"The only thing that is holding back the poor from killing the rich is religion." -Napoleon

As I woke up in my bed as usual, I noticed something was off.

No, everything was fine. But there is a problem with the part of how I live now.

Monday.

When was the last time I woke up in an ordinary bedroom on a Monday? And well, everything felt surreal.

Yuki, fell asleep on the floor, there was barely my blanket keeping her warm from the chaotic night we went through.

It hit her hard and broke her spirit into pieces.

Nii-san was no more.

I am starting to get treated differently.

My father was just sent to prison for the rest of his life. If I could, I really would have liked to have a last talk with Atsuomi Ayanokouji, my biological father.

Mother was completely heartbroken by it. Crying for two hours straight, until my grandfather looked by.

And well, I never thought that my plan, of letting that old man rot in prison, would result in a success.

But is this a success? Why did I do this? Just because of my selfish desire, Yuki was traumatized, Mother couldn't even look me in the face anymore, and that old man was in prison.

I destroyed this family, even though I had the option to just stay quiet.

What if I stayed quiet, how would it have turned out?

No. There is no time for that. There is no time to lose thought on such unimportant questions. I will surely break my head about them later on.

But for now, I have too much to explain to my mother and Yuki. To my grandfather, who I never told what was going wrong with the ideals of that man.

And most importantly, I need to restart all over again. A new life.

My name was completely reset so I get protected by the government, and the mental pressure on me gets released, to not get associated with Atsuomi Ayanokouji.

Even my old governmental reports are now secret. Kiyotaka Suou and Kiyotaka Ayanokouji are two different people.

And well, what should I think of it?

Nothing.

I just stood up, opening the window to let fresh air in.

I slowly lifted the body of my sister and placed her on my bed. Leaving her to rest again, since she slept pretty terribly, judging by her expression while asleep.

With that, I changed my clothes and left my room, going down the stairs. And well, I was surprised.

It was 05:18 a.m. in March. It was still quite dark outside, and even so, my grandfather was sitting on the living room couch. Drinking Turkish coffee.

Like always. But I never actually knew he woke up this early and judging by how he sits, he is brightly awake, reading a book.

The book he was reading was completely unknown to me, just Cyrillic letters, which I understand, but I never actually read or heard of that book.

"Seems like you had something to do, Kiyotaka."

He greeted me friendly like always, and my intuition told me, that it was a honest smile.

He wasn't forcing it. He wasn't forcing this conversation. He talked to me like he always did.

A calm and cool mind is probably the greatest thing I inherited from my father's side of the family.

"Good morning, grandfather."

"You have a lot of questions in your mind. After all, nobody would have expected a 14-year-old boy to go through that."

He signaled me to sit down, right on the chair, which was located on the complete other side of the living room.

He threw something into my hands. It was the book he just read.

The book was barely 60 sides long, but what stood inside it, angered me.

No, it just questioned my existence once again. It questioned who I was, from the first page on.

" 21. October 2000;
Kiyotaka, I don't believe that you will ever get to read this, or that you will ever understand what this is about.

But I think, one day, I, have to explain a lot to you. And well, a politician runs the danger of always being able to die, so what I could never tell you, will be written in this book.

And to continue this, I guess I need to apologize already. My plans for you are inhuman, maybe even close to the greatest crimes and worst experiments ever done in history.

You are an experiment. After massive tests with the first generation of the facility, you will also attend the White Room. A project, which is created by me."

"Grandfather. Where have you found this?"

"I am impressed, by how calm you are, just after reading that mess of a textbook. I never found this, it was handed to me by the police after he was sentenced to imprisonment, they gave it to me yesterday, and they wanted me to show you this if you wanted."

I am not calm. Not at all. I am just messed up right now.

I can't think straight after reading this. My life is in fact, a lie. I shouldn't exist in the first place.

I am a living experiment and have absolutely no value in this world. Not even speaking about this 'noble' family.

Kiyotaka Ayanokouji is someone who was previously living in this body. Someone who maintained a sense of superiority, someone who was arrogant and ignorant of reality.

But in fact. Ayanokouji Kiyotaka died yesterday.

"October 20th, 2003;

You are three years old now, since the beginning of records. You slowly started to talk, and well, almost every time your mother wasn't here, and she wasn't here for a whole three months, due to a business trip, you were trained a lot, and I believe, that you reached the level of a genius at this age already.

The experiment is going better than expected. And I think that you will be the first perfection the world will ever witness."

...

"October 21st 2008;

Yesterday was your 8th birthday. And with this, the experiment was going to break world records at this stage.

You are physical, by far the strongest and fastest eight-year-old. I am impressed. Your critical thinking is at the stage of a 20-year-old and you already achieved great results. With your current knowledge, you could graduate from the hardest university in the world with ease."

...

The more I skipped through the pages, the more it broke me.

The more damage was being dealt.

"What do you think? Your live reaction, to the textbook that your father wrote about you, is pretty sad."

"What do I think? Honestly, I am not surprised about anything in this world anymore."

But there is one question stuck in my head. Why me?

Why always me?

"October 20th, 2011;

11 Years later, I am aging. Yuki is doing great naturally, close to the level of a genius. But there is a difference between her and you. It was clear to me, that the white room is greater than any genius who is relying on their instincts.

To compare you with any other kid your age is an insult to you. In fact, at this age, you finally learn more than the average human could learn in a lifetime. I am proud."

...

What are you proud of? Look at me.

Why should anyone be proud of such a thing?

Honestly, what have you thought?

"December 25th, 2013;

You are entering stages, where it is almost inevitable for me to lose against you. And I will applaud you when the day comes in which you will break free. However, you won't survive out there."

...

"October 29th, 2014;

I think you are not ready for the day when you are reading this. There is nothing that will happen with a 100% possibility. But I believe, that the day you will read this, you will probably think of suicide or other types of self-harm."

"Grandfather. Can I ask you about something?"

"Go on. I will try and answer as much as possible."

"Have you noticed? Or more precisely, when did you notice?"

"I noticed that you were different. Not when this 'project' started. But since the day you were born. I wouldn't say it was hypernormal, but you had some screws loose." He chuckled.

I closed the book, as after this, the process of how the white room operated and what the goal of creating a human-like me was written.

That was to no interest of mine.

Right now was 05:59 and there were still two hours left, until the first classes I would ever have at an institution outside the white room, began.

And there was plenty of time to talk with my grandfather.

"I guess this book is pretty messed up, huh? Anyways, there is nothing to be done about it."

But there were still many questions lingering in my mind. It was certainly funny to describe;

I had no idea what the questions were that I wanted to ask, but I am still confused.

But I guess that humans have goals in their life. And I have one specific goal in my life.

It is simple, yet complicated.

Winning at any cost.

》》Bonds and Betrayals: Pre-Story《《

My grandfather told me to make myself some breakfast, and honestly, I had no idea how to look at a knife without having the intention of hurting myself.

But well...

Who cares?

I took the breadknife and prepared some stacks of bread, and today, I was quite motivated for some reason.

So I exaggerated the 'breakfast' chapter and produced way too much food for a single person.

I guess I could do the family some good and make some breakfast.

So, chief Kiyotaka is in the house, and a brain that is a supercomputer.

...

But not at cooking.

I guess that Internet-chan is ready to help me huh?

So I got out my phone and hell, there are way too many ways to make breakfast. And there are so many, that it is already complicated to select a dish, rather than even make it.

There were many Japanese ones, but what I am curious about, is this dish called "Kaiserschmarrn".

It was just pancakes cut into little pieces, eating them with applesauce and powdered sugar.

Sounds pretty simple but is heaven to eat.

So I took out a pan, eggs, milk, a teaspoon, sunflower oil, and flour.

So there it came, the new master of the kitchen is in the house-

...

People said that around 8 pancakes are easily enough for 4 people, but I assume that 21 pancakes should do the job as well.

Maybe Yuki wants to have more energy for later when eating 13 more, but who knows?

And well, here she came. A tired yet good-looking little sister, with a surprised look on her face.

She behaves like seeing me in the kitchen is ultra rare. But I think otherwise.

Now, I somehow am getting curious as to how to cook good dishes.

"Now...This is kinda weird."

"What do you mean? You think I will poison you or what?"

"No idiot. That's not it. I mean that it's seriously worrying for who you made...these MANY?! Are you braindead or why did you think 20 huge pancakes were a good idea?"

That was pretty stupid to do in the end I guess the next time I should do some research about what the perfect amount is for the average human.

Making some stupid assumptions based on some guy from Reddit isn't that smart huh?

"Look, I was a bit confused as to how many pancakes you can eat before passing. So I was trying to find out"

"I seriously thought you did some stupid stuff when I heard her yelling, but woah this is even dumber than I expected." My mom broke out laughing.

It felt like I was getting bullied. How could you do this to a 14-year-old boy who has no idea about cooking?!

I never tell them that they are stupid when they do some stupid stuff they never learned in school.

But that is just me I suppose.

"Kiyotaka, but I guess you weren't that dumb, I guess I could bring some for Amikura-san."

"Who is that?"

I guess that is someone she is befriended with or holds a special relationship with.

Maybe Yuki is lesbian after all?!

"R-Right, you don't know them... That is a good friend of mine. I would say that we are childhood friends."

"Oh, I guess that's true."

"Also, Eiichiro could surely get along with you, so don't worry about it too much."

I almost forget the fact that my first-ever school year starts today. And I will get to know many people.

I do know Matsuo Eiichiro. He is the son of my butler, around my age, and a pretty smart student. Well, I only know his name, the contact with people outside the home was pretty limited for someone like me.

But regardless, I am wondering what the person called Amikura is like. That person is pretty close to Yuki, which means she somewhat represents a similar personality.

"Say, Yuki, are we going to be in one class?"

"Well, uhm...I am still not over that thing that happened yesterday, but I guess we are."

"Kiyotaka. What will you tell them when they ask you which school you went before?"

...

As of now, I think the best way would be to tell them that I went to a private school.

But well, it won't work that well I assume, since it would raise many questions as to why Yuki goes to a regular middle school and I went to a private one.

I could surely cover it up with some behavior problems, or maybe I could just go on and say I was a bit crazy and studied 24 hours a day for school.

But that would be a statement and the teachers would overestimate me early on.

I guess, there is only one option, and that is, that I just lived in another town with my grandfather, which could be highly believable.

"I guess I will tell them that I lived with grandfather in Yokohama and then decided to go to this school."

"...I guess that would sound believable. I guess you will cover it up somehow."

After all, I remained silent for 14 years, and all of a sudden it turned out that I lied as often as I blinked.

Usually, that is a horrible skill for a person, but an insanely powerful and effective one.

It can help out in most situations, but you need to carefully think about lying. If you get detected, your other lies will be hardly believable to everyone else.

"Mhm~They taste so good... Have you ever made pancakes earlier?"

"These aren't pancakes. Well technically they are, but this dish is Austrian, called Kaiserschmarrn. Pretty popular in the Alps."

Not only in the Alps. But popular everywhere in central Europe. Liechtenstein, Switzerland, Austria, Slovenia, and southern Germany have this dish in common.

Well, popularity is sinking due to the westernized type of food taking over even there, over rolling traditional food.

Thus, I thought of tasting it at least once, and well, I am genuinely impressed.

"Woah, you know the most random dishes this well!?"

"Well, I made these in like 20 minutes after reading some random recipes on the internet. And I am impressed by how well they taste."

Europeans certainly do know how to make food.

"Weird, but somehow I am grateful that you overdid it with this much! I will get diabetes by tomorrow~"

"By the amount of sweets you eat on weekends, it wouldn't surprise me if your body isn't out of sugar entirely. You seriously should set boundaries for sugar consumption."

Mom joked, but one must know, that behind every joke, there is a glimpse of truth.

And Yuki wasn't a fan of this statement.

"Well, can you blame me? If this kind of weirdo somehow manages to learn cooking in thirty minutes?! You know the potential this guy has in the kitchen!?"

"Yuki, don't talk about your brother as if he was a machine."

I am a machine created by my father. But I guess I shouldn't tell them yet about that book.

"Anyways, say Kiyotaka are you able to repair a printer?"

"Yuki, I may be trained in the most inhuman way since birth, I may be some genius, I may be multi-talented. But not even the engineers who created these machines know how to repair them, do I look like I can?"

"Damn...I thought we finally had some kind of superhuman at home, but he can't even fix a printer."

"Yuki, I am a 14-year-old guy, not a god."

Printers are truly hell. They somehow get software failures out of nowhere. Printers are decades old. And even after decades of engineering and development, they still have countless issues.

We came from the era of writing with a pencil, to writing on a computer and printing it, to going back to writing with a pencil since printers are absolute shithouses of engineering.

And the problem is, we are going full digital before printers will be reliable.

That is like going from a bike directly to a fighter jet instead of a car.

"Well, true in some kind of way."

"You truly should rather get ready for school and stop wasting time talking about printers."

I am honestly surprised. As I thought that my family would never recover from this, they are somehow acting like yesterday didn't happen at all, rather they are relieved about it.

And woah, apparently, school is a lot more stressful than I thought.

...For a normal student of course.

I was different for sure.

As I got my uniform on, I immediately noticed something. In a fully black school uniform, I somehow look quite...

How shall I say? Weird?

I mean, this was the first time I saw myself in a uniform, precisely, a school uniform.

That looked quite well on me. And woah. Girls looked even prettier in them, They had skirts that went all the way down to their knees and had around the same top part as the guys.

But the thing is, the fitment is perfectly made for each body. This sounds pretty normal to everyone else, but insanely weird to me.

After all, I am completely inexperienced when it comes to school.

"You look handsome."

Suddenly Yuki called out, handing me my school back and she walked up to me, fixing my tie.

"Do I?"

"Yeah, you do. I am scared that Amikura-san might fall for you... More like every girl in our class. Your only objective is, to stay quiet during classes. Nothing more nothing less."

"Sounds quite easy."

"Even though you won't need it, I suggest that you pretend to pay attention in class, it will be less likely for the teacher to notice that you are daydreaming and it will spare you from weird situations."

So just act confused sometimes and always look the teacher in the eyes?

"It looks like you are giving your brother life advice. Sounds weird to me."

"Also, if a girl approaches you, keep calm. If they want your number, don't tell them weird things and just give them your phone number."

"You are making me sound stupid. I did some research over the past few weeks. Don't worry about that."

"...And most importantly. Never mention things about home alright? If they want to come over, they surely can. But never mention what happened yesterday or what we two watched okay?"

"Understood."

"Nice. I guess you are all set for your first school day."

I hope so as well. After all, my first objective in this last year before I join high school is, to learn as much as possible.

Not about anything school-related. But I am interested in learning about humans, in learning about the environment.

What to do when bored, who to annoy, and when to make a