I brace my hands on my knees, gulping the late spring air that's just starting to warm. I straighten at the top of the clearing of E-Class campus, pushing the fringe of my hair off my forehead to feel the light breeze on my face. I'm not sure when I took to using the campus grounds to run instead of the HQ gyms, but it's easier than facing all that i don't know—besides, having such a secluded campus might mean we have no AC, but it makes for useful thinking space, and space is what I wanted. To feel for a moment like I wasn't being pulled in so many directions.
I plop to the ground breathlessly, my training shorts gathering the dust of the sandy clearing as I dangle my legs over the small drop, propping one foot on the branch that grows from the tip of the stones. The one I remember Karma throwing himself off the first day I met him. The memory makes me realise how quickly three months have passed and how much has changed. How many of those things are good changes are too hard to say now. How quickly my thoughts have turned to him yet again, is hard to judge as a good thing or not.
"You're rather early, Miss Matsuoka" I hear the jovial voice of my target behind me, not bothering to turn around since he appears next to me as quickly as I can blink. He too has become a reminder of all I don't know. The target I was only placed in front of as a distraction, a promise of false rewards by those who really own the control over my life.
"I run to campus in the mornings now the weather is better" I say plainly. Three months ago I would've danced around a reply, found a way to turn it into a battle, something to take him off guard to attempt a kill. Three months ago I would've been sure it would work. Three months ago I thought killing him was going to mean something.
"For the scenery?" He enquires, mirroring my position with his tentacles dangling over the edge of the drop.
"For the silence" I reply "Easier to think"
"Something heavy on your mind?" He asks "A problem shared is a problem halved"
"Is it?" I snort, fidgeting with the edges of my hair that still only brushes the midline of my neck "I've never found that to be true"
"I suppose you share your problems with those who don't wish to solve them. Anything I can help with?"
"You could chuck yourself off this precipice and save us all a very big problem come March?" I suggest and he gives that comical laugh.
"Very funny, Matsuoka. How are those ribs of yours?" He asks instead and I lean back on my hands.
"Fine. All ready to get back to killing you and all"
"You sound different, Matsuoka" He says contemplatively.
"...So I've heard" I say more to myself, pushing to stand and dusting my running shorts with my hands, sand clouding the air "Are there showers on the main campus?"
"So I've heard" He repeats my own statement as if he wished I'd elaborated "Though they aren't normally for E-Class students"
"Well, good job I can play the government card to the principal to let me use them" I say, the thought making me recall Principal Asano's clandestine threats and I file it away to my internal 'to do' list. A list that instead of inspiring action in me, just makes my tiredness heavier.
"You are one of the most talented assassins I've come across, Matsuoka" He says abruptly, forcing me to pause mid-step "It is plain to see your dedication, not just to the physicality and skill of your role but the way it has made you think. You are the assassin you hoped to be, capable of all the things you wish for"
"But no one's mind is made to follow one path for the entirety of their life" He continues in a softer voice "A bridge may stand for hundreds of years and yet collapse under the weight of a feather if the cracks in the bricks are ignored"
YOU ARE READING
To Kill For the Truth (BOOK 1)
Fanfiction~ "That's the problem here. You say you want the truth as if it means the same thing to you as it does to me, but there's a big difference here. I'll kill for the truth" ~ Anri Matsuoka had spent her whole life knowing what she was good at. Killing...
