the air in the small dining room was thick, not with the smell of the evening’s miso soup, but with a tension that felt heavy enough to completely displace the oxygen.

  Sixteen-year-old Hiroshi shinkou stood by the edge of the polished wooden table, his gaze locked firmly on a loose thread in the tatami mat.

  In front of him lied his mid-term report card. The crimson ink of the teacher’s marks, vicious circles around failing grades, seemed almost like they were glowing.

  His mother, Midori shinkou, wasn't yelling at him, and that's exactly what terrified him, her calm anger.

  She held her smartphone in one hand, the screen displaying the school’s digital portal, while her other hand gestured sharply at the paper on the table.

  "Hiroshi," she said, her tone trembling with a mix of exhaustion and fury. "Do you think the tuition for your juku falls from the cherry blossoms? We sit here, your father and I, cutting every corner so you can have a future, and this is the 'effort' you bring home?"

  "I tried," Hiroshi mumbled to his socks.

  "You 'tried'?" Midori’s voice rose an octave, no longer being quietly furious, now she was loudly furioud. "You tried to reach the next level in your video games! I see the light under your door at 2:00 AM. I thought you were studying Kanji, but your scores say you were studying how to be a failure. Do you want to be the only one in your class who doesn't get into a decent college? Do you want to spend your life apologizing for being mediocre?"

  She pulled out a chair and sats, but her posture was rigid. "Look at me."

  Hiroshi slowly lifted his head. Her eyes weren't just angry; they were red-rimmed. "In this house, we do not ask for genius. We ask for sincerity. This-" she taps the failing math grade hard enough to make the paper crinkle, "-is a lie. It is a lie to us, and it is a lie to yourself."

  A couple minutes later, The boy lay in his room, staring up at the ceiling. He genuinely had tried his best… he just wasn't good at anything.

  His mother's words were weighing heavily on him.

  He was one of those people who wasn't built to handle stress, school was like hell for him, constant stress and work that he wasn't smart enough to understand. High school was supposed to be the best years of his life… so if this was where his life would peak, he'd rather not experience the drop.

  He didn't get how the kids around him were so much smarter than him, people like that top scorer girl from the next class over, yui hoshino he thinks was her name, he'd never actually met her, but he's seen her around, she seemed way more lackadaisical than him, she was way more gifted, just like everyone else around him.

  He would never be that, he would always just stay that one loser who no one knows the name of.

  Why would he willingly keep on living like that?

  He pulled open his drawer, and pulled out a knife.

  It wasn't like anyone would miss him.

  He put the knife up to his neck, ready to end it all right there… until

  He suddenly found himself floating in some dark empty space. It was like a tar pit.

  Such powerful envy

  “Huh?” he wondered where he was, what was this space he was in? And what was that voice?

  Y'know, I can give you the power you need. The power to make you just as great as anyone else. You can live your life stress free, and have the kind of fun that only the gifted can have.

  “You're.. one of those demon things aren't you?” He contemplated refusing… but the thing intrigued him, would he really get to live life stress free?

  All you have to do is form a contract,

  The boy smiled. A stress free life. That sounded perfect.

  –present–

  Yui's pink eyes fluttered open, her consciousness slowly but surely returning to her.

  That sin must have knocked her out during the fight.

  She had been laid flat on one of the roofs on the school compound, a towel laid beneath her, she pushed herself right back up, her eyes scanned the area, trying to figure out her exact surroundings. Himoru lay behind her, wounded but patched up, with a bunch of wrappings.

  “Oh, you woke up already, I don't think it's even been a full five minutes. You're pretty resilient.” She only noticed konchuu after he spoke, he seemed to be ready to jump off before he noticed she woke up.

  “Yeah I guess so.” she said, looking down at her hand which had a faint glow.

  “... May I.. ask you a question?” konchuu stared at her with a worried expression

  “Uh sure. What do you wanna ask?”

  “Why do you not want to use your angel gear?” The boy asked carefully.

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  Yui hesitated, running a hand through her pink hair, tugging at the ends like she was was trying to untangle a thought. “I'm not-” she sighed, pushing that lie to the back of her head, he definitely wouldn't have believed her if she said she wasn't holding back.

  “Do you promise not to laugh at me?” she

  “Why would I laugh at you?” He questioned her.

  “I don't know it's just.. I don't wanna be carried by my instincts. I want to fight. Me. Not some power I can’t control.”

  “Is that.. it?”

  “Huh? What do you mean?”

  “Well I mean, I guess I understand, since you're still a rookie and all, but.. using those instincts and abilities of yours isn't a bad thing. It's the reason you lasted so long against me remember?”

  “Yeah I know.” She said, though it didn't actually seem to make her feel any better. If anything it made her feel a little worse.

  “If I'm being honest? I'm quite envious of you.”

  Yui blinked at him, her pink hair falling over one eye. “Envious… of me?” she repeated, incredulous.

  “Yes, what you have? It's a gift”Konchuu stepped closer, his boots clicking softly against the concrete of the roof. He looked out over the city skyline, the neon lights of the district beginning to flicker on as the sun dipped below the horizon, painting the clouds in bruised purples and golds.

  “You see it as an intrusion,” he said, his voice quiet but steady. “Like some foreign entity is hijacking your muscles and making decisions for you. But Yui, where do you think those instincts come from? They aren't some separate ghost living in your head.”

  He turned back to her, gesturing toward her heart.

  “That power, that Angel Gear, it exists within you for a reason. You're not being replaced by anything, it's apart of you, and it's been apart of you all your life no matter whether you knew it or not. You're a strong girl, you just haven't grown into that strength.”

  Yui looked down at her hands, clenching them into fists. “But it feels like cheating. If I win because of some... some biological autopilot, did I really win?”

  Konchuu let out a short, dry laugh, though there was no malice in it.

  “ Expecting yourself to fight like a normal human is like asking a cyclist to win a race without the wheels. Sure, they can carry the frame and run the distance, but they’re ignoring the very thing they were built to do.” He walked to the edge of the roof, looking back at her over his shoulder.

  “I'm going to go find that sin before our competitor does, will you be following me?”

  —

  The stairwell door burst open with a metallic bang.

  The teenage sin, Hiroshi- tore up the concrete steps two at a time, fingers digging into the railing as he launched himself upward. That girl he was beating down on, he didn't recognize her at the time, but she did look kinda like that girl, yui hoshino he'd seen around a couple times. And if she was a fellow classmate then that made for an even better meal.

  He got into a hallway, looking for the group that had gotten away from him, where had they gone?

  Suddenly, the boy was cleanly bisected in half by some kinda high pressure blood shot?

  The old man that konchuu had been fighting rushed the boy, stabbing him in the head with a blood knife.

  “Hehe, I still got it” the man said, before noticing the boy's body coming back together.

  He was then launched across the hallway with a kick to the gut.

  “My God, food just keeps offering itself up to me tonight, and this time it's another sin, just like me!” the boy licked his lips in anticipation.

  “I hate losing more than anything.” The man said, struggling to his feet. The old man staggered upright, one hand pressed to the crater in his abdomen where the kick had folded him. Blood pooled at his feet.

  “Then don’t,” Hiroshi said lightly. “Just die properly this time. Die so that I can taste your flavor of genius” the boy rushed at him, before decking the man in the face, hard enough to shatter the wall behind him.

  The boy thought he had one, but he quickly found his hand being cut into chunks of meat. The man had let the injury stay so that he could gather more blood. And now that he had gotten enough, he closed the gaping hole in his chest.

  “Did you think you won? All sins can regenerate, or did they not teach you that in history class?” The man looked at him with a smug smile, trapping the boy's feet in the large pool of blood.

  “DIE YA BASTARD!” He yelled as large blood spikes pushed out of the ground, impaling the boy all over.

  If he could keep this up, the boy couldn't regenerate, and he'd die right there.

  “Woah”

  “Huh?” The man was surprised at the boy's ability to speak despite being impaled all over.

  “I didn't notice until now, but your blood’s not black like mine. It's red! That must mean you're way different from me right.” the boy said as his body strained, the condensed blood couldn't keep its hold on him as he twisted his body, causing his upper body to get ripped off.

  This allowed him to regenerate his full lower body,

  “Damnit” The man cursed, throwing spears of blood towards his opponent, but the boy simply ran at him, allowing them to pierce through him as he got up close and rocked the man across the jaw.

  He staggered back, this kid was crazy. Unlike him this kids demon clearly didn't have a unique ability to impart onto its host, yet despite that he was still so strong.

  No.

  Strong wasn't the right word for it. The boy wasn't actually any stronger than he was, after all, all phase one sins were equal in terms of overall power even if that power was split up differently for every single one.

  No this kid was just plain crazy, crazier than he's ever seen before.

  The man raised his hand to fight back, but the boy bit into it the moment it was raised.

  The man tried to shake the teenager off of him, but this just led to the boy ripping his arm clean off with his teeth, leaving red blood all over the floor.

  The boy jumped back as he spat the arm out of his mouth. “Disgusting, you taste disgusting. You're no different from me are you? That red blood isn't cause you're special. Your ability lets you control blood, but our blood isn't actually blood, so your demon left you with your human blood, am I right?”

  The old man staggered back, clutching the stump where his arm had been. He was supposed to be the one hunting this kid, how did the situation turn around so quickly?

  He regrew his hand, but before he could even process that it came back, it was gone again.

  Both he and the kid gasped in shock, what could have done that?

  The atmosphere in the hallway shifted instantly.

  There was no sound of a door swinging, no dramatic shattering of glass.

  One heartbeat passed,

  Then before another beat of their hearts, konchuu appeared.

  Foot firmly planted in the older mans face.

  “You two are making a mess,” Konchuu said, his voice dropping into a register that was dangerously smooth. “And I’ve never been a fan of cleaning up after others.”

  The older Sin, his remaining hand already forming a jagged blade of crimson, let out a gurgle of rage.

  But before he could swing, Konchuu’s hand blurred. There was a faint clink, like the sound of a hilt hitting a guard, and the older man’s newly formed blood-blade was sheared into mist.

  Hiroshi, the teenage Sin, didn't wait. His logic was primal, if a bigger predator enters the cage, you bite first. He lunged, his incredibly sharp fingernails cutting through the air like a sword

  Konchuu didn't even look at him.

  He pivoted on the heel of the foot still pinning the old man, swinging his leg around in a wide arc that caught Hiroshi mid-air.

  The force sent the boy skidding across the linoleum floor, but Konchuu used that momentum to fully unsheathe his blade.

  The steel caught the flickering fluorescent light of the hallway, a cold, clinical silver.

  The Older Sin Launched a volley of blood needles, dozens of pressurized red droplets aimed at the different vital areas all across konchu’s body, Hiroshi Recovered instantly, staying low to the ground and sprinting like a beast, aiming to disembowel Konchuu from below.

  Konchuu breathed, a slow, controlled intake of air.

  In one single, clean motion, he spun. and his blade acted more like a barrier than a weapon. The Blood Needles met the steel and were deflected into the ceiling with a rhythmic thud-thud-thud. As Hiroshi reached him, Konchuu stepped into the boy’s space, bypassing the claws entirely, and delivered a hilt-strike to Hiroshi’s solar plexus that sounded like a sledgehammer hitting a heavy bag.

  Yui watched from the threshold of the hallway, her breath hitching. The way konchuu was fighting right now, it was nothing like how he fought her.

  The man pooled blood beneath his feet, bringing it up to cover his skin completely, not a single gap.

  He rushed at konchuu, trying to get his hands on him, but the boy quickly grabbed the man's hand, and used his momentum to instead throw him out the window.

  Tho the boy had miscalculated, he didn't realize that touching him, even if just a little bit, would also cause force to be sent through him. This meant that he was sent flying out the window with his opponent.

  This left Hiroshi in the hallway.

  He turned his eyes to the girl on the other side of the hallway watching. “Pardon me, but would you, by any chance, be named… yui hoshino?”

  —meanwhile—

  Corveau sat alone in his decently large office, drinking a tea that he would dare to call exquisite.

  On a laptop infront of him, he watched the competition unfolding. He had set up drones to ensure he got every single angle.

  “i did believe that I'd been prepared enough for this eventuality. I didn't think you'd be able to sneak in here without me being notified, yet here you are” Corveau said, looking up at Ash who stood tall in front of him, seemingly untouched by even dirt.

  “Tho, if you're here to kill me before I can win, I have to warn you, that is the quickest way to turn public opinion against you.” The man said, looking past ash, out into the hallway where all his bodyguards and hunters were unconscious and beaten.

  “Nah, I'm not here to kill you, I only kill demons, and you aren't one… yet.” the man said, looking down at the leader of the so called rival group that had the HAS on edge

  “Then why exactly are you here? Shouldn't you be watching over your division? That konchuu boy’s picked a fight with one of my deadlier agents” the man questioned.

  “So you even know that huh? Well, no. Konchuu isn't in Junior division 13. But i wouldn't worry about it anyway, he's gonna kick your guys butt.”

  The man said before looking corveau in the eyes and turning a little bit more serious. “now, since you wanna asked what I'm doing, I guess I should answer…I wanna know. Why'd you defect? Why did you leave division 13, and become the enemy?”