“So the aura created by using my powers causes me to bleed? That is not a great ability.” He stared at the bloody rags that had been just a moment ago perfectly clean bandages.

  “Or is that a consequence of not focusing when it responded to me? The bandages are already ruined, it cannot hurt to try.” Closing his eyes, his heart began to slow. Thump. Thump. Thump.. Thump… Thump…….. Thump………

  Dark emotions started to mingle with his own but he forced them aside, focusing. His arm began to throb, he could feel every drop of blood in his body. It began to heat and boil in his veins awaiting his beck and call.

  He opened his eyes and pushed his will upon it. Flowing up and floating out of his arm, hovering over his open palm. The bandages started slowly turning pink as blood was pulled from the fabric.

  “So far so good.” Eventually he had a small sphere a few inches thick sitting in the air. It was strange being connected to something outside of his body. A connection just like he felt between himself and the blood in the kitchen.

  He had felt a shallow connection to the mess he left while running through the apartment earlier but now he couldn’t. Likely the blood had dried and could no longer be controlled. “Meaning I need fresh blood for my magic.”

  Another thing to test once he went to clean up the kitchen. “For now though, what can I do with this?”

  Staring intently at the sphere it started to shape into a cube, then he stretched it thin making a large pane of blood, it became almost see through. Like red stained glass but he felt the stability of his control wobble when he pulled it too far. He compressed it and crystallized it solid, what was a several inch diameter sphere became a tiny red marble.

  James pressed it further, after a minute of pushing himself hard it became a needle. He had lost control of it then, the tiny compressed needle physically exploded into a cloud of mist startling him out of his trance.

  His heart stammered unevenly and he coughed violently as misted blood entered his lungs, it covered his body, sink, floor, and walls. It tasted like iron, a taste he had long associated with blood. Not that sickly sweet stuff he had drunk when he awoke in this body.

  He felt frustration rise again, he wasn’t usually so irritable. What was causing him to be so temperamental?

  “ENOUGH!” His heart stopped and the world seemed to freeze. The cloud of blood that was settling on the floor lingered in stasis, he waved his hand at it. He wanted it to be gone and his blood obliged, the cloud and all the liquid that coated his body and every surface quickly swirled into his open wounds in a crimson whirlwind.

  With the speed his blood reentered his veins as it came back to him, his bandages were shredded. Covering his arm in tattered cloth, and his heart hammered in his chest.

  “How did I do that?” It scared him how violent that had been, he obliterated his bandages. And the anger that had filled him, he couldn’t recall a single time in his life he felt so enraged.

  “Just another reason I need to keep my emotions in check when using these powers, I can't lash out at a person like that without killing them.”

  He removed the destroyed bandages from his arm putting them in the same hamper his now dry bloody clothes were in. It was serving as an impromptu trash bin rather than something for dirty laundry since he was gonna throw out everything in it.

  ‘This could also be the reason Kuro was so injured, he might have been testing his powers and lost control of the blood, fainting.’ The bathroom was mostly still clean… Save for the dried bloody footprints and the shattered mirror. One he would have to get replaced, the other he would need to add to the cleaning list.

  “Another test, can I manipulate the dirty clothes.” Again he reached out with his power, it was coming quicker as he became used to slowing his heart.

  The connection was there, his dried blood resonated with his power when he slid his aura over it. Yet he couldn’t grasp it, it felt like trying to grip a perfectly smooth ball of ice with wet hands. Whenever he forced his will into controlling the blood his power slipped over it.

  “Okay so it does need to be fresh, or at least maybe not so old.” That did not bode well for his planned experiments in the kitchen. Most likely he had to give up on doing further tests today.

  There was also the fact that he had no idea what time it was, daylight came into the kitchen so it was obviously daytime. How long would he have until someone came to check on him? Some poor attendant or forbid one of the shadows his father assigned to him shows up while a giant pool of his blood sits in the kitchen.

  “Step one, find clothes. Step two, clean the apartment of all this blood before someone gets a heart attack.” For now he wouldn’t bother applying new bandages. If he was only gonna bleed when using his powers then he didn’t see the point in covering the wounds.

  The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  His room was across the hall from the bathroom, stepping out and looking down the hall back towards the kitchen he saw the trail he left. They were easy to spot being a deep red on a light brown wooden floor.

  Thinking deeply about it. He could not recall where the cleaning supplies were. Did the original Kuro even know? The bastard probably would never have cleaned anything by himself. James was gonna have to find them on his own the old fashion way, checking every closet until he found what he wanted.

  He shook his head and opened the bedroom door. Another giant room, a king size bed with blue and white blankets, and 6 blue pillows. A bookshelf filled with different works, fictional stories, encyclopedias, and advanced textbooks for just about every subject he would have in school. English, mathematics, chemistry, a various smorgasbord of content.

  There was a low coffee table of grey wood sitting in front of a black loveseat couch which faced a flat screen TV on the wall, and grey carpet. “I should be careful not to use my powers here, I do not wanna clean blood out of the carpet.”

  The TV displayed a resting screen that showed the weather, temperature, day, date, but most importantly the time. It was 11:47, Saturday. He had plenty of time to clean and thankfully did not need to rush, a minor weight lifted from his shoulders. On the same wall he walked in through was what he was searching for, closet doors containing clothes so he would not have to wander and clean his new home in the nude.

  He pulled open the doors, it was a walk in closet, 8 feet deep with clothes hanging on the left and right. A seat was built into a shelf containing several pairs of shoes against the back wall. The only thing was how terrible most of the clothes looked.

  Ripped skinny jeans, bright orange parachute pants, track pants, and slacks. Snake skin boots, several garishly colorful brand name sneakers placed beside dress shoes. A dozen different T-shirts with suggestive art on the front and back hanging behind button up long sleeve shirts with ties.

  He had a few hoodies and what looked like the uniform jacket that he would wear to school, a whole lot of leather and letterman jackets. All pretty normal for a stereotypical delinquent except for a particular coat. A long tiger fur monstrosity that reached down to almost touch the floor. “There is no way he ever wore this.”

  ‘I will need to go shopping for a new wardrobe, most of this stuff I will give away somewhere.’ He picked out a thin black hoodie that would hide his arm nicely, a pair of black and red sneakers, and one of the ripped jeans.

  He would have to roll up the sleeve of his jacket before using his powers but that was a good trade to hide the wounds from anyone looking at him when he went out. He had no idea how long it would take for his arm to heal, if it would take a while he might need to invest in long sleeve shirts.

  He also needed a haircut, he hated long hair and Kuro let it grow out and dyed it black at the roots and then blond as if to make it look like black was his natural color.

  Thankfully this world had hair dye that was easy to remove and replace using chemicals. An excuse the game used to explain why you could so easily change the protagonist's hair whenever you wanted.

  Supernatural School Days being an anime styled game featured a lot of characters with uncommon hair colors, and Kuro was no exception. He was born with white hair that he inherited from his mother.

  The boy had taken to dying it so he wouldn’t be reminded of her after she passed away when he was young. James had known of the character losing their mom but from his new memories it became apparent that it was the major cause for Kuro initially acting out. That did not justify the downward spiral he would continue into the man he became at the end of SSD.

  “I will need to get used to going by Kuro too, I will have to put my old identity behind me.” He was a bit sad to leave his old name behind. He had of course spent over 20 years becoming attached to it after all.

  Now in just a day he had to learn to love a new one. He had time to grow used to it, currently it was Saturday. School would be on Monday giving him today and tomorrow to acclimate to his new identity.

  “Now where is the cleaning closet?”

  The quest for bleach was a more arduous one than he initially expected. It took a grueling half hour before he found a discreet tiny closet near the front door. It contained all manner of cleaning supplies, wash cloths, a mop and bucket, and various chemicals. Including his beloved bleach and some expensive looking floor cleaning solution, perfect for his needs.

  Pouring a bit of the cleaner and bleach into the bucket and picking it up with the mop he decided he would start in the bathroom. Fill the bucket from the bath facet and clean all the dried footprints as he worked his way down the hall back to the kitchen.

  ***

  Mopping up those footprints was easier than he thought it would be, he supposed that was because the chemicals he used were just great quality.

  “I wonder who usually has to use that closet and clean this place, a maid? It is a luxury building owned by Raiyu Takamura, he probably has someone come clean the place whenever his son is at school.”

  Eventually however he arrived at the original crime scene, it was grim. Broken glass in a large pool of now sludgy coagulated blood. He thought maybe it would be a good idea to try and reabsorb it like in the bathroom, but he did not want that in him. It had sat there for far too long.

  It was a long process, cleaning up blood one squeezed mop full at a time. Pushing broken glass around on the floor, he placed the dagger on the counter, another thing to take care of soon. New buckets of clean water were needed several times. Hopefully he wouldn’t need to explain where all the floor cleaner went, but all the blood was eventually cleaned up.

  He dumped the last of the bloody mop water out into his shower drain. “Now to pick up the broken glass…”

  Knock, knock, knock. “Young Master, are you awake yet?”

  He heard the door click open and heavy footsteps echo from the entryway across the apartment, another deeper voice calling out. “Yo Lil Boss, we went ahead and walked shadow while you were resting.”

  He instantly thought about the blade coated in his dried blood left out on the counter.

  “Shit.”