AN: Hi, everyone! Welcome to the opening chapter of Dig Two Graves, which is the story I've been writing in a fairly nonstop manner for several months. In my head, at least. The physical writing part and production of prose has been extremely hit-and-miss-and-miss-again for most of that same span. To get around the writer's block plaguing me for the crime of getting sucked into a world-building black hole, this story begins in medias res.

This entire story takes place in a frankencanon of mostly-typical proportions, wherein the general plot follows the trajectory of The Untamed, but the story isn't entirely confined to members of the Chinese cultivation sects. There's a whole empire out there.

Chinese is rendered in italics for native Japanese speakers. When we come across a character bilingual in the other direction, that order will be reversed.

(The specific jumping-off point from the CYB side of things is chapter 4 of The B-Plot, which serves as a character primer for our first chapter's Japanese-speaking trio.)

In the depths of an autumn out of the great poems, the pink sunset of Yunmeng disappeared under thick, gray clouds that pressed smoke down on its famous lotus lakes. Thunder rumbled down the river and dragged the shroud of inevitable rain behind it. Ahead of the storm, Lotus Pier burned like a funeral pyre.

Wataru wasn't a poetic soul most of the time, but unseasonable cold trickled down his spine. Far be it from him to complain about weather changes that beat the mosquitoes into the ground, but—ugh, there just wasn't any to downplay the smoke, even in his head. There was no good news with a fire like that. Never was.

Upstairs, Tomoe probably had the window open. She spent more time in the house when it rained, but she hadn't said anything since he brought tea a few hours ago. He'd poked his head up the stairs twice, but found the door still half-ajar each time.

If Tomoe left—to get out of her head or to find Shinta, or both—she would've told him. Maybe while halfway out a window and in the dead of night, but she always did. Same as she did everywhere else they'd traveled, chasing ghosts.

Not real ghosts. Not like the ones being made today. Maybe.

He'd seen the first Wen cultivators spill out into town over an hour ago and closed the gates. Tomoe could get out if she wanted to by just leaping over the wall, and Shinta could get back in, but Wataru was happiest when his feet were planted firmly on the ground. Closing the gates would at least stop people from seeing into their little excuse for a courtyard.

Wataru might be foreign-born and bred, but there was no way he was letting this safehouse get ransacked to feed another foreign army. Even if he didn't care about the expense to replace everything—which soldiers inevitably broke—there was every chance that a Wen invasion would expose him, Tomoe, and Shinta as Nihonjin.

Assuming that they didn't just have to run back to Shanghai, that could be quite uncomfortable. Because Tomoe would probably cut several people in half (again) and track blood into inconvenient buildings (again) and make them scrap yet another perfectly nice set of robes (again). She needed to carry other pairs of shoes.

There was no war he'd ever seen that kept neatly to its own borders, so Wataru sighed and checked under the stairs for their qiankun bags.

Black-with-red, blue-with-red, and plain green were all accounted for. Honestly, the qiankun pouches themselves were probably worth more than their contents. As long as no one asked precisely where he'd gotten his hands on them—and why they had no ornamentation from any cultivation sect—Wataru figured they were as safe as…

Well. Not as safe as anyone, given what was happening just out of direct line of sight. The Wen forces targeted the Yunmeng Jiang cultivation sect first, sure, but Wataru didn't think for an instant that they wouldn't camp on top of the bloodied remains of their target like hungry tigers. Wen victory meant Wen territorial expansion, and rich people who got stab-happy didn't tend to treat less powerful people that well. The head of the Wen sect-and-clan, Wen Ruohan, was notorious for his total lack of patience and for enabling his petty, spoiled sons, so Wataru wasn't optimistic about that whole situation.

And Shinta still hadn't checked in since breakfast. Even if Wataru knew how well that kid could get around, his nerves might finally settle if their entire family was under one roof.

Wataru rubbed at his eyes. Tomoe definitely had the window open upstairs if the smoke was sneaking into the house.

"Three monks have no water to drink," Wataru said after a couple more heartbeats of trying to force his thoughts in order. He said it carefully in Chinese, to keep his accent up to standard, and directed it toward the clay pig on the shelf so he felt a little less like he was just talking to himself. It was a reminder to stay the hell out of fights as long as he could, because that was definitely Tomoe and Shinta's field.

The pig itself was also one of the many, many schemes Wataru and Shinta had tried to get Tomoe to practice more after the Shanghai tutor stormed out, but staring dramatically out the window was more her thing.

Speaking of immense time spent doing things, dinner was nigh and the sun was probably setting behind the storm. If nothing else, Wataru needed the tea set back so he could make much of anything to accompany dinner. What dinner there was, anyway; the day's chaos made it hard to do more than stockpile fried buns and prepare to run at a moment's notice.

With this thought in mind, Wataru headed up the stairs with the tray in hand. He knocked at the open door before sticking his head around the gap.

Tomoe had moved the privacy screen to the other side of the room, but didn't seem to have done much else. She was still looking out the window, back turned to the rest of the house. With her hair and her dark robes and the way she sat so still, it was a little like looking at an ink blot on a painting—though one with hands still clutching a teacup notably devoid of steam.

And she'd completely neglected the rest of the tea set, too. Must've been one of those days. But more so, given the outside factors.

Wataru cleared his throat and asked, "Is your brother still not back yet?"

Tomoe looked back at him and shook her head minutely.

Wataru set the tray down and Tomoe returned her untouched cup. She scooted backward to give him a little room to peer into the smoky air. If not for Shinta's absence, the lantern in this room would have been doused as soon as the trouble began.

It'd probably still be smoky in here, though.

"You don't think he's out there , do you?" Wataru asked. He closed one of the shutters, but left the other so Tomoe could still keep watch. After a couple heartbeats to think, he backed off, settled at the table, and said, "I've closed up the rest of the house, but—"

Tomoe came to life all at once, pouncing and knocking him straight to the floor with a clatter. The back of Wataru's head avoiding the hitting the mats or wood (and subsequently driving his bun through his skull, probably) solely because she got her hand under his head in time. Her face angled toward the window even though she was pinning him one-handed.

Wataru opened his mouth to either joke or ask what the hell that was for, but remembered himself just in time. Tomoe knew her business. And her business was mostly violent, so he shut his mouth with a click of teeth.

And a blue-teal-and-purple-robed figure climbed in through the window, soaked to the skin and swearing floridly in a Hubei accent. And then another, and another, and a smaller shape in the back wearing the duller purple-black-white of a Yunmeng Jiang baby disciple. Babyish. Under age twelve, anyway.

Wataru got to his feet in time for Shinta to be the last one through, and closed the shutter behind him. For the first time literally ever, Wataru was glad there was an absolute nightmare of a ginkgo tree at the back of the house. (Stepping on its smelly fruit once soured him on the entire concept.) Honestly, the storm darkened sky probably did the rest of the camouflage work, especially since none of the cultivators had their swords unsheathed.

Not exactly the usual window situation, even in this house.

"We have spare robes," Shinta said in the only dialect he'd fully adopted. At least the Shanghai tutor earned half his payment. "And food. You can rest here until—"

At this point, Tomoe caught the child by the back of his robe before he could smash right into the back of the older cultivator. To Wataru's inexpert eye, he'd fainted on the spot from exhaustion.

"Until he recovers?" Shinta finished with a more nervous glance at Tomoe and Wataru in turn, as though abruptly remembering who else was here. His deep red hair was nearly black from the rain and dripped into the deep silence after his question.

Tomoe's dark gaze slid from Shinta to his four guests, then down to the unconscious child in her arms. She beckoned the tallest cultivator closer, then deposited the child in his arms. Without a word, she shook her sleeves once and headed down the stairs.

"What is she—?" began the second cultivator, her voice rising in alarm.

Shinta ran after her. "Wait—"

"She's just upset," Wataru said, sidling over to the edge of the room to block the easiest way out. Besides the window—but if they'd come in that way, he figured they had enough sense not to go out and immediately smack into the damn tree. "Sorry about that, but since her brother brought you here, she's going to make sure you weren't followed."

"Who even are you people?" asked the third adult of their group. Wataru really needed to put some names to faces, or else he'd call this guy Rude for the rest of their acquaintance. Weird as it was.

"As of right now," Wataru said, leaning over comically left to reach a dresser while not leaving the doorway, "we're here to help you." He raised his free hand in a three-fingered salute that worked better for locals than bows did, sometimes. "I swear."

And the dresser was full of dry robes, which were worth their weight in gold at the moment. Given that everyone's clothes probably weighed five times as much when soaked with rainwater, though, perhaps that wasn't the best comparison. Making a mental note to write his memoirs with slightly better metaphors, Wataru started passing out robes and pointing each new guest at the privacy screen in the corner of the room in case they'd not noticed on the way in.

The only one who didn't move was Tall Guy, to avoid jostling the unconscious kid. So, really, two people didn't move. All three of the adult Jiang cultivators radiated tension like heat from three furnaces, which Wataru decided he couldn't take personally. There was enough bad energy all around the town for plenty of backwash, and these four were basically homeless now. The smoke coming off Lotus Pier hadn't looked good and probably wasn't going to in the next couple of hours.

Wataru, on the other hand, got the grunt work. If Shinta's decision got them a bunch of unexpected houseguests who might yet get them all killed, well, then that was just life. Or at least the portion of it Wataru was going to deal with, since he certainly wasn't going to start stabbing people.

"If you don't like the cut or fit of these robes, there aren't really other options. You're all tall enough that you'll mostly be wearing mine." Wataru kept his voice brisk, businesslike. Cultivators didn't usually tolerate being ordered around by "mediocre people," but damn if Wataru wasn't going to do his best to keep them alive. "They're mostly the green ones, though you can dig through storage later if you really want to check. If you see black or purple or gray or whatever, they'll only fit the boy."

"We understand," said Tall Guy. "Thank you."

Wataru nodded, then worked his way down his list of priorities with gusto.

He hauled dinner up the stairs in two trips. He got them strong tea, too, and turned the second bedroom into a sort of disciple dormitory by retrieving as much bedding from storage as they owned. The guests were in slightly less bedraggled states each time he saw them in his Shinta-imposed flurry of activity, which made him work that much harder to see the situation stabilized.

He also got all of their titles when everyone had more or less collapsed from all the activity. Rude was actually Li Jun, Tall Guy was Hu Jianhong, and the sole female cultivator was apparently Fang Shufen. Alternatively: Second Shixiong, Third Shixiong, and Second Shijie, in that order. The kid sitting up and sipping slowly at herbal soup was Li Kai, but the others all called him "Fifth Shidi" most of the time. Given the dreaded combination of mainland family names being in somewhat short supply and Wataru's personal lack of experience with cultivation sects, he wasn't entirely sure if any of them were actually related.

"It might be for the best if we all forget we ever met each other," said Hu Jianhong, though he didn't quite sound certain. Even Wataru's robes hung off him a bit, probably because he was entirely too damn tall. "The—with the Jiang sect destroyed, we need to leave as soon as we can to avoid losing what living memory we can still save."

"There isn't anywhere safe to run to," protested Li Jun, scowling ferociously. "Even the townspeople know those Wen bastards already burned Cloud Recesses and conquered the Unclean Realm. Lanling might be safe for now if the Jin sect keeps hiding behind their money, but without—" His lower lip wobbled and he tried to drink tea to hide it. Then: "We can't possibly be the last four left, can we?"

Fang Shufen closed her eyes for a moment, then said to Wataru, "Whether we are or aren't, these humble cultivators can't impose for long."

Wataru glanced toward Li Kai, who still looked like the world owed him more soup and a good night's sleep. Even in the smallest set of robes they owned—Shinta's—the kid was going to trip as soon as he tried walking anywhere. Wataru fixed that image in his head, placing it neatly next to the smoke column that had haunted the city all afternoon. Then he said, "With utmost respect, Jiang sect cultivators can impose for as long as it takes, to avoid wasting my brother's decision to save their lives."

"I didn't know you were related," said Li Jun, blatantly eyeballing him.

Wataru had to admit that he, Tomoe, and Shinta looked about as different as could be when viewed all together. Tomoe and Shinta were both petite and pretty, while Wataru towered over both of them and could grow a reasonable beard. Tomoe's hair was as dark as the night sky and Wataru's leaned a bit brownish, while Shinta's was nearly the color of dark blood. From the cheekbones to builds to accents, they were a weird little group.

Wataru opened his mouth solely to tell Li Jun where he could stick his opinion, because he didn't really owe these people any more detailed explanation.

But Hu Jianhong got there first, "A-Jun, this is not the time. These people are risking their lives for us."

Shinta and Tomoe were still absent, but he was pretty sure they had the sense to get into trouble they could handle. Wataru could probably keep the house from exploding until then.

"But we don't know a thing about them! They could be smugglers, or thieves, or—" Li Jun turned his attention back to Wataru. "Is Chen Hao even your real name?!"

"A-Jun," said Fang Shufen in a growl.

Finally, Li Jun shut up.

Well, this was awkward. Luckily, while Wataru could make it even more uncomfortable, he didn't—

Downstairs, a door swung open and closed with a bang to shut out the storm.

—mostly because he didn't have the opportunity.

Wataru didn't run downstairs, but it was a close thing. Fang Shufen followed as far as the top step, then stopped.

"How did it go?" Wataru asked, though the first words out of his mouth had definitely almost not been any kind of Chinese. Tomoe's briefly pinched eyebrows—though admittedly that might've been because she was busy wringing out her hair—compelled him to add, "Aside from the weather."

"Nobody's following anymore," Shinta said, subdued. Which was about what Wataru had expected. "Though we did find some evidence that our friends upstairs aren't the only survivors."

"Are you sure?" Fang Shufen asked hesitantly. When Wataru turned to look back at her and noticed that Li Jun was also peering over the railing. "Are you absolutely sure?"

"Wen Chao ordered his men to start searching for three people all along the river and anywhere else the Wen soldiers patrol," Shinta said. He fished around in his robes until he came up with a slightly damp piece of paper that was definitely more expensive than what Wataru used daily. With a flick of his wrist, the paper sailed across the room to land in Fang Shufen's hands. "They're definitely looking for anyone who wasn't at Lotus Pier when it was attacked, too, but they have to go house by house and have the sect registries in hand to do that. These are the only ones listed separately."

Li Jun had already unfolded it. Then, "I knew it! I knew someone had to have made it out—" His expression dropped almost immediately. "But if they're only looking for these three, then Madam Yu and Sect Leader Jiang…"

"Sorry," said Tomoe, into the grief-tinged silence. "For your loss."

That was probably the sentence Tomoe had said in any Chinese dialect in at least two days.

So, to undercut the moment and keep Tomoe from spending too much time worried about first impressions, Wataru promptly dumped a towel on Shinta's head. "Quit dripping on my floors. We'll talk about all this when you won't catch a chill and die."

As the "master" of the house—insofar as he'd paid for the land, the house, and that cursed tree—Wataru's word at least held some weight. The cultivators piled back into the room they'd invaded and continued talking about the news. Probably. He wasn't really sure what else they had to talk about, other than maybe how much it sucked to have to sit on their hands and do nothing while everything was so terrible outside.

At least the news gave them a little hope.

"I should've probably brought them somewhere else," Shinta said, a while and one outfit change later. After Wataru had hauled up a chair and handed him a comb, combing out the rainwater at least kept him in one spot long enough for Wataru's nerves to settle. "I panicked."

"You panicked two separate times," Tomoe reminded him, even as she poured tea for all three of them. Turned out that they did have another teapot, even if it was just Tomoe's personal one.

"He did?" Wataru asked.

"None of the cultivators upstairs were present during the attack. They all returned after the distress flares were launched and the barrier collapsed," Tomoe explained impatiently, "which is the only reason they are alive."

Wataru winced. Yeah, fishing people out of that mess would've probably been beyond even Tomoe and Shinta's combined killing expertise. "Were they out visiting relatives?"

"Two were night-hunting. Apparently, their sect has a high number of patrolling cultivators." Tomoe finished pouring and distributed the cups. "There is some hope of finding more survivors, if they are not chased down by Wen over the next few weeks."

Wataru sat next to Tomoe, leaning a little so she could easily touch him if she so chose. "I assume we can't just toss them out on their qi-wielding behinds even if we wanted to."

"Probably not," Shinta admitted, but there was no actual guilt in his face or tone. Regret at the risk to Tomoe and Wataru, maybe, but Wataru had never heard him apologize for protecting people and didn't expect him to suddenly start now.

The fact was, Wataru wouldn't even have met them if not for Shinta's bleeding heart. He couldn't bring himself to criticize. He liked having his guts on the inside and preferred to stay that way for the foreseeable future. Really, the people upstairs couldn't have asked for a better advocate under this roof. Shinta had a knack for roping Tomoe into his choices, too.

"We are involved in their war now," Tomoe said. In Tomoe's voice, there was the kind of tension she usually didn't explain. It flared up the last three times they'd arrived in cities where her targets dwelled, oblivious to their impending deaths. "I suppose it can't be helped."

It was anticipation.

Wataru tilted his head to one side, a little apprehensive, before he rested a hand against Tomoe's back. Under his careful touch, the brittleness of her posture eased slightly.

"Well, I guess we have a plan? Maybe?" Shinta offered weakly. Not actually suggesting his own ideas, but he wasn't as familiar with Wataru's line of work or cultivators.

Wataru rolled his eyes. "Just leave it to me. I haven't just been spending the last four months playing housekeeper."

"I look forward to seeing what you've come up with," Tomoe said under her breath.

"So, what the hell happened?" Wataru asked about three hours later.

Shinta lifted his head from the bowl of his arms, meeting Wataru's dark gaze from across the dimly-lit room. With the cultivators sleeping upstairs in an effort to regain their strength, the three actual members of their household were arranged around the main table in the kitchen in an effort not to disturb them. Mostly with rapid-fire Nihongo, at least until the sun was long gone and only the bats were busy.

"We're both entirely on your side," Wataru continued, when Shinta didn't immediately answer. "You know that, right?"

"She had a lot to say about…" Shinta tapped the table and the list of safehouses and supplies they'd burn by sunrise. "About rushing into a decision like this."

"I'm sure she did," said Wataru, even though both of them knew that Tomoe tended to weigh her words twice before speaking even once. "But Tomoe-chan's more active now than she's been since we got here. None of us like being entirely at loose ends."

"Were we, though?" Shinta asked. At Wataru's questioning pause, he went on, "It's completely different from where I came from, but I like it here. It was peaceful. And I—I even remember seeing the Jiang sect around town, all the time." He glanced at the long-dried brush on the table and grimaced. "I couldn't just stand by and do nothing."

Wataru sighed. "That's noble of you, but what happened?"

Shinta took a slow breath and considered how to even start the story.

Tomoe was the only one of them who had a complete list of all the people who deserved death by her hand. The last handful of Tomoe's targets had fled the tide of death that pulled from the edge of Tomoe's sword and sailed away on the true sea. She had no more intention of letting them live than she had the others—especially not when one of the remaining four had seen her face, once, and likely would have recognized her school's bladework.

Shinta understood, a little, and followed along like a faithful shadow.

Wataru, by contrast, went around entirely unarmed except for his mind and his voice, and pulled money and resources seemingly out of thin air. Or perhaps some other, secret means that Shinta wasn't allowed to see despite turning twenty last year.

And they'd all arrived in Yunmeng in the spring, only to realize that the rumor about Asakura Gin was vague at best and dead at worst. For all they knew, he was either in hiding or dead, either from ghosts, bandits, wild boars, or just tripping off a dock and drowning. With other Nihonjin as secretive as their little cluster, they had to rely on Wataru's…resourcefulness to find out anything. Dead ends, everywhere.

Four months and several festivals later, and they were still here.

And it wasn't at all bad! Shinta spent most of his time circulating among the locals and learning about their world one market hawker or screaming child at a time. Before—before this, he'd—

Traveling with Tomoe was different than any other journey Shinta remembered. And then his mind shifted immediately to breaking down all the reasons why, which was arguably worse than picturing heads rolling in the street.

Shinta drew a shuddering breath and tried to force his thoughts back into order.

"Hey," said Wataru's voice, low and concerned, "where'd you just go?"

Shinta blinked into the dim light offered by the nearby lantern, feeling returning as he clenched his hands. "I—sorry. I just…"

Wataru considered him, then said, "I already know you two get nightmares." He nudged the teapot, on its third steeping of the evening, across the table. "We're not getting much sleep tonight, so take all the time you need."

Shinta twisted his bangs, since the rest of his hair had already been carefully tied away from his face by his usual sleep braid. "I've had to stand to the side too many times, while everything burned down around me. Tomoe was there the first time I-I made a choice that changed everything. And she knew, I think, that I'd do it again."

"But not for the people around here?" Wataru suggested.

"Maybe only in the back of her mind." He doubted Tomoe knew for sure until he'd climbed in through the window and almost dropped a child on her.

"Well, nothing like a few deaths to get a samurai's blood moving again," Wataru said mildly, and Shinta winced. "Look, I know how Tomoe-chan works. I'm half-expecting to hear the Wen soldiers screaming at sunrise because they found one of their patrols in seventeen pieces."

"I was never a samurai." Shinta swallowed, closing his eyes against—but there hadn't been blood that he saw, not in the middle of the storm. He'd already been halfway up the next street before Tomoe drew her sword. "And they won't find anything."

"Is that because no one died or because she made sure you scattered their bodies on a pig farm?" Wataru asked, voice as dry as Yunmeng wasn't.

Shinta hesitated.

"Don't actually tell me. I still need to budget for your travel expenses and I don't need that image in my head."

"But you're the one who brought it up?"

"I bring up a lot of things. You should know better than to always listen by now."

Shinta was saved from having to figure out how the rest of this sleep-deprived conversation was going to go by the sound of Tomoe walking down the stairs to join them. She carried an armload of used bandages in a washbasin, and looked less than impressed by the two of them sitting at the table and trying to plan for tomorrow. Her spiritual power was a little depleted, but no fatigue showed on her face despite the late hour.

Tomoe held up her free hand before either Wataru or Shinta could rise from the table, disappearing out the back door without otherwise acknowledging them.

"So, the story?" Wataru asked again.

Shinta waited until he'd downed the next dose of tea, then began to explain how he'd gotten them all into this mess.

It wasn't a particularly long story if Shinta removed the bloody details.

Like Wataru, Shinta was vaguely aware of the rising tension among the cultivation sects. And then Wen Ruohan had banned all other sects from night-hunting or dealing with hauntings. Since the purpose and profit of cultivation sects were heavily intertwined, and because Yunmeng Jiang was one of the Five Great Sects, it seemed like everyone was talking about it. In the last couple of weeks, Shinta had overheard stories about Wen Chao slaying some legendary monster, but the details changed by the telling.

And then the army of Qishan Wen sect descended on Yunmeng Jiang, and here they were.

Shinta had been in the market when the barrier went up and flaming arrows rained down, and could still see it when the barrier died. Could see half the buildings closest to the clan holdings caught in the blaze.

Rushing in to save lives had never been the smartest decision, but Shinta didn't hesitate the first time and hadn't on any of the subsequent ones.

Shinta was no more equipped to rescue people from homes engulfed in flames than anyone else he could name, but he tried his best. Smoke and ash sank into his clothes and hair as he guided whole families out of danger one household at a time. If not for the pounding rain that managed the worst of the fires, there was every chance Shinta might not have made it back that night. Even so, it was close. Screaming, fleeing people and massive blasts of spiritual energy burned into Shinta's memory like a brand. It was perhaps for the best Wataru didn't hear this. Wataru didn't have any real ability to sense spiritual energy, and thus couldn't quite understand that dimension to the battle.

Maybe because of the overwhelming sensation, Shinta had missed the exact moment when the first wave of roaming Jiang cultivators returned. It hadn't seem to make any difference to the Wen attackers. There were more sword flashes in the night, but they didn't last.

All he could do, in the end, wasn't that much.

"Wait, those four weren't the first cultivators you saw?" Wataru interrupted.

"I was in the market, remember? I saw plenty of people run back to the clan compound when the Wen forces arrived, but—" Shinta bit his lip. "I didn't find Li Jun or any of the others until everything was already over. I was waiting on the roofs for anyone who…missed it."

"And thus, here we are now." Tomoe had returned during the story, and settled at the table to sharpen her tantō with the kitchen whetstone. "You'll depart tomorrow morning with your handful of lotuses. Wataru will take his own path. And I will do as I must to distract all attention from your self-imposed mission." She raised the knife, pointing the tip toward Shinta's face. "Understand?"

Shinta bowed his head. "I know."

"Warriors like me only serve one purpose," Tomoe said. Her words were sharp and short. "I live to see my foes in pieces. Nothing else." Her spiritual energy was like a haze in the air, crawling like mist around ankles and sending a shiver down both Shinta and Wataru's spines. "But if you fight to protect what's important, you cannot afford to lose. Your death will also cost the lives of those behind you." Her voice was a command, demand, and plea. "Do not die. "

Shinta deliberately avoided moving his hands. If he wasn't careful, they'd curl into fists or he'd try to reach across the table to grasp Tomoe's hands, and both outcomes were almost too sentimental for them. "I won't."

"Good." And Tomoe reached out instead, perceptive as ever, and ruffled his hair.

Then Wataru did, too, and ruined the moment because Shinta had to slap his hand away. The man had never met a tense moment that he didn't feel the urge to immediately mangle.

AN: There's character art up on my tumblr, cyb-by-lang, under the tag "Dig Two Graves."

Feel free to ask any worldbuilding/fandom questions as they pop up.