What was it that drew her to this balcony?
It was one of two attached to her room. The other looked out upon the Financial District, the crown jewel of the Northern Constituency; by far the more picturesque snapshot, a dynamic example of the life everyone wanted to live.
The balcony she was on while in this contemplation faced the West, which was far from the dream life. On the outskirts of the city, stretched the moderately prosperous farmlands that fed much of the Northern Constituency and First Principality. It was what lay beyond them, past the border, well out of sight but an acute presence whenever one glanced west, that disgusted every citizen. The Occupied Territories.
She shook her head. Those were not thoughts she could afford to have, not while she was living the life she was living. She lived in the most upscale residency in the entire district - the Occupied Territories should be the last thing on her mind.
Yet still, she stood unmoving, gazing into the horizon painted gold by the setting sun, wondering what it was that enraptured her when she admired the West. Was it this balcony? Was it the farmlands? Was it, god forbid, what lay past them? No. It couldn't be.
Perhaps it was the way the music from her violin sounded so beautifully when she played it sitting on the lone rocking chair.
Perhaps it was the way the purple of the dusk always seemed so much richer while she sipped her tea leaning against the rail.
Perhaps it was everything.
Perhaps it was nothing.
Perhaps, Asuna Yuuki thought, there's something wrong with me.
Numbers.
He liked numbers.
Numbers only changed when you wanted them to.
Pi wouldn't become finite tomorrow.
The golden ratio would always be the same formula.
Finding an integral or a derivative never involved a new set of rules.
Someone had decided long ago that it would always be this way, because it couldn't be any other way.
He wondered why the same couldn't be true for his life. Why was math his only respite? Why did the laws in Reksinya - nope, sorry, The Occupied Territories - change at the whims of his cruel overlords?
Who gave that power to these men?
He wasn't going to let them keep it.
While numbers may have been his escape, it also was how he exacted revenge against those monsters. Every explosive he designed using his chemistry knowledge, every firearm he made more efficient with physics, every single cent he swiped for the Reksinya Freedom Front - it was those heaven-sent numbers that helped him do that.
So he liked numbers.
Hell, he loved those goddamn numbers.
One, two - that was one number he did not like.
Thirty-one, Thirty-three - those were also numbers he did not like.
But he supposed his reasons for that were reasonable. Reasonable. Unlike the pricks who'd invaded his homeland.
He'd get true retribution one day.
Kazuto Kirigaya swore it upon the two graves that they'd destroyed. The two graves that meant everything to me.
a/n: hey, i know this is a sort of cliched trope but i just really got into this type of groove today. its a bit short, yeah, but lmk if y'all would wanna read this or if i should move it into my google docs trash. any feedback would be mucho appreciated :))