The International Academy for Talented Warriors

The instant Kidou's eyes fluttered open, he wished he'd kept them shut. A brilliant white light flooded his vision, garnering many justifiable complaints from his already aching brain. Slowly, he let his optics adjust to his surroundings. Curiously, he found himself neither face-down on the floor of a dark, sodden cave, nor standing in line at the foot of some giant gates, waiting for his turn to meet an omnipotent being who would decide the fate of his afterlife.

Instead, Kidou found himself laying comfortably on a soft mattress, his head resting on a mound of plump pillows. While a small part of his brain scrambled to assure him that he was safe, he felt more dizzied by the abrupt absence of fear and peril. The sensations brought about by that accursed mission were still freshly burned into his thoughts. The pace of his heart as he stumbled through shadows, the searing pain as jagged rocks slid easily into his flesh. It was difficult for the boy to digest that he was now covered in warm blankets in a room that was overbearingly bright.

All around him, Kidou was surrounded by white. White walls, white ceiling, white floor, white curtains... his already exhausted mind was sending him a flood of well justified complaints. With an irritated sigh, he closed his eyes once more and sank his head into the pillows. Images jumped vividly out from his subconscious. A small square of dim light swiveling shakily across course, rocky walls. A girl, skin tight against her bones, her recently deceased body hanging limply from a pair of shackles.

Kidou's rapid pulse urged his eyes snapped open once more, only to be blinded again by the infirmary's stark achromatics. Involuntarily, his arm moved to shield his face from the piercing brightness. A wave of dull pain shot up through his side, the suddenness of it rendering him unable to stifle a distressed grunt. He recalled his fall, then, through the floor of the cave. It had earned him a long gash running up his torso. Thinking back, it was surprising that he was even able to walk at all, then. Much less fight a lumbering monster.

Of course, that wasn't to say he was of much help anyway. It was Agi who-
Agi. Her name tied weights to all of Kidou's thoughts. Was she alive? She had to be alive. She was his partner. Maybe even his friend, or at the very least the closest thing he'd ever had to a real one. So the very concept of her simply disappearing was too strong a pill for him to swallow. She was also the first girl to ever hold his hand, and albeit the two of them were terrified, it was still... he couldn't have lost her. She didn't laugh at him when he was nervous, or afraid. She didn't care if he was cool. So she couldn't have...

Bleary and half-lidded, dark eyes reflected the fluorescence of the ceiling. Agi had done nothing but stare up at those lights as she drifted in and out. She hadn't much choice, her body trapped comfortably between a soft mattress and a blanket that felt heavier on her overexerted limbs than it actually was. With little else to do, she relied on thoughts to keep her company, most of which were occupied by the bright-haired boy in the bed beside hers. He hadn't stirred, at least not that she had noticed, so she didn't bother him. She remembered with startling clarity those first few moments of wakefulness, when she'd seen his unmoving body and felt her heart stutter, fearing the worst had happened. But the rising and falling of his chest and the steady rhythm of the monitors around him confirmed that he was alive. She'd never felt anything so dreadful, hopelessness like an anchor dragging her and all that was a part of her into an emotional black hole.

But he was alive, and she was alive, and everything would be okay... although she had yet to decipher what 'everything' entailed.

The memories of their almost lethal journey through the depths of the cave, the thoughts of which still chilled her bones, were still clear as daylight as they played behind her closed eyelids. They'd almost died. She found the thought both frightening and disheartening. Here they were, in an academy for fighters, and they had barely survived their first mission.... wouldn't have survived, had someone not saved them. That was the part that stumped her every time her thoughts reached that part of the strain of recollection. She didn't remember being saved. She remembered the monstrosity they'd had to fight, but fighting it... those memories eluded her. But she remembered when Kidou had gone down. The stomach churning dread she'd felt when she thought she'd lost him wouldn't be easy to forget, and it was so sharp in her mind that she felt warmth swell behind her lashes if she thought about it too hard. So she didn't think about it.

She didn't know how many hours or days it had been before a noise beside her brought her scattered thoughts into abrupt focus. Turning her head, Agi's gaze landed on the form in the other bed to see he was moving. At once, she shifted onto her side to prop herself onto an elbow, ignoring the sharp pain in her leg and the ache of her stiff limbs. He was alive, but that didn't mean he was okay. She had to hear it from him. She had to know he was still the one she'd sat next to on the bus... still the one she'd gone to have breakfast with... still the one who'd braved their first mission alongside her. She cleared her throat, her voice soft and a little hoarse from disuse.

"Kidou...?"

The sound of her voice blended so seamlessly with the memories flooding into Kidou's mind that he almost couldn't make the distinction between his frantic daydreams and the girl who lay only feet away. Turning to meet her with panicked eyes, her image washed over his cluttered thoughts. Just the hopeful expression on her pale face was an image so powerful and so comforting at once, it nearly broke the young man's oath never to cry in front of a girl on the spot.

She was alive. Her petite form, propped up beside him atop a mattress identical to his own, was as simple a panacea to his fears as he could have asked for. All the memories of her that had come crashing into his brain only moments before now fluttered calmy into their proper places. The sound of his own heart against his chest on the night they had met, and the realization that he would be sharing a room with, of all things, a girl. The melting of tension in the air between them as they laughed together, unaware of the trials ahead.

The warm feeling of safety and companionship that had engulfed his body and eased his frightened mind in the blind darkness, as the skin of her hand moved to grab his own. The echo of her voice as he lay in a pile of rubble, his consciousness drifting as his blood stained the jagged rocks beneath him. Soon after that point his recollection grew murky, but he could recall standing to a ghastly, lumbering creature, and the girl that had stood by his side, with no intent of backing down.

They had gone through hell.
And they had both survived.
Kidou could feel the cracking of his dry lips as they snaked into a smile.
"Good morning".
Definitely a cool thing to say.