Black Sheep

“Why did I ever believe I could trust someone like them — someone like him?”

Erena’s voice echoed across a barren wasteland. Her fingertips clung to the burning crimson earth beneath her, and hot sand sliced at her skin like the edge of a kitchen knife.

It hurt, but she was used to pain like this. The only thing that made it worse was that she thought he’d be different. She thought he would be the one to save her from Hell. While everything burned around her, Erena’s body only felt lifeless and cold.

Erena exhaled with a final pained breath, like she did that morning.

It was cold that morning, unnaturally so. Freezing winds gave birth to snow from the sky above, yet it felt empty. Erena stood atop a cliff overlooking the barren valley outside of Curse Academy; a place where students were sent to die. The end of their world. Unlike the faces of the students around her, Erena couldn’t reflect the same empty hunger for blood or their desperation. All Erena could do was look out into the distance and think. Thoughts spun within her of the day before, the two peculiar people she met, and her talk with Zephyr. Her mind hesitated to think of him.

The “perfect noble” in her eyes and the true opposite of herself. She cupped her hands close to her chest and with each breath she cursed being here and her lack of will, but similar to her, the boy she met reflected a similar look in his eyes.

It wasn't a simple desire that drove him. He wasn’t like those she’d seen before. No hunger or pain. He was… different. His expression was like a mask of pure gold, in a place like that masks were useless.

“So why is he here… Who is he?” Erena thought.

Golden reiju flickered through the sky like fireflies, untamed energy came from the far away, and as if she wished on a star he found himself under her gaze. In the distance, Guisei materialized a golden scarf to fight against the cold, constantly pushing him around like the snowflakes filling the sky above. He thought for once weather could actually remain the same instead of changing no matter the season.

Winter in the middle of spring?

It was irritating.

Purposeless thoughts riddled his mind. He thought back to the night before and the talk with Nabi. The fact she just wouldn’t tell him what he wanted to know lingered near him like a hole in his chest. He remembered the look on her face when he left. For once, her expressionless face had given way to pain. Idle sadness was all he could remember. Guisei shook his head. All she had to do was tell him, and maybe then it didn’t have to be like this. It wasn’t really his fault, yet he couldn’t shake the feeling that it was. Her words bled into his mind.

“Besides. you achieved your goal, didn’t you?”

He had, but then why did he feel so empty?

“HEEEYYY!

A voice hit Guisei like a slap of hot air to awake him from the void of memory. He blinked, wishing to return at the sight of the one disturbing him: Erena. For as much as she wished to shake it from her voice, Guisei could hear her tone, toeing the line of nobility and commoner. She tried so hard, yet it only seemed to make Guisei more annoyed.

“Strange,” he muttered.

Erena gave him an odd look, inspecting him closely. Even by Curse Academy standards, it was odd what Guisei said. The least he could have done was a veiled threat or some kind of taunt like yesterday.

“Strange — is a strange way of greeting someone, don’t you think?” Erena asked.

Unlike the day before, all the stuttering and stumbling over her words was gone. Instead, her inquisition sounded confident, bubbly against the freezing cold enveloping the two⸺maybe it was just because someone finally responded to her.

She walked around Guisei, focusing on him more; much to his displeasure. He never understood what people like her got out of doing things like this. She wasn’t even subtle. More thoughts grew in his mind, like the melodic crunch of snow beneath Erena’s feet the closer she got. He opened his lips to speak only for his train of thought to be interrupted by her voice.

It was irritating.

“I never pegged you as a morning person,” she said.

“Believe it or not—being a morning person is easy when you don’t sleep, Serena,” Guisei said with a yawn.

Steam created a veil between the two. Erena peered at him closer through it regardless, carefully taking in Guisei’s action and reaction to whatever she did. Behind her violet gaze seemed to be something more than what Guisei could grasp.

“Erena,” she asserted.

It was familiar being corrected like that. For a single moment, Erena sounded like Nabi when she and Guisei first met. Guisei dared to close his eyes at the sight of Erena and the way her form warped around the steam. Visions appeared around Guisei, similar echoes of situations like that.

“My memory isn’t that good for people that eavesdrop on private conversations.”

“A conversations that so many other people have here, next thing you’ll tell me is you want to become noble or a Deadly Sin,” she said.

Erena chuckled at her own joke before remembering, and shaking her head at the reminder of what she actually heard. Guisei stared at Erena, something about her stood out among the group of students that finally trickled out of the academy. Instead of carrying weapons or armor to handle the trial ahead she wore a single light purple jacket over her uniform. It looked nice, but impractical.

“What’s…with your jacket?” he asked.

The question felt weird when Erena finally processed what it meant. She blinked once before simplifying it even beyond her understanding.

“It’s cold outside,” Erena said with a tone that mirrored Guisei’s.

Erena had an odd air swirling around her. The peace and tranquility; something that couldn’t be quantified or understood to Guisei like the snowflakes that fluttered to the ground below without care.

It didn’t feel natural to him. It made his skin crawl.

“What kind of trial is so easy that even someone like you brings out only a jacket like it's a nice walk through a flower garden?” Guisei asked.

Erena twisted the dark brown locks of her hair without care.

“Obviously it isn’t easy, Greedy, but I’ll have you to protect me.”

Guisei questioned her choice, turning a simple codename he had into a nickname. It was like throwing a well crafted sword into a shredder to test its durability. He sighed not even wanting to acknowledge it or what she said after.

“Who said I was going to protect you — also Greed isn’t my name.”

“I did Gr—”

“It’s Guisei, just don’t go shouting it around,” he said. “But still that doesn’t explain why I’d waste my time protecting you. It isn’t like—”

“I as a second year wouldn’t have a decent grasp on what the Exousia think is a good test, and obviously is too much of a novice to understand that since we were called here that we’d go to Limbo, a place where the rules of the world simple don’t apply the longer people are there?”

Erena looked at Guisei with a cheeky grin. Guisei wondered why exactly she seemed so willing to help as if she forgot what nearly happened the day before when someone got on his nerves. Unlike before, at least now it was amusing.

“No, obviously I wouldn’t have a clue how to help you there,” she said.

“Fine, you made your point, Arena,” Gusei said.

“Eh-reh-na,” Erena corrected him, enunciating each syllable of her name this time.

Guisei gazed at her beginning her lecture about why remembering names was so important and how much of a bad reputation it can have on someone. For a moment he felt the artificial peace she brought with her. It was like a warm breeze.

“Erena, what exactly do you want out of this exactly?” he asked.

She paused, hearing the question in its entirety. Erena remembered the voices of Nabi and Zephyr echoing in the back of her mind: Black Sheep. That inescapable title. She hated it more than any human hated death, weakness, and nobles like her. It was like a scar that never left her. Her mind flashed to the sights she witnessed far in the past. Colored flames burned across the landscape of a snow-filled village. A beautiful sight. A painful sight. She wouldn’t forget it ever.

Erena lowered her head.

“There’s nothing a Black Sheep of a noble like me could ever want,” she said.

Guisei glanced in the distance far from both him and Erena. Reiju built up, only to be extinguished in an instant. He couldn’t tell which was more odd for him: reiju being simply erased or the idea of a noble without desire.

The thought lingered in him even when he walked away, leaving Erena to think to herself. He turned his gaze back at the girl before him. Erena Xestis, the noble closer to a black sheep.

The girl who had no desires.

The girl that should only exist at the world’s end.