She went up to the eleventh floor of the apartment building, swiping her card against the keypad to enter her private elevator. Sakura Enterprises. Her family, being one of the richest and most influential through Tokyo, had converted Gakuen Alice into the tall, sleek and pristine building with glass windows. From the outside, the tall building was just made up of a tutoring centre, a gym and several offices on the top floors which were controlling the stock-market.

She wasn't stupid either. She knew the entire building was a cover-up for the Academy. Every single person who worked in the building was an alice. She no longer was the dense, innocent childlike girl she once was. At the age of thirteen, she was exposed to the dangerous world outside the safety of the Academy.

Missions and trainings had led her to who she was today – no longer the simple-minded child but one of the highest ranked assassins in the country.

The set-up of the entire building made sense. The bottom three floors – disguised as a gym to the public eye - was run by Mochu, Sumire and Kitsu. They focused on the physical aspects of training and utilized different weapons made by Hotaru in order to train their students.

The next four floors were dedicated to both emotional and mental strength – including alice training and a school for the students to gain their normal education. These were run by Koko, Yuu and other teachers of Gakuen Alice.

The floors just below her office was owned by her best friend, Hotaru Imai. The eighth to tenth floors of the buildings consisted of her experimental designs and inventions. Ranging from human experiments to testing on animals (only harmless experiments on the animals approved by her boyfriend Ruka Nogi) to the countless of inventions built to increase the effectiveness of the missions.

The floor above her office, the twelfth floor, was her loft. Having reign over what happens within the office meant she could easily convert the top floor into her apartment. This made it simpler for her to switch between her missions and her cover-up day job of a CEO. Her job was to watch over the alices on other floors, assign missions and to make enough money to live outside the measly allowances the school used to give them.

A black, thin folder greeted her on her office desk. She tucked a strand of hair behind her left ear, revealing her four piercings, each containing an alice-prevention device. She didn't want to accidentally blow up the entire building she had worked so hard to build and create. Her long and straightened hair descended down her back in cascades, a change from the ponytails she constantly wore when she was young. She scanned the contents of the folder before reaching for her favourite knife. She had work to do.

Her mission had gone relatively easily, a simple one to infiltrate an enemy base and copy over several key files before corrupting the program. She grunted as she stretched, feeling the bones of her back crackle. She activated her healing alice on the small cut above her eyebrow before internally screaming at herself for being so careless. While it was a tiny cut that felt like barely a scratch, her carelessness could have costed her so much more. She had so much more to learn and needed to remain focused as her mind replayed all the events of the night. At the same time, she knew that she was her harshest critic but who could blame her.

She wandered through the streets of Tokyo, looking for a shop still open where she could get herself some coffee. She desperately needed some caffeine in her system if she was to work a full shift tomorrow collating statistics and regulating the stock-market.

Her Ducati pulled into parking lot outside the nearest convenience store as she waited to buy her ice coffee and a box of fluff puffs, because she might be grown-up but her taste buds never age. As she patiently waited behind the tall blonde woman in front of him conversing with the lady behind the counter while waiting for her coffee to be made, she heard it.

'Do you think the red-eyed boy will be back tonight? He was so good the other night you should try him out too!'

'The tattoo on his back is actually so hot!'

Red-eyed boy.

Tattoo on his back.

There were probably plenty of people in the world with red-eyes. It probably meant nothing. And yet, her mind was buzzing louder than ever. The pain from the cut underneath her eyebrow disappeared.

She watched as the blonde woman picked up her coffee and left the store. She eyed her attire, a plain black crop top with a mini skirt and fishnets underneath. The gold lace of her black boots glistened under the moonlight as Mikan rolled her eyes.

Okay she's one of those.

A cough brought her attention back to the present as she eyed the lady behind the counter. Mikan placed her order of a flat white and a medium-sized box of fluff puffs before awkwardly continuing, 'Hey! Sorry for eavesdropping, but I heard you mentioning a red-eyed boy? Do you have his name? I think we might have been friends at some point.'

The lady behind the counter narrowed her eyes before giving her a cold glare, 'I don't care if you guys used to be friends or not but what's between you and him is none of my business. I only talk about him with people I actually consider friends and I don't intend on discussing my sex life with a stranger so you can piss off.' A small cup of ice coffee is shoved into her hands and she is ushered out of the store.

Mikan sighed to herself. She had tried to forget about him ever since the Academy had declared him dead. He had meant so much to her and all of a sudden, he was gone and had never returned. Everything she did, her training and perfecting of her alices, was to find him again until her hopes were dashed by a cat mask being returned to the Academy followed by a funeral a week later.

Not that she had mentioned it, there was no evidence of a body brought back to the Academy. She had just turned fourteen and didn't question the Academy.

Was there a possibility he was still alive? She didn't know but a small chance was better than no chance at all. She regretted not using her mind-reading alice on the two ladies in front of her but she knew better than to use her alices on non-alices. The consequences were devastating especially if one of the higher-ups had found out.

If the Academy had lied and he was still alive, where was he now? Why didn't he try to find her? Why didn't he return? She had so many questions she needed answers to and she needed to find him, or at least try.

She didn't want to reach a specific conclusion but everything the ladies had said led her to believe she was right, despite how much she hated the prospect of it.

'He was so good the other night.'

'You should try him out too.'

'The tattoo on his back'

'My sex life.'

The way the ladies casually referred to him as some play-thing angered her and she felt sick to her stomach. The idea devastated her beyond anything else. She knew he had good looks but she had always imagined him having a successful future – maybe as a businessman, or a model or even a doctor. His ingenuity and cleverness would have aided him greatly. Regardless of whatever job he had, she had always imagined their future together.

The image entered her mind of the thirteen-year-old boy when she had last seen him. He had been consumed by darkness due to the Academy but his façade was cracking in a few places. He was no longer brutally cold and distant. She was one of the rare ones who he had let in to see who he was. His crimson-eyes were dark as ever and yet seemed to lighten up every time he had set his eyes on her. He had a strong desire to protect everyone around him, especially her – but she saw beyond that. She knew that the protector had to be protected too.

She needed to find him as soon as possible if he was alive. She had a vague idea where to start looking based on the clues she was given.

The tiny boy with crimson eyes that widened every time he saw her, selling himself? It sounded impossible and yet her mind screamed differently. Her Natsume Hyuuga – a prostitute.

Rated M to be safe!

Edit: I changed the M rating to a T for now since there technically isn't any overly explicit content. This might change in the future but for now a T rating is sufficient. There might be more mature themes but nothing really M rated.

My first story so please read and review! (and be nice and give constructive criticism to help me improve my writing!)

~ K