“Daitan, wake up. Wakey wakey! Daitan? DAITAN WAKE UP DAMMIT!” I open my eyes and my vision slowly concentrates on whos in front of me. 

“How long has it been?” 

“It’s been a day.” A day!? I need to do my daily Sunday routine around the city! Is it too late? “It’s 11:00am so no need to worry about you being late to your weird city shenanigans.” Thats a relief. 

Sunday, the day where I go around Kyoto and go shopping. Well, I wouldn’t say shopping. It’s more like chatting with the store owners and buy one thing just to be nice. 

“Be careful Daitan.” 

“Huh?” 

“Power went out throughout Kyoto after you used your Shinkuro,” Mya drops her head down “meaning that the DES is probably looking into it.” I sigh and laugh at her. 

“I’ll look out for the DES just in case, but I’m sure I’ll be fine.” After reassuring her, she sits down at her computer and starts typing. She must be working on our website. It’s a website on the dark web called the Private Deceit Executions (PDE). People use it to hire executioners to kill Deceits. They do this because the DES is sorta infamous for ignoring cases of deceits that they don’t see as a threat. The other reason is because the clients do the investigation so that we could get the job done way quicker than those DES losers. Yesterday was our first job and I’m surprised on how flawless we did. 

I grab my backpack beside my bed and leave the room. I walk down the stairs and go to where our cat is. It’s a black cat with red eyes that our father found when we were 4. Our father told us that it had red eyes because of some sort of genetic kinda thing. Oh and we named it Haru.

I lean down to pet the cat, but it leaps onto my face. I fall on the floor and try to pull it off my face but it wouldn’t let go. After fighting the cat off my face, I place it on the top of its pedestal. I wave and say a goodbye as I go to the door. On a small wooden drawer beside the door is a picture of my dad. 

“I’ll be back soon, father.” I say as exiting the house. I feel the nice cold breeze of wind hit my face. Kyoto, the place where I was born and raised. In Kyoto you can meet a lot of cool people around here and there are a lot of tall buildings around here. I take in the view of all the scenery and start heading to my first stop, Kiya Pharmacy.

Murata Kiya, the owner of Kyotos most popular pharmacy. Me and him go way back. I remember when I was 6 when my dad first took me here. Kiya looked really scary back then, but I use to think that any old man was scary back then. My father usually bought these weird pills that executioners have to use, but I never learned why. 

I soon arrive at the pharmacy and head inside. Despite its small size, theres a lot of stuff you can get here. Cough Medicine, Cold Medicine, Fever Medicine, and even more. They are all top quality and sometimes its hard to get your hand on the right thing. 

“Yooooi, Daitan!” I turn my head to the voice in the distance. It’s Kiya behind the cash register today? I wave to him and walk up to the register. 

“What’s up with you being at the register today?” I say as I nod in confusion.

“Araka wasn’t able to make it here today.” Araka is the usual person at the cash register. She just had a kid a few days ago so that may be why shes busy. “More importantly, I heard from the DES that youre an illegal executioner. Whats with that?” WHAT!? Me!? I start sweating. Did they already find out who caused that power outage? 

“What do you mean?”

“Daitan don’t play dumb with me. I have to supply the DES with their Shinkuro Stabilizers, so the DES give me private information about their cases all the time. You broke the executioners code. All 3 rules.” Dammit. He’s probably gonna report me. I pull my backpack off and as I’m about to press the small button on my backpack, Kiya speaks again. “I won’t report you if thats your concern.” I give look at Kiya in surprise and put my backpack back on. 

“Why are you not gonna report me?” 

“I don’t want you dead obviously. Me and your father were childhood friends and protecting his kids is one of my duties that I promised him after he died. Even if it meant throwing away my morals.” Kiya starts rummaging through the medicine supply behind him and pulls out a few small container of pills. “Take these with you. They’re Synchro Stabilizers. The DES take them so that if they have to use an amount of shinkuro that is dangerous, their shinkuro circuits will expand so that they wont die from overexerting themselves.” 

“Shinkuro have circuits? Like veins?” 

“Yes. I assume you know how shinkuro works. Elemental powers that span from Electric (Volt), Blood (Crimson), Ice (Kōri), Wind (Breeze), and Water (Mizu). They all use a special vascular system that executioners are born with and it shares the same name as the power it holds. Your shinkuro veins store all the power of your shinkuro and they grow thin if you overuse your power, making you and your shinkuro weak. So if you expand them they’ll be able to use and store more power of your shinkuro.”

“Huh?” 

“WERE YOU NOT LISTENING!?” Kiya bags 4 containers of pills and hands them to me. “Make sure to take one everyday.” I grab the bag and thank him. As I am about to walk out of store, Kiya says one more thing. “Make sure to be safe kid. I’ll be in deep shit with the DES if they find you with those.” I nod at him with a smile and leave the store. I put the bag in my backpack and think about where to head to next. 

It’s dangerous with me being outside in the public now that I’m a wanted executioner, but I really wanna go to the gun store to see my classmate. Eh, I suppose it wouldn’t hurt. It’s right around the corner from the pharmacy so it’ll only take a couple of minutes. I make my way to the store while thinking about how I should go about going outside now. 

Now that I know that I’m most likely going to be hunted down by the DES, I need to keep up a constant guard. I’m sure that their goal is to kill me, so I can’t hesitate too much to fight back. What if I end up killing a DES executioner though? It’ll be even worse…

I make it into the gun store and a girl with long blonde hair and brown eyes waves at me. Is my friend not here today? 

“Uhh, who are you?” 

“I told you I was going to dye my hair blonde! Does it look good?” The girl starts running her hands through her hair.

“Oh yeah thats right. I totally forgot! But yeah it looks decent.” 

“Decent? Ugh, should I go back to brown?”

“No, no, no don’t worry it’s perfect okay?” The girl leans over the counter and hugs me. This is Mako. We’ve been friends since junior high. She’s always been protective and caring for me after my father died. We use to hang out a lot after school, but now that she has a job it isn’t so easy. 

“You still haven’t said happy birthday.” CRAP! I totally forgot that it was her 18th birthday! I didn’t even buy a present!

“I was getting to it, trust me.” 

“You’re lying.”

“Of course im not! Why would I lie like that?” I let out anxious laughter and start to sweat.

“Your voice gets shaky when you lie Yuki, I’ve told you this for years now. It’s fine if you forgot. Not like I care too much anyway.” Mako says with a grin. 

“I’m sorry, but this time I’ll make su—“ The bells of the door ring open and I turn around.

“Welcome to the Makammo gun store! How could I help you?”

“Mako,” I say silently, “I have to go.” 

“Why?” As I am about to speak, the man who entered the store puts his hand on my shoulder and smiles. 

“Hey there kid. Aren’t you too young to be in a gun store?” It’s the cops.

“He wasn’t purchasing anything, he’s my boyfriend. He comes over here to talk to me on Sundays.” BOYFRIEND!?

“I see. Kid, could you look at me, it’s a bit rude to look away from authorities.” I slowly turn to the man. Our eyes widen at each other in shock. It’s the DES! And why does it have to be the prodigy executioner Masashi Mayumi!?