Everyone in Block 17 knew Leo and Mira. They weren’t siblings, but they moved like they shared the same shadow. Quiet, thin kids who slept behind an abandoned laundromat and carried identical metal pens tucked behind their ears. They barely spoke. They barely smiled. People ignored them… until the bad men started disappearing.
First was a dealer who used kids as runners. Found slumped behind a dumpster with a tiny puncture in his throat and a faint smear of blue ink on his collar. Then a man known for beating his wife. Same mark. Same silence. Then a gang recruiter who hung around the basketball court. Same ink stain.
No gunshots. No screams. Just quiet deaths that made the neighborhood feel… safer. Shopkeepers started leaving food near the laundromat. Someone left them shoes. Nobody asked questions. Nobody called the police. Crime dropped. Kids played outside again. People whispered that the two children were doing what adults were too scared to do.
They became a secret the neighborhood protected. Until the teacher died. Mr. Collins had only worked at the local school for a month. Soft-spoken, awkward, always carrying extra notebooks for kids who couldn’t afford them. He stayed late after class helping students read.
They found him behind the school building with the same tiny puncture wound and a small blue ink stain spreading across his shirt. The neighborhood changed overnight. Doors closed earlier. Conversations stopped when Leo and Mira walked by. The same people who once left them food now watched them with fear. Community leaders finally confronted the kids near the laundromat.
“Why him?”
One woman asked, her voice shaking. Mira pulled out a small notebook. Pages filled with names, some crossed out, some circled. Next to Mr. Collins’ name was one word written in crooked letters:
‘Rumor.’
Someone had spread a lie about the teacher. The kids never questioned it. They never checked. They just followed the list. The silence that followed felt heavier than any scream.
People realized they had built this. Feeding the children, protecting them, praising their quiet justice. They had turned abandoned kids into weapons and pretended it was heroism. This time, no one hid them. Leo and Mira were taken away quietly, the same way they had lived without protest, without tears, their sharpened pens confiscated like ordinary school supplies.
Months later, crime slowly crept back into Block 17. Dealers returned. Violence returned. Fear returned. And sometimes, late at night, old residents still argue about the Quiet Pair. Some say monsters kept the streets safe. Others say monsters never know when to stop. But every now and then, someone swears they see faint blue ink marks on alley walls, tiny lines like unfinished names as if the list was never really finished.
