The Night Seer

There's something special about auspicious meetings — the kind of instant that quietly reroutes a life without announcing itself. If you'll indulge me, I want to tell you the story of one.

Yozora arrived at the Night Market alone, hoping the bright colors and the smell of grilled everything would fill the hole recently excavated in his chest. Let's not be melodramatic about it, though — he told himself the same thing. He walked in and let the market do what markets do: assault the senses in every direction at once, sugar and smoke and neon competing for his attention.

The first thing that found him was the mochi donuts. The seller, a young woman about his age, handed him a skewer of the shop's newest creation before he'd even finished reading the sign.

"Mochi donut skewers," she said, like she was daring him not to be impressed. "New this week."

He took two, paid in cash, and didn't argue.

A few stalls down, a chalkboard sign for "chocolate milk" made him stop and stare at it for a solid, undignified ten seconds before he shrugged and walked over anyway. He came away with a cookies and cream milk that tasted like liquid Oreo and made him feel, briefly, six years old.

Drink in hand, skewer half-eaten, he let himself get lost in the market the way he hadn't let himself get lost in anything in months.

Then a voice — older, sure of itself — said his name.

"Yozora."

He stopped mid-step. Looked left, right, found no one looking back at him. The voice had come from somewhere past the noodle stalls, past the glow-stick vendor, toward a tent draped in fabric too elaborate for a parking-lot night market. He walked toward it before he'd decided to.

Inside, of all people, was Momo Hirai.

He blinked. Blinked again, like that might change the answer. Momo — in California, in a random tent, at a random market — made exactly as much sense as anything else about the ten minutes.

"Um. Hello?" he managed.

Momo turned, startled, then her face eased into a smile. "Hi there."

"Did you just call my name?"

She shook her head, and before either of them could sit with that, a voice from deeper in the tent answered for her.

"It was me who called the both of ya."

They turned together. An old woman sat at a round table draped in the same deep fabric as the tent's entrance, hands folded, watching them like she'd been waiting all evening and they were simply late.

Momo found her voice first. "How did you know our names?"

"Because I'm a fortune teller, dear. Duh. It's my whole job to know things I've got no business knowing." She said it like she was bored of explaining it. "Just like how I know you—" a nod at Momo "—are stewing over contract renewals you haven't told anyone about. And you—" a finger at Yoza "—are out here trying to reinvent your whole personality because your last partner packed up and left you so he could dry rot in Arizona."

Yoza winced like the words had weight.

"I wouldn't put it that way," he said.

The old woman rolled her eyes so hard it looked like it hurt. "He moved back in with his mother and left his very impressionable friend here — after talking him into moving out in the first place. Left you holding the bag more than once, too, if I'm not mistaken."

Yoza exhaled through his nose. "...Fair."

She turned to Momo next, gentler only by a degree. "And you, Miss Dancer. Strong as anything, and still lost, because your sisters are all pulling in different directions and you're the one trying to hold the shape of something that's already changing."

Momo's eyes went glassy before she could stop them, and Yoza stepped half in front of her without thinking twice about it.

"Ah — there he goes. Guarding the pretty face. Racing to be the hero, like always." The old woman scoffed at her own joke before he could scowl properly. "Don't you scowl at me, boy. Sit. Both of you. I don't have all night."

They sat. Neither of them fully sure why.

The fortune teller turned to Momo first. "For the young artist, looking for direction." She lifted a deck from beneath the table — the backs painted with a phoenix mid-flight, wreathed in flame and small red hearts — and shuffled with hands far steadier than her age let on. Five cards, laid one after another.

The High Priestess, upright. The Four of Cups, reversed. The Ace of Wands, upright. The Queen of Wands, upright. The Three of Swords, upright.

"Huh," the old woman said, more to herself than to Momo.

She tapped the first card. "The High Priestess doesn't talk. She knows. She's the part of you that already has the answer and is just waiting for the rest of you to catch up." Her finger moved to the second card, turned on its head. "Four of Cups, upside down, means you're done sulking. You've been offered things — chances, doors — and sat there with your arms crossed refusing to look at them. This card says that phase is ending, whether you're ready or not."

She moved down the line. "Ace of Wands. A spark. Something brand new trying to catch fire — a beginning, not an ending, no matter how it feels right now." Her finger landed on the Queen. "And here's you, or who you're becoming — the Queen of Wands doesn't wait for permission to take up space. Warm. Magnetic. Terrifying to people who mistake kindness for softness."

She paused on the last card longer than the others. "Three of Swords. Heartbreak, clean and simple. No sugar-coating that one." Her eyes lifted to Momo's. "You are stepping into new space because of a loss — not despite it. It will ask more patience of you than you think you have. I promise you it will be worth what it costs."

She sat with that a beat too long, studying the two of them side by side, before shaking her head slightly. "I wonder..."

She didn't finish the thought. Instead she swept Momo's cards aside and turned to Yoza.

"The hero, chasing a vision he hasn't looked at directly in years." A second deck appeared — deep blue, a kirin on its back with a sword held in its teeth. She shuffled, dealt.

The Ten of Swords, upright. The Five of Cups, reversed. The Hermit, reversed. The Magician, upright. The Ace of Cups, upright.

She groaned, low, like her joints were the ones doing the reading. "Well. This one's messier." She tapped the first card. "Ten of Swords is rock bottom. Not a bad day — the floor giving out entirely. You already know what that felt like; I don't need to tell you."

Her finger slid to the second card. "Five of Cups, reversed. Three cups spilled, two still standing — you've spent so long staring at what you lost you've forgotten the two that didn't tip over. This card's asking you to turn around and actually see them."

"The Hermit, reversed, is trickier." She glanced up at him. "Upright, he means solitude on purpose — going inward to find something true. Reversed, it's a warning: you're isolating past the point where it's helping you. Or —" she considered it, almost amused "— it could mean you're finally being pulled back out of the cave whether you like it or not. The cards are stubborn that way. They won't just tell you which."

"Then the Magician," she went on, "upright, full command of himself — every tool he needs already in his hands, if he'd just stop waiting for someone to hand him permission to use them." Her finger reached the last card. "And the Ace of Cups. Upright. A new well of feeling, right-side up, not spilled, not guarded. Something opening in you that you haven't let open in a long while."

She sat back, arms folded, gaze sliding between the two of them like she was doing arithmetic she didn't like the answer to. "It seems to me you're standing at the start of something that's going to test your spirit before it tests anything else. You cannot afford to disappear into yourself right now. Not this year." A pause. "But why would the two of you land in my tent on the very same night..."

She didn't finish that sentence either.

"Curiouser and curiouser," she murmured, and rose from the table before either of them could ask her to explain a single thing. "I'll get back to the two of you."

And with that she shooed them out from under the tent flap with both hands, like they were a pair of cats underfoot.

By the time Momo and Yoza had gotten their bearings, they were standing back in the middle of the Night Market, the crowd folding back in around them as if the last twenty minutes hadn't happened. They turned to find the tent again.

There was no tent. There was no old woman. There was only the space where a fortune teller's booth should have been, and it wasn't.

Yoza turned to Momo who smiled at him happily and said, "you wanna hang out?"

Momo stared at yoza for a moment then said, "Yeah,"