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Man I miss music. Not that there's no music here, but while I do enjoy classics, our role as 'upper class' means I can't just go down to some underground record shop and start trying to find the alt universe Sex Pistols or something. And Loid had a nice, for the era, TV, but had missed getting a record player. So we largely helped New Mama Yor move in without musical accompaniment.
I wasn't the help I could have been. Loid, as the big strong man, got the big stuff she wanted to keep, and all I could get was small boxes. But she got more and more anxious as I tested boxes to see what I could carry, so I ended up backing off and finding make work to look busy. Dusting things, moving our stuff, that kind of thing.
Might be another point towards being neurodivergent, might just be perfectly natural apprehension at having her stuff gone through for the first time in decades. She did basically raise her brother and herself alone through hard work. It's understandable that she might be a bit territorial.
Loid was right to give her a separate bedroom. I made a note to never go in unless invited.
She's kind of quiet, but I do notice her eyes lingering on me. I couldn't pick up anything telepathically, it wasn't like she was actively talking about me to herself mentally. Just the kind of quietly studious consideration people do sometimes.
Actually, that appeared to be her default mental state. When she did think something, like Loid, it came through clear and static free. She had a lovely mental voice. But she rarely actually thought like that.
Getting close, though, I could feel the way her nerves lit up in waves as she walked, or lifted, or just stood there in a perfectly relaxed but also weirdly high strung pose.
Like, she was constantly on guard for a physical attack, maybe?
She did seem unusually physical. Father's words came back to me.
'I hate to think how many of her clients, or otherwise, must have attacked her for her to put that much effort into learning self-defense.'
Hopefully, we could be something nice in her life.
I made a point of smiling at her when she looked at me. A few reassuring words might help, but I'm not sure what to say given my inherent weirdness. She's got a lot to be stressed over, so I decided to go for 'quietly supportive'.
She did smile back at me whenever I smiled at her. Seemed natural enough. A point against neurdivergence? Or at least against certain kinds of neurodivergence.
Once she got all her stuff in, though, I took her hand and gave it a squeeze. "I'm glad you're living with us now."
A little wordy for a six year old, but she didn't seem to notice.
She smiled back. "I'm glad to be living with you, too."
And she did seem to relax a bit. Might be deception. Again, that kind of wordless emotion was more of a neurochemical thing than the kind of mental voice I could read. Man I wish my telepathy had come with empathy as well. You could almost say I was somewhat neurodivergent as well. I wasn't great with picking up on people's vibes.
I was kinda huggy, though. I've always liked physical contact, and Yor's physicality was fascinating to feel, so I lingered near her for the most part.
Her legs were like pythons wrestling under tights, man. And they were longer than I was tall.
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"I've called in a favor and gotten our wedding certificate backdated a year," Loid explained two days later. "Since it would be suspicious for us to get married right before the school interview."
Yor nodded, accepting that easily.
"And I'll come up with an excuse for your brother about why we've maintained separate apartments until now."
"I'll keep my old place for a while, just in case," she replied. 'Although, now that I've got permission from the shop keeper, I shouldn't have anything to worry about,' she mused.
He nodded. "That's a good idea. I won't pretend that this situation will be easy." He paused while she nodded. "Now, Anya has a genius level intellect, so there's nothing to worry about for her grades. However, there are certain pretenses and mannerisms we'll have to maintain as a family for her to be acceptable at Eden Academy. They are the very top echelon of the wealthy and powerful in the country."
"I'm weird so I've got to learn how to behave properly," I added from my own seat near Yor. "I'm not a troublemaker but until now Father has just let me be me, and that's not going to be good enough for Eden."
"An oversight," Loid commented. "Anya soaks up information like a sponge but doesn't seem to have any social advantages." 'Genius, although useful, does have its disadvantages,' he thought.
Ow. Like, ow. I hadn't realized he'd picked up on my kryptonite so easily. We hadn't even spent much time around people for me to be awkward.
He is some sort of super spy, though. Maxed social knowledge IS to be expected.
Yor was looking at me, with a little bit of surprise.
I squashed my mild embarrassment and dove in anyway. "So if we're going to pretend that we've been a family for a year, we're going to have to get used to each other."
"As well as successfully mimicking the traits of the upper class," Loid added. "So to start, I've prepared a series of likely questions we'll be asked at the interview. As Anya prefers, we should go over them with no preparation to see our weaknesses, then take some time to prepare, and try it again."
"I understand," Yor replied. 'Like a teacher putting a student on the mat the first day, so that the student knows how much they need to learn.'
I perked up at that. Her having a history of martial arts made plenty of sense. Surprised she didn't say 'sensei', but this is Europe. Maybe some descendant of ringen, since we're in a Germanic area. Maybe I've had a subconscious assumption of expecting to run into Japanese stuff since Youjo Senki was a manga, but there's no real reason to think that other than my predisposed tendency to assign the narrative structures of my past life into this one.
With that said, we launched into a faux interview.
It was…
Well, I did okay. Not great. I got flustered and bobbled some words I probably should have practiced saying aloud before trying to use them.
Yor, though. Oof. Definitely not a social master like Loid.
But that's fine. Really. You take the test unprepared to see what you're weak on. Even Yor, who definitely ended up the most stressed of the three of us, ended up acknowledging it not as a setback, but merely a step on the path to success.
It had been a stressful couple of hours, so we went out to the park.
As a family.
Honestly, it was kind of nice.
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'Her hands are so cute and tiny. It takes me back to when I used to hold my little brother's hand,' Yor mused, holding my hand as we walked together.
Loid trailed a bit behind. They had tried holding hands briefly, but Yor had gotten a little flustered. Actually, I think maybe she did like men? Loid is, of course, stupidly handsome. I found a natural way of lubricating their social interactions by inserting myself and briefly demanding attention to shake them out of feedback loops.
Loid was surprisingly quick to worry when Yor had fluffed the 'interview'. Hazard of being a professional who worked with professionals, I guess. And he'd lucked up and got me for a child, and while I was no spy, I was better prepared to play a role than could be reasonably expected. Yor was a great find for the mission, but social stuff was clearly her weak point.
Yor was still thinking about me, and her formerly tiny little brother. 'Hahhh. She's just as delicate as he was. I'd better be careful. Don't want a repeat of that time I hugged him too hard and broke two of his ribs.' She gently squeezed my hand, clearly feeling the tiny little bones roll around each other.
!
Damn, girl!
Physical comedy or tragic 'I hurt those I love the most' drama?
Man, let's hope its physical comedy. I had to resist the urge to yank my hand back. The way I perceived her as holding my hand shifted from 'oh what a cute little girl' to the kind of 'this animal is so delicate I could accidentally crush it' feeling I got from holding small animals like kittens or birds or mice. Not so much the urge to hurt, but the awareness of 'other'.
"Father is very smart and very skilled," I told Yor, "but he's wrong sometimes too. He's so used to knowing how to do everything that he's sometimes impatient when other people don't instantly pick up things. I know he's worried about getting me into the best school, but don't let him push you too hard. If you need some time prepare, remind him." I turned and gave him the stink eye. "Remember, Father. This is a team effort, that's the point of a family."
For his part, Loid did look a little bit bashful. "I'm sorry, Yor. Anya is right, as usual. I allowed my worry to make me treat you coldly."
She shook her head. "No, it's all right. I understand that the answers I gave were not sufficient. And you haven't treated me badly at all. You've just been quiet. I understand the need to think."
Huh. Yeah, actually, all his complaints were in his head. Unlike Yor, who only uses her mental voice occasionally, Loid keeps a running commentary going in his head, and I'd lost track of the difference between spoken words and thought.
"Well, that's why we're taking a break in the park. It's a stressful time for everyone, and it's a new environment for you. As Anya said, if I'm pushing you too hard, please say something. You're doing us a tremendous favor, and shouldering most of the hard work as well. What do you say to getting a nice meal, and then finding some entertainment? Upper class stuff so we can practice our roles, but less intense and stressful as just sitting down at the table and studying."
"That sounds nice," she replied, offering him her hand.
Arm in arm, with me on her other side, we left the park and headed for an evening of upper class entertainment.
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A fancy restaurant was our first stop, early in the evening. Really more around tea time, since we'd gotten out and about early.
Under the guise of teaching me, Loid had gauged Yor's knowledge of fancy etiquette.
I mean, and mine. Mine was certainly lacking. I had vaguely remembered something about starting from the outside and working my way in, and a few other tidbits, but that was about it. And some of that was wrong.
The biggest thing that threw me was the way Europeans keep the knife in the right hand and use the fork in the left, where Americans tend to use the knife in their right, cut things up, then swap hands. I do consider the European way superior, but it's tricky to overcome a lifetime of doing it the other way.
Yor knew most of it, though she clearly hadn't spent much if any time at the truly fancy places like we were at. She marveled at the silverware, which was admittedly pretty swanky. Most of it was genuine silver, unless I miss my guess. And like Yor, I was kind of surprised at the knives being actually sharp. Most of my experience at nice restaurants involved the usual American standard of serrated knives, which disguised their dull blades by simply tearing through food.
I don't like serrated knives.
But these were elegant, sharp, and, judging by the way Yor spun one around a finger, well balanced.
'I've never killed someone seated at a fancy restaurant,' Yor thought to herself. 'I'll have to remember the quality of their blades.'
…whaaaaaaaat?
"Anya, don't stare like that, it's rude," Loid chided.
My eyes must have been as big around as the plates under our food. My thoughts were sputtering like a cold diesel engine. What-wut-WHAT-huh-wat-Wat-WHAT.
Yor held the knife in a thrusting grip, making a few tiny motions like stab, stab, which she followed through into slicing up her meat drizzled in some sort of sauce which now no longer mattered in the slightest.
But, once I thought about it, it made sense. She was clearly an expert at self-defense. Training and probable inclination plus probably a good chunk of talent. Plus one of the most dangerous jobs in the world, short of literally being in active combat. Men do terrible things to women, after all.
I managed to overcome my shock and returned to my meal. I was going to get the merlu koskera but I managed to remember that the time I'd tried it before, it had slices of hard boiled eggs. I could pick around the yolks but it was easier to just get something else. I got sole meuniere. It's hard to go wrong with butter fried anything.
One of the major benefits to this new life was enjoying the change in taste buds. I get to try everything for the first time again. A few things had already stood out. I'd never cared much for sauerkraut in my first life, but I liked it here. I hadn't liked German potato salad, kartoffelsalat, at all in my past life, but despite the vinegar on my delicate loli tongue, it had proven considerably more palatable when Loid made it. And peanuts had proven to be a surprisingly nice snack, far tastier than I'd ever considered them before, even more so than the hazelnuts.
Still didn't like hard egg yolk, though, or spatzle, or most pastas, really. And walnuts were still too bitter and woody. I also considered cauliflower to be a pale imitation of good broccoli. Really, the main change seemed to be that my new taste buds handled vinegary flavors better.
It was a nice meal. Genuinely tasty, and the tiny little rich people proportions were perfectly adequate for my coin wallet sized stomach. We got some etiquette lessons in, and made a plan to incorporate them into our meals at home until they were habit.
Unfortunately, that was the last of the really pleasant experiences that evening.
After that, we went to an opera.
I'd largely been neutral on the topic of operas in my past life. I like music, and I like orchestra music, but the bombastic singing in other languages was meh at best.
But now, I wasn't watching it from behind a TV screen. I was actually in the audience.
Between the crowd's futz of mental noise and the bellowing Italian-
Italian? What was Italy called here, again? Dangit.
-of the woman dressed as either Athena, Queen of the Zombie-Stags or Dra'nakyuek, Genarch Primate of Dying Stars as she blathered on about betrayal, sin, heartbreak, and murder. I didn't even understand Italian and I could tell that whatever this thing was, it was at least as depressing as that one with the fucking clown.
Between the headache from the crowd and the growing contempt for opera, I'd drawn up into a ball and had my hands over my ears to try and stave off at least the audible horror.
I made the mistake of glancing over to see Yor's reaction.
Poor woman.
I couldn't pick up on her thoughts due to the static from everyone else, but the expression on her face…
It kinda reminded me of this video I saw once of this dog, just sitting on the ground while multiple people around him yelled incoherently at each other. Not scared, because he's clearly not the target, but not happy either. Mostly, it was just confusion tinged with worry. Eyes so wide you could see the whites, darting back and forth. If it was an anime she'd have question marks floating over her head.
It was almost funny, but mostly just kind of upsetting because she was clearly uncomfortable and stressed.
I leaned over to Loid and spoke quietly. "Maybe not the opera, next time. Even rich people don't like everything. Let's try a play, or ballet, or a symphony or something. All this noise is giving me a headache."
He nodded, though he did seem disappointed. Like it was another complication to the plan.
After that, we'd headed home, and ended up going by some sort of political rally thing. Loid said something about patriotism and political camps being important for the hoity toity to have visible strong opinions on.
Oh man.
Remember how I said emotions don't really come through mental thought?
I was wrong.
I was so wrong.
What a fucking nightmare. On top of the bit of headache I already had from Dra'nakyuek and the audience earlier, a crowd of angry men shouting both audibly and in their heads was a nightmare. Holy shit, you just don't even know. I thought social stuff was my kryptonite before. I actually started crying and instinctively trying to pull out of the crowd.
Horrible. Just the actual worst.
I mean, the noise sucked but it was just so astonishingly vile. Even if I could catch maybe one actual word in a hundred the sheer vitriol being expressed made me feel like my brain was being boiled in hate and hot sauce.
Like the kind of shitty, way too fucking hot stuff they sold at low end hardware stores and such. With names like FATAL ANAL MALESTROM and DISTILLED TONGUE RAPE SAUCE. Now imagine a big pot of that shit with a bunch of the kind of people it's marketed to standing around bellowing about immigrants and snowflakes and fags, and they're all poking at you and yelling directly at you because it's all your fault and they want you to agree with them and how dare you look away even for a second because another one of them is yelling at you and you're getting bruised from finger jabs and going deaf and their greasy sweaty spittle is flecking your face.
Now bathe in it. All that hate and chemical pain up in your everywhere. I have no mouth yet I must scream style jar of fucking torture.
But I did have a mouth.
And I did scream.
It ain't easy, being psychic.
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I didn't faint or anything, but Yor was quick to snatch me up from the ground and retreat from the crowd, which I was sure to appreciate whenever I was capable of appreciating things again.
"I think the crowd scared her," Yor told Loid. "She might be a very self-possessed little girl, but that's a lot of angry men shouting over there."
"Head hurts," I mumbled, squeezing the bridge of my nose.. "Everyone is so loud. All shouting."
I don't know what else they said, but we ended up going home. My headache faded almost immediately as we got far enough away from the crowd, but I still felt drained.
Once we got home, I requested orange juice. It had a kind of chemical tang to it, and I rolled a sip over my tongue, thinking about it.
The oranges were almost certainly imported.
Old juice.
Preservatives…
Sodium benzoate, potassium sorbate, malic acid? Maybe some additional vitamin C and E?
I got up and got the waxed cardboard box out of the refrigerator. Yep, pretty much nailed it, plus some 'orange essential oils. I was surprised to see honey on there as well.
This stuff was probably considered pretty expensive. I put the carton back in the fridge.
Both Loid and Yor were staring at me. Yor looked worried. Loid looked pensive.
I toddled back over to the couch and climbed back up. Man it sucks being tiny.
"So. That's never happened before," I announced with faux cheer.
"Anya, honey, what happened?" Yor asked.
I shook my head. "It was like too much noise all at once. Crowds have always given me headaches, but that many people shouting was even worse. Just pounding in my head, making my ears hurt. The only other time it's ever been even close to that bad was when I was taking the entrance exam for Eden. All those sounds of kids mumbling and talking and crying and fidgeting made it hard to concentrate, but it still wasn't that bad compared to this."
"Hyper stimulation?" Loid asked. 'I may need to review the literature about savants. That's a complication I don't need.'
I opened my mouth, then closed it and thought about it. I wonder what literature there is available on savants, idiot savants, and other stuff this far back. I mean, I know that I'm not-
Well, actually, I am pretty goddamn divergent, ain't I? Telepathy ain't typical.
"…Maybe?" I hazarded.
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So I went to bed. Kind of a downer ending on the day.
I mean, on one hand, it's not really a big deal. Lots of people don't like crowds. Hell, I didn't like them in my first life, though they never caused any kind of debilitating effect like they did here. Of course, I wasn't psychic in my last life. Was this an old me thing exacerbated by new me hardware? A purely new me thing?
I mean, shit, I was like four or five, given my own imperfect memories. My new birth certificate was a lie I only got away with by having reincarnated knowledge. I can't expect to have all the resiliencies of an adult anymore.
Yor was still kind of stressed by the whole change in circumstances she had, and now worried about me.
But what really sucked was listening to Loid second guess himself.
In one evening I'd gone from a reliable co-conspirator to a liability.
And that hurt.
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Breakfast the next morning was a quiet affair. I'd slept badly. Loid stayed up late. Yor looked chic as always, but also a bit apprehensive?
I joked about my weakness to social stuff, but this newly discovered problem seems to be genuinely a problem. I'm cute, I can probably get a pass on being awkward. But breaking down in a crowd...
But I'm a child! Barely more than a toddler! It's probably not a real problem, just a reminder that I am not, in fact, all knowing, all competent?
Loid's worrying, though. Some of those books are getting fresh creases in their spines.
Too many hits close together, I think. I keep focusing on Yor's stress level, because I worry about her. Loid's the professional, right? He can handle it.
But the dude literally got injured on a job in a firefight last Saturday. He's got a massive job to do and they keep sending him little jobs and the guy has GOT to be managing some sort of trauma, possibly including PTSD. To function as a master spy, he's used to controlling all of the variables.
I give Frankie a little bit of shit but I'm one hundred percent certain he's a master at what he focuses on, and he's Loids main support. The only other person Loid relies on is himself, because he can control himself.
Shit.
Would it be better if I told him what he had stumbled upon in that shitty orphanage, I.E. me?
Or would that just mean I was too valuable to risk and I'd get whisked away to a Westalis lab? This ain't a USA vs USSR proxy war. I'm not even sure who the 'good' guys are here, if such a thing exists.
And I sure as fuck wouldn't want to end up nabbed by the CIA or whatever anyway.
Yor got a call before she went off to work. I didn't really listen in during the call, which was definitely a fucking mistake.
Because of what Yor thought as she went back into her room to change clothes.
'The Shopkeeper told me I'd have at least a week before another assassination, maybe two. Oh well. At least it's during the day, and work is covered. We still need to practice for that interview when I get home.'
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AN: There's more written, available on that patronage site.
You can also read my works on space battles, sufficient velocity, and questionable questing SFW forums. And for those of you wondering where the lewds went, they're on questionable questing NSFW, but you need an account to be able to see it.
Comments welcome!