A/N: Some details of the Blue Archive story will be changed, including some times and world-building. Assume it's intentional. I find that when I first played Blue Archive, there was definitely the intention that there are simply blanks left to purposely isolate the story, which, in my opinion, was very beneficial for the format of the game. This is a fanfic though, and with the story I want to tell, this principle will not always hold.

Content warning: if you feel like reading a story containing intense, negative emotions directed at the self may affect your current mental state, please proceed with caution.

Chapter 1: That Day When I Saw You

The soft band of orange on the horizon; the clink of ice in glass. After a day being lead around his new job, Sensei thought it wise to unwind somewhere nice. With this view, the hearth-fire of late-Spring dusk, and those thin, concentric halos of the city center, it was all too easy to doze off and bounce around in your own mind for minutes on end.

I'm really here. He had thought it was a myth: Kivotos, the land of mystics. It was easy to get caught up in this or that conspiracy theory if you delved too deep and lost your path, but after being approached by the government, these feeble truisms quickly shattered.

Sensei was likely the best teacher out there: over-qualified to teach almost any subject. The reason it couldn't be said for every subject was less because of lack of skill more than lack of time; Sensei was 22 years old, going on 23. Despite what one may think, this manic pace of education hadn't impeded on his social skills. Absurdly enough, he was commonly called in for assistance in dealing with troublesome teens and kids. With high demand for his mediation, he learned to have entire conversations in a single glance, a shift in posture. In the most routine situations, Sensei could take one look at the student and with a few sentences between them, open them up to positive change. Though, it's commonly the case that the students are just fine and it's really the teachers projecting some aura of malice and irreverence onto them.

This ease of perception comes in handy for a number of things: solving Sherlock Holmes plots, and developing adaptable 4-team tactics quickly – among other things. Sensei found that before being approached, he did a lot more of the first than the second. Although the rumors had stated that Kivotos was populated with super-soldiers, they never suggested that many of them were schooling-age – and heavily armed, to boot. Some of these students were lugging around equipment meant to be stationary, capable of rattling your skeleton if you held it while firing. Larger academies maintained military vehicles. It wasn't that clear why they did this; one-third of the students here were walking anti-material rifles anyway. Maybe they were dignified transport vehicles for when students wanted to travel to the beach? Sensei didn't see any cars here.

Sensei stirred his drink with his straw. Maybe this place is just weird like that. He had to be ready to work by morning, so he couldn't stay and dine forever.

He waved over a robotic servant. "Check, please." It scurried off into the building, then quickly returned.

Now, what is the tipping rate here…

He tipped 20% just to be safe. He wasn't wanting for cash, anyway. A quick exchange, and he got up, the legs of the chair rasping against the concrete. With his hands in his pockets, he stared at the dimming horizon, taking a few seconds to take it all in, and then started on his way deeper into the city.

A soft hum in the distance grew louder. A magnetic train track crossed his path. He had one of these back home, too. With an all-too-familiar dinging, a thin, do-not-cross barrier lowered down in front of him. It was a wide road he was walking, almost as wide as a highway. If it were earlier in the day, more than twenty people would be able to stand arms-length apart and still have room for more people. However, even though it wasn't properly nightfall, no one was there. Sensei assumed something benign. He was too in-his-head to notice footfalls behind him.

And as if she were always there, a phantom balanced on the lowered barrier in front of him. A girl, pale as a ghost, a crooked halo above her head, turned her back towards him. She stuffed her hands in her sweater pocket and leaned forward slowly, almost daring herself to fall. With the quick glance he caught of her face, he couldn't make out a smile; white hair with two plumes of black at the front and back obscured her face. A wreath of smoke followed her like a shadow out-of-sync.

Before he could recover, the hum of the approaching train grew sharply, and the girl leaped forward, safely crossing the tracks before the behemoth of metal and wires hurled through where she was moments before.

Sensei had moved before noticing it, but he caught air. As if his soul had left him, he stared as the train raced by.

He was slow.

And in the hum of the train, he began to hear people talking – dozens of people talking about their days. They lined themselves up beside him, waiting for the train to pass.

The dusk gave way to night. As the barrier finally raised itself and the crowd walked forward, Sensei stood still, his body frozen in place with an unease he had never felt before. With all the soft laughs and smiling faces around him, Sensei sank deeper into himself.

It was as if he were the only one that saw her.