［ house of cards. ］

[ lie down dead ]

❧

Blood was flowing non-stop from his nose. The blurry image of a woman of old age screaming and pointing her finger at him was frozen in his mind, although he didn't really care to make the image clearer, nor her voice audible. It sounded like nails scrabbling against a chalkboard, and he found that voice disgusting.

He had to come to, though. It was so unbearable. When he did, his ears picked up that one thing he hated to hear the most in such a situation like this one.

"Kuroyanagi Masamori!"

His dilated pupils retracted and he was instantly dragged back into reality, back into the cold room with nothing but him and the nagging grandma that was his discipline teacher. He tasted blood from the tip of his thin lips, which meant that his nose was, indeed, still bleeding.

"How many times do I have to tell you?!"

He was sitting on a small wooden chair facing the aged lady hollering at him, his face directed towards her, but his eyes somewhere else. The rays of the ten a.m sunlight shone through the window and illuminated his already pale face, making it even lighter, and tinting strands of his blackish-brown hair a shade of ocher. 

"Everyday this same event happens.."

Get your facts straight, woman, it's not everyday this happens, the teen thought to himself as his eyes shifted from the photograph of a group of graduation students hung behind the woman's desk to the vase of carnations displayed beside the window. He heard the sounds of students laughing outside the cold room, a sign that break had started. Almost at the wrong timing, his stomach let out a low growl, and his eyebrows furrowed slightly, which unfortunately gave the lady in front of him a wrong impression.

"Are you even paying attention?!" 

Eyebrows still knit together, he finally turned to look at the wrinkled, saggy and furious face of the discipline teacher. He looked slightly displeased at her remarks.

"Punching a student for the third time this week?! You risk getting suspended from school!"

"He started it first." The teen spoke in a hushed tone, clearly inaudible.

"Do you know how hurt he was?! He was crying when he told me about it!"

That's because he's a coward and he loves to play the victim everytime this happens, the teen's mind retorted once again, but his mouth kept sealed.

"See me after school and stay back for fourty-five minutes!!"

" 'Kay." He muttered under his breath, the blood flowing from his nose seizing the chance to slip inside his mouth, dyeing his pale pink lips dark red. He wiped the blood off his nose with his white school shirt, staining it in the process.

"Good. Now go for your break." The discipline teacher said as she sat down. "If this happens one more time this week, you're going to be suspended. No other choices."

The youth said nothing, but nodded slightly. He stood up from his seat and walked out of the room, but not before giving the chair he just sat on a swift and hard kick out of suppressed anger, which made it skid across the room. Seeing the scene, the teacher merely sighed deeply.

As soon as he walked out, he caught sight of a person standing amongst the dark corners behind the door. Honestly, it caught him off guard, but his receeded anger boiled back up again after he saw the beaming face of a male slightly shorter than him with dishevelled long hair and a sling hanging from his right arm.

"Had fun going to Sawada-san's, Kuro?" He asked, his wide grin revealing his crooked rows of teeth, which only added more fuel to the other's fire. "Helping victims again? Well, it seems that you won't be doing that anytime soo-"