Chapter 01
“The Middle Start of a Long Road”
The sound of the alarm clock echoing inside of the dark chambers was gratefully welcomed by the black haired male. He had been once again dreaming – and dreaming was a banned land, for as long as it concerned him.
It was always the same dream, when it came into such shape. All black... and then those words. They had been repeated inside of him for so long that he could no longer recall the first time they had echoed inside of his brain. They had been repeated so many times that their meaning had already been lost in the confinement of the passage of years. Or so he liked to think about them. No, or so he had to think about them. Just like dreaming had become a forbidden action for him, remembering could be just as much of a bad idea. Though he didn’t apply it to his own life, he knew that the past was the past, no use dwelling on it. Yes, that’s it. The two golden rules: no dreaming and no remembering.
As such, since he had dreamt, now all he had to do was forget about it once again. Bring it into the nothingness that his existence represented in the world. He must forget, for all is better forgotten and left in the past. Yes, everything.
The black haired male sluggishly motioned his upper body into a sitting position and stretched his arms over his head, dropping one of his hands down to ruffle his dishevelled hair. Lazily, he turned his body around on the mattress and allowed his naked feet to touch the cold floor, motioning towards the small bathroom attached to his bedroom as he leisurely undressed his sweaty clothes and left them scattered on the floor. By the time he reached the bathroom, he was only clad in his underwear, his teal eyes being greeted by his own reflection in the mirror as soon as the door was open.
His appearance resembled one more of a ghost than of a living human. Pitch black locks of hair, which he couldn’t even recall the last time he got cut and trimmed. Glassy teal orbs for eyes, two round balls that reflected what was seen by them with crimpling indifference. A skin so pale that a corpse would have more life to them than in the total amount present in his small framed body, one that barely went over 160cm of height (something that he really disliked to mention, for that barely was actually really barely, with his exact height being 161 cm).
He sighed softly, motioning one of his hands towards the plastic cup near the sink and grabbing his toothbrush. As he smeared the toothpaste on the soft white tufts, he gave a quick peek to the school schedule posted next to the mirror, using the chance to slightly inch his body away from the mirror and become half invisible to its ever present reflective properties.
The new school year was to begin that day, in a couple of hours. He was about to make his high school debut – or so it was referenced by normal teenagers of his age. ‘Normal’ was definitely not a word included in his or any other student of his school’s dictionary.
To him, it would just be another three years of an uneventful life, spending his days in total seclusion and fully unnoticed to everyone around him, whether he would be inside of the confinement of his bedroom in one of the school’s dorms or surrounded by his still unknown classmates. If he wasn’t aware that attendance wasn’t something that he didn’t need to worry in Kaimei Academy, then he would have wondered how exactly he had managed to advance as far as high school, his attendance being even worse than that of your regular, everyday delinquent. The few days – sometimes hours – where he was actually sat down on his desk on the classroom appointed to him were those days when he simply didn’t have anything better to do and his boredom was starting to catch up with his brain in numbing ways.
He appreciated the numbness... but not the boredom.
With his morning cleaning ritual fully finished, he started the lengthy chore of putting his school uniform on. Constituted by a light red shirt, which was covered with a white jacket, matching the also white pants, it was later on adorned by a gold tie, a small coloured square on the bottom part which represented the grade where he was inserted in. As he was a first year in high school, the square took on a greenish shade. Anyone would say that his uniform’s colouring combination was quite unusual. It was showy and it took on extremely rare combination of colours in that day and age, if they were to be featured in a school uniform – and that had been the exact purpose. Everyone needed to be aware of who the students of that school were, as it was written in the many contracts and agreements that had been settled during the creation of Kaimei Academy.
Done with his school uniform, he quickly moved for the final step in preparing himself to leave his apartment – combing his hair. Five minutes later, he was coming out of the bathroom – nobody would see him so why should be care if his hair was still a complete mess?
“...” Hearing his own reasoning, he couldn’t help but heave another sigh. That’s right. His life would continue in the exact same way as always. Uneventful... Seclusion... Unnoticed to all... But it was okay. That had been what he had wanted from the very beginning. To not exist in this world, even if he could still step on the same ground as everyone else, to breath the same air as everyone else. Everything is okay.
Walking from his bedroom to the kitchen, the black haired male put on an apron and readied himself for a new display of his culinary skills – or so he liked to call the fact that the only thing he could ‘cook’ was sweet drinks. He quickly prepared a piping hot espresso and allowed it to cool down slightly, mixing it afterwards with vanilla-flavoured syrup, milk and ice, topping it afterwards with a drizzle of creamy caramel. He didn’t even understand why he always put an apron on when preparing his breakfast, but he didn’t question it either. Maybe for such giving a final touch to make himself believe that he could cook more than he actually could.
On his way towards the entrance door of his apartment, he took a straw from the large glass cup on the counter and put it inside of the plastic cup where he had prepared his drink, his lips immediately meeting with the exposed end so that he could relish on the cold and deliciously sweet drink.
Once outside, he closed and locked the door of his apartment in Tsukiyou Dorm building and fastidiously crossed the corridor while slurping of the iced caramel macchiato. The sun was lightly peeking out of the horizon as it started its rise to the sky. No one could be sighted, both inside of the building and outside on the street. Perfect. Just like he wanted.
Simply imagining the morning rush of students coming out from their apartments, happiness splattered all over their faces as they greeted one another and cheerfully went together to school for one more day of classes, made him shudder. The possibility of any of them seeing him was pretty much null, but he couldn’t... no, he wouldn’t risk it happening for some sort of sick ploy of fate. Hence, he opted to apply this routine every day since he started attending Kaimei Academy: leave the dorm before everyone else and return after everyone else.
The dorm was a measly 15 minutes walk from the main area that constituted as school grounds, much like the other five dorms: Touyou Dorm, Seiten Dorm, Hokusei Dorm, Misora Dorm and Kairiku Dorm.
The brief walk to Kaimei Academy was peaceful and quiet, leisure in its own way as he remained completely alone, no one around to bother him. By the time he reached the perpetually open main gate of the school grounds, his slurping came to a sudden halt.
“Over already...” grudgingly mumbled the black haired male, almost falling under the temptation of clicking his tongue in displeasure. As he delved deeper inside of the school grounds, he softly put the empty cup inside of a bin he passed by, his eyes unmoving from the already visible mass of buildings that constituted the school, a mixture of both middle school section, high school section and other buildings built for several organizations directly associated with the school.
Moving like the ghost he was, he carefully treaded the hallways half lit by the ascending sun. He already knew which classroom would be his, thanks to the letter he had received the previous week with all the necessary information about the new school year, so he decided that a quick morning walk was in need, for he still had quite a few hours to burn before homeroom started.
Classrooms meant for the most diverse of subjects, ranging from the usual classroom designed for each class to music rooms, science labs and small kitchens for home economics; the libraries that could be found in every single floor of the main building of the high school section (each floor had one or two themes to them, and the black haired male made question of memorizing which theme corresponded to each floor, for future reference – one of the best remedies for boredom was a good novel, after all); the large teacher’s lodge, filled with sets of desks and large cabinets where the files of the students were being kept. All that could be found inside of the high school section of Kaimei Academy.
As for the other buildings in the surrounding area, the black haired male simply treaded close to them, leaving their insides untouched by his presence. The only building that he didn’t dare to step close to, not even inside of its outside delineated area was the Student Council building.
Never would he fall in the mistake of approaching what was to become their lair starting from this school year – not that it hadn’t been already moulded in conformity with their presence in that school already. It simply hadn’t been announced as the official building for their operations and conspiracies due to them not being of age as of that time. And, just so that it could be left very well known right from the start, the black haired male wasn’t maintaining the representation of the group addressed as Student Council members but at the group in particular that made up the Student Council body of Kaimei Academy.
‘The Gifted’.
Almost as if they had come out of thin air, they appeared one day in Japanese grounds. ‘Appeared’ wasn’t actually the most correct term, nor even the one used to describe this and later similar occurrences. A group of five males were awoken.
By who or what, or even for what reason... No one knew.
Currently, over fifty theories of why such an astonishing and unbelievable event happened had been spread through the entire world and there was not a single human being that wasn’t aware of ‘The Gifted’s’ existence in Japan and the almost radical change that they brought forward with their awakening. Some said that some kind of chemical waste released from previous wars had affected a particular group of more susceptible children, others said that they were purely the product of human experimentations and genetic modifications. There was even a theory that said that they were sent to the Earth by the gods and they would be the ones to bring about punishment to every single sinner that pestered the world.
But all remained that – nothing more than theories.
Six years ago, ‘The Gifted’ were awoken and, soon enough, others started to sporadically awake to similarly strange abilities. Abilities that defied the laws of physic and of what humans should be able to perform or control. The ‘Users’ were a sub race of humankind that had been created, in a roundabout way, on the day ‘The Gifted’ became what they currently were. The ones that held the category of ‘Users’ didn’t reach ‘The Gifted’ in terms of power but their abilities were still amazing on its own.
Every single student of Kaimei Academy, without an exception, were ‘Users’. As soon as a ‘User’ was acknowledged by a third party as such, they were immediately registered in this organizational teaching institution, regardless of their age – most of the abilities were currently first manifested at the age of eleven or twelve, so it had only be required to create a middle school and high school section in its inside area. Every single ‘User’ was ripped apart from their family and brought to one of the six dorms, depending on the availability of one-person apartments in the said dorms.
As to why ‘The Gifted’ were called such and not simply addressed as ‘Users’ didn’t lay solemnly on the fact that they were the first ones to be awoken. If the abilities displayed by regular ‘Users’ were already something out of a fairy tale or a comic book, then the abilities that the group made up of five ‘Gifts’ displayed were akin to bend the laws of everything known to human kind – that was how terribly powerful they were. They were simply of a completely different league of everything and everyone, something akin to be considered and revered to as gods.
Well... It’s not like any of it truly concerns me anymore, inwardly sighed the black haired male, his gaze intently kept on the large two-storied building situated metres and metres away from him, for safety measures.
Kuroba Sousei was a ‘User’. He had been brought to Kaimei Academy as soon as his parents discovered that he was also one of the rumoured and feared ‘freaks’ that had popped up all over Japan without warning. He had been forced to go to Kaimei Academy, his parents having received a monetary compensation for having lost their son to the learning institution. After so long, he was now more than used to that truth but he still felt somewhat bitter at how his supposed family got rid of him as soon as the word ‘money’ had been brought to the conversation between them and the representative that had visited the Kuroba residence.
He could still recall it, even to this very day. Their frightened faces when they saw him using his ability for the first time. Their relieved expression as the car their son was riding in departed from their house to never again return.
No, forget it, inwardly warned himself Kuroba, softly clicking his tongue in irritation towards his own thoughts. The past is the past so no use dwelling on it. One of the golden rules – no remembering.
Kuroba cast one final glance towards the Student Council building and, for no longer than a fluttering second, he could have sworn that he had seen a shadow of red, perhaps with golden added to the mixture, in a field of pure white peering over directly at him from one of the windows. He took a new glance in its direction but, just like he suspected of having seen purely a trick of the human brain, the shadow had long disappeared in the real world.
A sudden burst of laughter made the black haired male readily rip his eyes from the building and whip his head towards the source of the sound. A group of both female and male students were leisurely walking towards that area of Kaimei, talking animatedly with each other.
“This late already, huh...” softly breathed Kuroba, releasing a sigh afterwards as he put his body in motion once again, going back to his assigned classroom step by step.
Turning his back to the Student Council building, Kuroba casually walked away as he violently compressed his memories in the place where they had been looked down on one year ago.
-.-
“Is there any reason in specific as to why you requested our presence at such an unusually early hour in the morning?” inquired a glasses wearing brunette, his bright green eyes half hidden behind the thick lenses.
“Yeah, it’s too fuckin’ early for me to be out of bed...” groaned a tall tanned male, his hair possessing a fiery shade of red.
“I have an early meeting with my manager so it doesn’t really matter to me~” cheerfully confessed a tall blonde, a huge grin on his face as he jumped from his sitting position in the backrest of a sofa into a standing position.
“There are always snacks for me here so... Meh...” pointed out an extremely tall and bulky black haired male, his massive shoulders being shrugged as he took one more bite to a potato chip.
After having heard moans and groans from the other four males, the young male standing right in front of the half covered by a curtain window finally turned around and looked over to the remaining occupants of the large and richly furnished room.
“Welcome, my fellow ‘Gifts’,” greeted the white haired young male, an almost malicious smirk on his face as his heterochromatic eyes, one ruby red, the other melted gold, flickered in the shadowy ambience for nothing more than a fraction of a second.
The four ‘Gifts’ in front of him shuddered at the sight.
No one ever knew what exactly Katsura Kanata was planning or even thinking – only that he would come out victorious out of such almost evil and genius machination.