Bloody Petals

Chapter 30

Kyou brought something out of his cloak's inner pocket and threw it towards Zero's direction in a mere second. The teen seized it without taking his eyes off the two hunters. From the flat shape and rough texture, Zero was sure it was a letter. Slowly, his eyes fell down towards the thing he was holding. It was a black envelope... His eyes widened a little in surprise. Why would they entrust him with a black envelope...? It's supposed to be a secret mission...

"You know what it means when you receive a black envelope, right?" Shin smirked as he crossed his arms over his chest.

"Don't preach to me what the hell it means." Zero voiced venomously, crumpling the envelope in his fist. "I know full well what it means, hunter." It meant he was not allowed to tell anyone and no one should know of the mission at all except to whom the envelope was named.

Both Kyou and Shin's eyes darkened at the sight of Zero crushing the black envelope with his fist without reading it at all. It's almost sacrilege. It was as if Zero was cursing the Association and at the same time telling everyone that he was not loyal to it anymore. The teen did what he did knowing what it meant.

"You think you still have the right to tell me what to do, even though you've proven well enough that you are not my ally at all?" Zero asked, the crumpled enveloped clutched tightly in his trembling fist. He felt so angry and so hurt. After all the things they'd done to him, they still had the gall to think that he would obey them without question?

"If you want to know what's really happening, it would be best to simply do the mission." Kyou said without any emotion. His earlier enthusiasm towards Zero's lineage seemed to have been gone. Both he and Shin were just too surprised that a hunter who had sworn to serve only the Association – a hunter who was in the Elite Force no less – had the audacity to actually do something as outrageous as showing his disloyalty so explicitly.

Zero kept his glare on the hunters even after they've walked away from the place. He was trembling from too much rage but he was trying to control himself because he wanted to savor their appalled reaction. It was the least he could do to show that he wasn't their plaything, someone who simply mattered if they wanted him to do their bidding. He was a person just like them, for Kami's sake...! He started exhaling deeply to calm himself down.

Now... what should he do about the envelope...?

He looked at it and thought for a while whether he would open it or if he would simply burn it without looking at the content. He knew he would regret his decision either way so he simply sighed as his hunter blood won over the battle. He flattened out the crumpled paper before he read his supposed mission.

His eyes closed and his eyebrows creased. Would he really do something as outrageous as a mission like this...? It's almost as if they were telling him to commit suicide.

"A stand-alone mission to exterminate a pureblood, huh..." Zero snorted. "What a joke." Just because he was a half-pureblood didn't mean he could actually fight one on one with another pureblood. The fight he'd had with Rido had proven that point well enough. He's sure that not even Kaname would do something as insane as attacking another pureblood in his own home. Although, Zero was sure that if ever that would happen, Kaname was sure to win... It was Kaname after all...

He burned the letter together with the black envelope using his fire ability. He watched with indifference as the letter was rapidly eaten by his blue-colored fire. It merely took some seconds for the whole thing to turn to dust. As he stood there in the middle of the rubbles, with no one in sight and no letter in hand, he felt as if nothing had actually happened. There was almost no evidence of what had transpired except for the faint trace of the hunters' presence in the wind. But that too was slowly ebbing into nothingness.