Matching
587 Words
Before I turned twenty-five, my dorm supervisor came to see me. It had been a long time since we sat down face-to-face like this. She told me that her concern and sympathy for me had always been genuine and advised me against registering in the database for my good.
"I'm not waiting for that S-rank," I said, staring at my spirit animal. "If you're just going to repeat the same things—I already know. There's no need to talk about it anymore."
"Eve, if everything goes as you hope and you're matched with that sentinel, what do you plan to do?" she asked.
I didn't respond. I had no reason to tell her my plans.
"Eve, you have no chance of murdering an S-rank sentinel. And even attempting to kill your bonded sentinel is a serious crime, punishable by death or, at the very least, life imprisonment without parole."
"You know something, don't you?" I said. "You know I'm telling the truth, but you're with them, trying to make me believe I'm crazy, that I'm hallucinating—"
"Eve, I'm very sorry…"
"Liar."
She gently took my hand, and her nightingale cried mournfully.
"He's not a murderer, Eve," she said. "Sometimes, certain killings are legal. He may have violated some protocols, but he's not a murderer."
I couldn't understand what she was saying. Helen was lying on the carpet, bleeding, while I waited for her at my graduation ceremony. Legal killings. Why? Helen and I were ordinary people. My friends said I was being paranoid, and obsessed with conspiracy theories. Why would he come to kill Helen?
"Why?"
Classified. It's a secret. They couldn't tell me. I was just a D-rank guide who couldn't even serve, with no right to know these things.
"All I can tell you is that he's not a murderer," she said. "Your adoptive mother wasn't innocent."
"She was an ordinary person!"
"She became an ordinary person after she raised you. Eve, I'm sorry, but the truth is cruel. She was good to you, but that doesn't erase the crimes she committed long ago. She was sentenced to death over twenty years ago. She escaped and disappeared."
She was lying to me. Another lie. Another story. They'd already told me so many stories.
"The Tower thinks that letting you bond with him is cruel. Regardless of the justification, he's the one who took the life of your beloved adoptive mother. But he couldn't care less, persistently applying to the Tower to arrange a meeting with you, shamelessly wanting to bond with you," she said. "Sentinels naturally crave their destined guides, but some don't deserve it. Tomorrow, meet the sentinels I've called in for you. Pick one and bond with him formally before the match in the database. Any of them would be better than a beast lacking humanity. Let yourself go, and don't choose the path of greatest suffering. If Helen knew all this, she'd want you to be happy, not tortured for her sake."
No, Helen wouldn't.
Helen was dead. Helen could never again tell me what she hoped for me.
On my twenty-fifth birthday, I received a notification for a blood test. A week later, I got the results. I was asked to travel to another country under the Alliance's jurisdiction to bond with my sentinel. His name wasn't Ray; it was Phoebus. His public records didn't show he had ever been to my country.
He was an S-rank male sentinel, and our compatibility was…
One hundred percent.
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- Writer
