aiko's otter den

raise your weapon - Dusk threw away his past, his life, everything, to become a spy to preserve order. He’s now got to don the look of a family man and get a wife and child, all to prevent a war! Meanwhile, Bam is a beleaguered law secretary, struggling with identity. Miseng is a child looking to stop running. Hijinks will ensue. SxF au

Now with art by yole!

---

Chapter 2

In an uninteresting sector of the City of Gold, Lo Po Bia Elbaba sits at his desk and works.

He’s not supposed to be this busy, but when your family head gives you a task, you do it, like it or not.

So here he is, tired and with cramping hands, but with one more sheet of data for their military animal system. Just a few more lines of code and he could finally get home and go to sleep. It’s for the paycheck, he reminds himself.

A window creaks. Elbaba’s head snaps up, hair falling into his face. He can hear his wife’s voice now, reminding him irritably to ‘cut your hair, what kind of man are you’, well men can wear their hair lon—

Downstairs, a door opens. It closes just a second later, and Elbaba freezes. He looks towards the window. It’s two meters away. If he can just get there, he’ll be in the alley. It’ll be fine. He moves without lifting the chair from the floor, leaving his shoes behind. He slides across the old wood, practiced at not making it creak.

The window slides open with a squeak.

He freezes, all hair rising from his neck. Nothing. As Elbaba nudges himself through the opening, a floorboard creaks in the hall.

Throwing caution to the wind, Elbaba yanks himself up and through the window. He slides down the rooftops, using the gutter to keep himself slow. Panic pitches his breaths fast as he moves, careless in the quiet of the late night hours. Then a soft voice murmurs.

“Lo Po Bia Elbaba-ssi?”

A soft voice reaches his ears. Her words are steady, empty as steel.

He stops on the cobbled streets. “Who are you?” He says, trying to sound brave and not full of sickening fear. “What do you want?”

“My identity isn’t important.” Something gleams in the light of the streetlights. “However, yours… is very important.”

Where is the voice coming from?

A shadow leaps from the side, a monster on two legs. Their jacket swishes in the wind, a blade serene in their fingers. Many blades.

“So please,” they continue. “Are you Lo Po Bia Elbaba-ssi?”

“… What if I am?”

Their stance shifts. “Then Elaine-ssi sends her regards.”

Elaine? What of that filthy trai—

Elbaba’s last sight is a single golden knife and a flowing purple ribbon.

When they find his body in the morning, it’s painted the familiar symbol of two red diamonds.

Painted, of course, with his blood.

The Thorn Prince, F.U. G’s envoy, has struck again.

---

Miseng studies. She studies hard. She likes to learn, but Khun can tell that the orphanage did her little good. Her reading is fine, but slow. Her writing is awful, a squiggly mass of underdeveloped motor skills. (He reads to make games about it, but he doesn’t really know any games. Reading with her helps.)

But her math?

Her math is worse.

She can count. She can count well even, but outside of visuals, her math skills are… well, it’s a miracle she passed the first exam.

Khun can handle math, but he can’t teach math. Teaching reading and writing, even the visuals of history and sciences, he can do. But math is a subject he’s done in his head since he was young and given his sister’s old abacus. He just understands it.

Then again, considering most of Miseng’s studying has been a struggle of broadness, not even the specifics of teaching may have saved her. He knows the materials all too well.

Khun’s searching for a wife at this point turns frantic.

Is this also because another body of a prominent family has turned up in the streets? Or because the remaining family members in the city vanished? Maybe!! Not that FUG is really active in things Khun actively is working against, but that’s a concern for people paid to deal with it. Not him! And if his way into the school dies, there’s a problem. He cannot go looking for another orphan like “well the last one dad, can you sell me another?” Please!!

Unfortunately, he’s found that the City of Gold has a surplus of honestly terrible sounding women. Not in appearance, he imagines, if a Princess of Jahad has to be conventionally attractive, so does everyone else. However, the sheer amount of Great Family members who made up most of the jobs was enough to make him nervous. His old life shouldn’t affect anything, but he can never be too careful.

And yet.

Miseng bounces in front of him. “Papa!”

“Mm?” She sure recovered from being kidnapping fast. Are all kids this resilient?

“I look cute!” she declares in her new dress. One of like, seven to ten, but Operation Strix had a healthy, healthy budget and children needed clothes. So.

“You do,” Khun agrees absently. She looks better in pink and brighter colors. It’s a shame the academy demands the kids wear black and gold (with occasional red, who the fuck thought that was a good look for kids?). She’d look pale like that.

Maybe the sunny grounds will help. Kids need sun and pleasant weather and exercise, according to one book.

(Had Isu taken pity on him and given him useful books about parenting? Yes, yes he had, and what about it?)

“I want to keep being cute,” Miseng tells him.

“Well, the world’s your oyster,” he points out and she beams. She’s off in seconds and Khun allows himself the dignity of a deep sigh.

“Your daughter has a lot of energy,” says the front desk worker with a chuckle. “She must be hard to keep up with on your own.”

“A little,” he admits like a tired parent is supposed to do. “But I wouldn’t trade it for anything.”

The clerk nods sympathetically, as if she’s old enough to understand. She looks like a Po Bidau, a young one learning numbers instead of literature. He makes a note. Not a suitable type, too sympathetic, too invested after a single conversation, but a potential source of support would be ideal.

The bell rings and Khun flicks his eyes up to see the customer. The woman lets out a sigh as she enters, bag tight around her shoulder. No heels, leggings under a skirt that reached the knees. A comfortable-looking dress shirt. The giveaway was the black and gold ribbon tying her hair.

Bam… Grace, if he remembered his dossiers correctly. A middle level office clerk at a Yeon family office for the city. They did law consultation, if he remembered right. An orphan, graduated from one of the private schools, had one little brother who worked for the special forces in the Jahad Army, under a princess. Elite of the elite.

There had been nothing in her record showing wrongdoing or anything beyond a plain woman in an office, aside from her lack of marriage prospects.

Well, that and her unusual friendship with Wangnan Ja, younger brother to Karaka Jahad.… Interesting. That had to drive some guys away.

She approaches the desk with a nervous smile. She needed a haircut. He could barely see her eyes.

“Excuse me,” she says. “My name is Bam Grace. I’m here for the order they fit me for the other day?”

As the clerk busies herself in her data sheet, Bam fidgets with a bracelet on her arm. It’s old, the string faded and beads cracked, but her thumb wears over it with long practiced fondness.

“Papa!” Miseng calls, and Khun tilts his head to see her running towards him. Her old pink clothes are gone, hopefully in the bin because seeing them makes his stomach crawl. She’s now wearing something much brighter, patterns on the skirt and shoes that weren’t full of holes.

Khun gets up just in time for Miseng to make a flying leap right into his arms like she’d rehearsed it.

She was so lucky that she was cute. “All done,” he says instead of that.

Miseng nods. “She gave me a bunny hair clip!” She twists her head to show him, in fact, two bunny hair clips. Cheap and cute and where her old hair accessory had been.

“Did she?” Khun turns to the poor woman, who just smiles like children aren’t a problem at all, and nods. “Did you thank her?”

“Uh-huh!” But Miseng isn’t really paying attention. She’s staring at Bam, who is watching them with a nostalgic sort of fondness. (He thinks that’s what it is. That haircut makes it exceedingly hard to tell).

“Da!” she says upon looking at Bam for about two seconds more than is socially appro— what did she just say?

“Miseng!” Khun starts. “I’m so sorry about her. She’s not usually like this?”

The girl gives him a look, which Khun translates from six-year-old as you have known me for three days. You don’t know me, which yes fair, but don’t say that kind of thing!!

Bam, to her credit, only laughs shyly. It’s a shaky sound, from someone who has worked too many hours over too many days and just wants them to be over. Khun can relate more than he wants to admit. “No, no, it’s… it’s all right. I appreciate the name. Thank you, Miseng.”

She addresses the girl directly, and it makes the kid light up like a candle.

“This is my papa,” the little girl says, as if she is not digging the graves of both Agent Dusk and Operation Strix in one fell swoop. “I need a da-ma. I’m going to the Institute.”

She does not lisp it this time, phew.

“My wife passed not long after Miseng was born,” Khun supplies as the clerk rings him up, holding Bam’s order number for the poor fitting attendant. ‘The Institute is particular about families and traditional models.’ He drops his voice so the gossipers in earshot can’t hear as he takes the clothes. “It’s unfortunate, but I’m… well, I’m not really to date yet.”

“Oh, no,” Bam smiles and with her head lifted, he can see the golden eyes. “I understand entirely. My office… my coworkers are obsessed? They demanded I show up to the party with a date and, well…”

She trails off and Khun sees Miseng opening her mouth to cause more problems on purpose. “Perhaps we could make a deal? We can discuss it outside.”

---

Bam hates the office he works in.

His colleagues are sometimes nice, sure, but most of the time, they’re gossips and nosier than almost everyone around him, even his neighbors. Ehwa is the worst. She breaks coffee decanters and brings food that smells like charcoal, but blames others.

He recalls her crying when Wangnan left without her and holds onto that memory to not strangle her.

That and he’d get fired.

It’s difficult, but he remembers it.

It’s the way Ehwa says she when referring to him, like if she just digs a little deeper, she’ll unveil the ugly (is it really ugly? Is it?) secret burning in his skin, the one where he says, “I’m a man, I think you should stop” at every law-abiding man whose come all too close to tugging at his skirt on the trolley, or every moment she’s caught him staring at a pair of dress pants is a moment too long.

She says nothing, but her suspicion of him is worse than her suspicion of what he does at night instead of house parties and going home to a husband.

Hatz is worried more about the latter than the former. Though he’s suggested a wife, there’s really no winning here. His brother is trying.

Hell, Bam is trying.

Hell, Bam only really figured out he was -wanted? Was? Is? — a guy six months ago, after digging into the old clothes bin and thinking oh, at the outfit inside. It was just a “pants were nicer than skirts” and a poorly held urge to vomit every time he was called a princess or ‘my lady’ at home.

A laundry day and some knitting had fixed it and he’d justified it with “I need a new outfit, the bloodstains are getting hard to wash out” and no one had batted an eye. The girls had laughed and said, “I wish I was that brave,” and it’s not brave. He’s scared, he’s so scared to say the words again—

But then this little girl meets his eyes and said “da!” and oh, oh.

Okay, Bam, do not melt into the floor, do not have a meltdown of happy feelings in the middle of the clothing store. You are buying outfits. You are a functional member of society. Hatz needs you to be strong and adult.

Never mind, his brother has a perfectly respectable government desk job and didn’t need him anymore.

“Da!” Miseng repeats happily once they’re all out of the store, where no one is around and she’s beaming, enthusiastic and sure. Sure, in the way six-year-olds (she seemed a little small for six but who is he to judge, Hatz had seemed easy to crush in his hands at three, as a baby in his mother’s arms) are.

“Miseng,” Khun scolds.

Miseng pouts. “Papa~ You don’t get it!”

“What I get is you’re being rude.”

He’s handsome, Bam thinks absently, seeing his neatly slicked back hair and perfectly pressed suit. I don’t think I could pull off green though… maybe it’s just his complexion. I wish I could wear the jacket…

“I really don’t mind!” Bam reassures. “I’ve been called much stranger. So, uhm, what did you want to talk about?”

Khun disengages himself from the staring contest with the child (cute) and turns to him. “Yes, uh,” He introduces himself again (also cute, stop it Bam!) and explains.

“So, you need a fake wife?” Bam prods. The word wife in his mouth makes his stomach twist.

Khun sighs, rubs his eyes. “Yes, for her to get into the school. I didn’t get to have much of a formal education myself and my wife wished for it.”

Bam can’t help a stab of envy to a person who he’s never met, because Khun looks solemnly at Miseng. She dances in the sidewalk on the cobblestone, happy as can be, and he doesn’t look away.

You’re a sucker, Bam, he thinks. “I could help, if you’d like. I actually… need a date for an office party.”

“You look like someone who would brighten up a room,” Khun says with confusion, clear and real. “Why would you need a date?”

Bam doesn’t mean to laugh; he really doesn’t. “My brother says the same thing,” but with many more insults to the men who worked with him. ‘I’m not particularly eye-catching, and I’m not ready to stop working for at least a few more years.’ And I’m a guy and I might like men, and both are wrong, wrong, wrong to this city. “Old habits die hard.” Unlike elderly people.

“You’re amazing.”

Bam blinks as Khun smiles. It’s a little mischievous, a lot serious, and so much interest. “You stick to the beat of your drum no matter what happens to you or what you hear. You’re a very interesting person. You have yourself a deal. When’s your party?”

Bam flushes, the high of shaking hands and making a deal for a reputation he doesn’t really need warming his skin. “Oh t-tomorrow!”

He thinks he sees the man’s eyes flash with victory, triumph? Then he nods. “Perfect. We can meet here and go together?”

Bam nods, giddiness in his throat. Stop, stop, he thinks. He’s just being nice to a woman to be polite. He doesn’t know anything.

More than anything, the kind Khun (of all the families!) did not know he was an assassin, so it wouldn’t even be a well-built relationship, anyway.

So lost in his thoughts, Bam did not notice the man’s daughter looking at him with stars in her eyes.

… She was very bored from studying all day.

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