Summer break is five weeks long. A little over a month. Roughly thirty-five days.

Eight hundred and forty hours.

Fifty thousand, four hundred minutes.

Three million and twenty-four thousand seconds.

It takes less than a day, not even an hour, just barely a minute, but only fifteen seconds to change a person for life.

It takes fifteen seconds for someone to die and for someone else to lose the will to live.

Fifteen seconds is an eternity.

Fifteen seconds is…

The pencil pauses. The mostly blank page glowers in the light filtering in from the classroom window. Fifteen seconds is what? What is fifteen seconds that hasn't already been said? What is it?

The pencil continues – slowly, unsurely, its dull point dragging along words that want to escape in a hand that's wet with sweat and nerves.

Fifteen seconds is too long.

~::~

Anyone who knew Yamamoto Takeshi in middle school didn't know him by freshman year in high school.

He used to be nice.

He used to be friendly.

He used to smile.

Now it looked like something crawled into his eyes and died, leaving behind a stench you can't smell, but you can see its odors polluting the boy. If he smiled, no one ever saw him do it. If he was nice, he was only so in the secrecy of his own mind, nothing showing in his expression.

His school uniform was black. The sensei wouldn't call him on it – it was still the school uniform anyway – but everyone noticed the dark stain that was Yamamoto Takeshi stalk through the traffic of tan and blue outfits. He was a disease, spreading, getting worse, deadly in his silence. Just like a disease, no one wanted any part of him.

The boy that used to smile. That used to be nice. That used to like being with people. That boy was gone.

It only took fifteen seconds.

~::~

Two months into freshman year, Yamamoto Takeshi walked down a random corridor. One look at him and people were frozen. They flattened themselves against the walls, thrust into a hush, and wouldn't move till he passed on, like frightened deer. And then they ran in the opposite direction.

Not even Hibari Kyouya, disciplinary officer of Namimori Middle School, had had that affect on them.

Sensei had less of a chance at escape and so were forced to react differently. Fearfully, with shaky words, they told the boy who was no longer a boy that he had to leave. What he had done to himself – he simply wasn't allowed in school till he got it removed. If only then.

But Yamamoto looked at them with his corpse eyes and they were forced into a hush as deep as the students.

Yamamoto Takeshi, and it confused anyone who gave it a moment of thought, was not to be forced out of school.

The next day and the day after that, he came back with his mark of shame, a sheath curving over his left eyebrow, clutched in the grip of a grinning skeleton with blood red tears falling from its empty eye sockets. The sheath in one bony hand, there was a pistol in the other, held just at the skeleton's waist. Its holey, black robe swirled and rippled down to graze his collarbone.

The reaper.

That must have taken hours, for such great detail.

But, really, it only took fifteen seconds.

~::~

Five months into freshman year and Yamamoto Takeshi was balanced on the outside of a railing. The railing that lined the roof of Namimori high. Namimori high was four stories high.

It was tragic to watch him balance there, a smudge of black against the distant hills and approaching storm, hands caught lightly on the guard, leaning forward. The reaper was deformed as Yamamoto Takeshi smiled softly, dazedly, blankly.

One foot left the safety of the ledge and hung tauntingly in thin air, over the far-below concrete, over the very creature inked into his skin.

"Sorry, old man… I just can't do it." With those fateful words, his grip loosened. He was teetering over the edge, bleak eyes closing peacefully, and the reaper cried manically for them both.

Except he didn't fall. He jerked, suddenly, and his eyes popped open at the pained gasp of someone behind him, small hands on his wide wrists scrabbling and hanging on as if determined to do something, as if reluctant to let go. But what was there to not let go of?

Yamamoto Takeshi was hardly someone worth saving anymore.

"D-don't do it!" He was pulled back against the hard, cold railing and a small, warm chest, and small, thin arms came around him, holding him, weak but strong, shaking but steady, tight but not uncomfortable. "Please don't do it…"

Yamamoto Takeshi looked over his shoulder at his unwanted hero.

An angel wearing the Namimori high uniform was crying for him. His small heart was thumping against Yamamoto Takeshi's back, like it was trying to escape its small cage and jump into Yamamoto Takeshi's chest.

Everything about him – small. Except his eyes. His eyes swallowed up his oval face, caramel and copper and amber and orange and watery and desperate. Desperately looking up at him.

"It's not worth it," said the angel. A tear, not blood red, not accompanied by a fleshless smirk, travelled down his one flushed cheek.

He had been running, this angel.

Running to save Yamamoto Takeshi, who didn't want to be saved.

Yamamoto Takeshi smiled for the second time on the ledge, quivering and distressed. "It really is, Tenshi-kun."

The angel looked taken aback. "I'm no angel! And this really isn't!" He pulled. Hard. Yamamoto Takeshi was bent backwards over the railing, losing his footing, then his perch, and the angel collapsed under his weight, sending them both crashing onto the rooftop.

They rolled till the angel was on top, hands on Yamamoto Takeshi's shoulders, knees on either side of his waist, and more tears rolled freely down his face to spatter against Yamamoto Takeshi's.

"I-it took fifteen seconds f-for your d-dad to die r-right?"

"How do you know...?"

"T-that's what you said the n-night it happened! Over and over a-again, it was over in fifteen seconds." The angel dipped his head into the junction of his neck and shoulder, opposite the reaper. "It only t-took fifteen seconds!"

"So you really are Tenshi-kun, to know that."

"I'm not an angel!" screamed the angel against his throat. "I was there…"

…

"It only took fifteen seconds… It only took fifteen seconds! It wasn't even a minute!"

Yamamoto Takeshi could remember with perfect clarity what had happened in each of those seconds. His dad was outside the family-owned sushi shop – one second – , just for a breath of air. A car came by, a small, dingy red car, passenger seat window rolled down – five seconds. Two boys, one driving, one next to him. The look in their eyes, like so much pain, like they just wanted to take out their lives on someone else. Nine seconds.

A pistol fit into the passenger seat rider's right hand, a pistol into the driver's left hand, and then BANG BANG BANG BANG all the way down the street, people screaming, blood, crying – uncalled for.

Fifteen seconds.

Three people injured, one man dead.

Not five seconds.

Not a minute.

"It only took fifteen seconds!"

A blanket landed on his shoulders, tucked carefully around him, and a voice too rough, too croaky for recognition, sobbed, "I'm sorry."

…

"You gave me the blanket?"

The angel nodded. "A-and I cried for you, because you wouldn't!"

"What were you sorry for?"

"I'm still sorry… for how much you h-hurt."

There was silence. Not deep, not dark, not controlled by a reaper's scythe and gun but by an angel's clear tears.

Then the angel sat back and rubbed an arm across his face, erasing sorrow like a filthy rag to a dirty mirror. He failed. His cheeks were still stained, his eyes and nose were still red, and his shoulders continued to shake. He made small noises of agony like a baby animal left all alone.

"Don't die," he whispered when he finally could. "You lost your dad, but… your dad would have wanted you to be happy. Isn't that what any parent wants for their children? To be happy? You can be… really happy if you just deal with his loss instead of holding onto it so tightly." He sniffled and then tried for a small smile. "I'm getting tired of crying for you. I usually don't cry so much, but you never really give me a choice."

The storm had come. It boiled above their heads in shades of gray and black. The clouds gave a mighty effort to resist their own nature, but, in the end, failed, and drowned Namimori in waves of blistering cold rain.

Instantly, they were soaked. The angel began to shiver after another moment. Yamamoto Takeshi began to shiver too.

That had little to do with the rain, though.

He closed his eyes.

If he cried, his tears became rain drops. As he sat up and burrowed his face into the angel's chest, hands tight on the angel's sleeves, his screams mingled with clashes of thunder and the droves of small watery missiles impacting with cement and metal.

The reaper grinned morbidly against his cheek and neck. But only until a small hand came up and covered it. Then the angel's arms were around his shoulders, hiding both the reaper and the boy it was inked into in the cradle of his thin embrace.

If he cried, it didn't matter. Because the angel was already soaked.

~::~

Change didn't happen magically over night.

It took seven days, actually. One transformation at a time.

Yamamoto Takeshi apologized for bumping into a girl the first day.

He offered to help a sensei during class the second.

He smiled the third.

He laughed the fourth.

He had nine new friends by the fifth.

Sixth, the baseball team was begging him to join.

Seventh, his school uniform was tan when he went to school.

The reaper stayed, though, but he wore a bandage over it so it would be out of sight.

The next Monday after his miraculous recovery from depression, someone sneezed walking down the hall.

Yamamoto Takeshi, commonly referred to as Yamamoto-kun by his friends and, well, everyone, turned his head to see who it was. He had a tissue in his pocket he wouldn't mind giving.

"It's just No-Good Tsuna," said one of his fellow baseball players. "Can you believe it? He's been out of school for seven days because of a cold. I don't believe it. I bet he was just skipping."

"You can't know that for sure," Yamamoto said lightly, because he was never quick to judge. And then his breath caught. "Tenshi-kun!"

But he must not have been loud enough. The angel continued walking the opposite way, shoulders jerking in a second sneeze, and then disappeared around a corner.

"Tenshi-kun? That was just No-Good Tsuna! He's no angel." His comrade snorted. "He's nothing."

It was the first and last time Yamamoto ever hit a person.

And then he ran after the angel.

"Tenshi-kun!" he yelled out, despite knowing the boy's name. The angel, so close now, startled to a stop and turned around to look at him. His nose was red, his huge eyes unfocused as if caught in a haze, and his wayward, untamable head of hair drooped sickly.

Realization dawned. "Y-Y-Y-HIIEEE!"

They crashed into the linoleum floor, Yamamoto's arms protectively around the angel, twisting around in midair so that he took the brunt of the fall. His back ached, his shoulders ached, and the back of his head throbbed.

But the angel was safe, if not stunned, and he looked up at Yamamoto with his copper-caramel-amber-orange gaze.

"Tenshi-kun!" Yamamoto chirped again. "I've found you~"

"Y-Yamamoto-san, people a-a-re –" he sneezed on Yamamoto's vest. "Gomen…"

"No worries." It was just a vest. "What were you going to say?"

"People a-are staring."

"So?"

"Well, I'm on top of you."

"So?"

The angel's face was flushed red. Yamamoto had the feeling it had nothing to do with the angel's cold. "Isn't it a-awkward to be s-seen like this?"

"Nope. Not really." His grip on the angel's waist tightened, smile growing wider and wider till the bandage's tape cracked and a glimmer of a pistol showed. "I'm happy to see you again, Tenshi-kun."

"I keep telling you, I'm n-n-n-" He sneezed again.

But Yamamoto understood. "And I'm telling you – you're my angel."

It takes fifteen seconds for someone to die and for another to lose the will to live.

The pencil scribbles to a curious stop. Taps against the last line of the sixth page that has been invested in this retelling. Its eraser twirls before the lead is pushed back to the paper with purpose.

But it only takes one person and a strong grip to build that will back up again.

~::~

Tenshi is Japanese for angel.

I really wanted to write some 8027! But I couldn't think of anything… till this came along. Ironically, when it says "Tapped against the last line of the sixth page that had been invested in this retelling", I was actually on the last line of the sixth page of this word document, trying to figure out how to end this story.

Nice, right?

I had to look at a few different sites to figure out how long summer break in Japan is. There were a few different answers, so I just settled for five weeks.

Fifteen seconds is really specific, but I feel saying five seconds is overused. And sensei is apparently plural for sensei. Interesting, isn't it?