PersonS {A Rejected Title and a False Explanation}

Take the contract with you to school, but hold off on signing it just yet. You should ask your benefactor exactly who it is that's coming after you.

Though, if you're genre savvy, it might be a case of having to sign the damn thing in a hurry in the middle of an attack on your school. You should really read the whole contract properly this time, before you sign. You don't want to turn into a witch.

>Could ask for the full text of the contract in a readable form, but I'm betting the part you can't read is somehow info you aren't allowed to have yet.
>Why look at that, the contract has an escape clause.
>In a conflict between mutually exclusive 'better safe than sorry' actions, take the one that prevents a bigger problem (dying).

You take another look at the contract for a moment. It's the same as before; the individuals make no sense but you feel like it's still saying something. What you can understand is...

In exchange for ██████'s power...I agree to use that power to protect the other ███████.

It seems like you understand more of it this time, though some of the "words" you comprehend are more complex concepts than fit in a single word. It's not ambiguous what they mean to you; the concepts you have for those things just take up too many words to fit where they go in the phrases. The person whose power it is is the person who's been contacting you; the people it says you'd be protecting are that unknown group that that other person referred to, who they don't know the names of and can't tell you what they have in common.

There is actually some new information here, as well. The person you've been talking to didn't tell you it was their power you'd be borrowing, and on a second look it seems like they phrased things carefully to avoid saying that or denying it. In a similar way, they didn't mention that you were actually a member of the group you'd be protecting, though you think you could have inferred that from "I think they're coming for you first."

So...the contract's contents are restricted to things you would understand, and crystal clear within that set of concepts. If you knew this person's name you think it would show up in place of the more complex concept, so maybe there is a single word that would capture the thing the 'others' and you have in common as well. The contract itself doesn't mention the person or people who are trying to kill you at all, then, since otherwise that would appear in the phrasing somewhere. It's a little strange how clear this is; in principle the entire thing could be a lie and there's no reason why you should actually believe it works this way. But it really feels like it does.

You ask another question:

Do you know who is trying to kill me?

And then take the pen and sign the first blank line under the contract. Still holding on to it, you look back at the screen to find an entire paragraph of words have appeared while you were doing that, even though you're pretty sure it would take longer than the few seconds you were looking away to type all of it.

I don't, and I wish I did, because if I or anyone else knew we could just stop them directly. The thing we do know is that they already got one person, which is really really bad. But it'll be really obvious when they attack.

Thank you for trusting me with this! I know it's kind of hard to accept right away. I have to sign it too, for it to take effect. And when I do I might not be able to talk or really do much of anything for a while. I know you have to leave for school soon, but do you have any last-minute questions before I do that?

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Hopefully black-box characters don't break the forum or anything.