(A/N: There’s no author’s note. Iykyk)

Ariana’s eyes were wide open.

She wasn’t performing shock the way she performed most things — with that easy, controlled awareness of someone who always knew more than they let on. This was different. This was genuine. Her gaze was fixed on the swirling mix of elemental energy coiling around Aaron’s wrist like it had decided to make a home there, and for once in what was probably a very long time, Ariana had nothing to say.

It looked mystical. Unique. Absolutely packed with potential in a way that made the air around it feel different.

And she had to admit — quietly, internally, in a place she would never voluntarily hand him — that he was right.

This was not a thing you would expect from a boy toy.

Not even close.

What she didn’t know, and what Aaron was currently enjoying not telling her, was the full picture. The mythic rarity class sitting somewhere behind those sunglasses and that smirk. The new abilities. The older skills that had gotten a solid upgrade even if they didn’t come with the same kind of visual flair. All of it stacked quietly behind a guy who was currently leaning against a doorframe looking extremely pleased with himself.

And he had every right to be.

Behind him, Claire and Eva had gone completely still.

Not calm. Still. There’s a difference. Calm is a choice. Still is what happens when your brain receives information it wasn’t prepared for and decides to simply stop functioning for a moment while it catches up.

This was news to both of them. Significant news. And this was, to put it generously, a unique way to find out. Not a conversation. Not a quiet moment. A demonstration. In a doorway. For his sister.

Eva, now that she had a moment to think about it, did recall him being slightly more attentive during the group meeting than usual — more tuned in than someone who, by his own history, could not have cared less about most of the people in that room beyond her and Claire. That had registered somewhere in the back of her mind and then gotten buried under everything else. 𝐟𝕣𝕖𝐞𝐰𝕖𝚋𝐧𝗼𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝗰𝐨𝐦

Now it made sense.

His attention had been somewhere else entirely.

Neither of them said a word about it. They stood there with the quiet dignity of people feigning complete ignorance, doing their very best impression of decorative furniture while the sibling situation played out in front of them.

It didn’t matter much anyway.

Because as far as Ariana was concerned, the only person standing in that doorway was Aaron.

She stared at the elemental display for another moment.

Then she coughed into her palm.

"Yeah," she said, averting her eyes from the swirling mana with the energy of someone refusing to give a person the satisfaction of staring too long. She scratched the back of her neck and rolled her eyes in the particular way that meant she was recalibrating.

"Okay, I get that it’s supposed to be the other way around or something, but are we really going to keep talking on the door? Cuz back in OUR home city, inviting family inside was the norm."

Aaron blinked behind his sunglasses.

He looked back into the room.

Jaq was horizontal on the couch, legs thrown over the table like she owned the building. Lia and Katie had located the television and were watching it with the dedication of people who had mutually agreed this drama was not their business.

"Right, yes, I would invite you in, but to our house." He stepped back from the doorway and started moving. "For now let’s grab a coffee and something to eat, yeah? I’m starving."

He didn’t wait for a response.

He was already walking toward the elevator, footsteps clicking against the floor, leaving the two girlfriends and his sister to fall in behind him with varying degrees of awkwardness. Claire paused long enough to poke her head back into the room and give the remaining girls a brief version of what was going on, then pulled the door shut and caught up with the rest of them.

The elevator arrived. They filed in.

"So, baby bro," Ariana said, sliding her arm around his neck like they were old friends who happened to share DNA, her voice taking on the breezy tone of someone who had all the time in the world, "which of these two are you actually dating? Kinda hard to guess here."

Aaron’s footsteps clicked sharper against the elevator floor.

"...Which one, huh?"

He was stalling. It was obvious. He was using his shoe noise as some kind of conversational smokescreen, which was not working.

"Come onnn!" Ariana caught up with his pace easily, the teasing smile widening. "I am your big sis. If you don’t tell me, how are you going to have the guts to introduce them to our parents?"

A pause.

A sigh.

"Well... I am indeed dating them."

He said it like he was filing a tax return. Matter of fact. Calm. Looking straight ahead.

Ariana blinked.

"I think you mean one of them," she said, keeping her voice level mostly because the alternative was making a scene in an elevator. "And that’s what I am asking."

"No..." Aaron said.

Another pause. Shorter this time.

"I mean, I am dating them."

He was very glad about the sunglasses. Eye contact right now would have been a different kind of fight entirely. The kind fought entirely in silence with just eyebrows and the accumulated weight of sibling history.

Ariana turned her head slowly.

It was the kind of slow turn that belongs in films — the gradual rotation of someone who has just heard something that requires physical reorientation to process. She looked at the man she knew as her brother. The one who, for a significant portion of his life, had been so submissive and so thoroughly docile that a chicken — a regular, unambitious chicken — could have pushed him around without much effort.

That man was now standing next to her, wearing sunglasses indoors, with glowing hands, casually revealing that he was in a relationship with two women simultaneously.

"Wow..." She cleared her throat. The haughty edge in her voice had gone quiet, replaced by something more genuinely surprised. "So they know about each other, right? I don’t want to blow your cover or something."

"Ah yes, it’s a consensual relationship." Aaron nodded, still looking straight ahead with complete serenity.

Ariana absorbed this.

Then she decided to keep going, because she had never been particularly good at leaving things alone.

"So, I think I might’ve gone underground for a little too long, but... what the hell is going on?" She gestured vaguely at nothing in particular. "Are the girls recently so down bad or what? I mean, they always were down bad, but I just didn’t think it would be to that level! Is the competition that hard?"

The laugh that came out of Aaron was real. He shook his head, the smirk returning.

"Oh my dear elder sis, that’s not true at all! You can do it. Surely." He said it with the complete confidence of someone handing out a participation trophy while internally screaming. "And the reason I was able to convince them was simply because I am awesome."

"You? Aweso—"

She stopped.

Mid-taunt. Just cut herself off.

Because she had remembered, quite suddenly, the bracelet. The four colours of elemental mana swirling around his hand like a natural force that had decided he was its new home. The thing that no average person could produce. The thing that made the air feel different just by existing.

The taunt died quietly.

"Indeed," Ariana said instead, in a much more measured tone. "You’re very awesome."

The inn’s restaurant was quiet enough at this hour to find a four-person table without much effort. They settled in — Ariana dropping into her seat and immediately propping her face against her palm like a woman who had traveled a significant distance and was now ready for answers, Aaron sitting across from her, Claire and Eva arriving a moment later.

Eva’s forehead had a faint sheen of stress sweat.

Claire had deployed the poker face. The full, professional, completely impenetrable poker face that she used when she needed to exist in a situation without betraying anything happening underneath.

Aaron glanced at Eva, reached over, and hugged her across the shoulders, pulling her close and giving the shoulder a slow stroke.

"Cheer up," he said simply. "Don’t worry. She knows now."

"Mhm," Ariana confirmed, glancing at the two of them with a single nod.

And that was it.

No warming up to them. No sudden shift into friendliness. No polite questions about how long they’d known her brother or what they thought about the hotel. She had registered their existence as his girlfriends and filed them accordingly, and that apparently concluded that portion of the process for her.

Instead, she turned back to Aaron.

Leaned forward across the table.

And looked up into his sunglasses with those sharp, dreamy emerald eyes of hers, close enough that avoiding the look was not a realistic option.

"You know," she began, her voice dropping to something quieter, more genuine — the tone people use when they’ve finished being clever and actually want an answer. "I feel like there’s a lot I still don’t know about you."

She held the look for a moment.

Then, without breaking it:

"Why don’t you tell me everything that’s actually going on in your life, brother? This time for real."

The table went still.

Eva stared at her coffee cup like it contained the secrets of the universe.

Claire’s poker face didn’t move a single millimeter.

Aaron sat across from his sister — the woman who had traveled here on the strength of a casual goodbye, who had showed up unannounced with sunglasses and a black overcoat and emerald eyes that currently looked like they were prepared to sit there for as long as necessary — and considered the very large task that question had just placed in front of him.

He exhaled slowly.

This was going to be a long coffee.