The school bell rang loudly, echoing down the silent halls of Hikarashi High. Students began flooding out of their classrooms, laughing, talking about TikTok trends, homework, and club activities. But in the farthest corner of the school, near the windows streaked with dried rain marks, there sat a boy no one ever approached.
His name was Kikidori.
He sat with his hands in his pockets, head down, messy black hair falling over his dark eyes. His bangs were so long you could barely see his expression, but if you looked close enough, you'd see his eyes were completely empty – like looking into the dark ocean at midnight. Dead. Quiet. Cold.
"Hey, Kikidori!" a classmate shouted playfully while walking by with his friends.
Kikidori didn't even move. Didn't flinch. Didn't glance up. He was used to it – the teasing, the attempts to include him, the fake friendliness. They didn't know him. They didn't want to know him. Because if they did… they'd run away screaming.
After school, Kikidori walked silently back to the dorms, his black school bag slung over his shoulder. It was raining. Thin droplets hit his hair and ran down his face, dripping from his chin like tears he never shed. Beside him was Haruna – his girlfriend.
She was the exact opposite of him. Bright orange hair tied in a ponytail, her green eyes glowing like lively emeralds. She was sweet, gentle, and always smiling. Her voice was like music to others. No one understood why she was with Kikidori, the quiet dark boy who barely even spoke a word.
"Dori-kun!" she said softly, hugging his arm as they walked through the rain. Her voice was gentle like the falling droplets. "Let's go back to the dorm and eat together. I made your favorite – teriyaki chicken and rice balls~"
He looked at her from under his bangs, his expression unreadable. Then he gave a tiny nod.
"Okay."
That was all he said.
Their dorm room smelled like flowers and soy sauce. Haruna sat on the fluffy pink carpet and unpacked their dinner boxes while Kikidori sat against the window, staring blankly out into the darkening sky. The clouds were like bruises, purplish-black and heavy with rain.
"Dori-kun…" Haruna whispered after a while, glancing at him worriedly. "Are you… okay today? You've been… more quiet than usual."
He blinked slowly, his pupils shrinking slightly as if something dark had passed through his mind. Then he whispered in a flat, lifeless voice:
"I'm fine."
But inside his head… was a different story.
Because inside his head, there was blood.
KIKIDORI'S PAST:
A small room. Dark. Cold. There was screaming outside the thin cracked door. A little boy with messy black hair sat curled in the corner, his knees hugged tightly to his chest. His eyes were wide, blank, staring at the blood dripping from his forehead. His father had smashed his head against the floor earlier. His mother was screaming again.
"YOU USELESS WHORE!!" his father roared from outside. CRASH. Something broke. Glass scattered. Then the sound of a body hitting the wall. A sob. Another hit. Another scream.
The little boy covered his ears. He didn't cry. He couldn't. Because when he cried, his father would come to him next. And tonight… he didn't want to be killed.
His father was an alcoholic. His mother was a prostitute. Every night was hell – screaming, crying, beating, blood. Sometimes his father would grab a knife and carve crosses into his arms while laughing.
"Pray to god! Pray to god, you little demon child!" he'd scream. But Kikidori never prayed. He didn't believe in God. Because if there was a god, he wouldn't be living in hell.
That night, as his mother screamed and screamed, he sat in the dark, staring at his hands. They were shaking. Blood dripped from his forehead onto his fingers. And he laughed quietly. A broken, empty laugh.
"God doesn't love me…" he whispered to himself, as his mother's screams turned into choking sounds and his father laughed like a demon possessed.
"God doesn't love me. So I will worship something that does love me… I will worship the darkness."
From that night on, he began drawing upside down crosses all over his skin. The biggest was on his middle finger, the bottom of the cross reaching down his finger and the horizontal lines crossing into his hand. When he flipped someone off, it looked like he was cursing God himself.
He liked it that way.
Because he didn't want to be protected by God. He wanted to be feared like the demons in his head.
BACK IN THE DORM:
"Dori-kun…?" Haruna's voice brought him back to reality. She was holding out a rice ball with seaweed wrapped around it. "Here, eat up before it gets cold…"
He stared at her soft hand holding the rice ball. For a split second, his vision blurred and he saw blood dripping from her wrist, her eyes lifeless. But he blinked and the vision disappeared. She was still there, smiling sweetly, completely unaware of the monster sitting in front of her.
He reached out, took the rice ball, and bit into it slowly.
"T…thank you," he whispered.
And as he chewed, his mind drifted off again to the darkness, to the screams, to the blood. To the next person he would kill tonight after Haruna fell asleep.
Because outside of school, away from the bright fluorescent lights and the smiling students…
Kikidori was not human.
He was the devil himself.
The End of Chapter 1
HI!!! UH IDK WHAT TO SAY I'M JUST TYPING HERE TO MAKE THE CHAPTER OVER 1K LETTERS SO UH... HOW'S UR DAY BEEN READER? hope it's been well and by the way for anyone reading named Noah I think y'all are very good people and deserve friends and yup idk what to say..... This is getting kinda boring... Sigh.... Uh..... Wanna learn something? Well... Kikidori has killed 10 people already including 7 men 2 women and 1 person from the school... YAY IT'S 1013 NOW.. Heh... Bye now!