For as long as she can remember, Cadence has lived with the perfect family, the perfect grades, the perfect life in the upper circles. Caretakers that indulged her, and tutors hired for everything she would ever want to learn and more. Musical talent. Physical prowess. Everything about her past indicated a life that most would die to have. Sure there were a few minor things that weren’t as she would have hoped, like having busy parents, but it wasn’t a fate worse than death. In fact, her family was on quite good terms with one another; even if their daily schedules were too packed with events to see each other, they still dined together every night they weren’t gracing parties and soirées and the like with their presence.

Such a good life. Such a perfect life. Rather, it should have been. But these were memories, memories of a family, of school and suitors that were not hers. The moment Cadence opened her eyes in a white, sterile hospital room with “Mother” clutching her hand and crying out in delight that she was awake, she knew that this was not her life. So many specialists came in to examine her, each the best of the best from the medical world. Each of them proclaimed that she was as healthy as could be after a coma spanning several weeks. Pathetically weak, she would then call herself. So weak, so frail, that she couldn’t even manage staying awake for more than a few minutes at the beginning, before falling back asleep. So weak that she had to spend days upon days learning how to walk again, to speak without cluttering her words, and even longer to even cross a hallway by herself. All the while, she declared total and complete amnesia.

“This is my mother? She seems like such a nice person, I’m sure I loved her very much.” “Oh! I’m sure I vaguely remember Maya, my fellow soccer team member.” “I’m trying my hardest to remember about my twelfth birthday party, the one on Jacqueline’s father’s boat.” The lies fell off of her tongue easily, and everyone believed her. What wasn’t to believe, after all? So the fancy doctors and the foreign specialists merely patted her head and told her that that the memories would come back in due time if only she’d rest and stop trying so hard. In return, Cadence nodded and gave them her prize smile, the one that told them that nothing was wrong in the world. Because inside, she knew that everything was wrong. These people were, without a doubt, not her family, not her friends, not the people that she had grown up with. Even though the memories of them were there, something at the back of her head was absolutely certain that they weren’t hers. It was so much easier just to agree to what they were saying, and pass off her “unusual behavior” as memory loss.

Thus became the beginning of a lie—a series of white lies, and not-so-white lies, that piled up further and further with each passing day. Her hospital room became the most joyful place to be, gifts of chocolate and flowers littered all over the tables and floors for anyone to partake in. Family and friends of family came to visit every day, as well as school friends and suitors. They all sent their best wishes for her recovery, and expressed their desire to become closer to her once this “ordeal” was done and over with. As the days went on, the time of her release was estimated, and plans immediately began scheduling. In everyone’s eyes, this was just an unfortunate episode, and things would be returned to normal in time. The lives of the elite would go on, ever unchanging because there was no need for change. When everything we would ever want is in our hands, why would we ever let go?

Were it not for her insistence to stay the full duration of her time in recovery, Cadence would surely have been taken out early. But to combat the weakness that she despised in herself, every waking hour not spent entertaining guests was used to regain her physical strength. So hard she worked, she finished most of the physical therapy ahead of schedule, allowing the doctors to even insist on early release. Those that visited her the day before her discharge from the hospital were ecstatic, quick to offer early arrival the following day and a comfortable ride home. If they truly thought about it that day, however, they might have noticed that she was slightly less enthusiastic than she should have been to be going back to the great house she had lived all her life. Perhaps they merely brushed it off as nerves or the memory loss that tempered excitement, but they would come to know how much that expression meant. Because the next morning, when the doctors arrived to give one last check up before her scheduled departure, there was no trace of Miss Avellis.

PLACE OF BIRTH, New York City, America.

FACE CLAIM, DURARARA!!, sonohara anri — cadence avellis

SCHEDULE, Literature, Physical Training, Sociology, Music.

INVENTORY, Bow rosin, lock picks, chocolate.

WEAPON, A katana that she stole and later had plated in iron under certain advice.