II | Discovery (1)

Months passed eversince Lauriel discovered that she's reincarnated, she could already crawl around her crib and babble non-sense, since she's still an infant—even though she's already eighteen from her previous life. She practically indulged herself with how much her parents are spoiling her, and even though there's a lingering thought at the back of her mind that she is taking advantage of them, she couldn't help her childish impulses to act.

An infant's body has little to no control after all.

In those months as well, Lauriel learned many things about this world, with how much her parents love to talk about everything under the sun. Lauriel found out that they are in a continent called Doilea and that this place is the only place in the whole world of Chronos that is filled with natural resources (she overheard her father ranting something about how much 'Prima' disregarded their natural resources that it is suffocating him. So she assumed that her father is a traveller of some sorts).

Urielle also mentioned something about visiting the 'Blue Beach' one of these days—she deduced that their country is pretty much close to the sea. There are other things, like politics, sceneries, food, technology (their phones here are hologram watch that functions more than a cell phone can do), and trivial things like how much Laurent and Urielle loves to eat in Sebastian's and Julian's (whoever that is) sea food restaurant.

Lauriel also learned that they have close relatives, or friends (she could not particularly ask them, could she?) that often visited them. There's her 'Uncle' Tyron and 'Aunt' Chiaki with their one year-old son, Shiro. There are also others who she either forgot the name or did not bother knowing—she knows that she'll be able to know their names in the future. Only those three mentioned were the ones who visit the most that she remembered.

Today though, it seems that Laurent would be travelling again for a job. Lauriel didn't know why but she got a bad feeling about this particular time, and she prayed that her father won't be in harm's way.

Urielle bade her farewell as Laurent took a step forward, but not after kissing his wife on the lips and then Lauriel on her bare forehead. He turned around as he waved one last time, then drove on his sleek black car—she has no idea if it's called the same here as on Earth.

Urielle carried her inside and then went to her playroom, laying her down on the floor mat where she could crawl. The room is filled with stuff toys scattered around, some of which she threw in her childish tantrum, and some just plainly forgotten there.

Lauriel immediately turned on her back and lifted herself, crawling towards her favorite teddy bear. She didn't mind that Urielle went out of the room, not hearing the faint sound of the knob clicking its lock.

Other than the bad premonition in her heart before her father left, the day was typically the same as usual. The sun was blazing high on the sky, with small clouds hovering around it. The wind is cool on the skin and the birds are merrily chirping—but Urielle knew better than that.

A while ago, a few seconds before Laurent left, she saw a silhouette of a person on the thicket on their front yard. She felt their malicious intent, leaking uncontrallably on the person's body that confirmed her suspicions as to why that person is there.

So after Urielle tucked her precious gem inside her playroom—which was heavy with security, thanks to Sebastian—and then tapped something on the wall beside the door. A rumbling sound reverberated on the once warmth-filled hallways of their home, as a panel slowly descended from the ceiling, every inch of it filled with high-caliber weapons: sniper guns, grenade launchers, submachine guns, long and short swords, daggers, knives, sickles, and different magazines and bullets suited for the rifles.

As if by instinct, her hand reached for her favorite double-edged, long sword from the lower left panel where the bladed weapons are located and then gave the panel a nudge upward, making it return to its original place like nothing happened.

Inside the playroom, Lauriel heard the noise the panel emitted, and she immediately knew that something is terribly wrong—possibly worse than what her gut feeling told her. She sat on her buttocks and clutched the teddy bear on her arms, feeling utterly helpless that she could not do anything to help her mom.

'However, I am not an idiot to not know what to do.' she grumbled in her heart as she crawled towards her hiding place whenever she and her parents are playing hide and seek. She discovered a hollow space behind one of her large stuff toy, stored on the lower compartment of her toy shelf. And on that hollow space, there's a trap door that she accidentally opened her first time hiding there—though she hadn't used it yet.

Meanwhile, Urielle is busy fighting with an assassin that snuck on her precious home, threatening to paint it with their own blood.

As if she'd let them.

Yes. Them. After Urielle left the playroom with her long sword which she called, Seraphim, she instantly encountered an assassin that was waiting in the vent on the ceiling—it was not much of a fight, since she's a seasoned killer who got rubbed off with her husband's calculative thinking. It annoyed her since she's the reckless, and the 'strike-before-you-ask' type of person, but eversince she met Laurent, she learned that having a meticulous plan, and back-up plans is necessary.

Dodging from the strike her assailant gave her, she pivoted to her right, swinging her weapon gracefully before driving her long sword on the assassin's stomach, effectively finishing him off.

She suspected that there are more assassins deployed on their residence, knowing the fact that this situation also happened to her best friends Sebastian and Julian, when the latter gave birth to their first born, Sam. And also to their other friends when they had their own children.

Remembering that fact, a chill rammed her senses, threatening to take over and swallow her into hysteria.

Running back towards the direction of her daughter's playroom, she tried to ease her heart, saying to herself that the security feature of that room is high, as what her best friends said.

Only that, as she was stopped in her tracks by another assassin, she caught a glimpse of the supposedly locked door ajar, and her blood immediately freezed that cost her critically at that moment.