Fateful meeting

Reaper - Chapter 1

Charlton High School

"Suki? ... Susan Kira Harris! Would you be so kind and stop dreaming and follow the class instead ?!"
The sudden whistle from her teacher makes the 16-year-old flinch, so that her chin, which has just been resting on her palm, slips off and her head hits the table rudely. Your classmates laugh wildly. The teacher tries to calm the crowd down again.
"Suki, I'll be waiting for you after the lesson so that you can pick up a little extra work!"
She groans in agony, but refrains from protesting because she knows best that she deserves the punishment. It had almost become a habit this week that instead of following the class, she looked out of the window, lost in thought. But she can't help it, there is just too much going around in your head, which is clearly a higher priority than geography ...
Her seat neighbor and best friend Tessa leans over to her with a worried expression on her face.
"Suki, you've been in a weird mood all day ... Say you still haven't done anything about this stalker ?!"
Suki shakes her head in annoyance and tries to appear as carefree as possible so that her friend doesn't get involved in the matter unnecessarily. It had been in her ears for two days now with the suggestion to alert the police and on the way to school she had got into the habit of pecking around every corner, and then she, with the embarrassing sentence "The air is clear!" to guide to the next junction. But the worst thing about Tessa's paranoid behavior is that it always infects her.
Suki herself, is not even sure if she is actually being followed ... Sure, there was this strange guy who always wears that dark jacket that she had come across suspiciously often in the past few days, but she never had the feeling that any Threat poses him ... who knows, maybe he just found her attractive ...She grins involuntarily at the thought, which immediately brings her teacher to another reprimand ...

When Suki runs home from school and the subsequent training session with her athletics team, the setting sun has already colored the sky in shades of orange and red. The streets are empty and there is a gentle breeze. She turns the music on her Mp3 player a little louder and balances along the narrow curb. Suddenly she feels a hand reaching for her shoulder from behind, tears off her headphones with a sharp scream and whirls around so vigorously that she accidentally slaps the person behind her.
"..Ouch, hey, are you still ticking right ?!"
"I'm sorry, ... that was pure reflex, ... I -..."
When she notices how close she is to the young man in front of her, she takes a step back, blushing. She looks at him more closely and suddenly she realizes that this is the guy who has been on her heels all week. She instinctively assumes the defensive stance that she learned about a century ago in the self-defense course and, if the worst comes to the worst, gets ready to act according to the motto "attack is the best defense". She remains in this pose for a few seconds and fixes her counterpart penetratingly. He's about eight inches taller than her, which wouldn't improve her chances in a fight, has black, badly combed hair that hangs down his face to his eyes, and looks by and large like your average high school student. The only exception is the penetrating blackness of his eyes, in which one cannot even begin to make out the transition between the pupil and the iris. Captivated by his gaze, she unconsciously drops her hands a little. Suddenly he twisted his mouth into a grin, and before she really understood what was going on, he could hardly contain himself with laughter.She stares at him in confusion at first, but when she realizes that he is obviously laughing at her, she quickly becomes irritated.
"What the hell is so funny ?!"
She lets her gaze wander at her clenched fists, and when she realizes how ridiculous a petite girl like she must look in this "Jackie Chan" pose, she can't help but laugh either.
Suddenly he pauses and from one second to the next his face becomes dead serious as he frantically glances at the watch on his wrist. A blue minivan comes around the corner, followed by a motorcyclist in a dark protective jacket. The black-haired man suddenly looks restless and looks around nervously. The motorbike's engine roars when the driver flashes on the left and starts to overtake. Before she can react, he suddenly grabs her arm and pulls her off the sidewalk into the entrance of a small, closed flower shop. Just as she pulls away indignantly, she lets a loud crack swirl around, followed by a high-pitched squeak.
In the place where she had just been standing, lies the green sports motorcycle, smoking slightly. The sheet metal is dented in several places and the rear wheel is almost torn off. The driver lies on the ground a few meters away and does not move. The van that apparently caused the accident is steering around the next bend with screeching tires. Suki's heart is racing in her chest as she slowly turns to face her savior. He doesn't look surprised or shocked, however, as she expected. More like he has just committed a crime or something, and the police are already on his heels ... they annoyingly note that the look on his face looks more like he regrets rescuing her.
She turns on her heel to check on the motorcyclist when he stops her.
"You don't have to look after him, he'll survive.In a few minutes a woman will find him and call the emergency doctor. So-..."
"We can't just leave it there! And how do you even know that it will be found, we're the only ones far and wide!"
She tries to tear herself away, but he continues to hold on to her.
"We have to get out of here now, sure! It shouldn't have happened like that ... I mean, I shouldn't have intervened ... but I -... Damn it, they're going to rip my ass off ...!"
"I don't understand a word! Could you maybe explain to me what you want from me?"
Instead of some logical explanation for her, he simply takes her hand and pulls her along the street behind him. Just before they turn a corner, she looks back at the accident victim again and just sees a young woman with a fluttering summer skirt running towards him and kneeling down next to him.

As the two of them are running over one of the many small bridges that span the canal that runs right through the city, she manages to twist her narrow hand out of his and she stops panting and with an angry face. He turns to her, also out of breath, and visibly annoyed. The two face each other for a while and glare angrily at each other. Finally he gives up in the face of her incredible thick skull and sighs in resignation.
"All right, listen ... I'm really only here to help, so would you be kind enough to cooperate at least a little."
"I beg your pardon ?! A guy who is completely strange to me is dragging me through half of the city against my will and without a logical explanation, ... and then I should be even more cooperative? !!"
Suki's cheeks have already turned slightly red from sheer anger.
While she is still pondering whether her more or less poor performance in sprinting is enough for an escape, he runs thoughtfully through his hair."Nice, how about this ... we'll get out of here for now and as soon as we're out of reach I'll explain it to you ..."
The suddenly calm tone in his voice surprises her, so that she forgets her planned escape and just stares at him thoughtfully. She was supposed to take the opportunity and leave ... but then again, her curiosity was just too great. He had clearly foreseen this accident and also the young woman ... but how? Torn back and forth, Suki just stands there for several seconds and looks at her shoes. For some reason, however, she feels that she can trust him ... even if she has no idea why, as she is usually a rather suspicious person. But it's almost as if she's known him for ages ... as if she'd met him before ... a long time ago. She looks at him more confidently and crosses her arms over her chest.
"All right, I'll come with you. But I want you to know that I'm going with you because I want to, and that means I can go home whenever I want!"
He grins at her in relief.
"As you wish."

Meanwhile in a small dark bar in the southern quarter of the city ...

He is sitting in his regular seat, a worn, wine-red leather armchair, and is lighting his third cigar that evening. Thoughtfully, he runs his way through the short, gray-streaked beard. With one eye he scans some lists that are scattered across the small round glass table in front of him. Satisfied, he takes a long sip from his scotch glass. All deaths that were pending this month have been met, the memories of the eyewitnesses have been deleted or changed, so that there were no problems afterwards either. And there were no unwanted civilian casualties during the missions. But because of their new technical equipment, such incidents have become relatively rare anyway.Less than 150 years ago, most major missions ended in even more complicated ways ... He can still remember the old days ... they had lost a lot of good men back then. Unfortunately, in addition to their technique, their opponents had also developed ... Basically, however, that was not entirely correct ... actually it is the people who have changed ... unfortunately not for the better ...
He sighs tiredly and forces himself to concentrate on his work again when suddenly the door swings open and a small, skinny man sneaks in and walks straight towards him.
"Sir, ... e-I'm sorry to bother you, but we have a problem here with the latest transfer evaluation ... It looks like one less soul has passed over than intended ..."
"Have the results been verified properly?"
"Y-yes, sir! I carried out a detailed check myself ... Errors are excluded! A soul has managed to escape its overpass ... According to the grid, it must come from this