As Kira walked home, he thought about two things.
The first was the Monk. He has been on Earth as a living, breathing, human for nearly 48 hours, and she still hadn't even made contact. He was beginning to think she may have forgotten about him, but would that really be so bad? He had actually enjoyed his first day as a student, excluding all of the chaos that happened at lunch of course, but something about the routine just sat right with him. Perhaps the Monk was just too busy to send someone to retrieve him, she was always talking about how thin her Spirits were stretched across the world. Until that day came, he would just have to make do. He wondered if the apartment was still available.
The second thing that crossed his mind was the cookies from Marinette's lunch. He wasn't just casually thinking about baked goods, but when he saw a French bakery with multiple assortments of cakes and treats he couldn't help but go inside. He browsed, looking at the elegant pastries stacked beside each other. Of course, he wasn't especially interested in any of them, he was just trying to find the cookies, or macaroons, as he was pretty sure they were called.
It was only after a moment of searching he noticed what appeared to be a chef watching him. The man was enormous, with gigantic muscular arms and fingers as big as Kira's neck. This made him uncomfortable, so he shoved his head deeper in-between the brightly colored cookies.
Then he found it. The macaroon section. He quickly read over the vastly different flavors, many of them meaning nothing to him as far as tastes went, and finally decided on a single peanut butter and chocolate one.
He paid, money he had taken out of Chloe's wallet when she threatened him, the man thanked him, and he began to leave the store. On his way out, he passed a donation box that had two ridiculously dressed teens as cardboard cutouts that served to guilt you into
sparing some loose change.
He looked closer, and realized they were dressed very similarly, too obviously named for his tastes, to the superhero pair he had heard so much about. The boy was decked out in black spandex or rubber of some kind, accompanied by a tail that just seemed to be part of his belt, two ears that were attached to nothing, and a mask. The girl simply had on a skintight suit with a ladybug pattern printed onto it, her mask matching the black polka dots.
He dropped a few coins in, and left. On his way out, he bumped into another would be customer of the sweets shop. He moved to pass her, and then he realized who it was.
Again.
"Marinette!" The big man exclaimed, "Home so early?"
Kira couldn't believe it. This could not be happening.
She laughed, "Yeah dad, there was an Akuma attack and-"
"A what? Darling are you ok? Did you get hurt?" The man's strong build didn't hide the fact he was obviously a big softie, and most likely this girls father. Strange, they barely looked alike in any aspect.
Marinette just smiled and looked at the ground, "I'm fine dad, Ladybug and Cat Noir took care of it like always."
Kira was getting tired of those names, he turned to leave, but Marinette grabbed his hand, and pulled him inside.
"Dad, this is Kira. He was hurt when the villain attacked but he's all better now!"
Kira was flustered, he wasn't much for social interaction, especially not whenever he hadn't had time to prepare appropriate responses and small talk options.
Another woman walked in from the back, and Kira started to see the family resemblance. This one had Marinette's eyes and hair, so she must have gotten... something from her dad.
The parents both began checking him at once. Eye dilation, his hand injuries seemed to worry them more than anything, though he had only sprang two of his fingers. They checked his pulse, which was odd considering he was standing up looking at them while they performed these bizarre experiments.
Marinette jumped in-between them, and began scolding her parents for harassing him so much. They immediately realized they had started pampering a total stranger, and also became incredibly embarrassed.
Marinette's mom broke the silence first, "So Kira, where do you live?"
Kira had been dreading this question all day, but on the bright side of his overthinking, he had an answer planned.
"My parents are overseas at the moment, and for the foreseeable future, and I'm sort of... in-between places at the moment."
As soon as he said this he realized it was a mistake. Marinette jumped into the conversation as fast as she could, "Well, you can stay with us for a while, right mom?"
Kira grinned, there was no way they would ever let him-
"Of course!" The parents exclaimed at the same time.
-stay here. Great. They wrapped their arms around him and began discussing where he could sleep. A thought drifted back into his mind from earlier, and he cursed it to infinity and back. But he couldn't help letting the words run through his head one more time.
This just kept getting worse
--
"Are you sure it's a good idea to let someone you barely know into your house? He might find out you're Ladybug!"
Marinette brushed Tikki away, she was working on homework and needed to focus, but she also didn't want to discuss the new person living 15 feet away in the spare room they always used for storage.
"Quiet, I'm trying to focus. And no, I'm not worried. Kira's nice, you saw how he stood up to Chloe today."
Tikki grimaced, "I saw something alright."
Marinette ignored her, she had a feeling this school year was going to be something special.
--
"So, Mr Yoshikage Kira, based on your entrance exams, you should be in classes twice the difficulty of your current ones, is there any reason you opted for such a significant decrease in standards?"
Kira was sitting in the principal's office, he was called in the night after his new adoption, much to his chagrin.
"Well, sir, I don't think I'm qualified for the bigger classes. Too much stress, I wouldn't want my sleep schedule to be ruined!"
The round man looked at him oddly, he clearly wasn't used to hearing a student, a teenage boy especially, say that they needed to keep up with his sleep schedule. Most of the students were practically falling asleep in class, and he decided it would be a nice change for someone to actually care about the system.
"Very well, you're free to go. Now, preferably."
Kira stood up, thanked the man, and left his office, only stopping to view the owl drawings and paper crafts adorning his office. After he heard the door shut, he exhaled sharply. He couldn't believe the audacity of the man to call him all the way there to ask a stupid question when a simple phone call would have sufficed. He just wished the man would disappear-
Then he saw it, the reflection in a mirror hanging on a wall, it was large and humanoid, but clearly not a person. The narrow eyes, catlike ears, and pink skin made that much clear. They made eye contact, and he assumed it was a Spirit, coming to retrieve him from Earth. This would mean he could see the ghosts, so the Monk was either staying out of sight, or he was on his own. Instead of pulling his soul out of his body, however, it gently floated towards the principal's office. It went right through the door, and then it was gone. Kira supposed he should check on the man, an encounter with a Spirit wasn't always a guaranteed survival.
He opened the door, and the Principal was there, unharmed, but dressed in some sort of silly Halloween costume. The man looked like a stuffed turkey, just waiting to be cut into with an oversized knife. Kira held his gaze briefly, and then slammed the door shut, walking away as quickly as possible.
Kira closed the door, and hurried out of the school. The Spirit must have just been passing through, and decided to observe Kira in passing. He couldn't judge it for that, he often did the same thing, though he just wanted to read newspapers and catch up on current events.
He arrived at the bakery, and grabbed a peanut butter macaroon on the way to his new room. It was time to start decorating.
The boy didn't even know he would be the last person to see the principal alive, or even see him at all. If he had stayed even a minute longer at the door of his office, we would have seen the oversized man fall to the ground, holding his chest, try to scream, and crumble to dust.
"Goodnight, Kira!"
Marinette was standing in his doorway, and he knew he would just have to learn to deal with her dreadful cheerfulness.
"And to you, Marinette."
She stammered whenever they locked eyes, and slammed the door.
He could have sworn he heard two voices whispering in her room, but he decided it was just his imagination. It had been a long day.
He needed his rest.
--
He's eating everything! I'm going to make a fortune!!
The man couldn't believe his luck, a teen dressed in a school outfit was utterly destroying his hotdog stand. He was already well over a hundred dollars in toppings and other assortments.
The boy raised his head, slammed down a wad of cash, and spoke.
"Now, sir, excuse me for asking, but I'm not familiar with this place at all, and there's all sorts of weird gadgets all over the place that I don't recognize. So do me a favor, and try to answer honestly?"
The man nodded, this was a paying customer after all.
The student pulled out a comb, and brushed his bizarre hair back into place.
"My name is Josuke Higashikata, would you be so kind as to tell me what year it is?"