[December 15th of 2036]
He's blonde.
And not just any kind of blonde—that kind of blonde. The type that borders on silver but lacks the shimmer to make it ethereal. It's a washed-out, ghostly shade that looks unnatural under sunlight, as if it belongs in a storybook of cursed princes rather than a real boy. I've always been repulsed by blondes. Perhaps it's ironic, given I was once blonde myself in my past life as Anna Valentine. But that only makes it worse. I associate that color with everything I tried to escape—falsehood, vanity, tragedy.
Blondes remind me of death, not light.
I have a type, and Salvatore is the farthest from it imaginable. In this realm, I find myself drawn to the quiet elegance of Japanese boys—those with honey-toned skin, straight jet-black hair that shimmers like ink under the moon, dark monolid eyes deep enough to drown in. I like them calm, extroverted in kindness but never loud, respectful to the core, never one to curse or speak crudely. That type speaks to my soul. That type reminds me of Yato. He was the embodiment of everything I admired in a person, and nothing about him was loud or proud.
Salvatore is the antithesis of that.
Looking at him is like being slapped across the face by everything I hate in males. His hair is wavy, not in a graceful way, but in that undisciplined, disorderly manner that reminds me of aristocrats who never had to work for anything. His skin is so pale it lacks life—it has that bloodless, waxy sheen of someone long dead. He doesn't glow; he reflects, like a cold porcelain doll. And then there are his eyes—light chartreuse, a color that should never exist in irises. They're not even purely green. Specks of gold shimmer in them like a bad art project gone wrong, and paired with those long lashes and dimples... it's offensive.
I've never trusted men with dimples. They're always hiding something behind their smile.
And why is he already a head taller than me when we're barely three years apart in age? It's infuriating. I've always hated looking up at people—it feels like I'm being diminished, like they're towering above me in status as well as height. I have the soul of a Crowned Princess, damn it. It is undignified to have to tilt my head to meet the eyes of a commoner boy with far too much nose for one face.
And that nose—that nose—long, straight, and offensively perfect, like it's been carved from marble for the sole purpose of tempting me to break it. My fists tingle when I look at it. I want to hear it snap. His cheekbones are sharp enough to slice bread, and don't get me started on his neck—it's so absurdly long I'm convinced the gods could have used the excess to craft another mortal. His collarbones jut out like he's in a constant state of famine, and as if to add insult to injury, his waist is smaller than mine. He has an hourglass shape, and I cannot even begin to describe the level of unease that sparks inside me because of that.
He doesn't even move like a child. He moves like he's performing. Like he's aware of how symmetrical and disturbing his body is, and he uses it.
It's unnatural. All of it. He's too put-together, too designed. I'd almost think he was a work of alchemy, created in a lab to test the limits of my patience and sanity.
And then there's his voice—a rasping, grating thing that hovers just above the boundary of high-pitched. It's not delicate, but it isn't mature either. It sounds like he's just gotten over a cold, or like he's a child trying to speak through damaged vocal cords. There's a hollowness in it that unsettles me. If it weren't for his exaggeratedly prominent Adam's apple, I would have genuinely questioned whether he was male at all.
I did question it, until Jie-Jie stumbled out of the bathroom one day pale as snow and clinging to the walls like a survivor of war.
He looked shaken—more than shaken—humiliated.
"He's more of a man than Father," Jie-Jie had said in a trembling voice, eyes wide with a strange mixture of horror and awe. "It's... unfair."
Whatever that meant, I didn't care to press further. I got the confirmation I needed: Salvatore is, biologically at least, male.
I suspect he bullied Jie-Jie into that emotional wreckage somehow. Probably subtle, psychological jabs. The kind you can't prove, but you feel long after they've been delivered.
That would match the impression I get from him—a manipulator in the making, a prince of masks and poisoned words, hiding claws beneath his charming facade.
And I hate him.
I hate how deeply I hate him.
Because hatred that intense can't exist without meaning. And that, more than anything, terrifies me.
That little bastard reeks of agarwood—the same heavy, lingering scent that clung to the man who murdered me in my past life as Anna Valentine. But Salvatore's scent doesn't stop there. It's layered with sharp notes of cloves, delicate hints of jasmine, the smoky undercurrent of musk incense, and a coldness that reminds me not just of winter, but of a starless, biting winter night. A night so empty and desolate that even the wind seems to howl without hope.
Oddly, that is the only thing I find remotely appealing about him: the way he carries the essence of that starless, windy winter night. It's hauntingly beautiful in a dark sort of way. It's almost poetic, like the kind of loneliness that wraps itself around you and never lets go.
But that fragile allure is quickly overwhelmed by the sharper, suffocating scent of agarwood mixed with cloves—a scent that drags me back to the worst moment of my existence. The vivid, sickening memory of my death as Anna Valentine floods my mind like a ruthless tide. I remember the cold, brutal force that severed my head from my body, the stench of tobacco mingling with that same agarwood on the hands of the man who ordered it all—the man I was supposed to call father. How he'd prepared to carry out the execution himself. How Yato had rushed in to stop it, only for me to fall anyway. And then the unbearable weight of losing Yato, my soulmate, the one who ended his life because he couldn't live without me.
Fuck.
I miss him.
More than anything in this fractured world, I miss Yato. Every day, every breath I take is a prayer that our souls will find each other again. That no matter how many realms, how many lifetimes, or how many impossible obstacles stand between us, our bond remains unbreakable. Our love is immutable, eternal. Soulmates don't just disappear—they find their way back, always.
Salvatore? He's nothing but an unbearable, infuriating eyesore in my life.
He embodies everything I despise in one person—a grotesque collection of flaws and spite wrapped in human form.
What I feel when I look at him isn't hatred in any reasonable sense; it's an irrational loathing. A primal repulsion born deep in my soul, inexplicable and immovable. No logic or understanding can undo it. My spirit instinctively recoils from his, and that's that.
And now, of all things, I'm being forced to exist in his territory.
"So, Mel," Bianca—his mother, the ever-present obstacle in my path—snapped me back from the swirling chaos of my thoughts. I blinked and realized we were sitting around the dining table.
I hadn't even noticed that dinner had started. Or that I had moved here at all. The fog in my mind made the world feel distant and unreal.
I forced myself to focus and met Bianca's green eyes with a cold, dry stare—empty of any warmth or welcome. The urge to correct her, to demand she call me Melissa and stop with the presumptuous nickname, rose in my throat like a bitter taste, but I swallowed it back.
"Yes?" I said, my voice flat, detached. The others at the table probably didn't notice my tone, but I was sure the "walking hindrance" did.
Bianca smiled, an infuriatingly sweet expression that felt like a trap. "What do you want to do when you grow up?" she asked, as if I had a choice in anything.
I didn't even try to answer. I knew they would speak for me, as they always did—deciding my fate without so much as a glance in my direction.
"Melissa will be a top-performing Quant Trader," my father said, his smile firm and proud, sealing my destiny like a sentence.