hi i dont know anything about black butler who are those two guys you keep posting about
//sound of stone sliding against concrete
Let's ignore everything going on in actual Black Butler canon rn outside of the shinigami. <3
Those two guys are Alan Humphries and Eric Slingby, two musical-only characters in the second musical, "The Most Beautiful Death In The World"- a musical-only plot which focuses on our main characters, Ciel and Sebastian, investigating a series of mysterious "beautiful" deaths.
Meanwhile, the society of Shinigami (which is a more advanced, almost corporate setting in the midst of the 19th century the rest of the series takes place in) is thrown into an uproar over these mysterious deaths, as they're the ones in charge of "reviewing" the memories of the dying in the form of cinematic records (movie tapes), and claiming their souls with the use of their death scythes- specialized garden tools.
At the time of this musical's release, there were only seven reapers revealed in the series- the five shown here, one OVA-only character, and another major character throughout all of Kuroshitsuji's media. So far, I think there's now at least eleven of them!
Anyway, Alan and Eric (the guy in the middle and the blonde right next to him).
Shinigami can't die, but Alan is inflicted with a strange illness known as the "Thorns of Death". While we don't get to see how this illness came to be and what exactly does it do besides weaken Alan and give him coughing fits, many of his co-workers are aware of his condition. There is no known cure for the Thorns of Death, so Alan has resigned himself to his eventual, lonely death.
Eric, who used to be his mentor, partners up with him to investigate the mysterious deaths, where they bump into the main cast and end up having to rest at their place after Alan's sickness interrupts a fight between him and Sebastian. Eventually, Sebastian finds out that Eric has been the culprit of the mysterious deaths, and Alan is betrayed as Eric won't tell him why.
After a bit of musical plot goes on, Alan finds out that Eric has been killing innocents to collect a thousand souls, as there is a myth that only a thousand souls can cure the Thorns of Death. Unwilling to allow Eric to continue down this path and unwilling to hand him over to the Shinigami society for punishment, the two remove their glasses together and run away- glasses are highly important in shinigami society, as all of them have poor eyesight, and its an essential part of their uniform.
Spoiler- they don't run very far. Sebastian battles with Eric, Eric tries to kill Ciel as the last soul, Alan protects Ciel from Eric's attack. Eric ends up killing Alan, collecting a thousand useless souls in the process. Eric later asks Sebastian to kill him, joining Alan in death and releasing all the souls he has collected.
As Alan dies, however, we see one of his memories with Eric, which was them talking about how lonely flowers called ericas aren't so lonely after all, for they bloom with others. Both the flower petals and the souls Eric collected are likened to snow, and become the titular "most beautiful death in the world". This is shown through their duet, Unmei!
I should also note that, while these two are musical-only, they've made cameos in the anime as silhouettes- or worse, in the manga, in such a LOVELY panel which talked about shinigami that tried to abandon the shinigami society. If I had any hope of them appearing in the manga. Well.
ANYWAY SORRY FOR THE RAMBLE . I plan to post the theme song of the shinigami society from the musical (it is so silly and catchy I think you'll LOVE it) BUT !! HERE THEY ARE . DOOMED YAOI BLORBOS FROM MY MIDDLE SCHOOL FIXATIONS
