Resonance Zero: The Blood Resonance

He gave up his memories for the power to stop time. He just doesn't know which ones.

Satoru Tokiwa survived the Blood Resonance Trial. Most teenagers fail and die. Now he can bend well seconds. It's a shonen; people give the guy a break to grow. He's been conscripted into an academy built to break teenagers into weapons, and something followed him out of that trial.

Her name is Matoi. She has mismatched eyes and hair. Half her face is the same as his. She appears in no database on the continent. She insists she belongs to him, calls him her fixed point, and cannot explain why. Every time he looks at her, something behind his ribs aches for a reason he can't name.
Then there's Scarlett.
Half dread echo, entirely unsubtle, and the only person in Satoru's life who has ever said what she wants out loud. She calls him hers in front of people. She means it. She was built in a lab and treated like a weapon her whole life, and she decided loudly, without shame, without asking permission that this boy is the thing she's keeping. Satoru has spent seven years constructing a life with no room in it for that. She doesn't care.

Then there's the woman who owns him on paper.
Seraphina is a century old, made of ice, and the most woman alive. She calls him her asset. She watches him like a problem she hasn't decided how to solve, and somewhere between the punishments and the promotions, she stopped being able to tell whether she's building a weapon or keeping a person.

The academy runs on rankings. The instructors bet on who survives the year. And the people Satoru collects along the way. A girl with no powers and no fear, a street fighter who beat him into the pavement and then sat down beside him are the only things keeping him human.

He doesn't remember what he lost. Matoi is the answer, standing right in front of him, and neither of them knows it yet.

Dark shounen with a slow burn that actually burns. Post-apocalyptic Japan, 2131.

New chapters Tuesdays and Fridays.