Papers rustled together, and Akira blinked awake. When had he even fallen asleep? His cheek was mashed against the wooden desk, and he was pretty sure he was drooling. 

He blearily focused on his blank notepad, then on Surya, who was sitting quietly beside him, reading. 

Surya was? 

Akira choked on his shock, shooting upright, and glanced around the empty, dim lecture room in a cold panic.

Without lowering his papers, Surya cheerfully told him, "It ended half an hour ago."

Akira honestly wanted to be vaporised. 

"I'm so, so sorry," he gasped. "I really –I didn't mean to sleep this time."

"Then you meant to sleep all the other times?"

"No?" Akira's face was burning. 

Surya propped his chin on his braceleted wrist, gazing flatly back at him. 

"I handed out the results from the little test we did last week. Here we go." Surya slid Akira's in front of him with two slender fingers, then tapped the unbelievably low grade circled in red. "Am I very boring?"

"No, that –this doesn't reflect your teaching at all!"

"Well, thank you, but I'm not sure how comforted I can be when you've been sleeping through all my teaching, hm?" Surya was smiling, but cold and courteous. "Now, either you're a narcoleptic, and I'd just have to forgive you, or you've come to associate my lectures with napping. Which is it?"

With some hesitation, Akira pointed out, "It's really a compliment that your voice is so soothing."

"How kind of you to say. Now let's talk about my favourite thing for a moment, shall we?"

Akira was relieved that the subject was changing. "Oh? What's that?"

"Me. I pinned a list of the mentor groups on the board there, but let me be the first to congratulate you." Surya held up a hand for a high-five and sang, "I'll be your mentor for the semester."

Dumbfounded, Akira dazedly lifted his hand when Surya wiggled his fingers, and Surya high-fived him without much enthusiasm. 

"Listen, Akira, I'm currently on a trial period as an assistant teacher. If I do well enough at the end of this year, I'll be promoted to a position equivalent to that of an interim professor. The agreement I reached with Professor Masami was to keep the majority of students from failing. That is, from a grade perspective relative to the classes they attend. Well, I won't get into too much detail, but look here." Surya held up a class register ranked by grades, and started trailing his finger down the list. "One guess as to where you fall?"

Akira blinked. "At the –at the bottom?"

"That's right," Surya smiled, like he was praising Akira, though this was far from it. "You're my little mentee, you know, and I can't have you failing any more of my tests."

"But you just said you'd still be promoted even if one student failed."

"Other than it tarnishing my immaculate resume, you're not wrong. Or so I would like to say. It turns out that it depends wholly on who that one student is." Surya yawned, curving a finger through the air, until it was pointing directly at Akira. "Not a minute after learning about my group of adorable mentees, the Professor brought up your name. It's well known that basketball players are forbidden from playing if their marks aren't up to par. And you are apparently someone I have to take special care of. Isn't that sweet of the professor?"

"But I'm –I mean, I wasn't brought into Kaoru for actual school."

Surya's eyebrows lifted. "Uh-huh. Well, the fuss our professor made makes me doubt that."

"I'll talk to him," Akira suggested. "Maybe he can assign me to another group or omit my grades from your performance report."

"Or, and hear me out with this one: you can just study to improve your grades." Surya peered down at him, like something wasn't adding up. "You realise a good grade benefits you the most, right?"

"I'm not here for anything except basketball."

"But," Surya slowly reminded him, "you aren't allowed to play basketball without decent grades."

Akira's gaze narrowed on him. 

There was no guarantee that Surya was bluffing, and he notoriously did what was best for himself. If Akira was a blemish on his record, he would ruthlessly cut down Akira's every avenue of escape until he could polish it. And worse, since the coach was scrambling for any reason to bench Akira, the coach would eagerly seize this excuse.

"I won't tell the coach as long as you get an average higher than sixty. That means having weekly consultations with me, doing your readings and notes, and staying awake during lectures." Surya drummed his nails against the desk. "I look forward to your cooperation."

"Great," Akira snapped.

"Fantastic."

Hands curled into fists, Akira walked away before he exploded. How could he land in the clutches of this ambitious monster who'd exploit the only good thing in his life? 

"Hey," Surya called, and Akira made himself glance back. He watched Surya point at his own neck for reference. "Next time, I suggest wearing a plaster."

Akira's hand clapped over the curve of his throat, covering a hickey, and felt humiliation searing into his chest as he stormed out of the lecture hall.