Once more in the present, Taika, Pacifica, and Rebecca took in the story they had just been told while Aura went to grab a bottle of water.

“A stray.” Taika dwelled on that.

“Any Resonator not linked to a tuner and Maestro is a stray,” Pacifica reminded her. “Even when I lived with my parents, they never chipped or got a tuner for me, I was considered a stray in the eyes of the government.”

“If I didn’t track you down and just kept my tuner to myself, I’d be a stray too,” Rebecca added.

“Che stranezza...” Taika mumbled. “That’s really it, if you don’t have a Maestro, you’re a stray?” the lunar asked. She had heard the word thrown around, but never really attached it to the idea of it applying to any Resonator without a Maestro. Even in disparate situations like hers, Pacifica’s, and Mila’s, they were all just lumped into the single catch-all label “stray”.

Pacifica hummed, trying to think of how she wanted to phrase it. “Yeah.” She settled on the blunt approach.

“Che stranezza...” the lunar fox repeated.

Aura returned at this point with drinks for the group. “Okay, I’m back,” she announced.

“Hey, Aura,” Rebecca spoke up.

“Yeah?”

“So the last half of the story you just told us about the hide and seek – where the heck were you?”

The blonde Maestro grimaced. “Oh right – those fucks just left me hiding for hours. Shouri told me basically what happened later on.”

Rebecca nodded slowly. “Technically you won the hide and seek then,” she proposed.

The annoyance faded from the woman’s face. “Huh. I guess you’re right.”

They all had a good laugh at that revelation. Clearing her throat, Aura decided to move on.

“The next day was Sunday and Shouri had some homework to do. But he took it to the park. My parents were concerned about letting him go to the park alone, so they sent me with,” she explained.

There was something wrong with that scenario, however, which Pacifica caught onto: “Wait. You said your parents don’t really like Resonators. Why would they let you and him go see Mila every day like this?”

Aura smirked. “Aha, you saw right through me. It’s simple really: we didn’t tell them shit,” the woman boasted proudly. “Shouri lied by omission, he just kept telling them he wanted to go play at the park, which was technically the truth. He's always been a quiet kid, low willpower and all. Mom and Dad were overjoyed to hear he didn’t want to just sit in his room alone playing video games or reading.”

Rebecca frowned, also catching a flaw in the narrative. “But wouldn’t they catch on to their son’s weird changes in behavior?”

The story-teller chuckled. “No, they’re hilariously bad parents.”

Pacifica huffed and folded her arms across her chest. It seemed some more fuel was added to her “beat up my friends’ parents” fire.

Getting them back on track, Aura cleared her throat before resuming the narrative: “Alright, enough pre-amble: we went to the park to study.”

----------------------------------------

For the third day in a row, the Tomoshibi siblings found their way back to the local park. Shouri silently walked in and to another set of bushes, different from the prior day’s selections. And just like the two days prior, Mila popped up from the shrubbery.

“You came back,” the cat noted.

“Yeah. Wanna do homework?” Shouri asked.

The fire-cat furrowed her brows. “Home-work?” she questioned.

Finding a pavilion to work at, Shouri pulled out his textbooks. Aura herself had some schoolwork she had been procrastinating on finishing and brought her own to keep her busy while she watched over the young ones.

Shouri began to explain what he was doing and what the point of the assignment was. Mila however, grew more irritable as he did so. Her tail flicked back and forth quickly the longer this went on.

“Enough!” She finally broke, jumping to her feet. “This isn’t fun! Why did you bring this junk?”

The boy once more was hurt by Mila’s tone, but the cat-girl didn’t back down on this. At least initially.

“You said yesterday you were a stray. I thought you didn’t go to school,” the boy admitted quietly. He recalled his Maestro friends, how their Resonators attended school with them, they learned to read and write just like anyone else. There was a strange sense welling up in Shouri... something that said it wasn't fair. It wasn't fair that Mila couldn't get the same kind of education his friend's Resonators got.

The Resonator in his midst remained suspicious however, maintaining her guard.

“Yeah. I don’t go to school. What about it?” she questioned, her eyes darting between Shouri and the book.

“I thought I could teach you since you can’t go to school,” he offered, motioning to the seat next to him.

Mila continued to glare, processing those words. She slowly sat down but kept her narrow-eyed gaze on the young Maestro-to-be. He resumed explaining what he was doing, with Mila slowly calming back down.

“icantread.”

“Hm?” Shouri looked up. Mila had muttered something, but he couldn’t hear what she said. The girl fidgeted in her seat before speaking up again.

“I-I can’t read words.” She scowled at the textbook with its indistinguishable scribbles.

“Oh.” Shouri’s gaze drifted between Mila and the textbook that lay before them.

“Maybe we should get her an easier book,” Aura suggested.

“I can’t read words, getting an easier book ain’t gonna help.” Mila folded her arms across her chest and turned her head with a huff.

Shouri frowned. This was hard. Why was he doing this again? His eyes slowly met with Mila’s and it all made sense. “Okay. Let’s go get a book for you then.”

“I keep telling you-!”

By a single finger, she was silenced. “I’ll teach you,” Shouri insisted, before removing his finger from her lips.

She trembled with a righteous fury. “F-FINE. WASTE YOUR TIME.”

They packed up their stuff and left the park. Mila kept a lower profile than the two siblings in front of her. Shouri noticed she seemed on edge and invited her to walk next to them. The cat put herself between the two siblings as if hiding from some unseen threat.

“What’s wrong?” Shouri asked.

“N-nothing! Nothing’s wrong!”

Her little white lies were becoming easier and easier for Shouri to pick up on. “Hey, you’re lying,” he said bluntly.

“D-don’t call me out like that! What the heck?” She once more trembled with anger.

“Why did you lie though?” Shouri cared more about the answer than the nature of his inquires.

The trio came to a stop. “Look, I’m a stray, okay?” she started. Shouri and Aura nodded. “I don’t have a home or a Maestro,” she mumbled, flattening her ears and lowering her head.

“R-right.” Shouri slowly nodded, somewhat following along.

“I gotta eat food, right?”

“Mhm?” Another slow nod.

“I got kind of a... reputation with some stores around here,” admitted the cat. “I try to... get my food at night when nobody can see me too well,” she whispered.

Shouri didn’t understand.

“Ohhhh.” Aura did, however. “She steals her meals,” the eldest told her younger brother.

“Look!” Mila began the defense of her honor. “They’re usually throwing it out! Lots of good good stuff! Some of them are nice and give it to me, but some mean adults have chased me away,” Mila spoke quickly.

“Why?” Shouri tilted his head.

“I. Am. A. Stray. Nobody wants me,” Mila asserted.

“I... don’t understand.” Shouri lowered his head. “Why doesn’t anyone want you?” His brows perked up worriedly.

Mila too drooped. “I wish I knew,” she breathed out.

Aura watched this unfold, remaining silent. The boy from wealth who couldn’t grasp the concept of poverty, and the girl abandoned by society to try and survive on her own.

She looked around Shouri’s age, ten or eleven. For her to live all this time alone spoke to her survival skills. If only their parents weren’t so unaccommodating, they could easily take her in. She was still just a child after all.

“Okay. Let’s go. On the way, we can get some food,” Aura decided.

“Food?” Mila perked up.

“Sure.” Aura smiled. “It’s easier to study on a full stomach.” The older girl nodded.

Shouri’s frown began to rise. Maybe they could help Mila.

The first thing they wanted to do was get her a meal.

“H-hey wait a minute, where are we going?!” Mila paled as they approached the front door of the ubiquitous fast-food chain known as M’Kroc’s.

“Through the door?” Shouri blinked.

“Yeah, why?” Mila hid behind the boy, eyes fixated on the glass door in front of them.

“To get food?” The poor Maestro was hopelessly confused about why the Resonator was making a big deal out of it. It's not like Resonators were forbidden or something. In fact, looking inside, he could see a Resonator that worked there sweeping the floors.

“She probably has a reputation with the employees,” Aura reminded her brother.

“I can feel them glaring at me.” Mila gulped, trying hard to maintain a brave face, but failing.

Aura nodded. “Welp, none of that matters; you’re with money right now, come on.” She pushed her brother and the cat girl into the restaurant despite their protests.

“Alright, what do you want?” Aura asked the two.

Mila was still hiding behind Shouri, on her toes, and keeping her escape paths in her peripheries.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

“Mila, what do you want?” the brunet asked the cat-girl.

“To get out of here,” she hissed. “Why did I let you people convince me to come here? They’re all staring.”

Aura meanwhile had enough of the indecision and decided for them. “We’ll get a forty-piece chicken nugget, four Jr. Ray Doubles, three medium fries, and three sodas.”

“Size on the drinks?” the Resonator working the front counter asked.

“Medium.”

“Sauces for the nuggets?”

“Surprise me.”

“That’ll be 40.25”

With a press of her thumb on the rhythm reader, Aura had paid for the meal. Mila simply stared in complete shock. That sounded like a lot of food, and a lot of money. It was all just sorted out. No yelling, no swinging of brooms, just…

“Thank you, your food will be up shortly.”

Shouri and Mila sat at a table with their drinks while Aura hovered near the front counter waiting for their order. “It’s just that easy for you rich folks huh?” the cat mumbled.

“What’s easy?” Shouri tilted his head.

“Getting food.” Mila stared at her own thumb, knowing very well the result would not be the same if she had attempted the same stunt Aura had done.

“You don’t have money?” Shouri asked.

“I don’t even know how money works besides you can use it to get stuff.” Mila grimaced, lowering her head in shame.

“This is a note.” Shouri held out a rectangular piece of paper. The cat-girl stared at the bill, only having seen them changing hands, and never her own. “And this is a sharp.” The boy pulled a coin out of his pocket. “Four sharps equal one whole note,” he explained.

“If something is 40.25, it would be forty notes, one sharp.” There was something to his words that just made everything click. She glanced up at the menu board in the distance.

Studying the numbers on the board, she once again furrowed her brow. The pictures of the menu items were clear, but all the little squiggles surrounding them were just plain foreign to the cat.

“The chicken nuggets, how much were they?” she asked.

“Thirteen notes, two sharps, or 13.50,” he replied.

“And these drinks?”

“One note, three sharps each.”

Counting off the digits on her fingers, she quickly totaled them up. “Five notes one sharp for all three of our drinks?” Mila asked.

Shouri was impressed. “Yes, that’s correct.”

In rapid succession, she managed to tally out the prices of each individual menu item despite being unable to read the board.

“Huh.” The cat girl looked over her hands. “That’s kind of fun,” she muttered to herself.

Aura at this point joined the kids at the table. “Food’s up!” She read the table as it were and noticed the two young ones were bothered. “What’s up?”

“Mila’s good at math,” Shouri pointed out.

“Oh?” Aura looked to their new cat friend with intrigue.

“H-he was just showing me money and it was really easy after that,” Mila admitted sheepishly.

It clicked for the eldest of the trio. “Maybe you both are etuding,” she realized. “Hey Shouri, maybe we should look into stuff about fire Resonators.”

Mila raised a brow, missing the implication of such a pointed research topic.

----------------------------------------

“Sho wanted to etude with me shortly after I became his,” Taika recalled. It was only their third or so night partnered up and he had suggested it.

“Yeah.” Pacifica and Rebecca both nodded in agreement, each of them being almost forced into an etude on their first nights with their shared Maestro.

“Fuck, that boy is so predictable. He’s such a weak-willed stave it’s a miracle he didn’t start snorting Rubato crystals just to get a fix.” Aura rolled her eyes.

“It’s not a problem!” Taika waved her hands.

“Etuding is so nice, heavenly," Pacifica swooned.

“We’re probably addicts ourselves at this point,” Rebecca commented.

“Druggies, the lot of you!” Aura laughed at the trio of obsessed girls. “Anyhow, we had lunch and wandered down to the book store…”

----------------------------------------

“Books.” Mila frowned hard, ears folding back. There was a distinct odor to the little corner shop they had entered. It was a tad bit musty in all honesty. There were a couple of Resonators that worked there, organizing books, dusting shelves, etc. On top of it all, the huge shelves with countless indecipherable tomes just made the poor little cat dizzy.

“Come on Mila, this way.” Shouri took the girl’s hand and led her into the towering maze.

“W-wait stop!” Mila protested, powerless to stop herself from being dragged into the labyrinth.

Her head swam, surrounded by nothing but impossible-to-decipher lines and squiggles. Nothing made sense. Even the aroma of used books was starting to get to her, making the girl slightly sway.

It was all just overwhelming.

“Here.” Shouri shoved a book into her free hand. The picture on the front depicted the silhouette of a tailed Resonator of some kind surrounded by the shadows of fire. “Now to get something for you,” he quietly decided, keeping a firm grip on her hand.

“I don’t need anything!” she barked.

“Shhhh!” he hissed back, causing her to flinch and fold her ears back. “It’s rude to raise your voice,” the wanna-be Maestro informed her in a whisper.

“Why?” Mila glared back but lowered her voice all the same.

“Other people are reading and loud noises bother them.”

Glancing down at the book she held, it made sense. It must take a lot of brain power to figure out what all these little symbols even meant. Mila silently conceded to the idea and kept her voice down, for now.

The two moved through the shelves and found themselves in another section of the shop. “Here we go.” Shouri pulled a couple of books down and handed them to Mila. More unknowable scribbles.

“What is all this?” Mila whispered.

“One book on fire Resonators for me, and a couple of books to help teach you how to read and write,” he said with an innocent smile.

The cat was taken aback by his expression. “Stop wasting your money on me,” she demanded.

“But don’t you want to read? Isn’t it weird to not be able to read?”

“I’ve gotten by fine without it,” Mila huffed.

“You’ll have a better time being able to read than not.” Aura suddenly appeared behind them.

Mila flinched, startled by the sudden appearance of the elder sibling, her tail fur puffed out on end. “Don’t do that!” the cat hissed, managing to keep her voice low.

“Don’t do what?” Aura chuckled.

Mila narrowed her eyes, turning her head away with a huff.

Aura regarded the selections her brother had made and subsequently handed off to Mila. “You good with these?” she asked.

“Mhm.” Shouri nodded.

“Great let’s get the heck out of here!” Aura declared.

Once more Mila witnessed Aura effortlessly pay for the selections Shouri had made for the two of them. “Why does she not use the money you showed me?” the cat questioned; her curiosity particularly sharpened today.

Shouri furrowed his brows, frowning as he mulled over her inquiry. “Uh, I think that thing reads rhythm.” The boy pointed at the scanner affixed to the counter. Mila blinked, surprised he didn’t know how that worked, but she didn’t have a leg to stand on since she just learned how money worked less than an hour ago.

“We’re good to go.” Aura held up the plastic bag containing their books.

As they made their way back to the park, the curious cat continued her newfound line of questioning. “How did you buy those, lady?”

“With money of course,” Aura replied uselessly.

“But you didn’t use the paper or coin things,” the cat pointed out.

The eldest of the group took a moment to consider her words, simplifying her explanation for the target audience. “With a thing called a bank account. You give money to those people who hold it for you and when you scan your rhythm those people give your money to whoever you need them to.”

“That doesn’t make sense. Why wouldn’t you just give them the money yourself instead of the bank people doing it for you?” Mila questioned.

Aura chuckled. “Because then I’d have to carry a bunch of paper money and coins. Then I’d have to count everything out whenever I wanted to buy something,” she told the children. “Also you can steal physical notes and sharps, where my rhythm can’t be stolen.”

Mila slowly nodded, understanding the idea.

Having returned to the pavilion they started the day at, Shouri was eager to read over his new book. Mila sat next to him, looking over his shoulder in curiosity.

Shouri perked up suddenly, looking around. “Hm?” Mila tilted her head.

Without warning, he placed a hand on her shoulder. “Fuoco Fatuo, Tenuto,” he spoke. Instantly, a strange sensation formed within his body. The center of his mass, the spiritual essence of his soul, his rhythm reached out through his arm and entered Mila through her shoulder.

Mila jumped, her heart stopping as she suddenly bore the weight of the invasive rhythm. Her body moved outside of her own will being forced to lift a hand and cup it in front of her. Outside of her conscious thought, her unconscious mind performed the task being asked of it by the foreign rhythm.

The trio at the table watched a tiny ball of fire form within the girl’s hand.

“Magic… I can do magic…” Mila breathed out, trembling as her gaze was firmly affixed on the small ball of fire hovering just above her palm.

“You don’t even… have her tuner.” Aura was in a similar state of awe.

Shouri remained silent, staring at the hand which his rhythm had flowed through.