[Volume 2 | Chapter 46: There and Back, Again and Again (II)]

"Hey! Irregular! Wake up!"

The world snapped back into focus. Pierce stood before him, nursing his knuckles with a wince of discomfort.

"Your turn against me. Hurry up before lunch ends."

Acacia's mouth went dry. He'd been so lost in his thoughts that he'd missed the transition. Panic fluttered in his chest like a trapped bird.

"I... can we...?"

"Rock, paper, scissors—shoot!"

His response was automatic, ingrained by months of this twisted routine. Scissors extended from his trembling right hand as it was his only functional one now.

Pierce's fist remained clenched: rock.

"You lose," Pierce announced, unable to hide his delight. "Again."

"Wait! Please, c-can I have a restart? I-I wasn't ready, I didn't—" Acacia blurted, desperation overriding his usual resignation.

"...Restart?" Gio interrupted as he closed his portable mirror with a snap, his eyes glinting sadistically. "You want to restart a game of rock, paper, scissors? How does that even work, genius? We all play by the same rules."

"But my hand... I can't... please, just this once..."

"Are you saying you deserve special treatment?" Gio advanced slowly, the afternoon sun casting his shadow long across Acacia's crumpled form. "That you're somehow above the rules the rest of us follow?"

"N-No, I'm not—"

"Because that would be very presumptuous for an Irregular, wouldn't it? Acting like you deserve consideration beyond breathing the same air that fills our lungs. Do you think you deserve to breathe, cripple?"

"I-I'm sorry, I—"

"Shut. The hell. Up."

The blow came without warning.

A vicious right hook enhanced by [Sturm] connected with Acacia's face like a freight train. Cartilage yielded with a wet crunch, and blood erupted from his nostrils in a crimson spray. The world tilted violently as he sprawled across the courtyard stones, head ringing with a high-pitched whine that drowned out everything except Gio's next words:

"Know your place."

Consciousness flickered like a dying flame as Acacia stared up at the impassive sky. Blood pooled in the back of his throat, hot and coppery. And in that moment, suspended between awareness and oblivion, he experienced a perfect clarity that transcended the physical—a crystalline understanding of his absolute worthlessness in this world. Not a revelation but a confirmation of what he'd always known: that he existed merely as a vessel for others' cruelty, a receptacle for pain, a thing rather than a person.

"Not even fun anymore. It's like hitting a girl. Look at him—screaming like one, crying like one," Gio sighed, wiping Acacia's blood from his knuckles with a handkerchief. His expression was like a child who'd broken a favored toy through overuse.

"Bet he cries himself to sleep every night," Pierce chimed in, his narrow face alight. "Probably hugs his pillow and wishes someone would hold him."

Todd's booming laugh echoed across the courtyard. "Maybe he should wear the girls' uniform instead! Got the legs for it!"

Their guffaws merged into a cacophony that clawed at Acacia's ears. They were animals—no, worse than animals. At least animals didn't revel in their prey's suffering. They didn't mock the dying with laughter.

Something inside of him broke.

"I'm not... I'm a boy," he managed, voice barely audible due to the blood clogging his throat. "I'm not... a girl."

The pathetic defiance only seemed to energize his tormentors. Gio's eyebrows arched as if witnessing a dog attempting calculus.

"Oh! It speaks!" he exclaimed, clasping his hands together in mock delight. "And it thinks it's a real boy!"

"Even I... am..."

The declaration hung in the air for one suspended moment before Gio's face transformed—amusement giving way to something colder and calculated. He extended his hand toward Pierce without taking his eyes off Acacia.

"Give me your knife."

Pierce's expression quickly brightened in anticipation as he reached for the switchblade he kept concealed in his boot—a violation of school policy that went unpunished due to his family's status. "Finally gonna do it, Gio? About time we got rid of this—"

"Not that," Gio cut him off, rolling his eyes as he accepted the blade. "I just want to test a theory."

The sunlight caught the edge of the knife as Gio flicked it open, the metallic snick sending ice through Acacia's veins. He tried to scramble backward while on the ground, but his body refused to cooperate, limbs leaden with exhaustion and pain.

"P-please," he whispered, hating the tremor in his voice, hating that he had been reduced to begging. "Don't..."

"Hold him," Gio commanded and Todd moved with surprising speed for a boy his size, massive hands pinning Acacia's shoulders to the ground.

"A man, you say?" Gio crouched beside him, the knife dangling casually between his fingers. "Let's see what kind of man you really are, Acacia."

He spat the name like it was something filthy, something that contaminated his mouth. With his free hand, he reached for Acacia's uniform shirt, bunching the fabric in his fist.

"No! D-don't touch me!" Panic surged through Acacia, temporarily eclipsing his pain as he fought like a dying man against the hands that restrained him. But it was futile. He was too weak, too broken.

"What's wrong? Shy? Aren't we all guys here?" Gio's grin widened as he slid the knife under Acacia's collar. "Let's show everyone what a manly physique you've got under here."

The cold metal pressed against Acacia's skin as Gio prepared to cut away his shirt. Desperation lent him a frantic strength as he twisted violently yet again in Todd's grip, his breath coming in ragged gasps.

"Stop! Please! I'll do anything—just stop!"

In his frenzied struggle, something slipped from beneath Acacia's shirt—a small object suspended on a worn leather cord that had remained hidden against his chest. It swung free, catching the light as it dangled in the space between them.

Gio's hand froze mid-motion, his attention captured by the unexpected revelation.

"What the hell is this?" he asked, reaching for the dangling charm.

Acacia's heart plummeted as Gio snatched the pendant, his broken hand making a feeble attempt to protect it before falling uselessly to his side. The Narma heir curiously examined it, turning it over in his palm. It was a small brocade pouch, once vibrant red and gold now faded with age and constant handling, tied with intricate knots that spoke of careful creation.

"Is that... an Omamori charm?" Pierce squinted, leaning in closer.

"A what?" Gio asked, still studying the object with growing interest.

"It's like... a good luck charm or whatever," Pierce explained, taking on a self-important tone. "My dad has business partners in the East who carry them. They're supposed to protect you or bring fortune or whatever."

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Gio's face split into a delighted grin, as if he'd discovered a particularly juicy secret. "Oh my God. You actually have a good luck charm?" His laughter was sharp enough to cut glass. "What, did you think this would protect you from us? From life?"

Acacia remained silent; the truth was just a painful memory.

"Wait, wait, wait. Someone gave this to you, didn't they? A girl gave this to you?" He dangled the Omamori before Acacia's face, just out of reach. "Are you telling me that someone—even a girl—actually showed interest in a pathetic Irregular like you?"

"Please give it back," Acacia whispered, a tear escaping to trace a path through the blood on his cheek.

"Give it back~" Gio mimicked in a high-pitched voice, batting his eyelashes. "It's the only thing I have left of... What's her name? Come on, tell us all about your girlfriend. Was she pretty?"

"Kazusa," Acacia answered before he could stop himself, instantly regretting the admission. "And I'll never see her again, so please... just leave it alone."

Something in his voice—the raw desperation, perhaps—made even Gio pause momentarily. Then Pierce snatched the charm for closer inspection, eyes narrowing as he studied the attentive stitching and exotic patterns.

"Wait a second..." Pierce's face underwent a startling transformation, mouth agape. "This isn't from here. This is..." He looked up, meeting Gio's gaze like a lightbulb appeared over his head.

"This is from the Sugoroku Empire."

A terrible silence descended upon the courtyard, broken only by Acacia's ragged breathing. The accusation hung in the air, monstrous in its implications. Sure enough… there it was, woven into the pattern of the Omamori: The unmistakable symbol of the Rising Sun—the insignia of the Sugoroku Empire.

"Sugoroku?" Gio repeated slowly, as if tasting something rancid. "You're from Sugoroku?"

Acacia's silence was confirmation enough.

Everything clicked into place with horrible clarity—his too perfect accent, his unusual features, his reluctance to discuss his past. Not just an Irregular, but a foreigner.

An enemy.

"You're... you're not even from Tachyon. Acacia probably isn't even your real name, is it? It's a cover." Gio breathed, anger and disgust warring for dominance on his face.

Todd's reaction was the most visceral. His face contorted into a mask of hatred, cheeks flushing a dangerous crimson as veins bulged at his temples. "My uncle died fighting those bastards," he snarled, body trembling with barely contained rage. "Those damn monkeys killed him at Weimar Ridge."

The slur ignited something primal in Todd's eyes. Before anyone could react, he had flung himself onto Acacia's prone form, knees pinning the smaller boy's arms as his fists began a savage assault.

"Monkey! Filthy monkey spy!" Another blow, his knuckles split against the hard edges of Acacia's face. "Uncle Lamine! Uncle Lamine!"

Gio and Pierce watched in stunned silence as Todd's fury exploded cartoonishly, an unprecedented level of violence for even his standards. Blood spattered across the courtyard stones with each impact, speckling Todd's uniform in a fine mist of crimson. The meaty thud of fist against flesh created a sickening rhythm, joined by the wet, gurgling sounds escaping Acacia's throat.

Kazusa, help me.

She had always been his shield, his protector—fierce and unstoppable, standing between him and a world determined to destroy him. When the other children had mocked his inability to use Thaumaturgy, she had bloodied their noses. When adults had whispered about his strange fanaticism for understanding the world, she had glared them into silence.

Kazusa, I'm not strong like you. I never was.

Their roles had been clear from the beginning. She was the guardian; he was the guarded. She had dragged him through the forests of Litore on wild adventures, teaching him to climb trees despite his fear of heights, showing him how to catch river fish with his bare hands though he'd preferred to watch from the shore. He was so ungrateful back then. How he wished to go back to that.

Kazusa, I'm sorry I couldn't be brave.

They had promised to be together forever, two misfits against the world. She had tied the Omamori around his neck herself, her fingers brushing his collarbone with the type of intimacy you'd expect from a girl and a boy who were so close. He'd been so happy then, as she swore that as long as he wore it, she would be there to protect him from anything.

"So you'll never forget me," she had said before being taken away by the Imperial Army to hone her immense talent, as if such a thing were even possible. As if he could ever forget his very sun.

Kazusa, it hurts. Everything hurts.

And then she was gone, leaving him with nothing but a charm that couldn't protect him from the flames that would come later, or from the fists that rained down upon him now.

"Todd! That's enough! You're gonna kill him!" Gio's shouted, finally breaking through the haze of violence.

Todd's arm paused mid-swing, his chest heaving with exertion. Blood—Acacia's blood—dripped from his knuckles onto the smaller boy's unrecognizable face. "So what? He's the enemy! His kind killed my uncle!" he growled, but there was uncertainty beneath the bravado.

"And I'm telling you to stop. We can't explain a dead body, idiot. Not even my father could cover that up," said Gio, finally beginning to think straight. "We can't tell the truth about him either… don't think we can get away with beating up an Irregular unprovoked, even if he's a monkey."

For a terrible moment, it seemed Todd might defy the order, his body still poised to continue the assault. Then, with a final savage jab to Acacia's ribs which made the boy puff out air like a deflating balloon, he climbed off the broken boy beneath him.

As Acacia lay broken on the courtyard stones, consciousness ebbing like tide pools beneath a merciless sun, Gio held the Omamori aloft by its frayed cord. The charm caught the light one final time, its faded silk still somehow beautiful.

"You know what we do with Sugoroku contraband?" Gio asked, tone pitched low for maximum theatrical effect before manifesting fire from his hand without the need for a proper Integration Sequence. With a flick of his wrist, he ignited the Omamori charm.

"We burn it."

"No... please..." Acacia whispered, his swollen lips struggling to form even that single syllable of denial.

"Please," Gio mimicked again. "Is that the only word you know, monkey?"

The flames fully consumed the charm. Red and gold thread blackened and curled, ancient protection spells inscribed by unknown hands disintegrating into nothingness. All the hopes, prayers, and promises sewn into its making reduced to ash in seconds. Smoke spiraled upward—gray, then black, acrid with the scent of burning silk and broken vows. Gio watched it burn with detached fascination, allowing the flames to lick at his fingers until the very last moment before dropping the charred remains onto Acacia's chest.

"There's your good luck~" he sneered, wiping his soot-stained fingers on Acacia's uniform.

The smoldering remnants seared through Acacia's thin shirt, branding him with their heat. He couldn't summon the strength to brush them away, could only watch as the last physical connection to Kazusa—to Litore, to everything he'd once been—crumbled into nothing.

"Shit, I'm bored now. Come on, we're gonna be late for class," Gio said to the others, already losing interest as he straightened his uniform.

"What about him?" Todd asked, glancing down at Acacia's ruined form.

"What about him? Got what monkeys deserve, I reckon." The Narma scion shrugged, visage betraying neither remorse nor concern.

Their footsteps receded across the courtyard, the casual cadence of their retreat contrasting the devastation they left behind. Their laughter drifted back to him on the afternoon breeze, already discussing mundane matters—homework, weekend plans, girls—as if they hadn't just shattered a human being beyond recognition.

As if he'd never existed at all.

Above him, the sky darkened without warning. The first raindrop landed on his forehead—a cold benediction that mingled with his tears. Another followed, then another, the heavens opening as if in belated sympathy for his suffering. Rain baptized his broken body, diluting the blood that adorned his skin like macabre warpaint. It soothed the burning in his chest where the Omamori had been, where his heart struggled to continue its meaningless rhythm. Water gathered in the hollows of his eyes as they washed away the salt of his weeping until he could no longer distinguish between the sky's tears and his own.

"Help," he whispered to no one, to everyone, his voice lost beneath the steadily increasing patter of rainfall.

"Someone... please... help me."

The universe answered with rumbling thunder.

"Mom," he called, remembering gentle hands that had once brushed hair from his fevered brow, a voice that had sung lullabies in a language he was now forbidden to speak.

"Dad." The echo of strong arms that had lifted him toward sunlight, of deep laughter that had made him feel safe in a world of shadows. Only the rain responded, drumming against stone in rhythms that mocked human heartbeats.

"Kazusa," he breathed, the name a talisman against despair. She would have burned the world to ashes for laying hands on him. She would have made them pay a hundredfold for every tear, every drop of blood. In his mind, she remained forever ten despite her being fifteen now, wild and fearless, unconquerable even by death.

But she wasn't here. She would never be here again. They would never cross paths again. Infinite threads and worlds formed the vast cosmos, but their unique thread was cruelly severed.

And so his mind, delirious with pain and loss, reached for one final name—one he scarcely dared whisper even in the privacy of his thoughts.

"Master... Aciel."

It was a murmur, the familiar and foreign syllables on his tongue, belonging to a language no one in this world could comprehend.

The rain fell harder, obscuring the world behind a gray veil. Life continued somewhere beyond this courtyard, beyond this city, beyond this empire that despised him for the crime of his existence. People loved and laughed and lived without ever knowing or caring that Acacia—no, not Acacia, never Acacia, that was just a name they'd accepted to make him easier to digest—lay dying beneath an indifferent sky. In that moment of perfect clarity, drenched in rain and his blood, surrounded by the ashes of his last connection to another life, he finally understood the truth that had been waiting for him since the night flames had consumed his world:

No one was coming to save him.

No one had ever been coming to save him.

No one had ever saved him.

He was, and would always be, utterly alone in a macrocosm designed for his suffering. A cosmic joke with no punchline, a story without resolution, a life without purpose or meaning beyond the pain it contained.

And he understood, with a finality that transcended despair, that this was his destiny—not to die here on these cold stones, but to continue existing, broken and alone, in a world that had no place for him.

That was the true punishment.

Endless, meaningless life.

There and back, again and again.

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