THE LAST KEEPER

His feet felt a bit weak, and his hands clammy. Since his birthday, he had also been able to understand his own emotions to some degree, unlike before, as if the archive and the power inside him had kept him from growing those now. However, if he could say he actually felt what he had felt ooze out of other people.

Nervousness.

The human seemed foreign now and more intimidating, as if he hadn’t trained with it a thousand times. under the watchful eye of the examiners and his classmates, whom she had failed three times in front of, his hands felt cramped.

The small blades in his hands felt heavy and foreign. He had seen different boys use different combinations. two at a time. Four and two like kaka. One at a time in consecutive small durations. It seemed that they had been tested a couple of times and used the combination a few hundred times. him, on the other hand, this was his first time, and he felt like he was standing in front of a multitude of a thousand people instead of just less than a hundred.

The walk to the centre place felt even longer, and the eye contact with the straw man felt even deeper. sagiri stood with his legs slightly apart and one blade in each hand. He was not going to do it the kaka or kiuga way, with his hands going clammy.

”Hey, Sagiri the blind. Don’t fail me again.” It was Kiuga. It was the first time he had spoken to him directly or indirectly in the last few days, and his words made him feel some kind of way, as some little weight had been lifted off his shoulders. It was as if he was not performing in front of a multitude anymore, but in front of one person. The ice that had settled in his heart since his friends gave him a cold shoulder felt like it had been touched by a sunny day.

sagiri was not even wearing his hearing aids anymore to put on a facade, and he did not care.

”Start!” Bekuro was the one who announced. Time froze at that moment, and sagiri froze too. He tried to calm down, but he couldn’t. One second went by, then another, then another. Three seconds out of ten gone, and he hadn’t moved. kiuga had asked him to calm down. Senraki had told him what was at stake. Yet, he was still frozen.

Another second trickled by.

”If you don’t move, you are out of team ten.” Kaka snickered, and it was as if that grounded him instantly. He had spent all these days not understanding why his teammates were not talking to him. The him before he turned sixteen could not have felt much, but after he started to become aware of his rapid body growth, he was experiencing what could be described as pain for the first time. pain of losing something you thought you had. pain of being ignored by those you held dear and the distress of not understanding the reason.

At Kaka’s words, he finally breathed and shut everyone and everything out. even his feelings. They must have been the ones holding him back. He knew how not to feel more than anyone, and he had done it for the past sixteen years, so he stopped feeling. It was just him and the straw man now. He let the archive record the outline, and as the fifth second trickled by, he shut his eyes and moved.

He had trained more than a few hundred times on his own. he would just imagine he was alone in the combat pit in the central Pentagon with no one in sight. He crossed his hands on his chest when he covered half the distance. Four seconds remained to go. He however, did not feel pressured. There was no time limit during his training, and he just needed to hit the vital organs. He had learned about them in the library and memorized them like the back of his hand. There was no way he was going to miss.

He pulled his hands further back before opening them with force. His first two dagger blows were aimed at the heart and the liver. another second tickled but.

Three more seconds to go.

He pulled two more from his pocket and crossed his hands. This time, he needed more momentum.

”He is running with his eyes closed?” A voice said.

”He hit. He actually hit the target with his eyes closed,” another added.

”He is in team 25, of course, he can hit with his eyes closed,” kiuga’s voice said, and Kaka snickered.

He released the third dagger straight to the depression at the base of the neck. That put him in close range enough that he would not shoot again. He had to think fast. He stepped on the first he had driven to the strawman’s heart and used the momentum to twist his body and sit on the strawman’s head, facing forward on his knees. The third second tickled by. He twisted the blade between his fingers and drove it into the skull of the straw man.

Two more blades and two more vital points to go.

Another second went by.

with one second left. He did not have time to change his position to go for the vital points at the back. He had to think fast or not think at all. With that one second ticking by, he threw his body weight back and spun the blades just like Bekuro had shown him. You let the daggers drop, but capture them at the last second and drive them into a vital organ when you are cornered.

He let his blades slip in his hands as if he wanted to let them fall, but he caught them just in time and drove them into the two vital points in the back.

The last second tickled by as soon as he drove the daggers into the vital points. Then time stopped. He remained in the same position and did not open his eyes for a long moment after it was all done.

I did it.

I did it

a feeling he had never felt before hit him. He let himself fall backwards, catching himself with his hands and landed softly on his feet. He barely saw the instructors holding up the tags, and this time it was not a zero. It was four eights and five sevens and one six from Bekuro. a seventy-three. He was in the above-average category. thought the guy who had scored the lowest was seventy-eight and a staggering five points ahead of him. he had never felt so much peace in his heart. He had hesitated, yes, but he had done it.

”Recruit, Sagiri, 73 points!!” Bekuro announced, and sagiri looked at the ceiling of the arena. It felt even better than when he was able to hunt and catch a squirrel after a long moment of stalking it and hunting it.

”I did not know he was that good at handling blades,” a voice said.

”Maybe he is not completely useless. Let’s wait and see where he ranks in the written exam.”

sagiri did not care to hear all the gossip, so he turned around and walked away. He was proud that he had been able to show results in something he had trained so hard in day and night. Perhaps killing ’star-shaped’ one with a blade provided the breakthrough he needed.

He walked out of the arena, and his feet took him to a quiet place. He walked and found himself in the shadow colonnade arena. It was quiet as always, but after being ambushed way too many times, he could not take chances anymore. He pushed all his senses to listen to any movement and feel for any presence. Only when he proved that there was no one there did he move.

He walked deeper and deeper into the shadows and chose a spot which was raised not too high, but with a pillar he could rest his back on. He had not had a rest in the past five days, and the final day had drained him. Six days of no proper rest. He sank to the ground with a groan and rested his back on the broken pillar. He pulled his legs crisscrossed below him and rested his back even deeper into the pillar. He could feel his muscles relax physically and even his bones that had not stopped growing expand slightly under his skin.

He pushed himself into conscious slumber, and it had become easy for him now. It was so silent and peaceful, and it stayed that way for a long time. He could have stayed there for hours.

His peace, however, did not last long because something moved. not something. someone and there were many of them. His eyes snapped open in a rush. He had grown to become weary of any presence. This group, however, does not have threatening air hanging around them. This group had a smell not specifically threatening, but it was full of mischief.

Mischief?