Kaede threw herself onto her bed after sneaking back into the academy while her eyes were still filled with confusion. She genuinely had fun when she was playing with the sequence receiver with Yoruhiru. And she wouldn't even have realized if it wasn't for Yoruhiru's message. That realization scared her.
Everything she did in the two years was to train, train and train. She did so many things that she would've never thought of doing, so many things that made her feel awful just for a single reason, what had happened to Nagisa. She couldn't exactly tell what her feeling was, hatred? Regret? Sadness? Guilt? Maybe even all of them? But no matter what that feeling was, it was the one thing that kept her going.
She finally stopped resisting and started to officially train under her grandfather. She followed his plan and joined the dusk, killed her first animal, then magical beast and then human. Even though she still felt like someone was squeezing her heart when she did these things, she had convinced herself that she would get used to it, that she had to get used to it. That if she gave up now, her feelings towards her brother would start to fade away.
So she kept forcing herself to do things she didn't want to do, she didn't allow her to get sidetracked, she just kept focusing on her main goal, to make the entire slave market collapse. To make every single person who was responsible for what happened 2 years ago pay.
And that's exactly what she did the entire two years. There wasn't a single second where that goal wasn't on her mind. But that wasn't the case when she was playing around with the sequence receiver today. Even though it was only for a short amount of time, at that moment she was just having fun with her entire guard down.
"Nagisa…" Kaede quietly started to mutter her brother's name while tears started to roll down her cheek, "Nagisa…" she just kept repeating his name and cried, "I'm sorry… I miss you…" and she just kept going until she got too tired and fell asleep.
Nagisa went back into his room with a bitter taste in his mouth. Did he go too far with that joke? Honestly, he didn't think so. Considering how well Akari had been taking his more sassy side up till now, this little jab shouldn't have caused such a huge reaction. He probably just hit the wrong nerve without even realizing it. "This sucks…" Nagisa sighed as he changed into his pajamas and turned his appearance back.
Realizing that he wouldn't be able to sleep anyway, Nagisa decided to pick the habit of meditating instead of sleeping back up.
After making sure that his room was completely darkened, Nagisa locked his door and sat down on his bed and closed his eyes. But as soon as he did that, Nagisa suddenly felt how his aura started to leak out of his pool and into his body. He was having another breakthrough, but this time as a combatant and only a small breakthrough from 1-star to 2-star.
"Hrgn…" Nagisa grit his teeth as his aura ruthlessly started to fill his entire body. Veins started to appear on his body as his body became tenser and tenser. This was the major difference between the breakthrough of a combatant and a mage.
While a mage had to bear a heavy burden on his mind by suppressing his mana pool while it was expanding, a combatant had to endure the numbing pain of his aura refining his entire body. But as someone who did even the stage breakthroughs on his own, this amount of pain was not really a challenge for Nagisa.
Finishing his breakthrough in a ridiculously easy manner, Nagisa opened his eyes again only to see his entire body covered in sweat and a black sticky substance that was removed from his body through the refinement.
"… And I just took a shower." Nagisa grimaced as he removed his clothes and went back into the bathroom. The pajamas needed to be washed for sure and the same went for his bed wear.
With a long sigh, Nagisa quickly removed his bedsheet as well and piled it together with his pajamas. Nagisa then quickly went to the bathroom to fetch some water and mixed some soap in.
Using that water, Nagisa formed a huge water ball with his mana and threw all his dirty clothes into it. With a quick flick of his hand, the water inside the ball started spinning along with all the clothes inside it.
After the entire water ball had become slightly cloudy and dirty, Nagisa removed the now clean clothes from the water ball after removing all the moisture from the fabric. After sending the massive water ball out of his balcony, Nagisa condensed the entire water ball with his Unique Skill Status control and went into the bathroom to take another shower.
Theoretically, Nagisa could just clean his entire body with a similar method, but it was tiring and as someone with an elemental compatibility of 91, Nagisa welcomed any contact with water.
After coming back out of the shower, Nagisa quickly put his now clean pajamas and bedsheet back on and sat down on his bed again. However, this time he didn't start meditating straight away. Instead, he started to summon some of his aura to the palm of his hand. The density of his aura had increased with his breakthrough and along with that his physical abilities.
After trying it out a bit more and getting a hang of his increased power, Nagisa went back to meditating with a small nod and closed his eyes again.
The next morning, Nagisa was walking around the mansion with a disturbed look on his face. Since Karasuma told him to join their training today, he got himself ready quite early before he went back to meditating. But when the sun was already hanging high in the sky and Karma still didn't come to pick him up, Nagisa decided to get up and look for him.
But after checking every single room in the mansion, Nagisa could say for sure that Karma wasn't there. And considering the fact that Karma wasn't back yet when he came back at almost 1 o'clock in the morning, Nagisa could safely assume that he didn't come back at all.
"Well… guess I just have to wait." the edge of Nagisa's mouth twitched a little as he started to make himself some breakfast with some ingredients that were in the fridge. Nagisa wasn't very good at cooking, but he had learned a bit from watching Kagero for 2 years. Now that Nagisa had tried other foods, he was sure that Kagero was incredibly good at cooking. The dishes he made, even when he didn't have a lot of spices and ingredients, were even better than the ones they sell in the capital.
Just when Nagisa had finished his meal and washed the dishes, he heard someone knock at the door. "Finally," Nagisa muttered to himself as he started to walk towards the door.
"Hello? Who's there?" Nagisa asked as his hand had reached the handle of the door.
"Good morning, vice principal Karasuma has sent me to get Akabane-san's roommate?" instead of what Nagisa had expected, a girl's voice came from the other side of the door.
"Oh, sorry for the wait." Nagisa quickly opened the door, "Hello, I'm Karma's roommate, Shio…" Nagisa's introduction abruptly stopped when the door was completely opened and a girl with green hair tied into a ponytail appeared on the other side of the door.
"Hmm? I'm sorry I didn't catch tha…" the girl who was looking at the ground looked up realizing that the voice talking to her had suddenly stopped and wanted to ask but just like Nagisa, her words got stuck in her throat as her entire body froze.
Both of them simply stood there while staring into each other's eyes without even blinking, completely lost in thoughts.
"I-I'm sorry I think I got the wrong door." the girl said with a panicking voice and turned around and ran as if she was trying to escape from something.
"Huh? Hey, hey wait!" Nagisa only came back to his mind when the girl was already quite a distance away and started chased after her.
Kaede was losing it, she was sure of it.
After she had had her mental breakdown yesterday, she had woken up this morning feeling awful and exhausted. Even though she had fallen asleep almost instantly and had woken up quite late as well, she had dreamed of the same nightmare she hadn't had for more than a year now.
In her dream, the scene of Nagisa disappearing behind the cliff just kept repeating itself no matter what she tried to do. It was like as if she had lost control over her body. She couldn't turn her head away or even close her eyes while the entire scene just played in front of her in slow motion.
She could see every single change of expression on Nagisa's face, down to the smallest detail. A relieved smile after seeing that she made it to the other side safely that slowly turned into a sad doting smile and finally after he had closed his eyes into acceptance.
But the fact that there wasn't the slightest hint of negativity towards her in Nagisa's expression, made it so much worse for Kaede to watch this over and over again.
After quickly taking a shower, brushing her teeth and putting on her light green school uniform and black skirt. Kaede had made herself on the way to the school gate after she had grabbed an apple from her kitchen. Karasuma had told her that they would be back at around 10 o'clock and it had only been 10 minutes till that time.
She had then met up with them at the school gate and was asked if she could go and pick up Karma's roommate for Karma since Karasuma had needed Karma for some preparations.
And now she was here, turning around and running aimlessly while her mind was an entire mess. She was losing it again. The dreams were coming back again, and she was seeing Nagisa everywhere she went again. Just like back then when her grandfather had just found her in the mountains and had brought her to the dusk.
She had been overjoyed the first few times Nagisa had shown up in her delusions, only to have her hopes ruthlessly crushed by reality only a few seconds later. And after she had repeatedly felt the roller-coaster of joy, relieve and despair, this had turned into a trauma for Kaede. She had started screaming and running every time Nagisa had shown up in her eyes and this had continued for months before she had gotten over it.
"Huh? Hey, hey wait!" Kaede heard the familiar voice call behind her. Her symptoms were getting worse. In the past, at least her delusions had never spoken to her.
"Go away, please!" Kaede screamed out of terror as she kept running, she could sense that the "Nagisa" was still following her.
"Wait! Why are you running?" the voice kept chasing her, she had never had an illusion that lasted that long before.
"Leave me alone!" Kaede screamed desperately, this was getting too realistic, but Kaede was too scared to turn around and take a look, she was too scared that this "Nagisa" would just disappear like all the other ones before.
This time the voice didn't answer her, but she could still hear his footsteps following her, but they were getting further and further away and then finally disappeared.
- It's just an illusion after all… -
Kaede thought relieved but also sad when she suddenly lost her footing as she slipped on something. She subconsciously closed her eyes as the ground came closer to her face, but she did notice that the ground was glittering in a strange way.
Nagisa was starting to gasp for air while chasing after the girl that seemed just too familiar. Asking himself Nagisa would say that there was no way he would mistake someone else for Kaede, but the way the girl was reacting had put some doubts in his mind. Nevertheless, he had to make sure that he was mistaken before he would give up.
There was one major issue though. The girl was faster than him. Nagisa would love to use his Shadow Walk, but it was a cloudless day and the sun was hanging right above their heads so that there were no shadows Nagisa could use.
Luckily for him, the girl that resembled his long lost sister so much was simply aimlessly sprinting down the road and there was going to be a U-turn right ahead.
Throwing a slightly hesitant look to his side, Nagisa grit his teeth and took a sharp turn straight into the bush full of thorns while using some of his aura to clear his way and shield himself from the thorns coming from all sides.
Needlessly to say, the girl was insanely fast. When Nagisa came out of the bushes, he could barely see her running right past him.
Realizing that there was no way he could catch up to her by normal means, Nagisa rapidly lifted his right hand as he was stumbling out of the bushes and muttered a spell he just recently learned Bullet Rain.
As soon as he had finished chanting the spell, fist-sized water drops shot out of his bare hands, but instead of aiming at the girl, the bullets flew right past her and landed right in front of her feet, Status Control, Freeze! Nagisa chained his Unique Skill right after creating an extremely thin layer of ice on the girls footing.
And just as Nagisa had expected, the girl who was barely paying any attention to her surroundings, slipped on the ice he had created.
Putting all of his strength into one leg, Nagisa made a huge leap towards the girl and barely managed to catch her before she fell head first onto the ground. They still slit quite the distance because of the layer of ice Nagisa had created on the ground though.
"H-hey, are you alright?" Nagisa groaned a bit at the impact but quickly turned his gaze towards the girl in his arms, it was Kaede, there was no doubt about it unless she somehow had a twin sister she had never told him about but considering how she reacted when he became her big brother, Nagisa highly doubted it.
"You're… still here?" the girl asked in a shivering voice while she slowly lifted her head to meet Nagisa's eyes, the look had a conflicting mix of hope and terror, her hand was slowly reaching for his face but stopped right before she touched it as it started to tremble.
"Kaede, it's me." Nagisa said gently as his own voice started to shiver as well, "It's me."
"N-Nagisa?" Kaede stared at him unsurely as she slowly moved her hand away from his face and to his shirt, "Please don't disappear, please don't disappear… please... don't do this to me." Nagisa could barely hear her whisper to herself as she shut her eyes tightly and used both her hands to grab onto his shirt as tightly as she could.
If Nagisa still couldn't figure out what was happening to Kaede, he would be an idiot. His heart started to ache to see Kaede like this. Letting out a sigh Nagisa gently placed his arms around her, held her as tightly as he could and placed his forehead on hers. "I'm not going anywhere, it's me Kaede, I'm real."
"You're alive… I-I thought you…" Kaede tried to say something but she just started to bawl her eyes out and just chocked on her own words.
"Shh… it's alright now, I'm fine." Nagisa tried to stroke her back but his own hand was shivering so hard that he could barely move it.
"N-no, you don't… you don't understand… i-if I hadn't… then you wou-wouldn't … I…" Kaede just kept shaking her head and tried to explain something while her sentences were just cut off from her sobbing.
"It's alright… I'm here now. I'm sorry for leaving you alone." Nagisa took a deep breath and whispered to comfort Kaede. Even though he felt like crying himself, right now he had to pull himself together so he could be her mental support. Because that is what it meant to be a big brother.
New chapter :D they finally meet! Some of you have been pointing out that characters are starting to get OOC, and yes, I am very aware of that. I think I've said that before, but this is an AU story, I mean I could probably even count this as an original story if not for the main character appearances and names.
I've tried my best to keep their starting nature as close to the original source as possible, but as the story progresses they will start to drift away from that. They will have different experiences and hardships than in the original and therefore develop differently.
If some of you don't like this because it's not really the characters you fell in love with from the anime or manga anymore, I completely understand. Maybe check out my other stories, they stick more to the original than this one. (I'm very sorry, I will find time to update them when I finish this arc, especially Last Assassination)
All in all, I hope you enjoyed this chapter! :D Tell me what you think about it in the reviews, happy Easter! And I'll see you in the next chapter! ;)