Serious Shinigami Shenanigans

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A young girl with pale brown hair tied in a ponytail, wandered down the hallway of the Shin'ō Academy (or as the locals called it: the Shinigami Academy) in her white and red uniform. Her destination was the board upon which the school posted important messages and information. She was incredibly nervous. After taking the entrance exam for the academy, she was about to find out whether or not she had gained a place at the school.

With the board finally in sight, Kiyomi stopped walking all of a sudden. She couldn't quite see anything that was written, but her nerves seemed to have gotten the better of her. What if she didn't get a high enough score? What if she would have to wait to retry the entrance exam? She was never this nervous about anything and it felt unnatural to her. But her mind focused on one thing; if she didn't get into the academy, what if she hurt her friend again?

As these thoughts crept into her already nervous mind, a group of other students wandered past her, evidently headed for the board. Kiyomi stood for a moment and watched, waiting to see what their results were. Judging from the large smiles that were passed around the group shortly after, they had succeeded. With a small sigh, Kiyomi closed her eyes, still standing in the middle of the hall.
"Alright, pull yourself together Kiyomi," she thought to herself, trying to pluck up the courage to move forward, "You'll never find out how you did if you just stand here."

Opening her teal blue eyes and nervously twisting a hand through her wavy, pale-brown ponytail, she took a few steps forward until she was stood in front of the large board. Glancing at it, she scanned all of the pinned up papers, looking for the correct one. Finding the list of students who had taken the exam, she scanned down it for her name:

Shiratori Kiyomi.... Pass

All of her former nervousness evaporated instantly and a wide grin spread over her face as she read the result. The sheet neglected to mention scores, possibly out of respect for those students who had failed, however Kiyomi didn't really care. She had passed!
There was a small note pinned to the entrance exam results telling everyone who had passed to find their name on one of the class lists and prepare for their first lessons. Nodding to herself, Kiyomi began to scan each of the lists, looking for the class she had been put into.

The blackmailing student merely grinned and continued past Rakeshisu, "Don't fail us, Rake~"
Rake huffed in anger, he only allowed his friends to call him Rake, others were to call him Rakeshisu. He stayed where he was for a moment as he watched the student disappear inside a building, off to blackmail some other poor soul most likely. The shinigami looked at the paper and unfolded it, reading the contents. It had not involved killing, but more of trying to leech information from a certain student by ANY means possible.

After watching the blackmailer disappear into one of the buildings, Kiyomi gently and almost silently dropped down from her position in the tree, making sure to grab her asauchi as she did so.
"Rake..." she blinked, her voice quiet lest she attract attention to the area, "I'm sorry. I was so caught up in my own misfortune that I didn't even notice that you had something like this going on too, " Her teal gaze slowly shifted from Rake's face to the ground at her feet, "This is all my fault. If I just hadn't approached you when this all started... if i'd just had the confidence to do what I wanted to do by myself instead of selfishly involving you, then you wouldn't have to do any of this..."

Rakeshisu was startled by the sudden appearance of Kiyomi from the tree above him. His mind had not thought of it being her so he was preparing a Kido. The Kido was canceled though when he heard Kiyomi's voice. She was...apologizing? He knew it would have been useless to play stupid and pretend nothing happened. So he listened to her speak, "Wait...this is what was happening to you too?" he asked, not quite getting it through his skull that this was the reason Kiyomi had been so worked up over since the odds of both of them being trapped like this was low. He was unsure of what to say, so he remained where he was, confused and worried about his mission since it was to be done tonight.

Kiyomi didn't know what to say in response and so merely nodded to her friend. Though it was true that she had been going through the same sort of thing, the absence of any tasks since the second hollow bait incident worried her. She had continued her rather unhealthy habit of sleeping in a different place each night, lest they try and murder her in her sleep.
Perhaps it was just her overreacting, but Kiyomi wasn't comfortable sleeping where any of them knew where she was.
"What have they asked you to do this time?" asked Kiyomi quietly.

"They want me to get some information from some guy, which is strange since they usually have me beat other students half to death," Rakeshisu shook his head, "But that's besides what we were originally talking about. It's not your fault if I was brought into this, It's probably my own."
He didn't say specifically why it would be his own in fear of sounding as if he were bragging about his Kido and sword arts. Other days he would have been happy to, but right now wasn't the best of times. Rakeshisu looked to Kiyomi, "Have they tried anything like give you more missions since the incident?"
Rake hated to sound nosy, but this was rather serious business since if the group went as far as blackmailing, they might carry out their threat.

Kiyomi blinked at Rake, wondering how he would think all of this to be his fault, however before she could say anything he'd asked her a question. She shook her head in reply and looked to Rake with a worried look in her eyes, "I don't know if it's just me being paranoid but i'm terrified that they're going to do something to hurt me.. or even follow through on their threat to harm my family..." Thinking about it, she was curious as to how they had managed to blackmail Rakeshisu into helping them, after all she had never heard him mention anything much about a family.

Rakeshisu didn't know what to do. Should he abandon his missions to help Kiyomi and possibly risk his own life since the other group might not be too happy about his abandoning them or continue his own and hope things go well with Kiyomi. He knew that he would need to shove the documents somewhere else to hide instead of cramming them in his dorm in different spots. He just didn't know what to DO. The teachers would probably not believe them and even if they confessed to it, they would probably be kicked out of the school. They were going to have to try and deal with this WITHOUT the teachers help, by now that was obvious. His shoulder began to ache again slightly, but quickly faded away as he spoke, "What should we do? I got nothin.." he admitted defeat to thinking of an idea.

Kiyomi blinked before swiftly, though gently, snatching the slip of paper with Rake's instructions from his hands.
"Personally I think we should handle this as best as we can so you don't have your group out trying to kill you," she blinked, forcing a small smile as she waved the note, before she paused to read the instructions upon it. Getting information from someone by any means necessary. Well there were perfectly civil ways to do that.

"Hey!" Rakeshisu attempted to swipe the paper back as Kiyomi snatched it, but failed. He was a bit annoyed that she had done such a thing, but quickly turned to confusion as Kiyomi spoke, "We?" Kiyomi was going to help him in his mission? Rake was slightly confused by the offer since Kiyomi seemed to be AGAINST helping these people and yet she was offering to help him. Then again it WOULD be easier to be able to go around without assassins crawling around the place, that and he wouldn't appreciate dying very much. He just hoped that whoever they had to work with wasn't going to be difficult...

"Yes, we," she replied firmly, handing the note back to her friend now that she had read it's contents, "I got you into this mess i'm not gonna let you go it alone. My problems can wait." She paused before continuing.
"Besides, we both know you're terrified of the guy they've asked you to get intel from," she chuckled, trying to lighten the mood a little despite the dire situation at hand.

"Huh?"
Rakeshisu hadn't exactly looked at his target yet. He took the slip and looked at the photograph provided, his jaw nearly dropped off of his head as he recognized the face in the photograph. It was the same dude that he had nearly gotten in a fight with, the man that had rambled about wolves and fighting. He hid his astonishment and worry, as the man seemed to adore fighting as much as the killing machine captain that only few could even cut and the chances of him being similar to the captain made fear shoot up anyone who was about to fight him's spine, with a remark, "I'm not SCARED of him, I'm just cautious."

"Suuuuure you are," chuckled Kiyomi, turning and making her way over to the trunk of the tree she had previously hopped down from.
"Anyhow, I plan on getting some shuteye tonight," If i'm lucky anyways, "and so should you. I'll see you in lessons tomorrow morning," she blinked as she began to climb back into the tree she had adopted as a bed for the night.

Rakeshisu huffed and rolled his eyes as Kiyomi left. Of COURSE he wasn't afraid of the burly student! Why would he be afraid of someone who is obviously stronger than him and he knows nothing about them and will pretty much be probably end up fighting a fight blindly without any knowledge of the other student's ability? Rakeshisu was afraid though, he just didn't want to show it, at least not in front of Kiyomi of all people. She might start calling him Keishi again for all he knew.

The shinigami returned to his dorm, to find a note at his door once more. He picked it up and read it, "I'll keep your friend a secret from the big boss for you, it'll be more fun that way!" He gritted his teeth and clenched his fists in anger as he tore up the note. That must have been the guy that was black mailing him, at least he seemed to be somewhat merciful...he thought at least...

Kiyomi woke the next morning after a grand total of two hours sleep between the combination of paranoia and nightmares.
Better than nothing I guess, thought the young shinigami, peering through the leaves of the tree to spot the sun's position. If she was quick and didn't sleep any more than an hour -which was unlikely anyway-, she could catch a little more shuteye before she was due to be in her first lesson of the day. Luckily that mission of Rake's hadn't stated a set time and since they had lessons with the guy they needed the information from, it would be simple enough to find him.
Turning over to keep the sunlight from her face, Kiyomi closed her eyes and attempted to sleep a little longer.

Rakeshisu had been sleepless the entire night, unable to get worries and thoughts out of his mind. What if the blackmailer wasn't being so "generous" if he was being one at all? Was he just going further in blackmailing him or was he really just cutting Rakeshisu some slack? He sighed as he looked outside to see the sun rising over the strange land that was the shinigami's living world. Life was becoming a lot more complicated than he had thought it would be when he joined the academy with Toraburu. He had expected simple studies and goofing around, not THIS!

He got up and picked up his blade, nothing came from it as usual. He looked away from it and exited his dorm, maybe he could go get his job done without his friend knowing and noticing...keep her out of this was his plan. Whether he was successful would depend on Kiyomi's luck.