Chapter Text
Ukai Keishin was, by all accounts, a mediocre spy. In fact, he had the strong sense that he wouldn’t even be in this business were it not for his grandfather, one of the most celebrated spymasters in the history of their country. Well, celebrated might be too big a word — after all, his grandfather’s contributions towards obtaining and maintaining peace would never be known to the public. But it had undoubtedly helped get him in with the right people in the right organizations.
He'd never failed a mission, true, but he’d gotten pretty close several times. Codenamed Crow, Ukai had mostly been relegated to intel operations, using his shop as a front for gathering information, dispensing missions via coded products, making sure to get things to the right people. Unfortunately, he wasn’t so bad at his job that he didn’t know what the other agents called him behind his back, snickering the words “flightless crow” when they thought they were out of earshot.
So imagine his surprise when he got a coded message specifically for him. Someone upstairs knew him well enough to put it on the label of a beer bottle, a new brand he inspected to see if it was any good. Decoded, it read:
Crow — need eyes in local school. A child will be supplied to you, be at your apartment at 20:00.
Well, shit. He didn’t know the first thing about kids, besides having been one. Hell, he only had the small apartment above the shop, which barely fit him. He’d have to clear out the storage closet, make up the guest futon until he could get a regular bed. How old was this kid even supposed to be? Was he going to need toys? Books? And what about clothes? And where the hell did they pull a kid from?
“What a pain,” he muttered to himself. Why they couldn’t just get someone in there as a teacher or a janitor was beyond him. But he wasn’t paid to think about that kind of stuff. He’d had that drilled into his head early on: you get your orders, you make it work. There were no other options.
When his handler, Redwood, appeared at his door, precisely at 8 pm, he did his best to appear at least somewhat prepared. An hour of rapid cleaning had made enough room for the futon and space in the closet for anything he
The little boy appeared to be no more than seven, with bright orange hair and huge eyes that took in everything. He was holding Redwood’s hand, but he wasn’t paying her any real attention. In her other hand was a small suitcase, likely filled with most of the essentials.
“Shouyou, look, it’s your Uncle Keishin,” Redwood said with a bright smile.
Shouyou, huh? “Hey kid, good to see you again,” he said. He was trying too hard already, he knew, the kid watching him without saying a word. “I haven’t seen you since you were a baby.”
“Hi,” he said, clearly not convinced. Ukai couldn’t blame him; he’d never been much of an actor.
When Redwood came inside, planting the kid in front of the TV, she took out a file on the boy for Ukai to study. Hinata Shouyou had been rescued from an orphanage that had been targeted in a recent bombing. As such, they didn’t have any real information on his past, and the kid hadn’t been able to supply many answers, even simple things like his birthday or where he was from. Still, he showed a lot of athletic promise, meaning he could one day be a bigger asset to the organization. Not to mention that people tended to be more open towards athletes, meaning he'd have an easier time getting into places.
His psychological evaluation was a bit off, somehow giving the perfect answers to every question but noted as having poor social skills and a less-than-firm grasp of basic vocabulary. But, well, he was an orphan, he was probably good at being whoever he needed to be and little else. And now he was stuck with some hapless adult who could barely take care of himself.
“So, how long is my nephew going to be staying with me?” he asked.
“Little Shouyou is under your legal guardianship in every sense, Ukai-san,” Redwood explained. “And you’ll be enrolling him in the local elementary school, of course.”
“Of course,” he said. But he was still reeling from the revelation that this was going to be his kid, his actual legal kid, for the next ten years at least. And what if the mission went south? Would he be responsible for the kid then? Or would the organization burn them both? “Though, it’ll be hard to get him in, given that his paperwork was lost in the fire.”
“I’m sure you’ll find a way,” she said. Of course they wouldn’t have a contingency plan for this. Make it work. “But the orphanage did send over some funds to help you get the boy clothes, furniture, anything he’ll need.” Ukai could read behind the lines here: they should look as close to a real family as possible, which meant Ukai was going to have to act like a real parent. At least they recognized they didn’t pay him nearly enough to afford having a second mouth to feed.
It had to suck, being a little kid shuffled off to some weird adult who, whether the kid it realized or not yet, was woefully unprepared to be anyone’s anything, let alone get his shit together enough to be someone’s legal guardian. When he looked over to Shouyou, he was still happily watching cartoons of a masked hero fighting some bad guy, eyes glued to the screen.
“There is one more thing,” Redwood said. “As you know, it’s important that a child have a full support system. That’s something the school will be looking for as well, so please make sure you have everything in line before you apply to send Shouyou to school.”
Ukai felt the world suddenly stop dead. There was no way she was saying what he thought she was saying. “Something the…orphanage won’t be providing?”
Redwood’s smile made his insides curdle. “Correct. After all, they don’t have many spare resources. But that won’t be a problem, will it?”
It sounded like a question, but Ukai knew better. “Of course not. Anything for Shouyou.”
She smiled. “I knew you’d be a perfect fit for Shouyou. We thought long and hard about which relative to leave him with, but we knew you’d be the right person.”
Flattery wasn’t necessary, and if anything, it felt pretty condescending. But he did his best to smile back, and keep smiling as he walked her out the door. It wouldn’t be forever anyways, none of this was ever for forever. If the kid did well, they’d recruit him into the service and he’d be just some agent he lived with for a few years.
“Did you eat yet, kid?” he asked.
Shouyou turned to look at Ukai. “Yeah, the lady gave me a sandwich.”
But Ukai knew that look in his eye; he’d seen it for years on people of all walks of life. “Guessing it wasn’t a lot though. Do you want something else?”
The small smile that broke out on his face made Ukai feel almost relieved. Relieved and just a bit sad, to know this kid had long swallowed his hunger. “Really?”
“I’ve got some rice leftover from dinner, and I can probably make a decent omelet. What do you say?”
Shouyou smile widen, getting up from the floor in a burst of energy. “Yeah! I’m so hungry, I could eat a horse!”
And it certainly seemed like he could have, wolfing down the meal like it was the last time he’d ever eat. Watching him, Ukai went through all of the things he was going to have to do to get this kid into a school. Catch him up academically, create a whole set of records, get him clothes and supplies, and make it seem like they were actually a perfectly normal family.
Which meant somehow, by some miracle, he was going to have to find a spouse.