One night, Tang Tang was working the overnight shift at the store, using her phone to ring up a little girl who insisted on buying chocolate with a strange stone. The glass doors slowly swung open. As the wind chime rang out crisply, a tall, slender boy walked in.
He wore an oversized, tattered trench coat and was barefoot. His unkempt black hair brushed his shoulders, revealing a thick shackle three fingers wide around his neck.
A broken length of chain dangled from it against his chest, clinking crisply as he walked.
He lifted his head and looked toward the counter with a bright, carefree gaze. Then he gave Tang Tang a radiant smile, showing several neat, white teeth. It was like sunlight spilling through the leaves on a summer day, dazzling and full of life.
"A human," he said. "Sorry, my sister has caused you trouble, miss."
Behind the boy, the heavy darkness of night concealed the blood-soaked street.
Tang Tang didn't know it then, but she would never return to her noisy yet peaceful life.
*
The Anomalous Species Management Bureau, whose full name is the Abnormal Species Management and Containment Bureau, is also called the Anomaly Bureau by those who can't be bothered with the full name.
The world inhabited by anomalous species and humans occupies the same space, but the two are separated by a barrier, making them parallel realms.
However, the barrier isn't entirely stable. Cracks appear from time to time, allowing anomalous species to enter the human world.
The Anomalous Species Management Bureau's job is to stabilize the barrier, seal the cracks, contain unruly anomalous species, and, depending on the circumstances, send them back to their own realm.
Tang Tang never expected that, unable to find work in the human world, she would get a job at the Anomalous Species Management Bureau.
As a rookie who had only just joined the bureau, she was paired with an anomalous species who smiled like sunshine, but was rumored to have already killed his five previous partners. He was classified as the highest danger level. And so began her earnest life as a hardworking employee.
Theme: Saving each other.
