How to Make a Sinner Sleep

04 | reverse; the watcher of time

It was hard to pretend to not notice a stare, especially when there were dozens, each filled with a different variant of negativity and all equally judging.

The minute Kaden stepped into the expansive classroom, standing at the door as he looked over the entire room flocked with students, gossiping and whispering, he felt it—

—the stares.

Although it wasn't something he wasn't accustomed to, he still felt each one digging into his skin, scratching the surface with no desire to see within. Stares, he found, were the living's favourite and most unreliable way of judging a person.

With every step up the stairs that ran along the divide between the rows, the students ushered a path for him, separating as if a single touch or glance from him would curse them indefinitely.

He was a little offended—he'd taken a shower and smoothened out the wrinkles of his uniform seamlessly out of habit.

"It's him!" One whispered.

Another one stared, wide-eyed. "Have you heard the latest rumours? He's here to kill. Do you see his eyes? It's like they're judging us!"

'You're the ones juging me,' Kaden protested silently, thinking of the irony.

A few of the whispers were more simple. "Trash...!"

Then a stranger one. "Isn't he pretty good eye-candy though?"

"Now that you say that..."

Kaden ignored them, taking a seat in the back row corner. The classmate that was sitting in the room looked up fearfully, and awkwardly grabbed his things before scrambling away. Honestly, it was more awkward to escape than to simply endure Kaden's presence.

Well, they had every right to be fearful—Kaden Chauvet was a murderer.

And he would likely continue to be.

The first class was language, followed by mathematics, and then combat. The teacher for this class was one he remembered particularly.

A man drowning in passion for words, taking meaning from the smallest of things. Somebody who once tried to reason with Kaden, and almost succeeded.

It was a story of failure that Kaden didn't want to remember.

"I'm telling you it's true! The other night, in town, he killed the entire bar of people! Yet he is sitting here like nothing happened!" hissed a girl in a loud whisper, her words large enough to fill the entire room.

Kaden lifted his chin slowly, raising his gaze as he continued to listen.

"I'm not lying, my butler witnessed it with his own eyes! How can one mistake those frightening green eyes, cursed by death! He is a calamity—death follows his wake!"

He would not refuse the truth, or fear.

He'd turn a blind eye to it, used to the biting phrases thrown in his direction, however painful they could be. But he wouldn't claim a misjudgment, admit to a crime he didn't do.

There was a point where things were taken too far.

The man rapped his finger on the old oaken table, tilting his head with a lighthearted smile. The woman slowly turned her head, the visible and harsh lump in her throat swallowed down as her face flushed.

"Aren't you rather daring?" wondered Kaden, adjusting his papers into a neat pile on the desk. "Were you hoping I'd hear you, listen to your rumours? Your ridiculous notions?"

"I have proof—"

"With your own eyes, did you see me do those things you claim?"

She gulped again, shaking her head hesitantly. "I-I did not, however—"