Math class, created for the torturous purpose of children’s suffering. Grey sucked at it, so he had no idea how anyone could ever be good at such a horrid subject.
“Can anyone write a proof proving that AB is similar to CD?”
The class collectively grumbled, and no one raised their hand. Except for one person. With a confident expression on her round face, curled bangs, and her blue-black hair pulled into a loose ponytail behind her, Vesper Solaris raised her hand for the eighth time. She was the only person who understood this form of code, and as always, the teacher smiled and called on her.
“Yes, come up to the board, dear.”
She nodded, and walked up to the board, grabbing the blue dry erase marker and bringing its tip to the board. Without any hesitation of moving her eyes away from it, she drew the chart and started filling out the steps accordingly, and she was finished within a minute.
Ms. Kim scanned the board, looking for any mistakes she could point out, but just shook her head. “Good job. Thank you, Vesper.” She then continued teaching, talking about how the proof worked, on and on.
The girl smiled and returned to her seat, glad to be appreciated. A few nearby students gave her a thumbs-up or smiled at her, trying to get on her good side. She was the friend you would want if you had a test coming up, or math homework done at the last minute.
She was also one of the popular kids. She won in every aspect.
It was always like that. No matter the class, that girl always knew the answer- and the teachers loved her for it. It was always “Follow Vesper’s example,” or, “Why can’t you be more like her?”
Grey, sitting in the back of the class like usual, squinted as he read her proof, written in neat, legible handwriting. None of it made sense, it was as if he was trying to decipher some kind of alien language.
How could she know so many theorems? How could she know how to apply it perfectly to each and every problem?
He wished he could be like her. She was perfect, and kind to everyone, so everyone was kind to her back. She was correctly deemed the smartest kid at school. He was the opposite of perfect, and always said the wrong thing at the wrong time. If people at school knew him, he’d be called the dumbest kid at school.
Pursing his lips, he grabbed his mechanical pencil and focused on his notebook paper, adding on to little doodles he had in the corner of his page.
Well, she was doing well in school, and was on generally good terms with everyone. He was happy for her.
Maybe also the slightest bit envious of her perfection, though.
269Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡPLDFaTLqxw
“So, why do you guys have a magic library in the back of your cafe anyway?” Grey was balancing along the curb of the sidewalk while he walked home with Winter, carefully putting one foot in front of the other and holding his arms out so he could stand upright better.
The weather was actually quite nice. For the Rainy City, they hadn’t had rain for one or two days, which was pretty nice.
Winter answered: “It’s a doorway.”
“Like a portal?” He tilted his head to the side, his right foot slipping as he lost focus. “AAH!”
The taller boy reached out and grabbed his elbow, stopping him from completely falling to the dirty ground. “Yes. But for spirits. You can go anywhere.”
Grey huffed a quick “thanks,” and got back on his feet to keep walking, adjusting the sunglasses on his head to make sure they didn’t fall. “Anywhere? That seems a little powerful.”
He nodded. “It is. We guard it.”
The new hire narrowed his eyes, pondering whether or not he should say what he was thinking. He was really working on preventing insensitive stuff from coming out of his mouth, but… “You guys nearly lost to a mid-level ghost.”
Winter raised his eyebrows slightly. “But we didn’t,” he said, pointing to his face, and obviously referencing that time they defeated the One With a Million Faces. Well, Aeris, mostly.
“But you almost did. Aeris’ spell thing barely worked outside of the library,” Grey said, trying to defend his statement.
“She’s the guide to the library. I guard.”
“I don’t really get it,” he said, not knowing how just another teenage boy like Winter would be able to guard, but he just rolled with it, “but all right!” He wasn’t one to question things too hard.
Winter replied with another nod, and they walked in silence for a bit. It was getting dark, as the sun had nearly dipped below the horizon. Long shadows formed, especially their own shadows.
Grey stood up a little straighter, and looked around the path they were walking on. Empty. There was barely anyone there at all, at the darkness surrounding them and the flickering lamp posts weren’t helping.
“Hey, this feels a little weird,” Grey said. And it was. The whole street was dead silent, no cars to pass by, or buzzing of street lights to attack his ears.
Winter made a “hm,” sound, which was how he responded to things while he was thinking of something else.
Now they were making their way back through the long, winding road that connected the more suburban area of the city to the nearby plaza. Even though it was late, there would usually be at least a few people driving past. Nope.
Grey gulped. His nerves were really killing him, he was so jumpy. Something felt so off. He stopped balancing on the curb and opted to walk behind Winter for safety.
Suddenly, the taller boy stopped, calling Grey to bump into his back. “Hey, what was that for?” asked Grey.
Winter’s breathing hitched. “Shadow spirits.”
“Sh-shadow spirits?” He remembered reading about them in the spirit library, since he was so excited to learn all about the ghosts he was seeing. In fact, on his first day, he spent more time reading than actually working… and he also got lost in the library. Aeris had to go in there and fish him out, and boy, she wasn’t happy.
Anyway, he tried to recall all he knew about those spirits. Were those the ones that mimicked your movements? No… the shadow spirits were as the name said, yes, that’s what he remembered reading.
They were quite rare, and only created when a soul was split in half after death. The shadow parts were all the darkness that the poor soul had before dying, while the light would fly up into the sky and do… whatever. Usually they were alone, though, which made it odd behavior for them to be in a group, but he didn’t really know anymore. He stopped reading at that point, but still remembered that to make up for the lack of light in a soul…
They stole parts of other people’s to make up for it.
Grey turned around, and realized that the sun had fully gone down, with the only light being the lampposts and the full moon.
Oh. Holy hell.
It was the perfect time for him to remember that they came out at night, as it was harder to see them. The perfect cover for attack.
“Winter, what do we do?” he asked, tensing up.
“...Go somewhere they can’t see us.”
Right. He looked around the empty space, trying to find something, and his gaze landed on a random warehouse on the other side of the road. The windows had light shining through, and he could hear faint music coming from there, so that meant there were probably people there.
“Uh… do warehouses work?”
“Any enclosed space.”
“Okay,” he said, but just in case, he checked around one last time, and saw something horrifying.
Most people wouldn’t see just any old shadow as horrifying, but when you’re running from shadow monsters?
That was certainly a feeling.
It was approaching him.
He saw it for only a second, under the light of a lamppost, moving slowly towards him. Then it flickered and it was gone, but if he really squinted, he could see it getting faster, and faster, and faster-
Grey jumped back and grabbed Winter’s hand, then took off running, quickly leading the other boy to the warehouse across the street.
He looked back, and saw pure darkness.
He sprinted faster, though it still wasn’t enough, since he felt an odd, tickling sensation around his ankles and realized the shadow was curling around the bottom of his foot, and curling around Winter, too.
It didn’t matter to him too much whether or not the shadow got him, but Winter? He wouldn’t let it catch Winter.
Finally, they reached the warehouse, and Grey let go of Winter’s hand to tug at the handle. It didn’t budge. It was locked. He banged on the door. “LET US IN!”
The loud music kept playing, and the shadows were getting closer. Closer, and closer, and… it reached them, curling around their legs again. The longer it stayed, the more Grey started to feel it, and he also had a horrifying sensation of his energy draining.
“Let me,” Winter said, and Grey stepped out of the way right before he kicked, really hard. “AH!”
Nothing happened… because he had kicked the wall next to the door.
“Two steps to the left,” Grey said, standing on his tip-toes in hopes that it would be harder for the shadows to get him. It wasn’t, since you couldn’t really fight off a shadow.
Winter mumbled “thanks,” and he followed his instructions, stepping to the left and then kicking at the door again. This time it worked, and it burst open.
Without looking inside the warehouse, they both burst in, slamming the door shut behind them. Grey grabbed some random crates to put in front of the door, and Winter stood there, breathing heavily.
“Okay, we’re safe,” he said, and climbed up some boxes to reach one of the higher windows, looking outside. He only saw darkness.
“Who the hell are you?!” A voice called, sounding snappy and full of emotion. When he turned around to take a look, he found that the people inside the warehouse were not workers, but instead a trio of teenagers dressed in a very particular way, donning skateboards. There were ramps set up on top of the boxes, and the light came from a little portable lantern and a combination of people’s phone flashlights.
Some guy with green dyed hair turned off the music that was blaring over his phone.
Everyone was looking at the strange pair that just barged into their hang out spot.
“I’ll ask again, who are you? This is our place, you guys can go make out somewhere else,” said the first girl. Her hair was bleached besides the roots, and she had heavy makeup. She stood with her arms crossed and a frown plastered on her face.
“We’re not here to make out,” Winter said with a deadpan.
“...” Grey felt heat rush to his face and pinched his nose bridge, not saying anything.
The odd group kept staring at them blankly, waiting for an answer.
A shorter girl with an equal amount of makeup stepped forward, a hand on her hip and glaring just as hard. “My sister asked who the hell you are!”
Grey swore he heard her voice somewhere else, but just cleared his throat. “Ah, yeah. Sorry. We were walking home, and then there were these spirits that attacked. We’re stuck here without an exorcist, so we’re figuring out what to do while we hide.”
The taller, blonde girl guffawed. “Spirits!? There’s been less than usual in this family, the Crowmore family practically eliminated them all!”
“Yeah!” The shorter sister agreed.
Grey was about to argue back, saying that he saw spirits basically every day, but then he remembered that not everybody saw them like him. They could only see ones that wanted to attack, and it was true, there was a huge decrease of hostile spirits thanks to Mikaela Crowmore and his family.
But they were still there, and dangerous ones still existed. Like the shadow monsters.
“Why are you really here?”
“We just said-” Grey started, but was interrupted when there was a knock on the door. The sound echoed throughout the warehouse, and everyone tensed up. “Winter, do shadow spirits kno-”
“No. They don’t.”
“Right. Okay.” He had to focus on his breaths, in, out. Currently, he was stuck in a warehouse with only Winter and a group that clearly didn’t like him or believe him. Great. Just great.
However, the taller girl, who Grey now decided was probably the leader of the group, had her eyes widened. “Oh, come on. Not her again.”
Grey looked out the window again, pressing his hands against the glass, and realized he could now see outside if he squinted enough. With peering eyes now focused towards the door, he saw some middle-aged lady standing around in front of it, a stern look overtaking her features. “Who’s that?” he asked.
She rolled her eyes, and sat down on her skateboard, leaning her face against her hand. She made a dismissive motion. “Some annoying lady that lives nearby. She comes knocking every time we try to hang out, saying she’ll call the police.”
“I- just leave then,” Grey said. “Why not find another place to hang out?”
“May doesn’t want to,” said the boy with green hair, and the leader of the group rolled her eyes. It was probably safe to assume that she was named May.
There was another knock, and he peered out the window, seeing the same lady there, the stern expression she wore never fading, like a mother about to scold a child for cheating on a test.
May scoffed at his statement, and he looked back at her. “This is our spot, obviously.”
Her sister, the shorter one with long, black hair, nodded along with what the leader of the group said.
“And because this is our spot, you should really leave,” she continued.
Grey resisted the urge to roll his eyes at this stereotypical rebel girl, since he was more preoccupied on the shadow creature- spirit- things outside. “Look, it’s dangerous out there, so we’re not leaving. We should also let that lady in,” he said.
“No!”
“Fine,” Grey asked, and looked to his friend. “Winter, what do you think?”
“Hm?” The dark-hair boy perked up a bit at hearing his name. “What is it?”
Was he not listening? He did kind of seem to be out of it, but that’s how he usually looked. Grey asked the question again, this time a little more clearly. “What should we do about the shadow spirits outside? And the lady…”
“...I will fight them.”
“Fight the- what!?” Grey jumped down from the crates and walked over to his friend. “You’re gonna get hurt! You don’t even have an exorcist weapon!” Then, he paused, fully ready to suggest that he himself would fight the spirit.
“Eh, let him go outside to fight your imaginary monster,” stated May, scratching the back of her neck. “What do you guys think?” she asked the two people behind her, and they all responded with different forms of agreement.
She was starting to get on his nerves. “It’s not imaginary!” Grey argued back, and the two of them started bickering.
“Look, what’s the shadow gonna do to us? Turn off the light?” She huffed, and raised her hands in feigned shock. “Ooh, spooky! It’s so dark!” The sarcasm in her voice was practically oozing off of her.
“No, idiot! Just listen to me! They’ll steal your soul! Well, not exactly, but parts of it, which will feel like your energy draining-”
“The Crowmores took care of most of the spirits, idiot. We’re fine.”
“Dumbass!”
“Stupid kid!”
“Wannabe punk!”
“Goddamn t-”
While the duo continued throwing empty insults at each other, the shorter sister raised a hand, and quietly spoke up. “Um, guys-”
“FREAKING TAYLOR SWIFT LISTENER!”
“AT LEAST I DON’T SOB TO MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE AFTER MY BOYFRIEND OF TWO DAYS BROKE UP WITH ME!”
“WELL I DON’T SPEND ALL DAY PUTTING TOGETHER AN OUTFIT THAT LOOKS LIKE A HIGHLIGHTER THREW UP ON YOU!”
“Guys- I think that guy noticed something-”
“SHUT THE HELL UP!” The green-haired person yelled, and then gently placed a hand on the shoulder of May’s darker-haired sister. When everyone had done what he said, and the room was practically dead silent, he gestured to the girl in front of him. “She has something to say.”
Shyly, she nodded and took a deep breath. Everyone’s attention was on her. “Yes, that guy over there,” she pointed to Winter, “I think he noticed something. He’s got his ear to the door.”
Heads turned in that direction, and sure enough, Winter was leaning up against the door, trying to hear whatever was on the other side.
Grey walked forward to his friend, putting his ear up to the door, but he heard nothing. “What do you hear?” He asked, not understanding the dead silence.
“Nothing.”
“...So what’s wrong?”
Winter said: “Silence. But she is still here.”
“The lady?”
The pale boy nodded, and Grey went back up on top of the crates to look out the window. “Oh my god!” he exclaimed, and rushed back down to open the door that they had closed.
While they were arguing, the woman had fallen to the ground, her hair sprawled out behind her in the grass. She looked horrible, and as if all the color had been drained from her. He could only assume the shadow spirits had gotten to her, and taken part of her soul.
He struggled with the doorknob for a bit and then opened the heavy door, grabbing the lady by her hand and dragging her inside. He then shut the door, and leaned and put his head over her chest to listen for a heartbeat.
Thankfully, he could hear it- faint, but still there. She wasn’t dead.
“She’s alive,” Grey said, but Winter’s face looked less than happy.
“It took part of her soul,” he said, and though he was blind, it looked like he was staring straight at her heart.
Grey didn’t know what to do. He never really dealt with having parts of a soul stolen before.
“How do we know she didn’t just faint?” asked the girl he had argued with just seconds earlier. “How do you even detect a soul?”
“I feel it.”
“Souls?”
“Yes.”
“Great, so we’re stuck here with a lunatic,” she said, frowning and pinching her nose bridge in between her thumb and index finger. However, the fact that she admitted that they were stuck in there- maybe she at least was starting to believe him.
“He’s not a lunatic,” said Grey, glaring at her harshly. He usually didn’t act so… rude, but this girl was getting on his nerves, and it was a long night, probably way past his curfew. He’d be in for a lot of yelling when he got home. Plus, she insulted his friend.
To be fair, it was a little strange that he could “sense souls,” but everything had been strange recently. He was used to it.
Winter exhaled. “Doesn’t matter. We can go.” He got up and started to go to the door, but then stopped when he heard that his friend wasn’t following him. “Grey?”
Grey stood up too, and faced his friend. “What about the spirits outside?”
The lanky boy took a few steps to the door, then pressed his ear against the smooth surface. “Can’t hear it.” He stepped back, and stood there for a few seconds before continuing and murmuring: “Can’t feel it.”
“So… they’re gone?”
He nodded, and Grey was a bit confused, but still sighed in relief.
“Wow. So you started a racket for nothing, huh?” May glared down at Grey, and he had to admit, her angry look did make him a little nervous.
“Would you rather that you ended up getting part of your soul stolen?” Grey replied after averting his eyes from her glare.
She paused for a moment, then sighed. “Fine. Sorry. But now we practically have a corpse in this warehouse, and everyone is tense, so what do you think we should do? Huh?”
She was right, the vibes of the room were really tense. The woman was still lying on the ground, and shadow monsters were still released outside. Grey… really didn’t know what to do, so he just closed his eyes and tried to remember all he knew about the spirits.
“Well?” She asked again. “I don’t like her at all, but I don’t want to have, like, basically a death on my hands. Or more, for doing nothing.”
He hadn’t studied much, just a few things before skipping to the next book in the library, but… he had to come up with something to do. They couldn’t just do nothing.
“Well, the spirits will probably be satisfied for now,” he said. “But they’ll be back soon. I'll tell Mika about it tomorrow so he can eliminate them.”
“And the lady?” the shorter girl chimed in, now standing behind her older sister. “What do we do with her?”
“I…”
“She lives nearby,” Winter said.
“Wha… oh!” He finally realized what his friend meant. It took him a second, but Winter was correct. Someone from the trio mentioned that the lady lived close to the warehouse. “Right, let’s take her to her house. Hopefully this will all be resolved tomorrow, so when the spirit is exorcized, she’ll get her soul back. That’s how it works… right?”
“Yes. But after three days, no,” replied Winter, and a sense of confusion filled Grey.
“Why after three days?”
“Digestion.”
Oh.
So now they had three days to find the shadow spirits and eliminate them, before that little piece of the lady’s soul was fully digested and gone forever. But trying to find shadows in the city was like finding a needle in a haystack. They’d have to be quick.
ns 15.158.61.21da2
