Why, hello there! -waves- My name is Nobody Odd, based on two of my favorite series / books. D. Gray-Man is one of those things in which I love, so I hope to please you with my first fanfic, entitled "River Flows in You." I do hope it is to your liking! So, let us get started with chapter one!
Disclaimer: I own little, and therefore do not own DGM, though I do admit to owning awesome stripped socks.
1. In Which Allen Walker Loses Half His Mind
Her body broke into a mesh of white cloth and blood, splattering onto the asphalt canvas.
And yet.
The car screeched to a halt, the person driving stumbling into the road dimly illuminated by the lone streetlight on the corner. The white stripes for pedestrians stained a darker color as the ticking clock on the driver's dashboard changed to 8:14. He paused at the edge of the broken body, trembling, as his hands fumbled to reach for a cellphone. He patted every pocket until he remembered—ah, yes, it was still in the car, right next to the now-spilled Thai food. He glanced back, then hurried for the phone. Talking to someone, especially after they got hit by a car, was something he lacked when it involved him getting in trouble.
It flipped open to tell him he had no bars. Not a single one, since he was in the country where nothing spoke but the wisps of summer wind and rumbling clouds. The stretch of road continued for miles without houses both ways. What was a person, a young girl, no less, striding about on a dark street while a thunderstorm loomed in the distance? For what purpose did she have to walk towards nowhere? He dropped the phone and hurried back over to the body.
"H-Hello?" he whispered, shaking the body once. Something cricked, causing him to cringe while his hand shook. "A-Are you still alive? Hello? Please tell me you're alive."
One hand, broken in several places, snapped, popped, and contorted in the wrongest way possibly to grasp him by the collar of his shirt. The rest of the body followed; her skirt nearly dragged off her waist as she clung to him. Her teeth, most fallen out from the collision, broke into a ghastly smile that made his eyes widen. Something dripped onto his pants, but he didn't dare to see what. The eyes, dark yellow, stared him deep into his own. Words sputtered from her lips as she spoke, saliva slobbering his cheeks.
"I cannot be killed," she said, "but you, boy, had the nerve to do something such as this. To run someone over. Hah! You would be arrested in an instant. Be glad you got lucky, boy."
Her hand slid from his collar as she rose to her feet, snapping every bone back into place. Her stained clothes she briefly wiped before snapping her neck so it didn't tilt oddly anymore. She chuckled at the boy's surprised face, the way his wide eyes stared at her kind of made him cute. She bent down and held up his chin with her forefinger. "Don't just sit there," she said, smiling. "It's not everyday that you run someone over and drive home without an interrogation by the police. Now, go on—I have an interview to attend to."
He watched as she opened a now-broken pink umbrella with a pumpkin on top and strode down the non-existent sidewalk, hopping once into the tall grass before vanishing from sight. He rubbed at his eyes, then glanced at the spot where he hit her.
The blood disappeared.
~X~
The infamous white-haired boy, known for his charming smile, had many names. Some called him "that weird kid," others called him "what's-his-name." His formal name was Allen Walker, which few retained to their memory. He already owned a house, inherited by his foster-father when he died tragically, and worked like anyone else. He studied at a local college that required to live in the dorms, so he rarely visited the place except when he needed to. The drive from the heart of the downtown metropolis to the sticks was about a thirty minute drive on a road few knew existed.
So, it was odd for him to be on said-road in the first place.
His roommate, Lavi Bookman, immersed himself into studying as Allen told his story. The redhead glanced at him when he mentioned the car accident, his lone eye widened when he mentioned the girl was still alive, and he forgot all about studying when he got to the part where she walked off down the road and into the long grass fields. He sat there, unblinking, as Allen looked at his hands.
"I don't get it," he said, hugging his legs to his chest. "How did she just walk away?"
His roommate stared for a moment longer before re-opening his advanced calculus book. "Well, what you could've seen was just a ghost. I mean, that road is famous for ghost stories. It almost sounds as if you met 'The Burnt Girl.' You heard of that story, yeah?"
Allen nodded. The road he lived on, called "Pushaw" road, was famous for the amount of strange deaths that occurred between five in the evening and three fifty-nine in the morning. "The Burnt Girl" happened when a family traveled through the road, only for the car to breakdown. The parents told their daughter to go and fill the bucket full of gas so that they could get the car running again. She got the gas and, halfway back to the car, a group of boys spotted her and dumped the oil on her. Then, they lit a match and burned her in the ditch with nobody to see for miles. "I know, but she felt warm, Lavi, like a living person kind of warm."
"That's absurd." The redhead shook his head. "No way in hell can someone walk away from an accident like that, especially if they looked dead like you said she did. Unless," he raised an eyebrow, "you were tripping on acid."
"I would never!" he shouted, and his friend burst out laughing.
"I was kidding. Jeez, man, take a chill pill. C'mon," he said, seizing the boy by the neck, "let's go and get ourselves a sandwich and a smoothie, alright? If you calm down, we can try and make more sense of this mysterious accident. Sound good?"
"So long as I don't have to deal with Kanda, sure."
"Aw, you two still on bad terms? Why don't you kiss and make up already?"
Lavi got a punch to the face as Allen left in a huff, storming down the stairs. His roommate, rubbing at the forming bruise and grinning, followed behind him.
Lunch hour caused many people to flock to the sandwich shop. College students and locals mingled together, sodas opened here, sandwiches chewed there, and one open table left. Lavi seized it for them as Allen ordered their food, having six times more sandwiches than his roommate. He sat down at the booth, glancing out the window. The small park, where a fountain spurted water, had chairs outside, occupied by students and professors alike. The weather was perfect, unlike two days ago, when a storm raged upon the outskirts of town.
"Holy crap, Allen, how many sandwiches do you need?"
"About this many for a snack." He unwrapped the first sandwich and sighed. "I still don't understand, though. Am I thinking too hard? Was I tripping on acid? Did someone slip something in my Thai food that evening or what? She looked so little, too. Like a preteen, maybe younger."
Lavi shrugged. "I still believe in my tripping on acid theory, to be honest. Dude, speaking of theories, how're you doing on that studying for your Bio 101 test? Isn't that in a week or so?"
"Don't remind me." He groaned. "I can't even manage to stay awake through my professor's lectures, let alone reading the textbook. All of it just doesn't make sense to me. That's why there are other professions aside from Biology. Maybe I should take up philosophy or history or something like that, but science? No. You'd have to kill me."
"I could hit you with a car. Would that work?"
He glared. "Not funny, Lavi."
"C'mon, lighten up, I'm just trying to make you feel better."
"Yeah, well, it's not working, so don't bother." He finished his sixth sandwich and glanced out the window, blinked once, and felt his eyes widen. His hands dropped to his side as he gawked, looking past some college girls and staring at a peculiar individual with spiky hair and yellow eyes. The eyes looked right at him, the smile reappearing with all teeth instead of three. She waved.
"Allen? You look as if you've seen a ghost or something."
"It's her!" he shouted, pointing at the girl while looking at Lavi. "She's right—there?"
He looked for her in the swarms of people, but she vanished again like the time they first met. All he saw was summer clothes and ice cream in people's hands. The redhead followed his finger and frowned, shaking his head. "I don't see anyone."
"She vanished," he said, letting his finger drop by his side. "She was just there a second ago."
Lavi frowned as he chewed on the last bit of his sandwich. "M'not sure what to believe anymore, dude, 'cause you're acting all crazy." He stood up and stretched. "Man, that was good. Now I'm all ready to take a nap. You?"
"Aren't you going to study for finals?"
"Me? Pshaw. As if. You know me," he grinned, leading the way out of the sandwich shop, "I have a memory like an elephant. All I need to do is look at the pages of the book, take a snapshot for my memory, and I'm all set. Hey, don't look so glum, glum-chum," he slapped a hand on his back, "some people are just born a genius. I'm certain Yuu's studying hard, too."
Allen groaned at the sound of his arch-nemesis's name, following his roommate back to the dorm. He glanced back to see the fountain, checking to see if the girl was there. She wasn't; only the water, the students, and the baker who put out new samples of bread beside his shop. Pigeons shot up from the top of a building, a few feathers tearing off their wings in the process. He caught one and stared at it with curious eyes, then dropped it without another thought. It fluttered behind him, revealing beneath the gray a patch of red.
Upon the rooftop of a bank, directly above the large town clock, the girl sat with her parasol, recently fixed, resting on her shoulder. Chocolate ice cream dribbled down the side of her face as she watched the pair head back to the dormitory, unaware of her eyes following them. Three hundreds years came and went, not with a single bit of fun. Her family, yes, entertained her, but it didn't fill the void inside her, craving to torment ordinary beings. But now, upon meeting a normal boy, she had a small thrill reawakening inside her. She wanted to watch that boy writhe with pain, with disgust. She wanted that boy—a pure, innocent looking individual—to fall into the darkest depths of the human heart.
She giggled as she licked away at her ice cream.
The boy would belong to her.
~X~
"...base ATP production for the Kreg's cycle... isn't that 32 or something?" He tapped his pencil onto the small desk, hearing the sleeping roommate snore away without a care in the world. The temptation to swat him with a pillow overwhelmed him, but his exhaustion made his muscles refuse to budge. He glanced at the alarm clock, beaming green number at him that read "2:34." He groaned as he reached for the coffee he hated more than anything and took another swig. The bitterness nearly made him choke, but he kept his composure and turned the page.
"Ugh... Lavi?" He shook his roommate. "Lavi, can you help me?"
"Nn... maybe." The redhead sat up. "What?"
"What does this say?"
His roommate tilted his head before taking the book out of Allen's hands. "Holy crap, who the heck is your professor, making you learn this word? It's... I can't even pronounce it. It's a lung disease you get when you inhale silica dust or whatever. This word is also known as the longest word in the English dictionary. Man, I really feel bad for you now. You must have Komui Lee, then, huh? I took his class last semester, but damn does he have a cute little sister."
"Lavi!"
"It's true." He yawned. "You met Lenalee, yeah? I know you like her."
His face heated up. "I do not."
"Do too."
"You might, Lavi, but I know better not to get involved with Komui's sister, of all people. I think he'd kill whoever tries to touch her." He closed his biology book and sighed, relaxing in his chair. "I don't think I can handle anymore studying. College is going to be the death of me. Not only do I have a house to pay off, I still have to pay off my caretaker's debts, the lazy jerk. Add that with college tuition, and I'm done for." He groaned again. "I should've joined the Coast Guard or something beforehand, because this is ridiculous."
"That's what Yuu did. Said it really helped him out."
Allen clicked off the lamp before climbing the ladder of the bunk bed and collapsed onto his pillow, exhausted from reading the cursed textbook. He didn't understand how professors could bear to stand reading the whole thing. "Yeah, but Kanda's dumb," he replied, snuggling underneath the inviting blankets. "Like, incredibly dumb. If I put him on a scale of one to ten, I would put him at negative nine thousand or something."
"You're both dumb," his roommate mumbled. "There, I settled it. G'night."
He huffed, too irritated and tired to come up with a decent comeback as the clock ticked closer to three in the morning. Part of his memory recalled, in a statistics class in high school, that more people died at three in the morning than any other time during the day. He grimaced at the thought before rolling over, facing the wall. Death. Death was a funny thing, the greatest mystery of all time, and yet, no one, even with the nerve to try, figured out the mystery behind it. Were there truly any doors beyond the grave?
Or was it a void? Empty? Darkness?
And who was it to say it was dark?
He buried his head beneath the pillow, unable to think further of the idea. Since he hit that girl, his mind thought of disturbing things, ranging from suicide to any other aspect of death. Perhaps he developed an obsession, and an unhealthy one, at that. If he never hit the girl, his mind would be free of the constant torment presented by his memory. Grimacing, he sat up, staring into the darker corners of the shadowed room. His roommate snored away as the faint green hues illuminated only half the room, books revealed by the dim light. They called out to him, beckoning like a siren beckoned to the sailors, their pages laying open.
Stop it. He covered his eyes with his sweating hands. Stop it, leave me alone. I need to sleep.
Dim lights. The street light. The blood, the smell of asphalt having a coppery tinge. The smile, the eyes, the hand grasping him by the collar and yanking him forward to see something no one should see. The grass whispering lies while the wind tugged at his hair, begging him to look away. He can't, he won't, as the girl laughs, descending into the grass, whispering with it—
"Catch me if you can."
He jolted awake at the sound of the alarm clock, beeping to tell him it was six in the morning. His gasps smothered by the beeps, he calmed himself down before Lavi slammed his hand on the clock, obviously agitated. He watched from the corner of his eye as the redhead rose from the depths of his warm blankets, reaching for clothes of some sort. He strapped on boots, grabbed a black shirt, then glanced up at the terrified boy. "Oi, Allen, aren't you coming along to work out? The gym's gonna be packed if we don't hurry."
"Not today, Lavi."
He put on his shirt and frowned. "What's up? Is that accident still bothering you? C'mon, exercising might relieve you a little bit."
"Go on without me. I need to study."
"Alright. Catch up if you change your mind, okay?"
The door closed behind him, leaving Allen alone in the dorm, morning light streaming through the window. Particles of dust revealed by the light hovered and floated over the textbooks, the dirty clothes, the backpacks, the snack food. Lazily, he slung his legs over the edge of the bed and stretched, eying a book Lavi left bookmarked on the table. He climbed down the small ladder and snatched it up, observing the title—Something Wicked This Way Comes. Author, Ray Bradbury. He never had a peaking interest in books, let alone science fiction, so he put the book down before rummaging through his textbooks.
Then he paused, looking back at the book.
Something wicked this way comes.
He shuddered, a sudden cold feeling seizing him as he tried to focus his attention upon the subject of the day—English—and ignored it. A creak made him drop the book and whirl his head around, only to see Komui Lee's daughter, Lenalee, standing there, smiling. She approached him with a clipboard tucked under one arm, pen in the other hand. "Good, you're awake," she said. "I have a favor to ask. We have a tour today, and I was wondering if I could use your room. You know, for the incoming freshmen next year. Most already got their acceptance letters."
"Oh, sure. Do you need any help with the actual tour?"
She tapped the pen against her chin. "Well," she said, "the tour itself is in five minutes—"
"This early in the morning?"
She blinked. "Allen, it's eight in the morning. That's when we always do our tours."
He glanced back to the clock, the numbers revealing she spoke the truth. He looked back to her and cracked a sheepish smile. "Yeah, I guess it is, isn't it?"
She frowned before whacking him upside the head with her clipboard. "Allen, you look exhausted! You haven't been sleeping well lately, haven't you? Is Lavi giving you a hard time? Or is it Kanda? What is it that's troubling you? I can try to help, if you let me." She blinked as her watch beeped. "Oh, no! Hey, Allen, could you please take over the tour for me? It's in fifteen minutes, but I just remembered I have a doctor's appointment! Oh, God, I am so sorry for the inconvenience—"
He shook his head. "No, it's fine, I can handle it. They're meeting at the auditorium, right?"
"Yes. Thank you so much! You're a lifesaver."
"No problem."
It wasn't his first time giving a tour. When Lenalee left, he quickly organized the room, then organized himself. He put on clean clothes and brushed his teeth and hair before putting on his shoes. He picked up the clipboard she left behind, along with the pen, then looked back at the room to confirm everything was okay. Nodding to himself, he left the room, heading towards the auditorium. Maybe this would help him stop thinking about the accident.
He arrived at the school's auditorium, greeted by parents and incoming students alike. He glanced them over, counting them in his head and calling out their name to confirm they were there. Most checked off except for two names. He glanced around. "Is Derek Littlefield and, uh, Road Camelot present?"
Silent shakes of the head and shrugs answered him—that is, until the double doors opened, revealing a stout girl wearing a short skirt appeared. Allen froze at the sight of her. Her brown eyes weren't yellow, and her skin wasn't as dark, but the cunning smile and pink umbrella could not say more. Words failed him when she walked over, nodding at other students. "My name is Road Camelot," she said, her words dripping like candle wax from a burning candle. "I'm not late for the tour, am I? If I am, blame my uncle—he's a horrible driver. Nearly hit a pedestrian on the way here."
He swallowed hard before nodding. "Uh, yes, you are here in time, Miss Camelot."
She giggled. "Please, call me 'Road'. Formalities really make me sick."
He cleared his throat, eying Road the same way she eyed him. "Welcome to Appalachian State University. My name is Allen Walker, and I am your tour guide for the day. Please, if you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask."
As expected, Road's hand went up. "I have a question. How did your hair get so white?"
He frowned as giggles went through the rest of the group. "Please refrain from asking such personal questions, Miss Camelot."
"Why not?" she asked, pouting. "I like asking personal questions."
He ignored her and proceeded to give the tour. First the dorms, then the main teaching halls, the museum, the dining hall, the small park, and the remaining bits of the campus. Parents and students both had questions, ranging from "How much snow do you guys get?" and "Are there any major fraternities here?" Allen answered them to the best of his ability, but he felt as if his answers lacked any sense of meat to them. His mind was elsewhere, eying the young girl who followed his every move.
At last, the tour ended. Parents departed with their children as Allen found himself alone with the girl in the empty auditorium. She grinned at him as he tried to ignore her.
"What's the matter, 'Allen'? Are you feeling okay?"
"You're the girl I hit the other day," he breathed.
She snickered as her fingers caressed his cheek, making his breathing hitch. "Ah, poor little you," she said, brushing away some of his hair covering his eyes. "You look so tired. Have I been haunting your dreams, by any chance? Has your mind slowly deteriorated in the past few days? Look at me." She grabbed his chin and made him look into her eyes. "I'm alive, aren't I? I can still walk. I'm not hurt, though I should be. And, normally, I would kill you for finding out my secret. But Allen, you are so adorable when you look at me like that. And because you're cute, I've decided to spare you."
"What are you?"
She blinked, then burst into a roar of laughter. "What am I? I am human, like you, only more so. I have found a secret that the world wants to hide. I keep it to myself and my family."
She stood on her tip-toes, bringing him into a hug, whispering, "I am immortal, Allen Walker."
~X~
Chapter one, done! Tell me what you think! Favorite, alert, or leave a review. I'll see you in chapter 2!