♊︎Year 5057, Month 9, Day 11, Time 8:03 am♊︎
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It was his first day.
He was nervous, as he always was— paranoid, scared, and above all, terribly anxious for what the day would bring him.
For over a month, he had been waiting for this transfer. He still very much remembers the day that he was visited by that tall, slender figure of a man that came to be known to him as Max Cowell, the renowned scientist of MALUS industries.
Looking back at it, he's not sure why this man had ever taken interest in him. He wasn't a supreme erudite with Nobel prizes or awards of the sort for great accomplishments and breakthroughs in the scientific community. In fact, before he was sent to the asylum he had only been a lowly high school student with a knack for all things that dealt with chemistry.
And it's not like he could bring up those records to show this man anyway because they had been wiped out the minute he was sent into the Mental Asylum.
Which brings him to another point. Why would this well-respected scientist choose a boy with loose screws in his head and invest in him to join this million-dollar study program?
No one would, in their right mind, ever choose the boy who killed his own family with an aerial drug. No one, in their right mind, would choose the boy who also killed his nurses with a powerful purgative, making them throw up their guts to death.
Of course, he never did any of this without due reason. His parents ran a drug empire which he stumbled upon at 16 and the nurses were his tormentors. Murder was his only option. But no one would listen to the paranoid teen.
So why was Max interest in him?
"Hey! Move out of the way!" The lanky boy is ripped out of his deep thoughts suddenly when he's slammed against the right wall of the large hallway he was walking through, dropping the books he was clutching a bit too tightly in his hands.
Stooping over to pick up his books, the raven-haired boy notices the person that slammed into him still standing at his side. Their shoulders are hunched and he can hear them breathing heavily as their head whips back and forth, looking around wildly at both ends of the halls and waiting for something when he hears it.
"Kurenai! Get your ass back here with my keycard!" Keeping his head down, the lanky boy listens to the exchange, listening to the figure that ran into him curse under their breath.
"Can't you pick up those books any faster? I don't wanna get caught cuz of you." The person urges him and its then that he notices the voice has a very feminine edge to it, intriguing him further. He doesn't look up at the figure, sensing her grow in anxiety when they suddenly drop to the floor next to him, their hands flying outward to help him with his things.
The boy finally musters the courage to look up at the owner of the voice, initially stunned by her wide, pitch-black eyes and her long black hair tied into two pig-tails, a sanguine-red ribbon tied to each.
A trillion questions fill up his thoughts about the new girl in front of him, watching almost as if in a trance at how she frantically picks up his things and then just as frantically jumps back up to her feet when she hears the yelling of a faraway adult getting closer and colder. She doesn't give him enough time to ask any questions though, taking him up by his collar roughly once he's picked up his last item and searching for an escape before her furious purser reaches her.
It's then that an idea strikes her head and she pulls out a key card from the pockets of her jumpsuit, dragging the boy she ran into over to the nearest janitors closet and opening it by sliding the keycard over the pad. The light on the keypad turns green and she hurriedly opens the door, pushing the confused boy into the small compartment and heading in after him.
She locks the door behind her and squeezes in next to the boy so that they're chest to chest, controlling her breathing just as her purser rounds the corner. The longer they stay in this awkward position with their faces mere inches away from each other, the louder he can feel his heart patter against his chest and his face grow hotter.
"What do you think you're doing—?"
"Shhh!" The girl clamps a hand over his mouth to silence him which only worsens his flustered state. Listening intently to what's going on beyond the door of the janitor's closet, they both hear the adult that was chasing the girl yell in anger.
"Oh, you think you're funny, don't you?! Well, we'll see who'll be laughing once I tell Ursula what you've done this time!" Huffing, the man chasing her storms away, muttering curses and threats which makes the girl called 'Kurenai' giggle slightly.
It makes him wonder what exactly it is she did to get that man so riled up. Luckily for him, he didn't have to poke around for any answers because the girl was already filling him in on all the details.
"I stole his keycard to get access to the candy machine on the 7th floor since only staff has access to it." She informs him excitably, fishing her pockets for a moment before pulling out three bags of skittles for him to see. "It was too bad that he caught on too early, I could've gotten more."
She stuffs the candies back into her pocket and listens one more time to make sure the man chasing her has left. Moving away from being huddled up close to the lanky boy's chest, the girl opens the door slightly, poking her head out as the boy watches her curiously.
Once she's sure they're in the clear, she swings open the door and pulls him out into the hall they were just in, handing him back his books. He mutters a small thank you and begins to walk away from the girl when he feels her cold fingers skim his neck as she pulls him back with much force by his collar.
"Aht-aht-aht! Where do you think you're going?" She calls out as he stumbles backward because of her, his eyes widening just as she pulls him down by the collar to be at eye-level with her.
"I-I was just l-leaving because... because...," He stutters, a red-hot mess, taking in the soft features of the girl in front of him. She was attractive, he couldn't deny it, and being this close to someone so attractive to him wasn't good for his heart.
"Why are you stuttering so much? I just asked a simple question." The girl pushes her bottom lip out in a pout, frowning at how much the wimpy boy in front of her struggles to give her a clear answer. "Fine then, I'll ask you something simpler. What's your name?"
"S-Seonghwa." Her lips break into a warm and welcoming smile and her eyes shine with recognition, lighting up even the darkest places of his mind with its brilliance.
"You're the newbie Max acquired! I've heard lots about you!" She states it as if it were some sort of huge accomplishment. The way she looks right now makes Seonghwa wonder what someone as bright as her would be doing in a place like this. "I'm guessing that's why you have those vials in your back pocket." She adds on, stunning Seonghwa for a moment as he recounts the poisonous glass vials he stuck in the back pocket of his pants.
His heart almost stops when he doesn't feel them there and that's when Kurenai giggles, letting go of his collar and lifting her other hand to show the three glass vials he was looking for.
"Give them back." He reaches for them with a growing scowl, ordering her diffidently and she pulls her hand back right before he can grasp the vials. He didn't even feel her move her hand to snatch them up.
"Or what?" She plays around with him for a bit before he manages to snatch the vials back, stuffing them irritatedly in his pockets. "Are they really poisonous?" Kurenai suddenly inquires with wide eyes, filled with curiosity and sparkling with mischief
"Y-Yeah." He confirms her suspicion, moving around to leave once again and watching her out of his periphery as she catches up to him. "You don't have to follow me." He mumbles through a small frown that had formed on his lips at being accompanied by the new girl.
"Why not?" Kurenai crosses her hands. "For all I know you could be some goody-two-shoes that's sneaking away from me to snitch on me."
"I-I wasn't gonna—."
"Snitch? I'm not falling for that too easily. You know what, to make things fair between us how about you tell me a secret that can get you in trouble?"
"Like what?" He asks suspiciously and the edge of her lip curls up into a wry smirk.
"What's the poison made of and what were you gonna use it on?" She smartly inquires about the small glass vials in Seonghwa's pockets, knowing full-well that newly admitted trainees aren't allowed into the chemistry labs until their 2nd year.
"Stuff and I wasn't going to use it on anyone." Seonghwa looks away at first and then replies, feeling like he's been cornered. He's fully aware that she knows about the lab rules and he curses himself mentally for breaking them. This girl is going to be quite troublesome for him.
"That's not an answer." Kurenai narrows down on him at his vague response. "But it's cool. You must be so smart if Max admitted you into his course. His would by far be the hardest." She praises making a deep-set blush paint his high-cheekbones.
"Not really." His voice comes out small and she laughs when she sees his awkward demeanor, deciding he's an interesting character.
"I like you, Seonghwa. You amuse me." She declares, flashing a wide smile. "Let's be friends!"
Her words catch him off guard, making him sputter in response. He had never had anyone want to be friends with him so eagerly, so he didn't understand her interest in him. He wasn't popular, he wasn't the best looking, and he certainly wasn't social, so why?
"Why do you wanna be friends with me?"
"Because you seem lonely. I used to be lonely, too. I know what it's like." Her eyes turn empathetic suddenly, and she reaches out to set a hand on his arm. "But it doesn't last forever, as long as you surround yourself with the right people. And I know lots of people. I could introduce you to them if you want. Then you won't be lonely anymore! How's that?"
He only nods in agreement and that all she needs to link their hands together, intensifying his blush and pulling him along with her as she rants about her other friends.
Trying to keep up with her pace, Seonghwa finds himself struggling to decide how he feels about this girl. A girl whose full name he didn't even know and yet she was so keen on becoming friends with him.
She intrigued him, in more ways than one.
No one had ever been so straight up with him the way she had. No one had ever left such an impression on him as she had.
And certainly, no one had ever caught his attention as much as she had.
She was unique, amicable, and warm-hearted. Since the day they had come across each other, she had lighten up a part of his heart he didn't think she could.
She taught him how to open up again, how to care for others beside himself, how to trust and make friendships.
Which is why when she went after him and Candy at the trials after preaching about 'trust' and looking out for each other, his only hope that he had tied to her was shattered.
The girl had made him believe that there were good people in the world when he met her, but she had also made him learn that those 'good people' were only conditional. They were only 'good' when the conditions benefitted them.
And she had proven it the day she sliced his throat and watched him bleed at her feet in those trials.