"Walk without mercy nor clemency in this world, Mahiru. Because even if you do, other's won't."

%%%

"You can't do this, Mahiru! This is utter madness!"

Mahiru cranks her neck to the highest shelf of her closet, two suitcases spread out across the length of her condo. One suitcase for her utensils and the other for her clothes and a smaller one for her heels.

Outside her bedroom door, a distraught Katsuhiro Kai stood, leaning against the door. His face tight with anxiety.

"Mahiru!" he tried once more.

"All of your branch manager duties have been taken care of, everything I owe you for taking care of me since I was fourteen has been paid back. Your contract had been terminated," she replied to him nonchalantly.

"Do you honestly think that family is defined by money, Mai?"

She remembers a time when her father called her that.

"According to my father, it is. And well, I've always been my father's daughter. More so than I had ever been my mother's. But if I had been, maybe she wouldn't have died, right, uncle?"

Her words cut through him like a knife through butter if his sharp exhale is any indication in the cold atmosphere in one of Mahiru's many homes-but-not-quite home.

He grabs her shoulder in one last desperate attempt when she finishes packing, "Mahiru. I love you. You are my niece, I would never want you to be in harm's way."

She sighs and looks up, her eyes are half-lidded, "Look, I understand you cared for my mother more than you should have. But whether or not you will play a role in my life is up to me to decide."

He flinches.

She shakes herself free of his grasp and takes her purse from the counter.

Mahiru hesitates by the door, she turns and looks at her uncle, still motionless by the door.

"Seeing how much you like this place, you can have it," she tells him. "Some of mom's stuff are still in the attic, and some of mine in my room. I'll pull up a contract and send it to you, whether or not you sign is up to you. If you do sign, do whatever you want with the place and the stuff. I don't care."

Mahiru looks at the house again, inside the house. Opening her eyes, she stared at the orchids her mother had planted so lovingly outside the yard, the field of daffodils behind her childhood home. She waits. No flashbacks come. The memories remnant of her mother had been twisted beyond all recognition by her stricken father.

And she'd left her father after that, too. Let him twist himself, too, into someone she never knew. Gone, was the person who used to call her Mai-chan, who used to start food fights with her in the dining hall with her grandparents, the one who kissed her boo boo's away and made excuses for her 'battle scars' when her mother goes hysterical.

But she had gone with them, too. No longer the sweet, bubbly girl or the charismatic, candid girl of her tween years. No, the Mahiru now was the exact same as her father. A heart protected by an iron dam and unwilling to let go of things long gone. The feel of the world a fraction of what it was once was; the texture, the sound, the sight and the taste— But never the scent.

Yet now, even the wonderland of aroma and the aura of home was gone.

How long would it be until she was lost once and for all?

%%%

One thousand students are present in their first year.

One hundred will move onto their second year.

Less than ten will graduate in their final third year.

Totsuki Tea Ceremony and Culinary Academy.

And now she was back again. The weight of the letter that was in her shredding bin weeks ago ponderous on her breast.

"Hello, Mahiru-senpai," said Isshiki Satoshi as he greets her. Tenuori Kuga stands behind him.

"Isshiki, Kuga," she greeted them.

"Aww, as cold as ever, Mahiru-chin~" Kuga is still what he was eight months ago, but that ever-childish grin is back on his face and he's looking at her like someone who belongs in the past.

To be fair. She does. They all do. Azami Nakamura, Gin Dojima, even Joichirou Saiba, countless other alumni and students. And that was why this was happening.

The breeze picks up, and Isshiki offers to take her suitcase. "The path to the Polar Star Dormitory is a long walk. A delicate blossom such as yourself should never be subjected to more burden than the walk." He smiles.

Kuga pouts. "Isshiki-chin, Isshiki-chin!" he complains, "You never offered to carry my luggage when I was moving in!"

"That's because you had a hundred capable men fighting to carry them."

They're both dazzling, Mahiru thinks, two former seat holders of the Elite Ten who held just as much of the light stars coruscated as they did the darkness that encompasses it.

So Mahiru takes solace in the fact that unlike them— she never tried to hide the darkness that had always been inside her.

%%%

To his credit, Isshiki tries to make small talk with her, no matter how awkward. "So, how have the last eight months been?"

Mahiru was a business scion. Not a communications officer nor a chef at a diner like Joichirou Saiba's son. She hardly had the skills required to function as a normal member of the society.

Or, she did, but refused to exercise it. Because Mahiru is naturally sloth — lazy people are smart because they are people who prefer to do less work rather than more, instead of perfecting her facades and personas, she transforms her barely functioning communication skills into cold gazes and words with sharp edges that work wonders on anyone who opposes her.

"I ran the idea of a new chain shop with the board of directors and implemented as well as updated a few more budgets of existing stores," she replied nonchalantly.

"Have you done any cooking?" Still sunshine and butterflies.

He never knew when to stop.

"No,"

"Why not?" he sounds pleasantly curious, but the glint in his eyes tell her otherwise.

"Don't forget that I'm not here for the same reason you and Kuga as well as the rest are. We are no friends, acquaintances at best. But that is only because the enemy of my enemy is an ally." she looks at him coldly, "Let me reaffirm this once more, Isshiki-kun, I don't care about your self-righteous ideals nor about the past you wish to go back to. Azami Nakamura may seem like a demon to you, but he is but a vermin to me. I fear no man, so do not think that you can force me into anything I oppose."

I fear no man—

She takes her suitcase back from him and walks the rest of the way to Polar Star.

But demons are different.

And so she walks, bitterness on her tongue and this time, she, too, carried the ponderous weight of her own words and her father's words on her shoulders.

As well as that sense of justice her father had warned her of, one that made empires fall in their world.