The brilliant white light of the Assembly dissolved, violently snapping her consciousness back into her physical vessel with a soft, breathy gasp.
Jabami Yumeko slowly opened her eyes.
The cold obsidian tridecagon table was gone, replaced by the soft satin sheets of her bed inside an off-campus luxury apartment.
Sunlight streamed through the floor-to-ceiling windows, casting a warm, golden glow across the room.
Yumeko let out a delicate, sensual moan, arching her back as she stretched her arms high above her head.
She always slept completely naked, enjoying the unobstructed sensation of freedom against her skin.
As she sat up, the heavy silk blanket slithered down her smooth torso, pooling loosely around her hips and exposing her full upper body to the bright morning light.
The sun’s warmth highlighted the soft contours of her pale skin and the curve of her body as her long, jet-black hair spilled messily over her bare collarbones.
Ignoring the chill of the morning air, she reached over to the nightstand and picked up her phone.
Holding the device up, she activated the front-facing camera lens, using the screen as a mirror.
Her lips parted into a small, teasing smile.
Slowly, deliberately, Yumeko stuck her tongue out to inspect her reflection.
There, etched flawlessly into the delicate, pink flesh of her tongue, was a dark, precise Roman numeral V.
She ran a finger softly across her bottom lip, staring at the brand.
It throbbed with a faint, residual phantom heat, sending a delicious shiver straight up her spine.
The burning pain she had endured back in the council assembly wasn’t a sleep-deprived hallucination or a temporary trick of the mind.
It was a permanent, indelible stamp of absolute authority, marking her soul as a player in a game that defied reality itself.
A breathless, ecstatic chuckle vibrated in her throat, her eyes widening as a flash of pure, manic excitement flushed her cheeks.
“A cosmic brand… and a guaranteed stake against the unknown,” Yumeko whispered, her voice dripping with an intoxicating, sensual thrill.
She pressed her thumb firmly against the new icon on her dashboard, her heart hammering with a terrifying pleasure.
“To play a hand where the rules of the universe themselves can be broken… how utterly divine, O5-1.”
Yumeko reluctantly slid her legs out of the warm bed, the cool morning air brushing against her bare skin as she stood up to prepare for her school day.
A few minutes later, she stood before the full-length mirror, wrapping a warm winter scarf around her neck before adjusting the distinct, high-collared sailor-style uniform of Prefectural North High School, featuring its vibrant blue pleated skirt, white top, and red ribbon.
She pulled out her smartphone, her fingers brushing the glass as she pulled up the tracking radar with a delicate, graceful composure.
Staring at the pulsing green beacon, a sudden, erratic flush of heat rushed beneath her skin, her eyes dark and heavy with anticipation.
“The arcade center in Osaka is a bit of a trek from Nishinomiya,” she whispered to her reflection, her voice a soft that hummed with a quiet, dangerous ecstasy.
“And going to an amusement center while wearing this uniform is strictly against the school code. If anyone spots me, I might be reported to the disciplinary committee… Oh, but wouldn’t that just add the most delicious layer of risk? No, no, let’s not be reckless too early.”
Yumeko slipped the device into her uniform coat pocket and walked out into the crisp morning, making her way up the steep hill toward the school gates with proper, flawless decorum.
Upon arriving at Class 1-2, she smoothly slid the door open and glided over to her desk, completely accustomed to the layout.
Sitting right in the adjacent row was her timid, incredibly petite classmate, Mikuru Asahina.
Mikuru was already neatly organizing her notebooks, her large, anxious eyes darting upward to give Yumeko a soft, nervous wave, her shoulders slightly hunched against the lingering morning cold.
Yumeko returned the gesture with a brilliant, sweet, and flawlessly polite smile as she took her seat, bowing her head in proper greeting.
No one looking at her right now would ever suspect the terrifyingly brilliant, adrenaline-starved gambling monster lurking just beneath that innocent facade.
A woman who was currently trembling with a hidden, breathless desire to bet her very sanity against the absurdities of the world.
Her hand rested over the smartphone in her pocket, her heart fluttering as she waited for the final bell to ring.
***
Loid sat completely motionless in his single-seater armchair, the living room swallowed by the deep, heavy shadows of the night hour.
The apartment was completely dead silent, save for the faint, rhythmic ticking of the wall clock.
His legs were crossed, his fingers steepled casually beneath his chin as he stared intently at the cold glass of his smartphone resting face-up on the small side table
He was waiting.
Waiting for the reply of O5-1 to his private message regarding the brief, vanishing blip his radar had flagged right inside his home.
Buzz.
The screen illuminated the dark room with a crisp blue glow.
Loid smoothly picked up the phone and unlocked it, his sharp eyes absorbing the text sent directly from the head of the council.
___
FROM: O5-1 (THE REINCARNATOR)
TO: O5-6 (TWILIGHT)
___
Loid’s gaze immediately darted to the new menu option.
He tapped [ GLOSSARY ] and scrolled down with mechanical speed until he hit the entry.
Psionic Scanners: Specialized anomalous devices used to detect and measure psychic energy, telepathy, and mental manipulation.
Loid’s breath caught cleanly in his throat.
He slowly lowered the smartphone, leaning heavily back into the leather cushions of his armchair as his mind violently reconstructed every piece of data he possessed about his adopted daughter, Anya.
Telepathy.
Psychic energy.
Mental manipulation.
The puzzle pieces snapped together with a terrifying, flawless precision.
Anya’s uncanny ability to always know exactly what he was thinking, her bizarre timing, her random emotional outbursts during his inner monologues, and her intense dread of being abandoned.
It wasn’t just a child’s overactive imagination or eccentric intuition.
She was reading his mind.
She was a literal psychic anomaly.
A dense, suffocating dilemma instantly settled over his shoulders, his thoughts accelerating into a hyper-speed, clinical spiral as he sat alone in the dark.
Will this make changes to Operation Strix?
Loid calculated frantically, his brow furrowing.
An active telepath living inside the target environment…
her ability means she already knows I am a spy.
She knows everything about Twilight.
My entire undercover cover is technically completely compromised from the inside, yet she has actively helped me maintain it.
He re-evaluated his primary mission objectives with cold, logic-driven filters.
If the Westalis Intelligence Services (WISE) discovered that a test subject with raw psychic capabilities was sitting right at the center of a high-profile political infiltration, the handler would demand immediate action.
Do I hand her over to the agency for study or protection?
The thought entered his mind like a shard of ice.
WISE possessed the highly secure facilities, the top-tier researchers, and the protective military infrastructure to contain a psionic.
They could isolate her, study the mechanics of her brain waves, and weaponize her gift for the safety of the state.
It was the most logical, strategically sound move for an elite operative whose entire existence belonged to the mission.
Loid’s hand tightened around his phone.
He was Twilight.
The legendary, emotionless ghost of the underworld who had sacrificed his own name, his face, and his heart for the sake of a sane and normal world.
Yet, as he stared blankly toward the dark hallway leading to her bedroom, the image of Anya smiling, clutching her giant plush chimera, and calling him Father(Chichi) flashed vividly through his consciousness.
If he handed her over to WISE, she would be turned into a test subject, locked inside a sterile, white laboratory vault, hooked up to automated scanners, and stripped of her childhood just like the crying anomalies he had witnessed in the Foundation footage.
She wouldn’t be his daughter anymore.
She would be a classified asset.
“No,” Loid whispered into the absolute quiet of the living room, his voice dropping into a deep, fiercely protective tone.
The realization hit him with absolute, unyielding certainty.
He was no longer just a weapon for WISE.
He was now O5-6 Twilight.
He possessed an indestructible phone, an absolute information monopoly, and a soul brand that anchored him to an organization whose sole, cosmic directive was to keep the supernatural hidden from the public eye.
If Anya was a psionic anomaly, then keeping her safely contained right here, disguised as an ordinary, dense, and perfectly normal elementary student at Eden Academy, was the ultimate execution of his new creed.
He would shield her from the public, from the enemies of the state, and even from WISE itself.
He slid the phone back into his inner coat pocket, the screen dimming into blackness.
Bit by bit, his racing pulse steadied, his cold spy calculation seamlessly intertwining with the fierce instinct of a father.
“Your secret stays completely off the grid, Anya,” Loid murmured, leaning his head back against the armchair as a sharp, unyielding glint returned to his eyes. Read this novel at NovelPing for the best experience.
“We Secure. We Contain. We Protect. And that starts inside this house.”
Click.
The soft mechanical latch of a door echoing down the dark corridor broke the dead silence of the living room.
Loid’s hyper-alert ears picked up the sound instantly, his sharp eyes darting toward the hallway.
Emerging from the shadows was the small, pajama-clad figure of Anya, rubbing her bleary eyes while dragging her giant plush chimera behind her.
She already knows I am a spy, Loid calculated at hyper-speed.
But she must not find out that I now know her secret, nor can she ever catch a single glimpse of the SCP Foundation or my O5-6.
I need to partition my consciousness.
With a lifetime of psychological training, Loid built a perfect mental bulkhead.
He violently shoved his discovery of the psionic, the mark on his tendon, the thirteen-sided room, and the crimson alerts into a deep, pitch-black subconscious vault, sealing it away behind absolute mental silence.
On the surface layer of his active thoughts, he allowed his mind to wander through his usual, familiar, and highly complex spy calculations for Operation Strix.
He let his brain chatter naturally about the upcoming school activities at Eden Academy and his stress over securing new intel.
To her telepathy, he would sound exactly as he always did, a high-strung, hyper-focused intelligence agent.
“Anya?” Loid called out softly, his voice carrying his standard, perfectly measured tone.
“Why are you awake at this hour? Did you have a nightmare?”
Anya stopped in the center of the living room, her large green eyes blinking at him in the darkness.
She tilted her head, her inner telepathic senses instantly sweeping across his mind.
As she listened, a small, sleepy sigh of familiarity escaped her.
The mental decoy had worked flawlessly.
“Anya’s… Anya’s throat is scratchy,” she answered back, a sleepy, childish pout taking over her face as she gestured toward her mouth.
“I’m thirsty, Chichi.”
Loid stood up smoothly from his single-seater armchair, his posture relaxed and completely natural as he maintained the structured layer of his thoughts.
“I see. Wait here for a moment.”
He walked into the kitchen, poured a clean glass of cold water from the pitcher, and returned to hand it to her.
Anya wrapped both of her small hands around the glass, gulping the liquid down rapidly before letting out a satisfied, heavy sigh.
Loid gently took the empty glass from her hands, resting it on the side table before offering her a brief, reassuring pat on the head.
“Alright, now that you’ve had your drink, it’s time to head back to bed. It’s still far too early for you, and you have a very busy day of lectures awaiting you at Eden Academy tomorrow.”
“Okay…” Anya mumbled sleepily.
She turned around and shuffled back down the dark hallway, her stuffed chimera trailing along the floorboards behind her as her bedroom door clicked softly shut once more.
***
Author’s Note:
Damn, is it raining right now?…
Tell me…
Did Loid’s fatherly instinct touch anything?…
No?…
is that so…
I even teared up writing this…
T^T
Anyways!, on another note…
From my understanding, Yumeko transferred to Hakkaou in her second year of high school, and the school she attended in her first year is unknown…
So, I decided to have the liberty to add this v-e-r-y specific school for her…
hmm.
hmm…
Pretty generous of me, if you ask me…
hehe…