ON A SATURDAY NIGHT, the rest of Academy City buzzed and blared in contrast to the muffled interior of A Certain High School. Every evening, the chalky walls were washed in moonlight after being sullied by artificial, fluorescent light during the day. The rays bounced off the lumpy walls in odd directions and cast kaleidoscopic shadows on the floor. Tōma and Mikoto, hand in hand, skulked through the wall of moonlight, staying low even though they were on the fourth floor. Mikoto was nervous. She had first broken curfew, and now she had broken into a building. These were punishable by disciplinary action, but she realized long ago that the term "disciplinary action" was a euphemism. She thought of her housemaster and winced.

"We're almost there," he said. He squeezed her hand, and she squeezed back.

She'd already created several layers of lies to sneak out of Tokiwadai. She told Kuroko that she was going to study downstairs in the lounge; she told the housemaster that she was visiting an adjacent dorm without Kuroko, which was allowed; she told Saten and Kazari that she wouldn't be answering her mobile because she accidentally fried it in a fit of embarrassment when Kuroko almost molested her. She did this all for Tōma.

"We're here," he said.

In front of them was a final stairway that ascended to a metal door designed to look like a fire exit. Tōma reached in his pocket and produced a small key that he inserted into the lock. He turned the key and pushed the door ajar. An ocean of moonlight poured into the narrow stairway.

She had seen this scene before. It was the same movie that she thought of on the powdery quad yesterday. Instead of winter, it was summer break. The boy led the girl through the vacant hallways of his school and picked open the lock to the roof. On the roof, they sat on the dry tar, August-hot and swampy, and talked for what seemed like hours.

Tōma led Mikoto to the top of the high school. The concrete beneath her feet was cool and shiny like rough quartz. Past the fenced perimeter, the track and field idled below, edged in dust and pieces of rubber from the P.E. sessions the day before. Beyond the athletic space, several more academic buildings clad in blue glass dotted the campus. The briefest flashes from passing cars leaked through the narrow slits between the buildings and trees. In the distance, long bridges intersected with rising business centers and shopping malls that met at a skyline topped by aircraft warning lights like blinking cherries on a sundae.

They said nothing as they sat down on the concrete and stared at the stars. The night was surprisingly warm, and the moon howled at them as if it were ten times its size. I could read a book in this kind of light, Mikoto thought.

"They say that when a guy and a gal kiss on the roof of the high school on a Saturday night, they're fated by the stars to become lovers," he said, looking up.

Mikoto cocked an eyebrow. "That's awfully mushy. You made that up."

Tōma turned and broke into an innocent grin. A gentle breeze sifted through the fence to punctuate the moment.

How did she end up here? How did he win her over? She could still smell the electricity wafting across the city when they stood on that bridge almost a year ago. The night was warm, much like this one. He told her that she didn't have to sacrifice herself to protect her sisters. She didn't have to sacrifice herself. She flared up in fury. Shards of unbreakable rage scraped at her composure. She wanted to kill him. Shock after shock after shock; a billion volts of energy she threw at him like a javelin. Still he stood there, muscles locked in place. For the first time in her life, there was something that she couldn't conquer with just her powers. No matter how many volts she discharged, no matter how much she concentrated, she couldn't win him over. He was insuperable. He finally fell like a scarecrow blown over by a stiff breeze. He was smoldering where he lay, arms charred, clothes smoking. There was something mystical about him, she remembered (how the hell did his clothes not catch fire, anyway?). Right then, she felt something churn in her gut. It carved something deep within her like twisted metal. She didn't understand what it was at the time, but now she knew: it was fear, fear that she might lose him. What if Tōma never woke up? What if Tōma were gone? Not a minute ago she wanted him dead. She collapsed on the concrete and spun in a messy delirium. As she pulled her knees under her head, Mikoto peeled open his eyes; they were like pearls, glassy like a cadaver's. By the time he came to, she was leaking tears. Those heavy beads cascaded from her eyes to his as if to apologize.

The roof was still cool like quartz, the air still crisp. The skyline still glistened in the distance past the fence. They met lips. His breath brushed against her cheek.

"Do you like me?" asked Mikoto. Tōma searched her eyes and smiled.

"No," he said. "I adore you."

A glowing warmth gushed from her head and rolled through her limbs. Bright patches of phosphenes blotted her vision. How could she let something so corny get her like this? Her face simmered. I must look like a tomato right now, she thought. This was where they kissed and confessed to each other in the movie too. Tōma's eyes widened and he suddenly jerked her into him.

"What was that for?"

"I saw a spark," he whispered, barely audible. "And I thought you could control your powers by now."

"Tōma…"

"Shhhh…. The stars are watching."

Mikoto eased her eyes shut. The flow of time ebbed to stagnation. Far away someplace, a woman was frozen mid-sentence, her jaw slack and her hand attempting to form a gesture. Across from her, a man had sunken his teeth into the sandwich suspended in his hands, but his muscles had stiffened and he could not even twitch. Nearby, a child carried an overextended arm in front of him. A cup, apparently knocked over, hung weightless in the air, the water inside fixed in an amorphous blob never to hit the ground below. Leaves idled motionless in the air; squirrels and pigeons lay petrified on the grass; businessmen and fast-talkers refused to move as if they were models bound to a pose to be sketched by an artist; the world had been caught in a snapshot. Headlights in the distance sat in perfect stasis. The watchless moon dominated the sky, which had been dabbed purple from strands of stray light below. Academy City seemed blithefully unaware of the two figures cuddling on the roof of A Certain High School. They shared a clockless moment as the wind disappeared, the rustling of the city muted, and time condensed to a single point.

Suddenly, the sharp blare of an alarm shattered the hypnosis.

CERBERUS PANTED and pranced about as Dante crossed through the soulless back alleys. The gold and black German shepherd had taken a liking to him. He's just hungry, Dante reasoned to himself. Grime and garbage-water lapped at his boots. Puddles of petrol rainbows glistened luridly under the full moon. What a shithole, he thought.

They trekked through the filth, careful not to touch the refuse, and then skulked across the street to find a four-story building encased in glass that signified their arrival to District 7. Dante cupped a block of snow and brushed Cerberus's paws with it. The snow became discolored as Dante washed away the gunk that hung on the dog's fur. Cerberus shivered and then licked at Dante's hands as he cleaned him.

"You don't know what you're getting yourself into, little doggie," he said. Cerberus tilted his head, perplexed.

Dante brushed his hands, ambled to a food stand on the sidewalk, paid for twenty sticks of shish kabobs, and then made his way to a bald patch of grass. Cerberus followed closely behind him. Dante pulled the chunks of meat from the skewers and threw them in the grass where Cerberus pounced on it with voracious abandon.

"Stay here," he ordered.

Cerberus glanced up at Dante as if he were going to ask him to repeat what he said and then resumed inhaling the meat.

Dante made his way through the slushy trail and across two adjacent baseball diamonds and then a track and field. The stars didn't seem to mind.

He stopped in front of a three-story display of architectural conformity. It didn't look like any kind of school, more like an administrative building. The walls were immaculate and must have been to government standards, whatever they were. Quarter-inch thick windows, American steel foundation, and synthetic, non-toxic paint. State-of-the-art. There must be at least a Judgment office in there. A few squares of light were framed on the edifice, probably filled with faculty working overtime. It resonated with a quaint familiarity. But that's not too strange, he told himself. He used to be a vagabond here.

Academy City was more of a caste based on privilege rather than merit. True, esper level did affect the caste; level 5 espers always composed the upper echelon of the pyramid, but if one were too poor to afford schooling, one could never join the esper community in the first place. Dante was born in The Strange, an eternally dilapidated and gray part of District 10. Skill-Out gangs made up of level 0 thugs ran rampant there. They terrorized espers and non-espers alike, bullied shopkeepers into forking over "protection" money, and ran underground businesses to stay afloat. Both of Dante's parents had been Skill-Out gang members and without psychic powers, but it was evident from his birth that he was different. At age 2, he could move light objects with his mind. At age 5, he could generate enough friction in a block of wood to start a fire. Realizing his potential, his parents left the gang and scraped together their remaining assets, but they still were too poor to enroll him in formal studies. Dante however, possessed a ravenous hunger for knowledge. He practiced moving and levitating and igniting until his mind was sapped and his body was frail. At age 9, he started to visit District 7, peering into windows and stealing books to read. After a year of self-study, he evaluated himself by Power Curriculum standards and found that he was a level 4 telekinetic. He surmised that had he enrolled in formal schooling, he would be a level 5.

Dante concentrated on lock and mentally manipulated the cylinders inside the contraption until he heard a click. He eased open the door and looked around. It was dark and dry inside. He placed his palm on the whitewashed walls and closed his eyes. Wooden skeleton. Perfect. The building creaked and then rattled as a hard wind pummeled the outer walls. Dante headed down to the basement. A mechanical hum grew in loudness as he walked through the steamy rooms. Finally, he reached the source of hum. It came from several large, silver tanks labeled "flammable" and plugged up to rubber cords that fit into metal pipes that climbed through the ceiling and innervated the rest of the building. He pulled out the cords from the tanks and turned the knobs. A loud hissing overpowered the low hum, and he could instantly detect the heady odor of hydrocarbons fill the room.

He walked back upstairs and pulled the fire alarm. A piercing blare rang through the halls and the entire building began to convulse in flashes of red and white light. He waited a few minutes and watched several confused workers shuffle through the fire exits. He frowned and in a flash of concentration, generated a spark. The basement exploded and a giant fireball began to chew its way to the first floor. The alarm continued to ring.

His knees suddenly felt weak.

Not now!

The ringing turned to a blare, then to a blast. He felt as if he were standing before a jet engine. The streaky linoleum beneath him flushed into a sweltering glow. His skin was boiling. The fire alarm began to sonicate the tissue past his eardrums, which had already popped like balloons. This time was a thousand times worse. He could handle the throes of pain in a normal attack, but the blare amplified the pain to a new, excruciating dimension. It cleaved through his brain like a white-hot katana.

Think about something else, like you always do.

What can I think about? Each vibration rattled another bone in his head into mealy gruel. He couldn't think of anything but the real fire. Five years ago, he was living in The Strange with his parents and two brothers. Someone called out from outside. Said something about surrendering. Before anyone could act, the building ruptured in an orange mist of flame. The doors were locked, the windows were sealed. The heat lapped at his face. He could barely open his eyes, but he watched through tiny slits as his brothers turned red, then black as they were consumed by the flames. His father held him tight. Tried to protect him, but the smoke choked him into unconsciousness. He fell over and the fire scavenged on his burnt corpse. His mother huddled in the far corner, stared at him with terrified eyes. He concentrated. Created a bubble around himself to ward away the heat. The ceiling cracked, the wooden frame tumbled down, striking his mother in the head. No time to comprehend what happened. The heat, oh, the heat. He reached for the door nearest to him and with his last scrap of energy, mangled the lock and ran outside just before the foundation succumbed. The house imploded in a fiery pile of wood and concrete. His hands trembled violently. His mother's eyes like topaz flashed in his mind. He felt nothing now. No telekinesis, no focus, no substance.

He ran.

He ran as the night air weaved through his sweat-soaked hair like fingers. It felt so good against his wet scalp. He swallowed giant, chilled breaths and pumped his legs like pistons.

The night air felt so good against his hair. He felt like he could run forever.