Week Zero, Thursday
For as long as she could remember, Ayano could not feel. It didn't matter if someone insulted her, she felt no rage. It didn't matter if she saw a cute animal, she felt no happiness. It didn't matter if she took a significantly painful fall, she did not cry.
She was simply empty. There was a place inside of her, a place for emotions. But they were closed away, trapped behind walls that her bloodline built up. Walls that, like something out of one of the many fairy tales Ayano had read, could only be broken by love.
After all, she was an Aishi. Cursed by her DNA to be emotionless until she found her true love, just like her mother and her grandmother and so on and so forth. She was trapped in an eternal darkness, waiting blindly for the day that the sun appeared in her life. She was nothing without love, just an empty husk.
Ayano wanted to hate this fact. She wanted to hate how empty she felt, and how she didn't connect to others like her peers did. She wanted to despise her classmates, too, for taking their emotions for granted when she had been given none.
But she couldn't, for hate was locked away, trapped in the walls alongside sadness and fear, right next to happiness and love.
All Ayano felt was boredom, annoyance, and contentment. The three dullest emotions, but they were able to appease Ayano most of the time. She was bored when she had nothing to do, nothing to keep herself occupied. She was content when she was reading, or working on homework to keep up her grades. She reveled in the moments where a classmate annoyed her, asking their teacher pointless questions.
Yet three emotions did not always satiate Ayano. She wanted more, and waited for the day that she would find her love. Her mother said that she'd know in an instant.
"Every Aishi woman fell in love at first sight! You'll be exactly the same way, dear," Her mother had said one night, smiling wistfully as she cooked. "It'll be a wonderful day. And you'll know immediately, you'll feel it in your heart. You'd do anything for them, dear." Her smile changed then, gained that crooked aspect that Ayano recognized every time. " Anything ."
Ayano knew what her mother meant then, and even now, the night before her first day at her new high school, she still understands.
Her mother expects very, very dangerous things from her. She expects Ayano to do anything, everything to keep her love by her side. Even if it means hurting somebody.
Even if it means killing somebody.
But Ayano, while cold, empty, and emotionless, knows that she does not want to harm anyone.
So now, waiting for sleep to take her through the night, waiting for the sun to rise, waiting to go to Akademi High for her first day in class 2-1, Ayano almost wishes that she never loves. Or, rather, that she does not fall in love so simply, in a way that makes her so violent. Ayano wants true love, love that does not require fighting others for. She wants to feel, but she doesn't want to be controlled by a desire to keep her love for herself.
Ayano sleeps, and the next part of her life begins.