─What is your name? ─. A beautiful red-haired woman asks me.
Despite my pained gaze, I looked up at her and was engrossed in such beauty and perfection.
The first thing I looked at when I woke up that day were lines and dots. Lines and points on the ceiling, furniture and of course, also on people.
The bed, the wall, and everything around me was full of lines.
The doctor responsible for my family - the Tohno family was shocked to see how I took the bed apart.
I explained, saying that I "cut" the "lines" and the bed unmade itself. I used a knife with which I peeled the apples before eating them, those black lines that passed through the objects were cut like butter.
It wasn't the same as cutting metal or cutting the mattress, but it cut as easy as cutting paper.
One day─
I decided to escape from the hospital to take a break because no one believed in the existence of what I saw. Also, the lines started to bother me, I even had a dream where my arm was cut off by these same lines.
That same day is today.
The headache was killing me, I don't think I'll be able to take it much longer.
It was then that he appeared.
During the next few days, we talked several times about different things. But the most important part of everything we talked about was when she got mad at me for teaching her what she could do by cutting a bug with the lines.
She slapped me and then she hugged me.
─Don't do that again, Shiki. ─. It was the first thing she said to me.
I hear a ring of concern in her speech, where she seems to be scared of what she might do.
─You must not stop seeing others as equals, that is the first thing I will tell you. Just because you can see the "death" of objects doesn't mean you should stop seeing them as equals. ─. Her words filled a void.
A deep void in the depth of my heart. One that I had left pending since I got to the hospital.
They asked me not to go back to the Tohno Mansion, where I lived with my younger sister, Akiha.
The [Master] hugging me like this, tightly while I heard the insecurity in her voice made me decide.
In the depth of my being.
Hugging her equally, touching her soft red hair, I adjust the glasses that [Master] gave me. A special pair of glasses that blocks the lines that haunted me.
I would like to see Akiha again, but as long as my father is still there, I won't be able to get close to her anymore.
That was how I made up my mind.
Use the words he was determined to use.
─ Teacher. I want to live with you. ─. I remember saying those words like it was yesterday.
The [Master] took me by the shoulders to see me directly into her eyes. In her blue pupils a glow of happiness invaded, showing the latent emotion that she represented before my words.
That was the day that I, Shiki Tohno, began to live under the tutelage of Aoko Aozaki, one of the [Five Magi] under the rule of the [Fifth Magic], someone who would later become the most important person in my entire life.