Chapter 2 — Sign Here (Sort Of)

Nobody moved for a solid three seconds after the bucket hit the floor.

Two identical faces turned toward the sound at the exact same speed, found me half crouched behind a locker with a paint bucket rolling dramatically at my feet like it was auditioning for its own tragic ending, and both of them arrived at the same conclusion in the same instant.

"He saw," Hina said.

"Everything..." Mio continues.

"Why are you still hiding, you've been caught, come out."

I straightened up slowly, hands raised like I was being arrested, which, emotionally, felt accurate. "I was going to leave. Quietly. Pretend this never—"

"No," they said, at the exact same time, in the exact same tone, which was somehow the most unsettling part of the entire evening so far.

Then things got loud.

"Okay okay okay okay okay." Hina was pacing now, hands flapping near her own face like she was trying to physically stuff the last ten seconds back into her mouth. "S-Sorry! I thought you were the ghost story guy, I swear, I wasn't gonna, I mean I WAS gonna panic either way but not like this—"

"That's not making anything better."

"I know!! I know that!! Um, okay, new plan, we become best friends right now, like right this second, I'll bake you something every day, I know card tricks, do you like card tricks—"

"I don't think card tricks fix this."

"They fix everything!! that's the whole point of card tricks!!"

Mio, meanwhile, had gone very still, which somehow felt more dangerous than if she'd started yelling.

"If you tell a single person," she said, in the same flat voice she used to answer roll call, "I will find out. And then I will feed you to sharks."

I blinked. "There's no ocean anywhere near this school."

"Bull sharks live in rivers." She said it the way other people say the sky is blue. "There's a river a twenty minute walk from here. I've looked into it."

"You've looked into shark logistics?"

"I look into... a lot of things."

That was somehow worse than if she'd just threatened to kill me normally.

Hina had stopped mid-pace and was staring at her like a fire alarm that refused to go off despite there very clearly being a fire. "Mio, th-the sharks thing isn't helping, why is that your first idea, why is it always sharks—"

"It's a deterrent."

"It's insane, is what it is!"

"It's working. Look at his face."

My face, for the record, was doing exactly what it always did in a crisis, which was nothing useful. I just stood there holding the wet, paint-stained hem of my own pant leg, watching two girls with the same face argue about aquatic murder logistics like it was a completely normal Tuesday.

Which, apparently, for them, it was.

Mio was the one who finally moved.

She reached into the bag at her feet, and I braced for something dramatic, a knife, a second phone, a folder labeled Reasons You Should Be Afraid. What she pulled out instead was a small square of white cloth, neatly pressed, corners perfectly aligned like she'd ironed it that morning specifically for a moment like this.

To put it into simpler word a handkerchief.

"Sign this," she said.

"With what."

She magically produced a pen out of nowhere. Of course she had a pen. She held it out the exact way she'd probably hold out a verdict.

"Write your name," she said. "And underneath it, write: I will not tell anyone what I saw."

"On a handkerchief?"

"Yes."

"That's not how contracts work."

"It's how this one works."

I looked at Hina for backup. She gave me a small, wincing smile, both hands pressed together like she was praying. "Just, um, just sign it, please? She's not gonna stop, she brought a backup pen last time too, I've seen the backup pen—"

"There is no last time, this is the first time."

"There's a backup backup pen either way!!"

So I signed it. My handwriting came out shaky, which felt appropriate, and I underlined the word twice, because some part of me wanted it on record that I meant it.

Mio inspected the handkerchief like a bank teller checking for a forged bill, folded it once, and tucked it back into her bag.

"There," she said. "Binding."

"It's cloth."

"It's binding cloth."

I decided not to argue with that logic, mostly because I suspected she'd already prepared a rebuttal.

That was when Hina dropped down onto an overturned crate, patted the space next to her fast, like the invitation might expire. "Okay! Since you're basically part of this now, I'm telling you a story. Sit, sit."

"Do I have a choice."

"Nope! But I do the voices, so it's a good deal actually."

She cleared her throat, sat up straight, and pitched her voice into something warm and sing-song, a kindergarten teacher voice with the volume knob turned up a little too far.

"Once upon a time there were two baby pigs! Born on the exact same day, same house, same everything, so alike that even their own mom needed a second look sometimes."

"Are we really doing Three Little Pigs."

"We are doing pigs, yes, don't ruin it, I practiced this—" She caught herself, cheeks going pink. "I mean. I didn't practice it. I'm just naturally good at bedtime stories. Anyway!"

Mio, arms crossed, not looking up from her phone, cut in flatly. "The document says heir. Singular. Drafted before either of us existed on paper."

"I'm telling the FUN version, Mio."

"There is no fun version of a succession clause."

"There's a fun version of everything if you add pigs!" Hina turned back to me, voice bouncing right back up. "So grandpa pig built the biggest house in the whole forest, and he wrote down that it goes to whichever piglet grows up to deserve it. One house. One name on the paper. Very dramatic. Very piggy."

"And then a wolf shows up, let me guess."

"A big bad wolf shows up!" She nodded hard, like I'd landed a bonus round question. "Except this wolf used to live with the piglets' mom, a long time ago, and then he left, and now he circles the fence every so often, sniffing around for a crack he can blow the house down through and just. Take it."

Mio, quieter now: "Our father isn't looking for us. He's looking for an opening."

That one didn't get a pig voice. It just sat there, heavier than the rest of it.

Hina rushed to fill the silence before it could settle. "So the mama pig did the only sensible thing! She built a third house, not made of straw, not sticks, built out of something the wolf can't even see, one single name the two piglets get to share, so the real house behind it never even shows up on his radar!"

"Sora," I said.

"Sora!" She smiled wide, a little too fast, like she'd rehearsed exactly how bright to make it. "Two piglets, one house, and it's got two bedrooms nobody's supposed to know are actually there."

Her voice cracked right on bedrooms. Just slightly. The smile slipped half a beat before she wrestled it back into place, and she looked down at her own knees like they'd suddenly become extremely interesting.

"I-It's fine though!" she added quickly, way too quickly, laughing at nothing. "It's totally fine, we're used to it, it's not like, a big deal or anything, I just, um—"

I didn't plan what happened next. My hand drifted toward the top of her head on pure instinct, made it about halfway, panicked, and rerouted into patting my own shoulder instead, which fixed nothing and made me look, if anything, more suspicious.

She either didn't notice or noticed and let me have it. I decided not to examine which.

"So basically," I said, mostly to fill the space, "you built an entire fake person to protect your family's fortune."

"When you say it like that it sounds insane."

"It is insane."

"It's efficient," Mio said.

"It's insane AND efficient."

"We'll allow that."

...

The door slammed open so hard it bounced off the wall.

"KAZUKI!!!!" Ren stood in the doorway, chest heaving, headphones somehow still perfectly balanced around his neck despite what must have been a full sprint across half the building. "Bro, you would not believe what just happened, I almost had them, I almost had the whole story, and then this guy just vanishes into a stairwell like some kind of ninja, and I'm standing there like—"

He stopped.

His eyes moved past me.

To the two girls sitting three feet apart, wearing the exact same face, staring back at him in the sudden, ringing silence of a room that had just run out of excuses.