Blood dripped from a damaged beam hanging from the ceiling. The remaining white florescent lights flickered in the dim laboratory.

"What happened here?" A man in a lab coat yelled as he threw his clipboard to the ground. "You were supposed to keep an eye on this! How could you let 「FIELD」get out of control?"

Blood soaked into the clipboard. Others in lab coats began to stammer excuses as they gazed around at the destruction.

"I-It was all fine just a moment ago."

"I don't understand..."

"H-How could this happen?"

"「FIELD」wasn't this imbalanced."

The man heaved a large sigh. "Shut up, all of you. Where are they?"

The others glanced around at each other, each one of their expressions becoming more nervous by the second.

"...You don't know?" The man raked his hand through his hair and looked down his nose at the lab assistants.

Silence.

"If you don't manage to find both of them within the next thirty minutes, I expect to see your letters of resignation on my desk." The man turned his back on the destroyed lab, walking towards the empty doorway. "And get someone to clean this mess up."

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"Emery, there's someone here looking for you." Alora ran to Emery's desk, hurriedly grabbing her arm. Emery furrowed her brows. She didn't know anyone outside of class 6 who would come to look for her personally. Other students bullied her sometimes, but that only ever happened when she was an eyesore for them. Bullies never came to find her. Alora's face drained of blood, making her white as a sheet.

As Emery turned her gaze to the doorway, her eyes swept over the tall figure standing there. She couldn't help but widen her eyes. The only figure standing in the doorway was the school's top student.

「CROW」.

Emery didn't remember his real name. She only knew him as either his power, 「CROW」, or his nickname, Emperor. To an existence like herself she could only call someone as masterful as him "your majesty". When his dark eyes fell on her, she felt her back stiffen.

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"Why is his royal majesty the top student coming to our humble village?" Alora hissed.

Emery shook her head. It had been a month since the start of the new school year. She wracked her brain for every action she had taken in the last month. How could she have offended the emperor? But no matter how hard she thought, she couldn't think of anything she had done that might have made him notice her.

"Well, go see what he wants! A peasant cannot keep a king waiting!" Alora yanked Emery from her seat and shoved her towards the towering figure in the doorway.

She managed to catch herself before she tripped. Emery glanced back at Alora, who was making shooing motions with her hand. Most of the other students had thankfully left for lunch already. Those that were in the classroom had already begun to gossip, their eyes burning into Emery's back. Emery sighed mournfully to herself as she approached the great figure waiting for her, her poor lunchbox left abandoned in her bag.

She stopped in front of the emperor and tilted her head up to meet his eyes. Emery herself was considered petite, but this young man was impossibly tall. She wondered if she would have a sore neck from looking up at him.

"What can I do for you?" she asked. The great emperor stared down at her, his dark eyes narrowing slightly. Emery almost flinched.

"Follow me." He didn't bother to wait for her reply and turned his back to her. She watched him take a few steps down the hallway before he looked back at her and gestured with his head for her to come along.

Emery shot a helpless glance at Alora before hurrying after his distancing figure.

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Jun led the girl all the way up to the rooftop before he stopped to face her. She was shorter than he thought she'd be. He looked her up and down. No matter how many times he looked, from her long white hair to her small feet, she looked... weak.

His grandmother was probably stronger. And probably had less white hair. Or at least that's what he would have thought, had he met this girl a month ago. Now he wasn't sure what to think of her.

Jun reached into his pocket and pulled out the student handbook he had found by coincidence at the opening ceremony. He presented it to her and waited.

"...What's this?" Emery furrowed her brows.

"Take it."

She reached out and hesitantly took the handbook. He continued to wait. She stared at him with those confused eyes before flipping the handbook open to the student identification page.

It had been a month since he found the handbook, so there was no doubt she had gotten a new one from the school. The student card had long been deactivated. He watched her face as her eyebrows became even more furrowed when she saw her own picture.

She didn't say anything for a moment before she met his eyes. "When did you find this?"

"The opening ceremony."

"Why return it now?"

Jun shrugged. He was surprised by how calm she was. He had expected her to be angry or defensive. He was certain the information in her student handbook was not common knowledge. If it were, she would be famous in the school. As it was, he hadn't even known she existed until a month ago.

Jun had spent the past month slowly gathering information. No matter what resources he used or who he talked to, no one seemed to know a thing about Emery beyond three things: she never used her power under any circumstances, she was ranked dead last in the entire school, and she didn't ever associate with anyone outside of class 6. The thing that interested Jun most was when he had talked to Roy, he had learned of an incident where she had been involved in a "restriction" of a group of students' powers.

She was apparently the victim of bullying on occasion and once a situation became serious enough that it was brought to the disciplinary council's attention. Roy became involved as some students were using their powers violently. When he arrived on scene to use 「REIN」, she was the only student whose power he couldn't control. Even when students didn't actively use their powers, Roy could still grab hold of them, or at least sense them to some degree. Jun would have thought this meant she didn't have a power at all, but he knew the truth.

Her power was greater than Roy's 「REIN」.

Emery bit her lip before finally speaking again. "...What do you want?"

Jun stared at her. He wasn't sure what to make of her expression. She didn't look suspicious of him. She looked nervous.

"Why do you hide it?"

"Hide what?"

"Your power."