"Be sure to add the sensors to your prototypes for next week. I want to see some interactive stuff."

She put her prototype in her backpack. There was nothing left to do for her since she already ordered the necessary sensors. As she made her way to the door, ready to leave, the teacher noticed her. "Oh, Yuki. You look tired. Have you been staying up again? Same game?" No, not really. "Hehe, you know me, I'm a bit addicted, I'll try to play less." "Don't let it affect your assignment, okay? Those four credits for the MA are important; you know that." "I know, I know. Don't worry. I'll always do my best." She raised up her right arm and turned her hand into a fist. "Okay, that's good to hear. Treasure those young days of yours; they'll be gone before you know it." She made a small half-bow. "Yes, thank you for your wise words." He crossed his arms and lifted his chin. "Your welcome. I look forward to your progress. " The sun finally started to shine after a long period of rainy days. She walked to her bicycle that was parked outside the building. If she doesn't take the opportunity to cycle home now, she will most probably regret it. You never know how long the sunshine will stay, dark clouds could appear at any moment. She looked up at the clouded sky. Well, the nature here is a lot better than the nature there, that's for sure. To think that it changed so badly, that it kills people— intentionally. I'm not even sure whether the dark nature has a conscience or not. It's been forty-six days since my new project started. I gotta say, the results are pretty impressive so far. The situation itself is perhaps a bit depressing, but the events and the overall experience makes it worthwhile. Funny enough, the time here and there are identical, but because of the limited access time, you could say that it takes triple the time to live here than over there. It turns out that erasing the memory was a good idea after all. Everything feels thrilling again, the experience is at its best now. The biggest concern, however, is the dreams. Those troublesome memories, I can't control them. Any more unnecessary details, and it might eventually cause a complete breakdown. If that happens—what should I do? Starting anew is too risky. I guess the only thing I can do for now is to pray. Please don't pay much attention to those memories of mine... A new day has arrived. It was time for Ayuki to go to the Order's headquarters, the results of the GA were confirmed. To be honest, the results are probably going to be pretty predictable. According to Dedroy, nobody had passed the admission for the Order Elites by just attending the GA. It's unclear how they assess people, but she certainly didn't perform that great; only once. In other words, what would follow after this is the Specialized Admission specifically focused for certain departments, in her case the Order Elites. Once she arrived at the location, an attendant welcomed her and presented Ayuki a letter with her name written on it. There were a couple of documents inside when she opened it. The most obvious one was the GA report written by hand: General Admission (GA) REPORT Name: Ayuki Kazumi Age: 19 Gender: Female Participant number: 61 Assesment Round 1: Fail Round 2: Pass Round 3: Pass Round 4: Fail Challenges conducted Memory: 100% Observation: 50% Strategy: 65% Creativity: 60% Fes ability Type: Enhancer Ability: Empathetic enhancement The ability to improve the user's empathy towards that of others based on visual perception. With more control, the user can predict strong emotional behaviors of others and act in advance to either prevent or support it. Recommended department Order Investigation (Recommended by Rin Mayn) Requested department Order Elites: DENIED Motivation is still insufficient, but admirable. Physical condition is good. Cooperation within a team is sufficient. Fes is underdeveloped and therefore not suitable yet for the Order Elites. If you still want to join the Varyion Order Elites, take the Specialized Admission (SA). Order Investigation, that was unexpected to see. Rin Mayn was the coordinator of the memory challenge. She must have put in a good word for me; even a ticket was in the letter containing detailed information regarding the Order Investigation. If I wanted, I could already start next week, working under Rin's supervision. Too bad I already made my mind for the Order Elites, I'm sorry Rin. There was also a ticket that allowed Ayuki to participate in the Order Elites admission called the Varion Order Elites SA. The SA program has a minimum duration of two months. "Your full attendance will be expected. Missing a day within the program will be not be advised," is what the ticket mentioned. And there was an extensive schedule that covered the complete SA program for the upcoming two months. Survival training, evacuation simulations, TAG practice, even real combat; many information was written in it. Tomorrow is already the introduction of the Order Elites and a tour around the headquarters. On the following day, the introduction, Ayuki joined the group of people standing in front of the gate of the headquarters. The number of people here was even larger than the participants in the GA. Fortunately, the place was spacious enough for everyone to gather. On the schedule time, a person appeared from the front. He was wearing a high-class-looking suite with a fitting hat. His blond, slightly curled hair almost covered his glaring eyes. "I'm Hyo Jullian Rayne. I'm responsible for anything related to the Varyion Order, which includes the Elites." As he slowly walked, he passed by a few people, looking them face to face. Ayuki only saw Jullian from a distance, but she still felt the fierce atmosphere resonating from him. He's quite scary. Wait, he called himself Hyo—that means he's the other Hyonim besides Ravendell. If there are three of them, I wonder who the other one is. "Starting from today, you'll all be considered recruits. You'll train, you'll fight, and you'll communicate. Especially for the communication part, I ask that we all treat each other with respect. Am I clear?" The atmosphere feels even fiercer now. I don't know why, but there's this huge pressure all of a sudden. My body feels heavier than normal, is it because of him? His hands are currently behind his back, he might be using his Fes on us. "When I ask something, I want a reply. Am I clear?" The pressure intensified. Everyone replied now by saying, "Yes," as loudly as possible. "Good." He lifted up his left hand. A group of around twenty people marched forward, all wearing the same uniforms as the Order Elites wore during yesterday's Fortification. "These people are officially part of the Order Elites for a couple of weeks. You can recognize them by the badges attached on their shoulders; it has our emblem, the Raven. You will see them from time to time and even practice with them. You might all have different goals for joining the Order Elites, but there's one goal you all have in common: you should become an elite yourself. Only then are you allowed to go outside the walls for a long amount of time. Only then are you capable of fully surviving the outside world." Ayuki didn't completely listen to what Jullian said. She was distracted by the two persons standing there among the Order Elites. What? What? What?! Aisha and Eran—why are they standing over there? It was clearly them standing among the rest, wearing the Elites uniform with the emblems displayed. When Aisha finally noticed Ayuki's dumbfounded stare, her expression turned apologetic. "That's all from me. Good luck with your training." Jullian turned around and walked away. After that, all the Order Elites scattered to different places. It was break-time before the tour would start; this was Ayuki's opportunity to confront Aisha and Eran. "Aisha! Eran! What's going on? Explain!" Ayuki demanded an answer from them; she couldn't understand why they either lied or how they quickly promoted, not even her Fes ability could answer that. "Yeah! We're surprised too." Bayne and Vanessa showed up as well now. Everyone looked at Aisha's face. Her watering eyes with her eyebrows frowned deeply, made her look as if she could cry any minute. "Well...it's basically—we're sorry, we lied to you guys! Eran and I were already part of the Elites during your admission. We were there for observation purposes and monitoring participants that were aiming for the Elites." "What? Why is that necessary?" Bayne asked as he scratched his head. If he didn't, I would have asked myself. Aisha sniffled. "The coordinators can't witness everything, so some of us go undercover to monitor the process from close-by. It's also necessary to get a better understanding of all your characters, to find out whether you can handle certain situations." Aisha turned her face towards Eran's direction. "Hey, Eran, explain the rest will ya?" Eran pointed his finger at himself. "Me? Okay, fine, fine." "Ayuki," Aisha whispered and signaled with her hands for Ayuki to come closer. "We need to talk about something, follow me." Ayuki simply followed Aisha until they stood far enough from Eran and the rest. "What's going on?" Ayuki asked. "Once again sorry Ayuki! If feel so bad! But uhm, back to the topic. We saw your GA report since we also had some influence on the assessment for your admission. Your ability is called empathetic enhancement, correct?" "Yeah." I still have no clue where this is going. "Cool. Okay, here's the thing. Part of the reason we go undercover as participants is also so that we can scout for potential teammates. Eran and I are part of the Elites, but our squad is currently not complete. Two of my teammates were badly injured in the past and still need some time to rehabilitate. We can't do any away missions with only three people, and thus we have room for two temporary teammates." Ayuki could already guess what Aisha wanted to say, but she still wanted to hear it from Aisha's mouth. "Would you be interested in joining us for some time? It will be a good experience for you. My team works really well together if I say so myself. Eran might look like a troublesome person to work with, but you can really depend on him when it's necessary." Ayuki didn't need to think long about her answer. Aisha was the only person she could call a friend, someone she could hang around with. Eran acted stupidly, but he was probably fooling around since he didn't take the admission seriously. "I'll gladly join your team, but no more lying this time." "Deal! Welcome on board." According to Aisha, the forming of a squad is usually done after the SA, but joining existing squads is already possible. There are a couple of benefits from being part of a squad during the SA program. As a recruit, you can't participate in what they call 'away' missions—offical missions executed outside the city—but you can join a couple of training sessions with your assigned squad to get used to their teamwork. The experience should also give you a huge advantage during the exam held at the end of the SA. "Oh, yeah!" Aisha blurted out. "I still have to tell you about our declared mission! Last time, you told me that you haven't heard about Yeon's lost research before. Oh, wait, I was informed that you have a heavy memory loss... is that true?" Ayuki sighed heavily. "Yup, I'm afraid so. Nothing I can do about it." "You have to tell me more about that later, but for now, let me first tell you about the Speakers then. The Speakers are those who guide humanity into the right course of destiny, a path that saves the world from ruin. I've heard that only a Speaker can receive the divine messages from the nature itself, and use that knowledge to tell us the right direction of salvation. Yeon Althain is recognized as the last known Speaker that has lived. She's the key that could have fixed this whole mess, but as you might know, she's not alive anymore. Even worse, we don't know what really happened to her. She went MIA after a dangerous mission." To think that such an amazing person existed, she sounds even better than a hero now. Now that I think about it, I saw some books that mentioned 'Speaker' in their titles, but I didn't think it was something that important. I'll have to do some more reading after this. Yeon Althain... "So, do you know something more about it?" Ayuki asked. I can't ignore it now. "Right, so the last mission that Yeon attended is called 'Attaining the Sylvanie' with the goal of getting hold of a special plant she called the Sylvanie." Aisha grabbed a map from her bag and folded it open. "According to our intel, the location of that mission was most likely executed here." She pointed at a location that didn't have a name, but the area was marked as a danger zone. "I can tell you the details later, but our goal is to recover her body, or to be more precise her personal notebooks. Many people that knew her described her as someone that was very diligent in researching and making notes. She would always take the notebooks with her when she went out on a mission. We really believe that we might find something important if we can get our hands on that notebook of hers. That's the mission we want to risk our lives for, but I understand if you don't want to do this." Risking your lives for something that is still uncertain. Is it worth the trouble? I can't say for sure, but I have to admire their bravery. Perhaps we need this kind of resolution; to risk your life for even the smallest glimmer of hope. Was Yeon also like this? If she really is a Speaker, and if Speakers are really the key to salvation, then this sounds like a mission worth doing. "Hmm, the missions sounds like a great idea, but I'm not sure whether I have much to offer yet." "Ayuki... that not t—" "But that's why I need to do something first," Ayuki said determinedly. "There's one thing I need to find out. I need to know whether I can use my ability on the Dark nature. If it works—than perhaps there's a way to communicate with it."