Chapter Text
Ren Amamiya had learned about them from the Port Island incident. When Apathy Syndrome was at its peak, it all of a sudden died down. All articles and stories on the news blamed only one thing: A Blank.
As an eight year old at the time, he heard a lot during school about a Blank was, due to kids who had seen the news asking about it. Rare people who don't feel emotions but can establish one-way ties to other people, making them unnaturally powerful. It was when he was eight he realized that he now had a word to explain what he was.
The information on Blanks was mostly accurate, with a few rumors here and there. He could identify emotions easily even when he couldn't feel them, he could form small bonds with people, so far it had been his mother, and he could manipulate the world around him to a small degree.
Despite his mother's urging to find interests, Ren had no major desires. He mostly just did anything people thought of him as. When no one was around, he practiced his "World Manipulation," as he started to call it. It was mostly just changing what he looked like. His gray eyes could suddenly look red or yellow. His hair could go from curly to straight then back to curly. He would later learn that he was just changing the cognition of how people saw him, therefore changing reality.
By the time he turned nine, he had a firm grip on his abilities and what he knew he could do. He also adjusted a lot more easily when there were multiple personalities he had to keep up due to there being more people around. More people around meant more people trying to talk to him. When he turned ten he had one good friend, who was his younger neighbor. With such a small and close neighborhood, her father had no problem with Ren babysitting the five year old girl for a few bucks, since he knew him.
It was pretty easy, seeing that she seemed relatively self-sufficient. She quickly took a liking to him, drawn in by the forming bond. Ren reacted accordingly, smiling and clapping after she sang the jingles on TV, helping her with her chores, and later with her homework. Of all the bonds he made, this one was the easiest.
Later, when he was eleven or twelve, her cousin came to stay with her for a year. Ren still came over to on weekends and they both didn't talk much. But he could still feels some sort of connection forming with the older boy. It wasn't a bond, but something tethered him, like a light tugging at the back of his mind. He never thought he would learn what it was.
Despite there being a lot of trouble in their small town at the time, Ren never moved away like some of his neighbors had. His mother was still concerned for his safety, just not as much as she used to be. The bond between them was weaker. She was usually out late on dates with people, trying to find someone who could help support them. She would sometimes bring home a boyfriend or girlfriend to meet him. But a lot of the time he waited on the doorstep of their small house, knowing she accidentally locked him out (That was later fixed with an additional house key).
The guy from next door would always come home from whatever he does after school and stop to invite him over. Ren never took the offer, his mother would dislike it, but as the seasons began to get a bit chilly, he took him up on it.
Ren watched as he made tea and sat down in front of the television. The girl was not here, probably asleep in her room, and he hasn't spoken to the older boy long enough to know how to act around him.
"Thank you," he said, accepting the tea, he had to be polite.
The other just nodded and took a sip of his own cup, not even making a face even though Ren knew the tea should still be burning hot.
They didn't speak, just idly looking around the room in different directions.
Then their gazes locked, and Ren didn't see a gray that matched his own, but a bright and brilliant yellow. And if he could have seen his own eyes, he would've seen that they changed to a deep and beautiful red. The tugging from earlier, now yanks on his mind, forcing him to pay full attention.
"You're a Blank too,” Ren said, it was not a question.
"I am,” he nods. Ren realized that he had never looked the other in the eye. He always tried to do so when it was deemed appropriate, making sure he was always respectful. That’s why he never noticed before. “This must be why your bond with me feels different, doesn't it?"
Ren would hardly call it a bond, it felt deeper than that. It was an understanding from both sides rather than someone taking and taking from something that can't give.
"Have you ever met another Blank before?" It seemed like a reasonable question to ask.
"I have, in the city. But just in passing, I couldn't meet them properly, a conversation like this for too long would have gotten us both caught.”
Ren nods in understanding, almost reflexively putting on a mask of politeness, but realized that he doesn't have to. “Your eyes would have changed for too long, making it easy to spot you.”
“Exactly, but you should know there's a lot more of us than you think. It's still a small number, out of the millions of people in Japan, there's probably enough of us to fill this town to the brim. We're just spread throughout the country.”
Ren looked down, absorbing this information. He had always thought that maybe he was the only one in Japan. Online sources never had any estimations of the Blank population, probably because they were so good at blending in.
“I believe it will be good for us to both to stick together,” the older boy said suddenly, “You're already good at putting on you facades, but they slip off as soon as anyone turns around. You have a lot to learn.”
Ren's gaze had already drifted to the TV. It's going to be foggy tomorrow.
"I'll be fine on my own, it's not like you actually care,” he said, simply stating this as a fact.
From the corner of his eye, he saw the teen recoil a bit, then gather himself and say, "You don't know about the people who hunt for us, do you?"
It was just a statement. One that made Ren immediately face him with a questioning look. It had come up in a newspaper article when he had originally researched his kind, but nothing more than a mention.
"There's basically a witch hunt for us," the teen said with a serious tone, "Many people blame major problems on Blanks. Those types of people made organizations that hunts is down. If they even suspect you, you'll be killed in a laboratory. Even kids like us."
"So why do you want to teach me about this stuff?" It made no sense, they'd be easier to catch if someone suspected both of them. So why- no, how did he care?
As if reading Ren's thoughts he said, "I think you've noticed that I seem to care a lot about you when I shouldn't. Right now, you're kind of like a little brother to me. But even I don't know why I'm gaining emotions all of a sudden."
"Gaining emotions?" That should have been impossible. But on the other hand, so should changing your eye color. Blanks by definition have no emotions; it's part of what makes them so powerful. But a Blank would even more powerful if they gained them, due to the fact they'd have a motive to do anything and everything. This, Ren thought, was probably a joke. But the teen continued speaking.
"I'm still Blank, though. I don't usually feel anything, but then there's times like now."
It was obvious then and there that Ren did not know everything. He was almost twelve years old and had been told he'd die it he acted suspiciously. Instinctually, he wants to stay alive, and if needing knowledge is what it will take, then it would be best to learn about the world.
"Alright then, Narukami-san, please teach me."
After insisting to be called by his first name, Yu had told him about a lot of the things he already knew in but in greater detail. They can directly affect the collective unconscious and can alter cognition enough to make it real. He had demonstrated by tapping on the side of his tea a showing it to Ren as the top of the liquid froze over.
"Everyone, Blank or not, has an affinity to some element. Only some people can use it, but all Blanks can."
Ren looks down at the tea, "You say that like we're not people."
"I wouldn't know if we are."
He went on to explain that some, like himself or Ren, have more than one affinity. He'd said it was called being a Wild Card. Ren had an inkling that there was more to it than that, but it wasn't his business. Yu shared some tips about how to blend in and how to establish a believable personality.
Yu offered to make Ren dinner before he went home, but he declined, saying his mother would bring some back for him. So when his mother came to the front of the house, apologizing for locking him out again, he waved goodbye to Yu and went inside.
The next few months, Ren practiced working on a complete Personality with him. Plenty of events were going on in town, he needed to get his reactions right. Yu seemed to be turning more into the personality he pretended to be, unlike Ren, who distanced himself from it. When there wasn't really anything to do, Yu would talk about his friends. Ren learned a lot about how people interact with each other just from the descriptions of their escapades alone.
"So you and your friends have been the one solving the murders..." Ren said after a particularly revealing story, "Can I meet them?"
"My friends? Sure, if you want to." Want? He had never really wanted anything. Nothing that wasn't instinctual, like wanting to live or have food and water.
"I think I do?"
"That's a start," Yu said, not unlike he would if he were learning spells, but what could Ren even be learning? "I was going to meet with them after this, so you can come along."
Yu's friends were very upbeat. That was the only term Ren could use to describe them as a whole. They immediately treated him like a cute little kid who didn't know any better. It was difficult to adjust to at first, he almost looked to Yu for help, but he remembered the rule not to do so in public or their eyes would change color. Soon his Personality as the weird sarcastic quiet kid kicked in.
Then one of them (the detective one he forgot the name of) pulled Yu aside and asked him why he brought a ten year old to the meeting. Everyone got pretty quiet when Ren calmly mentioned that he knows about the TV world. They all started talking again when he said Yu told him. He then started sitting in on their meetings, but only that, as Yu said it was not his time yet to be part of a team.
Yu left after his year was over, promising that he would be back. Ren had his phone number and was told to call it whenever he wanted to talk about things he couldn't with anyone else. Beforehand they had made a coded language so they could talk about Blank stuff over the phone and in public.
A week after, mother brought home a girlfriend this time. Ren's bond with his mother had strengthened once she felt that she has been leaving him alone too often. She started to leave for work right before he left for school and come home around the same time he did. But if she stayed out for work late, her girlfriend, Maki, would stay with him.
Maki liked to read books to him and tell him stories. He could already feel the strong bond forming with her. She would stay a part of his life for a long time.
He learned from Yu over the phone that there are steps and layers with each bond that he would need to work on it he wanted to get stronger. He did as such, working on his bonds until he was thirteen.
By then, Ren could alter the look of his body, and could change small objects. He could cast a few weak spells too. It helped their money issues when he could change trash or something into money and leave it in his mother's room. Kindness was a part of his Personality.
Soon, life returned back to normal when Yu came back.
Years went by, he saw Yu from time to time and made weak bonds with many people. His mother and Maki got married and he went about life as the quiet, kind, sarcastic, and nosy kid. It was easy enough to keep it up, even when those Blank hunting organizations came through town once people found out about the whole murder thing with the fog. He's started to call those people Shadows, fitting due to how they wore all black. (Yu had thought he was joking for some reason when he said this).
His first year in high school was normal enough. Yu was always busy, going here and there to do... whatever he worked as, but Ren gets a call in every once in a while. Everything's fine.
Until one day after school, when he was on his route home late after cram school, he heard a scream.
The next things that happened were quick.
Something inside him flamed. Burning. Screaming and begging to be released.
He didn't pay attention to the spell in his hand before he moved, the fire inside moving his feet automatically.
He twisted the drunk man around. He fell on his own. He said he'd sue. He'd sue. He'd sue.
The flame is gone by the time the police showed up. It doesn't come back during the trial. It's still gone when he's forced to move to Tokyo. He was left feeling more empty than ever.
First Emotion Gained, First Emotion Lost: Anger/Rage.