A.S.E.A.N: Academy of South East Asian Nations - Chapter 01

"Where I am?"

A mysterious boy falls on the deep water, immobilized and is almost devoided of emotions in mind except his slowly opening eyes and his hearing eyes.

"Where am I now?"

A boy of mysterious origin, he has no memories of his own except born somewhere along the South China sea between Paracels and Spratlys. He has no real identity of his own whatsoever and his partially empty eyes with the colors of the associated sea, straight pitch black hair and his sharp-looking face gives him the impression of a careless young man who is disregarded by everyone it seems.

"Where did my memories go? Why does everyone ignores me??"

What's worse is that he is deeply submerged into the sea while in his bare slender and mildly androgynous birthday suit. No actual memories are recorded at all since his childhood and it appears that his mouth embodies deep anger inside out.

The South China Sea appeared to be a bright place of prosperity and paradise but is also a paradigm of a single major maritime conflict the teenager is not aware of due to his mind clouded with indifference, carelessness and jealously over friendship. His statelessness and blankness that surrounded his whole existence coincides with the fiery military attacks over territorial disputes in the marginal sea in which he can only hear the sounds of waves, firestorm and exploding armaments that are fragmented at high speed.

Unfortunately he keeps falling into the deep traces of sea even more in spite of his functioning breath and open eyes as he is not knowing what the hell is happening in his unnerving mind and brains. Nonetheless, the neverending military attacks between unknown forces can be easily reflected on the upper translucent part of the sea and it appears that something is going wrong in a region commonly known as Southeast Asia.

With an area of 4,500,000 km2 and a population of 623,000,000 habitants, it is one of the most populated regions of the human world known as Earth and sits south of China and lies near the intersection of geological plates with a generally tropical climate and draws the line between the peninsular (Indochina) and the insular (Nusantara) areas through equator. Earth is also the heartplace of an personified existence of female beings representing different sovereign states known as countries, guarding the sovereignty from invaders of mysterious origin known as aliens.

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The boy, whose name escaped, is commonly referred by the outsiders as the "protagonist" due to his birthplace in a famous legend originating in Southeast Asia, which was also the center of cultural blending of India and China. Washed ashore from the turquoise sea to the pure white sand on a fateful dawn came the existence of an archipel of four mysterious islands located between Paracels and Spratlys with no prior recorded existence according to empirical studies; it was officially called "Nanhai" (Chinese translation of Southern Sea) by an archeologist who is now deceased.

While immobilized from behind with his arms and legs feeling exhausted and a sleepy face, he almost can vaguely see a mysterious girl with a tall figure, squatting and greeting the boy despite her lack of prior friendship with him before. When the boy slowly awakens, he lifts his body to a rushed stand in front of her and finds himself naked once conscious.

"Where am I and how are you?"

He yells at the girl without knowing why before it took seconds for him to see her through eye contact. The girl with beautiful and mature face stands, blushing with embarrassment over seeing him in birthday suit.

"W-why are you naked!?"

She covers her eyes with her hands as she turns away from him.

"I don't know"

"Here."

While giving her raiment on one hand to the protagonist given his lack of clothes nor gifted objects bought by the boy, she senses something suspicious about his overall identity.

"Thanks."

Feeling careless while complimented, he wraps the raiment around his waist and ties it at the right side like a small ribbon, covering the skirt-like raiment down past his crotch.

"But don't repeat this mistake again, promise?"

The young woman complies in response but with little worry because she fear the boy will repeat the same mistake with another girl perhaps.

"How are you?"

"My name is Indonesia, a country living in Southeast Asia. Nice to meet you for the first time."

The tall girl has a gentle, if a bit low-sounding voice from the looks of it.

Indonesia has a lush, straight long black hair wrapped into a low ponytail tied with a ribbon descending up to mid-chest from behind; her strands are separated to make some space to her forehead. She has reddish brown eyes that half-reflects the red color of her flag. Her outfit is of a patterned kain batik bearing colors of the country but with her ruffled, assymetric sarong skirt descending to knees. Her barefooted sandals have semi-short length that ascends up midway to her legs and are made of batik material. She also wears a patterned raiment wrapped around her.

The mature-looking young woman has busty but not too large chest size and bears a slightly brown skin scented of indian summer. Her personality is described as a big sister figure with cheerful and confident personality, but can be airheaded and clumsy at times as if she spilled her spaghetti over minor things.

As the protagonist prepares himself to wonder somewhere turning from behind, Indonesia begged for help.

"Wait for me!"

"Huh?"

"Boy, you seemed so confused. What's your name?"

"I have no memories nor identity of my own"

"Then who I could call you from now on?"

"I don't know."

"Did you know about the rumors that there's someone who was born between the disputed islands of the South China Sea who was continuously chased by a group of druglords linked with the regional government?"

In a moment of shock that awaits, the boy, lamenting as he hears the words of Indonesia about the possible connection between him and the warranted boy, leaves him completely anguised despite his memories not fully recovered yet.

"T-This can't be..."

"What's wrong?"

Indonesia looks concerned at the protagonist lowering his head over his own missing self grappling his hands over rumors.

"I hate to break it for you, but I feel that the person that got warranted capture, is me!"

He anxiously turning his head upside down towards her with honesty, asking her about how she first saw him before his arrival at Nanhai.

"What the..."

The young woman is flustered over his truth.

"How could you even say it all of a sudden?"

"It's the only element of my memories that still lingers in me."

And that's about the last line he could say to Indonesia before wandering around the island...Then he stops at a certain point.

"Give me a name then."

"Hmmm...Naesa?"

"If you call me so, I don't mind"

Despite the weird name choice, the protagonist starts to call himself Naesa from now on; the surname itself is written in reverse from a powerful organizational center known as the "Association of Southeast Asian Nations" (ASEAN) without even being aware of the urban legend in question.

Wandering past the deserted beach while looking empty, Naesa sees something very large before him as the sun shines and sky gets clearer: the sun beams are let off to make way for the showcasing of a postmodern building called "A.S.E.A.N", rumored to be an academy center located at the heart of Nanhai coming true to life in his mind.

On the outside, the center's fusionally blocky and triangular-shaped building comprises five stages and is ornated with hard and shiny material. The center is guarded with magical barriers outside the entrance to prevent mysterious invasions. Once Naesa places his hand at the entrance's code machine, whose purpose is to carefully specify the person's identity and personal information in full, the sliding door magically opens despite no prior connections with the boy.

As he walks past the center, the entrance room is decorated with futuristic objects that comes straight out of a fictional sci-fi work. The atmosphere is surprisingly bright yet empty for some reason. An holographic imagery near the wall containing the numeric clock, weather forecast and location of the center as well the climate inside and outside it shows up before him, and a flying blue, yellow-trimmed and red coin with flowing lower body and functioning small puffy arms appears behind the young man.

"Good morning!"

"Wh-What are you even doing here!?"

Naesa turns his head fixed to the self-called flying mascot.

"How are you doing in the center, first-timer?"

"I'm actually lost and I am unfamiliar with this place so can you explain all this rubbish to me?"