II. Quirks
"Kid, where are you?" the Reaper called cheerfully, using his massive hands to lift the couch entirely off the floor and peering in the space beneath. He'd tried to childproof Gallows Mansion by putting away some of the more obvious dangers (he couldn't remember when he'd acquired so many ornamental scythes) but his son was so tiny and he worried all the time about something falling, or latching, or any other potentially harmful situation. The boy was just over a year old and already developing far ahead of human children, and while Shinigami delighted in his son toddling up and down the hallways energetically, he couldn't completely banish the fear that he would look away for a few seconds too long and something would happen.
When he finally found the boy hiding behind the heavy black curtains, his face red and puffy and his cheeks still tear-stained, he couldn't squelch the pang of fear that something had happened. "Kid?" he asked again, crouching next to his son. "What's the matter? Are you all right?"
"It's wrong," the toddler whimpered, pointing a finger at an abstract metal sculpture sitting innocuously in a recessed shelf on the far wall. Shinigami had picked it up in San Francisco about 20 years ago, when he'd been mirror-shopping. He loved it's quirkiness, the off-kilter colours that he felt represented him well.
"How do you mean?" he prompted gently. "Wrong how?"
Kid trembled and hid his face in the Reaper's black shroud. "I dunno," he cried. "I dunno."
The statue was put out in the trash the next morning; quirky wasn't worth his son's tears.