𝑸𝑶𝑻𝑪:

𝑻𝒓𝒂𝒈𝒆𝒅𝒚, 𝒐𝒏 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒐𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒓 𝒉𝒂𝒏𝒅, 𝒊𝒔 𝒓𝒆𝒂𝒍𝒊𝒕𝒚, 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒃𝒓𝒖𝒕𝒂𝒍 𝒕𝒓𝒖𝒕𝒉 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒇𝒂𝒄𝒆 𝒆𝒗𝒆𝒓𝒚 𝒅𝒂𝒚. 𝑰𝒕 𝒑𝒖𝒍𝒍𝒔 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒐𝒖𝒕 𝒐𝒇 𝒚𝒐𝒖𝒓 𝑼𝒕𝒐𝒑𝒊𝒂𝒏 𝒘𝒐𝒓𝒍𝒅 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒎𝒂𝒌𝒆𝒔 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒇𝒂𝒄𝒆 𝒘𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒉𝒂𝒗𝒆 𝒂𝒉𝒆𝒂𝒅, 𝒎𝒂𝒚 𝒊𝒕 𝒃𝒆 𝒉𝒂𝒓𝒔𝒉. 𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝒕𝒆𝒂𝒓𝒔, 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒔𝒄𝒂𝒓𝒔, 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒘𝒐𝒖𝒏𝒅𝒔, 𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒔𝒆 𝒎𝒊𝒓𝒓𝒐𝒓 𝒐𝒖𝒓 𝒍𝒊𝒇𝒆, 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒂𝒄𝒕𝒖𝒂𝒍 𝒍𝒊𝒇𝒆, 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒏𝒐𝒕 𝒋𝒖𝒔𝒕 𝒂 𝒆𝒖𝒑𝒉𝒐𝒓𝒊𝒄 𝒇𝒂𝒏𝒕𝒂𝒔𝒚.

***

A day, as bright as a flame, ventured into the skies. Light, moisture-less breeze swept above the ground, barely able to move a hair. The savory aroma of an old Kobushi magnolia tree inspirited the atmosphere.

Haruhiko Elite Academy was the sole institution affiliated to the P.E.D. They named it after the first Chief Director of the P.E.D., Mr. Haruhiko Sato. Being one of the major sources of income to the department, its education expenses were extravagantly high, allowing only students of well-heeled households to cover the costs of being educated from such a school.

Aside from basic education, the facility ran a cram-school for students who wanted to join the department, to hone their physical and intellectual skills. Even in the cram-school, they set aside a special course for honor students like Asami, under supervision from retired officers of the department.

Asami stepped inside the school grounds, her open hair surrounding her like an elegant silk shawl. Her personality, posture, expressions, everything she possessed radiated a significant aura that attracted everyone to her. But deep inside her seraphic halo, rested silence, a sullen silence that people felt, whenever they tried to get close to her. There was always a subtle distance between her and the rest of the world; an icy wall which sealed within it her dark inner self.

"Good morning, Sato."
The voices rang in a continuous manner as she approached the classroom. In a voice fainter than a breeze, she wished everyone, whilst on the inside, she was strategizing every possible way, to get her hands on the keys.

"Ah! Asami, what happened to you? You look so weak. And why didn't you come to school? I was so worried. I called you like a million times. Ah, Asami, is something wrong?"

She clicked her tongue in irritation. She could not think properly with all the stupid questions he was showering upon her.

Matsuha Mabuchi was in the same class as Asami and was her childhood best friend. His mother died of unknown causes and his father shed his life in the same POWAN attack in which her mother had died.

Dirty brown fuzzy hairs, brown eyes, with several pimples on his plump cheeks; he was not the least bit physically appealing. Calling him fat would have been an overstatement, but his cheeks were fleshy. He was the kind of guy nobody liked; ugly, clumsy, and always shadowing a certain girl. He scarcely scored any grades, exception being science, which was a little better than average.

Asami shed a sympathetic glance on him. Even after losing both of his parents, he remained cheerful and full of hope. Hiroichi took him under his care after the incident, and although he had a separate living place, the Sato household still covered his expenses. That explained why he studied in an elite academy along with all the honor students.

"I'm fine," Asami crooned, making Matsuha sigh in relief and babble about everything that happened in school last week, much to her annoyance.

She slid the classroom door and trod towards her seat. The students looked at her, expecting a reaction.
But she merely marched forward.

"Is that the girl you were talking about?"A boy whispered to the guy sitting before him.

Asami could hear him. It seemed like her senses had sharpened after receiving the POWAN powers. The thought of them made her flinch.

"She is beautiful. But her white hair?"
"Yeah, they are special, like a goddess."
"You sure it's not dyed?"
"No, they are natural, her eyebrows and eyelashes are white too. And she never even does any makeup."

To those boys, seeing someone with white hair was like seeing dinosaurs in the modern world. But they were right. White hairs are not something you usually see on an adolescent girl. Even blondes sounded like commoners before them.

The curious boy, whose face turned blue in surprise after seeing Asami, was apparently a transfer student, one of the two who came in her absence. She turned her head towards the guy, not the one talking about her, but the one behind him, secretly trying to sneak a glance.

Straight, jet black hair parted to one side flowed over his medium-sized, flawless forehead shadowing over his sharp gray eyes that could pierce through the hearts of men. Skin a shade darker than hers ran down his tall, masculine build, shoulders wide enough to engulf her within, with long legs stretching down from his perfectly balanced waist. His slender nose bridged between his hawk-like eyes was all one needed to have their attention drifted to him. To her, he was actually handsome.

Carefully, she studied him, and at the same time was being studied by him. In stolen glances, they tried to figure out what their intuitions told them. Eventually, it turned into a dual.

Asami leaned back, setting her overlong hair so they don't drag on the floor.
A swarm of fan-girls, who surrounded him, squealing their throats out, interrupted the black-haired man.

"Who is that boy?" she asked Matsuha, pointing a finger in the crowd's direction.

At first Matsuha seemed astounded by the usually quiet and aloof Asami's sudden curiosity in a boy.

Her sharp instincts sensed something. They told her to be careful of that guy.
But to beware of the enemy, one must know its ins and outs.

"Kiyoshi Azuma."

𝘏𝘮? 𝘈𝘻𝘶𝘮𝘢, 𝘪𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵-

It rung a bell. The last name Azuma sounded familiar, not much known but heard frequently.
Bowing her head, she processed everything quickly and vigilantly in her head.

***

Main school ended and Asami caught Kiyoshi looking at her several times.
A gut feeling told her that something was not right. Nevertheless, she drifted on her way to cram-school.

They did cram-classes in a secluded, large auditorium for the students attending the special courses.

Students who graduated from the cram-classes took exams for the 3-year study course. It was an onerous examination of physical skills and the intelligence to tackle a POWAN-involving situation with the least knowledge about them.

In those 3 years, they studied body structure, abilities, weaknesses, psychology, pharmaceutics and everything related to POWANs and gained actual combat experience for formal missions.

Along with students from the cram-school, there were students who got directly admitted to the 3-year course, if they possessed the dexterity and ingeniousness.
Asami stood at the door, with eyes widened, when she saw Kiyoshi sitting in the cram-classes.

Being in the special course meant possessing the potential to gain the higher ranks in the department and family connections.

𝘞𝘩𝘰 𝘪𝘴 𝘩𝘦? 𝘏𝘪𝘴 𝘯𝘢𝘮𝘦 𝘪𝘴 𝘧𝘢𝘮𝘪𝘭𝘪𝘢𝘳, 𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘧𝘢𝘤𝘦 𝘪𝘴 𝘧𝘢𝘮𝘪𝘭𝘪𝘢𝘳, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘩𝘦 𝘪𝘴 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘱𝘦𝘤𝘪𝘢𝘭 𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘴𝘦.

With all her thoughts jumbled up, she decided to give it a rest.
***

Asami unlocked her door. With her sharpened nose, she had smelled over one person inside the room, but she could still not distinguish them from each other. She was feeling a fleeting pain in her chest which she continuously endured all day. The stifling heat made it difficult for her to breathe.

Entering her house, she dropped her bag on the floor; her face turning pale. She remembered where she had seen him, Kiyoshi Azuma. Just like now, she saw him sitting right there 8 years ago.

She was in grade 4 then. Her attitude stated to change after her mother's death. Her cheerful self got lost under the haziness of a grim silence that occupied her heart, which became its permanent home.

Back then, she saw them, the man with a moustache and tanned skin and a small boy, with sharply aligned gray eyes. His face was beautiful, curiosity drooped from his eyes, but he was sitting still with his back straight, like he had practised it a hundred times.

A little attraction made its way to her heart back then. But she never saw him again.
And now here he was, sitting in the same place in the exact same way like before. Their gazes met, but he didn't react, like he was expecting this.

"Good evening, Asami. Come here."
Asami came closer to the couch her father was sitting on and bowed down in front of the visitors, wishing them a good evening, while carefully making sure that her one sided bangs don't reveal her white eye.

"It's been so long. Our little Asami has grown up. She has become a fine lady."
The man smiled with a brief laughter mixed in. He seemed jolly, unlike his son, who sat expressionless.

"Asami, you don't remember. He has visited us here before." Hiroichi squeaked with a pleased voice, keeping in mind not to disturb her daughter and make her flip the switch. In return, she nodded her head to say that she didn't.

"Oh well, it's been so long. This here is my subordinate and best friend, Chiharu Azuma. He is the present deputy director of P.E.D and the commander of P.E.F."

𝘛𝘩𝘢𝘵'𝘴 𝘸𝘩𝘺 𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘯𝘢𝘮𝘦 𝘴𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘥 𝘧𝘢𝘮𝘪𝘭𝘪𝘢𝘳.

"And this young gentleman here is his son, Kiyoshi Azuma. I believe he will go to the academy." Asami glanced at her father when he said that.

"He already does," she said, frivolously turning her gaze towards Kiyoshi, remembering the time he was trying to peek at her.

His father sensed the tension and diverted the topic.
"This city has changed a lot. Kyoto was so different from Tokyo. Kiyoshi, why don't you have Asami show you around?"

An urge to shout, to show his old fart that she hated them, and the need to kick them out of her house seeped into her heart, but she couldn't. She shoved her fingernails in her palm, to release the anger through pain.

They left together, walking side by side, not speaking a word, quietly analyzing each other. She turned her head towards the shops on the street, thinking of the keys, hiding her eye, noticing him, all while maintaining an expressionless face.

"Do you like books?" Kiyoshi spoke up, bringing her back from her thoughts. She noticed she had been staring at a book shop for quite a while.

She turned towards his face. His handsome features glistened in the light of the setting sun.

𝘏𝘦 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 𝘭𝘰𝘰𝘬𝘴 𝘲𝘶𝘪𝘵𝘦 𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦.

"Yes," she replied with her usual faint voice that matched with her calm face, but contrasted with her eyes, filled with blood lust, "they mirror me."

"Hm?" Kiyoshi raised an eyebrow in doubt.

"I read every kind of literature, from romance to non-fiction, but the one that strikes me the most is tragedy. Romance, humour, mystery, they reflect something that doesn't exist in your life. The adventure of the things you never experienced fills one's heart with excitement. But excitement is the mirror image of immaturity. And I don't like being immature. Tragedy, on the other hand, is reality, the brutal truth you face every day. It pulls you out of your Utopian world and makes you face what you have ahead, may it be harsh. The tears, the scars, the wounds, these mirror our life, the actual life, and not just a euphoric fantasy."

She blabbered, in contrast to her usually quiet nature, with eyes shimmering, but her words sounded hopeless, debilitated and intimidated.
Kiyoshi listened quietly and then gazed forward, lifting his head up, like he understood but didn't agree; like it was an irony in its own.

They walked home where their fathers were standing outside, shaking hands. Asami walked towards the door, when Kiyoshi put his hand on her shoulder and stopped her. He brought his face beside her ears.

"I wonder," he said, as his lips crooked to form a smirk for the first time, his eyes narrowing in sadistic pleasures, "which one are you?"

A shiver ran down Asami's spine. Her pain flew away for a second. All the voices in the environment faded, with only one voice ringing in her head.
"Which one are you?"

Sweat formed on her face as Kiyoshi went ahead of her, smiling nefariously with his head up, watching Asami from the corner of his eye.

𝘞𝘩𝘪𝘤𝘩 𝘰𝘯𝘦...? 𝘞𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘥𝘪𝘥 𝘩𝘦 𝘮𝘦𝘢𝘯 𝘣𝘺 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵? 𝘐𝘮𝘮𝘢𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦 𝘰𝘳 𝘮𝘢𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦 𝘰𝘳 𝘩𝘶𝘮𝘢𝘯 𝘰𝘳...

Her breathing sped up significantly.

With her vision blurring in anxiety, she saw his tall silhouette against the setting sun.
Forming a smile under the coat of sweat on her face, she stood yonderly, teetering on the edge of the abyss of her inner-self emerging out slowly.