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The Cut Sleeve by Holdt
Fandoms: 薬屋のひとりごと | Kusuriya no Hitorigoto | The Apothecary Diaries (Anime), Superman - All Media Types, Batman - All Media Types
17 Aug 2026
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Summary
A man comes and inspects your teeth and your hands and fingers, your bone length, your wrist width. He speaks a number to your father. Your father silently holds out his hand, and will not look at you.
Clark Kent is twenty-two when the Assessor's cart comes to Smallville. Forty-two silvers, a compass, and a long road east — and the boy who grew up in the wheat fields of the Western Reaches is delivered to the imperial household of House Wayne, Sovereign of the Eastern Delta. In the palace, concubines are currency, rank is survival, and names are the first thing they take from you.
Clark can't stop looking people in the eye. He gets beaten for it. He does it anyway.
The Sovereign sits behind guarded doors and doesn't look at anyone. But someone inside the walls is trying to kill him — hemlock in the training house, foxglove in the tea cabinet — and the unranked tribute from a province no one considers fully human is the only person who can smell the difference between medicine and murder.
Clark Kent was raised by good people in a quiet field, and that means you carry what you can for the ones you love. Even when — especially when — what you're carrying is a lie.