Author's Note: I'm going to try and keep any Author Notes out of my story, and keep this simple and sweet. But like all good stories, there's always a beginning from the creator. I have nothing to say except keep an open mind, and don't rush into facts and unrealistic attitudes, because I always explain everything somewhere throughout the story, and I am pretty good at looking at every direction to a point or moral, and I keep things as realistic and understandable as I possible can.

If you have any suggestions or questions, either Review me and leave an e-mail address so I can reply, or e-mail me straight away at . But please, even if you e-mail me, drop a review in. I always appreciate a comment or two that everyone can see. Even if it's criticizing, everything can be taken and learned from.

And, one more thing, I have a habit of revising chapters. But I never revise unless I warn my readers first, so if I ever DO revise a chapter, I leave a warning in my BIO page, so check once in a while. I'm trying the best I can to update quickly, but don't give me a hard time. I have two jobs and a life, but I will commit myself to this.

Thank you, and enjoy the story.

-Ayame Kinchiata-

Moyasu
Kinchi

Part One
Kie

Chapter One
Right Eye

...It was only seconds after I turned on the television before my mother screamed up the stairs the same old complaints of how I would be late for school and how I haven't eaten breakfast. How long does it take for me to get ready when I wake up two hours before school? Why can't I be more creative, unique, instead of spending hours in front of the mirror to fix myself to look like every other girl? I didn't listen, of course, or at least I tried not too.

"…And as President Nagawashi signed the High Crimes Bill, Japan is left wondering how this will effect the already threatening motives of the city limits-"

"Kie!"

I closed my eyes tightly shut and took a deep breath. But with the blade in my hand, I grabbed a handful of my raven hair from the back, and let the knife slip through my fingers and to the edge of my skull. I repeated this over and over again, curving around and around. I opened my eyes and steadied them on the reflection in the mirror. Every strand of my hair was cut short so it only reached above my ears. Every strand, except a portion of my bangs which I combed over to the right side of my oval face, covering my eye with a gentle curtain of thoughtful darkness.

When I was little, my mother used to tell my sister Kimi and I that the right eye showed the guilt inside humans, that it could mirror all the sins and fears of a person's mind. But it's what I feared more than anything when I was small, that someone could open my mind and stare at all the sorrow I held inside. The slice of my innocence could be twisted and folded into a simple life of god or bad.

Maybe it wasn't entirely a bad thing when I was a child, but lately looking into my own eyes of dark green has left me feeling disgusted even if I battled in my mind that there was no chance my guilt and fears could shine through the ice wall I built up around myself. But those logics slipped away each day with my old childish hopes and dreams. So I combed my hair gentle in front of my eye and pulled on my tank top with little other thought.

"Kie!" she screamed again, and I lifted my dufflebag over my shoulder without a second glance at the mirror while I walked out the door. "Kie, damnit, get moving or you'll be late again! You haven't even had breakfast and I am so sick of -"

She paused, and I knew she was staring at my hair. "I'll have breakfast at school," I said, but I refused to look at her as I jumped for the front door.

But too late, she'd taken her breath and opened her mouth. "Why can't you ever do anything right, Kie? What did you do to your hair?!"

I managed to ignore her snide remarks, but as I headed down the driveway from my house, I wasn't thinking of what she was yelling at me from behind, I was thinking over and over again about my sister, Kimi. She was always the one to do everything right. Always had good grades, always had a good attitude, always had a good boyfriend, and always had good ideas. I wasn't jealous of her, we were always close. But the day she died, everything was different. My thoughts of her were not the good peaceful kind most mournful people think about. I just resented her, for everything. For what she left me here to rot with, for what she created in her time here.

She had made such an important mark on our family, to a point where everything somehow functioned perfectly around her in a sort of unnoticeable way. At least, we didn't notice it until she was gone. She left me with the worst thing to pull myself back from, the worst thing in my life to ever happen. Her leaving took a piece of my mind and control with her. She'd always been the person to help me out in my worst days, and now that the worst thing to happen to me has happened, she's not here. It is because she is not here that it is the worst thing. Ironic, isn't it?

So I took all the daggers of my mind, all the scars and tainted flesh, and covered them with the ice wall I blanketed myself with.

But what I liked about myself, something my sister didn't manage to take with her, was that I could analyze fears and doubts. I could tell myself what was wrong, I didn't need a doctor to tell me. I could acknowledge my falls and my hurt, in a way no one else could. That always made me feel stronger.

Either I could acknowledge them, or I thought I could. Either way, I was pushing ahead quicker than I should have. And my battle against humanity was making me stronger inside.

..."Kie, get over here!" Someone was screaming in my ear, but I was too tired to respond. Instead I waved a limp hand at them and kept walking. Instantly, I felt a hand wrap around my wrist and pull me into a crowd of giggly girls. I knew then who was pulling me, and looked up into Naoko's face as she stared at something by the school building.

"Look!" Naoko whispered, still holding my hand tightly as if afraid I'd run away, which I was attempting too. "He's the new guy, some transfer from a military school."

"I wonder what he's doing here?" I asked lightly, turning my head in the direction Naoko was looking. Standing at the stop of the stairs was a tall boy, his dirty blonde hair shaggy and wild and covering most of his eyes. But his most noticeable feature was his arms, slim and dank, but you knew despite their appearance they must be strong and used in more than one hand-to-hand combat.

He lifted his chin up and looked over the crowd of girls, his deep brown eyes suddenly shining though the mess of hair. Some of the girls covered their mouths as they giggled, but I shifted my bag over my shoulder and freed my hand from Naoko's grasp, trying as best as I could to look uninterested.

But then his eyes sank into mine, and whether it was seconds or minutes or even hours, I felt a wild sickness in my stomach that made me look away. When I looked back up, he had turned around and was walking into the building. I shuddered at my own childishness.

"He's hot," a couple girls agreed beside me. But Naoko, for once, was not part of their conversation like she normally would be. Instead, she looked at me with a daring in her eyes.

"I heard he moved in with his sister," she stated, "Like, his Dad was some commander in the Military so he sent his son to the top Military Schools, but then his parents died in some gang thing on the other side of town, and he was forced out of the school and sent to live with his sister. Harsh, huh? I mean, a lot of gangs are killing families these days on that side of town. But to kill a famous commander of the Military, I mean, that would kill the family honor, don't you think?"

I looked back up at the spot he had been standing at only moments before, and felt a sudden dry taste in my mouth. I turned and glared at her, but Naoko didn't meet my eyes after that, blushing deeply and mumbling a sorry before turning her attention away from me. Naoko was babbling now with the other girls about how cute and dangerous he looked, but I was hardly paying attention.

I was feeling even more sickened than when the new guy had stared at me, but instead of dwelling on what she said, I started to push my way through the crowd of girls and to the school.

The new guy, however, was the most important thing on my mind. He was hot, which I would never admit due to the fact that I would rather cut out my own eyes. But it wasn't just that he was cute, or had his own style, it was that for that brief second he looked at me, I felt either sickened or flustered. And that, more than anything, both confused me and hurt me. It hurt my heart, and it hurt my thoughts, and it confused my morals. But when I looked into his eyes, I saw that same flicker of doubt that I always had.

..."Kie!" Naoko yelled down the hall, but this time I wouldn't stop or let her pull me away. Instead, I made a straight path toward my locker and roughly opened it with a loud clang.

A few girls were looking at me blankly, and I could feel a few more eyes on my back, but I made it my goal to look like I didn't care.

Naoko was right by my side not even a second later, leaning against the locker next to mine and crossing her arms over her chest. My next goal was not to look at her, either. But her eyes burned into me, and I flinched as I took out my Math Book, trying to stay focused on how angry I was with her. Or at least attempt to be angry.

"Look," she started, "I'm sorry I brought up the whole gang thing so bluntly. I mean, I know your sister meant a lot to you, but-"

"I'm not mad," I said lightly, calming down inside. I was realizing slowly as she talked that getting mad at her was, in fact, pretty lame. I mean, we'd been friends for years and I was almost ready to throw our friendship out the window for something that wasn't even directly criticizing.

"Really?" she asked, looking at me from the corner of her eyes as if trying to analyze me and detect any lying.

"Yeah," I said with a sigh, "Besides, you know, the President signed the High Crimes Bill this morning, gang wars should be put to a stop soon. It's what I've been crossing my fingers for, ya'know? I should be celebrating." I tried to sound as cheery as possible, but Naoko was still looking at me like she didn't believe me.

"Come on, then," she said, smiling weakly and deciding then that she would drop the subject, "let's go to first hour."

I sighed mentally now that she had let it go. She has been prying me for a long time now about talking to her more openly, but it wasn't like I was hiding everything from her. I just didn't talk because I didn't believe I had anything to say.

...It was sunset and I was walking down the street on my way home from school, Naoko's cries of disappointment still ringing in my ear from not flirting with the new guy. But I wasn't too concerned, she'd end up flirting with him the next chance she got.

I wasn't angry, either, like other girls might have been. I was letting a blanket of relief keep me from caring, and I watched the sun dip behind the mountains of Tokyo so it could disappear until tomorrow morning.

I was dreading going home, facing my mother and all her now well thought out complains of my hair. I'd given her too much time alone to think and drink, and I would pay for it the second I walked into the door.

I was so in deep thought of how I would fight back with her, that I didn't notice the new guy walk in front of me. During the day I found out his name was Akiro and that he hated people (from all his silence towards anyone who approached him) and that he stared, a lot. It made girls think he was a mystery man, which only excited most of them.

I didn't notice until the whole street went dark that he was walking by, but suddenly everything was pitch black to settle with the starry sky. I looked up abruptly, wondering who or what could manage this. I watched as the whole half of the city went dark and cold, and I looked around quickly before I actually realized he was standing beside me.

"Are black-outs common here?" he asked, and I was dually surprised to hear his voice, so calm and cool. Through-out the day I never heard him utter the word, and now that he had it wasn't something I exected.

"No," I said, forcing my own voice to keep steady.

He looked at the sky for a few seconds, then some of the black buildings, before looking at me and shrugging. He started to walk away when it happened.

There were sirens ahead, loud ones, coming from the Tokyo Alarm Tower that I could see even from my position. I felt and uneasiness in my stomach, and then far off I heard a loud explosion, but saw no fire, and then a scream. Lots of screaming, actually. Only most of them were far away, probably in the center of the city. The only reason I could hear them was probably because they all screamed together.

"What's going on?" I asked, loosing every bit of serenity from my voice. I was no longer thinking about what he thought of me, I was only praying he knew what was going on.

But he looked just as confused and as afraid as I was, or at least I thought so considering I could barely see him through the dark. Some families were now opening their front doors and pouring out into the streets, each person talking or murmuring reasons to each other, each excuse more insane than the first.

The siren was still blaring, and everyone was staring at its search light, the only light seen throughout the eternity of darkness.

Someone had started their car and turned on the lights, which was blazing over the people on the block like it was the only thing keeping everyone together.

But when it happened, we were no longer curious. When it happened, we were all more afraid than we've ever been. The siren tower had stopped blaring, as flames of fire erupted from it's windows and exploded the search light with a sound that shattered the whole towns innocence.

Someone had blown up the Search Tower.

I was gripping around for something to hold onto, weaving my fingers around anything I could. Before long, I had found Akiro's arm and was clenching his elbow. But he either didn't notice or didn't care, because he himself was stiffened and staring at the burning tower.

People were screaming, yelling, but now the car was blaring its radio for everyone to hear.

"—Gangs Wars are now becoming more deadly and threatening as Police report that the gang on the Southern Side of Tokyo stole bombs from the Police Station this morning. But at 7:06 tonight, just moments before now, they blew up the North Tokyo Electricity Building, and then the Search Tower, better known as Shinpi. We still have electricity here, but there are riots on the street as people either run toward the fires, or drive away from town. And—JUST IN! Gangs are now surrounding the Police Departments on the West and North part of town, making havoc for all that-"

I wasn't listening anymore, because I was watching woman and children, and even men, cry. They screamed of how the High Crimes Bill was suppose to fix this, but of course the Radio Man was not bringing up the fact that the President screwed up. Even in chaos like this, no one was willing to blame the government except the people themselves.

I let go of Akiro's arm, which snapped him out of whatever daze he was also in. I couldn't help wondering why the burning tower looked so beautiful, but it did. Somehow, in the dark night, it set a symbol that I didn't understand or didn't want to think about. I was afraid, but I wasn't going to show it.

I knew that gangs in Tokyo were getting worse, that daily everyone was tortured by these inhuman people who thought they ruled all. But I thought, I begged humanity, that it would get better. Somehow.

I choked back on any threatening tears, but I didn't have a chance to stop and think before Akiro was darting across the street. I don't know why I followed him, but I somehow felt like he might help in some way. That he would fix this, somehow. Somehow was the new important word in my life.

"Akiro!" I screamed, but he was darting through the crowd quicker than I was. When I finally made it out, I watched him jump behind a house, and I ran behind it too. "Akiro!" I yelled again, and this time and turned and looked at me.

Hesitation was written all over his face, but I didn't care about being the perfect girl in his eyes anymore. I wanted this fixed, I wanted the old Tokyo back. I wanted the country back that was once known for being the less murderous cities in the world. Barely anyone died here, no one was murdered. But now, kids were more threatening than adults, and ever since guns were legal we've had more and more gangs appear over the town.

But I refused to think of the facts, I was staring into Akiro's eyes now. Begging, pleading with him that he'd help, that he'd let me in. That he'd save me.

I don't know why I was putting so much faith into him, why I was trusting him to fix everything. It was childish, and for once in my life I could not analyze what I was thinking. For once in my life, I didn't know why or how.

But I drew closer to him, and even in the darkness, as I stared into his right eye, the guilt I thought should be there was peaceful and withholding. I slid my eyes from his one eye to the other, than let my shoulders drop.

He looked at me, stared right into me, reaching down and choking my soul. Then, as he grabbed my arm and pulled me up the stairs, I felt just as released.