I looked down and noticed for the first time that it was the handkerchief that I had wrapped around his wound. Looking at his hand I saw that it still had some bandages on it. He waved the cloth in my face.

"Well are you going to take it or not?"

I slowly reached for it and then looked back at the boy, Lavi, slightly shocked that he had kept it at all. I had told him to burn it.

With that small action the events of the entire week overcame me and I broke down crying. Everyone just stood there a moment staring at me and then a flood of speech came flying at me.

"Don't cry"

"It's alright"

"What's wrong?"

"Are you hurt?"

"Che…stop crying like a girl"

…And I cried harder.

Chapter 6

I don't know what my parents were expecting when they first conceived….Finally a child to call our own? How could this happen? I hope he looks like me?

Anything I can come up with just doesn't ring true. I am a monster, truly a monster. Is it any wonder that I was abandoned by them when they discovered this for themselves? I can't blame them for hating me. It can't be their fault that I have an ungodly appearance and strange disposition.

Despite this I always wanted to know why? Not to justify my own reasoning but so that I know definitively; the reason I don't have a mother to hold me when I cry, or a father to tell me to buck up and that real men don't cry when they're sad or hurt.

The closest person I had to father didn't believe in the traditional means of comfort either. He preferred to offer advice and teach you to rely on the only thing you can really be sure of….Oneself.

'Keep moving forward." He would say staring into the distance as if he could see into the future. Obviously he couldn't though as I don't suspect he saw himself dying and leaving me all alone. Again.

This is why it seemed so strange to me; when I could not stop crying and the first things I heard around me were words of comfort and concern (with the possible exception of Kanda of course)

"Don't cry"

"It's alright"

"What's wrong?"

"Are you hurt?"

It was definitely too much. Why do these people care? Why now of all times when I keep doing the wrong thing and hurting people?

I've had enough of questions, I never get any answers and it's frustrating. So very frustrating that I can't stop crying, years of tears that have never had the benefit of being released pouring down like storm cloud that's been waiting for years to release even one drop.

"Okay!" a voice interrupted my sober thoughts. "Obviously our little white-haired friend here isn't about to stop crying anytime soon, so I vote that Lenalee and Kanda go onto the next class and I'll look after emo here."

Lenalee and Kanda both gave him dry looks. "You just don't want to go to classes do you?" Lenalee asked.

"Would I do that?" Lavi replied innocently.

Deciding not to dignify that statement with a response Lenalee gave me a soft rub on the shoulder and dragged Kanda out by the sleeve.

"Soooooooooooo….." he dragged out the word a bit irritatingly while eyeing me off with his one eye. "Do you think it'd make you feel better if I gave you a blowjob?"

"WHAT!?" That definitely caught my attention.

Lavi just gave a short chuckle and a wide grin. "I'm not serious…not at the moment anyway." He added and once again held out the handkerchief towards me.

I slowly grabbed it noticing that it had been cleaned since he had taken it off and used it to rub the moisture off my face.

"I just thought that I'd wait till the others left the room to ask, and it seemed like the right thing to ask to make you cheer up a bit."

Regardless of having wiped my face, I took notice that what he had said did make me stop crying and I rewarded him with a small, shaky smile.

"That's a boy. How 'bout we ditch this place and go grab some cake and you can tell me all about it?" he suggested holding his uninjured hand out to mine.

/

"Now the first thing you have to learn about me Allen my dear; is that I like happy, fun times filled with sparkly butterflies and tingly feelings."

We were walking down the hallway at a steady pace the two of us not having anywhere urgent to be at that particular moment. The red-headed student had taken it upon himself to give me a full tour of the facilities (an important task that no-one had seen fit to provide this new student with). While he was doing this he did not seem to be able to stop talking. I was not entirely sure if this was his natural state or whether he was just excited to have a new ear to chat off. Either way, I was sure that my ear was about to fall off.

"As much as I appreciate you doing all of this for me Lavi, I'm not sure that I really need to know the location of every single girl's lavatories in the school."

"Allen, my good man!" Lavi exclaimed loudly. "It is a very important feature to the school. What would happen if a girl asked you to point out the direction of the nearest facility? Or if you had to go yourself and did not know which room held the female equipment and which one the males?"

I sweat dropped. "I think I would be okay with identifying the correct toilet by the picture of the little man or lady on the outside."I replied dryly. "As well as that I don't think that I need to know the number of toilets in each bathroom as well as their orientation towards the front of the school."

"You say that now Allen but what happens-"

Cutting him off there as I am sure I do not need to hear anymore I hold up my hand. "If I need to find my way anywhere I think I will just ask someone."

"But-"

"No, I am all good, you've given me the definitive tour and now we can move on to other things."

"Okay….Where is your room at exactly Al?"

I quirked my eye at him quizzically, "Al?"

"Just a nick-name buddy…you gonna answer my question."

I smirked up at him, realising just how much taller we was than myself. At least another head and a half above me. Damn it!

"How about I show you?" I suggest chuckling.

He grinned at me. "Sure. I'm not gonna lie though; your creepy laugh makes me a bit suspicious. I can dig it though."

We weren't all that far from the dorms so turning to our left I led him through the entrance and into the common room. Lavi was waving frantically at some of boys and girls around the room as if he hadn't seen them in years. From the way they were looking at him though it can't have me more than a week since the last time they saw him. He seemed to ignore this though and the more people seemed confused by his eagerness to greet them the brighter his smile seemed to get.

Lavi had obviously caught my eyes on him and he winked at me, confirming my idea of the correlation between the two activities. I just shook my head and kept walking.

"Hey Al…" the boy started looking a bit confused all of a sudden.

"Yes Lavi," I glanced at him with a poker face.

"Why are we heading into the girls dorms? You do know the entrance for the boys is at the opposite side of the room?"

"Yes Lavi I DO know this."

With every step into the girls dorms Lavi seemed to grow more concerned and nervous. No doubt he was wondering if he had made a mistake and had been calling me a boy the entire time when I was actually a girl. Or any number of other possibilities.

"I really don't think that we are supposed to be here buddy, why don't we just saddle on back to the common room and chat up those girls. I think that maybe they will get the wrong idea if we wander around here looking like panty thieves."

I looked at him a bit deprecatingly. "You may look like a panty thief Lavi. I am pretty sure that it's just you though."

Holding a hand to his chest dramatically he gave me a shocked looked. "You wound me!" he exclaimed.

Laughing I took notice that we had almost reached my door and turned to stop in front of it with the red-head by my side. "I have one thing to say before we enter." I stated seriously, making Lavi look at me intently. "No looking for panties in the drawers." I stated firmly before opening the door and walking inside.

/

Lavi stared at amazement at the room. I waited. He just kept staring. I kept waiting. It seemed we were at an impasse.

"Hi Lavi, Allen." Lenalee greeted from her spot on the bed.

"Hey Al buddy?" Lavi finally broke his silence.

"Yes Lavi" I replied sounding bored.

"Why are we Lenalee's room?"

"You asked me to show you my room didn't you?"

"….yes?"

"Well wouldn't the natural inference be that Lenalee was in my room and not the other way around?"

"Um…no."

Lenalee look at me disapprovingly (although she also looked a bit amused); "it's not very nice to play tricks on our friends Allen."

Damn my impeccable manners! "Oh sorry, I was not aware of that." I lied blandly.

"Of course you weren't." Lenalee sounded disbelieving.

Lavi held his hand up in the air a bit hesitantly. "What exactly is going on?" he asked the confusion clear on his face.

"I thought that you were supposed to be clever." Lenalee shook her head at him. "Obviously Allen and I share a room."

The older boy did an obvious double-take at that. "How did you manage to get that past Komui? He has the biggest sister complex that I have ever seen?"

"It's better not to ask." I sighed "I thought you went to class with Kanda? What are you doing here?" I asked Lenalee.

She lifted her hand to scratch the back of her head nervously. Waving a hand dismissively she said it wasn't important. This of course made Lavi really curious and he bounded towards the girls bed to interrogate her. After spending the last couple of hours with the boy I could fully sympathise with her plight and so when she conceded to tell him almost immediately I couldn't fault the girl too much. However the uncertain look she gave me seemed to indicate that the reason had something to do with it.

"They were kind of repairing the classroom and gym, so we couldn't use them today. We got the day off?"

Wow! Was I really that destructive a force? It seemed insane to me that one day I could be, well not the most normal, but pretty average. I thought I had no power whatsoever. Now here I am wrecking a magic school with my insane powers. Great, just fantastic! I laughed drawing the attention of the two others in the room.

"You alright Allen pal?" Lavi asked concerned. "You aren't going to start crying again are you?"

I thought about it a bit. "No, I think I'm good. Just thinking; that this must be a really weird dream."

Lavi looked at me really seriously. "Have you seen any magical neko girls?" he asked "Because I think that's how you would be able to tell if it was a dream or not?"

Lenalee gave him a dark look. "We are not all perverts like you Lavi. The way I tell if I'm dreaming or not is to call my brother. My real life brother will always pick up, but the dream one won't."

I balked at that suggestion. "There is no way I'm calling that devil of a guardian just to make sure that I'm not dreaming, or dead." I stated flatly. "He would hit me so hard that I probably wouldn't wake up for three months."

The day continued with plenty of conversation and eventually Kanda joined us at dinner. I don't think that I'd had such a good afternoon in a long time. Even though I had to deal with Kanda's prickly attitude, Lenalee's motherly nature and Lavi just…being Lavi. I thought that maybe I was happy for the first time in what seemed eternity and that if this was how magic and school was….maybe I didn't mind the attention for once in my life; and that everything would turn out to be okay. Only time would prove me right or wrong….

/

Rei; "It has begun…"