"What did you say about you and Ryo again?"

Luna's eyes glowed violently in the sudden dark that followed the fight. The sun had setted now and the rays of sunlight that once fell through the window were now disappearing at a rapid rate. Luna moved towards Mayu in a single step and grabbed a fistful of her hair. Before I knew it, Luna lifted Mayu off her feet by her hair.

"How dare you try to touch Ryo's lips with your filthy mouth..." Luna said, her voice shaking with anger. She rose her knife in her other hand, pointing the tip towards Mayu's face. "I'm going to tear your face apart and cut you like a pig."

"L-Luna, STOP!" I ran up and grabbed her hand preparing to wrench the knife away from her but at my touch, Luna released her grip on both Mayu and her knife.

"Ryo, why do you keep stopping me?!" Luna let out frustratingly. Her voice started breaking and I saw tears beginning to well up in her eyes. "I love you sooo much and even so you do this to me? H-How could you...?"

"This girl is a WHORE. She'll do anything to pull us apart!" Luna continued straining her voice. "Don't let her trick you with her looks. She is just trying to USE you!"

I looked at her and she looked back at me breathing in heavy puffs refusing to look away. Her hair that was once neatly combed and tied when she entered the apartment, had come messily undone and hair was plastered across her cheeks sticking to the sweat.

"Luna... please..." I started off slowly. "You promised me you wouldn't kill anyone."

She bit her lips and looked down at Mayu. I followed her eyes. Mayu's body was quivering in a heap of sweat and blood, the final slash that Luna had given her caught Mayu by the waist. Dark blood was oozing out from the wound and onto the floor. It almost seemed fatal.

"I didn't hit any organs." Luna said still looking down at Mayu's body.

I looked at her surprised and grateful. Maybe she wasn't so crazy after all. "Luna..."

"I didn't want her to have such a quick death after what she tried to do to you." Luna continued. "She doesn't deserve to die so easily. She should had been torn apart."

The sudden gratitude I had for Luna quickly disappeared. I couldn't believe I even thought for one second that there was a speck of sanity in that mind of hers.

"She'll be fine." Luna said. "I'm going out."

And with that, Luna turned her back and left the apartment. I watched as she closed the door shut behind her and I waited a full minute listening to her footsteps fade away.

Realising I had held my breath the entire time, I exhaled in relief. She was gone... at least for now. Snapping back to reality, I turned towards Mayu and scurried over to examine the full damage done. I grimaced at the sight. There was a lot of blood and it was hard to tell for any serious wounds except for the one on her waist by Luna and the other on her leg by Ichigo. Her eyes were closed and I could hear her panting, her chest moving up and down with each breath.

"Mayu..." I called out softly but she didn't respond. I moved closer. "You alright?"

Still she didn't respond. Of course she wasn't alright. She was covered in blood and had just taken a knife to the waist. What a pointless question. I had no idea why I asked that. Feeling like an idiot and still worried about the amount of blood she was losing, I got up to prepare some bandages.

Before I could stand up, a hand grabbed my wrist and pulled me back down. I looked at Mayu. Her eyes were open and tears were falling down her cheeks. Her lips were shaking as she spoke. "D-don't leave me."

She pulled me into a tight hug and I heard her sniffling. I felt the blood from her clothes seeping into mine but I barely felt it. I couldn't believe Mayu was crying. She had appeared so strong and arrogant when fighting Ichiro and Luna that this person who was now crying right in front of me didn't seem like Mayu.

"S-she was really going to kill me." Mayu said, her voice muffled. "I-I was going to die."

I tried to pat her back and be as supportive as I could, but no words came out of my mouth. I simply didn't know what to say. I waited until Mayu cooled down and drifted back into a semi conscience state before I decided to move.

I had to clean her up. If I had done it once then I could do it again. I picked Mayu up carefully off the ground and carried her to the bathroom. Turning on the shower head, I rinsed the blood off her body as best as I could. Once satisfied, I wrapped bandages around the wound and again dressed her in my spare clothes, taking her to my bedroom to rest. I laid her down gently onto one side of the bed and sat down on the other. There was not much else I could do now. I wondered where Luna was. She had said she was going out for a walk but it's been over an hour now and still she was not back. I hoped that meant that she wasn't coming back.

I laid down on the bed to rest for a while. It was tough work carrying Mayu around the house, cleaning her up and fixing all her wounds. I felt completely exhausted. I still had to set up a place for me to sleep in the living room. I guess I could just close my eyes and relax for a minute or two. I wondered why Luna is being chased by Mayu and Ichiro. And why does she seem to be so skilled in combat? Nothing made sense and the more I thought about it the more my head hurt. Eventually I dozed off to a sleep.

In my dream I was being chased but I didn't know by what. I just kept running and running. I tried to turn back to see but all there was, was darkness. Complete utter darkness. It frightened me. There was a beam of light in front of me that I was trying to reach but no matter how long or fast I ran, it always seemed to be the same distance away from me. I cried for help but there was nothing but the echo of my voice repeating back to me. No one here. Nothing.

I woke up staring into emerald. It blinked at me. And I moved back. "W-What the?"

It was Mayu. She looked at me confused and I looked back at her surprised. There was sunlight entering the window and the bed had little trace of blood. Surprising for someone that had a severe cut on the waist. Mayu picked herself from the bed and yawned.

"Thanks for taking care of me last night." She said. Mayu got up from the bed and headed to the living room.

"Where's my clothes?" Mayu asked, looking around.

"Uh, I threw them in the wash, I'll go get them for you." I said following her out to the living room.

She blinked at me and I quickly hurried outside the apartment and down to the washing room. I got her clothes back up to the apartment and held it out to her. She grabbed them with a thank you and went into the bathroom to change. I waited for her to finish.

When she was done, she stepped out of the bathroom and I looked up at her from the kotatsu table.

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

"Thanks for everything, Ryo." Mayu said quietly. "I better get out of here before Luna comes back."

She moved towards the door but I grabbed her hand. "Wait..."

"You're just going to leave? After all that happened?" I exclaimed. "I saw your wounds reseal itself at a rate that was inhuman. At least tell me why you and Ichiro are chasing Luna or how the three of you are so strong, and more importantly who... what are you?!"

Mayu looked at me and sighed. "Do you really want to know?"

I swallowed. "Yes."

She turned around from the door and sat herself down at the kotatsu table quietly.

"Look... this... all these things..." Mayu said. "Luna, Ichiro and me. We aren't like you."

"What do you mean?" I asked scared.

She sighed again and got up for the kitchen. She returned with a knife.

"W-what?" I moved away from her but Mayu laughed at me.

"I'm not going to stab you, silly." Mayu pouted as she sat back at the table with me. But I pushed myself further away from her and saw a flash of hurt across Mayu's face but it disappeared in a second.

"Look." Mayu said. She lifted her free hand up and made a cut across her forearm.

"W-What are you doing?!" I jumped back towards her and grabbed her hand. It was a short cut but blood was already flowing from the wound.

Mayu laughed at me again. "Relax, Ryo. Just wait a second."

I tried to say something but all of a sudden, Mayu's face looked very serious. She stared at her forearm fixedly and her eyes began to take on an eerie glow. I held my breath and watched her wound.

The blood stopped seeping out and it began to reseal itself. I looked in disbelief. "H-how?"

When the once bloody cut on her arm became a scar, Mayu closed her eyes. She opened them again and I saw the usual dull emerald blinking back at me. "That was synthesis."

I looked at her confused. "Synthesis?"

"It's an ability we Ashens share," Mayu replied.

"What are... Ashens?" I asked pausing at the word.

"Project Ashen was an initiative by the Japanese military during World War II. It was planned to be a means of creating supersoldiers for combat via human genetic engineering." Mayu said. "Little did we know, the Americans had already created the Atomic bomb."

She laughed eerily. "Only high ranking officials knew about the operation so when Japan surrendered to the bombings and most of the Japanese government were executed for war crimes, naturally the project was lost and all documents relating to Project Ashens were destroyed in the process."

"The project had always been underground and with everyone who knew about it in the above, dead. It was shrouded in even more secrecy. The Americans never found out about Project Ashens, and it continued running alone." Mayu stopped.

"It was during the bombings that the research had come to a revolution." Mayu looked at me. "It had discovered something truly amazing. Something that could actually make supersoldiers a reality. Something that would heighten all five senses of the human brain."

"Do you know what that is?" Mayu asked.

I shook my head.

"Emotions." Mayu whispered. "Mankind's greatest weakness. Without emotions... humans were essentially perfect creatures. There would be unlimited potential to unlock."

"Imagine a man without fear, pain, anger, greed, envy, pride, lust or idleness. It would be like an unstoppable train. The strings that once held the human mind and body behind would be broken." Mayu said. "And with the lack of emotions, we discovered that all five senses of perception heightened dramatically as a counterbalance to the void."

"Try closing your eyes." Mayu told me.

I did as I was told.

"Do you notice your other four senses of perception heightening? Hearing, smell, touch, taste." Mayu said. "It is the same concept, by cutting off a major sensory part of the brain like emotion, the five senses of perception heighten to compensate for the lost of a sense."

"That is what the research discovered." Mayu said as she got up for the kitchen. I looked at her dumbfoundedly as she rinsed the blood off her forearm along with the knife. "They did this through genetic engineering and impairing the limbic system in the brain."

Mayu sighed putting down her arm and looking upwards. "Luna, Ichiro and me... are subjects of Project Ashen."

I didn't know what to say. I was at a loss for words. "S-so you're telling me... you're all part of this secret organisation?"

Mayu turned to me and smiled bitterly. "We're simply subjects."

She finished rinsing the blood off her hand and wiped her hand dry on a cloth. She was right. The wound had completely healed now without so much as a scar.

"Anything else you want to know?" She asked as she stepped back into the living room looking at me.

I hesitated for a second. "Do you have any emotions?"

Mayu's face went dark at my question.

"Little." She answered. "Complete impairment of human emotions has still not been perfected. Most subjects have differing levels of emotions. The most potent Ashens have the least emotions while the ones with higher levels of emotions are the weakest."

She paused. "I'm going to go now." Mayu stated. She headed towards the door.

"Wait!" I called.

She stopped but didn't turn back.

"If you have no emotions... if you truly have no emotions." I said. I saw a flashback of Mayu crying in my head. "Why did you smile? Why did you laugh?... why did you cry?"

Mayu went silent. I sat there staring at her for an answer. I couldn't believe that she didn't have any emotions. It wasn't possible. She was smiling and laughing like a normal person not long ago. There was no way that she didn't have emotions. Did that mean Luna also had no emotions? Why did she do all those things then? Why did Luna say she loved me?

Mayu let out a breath. "Ashens are created in test tubes. As soon as we are born, we are placed into a procedural upbringing of lab tests and strict training. The pretence of emotions is simply a skill taught for Ashens to adapt to social settings and manipulate enemies."

She turned back to look at me with a blank look on her face.

"Bye, Ryo."