The Tsuchigumo residential zone of the Silken Hollow was perpetually quiet, a subterranean sanctuary wrapped in heavy, sound-dampening tapestries and soft, glowing carmot lights. For twelve years, Maya’s home had been a perfect, impenetrable cocoon. Her parents, Ryo and Shiori, had insulated her from the harshness of the desert and the ruthless expectations of their clan.
But the cocoon had been breached. The Monarch's absolute edict had forced their hand, demanding Maya enroll in the Academy. Now, the violence of the surface was seeping into their quiet life.
Maya sat at the low, polished wooden dining table, her posture perfectly rigid, her hands folded neatly in her lap. She hadn't touched the expensive, imported sweets her mother had placed in front of her. Even days later, the roaring winds, the deafening explosion of the Rasengan, and the suffocating killing intent from the village gates were still rattling around in her skull.
"You've barely touched your food, my little silk moth," Shiori murmured softly, kneeling beside the table to pour a cup of fragrant jasmine tea. Ryo, sitting across from his daughter, offered a warm, encouraging smile that didn't quite reach his eyes. Both of them carried a permanent, underlying tension these days.
"I'm... I'm sorry, Mother," Maya whispered, keeping her jade-green eyes cast downward. "I was just thinking about the classes. And... the things I saw at the gates."
Ryo sighed, a heavy, protective sound. "You shouldn't have been anywhere near the gates, Maya. The surface is chaotic. The people there are rough, unrefined. You must be careful."
"I know," Maya said softly. Her fingers twisted into the fabric of her skirt. "Everyone is just... so far ahead of me. The other students already know how to mold their chakra. And the teacher..." Maya swallowed hard, the memory of the confident, arrogant girl flashing in her mind's eye. "The teacher for the Ninjutsu class wasn't an adult. She was my age. Twelve. But she is already a Chuunin. She shattered the earth and cut a tree in half with wind, just to show off."
"A twelve-year-old Chuunin is an anomaly, Maya. A weapon forged too early," Ryo said soothingly, exchanging a quick, dismissive look with his wife. "You are not expected to be a monster like that. You will learn at your own, proper pace."
"It wasn't just her jutsu," Maya continued, her voice trembling slightly as she finally looked up. "It was her face. Mother... Father... she looked exactly like me."
The gentle, steaming stream of jasmine tea abruptly missed the cup.
The porcelain teapot clattered harshly against the wooden table as it slipped from Shiori’s suddenly nerveless fingers. Hot tea pooled across the lacquered wood, dripping onto the tatami mats, but neither parent moved to clean it.
Ryo froze entirely, his breath catching audibly in his throat. The warm, comforting fatherly facade shattered in an instant, replaced by a pallid, bloodless mask of sheer terror. He slowly turned his head to look at his wife. Shiori’s hands were shaking violently where they rested on the table, her eyes wide and reflecting a nightmare come to life.
‘It couldn't be,’ Ryo’s mind screamed, the walls of his meticulously built life caving in. ‘Not so soon.’
When the Monarch had issued the edict forcing Maya into the Academy, they had known the risks. They knew there was a statistical, terrifying chance that Maya might eventually cross paths with the identical twin they had given up on that dark, desperate night twelve years ago. The child they had sent away to keep both girls safe from the clan's political machinations. But they had assumed the other girl was living a normal, civilian life. Or, if she was a shinobi, that she would be another struggling Academy student lost in the crowds.
They had never, in their darkest nightmares, expected her to be a Chuunin. A recognized, terrifyingly powerful prodigy standing directly in front of the daughter they had kept. The two halves of their desperate secret had collided before Maya had even learned to throw a kunai.
"Her name is Sabaku Rika," Maya whispered into the suffocating silence, entirely misinterpreting her parents' frozen horror for disbelief. "I know it sounds crazy. I thought I was losing my mind. But she had my hair. She had my eyes. We were the exact same height. It was like looking into a mirror... except she wasn't afraid of anything."
Maya shrank back slightly, her shoulders hunching. "Are... are you mad at me? I didn't speak to her, I promise! I just... I stayed in the back."
"No," Ryo managed to choke out, his voice sounding like it was scraping over broken glass. He reached out, his hand trembling as he placed it over his wife's shaking fingers. "No, Maya. We aren't mad. We are just... surprised."
Shiori couldn't speak. She just stared blindly at the spilled tea, the image of a twelve-year-old Chuunin wearing her daughter's face echoing like a death knell in her mind.
The silence in the room stretched until it felt suffocating, broken only by the steady drip... drip... drip... of spilled jasmine tea hitting the woven tatami mat.
Maya pulled her knees together, her jade eyes darting nervously between her mother’s pale, tear-filled face and her father’s rigid, bloodless posture. The air in the room had grown incredibly heavy. "Father?" Maya whispered, her voice trembling violently. "Did... did I do something wrong? I promise I won't go near her again! I'll stay away, I'll—"
"No," Ryo interrupted, his voice hollow and completely devoid of its usual warmth. He slowly lowered his face into his hands, taking a shuddering, ragged breath. "No, Maya. You did nothing wrong."
Behind his hands, Ryo’s mind was racing, the carefully woven tapestry of their lives catching fire. Sabaku Rika. The name echoed mockingly in his head. They had told the clan elders—they had told the Monarch herself—that Shiori had suffered complications. That the second child, a frail little thing, had been stillborn. It was a desperate, treasonous lie, spun to save at least one daughter from the Tsuchigumo's brutal, emotionless conditioning. They had given the twin away to the desert, praying she would live a quiet, civilian life far from the clan's web.
But they hadn't saved her. They had cast her out into the unforgiving wastes, and the harsh world above had forged her into a twelve-year-old Chuunin. A monster of their own making.
Shiori let out a choked, muffled sob, pressing both hands over her mouth. Her eyes, so much like Maya's, were wide with a harrowing mix of overwhelming guilt and abject terror. She looked at Maya—the daughter they had kept, smothered in silk, and sheltered until she was afraid of her own shadow—and thought of the other girl, alone, fighting her way to the rank of Chuunin.
But the guilt was quickly being swallowed by a much sharper, colder fear.
"Ryo," Shiori wept, her voice cracking as she finally looked at her husband, sheer panic bleeding into her tone. "Amaya... the Shadowkeeper... if she sees her. If the Monarch realizes..."
Ryo flinched as if struck. Amaya’s web caught everything eventually. If the Matriarch discovered that Ryo and Shiori had falsified a death, that they had smuggled a Tsuchigumo child out of the Silken Hollow and lied to the clan's leadership for twelve years... treason was too small a word for the punishment that would fall upon their family. They would be executed, and both girls would be claimed by the clan to be used as tools.
"I know," Ryo cut in, his tone suddenly sharp with fear before he forced it back down. He looked at Maya, his chest heaving. The secret was out. Maya had already seen her. It was only a matter of days—hours, maybe—before the rest of the village, and the clan, noticed the uncanny resemblance. The web was already unraveling. They couldn't hide it anymore. If Maya didn't know the truth, she might accidentally expose them all.
Ryo pushed himself up from his cushion, his movements heavy, looking as though he had aged ten years in a matter of seconds. He walked around the low table and knelt directly in front of Maya. He reached out, taking his daughter's small, trembling hands in his own. His fingers were ice cold.
"Maya, listen to me very carefully," Ryo began, his voice dropping to a desperate, urgent whisper. "The girl you saw... Sabaku Rika. You are not losing your mind. She isn't a transformation jutsu, and it isn't a coincidence."
Maya blinked, a tear slipping down her cheek out of sheer confusion and the contagious panic radiating from her parents. "I... I don't understand."
Shiori moved to Maya's other side, wrapping her arms around the girl's small shoulders, burying her face into her daughter's dark hair as she cried openly, her tears soaking into Maya's expensive silk tunic.
"Twelve years ago," Ryo continued, his voice breaking under the crushing weight of a decade-long lie, "when you were born... you were not alone. The clan demands perfection, my little silk moth. They demand weapons. We couldn't bear to let them take you, and we couldn't bear to let them take her. So... we made a terrible choice."
He squeezed her hands gently, looking deep into her terrified jade eyes, his own eyes shining with unshed tears.
"She isn't just a girl who looks like you, Maya. Rika... Rika is your twin sister."
"My... my twin?"
The word felt foreign on Maya’s tongue, clumsy and wrong. She stared at her father, her breath coming in short, shallow gasps. Her mind flashed back to the training grounds. To the deafening explosion of the Rasengan. To the terrifying, casual way Rika had commanded lightning and wind. To the utter lack of fear in those jade-green eyes.
'We have the same face,' Maya thought, a cold, hollow ache blooming in her chest. 'But we are nothing alike. She is a monster. And I am... nothing.'
"But... but why?" Maya’s voice broke, tears finally spilling over her lashes and dropping onto her silk lap. "If she is my sister, why did you send her away? Why did you keep me?"
Ryo’s face crumpled. He pulled his hands away from Maya’s, unable to meet his daughter's desperate, pleading gaze. He looked down at the tatami mat, the shadows of the carmot lights deepening the sudden, harsh lines on his face.
"Because of what she was born with," Ryo whispered, his voice thick with shame. "When the two of you were born, the medical staff... the nurses knew immediately. They checked your chakra networks. Yours was normal, Maya. Small. Quiet. But your sister's..."
Shiori let out a ragged breath, picking up the thread as she gently stroked Maya’s hair. "Her chakra coils were immense, Maya. Heavier and denser than normal. She was born with a terrifying ceiling of power. It is uncommon, but it happens in the village. Children born with the strength of adults. They are prodigies. But in Sunagakure, and especially in our clan... a prodigy is not a child. A prodigy is a weapon."
Maya stopped crying, the sheer shock of the revelation freezing the tears on her cheeks. Rika hadn't just trained hard. She was born with a well of power.
"If we had kept her," Ryo continued, his voice hardening with a bitter, defensive edge, "if we had reported her true potential to the elders... Lady Amaya would have taken her. The Shadowkeeper does not let power sit idle. Rika would have been ripped from our arms and raised in the deepest, darkest chambers of the Hollow. She would have been broken down and reforged into a flawless, emotionless tool for the clan to wield against its enemies."
"We wanted to save her from that," Shiori wept, pressing her forehead against Maya's shoulder. "We paid the nurses to lie. We paid them to say the second child was stillborn, and we smuggled her out into the desert. We thought... we hoped a civilian family would find her. That she would live a normal, quiet life above ground, away from the shinobi world entirely."
But Maya could hear the hesitation in her father's silence. She was timid, but she wasn't stupid. She spent her life reading her parents' moods, carefully navigating their unspoken sadness to ensure she was always the "good daughter." She looked at her father's averted eyes, and the final, crushing truth settled over her.
"That wasn't the only reason," Maya whispered, her voice sounding incredibly small in the quiet room.
Ryo flinched. He finally looked up, his eyes brimming with a coward's profound regret. "We are weavers, Maya," he confessed, the words tasting like ash. "We weave silk for profit. We are low in the clan's hierarchy, and we like it that way. We wanted a quiet life. A safe, simple life. We didn't want the spotlight. We didn't want the elders scrutinizing our home, or other clans targeting our family to get to a prodigy."
He reached out, tentatively touching Maya's cheek. "If we kept her, the political struggles of the shinobi world would have destroyed our peace. We were selfish, Maya. We were so terrified of the storm she would bring to our doorstep that we... we threw her into it instead."
Maya sat perfectly still. The smell of spilled jasmine tea suddenly made her feel violently ill.
She understood now. They hadn't just kept her because they loved her. They kept her because she was safe. Because her chakra was small and quiet. Because she was weak enough to hide. Rika was the storm, cast out because she was too powerful to be controlled, and Maya was the fragile porcelain doll left behind to collect dust on a shelf.
And now, the storm had returned. It was twelve years old, wore a Chuunin vest, and shared her exact face.
"She is a Chuunin now," Maya said, her voice completely hollow, devoid of its usual anxious stutter. "She didn't get a quiet life. She became exactly what you were afraid of."
Ryo and Shiori exchanged a look of pure, unadulterated terror. The web of lies they had spun to protect their quiet life was entirely gone, replaced by a ticking clock. If Amaya saw Rika—if the Matriarch saw the lost prodigy wearing the face of a Tsuchigumo weaver's daughter—their quiet life would end in an execution.
Maya didn't know what would happen if Amaya found out, but she had an idea. The rest of the clan werent as warm and understanding. Maya pulled away from her parents suddenly and stood.
"I'm going to my room," she stated, and started walking towards it. She felt betrayed and, more than anything, guilty. She called her own sister a monster. Rika was everything she wasn't. Maya felt a strong sense to fix what her parents had cast out. They could have left the clan, kept both of them. But their own selfishness... Maya ignored her parents' sobs. Were they crying because they were guilty? Or because they were afraid of the consequences?
Maya shut her room door and tried to wipe the tears from her eyes. 'I shouldn't be crying...' She thought, but her cheeks and eyes burned. Her legs felt like lead as she approached her desk. She couldn't keep this a secret. She needed to tell Rika. Maya pulled out a parchment from a drawer and some ink. She then looked at a few of her glass pens before picking up her favorite one.
As Maya dipped the tip into the ink and hovered it over the paper, she froze. What would she say? 'Hey, I'm your long lost twin?' That didn't sound right. Maya frowned as she stared at the empty paper. Then her hand started to move in smooth motions.
Maya finished writing the letter. She would send it in the morning. For now, she would let the ink dry. She needed time to calm her mind. She was afraid, what if Rika decided to hate her? She had no clue what it was like... Where was she even raised? Was she adopted? Maya had so many questions. She knew she wanted to know who Rika was, learn more about her. Maybe Rika could help her become stronger. Maya felt a small bloom of hope in her chest, a chance at something new.
[Topic made]
But the cocoon had been breached. The Monarch's absolute edict had forced their hand, demanding Maya enroll in the Academy. Now, the violence of the surface was seeping into their quiet life.
Maya sat at the low, polished wooden dining table, her posture perfectly rigid, her hands folded neatly in her lap. She hadn't touched the expensive, imported sweets her mother had placed in front of her. Even days later, the roaring winds, the deafening explosion of the Rasengan, and the suffocating killing intent from the village gates were still rattling around in her skull.
"You've barely touched your food, my little silk moth," Shiori murmured softly, kneeling beside the table to pour a cup of fragrant jasmine tea. Ryo, sitting across from his daughter, offered a warm, encouraging smile that didn't quite reach his eyes. Both of them carried a permanent, underlying tension these days.
"I'm... I'm sorry, Mother," Maya whispered, keeping her jade-green eyes cast downward. "I was just thinking about the classes. And... the things I saw at the gates."
Ryo sighed, a heavy, protective sound. "You shouldn't have been anywhere near the gates, Maya. The surface is chaotic. The people there are rough, unrefined. You must be careful."
"I know," Maya said softly. Her fingers twisted into the fabric of her skirt. "Everyone is just... so far ahead of me. The other students already know how to mold their chakra. And the teacher..." Maya swallowed hard, the memory of the confident, arrogant girl flashing in her mind's eye. "The teacher for the Ninjutsu class wasn't an adult. She was my age. Twelve. But she is already a Chuunin. She shattered the earth and cut a tree in half with wind, just to show off."
"A twelve-year-old Chuunin is an anomaly, Maya. A weapon forged too early," Ryo said soothingly, exchanging a quick, dismissive look with his wife. "You are not expected to be a monster like that. You will learn at your own, proper pace."
"It wasn't just her jutsu," Maya continued, her voice trembling slightly as she finally looked up. "It was her face. Mother... Father... she looked exactly like me."
The gentle, steaming stream of jasmine tea abruptly missed the cup.
The porcelain teapot clattered harshly against the wooden table as it slipped from Shiori’s suddenly nerveless fingers. Hot tea pooled across the lacquered wood, dripping onto the tatami mats, but neither parent moved to clean it.
Ryo froze entirely, his breath catching audibly in his throat. The warm, comforting fatherly facade shattered in an instant, replaced by a pallid, bloodless mask of sheer terror. He slowly turned his head to look at his wife. Shiori’s hands were shaking violently where they rested on the table, her eyes wide and reflecting a nightmare come to life.
‘It couldn't be,’ Ryo’s mind screamed, the walls of his meticulously built life caving in. ‘Not so soon.’
When the Monarch had issued the edict forcing Maya into the Academy, they had known the risks. They knew there was a statistical, terrifying chance that Maya might eventually cross paths with the identical twin they had given up on that dark, desperate night twelve years ago. The child they had sent away to keep both girls safe from the clan's political machinations. But they had assumed the other girl was living a normal, civilian life. Or, if she was a shinobi, that she would be another struggling Academy student lost in the crowds.
They had never, in their darkest nightmares, expected her to be a Chuunin. A recognized, terrifyingly powerful prodigy standing directly in front of the daughter they had kept. The two halves of their desperate secret had collided before Maya had even learned to throw a kunai.
"Her name is Sabaku Rika," Maya whispered into the suffocating silence, entirely misinterpreting her parents' frozen horror for disbelief. "I know it sounds crazy. I thought I was losing my mind. But she had my hair. She had my eyes. We were the exact same height. It was like looking into a mirror... except she wasn't afraid of anything."
Maya shrank back slightly, her shoulders hunching. "Are... are you mad at me? I didn't speak to her, I promise! I just... I stayed in the back."
"No," Ryo managed to choke out, his voice sounding like it was scraping over broken glass. He reached out, his hand trembling as he placed it over his wife's shaking fingers. "No, Maya. We aren't mad. We are just... surprised."
Shiori couldn't speak. She just stared blindly at the spilled tea, the image of a twelve-year-old Chuunin wearing her daughter's face echoing like a death knell in her mind.
The silence in the room stretched until it felt suffocating, broken only by the steady drip... drip... drip... of spilled jasmine tea hitting the woven tatami mat.
Maya pulled her knees together, her jade eyes darting nervously between her mother’s pale, tear-filled face and her father’s rigid, bloodless posture. The air in the room had grown incredibly heavy. "Father?" Maya whispered, her voice trembling violently. "Did... did I do something wrong? I promise I won't go near her again! I'll stay away, I'll—"
"No," Ryo interrupted, his voice hollow and completely devoid of its usual warmth. He slowly lowered his face into his hands, taking a shuddering, ragged breath. "No, Maya. You did nothing wrong."
Behind his hands, Ryo’s mind was racing, the carefully woven tapestry of their lives catching fire. Sabaku Rika. The name echoed mockingly in his head. They had told the clan elders—they had told the Monarch herself—that Shiori had suffered complications. That the second child, a frail little thing, had been stillborn. It was a desperate, treasonous lie, spun to save at least one daughter from the Tsuchigumo's brutal, emotionless conditioning. They had given the twin away to the desert, praying she would live a quiet, civilian life far from the clan's web.
But they hadn't saved her. They had cast her out into the unforgiving wastes, and the harsh world above had forged her into a twelve-year-old Chuunin. A monster of their own making.
Shiori let out a choked, muffled sob, pressing both hands over her mouth. Her eyes, so much like Maya's, were wide with a harrowing mix of overwhelming guilt and abject terror. She looked at Maya—the daughter they had kept, smothered in silk, and sheltered until she was afraid of her own shadow—and thought of the other girl, alone, fighting her way to the rank of Chuunin.
But the guilt was quickly being swallowed by a much sharper, colder fear.
"Ryo," Shiori wept, her voice cracking as she finally looked at her husband, sheer panic bleeding into her tone. "Amaya... the Shadowkeeper... if she sees her. If the Monarch realizes..."
Ryo flinched as if struck. Amaya’s web caught everything eventually. If the Matriarch discovered that Ryo and Shiori had falsified a death, that they had smuggled a Tsuchigumo child out of the Silken Hollow and lied to the clan's leadership for twelve years... treason was too small a word for the punishment that would fall upon their family. They would be executed, and both girls would be claimed by the clan to be used as tools.
"I know," Ryo cut in, his tone suddenly sharp with fear before he forced it back down. He looked at Maya, his chest heaving. The secret was out. Maya had already seen her. It was only a matter of days—hours, maybe—before the rest of the village, and the clan, noticed the uncanny resemblance. The web was already unraveling. They couldn't hide it anymore. If Maya didn't know the truth, she might accidentally expose them all.
Ryo pushed himself up from his cushion, his movements heavy, looking as though he had aged ten years in a matter of seconds. He walked around the low table and knelt directly in front of Maya. He reached out, taking his daughter's small, trembling hands in his own. His fingers were ice cold.
"Maya, listen to me very carefully," Ryo began, his voice dropping to a desperate, urgent whisper. "The girl you saw... Sabaku Rika. You are not losing your mind. She isn't a transformation jutsu, and it isn't a coincidence."
Maya blinked, a tear slipping down her cheek out of sheer confusion and the contagious panic radiating from her parents. "I... I don't understand."
Shiori moved to Maya's other side, wrapping her arms around the girl's small shoulders, burying her face into her daughter's dark hair as she cried openly, her tears soaking into Maya's expensive silk tunic.
"Twelve years ago," Ryo continued, his voice breaking under the crushing weight of a decade-long lie, "when you were born... you were not alone. The clan demands perfection, my little silk moth. They demand weapons. We couldn't bear to let them take you, and we couldn't bear to let them take her. So... we made a terrible choice."
He squeezed her hands gently, looking deep into her terrified jade eyes, his own eyes shining with unshed tears.
"She isn't just a girl who looks like you, Maya. Rika... Rika is your twin sister."
"My... my twin?"
The word felt foreign on Maya’s tongue, clumsy and wrong. She stared at her father, her breath coming in short, shallow gasps. Her mind flashed back to the training grounds. To the deafening explosion of the Rasengan. To the terrifying, casual way Rika had commanded lightning and wind. To the utter lack of fear in those jade-green eyes.
'We have the same face,' Maya thought, a cold, hollow ache blooming in her chest. 'But we are nothing alike. She is a monster. And I am... nothing.'
"But... but why?" Maya’s voice broke, tears finally spilling over her lashes and dropping onto her silk lap. "If she is my sister, why did you send her away? Why did you keep me?"
Ryo’s face crumpled. He pulled his hands away from Maya’s, unable to meet his daughter's desperate, pleading gaze. He looked down at the tatami mat, the shadows of the carmot lights deepening the sudden, harsh lines on his face.
"Because of what she was born with," Ryo whispered, his voice thick with shame. "When the two of you were born, the medical staff... the nurses knew immediately. They checked your chakra networks. Yours was normal, Maya. Small. Quiet. But your sister's..."
Shiori let out a ragged breath, picking up the thread as she gently stroked Maya’s hair. "Her chakra coils were immense, Maya. Heavier and denser than normal. She was born with a terrifying ceiling of power. It is uncommon, but it happens in the village. Children born with the strength of adults. They are prodigies. But in Sunagakure, and especially in our clan... a prodigy is not a child. A prodigy is a weapon."
Maya stopped crying, the sheer shock of the revelation freezing the tears on her cheeks. Rika hadn't just trained hard. She was born with a well of power.
"If we had kept her," Ryo continued, his voice hardening with a bitter, defensive edge, "if we had reported her true potential to the elders... Lady Amaya would have taken her. The Shadowkeeper does not let power sit idle. Rika would have been ripped from our arms and raised in the deepest, darkest chambers of the Hollow. She would have been broken down and reforged into a flawless, emotionless tool for the clan to wield against its enemies."
"We wanted to save her from that," Shiori wept, pressing her forehead against Maya's shoulder. "We paid the nurses to lie. We paid them to say the second child was stillborn, and we smuggled her out into the desert. We thought... we hoped a civilian family would find her. That she would live a normal, quiet life above ground, away from the shinobi world entirely."
But Maya could hear the hesitation in her father's silence. She was timid, but she wasn't stupid. She spent her life reading her parents' moods, carefully navigating their unspoken sadness to ensure she was always the "good daughter." She looked at her father's averted eyes, and the final, crushing truth settled over her.
"That wasn't the only reason," Maya whispered, her voice sounding incredibly small in the quiet room.
Ryo flinched. He finally looked up, his eyes brimming with a coward's profound regret. "We are weavers, Maya," he confessed, the words tasting like ash. "We weave silk for profit. We are low in the clan's hierarchy, and we like it that way. We wanted a quiet life. A safe, simple life. We didn't want the spotlight. We didn't want the elders scrutinizing our home, or other clans targeting our family to get to a prodigy."
He reached out, tentatively touching Maya's cheek. "If we kept her, the political struggles of the shinobi world would have destroyed our peace. We were selfish, Maya. We were so terrified of the storm she would bring to our doorstep that we... we threw her into it instead."
Maya sat perfectly still. The smell of spilled jasmine tea suddenly made her feel violently ill.
She understood now. They hadn't just kept her because they loved her. They kept her because she was safe. Because her chakra was small and quiet. Because she was weak enough to hide. Rika was the storm, cast out because she was too powerful to be controlled, and Maya was the fragile porcelain doll left behind to collect dust on a shelf.
And now, the storm had returned. It was twelve years old, wore a Chuunin vest, and shared her exact face.
"She is a Chuunin now," Maya said, her voice completely hollow, devoid of its usual anxious stutter. "She didn't get a quiet life. She became exactly what you were afraid of."
Ryo and Shiori exchanged a look of pure, unadulterated terror. The web of lies they had spun to protect their quiet life was entirely gone, replaced by a ticking clock. If Amaya saw Rika—if the Matriarch saw the lost prodigy wearing the face of a Tsuchigumo weaver's daughter—their quiet life would end in an execution.
Maya didn't know what would happen if Amaya found out, but she had an idea. The rest of the clan werent as warm and understanding. Maya pulled away from her parents suddenly and stood.
"I'm going to my room," she stated, and started walking towards it. She felt betrayed and, more than anything, guilty. She called her own sister a monster. Rika was everything she wasn't. Maya felt a strong sense to fix what her parents had cast out. They could have left the clan, kept both of them. But their own selfishness... Maya ignored her parents' sobs. Were they crying because they were guilty? Or because they were afraid of the consequences?
Maya shut her room door and tried to wipe the tears from her eyes. 'I shouldn't be crying...' She thought, but her cheeks and eyes burned. Her legs felt like lead as she approached her desk. She couldn't keep this a secret. She needed to tell Rika. Maya pulled out a parchment from a drawer and some ink. She then looked at a few of her glass pens before picking up her favorite one.
As Maya dipped the tip into the ink and hovered it over the paper, she froze. What would she say? 'Hey, I'm your long lost twin?' That didn't sound right. Maya frowned as she stared at the empty paper. Then her hand started to move in smooth motions.
Maya finished writing the letter. She would send it in the morning. For now, she would let the ink dry. She needed time to calm her mind. She was afraid, what if Rika decided to hate her? She had no clue what it was like... Where was she even raised? Was she adopted? Maya had so many questions. She knew she wanted to know who Rika was, learn more about her. Maybe Rika could help her become stronger. Maya felt a small bloom of hope in her chest, a chance at something new.
[Topic made]