Chapter Text
Ena huffs.
And then she groans.
And then her eye twitches.
She wants to scream.
There’s just so much Ena can do before she goes absolutely batshit insane cleaning these incredibly high, incredibly long stained glass panels of Religion, of Worship. Just with an incredibly long stick attached to a raggedy, messy bunch of bristles arranged in the vague shape of a broom head, mind you.
Being a nun is no easy job.
Sweat pulls her face into an unpleasant scowl, down the sides of her flushed face. Her hair is clinging to all the wrong places, trapping too much heat. She must look even more unapproachable than normal.
The chapel is too big and too high and too fucking hot.
(“I hate this job, for real.”)
She also needs to clean the seats. The endless rows of seats.
Ena swears, “Fuck!”, despite the fact that:
- She is a nun;
- Nuns should not be swearing.
Sorry, Hatsune Miku, I didn’t mean any of that. Ena apologises in her head, because she just can't bring herself to say it out loud in this weather.
Ena attempts to clean the glass panels again and eventually just gives up. The freakishly long broom teeters over and falls in a resounding crash down on the ground.
She sighs, a puff of great hot air, and shifts her gaze to the marble figure-- the centerpiece of the chapel-- standing tall and flowing.
Hatsune Miku’s hair is gold and streaming behind her body, and her eyes are carved to be closed with a sort of effortless grace and beauty. Her skirt flows majestic, long and significant, and her hands are stacked gently on top of each other, stretching out to whoever stands right in front of the church doors. She is so magnificent in the golden light of the setting sun, when the light streams in drafty wisps through the highest clear windows.
Ena peers at her with relevance and shuts her eyes, at peace, clasping her hands together in respect.
The air is still stuffy but it is still, and with the stillness, her own frantic, errantic, annoyed heart slows and calms.
While her eyes are shut, she thinks about her life in the Mechanical Kingdom.
She thinks about Mafuyu, probably tired and sick with purple eyebags and fragile skin, nursing her third cup of coffee in their shared apartment, seven stories high within cogs and cement and steel, trying to shake the adrenaline from participating in the Hunt for animal meat for their Kingdom’s needs.
She is cynical and strange and hotheaded, but she is Ena’s best friend.
She thinks about the King. He is a suited leader-- pale grey eyes burning with the passion of bringing the kingdom to its most glorious days, hand sweeping through split-dyed hair in the most regal sense. Most of the time she approves of his many rules for the good of the Kingdom. But just sometimes she does not understand his decisions for the Kingdom.
(Like doubling down on limited trade with other Kingdoms. Or making them pay taxes. That one is the worst.)
(And what’s his deal with Magical Folk? Like actually. Ena has never seen one and will never see one. They can't be that much of a threat unlike what King Toya hisses that they are.)
She thinks about teatime with the Knights of the Kingdom, Shiho, Tsukasa, and Akito, sunlight spinning the tea in their posh little cups into gold. Banter with them, usually resulting in everyone teaming against Tsukasa. Banter with her little brother, sharp and pointed and sometimes a little too much for both their bleeding hearts to recover from.
She stops thinking.
When she opens her eyes again, Miku is pale and still and sunlight no longer settles on her marbled figure. She blinks to get used to the brightness.
And then that is when she hears it.
In the still, quiet, revered air of the church, a quiet sound slips through.
If there had been just a small draft, Ena would never have heard it. But the air is silent and the sound trembles into her questioning ears.
It is a sound of agony. Quiet, muffled agony, unwanting to be heard, unwilling to be received by an eavesdropper.
But Ena is nothing but a Filthy, Brash, Curious eavesdropper.
She startles, and gazes in the sound’s general direction.
It is from the back door of the Church.
Ena frowns, lips scrunched.
And then she moves.
She does not look back, presses a tender hand to the back door.
She pushes out back.
The grass out back is flourishing, untouched by any of the Kingdom’s humans. Little specks of flowers poke through. There is something beautiful in its wildness, its untamed nature.
But this backdrop is not the main character.
The main character is a slumped figure on the bed of grass, body rising and falling with small, pained breaths, a shock of long, pink hair tangled into the grass, locks of it falling across their face. A horn sprouts from the side Ena can see, right at the side of their head, winding upwards, the mark of the Magical Folk.
Their eyes are closed.
There is a small furrow in their brow, a tensed muscle in the corner of their lip.
A gash cuts itself through the person’s face, glaring and invasive and cruel, an open wound, festering and bleeding all over, deep and maniacal. Their right arm is twisted at an impossible angle, the strange garments on their body soaked with a dark red, irregular patches.
Ena’s mouth is parted, and her throat is so dry.
“Hel... Hello?” She rasps, a shock of horror running through her veins.
The person pushes a soft cry through their lips. Their finger twitches.
“Fuck,” Ena mutters, and hurries over.
The person groans. Ena wants to help, but fears her touch may injure them further. As such she hovers her hands inches from their shaking, pain-addled body, aimless, fraught with worry.
Their eyelashes flutter as they attempt to recover just slightly. Ena notices the swoop of a singular long pink eyelash at the outer corner of their eye, graceful and poised in spite of the current precarious situation.
They are beautiful. Ena doesn't think it’s the time to think about all that, though.
“How– how can I help?” Ena approaches, voice trembling and stuttering.
Their throat moves, in a dry, painful swallow. “Please. Please.” Cracks from their lips, rips like it hurts.
“Okay. Okay,” Ena bites her bottom lip.
She can't let them die. She can’t. She’s obligated to. She is a good servant of Hatsune, of the Good Way, of Moral Obligation. She will save a life, no matter magical or not.
And in a split second decision so brash, so daring, and so dangerous, Ena grits her teeth and scoops her arms under their shaking body, gathering dirt, gathering grass in her palms.
“Come on!” She groans, staggers upright, her weak arm muscles screaming at the weight of a whole person, and she gasps in breaths and pulls to her feet unsteadily. They jostle in her arms, a whine whistling through, exhaustion and injury.
Ena throws their good arm over her shoulder, heaves their body onto her back.
“Goddamn!” Ena stumbles, swears, so unseemly of a nun of the Church, and she staggers her way out of the Church compound, another body dead weight on her back, aching.
She takes the back alleys, the shortcuts, the ones with no one to see her struggle. No one to see her betrayal of the Kingdom.
She curses the fuck out of the fact that their flat is a whole seven stories high. At least there’s an elevator that clunks when she drags them both on board.
When she collapses into a heap with the pink-haired Magical, them now fully unconscious, Asahina Mafuyu stands above them both, cynical eyebrows a-flight, purple hair wild and sweat-drenched; takes in the incredibly confusing view at her feet.
Mafuyu’s indigo eyes flicker, and she purses her lips, hard to read.
Ena looks up at her, frazzled, awkward.
“Err... Help...? Me? Us? Them? Injured.” Ena clarifies, as though Mafuyu is not a sentient person with basic comprehension skills.
Mafuyu’s coffee is still steaming on the counter behind her.
Mafuyu’s lips scold themselves into a thin line, and without any humour whatsoever, she says, “What the actual fuck did you do, Shinonome.”
Ena and Mafuyu argue about it, and then Mafuyu has the rest of her coffee, and then they argue some more, but they end up nursing the Magical in their spare pull-out bed back to health.
Mafuyu agrees to this because she owes Ena this, and also because Mafuyu holds a distinct distaste for the people in charge of the Kingdom, their pretentious ways, their bored looks. It is Mafuyu’s rebellion against the system that has stripped her bare and exhausted and unable to muster up energy for the things she used to like.
Mafuyu’s passion is not in securing food from their daily Hunts in the forests, not in driving arrowheads into poor little rabbits too slow for their own good.
She likes to heal others.
And so Asahina Mafuyu pulls thread after thread of surgical stitches into the gash on the Magical’s face, on other parts of their body. Asahina Mafuyu snaps their shoulder back into their socket, makes a handy little splint for the soreness. Asahina Mafuyu steals medicine from the pharmacy for the fever.
Ena is so full of gratitude for her best friend that she positively burns with joy.
So she tells Mafuyu, “Thanks. I guess.” to express her full-bodied relief for the situation. That’s better than any other compliment, Ena reckons. Mafuyu only grunts back, expression stoic, and goes right back to subtly poke fun at Ena’s height and her boring hair and everything.
So everything is as normal as it can be.
A week in, the Magical stirs, long eyelashes brushing their cheeks. Not that Ena has been obsessively staring at their closed eyes. Nope.
(There is a chip in one of the Magical’s horns.)
Their eyes slide open and Ena peers down at them.
Their irises are a pale pink, sunset-coloured. They are pretty and peaceful and pliant on Ena’s pull-out bed, and Ena almost loses her breath.
The Magical blinks up at Ena. Ena blinks back.
A brilliant smile erupts over their face, the suddenness pulling almost painfully at the stitches, and it is bright but mischievous.
“Whatcha looking at me like that for? Like what you see?”
Ena startles.
“Pardon?” She says in confusion.
The Magical sighs. “I said, like what you see? Are you a little hard of hearing? I’m not a little hard of hearing. In fact, I can hear just fine. I can hear your heart beating pretty fast. Do you have a chronic heart problem? Is that what it is? You’re sick and stuff. Is that what all this starin’ is for?”
“Hello??” Yells Ena, in a sudden burst of annoyance and incredulousness.
The Magical narrows their eyes at her. “Yes?? I can hear you. I just told you.”
“Holy shit. You are insufferable.” Ena looks down at them with a primal fear.
“Well, tell me something new, Miss Non-Mag. That's what we call y’all, by the way. Non-Mags. Non-Magicals. We’re quite creative.”
“Kill me now.”
In the next month, Ena and Mafuyu are joined by a third roommate.
Ena learns that their name is Mizuki. Akiyama Mizuki. Like Autumn. And stuff. And that they present more feminine, responds to a feminine label.
So now they have got Mizuki, grinning, too friendly over burnt toast, her eyes twinkling, a smile gracing their lips, so full of life that Ena can hardly believe that the whimpering, quaking thing she heaved on her back, seeped of energy and strength, is the same girl that’s cackling when she gets a rise out of Ena herself, nudging at a touch-repulsed, confused Mafuyu like a lost little kitty.
“So,” Mizuki clears her throat, putting on their best posh accent, the one the King and his higher-ups use, (the one her idiot brother uses), clipped and too fake, “tell me about yourself, Shinonome Ena.”
Ena scowls over her morning eggs and toast. (It’s all she can afford, actually.)
Mizuki has got a teasing tint on her lips. Her hair is still so pink and so softly vibrant that her skin glows against the shade of their hair. She’s wearing her hair down, today, soft locks tickling at her chin, gentle waves cascading down at her chin and below, small flyaways that makes them look windswept and blessed by Hatsune herself. The stitches across her face has done their job. Or maybe Magicals heal much faster than normal humans. Probably that.
Ena admits to herself that Mizuki is just a little breathtaking. That’s all.
“I’m boring. I'm not sure what you want me to say.” Ena deadpans, staring at Mizuki with half-lidded indifference.
Mizuki waves a hand up. “Excuses, excuses. Nobody's ever boring. Come on, Princess. We haven't got all day.”
“We do have all day, idiot. I’m not on Church duty today. Tomorrow I’ll have to work a 9-to-5, though.” Ena snorts.
“Tell me.”
Ena throws hands. The fork clatters a little dangerously in her plate. “Fine!”
Mizuki arches a playful brow.
“I’m Shinonome Ena, I’ve got a brother and ungrateful parents, I’m twenty-five years old, I recently found one strand of white hair and had to take the whole day off because I was sobbing all over the place, I’m single, and I’m gay.” Ena ticks off her fingers.
Mizuki grins. “You’ve got a white hair?”
“You asshole!” she grumbles. “I haven't got over it.”
“Poor you, greying with old age. I’m living with Grandpa, everybody.”
“Shut up, you absolute maniac. Absolutely crazy. Bonkers.”
Mizuki tilts her head back, hair slipping back from her delicate collarbones, exposed by a stretched hem of one of Mafuyu’s old tees, laughing, a stretch of pale throat.
Ena swallows.
“Like I said, absolutely bonkers.”
Mizuki only laughs harder, shoulders shaking with mirth and delight, the picture of innocent joy, and Ena soaks in the sound and the sight and she is bathed in the purest form of easy companionship.
Mizuki and Ena and Mafuyu are all twenty-five and are all supposed to be saddled in the highest points of their youth, and Ena finds the definition of youth etched all over the smile lines in Mizuki’s perfect face, in the silvery scar across her face, healed by Mafuyu’s stitches, in the easygoing tilt in her tone. In the ease of her gait when she gets across the room to grin at Ena.
Ena catches herself smiling a little back, and sometimes she isn’t quite able to roll the smile back into her chest cavity, the quirk of the corner of her lip uncontrollable and wild, wild, wild.
Thank god for Akiyama, Ena thinks.
In the time Akiyama Mizuki spends in their little apartment seven stories up, little trinkets start to appear all around.
A conch shell ends up on the lowest shelf of a glass case. It is large and gleaming and definitely different from the flawed, small, white shells scattered on their miserable little beaches.
Vines creep at the corner of their flat, brings flair to their dim small apartment, literally. Ena swears they glow just slightly at night.
Suddenly a cat keeps on visiting their front door. Ena never can refuse a cat some of their scraps.
There is a dreadful scare one month and one week in.
Mizuki is lounging on their tattered couch, scratching at a spot in the fabric that is full of lint balls. Ena is on the couch, a suitable distance away from Mizuki if not for Mizuki’s executive decision to shove their lanky legs and feet into Ena’s lap. Mizuki and Ena bicker playfully about nothing and everything and Mafuyu is on the breakfast counter brewing coffee and everything is bright and light.
Until there's two knocks on their door.
The sound is familiar but suddenly grating to Ena’s ears. Fuck.
Mafuyu whirls around, wild curls of her purple hair in a messy ponytail frantic, even as her face betrays nothing as per usual. The deep indigo sheen in Mafuyu’s eyes flash and Ena sees the panic, the fear that Mafuyu tries her damndest to suppress. The fear of getting found out. The fear of getting dragged back under the Kingdom’s oppressive influence.
Ena bites her own lip and almost draws blood.
“Mizuki,” Ena mutters, panicky and sweaty. “Mizuki, you need to hide. Now.”
Mizuki springs up, the bubbling laughter dying on their lips, and Ena positively dismays at the loss before catching herself.
“Where? How?” Mizuki’s eyes dart around, scanning, accessing.
“Just go in a room. Under one of our beds. Quickly.” Ena hisses.
“Okay,” Mizuki shrinks, and Ena sees just how terrified she is, all raised hairs and fidgeting hands and trembling lashes, and remembers the state that Ena found her in.
Mizuki slinks off, smooth as ice, if not a little hurried in her movements.
Once Mizuki slips into the room and no sound is heard from Mizuki, Ena nods jerkily and Mafuyu draws her lips into a line, schools her eyes to be its indifferent mask, and stalks to the door.
When Mafuyu opens the wooden door, rusty at its hinges, creaking like old-man bones, Ena sees the mop of deep dark inky hair, pin straight and scattering in the slight wind.
Mafuyu makes a sound, unintelligible and hard-to-read, unless you are Ena, which Ena identifies as uneasiness and uncertainty.
“Hello, Ichika.”
“Senior Mafuyu! I haven't seen you around in a long time,” grins Ichika. Ena cannot remember her last name, because she just refuses to.
“As have I,” Mafuyu utters, and Ena hides a smile when she detects a vague slither of annoyance in her formalities.
“Ichika,” says Ena, warmly enough that Ichika wouldn't ask any questions, but also not quite friendly, “how’s the astrophysics stuff going?”
Ichika turns to Ena and smiles bashfully. “Actually, pretty dang good. I like doing astrophysics.”
“That's good. That’s good.”
Mafuyu peers down at Ichika. “Is that all you wanted to talk about, Ichika?”
Ichika blinks owlishly at Mafuyu through rectangle-framed spectacles.
“Well, not really. I actually wanted your opinion on something related to physics, Mafuyu.”
“Oh.”
“Can I come in?”
“No!” Ena bursts out, and catches herself as Mafuyu gives her the coldest look that ices over the blood in her veins. “I mean, uh, sure. I guess.”
“Right…” Ichika frowns a little bit, shuffles on the spot. “You know, if I’ve intruded on a bad timing or something, you could just tell me.”
“No, no, no, you’re fine.” Mafuyu says, blank slate. “We’ll talk at the breakfast counter, how about that.”
Ichika grins a thousand suns. “Yes, please.”
Ena hears a thud in the room Mizuki is in. Her heart literally stops.
Mafuyu also startles, sharp hearing from being an agile archer that wants a bullseye. She stops in the middle of walking Ichika to the counter, which makes Ichika slam into her back.
“Ow! Why’d you stop?” Ichika rubs at her chest.
“Nothing.” Mafuyu frowns just slightly. “Come over here.”
Her eyes flicker to Ena, saying, go check, and Mafuyu and Ichika are settling opposite each other at the counter, Ichika placing a stack of incomprehensible papers on the top.
Ena walks off when she sees them both engrossed in their nerd things.
She slips into the same room Mizuki went in.
Ena realises that Mizuki chose to hide in her room, in the room with her messy, frustrated drawings, angry splatters of paint and enraged pencil strokes of teenage angst, the wonky porcelain jewelry plate with small little frogs on them she made herself in the pottery place at twenty year old. There's also a small frame with her and her brother in it, looking at each other with disdain and love. Polar opposites, disagreeable, yet devoted in blood.
They haven't talked in a long while.
“Pssst!” Ena jolts.
Mizuki waves at her in the dark, just a blur of wash in the darkness of the room, from under her bed.
Ena walks over silently and crouches down to Mizuki’s level.
Mizuki is on her back, head poked out, dust settling on their hair up close. The glint of her teeth tells Ena that she is still smiling at Ena, still so lively, still so delightful.
“Hey,” says Ena first, shocking herself.
“Hey,” grins Mizuki, bright even when shrouded in darkness, a huffed whisper in the absence of light.
“Who's that out there?”
“Just a girl from Mafuyu’s uni,” Ena murmurs. “She's her junior. Used to idolise her, still does idolise her. Mafuyu did physics in uni, she did physics in uni, only one of them is an astrophysicist and it is definitely not Mafuyu the Archer.”
“Damn. Why didn't she?”
“She never wanted to be a physicist. Pretty sure she wants to be a healer.”
“But she's not a healer, is she.”
“No,” Ena says. “She’s already broken out of the expectations by being a Hunter instead of a good brilliant job like a physicist or a doctor. It’s still pretty dang good watching her gather the courage to do what's best for her.”
“Did you?”
Ena looks at Mizuki. Her eyes have already adjusted, and Mizuki’s features are clear despite the darkness. Mizuki’s eyes crinkle, adorable, perfect.
“Yeah, well. Nothing’s better than devoting myself to the Church. I just feel so secure and confident and brave there, working there, thriving there.”
Ena feels a tickling at her hand, and she looks down and finds softly twining vines with vibrant blossoms pushing their way over her skin, growing in front of her eyes. Mizuki looks up at her and Ena also looks up at her and the fondness in Mizuki’s eyes is very deep and very real. Almost tangible, almost able to spill all over her cupped hands.
“Is this your magic?” whispers Ena, not wanting to shatter the moment. (Not wanting to alert Ichika?)
“A small part of it,” Mizuki says. “We are very close to nature, Enanan.”
“That nickname is shit.”
“Don’t fucking swear, Enanan. Who’s the nun here?”
“I’m not a nun outside of my job, Mizuki.”
“Ch. I don’t care.”
“Oh, you are insufferable.” Ena cannot take the fondness from spilling out, dripping all over her words and breaths.
“You are insufferable.”
“Idiot.”
“My sweet.”
“Kiss my arse.”
“Gladly?”
“Well, stop that.” Ena blushes quietly, hoping Mizuki cannot see in the dark. So what if her cheeks look a bit darker. Ena balks at the fact that she is behaving much like the fifteen year old schoolgirl she had been with a despairing crush on the attractive Student Council President with her warm smiles and tender eyes.
Mizuki giggles softly.
They hear a thud outside, the shuffling of papers.
Ena frowns. She had forgotten why she was so worried in the first place. Now she’s brought back to reality, where she and Mafuyu have to desperately pretend that they're not harbouring a Magical illegally and that Mizuki isn't the best thing that has happened to both of them since they finally moved in together at twenty years old. The best thing that has happened to Ena since forever. Since her gradual falling out with Akito. Since Akito started visiting less and less and less.
“You better go outside,” whispers Mizuki. Her hair spreads on their wooden floor, perfect, perfect, perfect.
“Alright,” Ena says, not without reluctance.
“Alright.” Mizuki’s fingers skid over bits and bobs and they're in Ena’s hair, brushing a few strands and tucking them over her ear, tender and sweet. The contact is chilling and sends warmth deep into her stomach.
“Okay.”
Ena doesn't know which of them said that. They just stare at each other.
Then the moment passes and Ena pushes away to stand up, and leaves Mizuki on her floor under her bed in her room.
Mafuyu looks up when Ena slides out of her room. There is a pencil in Mafuyu’s ponytail. A smidge of graphite is on her right cheek.
“She left?”
“Yeah. Not that long ago.”
“‘Kay.”
Mafuyu eyes her warily. “What happened?”
“Nothing!”
“Something happened.”
Ena rolls her eyes. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”
Mafuyu tosses a stray strand of hair out of her face.
“You kissed Mizuki, didn't you.”
Ena balks, flushes red so quickly and so suddenly she gasps for breath.
“No!”
“Well then, what's all this about?”
“Err...” Ena thinks about those moments. “Actually. I think it’s pretty close to a kiss now.”
Mafuyu’s eyebrows rise slightly. “Oh, you’re in pretty deep.”
“Man, shut up.” she mutters, shrinking on herself. “My crushes never go anywhere.”
Mafuyu blinks. “Lucky you, then, since Mizuki also cannot go anywhere right now. Literally.”
Ena sighs. “You are so corny sometimes.”
“Let me have a bit of fun, Shinonome.”
“Mafuyu never has fun. Who are you and what have you done to her.”
“Ena, you are actually so hard to understand sometimes.”
Ena’s hand comes up to stroke the little vines on her other hand, the velvet of the small blooms a satisfying, gratifying drag on her skin.
“Look, it can never go anywhere, can it? We’ve been hiding Mizuki. She has to go back to the rest one day. And the Kingdom would never approve. We’re too different.” She picks at the vine.
Mafuyu frowns. “Well, fuck the Kingdom.”
“Can’t. They literally determine my future in this place. I’m gonna get expelled from here forever and never see you again and eat scraps for dinner.” She shudders. “Ugh.”
“You’d miss me?”
“Never said that. In fact, I think I would be happier instead of having to pacify pre-coffee-you in the mornings.”
“Rubbish,” Mafuyu’s lips twitch in the vague suggestion of a small grin.
Ena turns away, and calls, “Mizuki! You can come out now.”
Ena and Mafuyu share a charged look and Ena feels the endless devotion of Mafuyu, her steady passion, her stoic personality. She is the best friend anyone could ever ask for.
So when Mizuki emerges with messy hair and a beautiful smile, Mafuyu looks at Ena and casts her a look that says look at that, I understand. What a catch.
And Ena squints back with a I hope I don't mess this up.
Mafuyu blinks and it says I know you won't.
Mizuki is just so different from all the rhetoric the Kingdom spouts about Magicals.
She’s kind and good, laughter that may have come from Hatsune herself with its wondrous musical quality, nothing like the darkness that they say festers in their voices, innately evil. There’s a wonderful spark in her eyes, shifting carefully, blinking in the soft pink hue of her gentle irises.
She’s normal. So much like Ena and Mafuyu and Ichika and all the “Non-Mags”.
Normal except the fact that Mizuki can grow things on command or summon things out of thin air or that weird little breeze that perpetually sweeps at the strands of her hair despite Ena herself feeling no draft at all.
Once when Ena is hanging around with Mizuki in their dingy little apartment and suddenly in Mizuki’s empty palms there is a brilliant bleeding rose, stark against their pale skin.
“Here,” grins Mizuki, and Ena flushes such a strong red on her bronzed skin that she looks like the rose itself.
“You’re insufferable, Akiyama.”
“You love me.”
That she does. Ena is certain about it and she is strangely only slightly scared about the fact.
Which means, after a month and a half of blissful coexistence with Mafuyu and Mizuki, when something else disturbs the quiet of their small flat, and it all comes to a head, Ena is terrified.
Absolutely chilled at the bone.
Ena is exiting the flat when she feels a presence.
It's not the soft blanket of gaze from Mizuki; it is usually warmth and glow concentrated on her body even when she isn't looking back. It’s also not the steady, reliable strength of Mafuyu’s energy.
No, it’s entirely different.
This one is almost biting, cold, sick with a crackling sort of fury.
Ena’s hairs stand on their ends as she perches on the step before their front door. She stops.
“Enanan, what's going on? Are you...?” Mizuki’s voice calls.
“Nothin’.” She says into the air in front of her, paranoid.
“If you say so.” Mizuki sounds unconvinced.
Ena attempts to shake off the grimy feeling, and with a nod back at Mizuki, Ena closes the door and locks it.
She leaves, casually but cautiously, her nun dress bunching at the knees, the layers of petticoat under suddenly too stifling, too uncomfortable.
Is it really nothing, though? My instincts are never really wrong.
And so, Ena does not leave the apartment complex. She hides in the corner and observes their flat from afar.
And there it is.
There’s a man.
The man is unfamiliar, a shock of sickly purple hair awash on the high crown of his head, tall and gangly. The purple is all wrong and so unlike the deep reassuring depth of Mafuyu’s purple. He is all angular lines and sharp corners as he raises a bony hand to their front door.
He has horns, pointing up in a Y shape, much like Mizuki’s.
From Mizuki's world, Ena’s mind supplies, helpful.
Her hackles raise. Oh dear.
The man places his hand simply on the door, and it just creaks open under his fingers, silent. As though this door hasn't had crusty hinges in the decades before she acquired it.
Ena waits in the shadows, breathing slowly, as the man enters their flat, uninvited, unwelcome.
The brash part in her says, get him. But she is trying to make better decisions these days. She evaluates the situation in her head silently, objectively, and she decides that a weak, frail twenty-ish normal woman like her isn't gonna stand a chance against a six-foot-something Magical man.
A couple minutes pass and the weird Magical comes out of her flat, with Mizuki unconscious in his arms, hair a mess, strands of pink scattered messily all over her face and his arms, spilling like water over a table.
Fuck! What does he want with her? Ena scowls, reaches into her bag, and all that comes is a bunch of cloth for absorbing substances and a single scroll of parchment.
“Ugh.” Ena’s gaze flits over to the man, and he is leaving, black clothes billowing as he hurries off with her Mizuki in his unworthy arms.
She can’t just let that man get away with stealing Mizuki.
Here, the choice isn't just fight or flight.
It is follow.
—-
The man has stamina, is what Ena discovers.
“Fuck’s wrong with you, freak.” Ena pants, mumbles under her strained breaths as the weird neon purple man strides wide, long gangly legs blazing through crowds and alleys and corners and little hidden passageways, hood drawn up to cover his incriminating horns, his own robe splayed over Mizuki’s own horns as well. How this Magical could possibly know her little Kingdom better than herself, an actual registered resident, is beyond her.
The man keeps his punishing, fast pace.
Punishing Ena.
It does not appear that he has seen anyone tailing him, but his little discreet looks thrown behind his tall shoulder gives a sort of frantic, despairing air about him.
Ena looks at his retreating black hood and thinks, actually, he may think that he’s saving Mizuki. From us.
She swallows. Well. She’s got some prejudices to work on.
At one point the man approaches the edge of the Kingdom. It's just endless forest from here on.
Ena hides and watches as the man steps into territory unoccupied by the Kingdom, Mizuki in his determined arms.
And then he bolts.
Ena blinks, schools herself, and runs, tails him.
The man is even faster, wilder, freer in the forest. His feet touch the softest grass, the branches shape away from his extremities and make him a curated path, respond to the man’s unheard, supernatural call. Ena, however, is somehow whacked by everything, including a bunch of hanging ivy which she is half sure is poisonous, thorny branches, pokey leaves of bushes that were just not there before.
Ena suppresses the loudest scream when a razor-sharp thorn of a branch scrapes her face unceremoniously, a thinly-veiled threat. Keep away, human. We don't want you here.
Ena only grips her fists into white-knuckled spheres and keeps running after the blur of black cloth.
She loses him at one point, and panic seizes her, but the movement ahead keeps her hopeful.
She keeps running on her own.
Eventually it just pays off.
Ena pants quietly, ragged and muffled with her arm, exhaustion lining her limbs as she drags herself behind a tree where the terrain opens into a small clearing-- a place where the trees are sparser, the grass is just slightly thinner, where chaos orders itself into predictable patterns. There are a couple dozen little huts and houses, some bushes that grow just slightly unnaturally that look like fences. When Ena grips the infallible bark of the great tree she sneaks behind and tilts her head up, a tall barebones watchtower sits just above the various living spaces, small, and, despite the simplicity and lack of reinforcement of it all, a commandeering presence.
Ena gives a start. I’m in their base, aren’t I?
That’s not good. Not good for them and even more un-good for her. She thinks she stands even less of a chance against a hundred of these Magicals than against just one very purple, very lanky Magical.
There are Magicals milling about. Ena just watches as people with horns go about whatever they are doing-- and it’s all surprisingly, incredibly mundane. They are laughing and weeding their gardens and getting their breakfasts and cleaning their houses and talking and it’s all so normal.
So like normal people Ena gets whiplash.
Ena is so absorbed in the scene she doesn’t see where the Purple Guy and her helpless pink-haired Magical have gone until she gives a start and panics a little bit.
Damn it. She sighs, just a puff of air.
Apparently this was a mistake, because a very beautiful woman is suddenly right behind her and blinking slowly at her with her clear steel grey eyes and long gentle lashes and her delicately curling horns that wind into themselves.
Ena gulps.
Uh oh.
“You’re one of them… Non-Mags, aren’t ‘cha?” Her accent is lifting and vaguely airly. She looks down on Ena and lights are dancing in her light irises.
Ena decides to focus squarely on the mole she has right beside the corner of the woman’s full lips.
“Err... Maybe?” Ena swallows.
“How’d ‘cha get here? It’s protected with strong magic.”
“I followed that gangly weird-looking purple headed man...?” Ena really regrets how her sass is coming out as. It just can’t be good to insult one of the woman’s kin like that when she’s deep in enemy territory.
“Rui,” mumbles the beautiful women, a small jerk of her head, sending thin strands of hair flying perfectly across her face.
“I’m afraid I’ve got to take ya to the Chief, ya? It’s strict protocol.” The woman’s face is schooled into a thin line and she looks a little less devastatingly beautiful and a little more threateningly beautiful.
“Will I die?” is what Ena says, without thinking, again. She cringes. Wow.
“Well...” the Magical appears to think, and a flittering smile ghosts her pink lips. “Depends. You don’t look much like a threat, but the Chief has a way of finding out. Kanade always has a way of finding out.”
Ena shows some teeth sheepishly. “I don’t look like a threat?”
“You’re all small and weak and stuff.”
Ena cannot help but be offended at that, coming from a beautiful woman or otherwise. “Hey! I’m not that bad, alright. I carry sacks of rice sometimes.”
The Magical looks down at her blankly. Ena sighs. “Man, whatever.”
The Magical’s gaze hardens, and Ena knows the stall for time is no longer viable. “Come along, Non-Mag. We’ve got places to be.”
There’s a delicate hand on her wrist and it burns on her skin after it leaves, physically. Ena realises it might be some of their magic. Probably to keep her from escaping. Though, Ena thinks, looking around as the Magical leads her on a Walk of Shame through their village, there’s probably nowhere else to run to.
She is led through the civilization. Magicals peer curiously at her, gazes filtering upwards, a hint of shock at the lack of horns upon the crown of her head.
Ugh. This is all very unnecessary and very embarrassing.
But eventually they reach that tall watchtower she had spotted just previously.
The sunlight is glaring and all up in her eyes. She squints up at the watchtower, blinks blearily.
There’s a figure up in the watchtower.
Ena watches as the shadow descends the tower, a slow-growing vine wall wrapping gently around the Chief’s body as they are delivered down from above, a cascading descent.
The shadow dims and the Chief’s body and face comes more and more into focus. It is a woman, young, face smooth with no imperfections, twin horns twisted (in the same way the other woman’s ones are) into little spirals on both sides of her head.
Perhaps the most striking part of the Chief is not just how young she appears-- she has the longest head of silver hair Ena has ever seen. It slips all the way down to the Chief’s knees, bond-straight and well-maintained. It is gorgeous.
The vines unwrap around the Chief’s torso and slip away, reluctantly. The Chief straightens up, hand clutched on a sinew of strong bark, wrapped into the form of a sturdy walking stick. Her hair falls over her shoulder, not unlike a waterfall off a cliff.
Even when the Chief has to look up at Ena due to their height difference, the strength of determination and power that lies behind her eyes is so strong that Ena feels breathless when attempting to peer into them.
“Hello,” says the Chief, plainly.
“Hi.” Ena straightens, mouth screwed up in a wobbly line.
“Who are you?”
Ena blinks, tries to hold the Chief’s gaze.
“Err... Ena. Shinonome Ena, ma’ am.” She flushes. What is her business in calling a woman barely younger than her a title that formal?
“That’s quite unnecessary. It appears that I am just barely older than you.” The Chief gives her a very short smile.
Older? This day has been full of surprises.
She does not question how the Chief knows her age.
“Apologies.”
The Chief ignores this. “What is your business here?”
Her eyes are piercing, discerning. Ena feels a tremble run along the muscle fibers in her arms.
“I wanted to check and see if Mizuki was okay. ‘Cause I’ve been taking care of her for a little over a month after she almost bled to death in my Church. And some guy came and stole her from our flat. Of course I can’t just stand there, right? So, I followed that weird guy and now I’m here. Completely by accident.”
The Chief gazes at her. Her eyes dart a little, and she wets her lips, silent analysis of Ena.
“Alright,” says the Chief. “I see that it is true.
“Your kind usually do not take well to accidentally chancing upon a Magical. In fact, I am pretty sure that is what happened to Mizuki in the first place. Probably some of your soldiers, the ones that like to glare at people and weld those dangerous sharp metal things.” The Chief looks away and continues.
“Do you not harbour similar resentment and prejudice against us Magical folk? You are a strange one. Not many Non-Mags would willingly commit treason against the Kingdom to save a random Magical you have never met before.” The Chief’s eyes flicker.
“I don’t know.” Ena says honestly. “I just don’t know.”
“Alright. I’m assuming you want to see Mizuki, then? She arrived just before you, which I’m sure you already know. Since you were tailing them and all. If you would like, you can stay. At least for a while, as thanks.” The Chief brushes a long lock of hair behind her ear.
“Thank you,” says Ena, surprised.
“Shizuku, could you help Ena out?” the Chief turns, and the beautiful woman gives a slight nod, and both give each other a small sincere smile.
“Alright there, Kanade.”
The Chief-- Kanade-- gives a last resolute nod, and beckons for the two of them to hurry along. Vines reach over from the top of the watchtower again as Kanade begins her ascent into the top of the watchtower once more.
Ena catches the last glimpse of her long swaying hair and the quiet crackle of her thrumming magic before the beautiful woman-- Shizuku, she says to herself-- looks at her and cocks her head very slightly.
“Come on, Ena,” Shizuku says, soft tone. “We’re going to see your little sweetheart.”
Shizuku leads them to a small hut, despite curious questions from other Magical folk directed at Shizuku as though Ena herself hadn’t been there at all.
“They’re inside,” she says. Her tone betrays nothing.
“Alright. Thank you, Shizuku,” Ena says, awkward. None of her words fit any shape right now.
Ena steps forward, pushes the door open.
There’s a small living room, a space with minimal things. The sparse dining table is small, two stools around a round table, a potted plant on top. The windows are small but let adequate light in. There are plants growing on the windowsills and around the doorframes. This must be Mizuki’s house.
She proceeds through, stepping into a narrow hallway with two small rooms. Both doors are shut, but one door has got lily of the valley and wisteria on a plague that just reads MZK, paired with a shoddily drawn heart. The other irrelevant one has a plague that simply, boringly says Rui, complete with a fullstop and scratchy handwriting, no decor to be found.
Ena steels herself, not quite sure why she is this nervous, raises a fist to knock on Mizuki’s door.
The door opens, fast and instant, before Ena can push it open herself. It shocks her and she jumps a bit.
She is face first in front of the weird purple man.
The Magical looks down on her, even more than all the others-- he seems to be about 180 centimetres in height, which really just makes their interaction here frankly comical.
“Uh,” says Ena, eloquently, standing at 158 centimetres.
The man-- Rui-- frowns at her. The corner of his lips pulls down, and his unruly neon purple hair falls over his face unglamorously.
“You.”
Is what Rui says, extremely displeased. “I thought I lost you in the forest.”
“Surprise?”
“Not a good one.” Rui draws back, eyes cautious. “What do you want.”
“I’m not a threat.”
“You should not have been able to follow me into the area. You should not have.”
“I was determined.”
“No, you misunderstand. It is impossible to follow any Magical into this area. Only Magicals can do that. Find it on your own. If I’d lost you and you’d continued to run after me you would have somehow just ended up back at your Kingdom.”
Ena frowns. “What?”
Rui looks at her, searchingly. (For what?)
He doesn’t seem to have found what he was looking for, and he scoffs, removes his hand from the doorframe, slinks back.
Ena can finally see into Mizuki’s room, and it’s as pink and pretty as Mizuki herself-- smatterings of pink flowers, pink leaves, a tinge of green, a proper bed. Mizuki is on the bed, fast asleep, chest rising and falling under pink cloth covers. Her lashes cast shadows under the limited sunlight falling from her small lone window.
Rui appears to have been taking care of Mizuki in this room. There’s a stool located right beside the bed, with a small glass of water and cut fruit in a bowl on a small desk beside the bed.
“Mizuki alright?” Ena says, voice lowered.
“Alright,” Rui snorts. “She did not wake up when I picked her up and when I was running for my life with her in my arms. Bloody asshole.”
“Hey!” Ena flaunches. That’s not nice. Though she enjoys a bit of petty insulting, she never goes that far.
“Relax, Mizuki loves it when I insult them. Lovingly.” He shrugs.
“Y’all childhood friends or something?” Ena asks, curious.
“Yes and also no,” he says. “We became friends more around upper middle school.”
Ena is surprised. “You guys have school?”
Rui frowns. “Why would we not have school? We need education too, you know. Because you lot cast Magical Folk out of the Kingdom. We could not have education in the Kingdom, so we just made our own. So, yes, we have school.”
Ena flushes. “Sorry.”
“I do not take it to heart. You non-Mag Folk aren’t very bright, after all. Otherwise, you would not have pushed out Magical Folk, considering the amount of profit we could make with all the Magical shortcuts we have. Plus your King really likes his propaganda.” Rui gives a strange twitch and tremor of his shoulder, which Ena assumes is supposed to be a nonchalant shrug. What a befuddling Magical.
Mizuki gives a small sound, and Rui looks down sharply.
“She will be fine. How about you walk yourself to the Chief and explain this situation.”
Ena grins. “I already did. Can’t get rid of me that easily, Rui.”
Rui sighs, very loudly.
“Whatever you want. Just stand there and do not interfere.”
So Ena just stands very awkwardly in the corner of Mizuki’s room as Rui bustles around. Sometimes he stretches out his large hands and presses them gingerly against Mizuki’s bare stomach, so intimate that Ena has to look away, so intimate that Ena wonders if this is a thing Magicals do or if there’s something between Mizuki and Rui. Rui’s hands pulse with magic (which Ena notes does taste like electricity and gum. The pink kind of gum.), thrums it into Mizuki. Sometimes Rui just coaxes a little bit of water into Mizuki’s faintly parted lips.
“I thought a month or so of house care had healed her.” Ena can’t resist saying.
“You’re non-Magical, Ena Shinonome. Her physicality is mostly healed. But her Magical Core is very weak. She is exerting herself over even the smallest bits of Magic. Surely you have noticed?” Rui does not take his eyes off Mizuki’s sleeping form even for a second.
Exerting herself? Ena thinks about their time together. Mizuki focusing a little too hard on just producing the brightest red rose for her. A small frown in her brow despite the crinkling smile on her face when she summons those tiny drafts of wind to tease Ena.
“Oh,” says Ena.
“She will be alright. Or, as Mizuki would say, ‘calm your tits’.” Rui says, very calmly.
“HEY!”
Eventually, Ena meets some of the Magicals living in the area. Not all of them wanted to talk to a Non-Mag like her-- too scared to, or too disdainful to. But of those who dare hold conversation with a strange, un-horned Non-Mag, those who stand out are Shizuku’s close friend, Airi, a bright ball of biting energy with a sharp canine tooth; Honami, a quiet but spirited woman with the most gorgeous shade of brown hair; and Nene, a sharp-tongued girl with an equally cutting gaze. They stand around Mizuki and Rui’s shared living room, around the tiny little round table, sunlight turning gold, strands of it spilling over like liquid luck. The plants thrum and dust particles drift, casts their small slight shadows.
Ena is in a heated debate with Airi about the intricacies of the perfect outfit when Rui emerges from the corridor, purple hair a mess, eyes tired, still housing that little twinkle in them.
“She is awake,” Rui says.
Ena starts. Their little group looks back at Rui.
“Brilliant. Now we can lecture her about getting herself nearly killed.” Nene says flatly. Honami gives a little gasp, like Nene’s blunt word choice physically hit her in the face.
“Can we see her?” Ena says, hesitant.
Rui gives her a sweeping look, like he’s peering straight into her soul. Now that he’s not fretting over a weak Mizuki, he’s frighteningly sharp, observant in an awkward but piercing way, which feels both uneasy and teasing at the same time.
“Well,” he says, shortly. “She would be pleased. I cannot say the same about myself, however.”
Airi rolls her eyes. “Be less uptight, please. I am begging you.”
“I am not uptight. I just like stating my obvious preferences.” Rui declares.
Airi mumbles something a little disdainful, and Ena really thinks that in another life, they’d have been the best of friends. Like her and Mafuyu now, but different.
“But please, one at a time.” Rui sighs. “You lot are too damn loud.”
The Magicals are too kind, really, and they let Ena go first.
It probably has to do with how Ena wears her expressions loudly, undiscerningly-- she has never been good at keeping them off her face. Honestly, it’s gotten her in trouble more than it’s been helpful, but since the Magicals can clearly, undoubtedly see the worry and fear written over her hapless, pale face, fraught with frown lines, she’s spared to go first.
Thank Miku, really.
She pads down the same corridor, presses a gentle hand on the handle.
The door opens without any hitch or any atrociously purple-haired men, and Ena’s view narrows down to a girl, sitting up on the bed, all graced lines and brushstrokes of sunlight. When Ena enters, Mizuki perks up visibly, hair falling over one eye, and the smile that overtakes her face is so bright, so smooth, so genuine, that it crinkles at her eyes and smoothes out her cheeks.
The view is so beautiful that Ena somehow can’t find her next breath.
“Hi,” Mizuki says, eyes searching Ena’s face.
“Mizuki.” Ena says shortly. She flushes terribly.
“I can’t believe you came all the way here for me, Enanan. Just for me? You must be besotted.” Mizuki grins.
“Oh, shut up, you. Stop all this delusion.” Ena scoffs.
Mizuki just keeps her eye contact and her smile and it’s just too much, isn’t it? Fuck.
“Come here,” says Mizuki, just so softly, and Ena obliges.
Ena sits carefully on the bed with Mizuki beside her. They are close. Their thighs are almost touching. Ena can’t breathe.
“Hi,” Mizuki breathes, again, against the slowly shifting air, the strips of light, against Ena’s own breath.
“I was so worried,” and fuck, where did that come from? Ena doesn’t talk feelings.
Mizuki quirks her lips, small smile, reserved for Ena. “Oh, I can take care of myself, Enanan. You don’t have to worry yourself half to death over me.”
“I didn’t worry and you actually were halfway to death. Please don’t talk to me about not worrying.” Ena rolls her eyes.
Mizuki laughs. “That’s right! Seems like such a long time ago, doesn't it? Since I met certain death and you and Mafuyu and that quaint little apartment up in the air.”
Her knee nudges at Ena’s. Ena holds hers ridgedly, stiffly, so scared of messing it all up. So scared of losing this.
“I’m sorry,” Mizuki says, and Ena just doesn’t expect that.
“For what?” she says sharply.
Mizuki gestures vaguely. “For... all this. All this trouble, more than its worth. All this Mag-Non-Mag nonsense. All this culture war and all this mortal peril, really. It’s hurt you more than anything.”
“What are you saying.” It’s not a question.
Mizuki’s eyebrows furrow, and Ena wants it gone. “I’m really more trouble than I’m worth, Ena. Sorry about all that. You don’t have to.”
“I want to, idiot. Be for real right now.” Ena snaps.
Mizuki casts her eyes down, where their thighs are touching, just a layer of clothing in between.
“Why?”
Ena startles.
“What why?”
“There must be a reason, Ena. No way you rescue random Magicals lying on the ground, bleeding to death just because you want to and risk everything for them. Why?”
And Ena thinks and she knows already.
“Because,” she says.
Mizuki is looking at her through her eyelashes, gentle sweeping over her cheekbones every flutter of a blink. A long stray hair clings to her side burns. She is ethereal and fantastical and Ena just wants, just a little. Just enough.
“Because.”
They’re really close.
Mizuki just looks at her.
“Don’t you already know?” Ena murmurs, so close, too close, too right, too fucking good. So good.
Mizuki gazes at her. Her lips are parted so slightly, a sheen of pink, all fragile and lovely. The scar shines, silvery, delicate.
“Do I?” she breathes, and Ena doesn’t know who loses it first, who moves first, who presses forward first, and they’re breathing the same air, pushing their mouths together like some well-rehearsed performance, a gentle thrum of strings, dainty fingers pressed against guitar strings, a quiet choir.
Ena loses herself somewhere in the kiss, hand tracing up, sliding over Mizuki’s hand, warm and good. Mizuki’s hand glides right into her hair, gentle, searching, and right. Her eyes slip close and she exhales slowly into the kiss.
They’re together and they’re so good. So good.
When they part, it’s breathless, slow. Mizuki laughs, more of a breath than anything solid, whispers lowly, oh, oh. And Ena agrees, can’t agree more.
Ena’s gaze searches Mizuki’s hungrily, takes it all in, the wild look in her eye, the little wrinkle set in the corners of her eyes. That freckle on her cheek. That scar.
“Okay,” Ena says, her lips pulling themselves into a silly, uncontrollable smile. “Okay.”
“I’m a little crazy about you, you know.” Mizuki slips from her lips, and Ena scoffs, the sound melting into something so fond and goopy it makes her a little bit insane.
“If you didn't know, Mizuki,” Ena pulls from her own mouth, “I’m a little crazy about you, too. Dumbass. Reckless buffoon. Absolute moron. I hate you.”
Mizuki’s laugh is bubbling, louder, a plate of growing lavender soap suds.
“Oh, don’t you, Enanan? Don’t you?”
It’s so good. Ena might just cry.
Mizuki smiles, like she can’t bear to stop smiling, and their hands are still stacked like early-morning pancakes, the warmth radiating, encompassing, and Mizuki pulls their hands closer together, stacks her other on top like a strange sandwich. They laugh and it’s tender and oh so good.
Mafuyu, I didn’t mess this up, Ena beams, I didn’t mess this one up.
“Just a while more.” Ena says, reluctant. “The rest still want to visit your bedside, sickly girl.”
“Alright,” the other says. Her eyes never leave Ena’s face. “Alright.”