Hey guys, I'm Luke Benz. This is my first DN story, so I hope you guys like it. I'm sure later on in the story I'll have some huge monologue preceeding the chapter, but I don't have much else to say this time. ;-)

Disclaimer: Well I haven't seen any flying pigs, it's sunny out, so it can't be raining malted milk balls, and I don't believe Hell has frozen over yet, so I probably still don't own Death Note.

Chapter 1: Introductions and Paint

School sucked, as usual.

Oh sorry. Was I being to forward? Maybe I should start with an introduction first. My name is Near. Well, it's really Nate, but no one ever calls me that. I live with my cousin L, who goes by…well, a bunch of other names. Because we're currently in America, he tells me to call him Elliot. I swear, his paranoia is going to kill him one day. But he insists that it would be just the opposite.

Anyways, I at the top of my class, which is already two grades ahead of where I should be. I'm thirteen and a freshman in high school. And I'll tell you right now. High School sucks.

If you've ever been in High School, you'd know that it's a shark tank. And I was the albino guppy. I mean, I'm barely five-two, and that's when I'm not slouching. And if you remember, I'm at least two years younger than everyone else in my school. That combined with the fact that I'm basically a genius shrimp makes me a target in the shooting range.

It started with verbal bullying, which was pretty easy to shrug off. It got annoyingly difficult to ignore when kids would follow me around making "Moo" sounds. When I questioned them as to why, I was made very aware of the fact that my skin, hair, and clothes were all stark white, which—didn't you know?—is the color of milk. My new goal of ignoring the insults was increased in challenge when I found notes in my school locker, gym locker, and on my desks. Most of them were drawings of cows or sheep being slaughtered, and some of them were threats.

Not long after the notes started coming, things got physical in the hallways. Kids shoved me as they passed, or took the time to yank on a lock of my hair, mocking the way I twirled it when I was deep in thought.

Today was no better, and actually worse, in a sense.

It was the end of the day, and I had just been walking out of the front doors of the school when it happened. One moment I was walking out the door, glad to finally be getting out of the hellhole they called "school" when—BANG!

No, I was not shot at in an attempted assassination. Actually, I was bombarded with a hail of paint-filled balloons. Pink paint. On my white clothes. In my white hair. The extent to which I was soiled was almost worse than the endless, howling laughter. I turned my head upwards to see my assailants. They were a bunch of kids that I recognized from my class.

"I'm going to be stained for life," I muttered dejectedly as I walked down the street. The apartment L and I lived in wasn't too far away from my school, and for this I was grateful. If I walked around soaked in paint for too long in the ever-warming sunshine, I would undoubtedly be picking the stuff out of my hair for more than just a couple of weeks.

I slammed the front door of the apartment as I slumped in, thanking God and every other deity I could think of that we had a tile area and storage box for shoes near the front door. L was half-Japanese, and liked to have a couple little reminders throughout the house (the shoe area by the door, the small table in the dining/living room that was scarcely used, the Japanese tea that he would normally reduce to something akin to paste with vast amounts of sugar).

I removed my shoes at the door, lifting up the legs of my baggy white pants. I trudged into my room and stripped down, throwing the soiled clothes into the hamper while hoping that the paint didn't stain any of my other clothes permanently. I didn't see the point in putting clean clothes on an unclean body, so I made my way into the bathroom that connected mine and L's rooms.

"Near?" I heard him call from the other side of the door to his room. "Are you showering?"

"Yes," I called back, expertly hiding my internal fury. "There was a mishap at school that left me quite soiled."

L didn't respond, and I assumed that either he didn't care, didn't hear, or didn't feel the need to reply to my reason. Because it was L, I assumed it was the latter.

After a ten minute shower, almost all the paint was removed from my body. The only traces of the stuff left were clumps knotted in my hair. I'd need to comb those out.

Fifteen minutes later found me dressed in new baggy, white clothes (which I've been told look quite like pajamas), raking the last gobs of paint from my hair, wincing as the comb pulled out a good amount of hair along with the paint. Taking a look in the bathroom mirror, I grimaced at the pink tinge my (previously) colorless locks had acquired. "Excellent…" I muttered to myself.

"Near?" L's voice was muffled by the door that hid him from sight, but still loud. Robotically, I walked into his room, blinking as my eyes adjusted to the dark of the room that was only penetrated by L's computer. This room had blackout curtains, which blacked out (obviously) any and all rays of sunshine that the outside world offered.

"Yes?" I responded.

"Nothing," came his reply from around the silver spoon in his mouth. "I was only checking to be sure that it was you. Force of habit." He shrugged, like it was no big deal.

It isn't a big deal, I reminded myself. I was just overtired, overworked, and possibly hungry. But because I was overtired, I didn't feel like going to get anything to eat. L was concentrating wholly on the lengthy profile he was reading. It was some criminal that had recently been registered in a prison somewhere in South Africa. It was for this reason alone that he didn't notice me steal one of his small cakes. Either that or he did notice and let me have it out of pity.

…

Ha, like that would ever happen. He just didn't notice.

Four hours later found me sitting at the table, just resting my head on it. My homework was all completed, having been finished at least an hour ago. It wouldn't have taken me so long if not for the vast amount of it.

L finally emerged from his L-cave of Darkness and sat down across the table from me. "How was your day, Near?" he asked, not trying to hide the fact that he was staring at my hair. I didn't answer, prompting him to try and further the 'conversation'. "Your head is pink," he observed, sticking his thumb in his mouth.

"Yes." My voice was muffled by the table, and I was glad that he couldn't see my face, because it was actually starting to take on a pink tinge as well.

"Why?" I sighed. Dammit, L. Why couldn't he just leave me to my brooding?

"Because my peers are utterly juvenile and—to put it simply—just plain mean." Normally I wouldn't care; I could ignore the taunts and jibes, and even some of the physical bullying. It was all just annoying. But it made me angry when I thought about today's stunt. What right did they have to do such a thing? Anger was a foreign emotion to me, only felt on rare occasions. This just happened to be one of those occasions.

"Have you taken steps to prevent the bullying you're obviously enduring?" L asked me. I nodded.

"No one at school has taken action. The taunting is daily, the physical encounters are increasingly frequent, and the violent threats are growing in numbers at an alarming rate." L nodded, chewing on his thumb nail.

"I shall have a conversation with the school's administrative staff and see if we cannot work out an arrangement." As if to punctuate the sentence, he dropped a sugar cube into the already syrupy tea he was sipping. He tasted it again, and it seemed satisfactory, because he proceeded to noisily slurp the sickeningly sweet concoction.

"I'd actually rather you didn't," I said, sitting upright. L raised an eyebrow at me questioningly, prompting me to explain. "Even if you inform the school staff about the problem, there are only two things that are likely to happen. Either they will ignore it, which will make it continue at its current pace, or they will announce, and probably tighten, their zero-tolerance policy, which will emphasize my situation, thus forcing attention on me as everyone becomes angry with me for," I paused, trying to find the right phrase, "…ratting them out. When the situation seems as though the strict enforcement of the no-bullying rule has worked to its extent, and is no longer necessary, the administration will relax the security on the matter. Shortly after, the bullying would begin again—likely worse than it is at the present, and thus the cycle would repeat itself."

I narrowed my eyes infinitesimally. "And honestly, I'd rather not go through all that trouble." L nodded again, seemingly understanding my reasoning.

"…I see," he said, sighing. "Well if that is how you feel, than I will not interfere until you wish me to do so." With that, he sipped his…mixture, easily letting the subject drop. After a while, I got hungry, making myself a sandwich before retiring to bed.

I just wanted the day to be over.

Scarily enough, I woke up during the night, hearing the rustle of movement in my bedroom. I practically stopped breathing as I waited for it to stop. Eventually, the only sounds left were my breathing, my panicked heartbeat, and the light wind outside.

I turned over on my side, only to find that there was nothing there.

Eh, I thought dismissively. It must've been my imagination.

So? What'd you think? Like it? Hate it? Drop me a review and tell me how I'm doing.