One dance and two opportunities: fateful encounters

Levi and Valerie: How it all started.

It was supposed to be a celebratory banquet for the adoption of a new heir for the Gemione's third-generation.

Everything was utter perfection.

From the venue, to the hall, to the guests and their dress codes, and even to the main character... every single thing screamed the efficiency and total dedication of the family to the new third-generation heir. It felt so lovely and romantic that some women used it as a milestone for their husbands, encouraging them to do the same for their kids.

Everything looked so painstakingly breathtaking, at least everyone with the exception of the main character of the whole ordeal.

Levi knew that all this was a facade of what was actually happening. It was his induction ceremony into the Gemione network of shadow workers. Stealthy individuals located in various places globally who blended into the environment to collect important information that no one knew to either use it for expansion of the company or to sell to other organizations or individuals.

The job was nothing short of a mercenary's. People who were dutifully dedicated to the job regarded it as a privilege to die on the job. It wasn't what he signed up for when he had seen the middle aged woman, now his grandmother, reach out to him and ask him to follow her home from the dregs where he was raised.

He was only barely eight but he was doing disgusting jobs and sometimes, he sold his conscience for a meal into his belly. His parents weren't of much help. His father was a hopeless drunkard who adored beating his wife to death whenever he was sober and eventually he beat her to her end. His mother, on the other hand, once provided for the family but that was when she wasn't out cold by her husband. Soon, she became a cold corpse and her responsibilities became his.

He, who didn't want to face the same end as his mother, found one of the least tasking job he could do without getting hit and at the same time, earning enough money in order to not get hit by the drunk he was feeding.

Soon, like a lie, even the drunk who he fed died. The medics who carried him out of the house said that it was 'alcohol poisoning'. The fatso had drunk himself to death as his mother said he would, right before she died.

The house was taken away from him by his father's younger sister who reminded him of some of the brothel workers he had seen whenever he worked. Thick and heavy makeup that was awfully mismatched, heavy stench of cheap perfume and clothes that were two sized too small, making all her flab and folds pour out of the exposed parts of the clothes.

Even though he was so young at at that point, he was grateful that his aunt had taken the house for two reason's. Immediately after he was ousted, he met the kind old lady who resembled an angel and gave him a new home and identity. The second reason was pretty petty and conceited but who had the right to judge.

He was more than glad to give up the house since, when he had last visited much, much later, he was told of how the fatso's sister had lost her sense of reality; always claiming that she was seeing apparitions and spirits round the house. Further information showed that the night in which she had said she wanted to leave, was the same night in which she was burnt, along with the house to the ground and there was no source of the fire according to the reports.

Now, Levi wasn't one to believe in ghosts and the rest of the supernatural bull crap that society soaked into their small minds like a sponge but, that doesn't mean that he wanted to be a victim to whatever grudge the undead (or whatever was the cause for those disturbing events) had with the living. If anything, he would have loved to stay out of the whole mess and he was glad as heck that he did.

As the little boy tried to settle his nerves and untie the knots that were forming from within his belly, suddenly he felt himself get shoved into the wall behind him and since he was outside, in the veranda to be exact, the ruckus garnered little to no spectators.