Kaja Lando February 29th,20XX

“Kaja no!”

Tillo stood in front of the closet with his arms extended outwards, forming a human wall. Behind him was not only all of my clothes but also my makeup pouch.

“Tillo-“

I cut myself off and tried to remember what Anatha had told me last time.

“Tillo, I know you don’t want me to alter my appearance. I understand why as well! But you can’t possibly stop me from using makeup for school.”

It kind of upset me how visibly thrown off he always looked when I took a step back and tried to talk things out, but it had only been a few days since I’d started. It looked like we both needed time to adjust.

Things had been somewhat awkward since the day Aaron had thrown the two of us into therapy. It wasn’t like we suddenly started doing anything differently, but the nature of our squabbles had changed.

I guess it was because we hadn’t fought that badly for a while. It was scary to realize that not only would Tillo not bend after I pushed a bit but that I’d pushed him so much that he was about to break.

Tillo had also realized that he could speak up, and I would try my best to listen.

And I would… but not on something as silly as this.

“Isn’t calling prosthetic facial features ‘makeup’ stretching it? You can borrow my makeup box it’s right there on the dresser.”

Tch. He’d caught me.

I still wasn’t too keen on having everyone at our new school know who we were, but Tillo had latched onto the idea like a rabid dog and refused to let go.

“It’s not like we’re using fake names at these schools, Kaja. Names like ours aren’t exactly dead common either.”

Well, he had a point.

I stood still and weighed how important this was to me as opposed to how important it was to him.

“Fine. But you can’t complain that I’m using too much of it.”

After thinking about it and taking one last look at the determined expression on my twin brother’s face, I decided I would be better off letting this go.

I saw Tillo’s shoulders bunch up as he watched me use an exorbitant amount of eyeshadow on myself, but he said nothing and staunchly stood by the entrance to the closet.

Okay, maybe I should stop antagonizing him. That was something to work on as well.

Today was the first day we were attending our new school. Joyce had given us all the information yesterday and had told us to be asleep by ten at the latest.

To be fair, Tillo and I had tried, but we’d gotten too absorbed in researching the new school.

The first thing we’d noticed about it was how... expensive it looked. Our old school hadn’t exactly been the worst of them all, but it was hard to compare it to the place Joyce had gotten us into.

Joyce decided Destia would stay at her old school since she only had a few more months till graduation so it would only be Tillo, Archer, Eva and Me.

It was nice that the school was a Pre-K to high-school campus so we could all share a campus. What was less nice was the realization that most of the kids that went there had known each other since they were kids, infants even. I worried about fitting in with the wealthy kids, but I had to try my best to hide it lest Tillo caught on and panicked.

“Kaja, hurry! We have to go!”

The clock glared the time at us and my hands sped up as I did my face. I wasn’t doing anything too crazy, but I wanted to make an impression and take some attention off of Tillo.

We looked exactly the same, but for reasons only known to the gods, he always attracted weirdos. More so after we’d gotten our powers.

“I’m almost done, but remember to come back down to 5’9.”

In our previous argument, he’d almost doubled my size in an attempt to stop me from entering. It was fine in the heat of the moment, but I doubted the school was expecting a giant teenager to walk through their doors.

I took out the last roller from my hair and brushed it out before running to stand in front of the mirror with Tillo.

Aside from the difference in hair length and the makeup on my face, we looked like identical twins. This was somewhat problematic since we were of different genders, but most people didn’t know enough about genetics to know that mixed gender sets of twins couldn’t be identical.

We’d looked extremely similar as kids, but as puberty hit, we’d grown to look more and more different from each other. Thankfully, our powers had come in before we’d barely looked like siblings.

While I could have changed my face or Tillo could have changed his to lessen the identical nature of our faces, I didn’t want to, and I would not bring it up to Tillo either. As well, we’d already taken our official pictures looking like this. Changing it up now would just lead to annoying questions about photo alterations and plastic surgery.

Tillo was wearing a blue t-shirt and a yellow jacket over a pair of jeans, but I’d opted for a baggy green shirt I’d seen Joyce wear once and rucked it into high-waisted jeans. I dug through the jewelry counter for a pair of golden studs and handed one of them over to Tillo.

I clipped mine into my left ear, and Tillo put it into his right, just like usual.

While I kind of wished I should have my right ear pierced as well, it wasn’t that big of a deal, and having such an obvious tell seemed important to Tillo. Although he kept his hair so long that his ears were a rare sight.

I pulled at the ends of my hair and debated lengthening it a bit more, but eventually decided against it. I’d spent so much time styling it that doing anything else would just make it look messy.

Tillo got tired of being patient and thrust my school bag into my arms, then dragged me out of the room.

Archer and Eva stood in the middle of the lobby, looking like nervous dolls, and a sleepy Destia walked towards us in casual clothing.

She was the least fussily dressed out of all of us, but that was normal. After all, she was going to her old school, and she was already a senior. It was rare to see those mythical creatures well dressed unless there was a specific reason for it.

“Remember Eva, you cannot ever use your powers at school, okay?”

Archer’s voice floated into our ears as we neared them, and I caught a bit of the lecture. From the tired expression on Eva’s face, it looked like he hadn’t just started lecturing, but she said nothing in response and occasionally nodded to show she was listening.

A pale grey whale hung from her hand and little, grey whale drawings littered the surface of her grey dress. Her backpack had a whale character as well, and she topped up the grey and blue outfit with a pink headband.

Well, at least her self-introduction would be easy.

Archer was only dressed in a t-shirt and a pair of jeans. They were of wonderful quality and I recognized the brands, but it was clear that he had put little stock into what he wore.

Well, that was one benefit of being good-looking. Whatever you wore looked good on you.

The same driver that had taken us to Joyce’s office a few days ago walked into the lobby and gestured for us to get into the car. Neither Aaron nor Joyce could meet us here, but Joyce would be at school to finalize our transfer process.

The nerves set in and I found myself holding Tillo’s hand tight. It would be fine... we would be fine.