I opened my eyes to see a white room all around me; white walls, white floor, white sheets. The only thing that wasn't white was a large silver mirror on the wall opposite to me. I blinked, eyes watering as I sat up.

What happened? I wondered. I remembered meeting with Ryuu, giving him Nana's letter, getting caught by Takao sensei…

"Where am I?" I wondered out loud, staring around the room for some sort of clue. There were no windows, and the door was hard to pick out, seeing as it was all white as well. I swung my feet out of bed and padded over to the door to try the handle. It was locked. I knocked on it, thinking half-heartedly that someone would come if I signalled that I was awake. No such luck. As I turned to go back to the bed, I caught side of something strange out of the corner of my eye. Just beyond the huge mirror I could see a slight hint of colour, like something was pulsing with light just behind the mirror. I could see blue light, green light… and dark grey light.

Oh… I turned my back on the mirror with a scowl. It wasn't a mirror at all; it was a one way window. There were people on the other side watching me, and I had a pretty good idea of who one of them was. The grey light was unmistakable, even though I had only gotten the chance to see it once.

I sat back against the headboard of the bed, humming to myself. From where I was sitting I could clearly see my reflection, but I could also see the glowing colours more easily. The green one moved up and down the mirror, like the person in the next room was pacing back and forth. The grey one didn't move at all, while the blue one seemed to fidget, twitching now and then. Sooner or later one of these people would come in to talk to me, I just had to wait until then.

In the mean time I pondered what had happened to me after Ryuu and Mika had left Takao-sensei and me. I remembered vaguely walking into another building, then waiting in a corridor as Takao went into an office of some sort. She had come out ten minutes later with an older looking man with a strange beard. Green. He was green. I focussed in on the green blob once again, putting two and two together. So that old man was the green light.

Takao and the old man had then taken me to another bigger room, this one filled with adults. We only meant to pass through, but we were stopped almost immediately by curious questions by the teachers. Everyone wanted to know who I was. While Takao and the old man were answering questions, they seemed to forget about me a bit.

I just stood and stared at the swarm of people around me. Every single one of them seemed to have their own colour. To me, who before today had only ever seen one person with an aura like that, my senses started to get overwhelmed. My eyes began to water as they struggled to take in every colour of the spectrum that seemed to make the room pulse. The light made me dizzy, and my head began to spin, eardrums throbbing. Still the adults tried to step closer to me, and my vision went blurry. A hand I thought was Takao's tried to take me by the shoulder to steady me on my feet, but her grey light was too much; it was right in my face and it made my head throb even more.

"Stop it!" I choked out, tears streaming down my face. "Don't touch me!" I couldn't see anything else but the colours now, and I started to panic. I tried to shove the hands back, but ended up tripping over my own feet as I stepped backwards. "Don't…" Then the colours winked out, and black was the only thing I saw.

My eyes started to tear up a little even now as I thought back on all the different lights. No wonder I had passed out; seeing all that was probably not unlike sticking a person in a room full of different flashing police Christmas lights, then turning the main light switch on and off continuously as well. I wondered if I had had some sort of epileptic fit. I would probably have to go to a doctor when I got home.

"Hey kid."

While I had been thinking back to what had happened, someone had used the white door to come quietly into the room. I looked him up and down, saying nothing.

"You're just a kid too." I said finally.

The tall boy laughed, throwing his head to the side to get his white bangs out of his long face. He didn't look that much older than me, only fourteen or fifteen and dressed in blue tartan school pants and a black blazer with blue trim. He wore glasses that looked slightly tinted, like they were halfway between sunglasses and normal lenses. A sliver hoop twinkled from the side of his left ear.

"True." The boy admitted. "I'm only in middle school, but I'm still older than you, therefore I am allowed to call you a kid."

I arched my eyebrows at him, trying to display on my face how impatient I was for him to get to the point.

"Sorry." The boy held up one hand. It seems he got the message. "I just have some questions for you." He took a seat in a chair that was placed conveniently next to the bed where I sat. "Do you mind?"

I rolled my eyes. "Even if I do mind, I think you're going to ask me questions anyway, so I might as well get this over with." I swivelled so that I was sitting cross-legged on the bed, facing the boy. "But first… Who are you?"

The boy grinned. "Sorry, forgot about that part." He held out his hand for me to shake. "My name is Fujimaru Nakasaki, call me Naka."

I took the hand gingerly and shook it. "Kazumi Yukihira." I told him. "It's nice to meet you."

Naka smiled down at me as he ruffled my hair, making my bed head even worse. "Let's start with the basics, shall we Kazumi?" He said. "Why did you come here to Alice Academy?"

I looked away. "My best friend is a student here." I confessed. "I was worried that he wasn't getting any of our letters, so I came to see him."

Naka narrowed his eyes at me, and with a start I realised that he had taken his glasses off to do so. His eyes were a warm brown, but as I looked into them I could see a scrutiny in them that unnerved me slightly.

"Okay." He nodded, all smiles again. "And how did you get into the Academy?"

"Huh?" I frowned at me. "Didn't I already tell this to the other teacher?"

He nodded. "I know. I just want you to tell me personally."

I sighed. "It really wasn't that hard." I said. "When the guard at the gates told me to go away I walked around the wall, looking for a way in. Then I eventually came to a spot where there was a small hole in the electric barrier thing, so I climbed up the wall and crawled through the hole. I then dropped into a bush on the other side."

Naka was frowning at me now, eyebrows furrowed, like he was trying to figure me out. "Hey… Kazumi?"

"Yeah?"

"You told Takao-sensei that you weren't an Alice, right?" He looked at me, gaze intense. "Were you telling the truth?"

"Yes." I told him.

"You don't have an Alice?" He repeated.

"That is correct."

"Are you positive…?" Naka continued.

"I've already told you I'm not an Alice, right?" I said angrily. "Why do you keep asking the same question over and over?"

Naka blinked in shock, then shook his head. "Sorry. I just kept thinking that if I asked again I might get a different result." He sighed. "Looks like you're telling me the truth. Squeaky clean."

"Telling the truth…" I repeated slowly. "What are you? A human lie detector?"

Naka laughed. "Yeah. That's why they bought me in to talk to you." He confessed. "My Alice lets me know when the people around me are lying and when they're telling the truth."

"Wow." I leaned back on my hands. "That's so cool. I wish I could do that."

Naka raised his eyebrows. "You really want to know when people are lying to you? I hate it. When I was little, it meant that my parents couldn't lie to me about anything, so things like Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy went out of the window pretty fast."

I nodded. "I suppose, that does seem sucky. I guess you don't get many surprise birthday parties either, right?"

Naka chuckled. "Yeah, there's not too many people who can pull the wool over my eyes, I can see a liar a mile away."

"How do you do it?" I asked curiously. "See a lie on someone? Are you like those guys on TV that can tell from people's body language?"

Naka shook his head. "Nah, it's way simpler than that for me." He explained. "I just have to look at a person as they are speaking. If they start to get this white glow around them, then they are lying. The brighter the glow, the further they are from the truth."

I stared at him in shock. "They… glow?"

"Yup." He said. "But you didn't glow at all, so I guess you really did scale that wall without an Alice." He whistled slowly. "I have to admit kid, I'm impressed. No one has got through Hii-sama's barrier before, and I mean no one."

"Glow…" I repeated.

"Hey, kid? Are you even listening? I'm giving out some rare praise here!"

I looked up to fix him with my solid blue eyes. "Red." I said absently. "Like a dark red… what do you call that?"

"Huh?" Naka stared at me like I was from another planet. "Maroon… I suppose."

"Maroon." I repeated, nodding to myself. "I guess that fits you."

"Fits me…?"

"Ryuu is similar to you." I told the older boy. "He's like an orange brown colour; Amber."

Naka's eyes widened. "Wait… You see people that glow too?"

I looked away. "I'm completely nuts, right?" I sighed. "Forget I said anything, it's stupid."

Naka stood up abruptly. "No! Not at all… It's just…" He paused to scratch his head. "How did you say you found that hole in the barrier again?"

"I circled the wall, looking up at the electric barrier until I found it." I told him.

Naka shook his head. "No, I mean, how did you know that the hole was there?"

"I… I… just saw it." Was this a trick question?

Naka huffed in frustration. "That barrier is invisible!" He told me, "How can you see a hole in something invisible?"

This was definitely a trick question. "Invisible?" I snorted. "That thing was bright yellow! How could anyone miss it, even if it is a little see-through?"

Naka's wide eyes blinked once, twice, three times. "You're telling the truth…" He trailed off. "That's not a lie…" He sat back down in his chair to look at me with a gobsmacked look on his face. "What exactly can you see?" He asked in awe.

I looked over at the mirror. All three of the glowing blobs were motionless in the room next door now. Obviously I had done something weird. I never should have mentioned the colours thing to Naka. I lost my head just because I thought he was similar to me.

"Hey, Kazumi…" Naka spoke again in a soft voice. "You said that I glow, right?"

I turned back to look at him passively. "Yes, you glow." I confirmed.

"What colour?"

"Hmmm? Uh… that red colour, maroon…" I frowned. "Maybe it's a bit lighter than that."

"You said that your friend Ryuu glowed as well, what colour was he?" Naka continued. I could see an idea was forming in his head.

"Amber." I said confidently.

"Have you seen anyone else glowing?" Naka pushed further. "Anyone at all? Back home, here…?"

"You mean like the three people watching us from behind the mirror?" I asked innocently. "I know the grey person is that teacher called Takao, but I don't know the names of the green and blue people."

Naka sat back, hands in his pockets. His mouth twitched, like he was trying not to laugh out loud. "Fancy that." He said mildly. "Is that why you fainted earlier? I hear you were in the staffroom. Was all the light too much for you?"

I nodded slowly. "Why do you care about all this?" I asked. "My hallucinations really aren't that interesting."

Naka stopped smiling, face suddenly turned serious. "They aren't hallucinations, I don't think." He said solemnly. "I think you have an Alice that you don't know about."

"An… Alice?" I repeated. "Like Ryuu?"

"Your Alice is more like mine." He confessed. "You can see things that other people can't."

I rolled my eyes. "Great. So I see lots of people that glow for no apparent reason. That's super useful." My voice dripped with sarcasm.

Naka started rummaging around in his blazer pocket. "These people that glow, they're not random, and I think I have a way to prove it to you." He carefully extracted a small leather pouch from his pocket and opened up the drawstring, tipping a red stone into his palm. "Does this colour look familiar?" He asked, holding the stone up to the light.

I looked between him and the stone rapidly. "It's the maroon colour." I breathed.

Naka closed his fist on the stone slowly. "This is my Alice stone." He explained. "It's basically a piece of my Alice that I extracted so that I can let other people use it. If someone else holds onto it, they can see liars in the same way I can."

"So what does that mean about my… Alice…?" I wanted to know.

"I think that your Alice is similar to mine; we both use ours to identify people, but you can see something different to me." Naka shook his head like he couldn't believe what he was about to say. "I think you can see other people's Alices."

"Huh?" I shook my head. "No way. That's impossible." I stated.

"You should take Naka seriously." The door to the room opened to admit Takao into the room. She walked over to reveal the grey stone in her palm to the two of us.

"Dark grey…" I muttered. "Is that your Alice stone?"

The woman nodded, a quiet smile on her face. "You gave me quite a shock back there, picking me out from behind the mirror. The other two look even worse, you haven't even met Kagami-sensei properly, yet you predicted the colour of her Alice stone perfectly."

"So all of your Alice stones are the colours that I can see?" I mused. "That's weird."

"Weird?" Naka scoffed. "I think this is cool! This means that you're one of us!"

"One of you?" I wasn't sure where this was going. "You mean the colours I see make me an Alice too?"

"Yes." Naka said joyfully.

I nodded. "Okay." I said. "Right." I looked from Takao to Naka and back again. "I just have one more question for you guys about all of this."

"Fire away." Takao said coolly.

"What exactly is an Alice?"

YAY! My school exams are over, so now I am officially on Holiday! Hopefully I'll have a lot more time to write leading up to Christmas, so expect some more chapters soon!