Of Bullying, Erasers and Animals

Allen's classmate Kanda Yuu was always bullying him and so, they weren't friends. Allen absolutely disliked Kanda. He tried to be nice on his first day but Kanda was mean to him over and over again so after four days of trying to be nice, he stopped.

"Kanda is so mean!" 7-year-old Allen exclaimed to his father Mana, "I hate him! Can't I transfer to Lavi's class?"

Mana clucked his tongue, "Allen, you musn't say 'hate'."

Allen frowned and shifted his feet, "Sorry Mana. 'I dislike Kanda'." He corrected himself.

The adult male smiled, "Maybe it's just Kanda's way of communicating. He might actually like you but he doesn't know how to show it."

"But! But he calls me beansprout and look, just today he messed up my favorite erasers!"

Mana chuckled at the word, 'beansprout'. Allen certainly was small for his age and a tad bit too skinny.

"Let me see your erasers."

Allen shifted through his coat's many pockets until he finally found his two brand new and now ruined erasers. Where the eraser stuck out was a small indent in the middle –some of the eraser was taken out. Allen even kept one of the pieces that had been taken out of the eraser, hoping that Mana could fix it somehow.

Mana smiled, "Sorry I can't fix this Allen."

The young boy looked like he was about to cry.

"Why don't you turn this into something fun and I'll buy you new ones tomorrow?"

Allen blinked as Mana left the room, wondering how in the world was he going to change two ruined erasers into something fun. Had Mana gone mad? The young boy sighed as he flopped down onto his bed filled with stuffed animals.

"This is a real problem mister bear. I don't even kn-" Allen looked at the bear and back at one of the erasers he was holding. "You know…this kinda looks like it has bear ears!"

He picked up the second eraser and looked through his grand collection of animals. "And this one kinda looks like it has bunny ears!"

Quickly, Allen went to his small desk to get out a pen and drew on their faces. The bear looked grumpy –just like Kanda, Allen noted- and the bunny looked very happy –kinda like Lavi.

Allen smiled happily at his creations, satisfied with his work, he'd give them to Lavi and Kanda tomorrow. He wondered if Kanda would even bother to keep it, considering that the Asian boy would never keep anything that wasn't 'important'.

The white-haired boy sighed and decided that he would just give it to him anyways.

xox

The next day…

When Kanda arrived in his classroom, on his desk a grumpy looking bear eraser sitting on a paper that had horribly drawn flowers on it greeted him. Kanda bit back a laugh and knew right away that it was from Allen –he was the only one that drew like this.

Finding that he couldn't bring himself to throw the eraser away, he brought it home and put it in a box with all his personal treasures. If you looked through the box, you would eventually find a picture of him, Allen and Lavi arguing at the school.

Written by Cookie