Immaculate Spirit 66 :

New York, Columbia university. 08/10/2012. 18:00.

It was now two weeks since college had officially started and Nathaniel was starting to get his mark. It was kind of hard to be in college when the last cla.s.s that he took was in 7th grade. The memory of Marc did not help either as he stopped studying in high school to enlist in the army. Based on his long life, he was finally doing something that he had never done before and that was an exhilarating sensation.

He was doing very well in all of his cla.s.ses so far even if he had a lack of knowledge in a few subjects outside of it. Even if he was smart n.o.body could get back 6 years of education in six months. He had successfully memorized the academic questions as he knew that if he was tested it will be on it and he had guessed right with the test conducted by the dean. But still, there were a lot of blank areas in his knowledge that he wanted to fix.

His thirst for knowledge was immense ever since he was old enough to know how to read and never stopped since then. There was nothing better than to discover new things for him. He thought that he would find someone like him in Columbia but the reality turned out to be kind of disappointing.

On the preliminary result of his cla.s.s, his GPA was 4.01 when the second was at 3.59 and the next one at 3.42. Surprisingly, the third person was NYung. She had a lot of gaps in her knowledge but she was catching up fast under the tutelage of Nathaniel. Even if in the primary stage like now, the GPA did not mean anything, Nathaniel had already started to get a few approbative stares from his teachers.

This didn't mean that Nathaniel did not get any friends. He had in fact three so far. These were of course NYung, Maddison and Katty. NYung was easy to talk to and she was brilliant in her own right. She was seeing the good results of Nathaniel as her goal and was using him to push herself to be on the top. He could understand and respect her compet.i.tivity which was why he was helping her to catch up. Moreover, they were friends so he would of course help her in anyway that she needed.

Maddison was another case entirely. On the first hand, she was a third years in marketing so they did not get to see each other as their teaching buildings were not very close, but they managed to text and eat quite often with one another. Nathaniel found out that normally third years did not engage much with first years but that did not stop Maddison in any way. After their first night together, they became quite close and she stopped her advance on her own. It was almost like she felt it. Nathaniel was amazed of the intuition the women seemed to have over men. As of now, nothing had happened between them but Nathaniel could not deny that they have a tension hidden behind the surface. He could almost feel it when they were together.

Katty on the other hand was a nice surprise. They had started to run together every morning and then were having breakfast together in a cafe nearby. He discovered while they were talking that his a.s.sumption about money and good looks in sorority was in fact wrong. Katty was here on a sport scholars.h.i.+p. Her parents were respectively a teacher and a nurse so they would never have the means to send her here without the scholars.h.i.+p giver for a sport prowess. Albeit quite shy, she had a good sense of humor and was good at making people comfortable while talking. She was a second year here in columbia and was studying in architecture. A lot of people were a.s.sociating Columbia with law school but it was not publicly known that Columbia was also in the top 10 universities in the country without the law aspect taken into account. That was also good proof that their teaching quality was top notch in every domain taught there.

Seeing that Nathaniel was always walking or talking with a beautiful girl or simply by himself, people started talking about it. His fellow student began finding things weird, even starting to spread rumors that he had already several girlfriends at the same time. When he found out, he thought it quite funny. He decided to let them talk as the opinion of other people about him did not have a shred of importance for him and since he already had a reputation as a genius here it was inevitable that rumors like that would start to spread.

Truthfully, it was not that surprising that all of his friends were women. He lived all of his life with two best friends who were also his mothers so he had an almost natural affinity with girls. That was not to say that he refused to talk to other guys. He was nice and open to everyone who talked to him but was not the kind of person who engaged easily with other.

Exiting his business cla.s.s with NYung, his teacher had announced that they needed to form group of three people to make a thesis. It was to be turned in the next month and would count for the majority of their grade for the semestre. As he didn't want to give a free grade to someone and with the agreement of NYung they asked together if they could do it without a third person. Knowing that the two of them were smart, the professor allowed it but insisted that they will not get preferential treatment because of it.

That was fine by him as he did not expect preferential treatment and didn't want any. NYung had the same mentality, she wanted to be treated like everyone else and succeed without her family money or power. In that aspect, the both of them found each other perfectly.

They were now exiting the building and were walking to exit the campus to their respective homes when his body totally froze up. Surprised by him stopping, NYung stop walking too, looking at him curiously.

"What is going on?"

"I just remember that I forget something in the building." Nathaniel said apologetically.

"Oh don't worry, I'm a big girl, I can walk out of the campus all alone." She said smiling.

"Trust me, I know. So, we will see each other monday?"

"Yes we will. Bye Nathaniel." She said with a wave of her hand.

"Bye NYung." He answered, turning back and starting to walk.

******

Not far from here, on the top of a ten stories building, two men with korean features were hiding in the shadow of a pillar. They were both around 5"5" and were wearing black clothes. Even if their attire and face were nothing unusual, the two people were oozing danger and death from every part of their being.

Their sharp and dead eyes were now focused on two young people talking below. One was a handsome and tall young man with blond hair while the other was a beautiful korean girl with jet black hair. The two young people were obviously Nathaniel and NYung.

"Why is he stopping?" The leader of the two asked in english with a sharp accent.

"He is a waeguk-saram, does it matter?" The other answered in the same way.

Thinking about it, the leader admitted that he was right. The kid was insignificant, the girl was their target.

"They are separating. Good for him, maybe we will not kill him."

"That foreigner does not matter, the girl does."

Spying her until she let their line of sight, the two did not move to follow her. They knew where she was going and they had other men following her.

"Is everything ready for tonight?"

"Yes, our brothers arrived this morning. We are all ready. Tonight they will all die."

Finally the leader thought. They had arrived almost two months ago to kill their target but they had a hard time finding them in this foreign city. After finally interrogating someone with useful information, they managed to find their hideout. They were living in a high end hotel in manhattan with a huge number of security protecting them. Too many for only the three of them to be successful. Their organisation sent them five more people to finally deal with that contract as their employer was getting nervous.

It was all over now. With their reinforcement here, they would all die tonight. Nothing could stop them anymore.

With that thought in mind, the two killers vanished from the rooftop as if they were never there in the first place.