A/N: Not sure how I ended up with a "T" rating on this fic. Never posted anything here before. It's fixed now.


- 8 -

"Wake up, sleepyhead! C'mon, wake up!" The muffled voice was heard as if from a deep well.

Tyki slowly opened his eyes and squinted as dazzling sunlight of a cloudless autumn morning flooded his vision, leaving motley spots dancing haphazardly all around him.

Momo persistently shook him by the shoulder, and Tyki tensed up from the innocuous gesture, feeling a brief onset of panic, but Momo's hand didn't pass through his body like the farmer's pitchfork. Several weeks slipped by since he and Road destroyed that boy's Innocence in France, but he couldn't stop worrying that he'd make a mistake one inopportune moment, and his body would instinctively phase through a simple human touch like a tap of a hand on the shoulder. That farmer's pitchfork couldn't even graze him though he had made no conscious effort to avoid it.

Without realizing what he was doing, Tyki pushed back the Noah inside of him to the outer edges of his mind by a tremendous exertion of will.

"Sorry, buddy. What time is it?"

"We have about three and a half hours before the train arrives at the station," said Momo. "Clark's finishing up breakfast downstairs."

They spent the night at a shoddy inn in a small town somewhere in the north-east of England. After Tyki came back to London and met up with Momo and Clark, he learned that the higher-ups from Vatican had visited the barracks and questioned the workers about the murders. He told his companions that he was away on a secret job, and they seemed to believe him, but Clark recalled that it was Tyki's shift when the murders took place and suggested that he should talk to the investigators about anything suspicious he had seen that day.

It occurred to Tyki that if he didn't want to jeopardize the Earl's plans further and incur his wrath, he had to talk his companions into leaving London. Eventually, the four of them agreed to move to the mining town for the winter.

"I got your coffee, mister Tyki," cheerfully said Eez, climbing into his bed.

Eez, a blond, blue-eyed orphan of no more than eight or nine winters, often wore a cloth mask around face because his lungs were sick, but he took it off inside if the air was clean. He had a bright smile, and he smiled easily and often, as if to compensate for all those times when he couldn't show it.

After Tyki returned to London, this kid always chased after him, wide-eyed with delight, and asked him endless questions about the world around them. Tyki didn't mind.

"What's that way, mister Tyki?" he would ask.

And, depending on the direction in which he pointed, Tyki would say something along the lines: "The ocean's that way and the place called the New World."

Tyki took the mug into his hands and carefully sipped the scalding coffee.

"Do you like it?"

The watery beverage was godawful, but Tyki didn't have the heart to crush the kid's spirit. "I've had worse. What you really need are better quality coffee beans. One day, you'll make a fine chef, Eezy."

The kid beamed at him with the most adoring expression plastered across his face. Tyki couldn't comprehend the depth of such pure, simple-hearted, senseless devotion.

The tiny room on the last floor of the inn contained a narrow cot under the tattered blanket, a washtub, and a nightstand with a dark moldy stain, and it felt cramped despite the near lack of any furniture. Tyki couldn't straighten to full height without hitting the ceiling with his head, but at least, the lodgings were dry and there were less mice than in the rooms downstairs. Tyki heard the pesky rodents scuttering about at night.

Tyki would kill for a bath and some decent grub, but on the other hand, he hadn't given much thought to the Earl's schemes, the war with the Black Order, or the traitor in his family. Duality doubtlessly had its perks.

Downstairs, Clark and a plump woman in a dirty apron fiddled about with breakfast on a small stove, but the smell indicated that they had little success with it.

"Food's ready." Momo emerged with a plate in his hands. "Come quickly before all of it is gone. We don't have much today."

Tyki splashed his face with water from the sink, straightened his worn, faded shirt and baggy overalls, and picked up a tin bowl with a wooden spoon from the kitchen counter. The atmosphere in the inn's kitchen could not compare with the splendor of the Earl's mansion, but it had a simple rustic charm about it despite the abundant signs of squalor—empty bread shelves, shabby curtains with tiny holes across a single dusty window, and rickety chairs alongside a rough-hewn table under a well-worn tablecloth.

Tyki approached the stove.

"Morning, Tyki." Calrk sniffed, wiping his nose. "'orry, I caught a cold. Ah-choo!"

"Don't sweat it. I'll get you some hot water."

"I'd appreciate it."

Tyki reached for the kettle and began pouring water into a cracked cup.

"Um, mister Tyki," muttered Eez as he walked into the kitchen, "can you help me?"

Tyki looked at the child who tried to hand him a light-brown coat he usually wore and the two torn-off buttons. He was thrown into deep confusion. Was he really cut out for this kind of life?

"Look, kid, I'm not the best person to ask to fix your clothes." He brushed the strands of his messy hair off his forehead with the back of his palm and began filling his bowl with the contents of the pan that looked like deep-fried tangled seaweed. "Why don't you bother Momo or Clark?"

"I'll take care of it," Momo chimed in, taking Eez by the hand and leading him out of the kitchen.

Tyki sat down at the table across from Clark. The strange dish tasted as bad as it looked, chewy and flavorless, but Tyki was starving and could eat anything at that point. They were always short on money when they moved between towns because the odd jobs like porch sweeping paid little to nothing.

"Your other boss doesn't pay you well for your trouble, does he?" asked Clark, gobbling up the modest breakfast.

"The pay is not too bad." Tyki grinned, eyeing the last cigarette. If he smoked it then, he'd have to go for hours if not days without cigarettes, so he decided to wait a little while longer. "But I'm bad at spending my money. I can never get the math right in my head, you know."

"I feel you. I'm jealous of those rich bastards who don't have to pinch pennies to survive."

Tyki shrugged his shoulders—he didn't feel strongly on the matter one way or the other.

"By the way, I'm grateful that you've been spending so much time with Eez lately," Clark went on after he blew his nose on a dirty handkerchief. "It was hard for him to leave Tam behind in London, but he's been getting worse and worse lately. Afraid, it's the last time we saw the old man."

"Sorry to hear about your friend," Tyki said, feeling nothing of the sort. He didn't know the old man and even if he did, after the Noah inside of him awoke, his feelings were in a jumble that was becoming harder and harder to untangle. He doubted he'd ever feel pity for a stranger. "And I enjoy the kid's company, so no need to thank me for anything."

Tyki recalled the boy who, in desperate ignorance, asked to be turned into an Akuma, but he never found out where that thought would lead because Eez ran into the kitchen with the mended coat in his hands.

"Momo fixed it, and it looks like new!"

"I know who'll be stitching up my shirts and overalls," said Tyki.

Momo and Clark exchanged quick glances and guffawed.

After breakfast, they packed their bags, forked up several coins to pay the inn owner for the room and food, and headed to the train station.


Tyki Mikk couldn't recall the exact moment when an idea crystallized in his head that he had a light side and a dark side; not that he believed that a neat and surgical divide along some abstract lines was possible or that two separate personas inhabited his body, but the distinction seemed important to him.

At first, a sober realization came to him that his two lives should never be allowed to overlap. Just as he preferred to keep it a secret from Road and the Earl that he spent some of his free time with Momo, Clark, and Eez, he knew that the three of them could never find out about the Black Order and the true nature of his "secret jobs."

If he didn't want to lose his double life to a calamity like the fire that wiped out half the village in France or to a swarm of Akuma, the two parts of his life had to remain splintered, much like the two opposite poles of his identity.

It had to be done because, in the end, Tyki Mikk himself presented a danger to his dream of maintaining a double life.


The train slowly pulled up to the station with shrill whistling, belching out black clouds of smoke, and stopped with an abrupt jerk. Tyki held onto the back of the seat in front of him to steady himself on his feet.

Through the befogged window, a small platform came into view. It was nearly empty, aside from a solitary figure of a middle-aged man who hurried to greet a woman with silver strands in her hair – a wife, a sister, or some other familiar relation. The peaceful town was visible in the distance, bathing in the soft light of the sun that began to wane.

Tyki grabbed their luggage and descended the steps of the train behind Eez.

"Which way is the mine?" he asked.

"It's that way," Clark pointed to the tunnel at the end of the platform. "But first, we have to go to the post office. I sent some of our belongings there."

"I'll go look for the lodgings and I'll take Eez with me. He needs rest."

"Okay, we'll meet up with you in the miner's town. See you soon, Tyki!"

Tyki put his hand into the deep pocket of his overalls and groped about for a cigarette only to realize that he had smoked the last one he had with him on the train. Curiously, the awakening drastically altered his body and even his mind to an extent, but it did not affect his craving for tobacco.

"Mister Tyki, can I ask you a question?"

They dove under the tunnel arch and unhurriedly went along the train tracks towards the town.

"Sure, go ahead."

"What's your family like? I never knew my mom and dad. I wish I did know them, though."

'Damned kids and their curiosity,' Tyki thought to himself, but without genuine annoyance. He should have come up with plausible responses to predictable questions in advance.

"My family lives far away from here, but I get to see them from time to time."

"Who are your parents?"

"They died when I was very young. It's just me and my older brother now, and—" Tyki paused at a loss of words. "Well, it's too complicated to explain in a few words. When you grow up, you'll understand that family relationships aren't always simple and clear-cut."

"I always wanted to have an older brother."

"Momo and Clark are like your older brothers. They take good care of you."

"And you, mister Tyki!" Eez was wearing his mask, but the enthusiasm was heard in his voice, and his eyes lit up with serene joy.

Tyki absentmindedly glanced at the darkening sky. What would Road say if she saw him now? What was he doing, really? The answers kept eluding him, or maybe he wasn't asking the right questions just yet.

"I can't always be around, kid."

"Do you mean those secret jobs you do? It's okay. Momo says that you work very hard."

Tyki sheepishly spread out his hands. "Yeah, something like that. Look, there are people over at the guard house. Let's ask them for directions."

The mining town stood on the outskirts of the main settlement. It was fenced off with a makeshift enclosure from wooden planks that had seen better days, and the two guardhouses were erected at each of its entrances along the northern wall. A small crowd of miners in dirty clothes and cloth caps with lamp brackets for their lights bunched up by one the entrances, chattering, and as soon as they saw Tyki and Eez, two men broke away from the group and approached them.

"Hey, what are you doing all the way out here with a small child?" asked one of the men, chewing on a cheap rolled-up cigarette.

"We're looking for work. And the kid is with us. He has nowhere else to go," said Tyki.

"Mines are a bad place for the little ones," remarked the other man. "But if you want a job, you have to talk to the boss in that large building over there. He makes all decisions around here… Just a free piece of advice before you go. Don't waste his time if you're not willing to put in some real work around here. You know how to work a pickaxe?"

"Do I—" Tyki smiled, his eyes flashing coldly behind the rim of opaque glasses. "Best keep your charitable advice to yourself."

"Man, I wasn't trying to be rude. You just don't look like you've ever worked at a mine. The boss isn't going to like that."

"Appearances can be very deceiving. Let's go, Eez."

The mining supervisor's headquarters occupied the largest building in the mining town—a three-storeyed, sturdy, brick-walled mansion under an ugly gable roof topped with an oversized chimney—and smaller buildings grouped around it tightly. One of them was a shop of some sort; although it was missing an identifying sign of its owner, the wooden counters in front of it were crammed with assorted goods, from fruits and vegetables to clocks and kitchen utensils, and a bearded man paced back and forth in front of the counters, arguing with one of the miners over the price of beef jerky. A scattering of pines and furs overlooked the heathland beyond the mining town where the merry colors of autumn began to fade, turning a dreary shade of brown and gray.

Tyki knocked on the door of the supervisor's mansion, and when he received no response, he stepped into a poorly lit hallway. The door to the supervisor's cabinet at the end of the hallway was ajar, revealing a stout elderly man in a dark-gray suit who sat at his desk and scribbled something in a book. He had a look of self-importance about him.

"Look what the cat dragged in! A boy and a hobo," he said, lifting his eyes off the table with a bored expression on his round face.

"My companions and I are looking for work, actually," Tyki said nonchalantly. "They will be arriving here shortly."

"And what makes you think I'm hiring?"

"It's just a hunch, but I think you can find a place for the four of us."

The supervisor leafed through the book, making quick notes on the margins. "Did you bring your own equipment? You realize it's a gem mine, not a beach? It's one of the largest in the region, and I'm the proud manager around here."

If only that puny man knew who he was dealing with, he'd fall on his knees and beg Tyki for mercy, but he could not jeopardize his other life over something so insignificant on the scales of fate.

"I'm sure we can work out a beneficial deal for the both of us. You'll deduct the costs of the spare pickaxes from our salaries."

"It's an interesting proposition, but let me tell you about my conditions first," said the mine's supervisor with a calculating look. If Tyki had to give his best guess, the man thought about scamming them out of additional money. "The way I see it, you better be worth the hassle. If your group cannot bring me a large gem in the first two weeks, I'll sack you. And you won't get any concessions from me just because you have a boy with you."

"We have a deal."

"Then you have a job." He rose from his desk, rummaged in one of the drawers of his mahogany cabinet until he procured a set of keys, and casually tossed the keychain to Tyki. "You're going to stay at the common lodging house. The room number is on the keychain. Tomorrow you'll get a small advance on your salary to buy some groceries at the local store." He gave Tyki a toothy grin. "You didn't think food's free around here? But today's supper is on the establishment… You do look like you can eat a whole horse."

Tyki slipped the keys into his pocket. "We don't need your charity, so we'll gladly buy our own food. We'll be in the mine first thing in the morning." Tyki was on his way out of the door when a thought occurred to him. "Oh, and one last thing…" He looked over his shoulder. "Where's the nearest payphone?"


Momo and Clark met up with them at the common lodging house for the mine workers. The lodging house, unlike the barracks in London, had separate rooms, albeit small, and they occupied one of those rooms at the end of the hallway on the second floor. It was poorly furnished with four beds on bed frames with sagging springs, a wardrobe, and two nightstands with drawers, but it had a wide window which overlooked the entire mining town, obscured by smoke, soot, and clouds of dust.

Tyki's companions returned from the post office carrying a heap of clothes and an old chair—a memento Clark wasn't willing to part with despite its rather sorry condition—and began unpacking while Tyki was telling them about the meeting with the mine's supervisor.

"He's a first-rate cheat," Tyki concluded, dropping his knapsack onto the bed. "But the good news is that we have a job."

"For two weeks, at least," sullenly said Clark.

"C'mon, the deal's not half bad. We'll find gems for him, and even if we don't, we'll go someplace else. It's not like you'll miss this dump."

"Can anything dampen your spirits, Tyki?"

"I don't know." Tyki smiled an infectious smile. "But I certainly don't take petty setbacks personally."

"Eez, there's a package here for you," said Momo. "It must have been mixed up with the clothing. I didn't see it until now."

Eez came running through door. He was sitting outside the room, waiting for them to settle in because he disliked getting in their way.

"It's from Tam," he said excitedly, fumbling with the wrapping paper and a coarse rope tied around a small wooden box. "He sent me a letter and some money."

Eez unfolded a piece of paper covered in pencil scribbles and helplessly stared at it. Tyki figured that the kid couldn't read. Momo took the paper from his hands and, with some effort, skimmed through the message. Then he stuffed the crumpled piece of paper into his pocket and whispered something to Clark, his face wearing a worried expression.

"What does it say?" Eez kept asking over and over.

"Tam was not feeling well," said Clark, "and—"

"I'm sorry, Eezy, but he's gone. He left you all the money he had on him."

"I don't need his silver," muttered Eez and ran out of the room.

"You should go talk to him, Tyki," said Momo. "We told him the sad news. I think he's upset with us, but he'll listen to you."

'Oh man, what am I going to say to him?' Tyki thought, following Eez down the stairs and into the courtyard. At twenty-something, he had little to no experience in consoling upset children, and the Noah inside of him—though faintly present—felt familial empathy only to other members of the Noah Clan.

Eez sat on the porch, with his shoulders hunched, sniffling quietly from time to time and stubbornly looking at the dirty steps under his feet.

"What's up, Eez?" Tyki asked, taking a seat by his side.

Darkness had enveloped the town and brought a waft of chill with it. The rowdy voices of the miners were heard in the distance, laughter, swearing, the clinking of mugs and bottles, but there was not a soul around them.

"Is he dead? I won't see him again, right? That's what they said about my mom."

That's when Tyki felt it again—the intangible passing of a shadow darker than the night.

"It's perfectly normal to mourn the death of a friend," he said with a thin, cruel smile, hidden in the deepening gloom of the autumn evening, "because there's no alternative for you. You—" Tyki almost said, "you, humans," but he bit back his words and vigorously shook his head. The thoughts were slipping away from him, and he buried his face in his palm for a moment to collect himself. "What I mean is that you don't get to choose whether your friends die or not. There is no special magic that allows you to cheat death. Do you understand, kid?"

Eez stared at him, mouth agape. "I—I… don't think I do, mister Tyki."

"Just remember what I said."

"About the special magic to cheat death?"

But Tyki was already gone—just another shadow passing through the night.