to look at solemnly; to defy

That was until his unusually bright and sparky response came, an ill-pitched yes that caused her to tense ever so slightly. Searching for murder weapons was one thing, but not denying it even more suspicious. Normal people tried to keep their plans for murder a secret; someone open about it was more likely to be lethal and deranged. At least, that’s what she’d picked up from TV shows and had decided to apply to this situation. Common sense dictated that no idiot would kill under the orders of a TV screen, but judging from the tall boy’s response that was not so. Whether or not this made him an impressionable imbecile was irrelevant, for at that moment it struck Katsumi that not only was he standing next to a drawer of knives, but that the room was devoid of any other presence besides her own, classifying this situation as a somewhat risky one. Whatever she knew of self defence boiled down to ‘run fast’- and as practised as she was at dancing in her current footwear, she doubted whether she could outrun him should the need be; and any self defence would be negated by the fact that he would be armed and she not.

Of course, it was a bit quick to jump to the conclusion of an attack, hence why Katsumi did not instantly flee- after all, keeping calm was usually the most useful skill in high pressure situations. But this restraint did not stop her from taking a few cautionary steps backwards and holding out a hand warning him to keep his distance. Her look became a more wary one with a threatening edge.

"Like to help? No. No, no no, I am not becoming an…accomplice in anything.” She spat out the word as though it was a vile insult; and in a way it was. Katsumi wasn’t planning to lose her head and murder anytime soon, but if she did then it would be on her own terms. No way was she going to be anybody’s assistant, especially not to this boy, pale as death and with the same morbid atmosphere surrounding him.

“M-Murder?” Juzou’s eyebrows shot up unbidden. He took a maladroit step back with the unfortunate epiphany as to what she meant, and in doing so, struck the bottom of the drawer he’d been inspecting with the hard line of his knuckles. The knives jolted in a symphonic rattle; fixing an intense gaze on the offending implements, he lowered the other hand gently, willing them to quiet down as if children or small animals. Cradling his bruised hand in front of this stranger accusing him of murder seemed strangely inappropriate, so he clasped them quickly behind his back, clenching the appendage with an overwrought rigidity beyond her line of sight.

Before all hope of seeming vaguely normal under Katsumi’s blasé scrutiny was lost, it seemed wise to mend matters how he could. As with a corpse, Juzou smoothed over his features, trying his utmost to drain the neuroticism from his smile before it counted as further testimony against him. The room was warm, he noted— and bright, to boot. The pale fluorescent light flickered infinitesimally, like it might have burst the grates with the full glare of judgment but reconsidered, seeing him this translucent already. It was enough to make him want to bolt, so he stood his ground and counted the tiles below them: how many in a row, how many in a column, and what number that made excluding the thin swaths built over with counter. It was soothing enough for him to speak, quietly.

“If you don’t trust me,” Juzou offered helpfully, his overinflection giving way to a slightly calmer tone now that the immediate threat had subsided, “why don’t you tell the others anyway? I mean— I’m sure it’d clear up some confusion, and, and, if it’d put you at peace—”

She was still holding the cactus— tightly, at that. Petting it gently as though to assure it its next meal was coming soon. A thin bead of sweat trickled down Juzou’s temple, reminding him exactly how terrified he was beneath his self-erected comportment.

"It does," she agreed, even though that much time hadn’t actually passed between her giving him the charm, them being whisked away to the gymnasium, and the reveal of the Headmasters. Something still bothered her about that, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on it. Other than being ordered to kill someone, of course. She looked back up to Juzou as he began speaking again, and at the mention of the murder game, Umi’s eyes widened slightly in alarm. Is that what he was—?

But then he continued, and she felt herself relax slightly. In spite of the seeming morbidity of it, she took some small comfort in knowing at least some of the others were trying to prevent murder. Even with its seeming ineffectualness, she smiled as he touched it, but paused at the comment. "I… guess you’re right, but maybe we shouldn’t speak just yet…" She knew she wasn’t planning to kill anyone, and neither, it seemed, was the mortician in training… but that didn’t mean none of the 14 others were, though.

Juzou kept talking, and she found herself flushing lightly at his words. "I’m still a little wary…" she admitted, "…but with all the traveling around the school we’ll be doing, maybe this will help?" With unsteady hands, she clumsily undid one of the St. Christopher’s Medals on her sweater, and held it out to him in an outstretched hand. 

“I’m sure it will,” Juzou said, still smiling thinly, “though I’ll admit you might have to educate me on why. This is— Christian, right? I was never any good at English, though the iconography seems familiar from, ah, experience.”

He stopped himself before he could allude too strongly to Christian funerals, still wary of inspiring the same reaction as he had the first time he’d mentioned his title. Conveniently, Umiko changed the topic for him before he could firmly place his foot in his mouth again.

“Not quite,” he admitted to her next question, hoping that wouldn’t draw attention to the fact that that firmly struck out any possibility of him examining the kitchen knives for culinary purposes. “But there’s... fourteen, fifteen... sixteen of us?” He frowned for a moment, his counting slowed by the fact he could only identify most of them by characteristics rather than names or faces. The exact number mattered little at this point, regardless — what was significant was the sheer numbers of them. If the ‘headmasters’ weren’t Hope’s Peak’s administration, they must still have been enjoying Hope’s Peak’s resources to be able to supply enough food and space for their entire class. “I imagine the kitchen is well-stocked, unless we’re meant to be dying of starvation.”

The sound of her stomach, though he observed it uncritically, gave him a idea.

However, the kitchen yielded something much more interesting when she first entered. She had briefly glimpsed this boy before while in the gymnasium. The only reason she remembered was due to his height. Despite his slumped posture, he towered over the rest of the students, even the tall ballet dancer she had run into earlier. Yet for some reason his stature wasn’t intimidating in the slightest. That was probably thanks the fact that this boy, whoever he was, looked as though a gust of wind would knock him over. Not only was he lean and lanky as well as unhealthily pale, but he seemed timid and unimposing.

Then again, Katsumi couldn’t ignore the fact that he was bent over a drawer full knives. That was suspicious enough in itself, and the fact that he was counting them even more so. She made her way over, fully aware that he could probably hear her approach at her heels tapped against the tiled floor, and stopped a few feet away, hands on her hips and head tilted to the side as she pinned him with an impertinent gaze.

Then came the inevitable question, for which he had only one real reply.

In what seemed to be a grand show of possible innocence the tall boy raised his hands high above his head and thusly, far above the neat little kitchen blade collection he’d been nosing over prior. He then began to speak but Subaru couldn’t help but notice as he shuffled away from the knives at the same time. It seemed like a good case of “thou protesting a bit too much” but as long as he was away from them now, she supposed it was fine. Again, she thought, even if he did somehow miraculously charge at her, she would surely survive and he would surely pay for his foolishness. Hm, now that she thought about it though… what if he’d swiped a knife without her knowing, perhaps to murder someone later?

Oh. Gloomy tall legs actually knew about wrestling? She was sure that reference would’ve gone completely over his head. Surprise registered on her face before she went to a default sort of judging frown, her eyes tracking his every movement. "Why not?" Subaru asked in a shockingly innocent tone. "I know if I were a wrestler plotting murder I certainly wouldn’t do anything that’d tie itself back to me. A knife, for instance, would never be associated with me. Not without evidence, anyway.” 

Honestly the more she looked at him the more puzzled she was. She’d recalled seeing someone his height at the auditorium with everyone else but really hadn’t been looking at him much. Her attention had been better focused at others at time, really. But now that she looked at him dead on she just blinked. He looked so dour and sad. His formal wear made him look so old and his posture made him seem so awkward. She briefly considered what kind of talent someone like him had before moving on.

"We-ll, can you blame me?" she finally replied, eyebrows raised yet her eyes still narrowed. "Why else would anyone be loitering by a buncha knives right after those TV heads told us to go crazy and kill everything? I’m no mathematician but even I know one plus one equals two." Subaru placed her arms behind her back, her fingers now intertwining when they weren’t fiddling with her large heavy sleeves that were constantly falling over her small hands. “A grave line work…” she then repeated. “Even that sounds a lil suspicious. What is it you even do to merit this “grave line of work”? Don’t tell me you’re an Super High School Level Assassin.” she laughed out loud at the audacity of such a thought before wiping an eye and facing him dead in the eyes. Well, looking up at his eyes best she could, anyway. "Mm. Odd time to ask for someone’s name, isn’t it?" Subaru tapped at her cheek, a wry look appearing on her face. “But I’ll oblige you - it’s only right. I’m Oshima. Oshima Subaru.” she introduced herself, not a quaver in her voice. She almost smiled. "And who are you supposed to be, Mr. "Grave line of work"?" her tone became one of light amusement.

He fought the urge to run his hands over his vest, suspecting that smoothing it out might carry the air of a challenge when she already believed there could be weapons there; with a great effort, he kept his hands loosely clasped at his waist, and hoped she would take the gesture as pacifistic. Subaru herself was playing with her sleeves, but he severely doubted she’d be drawing so much attention there if it wasn’t just an idle habit. What would be the point of interrogating him at such length about weapons if she was planning to use her own, anyway? At peace, Juzou glanced off to the side and made great efforts to summon an air of innocence. It wasn’t that he didn’t feel it — just that seeming normal, in this case, required exhausting amounts of acting.

“Oshima-san,” He bowed neutrally, committing the name to memory. It felt vaguely famous (as it should, he supposed), but from where exactly, Juzou couldn’t place. When his speech continued, it was inflected with the kind of speed and panic that could easily be mistaken for mild melodrama. “Let’s— get along, s-shall we? Juzou Kyouin.”

Acutely aware of the fact that she’d called his title into question earlier, the hint came to him after a few seconds.

“And I should probably clarify—” A sharpness crept its way into his words, unbidden. “—that I’m not an assassin.” Truth be told, the idea was offensive on several levels, chiefest of them being that death was something he never planned to bring. It was an unfortunate truth of the world that he was privileged to dress in more tolerable garments, and mildly fascinating in a philosophical way beyond yielding obvious anatomical truths — but as a human, and even a mortician, it was impossible to forget that death was the enemy.

Ryosuke leaned against the doorway into the kitchen, and managed his face so that he would not smile. He wanted to smile, you see, because he was threatening a hugely tall, pale boy who looked as though he might be a threat on his own. The boy, although he had only vaguely heard him mumbling in the gymnasium along with everyone else, was altogether unfamiliar to Ryosuke. He did not have a physique that merited any kind of athletic talent, he did not appear initially very intellectual, and his stature gave Ryosuke the willies. 

It was only logical to fuck with him if at all possible.

He stalked over to the boy, and shoved him a little, getting in between the tall boy and the knives in question. His face was serious; his mouth set in a firm line and his eyebrows knitted together. 

"Just because those freaks said we had to kill each other doesn’t mean I’m about to let you get away with one of those knives," he told him, glaring up at him. It was a bit harder to look serious when he had to crane his neck at such an angle, but he felt like he was managing okay.

There was something about him, Juzou realised, that reminded him of the one relative — for there was, with a distressing frequency, one — who was not only not unhappy to see the dead go, but welcomed the following proceedings only as a customary fanfare through which funds could be eventually distributed. There was the same impatience; the same lack of care for things that glowingly mattered. The difference in Ryosuke was that, from the fineness of his aspect, it seemed as though funds were at no great lack in his own life. That was where the metaphor, and Juzou’s estimation of the other boy’s goals, firmly stopped.

Needless to say, the truthful no Juzou had prepared died in his throat at the approach. When Ryosuke deigned to shove him, he yielded, though he briefly summoned the gall to look mildly offended. And there were those permeating words: Kill. Knives.

The shorter but infinitely more imposing boy still standing close (too close, and the brusqueness of his touch sickeningly lingered), Juzou timidly smoothed out the lines of his vest and conjured up his best look of disapproval. This stranger who had judged him guilty and not metaphorically pushed him around — there was something about him that reminded Juzou of all disturbers of the peace in the world.

“Y-You,” he finally muttered, shoulders and neck still not drawn straight as his eyes uncomprehendingly navigated the contours of Ryosuke’s face (mostly for effect, he’d admit). “You didn’t have to do that.”

A heady silence hung. Struck by the weight of his own ineffectuality, Juzou paled and found himself continuing to talk, despite himself. His words took on a light, appeasing tone — a coping mechanism that left him with more guilt than anything else, but an automatic and often effective one nonetheless.

“I’m sorry— I’m being terribly impolite here,” he blurted out, inclining his head with a chastened fright to the stranger. “Here you are, on guard for killers already, and I’m letting simple things like pride and manners get in the way!” Nervous as he was, he couldn’t help but exclaim the word manners with a certain vitriol towards the person who’d pushed him; it filled him with a sly kind of satisfaction, as small a victory (if even a victory) as it was, but mixed with guilt at the slight chance he really had taken him for a proper killer.

Perhaps, he thought, perhaps it was time for him to leave before any such mandates or prophecies of death saw fit to fulfil themselves.

It was pointless to make a show of closing the cabinet when she hadn’t properly seen anything of his endeavours yet, so he slid it shut gradually, slowing his pace to an even more agonising one when the rail it lay on screeched against the drawer slightly. It was only when a myriad of tiny jets spattered against the side of his face and shirt that he realised exactly how alarming he’d probably seemed in the eyes of the stranger.

“Wait, wait, wait!” Juzou pleaded, loath to move in case she took any movement as a declaration of hostility but struggling to parse her words beyond the sensation of the sprayer on his skin. He settled for raising the side of his forearm to shield his face, squinting through the watery onslaught at Sayuri herself as she stood over him. “I’m not— murder? W-what? Just— just a moment, this isn’t—”

Before he could even finish his protests on a dignified note, the harsh clatter of the sprayer landing back into the sink making him vocalise a mixture of a guttural cry and a gasp.

“Could you—” He frowned involuntarily, made irritable by the sudden assault of water and noise. It was a rare feeling that he could neatly push aside a moment later, thinking better of angering her further. “Forgive me. I don’t— you’re right, I’m not sure this is real either. But who’s to say some of our more impressionable friends can see matters with the same clarity as you, hmm?”

With as much dignity as he could muster, he stood from his kneeling position by the knife drawer and brushed the damp hair from his face, offering a deferential bow to the smaller girl.

The smaller mangaka had gotten herself a bit more distracted than she’d intended with every odd little nook and suspicious-looking cranny catching her watchful rose-coloured eyes. The kitchen was still her goal, however, despite the scenic route there, so when she arrived she immediately got to work having a nose around. At least, that was the initial plan. In actuality she couldn’t help but notice the giant student who was already standing there. He (or was it she? It was somehow very ambiguous - maybe she’d been reading too much manga after all) towered over her and this was despite his stiff sort of hunched posture that somehow gave him the appearance of a squished parcel trying to fit through a chimney. He seemed to dress the part of a classy gentleman sort… well, apart from those geta sandals. Now that really was something. Who wore geta sandals these days?

Then, she realized something. Wasn’t he… yeah, he was. She hadn’t noticed it as she came in but as soon as she looked at him more thoroughly Subaru couldn’t help but notice where his attention was directed. At several knives. How many she couldn’t guess - quite a few though. Admittedly it was a little hard to see the full picture with the boy in the way. She was pretty proud of her eyes for even noticing the knives in the first place - then again, for whatever reason, she’d always found herself with pretty good eyesight. Maybe that was an artist’s gift. "Uwaah, I didn’t expect to expose a villain so early on! You’re being pre-tty careless, plotting murder already! And so brazenly, too!" Subaru folded her arms and held her ground in the doorway, her shoulder leaned up against the frame.

Though he’d seen her in the auditorium earlier, he hadn’t been able to glean her identity or the source of her repute from the brief protests she’d made. Since he’d set foot in the gymnasium, it had all been an outrageous blur, really — and her face a literal blur to Juzou, but thankfully, the distinctive way she presented herself would leave no ambiguities as to her identity in the future. Subaru was unmistakable, and from her asymmetrical hairstyle to her fashion sense to the way she opined like a peppy shounen hero in the throes of a tragic search arc, there was something patently intimidating about the height of her spirits.

Juzou held nothing against her for assuming the worst in what was frankly a dubious situation — but if he were to be quite blunt, this wasn’t the least terrifying of first meetings to endure.

Slowly, hands raised above his head in a brittle show of innocence, he turned to fully face her and hoped with all his heart that that would be the happy end of the matter.

“Ahahaha, h-heel-face turn?” He asked in earnest, sidestepping away from the still-exposed drawer of knives as a second thought as he spoke. “If I were a wrestler, well— surely I wouldn’t be in need of those knives, now, would I!”

Hands still raised, he glanced down at himself as though to signal the grand risibility of such a prospect — and in doing so, he hoped, the unlikeliness of any similar business with the knives themselves. From the set of her crossed arms, perhaps that was too much to hope for.

“You’re looking at me like I’m going to charge you with one of these,” he frowned, jerking his thumb delicately towards the offending drawer once more. “I know I’m in a grave line of work, but don’t you think that’s going a little too far? Ah, but— I see what you’re thinking. I’m sorry I didn’t catch your name, b-but. I think I understand what you saw. Pardon me if I drop my hands now.”

SPOTLIGHT: The Kiss of Death Sculpture in Barcelona

Located at Barcelona’s Poblenou Cemetery, this magnificent sculpture, titled Kiss of Death (El Petó de la Mort in Catalan and El Beso de la Muerte in Spanish), depicts death (in the form of a winged skeleton) planting a kiss on a young man’s forehead.

Somehow, despite poor muscle control and balance issues (and an empty stomach; when was the last time she’d eaten?), she managed to navigate with the ID in one hand, her cane helping her walk in the other. Her destination, obviously, was the kitchen, and though her movement was slower than normal, she managed to get there without any mishaps. 

She dropped her ID back into her sweater pocket as she entered the kitchen. There didn’t seem to be anyone there, but - wait, was there someone back there? She took a few steps forward and - "Kyouin-san!" she called, immediately recognizing the incredibly tall boy as the one she’d… been incredibly rude to. She drooped slightly, but forced a smile as she approached him. She wasn’t particularly shocked or anything to find him by the knives - maybe he was going to cut up something? Carrots? - but she was slightly wary nonetheless. 

“Onodera-san,” Juzou nodded, turning to stand against the counter with a slight smile. “It feels like a while, doesn’t it.” It was with some mixture of calmness and disbelief that he spoke after the general debacle in the gym, though if he was visibly shaken, it came across less in his movements than his speech. After a moment’s thought, he judged it wise to comment on what he’d been doing, his desire to clear matters up outweighing his reluctance to make a fool of himself in the process. He gestured vaguely towards the drawer he’d been searching in, veiling whatever worry he had for its contents’ potential in a jovial dismissiveness. “If we’re to kill each other, I thought it’d be wise to see what this place has to offer. I counted them all— so if one of our classmates is ridiculous enough to take one, someone’ll know, at least!”

Upon mention of the charm, Juzou glanced down and tapped it with his index finger, glad of its presence if it meant faith in his safety from evil. He’d never considered himself particularly superstitious, or inclined towards one faith or the other past a cocktail of Buddhist activities, but spiritual was another matter. He’d laid palls on coffins— stood beside the steel crematory doors as fans whirred beyond, imperceptibly. Whatever put people at peace was a good faith, he thought, and worth appreciating when shared.

"It’s quite alright! You said you only heard my cane, correct? In that case, thinking I had fallen is a logical conclusion to come to, I think." Her handshake was not the best, starting off limply then progressing to too tight. She managed to get her hand to relax, again, and pulled it back awkwardly just as the pale boy began to speak again. "That’s understandable. That… that noise was almost unbearable. But… where did you wake up, if I may ask?" She shook her head at the memory of the noise, but paused as the boy continued. 

Something… off? This struck Umiko as something she should’ve noticed, but during the time she was in the classroom, she was more concerned with getting out of it than with examining it. Perhaps she should have - But the boy jerked into a less hunched position suddenly and she looked up at him, slightly startled herself.

"Ah! Kyouin-s—” She cut herself off with a small gasp at the exact moment that he revealed his title, and not only did her face fall, but she paled visibly, and suddenly found herself unable to speak.

Well, this was a quandary. 

Kyouin-san was nice to a fault; it was rare that someone would worry if she’d fallen. But the boy worked hand in hand with death, and to put it mildly, that scared the hell out of her. 

And wasn’t it the job of those bearers, Juzou serenely noted, however possible, to assuage that fear in the shielded many?

“I understand,” he said promptly, his manner losing its lightness for a scarce second. Then, with an absurd force, his graveside affability returned. “It’s not something normal people want to associate with, is it? I can’t judge what circumstances led you to react this way to what I do, just like you don’t know mine.”

By no means was Umiko’s a new reaction, but the fact that he was meeting strangers his age at a school — something he hadn’t done since he was young, long before his hands had touched the dead — and not the grieving, left him with a fresh sense of guilt. It had always seemed to him an altruistic duty to bring peace to the dead and their closest witnesses, but there was something cruel about inflicting himself on others when he represented their least knowable fear. With the grieving, he had always felt as though he could help, and routinely did. Here, at this clean, deathless school, Juzou couldn’t help but feel a burden.

Under Tatsuma’s icy glare and his next comment, Juzou was lost for a moment. His eyes — when he concentrated on them entirely — flickered towards his bag, and the way in which he spoke implied more than a wonder. After a brief pause, Juzou took the cue and held up the heavy black briefcase, carefully unclipping it to reveal an array of materials for the restoration of people’s faces. Cosmetics, in the form of creams, pigments, and powders lined the case, with several boxes of wound filler and restorative wax alongside them; to apply all these, he had also brought a number of brushes and metal implements. At the very top of the briefcase, a folded white cloth and a bottle of sterilising liquid stood out from all these, emblematic of his profession.

He’d thought she’d fallen, and the fact that he had been worried about her as opposed to agitated was… nice, for a change.

He quickly tried to backpeddle on his words, and though she opened her mouth to speak he just kept going, and she thought quickly for something that would silence him. "You’re fine," she said somewhat loudly as he finally quieted himself, and she consequentially flushed slightly in embarrassment. "I apologize, for my rudeness," she quickly added. "But I am alright. I sat down to rest, and my cane fell to the floor. My reflexes… aren’t the best." That was an understatement, to say the least, but she continued on. "I’m sorry if I worried you. My name is Umiko Onodera."

“No, no— I’m sorry I misunderstood you, Onodera-san,” Juzou offered a thin smile, waiting for her to release contact rather than doing so himself. “I’m glad to hear you’re alright! I’m just on my guard after those sirens and that announcement, and... wherever I woke up. Ah, was it just me, or did something seem terribly out of place there?”

He ruminated on his own question for a moment before quickly jolting upright, coming to a realisation.