Did we force ourselves on you, or you on us? Closed

"The Weary Soul of a Soldier in the Body of a Child."

Selim carefully walked down the nearly-empty corridor, fighting off the haze of exhaustion that was clearly shown in the deep bags around his amber eyes, which made them stand out all the more strikingly against his sallow face. Yes, these days most probably likened him to a walking corpse, not that he cared.

Slung across his shoulder was a worn book bag, textbooks inside it disguising the tome he got from his brother last year. A pair of steel chopsticks stuck out of the satchel, along with some grey gloves he had taken to wearing whenever his paranoia pushed him to scratch the back of his hands until the skin tore like rotten flesh.

He was dressed in a simple grey hoodie and black sweatpants, barefoot. The only protection for his feet were the bandages wrapped around the sole of each. A loop of black fabric was loosely coiled around his neck, hiding a few of the scars that peaked out from his scarred torso.

His hair was a mess, and it seemed the boy no longer bothered to try and make it look neat.

His cold eyes roamed the shadowy corridor sharply, occasionally fixing on the patches of darkness as if the raven saw something there that no one else could. Occasionally, his free had twitched, brushing against his leg like a fluttering wing, bony fingers looking reminiscent of pale spiders.

The whispers were quieter that day, manageable. More than once throughout the aftermath of his mind snapping, they grew into a cacophony, forcing him to hide away from his peers and clench his head in pain. That summer he was too exhausted to pay much attention to the chatter thanks to his father working him into the ground. But now?

Well, he was still tired, but his mind was still active enough to think.

Perhaps that wouldn't sound foreboding to most, but to him, it was a living hell. His mind was too cluttered with paranoid whispers and self-deprecating thoughts to turn to his favored subject of science. His thoughts were no longer something that piqued his interest with theories and ideas, now they only spoke of fear and self-loathing.

But he hid it well, he had to. He could plaster on a very real-looking smile, he could tease others with a light tone, and make his golden eyes sparkle with humor and delight. Or, if his mind was worse than most days, he could paint a picture of lazy apathy whenever he walked into class late, making up excuses that exasperated most (Tall tales, they said).

He could seem to function like a healthy, if sleep-deprived child, and hide his internal turmoil with a fake persona he delicately crafted over summer. No one seemed to think he wasn't ok, mentally or physically, no one saw past his lies... other than Vladimir Athanatos.

The Ravenclaw said he was bad at lying, but if he was how was Selim duping so many of his peers? Selim knew he was good at lying, but not to Athanatos. His upperclassmen was too smart, his eyes too piercing to hide from.

Perhaps Jack could see through his falsities, but Selim wouldn't know, the redhead seemed to avoid him on most days.

Though it was hard to hide his paranoia, most people probably noticed how he looked at seemingly normal shadows, as if they hid dark horrors.

But they wrote it off as the raven merely being 'quirky'.

That seemed to be slowly changing over the days, perhaps the rumor of Victor's death was creeping over the student body like a disease.... but Selim wouldn't know, no one really spoke to him.

So, as he walked alone in the corridor, mind foggy with his sickly thoughts, he didn't notice the other student watching him like a hawk. Let's hope the first-year didn't surprise him, that tended to get people injured. Most have learned not to abruptly shake Selim out of his nightmarish world the hard way.

His prey appeared, an exhausted ghost of a child moving slowly down the quiet hallway. His feet made no sound against the stone and Kazuo noted that the boy was barefoot. He was dressed not unlike Kazuo, in casual comfort though where Izaya chose his clothes with intent, it appeared to him that Selim had thrown on whatever might be convenient. His hair was an absolute mess and the dark circles under his eyes spoke to chronic sleeplessness. In fact, if Kazuo hadn't known who he was watching for, he might have wondered if this boy wasn't a castle ghost.

It was a good thing for Kazuo that the boy walked slowly. As he crept along the ledges, watching Selim with obsessive curiosity, he discovered they were harder to navigate when one was trying to be stealthy. He was no shinobi, just an eleven year old with a penchant for climbing high places.

Selim seemed skittish, though Kazuo had no insight as to why the boy would be acting nervous in an empty hallway. His eyes would dart to and from, searching for something unknown in the shadows of the hall. Beyond what he had already learned from rumour, seeing Selim in person made Kazuo even more curious. The boy was different, the very air about him felt heavy with something…

Distracted as he was by his obsession with watching Selim, Kazuo wasn't paying as much attention to his feet. One misstep and he was losing his already precarious balance on the ledge. "Fuck!" He blurted - his new favorite and highly inappropriate English word - as he slipped, hands scrabbling for purchase as he tumbled to the floor just ahead of Selim. "愚か. (Stupid.)" He muttered as he ran his hand through his hair. He looked up at Selim and gave the older boy a broad grin. "おはようございま! (Good morning!)"

He jumped to his feet, glancing around to see if anyone else had noticed his accident or, more importantly, realized that he had been hiding among the window sills. Seeing that no one seemed to be paying attention to them, he gave an inward sigh of relief.

"You're Selim Faust, right? I want to ask you some questions. Like why your name is Faust. Is it based on the author? Or the character in the book? Does your family make questionable deals with devils? Or do people come to your family to make deals? Are you the devils? Did you change your name because you want to blend in with the Europeans? Or are you hiding? Did you do something awful in Japan and have to leave? Maybe do magic in public or something stupid like that?" Kazuo had an amazing ability to talk when he wanted to. Rapid-fire questions, all in what seemed to be a single breath, like some sort of reporter trying to get as many questions in as possible before his target was able to disappear. "Also, why do you look like a zombie? Halloween is over. Or are you trying to imitate the ghosts? Or do you just not like sleep? Maybe you like creeping around the castle after dark. Is that why there are rumours about you?"

He stared at Selim with bright, curious eyes and a smile that was cheerful but not necessarily friendly. If the boy continued walking, he would fall in step beside him.

Those houses haunt in which we leave
Something undone. It is not those
Great words or silence of love

That spread their echoes through a place
And fill the locked-up, unbreathed gloom.
Ghosts do not haunt with any face

That we have known; they only come
With arrogance to thrust at us
Our own omissions in a room.

Truly, his unknown stalker was not good at stealth, for if Selim had been any more alert he would've seen the boy's shadow cast on the ground, blocking the sickly yellow beams of dawn. Luckily, for the moments that passed with the raven trudging along like a wandering soul, he mistook the silhouette of the first-year as yet another one of the twisting apparitions he saw on a daily basis.

Only when the younger Japanese boy fell inelegantly to the ground was Selim snapped back into reality, chopsticks drawn, one thrown just inches away from his underclassmen's face. The child was lucky he didn't lose an eye.

When the raven heard the familiar language of his clan's heritage he blinked, fully snapping into reality, and examining the boy who was on the ground before him. For a while, his expression revealed no emotion as the Hufflepuff rambled on with question after question, each either personal, a clan secret, or simply offensive in one way or another.

His own etiquette training was screaming at how blunt the child was being, it was rather annoying.

The child was grinning, and a faint flutter of a memory passed through Selim's rattled brain, flashes of when he was younger, before everything went to hell in a handbasket. He remembered being that inquisitive, curious about the world around him, but that was quickly stifled into a mere spark with how he was treated in his clan.

It took a moment for the raven to process just what his fellow Japanese peer was saying, that moment was mostly spent with him staring blankly at the boy, feeling like he was decades older than the underclassmen, not a mere year older.

It was an oddly alien feeling, for a moment, he felt like he was back in his fever dream of a first-year at this blasted school, acting as if he were merely watching as his body acted out the mind-numbing motions of the day. Truly a ghost of himself.

He shook himself out of it, mind rebooting, and mask slipping back on his face as if it had never left. A raised brow, a quirked mouth showing that he was mildly unimpressed. It was an unfamiliar experience, interacting with a child who acted his age.

His pale lips opened as he eased into a lazy stance. "You know, it's rather rude to ask so many questions at once to a stranger who was just enjoying a stroll." His voice was a bit of a cross between a deadpan and a drawl. "Yes, I am Selim Faust. My mother named me because she liked how 'Selim' sounded, and 'Faust' is just a name that we chose to take up." He eyed his underclassmen "I suppose it suits us, we're basically demons in human skin, figuratively, at the least."

He idly scratched at his neck, nail catching on fabric. "Now, kohai." the raven stalked over, plucking his 'chopstick' from the ground behind the younger boy. Twirling it skillfully, he slipped it back into his bookbag with its counterpart. "Why don't you actually introduce yourself before asking me personal questions, hmm?" He looked over at the first-year, "And next time, how about you walk up to me and just ask me questions like a normal person instead of stalking me. You'd be more likely to prevent the chance of being impaled in the eye. Not a pleasant feeling, I'd say. He paused, casting the child an unimpressed look "In fact, it'd be rather painful, and you'd have to adjust to being completely blind in one eye. There goes your depth perception, and your chance of sports, maybe even driving." Perhaps there was dry amusement in Selim's voice, but he mostly sounded tired. This was proven by him yawning a few moments after his chastizing. "Much too troublesome to deal with, in my opinion."

He wasn't in the mood to be social with starry-eyed children who had the potential to be stalkers. He was paranoid enough without having to deal with the possibility of lashing out against his peers. It was rather embarrassing as well, seeing as how most kids didn't have training in stealth and were about as elegant as an elephant in a china shop.

Looking back at his underclassman, he shot the boy a weary look, he looked done with life, really. Though, that was to be expected of someone who got a max of maybe three hours of sleep a day (Even that was a slim chance). He blamed the fact that he had survived this long on magic. Magic was a very unhealthy life hack, with little to no benefits.

Selim hated magic.

後輩 (kohai): Underclassman

The whispering, whizzing sound and feel of something coming very close to his face caused Kazuo to freeze into unnatural stillness for a brief moment, eyes widening in surprise and an unhealthy amount of delight. His head turned slowly to stare at the chopstick, a sound that could only be called a giggle managing to escape his lips. “凄い! (Amazing!)” His

As he rapid fired questions at Selim, he watched the upperclassman’s expression like a hawk watching a mouse, fascinated by the range of reactions he earned from the other boy. At first, Selim seemed guarded - not surprised by his presence but not entirely expecting it either. For whatever reason, it seemed Selim had identified him as a threat, at least if the weaponized chopstick was a sign.

As he continued to babble, Selim’s expression turned to one of annoyance that Kazuo had expected. If he’d been assaulted with questions from some random student he didn’t know, he’d be annoyed too. Which was why he had done it. After spoiling his chance at surprise - which he was beginning to think wouldn’t have been successful even if he hadn’t fallen - he suspected he had a limited timeframe in which the other boy would tolerate his presence. Throwing as many questions at Selim, as fast as possible, meant he could likely distract him into answering at least a few of them.

The blank look though, that was interesting. Had his interrogation caused the boy to simply space out? That wouldn’t do. If the boy wasn’t paying attention, he wouldn’t get his answers. But then Selim shook his head and when he refocused on Kazuo, Kazuo could see the way his expression twisted into one of carefully constructed normalcy. That was something he recognized very well, not on the ghost of a boy before him, but when he looked in the mirror. Mild irritation quirked the boy’s brow as he finally deigned to respond.

“Demons in human skin?” That was an interesting admission, though the other questions about his family went unanswered. Still, an admission like that certainly hinted at the possibility of a something interesting in Selim’s family. “You don’t look like a demon. More like half a person. 幽霊 (Yurei - ghost).”

He watched as Selim retrieved the chopstick and couldn’t help but to approve of the improvised weapon. Despite teaching the children how to light each other on fire, the school had a strict rule regarding mundane weapons. The brief thought that his mother would approve of Selim’s resourcefulness flickered across his thoughts before returning his attention to Selim’s words. The ghost-demon-Slytherin chastised him for his terrible manners which just made his grin widen. He gave Selim a casual shrug, shoving his hands into the pockets of his hoodie as he school his expression into one of polite formality, a mask easily as good as Selim’s own, one he had spent most of his childhood crafting. The brazen, excited eleven year old vanished, replaced by a solemn-looking boy who bowed from the waist, to the precise degree of respect that would acknowledge Selim as his upperclassman.

“おはようございます。私の名前は島田和夫。よろしくお願いします。(Good morning. My name is Shimada Kazuo. Pleasure to meet you.)” The greeting was formal, the tone was polite, practically a textbook example of Japanese manners. Yet as Kazuo raised his head, his eyes shone with amusement and his lips curved into a shadow of a smile. He noted the exhausted look Selim was giving him and it made him pause briefly, thinking that he had only seen that kind of look on adults. Adults who had seen too much suffering. That was not a look that belonged on the face of a child. Intriguing.

“Thank you so much for choosing not to impale me. It might have been an interesting experience but it does sound quite inconvenient. I’m beginning to understand why there are rumours about you. So… why did your family change their name? You never did explain that part. What was your name before? You’re a pureblood right? So you must be old clan. And where did you learn to throw like that? What art are you trained in? Do you have a private sensei? Or attend classes somewhere outside school? That throw was very impressive.”

He reduced the number of questions, focusing in on a specific topic instead this time, refusing to give up on getting answers but choosing not to badger him this time. There was genuine admiration in his tone when he paid Selim the compliment on his throw, and genuine curiosity still lingered in his eyes as he spoke. Selim Faust had definitely caught his attention.

"He looked into the mirror, his reflection off. It was smiling, alive. He was supposed to be dead."

Selim noted that the boy's response to almost being horribly disfigured was a rather misplace 'Awesome.' It made him inwardly shake his head because that response was eerily childlike, he wasn't used to children, he was used to adults walking around in the skins of kids.

Though, as his underclassmen spoke, he didn't miss the sharp look in the child's eyes, one he had seen many times on himself, used to dissect the person in front of you with just your hawk-like gaze. Perhaps he'd be disconcerted seeing such an expression aimed at himself, but he wasn't, his father often used the very same expression on Selim, like he was a science project, a lab rat, not a human.

Being treated less than human wasn't new to Selim, and the way his underclassmen was looking at him was slightly different from how his father looked at him. So, to the raven, it just meant that this boy was another smart child.

Magic had to affect mental development someway, there were too many genuinely smart children in Hogwarts, it was annoying.

He quirked a brow as the Hufflepuff called him a ghost. A light humorless chuckle, "Perhaps I am, in some sense." He smirked slightly, some might call it a cryptic expression if they thought too hard about it.

His gaze drifted once more to the shadows that seemed to grasp at the younger boy, coiling around his ankles, waiting to pull the underclassman into the depths of Selim's personal hell.

A slight frown graced his face, and he forced himself to look away as the Hufflepuff fell into a familiar bow, one Selim had used more than once, and spoke out, in a polite tone, his introduction. The Japanese words were easing, less grating than the English Selim had to endure since he could speak, but had never fully gotten used to.

The voices echoed the name... Shimada Kazuo.

The formality elicited a pleased look from the raven, eyes glinting in approval. Etiquette was pounded into him, so was the idea that it was a good thing, something his culture used to favor more than they do now (Though he supposed, compared to westerners, his culture would still seem rather formal).

Yes, he was inexplicably pleased that there were still some people who knew how to be polite the right way.

Though the amused smile from his kohai ruined the effect to some degree. Despite the mildly disrupted moment of formality, he couldn't help but echo the same feeling back, amusement seeming to make his amber eyes warmer, less dead.

On the outside, it seemed Selim was easing into the conversation. On the inside he was as tense as a bowstring, a snake ready to strike in self-defense... none of it showed on his face though, he made sure of it.

The boy began his questions anew, seeming to be rather skilled in information gathering if he knew what questions to ask, but Selim obliged to answering anyways... vaguely, very vaguely.

He responded to the inquires in order.

"We changed our name for reasons. My name before was Japanese." He technically still had his Japanese name, but he wasn't about to hand it out to this child, just like he hadn't handed it out to Jack, "Yes, I'm a pureblood. We could be considered an old clan, but also a new one." He smirked, the Faust Clan was relatively new, but their previous clan name tied them back to ancient eras, "I learned all my fighting skills from my clan tutors, and I'm trained in a fair number of arts."

He quirked a brow, for the first time in a while he was curious... curious about what the boy would take from his purposefully ambiguous answers. He recognized this boy's surname though, of course, he did, his tutors taught him in more than just fighting. The history of their forgotten clan was a rich one indeed, and the Fausts have made sure to track the line of this particular clan.

He examined the boy carefully, though was interrupted by another yawn. His eyes felt heavy, and he didn't have to fake the half-lidded gaze he was wearing. He was exhausted mentally, physically, spiritually, and if he wasn't so terrified of sleep, he'd likely flop to the ground in the middle of the corridor and nap without a regard for the world around him.

He didn't, he could barely manage meditating these days. He felt terrible, but couldn't do much about it except sip some tea to relax his sore muscles for once. Sadly, he didn't have his tea set with him, or else he would've set upright against the wall.

Though...

The raven looked around at the living shadows, inwardly grimacing.

Perhaps even having some simple tea would be hard today, the hallucinations were rather active, auditory and visual.

His mind cast back to the tea he had in the summer, with Vlad, before he (his shadow) impaled Victor Moore, killing him in cold blood.

He was right, at the time.

He really did wish that blissful relaxation would've lasted longer than it had.

Kazuo’s attention was fixed on Selim, as if every action the other boy took could mean something. As if, perhaps, the other boy might grow tired of his presence and choose to actually injure him. As if he could determine how Selim might move, might react, from some tiny, imperceptible movement or change of expression. This boy, this ghost who wandered the halls alone, was not like the other carefree students. He was someone Kazuo would consider dangerous.

Perhaps it was unhealthy, his particular obsession with seeking out those individuals who stood out from among the masses. Who, whether by choice or by circumstance, did not blend in, did not live according to the expectations of others. He had thought wizard society would have disproportionately higher numbers but his experience so far had been disappointing. The rules were different but humans - wizard or not - tended to behave the same.

Selim did not behave like other wizards, or other humans. For example, the way his gaze seemed to constantly shift toward the shadows, lingering there as if he could see something no one else could. It wasn’t obvious at first, easily mistaken for the simple wandering gaze of disinterest, yet it didn’t seem to be in response to disinterest, did match with Selim’s expression or body language. The mask of formality, the mask of apathy, the mask of normalcy.

If Selim’s mask was disinterest, Kazuo’s was a smile. A smile that never faltered, that shifted from cheerful to mocking to wry yet rarely reached his eyes. A smile he graced Selim with when he responded to the questions in a most unsatisfying way. He took a silent moment to parse through what little information Selim had provided, expanding upon it in order to best phrase his followup. “Clan, not family. An entire clan who changed their name. At least, to outward peering eyes. You have a Japanese name and you follow Japanese etiquette so the name change… it’s just a disguise. A clan that teaches and studies martial arts… Yet you’re an onmy- uh… wizard. Not many clans who boast of both magic and martial arts. Even fewer who would exist outside Japan. The few I'm aware of are... of a particular type.”

His grin widened as he made his assessment of what little Selim had shared, noting the way Selim seemed to be watching him with curiosity. Had he caught the older boy’s attention? If he had, and it meant more opportunity to dig at Selim’s secrets, all the better. He was able to make many of the connections because of their shared culture, and because his own clan was old. His mother had been very sure to teach him the histories, especially in regard to the clans who practiced magic. He didn’t know of any specific clan leaving Japan but that hardly meant much given that he was only eleven and had not the time or opportunity to do an in-depth study on the topic. Perhaps his mother would have been better able to connect the threads of information. Perhaps he would write her a letter...

Then the older boy let out a yawn, eyes shifting to the corners of the hallway once again and Kazuo’s brows creased in thought. “Were you heading to the hall for breakfast? What’s your proper name? Given name, I mean. Obviously, you’re not going to tell me your surname since you are doing a great job of avoiding my questions.” He paused then, considering his next move. How best to address the rumours he’d heard. Confirming Selim’s martial arts training was a good step but he had a feeling blunt might not be the best tactic if he wanted to get the truth.

“Why do the other students avoid you?” He finally asked.

"Many people would be scared if they saw in the mirror not their faces, but their character"

Selim listened to the boy's conclusions he drew from the few words the raven said. His face was that of lazy, tired, apathy. Slouched with his hands in his pockets, Selim watched the child as he puzzled out a vague picture of the Faust clan. The raven's response to the claim was as simple and ambiguous as his last answers. "An interesting assessment." His tone was mildly dismissive, attention elsewhere. He had caught a glimpse of something in the shadows, another hallucination.

The being looked similar to a ringmaster, wide smile on its black-shrouded face, eyes a kaleidoscope of colors as it gestured with one finger for the raven to draw closer.

Selim didn't, his awareness instead flitting to the voices that had begun to whisper hurriedly in his mind, speaking about the child in front of him. Their hissing tones slithered through his ears, sounding almost like white noise, though he couldn't ignore them.

"Don't speak to the boy, reveal nothing, he's poking his nose where it doesn't belong. What if he's a spy from the Kuroda clan? He could easily stab you in the back, age doesn't matter in our world..."

Paranoia's whispers made his fingers twitch slightly, before tightening. Bloodlust was screaming at him again.

"KILL HIM, KILL HIM, KILL HIM, KILL HIM, KILL HIM... before he kills you. Go on SLit his THrOAt, you can do IT, You KNoW How. A few steps to the left, run forward, slip behind him, draw your weapon across his JUgulUlAr-"

Selim Internally shuddered, feeling a bit sick to his stomach as he eyed the boy. He was actually contemplating it, but logic was murmuring to him, saying that the body would be found eventually, and he'd be a prime suspect. If he killed the boy and was found out, he'd be dragged away into a mental institution, surrounded by strangers.

His father couldn't write off cold-blooded murder for the Aurors.

"Then don't be found out...."

A sharp breath through his nose, Selim turned his gaze to the window.

But if father did try and spring him from jail, he'd be shoved into the shadows with the rest of his clanmates with their.. 'specialization', forgotten even further by the world, living life as only a weapon.

His warmer persona was murmuring about growing closer to the boy, cracking a joke, perhaps taking him under his wing as a proper kohai. Keep your friends close and possible enemies closer.

His darker side was silent, rarely pitching in anyways unless it was interesting enough for it to join in. His professional mask was also quiet, only speaking up every once in a while about being cordial.

His personal demons were simply niggling at them, Guilt hissing at him, saying that he shouldn't let the boy grow close to a monster who could snap and kill him at any moment. Snuff out another life that had a future ahead of them.

He was snapped out of his debate with the voices when his underclassmen spoke once more, pushing for more answers about Selim's true name. He blinked, staring at the boy for a few moments, and rubbing his eyes wearily. The whispers in his head were taxing him mentally again, he was feeling more exhausted by the minute.

"Already had breakfast. Tip for the future, little kohai; If you don't want to deal with other humans during meals for one reason or another, head to the kitchen and ask the house elves to make you what you want. They're happy to oblige, especially if you're nice to them." He doesn't know where the words came from, and the boy before him didn't ask for them.

Well, no matter, not like he can take them back now.

"As for my name, Selim Faust is my given name, though also isn't." He looked up in faint amusement. The Faust clan gave their children two names at birth, the one they'd often use in public, and their 'true' names. Both were legal, one in the eyes of the law, the other in the eyes of the clan.

He wasn't about to give this kid his true name, it was private, and true names are never given out to those who aren't part of the clan.

Then, after the boy's pause, he asked something much more direct, and much less sensitive.



Selim didn't answer for a long while, examining the boy in front of him carefully, seeming a tad more alert. The raven slowly blinked and took a breath before answering in a slightly colder tone. "Because I scare them. I make them uneasy, quite often." He smirked slightly, no emotion behind it, "Humans fear the unknown, and to most, I'm an unknown."

A scoff, Selim shoved his hands back in his pockets, hiding their twitching, "I'm an unstable child with little to no information attached to me. They avoid me, and I prefer it that way." He cast his eyes back to the shadows, the whispers had grown silent, "A few have approached me though, interacted with me, most of them ended up with rather bad things happening to them." His tone seemed a tad bittersweet but had a flinty undertone.

He thought of Jack, the boy now disfigured because he associated with him. Ruka was affected by that in turn, negatively. Flash Holmwood, Opeilia Winters, Oliver Averill, Percival Rainwood... his Brother.

All of them had bad things happen to them by just interacting, directly or indirectly, with him. Sure, some things were more mild, and some extreme. There were some who Selim had interacted with before that hadn't had a bad thing happen to them, but inevitably, they would.

It was best if he was avoided. So he didn't hurt himself or others, just like Jack said.

He closed his eyes slightly, pulling away from those thoughts and looking to the boy with a raised brow. "You should do the opposite of what they did, and stay away from me." His tone wasn't bitter, or dry with amusement; it was blunt, stated as a fact, accompanied by an unfeeling expression.

He doubted his kohai would heed his warning, but no one could say Selim didn't try to keep the child away from him in the future. He had, and if he failed, then that wasn't on him.

Though, his guilt if something did happen to the boy would still haunt him regardless.

Selim's response to his assessment was equally uninformative but that was to be expected. Clearly the older boy had secrets and did not want to share them. It was too bad he wouldn't even share his Japanese name, though. That was a bit disappointing. Kazuo didn't dwell too long on the disappointment, simply acknowledging to himself that he could always try again for that information later. To Kazuo, the response was as much confirmation as denial. He didn't have much to go on but his gut told him he was on the right track.

There it was again, that distracted way that Selim seemed to stare into the shadows, seemed to disappear into his own thoughts. The look he had fixed on Kazuo actually brought a thread of concern to the younger boy's face. There was something there that he couldn't read, something going on behind those exhausted eyes that he couldn't perceive. Selim was dangerous, he thought, but not for the obvious reasons. No doubt his martial skill was intimidating to others but to Kazuo, it was the masks and the haunted look that made him cautious. Not so cautious that he wouldn't continue to pursue the truth, however.

"Oh, that's good to know, thank you. I usually skip breakfast so that I can go jogging in the morning. If I can ask the house elves, that will make things easier."

Then the admission, the confirmation that the reason other students avoided him was his behaviour, though he doubted the other students truly understood why he made them uneasy. That would require looking beneath the surface and his experience was that most didn't bother, even little wizards-in-training.

"Some humans. Some humans fear the unknown but not all. Though I admit, they tend to be the majority. There are far more terrifying things than the unknown, especially in this world. Would you agree, Akuma-senpai?" He gave Selim a smirk of his own, confident and perhaps challenging. "Though I don't intend to seek out death, I am not so easily scared off by the potential of it. We are wizards. There is nothing safe about the life we live. Bad things happen to people all the time, whether they associate with you or not. Like all the children that seem to go missing from this school. Surely you aren't responsible for every one of them?" He arched a brow at Selim in return, a subtle dare to claim the misery of every child in Hogwart's.

"People make their own choices…" He glanced away, looking to the other students in the hall. "Good or bad. And we have to live with the consequences of our choices. This was a lesson I was taught my whole, long, eleven years of life, along with all those etiquette lessons we have in common. So," his gaze travelled back to Selim and he grinned. "Why don't we make a deal? I will cheerfully accept responsibility for my choice to stalk you and you won't feel guilty if something awful happens to me."

Reducio

Interacting with @Selim Faust

"Many people would be scared if they saw in the mirror not their faces, but their character"

Selim listened to the boy's little pep-talk, eyes intent even as many of the voices in his head scoffed at the words. Wizard life was about as dangerous as muggle life, Hogwarts was the exception, really, this place probably was cursed.

A faint ghost of a smirk curled up his lips ever-so-slightly at the nickname his kohai gave him. Akuma-senpai, hm? Fitting, yet seeming slightly contradictive to the words the boy spoke about him. The name roused his crueler side, which seemed rather pleased, a molding sadistic glint shining on the raven's face for the slightest of moments, pupils seeming to narrow for a fraction of a second (Wizards who make contact lenses such as Selim's enjoy going all out).

The Cruel One seemed to be awoken though, overtaking the other voices with ease, whispering dark temptations to the raven.

Its voice slithered through his soul.

"You keep denying me, but I am a part of me, just give in, it'll be easy. YOu'll have no more regrets, no more... empathy. You'll be free, I'll get rid of your demons, I will restore your ambitions..."

Selim's chilling heart wavered. He did not want to give in, the last time he did....

"Just for a bit... little raven."

A switch was flipped.

His eyes took on a sudden sly amusement as a deal was brought up. A snakish grin curling up his expression. His amber orbs twinkled in delight. The 180 turn in personality was enough to give most whiplash.

"A deal, you say?" He tilted his head, stalking a tad closer, "You'll have to offer me something a tad more equal to an elimination of guilt than just admitting responsibility for stalking me." A laugh, "Feelings like that are rather hard to smother in the face of looking down at the dead body of a child."

He smirked, pale face looking almost ghoulish with this new expression of emotion. Now he looked confident, focused, calculating, cruel. Honestly, most people would diagnose that as some sort of multi-personality disorder.

His kohai had witnessed him taking off one mask and slipping on another that seemed all the more real, perhaps this was the true face of the newly-labeled 'Akuma'. No one would've likely predicted this sudden change into a much darker person that radiated an unnerving aura.

Quite the accomplishment to make Selim revile this mask in public,. In light of this, perhaps it made more sense that students avoided or chose to ignore the snake in the shadow of a raven.

"Try again, Kohai, if you really are that determined to linger around me." His tone was playful as he looked into Kazuo's eyes, his pale yellow ones seeming to glow with dark mirth and morbid curiosity. The expression was reversed, now he looked like he was looking at a science experiment instead of a foolish child. "Maybe take it a step further and make a deal with the Devil."

He didn't stop smiling either.

He wasn't one to miss a chance to live up to his name.

Faust indeed