~1~

“Minoru, here you are. Daiki has been looking for you…”

Aoi’s voice is more than enough to make be drop anything regarding Nagisa and focus on the present. I pull down my face mask and take a deep breath of air. Aoi steps closer to me and stands by my side with her lean hands touching the stones. I’m glad her hands are covered in leather cloth; otherwise she would get frozen cold. I watch her getting quiet as she looks down on the ground. For a second I wonder whether my previous thoughts managed to create an image down there, because Aoi appears to be able to see something. But that’s the thing with Aoi. Ever since we met, back at the Blue Station, I always felt she could read my thoughts.

“What are you thinking?” I don’t usually bother to ask such questions. I feel alright in silence and I appreciate it when people don’t get to ask me a lot of things too. I was always a bit of an introverted kid, but the few past years I got to be pretty antisocial as Daiki always says. It’s just a tease but he is not wrong. I spent too much time talking with myself in my head and always feel exhausted when it comes to real conversations. But not with Aoi, every word she has ever said has been imprinted in my thoughts.

Aoi is smart, genuinely smart. For years I believed smart people are the ones who have the guts to be loud about their opinions. I blame Nagisa and her friends for that false opinion, Daiki is no exception. But this is not true. Smart people don’t need to prove anything. Aoi has strong opinions and she isn’t really willing to change her mind. I found this out the hard way. We worked together on a mission where we got to live in the sewer of the Shurighashi town at the urban district and get information about the enemy. I didn’t know her well back then and for sure I wasn’t willing to trust anyone but myself. I didn’t believe I was too smart, as I heard people accuse me of. I just couldn’t trust a single soul. Not after my own sister betrayed me. Aoi, with her silver hair and dark eyes for sure had my attention, but I wouldn’t let her looks affect my judgment. Everyone else in the group seemed enchanted by her beauty and willing to follow every order of hers. But I strongly disagreed. Aoi stated her opinion on the route we should take and wasn’t willing to do otherwise whether we followed or not. She would do as she said. Her stubbornness had reminded me off Nagisa’s. And this didn’t help at all to make me see Aoi in a friendly way. Honestly, everything with Nagisa was still too soon to be able to think clear.

I was stubborn too, my sister had taught me well, but not reckless. As everyone seemed to want to follow Aoi, unwillingly I did the same. I had no death wish and roaming around the Shurighashi on my own was sure death. So I decided to stick together with the rest of the group, a group consisted of me, Aoi, two well trained crossbow users and four rookies. Apparently my silence drew Aoi’s attention and when the mission was over –with her calls being proved more than right- she approached me. I am still not sure how she got me to talk about myself, I usually avoid this at any cost, but that night I found myself opening up about so many things. I also came to realize Aoi was strong opinionated, strict but also someone who, unlike Nagisa, did not aim to make me feel bad about myself, mock me, scoff me… Aoi simply did not bother about people that much. Aoi only cared for the job to be done, efficiently. I appreciated that and I still do. But now I think I carry a lot more feelings for her than just appreciation. Aoi, Toru, Daiki and of course Mr. Ono are the closest thing to family I have. I know I often don’t act like it. I grew up to have difficulty sharing my feelings; I understand why both Toru and Daiki always tease me about it. They often get to call me cold hearted, but this is not the case. It’s just… ever since Nagisa left, my mouth has been shut. I speak so little as if words don’t know how to get shaped anymore. How ironical. I always believed if Nagisa was out of the picture I’d be free to speak however I liked. Now she’s gone –for good, as it appears so- and I feel trapped in my mind more than ever.

This is the reason hearing myself asking about Aoi’s thoughts surprises me a bit.

Aoi raises her charcoal dark eyes to the night sky. Eyes so dark often appear like dead, yet whenever the light falls on them it’s too obvious Aoi is anything but a cold person. Despite how bad she tries to look like it. She shakes her head a bit, it is clear to me she won’t say a thing. Unlike her, I never manage to read her thoughts. Sometimes I wish there was a weapon to do so. But usually I am very content our weapons are adjusted only to our hands. Having anything in my brain sounds absolutely terrifying, to the point all those stories of people having experimented with such things appear fake to me. Who’d add poisonous substances in their eyes, in their mouth… their brain, just to see if they are going to get mutated in something stronger than a human being or just turn into an abomination? I don’t know. I can’t believe it. To me all this sounds too much. Then again, the stories are too many…

“I find this pathetic, Minoru.” Aoi speaks and she has my full attention. The words she uses are always precise and have a strong impact, mainly to my feelings. But I manage to keep a straight face. Weak feelings are one of the worst human vices. That’s what I came to learn soon enough after I was left on my own. “It is your birthday and everyone is inside celebrating for you. You have no actual reason to be outside here all by yourself” she is not wrong. I have no actual reason to be here by myself.

“I don’t want to bother you, Aoi. Just return inside, celebrate with the others.” My voice has turned deeper through the years. It still feels a bit strange to me. “There’s nothing for me to celebrate.” I throw a glance on the ground. What am I thinking? Do I expect to find Nagisa’s corpse lying there? Maybe I am indeed pathetic. Besides, Aoi is always right.

Aoi raises her pale eyebrows and pushes back her silver hair. I know this expression. She thinks I’m an idiot. Right now I am glad I wear my face mask. It covers my mouth enough to hide that smile I can feel shaping.

“Yes there is. The mission was successful and that’s enough reason to celebrate. Eighty Oppressors are now locked because of us. We lost nobody today. We saved kids today, Minoru. If you want to stay here and shed a tear because for you, your birthday is linked to the day your sister left you, this is your choice. But there is also the choice to remember the day you were born, as the same day we saved Ankhara of the Yellow district from the Oppressors. Now if you want to take the first choice, this is self-centered and pathetic to me.”

I’m not sure how, but I just made Aoi angry. I should be the one being angry here. She is bringing Nagisa in the conversation with such ease; she is accusing me of being self-centered. She finds my behavior pathetic… Yet, she is the one clearly boiling in anger. The ice queen shows some emotion. Again I laugh behind my mask, but this time there is a sound loud enough for her to notice. A single irritated sigh comes from her mouth and she turns to walk back inside. I easily stop her.

When I first saw Aoi she was a little taller than me, lean and almost fragile looking. She hasn’t changed much through these two years, but I have. I got much taller than her, constant training made my body wider and I gained much power. I still try to get used to so many changes, but the life we have doesn’t leave much space for such thoughts.

“You are right” is all I say. She is right and I want to be honest with people. That’s an important rule for me. I don’t care if I am smart, stupid, friendly or not… I am always honest. Honesty is crucial.

The moonlight makes Aoi’s silver hair look even paler. The thin chain around her neck reflects the light and her cape struggles to leave her body because of the wind. She seems to accept my poor apology that didn’t even consist of a single sorry. But I know she does, by the way she parts her lips and softly sighs. This is Aoi dropping it. This is Aoi accepting the apology. And this is me looking down, staring right in her dark eyes. I feel the urge to pull down my mask. I need to take a better breath. Before complete the thought my hand has done it already. Aoi’s eyes wander all over my face and I can’t help it but wonder what she sees. What do I look like in her eyes? In a magical almost way, I realize my reflection appears clear on her dark big pupils. I can see the reddish of my hair try to escape by my black hood; I can even see my icy eyes… same as Nagisa’s…

“Lovebirds” Daiki’s voice makes me take a couple of steps away from Aoi. The cold of the stones behind me stop me from keep walking and Daiki bursts into laughing. He is drunk.

Aoi throws me a quick glance and I nod, trying to tell her through this that I’ll keep in mind everything she told me. As she heads back inside to the others, she throws a nice punch right at the center of Daiki’s stomach. Again I find myself smiling with Aoi’s doing. Daiki bends over but in a moment he smiles too as he raises his dark gaze to me. He seems thoughtful but I guess it’s the alcohol that makes his eyes so vivid.

The small moment gets interrupted by a loud howl and both Daiki and I look up in the night sky. One of these creatures flies over the castle. It’s too high in the sky yet large enough to be seen in detail. Its black wings are covered in blood but by the way it flies we can assume the blood is coming from some pray rather than from a wound on its own skin. These things are too thick skinned to get easily wounded. I’ve learnt this through personal experience… This one must be still a baby, it’s hardly six times a human size, meaning too small to be fully functional. Times like this I miss the years I used to believe such creatures were nothing but urban legends. I keep following the howling creature flying above us with my eyes. I read the signs trying to understand whether we should get ready for anything or if this one just passes by. It moves its wings slowly almost looking as if it is bored. Each time it flies a bit lower, the moonlight hides behind it for a second or two. These dark moments I find my hands itching. Maybe they have grown too eager to turn into weapons than plain human hands.

“No worries, he’s deaf and blind” Daiki says without much interest and leans on the balcony as he looks through his pockets, for cigarettes I guess. I hold my attention to the flying creature for a little more but decide to agree with Daiki. He always gets to believe these things are a she or he. In a way he is not right, biologically I mean. They are, in some parts, animals. And they reproduce like ones. But I find it too difficult to see them in any way different than abominations, monstrous things. This one especially… deaf and blind, as Daiki said. This didn’t happen through a fight. This one was born like this. Apparently the ones that mated to give birth to it were not meant to. And here comes that long, long conversation… are these the results of humans messing with nature? Are we the real virus on this planet?

Honestly… I don’t know.

I’ve decided the effort to find this answer is meaningless for someone like me… for someone in my position.

“No worries” Daiki adds and laughs on his own words as he holds his cigarette with his lips at the side of his mouth and tries to light it up.

I don’t worry. I trust him.

But things weren’t always like this. I’ve known Daiki for too many years and never found him smart or even likeable. He was one of my sister’s friends… a year older than Nagisa, but probably the most immature guy among their small group. He’d never shut up, he would talk all the time, loudly, even louder than Nagisa and tease everyone younger than him. If I want to be honest, I must say he was not mean spirited. No, not really. He was just a big tease and he simply didn’t seem willing to drop anything. You said one stupid thing around Daiki, be prepared to be mocked for the rest of your life. Even now, after everything he often brings up things I don’t even remember. Most of the things me and my peers got to be mocked about weren’t even things we really did or say. Like that one time I went to Nagisa’s room with my friend Ichigo to get back something she had stolen from me. Daiki caught us and somehow we ended up being the two idiots trying to peep in girls’ dormitory. The thing is… it was just bad luck to get around Daiki when he was bored. I truly believe he saw us all the same way a cat sees mice and felt like messing with us. Mocking us as food he’d never get to actually eat.

From times to times I wish those awful days came back…

I did not expect to see Daiki –or anyone else- once I was taken by School away. I had spent three months at the Penitentiary and I was the only one under eighteen around there. Of course my time there was nothing compared to everyone else’s. As I was being told again and again, I was being held until it was official that what I kept saying was true. I don’t know why my sister left. I don’t know anything… anything. I had been repeating the same words again and again to a point I had lost the sense of time. Was I repeating the same phrase out loud or was it just in my head?

I was not tortured, I was not injured, I had food… all these were luxuries compared to Toru’s time at the Penitentiary. But still, I was fourteen years old, locked in a place like that away from anyone I knew, without answers for any of my questions, without answers of my own.

When Daiki appeared right behind the gates of the Penitentiary that slowly opened, with that familiar crawling sound, I did not realize it was him right ahead. His usual smug expression, that big wholesome smile were all gone. His dark hair had grown longer reaching his neck and covering his face. His bare arms were covered in fresh wounds, just turned into scars and that second I knew exactly what this meant. Daiki and the ones standing around him by the gate, with the same broody expressions, tired but well-built bodies, all of them had been subjects of experiments. As far as I knew back then, this was the worst kind of torture. I hid behind Toru whose expression remained stoic, as it always is.

Today Daiki’s both arms are covered in tattoos. Tattoos of Japanese fish, mainly Koi and flowers around them. They are not too good, but as Daiki often says “Do they hide the scars?” the right answer to this question is yes “Alright, then they are good enough for me” I get it. Such scars are not something to be proud of. Even though Daiki did not choose to have them, nobody asks before gets to judge. And that’s a rule… one of Toru’s wise sayings.

I was not wrong with Daiki. Knowing him better didn’t change my opinion on him. Daiki is not exactly a smart person and even though he speaks all the time, he never bothers to express strong ideals or his view on life like Toru does, or like Aoi with her strong opinions. I came to realize Daiki thinks faster than anyone else though. He might not have the answer to how the status of a man plays a crucial role in their definition of happiness –the type of conversations Toru loves and Aoi always has a different view than him- but Daiki can know in seconds if that flying thing above our heads is something to worry about. He’s drunk and sleepy, but his judgment just proved to be far faster than mine. One thing I was wrong about Daiki is that I believed he was just very lucky with his guesses. I just couldn’t come to believe someone pretty dumb could be so right over so many things. But Daiki is not lucky, he is very observant. He likes to do things on his own and ignores orders, but he is an extremely fast learner. He says his best teacher is his own mistakes. Truth is he makes a lot of them, but never repeats one.

On the other hand Daiki is indeed a bit of a lucky person. Sometimes… now or then…

“I’m so fed up with this dead place. Only Blackbirds and jackals are around here. Everyone is gone, Minoru… gone… why do we get to stay here?” he groans and lets the smoke through his nostrils. Daiki is impatient to the bone. But I cannot blame him, I’m no better myself. I just manage to hide better my feelings. But I get his annoyance. We are over with the mission, yet we get to stay here to make sure nobody else is coming… to make sure this area is clear by the Oppressors. Most of the times they are, but we’ve heard about missions that appeared clear only to be blown up a day after. It’s not important to just do the job, we need to also do it right, with security. I think that we all share the same annoyance though, even Aoi, who loves rules.

Our job is in a way simple. We get informed about districts with possible danger. Our enemies are extremists and more specific the Oppressors. Not everybody sees the turn of events in a good eye. As things got to change through the last couple of decades, groups of extremists of both sides were created. It makes sense; evolution will always have its biggest fans and its biggest enemies. It’s always been like this. Our job is to find the ones trying to fight against the evolution and stop them before they act. It’s too easy to be talked into becoming one of them. According to the Oppressors they fight to stop the terror, to gain back freedom. In a way this sounds appealing; we’ve lost freedom ages ago… but in reality they are nothing close to saviors as they call themselves. They are a bunch of extremists eager to take human lives in the name of their so called freedom. Anyone who doesn’t hold the same view with them is considered enemy of humanity. They are cruel; they are plain sadists, stuck in old religious rituals, believing the only way to that freedom is by eliminating anyone who sees any kind of technological development in a good way. More and more people get to embrace their ideals. Fear makes humans lose any kind of logic and get blind to the truth. I’ve seen in with my own eyes…

All we need to do is stop the Oppressors’ plans with the less possible human casualties. As simple as it sounds, it is what it is. People often compare as to army and in a way they are not wrong. We are the Army of Technological Superior Weapons Users, or as we are often called the Superiors. Honestly, I don’t see how having given up my hands as I knew them makes me superior, but I’ve also given up philosophy. As Toru says, “Trying too much to understand things out of human perception can make a man lunatic” I appreciate simple things. Simple meanings… simple rules… I don’t think my mind is made only for simple things, but my heart is. I just often fail to find the will to try for anything too confusing… I wasn’t always like this. I used to love riddles, trying to find what is right what is wrong, trying to make friendships last… three years and I haven’t seen any of my friends…

“Full moon we’ll find us on our way to South.” Daiki spits his finished cigarette on the ground and shows with his finger the sky. He used to have a strong environmental consciousness back in School. It was pretty funny to see a guy like Daiki wearing that green bandana on his head with the words ‘Earth is our first home’ roaming around the fourth buildings and the church looking for anyone who broke the Earth Rules as he called them. Of course no body dared laugh at his face, especially after we found an older than me and my friends student –I think he was called Tanji or something like that- hang on a tree by his feet. That guy was paying for daring mock Daiki’s patrol.

Now Daiki throws his cigarette on the ground without second thoughts. I think Aoi would find him a hypocrite if she knew him back then. But I know better, this is Daiki’s way of accepting that Earth finds us nothing more than a virus that needs to be taken care of… for good.

“…we need to be prepared for that or we are going to get our asses kicked, Minoru. You’d be such a waist of an ass… such a waste…” Daiki laughs at his own joke as he puts his round orange shades on his face. They don’t serve anything but his strange sense of style. That’s a thing that despite everything didn’t change. Daiki was always a bit of an eccentric guy. He had the built of a jock –now even more than ever- but I’ve never seen him with some simple athletic attire. He would always wear long coats, big boots “they are original punk boots from 1977”, crazy colored shades in every possible shape and hats on his head. Nobody else in School cared that bad for their style, most of the times the school uniform would be more than enough. Some people would just customize it a bit. Nagisa would write with black marker on every white shirt she owned. Phrases like Baby Steps and Gorilla Jumps were written on one of them on each sleeve. My favorite one was THIS PLACE KILLS MY DREAMS AND MY BABY BROTHER written on the back of her short sleeved shirt. Damn, I had a favorite one… and deep down I knew this had nothing to do with me despite that beautiful written baby brother. Daiki and Nagisa, along with the others of their group had got scolded so many times about their appearance, at some time teachers and instructors just gave up on trying. This wasn’t a change of times, as Nagisa had said. When anyone else ever tried to even remove their tie, they received the same penalties as usual. Things were as strict as ever, but every disciplinary system, every school, has its delinquents… those few who are not going to compromise and get the system to compromise with them. The same rule went with the Penitentiary…

It has always been too easy for me to recall memories in great detail, either this was Daiki’s grin wearing his ‘Earth is our first home’ bandana or the view of the back of the School through my window. But no matter how hard I try I just cannot bring in my mind the full image of Nagisa the last time I saw her. Only her thick dark hair comes to me, but nothing else… her dark hair and icy blue eyes.

Every time Daiki looks straight in my eyes, he sees Nagisa’s gaze, he hasn’t told me, but I’m just sure he does. Maybe I can read his mind as easily as Aoi reads mine… maybe… Nagisa is not just someone who disappeared from our lives, a sister to me… a friend to him. She is a traitor whose acts brought as here, where we are today.

“If we don’t waste any time, maybe we can avoid be on the road during the full moon.” I suggest trying to calculate everything and see how possible is what I say.

Daiki laughs slowly and hits the cold stone with his big hands a rhythmic way. “No way, Minoru… brace yourself for that full moon… it’s going to be hell on Earth. I’m bringing the big babies out” big babies… The way he speaks about his weapons makes me feel as if we are part of a game or something. But this world isn’t anything close to a game.

This is real. We fight for time. A little more time for humanity on Earth…