In Academy City, politics, war, and crime formed the shadow beneath its shining towers.
And within that shadow operated "School."
Second-in-command Kaibi Gokusai sat alone, eyes glued to cascading lines of intel -blueprints of military tech, corrupt databases, black market projections. Her fingers never stopped. Days had passed without rest. Call her a workaholic? She'd agree. She had asked Kakine Teitoku for work. He delivered.
"Cover for Rakko. She'll finish the job. You're on cleanup."
No elaboration. No details. Just an order. Solo missions weren't Rakko's style. But Kaibi knew better than to ask questions. Kakine only gave what was needed, and Kaibi only needed that much.
Or so she told herself.
Now she sat in a cold, temporary ops room tucked behind the skeletal frame of an unfinished research tower in District 5. Screens flickered. Surveillance feeds are scrambled. Her hand paused. She completed the mission. But the building was...
A blink. A breath. Then silence.
"...detonated?"
The explosion radius matched a pre-planted charge. The fail-safe had been triggered early. No signs of survival. Anyone still inside was gone.
That should've been the end. Mark Rakko KIA. Move on.
Buzz.
Her phone lit up.
[Yumiya Rakko]
"...You're kidding."
She answered with a gloved swipe.
"Report."
Static. Then a broken breath.
"Need... ambulance."
Kaibi's body didn't flinch. But her eyes narrowed behind pale lenses. Not at the words. Not at the pain. At something else bleeding through the signal.
Atmosphere. Rakko had killed before. Dozens. Cold. Precise. Detached.
But this wasn't fear. "She's panicking," Kaibi muttered. "No... she's ashamed."
She didn't need Measure Heart to feel it. Something inside Rakko had cracked.
Kaibi tapped her tablet, silently dispatching a blacklisted ambulance unit to the industrial outskirts. Just far enough to stay out of sight.
"Sending extraction," she said. No comfort. No sympathy. Rakko didn't need it. Kaibi didn't offer it.
"ETA: six minutes. Don't die again."
She didn't ask how Rakko survived. She already had her suspicions. Probably interference.
An anomaly. ...A bystander?
The feed had one blurry frame. A boy. Familiar. But nothing concrete.
"And the boy?" she muttered.
That could wait.
First came answers. Like why Rakko, an elite operative, had fumbled so hard. Kaibi exhaled and shut off the call.
"You're not broken because you're bleeding," she whispered. "You're broken because something began." And in their world, that shift was more dangerous than any bullet.
"I see you are still up, Ms. Yumiya." A doctor, going by Heaven Canceller, approached the sniper, seated on a padded chair. She looked to the medical professional, appearing to be... fairly well. Limbs such as her left arm and legs were bandaged. Clean and sterile, they were as the hospital.
They were easily treatable. After all, the city provides highly advanced medical treatment, making fatal injuries recover like miracles. But that's slightly exaggerated: 'I doubt they can miraculously heal my mind's confusion... or whatever it is I'm feeling.' She laughed humorlessly before asking the silent Canceller a question while turning away from him.
"...Is he alright?" Both knew who she was referring to, the boy who helped her and the one currently lying down before the two. The spiky hair and the face she saw while in the collapsing building. He looked at peace, his expression was evident to her, the sound of the electrocardiogram was constantly beeping in a natural rhythm. The sound soothed her, for some reason, but she couldn't tell why.
As if time stilled, it went back in motion as the doctor spoke, "...He'll be fine now. He has faced worse than this, but this case..." He paused for a moment, pondering his words before continuing. Yumiya noticed and just waited...
...this case was a difficult one, even for him."
Heaven Canceller's voice was calm and slow, but it carried the weary years of witnessing countless close calls, patching together shattered bodies that defied logic and science. As he continued, he reached into the breast pocket of his coat and pulled out a digital clipboard, tapping it once. A screen lit up with vitals, diagrams, and status reports.
"Massive exsanguination due to complete traumatic amputation of the right upper extremity. Hemorrhagic shock onset occurred within minutes. That, combined with the collapse of a burning structure and internal bruising to the ribs and left lung, complicated his situation."
He stopped, giving her a moment to process it. But Yumiya hadn't even blinked. She only stared ahead at the boy's sleeping face from across the glass window, her golden-brown eyes unfocused. Her mind was drifting, drawn toward a memory. One that refused to settle into clarity. His face, twisted in pain as he stood before her, blood pouring from a stump where his arm used to be. And yet, he'd still smiled. Why?
Heaven Canceller noticed the vacancy in her gaze but didn't push. Instead, he continued, letting his clinical cadence serve as a grounding rhythm-like a surgeon narrating a procedure to distracted interns.
"We stabilised him en route. Arterial clamps were applied at the scene. Thankfully, one of Anti-Skill's medics had the sense to initiate plasma expanders and an automated tourniquet. We performed emergency vascular grafts to prevent ischemia across the adjacent musculature. He's lost the arm, but we managed to prevent the onset of multiple organ failure."
Yumiya blinked slowly. Her bandaged fingers tightened against the arms of her chair.
"That's... a lot of words," she muttered. "But... he's alive."
"Yes. For now, that's what matters."
Heaven Canceller sighed and folded his arms. "Truth be told, I wasn't sure he'd make it this time. Even he has limits. But..." he glanced toward the window, watching the boy in the bed, hooked up to IVs and monitors, still breathing, somehow "...he always finds a way to crawl back."
The silence that followed was not empty. It throbbed with Yumiya's confusion, shame, and something else she couldn't name. Something that clawed at her chest. The boy hadn't even told her his name.
"You didn't know him, did you?" Heaven Canceller asked suddenly, as if reading her mind.
She shook her head. "No. He just... appeared. Risked his life. Got that arm torn off because of me."
The doctor didn't correct her, he didn't need to. There were many truths in Academy City, and not all of them needed to be said. Still, he added one thing, his voice unusually soft for someone so used to emergencies.
"He wouldn't want you to carry that weight. That's not the kind of person he is." This stirred the attention of Rakko's to the old doctor.
"...You know him well?"
"Yes," he answered. "Far too well for my comfort, sometimes. He's the type of person who'll dive into hell for a stranger, even if he's the one who burns."
She mulled that information in acknowledgement. Yumiya lowered her eyes, her lips trembling, though her voice remained composed.
"...What's his name?"
Heaven Canceller paused again before answering, "...Kamijou Touma."
That name echoed in her mind like a prayer in the wrong chapel. Kamijou Touma... It didn't match the image of a boy who should've run and stayed safe. A boy who she imagined to be fictional. Who never told her anything, not even why. A question that stayed with the friendless sniper.
The electrocardiogram beeped on. Heaven Canceller walked away, leaving her with the silence and the name.
Kamijou Touma.
And for the first time, Yumiya wasn't thinking about the mission, the orders, or the next shot. Her mind was filled only with that boy, and the question that refused to leave:
Why did you save me?
A simple question was to be answered with an obvious answer. But saying something like, "Because you need saving," sounds wrong. However, that answer felt right. Right, that it's foreign to her.
Kamijou Touma.
The name didn't sit well in her mind. It was like a half-remembered song, familiar yet offbeat, the lyrics just out of reach. Rakko sat still, not from pain or medical advice, but because movement might exacerbate the sensation. That strange heaviness in her chest wasn't an injury.
Or if it was, it wasn't one the hospital could treat. It was an ailment of the heart, something her sister would have described. Her eyes drifted from the steady beep of the machine to the window beyond it, where the glow of the city bled faintly through tinted glass. Neon patterns cut across buildings like circuit boards, alive with secrets. Her world. Their world. The one he didn't belong in.
"...Idiot," she whispered. The word lacked her usual venom. It hung in the air like an unfinished sentence. What kind of person did that?
Not "a hero." She had met those before. They wore masks of righteousness but killed just as cleanly. Not "a fool," either. Fools ran into bullets for pride or ego. This boy... he had stood between her and something collapsing without knowing who she was.
No questions. No hesitation. No logic. He hadn't even pointed a gun. That would've spared her some stress if he did.
She remembered the way his fingers had gripped her shoulder before pushing her out, how he'd looked directly at her, unflinching, despite the chaos behind him. That look had no judgment. No superiority. Only conviction.
Conviction without reason. That was what haunted her.
Why save me?
A question born not from guilt but something she couldn't name. Something older. Something human.
The door clicked open again.
A nurse stepped in, barely older than a high school student, likely on a part-time shift. She smiled nervously, held out a tray of supplements, and began the routine: pulse check, blood pressure, retina scan.
Rakko complied in silence, listening to the rhythmic sound to ignore the assigned staff. It didn't help.
"You're lucky," the girl said softly, not making eye contact.
Rakko tilted her head. "Is that a professional opinion?"
The nurse stiffened, "Ah, no, just... not many people walk away from that kind of scene... The building, I mean. You're the only one they found breathing. They say the guy who pulled you out and lost his..."
Rakko's eyes flicked toward her with a warning glint. Halfhearted the attempt was but it made the nurse flinch and quickly looked down in shame. Or fear.
"I-I'm sorry. I didn't mean..."
"It's fine," Rakko said. The words tasted foreign. "You didn't say anything wrong."
She accepted the supplements, swallowed them dry, and leaned back against the chair, eyes returning to the boy in the adjacent room. Machines still chirped, but she wasn't listening to them anymore.
This wasn't recovery.
This was a pause.
And when it ended, when she stepped outside and re-entered a world that ran on silence, shadows, and sniper rounds... what then?
She wouldn't call this a turning point. She wouldn't insult herself with that kind of melodrama.
But...
Her finger twitched. Just this once. Just... for now, like a memory of a trigger pull, that didn't happen. For now, she'd let herself ponder.
A/N: Okay, I made up my mind and had another chapter done! I'm going for a third chapter then I'm going to study again and fail!