Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Ren never quite understood why other children were afraid of the dark. The absence of light certainly didn't make it any more likely for monsters or scary creatures to appear. If anything, at night, when most were in deep slumber or inebriated, the emotions of people could be better kept in check so as to not attract the fangs and claws of Grimm. Submerged in shadows, the outline of objects seemed to merge together, their clamorous shapes and colors mellowing out and letting the mind rest easy. Thus, Ren found comfort in the darkness, and he would often find himself answering to its alluring call. Before he realized it, and despite Nora's protest, Ren was already running through the school gardens in the middle of the night.
He had found it particularly difficult to fall asleep, so he had made the mistake of falling back into old habits instead. Despite being in a faraway place, and despite the turmoil going on inside his thoughts, Ren sensed nostalgia swelling up inside him as he dashed through the school campus. By virtue of the darkness, nothing unfamiliar stood out in the environment around him. There was just the ground in front of his feet, the wind gently blowing past him, the light tingle of his muscles and the sensation of sweat along his arms and on top of his brow.
Whether he had been exerting himself too much he couldn't quite tell; he wasn't even sure how long ago he had begun running. However, Ren would be all too suddenly snatched from his thoughts and dragged back down to reality. He noticed another person quickly making their way toward him, their figure only barely visible due to the light still filtering through the windows of the nearby building.
Ren stopped and prepared himself to face the consequences of his actions: he was certain that he was about to be confronted by an authority figure about him being out of the dormitories in the middle of the night. Expectantly, he stood and waited as the other person kept getting closer and closer until, eventually...
*Bonk*
"Ugh!"
"Gah!"
They bumped right into Ren.
Perplexed, Ren blinked a couple of times while trying to understand what had just happened. In the meantime, the other person rubbed their head while whispering some profanities underneath his breath. Finally, the unknown figure lifted his face and spoke:
"Well... this is certainly something. If I'm going to 'run into' someone in the middle of the night, then I would much rather it didn't go down so literally. Seriously man, couldn't you just, like, move a couple of steps?"
Still taken aback, Ren prepared himself to address the annoyed man before he sensed yet another person approaching them from behind. Figuring a school warden would finally make an appearance, Ren turned around quickly, ready to explain the situation and clarify that he had no relationship with the stranger he had bumped into. But, once again, he could tell something was off about the presence approaching him: its movements were far too precise and meticulous to belong to a guard doing their usual rounds. Suddenly, Ren came to a realization. Those movements were indeed quite unusual, so much so that they had caught his eye before, during the entrance examination. A bit hesitant, though still confident in his hunch, Ren turned to the nearby building and called out in a hushed tone:
