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!

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Chapter 6

About ten minutes into his lunch break, Bam gets a phone call.

This actually isn’t too uncommon. He does special projects all the time, even though his killing usually takes place during the wee hours of the morning. It’s that person’s way of attempting sympathy for him. The bias can be a lot sometimes. But usually it’s his brother or F.U.G.

This time, it’s a little inconvenient. He’d taken it late after Nare had fallen behind with the financial reports for the callers, so he had been desperately downing a sandwich without looking improper. Annoying, but most of his time was on getting Endorsi to stop sniffing about it. (He’s not even sure why Endorsi works here. It’s not like she needs the money… or the position.) She doesn’t like the finance math. Only Xia Xia likes the finance math. That also comes with the bribes and a delightful sense of blackmail.

Bam says nothing about both because Xia Xia bought him the hair ties he loved for his birthday every year and if it was in exchange for silence and an occasional carrot cake on her birthday, he’ll hide the bribery. He has hidden much worse.

Unfortunately, he’d been intending to use his remaining lunch break to take a nap instead because by the time it was over, he was going to do a lot of errands. Instead, Ehwa glares at him with the intensity of a thousand suns and says, “Your date is calling downstairs.”

My date? “Aguero is?” He didn’t slip up this time, yes! “I’ll talk to him. Thank you Ehwa-ssi!”

She grunts. He’s almost tempted to ask her how she’s doing with Wangnan. Almost. He likes his eyebrows where they are. Instead, he picks up the company’s phone and greets his ‘husband’ with a mild hello, instead of “can you cook tonight? I think I need to pass out.”

“Miseng punched a kid’s lights out at school.” Is what falls from his mouth instead of ‘hello’.

The first thing Bam has to do is not laugh because Khun sounds so confused. Like, what do you mean my daughter, child of my loins, part of my life and half my heart, punched a kid’s lights out?

Who taught her to punch kids in the face? Me, Bam thinks but does not say through this invisible argument.

The second thing he has to do is not ask “did they deserve it?” Because the other party never deserves it apparently, especially when you chase them with sticks half your height, Hatz.

So he carefully picks up his most concerned voice and says, “Is she okay?”

“Mostly.” Khun relaxes a little. He probably expected hysteria or something. Goseng-nim would definitely have gotten hysterical because Beta bites people. “Mostly upset. I’m calling from the school, actually. He’s claiming she attacked him for no reason. She says he bullied her. I’m… not sure what to think. She’s never done this before.”

“Is she getting expelled?” Bam gets the sense Khun isn’t talking about the one who got punched on purpose.

“No, because then the other kid would get expelled for provoking a fight.”

“That’s very equal for Jahad.”

Khun snorts, as if he understands. He doesn’t, and Bam knows better than to explain it to him. He’s overwhelmed as it is. “They’re not expelling immediately. There are these… badges, called Third Eyes, that the kids have to wear. If you get eight of them, you get expelled. She has one and so does the kid.”

How does no one get expelled every five minutes? Hatz hadn’t mentioned any of this at his school! Kids do this all the time.

“I can leave now,” Bam offers. “Are you trying to figure out how to scold her?”

“Kind of?” Khun lets out a loose, ragged laugh. “I’m not used to… this part of parenting. She lashed out instead of talking. I thought I’d explained it well.”

“Mm.” Bam has a lot to say about that, but not where nosy coworkers were definitely listening. “I’ll stop and pick up dinner ingredients then and we can plan from there.”

“Thank you,” Khun whispers, and hangs up. For the best, phone calls are expensive.

He puts the phone down onto the cradle and goes to pack up.

“Trouble in paradise,” Rozeal says, sly.

Bam smiles sweetly. “Just a little. Good luck with the rest of the paperwork!”

They yell things at him as he leaves. He’s worked his schedule.

Unfortunately, when it rains, it pours. Bam gets five steps out of work when a familiar voice calls “Noona!”

Oh no.

Hatz waves as he approaches, all smiles and clutching groceries. “I wanted to visit for dinner.”

Bam winces. “You shouldn’t have, Hatz, you have bills.” And he can’t cook. Despite all of Bam’s best efforts, he really can’t cook.

“So do you.” His brother’s voice and eyes are soft and sad. “Let me meet your husband. I don’t want him to hurt you.”

Bam does not trust this to go well. “… All right, but we need to take care of Miseng first. She punched a kid.”

Hatz’s face contorts around a sentence. Bam sighs and falls into step with his brother, mentally apologizing to Khun again. This would be a long night.

---

It’s taking all of Dusk’s spy training not to scream into his hands. He’s handled multiple crises before. What excellent spy hasn’t? But he doesn’t know how to handle children! That is the entire problem. Isu handles children. That’s his entire hiding place.

He is not prepared to handle a guilty, anxious, frightened child who had simply reacted if she wasn’t lying to save her butt. Kids do that. He was a dumb kid; he did that. And she sounds guilty. She doesn’t want to ruin her papa’s mission, though how she actually knows this is a mission is something to think about when something normal happens in his life.

She’s on the couch, having missed all her classes and sniffling over her worksheets. He can’t tell if she’s still upset about the fight or thinks he’s mad at her (he should be, he really should be, but she’s six years old) and Dusk is too nervous to ask.

At least Bam will be home soon. He’s an excellent buffer, and he’s actually, unfortunately, luckily, raised a child. Even while as a child himself. Khun hadn’t lied when he’d said it was admirable. It was also a gigantic thank god because he’s not a parent, and frankly he doesn’t know how to be one.

“Miseng,” he says. She jolts upright, which isn’t comforting but expected. “Are you okay?”

Her lip wobbles and she cries. Oh no, he was trying not to do that. “I, I’m, I’m sorry papa, I just…”

“He bullied you,” he says because that was the official explanation from witnesses, while the nobler kids and supporters of Jahad said he had been ‘establishing the class hierarchy’ or something as inane as that. “And you fought back.”

“He called daddy weird,” Miseng protests. “And me a freak! He said I didn’t belong there! I do! I did everything he did!”

Khun thinks of Prince Jahad. If he recalls correctly, he’d been adopted at the behest of Wangnan Jahad because of a father who’d accumulated massive debts from taking on other’s debts. Much like the Princesses, Prince may feel pressure or a desperate need to prove himself. How Jahad instilled that in a literal six-year-old, Dusk does not know.

And Miseng will not give a shit. She’s a six-year-old dealing with an equally bratty six-year-old. There’s no such thing as empathy and working around these circumstances after a first impression like that.

So he has to encourage her to stand up for herself some other way.

“Miseng,” he says, slowly, carefully, so she doesn’t mishear anything (she’s done it before). “He was wrong.”

She looks up, puffy-eyed. “Papa?”

He breathes out. “Prince was wrong. Your dad isn’t weird, you aren’t a freak, and we got there, you got to where you stood, through your own efforts. He was wrong, and he hurt you because he wanted to prove he was the best. I’m glad you got angry. You should be angry when people try to hurt you. You should stand up for yourself when people try to tear you down.”

She looks a little more hopeful, chestnut brown eyes warm with relief that no, her dad didn’t hate her. Kids were simple, but he really could not understand them.

“But you shouldn’t have hit him.”

She freezes.

“I understand why you did.” In his mask of a caring father, he moves to sit beside her, far enough that she can escape if she really needs to, but close enough for her to reach. The parenting books said that was right. “And sometimes, our emotions are too big for us to make hard choices. But you are in trouble. For next time, there’s something else I want you to do instead: beat him.”

Miseng swallows. “Papa?”

This is a core rule of the Khun family, true, so it’s not wrong that he tells her. Even his mother had done it before. “If he scores high in school, score higher. Build up slowly, each step at a time, get stronger, get smarter, get better. Show him you belong there just as much as he does. It’s hard, but I’ll help you the whole way.”

“What if he says that stuff again?” she sniffs, not really thinking about what he’s saying… yet.\

Khun smiles. “Then he’s a one-trick-pony, and you’ll show him better. That said… if he or his flunkies hit you, you can hit them back. Okay?”

She sniffles, but she doesn’t seem ready to cry again. “Didn’t… I thought I was supposed to be his friend…”

I’m pretty sure that plan is dead, he thinks, but doesn’t say. Miseng twitches. “I would like you to make friends, and if you make friends with him, I’ll be happy for you.” Khun keeps his tone light as the key turns in the lock. “But I know how hard it is to be friends with someone with a rocky start like that. You can make friends when you’re ready. But you have to apologize for punching him, and he needs to apologize for hurting your feelings. As long as that happens and you’re okay with his apology, I think that’s enough.”

She smiles right as Bam opens the door, calling out a greeting. Good enough.

Khun is about to relax and get some more tissues when he realizes there’s someone else with Bam.

And whoever that person is, they’re hostile. To him or this whole thing, Khun isn’t sure. Bam comes in with groceries and a young man around Khun’s height. His black hair is messy and his build doesn’t look muscular in the slightest. But he has to be. There’s no way he could keep with Bam’s unnatural strength and speed if he was weak. And judging by the soles of his shoes, he had been walking quick and very hard. Avoiding the conversation, which was something he could not blame the other for.

Bam looks exasperated and worried in turns and introduces who is likely going to become such a pain in Khun’s ass. “Apologies for the surprise. This is my little brother, Hatz. He brought groceries for dinner.”

“Nice to meet you,” Hatz says in a voice that makes it clear it isn’t.

“Daddy?” Miseng squeaks. Oh right. She probably thinks her other parent is mad at her. At Khun’s concerned glance, Bam nods with a smile.

“Coming!” he calls before turning to his brother. “Set everything up. Do not touch the stove.”

“It was one time,” Hatz protests. As Khun raises a concerned eyebrow, Bam doesn’t even falter, slipping his shoes off and going towards the bedroom, likely to change.

“It was three that I was there for,” he corrects with the long suffering of someone who has been on their feet too long. “And quite a few phone calls. I’ll be there in a minute. Can you handle the prep part, K— Aguero?”

“Of course,” he says smoothly. He can actually and one-upping this gawky little college honor student suddenly feels vital to the future of his career.

Not that anyone who goes straight into Jahad’s army under the guise of a decent paying office job before graduating is normal, but he’s expecting it.

Bam smiles at both of them like they’re adorable puppies and heads to his bedroom.

Shit, they did not set up things yet to make it look like they slept together. This would be harder than he’d thought.

But adults were easier. Dusk could easily fuck with his brother-in-law a little.

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