In the wake of the Summit War, a yōkai hunter negotiates a pact between her clan and the Heart Pirates. The alliance is fragile from the start, but things are complicated further when her tenuous relationship with the Surgeon of Death takes an unexp...
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"Can't you tell Teru and I are sick of hearing you go on and on about how hard you have it?"
Despite being the oldest sibling, Murasaki Teruko had burst into tears long ago. Kind, amiable Teru. Always the pacifist, always wearing her heart on her sleeve. Always the first to crack at the first sign of conflict, even if the matter didn't directly concern her.
"Don't listen to her, Arisa," she whispered, clinging to her youngest sister's arm in a preemptive attempt to hold her back. "You know she doesn't mean it – she doesn't. She j-just hasn't been like herself lately..."
But all the seven-year old could do was stare blankly up at her older sister, a mixture of shock and confusion churning at the pit of her stomach. She couldn't think of anything to say, really, because the Misa she knew was never like this. Of the three of them, Misa was supposed to be the cool, level headed sister. The dependable one, the calming ocean tide that tempered Teru's boisterous spunk and Arisa's childish sulkiness.
Something must have changed after the accident that rendered her incapable of competently wielding her beloved katana for good, after her childhood dreams of becoming a high-ranking Navy officer had been dashed to pieces at the base of the local school's fire escape landing. Or maybe not. Maybe the resentment had always been there, always lying dormant beneath a facade of manufactured calm until she was pushed past her breaking point. Because unlike the long-suffering Teruko who clung to the belief that nobody was beyond redemption, Murasaki Misato had never truly forgiven the Commodore for betraying her mother. She'd never forgiven Uzuki Towa for destroying her parents' marriage and rending apart the perfect image of familial harmony which had once encapsulated the entirety of the Murasaki household.
And though she likely would never say it aloud, she would never forgive this trembling, wide-eyed slip of a girl standing before her for merely existing, because her presence served as a permanent reminder of her mother's grief and her father's infidelity.
"Has it ever occurred to you how...how embarrassing this is for all of us?" Misa went on, her unbandaged hand balling into a trembling fist. Her large brown eyes glistened with unshed tears. "You know the reason why Mom went to bed crying every night ever since you were sent here? Why she ended up leaving me and Teru?"
"Shut up," Arisa said hoarsely, voice cracking. Something also burned at the corners of her eyes, but she fought to ignore it, to throttle it back savagely as she might extinguish a stray flame. Because crying was weak, crying was pathetic, and didn't Mother always say how important it was to hide all weaknesses, to exhibit nothing but strength to the world?
"No, I won't!" Misa shrieked back. The angry tears glimmering in her dark eyes finally spilled over, cascading down her cheeks in uneven rivulets. And then just like that, all three of them were crying. Just three insignificant kids reduced to a mess of hot tears and gulping hiccups and runny noses, bawling uncontrollably, failing miserably to make sense of their parents' mistakes. "Because how is any of this supposed to be fair? Why do you get to whine on and on about having an overbearing mother, when we don't get to have one at all anymore? Why do we have to deal with everyone at school calling us that family?"
