Lucky - Naekusaba

Chapter One: When It Started

So much has happened in the past few months. My perception of reality has shattered, my worldview has shifted drastically, and I'm lying in a hospital bed, battered and bruised, covered in puncture wounds. Every breath hurts, every movement sends daggers of pain shooting through my entire body. But now, looking up into the face of the boy who indirectly did all this to me, I realize I wouldn't have it any other way.

I can't even imagine how different my life would've been if my sister had never sent me on this assignment, if she had just decided to take her chances with him and let everything play out according to her original plan. But because she did send me after him that day, everything changed.

The day didn't exactly start off normally. I woke up in a five-star hotel instead of an active warzone, and was actually allowed to spend a few minutes collecting my thoughts. Not that I had many thoughts of my own back then. My only goal in life was to please my sister, and everything I did was a means to that end. Then my phone rang, and Junko was screaming in my ear, "Get in here, you ugly bitch!"

"Y-yes, of course," I stammered, caught off guard. "I'll be there in a second." I wasn't sure why she'd called me when her room was right next to mine, but I didn't question it. I didn't question anything before I met him.

Junko was lying back on her bed, idly running a knife along her finger. The second she saw me she whipped the knife at my face, and I dodged effortlessly, feeling infinitely grateful that she thought I was worthy enough to try to kill.

"Took ya long enough, you lazy slut." Junko sat up, and I noticed that she was already wearing a full face of makeup and had her hair done up in her signature pigtails despite it being four in the morning. "I got a target for you."

It had been a while since I'd been given a specific target. When I got back to Japan, she had sent me to cause a massacre at a local middle school, but since then she'd kept me close by, not letting me out of the hotel except to get groceries. I smiled in spite of myself. It felt like forever since I'd been allowed to run wild. "Who is it?"

"Calm down, murder whore." She hopped off the bed and walked over to the desk in the corner, where she held up a newspaper. "See this?"

I squinted. It was an article about a boy who'd narrowly escaped death at a construction site last month by tripping over his shoelaces at the exact moment a construction worker hit the wrong lever. "Is that...?"

"No shit. And you know who orchestrated that whole thingamajig?" She stared at me for a full five seconds. "I did. I set that up, and it failed."

I let out an involuntary gasp. Junko was the smartest person I had ever met. Her plans might not always be the most well thought-out, but with something as cut-and-dry as bribing a construction worker to kill a defenseless kid, there was no way something could've gone wrong.

Junko nodded, seeming satisfied. "Right? Even a moron like you gets it. But hey, accidents happen, you know? Plus I got a great despair kick out of it. So I sent another guy to take him out. And you know what happened then?"

I had a feeling I knew what was going to happen, but I shook my head anyway. If I tried to make a suggestion she would just call me stupid and try to kill me again, and while that wasn't necessarily a bad thing, I really wanted to get on with this assignment.

She slammed the newspaper down on her desk. "The fucker's gun jammed at the last second! And I would just try again, except..." She rifled through the stack of papers on her desk for another second, then pulled out a picture of the boy. "This is Makoto Naegi, the Ultimate Lucky Student."

"Do you think his luck actually has something to do with it?"

She rolled her eyes. "Of course a dumbass like you would think that. I don't know what this kid's deal is, if he's got super good reflexes or what, but... well, you know the original plan was to trap him in the school along with the rest of em, right? I tried to get him killed because I decided he was too dangerous. He's got this anime-protagonist air around him, you know? Is your tiny little pea brain keeping up?"

I blushed and nodded.

"But," she continued, "the little twerp is being super super super elusive about it. So I need you to go and gun this brat down."

I looked at the boy again. He was cute – kind of an egg-shaped head, and the most innocent smile I'd ever seen. But that didn't matter. He was a target. That was all that mattered. I looked up at Junko's expectant face and nodded. "Anything for you, Junko."