Chapter 3: Day 1: A Nice Quiet (Loud) Morning
Shirou sighed and rubbed at his eyes with the heel of his palm.
It was too early for this.
Too early for the noise, too early for the sunlight stabbing through the open doorway, and definitely too early to be staring up at Fujimura Taiga's unbearably smug face while she loomed over him like she had personally won some great and glorious victory by finding him asleep in the shed again.
He could already feel the smugness radiating off her.
It was intolerable.
"Are you done dying dramatically?" Taiga asked, hands on her hips, grinning down at him with the kind of shameless satisfaction only Fuji-Nee could manage this early in the morning. "Because breakfast is waiting, and unlike certain lazy blacksmiths, some of us have places to be."
Shirou squinted up at her.
"…You really talk too much in the morning."
"And you don't talk enough!" She shot back immediately. "See? We balance each other out. It's called family!"
"That's not how balance works."
"It is when I say it is!"
Of course it was.
Shirou let out another tired breath and stretched where he sat, shoulders rolling with a faint ache from the awkward position he had fallen asleep in. His back cracked. He had apparently chosen to sleep half-curled against a stack of junk metal and an old workbench like some kind of exhausted raccoon.
That probably said something unflattering about the state of his life, but it was too early to care.
He planted a hand on the floor and started to push himself up.
Taiga, apparently containing too much energy to simply stand still like a normal human being, bounced in place the moment she saw him move. Then, with the air of someone being incredibly helpful despite nobody asking her to be, she reached down, grabbed his arm, and hauled at him with unnecessary enthusiasm.
"Come on, Shirou~! Hurry up!"
"I was already getting up—"
"Yes, but now you're getting up faster."
"That's not what I was complaining about."
"It is if I make it!"
She nudged him once he was on his feet, then spun away from him in one bright, restless motion. Her short hair flowed behind her as she twirled toward the door, turned on one heel, and pointed at him with that stupidly cheerful grin of hers.
"I'll wait for you in the kitchen!"
And then she was gone.
Instead of walking out or exiting like a sensible person. She sprinted off with all the relentless force of a natural disaster that had somehow been accepted by society as a schoolteacher.
Her footsteps thundered away across the yard.
There was then silence as Shirou stared at the empty doorway for a second.
"…Yeah," he muttered to no one. "Take your time."
The shed, naturally, did not answer him.
He let out a long, tired sigh and ran a hand through his hair before finally taking a proper look around.
Morning light spilled in through the open door and the narrow high windows, cutting thin pale bars across the dim interior. Dust floated through the beams like drifting ash. The old familiar scent of metal, oil, wood, and cold air wrapped around him in a way the main house never quite could.
There was junk everywhere, stacked in careful chaos. Broken appliances. Pipes. Toolboxes. Half-disassembled mechanisms. Shelves packed tight with things waiting to be repaired or repurposed or at least looked at and judged for their terrible construction.
And in the corner of the shed was an old, weathered blacksmith forge and tools that were helpfully provided by his late father.
The reason for which was around him, resting against the walls or laid carefully across the workbench and floor racks, were blades.
Several of them.
More than several, really.
Knives. Short swords. Long blades. Crude spears. Some sat in old scabbards. Some in makeshift sheaths. Some were wrapped in cloth. Some were simply laid bare where the morning light could catch on the edges.
At a glance, they looked real enough.
No, more than real enough. They looked good.
They were solid and clean. They looked well shaped and balanced, with edges sharp enough to cut into flesh with relative ease.
Each one carried the sort of weight in its silhouette that made people assume skill. Assume craftsmanship, and dedication. The product of patient hands and hard-earned talent.
Fuji-Nee certainly thought so.
To Fujimura Taiga, Emiya Shirou was apparently some kind of bizarre blacksmith prodigy.
A strange, sleep-deprived, junk-hoarding domestic boy who fixed stoves, cooked breakfast, did impossible amounts of housework, and in his spare time manually forged perfectly convincing weapons in a dusty shed behind the house because apparently that was just the sort of thing he did.
She had looked at the blades in here with open admiration before. Sometimes with confusion. Sometimes with concern. Once with what had probably been pride.
She thought he was talented.
She thought he made them by hand, that he had that kind of gift.
The red haired young man stood there in the dim morning light, surrounded by rows of weapons in their holsters, by sharpened imitations and beautifully arranged lies, and felt that old, unpleasant thought rise in him with the same quiet certainty it always had.
Because much like all these seemingly real blades, Shirou Emiya was nothing but a ᶠFͣrⷦaͤuͬd.
The truth was, he did indeed have a talent.
It was a small, unnatural thing in a world most people would never know existed, a crooked little miracle that only meant anything in a place hidden from ordinary eyes.
A talent buried in a body that had no right to possess it, in hands that could not shape real steel honestly no matter how long they worked, no matter how many nights they spent among metal and fire and scrap.
Projection.
That was the only Magecraft truly allowed to Shirou Emiya.
It was the only thing that had ever come naturally. The only thing his body seemed to understand without permission.
The only thing that responded to him the way a language responded to a native speaker, as if it had been waiting for him long before he had ever learned its name.
He looked down at the katana in his hand.
It was one he had created yesterday. Slender, curved, and modestly elegant. It was not especially ornate.
It was a practical blade, the sort of thing that invited the eye to linger just long enough to appreciate its shape before deciding it had probably always existed. It had the right balance. The right grain. The right weight. The right quietness.
Shirou shifted his thumb and eased it free of the sheath by a fraction.
The soft sound of the unsheathing slipped through the shed.
The sound landed inside him in a place deeper than hearing. It did not just reach his ears. It reached his nerves. His bones. Something old and instinctive that had lived in him for so long now that it no longer felt separate from breathing.
In fact, he heard and felt it every day of his life.
Ever since the days after that fire.
Ever since Emiya Kiritsugu had dragged him out of hell and into a world that no longer quite fit him.
The boy's fingers tightened slightly around the sword.
There had been a time when that sound meant wonder.
When he had been a child with bright eyes and too little sense, staring at the impossible and deciding immediately, with all the sincerity his whole heart could manage, that it was beautiful.
As a child, he decided he would be a Magician.
A Hͣerͪoⷱ ⷬoͦfͨ ͬJͥuͭsͤtice.
Back then, the sound of a blade being drawn had belonged to a world larger than life. A world full of mystery, danger, and dreams big enough to swallow grief whole if he just stared hard enough.
Now it was just familiar.
He could not hear that sound without feeling the outline of the weapon in his mind before the steel had even fully cleared the sheath. Length, curve, center of balance, temper, edge. Everything. The whole object rushed into understanding at once with an ease that still felt unfair no matter how many years passed.
Shirou slid the blade back in with care and walked it over to the mount by the wall.
There were several other weapons there already, resting in silence like sleeping lies.
He set the katana down among them and adjusted it until it sat perfectly straight.
That one would stay there until it was needed.
Until one of the Fujimura men came to collect it, or until word traveled from someone else who wanted a blade and did not care very much where it came from so long as it was sharp, sturdy, and convincing. The Fujimura yakuza had become his greatest buyers these days. Practically his only buyers, really.
That much was almost funny, in a bleak sort of way. Fuji-Nee's family handled enough of the underworld that weapons passed through their orbit as naturally as tea cups passed through kitchens.
And somewhere along the line, some of the more trusted people around Old Man Fujimura had learned that the strange Emiya kid with the shed full of scrap and secrets could provide goods that looked real enough and held up well enough for human hands.
Thankfully, the quality of his projections seemed good enough to fool Humans.
That was the important part.
Human eyes saw steel and polish and shape. Human fingers felt weight and balance. Human experience filled in the rest.
A human could believe in his Fakes.
That, of course, said nothing of a Mage's eyes.
A real magus would know. Or at least know enough to ask the wrong questions.
A real magus would feel the falseness in the thing even if they could not name it immediately. They would catch the scent of something too convenient, too imitative, too structurally intimate in a way no normal blacksmith should manage.
While a human could be fooled by appearance, by quality, by confidence. A magus looked deeper.
A magus would see the Lie.
Shirou stepped back from the stand and his heel caught on the edge of a mat.
"Hm?"
The mat shifted with the motion, folding back just enough for the boards beneath it to show through, along with something drawn across them.
Something pale and geometric and deliberate, so old now that its lines had sunk into the floor as if the wood itself remembered it.
A hollow magical circle.
Shirou stilled.
For a second he only looked at it blankly as, unexpectedly, a small pang of nostalgia ran through him.
It was a true magical circle. Not one of his makeshift training failures scratched out in childish imitation years ago. Not one of the useless patterns he had copied from books and notes and half-understood lectures when he first began trying to claw meaning out of the world Kiritsugu had left behind.
No.
This one was real, though unused for ten years.
Not since the war. Not since the war his father had taken part in.
The war that had changed everything. The war that had burned through Fuyuki, through Kiritsugu, through him, and left behind the strange, crooked lives now standing in the ashes pretending to be ordinary.
The Fourth Holy Grail War of Fuyuki.
He remembered sitting across from Kiritsugu years ago, listening far too seriously as the man explained it in that dry, almost offhand tone of his, as if he were discussing the weather or a badly designed mechanism rather than a ritual of slaughter carried out by magi and heroes.
A war for the Holy Grail.
Seven Masters. Seven Servants. A battle fought in the dark corners of the city while ordinary people slept, worked, laughed, and died without ever understanding what passed over their heads.
The circle had been used in that previous war, for something regarding the old man's late wife.
Kiritsugu had told him so.
Told him a number of things, really. Some of them clearly. Some of them only halfway. Some of them like a man trying very hard to explain something while also praying the person listening would never need to understand it fully.
And Shirou knew, in the stubborn private way he knew things that mattered too much, that if the Fifth War ever arrived as his father had once prophesied, this would be his salvation.
This circle. This place.
This old remnant sleeping under a mat in his shed like a bone buried in the yard.
Shirou stared at it for another second, then exhaled through his nose.
"…Like that would happen so quickly." He muttered.
The words sounded thin in the quiet.
Maybe they were reassurance, or maybe they were denial.
Maybe there was no difference.
He bent down, adjusted the mat carefully, and pulled it back into place until the magical circle disappeared once more beneath ordinary cloth and the familiar cluttered mess of the shed.
Shirou straightened, gave the room one last glance, and headed for the main house.
The morning air was cool on his face as he crossed the yard. Bright, clean sunlight had fully settled over everything now, washing the old wood of the house in pale gold. It should have felt peaceful.
It did feel peaceful.
That was probably why the shed always unsettled him a little after nights like this. The moment he stepped out of it, the world insisted on continuing as if hidden circles, fake swords, dead heroes, and apocalyptic prophecies were not tucked away a few steps behind him under a cheap mat.
He stepped into the entryway, took off his shoes, and padded into the house.
The television was already on. Naturally.
He followed the sound into the kitchen and found Taiga exactly where he had expected to find her: sitting lazily at the table with one leg tucked beneath her, peeling open a tangerine in front of the morning news as if she had been hard at work for hours and deserved a medal for it. She looked up the moment he entered.
"Yo, sleepy Blacksmith-kun."
"Morning, Fuji-nee."
She popped a segment of tangerine into her mouth and spoke around it with zero dignity. "I was starting to think the shed had finally claimed you as its bride."
"It can't. You'd get jealous."
Taiga pointed at him with the half-peeled fruit. "Correct! Because I am already the most important woman in your life!"
"That sentence made my soul leave my body."
She gasped dramatically. "Ah! Rude!"
Shirou ignored her and moved past the table to the kitchenette.
There, laid out on the counter in the rough approximation of help only Taiga ever managed, were eggs, a packet of salmon fillets, and the rice already measured, prepared, and already heating up in the cooker.
A cutting board sat beside them. The soy sauce was out. The mirin too. A bowl had been placed nearby with the sort of confidence that suggested Fuji-Nee had absolutely intended to contribute and then wisely stopped before causing irreversible harm.
This had become their small, unspoken ritual whenever Sakura Matou wasn't around.
Taiga would rudely wake her little brother every morning with all the subtlety of a home invasion.
Shirou would then drag himself into the kitchen and cook them breakfast with the diligence of a man trying to prevent a national disaster.
Because the thought of Fuji-Nee's cooking sent a very real shiver down his spine.
He had seen too much.
He had survived too much.
But some horrors should never be repeated.
So Taiga helped in her own selfish way instead. She would rummage through the fridge like an opportunistic raccoon, pull out what looked good to her in the moment, and arrange it with the air of someone who had contributed something invaluable.
Then she would sit down, peel fruit, watch television, and act as though this household operated through a perfect division of labor rather than Shirou desperately steering it away from destruction every morning.
Still.
The eggs were here. The rice was ready. The salmon was thawed.
That counted for something, right?
Shirou sighed, turned on the tap, and splashed cold water over his face. The chill cleared the last sticky remnants of sleep from his head. He wiped his face off with a towel hanging nearby and rolled up his sleeves.
He got to work.
First the tamagoyaki.
He cracked the eggs into a bowl one by one, the shells breaking cleanly between practiced fingers. Four today.
Enough for both of them and enough for Fuji-Nee to inevitably ask for seconds like she had not inhaled half the table already. He added a little soy sauce, a little sugar, a touch of mirin, and a pinch of salt, then whisked it all together until the mixture smoothed into a warm golden liquid.
The square tamagoyaki pan went onto the stove. A little oil. A quick tilt of the wrist to coat the surface.
When the pan was hot enough, he poured in the first thin layer. The egg hissed softly. He waited just until the bottom set, then rolled it carefully toward himself with chopsticks, neat and practiced, forming the first layer of the omelet. Another thin pour. Lift the roll. Let the new egg run beneath. Wait. Roll again.
Behind him, Taiga had reached the portion of the broadcast where the anchors were discussing traffic and weather in voices far too cheerful for the hour.
"Looks like it'll be cold!" She announced.
"That's because it is." Shirou said with his eyes on the pan.
"Then we should stay home."
"You say that every weekday."
"And one day I will be right~!" Taiga said grandly.
"You're an English teacher."
"I teach inspiration."
"With how you act daily, you only teach chaos."
"Same thing."
Shirou rolled the egg once more, shaping the tamagoyaki into a clean layered block, then set it aside to rest before slicing.
Next came the salmon.
He took the fillets from the packet, patted them dry, and sprinkled them lightly with salt. A little sake. Nothing more complicated than that. He set them into the steamer and let the heat begin its work, gentle and patient. Steam rose, carrying the rich clean smell of fish through the kitchen almost immediately.
The rice cooker clicked softly behind him.
Perfect timing.
He lifted the lid and a wave of white fragrant heat rolled out. The rice inside was glossy and tender, each grain swollen just right. He fluffed it gently with the paddle to release the steam without crushing the texture, then let the cooker keep it warm.
After that, he dug into the fridge.
There was still miso soup left from yesterday, just as he remembered. Radish, carrots, and a little tofu. Nothing fancy, but good enough not to waste. He set the pot on low heat to rewarm slowly while he searched again and found the pickled vegetables in the back: cucumber, daikon, and a bit of cabbage.
Those could go on the side.
He set them on the board.
Reached for the knife.
And the instant his fingers wrapped around the handle, the sound of a katana's unsheathing flooded his mind.
The exact same sound as before. The same sound from only minutes ago in the shed.
For one brief, strange instant, his hand on the kitchen knife and his hand on that katana became the same gesture.
Then, like a Trigger pulled in some hidden mechanism deep inside him, his body reacted instinctively.
A subtle glow crept along his hand.
Long, circuit-like green lines lit beneath the skin, so faint and quick that they could have passed for a trick of the light. They ran along his fingers, his wrist, the back of his hand, and seeped into the knife before thought had even caught up.
"Trace… On..!" He whispered under his breath, so quietly that not even the woman lounging a few feet away noticed.
It was automatic.
That was the ugly truth of it.
No matter how small or simple a blade was, no matter how mundane, cheap, or ordinary, as long as it landed in Shirou Emiya's hands, the Faker's body instinctively responded.
And so the knife opened itself to him. Immediately, it was analyzed in its entirety.
Not in the broad vague sense of a person glancing at an object and making a guess.
Immediately meant immediately.
He judged the concept of its creation first.
A kitchen knife. Utility over ceremony. A tool born not for battle or display but repetition. Cutting, trimming, separating, and reducing.
Its purpose was humble and direct. It existed to prepare food, to serve the quiet labor of daily life, to transform ingredients from raw shapes into something people could share across a table. No pride or grandeur in it, just a simple reason to exist.
Then came the basic structure.
The blade's length. The slight taper toward the tip. The thickness of the spine. The grinding angle of the edge. The way the tang ran into the handle. The distribution of weight between steel and grip. The cheap synthetic scales fastened with two rivets.
A small asymmetry near the base where the finishing had been rushed. Microscopic strain along the edge from repeated sharpening. The exact composition of the metal, not high quality but decent enough. It was made of stainless steel. A knife built to endure routine rather than glory.
And after that came the sympathy with its experience, growth, and history.
This was the part that always felt most obscene.
The knife had not lived, obviously. It had no thoughts, no heart, no soul in the human sense.
And yet history clung to it. He could feel the accumulated memory of use in the object all the same.
The slight dulling near the middle of the edge from repeated chopping on this very board. The tiny flex of the handle under pressure from Taiga's terrible grip whenever she insisted on "helping." The careful, consistent maintenance from Shirou's own hands. The rhythm of quiet breakfasts, of lunches packed, of dinners made late at night after work, of ordinary survival.
The knife's whole life stood open to him in an instant.
Its reason. Its structure. Its history.
And all Shirou Emiya used this for was to cut the vegetables into small, bite-sized pieces.
The glow faded. The lines under his skin dimmed and vanished as if they had never existed.
He exhaled once, steadying himself, as he lowered the knife and began chopping.
The blade moved cleanly through the pickles, reducing them into neat portions. Cucumber first, then daikon, and then cabbage. Each piece small enough to pick up easily with chopsticks.
By the time he finished, the miso soup was hot, the salmon perfectly steamed, and the tamagoyaki cool enough to slice.
He cut the omelet into even golden rectangles, portioned the rice into bowls, plated the fish, ladled the soup, added the pickled vegetables, and carried everything to the table in two trips.
Taiga's head lifted the moment the first tray came down.
"Ohh, nice. Wait…" She narrowed her eyes at the soup. "...Is that leftover miso?"
"Yes."
"Shirou..."
"What."
"You wound me."
"You'll survive."
"But I am a growing girl!"
"You are a grown woman."
Taiga gasped as if he had stabbed her directly in the soul. "M-Monster! How could you say such a heartless thing to such a beautiful, unsullied young maiden such as myself?!"
She then took a sip of the miso, made a pleased noise, and proceeded to eat everything ravenously anyway.
"I'll have you know, all the guys at school were fighting over me!"
…Naturally.
She devoured the tamagoyaki first, stole an extra slice of salmon before he had fully sat down, complained that the pickles were too healthy, ate all of them regardless, and went back for more rice with the single-minded determination of an athlete preparing for war.
By the time Shirou had finished half his first bowl, she was already reaching for seconds with zero shame and somehow getting grains of rice onto the table, her sleeve, and the side of her own face in the process.
"Fuji-nee."
"Hm?"
"There's rice on you."
"Where?"
"Everywhere."
"That sounds like your problem."
"It becomes my problem when I have to clean the table."
"See? Teamwork."
Shirou sighed and pushed a cloth at her without any real force behind it. "At least wipe your hand before you touch the tangerines again."
She did not.
Or rather, she did an approximation of it so useless that he ended up doing it properly himself while she grinned at him proudly.
He ate more slowly. Not because he lacked appetite, but because someone had to preserve the dignity of the meal.
Even so, a small soft smile stayed on his face the whole time despite himself.
These mornings were nice.
Of course, they were also loud. irritating, stupid, and full of petty complaints and selfish habits and the constant threat of Fuji-Nee deciding that gravity, logic, and social norms were optional.
But they were still nice.
And if he was being honest, the boy did not know if he would be here today without them.
Without her.
No matter how annoying or petulant she was. No matter how often she drove him up the wall. No matter how much of his life she consumed by sheer force of personality. And though he would never admit it out loud for fear of sending her ego into the stratosphere and causing a natural disaster.
Shirou Emiya would always love his big sister.
Taiga chose that exact moment to leap to her feet.
"RIGHT!" She declared at a volume that should have been illegal indoors. "We're heading to school this instant!"
Shirou blinked.
"…We haven't even cleaned up yet."
"We'll do it later."
"No, I'll do it later."
"Sounds like a problem solved to me."
"Fuji-nee."
"Shirou!" She pointed at him with dramatic authority. "Uniform. Now. We're late."
"And who's fault is that?!" He blurted out exasperatedly.
But, as it turned out, she was not interested in continuing the debate.
She barely let them clear the table properly, barely let him stack the dishes, barely let him change into his uniform before she was already herding him toward the door with the unstoppable confidence of someone who had decided momentum was more important than reason.
The next thing he knew, he was outside.
The next next thing he knew, Taiga had forced a helmet at him and was kicking her motorbike to life with a triumphant grin on her face like this was a completely reasonable start to the day.
Shirou stared at the machine, then at her, then back at the machine.
"…I still think this should be illegal."
"It's not."
"It should be."
"Get on, little brother."
"That makes it sound worse."
Taiga revved the engine.
Shirou closed his eyes for one second, the expression of a man making peace with his impending death, and climbed on behind her.
A second later she was off like a bullet, cackling into the morning as the motorcycle tore down the road with far more enthusiasm than the speed limit had probably intended.
Wind hit his face hard enough to wake whatever sleep had still survived breakfast.
He gripped the back rail, then immediately abandoned that plan and grabbed onto her waist instead when Taiga took a turn with the kind of unearned confidence only Fuji-Nee could possess.
Yeah…
Taiga Fujimura can never find out how much Shirou Emiya cares for her.
He feared for this earth too much.