Hello! Before I proceed with the story, I'd like to get some things out of the way.

• Black Butler/Kuroshitsuji belongs to its rightful owners. This piece of writing is for entertainment purposes only.

• This story is (say what you will, I know) a self-insert, and many features are drawn from my own life. With some exceptions, names of real people have been changed or avoided, as are overly specific locations. There's no such thing as too much paranoia.

• This story contains, among other things: gore, death, suicide talk, copious amounts of swearing, infrequent sex talk, and occasional homophobia/transphobia.

I should also mention that I have a habit of revising things without warning, especially when I'm dealing with writer's block. If it's been a while since any updates, you might want to check the previous chapters in case something has changed. Or don't. Your call.

Now, without further ado...

Secrets Only Death Knows

The playground smelled like death.

The clouds overhead were like omens, waves of foreboding harsh enough to make someone physically unwell, and yet—and yet, not one of the hundreds of children out seemed to notice. They were laughing and tumbling about, remaining perfectly oblivious to the possibility of a catastrophe the entire time. Every single one of them so painfully and pathetically oblivious.

Except for me.

I stayed at the edge of the excitement, leaned against one of the school's walls and watching with a cold curiosity. I was so eager—is that even the word to call it?—and I didn't even know why. It made me sick.

There was screaming in my ears, white noise that made me want to throw up. But then the discomfort would falter just long enough for me to gain awareness of my surroundings, and I'd fisheye to a pair of first-graders, a red-haired boy and a girl in a brown bob and skirt. They each had a wide grin on as they started planning tests of bravery. Dares like: "Do something bad behind the teacher's back." "Talk to that scary, mean kid."

Or, my favourite: "Try standing on the monkey bars."

Redhead agreed almost instantly, and proceeded to scoot up the side, shoes squeaking on the polished, violet-coloured metal, until he was right on top. Didn't breathe, didn't move for a moment, until he managed to lift his hands and stand up, successfully balancing on the rungs.

Or not.

That's when a gust of wind kicked in, knocking him off his feet. He gave a sudden cry of panic, waved his arms around in an attempt to regain his balance. People turned, looking to see what all the commotion was about. I wanted to scream, run up there and save him, do anything, but I was frozen to the spot. I couldn't even close my eyes as he fell forward, slamming his neck on the bar in front of him with a sickening crack before tumbling to the ground.

And then nothing. There was nothing but a blank darkness as far as I could see, until I suddenly heard a horrifically loud ringing in my ears and felt the breath pushed out of me, and then my vision reappeared.

I was at a school. Not my old elementary school, but—

High school, Grade 8, knee-deep in the second week of classes.

I was in front of my locker, barely standing and with one hand on the padlock, trying to remember my pass. I wondered distantly if I'd fainted for a moment—the way I was disoriented, the mess of thoughts, it definitely fit. But the things I saw, they were too vivid. Too concrete.

I took another look at the numbers. I couldn't see a thing.

It wasn't a localized loss of vision, some spots here and there where I might've had an eyelash. Straight-up all-over fuzziness. I only panicked more when I rubbed my eyes to check and nothing changed. It wasn't too bad—I wasn't walking into walls or anything—but I couldn't even read the large-print posters on the wall, much less the tightly-spaced numbers that were difficult to discern at the best of times.

I dropped to the floor and closed my eyes, tried to distract myself with a theory on the fainting spell, daydream, whatever it was. The last thing I remembered was eavesdropping on a discussion between some sophomores, only to appear in the middle of what I hoped was nothing more than some thoughts brought on by my vivid imagination—unnervingly lurid thoughts of a stranger's death. Lovely.

Something that uncanny had to have some kind of trigger, and more than likely it was something they'd said—but to blackout from hearing some words? I couldn't, didn't want to understand what could lead to that kind of ridiculous simultaneity. And the possibility that it wasn't simply? Hell no.

I was running late as it was and had no intention of sitting and waiting to freak out completely, so I decided to instead go back to trying to get my locker open, relying only on a vague memory of how much I had to turn the dial in each direction. It worked often enough, but this was clearly not that kind of day; it must've been two dozen attempts before I just sighed and headed off to class without my things.

Maths was a short walk straight from my locker and then left, something which was thankfully one of the few things I'd remembered from day one. Simple enough not to get lost. I stopped, shuffled awkwardly up to the door. A nervous peek through the tiny window in the middle showed that the lesson had already long started, and my eyes widened slightly. Whether that was my unsuccessful safe-cracking or the trip to hell in front of my locker, hell, I had no idea, but something told me it wasn't the former.

In any case, my endeavour to remain unnoticed as I slipped through the open door was a right failure.

"Where were you? The bell rang ten minutes ago," the teacher noted, a bewildered look on his face.

"I wasn't feeling well," I muttered, taking a seat in the only empty desk left, at the very back of the room.

There was a pause before he simply shrugged and went back to writing questions on the whiteboard.

By that time, my vision had somehow—miraculously—returned to its original 20/20 state. I glanced at the kid next to me and whispered, "Hey, you have any paper I could use? And something to write with?"

He gave an annoyed sigh and roughly tore a sheet from his binder, which he handed me along with a tiny, over-sharpened pencil. I leaned back in my chair and slowly got to work.

First, my name in the corner, in the smallest, messiest, and most indiscernible font I could manage. Then the date: September 16th, 2015. And after tediously copying down each string of numbers and variables from the board, I calmly braced myself for another period wasted doing absolutely nothing.

There remained the issue of my horrifically poor focus when it came to learning. No one I knew had ever called me dumb, but when it takes two hours to do something that others finish in twenty minutes and the simplest set of instructions completely boggles your mind—if you're even able to focus long enough to hear them properly—it's hard not to think of yourself as such. ADD? Who knows.

Today was different.

Whatever happened back at my locker, something told me it was more than just a blackout. But thinking about it just then, it was more than I could handle. So I just kept working.

By the time class was over, I'd finished not only the assigned material, but the pages upon pages of old material from a few weeks ago. The speed was straight-up unnerving; some of the work wasn't even possible in that time, regardless of skill. It felt a bit like I'd known the answers all along and... forgotten and remembered suddenly, maybe. Again—whatever happened, there was more to it. That kind of burst of focus, regained memories, it didn't happen every day.

Drama wasn't too far from the usual. I made it to class just before the bell rang and leapt into one of the many empty desks in the room, dropping my things on the floor under my chair and leaning back to look at the board. The plan that day was to watch the rest of the students' short films and then play competitive charades until lunch, and I couldn't help but shrink a little at that. I was awful at those.

The rules were simple: one person from each team tried to act out the same thing, and the first person to have their team guess won a point. But any and all of my attempts—if I was even able to get past my stage fright in the first place—always failed miserably, and the other team ended up getting the point. Today wasn't very different, and it wasn't even a full round before one of my teammates started yelling at me, to which I promptly replied by flipping him the bird, stomping out of the room and slamming the door behind me.

I spent the rest of the period in the bathroom, angrily scratching off flakes of chipping paint from the inside of a stall door.

Half an hour and eight fingernails full of dark green later, a wave of emotions hit me, fear and discomfort and the most harrowing gloom I could've ever imagined. And then—just for a split second, that very same orange-haired boy, sprawled in the sand with a blotchy red neck and a face jutting straight-up.

My eyes burned and I was throwing up and God knew I wanted anything but to try and walk. But I got up anyway. I left through the school's back entrance and ran, cutting straight through parking lot and the forest path, the steep downwards hill halfway through and every root and piece of trash in between. That feeling in my gut was real. And I was terrified.

I was at the scene in minutes, lungs burning and legs numb. A few deep breaths and I slipped into the schoolyard, clutching the edges of my hoodie like it was a safety blanket. I was scared, not for myself, but for that boy. He wasn't as reckless or utterly suicidal as my brain had made him out to be, but damn if he wasn't setting off every alarm in my body. I didn't know what death looked like; all I knew was that he was absolutely covered in it.

My eyes lit up again and I fell to my knees, blind as could be and just about unconscious from the intensity. There was a throbbing pain in my head and all I could see was static for what felt like the longest time, something like a minute straight of pure darkness right up until my vision suddenly came back completely.

I almost expected to wake up when I saw that little boy, eyes wide and body all wrong. But I didn't. My head continued to ache and all I could focus on was a tall, suited man standing in the back that gave off the strangest vibe, like he didn't belong—and I mean, he didn't. He was a fucking guy in funeral clothes who just showed up out of nowhere. What the hell?!

That's when he looked at me, cocked his head and squinted his eyes slightly before suddenly yelling something my way. I didn't know who he was and I didn't know why he was here, or how no one had noticed him yet. But it was probably a good idea to run.

I headed back the way I came, straight through the thickest part of the forest. I ran until I passed out.

Whatever happened, when I came to, I was sprawled in the dirt, with tears in my jeans and a huge, searingly painful gash on the side of my face whose intensity took me so much by surprise that all I could do was scream.

It wasn't long before the screaming turned into loud bawling, which in turn faded into pathetic whining as the pain slowly became more tolerable. I was curled up in the dirt by then, with my arms around my knees and my bangs stuck to the blood and tears on my face, and my vision was already rapidly returning to its old, useless state, which only added insult to injury. I felt miserable.

I couldn't remember when, but at some point, my body decided it was enough, and I fell asleep on the ground.

O O O

I woke up to a bright orange sky, with the pain in my cheek gone and dry, flaky blood the only sign I'd ever fallen. My vision was still gone, though, and I was starting to feel like whatever was going on with my eyes might be permanent. That was terrifying, for maybe no other reason at the moment than the fact that I had no way of getting back home.

I had half a mind to just start screaming for help at the top of my lungs, but even then, it was unlikely anyone would come. I was way too far off the main path, where I would've almost certainly been spotted by a student, or even a group of them—and it was way too late in the day, for that matter.

I sat there for a while, wondering what the first time crossing the street as a blind person was like, until a pair of loud, crunchy footsteps suddenly sounded behind me. The noise continued for another few seconds before it abruptly stopped, and I heard a deep, shaky, "Excuse me, are you alright?"

"No," I answered, frowning. "Something happened, I just—I can't see anything. Can't get back home."

There was a pause, before the man—or, it sounded like a man, at least—continued. "Oh, kid, that sounds terrible! Where do you live?"

"Just down the street," I replied, slowly tracing in mid-air what was hopefully an accurate map.

Another moment passed, before I heard him shuffle over, and felt his hand wrap around my arm. "Well, I was heading near there, anyway. Follow me."

"Thank you."

It was an awkward, stumbly trip, but he didn't seem to mind. He kept me from falling and I was beyond grateful for his company, but it was a little unnerving when he suddenly said, "Your eyes are the brightest green I've ever seen in my life! They're practically glowing."

I nearly choked on my own spit. "What?"

"Yes, you must get a thousand compliments on them everyday," he continued, awestruck as ever.

I managed to keep walking, but I couldn't stop thinking about his remark. My eyes were a dark, muddy hazel and they always had been. Either this guy was as senile as he sounded, or my situation wasn't nearly as simple as fainting a bunch of times and then going blind.

"Which house is it?"

"Huh?"

"Which house do you live in?"

I hesitated. "Number twenty-nine. It's white."

A minute passed, before there was a tug on my arm. I stopped.

"Are your parents home?"

"My mom's usually in the house," I answered. "I don't know. Knock."

He gave three quick raps on the door, and a few moments later, I heard it open. There was a short silence, followed by a yell: "What happened?!" The faint Slavic accent was instantly recognizable.

"Your son was passed out on the trail by the apartment blocks. Says he can't see now."

What sounded like a sharp gasp left her mouth. Mom quickly thanked the man and pulled me inside, shutting the door behind her, and then immediately bombarded me with a series of questions in Bulgarian; Where were you? What's wrong with your eyes? Did you know the school called? Why did you do this? How did you pass out? What's wrong with your eyes? What if someone raped you while you were like that?—I flinched at that—What's wrong with your eyes?

And again; What's wrong with your eyes?

I stared breathlessly, confused and increasingly terrified. I begged her to tell me, tell me what was wrong with them, because I sure as hell didn't know. What was fucking wrong with them? And then—and then, she repeated what that man had said. They were bright green, not a natural kind of dark emerald, but something more like what you'd see at a costume party. Glowing.

Before I knew it, she was suddenly dragging my half-responsive body up the few steps from the door, down the hall, to the right, and then—

The bathroom. It made a little sense; my eyes were glowing, and I, even obsessed with the supernatural as I was, clearly didn't believe her. The living room was dark, dark enough that if my eyes really were glowing, it'd be obvious—obvious to her and only to her. The solution? Get me to a reflective surface, shut the blinds and turn the lights off, and hope that I had enough vision to see their luminescence. After a few painful moments of mulling it over, I agreed. Mom left me alone inside the room, closed the door behind her, and flicked the switch.

The pitch-black darkness I braced myself for never came. Instead, the tight space around me was faintly illuminated by an intense, limy glow radiating from my eyes, visible as a fuzzy green blur in the mirror. Even with my vision, it was impossible not to notice it. Looking at my reflection, I couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong, something I ought to know off the top of my head. Besides the obvious—the whole holy-shit-my-eyes-look-like-a-rave-party—what was it that could possibly stir me up so much?

A minute passed, and I eventually let out a defeated sigh and pulled the door open. I had Mom call my dad to take me to the hospital and shuffled over to my room, where I promptly collapsed on my bed. I still didn't know what had happened, or what was going to happen, but at this point, one thing was certain: I fucking hated Wednesdays.

O O O

When Dad saw my eyes, I swear he almost had a heart attack. Poor guy; the further he progressed into old age, the more he refused to believe in the uncanny, and seeing me like that, all stumbly, squinty-eyed rave kid, must've dealt him a pretty harsh blow. The car trip was a blur—both literally and figuratively. He spared no time for panic and rushed us straight to the ER, where we were then escorted by a nurse to the on-site eye clinic.

I was in a daze the entire time, hardly understood anything that was being said. All I got from the conversation between Dad and the optometrist(?) were roughly thirty counts of holy-shit-dat-eye-colour, seventeen of "When did this all start?"—"Just now.", three "Are you on drugs?" (Now, narcotics can absolutely impair your vision, but turn your eyes neon green, as well? I doubt it.) and one "Your daughter is screwed, LOL," and although he didn't word it exactly like that, he might as well have, given his tone of voice.

I didn't have a clue what was going on or what I was supposed to do, save for when he asked me to open my eyes wider, or when he asked me which image looked better or what letter he was pointing to. Neither the images nor the letters appeared as little more than indiscernible grey blurs, so when it came to that, I just shrugged awkwardly.

When it was finally over, he led us back into the room and sat me down on the bed. I twiddled my thumbs, waiting for an answer, until he cleared his throat and took an uncomfortable-sounding deep breath, and then began, "Well, I don't know what to say. In my entire twenty-eight years working here, I've never seen anything like this. None of the tests showed anything unusual, leading me to believe that this is honestly just some kind of crazy freak incident. The only thing I can recommend to you now is to go get a pair of glasses"—I heard him print something off his computer—"as there's nothing dangerous going on to what I can tell."

I just stared blankly, and I got the feeling that Dad was doing the same.

"That's it?" he asked, a disbelieving tone to his voice. "You couldn't find anything wrong?"

"Nothing at all."

The door suddenly opened and I heard a female voice say that optometrist guy had another patient, and she then shooed us out; we stumbled back into the waiting room, dumbfounded and hardly able to move for a full minute.

I sighed and nudged him, whispering, "What did he give you? A prescription?" At first it seemed like he nodded, but he quickly caught himself and whispered a more obvious da to me. I brought my fingers to my lips, nervously scratching at them with my nails. "Can you read it?"

"... No, but I doubt it's anything good," he muttered, making a tsk noise.

I sighed. "Well, come on," I said, tugging at his arm. "Let's leave."

With no further possible explanation for what was going on, Dad and I drove off to the shop widely advertised as the best in town, with low prices and speedy one-hour service. He led me out of the car and into the building, where I immediately—whether through imagination or a legitimate gut feeling, I don't know—felt like everyone who was there at the moment had turned to stare at me. I stood awkwardly beside him as he handed the prescription to the receptionist. There was a short silence, followed by a surprised gasp and an incredulous "Have you really never worn glasses before this?"

"Well... yeah," I said, shrugging. "I had perfect vision until today."

"Good lord," she murmured. "This is one of the worst cases of nearsightedness I've ever seen. You're not far from being considered legally blind at this point."

Thankfully, my dad wasn't one to faint, as I'm sure he would have otherwise collapsed on the floor just then. I gave her what I hoped was a decent you-can't-be-serious look, which she must've understood because she then squeaked out, "I'm not kidding. You may have been 20/20 before, but now..."

"How do I pick my frames, then, when I can't even see them?"

"I don't know. Usually it's not a problem, people can still see well enough for that, whether with their old lenses or just because their vision isn't very bad, but in this case, I'm not sure. Do you have anything in mind?"

I shrugged.

Dad dragged me along to the displays, which I, of course, couldn't see, and asked me if I could describe what I had in mind. I didn't know how to answer; I had no idea what shapes would look good on me, nor could I check in a mirror. "Maybe... those glasses they wore in like, the 70s, 80s... I forgot what they're called."

"Aviators?" she chimed in.

"Yeah—yeah, those. Can I get something like that?"

"Will do."

"Perfect," Dad said, just the faintest hint of what was probably annoyance—or maybe frustration was a better word—in his voice. I wondered if he was still trying to accept how quickly we'd been kicked out of the clinic. "One hour?"

"Mhm."

"Then, chop-chop." He nudged me slightly. "We'll come back around 6."

I nodded and followed him out of the shop. On the way home, Dad stopped by Starbucks and got me an iced mocha, and then brought me with him to his office, where he resumed working on whatever he was doing before he came to pick me up, and I flopped face-down on the sofa, groaning as dramatically as I possibly could. "Well, I'm not just gonna sit here and bore myself for an hour. Can't you at least turn on the radio?"

A moment passed before I heard an obnoxiously fitting, morbid-sounding violin and piano duet start playing, which only heightened my groan. "Oh, damn it—just read me the news or something..."

What else could I have expected other than the epic tale of that little brat who had essentially killed himself with his sheer bravery on top of those monkey bars? I shoved my face into a pillow, only managing to think, little brat? Now that—that was a little worrying.

I didn't catch anything that came after that.

Eventually, he got up and told me it was time to go, and I gladly flung myself off the sofa and ran after him. We arrived back at the clinic pretty quickly, given that it was a small town and the building itself was only a five minute or so distance from us, and he then lead me to the counter.

"Here you go," I heard the same lady as before say, and the sound of a case snapping open. "They'll be heavy."

I frowned, felt around in front of me for a moment and then picked them up. She wasn't lying about the weight; even in my hands, they felt like a sack of bricks. How I'd be able to stand them, I wasn't sure. I took a deep breath and slid them on.

At the end of the room was a large mirror, and it was there I could finally able to see myself properly for the first time in almost a day. My skin was an even sicklier shade than usual and my hair was a tangled mess, and there was still a little dried blood on my face and what looked like a chunk of dirt from earlier today lodged in the thick confines of my eyebrows. Behind a pair of thin-rimmed, silver specs were two bleary, green eyes; now that I got a good look at them, I realized exactly how peculiar they were. Specks of light seemed to randomly swirl around inside, and a dark ring encircled the pupils. Together with my new glasses, there was something incredibly familiar about my appearance that I couldn't quite place. I'd seen something like this before, and very recently, it felt like. But where?

"How are they?" Receptionist lady, whose name I then discovered was Nancy through a quick glance at her (not blurry!) name tag, had strolled over to my side and was waiting for my response with an annoyingly wide grin on her face.

"Great," I lied, struggling to suppress a frown. The lenses were so incomprehensibly thick that, along with a terrible headache that took less than a minute to show up, I was also left with a hilariously awful coke-bottle appearance. All I needed to complete the look was a set of braces and a mullet.

Dad paid and took the case, a tiny bottle of cleaning spray and a soft cloth which Nancy gave him, and the receipt, and then we headed back home. The house exploded into a flurry of questions, things I knew related to my glasses in some way but were impossible for me to follow; all I answered was a yes-or-no about my health and then promptly went to my room and flopped onto the bed with a huge sigh, curled up next to the giant me-sized plush monkey sprawled in its centre.

For a while I just lied there, staring blankly at the ceiling; when that got old, I rolled onto my side and switched to staring out the window to my left, but the dreary weather reminded me too much of this morning to bear, so I instead stared at my reflection in the bookcase next to it. A cheaply-made Rubik's two-by-two sat on top of volumes one through six of Black Butler. I thought about my favourite character, the hilarious resemblance I now bore to him—frankly, all the Grim Reapers. Green eyes, glasses.

It was a few seconds before it hit me.

I hardly registered it. The thought was so unbelievable, so surreal, that it sent my brain screeching to a complete standstill. I burst into laughter, questioned my own sanity for a moment—and when that eventually died down, I realized it actually made sense. Witnessing a death and losing my vision like that, eyes taking on a limy, no, a chartreuse glow. And that man I saw—

Chartreuse eyes and glasses. It was the signature look of the Grim Reapers, one that I was boldly wearing at that very moment. It shouldn't have been possible. But here I was.

My parents spared me the rest of the week, under the excuse that maybe something would develop. I didn't question it and I definitely didn't take it for granted. I was scared and—yeah, excited, a little giddy. But scared nonetheless. I didn't know what this meant for me or what came next, and I took that time to calm down, think things through. Just relax as best as I could.

Those few days were terribly hectic and full of identity crises, most of which I owed to my meticulous web-crawling, looking up information on, who would've guessed it, Grim Reapers—the Black Butler ones, of course. I spent hours dwelling on the fan-made descriptions spread out across multiple sources of their abilities, which included, but were not limited to; immortality and agelessness; enhanced strength, speed, endurance, and healing; powerful senses; invisibility; teleportation, which I wasn't very clear on, as some people said it was only short-range, while others said they couldn't do it at all; and one theory, which particularly resonated with me, that described death clairvoyance—the ability to foretell a person's death.

On multiple occasions I would leave the house to go on walks, heading into the massive forest behind my street to test whether or not I was capable of these feats, which were allegedly universal among Grim Reapers.

The first thing I attempted was running from one end of the forest to the other, around where it opened up to the large river that spanned the entire town and more. A regular person would achieve this in no less than an hour at walking speed. The difference was blatantly obvious; not only was I noticeably faster, but my stamina was virtually endless, which allowed me to sprint the entire time and brought me to my goal in the outrageously short time of seven minutes and fifteen seconds. Enhanced speed and endurance—check.

The second thing I attempted was lifting a fallen tree trunk, something which not even the strongest of bodybuilders could possibly achieve. After turning down a few logs, which I had somehow deemed too small, despite the fact that they were at all at least ten metres long, I found it; a giant, monster of a tree with hundreds of branches sagging onto the ground and what looked like patches of mushrooms growing on more than a few of them. I drew my hands inside my sleeves, took a deep breath, and then—

Bam. I lifted the whole thing off the ground; not a lot, but enough for it to be noticeably floating in mid-air, and enough to give me a damn near heart attack the instant I felt it move. Enhanced strength—check.

The third thing I tested, upon arriving home after the first two, was the enhanced healing. It sounds horrible, I know, but the way I went about this was taking an old X-Acto knife I had lying in my art drawer, and slicing a small, one-inch-long vertical cut on the top of my wrist. I had a pile of bandages and rubbing alcohol in case anything went wrong, but as I sat there staring at the wound, I was stunned to discover that it was healing so quickly that I could see it with my very eyes. The blood stopped within seconds, and by two minutes, when the scabbing faded and I saw the shiny red beginnings of a scar, well—the answer was pretty obvious by then. Healing? Check.

On Saturday, after having tested everything else, I decided to try my hand at teleportation and invisibility. Teleportation, after a long hour of intense concentration, I was now able to make use of for short distances of up to a few feet. Practically speaking, it wasn't much, but for a tiny little had-been human who'd been told all their life that magic wasn't real—it was more than enough. And it only got better with each attempt.

Sunday, I didn't do much. The one time I tried turning invisible, I never actually found out if I'd been successful. I didn't have the guts to ask someone and the clearing was almost entirely deserted either way, so I shelved that one for later and headed home.

I lazed around for the remainder of the day, listening to metal albums and adding the finishing touches to a self-portrait, the last of which was drawing in my coke-bottle glasses and changing my eye colour from hazel to bright chartreuse. It was odd seeing myself like that, but I figured this was me now, the kid who randomly got a bunch of magic powers and went blind.

School terrified me, but like the doctors had claimed, I was in a stable condition, and my parents told me that if I wasn't dying, I shouldn't be staying home—and considering the fact that I was now somehow capable of doing work, well, I had no excuses. I got my things ready and went to bed.

O O O

Monday, September 21st.

Dressed in black skinny jeans, a plain tee, and a long, two-sizes-too-big navy blue sweater, and dragging my backpack along with one hand, I shuffled through the school's main entrance. I avoided meeting others' gazes as much as I possibly could, and as a precautionary measure in the odd case that I did lock eyes with someone, my bangs were carefully teased to their maximum volume and made to cover most of my face. Dad told me I was being paranoid, and I knew he was right, but I didn't care. If this was what got me to school that day, so be it.

When someone asked me where I'd vanished to last week, I shrugged and explained that I was down with the flu and left it at that. No one made me elaborate. The questions stopped completely by 10 o'clock and the day progressed as normal, or as normal as it could be with me in this ridiculous situation, anyway.

Phys. ed. saw my worst fear come true; I couldn't hold back my powers. When I had to run, it was difficult not to automatically sprint ahead of everyone; when we played dodgeball, it took every ounce of my strength not to throw so hard that I bruised someone; and then later, when our teacher said we could play flashlight tag for the last fifteen minutes of class, I panicked. I panicked and ran out of the room, cowered next to a vending machine with my eyes hidden as ever.

"It's personal," I told him when he came after me.

A moment passed before he replied, "Well, if you don't want to share, I won't bug you about it," and then returned to the gymnasium. I breathed a huge sigh of relief and slumped against the wall, where I spent the rest of class.

At lunch, I headed to my old school again; whether it was out of morbid curiosity or just some kind of weird impulse, I wasn't sure. I stopped by the corner store to buy a couple of overpriced pork ribs before making my way to the playground, where the first thing I noticed were the monkey bars—or rather, their absence. Though I'd expected something like this to be done, it did strike me as a little pointless. No one had ever been seriously injured on them before this; just a single kid had fallen off and killed himself, and that had been due to his own recklessness, not a design flaw. But I didn't care—after all, I didn't go there anymore, nor had I ever especially loved climbing on the monkey bars.

People were very deliberately avoiding the spot where they had been, and I didn't blame any of them. It'd been nearly a full week since the incident, but even I could sense that there was still something lingering in the air, just the faintest residue of that bleak and gloomy atmosphere that had clung to the boy's lifeless body that day like flies to honey. Just standing there made me sick to my stomach.

Classes continued as usual and I was heading home when I was struck with the awful suspicion that I was being followed. There was no one as far as the eye could see, but the feeling remained. I couldn't even begin to relax until I was in my room. And then I was worried that I'd led him to me.

The next day, I met him, an early twenties-looking man dressed in a pure black suit and a striped silver-and-black tie. He had a sharp jawline and stick-out ears, both pierced with a matching black stud and helix ring; his eyes were a shockingly bright green and were hidden behind a pair of steel Wayfarers and black, red-tipped bangs that he swept to the side. He reminded me a little of a Hot Topic.

"Could you pay attention for one minute?" he snapped.

I jumped slightly and muttered a quick apology under my breath.

He hesitated for a moment, playing awkwardly with an earring. "Listen, kid. There's something strange about you that I'd like to talk about."

"Strange?" I stopped, eyes widening as I suddenly remembered last week's events. "Oh, no... that? Please tell me it's not what I think it is."

"Depends," he said, shrugging. "Are you into anime?"

"Oh, what the fuck, you're telling me I guessed right? You can't be serious!"

He shook his head and chuckled, motioning to his eyes. It was with a jolt that I noticed they weren't just a regular, albeit rather intense shade of green that I'd assumed they were—they were that shade of green, with spots of light swimming inside the iris and a dark ring around the pupil, and as a cloud passed over the sun, it became all but possible to ignore the bright glow radiating from them. Glasses and chartreuse eyes, I thought, for what was surely the twentieth time in the last few days. That fucking combination.

"When did this first happen to you?" he asked.

"Last week."

"Are you sure?"

"What? Yeah."

"It's just... things like this usually aren't a one time event. Chances are you've already had many episodes similar to what you experienced last week, even if you don't remember them. This one's effects were just permanent. I mean—I'm not an expert, but it's likely, if I'm going off every other recorded incident." I gave him a confused look, and he let out a long, frustrated sigh before continuing, "Have you ever experienced out-of-place love for or extreme interest towards death?"

"Oh, now that you mention it..." I furrowed my brows in thought. "Yeah, I have, though I wouldn't describe it the way you did. In my case it was more like, whenever I heard of a death or something, I felt strongly attracted to the idea, on a deep, personal level, like it was a part of me. I guess I stopped bringing it up because it was considered weird, insensitive—but looking back... the feeling was definitely there."

"I knew it. You're a classic example of what we call pureborns: a Grim Reaper by birth."

"A Grim Reaper. Like, Black Butler, that kind of Grim Reaper?"

"Yep."

"I'm one."

"Yep."

"And so are you."

"Last I checked."

"Damn."

The man stopped, adjusting his glasses carefully before beginning, "First, I haven't even introduced myself yet, and I'm sorry for that. Marx Fossi. Member of the soul collecting division. You?"

A long, stomach-turning moment passed before I finally managed to let out, "I'm Johannes. Johan for short. N-nice to meet you, er..."

"Just Marx," he said, and gingerly reached out to shake my hand. "I'm gonna hate myself for suggesting this, but look: you're probably having huge difficulties already remaining seen as a human with your, um... newfound powers. Correct?"

I nodded.

"And you're up to date with the manga, right?"

I hesitated slightly before nodding again.

"So you must know what being a Reaper is like," he muttered, so softly that I barely managed to hear him. "That in mind... how would you feel about joining us as an apprentice?"

"Come again?"

"What you just heard: come and learn how to use your abilities to your advantage."

"You're kidding."

"I'm not," he said, shaking his head. "Thing is, I'm currently mentoring a small group of rookies, and adding you to the list wouldn't be a problem. Come learn a thing or two. Or stay. Either option's fine."

Being asked something like this out of the blue seemed so surreal that it hardly even registered in my brain. I couldn't believe it. First I had learned I wasn't human, and now, this. How the hell was I even supposed to reply?

"Listen, meet me here tomorrow. I can bring some print-offs of information and explain to you in greater detail what to expect if you figure you want to join. Deal?"

"Uh... deal."

Marx breathed a sigh of relief. "Right, then. This is going to sound blunt, but my break's almost over, so I'll be heading back now. Take care, Johan."

With that, he ran off, utilizing a series of short-distance teleportations as he did, until he was completely out of sight. I stared at the empty space where he had been, completely flabbergasted, for what felt like an eternity before I finally managed to recollect myself. It was already 4 o'clock by then, far past when I was supposed to be home, so, albeit with great hesitation, I started walking. Socially anxious as I was, the thought of speaking with Marx again filled me with worry, but I figured that, like he'd said, this might be the best course of action for me, and I ought to at least meet him after school; if anything, it would be the polite thing to do, even if I decided that joining wasn't for me.

Memories of this week's events kept me awake most of the night, but I eventually drifted off—and I dreamt of what it would be like to work as a Grim Reaper.