I don't know if this will grow into something bigger, but for now, here's an intro.

Chapter 1

The sun was bright, the birds chirped, and Makoto's classmates were being raucous, as usual. Another Monday morning. She leaned back on her seat and stared at the window two desks to her left, running her fingers through her coal black hair. If she had been the protagonist of a manga, her desk would have been that one in the corner, at the back of the class and next to the window. As things were, she had to stare at it from afar and deal with being in the middle of the classroom, with people moving around her all the time.

She prepared for the impact. Three, two, one…

A crash, and somebody tumbled over a chair to her right. She didn't look at it. She didn't need to. In fact, there was a chance that if she did, someone would blame her for it.

They were so loud. Why wouldn't the teacher come already…?

She stared vacantly at the sky outside, feeling acutely the presences of the people in the room. Takeda, behind her, was feeling down. She'd flunk the next chemistry test. Fukui, visible from the corner of her eye, was coming up with something. A flu? Sasaki kept sneaking glances at Yoshida. He'd confess that afternoon and she'd turn him down.

Being bombarded like this bothered her when she was little, but she was used to it now. If only she had any interest in her classmates' teenage problems, she could have had a lot of fun.

A new person came into the room. Shuuichi Minamino. The anomaly.

He sat two desks away from her, right where a manga protagonist would. He entered her field of vision soon enough, apologizing his way between students and catching the longing gazes of many.

He was an anomaly because he wasn't human. He stuck out like a sore thumb in a place full of reiki, demonic energy rolling from him like waves of cheap cologne. And he was concealing it, too. To the trained eye, he was the equivalent of the shifty guy in the train that nobody wants to sit next to because you're sure he's carrying a knife in his pocket, but people just flocked to him because it didn't show on the surface. He was the only subject Makoto considered worthy of study in the entire school.

He also was, easily, the most inaccessible of them all, what with always having people vying for his attention.

Her stare traveled to the two girls who were chatting him up. They were notorious for pestering him every chance they got. They would ambush him after the last class. She felt kind of sorry for him, and in a moment of weakness wondered if she should tell him about it. Then again, that would mean walking up to Minamino, say in front of her companions that she knew something she shouldn't, and be the talk of the class again. Was it worth it?

She remembered then that she would skip school the next few days. It could be fun, in that case.

She stood and walked up to them, tapping a few people on the shoulder to make way and spooking most of them with her trademark stony face. She had gathered an audience before she could reach the anomaly.

"Please excuse the interruption, Minamino." Her voice was quiet and had a raspy quality, as if not making much use of it had made it shrivel up. It added to the creepy effect. She liked it. "I thought you would like to know that Chiba and Amano are planning to corner you in the hallway of the chemistry lab after class. The baseball team will not be out on the field yet, so you may use the window to escape if necessary."

Which wouldn't be. The girls had gone white as a sheet. They wouldn't try anything.

The anomaly blinked twice, studied her face with keen eyes, and after he ascertained whatever he was looking for, he smiled politely. "Thank you, Kodama. It is certainly good to know."

With a small dip of her head, she said, "Glad to be of service," and retreated to her seat. This time the crowd parted for her, and she felt accomplished at having creeped out her entire class and done a good deed at the same time. Poorly concealed gossip would keep her entertained for the rest of the day.

—

Makoto Kodama was (purportedly) fifteen and had the soul of a bitter old woman. According to her parents and several psychologists, it was due to the deep trauma she underwent when her biological mother abandoned her. According to herself and people who knew better, it was because she saw the idiocies people were about to commit all the time, and, usually, no amount of warnings would manage to stop them.

Ever since she was able remember, she had seen things. Ghosts, people's energy, events that hadn't yet happened. It was normal for her, but she said it out loud a few times when she was little and her parents started dragging her to doctors and therapists. When she advised someone not to do something, they wouldn't pay any attention to her. And as she got older, mostly after especially disastrous outcomes, some would point at her and say she had jinxed it, so she just stopped warning others.

Makoto sat in a hospital room next to her grandmother, who was sleeping soundly. The woman had suffered a heart attack the same day she had spoken to Minamino, and she had decided to spend the following days keeping her company while her parents worked.

Her grandmother had exactly nine more days to live. Makoto had told her weeks beforehand so that she could be ready when the time came. She had never dismissed her. She said oddities ran in the family, and had introduced her to somebody who could help with her powers.

Makoto would stay by her side until she left. She owed her that much.

She was reading one of the required books for Japanese class when two nurses asked her to leave the room. Taking off her reading glasses, which hung on a chain with tiny decorative beads around her neck, she vacated the room quickly, and apparently she wasn't the only one who had been shooed out to the hallway.

The Shuuichi Minamino stood outside a room at the other end of the corridor, and for a change, he was alone. Now that was something she hadn't seen coming.

He noticed her stare and reciprocated it. Social rules dictated that they should walk up to each other and engage in small chat. Makoto was disdainful of such conventions as only an outcast fifteen year old could be, but she figured she could learn a little more about her enigma if she played nice.

His energy felt duller, subdued as she approached. There was a dark edge about it. Whatever the reason he was in the hospital, it had hit him hard.

"Hi, Kodama. I hadn't expected to see you here."

A lie? Surely their homeroom teacher had told the class of her situation.

"Likewise," she said. "Who are you here for?"

His gaze was analytical, and he stared at her like she was a puzzle to solve. She thought it was ironic.

"You don't know?"

She huffed lightly. "Despite what rumors you may have heard at school, I do not know everything."

"That is good to know as well." He glanced at the window of the room. The shutters were open, and there was a woman in her late thirties, sitting on a bed and talking to a doctor. "My mother fainted yesterday. The doctors have ordered some tests and the results aren't promising."

Makoto walked closer to the glass. She could feel Minamino's piercing stare with every step, but she wanted to take a better look at his mother.

Young, too young. Her hair was long and black, like Makoto's own. She looked worn. Her energy was fading, and when Makoto concentrated on it, she had a flash of the woman, like a movie still, surrounded by doctors, lying lifeless on that bed. It would happen soon. She blinked a few times, willing the vision away.

"You aren't human," Minamino commented behind her.

She didn't turn around. "Birds of a feather," she muttered, unimpressed. She had been sitting two desks away from the guy for months, after all.

"But you aren't a full-blooded demon."

"And you have a human body." She did turn to face him this time, and though her tone wasn't hostile, her eyes were sharp. "What is your point?"

"My apologies if I offended you. I was merely curious."

"That's okay." She played absentmindedly with the chain of her glasses. "My father was a demon, or so I am led to believe."

There was an uncomfortable silence between the two. Makoto stared at her feet, thinking she liked it better when he could examine him from afar.

"You're here for your grandmother, right?"

She lifted her head at once. This was a subject she could get behind of. "Yes. She will die soon. Nine days." She said in a clinical way that tended to make others uneasy. "I want to keep her company."

"You can tell when she'll die?"

A ghost of a shrug. "I have known her for a long time. It is easier that way."

"Did you see anything when you looked at my mother?"

Way to corner her in conversation. Even distressed as he was, he still thought clearly enough to maneuver his way with words. "You could have asked right away," she said icily. "I do not bite. I do not pose a danger to you. I do not associate with anybody who could, and it is actually refreshing to have someone ask instead of treating me as if I had grown a second head." Minamino began to open his mouth, but she cut him before he could begin. "And yes, I saw something."

He held his breath, and she didn't delay her reply, because she may have been creepy to the average Joe, but never cruel. "I'm sorry. She will not make it."

Minamino exhaled sharply, and Makoto felt genuinely bad for him. His energy grew restless but sharper. Supernatural powers aside, she could almost see the wheels of his mind turning.

"How long?"

She tilted her head left and right, slowly, then turned to the glass to look at the woman again. "I cannot tell," she said after a few tense seconds. "I would say less than two weeks, but I can't know for sure." She faced him again. "Sorry."

"A week, then," he muttered to himself. "Thank you, Kodama. You've been a great help. Again," he smiled weakly.

"Again?"

"Chiba and Amano."

"Ah…" She shuffled her feet. "It was nothing. I only did it because I was bored."

Although he still looked sad, the corner of his mouth quirked up in amusement. "You spook people for fun?"

Feeling a little childish hearing it put like that, she mirrored his expression. "Don't you?"

—

He did.

Minamino was in the hospital every day after school, and he took to approach Makoto from the back every time. Perhaps he did it to make a point. Perhaps it was the highlight of his day, which, if she thought about it, had to be quite depressing. At any rate, in record time, he managed to have her on high alert from the moment the bell of Meiou High rang to whenever he decided to show up.

He also brought her homework. Makoto suspected he had a substantial sadistic streak.

He dropped a notebook full of math problems on her lap. Offended, she said, "Today you are going to buy a ham, cheese and lettuce sandwich. And you will regret it."

He halted mid-motion when he was about to hand her a stack of photocopies. "Did you actually see that?"

She looked up at him through her reading glasses, face impassive and golden chain reflecting the light of the hospital's fluorescent light. In all honesty, she couldn't make a single feature of his face with those on. "You have been cycling through all the sandwiches of the vending machine. Skip that one. The cheese is pasty." She lowered her glasses, looked into his eyes and confessed, "I tried it this morning."

She outstretched a hand, and Minamino put the papers on it.

"Have you been living off of the vending machines all these days?" He asked.

"No. Sometimes I go to the cafeteria. They have sobapan."

She was quite certain that her classmate was looking at her with a mix of concern and pity. Oh, how low she had fallen.

"How is your mother today?" She asked, trying to divert the subject.

"She's having a good day. She's only on analgesics. In fact," he said with a half smile, "she asked if she could meet you."

Makoto almost dropped all the school material she was balancing on her knees. "What."

"You. Her." He pointed at the room and made a walking motion with his middle and index fingers.

She glared at the offending fingers. The effect was more comical than menacing. "I meant why would she want to meet me."

"Because she saw you the other day through the window and she knows we're classmates."

"You told her?"

"Of course," and he added. "I think she'd like to see you, but you don't have to go if you don't want to."

She avoided his eyes and kept busy playing with some strands of her hair. Meeting new people was always stressful. "What else does she know?" She muttered.

"Just that you're here with your grandmother." He paused and added, "She doesn't know anything else. She doesn't know about me, either."

Her mouth opened a little and she stopped fiddling with her hair. "Why?"

It was Minamino's turn to look away from her. He didn't speak right away, and when he did, it sounded like he was talking about somebody else. "Originally, I lived in the Demon World, and I fled in spirit form to the Human World. I was gravely injured, and my only chance for survival was a woman that was carrying a newly conceived embryo. I took the place of her son."

Makoto couldn't believe her ears. The subject was volunteering the information she had been wondering about for months. "Then you are… what? A possession? A mix of the two?"

"Neither. Shuuichi Minamino, the real Shuuichi, has never existed. My soul inhabited his body before another could enter. His body and my spirit are a single entity now."

Makoto watched his body language out of the corner of her eye. It didn't betray anything. "Who are you?"

"…Excuse me?"

"You speak of yourself as opposed to Shuuichi. Who are you?"

This time, she caught his full attention with the question, and he looked at her again.

"My real name is Kurama. I was a thief in my former life."

The pieces that formed the enigma of Makoto's anomaly clicked together in place. 'Kurama.' Yes, it was fitting. It was wider, filled the spaces that 'Shuuichi' didn't cover. The human body with youki finally made sense.

But he wasn't done. "Because of me, her son never existed." Nothing about him wavered when he said it. His voice, his energy were a rock, yet there seemed to be a hint of sadness burrowed in his words. "I can't tell her that."

Makoto rarely had trouble reading people, but he was proving to be an exception to the norm. "But you are her son."

He closed his eyes for a second and took a deep breath. "Her son was dead before he was born. I'm under no illusions of what I am."

She played with the hem of her sleeves, curtains of hair concealing the sides of her face, when she said, "Now I understand why you don't treat me like a freak. I'm sure you're seen much stranger things than a girl who can guess the contents of your sandwich."

Kurama took some time to reply. "It would be hypocritical of me, wouldn't it?"

"Yes," she agreed, picking a loose thread from her dress, and declared, "I will visit your mother. I am curious about her."

She wanted to know if she was the kind of person that would find his actions unforgivable, or if it was just his guilt and fears talking. She wanted to know what kind of woman had been able to raise a demon into an overachieving member of society who was stealing the top grades from the rest of his class.

"Thank you. I think she'll appreciate seeing a new face. It's Kazuya and I all the time."

"Don't be so confident. I hear I do not make very good company." She put her things aside on a chair to get up and shook off some invisible dust from her skirt.

"I disagree with that assessment."

She hesitated before she said, "Keep the niceties for your fangirls."

Kurama chuckled, got up and started walking down the corridor. Makoto trailed close behind and waited outside the room until she heard Kurama's mother call her in.

—

Kurama was late the following day. Makoto's grandmother was sleeping again, so she went to Ms. Minamino's room to keep her company.

Despite the state of the woman, Makoto felt at ease with her. Ms. Minamino's aura appeared to be permanently embedded with positive emotions. Calmness, acceptance, love, they were all there in spite of the fading energy and its fraying edges, characteristic of terminal patients. She understood why Kurama wanted to keep her close.

She hadn't commented on her behavior or reacted to her negatively at all. Makoto was sure of it, because the cues were familiar and she had been looking for them. This woman wasn't judging her, and she was returning the favor by analyzing everything she and her son did. Way to go.

"He must have gotten caught up at school," Makoto said for the woman's benefit. "Teachers and students always need him for something or another."

"I'm glad to hear from someone else that he gets along with his classmates. I've never met a friend of Shuuichi's before you…"

"We have never talked before this week." Makoto didn't have friends in class either, and calling Kurama one would feel strange. "No offense intended, but I would hardly say that's friendship."

Ms. Minamino wasn't put off at all by her reply. "But do you plan on not talking anymore to him outside the hospital?"

It was official; this family had a knack for verbally cornering her. "No, I suppose I do not," she admitted shyly.

An arrival. One, two, three…

The hinges of the door creaked softly and Kurama walked in. "Hi, mom, sorry for—oh, I see you have company."

He smiled and Makoto felt instantly sick to her stomach. Something was wrong. There was a dark sort of energy around Kurama, noticeable for anybody with the smallest bit of spiritual sensitivity. It came from him, but he wasn't the origin. Whatever it was, it wasn't alive and it was tainting him, like a parasite.

She quickly excused herself and ran to the closest bathroom. She got inside a stall, threw up, and blamed the bacon, egg and mayo premade sandwich while she sat on a toilet lid and waited for her digestive system to settle down.

She had never felt an energy so twisted before. What had he done?

By the time she came out of the stall, Kurama was out of Ms. Minamino's room and lingering outside the bathrooms.

"Are you okay? You took so long that I came to check up on you."

"You are going to die," she blurted out, and it was more of an accusation than a warning.

He didn't show any outward changes, but the atmosphere got tenser. "As we all, someday," he said quietly.

She ignored him and insisted, "I don't know what you did today, but you are going to die. Throw away what you're carrying and get any funny ideas out of your head."

His expression hardened. "I can't do that."

She furrowed her brows, feeling cold sweat build up the more time she was near him. "What are you planning?"

"There's a way to help my mother."

She willed herself to ignore the negative energy he was emitting and look at his face. There was nothing but determination in there. She was fighting a losing battle.

"And you think you will come okay out of this?" She asked with incredulity.

His eyes were cold and detached, nothing like the personality he showed at school. "I know what will happen, and I intend to go through with it. Your concern is appreciated, but unneeded."

His words felt like a smack to the face. It served her right for caring. "I see," she said neutrally. "When will it be? You are running out of time."

"On the next full moon."

She lowered her gaze to her feet, gave a small nod, and walked past him. "I will be with my grandmother."

"Kodama," he called with a stern voice, and she paused, "if you try to interfere—"

"Please, spare me the threats. You are free to trash your life however you want."

He made no attempt to stop her again.

What a waste.

—

One, two, three.

Makoto opened the door to look into the hallway and saw Kurama with a punk in a Sarayashiki uniform. Should she approach them? She didn't want to miss the last day she'd have to talk to Kurama, but she didn't want to meet any new people. Tonight was supposed to be a night of goodbyes. Her grandmother, and either Kurama or Ms. Minamino. If things went very wrong, maybe the three of them.

She snuck a glance at the elderly woman on the bed and fiddled nervously with the chain of her glasses.

"Go, Mako," the woman said. "I still have a few hours left in me."

"I'll be back," she replied quietly.

"I know you will."

Makoto forced out a smile before leaving the room. Kurama saw her right away and flashed one of his own in her direction. Was it true or was it a fake one? It was impossible to tell with him.

What a waste. She had finally gotten to approach the anomaly, and she never got enough time to know him properly. That would teach her to leap to action sooner in the future.

"Hey," she said as a greeting.

"Hi." He was still smiling. Who was he trying to fool? "This is Yuusuke."

"Yo!" The boy grinned. "Nice to meet you, uh…"

"Makoto. Makoto is fine," she said, since Kurama had only volunteered the boy's first name. The reiki coming from him was higher than that of the average human. She looked sharply at Kurama. "What is going on?"

"Don't worry about it," he said nonchalantly, as if he didn't plan to commit suicide. It irked her to no end. "Can you keep an eye on my mother while I talk to Yuusuke?"

That was incredibly selfish of him.

"Sure."

"Thank you."

Ten minutes later, hospital personnel was speeding past her ("Her son is on the rooftop") rushing into the room, and pushing Kazuya Hatanaka outside. The man stood glued to the glass. Makoto was a few feet away from him, observing quietly. Kurama came back with Yuusuke, and the energy he carried was so powerful, so revolting that she screwed her eyes shut and tried to block it to no avail. She didn't want to see, didn't need to.

What a waste.

Kurama ran past her once again, and she didn't open her eyes to watch him go for the last time.

Soon after, there was a surge of negative energy on a floor above and the certainty that the woman on the other side of the glass wasn't going to die. It was done.

Makoto began to walk towards her grandmother's room. She was disappointed and bitter and tired of watching people dive headfirst into disaster—

The sound of footsteps made her look up, and she saw Kurama running in her direction. Her mouth fell open. He should have been dead! The path had been clear as day. It was either him or Ms. Minamino, not both.

"Is she…?" He asked as he approached her.

"You—you should be—how—?!"

He passed her before she could form a coherent sentence, which was alright in her book, because she didn't think she'd be able to.

In her little world of certainty, somebody had strayed from the path so unceremoniously and unexpectedly that the foundations of her beliefs trembled.

She blinked a few times, opened her grandmother's door still dumbfounded, and squeaked, "Nana. I just saw a miracle."