Chapter Text
People talk about emptiness as if it is an aching thing.
They describe it as a void, a gnawing hunger, a phantom limb that throbs in the middle of the night. But that is because normal people have known what it is like to be full. When you are born empty, it doesn't ache. It is simply a fact of biology. As simple as the grass being green, or the sky being blue. Like being born blind, or without a sense of smell.
For the first fourteen years of my life, the world was drawn in grayscale.
My earliest, notable memories are not of joy or sorrow, but of mimicry. I remember sitting in the sandbox at five years old, watching a girl scrape her knee. She wailed, cried, fussing over her small injury. Tears streamed down her flushed face. I observed the water leaking from her eyes and the red fluid leaking from her skin, cataloging the pitch of her screams. I offhandedly wondered how she did not tire of her own cries. Some of the other children cried, or fussed over her, and when her mother stopped to bandage her scrape, she smiled.
It was as if her emotions teetered over like the swing I was on. Swinging over to the left, then the right. It was the first instance in which I felt a small bit of curiosity, even if I did not yet know what that was.
The next week, I scraped my own knee. I recreated the wail perfectly. I squeezed my eyes shut to force the water out.
My father looked terrified. My mother, however, just smiled. She bandaged my knee with gentle, knowing hands.
I recreated the girl's toothy smile, too, and it felt odd on my face.
My father paled as my mother giggled, her cheeks swelling with joy I did not have, as if privy to a joke.
"It's alright, sweetheart," Mother would whisper to me late at night, brushing my hair. Her eyes were always so bright, burning with a strange, manic light that I couldn't quite understand. It burned, burned and burned, compared to my own eyes.
"Our family is special. We are born asleep. We walk through a gray, boring world until, one day, we meet him. The one who holds our heart. When you find your special someone, the world will burst into color. You will finally wake up."
So, I waited.
I asked my father for a book on psychology, and he gave me plenty, amused as he was. I suspect he thought I was developing normal hobbies. A sign that his empty daughter was somewhat becoming a regular girl. He had smiled, a quick upturn of his mouth, when he so hopefully handed it to me, his shoulders relaxing for the first time in years.
"The first of many oddities," my mother noted, over dinner, watching me through her half lidded eyes. I read the books slowly, measurely. Making sense of emotions, of the world. My mother had a particular idea of how I should be ("Aishi girls are particular,"), and I did not heed her. I had just wanted to know.
On and on it went. The hollow ache in me did not cease, but I found myself wanting to know of many things. Cataloging, writing, reading.
My father was amused and relieved. And he directed my attentions to many things. To many hobbies, classes.
He allowed my mother many things, wanting me to develop a curiosity in the world.
"Ryoba," He would say with a pursed face. "I ought to indulge my precious daughter."
It was manipulative. But no more than my mother.
I slept, ate, drank, trained, searched, wrote, read.
I progressed through elementary and middle school as a ghost operating a human suit. With more knowledge, I learned when to smile, when to laugh, and when to look away. I was polite. I was forgettable. But not so much so. I was just average, with the right amount of acquaintances, a friend or two (of which were of-like, except for Midori, who barreled through every encounter with me like glue), and the right amount of everything. I had plenty of hobbies, and many interests that would make anyone nosy enough to back off wanting to know me.
"Aishi-san's nice," a classmate of mine would say, as I overheard them while I was on cleaning duty.
"But not much to look at?"
"Man, don't say that."
Their laughter lingered as I cleaned meticulously.
Polite, smart, nice.
That was perhaps the only thing of note I remembered that year.
I slept, ate, drank, trained, read, wrote.
I waited for the boy my mother promised would fix me. I scanned the faces of my male classmates, waiting for the spark.
Nothing. Just gray faces, and white noise. Their faces blurred together, throughout the years.
When I had graduated, my father had gifted me a plant. It was a modest, leafy thing in a pale ceramic pot.
I had read more and more on horticulture in that year. Both of my parents cultivated my "interests" with differing motives. Cacti. Lilies. Belladona. Wisteria. Wolfsbane.
I slept, ate, drank, trained, searched, wrote, read.
I assumed the machinery inside me was broken. Perhaps the Aishi curse had finally mutated, leaving me permanently stranded in the dark. I resigned myself to a lifetime of polite, painless nothingness.
Perhaps resigned was not the right word. I just did not care at all, of my circumstances. I did not avidly wait for anything at all.
I was not cruel, or harsh. I was not forceful with anything, even if my mother was particularly happy with my strength.
An outlier, I was, that I did not need my Destined One to possess such abilities.
I slept, ate, drank, trained, read.
My mother trained me further, even if my father made a small fuss. And rarely did he do that, but he said that I ought to have my own choices.
I did not particularly care. At night, she trained me further to know what to hit, where to put in the most force, how to maim, manipulate, poison. To know how to get bloodstains off of clothing, the best way not to leave any marks, to cook, to clean, to be an idealized Yamato Nadeshiko.
To be the ideal, perfect wife.
To be the ideal, perfect....weapon.
I did not care. I just did, as I always had done.
I slept, ate, drank, trained, read.
I slept, ate, drank, trained, read.
I slept, ate, drank, trained, read.
I slept, ate, drank, trained, read.
I slept, ate, drank, trained, read.
I slept, ate, drank, trained, read.
I slept, ate, drank, trained, read.
I slept, ate, drank, trained, read.
I slept, ate, drank, trained, read.
I slept, ate, drank, trained, read.
I slept, ate, drank, trained, read.
I slept, ate, drank, trained, read.
I slept, ate, drank, trained, read.
I.....
.....
.....
It was time.
The spring of my first year of high school.
My mother was particularly avid as she waved me out, sure as she was that my true love would come in a year or two.
I already had an idea of what my day would look like. The morning of the entrance ceremony would be perfectly average. The sky was a pale, washed-out gray. The cherry blossom petals falling around me looked like flakes of ash. I wore my new uniform, ensuring my long skirt was neat, my blazer was ironed. Everything was perfectly straightened, and I walked my memorized route to Akademi High School.
As I approached the final hill leading up to the school, the crowd of students thickened. A sea of red, white, and black. I navigated through them with the practiced ease of a phantom, side-stepping conversations and avoiding eye contact.
I would be close enough, soon, to a day of nothing.
"Whoa—!"
A sudden weight collided with my shoulder. It was odd. Nothing had ever caught me off guard before. My foot slipped, and I tumbled backward onto the paved concrete. My skirt ruffled, and my palms stung slightly against the ground.
I breathed in, feeling surprisingly ruffled?
"I'm so sorry!" A boy stammered, extending a hand toward me. It felt odd, like something heavy was over me. It was heavy, suffocating. Something felt off, skewed. I almost recoiled. "I was reading while walking, I wasn't looking where I was going. Are you okay?"
I stared at his hand. For the first time, I felt faint.
And I also felt... absolutely nothing. Well, many shojo manga (and especially my mother), ought to dictate this was the point I felt something in my heart.
....
Doki-doki? Ah, no.
I blinked twice, just to make sure if I felt sparks in my fingers.
Nothing.
He was just a boy. Another gray face in a gray world. I opened my mouth to tell him it was fine, to take his hand, and to walk away.
But as I raised my head to meet his eyes, my gaze drifted slightly past his shoulder.
Past the boy. Toward the top of the hill.
There it was. Akademi High School. The elite school I would be attending, as per tradition. I knew its grounds by heart. And I've seen its front on the brochure of the testing facility I took the exam in.
It should be familiar, but.
It started in my fingertips. A violent, electric shock that snapped my bones to attention. My breath hitched, trapping itself in my throat as my pupils dilated.
The gray sky abruptly shattered.
Blue. A blue so piercing and profound it made my eyes water. The ash falling around me ignited into brilliant, blinding pinks. The cherry blossoms. The sprawling, majestic white architecture of the main building caught the morning sun, practically glowing like a temple.
But it wasn't just the colors. It was the sound. My, the sound of it.
The dull white noise of the crowd suddenly resolved into a symphony. The melodic chatter of girls comparing schedules, the rhythmic thud of athletes jogging to the track, the gentle rustle of the wind through the manicured courtyards. I could feel the collective heartbeat of the student body, a pulsing, beautiful ecosystem that moved in perfect harmony.
It was flawless. It was pristine.
It was my school. Mine. Mine. Mine.
"Ano... miss?"
The boy's voice grated against my ears. An annoying, dissonant screech interrupting my symphony. I blinked, realizing he was still holding his hand out, casting a shadow over my view of the gates.
Perhaps I was wrong? I stared at him again, at the boy with unremarkable black hair and charcoal eyes. He looked embarrassed, his cheeks dusted with a faint, vivid pink.
I didn't take his hand. I stood up on my own, brushing the dust from my skirt. I didn't even look at his face as I stepped completely around him, my eyes locked on the wrought-iron gates of the school.
"Excuse me," I murmured softly, leaving him standing there bewildered on the sidewalk. I heard some shouting nearby, a high pitched girl lecturing him over being late.
I did not mind.
I walked toward the gates, my heart hammering a frantic, terrifying rhythm against my ribs. It felt like I had swallowed a star. The emptiness was gone, violently replaced by a feral, all-consuming heat. Mother was right. The world had color. I was awake.
How beautiful it all seemed.
People lived like this everyday?
I crossed the threshold onto the campus grounds, letting the shadow of the cherry trees wash over my face. I watched a group of students laughing by the fountain. They were so blissfully unaware. So delicate. They walked through this sanctuary without realizing how easily it could be tainted, like how her Mother had tainted it. They were beautiful, fragile flora in a pristine garden.
My garden.
A dark, euphoric smile stretched across my face. The first genuine smile of my entire life.
My senses extended, just as my mother said it would.
I would protect this place. I would maintain its perfection. I would prune the dead weight, rip out the weeds, and slaughter anything that dared to disturb the peace of my domain.
How beautiful it was, to be in such a place.
How beautiful it felt, to be alive.
Welcome to Akademi, Aishi Ayano.