Yuna Park sat in the most famous tent on the internet, in a white plastic folding chair, and stared at the wet ink of her own signature.
Doug turned the letter of intent back toward himself, reviewed it once from top to bottom, and tapped his tablet twice. "Notice of representation, filed. As of this moment, Miss Park, Eclipse’s legal team speaks for you in all matters concerning Skyline Guild."
He said it like it was nothing, a stamp on an envelope, and yet the words reached into her chest and switched off an alarm that had been ringing there so long she’d stopped hearing it.
Three years of quarterly reviews. Three years of drawn blinds and being "valued."
Somewhere between one tablet tap and the next, all of it had stopped being her problem and become paperwork on somebody else’s desk, and the relief that flooded into the silence the alarm left behind was enormous, physical, and completely unmanageable.
She managed it anyway. For about a second and a half.
Then she tackled Luna in a hug.
"Wha- HEY." The gremlin nearly lost her apple off the edge of the table. "Stop. What is happening?! Explain."
"You’re my big sister from another mother," Yuna said into her shoulder, entirely unrepentant.
"The fuck I am."
"You said so yourself. ’You’re like my little sister from another mother. From an Asian one.’" Yuna pulled back just far enough to meet her eyes. "Which makes you my big sister from a Caucasian mom, right? And little sisters are allowed to hug their siblings, right? Ask Alice. I’ve watched the streams, it’s practically guild law."
"Okay, first of all, quoting me back at me is forbidden." Luna wedged the apple between them like a crucifix. "Second, the adoption is cancelled. Revoked. Retroactively. You were never my sister."
"What?! N-no!" The sound Yuna made was small, high, and genuinely wounded. It was absolutely a weapon, and it worked anyway.
Luna stared at her for a long moment, sighed through her nose, and went back to her apple with a fully grown S-tier assassin still attached to her side.
"...I always knew the Japanese were weirdos ever since I watched their... content, but god damn..." she muttered, making zero effort to remove her.
"That’s racist. I’m Korean," Yuna said into her shoulder, delighted, and did not let go.
"She’ll fit right in," Doug observed.
"Hah?" Luna’s head snapped toward him. "What’s that supposed to mean?" Asked the girl known for getting hardcore demolished in bed by her boyfriend, and for the incident that involved her shoving a certain item up her best friend’s butthole.
Well, she was known for that among many other things. Luna had quite the colorful reputation.
Doug became deeply invested in his tablet and declined to have said anything at all.
Yuna decided she would be replaying this entire morning for approximately the rest of her life.
Then Doug’s phone rang.
He glanced at the screen, and his eyebrows climbed a fraction, which on Doug counted as open astonishment. "Doug speaking. ...Yes. ...That would be agreeable. Two o’clock. We will require the full development ledger in advance. Good day."
He lowered the phone and looked at it for a moment.
"That was Skyline’s front office. They have agreed to a buyout discussion. Today, two o’clock, at their headquarters." A pen click. "We filed our notice just a few minutes ago."
"That’s really fast, right?" Yuna asked. "What does it mean?"
"Miss Park, I have handled transfers where acknowledging our letter took eleven business days." Doug set the phone face-down on the table. "This is the corporate equivalent of a man waiting behind his own front door. As far as what it means... A guild that is very invested in the ongoing procedures, I’d imagine."
She nodded, having arrived at the same thoughts.

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