With mere minutes left to cross the gates of the school, I sprinted as fast as I possibly could through the busy sidewalks of Shibuya, whilst everyone stared at me; I was already out of breath from running for a few minutes straight, the sweat on my forehead was dripping down my face and soaking my uniform, it was a pretty uncomfortable situation, to say the least.

As I stopped to rest beside the statue of a dog, I heard a young boy yell out:

“Look, mommy! That girl is so sweaty,” he repeatedly pointed at me.

“Don’t stare at her, she’s from the Amber Academy,” the mother replied to the young boy, while quickly pulling him away.

I turned my head to the right, and I heard people talking about me, “Hey, isn’t she from Amber Academy?!” asked a young man. No matter where I turned my head to, there were people all around me talking to each other, “Call the police! Get somebody here quickly,” said an old lady. I was used to this feeling when out in the public, I knew people were not ready to accept us because they feared us.

“Do you guys have nothing better to do?” asked the angry voice of a girl.

I turned my body around and saw someone walking in my direction, she was about my height, had short, orange hair, and was wearing the same uniform as me. “Oh god, another one is here,” said someone else. Upon getting a closer look at her face I immediately recognized her.

“Good morning, Hinako-san,” I greeted her.

She looked at me with a disappointed look on her face, then turned her head to the crowd.

“My name is Hinako Aura, the only daughter of the Aura family and the president of class 3B, I will not allow anyone to talk about my classmates in this manner, if you have anything against her, please step forward right now so we can sort things out,” said Hinako in my defense.

Suddenly everyone went quiet, not saying a single word, and it was not necessary either, because the look in their eyes said everything; they were terrified of her. “That’s what I thought,” Hinako added. She averted her eyes from the crowd and turned back towards me.

“Thank you, Hinako-” I tried to thank her, but she interrupted me by placing her left index finger on my lips.

“Honestly, Celestine, why don’t you stand up for yourself? Do not forget that you are the Ace of the academy: the strongest among us. If you falter, then what does this mean for the rest of us?”

I did not know what to say, so I just looked down at the ground.

“Forget about it, just be glad that I was around to prevent anything from happening. I do not need your expression of gratitude either, as I said, I will not allow anyone to speak like that to my classmates. This is all there is to it,” said Hinako as she started walking away.

‘She reminds me of somebody,’ these were my thoughts at that moment.

“Oh, and by the way, the nearest access point is inside 109.”

I picked up my bag from the ground and ran towards the Shibuya 109 department store, just across the street about three minutes away. It is a ten-story store targeted at young women, but it also serves as one of the entry points to the Amber Academy.

Upon arriving in front of the building there was an elevator inside the lobby, I walked into the elevator and placed my student card in a slot below the buttons. The elevator lit up and the speakers greeted me by name, “Welcome, Illyanna Celestine, future heiress of the Celestine family.”

The doors slowly started to close by themselves.

“Wait! Hold the doors,” shouted someone from the other side of the glass doors of the elevator, as they gradually approached me, I realized who this person was.

“Well now, Yumi Agate, you can’t be arriving late to school,” I provoked her.

She was out of breath from running and did not respond to my remark, but to put it simply, she is someone I cannot stand; The daughter of the Agate family, as well as their next heiress, although she is in the same boat as me, we could not be any more different.

“You can’t say anything, since you’re late yourself,” she finally responded whilst forcing the doors to open.

As she stepped inside, the doors closed, and the elevator started moving down. During the ride I instinctively kept my eyes on her, not looking away for a second. “What are you staring for?” she asked me directly. I hesitated to answer her, but we were trapped in there for a while, it would be awkward not to say anything.

“Nothing, I was just lost in thought,” I answered her question.

She turned her body towards me, the two hairpieces on her head occasionally blinked and subtly changed colors. These had always fascinated me; it was one of the few technologies that our family did not develop, instead, it came directly from the military themselves, it is supposed to control one’s emotions, the different colors it displays matches with which emotion they are currently feeling. ‘I wish I knew what purple meant,’ I thought to myself.

“Then, quit staring at me.”

Her hairpieces lit up in different colors, showing red and purple, respectively. “And I hope you haven’t forgotten that the Amber Tournament is right around the corner, unfortunately, we need you to help with the opening ceremony, Celestine failure,” she angrily told me.

If there is anyone who grinds my gears, this girl is the answer. It is as if we were made to naturally dislike each other, whenever we met, I felt my emotions running rampant.

“You don’t need to remind me, weightless princess,” I called her by an old nickname that she was never fond of, this did not sit well with her.

Yumi grabbed me by my school uniform and pulled me closer to her face, her hairpins both turned red and she had a visibly angry expression on her face. “Let… go,” I calmly warned her. Although I would not normally fight any students, she was an exception.

“Now arriving at the outskirts of Amber Academy,” an announcement was played through the speakers of the elevator, this was enough for her to release me. “Don’t push your luck, Celestine failure. You are undeniably strong, but I am not scared of you,” exclaimed Yumi.

The elevator reached its destination, we arrived at the top of an old tower near a big garden with many beautiful and colorful flowers everywhere. Yumi was the first one to quickly storm out of the cramped space of the elevator, without saying anything else she just went downstairs and ran out of the building.

‘It is very unusual for her to be late for school though, I wonder what happened,’ I thought to myself while I kept watching her from the very top of the tower, through a small window.