Tit for Tat

Tit for tat

“Yo, Yato, we’re about to land,” Jameis Burton said, nudging his friend Hayato — Yato to everyone who knew him.

Yato woke up groggy, looked around to get his bearings, and nodded before yawning.

“I can’t believe you convinced Angelica and me to come with you just to pick up a camera.”

“Um, I didn’t. I showed you the concerts and the food spots I was hitting, and you both said, ‘Can we come?’”

Jameis rolled his eyes but smiled as they departed the plane and headed to the hotel.

Yato let Jameis and Angelica settle in while he slipped out to the camera shop he’d scoped ahead of time. His destination: a special edition gold Panasonic LUMIX S9 with lens kit — his white whale, and the real reason for this trip.

He arrived to find the owner already watching the door. She had a punk aesthetic and an unhurried confidence about her.

“Welcome to Cyclops Store and Lounge. I’m the owner, Suyu Kim.”

“Hayato,” he replied with a nod.

“What are you looking for?”

Yato scanned the shop, then his eyes locked onto it. “I want that,” he said, pointing.

There it was — the special edition LUMIX S9 in gold. Suyu glanced at the display case, then back at him, and smiled.

“I knew you had good taste,” she said.

“I try.” He laughed a little.

Suyu retrieved the camera and set it on the counter. He was mid-checkout when the door opened.

Tzuyu had been feeling restless that afternoon — the particular kind of bored that needed either attention or something new. Chaeyoung had mentioned a camera shop called Cyclops, so she went.

She arrived in a bucket hat and mask, which turned exactly zero heads. The owner and the man at the counter glanced at the door and turned back to their business. Tzuyu approached, and it was the man’s camera bag that caught her eye first — a striking burgundy. Up close, she was surprised to find he wasn’t Korean.

He noticed her and said, “Um, can I help you?” The Korean was sloppy and rudimentary, but functional.

Tzuyu nodded and pointed to his bag. “Your bag is really pretty. Where did you get it?”

“Custom order from Wandrd — it’s their 6L Rogue sling.”

She nodded, then noticed the camera he was buying. “Ooh, so cute.”

Yato rolled his eyes but finished the transaction before walking Tzuyu through the ins and outs of the LUMIX S9. Suyu watched them from behind the counter with a quiet smile, then retrieved what she called her “married couple camera,” snapped a photo of the two mid-conversation, and sent it to her display frame via Bluetooth. Neither of them noticed.

By the time they came up for air, Tzuyu had made up her mind.

“Can I get the same camera as my friend?” she asked Suyu.

Suyu’s smile turned knowing. She checked the back and returned with a teal one — the last gold had gone to Yato.

“I’ll have to borrow his sometimes,” Tzuyu said, already reaching for it. “But I want this one.”

Tzuyu took off her mask and handed Yato the camera so she could do contactless payment. He took a few shots of her. Then he saw her face clearly and went still.

Tzuyu caught it immediately. “What — stunned by how pretty I am?”

Something about the smugness knocked the starstruck right out of him. “Yeah, you’re gorgeous. But models usually are.”

Tzuyu smiled at that. “So you’re not amazed by my overflowing visuals?”

“You are taller than I imagined,” Yato said. “That part’s kind of hot.”

“Kind of hot?”

She was indignant and pleased at the same time. Most people didn’t do this — the back-and-forth, the actual rapport. It felt like fresh air.

“Okay, I’ll give it to you,” he said. “Very hot.”

“I know,” Tzuyu said with a smirk — then burst into giggles.

Suyu leaned on the counter. “You two bicker like an old married couple already.”

Yato turned to her immediately. “No. Absolutely not. Her fans would kill me — probably with company assistance. Not a chance. Never. Not in a million years.”

Tzuyu watched him ramble with quiet amusement, and before she could stop it, a small laugh slipped out.

Yato heard it. He turned to her and said, “Don’t you dare.”

“Dare what? Chuckle at your weirdness?”

“Yes — wait, no. Technically, laughing in general. At or with me.”

Tzuyu laughed harder.

“No,” Yato said, dead serious. “If you laugh too much, you’ll fall in love with me, and I cannot have that. You’re like a super heiress or something — I am not trying to get taken off the census and dropped into a labor camp. Or worse. Someone’s pet.”

Tzuyu lost it. A full minute and a half, easy. When she recovered, she managed, “You telling me no only makes me want you more.”

“No,” Yato repeated.

Tzuyu smiled.

Sensing that he was actively giggle-walking himself into her heart, Yato reached for his ace.

“You can’t date me anyway. I’m a mutant. Technokinesis, among other things.”

He opened his palm toward the display case behind Suyu and popped the lock.

“Hey!” Suyu barked.

Yato winced. “Sorry — I had to prove I wasn’t bluffing.” He closed it again.

Tzuyu had smiled through the entire demonstration. “I’m a mutant too,” she said. “So are like half my unnies.”

That landed differently than she probably expected. Yato’s defensiveness dissolved. “Oh, for real? What’s your power?”

Tzuyu spun once, slow and deliberate. Her skin shifted to a metallic sheen as psionic energy curled around her like a second atmosphere.

Yato’s eyes went wide. “So Cyclops and Colossus had a love child?”

“Kind of.”

He was about to say more — fawn more — before he caught himself. “Wait. No. I came here to see Luna Snow in concert and get my camera. Not to fawn over a gorgeous K-pop idol.”

He was so far inside his own head that he didn’t notice Tzuyu had drifted closer until she was right there.

“You think I’m gorgeous?” she said softly.

He blinked. “Think? You’re a dime piece — actually no, you’re the full dollar.”

Tzuyu tilted her head. “Dime piece?”

“Right, sorry — American slang. A dime is ten cents, so a dime piece means a ten out of ten. A dollar is ten dimes. You track.”

Tzuyu laughed, then looked at him with something warmer than amusement. “Aren’t you sweet.”

Yato clocked it immediately. “Wait — no laughing—”

“Okay then,” she said. “How many laughs do I have left before I fall madly in love with you?”

Yato did the mental math with visible gravity. “Minus the one Suyu caused — twenty-two before madly in love, twenty-eight before you try to seduce me.”

“Really.”

“Really.”

“What’s your proof?”

“Every girl who’s spent real time around my funnier friends crosses thirty laughs before she throws herself at him. Give or take five. Consistent across the board.”

“But I’m not a girl,” Tzuyu said. “I’m a lady.”

That was the moment. Yato felt it land somewhere he wasn’t prepared for. He rallied anyway.

“You got me there, but the principle still stands,” Yato said as Tzuyu smiled.

When the social temperature reset to neutral Tzuyu decided to push forward a bit.

“Lunch?” she asked.

“Sure. But no laughing.”

Tzuyu laughed the second they stepped outside.

“Fuck,” Yato said. Tzuyu smiled as they walked to her car.

The car stopped Yato in his tracks.

“Damn it,” he said.

Tzuyu turned. “What?”

“You even drive my favorite car.” He said it like a man reading his own verdict.

Tzuyu laughed and unlocked the Porsche Panamera.

Neither of them noticed the black car that pulled out two lengths behind them and stayed there.

Inside it, a man in black jacket and red sweater watched the Panamera through the windshield. The mechanical collar around his neck caught the light every time he moved. His phone buzzed on the center console.

“Mr. Heller, do you have a visual on the asset?”

“Yeah,” he said. “But there’s another one with her. American, I think.”

A pause. Then: “Dispose of the non-asset.”

Heller smiled. “Hell yeah.”

The restaurant was busy enough that no one looked twice at them, which was the point. Yato had picked the table himself — back corner, sightlines to both exits.

Tzuyu noticed.

When she wasn’t talking, he was somewhere else — scanning, clocking, running quiet calculations she couldn’t hear. His eyes moved to the door every time it opened. But when she spoke, something in him settled. He’d find her face and stay there, listening like she was the only signal worth receiving.

It made her heart do something inconvenient.

She wasn’t in love with him — not yet, not even close — but she could see exactly how it would happen, and that was almost worse.

She decided to use the feeling rather than sit with it.

“So when did your powers first manifest?”

“Eleven,” he said.

“What was it like? Mine were so disorienting. One minute everything’s normal, then my skin is metal and there’s psionic energy coming off me like — I was a tiny firecracker.” She watched him.

Yato was quiet for a moment. “Imagine a machine growing out of your hand while your brain is picking up radio signals from four houses away. Simultaneously.”

Tzuyu winced. “That sounds awful.”

“It was.” He turned his water glass once. “Doesn’t hurt anymore. Now I just build the machines on top of my skin instead of through it.”

Tzuyu laughed before she could stop herself. “Sorry — that’s not funny, I just—”

“Twenty-six,” Yato said.

She tilted her head. He’d miscounted. She’d chuckled getting into the car — quiet, barely anything — but it had happened. Which meant either he hadn’t heard it, or he had and wasn’t saying so.

She filed that away.

“I’ll use them sparingly,” she said.

“Thank you, Mrs. Chou.”

The sincerity he said it with — completely straight, totally earnest — did something to her she wasn’t prepared for. The laugh came out before she could even think about stopping it.

“Mrs. Chou is my mother. Please just — Tzuyu.”

Yato nodded like he was logging it.

After that they ate in mostly silence feeling each other out.