Chapter 1: Off to You

“Why didn’t you kill him?” The voice echoed as she ransacked her mind for a definitive answer.

It was like a broken cassette tape, she covered her ears with her hands and tried to enveloped her knees together close to her chest.

When she raised her head she saw a tall French man passing down the dark-colored business seats of the plane.

"Noir, Noir, how did it go?” she asked, worry was written all over her beautiful pale face as she planted her feet on the floor and ran for Noir.

Because she knew that whatever he would say can break the puzzle she was trying to complete. One thing was obvious: her mission failed, that's why she was riding on the organization's private plane not having any information on where it would land. Because she didn't pull the trigger on her last mission, the organization got mad and she was close to thinking that they will drop her off the plane in a suburban land and let her die.

Noir's sad eyes led her back into her seat, "Do you want to have tea, coffee, or milk?" He sat across her, resting his left leg to the other.

She grunted in annoyance, and here she thought he'll be straightforward with her once.

This was her first failed mission for all time's sake. After all those years the organization trained her to be perfect, they assumed she was perfect but clearly, she was not. Now, she might consider having chamomile tea before they decided to drop her off the plane.

“Blanche, calm down,” he said as he watched hope slowly fade in her gorgeous upturned black eyes.

Hearing her name came out of Noir's gave her calmness she never thought she could get.

The french man eyed her with a dead-pan look, sighed. Noir was her handler, an agent with a higher position than her in the organization, and the only man who treats her like she's his child, and seeing his daughter fidget and biting her nails in her seat broke his heart.

“How did it go?” She spouted, sighting the silhouette of a man sitting on the tail end of the plane. The man was in a black parka and a cowboy hat, all the way to looked mysterious, but he pulled his phone with a tassel so red it made Blanche diverted her gaze back to Noir.

He chewed the inside of his cheeks. “They want you out.”

She can hear her bones breaking simultaneously, her pulse on the verge of popping, and her mind catapulted out of her ears: if that's possible. After Noir said that. She clasped her hands together, feeling the sharp pain as it seeped through her veins. The moment she didn’t pull the trigger, she knew she messed up.

Teaching her the right things all these years, watching those who were made to do anything they were asked to do, Noir never dreamt ever in his life that the little girl he helped would turned out to be like this.

"Tell me, Blanche." Noir lowered his gaze and closed the space between them as if what he will say next would just be a daughter-father secret.

"Why didn't you pull the trigger? Why didn't you kill him like you should do?"

There were so many questions around Noir's head. Blanche knew the answer to his question yet she didn't dare voice it out. Her family taught her to love that's why she killed her loved ones and spare those she hated.

Maybe, she needed more time to love him that's why she can't kill him, maybe when she's in love with him she can kill him. Maybe, the timing wasn't right, the rendezvous wasn't placed together. There were so many maybe, but one thing's for sure; she failed. Big time.

She swallowed the lump on her throat, she sighed and dropped her shoulders, resting her back from her seat.

She stared at the lonesome man in front of her with sharp jaws and tiny freckles in his cheeks. She didn't speak, she doesn't trust her voice when it comes to Noir, her voice might break and it might affect her already-torn performance in the organization and caused more problems than it could get. After all, the organization has eyes everywhere.

She heard Noir muttered his little 'OK' like he understood her silence and pulled out a red folder.

Before he started to open the folder, he gave a smirk, his eyes also smiled as his lips turned upward. "Don’t worry Blanche, I made them reconsider.”

She pursed her lips together. "How can you say that to me with such eyes? They want me out, it’s clear as a fragile glass, I failed them."

The clouds were so white up in the air, yet it didn't help her a bit when she's seeing red and sadness.

“They’re not, you know that’s not your fault," he replied, trying his best to vitalized his tone.

Blanche knew how Noir could be the best sympathizer, her eyes narrowed. "Let’s just hear what you have for me.”

He sighed and opened the folder and read something in there before giving his full attention to her. “You were assigned with the person you didn’t kill.”

His words rang in her ears, of course, the organization won’t easily get rid of that guy and because she was at fault for this she's the one responsible, she's been tailing the boy in Spain for two months before the organization told her to kill him. So who's more capable than she?

And now because she failed to finish her mission, he was still on the loose, and that's a big mistake, he can't be seen alive, his life was in catastrophe the moment he decided to take a step forward, who knows what he was thinking right now, he might've planned on ending the world tonight or tomorrow, so the organization ought to do what was most sensible to do and with that, they painted her as the one responsible for him.

Simply put, they gave her another assignment yet still the same and by the looks of it, as soon as the plane lands, she's going to follow him again like what she did months ago and then build up the right time to kill him. It's much better than throwing her off the plane. She sighed and held her hands together.

“By the looks of it, you know how this is going to happen.” He smirked and gave her the folder he’s holding, “But this is not the same order Blanche, the organization received your hypothesis about him not being the Alas, so for this to run perfectly, you’ll work more closely to him and find the truth."

She nodded and opened the folder. The other reason why she didn't shot him was that she thought he's a fake, a pseudo, and her real target was not him.

Closing the folder filled with facts that she already knew like the back of her hand, she darted her eyes again on the French man that knows how to alter his words just to have people follow him.

"I really hate you," she mouthed with a smile and he only replied with a grin.

-

Landing at the airport onto an East country, she tied the knitted sweater around her shoulders on top of her white loosed button-up shirt tucked on her stone-washed pants, her brown boots and black sunglasses completed her look as someone who pretends to be fresh from overseas.

She pulled her maroon-colored luggage behind and waited for the door to slid open as she run her fingers through her wavy black hair.

Noir made her wear a button-down shirt and skinny pants, she wore bright-red tainted lipstick and gave her things that: “normal people who were fresh from a foreign country have’'.

At the young age of ten, her views and opinions about the world changed, she lived in a sheltered home almost like a prison that served them for when they'll have their mission, but she's glad to experience that.

Dragging numerous souls since she turned ten. She killed because she loved them, she's killing because she can't bear to witness pain in the eyes of a loved one anymore.

She was told to love so much, to be kind because that’s what the world needs, but that person contradicts his words, and that scene was imprinted in her soul thus, she's killing for love.

Killing feels good when you set your mind on one goal, you don’t have to regret anything. That’s why, the organization recruited her, and trained her as a robot. Living like a porcelain doll and working as a puppet with strings.

So to speak, this assignment doesn’t seem to lined-up the threads to what the higher-ups in the organization would do, but she accepted it nevertheless because of the mere fact that that boy was her responsibility and she's going to do everything just to love him.

"Ah, shit!"

“Welcome home, ma’am," a woman, dressed in a blue blouse paired with a pencil-skirt uniform said and asked for the passport Noir handed to her.

It's the first time she traveled alone. Last time she traveled with the others and took separate ways after they went out of the airport, yet now she's going with the alias, she smiled and nodded at the woman when she returned her so-called passport and let her through.

Way to have fake documents, she never heard her name, she never traveled legally, at least not with the public, the organization likes to take her in different countries in their private plane. Well, might as well enjoyed the welcome then, she thought.

Welcome to the battlefield, Cleo Martinez.

"Ouch! What the hell are you doing?"

Her head followed the irritated voice made by a woman struggling to stand on her orange high heels. Not far from her, a man in a big brown coat in a cowboy hat and a brown attaché case was also struggling to stand, hands on knees and as if his world was spinning one-hundred eighty degrees per second.

Sticking to the plan, Cleo made a thought of what normal people would do when they witnessed a scene like that. Cleo shall do also what people should do.

She helped the man. Leaving the woman in bewilderment.

"Thanks." The man wearing a dark brown cowboy hat smiled at her trying to step forward on his foot.

Cleo should be out of the scene now, but somehow, she followed the man with her gaze and as she'd expected. The man was about to bump his head on a large pillar.

It's not like she wanted to, she found herself walking towards his place and placed a hand before his forehead could hit the pillar.

"Thanks again, miss."

It's what normal people should do, right?