I See The (Yellow) Light

Monday morning came faster than they'd hoped. Byleth and Berith had been sentenced to household chore duty all weekend, and Cethleann had been forced to scrub her whole house. To say they were exhausted that morning would be an understatement.

"Look at you two, you're a sight for sore eyes," Jeralt teased, a hot mug of coffee in one hand, car keys in the other. Byleth yawned, bags under his eyes and a slight limp as he walked, still very sore from running back and forth between the yard and garage, moving boxes in and out. Berith's arms were in similar condition, having been assigned to her father's cleaning duty from hell.

"Let's just get going," Byleth grumbled, heading toward the door. Berith followed sluggishly, groaning. Jeralt just laughed at them as he exited their house and locked the door behind him.

The parking lot was barren. And so was the campus. Outside of a few very early morning labs and discussions, the university was mostly quiet. When Jeralt, Byleth, and Berith entered their designated classroom, they were surprised to see a few students already seated.

"Good...Morning?" Jeralt greeted, a tad unsure. "This is the early morning driving class. You guys in the right room?" All present nodded their heads, to his pleasant surprise. Putting his laptop down on the front desk, he opened the attendance list for his first morning class, and began reading down the names.

"Uhh...Aegir, Ferdi-"

"PRESENT AND ACCOUNTED FOR!" Ah, yes, he was the proud and noisy peacock who more or less shouted his name and lineage in his intro. He had introduced himself over ten times at that party, if he remembered right.

"Bergliez, Caspar?"

"RIGHT'ERE!" The one who threw up in the bathtub, eh?

"Okaaaay….Blaiddyd, Dimitri?"

"Here, sir…" He looked down, ears red from shame or embarrassment. Seems he remembered his behavior at the party! GOOD.

"Cordelia, Lysithea?"

"Here!" Jeralt raised a brow at the tiny white-haired girl. Is...She really a college student?

"Uhhh...You know you have to be a university stu-"

"I AM! I'M NOT A CHILD, DAMMIT!" The classroom fell silent with her outburst, Byleth and Berith shaken out of their impromptu nap. The glare she gave Jeralt was withering and wrathful, but at the same time absolutely adorable. With an amused smirk and good humor, the roll-call continued. He'd be keeping this little brat in mind.

"Dominic, Annette?"

"Here!" a girl with bright orange hair chirped from the front, smiling despite the obvious dark circles under her eyes. He recognized her as one of the singing girls from the party. He'd have to keep an eye on her.

"Edmund, Marianne?" A quiet girl in the back raised her hand slowly, Jeralt nodding as she dropped her hand back down onto her desk. A girl next to her patted her back, seemingly in some kind of congratulations or comfort.

"Gloucester, Lorenz?"

"On time and present, sir!" Ah, yes. The kid with the ugliest hairdo in the history of mankind. Also a terrible singer with no coordination when drunk. Another one he'd need to keep an eye on.

"Uh-huh. Well, I'm going to assume now that your haircut decisions are made while inebriated." Lorenz sputtered in an attempt to respond, the classroom soon filled with laughter at his expense. Again.

"Goneril, Hilda," he stated, giving the pink-haired girl the stink-eye. Oh, he didn't trust her in the slightest. Something about her and that Claude kid with the DJ equipment reminded him too much of his daughter on her bad days. Damn, Jeralt was going to need to glue eyes to the back of his head with these kids. She gave him a cute wink and a wave, as if attempting to be disarming. Nope. Not on his watch.

"Hevring, Linhardt?" A beat. There was no response. "Hevring, Linhardt," Jeralt repeated, with more volume and force this time. Another beat. Only crickets chirped in the classroom. "Is there a Linhardt Hevring signed up for this course?"

"HERE! Linhardt, wake up!" the Caspar kid practically shouted, pointing to a dark green lump of hair on the desk next to him. The mass of hair didn't budge. Caspar then unceremoniously kicked the desk, bringing the student down onto the linoleum floor with a thud. The class "oooh"-ed in response.

"...Is class starting? Don't wake me up unless it's important, Caspar. I haven't had my medication yet," Linhardt mumbled, tucking his arms under his head….Still on the floor.

"KID, CLASS IS IN SESSION, NOW GET THE HELL UP!" Jeralt practically commanded, clearly not in the mood to deal with this. He was so sure these were college kids, practically adults, yet here he was, shouting at them like they were his own little shits back in their high school years. With exaggerated sighs and groans, Linhardt got up and sat back down on his desk, giving him a tired, bored look. Jeralt was not going to like this kid either.

"Hresvelg, Edelgard?" he continued, sighing under his breath.

"Present and accounted for, sir." Ah, the blonde boy's girlfriend from the party. While up and alert, she seemed to avoid looking him in the eyes at all costs, so it was safe to say she also had a good idea of how much of a wreck she was in his eyes. Also, GOOD.

"Martritz, Mercedes?"

"Oh, right here sir!" Jeralt remembered this sweet girl from the party, but was rather surprised to see her in...Soft Kitty pajamas?

"...Any reason you're still in PJ's, kid?" he asked, thoroughly confused.

"Oh, I slept through my first two alarms, and my brother had to come in to remind me to go to class, but I didn't have time to change, so I got cleaned up and had my brother drop me off like this!" she answered, ever cheery and soft. Morning people.

"...Uh-huh…...Moving on then…" He didn't even know how to respond to that. Again, these were college students, right?

"Varley, Bernadetta?" he asked, moving to the final student on the day's roster.

"Um, uh, H-H-HERE!" Jeralt looked around the room, wondering where the response was coming from, feeling a headache coming on. And fast. Ferdinand, Linhardt, Caspar, and Edelgard pointed toward a corner seat in the back. Lo and behold, a small girl was right under it, waving nervously at him. Great, another special case.

"...Would you kindly please sit down in the chair? I like to see my students while I'm teaching, and it's not really helpful for you to be under there," he said, trying to sound as calm and nonchalant as he could with the frustration bubbling in his gut.

"Umm, okay, just...Give me a moment to get...Comfortable, please...And, don't let Hubert know, please, he'll be so disappointed and he might actually kill me in my sleep, and I-I, I'd rather not d-d-die, please?" she stuttered out, peeking her head out like a scared rabbit. Was that rat-faced goth threatening other students? What the fuck was going on in this school?

"What time did you schedule your medication, Bernadetta?" Edelgard asked.

"U-Umm...A-around 8:30, b-before my lecture class," she answered, finally seeming comfortable enough to crawl into her actual chair. Edelgard nodded, clearly texting the rat something on her phone.

"HEY, no phone use in my class. Save it for later." With a huff, she dropped her phone back into her backpack. From the corner of his eye, he could see the Goneril girl seemingly mocking him with her phone in her lap. Oh, she was getting SOMETHING later.

Snapping Berith and Byleth out of their impromptu naps behind his desk, Jeralt had them handing out basic papers to the class. "Welcome to, essentially, Driving 101. And I might be an ex-racecar driver, but I'm here to teach you how to survive the road, not swim in speeding tickets, got it? So no questions about racing in here. DO I MAKE MYSELF CLEAR?" While most of the students gave nods and grumbles in understanding, some of them, well…

"So can we ask about it after? I wanna learn how to drift!" Everyone looked at Caspar with either pity or disbelief.

"No."

"AWWWW! BUT-"

"NO." Ferdinand and Edelgard gave Caspar the stink eye and he finally acquiesced and quieted down.

"Okay, no more stupid questions? Good. I'm sure you've all taken looks at a driving handbook before, and watched your parents, siblings, chauffeurs, whoever the fuck drives you around, actually drive. I hope. So, this is a basics quiz to see how much you already know about getting around in a vehicle. Keep in mind, no grades in this course, you pass when you are legally allowed to drive, understood? My kids'll be watching for any funny business, got it?" With a nod of his head, the students began scribbling onto their quiz papers. For a moment, all was silent and peaceful.

"Hey! Gimme back my phone, Byleth! I thought we were cool!" Mostly.

After a surprising thirty whole minutes, all twelve quizzes were neatly stacked on Jeralt's desk. With his red pen out, he tried his best to keep up a "teacher" look, but some of the answers he read were….

"I shouldn't be, but I'm surprised at how many of you seem to know almost NOTHING about driving," the frustrated instructor groaned, hand sliding down his face.

"My brother drives me everywhere."

"I have friends who drive."

"My dad didn't let me sit in the passenger seat until I graduated high school."

And the excuses kept coming. With a huff, Jeralt slammed a book down (a magazine, but it worked), silencing the rowdy bunch. "We've got a lot of material to cover, and a lot of work to do. Let's start with the basics," he began, drawing basic road signs and diagrams on the whiteboard. "I hope you're at least familiar with these, or else a few of you wouldn't be here right now. So let's begin with identification." A flurry of hands shot up, and answers being shouted left and right echoed in the classroom, but so far, Jeralt was almost impressed with how much they seemed to already know.

"Dad, I have a lecture in 30 minutes, I'll see you later," Byleth interrupted, slapping his father's shoulder before running out of the room. It was kind of cute when the students gave him a loud "bye" as the door closed.

"Can we leave early too?" Kind of.

"Alright, I'm sure you've all seen this and know how this one works. Most traffic lights use green, yellow, and red to indicate whether to stop or go at a crossing. Now, who can tell me what the yellow light specifically means?" Jeralt was surprised when Caspar's hand shot up first, a confident shit-eating grin on his face. "...Alright, Bergliez."

"It's permission to speed, sir!" He seemed genuinely proud of his terribly wrong answer.

"What? NO!" Jeralt's palm met his face yet again.

"It means caution, you idiot!" the tiny one, Lysithea, scolded.

"But is Caspar technically wrong? Depending on how far from the main road one is when the light turns yellow, it could be a signal to hurry up or stop," Linhardt responded from his desk, popping a pill into his mouth and downing a bottle of soda.

"Yes, he's very wrong-" Jeralt tried again to interject.

"If you floor it, I think you can make it no matter how far from the light you are," Hilda added. "At least, that's how my brother likes to drive."

"Holtz is a barbaric buffoon on the road, and you know this, Hilda," Lorenz muttered, earning him a one-finger salute from said girl.

"One must maintain a steady speed on the road before the light turns red, so a yellow light should generally be a warning to slow down," Ferdinand also threw out, nodding to Lorenz.

"Oh, but the drivers behind you wouldn't like that if you have plenty of space in front of you," Mercedes piped up, stirring a pot that had already boiled over. The class had clearly devolved very quickly.

"TA-DA!" Everyone's head snapped toward the whiteboard, where Berith had added her own doodle of the students' conundrum (and her father's inevitable headache). It was just a line dividing the street, but it made Jeralt so damn proud in that moment.

"Okay dad, I'm going to class!" And she also left.

"...So, even if we're below the line, would flooring it help?" Saints above, why did he take this job?