In the year 2005, Arina Avenira, a small child, was only three years old.

Everyday life she woke up in a campus of buildings including holding cells with medical, and technological facilities, and a gigantic crematorium.

The trains came and left frequently bringing countless people from different nations to the camp. The young Arina was curious all the time and confused as to why so many arrived at this place. She was among those who hadn't been called out for the experiment just yet, living in a dark, damp cell with a bunch of others, and as though the soldiers acknowledge her worth, she was spared multiple times.

She was a lucky girl indeed when compared to many others. She was blessed with such imagination to escape the brutal reality and was even luckier to find someone who worked hard to boost it further– a mysterious Japanese old man who was held in the same cell as her, regularly telling the young girl all that happened before her eyes were just a game.

"Grandpa, how come you're so different?" even though Arina was only three years old, she could already talk very well. "You look different from human."

The old man laughed.

"Well now, imagine a world where there are a lot of people who look the same as me, you will be very shocked."

Arina smiled dreamily. The 'world' sounded like an interesting abstract concept. And full of colors. Colors, yes, colors. Colors seemed to be an interesting concept too, the most colorful place Arina had ever witnessed was when she shut her eyes closed and saw a blob of colors flashing through before her, all of which were too much loveliness.

"Grandpa, why are we here?"

"Grandpa, why is everything black?"

"Grandpa, why do people come and go?"

"Grandpa, why don't they ever return?"

Being a child, Arina was as curious as ever. She kept questioning her surrounding. And upon that, in order to protect a child's innocence, the old man always replied to her with:

"We are here because a rabbit had dug a chamber and we fell into it."

"What is a rabbit then?"

"It's all black because the stars are hiding somewhere."

"What are stars then?"

"People come and go because they have won the game and become angels, who don't belong to this world."

"What are angels then?"

It was difficult for a little girl to imagine them despite being very good at what she was doing, considering she never had an image of those mentioned things before. The child held her breath in amazement at all those new concepts.

In her imagination which she tried nevertheless, 'rabbit' was very much a human-like creature in a muscular frame. It requires enough strength to dig chambers all the time, doesn't it? As Arina thought.

And 'stars' were basically the light she saw from the outside world every time she got a chance to go out or someone leave and enter the cell, by that the light will step out from its hiding. 'Light' as they called but in Arina's mind it was always 'happy uncover'.

And angels – angels were people who possessed superpowers to be free. Free from this never-ending game. Free from blackness but to chase after and seize Happy Uncover to themselves. Oh, wasn't it just delightful to be an angel?

"See, Arina, there's nothing to be afraid of," murmured the old man softly. "As soon as they realized this is just a game, they will go to sleep."

Amid the horrible chaos of people slamming the door made of steel to get out of the dark cell whilst the screams of agony rang in Arina's ear despite the old man having covered her ears, she just couldn't – couldn't imagine things differently. Frightened tears rolled down her cheeks and down to her test subject black uniform, soaking all in like heavy raindrops.

At last, some had given up and gone asleep.

"Grandpa, I can't imagine this getting any better--"

The child threw up the unhygienic soup, it was simply terrible – too terrible to be improved by imagination. Though it was still better to bare the food they were giving out rather than starving to death, and thus she swallowed back her vomit, sobbing while seeking out some spark of imagination, despite knowing taste was something which imagination doesn't help much.

The destined day arrived when again, Arina saw that Happy Uncover uncovered the darkness of the cell, peeling the whole place into a lovely bright shade. Two men garbed in white from top to toe, standing by the door with a checklist in their hands – something for which Arina had never known its use.

"Hirose Tsutomu," the man holding the checklist called in the Nomadian language. The other barged straight into the cell and yanked the old man out, who was removing the lice from the little girl's head when she complained it was itchy, despite having no source of light.

"Grandpa, it's finally your turn for the game – it's finally your turn!" said Arina excitedly in a manner of pure innocence, having no clue what was actually going on, and thus the fear in the old man's eyes certainly had driven her to confusion.

'Why is grandpa not excited?' questioned the child to herself. She lay down on the cold, damp ground after the door was closed, leaving the cell again covered with darkness. 'Why are everyone not excited?'

"What do they want to do with us?" sobbed a guy next to her in a language she could understand.

"I wonder what too," another said in a choked voice.

"They will play with us!" beamed Arina, excited to answer their wonder. "They will play a game with us! If we win then we will become angels!"

A moment of silence occurred. Those two men went speechless but in the mere moment of inconsideration and anxiety, one of them grabbed the child by the collar and shouted ragingly:

"The f*ck is to play!? Get the f*ck out of delusion and grow up, child!!"

In hell circumstances, humans might be deprived of their humaneness and enter the other territory. But the man quickly got some back when the child burst out crying. After all, she was only a child of three years of age.

"Jeez, you're just a child after all, how can you understand what's happening..." murmured the man in hopelessness, tossing the girl aside.

"...They are going to kill us after all."

"What—What's kill?" choked the child he just tossed.

The man looked at her and sighed.

"To kill is—"

"Mercy me, let that child have some faith," the other man cut his sentence. "She's only a child for goodness's sake."

During then the young Arina had been listening and tearing up uncontrollably. Despite being merely three years old, she could somehow sense something was off about the way the men delivered their words.

At night when they were all asleep on the hard ground, the steel door that served as a barrier between darkness and brightness suddenly was unlocked in the key insert hole and creaked open.

Arina was awakened by the noise. 'What was that?'

The child stood up and carefully to not wake other people up, she tiptoed to the door in silence to check whatever that was.

Surprisingly! It was grandpa! He was gesturing for Arina to be quiet and to follow him outside. But the child refused to move. She stood there open-mouthed. Had grandpa lost the game? There was no reason for him to be back unless he lost the game. And why were some of his fingers lost?

"Shh, child, let's play another game, shall we?" the old man said in a pleading voice.

"What game?" blurted the child chokingly, on the verge of tears. Revelation quickly stirred her vague consciousness. The pure innocence had slowly died out under these circumstances, even for a three years old, the brutal reality was something impossible to imagine away. "There's NO such game!"

The old man had no choice but to cover her mouth in case the noise will alert the guards around. Without saying anything, he picked up the child in his arms and quickly fled away, carefully avoiding places where the NKVD guards might be patrolling.

The child was shocked and horrified. She tried her best to free herself from the old man's grasp and even tried to bite her way out of it. It worked. She slipped down to the ground and soon witnessed the terror before her.

They were fleeing past a room filled with shelves and shelves. The white moonshine shone into the room; there were big glasses of bottles on the shelves, and in those bottles...were liquid and human babies in them.

The old man abruptly covered the child's mouth and eyes with his missing-fingers hands before she could give out a terrifying scream. Just right at that moment, a NKVD guard stepped into that room with a flashlight.

He directed the light on every corner around the place, especially to the particular spot he was sure there was some noise coming from.

The old man and the child in his arms were lucky enough to hide behind one of the shelves in time. However, the guard began to step forward for further investigation.

The old man's heart thumped faster at each step the guard took and got nearer to their hiding spot. The child acknowledged the situation and paled as well. She began to hold her breath, feeling her entire body shaking.

The guard reached their shelf row at last, and to the immense relief of the old man, he directed the light in the opposite direction instead. Seizing it as a chance, the old man grabbed the child with him and quietly fled away before the guard check their spot as well.

Poor young girl was on the verge of fainting from the heart attack experience. They soon made their way out of the building and, the child, almost blinded by the bright moonshine casting on the world before her. 'Happy Uncover' hadn't it? Finally, it had reached her.

"There you are, you filthy prisoner!!"

To their panic, the guard whom they managed to escape from minutes ago had caught up to them and called out to other NKVD guards. 'The old man that had escaped from the experiment' as they noted. The guards poured into the scene with the trained dogs with them, "Woof! Woof! Woof!"

The old man picked the child up and barged ahead before the other guards and their dogs reached them. However, the weak old man was shot in the leg by the guard behind. Nevertheless, by some miraculous strength and love he spared for the little girl, wishing the best for her freedom, he still stand firm on his legs and proceeded to flee from that guard's line of sight and eventually hid under a pile of lumber on a tract of land being prepared for the camp's expansion.

"Where's that damn old prisoner!?" the NKVD guards yelled. And further added to their exasperation was that the goddamn daughter of the Comrade Chairman had also been kidnapped by that old scumbag.

"Woof! Woof! Woof!"

The NKVD dogs with their trained keen noses were spreading out the territory and searching for some traces of the two prisoners.

Acknowledging it, the old man and the child had swiftly covered themselves with gasoline-soaked tobacco near them, hoping it would mask their scent from the dogs. And after remaining immobile in several hiding spots for three days, they sprinted out of the camp and into the woods.

***

"Ms. Avenira? Ms. Avenira? MS. AVENIRA!"

Arina came back to earth with a start.

"Oh, yes, whatever is the matter, sensei?" she smiled merrily.

"Where have your mind and ears gone, huh!? Come up here and solve this problem!!" exclaimed the math teacher in frustration.

"Oh," gasped Arina. "Oh, that's a very fine equation, I suppose. If you place your trust in me, then I am too, having faith in myself!"

But just as soon as she was about to stand up, there was this uncomfortable, squelchy feeling in between her legs. Nevertheless, Arina shrugged, thinking it was just another of her imagination, but oh boy did she regret it.

Whilst she made her up to the blackboard, the other students followed their gazes after and almost choked on their saliva. You could clearly see the second-hand embarrassed expressions on the girls' faces, while the boys were blushing like there was no tomorrow.

"Arina, get back here now!!" demanded Asano suddenly from behind.

"Oh, Asano-kun, what is it?" whirled Arina around. Just then that view of her behind also got in the teacher's line of sight, as he froze in place.

To the naive girl's utmost confusion, a torrent of laughter burst forth from her classmates. Even Shirayuki Sae was laughing! What the!?

Asano hid his red face and facepalmed from the second-hand embarrassment he felt despite being a guy.

"Silly Arina!" laughed Seo in the mid of the entertained students, pointing rudely at the poor, horrified girl. "You bled THROUGH your skirt!!"

Arina's face blanched. Her hands clawed on her face.

"Uhh, ehem!" the teacher cleared his throat. "Now – now, class! Attention, please! See? This is one of the consequences you will have to face if you keep your mind up in the air all the time! Remember to wear your sanitary pads next time, Avenira!"

The second wave of laughter burst forth. All the animation fell out of Arina's point of view. Oh, what should she do? Should she commit suicide out of mortification? Her life was over now. But for now, all she wanted to do was burst into tears. Oh, what shall she do then? Bursting into tears in front of the entire class to add more reason to her later suicide attempt?

Burst into tears she did before giving out a decision. Arina's feet moved on their own and fled away in the middle of the class to the place where no sight of humanity could be seen – to the girl's bathroom. Well, at least during study hours the place was usually empty.

Hiding away in the toilet booth, Arina proceeded to cry stormily. She could never EVER step outside into the world anymore – she could never be able to live with this scandal for the rest of her life!

Whilst sobbing, she frantically checked her underwear to see what was going on down there. She BLED! Seo was right! There was a maddened amount of red blood stained through her underwear and to her skirt.

Arina was near to passing out from heart attack when someone suddenly knocked on the door of her booth.

"Arina, are you in there?"

It was Nagasawa Juria's voice. Arina freaked out and was snapped back from the near fainting and accidentally blurted out, "N-no!"

"Come on, Arina! You can not reply if you aren't there! You're lucky that I'm also on my cycle now. Do you need any pads?"

"Oh, Nagasawa-san!" cried Arina in utmost mortification. "Per-perhaps you could help me prepare for my funeral right now! Ma-Make sure to make it private because I DO NOT need any attendees, Oh, Nagasawa-san! Please plant some white roses on my grave! Please, white NOT red! Oh, and I'd forever remember you even in my next life. I will see you until then, I'm about to commit suicide now and no one could ever stop me from doing so."

Juria listened through the door with a confused expression written across her face. "Hah!?" as she said. Why must one be so dramatic?

"Arina, you're in your womanly flowering time and it's perfectly normal! Don't make such a big fuss out of it!"

Juria was uncomfortable when all she got was an uneasy silence. It built up for at least three seconds before Arina let out her greatest distress in the entire history of mankind:

"I'm not ready to be a WOMAN!!?!"

Juria sweatdropped, "Well, that's how biology works and that's the way of it."

The horrified Arina leaned her back against the door whilst breathing heavily, "Oh there must be a mistake, there's no way biology could dictate that it's time for me to be a WOMAN!?!"

"Just let me in, Arina!" pleaded Juria. "Let's be real. You can't just walk out like that, aren't you? Come on, I will help you take care of it. And please, don't just give up on your life that easily."

And so Arina had no choice but to let Juria in. She taught her how to use pads and how to clean stained underwear. During then Arina hadn't overcome her sobbing state but only let more out after hearing how she will have to deal with this nightmare EVERY month!

"Ho-How about yours, Nagasawa-san? When did your, hic! When did your cycle first start?"

"Hmm," hummed Juria. "Properly...when I was ten?"

"Then I am truly, extremely sorry for you," she shook her head in pity. "I could never imagine what a horrible nightmare it must have felt for you. You're such a GREAT inspiration for generations to come."

"Actually, I'm glad that I got it," confided Juria, giving Arina her spare skirt. "It might not be comfortable but you will definitely see the result after a while. See how it transformed my body?"

Arina's eyes marveled at Juria's whole figure and sighed.

"Oh, only if that nightmare of incident had never happened, it wouldn't be as half as bad."

The other girls in Arina's class soon visited her in the bathroom too considering they all could relate to her dismay. Nevertheless image keeping was something too important for Arina to ignore as she skipped school that day and came home crying.

Seo and the others had tried ringing her doorbell too but all was for naught. Arina was DETERMINED to not leave the house ever again!

It wasn't until Asano came to her home that day with a box of ice cream that she allowed him in for just a while. Entering the password Arina had recently installed and told him with the mindset that it could be changed anytime she wants, he entered the house to see that it was all dark and no sign of Arina whatsoever. He proceeded to boldly go up the stair and barged into her room to see Arina herself lying on the bed, face downward among the pillows.

"Get over it and don't be childish," said Asano. "Get up and eat your ice cream before it melts."

"I have a fridge," was a muffled reply.

"Then get up to put it into the fridge," he demanded, going over to the bed.

Arina cowered deeper into her pillows as if desirous of hiding herself forever from mortal eyes.

"No. But please, Asano-kun, put it in the fridge for me or you can eat it and go away and don't look at me. I'm in the depths of despair and I don't care if you're a mile better than me in almost everything or my Father is planning to start a war anymore. Little things like that are of no importance now because I don't suppose I'll ever be able to go again. My career is closed. Please, Asano-kun, go away and don't look at me. Society is definitely going to cast me away for this."

Taking a deep breath in to cope with her childish drama, Asano waited to get calm enough to reply, "I do understand that it's a beyond embarrassing experience one must deal with, but do not let it defeat you! Tomorrow I still want you to go to school like usual with your head up with dignity. Just then that society will have to respect you for overcoming the incident. Never let their words pull you away from dignity, do you understand?"

"Oh, Asano-kun! It's easy for you to say so when you're not a MONSTROSITY like me! I bled THROUGH my skirt, Asano-kun, you can not convince me otherwise, my--my life and hea-a-a-art— a-a-ah—"

Asano furrowed his eyebrows in exasperation. She had such a weak mindset of a loser and he could not tolerate it!

"Fine. Bury yourself here until you learn your lesson."

That said he stood up and left. Though one thing Asano hadn't yet noticed in Arina was that she was extremely quick to get over stuff because the next day he already found her looking perfectly fine at school.

"Oh, Asano-kun," she heaved a sigh. "People like you are so blessed. Hadn't it ever occurred to you that why you are a boy? Why – why? And just why am I a girl? Oh no, no, I'm no longer a girl. I'm a freaking WOMAN now! And are you still a boy, Asano-kun? If you aren't anymore I still expect you have it way better than we do."

"By your stupid logic then I'm a man I guess," said Asano, crossing his arms. "And yes I might have it easier, but it also comes with a greater responsibility."

"What greater responsibility?" Arina shot her eyes wide opened. "You don't have to carry a whole person in you later in life!"

Asano straightened up and went speechless for a while.

"There are more roles in different sex than you think and how to properly run a society. With the current population reproduction is no longer necessary for survival. I dare say males are more important nowadays to keep society running in the correct direction. And come along with that a greater responsibility to protect and provide for women and children."

"And my Father is out there killing them!" mourned Arina helplessly. "Oh, Asano-kun, do you suppose he's a—a real man?"

"No," answered Asano bluntly.

"O-o-oh, what a pity," she panicked.

"And I don't think you as a woman have to set a goal for such an impossible task either."

"Nonsense!" laughed Arina merrily. "I am the daughter of my Father by flesh and blood and I'm destined and WILL do it even if God forbids me to! My mind is very much made up, Asano-kun, and even the strongest typhoon couldn't blow it away! I'm NOT going to let him run wild with his false ideology; and I AM going to destroy it by all cause, in the name of his one and only kid! Don't you worry about me a bit."

Her strong and relatable declaration caused Asano to let out an unconscious smile. He patted her head without thinking.

'As long as it's your wish, I'll go out of the way to help you with it.'

"Oh, my, Asano-kun, what had gotten into you?" startled Arina by his sudden intimate gesture.

"Nothing," he smirked. "I'm going to the student council right now. Christmas is near, I'll have to prepare for that."

Arina's pretty green eyes lit up in delight.

"I have this wonderfully splendid idea, Asano-kun! How about we arrange a program for students of our school to dress up as Santa Claus and enter every kid's home through the chimney to surprise them? That'd be spectacular!" Arina said so without realizing modern houses didn't have a chimney.