Archive of Our Own ^beta

1: Agent Twilight

“Good day, or perhaps good evening, Agent Twilight.” 

How many times has the woman now known as “Nene Yashiro” been greeted this way? From over rustling, secretive newspapers on opposite sides of a train car, say, or from out the windows of sing-song ice cream trucks, the other agent dressed in a fake mustache and mint-chocolate-chip-themed baseball cap. There’s always another mission waiting around the corner for Agent Twilight, and no one has used Nene’s real name in years. Almost a decade, honestly. 

It’s better this way. There are plenty of things Nene’s given up on for the good of the world: she’ll never be one of those laughing, carefree women she sees in the fashion magazines her agency sometimes uses to relay secret codes, and that’s okay. Maybe she was a romantic, once, but she watches rom-coms for social research, nowadays. Maybe Nene did learn how to create flawless disguises in part to mask her thick ankles… because people in her espionage training course kept commenting on them, the jerks… but what matters now is that she’s one of her agency’s most trusted specialists. 

So, hah. 

Agent Twilight has spent a long, long time reminding herself what matters, when all is said and done. What her priorities should be. Her every expression is meant to be kept perfectly controlled, just like her mentor Aoi-chan taught her. Her emotions can be crushed down deep, hidden behind a tittering laugh, a light, shy brush against the arm (all the better to get somebody spilling their darkest secrets, you know.) Nene is a weapon, another bullet in her agency’s gun. She drifts from name to name, from home to home like a plant that never needed roots to grow poisonous. Everything for the sake of the mission; everything for the sake of world peace. 

Or…

That’s the way things used to be. Nene’s sort of let this most recent mission — “Operation Strix” — run away with her a bit, hasn’t she? She wasn’t… hm. She wasn’t expecting such a troublesome, time-consuming, emotionally-exhausting mission to feel so much like an actual home. She shouldn’t have to remind herself not to get too attached — hasn’t she worn dozens and dozens of lives, by now? She kicks social roles off like shoes, switches boyfriends out like colored contacts. None of those men could actually love her. Perhaps they love a shadow puppet she casts on the wall. 

But Operation Strix is… something else. 

Here’s what’s happening today:

Nene gets a signal from across the street, and she follows her dear mentor Aoi-chan into this coffee shop, inconspicuous as she can be, always so many feet behind. She places her order and takes a seat in the corner, flipping through a romance novel she keeps in her purse, skimming words like Yearning and Debonair. Crossing her legs at the disguised slender ankles; tucking long silver-green hair behind her ear. Nene has modest pearl earrings in, today, and a ruffled white skirt. 

Aoi brings Nene’s order over to her, now, wearing something new. She’s holding two matching coffees, sliding into the seat across from her protege like they’re old friends. And they are, sort of, perhaps. This woman shaped Nene into the spy she is, giving her all the purpose in her life. Aoi’s wearing a shiny blonde wig over her purple-blue hair, just now, and she’s painted freckles across her cheeks. If Nene didn’t know Aoi’s signals, she would look like a beautiful, easy-smiling stranger.  Carefree, already spilling giggly gossip that means nothing at all across the table. 

“Hello, hello, Nene-chan!” Aoi sings. “Oh! Your hair! I love the loose curl — reminds me of what Yako-san wore to the party last weekend… do you remember?… except before Sakura-san splashed that cup of water over her head. Gasp! Wasn’t that something?”

And here’s where Aoi leans over to whisper in Nene’s ear, isn’t it? Pretending she’s leaning in to kiss her old friend’s cheek. To offer a little hello, maybe. “Good day, or perhaps good evening, Agent Twilight. You have a job today.”

Nene and Aoi-chan drink their coffees — sweet lattes, with butterflies traced into the foam and a sprinkling of cinnamon — and Nene learns what her day is going to become. She learns mostly through Morse Code messages Aoi taps into the underneath of the table while they laugh over rumors she’s likely making up on the spot. She learns through an envelope Aoi slips her, pretending she’s offering tickets to go watch a ballet together next month. 

Nene has to steal a watch, this time, but not just any watch: this one has secret coordinates engraved into it, carved there by the Man Who Stops Time. That is, a rival agent. Aoi-chan’s nemesis, some people call him, though she usually shakes her head and laughs demurely, then, says “No, no,” with the kind of poison in her voice that Nene knows… by now… can only mean her mentor really does despise this man. Aoi wouldn’t despise him if she couldn’t admire him, of course. She wouldn’t admire him if he wasn’t ruthless as a blade twisted into the eye. 

There’s a rumor that Aoi and the Man Who Stops Time have almost the same name. Aoi Akane, and Akane Aoi. Perhaps that’s only an alias he chose to taunt her, though. There’s another rumor that they used to know each other well, in the great before, before Aoi became the woman who created Agent Twilight. But perhaps he’s only stolen another man’s name, pieces of another man’s history?

Either way, the Man Who Stops Time is posing as a harried secretary, tending to a scatterbrained government official, just now. Either way, if the watch he’s engraved — the watch he’s delivering — finds its way like it’s supposed to, a cigar club meeting full of high-ranking officials will be at risk of a devastating evening, soon enough. Clocks will be stopped… (or, you know, people the Man Who Stops Time thinks have failed their posts will be killed)… and when Nene’s country is blamed, because of course they’ll be blamed, their two nations will teeter ever closer to an all-out war.

Can’t let that happen.

This is why Nene breathes: to dance everyone back again, away, away from the edge. Away from blood and rubble in the streets. 

This is supposed to be enough. 

But before Nene and Aoi-chan slink off their separate ways, today, Aoi taps another message. She says, “Ah, right — how is your husband, Nene-chan?”

And she taps… in Morse Code under the table… “How is your progress with Operation Strix?”

The answers are one and the same: confusing. Wonderful. Maddening. I’m getting nowhere, and we’re going on a date tonight. Partially to fool our nosy neighbors into thinking we’re an honest-to-God couple, and partially… ah…

Partially just because we want to try out a new restaurant together. It’s a pretty game, pretending to be in love with someone like Amane Yugi. The game is: what would it feel like if any of this could be real? How would I smile at you if that smile was meant for you alone?

Nene has pretended to be married before, obviously. How many spies haven’t? But always to some target she’s meant to trick and steal information from, or perhaps another agent, so they look less suspicious infiltrating an event. Now, everything is a mess, and it’s so bizarre that Amane even agreed to go along with this. Pretending to love her; pretending for the sake of a mission he’ll never know exists. 

Operation Strix involves Nene winding her way close to a dangerous man. Naturally. But it also involves her parading around a make-believe husband, and taking an orphaned girl under her wing so she can befriend the dangerous man’s son at an uptight high-class academy. Little Tiara doesn’t realize that what they’re building together can’t last. How could she? And Amane… well, Amane… he’s strange, and he teases too much, but…

But Operation Strix is infuriating; some days, Nene hates that Operation Strix has to end. She tells Aoi about the date. About the restaurant with tiramisu and live music and dark wine… with Amane watching her, trusting her, eyes hazy gold in the candlelight and smile sharp as a knife. She doesn’t tell Aoi that it isn’t fair. Nene used to want a romance that would look just like this, from the outside, more than she can say. She gave up on princes around the same time she gave up on her name. 

Aoi reminds her that she’s holding the fate of her nation in the same hand she’s using to hold her cooling latte mug. She knows. 

Agent Twilight has a job, today. She gets started as soon as it’s natural for her to drift away from the coffee shop and out into the street. 

***

1.5

In the hours before the woman now-called Nene Yashiro’s scheduled dinner date, she breaks into a government official’s office, disguised as a cheerful maid. She scrubs stains out of the carpet until no one’s watching her, and then she picks the lock on a certain harried secretary’s desk drawer. 

That drawer has a false bottom, with secrets waiting inside; Agent Twilight identified this desk as the correct one while she was dusting. She flips through the Man Who Stops Time’s things delicately, wearing gloves without any snitching fingerprints, and she finds receipts for three separate storage facilities. Only one of them is anywhere near the rendezvous site Aoi-chan’s other agents identified for the watch-exchange later on that evening. So Nene heads there first, after slipping out of her maid’s uniform and into something sleek and no-nonsense — transforming herself into the sort of busy professional you might expect to snap at you if you ask what’s in the storage room she’s renting.

Nene used to have tender, trembling lips. A vulnerable smile. Now, she only wears that sort of face when she means to. She swipes an access key into the rented storage facility while flirting coyly — like Aoi-chan taught her — with a guard at the reception desk. It’s easy enough to find the engraved watch, once she’s inside: Nene breaks into a safe that’s gently ticking, leaning her cheek against the cold metal to hear the whispering click… click… click of shifting gears inside. She slips out a window without the guard ever realizing she was never going to finish writing down her phone number for him. 

Goodbye. Good day, or perhaps good evening.

Agent Twilight opens the engraved watch and flinches, just a little, in a way almost no one but her mentor would notice and think to scold her for. There are coordinates in here, certainly — and she’s going to head that way soon, easily enough, dressed as an exhausted housewife carrying piles of groceries on the train — but there are also pressed wisteria flowers, flaky and taunting and old. In their agency’s headquarters, Aoi-chan often wears jewelry styled to look like wisteria flowers pinned in her hair. Who is this man, the Man Who Stops Time?

Nene finds her way to the coordinates carved into the watch, her hair tucked away, her wide red eyes hidden. She shoots tranquilizer darts into two suspicious men prowling nearby — they collapse, helpless, sleeping, and she steps smoothly over them. She digs up the small metal box that’s waiting for her, using a gardening shovel she bought to plant cute little window box flowers with Tiara. 

The box is full of vials, the liquid inside clear but glowing slightly. Nene and her agency have seen this concoction before: it rapidly accelerates someone’s aging… aging them past decay, into crumbling bones in moments… and it’s very, very difficult to make. It probably took the Man Who Stops Time months to procure each one of these vials. And then someone was going to feed this chemical into the sprinkler system at the cigar lounge, it seems. By the time any water fell, it would be too late, too late, too late. 

Aoi says, “Sneaky man,” when Nene reports back to her. When she turns the watch and the metal box both in dutifully to her agency. “Clever, but such a rotten piece of work.” And there it is: the respect. The hate. Nene waits to see if Aoi-chan reacts to the pressed flowers in the watch — just in case she needs to talk about it — but if they mean anything to her she doesn’t let it show. 

They are friends, those two, and they aren’t. You see?

Agent Twilight slips back on her usual formal clothes — her usual prettiest mask — before hurrying home. She is only a little, little bit late for her date with Amane. It’s okay, she thinks: he’s told her he makes reservations later than he actually tells her they are, because she’s like this. He thinks she’s just taking a little longer with clients in her relationship counselor work, likely as not. He thinks she’s kind, and dreamy-eyed, and trying her best. 

Amane Yugi doesn’t know that even Nene’s normal makeup is a costume, and even Nene’s favorite shoes were recommended to her by the agency. What would he think, if he knew? He will never find out. 

That’s what Nene tells herself. She gets back home for her date; she takes a deep, slow breath and pulls a smile out of the air before throwing open the door. “I’m home!” she calls, shifting her voice into something sweet and breathless. “Ahhh, Amane, I’m so sorry I’m late!”

Since they’re supposed to be married — since they are married, as married as Nene will ever be — she calls this man by his unadorned first name. Amane’s kneeling next to Tiara at her child-sized desk when she walks in, apparently helping out with some math homework. He grins up at her like she belongs here. Tiara exclaims, “Mom! Hey, Mom!” and throws herself into her arms. 

Nene laughs, as she holds her “daughter,” for a moment. She doesn’t mean to. Something stirs in her that she has destroyed a thousand times. That she will destroy a thousand times again, if she has to. For the sake of the mission. 

Tiara tells Nene a little about what her day at the fancy academy was like while Amane gets his coat and gives some final instructions to his younger brother, who is babysitting their child that is not their child for them tonight. Amane’s voice is coy and soft and velvet-smooth; all Amane’s clothes are simple but well-made, black and red. Nothing else. Tiara is quick and bright like a shiver of lightning. Her eyes are a clear, knowing blue — those eyes look far away and hollow, sometimes, when she doesn’t think anyone is watching. She’s very young, maybe younger than she promised Nene she was when she picked her up — free of charge, free of paperwork — from a rotting orphanage. 

“Bye, lovebirds! Have funnnnn!” calls Amane’s little brother — Tsukasa — as Nene leads her husband that is not her husband back out into the world. She’s tired, but she can carry on a little longer. It would be nice, Nene thinks, if they could hire a different babysitter next time. Tsukasa looks adoringly at Amane, but something livid and splintering as blunt-force-trauma seethes under his smile whenever he glances Nene’s way. 

Agent Twilight has known from the very first dinner she had with Tsukasa that he’s a member of his nation’s terrifying Secret Police force. If he figures out who she is, will she be quick enough to stop him from splattering her blood across an interrogation room wall? And smiling so boyishly, so playfully as he does it, too. With Amane’s choppy dark hair, and Amane’s bright golden eyes. Amane’s sharp, sharp teeth. Amane is the older brother by a handful of years, Nene knows, but the two of them look like twins.

Yeah, Nene’s heard stories about Tsukasa Yugi, stories Amane certainly hasn’t heard. He still thinks Tsukasa’s working a gentle government desk job. 

But for tonight, Tsukasa and Tiara are going to play a board game and watch a movie about superheroes that’s airing at six-fifteen. Things will be fine. Nene’s breath hitches just the tiniest bit when Amane offers her his arm, outside the home they’re making together. This home that is not a home. 

Amane looks a little hopeful, a little shy. A little like he’s trying to be suave. Agent Twilight takes his arm. 

***

2: The Thorn Prince

The city air is gently brisk as Amane Yugi walks with his make-believe wife, down streets lined in flowering trees, past shops with glittering bracelets and lacy party dresses spotlighted in their windows. 

Amane is trying to make Nene Yashiro laugh — he’s describing a mistake he made at work, today. Not at his real job, the job that pays most of his little brother Tsukasa’s tuition debts and medical bills. We’re talking about the other, reasonably respectable job that everyone knows about, where Amane files things in an office. His coworkers think he’s cold and standoffish, there, and he tries not to let it bother him too much; earlier today, he accidentally installed a printer-ink cartridge backwards. He was able to mostly fix it, but not until after splattering himself with ink. 

“Oh no! But you’re okay, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, yeah. It’s why I always wear black, right? So my things are easy to clean up.”

“Are you really so clumsy, Amane?”

Ink splatters certainly aren’t the most incriminating stains Amane’s had to scrub off himself in the last twenty-four hours, by the by. It’s better if Nene doesn’t worry about any of that, though. It isn’t as if she’s tied herself to someone as inherently, unrepentantly dirty as Amane knows he is, not really. Not in the romantic ways that matter. This is a marriage of convenience, for Nene: she told Amane she only needs someone with a pulse and a convincing smile, someone to fill in for the husband she truly loves. The husband who’s dead. This elite academy Nene found for her daughter Tiara-san — this elite academy that practically guarantees Tiara-san a bright and painless future — has something against single mothers. It’s cruel. 

Amane doesn’t mind posing next to Nene for a while, providing her with his pulse, with his smile. Having a wife — appearing to have a wife — makes him less suspicious, too, anyway. Less likely to get caught working his real job; less likely to be stranded without a believable alibi, someday. If that ever happens, Amane might not be able to be there for Tsukasa anymore. He might not be able to keep his little brother’s hands clean, in a world that keeps trying to eat the pair of them alive. 

If Nene ever really tries to bind herself to Amane — in a way that would mean it could hurt her, truly hurt her, if all the blood on his hands finally catches up to him — he might have to… well. She probably deserves to know the truth, even now. She probably deserves a chance to run away from Amane and find another false husband, if she needs one. But Amane hasn’t said a word, or tried to drive her away from him, yet. This, he thinks, is the closest he’ll ever make it to love.

Nene’s arm is so warm, and her laugh is so tender it twists in Amane’s insides, sometimes. Gravel crunches softly under their feet as they walk. Amane is asking Nene about her day at work, now. Being a relationship counselor, she usually can’t spill too many specifics. Something about doctor-patient confidentiality; something about common decency, about strangers coming to Dr. Nene Yashiro — a trained psychiatrist! — in their most vulnerable moments. 

“It was exhausting,” Nene says, with a little sigh. “A patient asked me to fetch something for her before our appointment, so I was running all over town.”

“You’re too nice,” Amane snickers. He snickers, because otherwise he knows he’d sound sticky-sweet. Honest.

“You’d do the same,” Nene says. “Maybe not for anyone at your job, but…”

“If you say so.”

“Oh! And I got coffee with an old friend. She invited me to see a ballet together.”

It’s a sweet, easy conversation, as the city sinks into a sweet, easy sort of evening. Amane doesn’t know much about ballet, really, and so Nene tells him some little things. He holds onto her words, onto the feeling of her close enough that he could tilt her chin a bit and kiss her under any one of these streetlamps. He won’t. He couldn’t. 

But perhaps he could?

Sometimes, Nene describes her other husband — her dead husband, her real husband — as “an absolute prince.” Whoever he was, Amane pictures him as the kind of prince you’d find in a fairytale, the kind of prince that could be something like worthy of standing this close to Nene Yashiro all the time. Amane is a prince, too, you know. It’s in the name people call him when they need his truest work. Need the realest, most terrible side of him there is. 

Amane Yugi became the Thorn Prince years ago. When he started keeping secrets, and muddied his soul, and figured out a way to keep himself and Tsukasa fed after their parents died. The Thorn Prince is an assassin — the assassin you hire if you want your target to die screaming, shaking, tear-stained. If you’d like to know he played a little with your prey, appearing somewhere in their home like a ghost. Laughing at them. Twirling knives in his snappy black-gloved hands and wearing a mask all tangly with embroidered red brambles. 

Amane used to keep some of his knives up his sleeves all the time, every living moment. Just in case. He’s carrying them strapped to his ankles instead, today, and tucked politely into his coat. So that Nene can hold his arm, see, and so he can loop that arm around her and nudge her out of the way of oncoming cars. He imagines what it could be like to accidentally slice Nene or Tiara-san — the flesh of her flesh — with one of his knives, and it scares him in a way he didn’t know was possible. Usually, Amane doesn’t fear for anyone but Tsukasa quite like that. 

Amane is resigned. If he has to be a killer to support his brother — if that’s all he’s really good at, and it is, Amane knows it is — then… it’s decided. It’s done. But Nene doesn’t realize the Thorn Prince is a villain swooping into her story, a blood-stained figure on a black horse here to take her rightful prince’s place. They walk right by the hotel where Amane killed a man last night — a man called Misaki, who the police found crumpled into a crusting pile of blood at the bottom of some stairs — and she has no way to know. 

“Goodnight,” the Thorn Prince said to Misaki, just before he bled out into those stairs. Just as the light left his eyes. His voice was a horrible purr; Amane’s voice is always on the edge of becoming exactly that. “And never a good morning.”

The job paid well. Well enough that Amane’s planning to buy Nene a slim pearl necklace to match her earrings, soon. He imagines sneaking up behind her, silent as the dead, and stringing those pearls around her neck. Then, he imagines the pearls as a garrote without meaning to and hates himself a little more. This is what he is. Someday, when Nene doesn’t need a pretend husband anymore… when she falls in love with someone else, perhaps… at least he’ll leave carrying memories like this. Like now. 

Amane and Nene arrive at the restaurant, the new restaurant she claims to genuinely want to try out with him. Amane holds the door for her, bowing a little, grinning like he has a clear conscience. Like he’s another kind of man completely. They’re already playing make-believe, after all. So why not?

***

2.5

In the restaurant where Amane and Nene eat together — an actual date that can’t be an actual date — someone is playing the violin. Amane has killed a lot of strangers so that maybe someday Tsukasa can eat in a place like this, with someone he loves. Tsukasa is younger than Amane, but nowadays people say they look like twins. Not so, when their parents died. Amane will never forget how small Tsukasa seemed, back then, when there was no mother left to bandage his bloody knees. 

The first time Amane killed… the first time he took on an assassination job, because he was running in truly desperate circles, already, by then, and somebody needed to pay the rent… he was terrified by how easy it was to carve his mother’s kitchen knife deep in his target’s wet-pulp neck. It was a horrible knowing, but a relief, too, because now Tsukasa was going to have something nice for breakfast in the morning. He was going to get to go to a good school. 

Goodnight. And never a good morning. 

Amane traded his telescope for a better knife the very next day. Nene would be scared, if she knew who’s looking over these classy menus with her, now. Amane points out an interesting cocktail, made with dark coffee. Nene wonders whether to order chicken or fish. The candlelight is woozy and golden on the table between them. 

Nene isn’t anything like scared around Amane, yet, huh? She orders the cocktail he was looking at for him, though drinks here aren’t exactly cheap, and they both know he’s a bit of a lightweight. She asks him if he has a favorite book, because she realized recently she doesn’t know. He does, about a monster that rampages through a city, though he’s not sure if that’s a good answer. She tells him about the romance novels she carries around in her purse, and they talk about a movie they watched with Tiara-san a couple nights before. Analyzing plot holes. Discussing different actors whose names they can’t remember. 

Amane says something that makes Nene grab his arm. Shaking him, gently, candlelight dancing in her eyes. “Amane, you’re terrible,” she says, like she actually thinks he’s… he’s, you know…

Wonderful. 

For a moment — with Nene reaching across the table to him, with silky violin all around — Amane forgets why this can’t be exactly what it looks like. Why he isn’t Nene’s prince. She thinks he’s funny, after all, and his voice is slurring a little… maybe he’s talking too loud… but she doesn’t mind him. She wants to be here. She hasn’t lifted her pretty fingers off his arm; her nails are painted with clear, simple polish and her hair glints in the candlelight like molten silver, softly curled. 

“Hey, Nene,” Amane says. Before he can think better of it. “Are there any other date spots you want to try out, sometime? Tell me where you wanna go and I’ll take you.”

I’ll find the money; I’ll be what other, better princes can’t be for you. I’ll be here. 

Nene considers Amane, her husband, her stranger. She swallows, hesitating, like maybe there’s something he needs to know. Her grip has gone slightly tighter against his sleeve. And then she says, “We can go to a play. If you want. We can… we can bring a picnic basket up into the mountains… we can go dancing. Do you like to dance? Have you ever tried?”

Amane has danced with some of his targets before killing them. “Only a little,” he says with a sloppy smile. “Do you wanna teach me?”

“Yes,” Nene says, and Amane laughs. It’s easy to forget who he is when Nene’s looking at him like this. It’s a good thing he didn’t take any assassination jobs tonight. 

Tonight is all for Nene Yashiro. But even so, by the time they make it back home, Amane collapses almost immediately onto the sofa… Nene’s apartment’s sofa… dead asleep. He half-hears Tsukasa muttering an interrogation-y goodnight to his wife that is not his wife. 

“Tell my brother I’ll call him in the morning.”

“I will.”

“He had fun? You promise?”

“I think so. I promise.”

“Hmph.”

This is what Amane gets, isn’t it, after staying up all last night to chase that guy Misaki on the stairs. After wine and coffee liquor; after Nene plotting so many adventures at his side. 

Amane sleeps.

***

3: Tiara-san, With a Thousand Last Names

The child now called Tiara Yashiro — because her newest adopted mother told her so — was brought into this world to exorcise its evils. To be a force for something good, unlike the two older-brother experiments before her who failed. Who died. That’s what they used to say, you know, at the other place. Tiara remembers summoning circles and talismans, sacrifices and incense. She remembers sleeping in a circle of salt to keep the demons away for a little while, and learning lots of prayers before earning a name. 

Tiara knows spirits are real, because she can see them everywhere, clutching her new dad’s ankles like they’re trying to drag him under the world and hiding in her new mom’s closets. Curling around her briefcases and imitating explosions in creaking, inhuman voices: “Tick… tick… tick… boom.”

“Any time, now. Any time.”

Tiara knows a lot of things, really. More than other people think she does. She knows some children are born into ready-made families, born with last names that are already entirely theirs and older brothers that haven’t been eaten by demons. It must be nice. Since she left the other place, Tiara has belonged to a lot of homes, a lot of names, but no one ever wants to keep her close for too long. There are a few reasons for that, you know? 

One is probably the spirits they taught her to see at the other place. When spirits figure out Tiara knows they’re slithering around all over the world, they can get mean, sometimes. They cause trouble. The next reason is probably the other place’s fault, too. Tiara isn’t just making up excuses: it’s the stupid honest truth. In order to exorcise the evils of the world, those evils have to be seen, you know, and pretty much every super-bad evil is waiting somewhere inside the human mind. That’s what people used to say, at the other place. They said way too many things, back there. 

Tiara can hear other people’s thoughts inside her own mind, if she listens. See? Everyone’s thoughts, all the time, if she isn’t careful. So… Tiara can tell when her new mom is worried about countries Waltzing Around on the Brink of War… and when her new dad is thinking about how he snapped some guy’s knees backwards before he slit his throat. She can hear it all, as clear as her own self. It’s pretty scary to people, Tiara’s learned, when she knows more than they think she’s supposed to. 

It’s only a matter of waiting until new families figure out there’s something weird about her, usually. 

Any time, now. Any time. 

Tiara doesn’t like to think like that, but sometimes she can’t help it. She was adopted by a spy called Agent Twilight, a little while ago. Neat, huh? It’s her job to make friends with this one bully kid at school so she and Mom can stop a big nasty war together. It’s a pretty important job, like chasing a demon away from the whole world. Maybe they’ll even save the day before anyone realizes there’s something not-quite-right about her. 

For tonight in particular, a major part of Tiara’s job has been to play nicely with Uncle Tsukasa. Uncle Tsukasa’s thoughts can get scary, sometimes, but Tiara’s used to scary thoughts by now. She knows Uncle Tsukasa won’t be scary around her, at least not really, because he loves her new dad so much. His thoughts warm up and burn with care, when Tiara’s dad comes to mind. Usually, Uncle Tsukasa’s thoughts are sort of cold, like he’s watching stuff that happens from far away. 

They play a board game together. Uncle Tsukasa keeps interrupting as Tiara tries to explain the rules, and when she tells him stuff like, “No, not like that! Your piece died, so now you have to start over.” He keeps trying to make new rules, too… but after a while, the new rules are kind of funny. He gets them to make little tissue-capes for some of the pieces, and stuff like that.

He says, “Amane… my brother… loved board games, once! Card games, too.”

And, “I know!” says Tiara, feeling kind of like she does when she figures out an answer at school. “He bought this game for me!” 

“Ah,” Uncle Tsukasa says, looking at her a little sharply, but trying to smile because she’s a child — so he’s supposed to — and because her new dad apparently likes her a lot. He’s my brother. You only just met him. “I guess that explains it.”

“He warned me it might be hard to convince you to follow the rules,” Tiara sighs. She knows Uncle Tsukasa’s thoughts will brighten up a little bit, hearing his brother’s been talking about him. 

They watch a movie, too. Or, at least… part of a movie. After a while, Uncle Tsukasa’s complaining about all the ways the villain’s cronies could have thwarted the hero, if only they weren’t being stupid about everything. After a while, Tiara’s getting tired, and feeling a little sick thinking about the Spelling Bee contest her class has scheduled for tomorrow afternoon. Tiara’s great at a lot of things, but school is… it’s something she does for the sake of the mission. Mom’s mission. It’s something she does to exorcise a true evil from the world. 

But when Tiara messes up during the Spelling Bee tomorrow, the bully kid she’s supposed to make friends with for “Operation Strix” will probably have something nasty to say. She doesn’t belong in the same class as him, after all, he thinks. She should be paying him tribute in candy, like a bunch of other kids do.

The movie’s still playing when Tiara asks, “Uncle Tsukasa? Do you know a lot about making friends?”

“You don’t have to call me ‘Uncle,’ you know,” Uncle Tsukasa says. His thoughts answer Tiara’s question for him: there are people he’s friendly with, but the only real friend he needs… the only friend he chases after and would ever, ever take off work to babysit for… is his own big brother. Tiara’s new dad doesn’t really see how loved he is, does he? 

“I know, Uncle Tsukasa,” Tiara says. It will probably take him a long time to like her, because he doesn’t like her mom. That’s okay. Tiara has lived places where nobody ever decides to like her at all. “But if you had to make a friend, what would you do?”

“You don’t have any friends?” You have my brother. That isn’t enough? 

“No… it’s just… this one kid at school. He’s mean, though.”

Uncle Tsukasa smiles, head snapping up so he’s looking at Tiara properly, now, like he suddenly understands things. “Do you want to make a plan to get him to stop whatever he’s doing?”

“Maybe…”

By the end of the night, Tiara’s not sure she’s actually going to be able to use much from Uncle Tsukasa’s plans. Still, it was sort of fun scribbling picture after picture with him, imagining scenarios where she steals the bully kid’s prized pink rabbit to hold as a hostage until he fixes his wicked ways, or maybe shows up at school with a fancy kind of candy from far away that the bully kid’s never seen before. But where would Tiara even get candy like that? This particular bully kid is from a super-rich and powerful family: that’s part of the problem. Part of the mission. Though of course Tiara can’t tell Uncle Tsukasa about all that. 

Someday, maybe, Tiara will have to drag some of the secrets she knows out into the open. She’s imagined holding her new mom’s face in both her tiny hands and declaring, “Dad didn’t kiss you just then because he kills people for money, and he thinks he’s like a bad guy on a black horse coming to steal your story or whatever. It’s not because he doesn’t think you’re pretty,” or something like that. Maybe someday, if Tiara really needs to.

Tiara gets tired of doodling before Uncle Tsukasa does. It’s a bit after her bedtime, and when he remembers that her new dad likes it when she goes to bed early — he told him so, before leaving for that fancy date with Mom — he shoos her away to brush her teeth. 

Tiara isn’t sure she’ll be able to sleep until her new parents come home. There’s a spirit scratching outside her window, after all, and a catlike creature with dozens of staring eyes winding around and around Uncle Tsukasa’s legs, tangling him up though he never trips. What if Tiara’s new mom and dad never come home? What if something happens and Tiara needs to save them again, probably dragging Uncle Tsukasa along with her somehow? 

Uncle Tsukasa is brusquely turning away and clicking off Tiara’s bedroom light when she asks, “Hey, did Dad tell you any bedtime stories, when you were little?”

“Of course he did,” Uncle Tsukasa scoffs. 

“Do you remember any of them?”

Uncle Tsukasa considers this. “He liked stories about the stars, back then,” he says. “Constellations. Do you know what constellations are?”

“Sky pictures!” 

“Yeah. Sort of.” Tsukasa slides down to sit on Tiara’s bedroom floor, now, with his back against her door. He closes his eyes, remembering scratchy blankets his brother scavenged for him from the side of the road. “There was this one… where Perseus gets sent to assassinate the Gorgon Medusa while she’s sleeping. Because she’s been cursed by a god, so everybody she looks at turns to stone. Amane used to tell that one with pretty good sound effects.”

“You could tell it to me. Please. If you wanted.”

“Okay,” Uncle Tsukasa says. There’s still a bit of time before Tiara’s new parents get home, by this point. Before Dad falls asleep on the couch, and Mom carefully pries his shoes off to set by the door. They sleep in different bedrooms, Mom and Dad. They don’t open each other’s doors, because there are too many secrets inside. “I guess I could do that.”

***

3.5

Of all the places Tiara Yashiro has ever woken up, from morning to morning, her new mom’s apartment is usually one of the quietest. She has a little sparkly blue alarm clock chiming “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” by the side of her bed, sure, but unless her new dad’s accidentally set the stove on fire again trying to make French toast there’s almost no yelling at all. 

It’s quiet this morning, too. Tiara knows there aren’t any cockroaches skittering in the cupboards, around here, easy prey for sticky mold-grown demons. There aren’t any holy men, either, trying to build her into something divine and fearless. Tiara yawns, stretching her arms up over her head, perched on the side of her bed. She brushes her hair in the mirror, and puts on her fancy school uniform, and pretends she doesn’t see the creature with lots and lots of extra elbows peeking out from the edge of her closet. 

Tiara finishes getting ready, humming defiantly to herself. She knows her mom is doing the same thing: she can hear her thinking over what needs to be done that day as she fixes her makeup… what messages she needs to encrypt and send along to an agent a couple towns over. What transmission she received in the middle of the night, and how much pressure it puts on her to succeed with Operation Strix quickly.

How much pressure it puts on them, really. Mom doesn’t know it, but she and Tiara are in this together, one hundred percent. As Mom picks a lipstick to wear, Tiara chooses a pin to clip in her hair. Yup. They’re basically in-sync. 

Out in the main living-area part of the apartment, Tiara finds the doodles she made with Uncle Tsukasa last night, just where she left them. She finds her new dad wearing a black-and-red bathrobe, his hair still wet, just washed. He’s pouring coffee into two cups, and he mixed together some strawberry milk for her. He might burn most of the things he tries to cook, but he learned how Mom likes her coffee easily enough. He smiles like his head hurts but he doesn’t want Tiara to know. 

“G’morning, Tiara-san,” Dad says. “Sleep okay?”

Actually, Tiara dreamt about something horrible — one of the things that ate the experiment before her, an older brother she never got to meet. She doesn’t tell Dad that, but she does take the strawberry milk he offers her. He’s worried about a job he has to do after his shift filing papers. He’s supposed to hunt down some sort of diplomat, but it’ll be tricky to catch the guy alone. He hopes he doesn’t have to haunt his target all damn night waiting for an appropriately Thorn Prince-y opening. It’s nice, being able to spend time at home with everyone; it’s nice falling asleep in his own bed, before it’s already getting light outside. 

Tiara and her new dad read some of the paper together, waiting for Mom to join them. When she does, Tiara reads her the funniest newspaper comics that day. They eat breakfast together. Pretty soon, Tiara’s gonna have to face her class’s Spelling Bee, and that bully kid she’s supposed to figure out how to make friends with. 

Any time, now. Any time. 

In the meanwhile, though, one of the comics she reads aloud manages to make Agent Twilight laugh. The Thorn Prince’s lip twitches up at the sound. He doesn’t mean it to. Tiara knows her new parents don’t mean to love it here. But bit by bit, piece by piece, they do. She’s starting to think… you know… maybe… 

Maybe despite all the reasons this family shouldn’t last, it actually will. Tiara’s the youngest kid in her class, by a lot – (shh. Don’t tell anybody!) – but even still, she’d thought she was way too old and wise to let herself count on happy endings.

Doesn’t mean she can’t hope, does it?

Tiara shoves her homework into her school satchel. She and Mom leave Dad to clean up after breakfast — they wave goodbye, and Mom squeezes his hand for just a second. They’ve got a lot of important stuff to take care of today. For the sake of the mission, and all.