Deception

Chapter 12: Recurrence

Nakumi ran down, and stood perched on a stool like a little red-haired gargoyle, her feet and hands on the stool, like a cat waiting to jump at its prey, watching Lira chop vegetables with way too much focus.

"That's not how you hold a knife," Nakumi declared, pointing, before removing the strands in front of her eyes.

Lira didn't even look back. "Shut it, demon."

"You hold it like this," Nakumi insisted, miming a grip on the stool, and promptly falling off, knocked over a bowl of peeled potatoes next to Lira's feet with her face. They rolled everywhere.

Lira's eye twitched.

I sauntered over, scooping up a potato mid-roll. "Alright, break it up. Nakumi, quit harassing the chef. Lira, try not to stab my kid, yeah?"

"She started it," Lira muttered, holding the knife up into a practiced stabbing stance.

"Did not!" Nakumi pointed at her. "Doing it wrong!"

Nakumi scrambled to her feet, puffing out her cheeks. "You hold knife like this!" She mimed an exaggerated downward stab that would've made a butcher cringe, has Hiko been teaching her anything?

I caught her wrist before she could demonstrate on Lira's cutting board. "Whoa there, stabby. Let's not turn breakfast prep into a murder scene."

Lira exhaled through her nose, knuckles whitening around her knife handle. "She's been like this since dawn."

"Because you chop wrong!" Nakumi insisted, wriggling in my grip.

I plucked a carrot from the counter and tossed it to her. "Show me how it's done then, chef."

She fumbled the catch. The carrot hit the floor with a thud that echoed way too loud in the sudden silence. Every kid in the kitchen froze like we'd just triggered a bomb, staring at us with the look of only god will save you now.

Lira's knife embedded itself in the cutting board, causing a small crack with a thunk. "Out. Now."

"Alright, alright!" I hauled Nakumi up by her collar, her legs bicycling midair. "We're going--"

---

"Nakumi! You shouldn't bother people when they work," I said, pressing my knuckle on her fluffy hair, as she tries to get off my grip. I held up to my waist, like a barrel as her feet wiggled behind me.

"oww! st-stop!!" She yelled, her hands trying to guard her head.

Hiko's shadow fell across us. He stood in the doorway holding a chipped mug, his hair still sleep-mussed and his single visible eye bloodshot. The smell of whatever sludge passed for coffee here wafted between us. "You look like hell," I said cheerfully.

He took a deliberate sip. "Your face is hell."

Nakumi shot a pleading eye at him. "Hwaiko! make him stop!"

Hiko blinked at her dangling form, then at me. "I'm going back to read."

"Not so fast, sunshine." I tossed Nakumi at him like a writhing sack of potatoes. He caught her on instinct, coffee sloshing dangerously close to the rim of his mug. "Your turn to babysit. I've got a class to teach."

His eye twitched, the same way Lira's had. Maybe I should start keeping count. "When did I agree to this?"

"When you accepted my plea." I flashed him a grin and ducked out before his mouth opened.

---

The training area smelled of sweat and the sharp tang of honed metal. A rough oval of hard-packed earth stained dark in overlapping rings where blood and sweat had soaked in over the years. The walls were reinforced with salvaged sheet metal, dented from countless impacts and streaked with rust that wept down the corrugated grooves. A set of bulbs and fixed lamps casted shadows across the space, the light catching on the hundreds of knife marks that pockmarked the walls—some clean and precise, others wild gashes where blades had slipped. The air hung heavy with camaraderie, hard work, relentless spars, and the faint metallic bite that lingered after a nosebleed.