"Ahh there he is!" A familiar voice called out.

Jaeseop felt like he has just woken up from a rough nap...and he doesn't recognize where he's at now.

The sky is a musty haze of dark purple, and the landscape is an endless field of dead grass and trees.

He recalls the conversation he had with the disembodied voice like it were a fuzzy dream, but this right now...it felt as real as ever.

A tall man approached Jaeseop. His long black cloak flows gracefully behind him, it's slightly torn and tattered, but it matched the rugged style that the rest of his outfit sported. The shadow of his hood covered his face.

The tall man extended a hand to Jaeseop. Through the darkness of his hood, the strangers eyes looked down upon him, inked black with blazing red pupils.

Jaeseop shakily grasped the stranger's hand, whom elegantly led Jaeseop away to who-knows-where.

After walking through a long path in the middle of a forest full of dead trees, they end up at the front of a huge estate. It looks abandoned, which fits the aesthetic of it's lifeless surroundings.

Jaeseop thought he should be feeling panicked by now.

A stranger taking him to an abandoned building in the middle of nowhere...but he felt oddly calm, even after mentally acknowledging that he shouldn't be so mellow, his nerves didn't act up.

"Right this way~" The tall man opened one of the two gigantic doors, a loud eerie creek sounding from it's rusted hinges.

Jaeseop only just realized that the tall stranger's voice is the same voice that had talked to him before in his "dream."

Jaeseop slowly entered the dark building. As soon as he fully stepped in, the door creeked closed behind him, leaving him in pitch black darkness yet again.

He heard some shuffling behind him...then at the sound of snapping fingers, hundreds of candles lit the room all at once.

Jaeseop felt himself flinch.
What the actual heck just happened?
What is happening right now?
Where even am I?

"No need to start asking a bunch of questions again, everything will be explained when we get to the other students." The tall man told Jaeseop, as if he had just read his mind or something...

Other students?

The tall man led Jaeseop down a long corridor, at the end were two more big doors that matched the building's front doors.

As they creep open slowly, Jaesop could see more and more of what was on the other side of them.

It looked like...a school cafeteria?

A huge contrast from the dark and eerie rest of the building that Jaeseop had just walked through, this room was a decent sized cafeteria that lookes much like the one at his old highschool.

The many tables were empty, all except one in the very far corner.

The tall man started walking towards the table. He turned his hooded head a little and waved his pale hand, signaling for Jaeseop to keep following him.

Jaeseop almost tripped on his own shoes as he scrambled to catch up.

"My students!" The tall man kindly greeted the people at the table with a giddy tone. Some of the people groaned.

"HanHao, you're not supposed to bug us during our break time." One girl groaned without even looking at the tall man, apparently named HanHao.

"He sounds excited. That's not normal, something must be up." A boy mumbled as he rested his head against his fist.

"It's Mr. Grim to all of my students, whether it's break time or not. And it is a rather exciting moment, because we have a new student." HanHao...or Mr. Grim informed. "This is Kim Jaeseop!"

"uGh, another one?!" The boy wined. The girl sitting next to him hit his shoulder, "HEY! What have you got against new students huh?!"

"You're technically not the new one anymore if we have another newbie." The other girl told the angry one.

"Alright, alright. It's not like any of us can choose whether we get a new student or not. Have some sympathy, we're all here because of our heavy pasts...for some of us it wasn't even that long ago.

It's rude to complain about a new student joining us after he just died. All of you are lucky this is break time, or else I would have given you some form of punishment." Mr. Grim's voice was now sharp and deadly, his previous playful tone long gone.

The students at the table all went silent.

"Introduce yourselves to him. You still have 10 minutes left of break time."

Those were Mr. Grim's last words before throwing Jaeseop to the wolves.

He turned his head and Mr. Grim seemed to disappear completely, not even catching him walk across the large cafeteria to the doors.

When Jaeseop looked back at the table, all of the students were staring at him. It was still quiet and awkward.

A girl cleared her throat. "I'll introduce myself first." She eyed the other students as if mentally telling them to snap out of it.

"My name is Fujisaki Chishiya, and that's my sister Fujisaki Mina." She gestured to the girl sitting next to her, whom had long black hair with bright neon pink highlights.

Mina looked a lot more colorful and wild compared to Chishiya, just judging by their outfits. It was almost hard to believe they're sisters.

"We've only been here for a year, but trust me, I think you'll like it here." Mina gave Jaeseop a wide smile, trying to brighten the mood due to the rude greeting Jaeseop had gotten earlier.

"I'm Matsuoka Haruka, but you can just call me Haru!" A rather handsome boy exclaimed with a big toothy grin.

Haru looked like one of the popular jocks from his old highschool. Someone who he'd never be able to relate to or be friends with...only Haru was already much nicer than the jocks from highschool. None of them had ever even looked his way.

"It's nice to have another guy around, this grump over here doesn't like having much fun." Haru chuckled, talking about the other boy sitting next to him.

The boy was quiet, and hadn't even spared Jaeseop a glance since he had gotten here. Not even when everyone else previously had gone quiet and just decided to stare at him.

His long black fringe tucked behind his ears, a few strands hung in his face. He was staring down and scribbling in a notebook the whole time.

"Uh...his name is Uzumaki Reiseo. He's probably not going to introduce himself."

Reiseo paused his scribbing for a second and have Haru a sharp glance. Not really glaring, he kept a blank expression.

Haru just laughed and lightly elbowed Reiseo. "Ah, he cracks me up sometimes."

"I didn't even know his name for a whole month after I got here." The last girl at the table stated, rolling her eyes.

This girl was the one that they said was the "newbie" before Jaeseop got here.

"I'm Park Lena. I've only been here for 4 months now, we'll probably be on the same training level once you start class." She gave him a small smile.

"Come sit with us, you've just been standing there the whole time!" Mina scooted over a bit and gave the metal seat a little patt.

Jaeseop finally let himself smile for the first time since he's been here. He sat down and realized that nobody was eating anything, even though it's apparently break time, and this place looks like a cafeteria.

"You'll probably get to meet Natsuki later. She's been off on a mission for the past few days." Mina broke him out of his thoughts with a different topic.

"She's the eldest in our class, and she's been a reaper for longer than all of us. So she does a lot of solo missions."

Jaeseop still didn't know what all of this meant. Missions? Class? Training level?

"I think you're confusing him. There's still a lot he doesn't know." Chishiya chuckled.

Jaeseop turned to Haruka. "If they've been here for a year, and Lena's been here for 4 months. How long have you been here?"

Haru seemed happy to have the attention on him. "I've been here for a little over a year. I haven't gotten to go on any missions yet. Neither have any of the others. The only one in our class that's gone on missions so far is Natsuki. She's been here for so long that we don't even know how many years exactly."

"Almost 100 years!" Mina chimed in, eyes sparkling, seeming fascinated by the conversation.

"So when do you get to go on missions?" Jaeseop questioned.

"Whenever Mr. Grim deems us ready enough." Haru shrugged.

Jaeseop then peered at Reiseo, almost hesitating to ask about anything related to him for some reason. "What about him?"

Reiseo closed his notebook, slotting the pencil inside of it.

Everyone went quiet as he slowly looked at Jaeseop with the same blank expression that he's been wearing the whole time.

"They don't do the talking for me. You can ask me questions straightforward."

Reiseo's voice is low and chilling.
Getting a better look at him, now that he was looking straight at Jaeseop, he's a rather pretty boy...it's too bad he's so creepy.

"Uh...sorry." Jaeseop awkwardly fiddled with his fingers, but didn't dare to look away from Reiseo while talking to him. "How long have you been here?"

"That's none of anyone's business." He simply answered, with no venom in his tone.

Everyone kinda just pretended to mind their own business while Jaeseop and Reiseo had their weird moment.

"Break time is over." Reiseo got up and walked away without another word.

"Ummmmmm okaaaaaaay." Jaeseop noted to try avoid another interaction like that as much as possible.

"Let's go Jaeseop, this will be your first class!" Mina happily grabbed Jaeseop's arm and flung out of her seat, yanking Jaeseop with her.

The two of them skipped down the hall, Jaeseop not really knowing where they were exactly going.