Chapter Text
Esse District, Fenneca
Yukiko craned her neck in an attempt to see above the crush of people, searching for some glimpse of Kanji.
“There’s no sign of him,” she said, turning to Chie. “Well, there is in that the entire street’s in chaos, but if everything is a sign, then nothing is.”
“You give me a heart attack every time you do that,” Chie said, rubbing at her face.
Yukiko cocked her head. “I didn’t think I did anything unusual just now.”
“The sticking your head out and doing eye-catching things thing,” Chie said, glancing around the crowd. “It’s not really the best way to keep from getting caught.”
“It is the best way to spot someone else, though.” Yukiko pointed out. “Besides, we have glamours; no one’s going to recognize us with only a two second glimpse.”
“That’s not how it works, Yukiko,” Chie said, her head sweeping back and forth, watching the crowd. “It just makes our faces hard to remember. When they’re still looking at us, they— What?”
Yukiko couldn’t help but laugh. “Sorry, it’s just funny. For once, it’s the opposite way around.”
Yukiko could see the exact moment that Chie realized what she meant. “Oh, right,” Chie said, the words slow and enunciated. “You never remember faces.”
“It sure does make diplomacy fun,” Yukiko said. “A never-ending game of ‘Memorize Who Has Certain Pronounced Features So You Have Half a Chance at Identifying Them Later’.”
“Yukiko,” Chie started, the tone foreign and soft enough that Yukiko had to interrupt before Chie finished the thought.
“Anyway, there are a bunch of alternatives to popping my head out to look for Kanji that would be exponentially more hazardous.” She grinned. “For instance, I could set one of the waste sluices on fire.”
Chie looked at her, eyes wide in alarm.
“Oh, stop. I’m not actually going to do it. I just brought up the possibility for comparison’s sake.”
“I never know with you,” Chie sighed. That was one of the best and worst things about Chie; it felt like she never doubted for a second that Yukiko was fully capable of doing anything she set her mind to.
“I do pick my battles, you know.” Yukiko paused. “I don’t like to, mind, but I do.”
Chie mumbled something indistinct, and Yukiko narrowed her eyes. “What did you—”
“This feels weird. I feel weird about this,” Chie said, looking around.
“What do you mean?” Yukiko asked.
Huffing out a breath, Chie lowered her voice. “I don’t know. It’s just— I know Kanji needs something to do. I know that we need something to do. Just sitting there and letting it all fester won’t work; it can’t work. We can’t stay in one place with only a field trip to the abandoned emotional hell of the Dolia district every two days. We can’t do that.”
“But?” Yukiko prompted.
“But this is risky, Yukiko.” Chie scrubbed at her face. “I have no problem with risky, usually, but not—” She looked back at Yukiko, and Yukiko fought to look into her eyes. Fought not to wince at the brush of unfamiliar people rushing past.
“I just—” Chie’s mouth twisted. “I have to make sure you’re safe.”
There was a time where those words would have made Yukiko flush, back before she had realized what they really meant. Now she only felt some hollow, heavy thing grow in her stomach. “Loyal to your station, even off-duty,” she said, forcing a laugh. She dropped her eyes and moved to push through the crowd.
There was a long moment before Chie said anything more. “You know me,” Chie said, “loyalty is my middle name.”
“I thought it was— Kanji!”
“Okay, where in the world did you get that idea?”
“No,” Yukiko said, pointing, “I saw Kanji over there. He seems to be standing still for the moment.”
“Finally,” Chie said, sighing. “I’m glad he hasn’t gotten into any trouble. It’s not much fun playing guard when your charge keeps running off.”
Yukiko scrunched up her nose. “Now you sound like my old guards. You just need to start complaining about how that Satanoka kid should know better than to encourage me.”
“To be fair, I did eventually learn some good redirection tactics,” Chie said. “They could have stood to learn something from me.”
“Right,” Yukiko said, freezing slightly. “Right. Well, I’m going to just see what needs doing over there. Right.”
Chie reached out a hand and Yukiko moved away. “Yukiko, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Something could be wrong over there. I’m going to go check in with Kanji to make sure. It’s fine.”
“You do not seem fine, Yukiko,” Chie said, her brow wrinkling. “You don’t have to bottle everything up, you know. I’m here for—”
“ Don’t , Chie.” Yukiko took in a deep breath. “Let’s go check on Kanji.”
“I— Alright. Sure,” Chie said.
Yukiko bit the inside of her cheek as Chie fell into step behind her. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair for Chie to sound so hurt when she’d been the first to pull back. She was the one who’d built walls between them, not Yukiko. She was the one who’d given them jagged edges so that they didn’t fit together anymore.
Yukiko was the one who had had to learn to stand alone.
Absorbed in her thoughts, Yukiko didn’t notice the child that almost barrelled into her side until it was too late. At the last moment, she was pulled out of the way.
She could feel Chie release a long, drawn out breath, pressed as she was against her. “That was close,” Chie said. “Kids never do look where they’re going, do they?”
Yukiko let a bark of a laugh escape. “We never did.” She tapped the arm Chie had wrapped around her. “I’m safe now, you know.”
Chie released her immediately, stepping back and almost bumping into someone in the process. “Right. Of course.”
Righting herself, Yukiko looked around. “Alright, now where is Kanji?” She asked, only for her breath to catch.
“Oh no.”
“Oh no? Why oh no?” Chie asked, craning her neck. “He’s just talking with that one person, right?”
“Chie, remember what I just said about having to memorise key features?”
“Yes,” Chie replied. Her eyes narrowed. “Are you saying you know the person he’s talking to?”
“Unless there’s someone else who’s exactly that height with that shade of hair in the city, then Kanji’s talking to the heir to the Detecandian throne.”
“Shit,” Chie hissed before snapping to attention. “Okay, so, how likely is that? Comparatively speaking.”
“Have you seen anyone else with that colour of hair?”
“Point. Alright, so I’ll run the extraction. Piece of cake.” Chie took a deep breath and walked towards the two.
“Wait, Chie—” Yukiko called out just a moment too late, and Chie was swallowed by the crowd, only to reappear a moment later. “I could have helped.”
Yukiko scuffed at the ground with her shoe, frowning. She could have provided a distraction, or helped create a cover for Kanji’s quick disappearance. Maybe she’d be his adopted sister, and their aunt had fallen down a well, or their crops had fallen under the siege of a swarm of giant beetles. Chie could be their concerned neighbor or childhood friend.
There were a thousand different ways Yukiko could have helped, and twice as many stories that she could think up on the spot. She just never had the chance to prove it.
She frowned at the figures in the distance and forced herself to consider the problem at hand. Before that moment, Kanji talking to people about the suspicious nature of the political situation hadn’t seemed like much of an issue. After all, there was no force on earth that could curb the mighty deluge of gossip. It was an unstoppable force upon which society depended.
However, things could go very badly if Kanji was implying things to someone who was residing inside the castle. Gossip around the town was one thing, and even then, the empty streets of Dolia served as a grim reminder of consequences, should it go too far. Gossip in the court led to unrest: to coffers being put away for the stockpile of weapons, to years of peace shattered with one misspoken phrase.
Yukiko bit down on her lip, hard. Things would be so much easier if everyone just understood exactly what everyone else meant whenever they spoke. No diplomacy, no ornamentation, no picking and choosing the exact right words, just raw, thrumming meaning and understanding.
Things would be so much simpler if operations like Chie’s extraction could be as simple as hoisting Kanji into the air and carting him back to the Tatsumis’, rather than depending on conversational finesse and distraction and fine manners that meant nothing more than a silent agreement that peace necessitated pretending that everything was fine all of the time, no matter how much insincerity Yukiko could feel dripping off of the, “Of course we’d be glad to assist you,” that fell from an ambassador’s mouth.
Chie had told her once— back before everything broke— that she found audiences between ambassadors unnerving, but she understood them. “I don’t like the way they play pretend,” she’d said. “I wish they’d be honest and just say what they want, how they feel, and why, but they never will.” Then she’d sighed and smiled at Yukiko. “I get why they do it, but I still can’t help but wish, y’know?”
Yukiko hadn’t been able to ask her the reason, too choked up with her own inability to see it. She didn’t know why all of it was necessary, all of the false saccharinity of it, but she had to perform to every expectation of it. Then there was Chie, who could be frank and honest and Chie instead of some phantom of herself, yet Chie was the one who understood.
There were times when Yukiko thought that Chie would be a better ruler than she’d ever be. That if they’d switched places somewhere, some transfer of responsibilities and contracts and fates, Chie would never falter.
She was certainly fumbling enough with Kanji and his conversational companion, however. Then again, it was hard to anticipate any member of the court (aside from Yukiko) disguising themself and walking about the city, much less the heir of a neighboring country. However, Naoto Shirogane had always been as odd as a fire without ashes. Yukiko respected that about them. It made interactions and audiences much more interesting.
Unfortunately, the same traits that made court interactions fun were further complicating the great mess that Yukiko referred to as, “The Shadow Situation”. She hoped that if it all worked out, historians would keep the title. Maybe they would even ask her to provide input on the transcription. She’d have to ensure that they properly illuminated the pages with lots of complex, interesting designs with gaping mouths and glaring eyes, and—
Wow, Kanji was a very alarming shade of red. Yukiko hadn’t seen him blush that much in years.
Naoto had brought their hand to their mouth, their index finger resting on their fist, as was their habit when they were trying to make sense of something. That, alone, wouldn’t have boded well. Combined with the fact that Chie had adopted the ramrod military stiffness she fell back on whenever she was uncomfortable, it meant trouble.
Then, Naoto moved.
There was a beat between the moment Yukiko was staring at the group and the moment that she ran to them, propelled by the step Naoto took towards Chie.
“My sincerest apologies,” Yukiko lied, her mouth shaped by muscle memory, “but something requires our full attention as of this moment, and I fear I must deprive you of your companions.” She slipped her arm through the crook of Chie’s and tugged at the back of Kanji’s tunic.
“Hold on a second, Yu—”
“Kanji!” Chie hissed.
“Yui?” Kanji said, his voice pitching it into a question.
Yukiko hesitated, still ducking her head to escape Naoto’s gaze. “Kanji, can whatever it is wait? Your mother’s going to be worried.”
“Ma? What’s she worried about?” Kanji’s voice rose from bewildered to indignant within the space of a moment. “Are those punks still hanging around? I told them to step off and leave the shop alone.”
“Are local businesses often antagonised by delinquents in Fenneca?” Naoto asked. “I hadn’t heard of such troubles previously, I’m afraid.”
“Nah,” Kanji answered. “They’re just some powderkegs with too much time on their hands.”
“Kanji,” Chie said, the exasperation in her voice tempered by affection, “that’s what delinquents are.”
“In that case, nah, Fenneca’s fine. They just hang around Cuross— Sorry, the textile district— for some godsdamned reason.”
“That is unfortunate. You had best leave at once to attend to that, then.”
Yukiko felt Chie shift her weight beside her. It wasn’t too noticeable, the way that she released some of the tension she’d been carrying. The remaining stiffness, however, was hard to ignore. Something was still wrong.
“I’ll take my leave first, and allow you to go about your business. Good day, Tatsumi.” Naoto ducked their head, then turned to Chie. “Liuetenant.” They ducked their head again. Then, they turned to Yukiko, and bowed. “Princess.”
Yukiko felt a wash of cold overcome her, her expression freezing into a mask.
Naoto straightened, then tipped their hat. “I do hope you didn’t expect me to just ignore all of this. I will figure out what’s going on, eventually.”
“I would expect nothing less of you, Détea Shirogane,” Yukiko said, enunciating the Detecandian title.
Naoto snorted, then looked surprised at themself. “That’s fair.” They shook their head. “I should know better than to give you openings. I’ve never been the best at recovering my suavity.”
“And you hide it so well,” Yukiko said, allowing herself a smile.
“Pretension comes with the occupation, I’m afraid,” Naoto said. “Although, I’m learning more and more about its hazards each day. For instance, if you would care to explain how you manage to be in two places at once—”
“You see, we would ,” Chie exclaimed, talking with the frantic energy of Muku before a walk, “but we are very, very busy with the thing at Kanji’s house, which demands our full attention, and, would you look at the sun, it looks like we’re late!”
“I was unaware that delinquency runs on schedules.”
“Fennecian delinquents are very organised,” Yukiko said.
“They’re assholes is what they are,” Kanji interjected, rubbing at the back of his neck. “Sorry, Naoto, looks like we should get going.”
“It’s no trouble at all. Good luck with your delinquents,” Naoto said, expression blank. Yukiko could swear there was a note of laughter buried in their voice.
Once they were out of earshot, Kanji turned to Yukiko. “What was that you called ‘em?”
“It’s a Detecandian title that’s equivalent of ‘heir to the throne’. It literally means ‘person who uncovers’.”
“Gods above, you made a pun. You made a pun at the heir to Detecandia while we were panicking and trying to escape; how are you even real ?” Chie said, bringing her hands to her face. “Oh gods,” she said, her voice cracking a bit. “How are you real?”
“That’s Yukiko, alright,” Kanji said, laughing.
Chie still had her face buried in her hands, but she extricated one to point at Kanji. “And you! What were you doing talking to the heir to Detecandia?”
Kanji’s brow furrowed. “They asked me about what happened in Dolia,” he said, as if it were obvious. “They were investigating when we were nosing around the other day, apparently, and wanted to know what was going on.”
“And you just told them?” Chie asked.
“No!” Kanji puffed up, offended. “I know when to keep my trap shut, you know! I just said that we were good friends with some of the people that shacked up in Dolia, which we were.” He winced. “Are,” he corrected.
“And Naoto just let that go? That doesn’t sound like them,” Yukiko said.
“Nah, they were pretty insistent that you two looked just like the princess and one of her guards, which, yeah, but I know your glamours work, so I just kept denying shit.”
Chie sucked in her bottom lip. “How would Naoto have seen through the—” Her eyes slid to Yukiko. More importantly, they slid to what Yukiko was sure was her sheepish expression.
“Naoto’s faceblind, aren’t they.” It wasn’t a question.
“Yes,” Yukiko admitted. “Yes, they are.”
Chie closed her eyes. “Yep. Alright. Great. Perfect. Time to never leave Kanji’s house ever again.”
“Naoto seems nice, though. I’m sure they’ll understand if we explain the situation,” Kanji objected.
“Why is your type always reserved nerds who laugh at bad puns?” Chie asked.
Kanji mumbled something, and Chie stretched to cover his mouth.
“Anyway! Let’s get home before you two cause any international incidents. We should fill the others in on this mess,” Chie said, nodding to herself. Then, she was off, power walking with single-minded determination.
Yukiko laughed, but followed. Kanji, grumbling, did the same. Neither looked back.
“Do you ever feel regret coil in your gut? Resentment block your throat? Tears suffocating you in your frustration and self-pity?”
“Do you feel them like a physical ache, weighing down, pressing, hurting ?”
“They aren’t physical attacks. They aren’t real like hands are real, like swords are real. They are perceptions. Phantoms.Yet they hurt.”
“Isn’t that funny? Isn’t that obscene? How an idea, an emotion , can hurt you?”
“Imagine how the pain of it could fester, how the reality of it could fester, if given enough time.”
“I have endured this for long enough.”