with all your sweat, and tears continuously falling to your templates.'
Mikasa shook her head again, and clicked her tongue in pity. She, then, settled herself comfortably in her seat. She put one of her feet on the table, and she rested her back against the backrest of her chair with her arms crossed on her chest. Her eyes were watching the panic state of the whole student body in class.
"Wow, what a relaxing life you have there." She heard her friend–Sasha–mocked her laid back posture; which only made the raven haired girl chuckle in reply.
"It's not my fault that you have a thing for rushing everything all at once when you had enough time to do so before the deadline." Mikasa shrugged and smirked at her friend who was busy finishing her project. "Besides, this one was given to us a month earlier, why are you only doing this just now?"
"Just in case you forgot or you haven't been informed yet or you didn't care enough to remember, our projects were given back to us." Yelena grumbled by her side. "Worse, some of our classmates' projects didn't even make it back to their possession in one piece, so now they have to do it again from the very beginning." Yelena showed Mikasa her own former project in its sorry state with a frown. Seeing her friend's reaction to her old work that was now worth to be called nothing but a garbage, Mikasa couldn't help the snort that managed to escape her.
"Oh, I remember now." Mikasa chuckled, then she cast a glance at each member of her friend group with amusement. "Professor Antarctica ripped them during our last meeting because she noticed the tiniest bit of a dirt, and a little mistake on it." She recalled with a teasing smile on her face.
"She's such a perfectionist like please! It's just a teeny tiny little bit of dirt! Cut us some slack, miss?!" Sasha exasperated with her hands rubbing her face in frustration.
"Lucky to be you, Mikasa." Mikasa pinned her attention on the person who suddenly joined their conversation. She raised her eyebrow as a way to tell them to elaborate.
"If I didn't know who you were AND that the infamous genius Mikasa Ackerman is you, I would've been convinced you were her favorite." Connie said to her with a chuckle, shaking his head to his own words with his eyes never straying from his task at hand.
The others who heard Connie agreed with what he said. Mikasa decided to ignore his words and their agreement as she turned to them with her own piece of mind ready at the tip of her tongue.
"If you don't want to repeat another year with her, how about you focus on your unfinished tasks instead and leave me alone?" She remarked lightly; making some of them groan. "I'm pretty certain she's gonna arrive in about a few minutes or so." She commented, her eyes glancing up to them with a playful smirk while pointing to the wristwatch she was wearing; to emphasize her point.
"Relax, dude. We still have another hour to finish this. No need to rush things." Connie mumbled to her, his eyebrows furrowed in concentration.
"Yeah, sure. Because it's not like that terror Professor of ours wasn't like any other Professors here, and that she doesn't always attend her classes really early." Mikasa sarcastically remarked back, her posture deflating as she noticed the whole classroom was completely stunned in a second or two at the realization.
A beat passed, and then the already messy classroom turned chaos after the words left Mikasa's mouth. Her classmates were panicking even more when they heard what Mikasa said to her friends; which she now processed that she had unintentionally said out loud when Sasha hushed her and hissed at her, saying: "oh, you just love stirring trouble for no apparent reason, don't you?"
"Oh, for Pete's sake! Who the hell snatched my ruler?! I swear to God, if you don't give it to me right now, I will make sure to never stop pestering your life even after we graduate! Shit, I'm almost done here!"
"Can you calm your tits, bitch? I just borrowed it for a second, no need to go dramatics! Here, you can have your rusty ass ruler back!"
"Why didn't you just tell me that you were gonna borrow it?! You could've at least asked me for it! Don't just use other people's materials without asking for their permission, you thief!"
Mikasa watched the debate unfolding in front of her with a mixture of amusement for their childish banter, and an annoyance for their unnecessary screaming contest; although, her face remained neutral.
'This is going to be a long day.'
Straying her attention from her front, Mikasa chanced a look over around the room. Seeing their pitiful predicament, Mikasa selfishly allowed herself to feel relieved for finishing her template a week before the deadline. If she wasn't as more capable with handling her tasks partnered with her time management, she was sure that she'd be in the same stressful situation as her friends.
'And I would also like to thank whoever Higher Deities above for giving me a curse and a blessing that is called being a clean freak.'
"Hey, let me have a look on that one." She turned to her seatmate–who was already on the verge of tears–after waiting doing nothing for minutes long, and no one to bother considering her friends being way too busy burying their noses in each of their own tasks. Boredom getting the best of her, at the end of her musings, she decided to lend some help for those in need; which in this case was all of her classmates. Starting with the one nearest her, "oh, you're almost done, you just need to tidy it up thoroughly. Don't let your tears, and sweat stain it or else you're going back to nothing." Mikasa grabbed a handkerchief that was on the girl's table, and offered it to her. "Here, wipe them away, and make sure that not even one will stay on your skin."
After making sure that her seatmate was fine, Mikasa switched her attention to the others. She let out a breath in sympathy for the obvious stressed out students in the room; with most of them reaching borderline mental breakdown out of frustration, and irritation. Some had a full blown crying session in the far corner, seeming to almost lose all hope for having to repeat the same work over again, and for the nth time. Each student sweating to the brim even though their AC was near highest to the point that it was already freezing cold for Mikasa's low cold endurance.
Mikasa craned her head from side to side, her ears prickling each time she heard either a low prayer or a loud curse from all four corners in the room.
The ravenette chanced a glance to her seatmate for one last time; to make sure that her template didn't have a stain on it that would result the poor blonde girl to repeat the project or worse, she'd get an F and repeat the whole year itself. Seeing her seatmate just cleaning some parts of her work–correcting some parts–Mikasa gently took the card from her, and work on it herself; muttering some advice here and there for future references, her seatmate taking the informations intently while nodding eagerly.
After a bit tinkering, Mikasa placed the cardboard on the table again. Smiling reassuringly, and proudly at the finished work of her seatmate's hardwork; even though she helped a bit, the credit was all on the small woman's efforts, and determination.
She watched as Krista's eyes welled up in tears while checking her template before turning her body to Mikasa's direction with a grateful bow, furiously repeating the same words like an enchantment, "thank you so much, Mikasa!"
"Mikasa, help me please!" One of her classmates suddenly ran over to her after witnessing the ravenette's small act of generosity. Mikasa tilted her head in time to see them almost kneeling down to her, and ready to beg for as long as needed just to get on Mikasa's good side. Fortunately for the ravenette, her reflexes were fast enough to avoid the oncoming awkward scene that was about to unfold. Mikasa quickly caught her classmate's arm, and gently hoisted them up from their crouched posture to standing still.
"I will." She let out an awkward chuckle, crimson coloring her cheeks out of embarrassment at the almost attention seeking begging play akin to what she was sure of a stage play; definitely based on the drama plays her classmate was so fond of. "You don't have to go through that."
After almost half an hour of going around the classroom, and helping everyone who needed Mikasa's help the most, she saw her classmates relaxed. All collectively let out an audibly heavy sigh of relief; with some boisterously yelling out a victory shout, and some doing a ridiculous chicken dance as a way to present their joy.
Some shouts of "Fucking finally!" And "It's been 84 years..." coupled with a few fake overexaggerated sniffs, and bits of wiping their tears dry. Some just doing it to mock those who really were in tears, them getting a smack or two in retaliation.
"I'm glad that you seem to get most of your energy back, and I hate to be the villain for bursting your victorious little bubble, truly, but you have about only a half hour to make yourself look presentable, and get rid of this stink." Mikasa mused, playfully pinching her nose, and waving her other free hand in the air to swat the smelly gas in the room. "Remember it was one of our beloved Professor's rules to clean up, and make ourselves pleasant before attending her class because if not, you're gonna need to beg for another professor to have you." Mikasa let a dramatic silence pause her speech before continuing, "although, it's definitely an equivalent to having yourself be transferred into another school because she's almost like the boss of this school."
Her classmates laughed at what she said before they did what they were told.
"Honestly, it never fails to amaze me how Miss Leonhart has this kind of power over her students." Yelena suddenly commented after a moment passed with just the sounds of rustling everywhere. An amazement was evidently shown on her face while her eyes busy raking over everyone busy cleaning themselves, and also their tables.
"Makes you wonder how she is in a relationship." Connie whistled while throwing a glance to Mikasa's direction with a knowing look.
"The real question is, does she even have one?" Sasha wondered with her hand scratching her chin in a mock show of her fake genuine curiosity.
"Nah, the real real question here is... if she's even the type to actually enter a relationship or if she even has a plan on actually being with someone because honestly? She doesn't seem like that to me." Connie shivered when his imagination went further, and pictured their Professor being all sweet, and doing lovey-dovey stuff on his mind. "I don't think there'd be someone out there willing to last long with her unbearable strict nature, plus her crystallized heart, and triple that with her cold and scary exterior." He whispered to them.
"You guys make it sound like she's some kind of a monster." Krista shook her head at her friends' accusations. She couldn't believe her ears were hearing her precious friends to talk so negatively about someone they didn't even know on a personal level yet.
"Whatever she does in her private life is none of our concern. We're just her students, and she's our professor. You need to know where the boundaries stand, the lines to cross, and the limits of how deep you can only dig about her outside her profession; which means just all the informations she's willing to provide us herself." Mikasa butted in the conversation, her attention solely on the game she was playing on her phone; that she pulled out earlier while her friends were annoyingly talking smack about their Professor. She did not give her friends a lick of her attention while they were staring at Mikasa wide-eyed with slacked jaws out of shock at the obvious show of defensiveness. Choosing to ignore her friends' astonishment, she continued her lecture: "Other than that, knowing about her basic info such as her name is enough for us students to know about her." Cursing under her breath as she watched blood spluttered from her character seconds after hearing a gunfire; the suspect completely undetected by the ravenette. Mikasa exited from the game before locking her phone, and putting it inside her pocket.
Releasing a breath in exasperation, she pinned her eyes on her friends with a deadpan expression.
"If she doesn't want to say more about her background, and if she's uncomfortable of doing so, us being respectful to the matter isn't just what we should do as her students but also as decent human beings." She finished her long rant to her friends before she seated more comfortably in her seat; her arms across her chest, her focus ahead with a furrow of her eyebrows to show her seriousness, and a small pout on her lips in a childish protest.
'Well, damn.' Was all her friends could think about before they all turned away from their sulking friend. Not spitting back, and just letting Mikasa's words to be soaked in for they knew it was their friend's way of letting her frustrations out for clearly losing her game; of course, aside from truly lecturing them for their, admittedly, over the line tittle-tattle.