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Chapter One
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They said reincarnation, a new life, was a gift given only to those who deserved it.
It became clear in the aftermath of her death that was not the case; she was a horrible person, no matter how one looked at it, and she didn't deserve second chances. She didn't die from illness or murder born from spite or by accident; she died from an assassination. A hit placed on her head from the top of the food chain—no innocent person ever died from a target assassination, a hit man was an option, yes, but not an assassin.
Only the best of the best, or the most dangerous of the dangerous deserved the attention of a professional assassin. A ruthless but controlled killer with abilities honed sharper than the knives they killed with would only kill those who sat high in the hierarchy of the world and it was only those people who had hits placed on them for the best. And back then, she adhered to the victim profile like a textbook; a genius using their intelligence for illegal means and on their way to the top, they made too enemies to count.
But she differed from the other underworld heads in a way. She wanted to die, always dreamed of death taking her into his gentle arms, and she never wanted to become the person she was. She never wanted to become the monster she used to be.
She was a wraith in the night, a thief in the day, and rich through the most unethical means—although, her status became admirable under a certain light, rags to riches by the age of twenty-one was not an easy feat. White collar crimes to a degree when she turn sixteen, always challenging her intelligence, but she didn't mind getting her hands dirty. It was how she started out; bloody hands, and a stone heart, even if the stains followed her into her dreams.
And the stark crimson hue followed her to the next life; it stained her palms the moment she was reborn.
Her mother died in childbirth, too weak to even carry through to the end, and her father abandoned her in an orphanage, too heartsick to raise the perceived killer of his wife. She understood his grief to a degree, even criminals had a heart under it all, but she never understood falling in love; too much to do, too much to lose. But he gave her a name; some form of love for his flesh and blood, his wife's last legacy.
Matsumoto Sana; born in Tokyo, Japan on June 17th, 2001 at 9pm and a newly abandoned orphan.
A plain name—but it suited her, or at least, the criminal reborn in her. Movies depicted them as gorgeous women and men; slithering in the crevices of cold beds and lonely hearts with poison running through their veins and seeping from their fingertips. In some cases, it rang true—seduction mattered at times and the ability to enchant the target came in handy when taking the direct approach but it wasn't the most effective. The real professionals with hit counts in the thousands—unknown faces with hundreds of aliases, the wraiths of the night—wore their average exteriors like a shield and a weapon all at once. Their plainness, their invisible existences, gave them the ability to melt into the crowd, to approach their targets without an ounce of hesitation—and the target would never know until the moment they died. Average, used as an insult, was their advantage; a complete and total deception, a hidden blade to replace the first used to strike.
Matsumoto Sana, or rather, the girl before her, was the latter.
And hopefully, in her new life, the choice was neither.
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In the wake of discovering her rebirth, or rather, realizing it, she examined her situation.
She was still on Earth—humans surrounded her, tried to take care of her, and like always, they forgot about her until she needed them.
In the dark of the night, even as a child, Sana took advantage of her previous life's extensive knowledge as much as she could.
An assassin working on an international scale needed more than one language on their belt. If they wish to blend into the crowd, and luckily, the previous her mastered four languages—English, French, Mandarin, and Korean—with a working foundation of three others. Unfortunately, she didn't master Japanese, but a working foundation for a three year old was better than nothing. She could expand her knowledge in math and physics and sciences, and when the time came, she would hone her physical abilities once more.
All she needed was to hustle like she starved, and she knew what it was like to starve. Hard work was all that she needed to achieve her goals—it was the only way she dominated the criminal world. Genius and hard work became unanimous under the roof of success—although, people didn't like to acknowledge it, especially when they perceived themselves as born blessed or talented.
A damper on her future person education and growth into a new person, a new world, was the orphanage. The orphanage she lived in wasn't the best compared to what it could be, but not as bad as her previous one, and she could make do with what they gave her, but she would never soar to the heights she wished to reach. The orphanage wasn't supplied well, with a small staff paired with overcrowding, not an ideal situation on both sides. The amount of food and resources given to the orphanage was the base line for survival, not success.
The years passed with ease, boring for her tastes, with the constant training of her mind and conditioning of her body. She wasn't planning on reverting back to her old ways, but if she needed it, assassination was a choice. Invisibility became an advantage in her case as no one ever noticed her doing things out of the ordinary— too smart for a child and flourishing too fast to justify. Sana kept her head down and quiet; not a single person noticed her existence unless she spoke, which was rare, or made herself stand out, which was even more rare. No one could pick up on the fact she had big plans for herself and even bigger plans for the future ahead of her.
When she turned six, she became more bold with her learning and development—the orphanage became too stale, too easy to learn from, too small for what she needed. Japan was a new environment, but soon enough, it would become her terrain, but to get there she needed to leave.
No one noticed the little girl sneaking out in broad daylight to the library or the dark corners of Tokyo—observing the people go by, examining the culture, the way the country worked. She never stayed in Japan long enough to truly understand what the country was like; but she knew how Tokyo bustled and bloomed at dawn and continued to thrive late into the night. And somewhere, Sana wondered, if she could've lived in Tokyo peacefully in her past life. The city suited her busy yet slow life—a constant crowd around her yet she waded through them at the pace of a snail, enjoying the aura.
And while she wasn't going to resort to assassination, just yet, it didn't mean she forgot every other one of her criminal...tendencies. Pick-pocketing, petty theft, scamming, she had it all down pat—and she would never get caught, not when people never noticed her or saw her face long enough. Not a single adult or child in the orphanage noticed the money slowly piling up in the wall hidden by Sana's bed. She saved and stole money everyday for a new life away from the orphanage. No one ever looked at her so she doubted they would rifle through her things and steal her money.
She blended into the background her entire time at the orphanage, and she couldn't ask for anything else.
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Everything crumbled on a Monday morning when she turned seven.
Because she assumed her reincarnation was to the same world she came from, and she should've known; it wasn't that easy.
Sana woke up to an empty room like normal—the caretakers never looked for her sleeping under the wrinkled pillows and blankets in a bed tucked away in the corner. She wanted to say that it didn't bother her but after a lifetime of loneliness, even when self inflicted, while watching other children preen under attention, something in her chest dropped every time someone didn't take the chance to acknowledge her.
Something like disappointment but the feeling was too vague to pinpoint accurately.
She pushed herself out of bed and unraveled a cloth backpack she had tucked it between the metal cage supporting her mattress. Sana peeled away the wallpaper hiding her cash with care and the stacks of ten thousand yen bills sat in the dark. She tossed all of the money into her backpack and secured the opening.
The window, left open by one of the caretakers to 'let in fresh air', was the perfect exit without arousing suspicion; although, she doubted they'd notice her until they did the semi-annual check for all the children in the orphanage. Sana tossed a leg over the window pane and glanced around before leaping out of the window; it wasn't too high, not even two stories, and she rolled on the ground.
Her thin and flexible body took the fall with ease—she stood up within moments and headed straight for the tree towering high over the walls barricading the orphanage away from the rest of society. She climbed the tree and she took her time dropping herself onto the sidewalk just outside of the walls. It wasn't often she did this; only when the caretakers didn't leave the gates to the orphanage open because they forgot—and they forgot more often than not.
The flimsy branch she hung from lowered under her weight until she dangled only two feet above the ground. Sana took a deep breath as she jumped and landed on her feet—the branch flung behind her, whipping back and cracking under the force of her jump. She winced and took off with a flit of her feet—quick and slight as she melded into the crowds of Tokyo. She was out—all she had to do was make it to the red light district and then she could rent out a hostel room for two years. That was the most likely course of action that wouldn't arouse suspicion among people and the red light district never asked questions; a policy among all criminals. If you didn't know, you didn't catch heat, and for all they knew she could be an assassin, they existed even if there was a lack of them, thankfully.
Sana cut through the crowd and crossed the street to cut through to the park; a shortcut to the red light district no one seemed to know about, or rather, didn't want to know about. She grumbled as her long hair caught on a low branch and she winced when she tugged it out; it probably took some hair from her as retribution for being so rough, but she needed to get to the district as fast as she could. The day guaranteed safety if she rented out a room. After all, there was a reason all criminals chose the night as the prime time to commit crimes, there was a lesser chance of being caught in the dead of night when even souls weren't awake.
She was twenty-right, mentally, but her physical body said otherwise and there—
"What the hell?" She yelped as she crashed to the ground, holding her nose. "Ow."
There wasn't a brick wall the last time she scouted the park—and one of her talents was a photographic memory, so yes, she knew that there wasn't one there.
"Sorry," someone apologized stiffly from above.
Sana blinked her watery eyes and she rubbed her nose, checking to see if she broke it on the human brick wall's body, and luckily, she didn't. She didn't need to worry about going to a hospital and renting a room in the red light district all in one day—and she liked her nose in this life, thank you. "It's not a problem," Sana murmured as she shifted to stand up. A giant hand extended in front of her and her gaze trailed up the giant hand to a muscular arm to a stern face which softened when she looked up at him.
A particularly stern face she recognized—piercing eyes, tan skin, spiked black hair and lips set into a perpetual frown. A face she knew from watching a show—a cute show, really, with how they depicted assassins.
And this man, while not the main character, was a center of it—Karasuma Tadaomi.
"Are you alright?" He asked, deep voice layered with concern when Sana stared up at him with wide eyes.
"Yes," she squeaked.
So she wasn't in her world—she was on Earth, but she wasn't in her world. She was in a world where they relied on a group of junior high students to save the world from a monstrous octopus who was previously an assassin but morphed due to a madman's experiment—and she was in the same country, the same goddamn city, where it all happened. And she just met one of the main characters on her way to the red light district where she knew, for a fact, other assassins lived.
Now she knew why they gave her the gift of life—because it really wasn't a gift, at all, they wanted her to suffer. This wasn't the world where one wanted to live a second life in.
Sana knew, with a bone deep surety, that she was fucked.
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