The second slice of chiffon arrived as if rewarding bravery. Outside the window, Tokyo was itself: scooters, murmurs, the practiced choreography of a city that has negotiated with disaster and still chooses to love itself in public.
A little ping from the city channel: Minor Bronze Ping: Setagaya side street. Three other guilds had already accepted. Anastasia’s hand went to the Aegis, then relaxed. It would be handled. It was being handled. She was allowed to have cake.
“Walk?” Miyu asked. “There’s a street with lanterns three blocks down. It’s silly during the day. I want to see if it’s silly with you.”
“I like silly,” Anastasia said. “It keeps the sky from thinking it can get away with anything.”
The lantern street had been strung for a festival and then, as these things do, outlived the posters. Paper moons slept over an alley of thrift shops and noodle steam. It was not crowded, which is to say two people could have a conversation without it being someone else’s.
They walked close because the city permitted it. Anastasia kept the Aegis slung low, not as a shield but as the world’s most chivalrous umbrella against an entirely theoretical rain. Miyu’s shoulder brushed her arm once, then again, and the third time it stayed.
“I have a strange request,” Miyu said.
“Those are my favorite,” Anastasia said.
“Can we try not being brave for five minutes?” Miyu asked. “I know we are good at it. I know we are monetized for it. I would like to see what you are like when you don’t try.”
Anastasia studied the paper moon above them, then the line of Miyu’s jaw, the way relief looked on her face when she let it. She let her own shoulders drop a centimeter. She unclenched three muscles in her back no one knew were clenched. She breathed.
“This is me not trying,” she said.
Miyu nodded as if taking notes. “You look… taller,” she observed, and smiled at her own nonsense.
“Flattery accepted,” Anastasia said. She reached up and tugged, gently, at a lantern string to set it swaying. Light moved over Miyu’s hair like a small tide.
Her HUD chimed, quiet, like it, too, had decided to be human.
She didn’t look away. “Miyu,” she said, because truth likes to be addressed by name. “I am going to say something that will sound like work and is not.”
“Okay,” Miyu said, voice very careful.
“I accept Tokyo as my charge,” Anastasia said, and her voice didn’t swell or grandstand. It rested. “I accept its mornings, its good bread, its tired doctors, its reckless teenagers, its cranes and ferries and vending machines that judge nothing. I accept its bells when they are wrong and when they are right. I will stand where I should and I will leave when leaving is the thing that keeps it gentle. I will ask for help when the day is bigger than my shoulders. That is my vow.”
Lanterns swayed. Somewhere, a scooter backfired like applause. Miyu’s hand found hers like it had known the route before her brain did.
“Witnessed,” Miyu said, the way a physician signs a chart that matters. “I will help you remember it on the days you are too helpful for your own spine.”
Numbers bloomed, then tucked themselves away.
Miyu’s own HUD (gentler, pale) chimed; she blinked, then flushed. “Paired… breath?”
“We breathe together,” Anastasia said, because romance is sometimes a mechanic and the mechanic is kind. She lifted Miyu’s hand, turned it, and pressed a kiss to the heel of her palm. Not performance. A simple reverence, like touching a saint’s ribbon.
Miyu made a small noise that begged to be kept private and yet had a public health quality: this is good for you, please do it again someday. She stepped in. “May I—”
“Yes,” Anastasia said.
The kiss was not cinematic. It was tidy and careful and felt like a proof of concept that the world did not end when two people wanted a thing and asked nicely. Light moved. Air tasted like paper and sugar. Anastasia cupped the back of Miyu’s head with a palm that had brushed away lightning. Miyu rose to her toes with the courage she used for undoing pain.
When they separated, the city was still a city. A pigeon walked by with professional indifference.
“I would like to do that again in a room with a door I can lock,” Miyu said, medical as ever.
“I would like to offer you a door,” Anastasia said, amused. “And a chair. And a nap.”
“Cake,” Miyu said.
“Non-negotiable,” Anastasia said.
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