Love's Psychos

Chapter 1

Nobody would care if I just vanished tomorrow.

That thought must have crossed through Akane's mind at least five times a day. None of these sycophants would care if she just stopped coming to school. They may have smiled whenever she passed by them in the halls and offered a halfhearted greeting and a wave of the hand. And indeed, she might have smiled and waved back at them, plastering on some semblance of humanity day in and day out. But not one of them, not one of these nameless faces could understand the real her.

None of them could see just how broken she was inside.

As far back as Akane cared to remember, she'd never been able to feel anything. It wasn't much of a stretch to say that the girl everyone knew as Akane Toriyasu was just a facade, a mask she put on to maintain some small semblance of humanity. She played her role well enough, keeping her grades at the top of her class, projecting an heir of confidence and seemingly effortless grace wherever she went.

Others looked up to her; that's what she'd been told at least. On the surface, Akane was what one might consider to be the perfect model student of Fuyuki Highschool. But it was all a lie. A ruse designed to hide the truth. She felt nothing, not one single comprehensible human emotion except...occasionally...disgust and contempt.

She wasn't looking for pity. In fact, the very idea of pity disgusted and enraged her in ways few other things could. This was normal for Akane, after all. Where others had friends, family, things they seemed to care about, she had nothing of the sort. Not to any extent that wasn't purely another superficial mask, at least. She may have been numb to everything around her, but in truth, Akane was unbothered by this. If anything, she'd grown accustomed to this empty feeling in her chest.

Of course...all of that changed the day she met him.

For the first time in her life, she felt something after that moment. A longing. A yearning. A desire to be accepted. The day he opened her eyes to the truth of her once bleak existence, she finally understood what it meant to be alive. The way he made her feel was a drug; she was addicted to it. This...warmth in her heart whenever he was near.

From that moment forward, she cared about nothing else, no one else. He is everything to her. Her reason to live, that which gives her purpose. She loves him. She loves him more than life itself.

Which is why nothing will take Senpai away from her.

--

It all began one fateful day, on March 16th, at roughly 7:42 in the morning. A day like any other, just as gray, just as soulless. Akane was walking her regular route to school, passing all the usual landmarks on her way to Fuyuki Private Academy. The alley with the market, the cherry blossom trees in the courtyard, none of it failed to distract her from just how dull and colorless everything felt to her. Her only true moment of solace was the neighbor's dog she would occasionally see in their front yard. She liked dogs, Akane liked all animals. A shame her parents would never let her get a pet. They couldn't afford it.

Something about that day felt slightly off, an unfamiliar energy in the air she couldn't quite place her finger on. Tomoe, the closest thing Akane had to a genuine companion at school, was rambling on about something to do with a new upper-level student, some wealthy honors kid from the US. Not that she understood why that was so noteworthy. They got transfer students all the time, and all of them were typically either straight A geniuses like her or rich airheads like Tomoe.

"I'm telling you, you should talk to him, Akane-chan!" Tomoe insisted brightly, an infectious ray of sunshine and positivity as always. "I think you'd really like our new Senpai."