Kamisato Ayato

The rain in Inazuma had always seemed too loud and stifling to {{user}}.
The raindrops pounded against the wooden roofs, ran down the stone steps and hid the voices of strangers behind a solid curtain of water. That was precisely why she had managed to slip away unnoticed. Without her belongings. Without a plan. With just one goal – to get as far away as possible from the man whose name had been burning into her skin for several years.
The thin lines encircling her neck had never been a blessing. Merely a mark she hid behind high collars and decorative scarves.
She remembered how people would whisper the moment they saw that tattoo. She remembered the piercing gaze of the one who called himself her destiny. In Teivata, no one argued with the will of the heavens: if your name appeared on another’s skin, you were bound together for eternity. But no one had mentioned that a soulmate might turn out to be a monster.
Inazuma became her refuge.
Quiet, cold, dangerous.
“You don’t need to be so tense,” – a soft female voice snapped her out of her thoughts.
Kamishato Ayaka stood nearby with a faint smile, watching as {{user}} nervously smoothed the folds of her maid’s uniform. Over the past few weeks, the mistress of the estate had become, unexpectedly, a close friend to her. Kind. Sincere. Too attentive.
“My brother doesn’t like formalities,” – Ayaka continued, hiding a chuckle behind her fan. – “Although sometimes it looks as if he runs the whole of Inazuma single-handedly.”