Mingtian sipped tea, watching as Aimi ran around the room with the little toy star he’d made for her, giggling eagerly to herself as she every so often activated it and watched it glow. It was such a small, useless thing, if one didn’t know the fullness of its construction, and yet… it brought a smile to him, nonetheless. “I’m glad that she’s been having fun.”

Janus groaned— softly, low enough not to alert his sister— and let his head collapse onto his folded arms. “She’s been way too excited these past weeks. With school out, but the parents still working, I’m the one who has to take care of her half the time.” Still, he was smiling. There was a love there, no doubt. “I’m so glad that you’ve been picking up the slack for me at work. I think I’d just straight perish if I had to take care of Aimi on the sort of schedule I had before Lexi hired you…”

“It’s no issue.” It really wasn’t. Without anything else to occupy his time, it wasn’t like there was much for him to do except put in more hours at the library. It was a… decently relaxing job, for the most part. Recently, he’d taken to counting how many times each elite showed up, then correlating the values to their relative grades in his class. Important work, no doubt.

Definitely.

Aimi ran over to the other side of the kitchen and reactivated the little formation-star, giggling with delight as it homed back in on the other side of the house. The thing got a little weird with its directions when it was actually inside the building— not random, as Janus’s family might have thought, but so close to random as to essentially be the same. It wasn’t like mortals were going to figure out the sort of spatial-realm-fixing… it was a whole complicated conceptual underpinning that they didn’t even begin to approach competency in. Maybe nobody in the entire realm did.

“…can’t wait for school to start up again; she’s clearly a bit bored around here…” Janus continued on speaking, entirely uncaring as to his momentary lapse in concentration. Or maybe he just didn’t notice. That was something mortals were, if anything— unobservant, no auras nor domains nor spiritual presences to discern the deeper truths of the world. It was all too easy to hide something from them— and that was here, with a rather advanced

society in comparison to what he expected of lesser realms like it. If they’d been stuck in that same sort of everlasting feudal nothingness his home realm had been in…

He wondered what he would’ve done if he’d descended into a realm like that. In some senses, he was lucky that he’d found something so interesting on his first try. So far diverged from the normal essence of the realms… at some point, Janus had stopped talking, giving him an odd glance. Well, Mingtian supposed obliviousness didn’t extend forever. “Sorry. I’m merely… tired.” He wasn’t even sure if it was possible for him to get tired in that way, but the sentiment held true nonetheless. He couldn’t wait for Avyr and Lily to get back… they were, at least, much more interesting than most everyone else.

“You would be, wouldn’t you? You really need to take some more breaks.”

This tale has been pilfered from NovelBin. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

“Aren’t you taking care of Aimi?”

Janus just shook his head. “I am, but you need to take care of yourself too, you know? It’s not possible to just work forever.” For a mortal, for a mortal— the correction echoed unspoken within him, but he didn’t put word to it— because he was a mortal, to Janus. “C’mon. Let’s take a walk. It’s too stuffy in here anyways.”

“Alright…” he stood, stretching languidly, letting his domain ease some of the aches and pains from his body. He’d been more wary when it came to overt uses of his cultivation since the assassins… and since whoever had rummaged through his room had rummaged through his room. He still didn’t know who they were. “Aimi, your brother and I are going to go outside for a bit. Don’t cause any trouble.”

Her eyes widened, and a grin split her face, so mischievously that Mingtian might have thought her in that moment some trouble-making spirit from then incarnated. “Nuh uh! I’d never make trouble! You don’t have to worry about me Mr. Librarian!” She was already eying the pantry where Mingtian knew her parents kept all the sweets.

Janus just groaned, sighing as he managed to catch onto his little sister’s rather… unsubtle indications of imminent trouble. “Actually, Aimi, because you’ve been such a good girl this entire time, I was thinking you could come with your favorite older brother outside. The weather’s too nice for this time of year to let you sit inside all day.”

Aimi gave him a look of utter and sheer betrayal

. “But… but… you’re my only older brother!”

“Aww, I knew you loved me too.” Mingtian just rolled his eyes at his fellow librarian’s rather smug grin. It was no great effort of intelligence to defeat a little kid… though, he had to admit as Aimi struggled to come up with a response, it was rather funny. “If you go grab your gloves and jacket quickly, then I’ll let you have one of the juicy gummies—”

“Okay!” And then she was off like a bolt of qi, dashing upstairs and all about fast enough she almost seemed to blur with her excitement. All that for a single candy that couldn’t have cost more than a few cents… he laughed, brightly. The priorities of children!

Pushing back his chair, Janus stood likewise— if far more sedately— grabbing the thick winter jacket he’d slung over the back of his chair and shrugging it over his shoulders. “We’ll have to keep an eye on her to make sure she doesn’t do anything crazy, but she’s grown up a little from when she felt like it was a good idea to stick her hand in everything that looked even remotely dangerous. Kids, I swear…”

“I’m sure you were just like that when you were younger.”

“And you were so much better, sure.”

“I—” he paused, just for a second, then shook his head with a soft laugh. “I can assure you, I was the very model of the Six Virtuosities.”

Janus gave him an incredulous look, finishing off the last little bits of his tea. “The six virtuosities?”

“I was just that good.” For a second, Janus just stared at him— before snorting, a choked giggle escaping him at the absurdity of it. Mingtian just barely managed to restrain a sigh of relief— glad, again, that some things seemed to be the same between realms. Why that was…