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1. A Knight in the Mirror
The Silver Anchor's living area was, unusually, heavy with something.
"Sis... can you let me go soon...?"
Shutia Mace stood in front of the full-length mirror with an expression of poorly-concealed discomfort, twisting slightly at the waist as though testing whether escape was an option.
"No. Stay still. I need to fix this draping."
From behind her: Ledea's voice, calm and entirely non-negotiable.
The usual arrangement, in this household, had Shutia pressing frilled dresses and adorable outfits onto a reluctant Ledea with unconcealed enthusiasm. Today, the positions were reversed completely. Shutia — who applied exactly two criteria to her own clothing choices, those being functionality and whether Ledea would like it — was staring at an unfamiliar version of herself in the mirror and finding the experience bewildering.
What she was wearing was not the practical pilot suit or the unpretentious gray shirt. It was a slim formal suit in deep navy blue, cut from fabric of notable quality. At the collar, a cravat embroidered with silver thread was tied with precision. The silhouette preserved something of her feminine lines while carrying a certain androgynous quality — the bearing of a knight, refined and adult, belonging without question to the kind of occasion Shutia had never particularly sought out.
"Good. The suit is perfect. Now the hair."
Ledea produced a beautiful silver hairpiece from somewhere and held it ready.
"Oh — the hair can stay as it—"
"Be quiet. Today you are the escort of an Alnilam Heavy Industries daughter. A casually thrown-up ponytail is entirely out of the question."
Ledea's precise fingers moved through Shutia's golden hair with practiced efficiency — not the high ponytail of everyday, but a low, intricate arrangement, secured with the hairpiece in a way that held without a single strand out of place. The sharpness of Shutia's features, the poise her height produced naturally — all of it emerged more fully under Ledea's hands, as though it had been waiting for the right frame.
The figure in the mirror was someone who could walk into any event in the galaxy's social circuit without apology. A perfect knight of the escort variety, complete in every detail.
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2. An Ultra-Priority Transmission and an Absolute-Zero Smile
The relevant events had begun a few days earlier.
The Silver Anchor's living area had been, at that point, peaceful in every possible sense. Shutia was sunk deep into the sofa, Ledea settled comfortably into the space on her lap that she had long since claimed as her own, and Shutia was wearing the loose, entirely undignified smile of someone whose happiness had reached its upper limit. Ledea, for her part, was permitting all of this with the expression of someone who had decided not to object today.
The finest moment in the universe. The most sacred interval in all of known space.
Then the cockpit's communications console produced a sharp, insistent tone.
"Encrypted channel incoming."
Not a guild line. Full encryption. The number of parties who would direct that kind of signal at a small odd-job operator's ship docked at a frontier station was, in practical terms, quite limited.
"Honestly — who is this. This is my charging time with sis."
Shutia connected the call without actually moving Ledea from her lap. The main monitor lit up.
Lumie Alnilam.
"Good evening, both of you. ...Oh."
The greeting stopped there. Lumie's attention had fixed itself on the image before her: Ledea, sitting on Shutia's lap, fitted neatly into the space Shutia's arms made around her.
"Good evening, Lumie."
Ledea addressed her from that position without any apparent awareness that the position itself required comment. Lumie, in the weeks since the incident, had become a regular presence in their lives — a genuine friend as much as a major patron, appearing via personal channel with reasonable frequency.
Today, however, Lumie's composure was behaving oddly. Her cheeks had gone the color of something ripe, and her eyes were producing a quality that could only be described as longing.
"Um... Ledea. That spot looks... very comfortable..."
"It is, I suppose. Our household's large dog has excellent cushion properties. A little warm, but functional."
"...I'm envious...!"
Lumie pressed both hands to her chest and directed her gaze — luminous, slightly desperate — through the monitor and directly at Shutia.
"I — I would also like to... sit on Shutia's lap...!"
"—pfft—?!"
Shutia came extremely close to biting her own tongue.
"What are you saying, Lumie?!"
The flustered scramble for a response was interrupted when Ledea, still seated exactly where she was, produced a quiet, elegant laugh.
"Oh. That sounds lovely, Lumie."
"...What?"
"Sis?!"
Ledea nodded pleasantly toward the monitor.
"Shutia should practice being indulgent toward younger people occasionally. Shouldn't she."
The sound Shutia made next was not a word. Her head turned toward Ledea with the mechanical quality of something running on very old hinges.
Ledea's expression was warm and serene.
Her eyes were not.
(The eyes. Sis's eyes are doing something that I don't have a category for.)
"I — that's not — I'm exclusively devoted to sis, Lumie is a valued client and nothing more—"
"Now then, Lumie. What was the actual purpose of your call?"
Shutia's defensive spiral was redirected without acknowledgment. Lumie cleared her throat and composed herself.
"Yes, um... I actually have a matter I'd like to discuss with Shutia. A sort of... professional consultation. I was hoping we could meet, just the two of us, to... go over the details."
Professional consultation. The words, on their own, were entirely reasonable.
The delivery, however — the particular warmth in Lumie's voice, the slight downward cast of her gaze, the entirely unnecessary emphasis on just the two of us — communicated something that no amount of professional framing could disguise.
It was a date invitation. Unmistakably and completely.
After the call ended, the cockpit held a silence of some weight.
"...Hey, sis."
Shutia tilted her head with the expression of someone genuinely working through a puzzle.
"It's a professional consultation, so why did she specifically request just me? Usually requests come addressed to the Mace sisters. For an Alnilam Heavy Industries matter, having you there would make negotiations go much more smoothly. Sis should come too—"
Ledea released a sigh that belonged to a very particular category of exhaustion.
The woman before her had not registered a single element of what had just happened. The courage Lumie had assembled to make that call, the significance of the just the two of us — none of it had landed.
"Shutia. You are a genuinely hopeless case."
"Why am I being scolded?!"
"Keep the specified date free. I'll have you looking presentable before you leave."
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3. A Cold Send-Off
And so: the present moment.
"There. Turn around."
Shutia turned, carefully, under Ledea's direction.
The deep navy suit moved with her height. The arranged hair held its shape. There was no belt and no sword, but the person standing in the living area was, without any reasonable argument to the contrary, someone entirely appropriate to stand beside a major corporate heiress as her escort.
"Perfect. You are representing this household. Anything less would be embarrassing."
"Sis... you're really not coming...?"
The perfect knight in the mirror had given up hiding the fact that she was about to cry, and was looking back at Ledea with an expression of complete structural failure.
"I can't go out alone without sis... what if sis trips and gets hurt while I'm gone? What if something unpleasant approaches? What if there's a laser malfunction somewhere in the station? Oh — I should install three micro-escort drones in sis's jacket lining before I—"
"Denied."
Ledea said it flatly, placed both hands on Shutia's back, and pushed.
One hundred and forty centimeters of older sister, moving a twenty-four-year-old former professional operative steadily toward the airlock through sheer persistence.
"Go. Escort Lumie. Try not to disappoint her. And don't worry about coming home at a reasonable hour."
"That's so cold! Sis's attitude is colder than the furthest star! I'll be back in thirty minutes—!"
The fingers that had locked themselves around the airlock hatch were removed, one by one, without mercy.
Clunk. Hiss.
The sound of the seal closing. Shutia's voice, cut off on the other side.
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4. A Sister's Quiet Plan
"...There. Finally quiet."
Ledea brushed a small crease from her sleeve and settled into the sofa.
The Silver Anchor, absent its usual occupant. No warmth pressing in from behind. No persistent, slightly overwhelming presence filling the space. Just the ship, and the quiet, and — surprisingly — how light the air felt without the weight of constant observation.
"I do feel a little sorry for Lumie... but redirecting that particular quality of devotion, occasionally, is a matter of basic survival."
She laughed to herself — small, a little wicked — and picked up her tablet.
This was not merely an exercise in pushing Shutia toward Lumie. This was something rarer and more valuable: a window of time, completely unmonitored, in which Ledea Mace could do exactly as she pleased without a running commentary or an audience of one.
She opened the channel and sent a call to a specific address.
A few tones. Then:
"Oh. Ledea, what is it?"
Katrine's face appeared on the screen, looking genuinely surprised.
"Katrine. Are you free today? There's somewhere I'd like to go."