A/N: This is 10000% based off Yassen and Colette on Malagosto from Russian Roulette by Anthony Horowitz (if you've read the book you will see many similar lines, particularly from Chapter 14: The Island), but I totally took liberties in the name of Rivetra.
The moment he accepts Erwin Smith's offer, he is taken out of the office, down the stark hallway, through a set of glass doors, and into a waiting car that sends him deep into the heart of the compound.
The base is huge, the road they travel on winding through endless rows of buildings ranging from chiseled stone to glass and steel. Through the tinted windows, Levi sees large grassy fields with railings and bars snaking through like death traps, empty gray parking lots lined with targets on all sides, a clear lake sparkling blue and gold under the rays of the setting sun, and yet more buildings, tall and cold and faceless.
Eventually the driver slows down; they are on what must be the outskirts of the compound, a small enclosure of red brick houses fenced in near the woods beyond. Someone is standing by the side of the road, waiting, and the car drives off after Levi steps out.
It's a boy—no, he realizes upon closer inspection, it's a girl, maybe a year or two younger than him and about his height, with short copper hair cropped close to her chin and large golden-brown eyes. She's wearing a long, loose jacket and jeans, but under the shapeless outerwear he can see a hint of curves.
"I'm Petra," she says as they size each other up. There is no makeup on her face, no jewelry adorning her skin, but her features are clear and soft and she is, he thinks, quite pretty.
"Levi."
"You'll be staying here during your training." She starts walking down the path towards the brick houses and he follows; the slap of his shoes hitting the pavement is loud compared to the silence of hers. "Did you bring any luggage?"
"No." He left all his belongings with his old life in Kenny Ackerman's house.
"Well, we can stop here last then," she says, turning back around abruptly. There is suddenly a smile on her face, a warm expression that melts away the cool apathy of her features. "I'll show you around the places we're allowed."
There is a new spring in her step as she heads back down the road, not waiting for him to follow. It is not a short walk back towards the closest row of public buildings he passed, but she talks the whole time, explaining their daily schedule and how to navigate the twisting paths of the compound. When they finally reach a main road, she starts pointing at various structures and explaining what they are for, not giving him a chance to speak.
Almost as if she doesn't notice, she slips seamlessly from English to German to French and then back again. She must have heard the French accent in his English, but her own is tinted with German so he concludes she is from this country. "Are you a teacher?" he asks when she pauses for breath.
"No, I'm a student, just like you." Petra leads him up a wide staircase and through heavy wooden double doors into a large open hall, staircases winding up on both sides, the ceilings high above dotted with circular windows that let in the sunlight. "We take academic classes on the second floor here. We all have classes in the same rooms though we're all on different skill levels for math, science, and everything else—but there are only two other students, so the teachers have time."
She talks like that for the next few hours, taking him place to place, showing him different buildings and parks and arenas, rows of offices they're not supposed to enter, the shooting grounds where the students and guards alike practice accuracy, the library and the infirmary and the side of the compound used for actual factory production like the government believes.
Levi does not say much, only nodding in response when she glances at him and offering brief answers to her few inquiries, but at the end of the tour, when they are back in front of the circle of small houses and she points him to his own, he cannot help saying, "Why are you here?"
Petra blinks. "What do you mean?"
He has no words to explain: she looks just like any other girl he's seen in the streets of Berlin or Paris or London, bright and lively as she introduces him to his new school, but she is a student here, just like him. That means she is training to become an assassin like him as well, but there is nothing about the small cheerful girl that makes him think killer.
She must read his thoughts in his face, because she shakes her head, her lips twitching in amusement. "You think because I'm a girl and I'm friendly, I can't kill? You have a lot to learn, Levi."
She leaves him standing before his new home, staring at the security cameras positioned by the door and wondering what he's gotten himself into.
.
.
.
A lot of pain, it turns out.
His body is sore and aching by the end of the first day, but he drags himself up before dawn the next to run laps around the lake with the other three students. Besides Petra, there are two tall boys, a blond named Erd who speaks English with an Australian accent, and another with dark hair who never speaks, but Petra tells him Gunter is Brazilian.
After the sun is up, when he feels like his lungs are going to burst and his legs have turned to jelly, he dives into the lake with the other three to swim for another half hour. It is the required time, but Levi stays for nearly an hour with the others until they begin to leave, and only then does he let himself drop onto the bank, soaking wet and limbs trembling with exhaustion and cold.
"You'll get used to it," Petra says, slinging him a towel. Her eyes trace his bare chest for a moment, but she does not comment on his scars. "Come on, let's go eat."
All three meals are served in the cafeteria on the top floor of the academic building; there are gymnasiums and swimming pools and large air-conditioned theaters and classrooms on the lower floors. The food is always excellent, fresh and well prepared, and different cuisines are served every meal, but to Levi, everything tastes like ash.
The morning consists of classes: math, science, history, and more languages than he can care to count. He was lucky to know English, French, and German already before coming, but now he must learn how to speak each like a native. There is also Arabic, Russian, Chinese, and Italian to become fluent in, and thanks to the Legion's increased activity within the yakuza, Japanese. Then there is a slew of other languages he should at least know his basic phrases in, though he has never seen terms like "political prisoner" and "assault rifle" in phrasebooks for tourists before.
The afternoon is when his battered body must take yet another beating: hand-to-hand combat and self-defense. The instructor is a tall sandy-haired man with a scruffy goatee and a pleasant expression, but he knocks Levi to the ground and holds his neck in a near-snapping position within the first five minutes of a demonstration.
The first week is the hardest, but after that things go more smoothly, despite the constant changes to the schedule. Classes are added, etiquette and art and music, then switched to the afternoon, then night. Weapons become an essential part of training; Levi knows his guns and knives, has helped Kenny clean them far too many times, but he is forced to relearn them until they are as familiar to him as his own two hands, to get comfortable with bombs and poisons, but above all, he has to know the human body.
"There are hundreds of ways to kill someone with only your fingers, and you don't have to choke them to do it," Hanji Zoe often says, and after another week, Levi fully believes it.
Zoe loves gadgets too and teaches them safety precautions, how to detect bugs and scanners, how to create makeshift weapons themselves from ordinary household objects. He learns enough to walk back into the house they've given him—it is well equipped with plenty of furniture, air-conditioning, and all manners of electronics to keep him occupied in his spare time—and look around, and see dozens of different ways to die beyond stabbing himself with a kitchen knife.
Zacharius, the instructor overseeing hand-to-hand combat, often calls in guests to give lectures and demonstrations: masters of judo, karate, taekwondo, ninjutsu, and other various forms of martial arts. He himself has only one motto: "Fight dirty," he says, "because your lives will be at stake."
Besides these lessons, which Levi expected, are others he did not: one teacher who only introduces herself as Nanaba and tells them all to call her "ma'am" begins class by telling them to introduce themselves. It is one of the few times Gunter speaks, his English impeccable, and one by one the students murmur their names and countries of origin. When they are done, Nanaba spends twenty minutes correcting everything about their words, from their manners of speech to their diction.
They spend the rest of the class poring over newspapers and popular magazines, and as they file out of the classroom, she requires them to keep up with the periodicals. The next class, she takes them out of the compound and to the Ku'damm, the Mitte district, and the Berlin Wall, and only on the way back does Levi understand what she is doing.
"Took you long enough." Petra turns from staring out the windows of the car to flash him a grin. The ride back into the countryside is not a short one, and Levi finds the passing blurs of green and blue outside dull. Petra claimed the window seat and he is the second shortest, so he sits between her and Gunter, who is reading a book on interrogation techniques. Erd lounges in the passenger seat, his Australian drawl a constant hum as he chats with the driver.
"I didn't say anything," Levi says.
"You need to train your intuition." Petra taps him on the thigh and he tries not to flinch at the contact. "But for someone who Nanaba says has no manners, you're quick."
He only wanted to get away from Kenny. He thought he'd systematize his knowledge and acquire more, but he hadn't thought until now that being an assassin meant anything other than lying in wait on roofs, in houses, with a sniper rifle in his hand and an escape plan in his mind. He hadn't considered he might need to socialize with strangers, attend charity auctions or dine in fancy restaurants, make small talk—all in order to pinpoint the target better.
"How long have you been doing this?" he asks.
The look Petra gives him is innocent. "It isn't polite to ask personal questions of a near-stranger, sir."
He scowls and she winks before turning back towards the window—but she presses two fingers against his palm and traces a letter across his skin.
Two years. He glances at the other occupants of the car and remains silent.
Two years. He wonders why she doesn't want the others to know. He wonders why she's telling him, and what she'll want in return.
(Nothing is given freely—another valuable lesson.)
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.
.
On their days off, they are encouraged to go out—life in the compound gets stale, and if they are to be killing people in the real world, they may as well immerse themselves in it, get acquainted with their future battlefield.
Erd and Gunter always go off together, so Levi usually ends up with Petra. She calls a company car for them, then spends the ride either playing strategy games on her phone or sleeping on his shoulder, and he doesn't know why the latter makes him feel incredibly antsy, his skin uncomfortably hot. From the sly looks she sometimes shoots him, he has a feeling she knows too, and that's exactly why she does it.
She drags him around the city of Berlin, a place she claims to be as familiar with as the grounds of the academy now; she pulls him on and off the U-Bahn as they visit markets, memorials, museums—he particularly likes the interactive DDR Museum and its portrayal of life in East Berlin. She buys them currywurst and they eat it outside the Reichstag; he doesn't enjoy food but there is something he likes about the sliced spiced sausage on a bread roll (he tells himself it isn't because she handed it to him).
They visit the Schloss Charlottenburg and point out flaws in the security of the palace and its surrounding gardens in quiet Arabic; they discuss the architecture of the Olympiastadion in halting Japanese. Classical music is part of their curriculum and it's never interested Levi much, but when they watch the Berlin Philharmoniker he has to admit there is something ethereal, almost transcendent about the performance, the delicate notes floating through the concert hall long after the orchestra has stopped playing.
It is a city he soon becomes familiar with too, creating maps in his mind of all the streets and places they visit each time. Petra loves art, has been to the galleries of the Kulturforum multiple times, and once she spends an entire afternoon in the Bauhas Archiv, admiring the prints, sculptures, photographs, sketches, and other works on display.
"I would've liked to attend this school," she says quietly, fingers reaching out as if to brush the glass on one ceramic display. She withdraws her hand and when she turns to him, he catches something wistful in her gaze before she blinks and the cheerful expression returns.
"So why aren't you at some art school right now?" he wants to know. "Why are you here instead?"
"You ask too many questions," she says, and tugs on his arm. "Let's go to the zoo or something."
Levi does not want to go to the zoo, not even to see endangered species—honestly, he only cares about the human one—but she insists, and after a few hours there, he decides he likes the sharks. He imagines Kenny in one's jaws for a moment before shaking his head—one thing he has to do, Erwin Smith told him, is forget that his past life existed at all. He's still working on that.
One time they rent bikes and pedal their way around the city, weaving through traffic and dodging cars. Petra leads him on a personal tour of several underground bunkers from World War II, none of them open to the public, and afterwards she pushes him into a Photoautomaten and makes him pose with her for four black-and-white shots.
"What the fuck are these for?" he asks when she stuffs two in her wallet and hands him another two.
"We're pretending to be tourists right now," she says. "Tourists do this. Besides, I like photography."
That's true enough; she is always pausing to snap pictures on her phone of the most random things: a violent slash of graffiti, a particular pattern of leaves, an iron curlicue adorning a fence. She likes little things like that, details, and he wonders at all the things he knows about her and all the things he does not.
Later that night he tucks the pictures under his mattress and lies down, but sleep does not come easily. His mind is buzzing with questions. He doesn't really understand Petra—she is always friendly but distant when they are in the academy, but on days out, if he didn't know any better, if he hadn't watched her ruthlessly shove her foot in Erd's throat while fighting or describe in a perfectly blasé tone of voice sixteen specific torture methods used effectively over the centuries, he would think she is just another university-age girl—and he thinks if he weren't who he is, if this had not been the life he chose, he would probably like her.
He is training to be an assassin, and one thing he must learn to do is hide his emotions, preferably stamp them out. He shoves his pillow over his face and lists the names of recently deceased prominent politicians from around the world until he falls asleep.
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.
.
Weeks pass, then months. His bruises fade and his muscles firm up; he manages to get the upper hand despite his size when fighting Mike once, then twice, then another time. His English teacher tells him he can imitate British, American, and Australian accents perfectly now, and though he still often finds certain curses leaving his lips, he manages to give an entire talk on the seven-course meal and the proper usage for all the cutlery to be found at one—in Russian. His Russian teacher tells him his accent and usage of cases were exemplary afterwards.
He can run one hour around the lake, then swim another hour in it without feeling tired anymore. He could probably build a bomb out of materials found in a standard kitchen in his sleep; he can detect hundreds of poisons by odor, color, texture; he can correctly identify the composers and creators of thousands of pieces of classical music and paintings and sculptures ranging from the times of ancient Greece to the twenty-first century.
They are given free time to themselves in the evenings, but they are expected to use it productively: he reads thick tomes he would rather burn, teaches himself to be ambidextrous and how to read lips, fiddles with locks and handcuffs and ropes until he can get himself out of almost any binding. There are often guest speakers who come to show them skills that will be useful in their profession, and he usually practices what they teach every so often. One memorable guest speaker, an old blind Irish man, talks about disguises for nearly an hour before revealing he is actually a young Egyptian woman who has no problems with her eyesight.
Every month they meet with a psychiatrist, someone meant to analyze their progress and their feelings on their education, someone who will decide when they are ready to enter the field. Levi never says much to the man; despite how irrational he knows such a feeling is, he is still unsettled by Dr. Jaeger's presence. Even when he says nothing, when the man stares at him through his spectacles, Levi feels like all his thoughts are being laid out for perusal.
"You're the best, you know," Petra says one day during dinner. The cafeteria is serving Indian food, and he pushes his basmati rice around his plate, not really hungry.
"What?"
"You heard me." There is no jealousy in her tone; she states it like a fact. "You've been here the shortest time but already you're just as good as, if not better, than all of us. You're linguistically gifted, a superb fighter, and a terrific marksman. I've heard the teachers talking; Smith's going to give out assignments soon, and I think you'll get one too."
What little hunger Levi may have felt quickly disappears. Training in the academy goes on for as long as it needs to—when the teachers deem him capable and the psychiatrist deems him mentally prepared, then he will be given his first assignment. A job, an assassination. If it is successful, he will sign a five-year contract with the Legion. The cost of his training will be deducted from his salary, and he's free to do whatever he likes with the money, as long as he doesn't sell himself or any information he may have to other agencies, legal ones or not.
"You think I'm ready?"
"I know you're ready."
Petra's smile is meant to be encouraging, but it only causes something to flip in his chest. He instantly knows what it is and pushes it down, willing himself to ignore it—how can he be an emotionless killer when a girl's smile can disarm him so easily?
"Have you thought about actually doing it?" he asks, searching for a subject change, but as soon as the words leave his mouth he realizes it is not the best topic.
"Doing what?"
He falls silent, but she seems to understand. Her gaze darts to Erd and Gunter at the end of the table, then the woman overseeing the food near the racks of silverware, then back at him. She leans forward and picks up her cup of mango lassi, taking a sip.
"Talk to Dr. Jaeger about that," she murmurs.
It's distracting, the way her lips move against the straw, so he keeps his eyes on her face. "I'd rather not talk to him."
"Are you going to drink that?" She points at his own cup.
"Take it."
As she reaches across the table for the drink, her other hand finds his under the table. Why would I? she asks with English sign language.
This from the girl who so sweetly helped an old woman cross the street just last week in Berlin—Levi can't fathom it. I do.
You shouldn't. You're not supposed to think about it, just do it when the time comes, that's all. Her fingers tighten against his briefly, as if in warning, but he does not heed it.
You've seen the people in the city. You really wouldn't mind killing any of them?
She makes a face as she drains the cup and sets it down on the table. It's just a job. Who cares?
They might not have done anything bad. They might have family. Kids.
If that bothers you, you shouldn't be here at all.
She withdraws her hand then and picks up her napkin to wipe her mouth. Levi stares down at his nearly untouched plate of food and wonders if she really doesn't care, if he actually does care. He's killed before, in self-defense or on Kenny's orders, but there is something vastly different about sliding a knife into the gut of a person bent on attacking him or ending the misery of some poor unfortunate being who caught Kenny's attention, and lying in wait for a stranger so he can be ten thousand euros richer the next day. He did not think there was a difference when he agreed, but now that he is so close to actually doing it, he can feel the chasm between the two actions, and it shouldn't bother him but it does.
"Why did you ask me?" she says later that night, outside his doorway. She's changed into a pair of pajamas and a tank top, and the moonlight highlights the freckles on her bare shoulders. "If you asked anyone else they would've reported you to Dr. Jaeger. You should talk to him about that anyway."
He does not respond. She studies him for a moment and a shadow of a smile crosses her face.
"Because we're friends, right?"
"We're not friends."
"You're right. We're not. Assassins don't have friends." But she turns, looks at the security camera facing the doorway for a long moment, then turns back and pecks him on the cheek. "Good night, Levi."
He shuts the door so the camera does not capture the image of him standing there, motionless, for the next half hour.
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.
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When all four students pass the toughest obstacle course the instructors create for them with flying colors (literally; Petra is a blur of orange hair and bright blue clothing), Smith meets with them individually to hand out their assignments.
"You haven't been called to his office yet?" Petra looks genuinely surprised. They sit in the library, poring over blueprints and security details, devising as many ways as they can to get into some of the most notoriously guarded establishments in the world.
"No."
"You'll probably be called soon. Gunter and Erd have already left. I'm leaving tomorrow."
Tomorrow. The word is a slap of reality. But that's the nature of the occupation he signed up for: he must be prepared at all times for anything.
"Good luck," he says, and immediately wants to hit himself for saying it afterwards. After all, it's been drilled into them plenty of times already—
"I don't need luck, and if I do, it's because I didn't plan carefully enough," Petra says like she's reciting from a textbook, then rolls her eyes. "Or however Zoe and Zacharius like to word it. But thanks."
They return to studying their blueprints, but Levi finds he can't concentrate properly. He wants to ask about her assignment, where she's going, whom she'll kill, when she'll be back, but he knows that's not something they're ever supposed to discuss, not with each other. She probably doesn't even know herself. He grasps for a different thing to think about and ends up remembering the feeling of her warm lips pressed to his cheek, and he wonders how strange it'll seem if he suddenly sets his papers aside to meditate for a moment, to clear his mind and get his thoughts back on track.
"What time are you leaving tomorrow?" he finally asks.
"The Bank of England's vaults aren't interesting enough for you?" she says, but she drops her pencil and regards him with a faint smile. "I'll be gone when you wake up."
"You don't know what time I sleep."
"We're not allowed to roam the grounds in the middle of the night anyway."
After midnight then. Suddenly there is something oddly final about this moment—the next time he sees her, she will be working for the Legion, and he will still be an assassin-in-training. He eyes her for a moment, then stands to gather his books and papers.
"Good night," he says, remembering his courtesies, but before he can step out of the little alcove they are situated in she stands too, and puts a hand on his arm.
"Levi—"
There are no cameras in the library, only at the entrance. There is no librarian, only a caretaker who sweeps the floors once every two days and misplaces fallen books if there are any; there never are. The students of the Legion's academy clean up after themselves.
So no one but the shelves and the books see when all the reason and indifference he's been cultivating in the past half year fly out of his mind, and he kisses her.
Instantly her hands are on the back of his neck, in his hair, and he hears the thud of his books falling to the floor when he drops them to pull her closer. She winds her arms around his shoulders and tilts her head, slanting her mouth at a better angle across his, and when he bites softly on her lower lip, she drags her tongue across the ridge of his teeth.
He isn't thinking, he isn't using the logical, dispassionate brain he's been developing; he's only feeling instead: the warmth of her skin through her shirt, the sweetness of her lips, the pounding of her heart against his and the pulse of blood rushing through his veins and the sensation that his nerve endings are being set on fire.
That's what finally causes him to step back and extricate himself from her grip as much as he has to relinquish his hold on her: his brain feels dazed, dizzy, his skin hot and prickly, and he's watched enough popular movies in culture training to know exactly what will happen next if neither of them stop themselves.
"You should sleep," he says, looking at her swollen lips, her flushed skin, her mussed-up hair, and something tightens in his gut, but he knows this is for the best. "You have to leave early tomorrow."
"Yeah." She blinks at him, then smiles, then starts to smirk. "I'll see you soon, Levi. I've shown you Berlin—you should show me something too."
For all that he's been trained to hide his emotions, he can't help blushing at that, and that night before he goes to sleep, he allows himself one minute to indulge in thoughts unrelated to his education—that of assassination, anyway.
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.
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Five days and seven hours after Petra left on her assignment, Erwin Smith calls Levi to his office.
Once again he is driven back through the compound, though he could run all the way there himself now. The obstacle and assault courses they pass are commonplace, the sight of the shooting ranges almost comforting, and now that he has been trained to do so, he can pick out memories of his last time in this building and know which routes he will be taken down before anyone actually points him there.
He knocks on Smith's door, and after a pause, a voice calls, "Enter."
Smith sits behind a giant desk, folders piled neatly on one side, a computer on the other. Behind him, the curtains are open, letting early morning sunlight illuminate the dust motes in the air. Levi closes the door and waits to be told to sit.
When Smith gestures at the chair opposite him, Levi sits. His posture is straight, his face blank, and he can feel the older man studying him through calculating blue eyes.
"You've done very well in six months," Smith says. His tone is genial, the voice of a principal congratulating a student, but Levi is not fooled. "You are naturally talented in hand-to-hand combat and marksmanship. Your instructors are very impressed with you: Mike Zacharius is confident in your abilities and Hanji Zoe speaks highly of your innovative mind. You can speak three languages like a native, and another five well enough."
Levi says nothing. There is no need to say thank you; gratitude should not be shown unless something can be gained from it—yet another lesson.
"They believe you are ready."
When Levi still does not speak, Smith picks one file from the stack on his desk and slides it towards him. "We will see if you can apply what you have learned to an assignment."
Levi takes the file but does not open it. It feels heavy in his hands, one part of it bulging more than others, and he surmises there is a passport inside with his name or another's on it, and perhaps bank statements or cash, maybe a plain ticket and a few details as well.
"You are flying economy class to Tokyo. You will be provided a name and a weapon when you arrive," Smith says, steepling his fingers together as he speaks. "When you return, report to me immediately. Do you have any questions?"
Of course Levi does. He wants to know whom he has to kill. He wants to know what the target did to anger someone, how much that someone paid the Legion to have the target eliminated. He wants to know so many things he couldn't possibly think of them all, but he does not ask any of them. Every minute he breathes within this compound he is being evaluated, but never has he felt it so acutely than under Erwin Smith's watchful gaze, and he is determined not to show any weakness.
"No."
"You may leave," Smith says, and Levi stands and walks to the door.
His hand is on the doorknob when Smith says, "You are fond of Miss Ral, are you not?"
Miss Ral. That must be Petra. For all he has known about her, he has never learned her last name, or where she came from, or why she was here in the first place. "We spent some time together," he says neutrally.
"I thought you would," Smith says.
Levi knows what the older man wants him to ask. So he asks. "How is she?"
"She's dead." Smith restacks the files on his desk, carefully aligning corners until each is as sharp as the edge of his desk. "Her assignment did not go well. It was not entirely her fault, but the target is still alive and she was struck down by a German police car."
Germany, Levi thinks. Her first assignment was in this very country.
And that's when he knows exactly what he has been turned into, exactly what he is to become. He knows exactly what he is meant to be.
He does not say anything else to Smith; if he feels anything, he does not show it. He nods once, impassively, and leaves the room, shutting the door behind him with a quiet click.
On the ride back across the compound, he peruses the file he was given. He is now Levi Streicher, a German university student, linguistics major, traveling to Japan to immerse himself in its language and culture for one week before his studies demand him back. He has access to a hundred thousand euros and some twelve million yen in a Swiss bank account, and a fraction of that amount in cash. He will be sitting in seat 34A on his way to the Tokyo-Narita airport, and seat 26C on the way back.
He does very well during classes that day; he is the only student. At night, after he showers, he lies in bed, reviewing Japanese verb conjugations in his mind. At one point his mind snags on something simple and he finds himself reaching under his mattress.
The pictures are slightly crinkled and he cannot see the color of her hair, but even though the images are in black-and white, they manage to capture the spark in her eyes, the brightness of her smile. He only looks bored, slightly uncomfortable.
He allows himself to stare at the pictures for one moment longer, and then he crumples them in his hand and tosses them into the trashcan by his bed. He turns out the light, rolls over, and goes to sleep trying to remember the Japanese word for "forget."