Noremma Oneshot Collection

Burden {💔}

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CONTAINS MANGA SPOILERS
(END OF SERIES)
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Norman is getting dressed for the day in his room when he hears a knock at his door.

"Hey, Norman? It's Emma." Says the voice from the other side.

Norman drapes a light blue tie around the collar of his shirt. "Come in," he says, turning to face the door after tying a windsor knot in the mirror.

Emma steps inside, shutting the door gently behind her. She blushes a little as she sees Norman tightening the tie around his neck. Damn, he sure could pull of that sophisticated businessman look.

He smiles at her as she enters his room. "Good morning, Emma. What's up?"

She beamed at him with her signature sunshine smile. "Ray and Vincent just wanted me to let you know..." her voice trails off as she catches a glimpse of Norman, whose eyes were now looking sideways into the mirror. He was busy trying to pull up his collar in order to fully conceal the numbers that were tattooed across his throat.

She had noticed similar markings before on some of the others, like Ray, Don, and Gilda, but they never tried to hide them as much as Norman did.

"Hey..." she starts, stepping closer to the white-haired boy.

He turns to face her again as she reaches for the hand that gripped his collar, taking his fidgeting fingers in hers so that she could get a closer look at the exact markings he had on his neck. All she could see however were the top edges of the black ink that peeked out over his white shirt.

Norman's eyes turned sad as he saw the troubled look on her face that had begun to cloud over her usually sunny disposition. He didn't want her to worry about things like this.

"Why do you always cover these up?" She asks, her voice quiet as she looks back up at his sky blue eyes.

He shrugs and gives her a small smile in hopes to comfort her in some way. "I guess it's just a force of habit for me. The demons always recognized that this particular tattoo meant that I was from Gracefield, and therefore the highest-grade meat. I wanted as little of them to know about that as possible, so... I always did my best to hide it."

He watches as Emma's brows furrow even more while she considers his words.

The white-haired boy clears his throat after a moment before continuing.
"Plus, it's better from a workplace perspective to cover up tattoos in the human world, apparently." He adds with a soft chuckle, still trying to lighten the mood.

She looks back down at it, concern ridden on her face.

"Can I see it?" She asks.

Norman simply bows his head in response, removing his hand from hers as he undoes the knot around his neck that he had just put up. He slips off the tie, placing it onto the wooden dresser that sat next to the mirror.

He brings his hands to deftly unbutton the top of his shirt, and tugs his collar down slightly so the girl before him could finally see each of the numbers on his neck.

Her eyes were fixed on the black markings as she reached up to gingerly brush across them with her fingertips.

Norman felt his heart skip a beat at the gentleness of her touch, his eyes darting up to the ceiling, hoping she didn't notice the redness that was starting to creep up on his face.

A few moments of silence passed before Emma's soft voice was heard again. "Did it hurt when they did this to you?"

Norman looked down at her once more. "No. These ones were put on us when we were babies, so none of us remember how it felt." He replied, referring to the rest of the Gracefield children.