Open-Minded

~01~

Daniel James Howell. He was never one to 'fit in'. You couldn't blame him though, he was a little different. He had a few friends. A few being only one. Caspar was always there for him. Dan knew that he meant it. Dan always knows. In his case, he knows everything. He isn't a genius, no. He is just... Unique.

[*Dan*]

Dan keeps his eyes glued to the ground. He was entering the school gates, so he had to keep his eyes to the ground. No one understood why. The people assume things. All of them do. Eyes looking down, Dan sits on a bench. He takes out a book and begins to read. Reading was the only thing he could do safely. Doing anything else would stress him out. He always got good grades, as all he can do is read. And he also gets good grades because... Well, he is special.

The bell rings and Dan looks up accidentally. It pained him to do this. No, it didn't pain him physically. It hurt mentally. He caught glimpses of it. He never liked seeing them. Dan saw things no one else would see. Ever. Dan never fully understood that 'box'. But he knew what was inside. Statistics. In these boxes were statistics. Every single person he saw, when he had actually decided to look up, had a box above their heads.

These boxes were weird, in Dan's head. They all had... You could call them 'categories'. Each category had a horizontal box laying next to it, it was a bar. It would fill based on percentage. Dan barely looked up, but he looked up enough to know what each of the categories were. There was- Kindness, Honesty, Wealthiness, Dirty-mindedness, Smartness and Talent. The bar would show a percentage out of a 100 depending on how you acted specifically in each of these categories. There was also extra bits of information. Dan only knew a few as he usually never looked at anyone. There was- Age, Height, Birth Date, Talent and a few more that he never got the time to read.

Seeing this box would annoy Dan. But that wasn't all. He saw more. A lot more. That didn't matter as Dan Howell avoided people whenever he could and everyone else would do so aswell. Dan gets to class, 5 minutes late.

"Mr. Howell! You are 5 minutes late!" Mr. Kingsley says, annoyed.

It had already been a bad day for Dan so he chose to do something he hadn't done in a while. Look up. Daniel Howell looked up. On purpose. Dan hears a few gasps and even Mr. Kingsley looked surprised. Oh no. Dan thought. Not again, please. He saw it. Those words. The voices. It was the teacher's thoughts. A few words slide by above the teacher's head- This boy- he looked up! He actually looked up!

"Yeah, I looked up. Why do you sound so excited?" Dan says, regretting it soon after.

"Excuse you, but I haven't said anything." Mr. Kingsley replies. He's quite sassy. Isn't he?

"Sassy? Yeah, totally." Dan says sarcastically as he rolls his eyes.

"I.. Er.. How did you? How on ear-"

Dan glares at the teacher, grabs his bag, swings it over his shoulder and walks out of class. He sits and dwells over his thoughts. What had he just done? Why did he do it? Why didn't he stop? He was engulfed in his thoughts and had been pulled back into reality by the bell. Time to get to the next class.

He walks to the English block. Dan opens the door and makes his way to his seat. It was at the back corner, where he always sat. It was the furthest seat from the teacher's desk. After sitting down and class starting, the principal has a quick chat with the teacher and he hears the teacher say 'yes' to something.

"Class! Please listen," Mrs. Smith says, Dan still refusing to look up,"we have a new student!"

The class grumbles and explodes into chatter and murmur.

Mrs. Smith claps her hand and immediately regathers the class' attention. "Phillip Micheal Lester," Mrs. Smith pauses to examine the room,"ahh. You may sit over there at the back. Next to Mr. Howell!"

The class goes back to murmuring. The teacher claps once more and continues her lesson. You hear one of the students break into laughter.

"What's wrong, Ms. Lorenzo?"

She points to Phil and Dan, laughing even harder."Twinsies!" She shouts.

Dan bites his lip and his eyebrows furrow. He looks up. Again. It was accidental this time. He did it out of anger. Out of rage. He sees words again, they belong to Lisa Lorenzo- I hope everyone thinks I'm funny.

Dan, getting angry, shouts,"Well you're not! No one thinks you're funny so why don't you just give it up?!" Dan slams his fist onto the desk.

Everyone looks confused and scared. Lisa looks bewildered. Then Dan turns to the boy sitting next to him, Phillip begins to smirk.

"Find something funny, 'new kid'?" Dan asks, anger in his tone.

Phillip keeps the same steady gaze on his desk. Not looking away. He sees Lisa's point. He recognised this attitude. As his own. Dan was shocked, but kept his glare at Phillip.

He chuckles,"Oh Howell, you have no idea."

After class ends, Dan is the first to walk out of the room. He basically ran to a bench in an alley at the back of the school. All that he could think about were Lester's words. Oh Howell, they repeated in Dan's head, you have no idea. The bell rang for free period. This was the last class on Dan's schedule.

"Hey Howell!" A voice shouts.

These two words didn't bother Dan. The person speaking did. Dan looks up. He sees Phillip Lester wearing sunglasses, still looking at the ground, hands in his pockets. Dan never realised that he himself looked like this.

"It's funny. It really is." Phillip finally says, taking his sunglasses off and looking up, Dan noticing the vivid blue eyes of Phillip's.

Dan's gaze goes from examining Phil's body language, to his head. It takes hime a few seconds to realise, but he does.

"Y-you don't h-have.." Dan stutters, accidentally letting the words slip from his mouth.

"Yeah, I can't seem to see yours, either." He replies calmly.

Dan's heart sinks to the ground. Yet at the same he can feel it beating in his throat. This man, Dan thought, He... He... He can re-

Before Dan could fully process the sentence, he feels something hit his head. His mind starts spinning, the alley darkens and Dan finally feels himself collide with the ground.

"Daniel. James. Howell." Phillip says, he begins to laugh. His chuckle being the last thing Dan hears. Then he's out like a light.

~Author's Note~

Hello Phandom! I hope you're enjoying my story so far! I don't really plan any of this out, so I would like to see suggestions such as- One of them should die, or they should fall in love, etc. Do you guys want me to keep the intensity? Or should it ease into romance? I love writing this and I hope you enjoy reading it! Continue, hope you like the rest!

(Here's a little thing I do)Word of The Day: Gelatinous