Kuromu gnashed her teeth and clicked her pen repeatedly in frustration. This was supposed to be simple; she had gone through something similar hadn't she?! Did dying make her stupid?

An itch that she could not claw began snaking its way up to curl around her heart, squeezing light like a warning as pressure began building. Sweat slickened her palms and loosened her grip on her pen, and she disgustedly rubbed her palms on her shirt.

Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.

Seconds passed by in silence uninterrupted save for the sound of clicking pens, yet her assignment remained undone. Anxiety frazzled her with every passing moment. The environment she has put herself in was removed from distractions, yet somehow this made her thoughts scream angrily, insidiously her every fear and doubt. It echoed within her mind, bouncing off the walls of her skull almost painfully. She was going to have a migraine.

Her throat felt parched and her eyes strained and blurred, her entire body struggling to maintain still. And yet, she drove herself on, pushing herself to stare at the questions - as though she could burn a hole through it, and somehow reach the answers that way.

Her grip on the pencil was deathly white, and her lack of progress made it seem more and more appealing to take a break. But she shouldn't. She didn't deserve a break for all that she hadn't yet done.

She had to prove herself - be better, be stronger, be smarter, if only because she was the least trusted. That way Boss would at least stop treating her as someone who should be protected, right? If his protective nature was to remain, she would never get to leave any significant impact on Vongola, to sear her mark upon history. She would become just another nameless casualty in the passing of time.

Besides, she didn't even belong in this place - this beautiful, magical dimension. She was probably going to fuck up at some point and make the higher powers regret giving her such a new and vibrant life, and they'd retract their divine favour. She had to - had to leave a scar behind for them to remember her by - had to make her time worthwhile.

Familiar tears pricked at her eyes, but she willed them away through sheer unfocused desperation. She had to - she had to do something! Her breathing became audible as the self inflicted stress began crushing her, and her struggles dug a wild, black gash across her paper. The pen was strangled in her grip, and its tip pushed a hole through the paper. Ink was bleeding all over the place, smudged by her hand.

She had to - had to —!

Spying at Kuromu from a corner, Mukuro gave a sigh of relief. His decision to enroll her in a school was the right one. It seemed like homeschooling was only giving his disciple even more pressure, and that girl was already halfway through eating her sanity.

Now he just had to tell her the news and... oh. He had submitted the documents with her name in Hiragana hadn't he? Well, she could take a break and obsess over choosing her name now. He just had to find her a kanji dictionary and discreetly retrieve the documents for a moment while she pandered to her wishy washy nature...

A few hours later, he had successfully maneuvered the girl away from her self studies and onto the idea of choosing a name of glory.

She was surprisingly easy to pry away from work once he preyed on her delusion of grandeur…

Her eyebrows deeply furrowing, she glared at the kanji dictionary and worried her lower lip.

A name - something that defined oneself - an identity to build one's reputation upon.

Just like it was described above, a name was pretty important. For example, someone with a strange name; wouldn't that person be mocked forever? Strange puns or catchy nicknames, if the person was unlucky, things like that would stick with him or her forever.

It shouldn't be an exaggeration to say that living with a weird name was a diluted form of psychological torture!

Well, it was pretty inconvenient -or should I say unfortunate- that people could rarely choose their own name.

Although, that did not apply to Kuromu, fortunately.

And thus, hoping to find her own name, she was currently curled up on the sofa with a worn kanji dictionary that was obviously from a hundred-yen shop. A cheap dictionary for a cheapskate!

It was an important decision between kanji and kanji—

No, it was a life decision, for it should be a pretty name that lived on in people's hearts— Kuromu thought of something like that, eyes burning.

How passionate.

The words made her head almost spin.

So many pronunciations, that she almost flipped to the wrong pages.

But it didn't matter; she was at the correct page now.

Kuromu scrunched her face up in concentration, an iron grip on the thick, wordy book.

Which one should she use?

This was an important decision - one that would decide her future itself, yes, a life decision.

Her surname was obvious. 'Dokuro' for 'Skull'.

'Kuro' was obviously 'Black', but 'Mu' was one that offered an array of choices.

She murmured something to herself before determinedly crossing out several options. 'Halberd' was not something to be put within a name, especially not a girl's name, even if it did happen to be her choice of weapon. She wrinkled her face in distaste; the ridicule that she would receive with a name like 'Black Halberd' was unimaginable.

'Mu' could also be read as 'Mist', which was too much of a coincidence to be anything but a conspiracy. She scratched that out too, vehemently, narrowing her bright violet eyes at that word.

She had hoped to burn a hole into that spot, but it stubbornly refused her demand. She clicked her tongue in annoyance, though there was no denying of the self satisfaction she had derived from the coincidence — it said a lot about what kind of attention was being paid to her from entities up above.

'Pupil' would be way too stupid since she had violet eyes currently, not black. Or did that mean student? Is her name forever going to be a pun now?

Please don't even mention 'Six', since she didn't even know it could be pronounced as 'Mu'. Not to mention how weird 'Black Six' would be for a name.

—Wait, were the previous two kanji a reference to Mukuro?

She immediately looked away, and cleared her mind.

Nope.

Next was 'Blank', or also read as 'Nothing'.

Seriously? Kuromu rolled her eyes in mock horror, for what self respecting girl wanted her name to be 'Black Nothing' anyway? It was ridiculous.

(And redundant.)

Yea, no, even for her, the name is unacceptable.

Inauspicious, she muttered to herself. As if her head wasn't blank enough, or she hadn't had enough blackouts to last a lifetime or anything.

(Not that she was calling herself an idiot— though she was a real idiot. And it wasn't like she was superstitious or anything, you know? You know?)

Finally, her only option, not to say her favourite option, 'dream'.

Perhaps she was being a little precocious if she said what she actually wanted to about that choice. But if she didn't speak her mind, wouldn't she just seem like she had Eighth Grade Syndrome?

Well, most likely, she would be diagnosed as having precisely that and much more, but—

That wasn't the point.

Freedom of speech was the point.

Saying what she wanted, self consciously, to describe her whole life up until now as nothing but-

"A dream that I can never make heads or tails of... Fading to black... If I say this about myself, I really must be a pathetically idealistic person." She said as a matter-of-fact.

But that was how she was, and smiling to herself, for who else was there to judge- Her name was her own choice!

In the end, she properly decided on the kanji for her name —髅 黑梦— 'Skull' as her surname and 'Black Dream' as her name.

It was fine like this.

She never wanted to be remotely similar to Chrome anyway. Chrome Dokuro and Dokuro Kuromu were two different people on two different paths, and she would determinedly continue walking, even if she ended up on the wrong path.

(At the very least, she would leave footprints. Carbon footprints, bloody footprints, proof that she had once lived so intensely.)

It didn't made sense, but she never said that they had to.

She really didn't have the Eighth Grade Syndrome. Really!