➤ professor mori is never a name you want to see on your schedule - he might have earned his place as a battling teacher, but he's not exactly well-loved among students; in fact, the general reaction to being placed in one of his classes is dread and abject horror. he's a hard-ass, demanding 110% of his students' attention and participation from the get-go, and accepts exactly no excuses for not performing up to his standards.

➤ on the other hand, those students who do try to the best of their abilities find an incredibly supportive, if rather unnerving, pillar to depend on. he's never gotten out of the habit of asking invasive personal questions, but it's all in the proverbial name of science: to know how to teach someone, he has to know how and why they fight, first. there's not exactly a point in giving someone a road-map with no car, is there? (in this case, the road-map and the car both require fighting. like, from day one. what's a lecture?)

➤ his early years weren't much to talk about; both of his parents were successful, one a psychologist and the other a therapist, and they both expected great things out of their one and only son amidst a squadron of five daughters. he might not have the healthiest internal life because of it, but hey, who does? he's employed and (almost) married, he doesn't really complain about the journey to get there.

➤ during his time enrolled in the academy, kaede was a rising star. testing and studying came easy, and he excelled in memorization, able to spit back facts from weeks before. when it came to control, however, he was decidedly lacking, and spent a majority of his nights wracked with intense cluster migraines from his unmoored psychic abilities. he attempted to focus himself through sparring, but inevitably churned through partners, due to either his own social ineptness - a quick temper and a sharp tongue didn't exactly make him any friends - or fighting entirely too harshly to be strictly legal.

➤ in his third year, he'd run the gamut of available partners of his own age... and ended up paired against cassius holt, a fifth year who matched him move for move. sparring with him felt entirely different from anything before or since, and a fight that ended in an exhaustive victory for kaede provided much more than a win: for the first time in two weeks, his head didn't hurt one bit. enamored with a touch more than the relief alone, kaede actively tried to be nice for the first time in his short life (although an eighteen year old with sarcasm issues being kind was a lot different from a settled professor's idea of the thing).

➤ although their first date was a bit of a disaster (rest in peace, bottle of technically-against-code wine), kaede fell hard and fast for cassius, working with him on his control issues throughout his third, fourth and fifth years, supporting his efforts to become a professor and being a glorified cheerleader when his efforts paid off. by twenty-four he had realized that the whole suppression thing didn't work, and instead began to both harness his psychic abilities in and out of battle and branch out in his techniques, discovering an interest in battle strategy that he'd never thought to pursue in a life mired in textbooks and study plans. he applied to begin working at the academy as an alternative battle professor - one specializing in working with students outside of their spirit's type, and how to master control over one's own power.

➤ his migraines still pop up sporadically, especially during testing season, but with holt's support and daily use of his abilities, both psychically and mentally, kaede is incredibly content in his life, despite his hard exterior. he recently propose to cassius, and the two are engaged, with kaede wearing a matching ring with quite a nauseating amount of pride.