After Black's abilities awakened, mixing with people became difficult, so he isolated himself from others — he even built a robot copy of himself to go to school in his place.
But along with his awakening, something else awakened in him too: the desire to understand human beings. Black knew he was different, but feeling the emotions stored within other people's memories was truly a different kind of feeling — as if he had been freed from something, yet at the same time something else had come to bind him.
And of course, his mind wouldn't rest when it came to his curiosity, so from time to time he tried using his ability on people he knew, and the results weren't very good for him.
After looking into a person's eyes, his consciousness would detach from his body, and the emotion of the memory would take control. Black hadn't tried it just once, and every attempt was different from the last, until he reached a stage where he could stay slightly aware of what was happening to him while seeing the memories, whereas before he had been considered completely unconscious during it.
But unfortunately, he discovered that his ability produced many bad effects, both obvious and hidden.
Today he decided to try his ability on members of the terrorist gang, after concluding that there was a major conspiracy being carefully hidden. Through the information he had gathered, he was able to identify which targets' memories he needed to focus on, given his current situation.
There were many members of the organization scattered everywhere among ordinary people, but this time he chose the one closest to him in location.
"I hope the odds don't betray me this time, and I hope the curse works in my favor for once."
Merlo was, as usual, returning from the bad places where his mind drowned in a sea of lust, even though he knew perfectly well that this wasn't what he really wanted — it was just something temporary to fill his emptiness.
If you looked at his face at any given time, you'd see nothing but the face of a dead man who hated life. But look at him again while he's watching the news broadcasting something about the terrorist organization, and you'd find a smile on his face carrying every kind of ill intent. His greatest desires were the organization's missions — especially the bloody ones.
While walking home as usual, thinking about how impatient he was for his next mission, he noticed someone looking at him. It was a boy who looked to be about fifteen years old, dark-skinned with orange hair, sitting in a car parked on the side of the road.
What was suspicious was that the boy was looking at him with an ugly smile that felt oddly familiar — was that his own involuntary smile? At that moment, Merlo could only think of one thing.
"Is this little bastard mocking me?"
So he changed his path and headed toward the car, shouting:
"Hey, you, you [censored]—"
But before he could reach it, a police robot cut him off, blocking his way.
"Hello, sir, how are you? Do you know why I've stopped you?"
"No, I don't know, you—"
Before Merlo could finish, he remembered he had certain secrets to keep.
"Alright, let me tell you the violations you've just committed."
After Merlo got rid of the robot and paid the fines, he tried to get back to his target — the bastard mocking him.
But the bastard's car was no longer where it had been, so Merlo thought to himself, his wicked smile beginning to show on his face: "Looks like there's a mission I need to sign up for."
The mission was carried out successfully. Black managed to look into Merlo's eyes and see his memories.
The first thing Black felt in the memory was some anxiety and fear — it was Merlo's first mission, a mission meant to prove he deserved to join the organization.
The target was to get rid of someone he knew, someone who had been bad to him, someone he hated with a hatred deeper than what he'd received from him — and now, at last, he could truly live.
There had been a supervisor from the organization helping him, and together they had managed to capture this person after some struggle and a bit of blood. Now his moment had come. He aimed some kind of device at the man's forehead and pressed it for a while.
As he did so, the man's body shook violently for a time, until it finally went still and became nothing but a lifeless corpse. He was dead.
This was the first time Black had seen someone die this closely, but Black was a realistic person — he knew there was no difference between someone dying near him or far from him, except for the probability of increased danger to himself.
What was truly strange was Merlo the killer's emotions in that moment — his feelings had flipped from fear and anxiety to a thrill mixed with happiness, and that's exactly what showed on his face. After that, the memory moved into weaker, more faded regions, which gave Black enough capacity to avert his eyes and order the car to move.
Of course, the memory still had an effect on Black's mind, so it took him a full day to clear its influence.
Afterward, Black organized his thoughts around the new information he'd gathered. Well, it wasn't much — all he'd managed to deduce from it was his next target. The supervisor who had been with Merlo in the memory had called him "Six-Seven."
It seemed to be a codename meant to keep his real name secret, but fortunately Black already possessed all the information related to the organization's members — codenames, real names, and of course, their locations — so Black got ready and set off toward him.
This time it was much easier for Black. The target was at one of the most popular destinations of this era: the psychiatrist's clinic.
Six-Seven was walking out of the clinic when Black spotted him. Black easily caught sight of his eyes, and once again the image inside his mind shifted.
He was in a battle against ugly monsters, like the aliens that appear in science fiction films.
It was a fierce battle, but caught between rage and joy, he never stopped fighting. In the end, though, he didn't survive, and his body was destroyed. He heard a voice in his ear say:
[You have been permanently eliminated]
After hearing this voice, he felt something worse than death, and his face turned to the same pallor it had carried his entire life — he felt as though he had lost the most precious thing he owned.
He spent a long time trying to grasp what had just happened to him, until he realized he was still alive, and he removed the helmet from his head and sat staring at it, as a flood of dark thoughts came rushing into his mind.
Black put in every effort to free himself from this memory, and with great difficulty managed to close his eyes.
That was the most intense memory he had seen so far. Obtaining the memory hadn't been hard, but breaking free of it was far harder — so much so that even after closing his eyes, he couldn't order the car to move. Luckily, he had programmed it to move on its own if his eyes stayed closed for a set amount of time.
Black kept struggling against the memory until his mind cleared again, five days later, and even after that, he still suffered from some lingering effects.
Now Black tried to review the information he had gathered, as usual.
At the start of the memory, the scene had seemed strange, but too realistic to be anything but real — he had no doubt whatsoever that it was real, until Six-Seven took off the helmet.
Black remembered that the helmet had a distinctive shape, so he tried redrawing it.
"Search for any device with the same shape I've drawn, and also search for any game with the same specifications I've told you." Black ordered Robby.
Black tried hundreds of games with the same specifications as the game in the memory. He shattered every high score in every one of them, just to make sure he hadn't missed a single moment, and for games that took too long, he hacked them to speed them up or to freely jump between all the stages.
He spent entire days doing this, but he didn't succeed — he couldn't find the device or the game. He even had Robby capture Six-Seven so he could interrogate him about the game, but the answer was shocking:
"I don't know. There really was a game I loved a lot, but I don't remember what it was, or where I got the device, or where it went."
Black confirmed, through every means he knew, that Six-Seven wasn't lying — he even used the harshest of those means.
After this round of searching, his suspicions only grew.
The mystery Black perceived in this world had deepened further.
But he wouldn't be able to continue searching today — today the organization was throwing a big party, and he had to attend.
"I wonder what I should wear?"