amira!

COD

Storybook — Knight!Simon Riley / Midwife!Reader

1 2 3 4 5 — COMPLETE

KAGURABACHI

Growing up has been so hard for me; — Sojo Genichi / Scientist!Reader

1 2 (Please check CWs for this one!)

WIPS

You knelt, feeling around beneath the bed until your fingers closed around a cold sliver of metal. You pulled it free and let out a startled laugh.

In your grasp was a single silver tooth. 

You raised it to eye level, holding it closer than you'd ever held Ghost himself, save for your final awkward embrace. The metal caught the light as you turned it between your fingers, revealing the precision of its craftsmanship. It was curved on one end and straight along the other, with a tiny hole at the top where it must've once been fastened to his mask. 

You'd never checked whether he actually slept with that garish thing on. From your bedroll on the floor, you could never quite make out his face, but even if you had been able to, you knew he wouldn't have wanted you to look. Now that you were alone, it was painfully easy to recognize the truth: you'd accommodated his unusual habits since the day you'd met him, but somewhere along the way, you'd started doing it less out of propriety and more because you'd wanted him to like you.

You placed the silver tooth at the edge of your newly organized table, right beside a deep indent in the wood. That way, you'd be able to see it as you worked, and if you accidentally knocked it over, it wouldn’t immediately fall to the floor. The gesture was silly and more than a little pathetic, but you did it anyway. It'd help you remember.

***

The following week, you attended the festival alone. 

Due to this summer’s unusual heat, this year's harvest wasn't as bountiful as those in years past, but everyone would have enough to eat through the winter, and that was enough. The festivities were still lively, still bright. You enjoyed watching the people you'd known your entire life enjoy themselves. When you encountered the market girls, you bought each of them a piece of candy because it seemed like the amiable thing to do, but you didn't linger to catch their gossip or entertain any more prying questions than you already had.

The villagefolk were still curious about the knights. You smiled through it and kept your answers amiable, too. Yes, they'd left so suddenly. No, you didn't know where they'd gone, though surely it was somewhere important in service to the King. Yes, they'd all been so strong, and their horses had been so beautiful. Yes, the frightening one with the mask had stayed with you. No, you hadn’t seen his face or learned his name. No, you didn't know why he'd turned away all those girls’ offers, though given the tumultuous nature of his profession, perhaps it was for the best.

Things continued exactly as they always had. You delivered babies, tended to ailments, and sold remedies at the market once your garden yielded a sufficient harvest of its own. You rose before dawn, washed your laundry in the river, and ate your meals outside for as long as the weather allowed. Occasionally, when your mind was elsewhere or when you came home especially tired, you'd catch yourself cooking enough for two or reaching for an extra bowl, only to remember that you no longer needed to.

It was odd, realizing how lonely your life had become only after you'd been given a brief reprieve from it. First no mother, then no brother, and now no Ghost. But it hadn't hindered you before, and you wouldn't allow it to hinder you now. You still had your own life to live, whether or not there was anyone asking after you.

***

Autumn was as busy as you'd anticipated. You were proud of how diligently you'd prepared for the season's rise in illness, even if it was the same work you did every year. There was comfort in the rush and routine, in rising each morning with a clear list of tasks to accomplish. You were just beginning one of those mornings when a loud knock sounded at the door.

You bolted upright. For one irrational second, hope rose within you. Then you opened the door to a stranger and drifted back down to reality.

“Does the midwife live here?” the stranger asked. “The one who saved the knight’s life?”

You hesitated. The man was clean and well-dressed, clearly of higher station than you. You couldn't quite explain how you could tell, but something about his demeanor made it obvious he wasn't from your village. If he knew about Ghost, he had to be someone important, but the way he’d described your actions—saved the knight's life—was a flagrant exaggeration. You didn’t correct him, though; you weren’t inclined to explain Ghost's condition to someone you'd only just met.

He told you he was in the employ of a wealthy merchant farther north. The merchant's wife was nearing the end of her first pregnancy, and they wanted you to attend the delivery.

The journey took most of the day, carrying you through stretches of forest to a bustling town you'd never visited before. The merchant’s family lived in a grand house with more rooms than you could count. As always, you kept your attention on your duties, ignoring your own thoughts and the fineries around you until both mother and child had been declared healthy. Only when you were checking on the new mother one last time, tending to her as she rested in her luxurious bed, did you finally ask how she'd heard of you. 

"From the knight, of course," she said. Her voice was still hoarse from labor, but her body was relaxed, the tension smoothed from her brow.

“What was his name?” you asked. You gently tucked the blanket over her shoulders to disguise how eager you were to know. It was sewn from rich brown fur, the softest you'd ever felt.

“I don't recall,” she admitted, bashfully ducking her head. “But he was very good-looking.”

Gaz, then.

You thanked her and didn't pry any further. You wanted to, but it would've been ill-mannered to burden a woman who'd just given birth with questions of your own self-interest. Besides, you'd just been paid in full, which you took as a sign that you were meant to leave. You'd charged the same price you did every other woman, but the pouch her husband had pressed into your hands was unusually heavy. You weren't sure how to politely insist on less, or whether you were even supposed to.

When you returned home, you mulled over how it could've happened. Maybe Gaz had met the merchant's family while passing through and, after learning they were expecting, he told them about you, expecting nothing of it. Or maybe he'd mentioned you over drinks with Soap and Price, and a nosy barmaid had passed your name along until it reached the merchant’s ears. 

Whatever the explanation, it had been a pleasant experience, a welcome aberration from your usual routine. You'd seen somewhere new, and now you had another memory you could trace back to the knights. 

You were content to let the incident stand on its own, but a few weeks later, another wealthy family sent for you. Then it happened again, and again, and by the time winter arrived, you were busier than you'd ever been. You found yourself meeting women unlike any of the ones you knew back home, women with soft hands and unblemished skin, women who could afford fresh linens and multiple servants and a plethora of other comforts you hadn't previously known existed. 

Apparently, stories were spreading about you. People across the Kingdom called you a gifted healer, extolling your abilities as if they were something exceptional, something magical. You were certain you were no more skilled than any other trained midwife in the region, but stories weren't tangible things—you couldn't just grab them from the air and stamp them out. So you ignored the praise instead, channeling the spirit of the most impassive man you’d ever met, and carried on with your work. 

With each journey, your existence grew a little larger. You saw more of the forest, more of the river, more of the lives people built beyond your village. The differences weren't all that dramatic, but they were noticeable. People spoke differently, planted different crops, gave their children different names. Sometimes you wondered if you might ever be summoned all the way to the sea, if you might ever see that mapped line between water and land. Witness the edge of the world itself, nothing but water.

It seemed unlikely, but then again, so had all of this.

***

You were making more money than you’d ever seen in your entire life. Money that would've allowed you to buy land, if you could; money that would've allowed you to sustain a family, if you had one. You saved most of it, driven by the practicality your mother had instilled in you, but you were unsure what to do with the rest. You already had everything you needed, but now you had the privilege of being able to purchase things you wanted, too.

First, you hired a blacksmith to change the creaking hinges on your cottage door. Then you bought a new blanket to carry you through the rest of the winter, fur-trimmed and wonderfully warm. Next came new vials to replace the ones Ghost had broken, along with new dishes, though you were too sentimental to discard the chipped ones. When spring arrived, you visited the tailor and had new dresses made from softer, thinner fabric, then paid extra to have them embroidered and embellished with ribbon. Girlish, perhaps, but what was the harm in that?

It occurred to you, on a rare slow evening, that you could pay to write to Ghost. Before the doubt crept in, you combed your thoughts for what you could potentially tell him. You could thank him and his Guard, maybe, for the reputation they'd given you, for the endless opportunities that had followed. You could describe what it was like attending to wealthy families, remark on how ridiculous some of their expenditures seemed or provide a list of the most amusing baby names you’d come across. You could paint a picture of the land surrounding your cottage: heavy rainfall, freshly sown fields, trees beginning to flower along their spindly branches.

None of it seemed worthwhile. You could be earnest, but that wouldn’t make it any less inconsequential, any less trite.

And when you finally visited the scribe, another unsettling thought struck you: what if Ghost had already forgotten you? He’d only been with you for a handful of weeks, and since his departure, almost three full seasons had come and gone. He had asked you to write, but a soldier’s life surely moved at a far quicker pace than yours; his request might as well have been made an eternity ago. Was the brief stretch of summertime you’d spent together really worth an entire letter?

In the end, you chose to spend your money on your brother. You asked about his physician's training, about the differences between the forest and the coast, about the aunt and uncle who’d taken over your role as his guardian and protector but hopefully not his closest confidant. You wrote to him more often than you ever had before, sharing bits of your life in tandem with learning more about his own. You now had the means to be a greater part of it, even if it was from afar.

***

As it turned out, he didn’t forget.

Thankfully, the following summer was significantly less scorching than the one before. The spring rains had been kind to the land, nourishing the soil enough for you to plant a new row of raspberry canes, which would replace the old bushes—the ones your mother had painstakingly planted so many years ago—once they finally gave out. They wouldn’t bear fruit this year, but their baby leaves had begun to unfurl, sweet-scented and ridged beneath your fingertips.

That morning, you took your time watering them, mindful of their still-fragile roots. As you worked, a figure came walking up the path. A man, not a monster.

Ghost. 

He held the same impossible height, the same broad shoulders. No armor this time, though he still wore his mask and carried his sword. The blade hung sheathed at his hip, hidden from the sunlight. You set your bucket in the grass, dusted your hands on your skirt, and walked over to meet him, stopping just outside your cottage. 

He went still once you reached him. It was as if he'd stepped out of a dream, or perhaps you'd fallen into one. Your surroundings hadn't changed, yet Ghost's presence made everything feel distorted, unfamiliar. You folded your arms, your movements sticky-slow, your mind overwhelmed by a thousand questions at once. You wanted to ask him how he was here, why he was here, where his horse was, where his Guard was, whether he needed to ask for directions to find your cottage, whether he even remembered your name. 

What came out was: “Have you eaten breakfast yet?”

You regretted the words the instant they left your mouth. Ghost said nothing. He instead appraised you from head to toe, as if confirming that it really was you. A single year wasn't enough to change you all that much—not outwardly, at least. You were a little older, and your clothes were definitely nicer, but you weren't a child anymore, capable of growing by leaps and bounds with every passing season.

He stayed silent long enough for doubt to creep in. You wiped your brow as you waited, resisting the urge to smack your forehead. A year apart, followed by an unexpected reunion, and that was all you could think to say? Maybe if you’d run to him instead of walked, if you’d actually sent him a letter, no matter how frivolous its contents, he would've reacted differently. Taken you into his arms and swung you around, laughed with you and then carried you inside. But that wasn't who Ghost was, nor was it who you wanted him to be.

“Not yet,” he said at last. You shivered; if you’d been asleep, the gruff familiarity of his voice would’ve immediately woken you up. “Thought I’d surprise you.” 

“I am surprised,” you replied truthfully.

“Not actin’ like it.”

“My goodness,” you exclaimed, fluttering a hand to your chest. You took an exaggerated step forward, widening your eyes as if trying to drink in every aspect of him. He looked well, uninjured. In good spirits, too. "Am I dreaming? Sir Ghost, is that really you?" 

“That’s better,” he said.

His eyes crinkled—a smile. Your heart beat so fiercely you thought it might break free from your ribs. 

***

Initially, it took you absurdly little effort to fall back into physical routine with Ghost. Being around him felt like folding laundry or drawing water from the well, tasks you'd performed so many times that you could carry them out without conscious thought. You sat together in the grass and ate breakfast in silence. Afterwards, Ghost gathered the dishes while you finished watering your plants. Then he took your basket and you both set out towards the market, retracing the very path he'd taken up to your cottage.

The difficulty came with talking to him. Without any animosity to overcome or trust to establish, the conversation should've flowed more easily. You knew what his hands felt like, knew the solid weight of his armor-clad frame against yours. Yet as you walked beneath the swaying branches, shadows dappling the dirt, you couldn't decide whether to treat him like someone you'd just met or simply pick up where you'd left off the summer before.

“Everyone will be ecstatic to see you,” you decided to say, though perhaps they already were, if they'd caught a glimpse of him on his way into the village. You'd been sneaking your own glances at him, hoping to catch some hint of how he was behaving so you could mirror it, but it was akin to mimicking a rock. “I still get asked about you.”

"They’ve got nothing else to talk about?”

“I suppose not,” you said, then winced, because you didn't truly believe that. Even if they weren't doing anything as grand as directly serving the King, they still led their own unique lives, with their own ups and downs, joys and miseries, just as you did. “How's…where's your horse?”

“At the tavern,” he said.

So they had already seen him. You were the last to learn of his arrival, this time around. You rounded a bend, tall grass brushing against your skirt. Ghost slowed for a moment, and you matched his pace. Your body had remembered how to keep with his strides, too. 

“The boys still ask about you, too.”

You laughed before you could stop yourself, realizing he meant the rest of his Guard. It was odd to refer to three grown men as boys, though you supposed you also thought of your brother that way, despite the fact that he was a man now, too. He remained fixed in your memory exactly as you'd last seen him, frozen as a child no matter how much time passed. Ghost was supposed to be one of those fixed, frozen people too, but instead he was here. You were burning with curiosity to know why, but you preemptively squashed it down. He would've told you if he wanted to.

“What do you tell them?”

“That you're busy,” he said plainly. “Working hard.”

You were grinning, stupidly, before you could help it. Because you were busy, and you had been working hard. And unlike the praise you received from the wealthy families you met, Ghost wasn't the sort of man to flatter people for politeness' sake. If he said something, he meant it.

“Did you tell them to spread those stories about me?” you asked.

He looked at you from the corner of his eye, then sped up. “Maybe.”

***

The next evening, Ghost sat at your table while you presented all the purchases you'd made over the past year. You still had work to do, and he hadn't asked for a tour of your belongings, but you'd spent the entire day struggling to concentrate with him lingering so close by. You needed a distraction, something for the two of you to do besides sitting and looking at one another. 

First came the cottage door. You threw it open, revealing the setting sky, and swung it vigorously back and forth. The hinges remained blessedly silent.

“It doesn't creak anymore!”

Ghost nodded. You chose to interpret that as him being impressed. Next came your new dishes, which drew no reaction from him since he'd already eaten off them; then your new glass vials, which prompted a curt apology from him about your tumultuous first meeting; and finally your fur-lined winter blanket. 

"Feel how soft it is," you urged, cradling the folded blanket in your arms.

You'd spent the entire evening carefully keeping the table between the two of you. If you stepped closer, you weren't sure whether Ghost would object, or whether you wanted him to. Even this quiet guessing game felt familiar, but you weren’t sure you wanted that, either.

He leaned over and brushed his fingertips over the trim.

“It's soft,” he agreed.

“Isn't it?” you said brightly. “If you'd come during the winter, I'd have let you use it.”

Ghost sat back in his chair and folded his burly arms across his chest. "Then how would you stay warm?"

“I'd have bought another,” you answered, instead of blurting out something dangerous, like we could've shared it.

You returned the blanket to the chest at the foot of your bed and fastened the latches. That concluded the tour, you supposed. You could've shown him your new dresses—the ribbons, the embroidery—but he could already see them, because you were wearing one. You were sure he'd noticed the changes, but he hadn't mentioned them, which you were grateful for. That felt too exposing somehow, admitting you liked nice things, even when they were impractical. 

“And what's this?”

You turned. Pinched between Ghost's fingers was a glint of silver, plucked right out of the groove in the table, resembling some strange ingredient. You could've ground it up in your mortar, mixed it into a shimmering remedy to cure some fantastical ailment, or blown it into the wind to make a wish. 

“It's a tooth,” you said, baring your own smile at him for reference. “I believe it fell from your mask.”

“Why'd you keep it?”

Slowly, you crossed the room until you stood beside him, feeling both very foolish and very brave. After all that effort to occupy yourself, you'd ended up doing the very thing you'd been trying to avoid: looking at him while he looked at you. But in this moment, with you on your feet and him seated, watching you so intently, it didn't feel as daunting.

“The time you spent here—” you began, searching for the words, “it didn’t feel real. I wanted something to remember you by.”

He shifted in his chair and held out the tooth, like it was now his turn to show things off to you. It looked tiny in his fingers, the size of a seed. What did his real teeth look like? Would you ever see them? You stuck your hand out and he dropped it into your waiting palm. All you needed now was some soil and sun.

“Was plenty real to me,” he said.

You closed your fingers around the metal, gripping it so tightly that its edges dug into your skin. “So you remembered me?”

“Couldn't forget.” Then he was grasping your wrist, tugging you closer, dropping away just as you'd begun to process the sensation. His palms felt slightly softer than you remembered, but maybe you were just imagining things. You were standing between his knees now, his thighs brushing against your own legs. “Never met a bird like you before.”

“You don't have to be so crude,” you complained. It was easier than acknowledging this sudden proximity. Perhaps he wanted to pick up where you'd left off a year ago, but where was there to go after this? To the blanket? "There are plenty of more favorable ways to describe a woman."

He said your name, and out came his raspy laugh. You wanted to congratulate yourself—it'd taken you so long to break that out of him a year earlier, and now you'd gotten it on the very second day. Tentatively, you reached out with your other hand, waiting for resistance and finding none. Ghost’s brown eyes remained trained on you, barely blinking. You pressed your fingertips against his mask, right over his teeth. He took a sharp breath, and when he exhaled, the warmth filtered through the cloth and washed over your skin, spreading through you until every bit of your body felt fuzzy and molten.

Even more foolishly, even more bravely, you traced your fingers over the row of silver sewn into the mask. You could make out the faint curve of his lip beneath them, belonging to a face you’d once seen half of and subsequently convinced yourself you hadn’t. Each touch felt like pouring water onto thirsty ground. Only when you reached the end did you realize your breathing had become as uneven as his.

“I'm sorry,” you whispered, withdrawing your hand.

“Don't be.”

His voice was so low, so quiet, that for one fleeting moment you almost wished for a great gust of wind to come, to rattle your door hard enough for the silent hinges to squeak again, if only to break whatever spell had settled over the room. Everything was happening all out of order, too quickly for you to make any sense of it. You placed the silver tooth back on the table and stepped away. Ghost picked it up again, turning it thoughtfully between his fingers. You sat across from him, reached for your pestle, and resumed your work.

***

You didn't attempt to touch Ghost again after that. He didn't attempt to touch you again, either. If things had shifted at all between you and him, they'd only moved backwards. As the week unfolded, you slipped back into the rhythm you'd built the previous summer, living alongside one another and bickering whenever the opportunity presented itself. There were no visitors this time, no knights or unmarried girls, no secret expeditions into the forest. You worried, at first, that Ghost might grow bored of living the same routine day after day, but he seemed perfectly content to carry out his old chores and keep you company whenever your work demanded your full attention.

Halfway through the second week, you were summoned for a delivery. Only one village over this time, a place you'd been offering your services to long before you'd met Ghost. You hurried around the cottage, gathering your supplies. You hadn't been told of the mother's condition, so you packed with extra care, double-checking everything, preparing for every potential problem that could arise.

To your surprise, Ghost, who'd been ambling around the garden, came inside to help. Before you could reach for your basket, he'd already picked it up. He pulled the chairs out of your path and reached for the very things you would've taken yourself—herbs, salves, honey—lifting them from the shelves without you having to ask. How much had he remembered?

"You know me so well, but I know so little about you," you said as you dropped your scissors into the basket he was holding open for you. Your blood was already racing in anticipation of the birth, and now it seemed to be carrying your tongue along with it. "It isn't fair."

"It isn't," he echoed, holding the door open as you stepped outside together. "Does it bother you?"

Had you not been preoccupied with leaving, you might've stopped dead in your tracks. This, at least, was different. Ghost was asking what you thought, what you felt, all so openly. He never would've done that the year before. Or perhaps he would've, if he'd stayed for longer.

"Of course it does," you said. You wanted to explain more—that it bothered you because you wanted to know him, that the longer you spent tiptoeing around what his reappearance meant, the more curious you became, that it felt ridiculous to care for a man whose real name you didn't even know—but you didn't have enough time. "But you're free to live however you'd like. I'll be back late."

You didn't allow yourself to mull over what he'd said until your work was complete. On your journey home, you considered how you didn't know any of the conventional things about Ghost: where he'd grown up, what his family was like, or what kind of boy he'd once been. But you knew his Guard, knew how hard he worked. You didn't know what lay beneath the mask, but you knew how he carried himself, how he moved through the world. Maybe you didn't know him in the traditional sense, but you still understood the man he was, how he regarded you, and that was good enough.

***

You returned home at an awkward hour, still buzzing with energy. It was too early to sleep, but too late to start on anything productive. Ghost was sitting outside in the patch of grass by the hearth. As you approached, you felt the urge to ask him what he was thinking, wondering if he was expecting you to apologize for the earlier words you'd spoken. He rose before you could greet him and studied you carefully, then took your things from your hands.

"Are you going to rest?" he asked.

"Not yet," you said, relieved by the lack of agitation in his tone. You followed him to the cottage, leaning against the doorway as Ghost set your baskets down where you usually kept them. When he turned to exit, you sidestepped him just in time to avoid his chest bumping into yours. "Where are you going?"

"Need to check on my horse," he said brusquely.

"I'll come with you," you said, a little too eagerly, before finally finding the sense to rein yourself in. "If that's alright with you."

Ghost had already set off. "Come on, then."

You remained behind him long enough to breathe a sigh of relief, then rushed to catch up.

The earthy smells of hay and leather greeted you as you stepped inside the tavern's guest stable. A stable boy led you down the row of stalls, all the way to the end. Raspberry the stallion nickered as Ghost drew near, docile behind the wooden gate yet still so imposing. He looked exactly as you remembered: reddish-brown coat, star-speckles of white on his forehead, and a long, glossy mane. You stayed back cautiously, until Ghost waved you over, making room for you to stand beside him.

"Hello, Raspberry," you murmured. Despite his tremendous size, you couldn't help speaking to him as if he were a child, young and innocent. You lightly patted his side. His limber neck ducked down, then up again. "You're even more handsome than I remembered."

While you stroked his coat, Ghost busied himself with tasks of his own. With the assistance of the stable boy, he poured fresh grain into the trough, checked the water bucket, and rubbed his horse's forehead, muttering something too low for you to hear.

Maybe this was how he felt when he watched you work. You liked watching Ghost like this, too. He moved with the same brisk, unassuming competence he brought to everything else, tending to his horse with practiced hands. It wasn't difficult to picture the two of them crossing the kingdom together, mane and cloak streaming behind them, armor and leather gleaming in the light. You tried, for just a moment, to imagine yourself riding behind them, beside them. The thought tied your stomach into knots.

"If I'm able to save enough money," you said, "I'd like to get a horse of my own."

Ghost humored you. "What kind?"

You considered it, mentally shuffling through all the different horses you'd seen. You still didn't know too much about them, but you were certain you had no business with a stallion as magnificent as this one. It was hard to believe such a large, beautiful creature could exist, that he was real and walked among you. Raspberry was so enormous that even Ghost's broad hand covered only a fraction of his forehead. The white speckles peeking between his fingers looked like stars between clouds.

"Not one like yours," you decided. "I'd want a horse that's gentle. And perhaps old."

"It'd be useless." He stated this resolutely, like he was sharing an objective truth. "Wouldn't carry you far."

"But I'd enjoy its company. Wouldn't that be useful enough?"

He fell quiet, as if genuinely considering the question. You supposed most of the people closest to him had first been men he'd been assigned to fight beside, comrades bound together by duty before affection or the simple desire to be around each other. Perhaps companionship without utility—or the utility of companionship—wasn't something he'd ever had reason to think about. You supposed you hadn't, either, not for a long time. Not until he'd stumbled into your life.

"Dunno," he said at last.

"I'm unmarried and without children," you mused. That made him look at you sharply, his hands stilling against Raspberry's neck. "Most people would call me useless, too."

Silence, again. Raspberry nosed eagerly toward his trough, more interested in his supper than your conversation. You stepped back to give him room; you knew that much about horses, at least. Ghost gave his stallion one last reassuring pat, pressed a few coins into the stable boy's palm, and led the way back down the row and out into the village square. You diligently fell into step with him, brushing bits of hay from your skirt. The market had thinned with the evening, but the handful of people still wandering between the stalls immediately noticed him. You would too, if the roles were reversed.

"I enjoy your company," Ghost said, before you'd even made it back to the path. You copied one of his own mannerisms, offering him a jerky nod of your own, rather than asking him where all of these sudden niceties had come from.

***

As you walked home for the second time that day, Ghost told you he'd be leaving again soon. Fatigue was settling into your bones, the exhaustion of the whirlwind day finally catching up with you. The sky had darkened completely, stars scattered overhead like the white speckles across his stallion's forehead. This had to be one of the nicest parts of having him around, you thought—having someone to walk home with after dark.

"Last year was busy," he began. You instantly quieted your breathing, wishing the evening insects chittering in the trees would hush with you, lest they distract him and make him retreat once more. "But I get leave every few months. Can go wherever I please."

"And you chose to return here." You hoped you sounded calm, encouraging—whatever he needed to feel comfortable with telling you more. Even if he didn't, you already understood what he was implying, and the fact that he'd offered it of his own accord was enough.

"I did."

Why, why, why, you wanted to ask, but didn't. You waited instead. So many things had yet to fall into place, and this would've been a piece too large to comprehend all at once. He hadn't told you when he'd arrive, and you already suspected he wouldn't tell you when he'd leave, either. You still had your own life to live, your own work to do. But you could picture Ghost woven into your life, not the way he had been last summer, but in a week and a half or a handful of days or whatever he could spare every few months. It wasn't the most vivid romance—if it could be labeled a romance at all—not the kind the market girls would've dreamed of, but it sounded quite lovely to you all the same.

You continued picturing it, calm mornings and focused evenings and all the silly things you did in between, as you unlatched your cottage door and laid out your bedroll. You wanted to voice at least some of it out loud, but you decided to save it for the morning, when your mind was steadier. Meanwhile, Ghost prepared for sleep alongside you. You could tell, when his footfalls stopped, that he'd finished and was now sitting at the edge of the bed. 

You looked his way to confirm it, and of course, he was already looking at you. His sword was in its regular place against the wall by the pillow, as if he might need to ward off any opponents in his sleep.

"Will you sit with me?" he asked.

Maybe he'd been waiting, too. You crossed the distance and sat beside him, keeping space between your thigh and his. A year ago, he’d taken your hand here, seated at the edge of your bed while you stood before him. Now you were level with him, so you decided to be bold and take his in return. You interlaced your fingers together and let him guide your joined hands into his lap, where they came to rest atop his thigh. The feeling of him sent little sparks of something—anticipation, maybe, or disbelief that this was even happening—coursing up your arm, coalescing into a bundle of warmth in your chest.

Feeling bolder still, you leaned over and attempted to rest your head against his shoulder. Ghost gave you the small kindness of looking away while you tried, but reality wasn't always as quaint as the stories. He was too tall, his posture too rigid, for the angle to be comfortable. After a few fumbling moments, you withdrew and sat upright again. 

“D’you want to lay down?” he asked. 

Your face burned. “Perhaps.”

Then Ghost took his hand out of yours to place it on your shoulder, gently guiding you back onto the bed. You caught hold of his biceps in return, wanting to pull him down with you. You weren't sure what you were doing anymore—it felt like your body was behaving independently of your brain, like all the excitement had crowded out your rational thought.

"We can't both fit," he warned.

You patted his arms, ignoring how firm they were to the touch. “Can we try, at least?”

A great shuffling of limbs ensued, almost like play-fighting. You laid down on your back and Ghost came to hover atop you. Then you both registered how preposterously large he was and quickly traded places, putting him on his back while you hovered over him instead. Your legs tangled with his, then he was creeping his way against the wall, until his shoulder was practically jammed into it. You wedged yourself onto the remaining sliver of mattress until you were half lying atop him and half supported by the bed. You wanted to laugh, but then one of his hands came to rest in the middle of your back, the other hesitantly perched on your shoulder. You lightly placed your own hands on his chest in return.

There was so much touching, so much contact, so much Ghost. You could hear each inhale he took, see the shine of his eyelids when he blinked. He smelled like the same soap you used. You'd never laid with a man like this before, so intimately entwined, and that realization sent gooseflesh rising along your arms, legs, the back of your neck, and everywhere else. You shivered despite yourself, fighting the urge to squirm.

"Are you cold?"

"No," you said, and fought back another shiver. You poked him in the chest, right over his heart. "This is just very—intense."

"Intense," he repeated.

"Unmarried people aren't supposed to behave like this, you know."

Ghost barked out an incredulous laugh. You felt it vibrate in your own chest. "Aren't you a midwife? Unmarried people behave like this all the time."

"Sir Ghost," you said, fully intending to match him with something equally crass. But then his lashes fluttered, and the thought vanished at once. What you really wanted was to make him acknowledge all of this, to call attention to everything he'd been doing to you since he arrived. "Why did you come to see me again?" 

"I wanted to."

"What… what else do you want?" you pressed.

He shifted the hand on your back, drawing it further up until it was between your shoulder blades. The weight felt nice, until you realized he was using the movement to stall. You withdrew one of your own legs that had been bunched against his, like a little separation might help him think better. Miraculously, it seemed to work.

"I want to see you, when I can." He spoke so stiffly that you might've thought you were forcing the words out of him, but you already knew that wasn't possible. You averted your gaze. "I want to look after the land with you. I want to take you to the sea. I had a younger brother, too. If I could see him again—"

He cut himself off. Each sentence he uttered had pierced straight through you, so sincere that it hurt. And beneath all that sincerity was something so awful, so unbearably sad that it left you reeling. You'd suspected some form of strife in his past, pieced it together from all the sparse details you'd gleaned over time, but you hadn't anticipated anything like this. You missed your brother so much it ached, but at least you could still hope to see him again. Ghost had carried that same ache with no hope at all, but now he was here, giving you a chance to turn your own hope into something real. What use was knowing his name or his face when he was offering you something like this?

"I'm sorry," you said weakly.

He shook his head. "It was a long time ago."

You shook your head harder, jostling you both until your forehead bumped lightly against the cloth covering his own. "That doesn't mean anything. I wish I could see my mother again, too. I miss her all the time.”

He was quiet for a long while. His eyes were open and focused on you, but it didn’t seem like he was entirely there. You remained alert anyway, every trace of weariness from the day pushed aside to allow this to take precedence. 

"Did you miss me?" he asked.

"Yes," you said quickly, unabashedly. His eyes finally closed. You wanted to cup his face, to slip a thumb beneath his mask to feel his pulse at his neck, but that was too drastic of an action for a moment as tremulous as this, so you curled a hand into his shirt instead. Over his heart again. "You can see me whenever you'd like. And you can help me with the land, and—and would you really take me to the sea?"

You didn't know how to explain the weight of what you were asking, how to tell him that he was cradling your own heart in his two massive hands. Given the way he was looking at you, he likely understood it well enough on his own.

"I would," he said, and later on, he did.

***

Masterlist!

“Go ahead,” Sojo said.

His expression hadn’t changed since you’d stepped into his office: brow creased, gaze vacant, mouth drawn in a straight line. It was the same look he wore when he was intrigued, the same look he wore when he was bored. You lifted your chin and mustered up the courage to continue.

“Instead of getting paid next month, would it be alright if I... I mean, do you think I could get a weapon?”

“A weapon,” he repeated.

As Sojo leaned forward, a dark lock of hair fell in front of his eye. He was the first person you'd ever met with tattoos on his face. Black ink lined his undereyes, speckled down his cheeks. The skin there was so delicate, so spidersilk-thin—getting them done must’ve hurt like hell.

“Yes,” you said unsteadily. “I want a sword.”

“What kind of sword?”

You blanched. 

“There’s different kinds?”

Other than a katana, you couldn’t name a single blade. You knew you should've done more research beforehand, but you hadn’t thought you’d get this far—you'd assumed Sojo would refuse the moment you uttered the word favor. Maybe he was going to refuse you now, berate you for your ignorance, throw you out of his office and forbid you from ever returning. You almost wanted him to do it, to punish you, just so you could learn what it felt like. 

Instead, he laughed. After two years in his lab, you were no stranger to the sound. Most people didn't expect it, but he actually had a decent sense of humor, even if it was a little crude. He reserved most of his jokes for his clients and sorcerers, though. Not for his scientists.

He dismissed you without an answer. You went about your day like usual, saving your disappointment for the train ride home.

That afternoon, you settled at the biosafety cabinet to check on the Kyonagi cell cultures. The cells could survive independently for short bursts of time, but they always died off within a week, as if belatedly realizing they were no longer attached to the bodies they'd come from. Sojo suspected that was why they could only temporarily stabilize the datenseki, and you'd been tasked with determining exactly where the tipping point lay. 

You were still in the process of figuring that out, but the latest samples were thriving for now. Sliding one gloved hand beneath the glass sash, you gingerly lifted the culture plate’s lid to expose its wells. With your other hand, you aspirated the spent growth medium and pipetted in a fresh aliquot. The liquid was watery red, smelling faintly of salt.  

You’d done this so often that you could’ve gone through the motions without thinking. You made yourself think about it anyway, so that your mind wouldn’t wander elsewhere.  

“It'll cost you more than a month’s pay. Swords don’t come cheap, you know.”

His voice was muffled by the hum of the ventilation system, but you knew who it was before you even looked. Keeping your attention on the cells, you shifted aside for Sojo to drop onto the rolling stool next to you. It’d be useless to react to his sudden appearance—everything here was his, and he was entitled to move around as he pleased.

“How much?” you asked. 

“With your salary? Half a year, give or take.”

“Forget it, then,” you said. While Sojo paid you generously and your spending habits were frugal, you didn’t have nearly enough saved to skip six months of paychecks. “I'm sorry for bothering you.” 

Sojo tipped his head back and sighed. You weren’t sure how much he knew about aseptic technique, but you appreciated that he kept his large hands in his lap and didn’t fog up the glass with his breath. He’d only sat here with you a few times before, but maybe one of the other scientists had shown him the ropes. This castle had no shortage of men desperate to impress him. 

“What do you want it for?” he asked.

For a split second, you considered telling him the truth. You imagined him reacting the way people did in the movies: sympathetically patting your shoulder, offering you a box of tissues, asking if you wanted to file an official report. In reality, he'd likely just laugh at you again, or advise you to kill the person who’d wronged you. You'd prefer that, honestly, because at least it'd be sincere. 

“There isn't any specific reason,” you lied. You changed the pipette tip and dispensed more growth medium, quick and methodical. “I... I just want one.”

“Are you planning on fighting someone?”

“No.”

Sojo frowned. “Then what’s the point?”

“Forget it,” you said again, as firmly as you could while still being respectful. 

You lowered the plate's lid, careful not to touch the rim. Even with gloves, your fingers were still a contamination risk. Sojo remained silent, watching you work until his cell phone rang. A client, probably, or the underworld group he'd been in contact with recently. You'd heard they wanted to buy out his entire stock of datenseki weapons, but Sojo had been dragging out the negotiations to drive up the price. Then he rose, tucked his stool beneath the bench, and left.

Fortunately or unfortunately, he didn't forget. A few days later, he summoned you again, though not to his office. You hurried from the basement lab to the castle entrance, climbing the long flights of stairs two at a time, winded by the time you made it outside.

While the castle's interior was state-of-the-art and rigorously maintained, its exterior was the perfect disguise. The walls were cracked, the roof sagged in places, and the entire property was encircled by unruly forest. The dead foliage made for a brutal sight in the winter, but during this time of year, everything was lush and green, all blooming wildflowers and birdsong.

You found Sojo waiting by the double doors, making idle conversation with the twin sorcerer-guards posted nearby. He was in his purple combat uniform, a sheathed katana hanging from his waist. As always, his shoulders were hunched. Sometimes you wondered who had raised him—if you'd had a son who grew to his height, you would've taught him to stand up straight.

“I can get you a weapon,” he declared as you approached.

You'd convinced yourself that you'd moved on from your unfulfilled request. You’d spent enough time moping during your commute, in the shower, and while lying awake at night. It had been nothing more than a silly, impractical whim, a false desire born out of boredom and loneliness and insomnia. But now that he’d mentioned it again, the longing resurfaced, itching beneath your skin.

“I already told you,” you huffed weakly, still catching your breath. “I can’t afford it.”

The trees loomed overhead and the guards chortled in unison. You ignored both. 

Sojo adjusted the buckled strap around his wrist, pulling it a notch tighter. “You don't have to give me any money.” 

“Then how am I supposed to pay you?”

“Go on a date with me.”

Despite the warm weather, a full-bodied shiver coursed through you. You hugged yourself, then dropped your arms upon realizing how ridiculous you looked. 

You knew Sojo didn’t mean it like that, because he didn’t like you like that. He didn’t like anyone like that, excluding Rokuhira Kunishige, but even that was more akin to idolatry than genuine want. Sojo was the big-fish boss and you were merely his obedient employee. He kept you around because you were good at your job, because you were punctual and scrupulous. Not because he was a man and you were a woman. 

You opened your mouth to confirm these truths, but no words came out. The guards were still smirking.

“This is Kuregumo,” Sojo continued, patting the sheath at his hip. The name was familiar—it was the enchanted blade he’d received from that underworld group, the datenseki-forged weapon he was devoting his entire career to replicating. You were devoting your career to it, too, in a sense. “I’m its new bearer. But if I'm going to wield the blade well, I have to deepen my understanding of it first." 

“By taking it on dates?” 

“You always catch on so quickly,” Sojo said, almost approvingly. He’d never complimented you so directly before, but maybe he didn’t recognize it as a compliment. “I thought some hands-on experience would be a good place to start. If you decide to help me, I’ll get you a sword.”

If you decided. That was the thing about Sojo—he wouldn't coerce you if you refused, but if you accepted, you had to commit until he was satisfied. When it came to matters like this, what would it take to satisfy him? Dinner and dessert? A kiss on the cheek? An invitation up to your apartment? Would he make you touch him? Had anyone ever touched him that way?

You should’ve refused. Should’ve shoved past the guards and beelined straight down to the lab. Should’ve redirected your efforts towards something with a legitimate chance of helping, like meditative yoga or finding a counselor. 

But you really, truly wanted a fucking sword. 

“Okay,” you said, to which he just stared at you expectantly. “When's… um. When's the next time you're free?”

You met him over the weekend in Chiba City proper. Sojo lived in Tokyo, and while he was usually chauffeured to the lab, you'd overheard a few sorcerers mention that he occasionally favored venturing out on his own. Just in case he decided against taking a car, you chose a bustling café within walking distance of the train station.

Inside, you claimed a table with three chairs: one for you, one for Sojo, and one for Kuregumo. When Sojo joined you, he tenderly lowered the katana into its seat, murmuring an apology after it accidentally bumped against the table. You didn't waste your energy being aghast.

It was no secret that Sojo had a few screws loose. A sane person wouldn’t regularly conduct business with the yakuza, or build a secret laboratory underneath an abandoned castle, or attempt to tame the datenseki with human flesh. Romancing an enchanted blade was practically unremarkable in comparison. Besides, who were you to judge? Even you named your favorite houseplants and talked to them from time to time. 

“What else do people do on dates?” Sojo asked once your drinks arrived. He cradled his tea like a little kid, wrapping both hands around the mug.

He'd given you a thorough once-over when you’d risen to greet him, which had grossed you out until you'd remembered it was his first time seeing you outside of your work clothes. He was dressed casually, too, in a white long-sleeved shirt and baggy trousers. Black ink trailed down the backs of his hands, curled along the sides of his neck. If he tucked his hair behind his ears and dabbed concealer over his tattoos, he could almost pass for a normal person. If he hadn't brought Kuregumo along, the two of you could almost pass for a normal couple.

“Ask each other questions, I guess,” you said, taking a sip of your iced coffee. It was so bitter it stung your throat. “So they can get to know—so they can deepen their understanding of each other.”

Sojo nodded vigorously, the way he did when you presented new data at a lab meeting. "Ask me a question, then."

You'd been on enough dates to know the script. There were the standard questions, meant to sketch out a basic picture of who he was—what he did for work, what he liked to do for fun, what his interests were—but you already knew the answers. Weapons dealing, reading, datenseki.

Then there were the preference questions, meant to uncover what you might’ve had in common—favorite book, favorite movie, favorite color—but you knew those, too. Anything about Rokuhira, anything about Rokuhira, purple.

And then there were the riskier questions, meant to gauge if you'd be compatible in other ways—favorite love language, favorite way to be touched, favorite position in bed—but you decidedly didn't want to know the answers to those. Not today, not tomorrow, not ever.

You glanced around the café, searching for inspiration. Summer sunlight streamed in through the windows and Kuregumo rested impassively in its seat. Just about every table was occupied: college students with backpacks at one, a group of teenage girls at another, and no fewer than four couples scattered throughout. Ordinary people doing ordinary things, most of them your age or younger.

“How old are you?” you asked.

“Twenty-nine,” Sojo replied. He cast a brief look towards Kuregumo, as if waiting for the blade to chime in with its own age. “But my birthday’s next week.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Am I supposed to ask you something, too?”

“Only if you want to.”

The prospect of your boss learning about your personal life made your stomach twist, but you wiped the condensation off your glass and willed yourself to remain calm. At the table beside you, a boy cracked a lackluster joke and the girl across from him laughed with far more enthusiasm than it deserved. If the worst came to worst, you could act just like her. Perform.

“Where did you live when you were younger?” he asked.

It was a strange, roundabout question—what he was really asking was where you'd been during the war. It wasn’t uncommon for people to be squeamish about Seitei, but it was unlike Sojo to skirt around the subject, to skirt around anything. He’d chew out your colleagues for submitting vague reports, call their proposals idiotic directly to their faces. He was who he was, no performance necessary.

“I grew up in Hakone," you said, thinking of oceans and hot springs and other grand bodies of water. The ice in your drink was starting to melt. “In Kanagawa Prefecture.”

“Tourist town,” he said. “It must've been hell.”

You hesitated. “Kind of?”

It had been hell, but not because of tourists. Kanagawa had been one of the four territories devastated by the war, a fact that Sojo was undoubtedly aware of. He smiled as you blinked at him, and you realized a moment too late that he'd also been trying to make a joke.

The date went fine. You and Sojo kept up a perfunctory conversation for an hour, exchanging clipped questions about things that didn't matter, before he and Kuregumo left for another underworld commitment. He didn't reach for your hand, didn't nudge his knee against yours, didn't lean in for a goodbye peck. The bar was so low it may as well have been nonexistent, but you were still relieved that he’d cleared it.

The following week, you woke up early and stopped at a bakery before work to buy a small box of wagashi. You'd never actually seen Sojo eat anything, but since he liked tea, you figured he was probably the traditional type. 

After lunch, you stopped by his office to find him poring over a lab report—there wasn't nearly enough text on the page for it to be yours—with Kuregumo in his lap. He was absently stroking the katana as he read, the way someone might pet a beloved cat.

“This is for you,” you said, reorganizing a stack of papers at the corner of his desk to make room for the gift bag. “Since your birthday’s coming up.”

“It's today,” Sojo corrected without looking up. “How are the cells?”

“Still alive.” You abstained from wishing him a happy birthday, since he was apparently unmoved by the occasion. Until last weekend, you'd never once considered that Sojo even had a birthday. Nobody in the lab had ever mentioned it, but maybe he'd rather celebrate with sorcerers than with a room full of scientists. “We're running low on trypsin and a few other reagents, but I can reorder them myself, if that's okay with you.” 

Sojo flipped the page. “Sure.”

You'd wanted to ask him about your sword, but it already felt like you'd long overstayed your welcome. You turned to leave, contemplating how many other thirty-year-olds in Japan commanded as much power as Sojo did, how hard he must’ve worked to earn it. There was a reason his name carried such weight, why he remained so elusive to the Kamunabi.

"Can we go out again?"

You spun around so fast that your elbow collided with the door. As tingles of pain shot up your arm, your heart began to race with excitement and anticipation, and a third, murkier thing. Dread, perhaps.

"For your birthday?"

“Of course not,” Sojo said flatly, as if the concept of celebrating a birthday was preposterous, as if having one in the first place was an inconvenient side effect of existence. “It's for Kuregumo, and for your payment. I have to complete a delivery for the Hishaku tonight, but how's tomorrow?” 

Tomorrow was Tuesday. You didn't go out on work nights anymore, even when the rest of your colleagues did, because being the only woman in the group was beyond uncomfortable. The men would become rowdy once the alcohol hit their systems, slapping each other on the back and pelting each other with insults, but somehow they always managed to rein themselves in around you. They'd watch their language, ask if you were up for another round instead of automatically topping off your glass.

You knew they were trying to be considerate, yet it only made you feel more conspicuous, like you were wearing a giant reflective vest with FEMALE emblazoned across the chest. It wasn't that you wanted to be slapped on the back or insulted—it was the knowledge that you'd always receive a different kind of kindness that grated on you. Then again, Sojo wasn't particularly kind to anyone. 

“Tomorrow works,” you said.

“Do people actually enjoy things like this?”

For your second date, you'd decided to take Sojo for a safe, inoffensive walk through the park. Right after work, you rode over together in one of his expensive cars, thankfully on opposite sides of the back seat. Relaying the address to his drivers—who turned out to be the twin sorcerers that had guarded the castle entrance that day—had been one of the most excruciatingly awkward moments of your life.

“I think so,” you said tentatively. Passing a dense thicket of honeysuckle bushes, you reached out and skimmed your fingers over the leaves. “It's nice to walk around with—with someone you care about. You can enjoy the fresh air, and look at things together. Like flowers.”

Sojo matched your pace, slowing as you did. “But I don't like flowers.”

“Why not?”

“I just don’t,” he said, and didn’t elaborate further.

You had an inkling why, but knew better than to pry. You continued on in silence, meandering through the greenery like a pair of disheveled office workers. The worst of the day's heat had faded, but the evening was still warm enough for sweat to prickle at the back of your neck. You’d untucked your blouse and Sojo had done the same with his dress shirt, then shrugged off his fancy suit jacket and draped it over his arm. Even stripped of the layers, his body seemed broad, seemed strong. Strong enough to knock you over, if he wanted to. 

Farther into the park, you came across a quiet hillock shaded by a tall maple tree. Sojo stopped along the slope, spread his jacket over the grass, and promptly sat down. He unclipped Kuregumo from his waist and gently set it beside him. You started towards a nearby empty bench so that he could have a private moment with his katana—they could enjoy the fresh air and look at things together—but then Sojo impatiently jerked his head towards the unoccupied spot at his other side.

"Sit here."

Cautiously, you lowered yourself to the ground. You settled at the very edge of his jacket, leaving a deliberate gap between your thigh and his. It proved the right instinct when Sojo lay down and closed his eyes. His hair fanned out atop the fabric, just barely brushing your leg. One of his hands clutched Kuregumo's hilt and the other came to rest atop his stomach. 

His chest rose and fell, slow and steady. Insects buzzed in the trees and orange streaks of sunset blazed across the sky. To busy yourself, you studied the scuffed toes of your work sneakers, estimating how much longer they would last before you'd have to replace them. When that lost its appeal, you childishly gathered a few fallen maple leaves, tore them into little pieces, and tossed them as high as you could. They caught in the breeze, swirling about before fluttering down to the grass without fanfare. 

“Looks like confetti,” Sojo said.

You glanced over to find him watching you with one eye cracked open. His mouth was slightly agape, as if he’d forgotten to shut it after speaking. If this were a real date, you might've playfully tapped his chin or traced a finger along his lower lip. What would he do if you tried it? Bite? Unsheathe Kuregumo? Pull you onto him?

“Or butterflies,” you suggested.

He closed his eye again.

June flew by in a whirlwind of dates. Private dinners, more cafés, a trip to the history museum, a stroll along the beach. Sojo told you he'd get you your sword once he sufficiently understood his enchanted blade, an undertaking that evidently required more than just a month. You still couldn’t fathom how your presence was helping, but you didn’t dwell on it much. The outings were keeping your mind occupied.

In July, Sojo proposed a date of his own. He offered to bring you to Tokyo himself, but you took the train instead and walked from the station to the movie theater. You paid for your own ticket and saved three seats at the back of the theater—Sojo in the middle, flanked by you and Kuregumo. Surprisingly, he’d even been on board with sharing a bucket of popcorn.

“Are you sure you want to watch this?” you whispered, stealing a handful for yourself. “I don’t think it’ll be very accurate.”

“I’m curious about the inaccuracies,” came his toneless reply.

The movie was half action flick, half love story, following two childhood friends separated by the Seitei War. He enlisted to fight while she stayed behind as a nurse, and they spent most of the story apart, communicating exclusively through letters that gradually stopped coming once the conflict intensified. It was overwrought with special effects, but the dialogue was punchy—Sojo laughed twice—and the fight scenes weren't terrible. 

They even got a few details right, like the roar of the waves during the coastal battles and the weeks-long thunderstorms that swept across the country after the war's end. The casualties were understated and most of the territories remained intact, but that was to be expected from a movie like this. Maybe they'd hired a Kamunabi sorcerer as a consultant.

After Japan declared victory, the hero reunited with his love interest at the very hospital where she worked. The camera shakily followed the nurse as she sprinted through the wards, weaving past patients and white coats until she found his room. She flung the door open to reveal him lying in his hospital bed, bruised and bandaged and staring wistfully at the ceiling.

She threw herself at him. The soldier smiled, the music swelled, and then they were kissing.

The camera panned in on his lips meeting hers, unchapped and glossy. Your mouth went dry. He tangled a hand in her hair, tugging her closer. You wanted to run—to the bathroom, to the train station, all the way back to Chiba—but your body refused to move. He spoke when they finally pulled apart, raspily quoting one of her letters back to her, something trite about the everlasting power of hope. You broke out into a cold sweat, and then your chest seized, and then you were sobbing.

You didn't recognize the sounds as your own until Sojo turned to squint at you in the darkness. Desperately, you curled in on yourself, lifting the collar of your shirt over your nose and mouth to stifle the noise, except that only made it harder to breathe. Soon you were gasping and trembling in your stupid theater seat, tears slipping free despite your attempts to blink them away.

“I'm—I’m so sorry,” you hiccupped, scrabbling at the armrest to hold yourself upright. On the screen, the nurse was climbing into her soldier's hospital bed, jostling countless wires and tubes in her quest to embrace him. She was crying, too, though the tears streaming down her face had to be significantly more elegant than yours. “This is just—really emotional—” 

“This is drivel,” Sojo interrupted. He didn't bother lowering his voice, oblivious to the stares you were both attracting from the surrounding moviegoers. “Those tubes don't connect to anything, and she's crushing his broken ribs with that hug. Also, why didn’t they include Rokuhira?”

You tried to laugh, but it caught in your throat and sputtered out as a wet cough. When you looked at Sojo, bits of black spotting your vision, he averted his gaze. Maybe he was regretting bringing you here, regretting that Kuregumo had to witness something as pathetic as a woman crying over a harmless kiss. Maybe he should've chosen someone else for this whole how-to-date endeavor, someone who could actually endure being on a date.

Then he held out a napkin. Clearly used, crumpled and greasy with popcorn butter. You grabbed it anyway, swiping furiously at your eyes and blowing your nose.

As you did, the soldier sighed indulgently and adjusted his injured body to embrace the nurse back. His arms were bulging with well-defined muscle, so large they nearly engulfed her entire torso, and wasn't it all so perfect? He was big and she was small. He was a fighter and she was a healer. He was battered and she was unscathed. They loved each other so, so much, and they were so happy to have found each other, and now that they’d reunited, they'd never let each other out of their sight ever again. You cried until the credits rolled.

After the movie, you planned to bid Sojo a hasty farewell, book it to the station, and board the first train that arrived, even if it was headed in the opposite direction. 

“Will you walk with me?” he asked as you stepped outside.

“Why not,” you found yourself saying.

It was dusk out, the streetlights flickering to life one by one. As you walked, Sojo resumed picking apart the movie, lamenting everything it had gotten wrong about the war, including the death toll. You parroted your agreement, nodding along when you were supposed to, ever the dutiful subordinate. He didn't mention the ending, and whether that was intentional or not, you resolved to buy him more books and wagashi and cups of tea in gratitude.

Two streets down, the twin sorcerers were leaning against the trunk of Sojo’s parked car, each holding a lit cigarette. You held your breath as you approached, the smoke stinging your sore eyes. Sojo exchanged a silent glance with them. They both grinned in return, one tossing the keys before the pair walked off.

Sojo opened the rear door and stepped aside. You clambered in and slid all the way across the leather seat. Sojo followed, taking the opposite side by the window. He closed the door, locked it, and carefully positioned Kuregumo between your bodies. Your brain felt underwater-fuzzy, your limbs heavy with fatigue. You had no idea what was going on anymore. Maybe you’d be able to sleep early tonight, catch a full eight hours.

“Show me your hands,” Sojo said.

Instinctively, you hid them behind your back. Despite being all cried out, the chest-seizing feeling began creeping in again, thrumming dangerously inside your ribcage. But Sojo wouldn’t do that to you—would he?

“Why?”

He edged forward, one knee knocking against the passenger seat. “I need to know what kind of sword will suit you.”

“Oh,” you breathed, hating how frail your voice sounded. A sword, suited to you. “Okay.”

You stuck out your hands. Sojo started with your right, slowly tracing the lines of your palm before pressing into the skin under your fingers, checking for calluses. He grasped your index finger and tugged at it gently, betraying no reaction when the joint popped. He did the same with your middle finger, then your ring, then your pinkie, cracking them in calm succession. Finally, he turned your hand over and ran a finger across your knuckles.

He repeated the process with your left hand, analyzing your skin with the concentration he typically reserved for his katana. You thought about all the things people usually did alone in the back seats of cars. About the stretched-out collar of your shirt, stained with dried tears and snot. About Kuregumo, deadly and waiting within arm's reach. You'd been playing along with this pretense for a full month now, yet you still hadn't seen the blade uncovered. Did he keep it unsheathed when he was alone? 

“What do you think?” you asked once he'd withdrawn. 

You ground your palms into your knees, coaxing yourself to lucidity. As if nothing had happened, Sojo leaned against the window, his posture as horrendous as ever. He looked tired, too, but it could've just been the tattoos beneath his eyes, the ink creating shadows that weren't really there.

“You have good hands,” he said.

“So do you,” you replied, only because it seemed like the right thing to say. A direct compliment for a direct compliment, even though you'd barely registered what his touch had felt like.

Sojo stiffened.

“They're perfect for Kuregumo,” you added quickly.

He relaxed, if only marginally, then fished his cell phone out of his pocket, presumably to call his sorcerers back.

You were facing a new challenge with the Kyonagi cells. After months of intensive monitoring, you’d managed to narrow down their independent lifespan, but now you needed to determine how they underwent apoptosis. Given how drastically their behavior diverged from that of normal human cells, Sojo's latest hypothesis was that the dying cells experienced some sort of unique structural change that directly destabilized the datenseki. 

Before planning any formal experiments, you examined a culture plate beneath the microscope. All the usual hallmarks of apoptosis were there: the cells had shrunk, their membranes were blebbing, and many had detached from the bottom of the plate to float in the growth medium. But what caught your attention was that the cells weren't dying individually, or even in irregular clumps. Instead, they floated in remarkably uniform clusters, each roughly equivalent in diameter. 

It was so bizarre that you double-checked the microscope’s lenses for smudges, then swapped in another culture plate, only to find the exact same phenomenon. You gave the plate a light nudge, watching the clusters drift through the medium. 

"What are you looking at?"

"Dying cells," you said, pulling away from the eyepiece. As your vision readjusted, you found Sojo standing in the lab’s doorway with his arms crossed. "You might be right about the structural changes. Do you want to see?"

He nodded. You gracelessly scrambled off the chair, tamping down a sudden wave of apprehension as you motioned for him to take your place. Sojo hadn’t been treating you any differently, but ever since he'd seen you at your absolute worst, being around him made you feel like an angry beehive had taken up residence in your stomach. It was almost funny—the last time you’d felt this nervous around him was during your job interview.

You wouldn't let it affect your work, though. You opened a nearby drawer and rummaged inside for a pair of nitrile gloves. Size large, you guessed. They weren't technically necessary, since the culture was already dying, but wiping fingerprints off the microscope was a nuisance, and you disliked deviating from standard protocol.

Once he'd snapped them on, Sojo sat down, folding his legs under the bench. He was tall enough that he didn't have to crane his neck to reach the eyepiece, but as he leaned in, his hair fell across his eyes and over his mouth. He leaned back and flicked his head, like a dog shaking water from its coat, only for the strands to tumble right into his face when he bent forward again.

"My hair," he muttered.

You reopened the drawer, rifling through its contents until you found an old slide box, its hinges so rusted that you’d taken to securing it with a rubber band instead. You plucked the band off and offered it to him, only to be met with a blank stare.

“Can you do it?”

Not for the first time, you wondered who had raised him. You’d always assumed that he’d grown his hair out simply because he couldn’t be bothered to cut it, just like how he couldn’t be bothered to wear neckties with his suits or wish people good morning. You tried imagining him as a child, running outside with his hair wild, but it was difficult to picture.

“Sure,” you said.

For his sake or your own, you made your footsteps noisy as you circled behind him. Steeling yourself, you peeled off your own gloves and combed your fingers through his hair, sweeping it away from his face. It was finer than you'd expected, soft and sleek to the touch. You gathered the strands into a ponytail and looped the rubber band around twice, leaving it loose. With the nape of his neck exposed, you noticed more tattoo ink disappearing into his collar, bands of blackout etched along the notches of his spinal column. If the tattoos on his face had hurt, this must have been agony.

“Be careful when you take it out,” you said, reentering his line of sight. He looked startlingly different with his hair tied, revealing features you’d never seen before—the slope of his forehead, the whorls of his ears, the clean angle of his jaw. “You'll pull your hair if you do it too roughly.”

Sojo leaned in for a third time, slotting his eye where yours had earlier been. “You can take it out, too.”

“What?”

“Let's get dinner tonight,” he said, as if that clarified anything. “You can do it then.”

“Okay,” you agreed. He didn't ask if you were free anymore—by now he knew you almost always were. All that waited for you at home were your plants. “Did you notice how the dead cells are floating in clusters? I've never seen a cell line behave like that before.”

His reply came a few seconds delayed. “It's fascinating.”

His unhidden face was so disorienting that you decided to watch his hands instead. With deft fingers, he found the stage controls and shifted the culture plate left and right. Someone else must've shown him the ropes again—one of your male colleagues, probably, the same as with the biosafety cabinet. You could be the one to introduce him to flow cytometry next, if he hadn't learned it yet.

“I have your sword,” Sojo announced at dinner.

You nearly keeled over right then and there.

“Where—where is it?”

“In Tokyo, at my penthouse,” he said, because of course he lived in a penthouse. “It's a wakizashi.”

“That's great to hear,” you said. “What's a wakizashi?”

Sojo continued eating. You hadn't taken out his ponytail yet, but a few strands had escaped from the rubber band to fall loose around his face. He looked younger like that, borderline pretty. You were at another restaurant well beyond your pay grade, seated at a low table in a private room, with Kuregumo resting against the wall behind you. The waiters hadn't so much as batted an eye at the sight of it—if anything, they'd been eagerly awaiting Sojo’s arrival, greeting him at the door with reverent whispers and bringing out elaborate dishes before you'd even had a chance to see the menu.

“It's a shorter blade than a katana,” Sojo explained, his voice growing louder. He set his chopsticks down and gestured vaguely past you—at Kuregumo, you realized. “Samurai used to carry both, but you don't really need to. You can wield a wakizashi one-handed.”

“Thank you, Sojo-san,” you murmured, bowing your head in your best impression of the waiters. You hadn't known that katana were two-handed weapons, though you supposed the wakizashi's convenience would be nice if the occasion to fight ever arose. Not that you had anyone to fight, but still. “Does this mean... do you understand Kuregumo now?”

“There's always room for improvement.” Then he fixed you with a look so intent you could’ve mistaken it for a glare. “What do you think?”

Another veiled question, but you couldn't bring yourself to decipher its true meaning. You ate a bite of rice to buy yourself time. You wanted to ask Sojo a million questions of your own: whether feeling your hands had actually helped him select a sword, whether he'd recommend dating it, whether he slept with Kuregumo tucked beneath his pillow, whether the past two months had been worth six months of an underworld scientist's salary, whether he'd been enjoying himself this summer, whether he would’ve enjoyed himself more if you weren’t the way you were.

“Could I see you and Kuregumo in action?” you finally asked. “And then decide?”

You visited his penthouse on Saturday night. This time, you accepted his offer to be chauffeured to Tokyo, buckled up in the back seat while the twin sorcerers rode up front. It was unnerving, at first, to be in such close proximity to them without Sojo nearby, but they spoke almost exclusively to each other, leaving you free to watch the city blur past in the dark. Through snippets of conversation, you learned they were identical twins, that they’d been working for Sojo for half a decade, that they wished they got to use their sorcery more often.

They cursed constantly, but they weren’t unkind to each other and seemed good at their jobs. You could understand why Sojo kept them around.

The elevator ride up was nerve-wracking for no reason. Sojo was waiting for you by the doors, but he didn’t grab your wrist, didn’t drag you out. Instead, he stepped inside with you, one sheath at his hip and the other in his hands, and asked you to press the button for the roof. You caught glimpses of towering bookshelves and floor-to-ceiling windows as the doors sealed shut.

Outside, the weather was warm and windy. The rooftop had a thin railing around its perimeter but was otherwise sparse. Tokyo’s skyline stretched out beneath you, its lights drowning out the stars, thinning towards the outskirts until they disappeared altogether. As you surveyed the view, searching for the coast you knew you wouldn’t find, Sojo gave you the sheath he’d been holding.

You clipped it to your waist the way you’d seen him do so many times over, the weight bumping into your thigh. With your dominant hand, you grasped the hilt of your wakizashi and drew the blade. It gleamed in the night, only a little longer than your forearm—small but practical, ideal for warding off someone coming near. It didn’t feel like an extension of your body quite yet, but you told yourself you’d get used to it. 

You stared down at the sword. It looked sharp, the tip honed to a razor point, but there really was only one way to test its efficacy. You raised your other hand, aiming for the pad of your thumb.

"Don't," Sojo warned.

You lowered the blade at once and returned it to its sheath. "Your turn."

Sojo walked backwards until he stood by the railing. You retreated too, putting as much distance between you and him as possible. As he drew Kuregumo, the night grew warmer, heavier, the humidity so cloying it choked your breath. Electricity crackled along the blade and danced up Sojo's sleeves. White dragons poured from the datenseki-steel like living fog. You didn't know the first thing about practicing sorcery, but whatever this was, it had to be tied to spirit energy, magnified a thousandfold.

"Do you remember when it stormed?" Sojo asked.

You swallowed, trying to rid your mouth of the metallic tang of ozone. "Like... in the movie?"

"No," he said, shaking his head with a smile. Sparks of electricity fizzled with the movement, crawling up his shoulders, his neck, his face. "After the war."

“I do,” you said, though you remembered the aftermath better. Once the storms had dissipated and the tides had receded, everything in Hakone had been coated in a layer of ocean muck, smelling of brine and rot. You'd had to wade through it on your way to and from school, trudging in rainboots long after the rain had ceased. “Did Kuregumo cause them?”

At the mention of its name, the katana crackled louder, stealing more air from your lungs. The dragon-clouds reared their heads, whiskers curling in the wind as they glided across the rooftop, closing in on you. You grabbed your wakizashi’s hilt again even though you knew they wouldn’t attack, even though you knew you wouldn’t hold out if they did. The silk-wrap was grounding, smooth yet sturdy against your palm.

“Kuregumo and its old bearer,” Sojo amended.

“Could you do it, too?”

“I could,” he said, sounding like he very much wanted to. He was grinning with his mouth hanging open, his gaze distant despite being fixed on you. You’d never seen this expression on him before, never witnessed him so impassioned. “Kuregumo has three attacks. Mei creates lightning, Yui creates ice, and—”

“Sojo-san, where did you live when you were younger?”

He carried on as if you hadn’t spoken. “Kou creates water, but I haven’t figured out how to use it offensively yet.”

He turned away from you, facing the skyline. How would the view look during a thunderstorm? During a lightning strike? Did Sojo have to wear rainboots to school? Did he even go to school? You supposed you were out of chances to find out—now that you had your sword, you didn’t have much reason to see him outside of work.

"You might have to go on more dates," you said. The words felt tremulous on your tongue, slippery as fishscales. "To improve." 

“I agree,” he said.