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Rentarō X Cursed!Reader~ Clockwork[contains spoilers]

Tick, tock

"Mr. Satomi?"

The tall navy-haired figure placed the thin piece of chalk on the ledge of the board and rubbed the white powder off his fingers. He looked over his shoulder, seeing nothing but the stretch of wasteland. The air was dry, the sandy ground was littered with tumble weeds and fallen bricks, cacti sprouted up every so meters, and the sky was void of any rain clouds.

The landscape made his brown eyes look even more dustier and dull as they trailed down until a puff of [H/C] was seen. The young girl stood on her toes but stood at around Rentarō's thigh in height.

Behind her was a set of desks with girls, all with crimson red eyes and the same age as her.

"You're so short, [Y/N]!" One of the students hollered, resulting in a few others laughing. "He's more than two times your height!"

Rentarō scratched the back of his head, "You are all tall for your age." He crouched down to the girl's level and smiled.

"She's the shortest in the class!"

[Y/N] clutched a paper nervously between her tiny hands, but he just brushed off the comments and decided not to tease her about it. Her large red eyes anxiously looked at her educator as he reached over to take the paper.

"Are you sure that your done?" Rentarō asked. "You still have fifteen minutes left."

She glanced up at the paper in his hands but seemed confident. "I'm good! I think I'll get a good mark."

He skimmed over her answers briefly and glanced down at the girl, who was beaming up at him. Rentarō sighed and reached into his pocket to grab something. The teacher pulled out a golden star pin and hooked it onto her [F/C] scarf.

[Y/N]'s eyes brightened. "Did I get them all right?"

He nodded then she started jumping up and down.

She hopped back towards her seat, "You see this? I may be short, but I'm smart! Even Mr. Satomi says so!"

Tick, tock

He held the quiz that the girl took two weeks ago. She actually answered five questions wrong, but the look on her face made Rentarō conceive. He looked back up at the furthest wall across the room.

The same dusty brown eyes stared up at a clock, one that looked ancient for this era and had intricate wooden carvings around its face. The Roman Numerals around the circumference of the clock were dull and some were scraped off.

Rentarō would stare at the minute hand as it moved every sixty seconds and the dial that swung back and forth behind a glass pane. The floor was the place he would reside to, against the wall and away from any windows of the abandoned building.

Tick, Tock.

"Who's that over there?" He asked Matsuzaki, the elderly man who originally cared for all the students. Rentarō pointed to a lonely girl who sat at the far corner of the outdoor classroom, quietly writing down something on a piece of paper.

"That's [Y/N]," his voice was deep and cracked often, "I found her just recently in the city area. She lived in an old abandoned building and was staring at an old clock on the wall like it was the most fascinating thing she ever saw. Certainly a peculiar girl."

Rentarō saw a few other girls try and start up conversations with the cursed student, but noticed they failed as they began to walk away after a few minutes.

"She's rather quiet, but takes work seriously. She's fairly sensitive about her height too."

He walked away from the man and approached the desk where [Y/N] sat, working away with whatever she was writing. She didn't notice him for a few moment and continued to write on the lines of the paper.

"Hey there," Rentarō greeted, causing the girl to pop up in shock. "What are you writing?"

"N-nothing," [Y/N] attempted to hide the paper.

"I'm sure it's great," he smiled at her.

She hesitated for a moment before giving in, "It's a story."

"About?"

"It's a fairy tale, the ones other girls would talk about on the street." She explained, "It's about a girl who is lonely and wants friends to talk to, but everything changes when she meets a boy who is surrounded by friends. Even though the boy is popular, he finds a way to have fun with who she is."

Tick, tock

Rentarō stared at the clock as it struck midnight. A loud dinging noise echoed through the room that was cluttered with fallen furniture and rubble. He had information swirling around in his head, spinning in circles like clockwork.

He could imagine the bomb dropping down on the once quiet outdoor classroom; imagine the screams of the cursed children; imagine the pain each one of them felt as they descended into darkness.

But after everything, he still had one single thought.

Did [Y/N], the lonely, short girl in the back of the classroom, hear the clock tick in her mind as she met her unavoidable fate?