For the majority of two weeks, Juuzou occupied his time by staring at the things that surrounded him in the CCG headquarters.

As he walked around, he was faintly aware of the chatter and whispers directed toward him.

His wide, creepy eyes.

He was also faintly aware of the constant tugging on his consciousness. He was faintly aware of it because he refused to acknowledge it. The fact that he missed Mama.

Juuzou continued this roaming until he turned sixteen, something nobody was aware of, not even Juuzou himself. What even was a birthday?

When he turned sixteen years old, he was accepted into the Akademījuniasukūru.

When he was there he met two twins. The girls whose names were Kurona and Nashiro Yasuhisa.

And at the Akademījuniasukūru, he began to be hated. Not just because he looked creepy.

He was “Okama,” and he soon developed the label psychopath.

Juuzou one night was taking a night stroll through the woods surrounding the academy, letting the air cool him down.

He loved listening to nature. The owls hooting. The flap of the wings that emerged from the bats flying freely through the night sky.

He wanted to be like a bat one day.

Nobody can tell him anything. He could fly with Mama. Feeding on fruit, nectar, and not being called okama.

Maybe a nuisance. A damn animal, but who cared? Every animal was a damn animal.

Mama.

How is Mama living right now?, he wondered.

A twig snapped, breaking Juuzou out of his thoughts.

He looked up, not quite startled, and saw a man whose face was hidden in the shadows.

Krak!

The man cracked his pointer finger with his thumb.

Then, he leaned into the moonlight and Juuzou was able to identify the man, an old prison interrogator.

“Kid…,” the man’s raspy voice called out from several feet away.

The man did not frighten Juuzou at all. He’d seen more intimidating people as a Scrapper, up to the point where Juuzou had no definition of fear.

“If you tell anyone… I’ll kill you,” the old man finished with a harsh whisper.

Then, for some odd reason far beyond Juuzou, the man casually walked away.

Tell anyone? Tell anyone what?

A pained meow broke into Juuzou’s thoughts, as if the night were trying to tell him he was too stupid to think. Telling him not to ask questions. Not to be curious.

But the night was not the one to tell Juuzou anything he would listen to. His heart deep down remained loyal to Mama.

He followed the saddening sounds until he found the source.

A strung up neko, hanging from a tree branch.

It’s fur was matted with blood and its skull appeared to be smashed, revealing damaged tissue.

Is the kitty okay?,  Juuzou thought.

“Kitty,” Juuzou said, the tone of a child just now learning how to say a familiar word.

He reached out to pat the neko.

He felt the soft fur but suffered a quick relapse of being a Scrapper when he felt the sticky dark red liquid.

It was a Kitty.

“REI!,” A voice shouted from behind him, making his heart leap.

“What on earth are you doing?,” the voice cried.

One of the staff led him away from the horrible scene. A horrible scene for them, an unusual but eye-opening scene for Juuzou.

Another example which pushed on Juuzou’s general idea as to what death really was.

What he did not realize however, was that Mama had made Juuzou into a killing machine and blinded him to death’s reality.