Passage 7

                Takeshi awoke to his alarm like normal. His first thought was ”it had to be a dream”, but then he looked down. The clothes he wore yesterday were still on, ripped and blood-soaked. It was not a dream.  He quickly jumped to his feet before his mom could enter his room to wake him, that way he could get rid of the clothes. Luckily, he had more than one school uniform. Takeshi changed and headed to school, dumping the clothes in a trash can on the way.
                 As Takeshi approached the gate to school, he felt a hard punch in his side. He turned to face his attacker, clutching where he was hit. It was Kitaro. Takeshi could tell how angry he was.
                “You’re pretty low Takeshi.”
                “What…” Takeshi asked, preparing for another attack, “What do you mean?!”
                Kitaro jumped forward, swinging for another hit. His right fist came across Takeshi’s face,
                “Like you don’t know!”
                Takeshi fell to the ground. The punches didn’t hurt as much as he thought they would.
                “Hanako!”
                Takeshi looked up not fully understanding.
                “You’ve already moved on from Yumi?! You never deserved her! And then you start treating Hanako the way you did. Everyone saw you two. And you’re just gonna lead her on! Till she ends up dead too!”
                Takeshi quickly got to his feet, grabbing Kitaro by the neck,
                “How dare you!”
                Then he felt a hand on his shoulder pulling him back from Kitaro.
                “Takeshi, please stop!”
                Takeshi turned and looked. Hanako was standing there, with tears in her eyes. He let go of Kitaro.
                “I’m sorry I caused this,” Hanako said, running in the opposite direction.
                Kitaro stood and walked away as well. Takeshi was left with no one. Only strangers gazed upon him, talking about what had happened. Takeshi went home, skipping school. He wanted to keep his mind off of everything. So, he entered the realm of death.


                Takeshi flew to the cave where he previously met Rayfe. Rayfe was already outside, as if he were waiting for Takeshi to arrive.
                “Hello,” said Rayfe.
                “Hi.”
                Takeshi landed in front of Rayfe,
                “You want to tell me about what happened last night?”
                “Oh. Yeah. Seems the god known as Ballock was digging for information about you. Once he learned of, your abilities, he decided to get rid of you. Luckily, I stopped him before he could.”
                “He was the one I saw, when I first came here.”
                “Ahs. That would explain it. Anyways, the encounter has gotten me to thinking. You need to learn how to defend yourself from beings that aren’t human. Otherwise, you’d probably die. I can’t save you all the time.”
                “Fine,” said Takeshi, “But one question before anything else.”
                “Alright.”
                “When I met you, you said that you came to collect Yumi’s soul. Doesn’t that mean… you killed her?”
                “Mm. I wondered if you’d question that. I did come for her soul. But. I did not kill her.”
                Takeshi had nothing but Rayfe’s word to rely on, so he accepted it.
                “So. As for training, we should work on speed first.”
                Rayfe began Takeshi’s training by making Takeshi fly around stone structures near the cave. It went on for an hour, until Takeshi was too tired. It was fine when he started, but when he had his scythe out, he was too slow.
                “You’re key to winning is your speed. Train it to build agility and endurance. Strength will come later. This is all we’ll do for today. Train in the human realm as well. I don’t know if you noticed, but the gravity here is slightly lighter.”
                “Actually, I did. Training there might help me a lot more.”
                Takeshi returned to the human realm.

                Rayfe went inside the cave to talk with Rath.
                “How did it go?” asked Rath
                “He is getting stronger. Haha. Oh. And he asked if I killed the girl. It was funny that I didn’t have to lie to him.”
                “Least you didn’t rat me out.”
                “Yes. Well. I’m getting tired of the waiting game. The new girl. We should use her to unleash his powers,” said Rayfe with malicious intent.
                “I don’t think that’s wise. We just need some more time.”
                “Mm.”