You woke up to the sound of a human scream.

Still stranded on the threshold between dreams and reality, you were startled wide awake when the scream came again – louder this time, almost as if it were coming from somewhere in your room. Bleary-eyed, you staggered out of bed and saw a silhouette stood right outside your window, long, crooked fingers tapping against the glass...

You blinked once. Twice. And realised with sudden, stark clarity that the only murder happening nearby was the murder of crows roosting in the tree that grew outside your window, its black branches dragging lazily across the glass. A trick of the mind. A little too much dreamscape bleeding into reality.

The sky behind the willowy branches of the tree was still grey with the hazy remnants of dusk, and a side-long glance at the clock revealed it was only half-five in the morning. You still had a couple of hours before you had to start getting ready for school.

The rest of the house was silent. There was a lingering echo from the rain pattering against the rooftop, and the soft scrapes of the wind chafing the stones outside. But there were moments when even the wind stilled and the rain paused and the silence was so thick that you held your breath, listening for something beyond the quiet.

Then you heard it. Somewhere further in the house, a floorboard creaked. Water dripped. The house was waking up around you, whispering and tiptoeing and stirring the dust. It was an old building, and you were used to hearing its creaks and groans; the echoes of long-gone footsteps, the rattling of pipes behind the walls.

The house had been in your family for generations. There was even a familial burial ground beyond the small copse of trees that grew behind the house, where memorials for your ancestors rose from the ground like sitting stone sentinels, guardians of the dead.

The building itself was decades older than the first grave, two-stories tall with a wide front and an overhanging porch. The interior was all porcelain and dark lacquer, traditional bamboo sideboards and cabinets embellished with the golden crests of a forgotten ancestry. Its age was starting to show in the faded polish and chafed edges, but your parents refused to replace any of it with more modern fittings. Not that you really minded. You rather liked the old furniture, the atmosphere it created, the secrets it hid. The older, the better.

Resting your arms against the windowsill – gooseflesh breaking out across them from the chill in the air – you watched the tree tap impatiently against the glass, the crows unfurling ink-black wings as they readied themselves to take to the sky. You smiled when one of them turned to you, eyes glossy and bright with intelligence, and then pushed off the branch with a single, delicate beat of its wings.

Even as you covered up a yawn and debated going back to bed, dusk was starting to become watery at the edges, smudges of stars fading back into their dreamscape. The sun would be up soon. And with it, a new day.

* * *

Shiratorizawa Academy had been a nightmare to get into. As one of the top high schools in Miyagi prefecture and probably beyond, you'd been forced to study hard to pass the entrance exam. Once you'd made it in, however, lessons were a whole new nightmare. You were immediately rejected by your peers, and the standard of work was ostensibly difficult to grasp. You'd failed your first few assignments, already falling to the bottom of the class, and although you had slowly managed to redeem yourself, your grades had been at a constant low since starting over two years ago. The teaches had expressed their concerns for your suffering grades, and put in support measures like arranging tutor sessions and study clubs, but your attendance at those had gradually petered off given the way the other students had acted around you.

As you walked through the school gates that morning, your black bag thumping against your back, journal clutched tightly under your arm, you found a familiar sight waiting for you on the other side.

By the maple tree that grew in the courtyard, Tendou Satori was in the middle of a fight.

It was him – thin, lanky, his hair viciously red – against three guys, all with heavy-set frames and powerful stances. Tendou's face was calm, almost eerily so. A perfect illusion, like a mask. It was difficult to read people like that from a distance, though you suspected not even the bullies could see what he was thinking.

Bullying came with every school. Social expectations dictated who was at the bottom of the hierarchy, and that's where you and Tendou had found yourselves. Because you were a bit different. Because you didn't conform.

You sighed quietly and turned away. You already knew how the fight was going to end.

Ignoring the sudden howl of pain from behind you, you hurried on to your homeroom with your head bowed low, watching the shadows bite at your feet from the students either side of you, their faces flickering hazily in your vision, blurred and indistinct. If you couldn't see them, they couldn't see you.

Settling into a seat at the back of the classroom, you opened to a fresh page in your journal and started jotting down ideas and thoughts that had struck you on your way to class.

You'd always been a wordsmith; an architect of words, a seeker of tales. Stories were always at the tips of your fingers, itching to get out. You loved learning about history and folklore, local legends and myths, especially if it involved the weird or macabre. It made life more interesting, trying to find the bits and pieces of darkness that hid in plain sight. Not everyone else thought the same though. At school, they took one look at the strange books you read and that was it – you were the weird one, the one to be avoided.

The room had started to fill up with students, and you tried your best to keep scribbling despite the muffled chatter and irritating scrape of chairs against the floor. You only lifted your head when the door swung open five minutes later with the grate of rusted hinges.

Everyone stilled, watching Tendou Satori walk in with his usual lazy slouch. He had blood on his face and the collar of his uniform, but a hasty inspection suggested he wasn't hurt at all. Sensei's eyes went wide when she saw the blood, but Tendou waved away her concerns, uttering a simple "they'll live" before finding his seat at the back of the class, on the opposite side from you. You studied him from the corner of your eye as he began wiping the blood off his face with his fingers, rubbing it together against his skin. You thought you could smell it, sweet and metallic, but it could have just been your imagination.

Your eyes widened, and your lips twitched a little as the strange boy touched a bloody finger against his tongue, shuddering at the taste, then pulled a tissue out of his bag.

Tendou Satori might be at the bottom of the social hierarchy, but you both knew he wasn't at the bottom of the food chain.

Sooo uh Tendou's going to be pretty messed up in this story....