It was a balsamine day rising over the bamboo fields, dawning powder-blue over the seclusion of Black Order Asia-a day for starting over.

Whispers carried through the cracks of a slowly breaking tension, the loudest they had been since the Chans had died, along with so many of their colleagues, in the chambers that the Guardian had sealed and still refused to open. She, like them, had been mourning, and though she hadn't been seen, all who knew the ancient Asian branch knew she was there-they could feel her sorrow in the coldness of the shadows on the stone and in the sad music of wind escaping from the lowest levels of the building, from the parts hollowed so deep and old into the earth that fresh, natural water ran through them, left rough as the day they'd been hewn into the mountain.

But the human spirit demanded recovery, and after the grim shock of hearing the death count-attributed to a gruesome "experimental accident"-it began to resurface in gossip.

Some said the Chan's son had been listening to the walls, which gave them hope that his bond with the Guardian might make him just as strong a leader as his indomitable late parents. There had been glimpses of a child from nowhere who they said the old man Zhu was crafting a sword for. Someone was being promoted, some scientist they were sending up to Europe to be a bigshot Branch Chief, even though he was young and not Western-born.

The Guardian heard it all through the stronghold she held strong, but she held her silence just as well. What had been set in motion was already too late to stop, and whatever happened, to either the child or the scientist, was a beginning not meant for here.

It was the first time since the day Kanda was learning to call his "birth" that he had ever been allowed to roam the Order freely-the first time he'd ever been outside the lower floors he and Alma were confined to without red cloaks chasing after him, and the first time with a present mind.

It was also the first time that he was learning to call himself Kanda. He had never had a family name, since that required a family to have, but in this country that was what people were called by, and he preferred it that way-to be called anything but Yuu, anything but the name Alma had called him by. No one else, he had decided, would ever call him by that name so easily again. He would be Kanda now, and Alma would be Alma and that would be that.

Zhu had picked the name for him, kneeling down to him on his creaking knees instead of making him sit to listen like one of the scientists would have. Kanda allowed him to because Zhu never demanded his complacence, but always came to his level instead. This way, Zhu had told him in quiet tones of the name and the shrine it came from, and of the rice paddies in the country of the rising sun, and that was his name.

There were a lot of things like that, he had found, things that had been and now were. It was one of the reasons Kanda liked to spend his time at the Guardian's door-the vast heights of the ceiling and the pillars twisting up into it had a feeling of "always".

The door itself stretched up in squares of aged stone tile, each bigger than his hand, that were warm to the touch and pulsed with the Guardian's power. They were set in arches of dull yellow and orange and pinkish red that reminded him of a day breaking, of the sun breaching the dark horizon. Kanda had never seen a dawn before with these eyes, but once another man had. Though he didn't know what awaited him in a new day, he found something restless and awake stretching its wings in his soul, and he knew.

He was ready to see it.

He was ready to be free.

For weeks, the throat-scouring odor of heavy bleach had been wafting up to Komui's workspace, reminding him of the dead. To most of the other scientists around him, discomfort came from thinking of their co-workers' scattered remains being scrubbed away, but Komui's was a different anguish: impatience.

He felt the tragedy just as keenly as the others, and perhaps more solemnly-he had always had that sense, a sense of impact that might have come from his ability to project and theorize-but more keenly than that he felt a tireless anxiety to get to the future as fast as he could. The death of the Director was a tragedy, yes, but it was also an inconvenience, even if he felt wretchedly guilty for thinking it.

These weeks of mourning had changed his life kaleidoscopically-nothing had changed, yet everything was different. Bak Chan still passed by his overflowing square of desk space every day, but could no longer be lured into spitfire wit-to-wit debate over the merits of science against magic, on either side. The heads of the Chan clan were still mysterious, unreachable figures who vanished with their special team of hand-picked researchers down to the experiments they said were on the properties of Innocence, but now they would never reemerge. Sometimes, when the bleach fumes became dizzying, Komui would wonder bleakly about what had been dangerous enough about a green crystal he could fit in his pocket that it could go so wrong.

But for Komui, the hope was stronger than the loss, because there was a transfer order with his name on it in neat European letters, just waiting to be approved-by a new Director or by God, whichever could get him to Britain faster. And there, somewhere, he had a sister, a small one, with soft white hands that reached up to brush like dove wings over his face.

He had an Exorcist for a sister, a sister he hadn't seen in years, who he hadn't even stood in the same country as since she'd been taken to European Headquarters. That was where all Exorcists went, all the men and women and children in the world who could withstand the power of the thing they called "Innocence", that very same volatile beast that was supposed to be responsible for the deaths of the late researchers. By contrast, there were only a select few Asian scientists who ever went there, and only the very best were transferred up to work directly with the Exorcists.

Komui had made sure he was better than the best. Edgar Chan had known it well. In fact, Komui was sure that he had even signed the transfer form. Edgar, however, was dead, and of all the many reasons Komui had to wish the man was still alive, that letter not being sent was the one that kept him up at night the longest. He had never been so close to his goal. He had never allowed himself to look back at the unfathomable depths of effort and determination he had poured into his pursuit, but now that he stood on the precipice of either success or failure, he found himself overwhelmed by the distance he'd come.

All of this, he would think to himself in a daze of chemical smells and overwork, all of this and it might be wasted because of postage.

But he kept his faith, and he couldn't have killed that rebellious hope if he'd tried.

Komui was waiting, just like his Lenalee, to be told he was released. And, like her, he was ready to fly.

Welcome to Headcanon: The Novel.
Fair warning, this story couldn't include more spoilers if I tried. Ignore the timeline nonsense, too, i'm pretty sure it's not accurate to canon, though feel free to correct me if it becomes to egregious. In any case, enjoy kid Exorcists, badass Tiedoll, and authentic D. Gray-Man depression. I'm not quite sure where this story is going, though I have pages and pages of content to post, so make suggestions if you've got 'em. Allen and Cross later.
Thanks for reading, and I hope to see you in later chapters. Cheers!
(By the way, the plant balsamine is also known as "impatiens", and in Flower Language communicates "impatience".)