I’ve been visiting Tay at her family estate for months, but the peculiar breed of hair-raising nervousness I suffer on my trips to see her has never gotten old. A consequence, I suppose, of being trapped in a car for hours with one of the most powerful- and certainly the most loved- men on the planet. Most people would be having a heart attack at the chance to shake the famous Mars Mons’ hand, much less take an extended road trip with him. It’s a little more awkward when you’re best friends with his reclusive daughter.
I’ve been living a double life since I chased after her that summer. Two, three years ago, maybe. I’m thirteen now. One foot in the capital with my sister as wards of the state, the other half a world away with the girl I spend far too many afternoons daydreaming about. Balancing the two is a nightmare that the man beside me is well acquainted with. He lives the same struggle: a father to fifteen million people, but also to one. Ruling from the capital so often keeps him from returning to that windswept estate by the sea.
I know he dreams of our destination. Every night, I’m sure. I can see it in the distance to his gaze, the gentle breath he releases as he sinks back into his seat, watching the empty road scrolling beneath us, thinking only of what waits at the end. It’s been weeks since we last returned. We tend to make most of these trips together, courtesy of good fortune and timing. The pads of his fingers drum quietly against the steering wheel. He always keeps a hand on, even though the thing drives itself. We’ve been on the road all night. On the dash, an electric-blue clock burns an ungodly hour of the morning into our retinas.
“How’s your sister?” he asks, startling me out of my reverie.
A loud yawn escapes me before I control it; Mars smiles. “Cal is well,” I say. But I know better than to lie. Guiltily, my gaze turns to the window. “Well enough, at least. I worry she doesn’t get out enough when I’m not there. I read her reports from school. They’re always the same. Perfect grades, never participates with the others. Poorly socialized.”
Mars snorts out a note of amusement. “I know someone who would argue quite vehemently that there’s nothing wrong with being an introvert.”
“Director Mons, you mean?”
“General Manager,” he corrects, raising a finger. “Jolie is finicky about titles.”
I reach into the middle console, blindly feeling through the four half-finished cans of caf drinks. “Cal doesn’t like using a JOY, either. Our pediatrician thinks she might be technophobic.”
Mars raises an eyebrow. “They told that to you?”
“I browsed his notes when he wasn’t looking.”
“Browsed.” He smirks to himself. “And what do you think?”
“I think she’s an artist. Not everyone has a heart meant for fighting.”
“You’re older than your age for understanding that.”
Mars’ face, as always, is inscrutable. Charisma, not raw power, has always been his strongest suit. He lightens the mood with a quick chuckle and a side-eye glance. “So what else did you browse, Thane? I know you read your file too.”
I take a careful sip of my drink, watching the rice fields flowing past. “Nothing worth mentioning.”
A comfortable silence stretches between us for long minutes. I find myself swept into it without even noticing. Mars has an easy way like that; a campfire charm. He has a father’s care in his eyes. A gentle way of sitting. All potential energy, like a panther who rarely needs to show his fangs. The sort of man that you want to like you from the moment you meet him. A man of violence, surely, but also one of love. Better than most who find themselves with his same burdens.
It’s all too easy to see why our people follow him to the end of the earth, forming armies in age where such things have never been done. Talking to Mars is never like talking to a gladiator king. It’s like an old friend from the office, a fellow gym-goer, someone who’s no different than you. A man of the people.
“Tetsuka didn’t like using a JOY either, at first,” he eventually says. “And look at her now. I’m sure your sister is the same. Just a little later to bloom than the others.”
I look up as I feel the car turn, entering the last darkened straightaway to the estate. To the east, the first light of dawn splinters golden through the clouds.
“Speaking of which…” Mars’ JOY rumbles quietly on the dash, drawing both our focus. He sighs, reaching for a cup of long-cold caf, then opens a projection of the incoming message. Cyan light casts the tired circles under his eyes in even darker shade. “Always something else,” he murmurs. “I’ll let you wake her up while I start breakfast. I need to make a call.”
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-
I know I’ll find Tay exactly where I last left her. She’s a tough animal to rouse. She sleeps too much, lazes in the sun, and has mastered the art of only ever opening her eyes halfway, just enough to show her disinterest in worldly boredoms. If her temper is the wind, her moodiness is the stifling heat of a humid summer noon. But when she finally deigns to stir, there is an addictive danger to watching it happen. Like watching a tiger stretch its claws while it licks its fangs while it decides what it’s going to do.
Outside the house, endless fields of rice billow in the grip of a gentle seaside wind. Bamboo creaks in the rock garden. Birds and cicadas buzz and chirp loudly; life overflowing. Morning dew drips down the windows of the estate, sunlight fractaling through the watered glass. The comfortable silence of an empty library pervades the wooden halls and paper walls of the quaint main home as I pad along, looking for Mars’ bedroom. His daughter is a creature of patterns. I know enough of her by now to know she’s only ever found comfort in one man in her life. And when her loneliness takes root, she returns to the closest things she has to him: his belongings, his scents, and his memories.
I slide open the door to the bedroom carefully, minding the chips in the wood that make it wobble, to find her sleeping in a puddle of sunshine atop her father’s bed. Hair gleaming, a liquid river of mercurial silver and polished gold that drapes in petals from her forehead down the wending curve of her freckled spine. Heavy eyelids closed. Lips faintly open, blowing tiny breaths to stir the sheets beside her face. Her lanky legs curl close to her chest, making her look half the length she really is. The nub of her right arm is buried deep in the bed. The fibrous muscle of the left twitches in the thrall of some imagined battle of her dreams.
Minding the mess on the floor, I draw up to the side of the bed, debating on how best to wake her. I feel guilty even considering it until a blind left hand reaches up to paw over my face. Her red eyes slowly crack open, and a contented smile splits her mouth.
“Thane,” she murmurs.
My heart turns in my chest. I back off blushing, looking for something to clean up on the floor. “I thought you’d be asleep.”
“I was. But I felt you coming.”
“How far off?” I ask.
As a ki fighter, Tay is as twinned to the world as the wind she so often reminds me of. With her JOY, her soul can tap into the pulse of ki, the life energy created by all organic creatures, and manifest it in reality. Some treat the manipulation of such energy as a science. For her, it’s an instinct. She blooms and fades with the energy around her, drawn to powerful souls and vibrant life by subconscious impulse. Her ability to sense them out has only grown since I’ve known her. Only a more skilled ki fighter, like her father, can mask themselves from the wandering touch of her kind.
“Mmm… a mile away, I think. When you turned on the street.” Stirring in the sun, Tay rises and pulls up the shoulders of her traditional robe, wiping the crust from her eyes. She yawns loudly. “Is he with you?”
A familiar voice booms from around the corner, growing louder as Mars leans into the doorway with a basket of laundry in his scarred hands. Crimson hair is thrown back over his shoulders in a proud lion’s mane, framing a wide and crooked smile. “Someone hasn’t been keeping up with her training programs.”
Tay’s eyes bolt wide open. She’s rebounding off the bed and sprinting past me in an instant, diving into her father’s arms with a yip of joy. “Dad!”
A burst of elated, invisible wind lashes the room and the fields outside as they meet. Mars crushes his daughter to his chest in a hug and buries his face in her shoulder, holding her for long seconds. The last tension that he was holding bleeds away in a breath the world will never see. A father’s vulnerable, unsalvable fear that I’ve only barely glimpsed before: that today would be the day his return would be met with apathy or hate, not love.
But today is not that day.
Mars swings Tay around one quick rotation before setting her down on the wooden boards, smiling uncontrollably. She’s a coltish fawn when put beside a fighter of his stature; gangly and thin, still growing into her height. He ruffles her already messy hair until she blushes, then gently pushes her back into the bedroom with a finger raised in warning.
“Just because I’m home doesn’t mean you get to slack off,” Mars chides. He picks the basket back up and crooks his head for us to follow. “Thane is up and going on runs before the sun rises. You, butterball, sleep in way too much.”
“Dad…”
“What, embarrassed because I caught you napping?” He stoops and snags a half-dried towel off the hall floor, adding it to the load. “Or because Thane did?”
She blushes and glances bashfully at me. “I don’t mind when Thane does. He doesn’t call me dumb names.”
“That’s because he likes you, Tetsuka.”
My cheeks shoot straight to a heated red.
“Dad!”
“Hey, I never said I have to like you. I have to raise you. It’s my privilege as your father. And if that doesn’t count, then damn it, it’s my privilege as your champion.”
She bounces forward and nuzzles against his side. “You know I don’t care about that.”
“And that’s love, for what it’s worth.” Mars sighs languidly, turning the final corner to the kitchen. The wide doors beyond are slid fully open, revealing the depths of a sun-stroked rock garden filled with bamboo and hidden brooks. Right off the porch, a gleaming slab of marble etched with the Mons family’s tiny history waits under a scattered carpet of verdant leaves. He grunts and sets the basket in a corner. “Food’s almost done and the birds are already out, kids. You both need to eat up. Because what comes after breakfast?”
Tay and I share a glance, moaning the dreaded answer at the same time.
“Training…”