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When Cyno left, the rainforest still smelled of wet bark and metal.
The last caravan had already disappeared down the slope. Lanterns along the wooden platforms were going out one by one, until only the warm light from Tighnari’s room remained.
He sat in front of the polished copper plate he used as a mirror, ears drooping a little lower than usual. His hair, dark green with the familiar bright streak, fell just past his shoulders when he shook it loose from its tie.
Without Cyno’s quiet presence on the other side of the room, no rustling of reports, no soft clack of a deck of cards, it felt too quiet.
“Two years,” he murmured, fingers combing through his hair. “Not long, not exactly short either.”
He could still picture the way Cyno’s back looked that afternoon: straight, unhesitating, cloak falling in sharp lines as he walked away with the Matra escort. No dramatic look back, no shouted promises—just a steady hand on Tighnari’s shoulder before he left, the weight of it saying everything they didn’t put into words in front of other people.
Tighnari exhaled.
He hated meaningless rituals. He hated anything that wasn’t practical, measurable, or at least scientifically interesting.
And yet his hand curled in his own hair, and a thought arrived so naturally he almost laughed at himself.
“Hmm…alright,” he told his reflection, watching the tips brush his collarbone. “For the two years you’re gone, I shall not cut it. Until you’re back.”
No letter about it. No mentioning it to Collei or the rangers. It wasn’t a promise to Cyno; it was a promise that just happened to orbit around him.
A private experiment: to see how long two years really was, when you could feel it with your own hands.
He tied his hair up again, a little higher than usual. Outside, a night bird called somewhere past the treeline.
“If you still recognise me when you’re back,” he muttered to the empty room, “I’ll call it fair.”
—
Two Years, in Letters and Inches
Cyno’s first letter arrived faster than Tighnari expected: a slim envelope with the Matra seal, edges damp from travel, handwriting as precise as ever.
Tighnari,
Assignment proceeding as projected. Terrain along the border is harsher than the central desert; temperature fluctuations are greater. No serious incidents so far.
I’ve attached soil samples from the northern route. Please help confirm whether the contamination patterns match the reports from three years ago.
I will send a more detailed report when we establish a stable relay point.
—C
At the bottom, squeezed into one corner almost like an afterthought:
P.S. Have you been eating properly? You tend to forget when you’re writing reports.
Tighnari snorted at that—who was he to talk—and wrote back that same night.
Cyno,
Soil samples received. Next time, label them better; if I hadn’t recognised your handwriting, I might have assumed some apprentice mixed them up.
The rainforest is as usual. Collei has improved her patrol timing by 12.7%. The new ranger you met once, still can’t tell apart two very poisonous mushrooms; I am addressing this at length.
As for me, don’t worry. I haven’t starved to death yet.
—T
Then, almost idly, a line near the end:
Some branches seem to be growing faster than before. I keep getting smacked in the face.
Cyno read that line twice, imagined overgrown branches on the patrol routes, and made a note to remind Tighnari about pruning schedules in his next letter.
He did not think about hair.
—
Months passed.
Tighnari’s hair brushed his shoulders, then his upper back. For patrols, he tied it higher, ears flicking in irritation whenever it slipped free. Collei started hovering nearby before he went out, offering to help braid it in neat rows so it wouldn’t catch.
“You don’t have to,” he told her once, as her fingers worked with surprising dexterity. “I can handle it myself.”
Collei smiled. “I know you can, Master. But… it actually suits you!”
He pretended not to be pleased.
His next letter to Cyno mentioned none of that. Instead:
The rainy season has been stable. No major landslides. The rangers are slowly learning not to walk directly into suspiciously colourful spores.
I still get hit in the face sometimes, but I’ve decided to take it as the forest’s way of reminding me to stay humble.
Cyno’s reply came a month later, edges of the paper smelling faintly of unfamiliar incense.
The foreign courts are inefficient. Their laws are numerous but loosely enforced. It is… frustrating.
Your reports on spore spread have been useful; I used your diagrams in an explanation for local officers. They were very impressed.
Regarding the branches: have you adjusted patrol routes? Repeated branch entanglements are not recommended.
He signed his name, then stared at the page for a long time before adding, almost grudgingly:
P.S. If the branches are truly that ‘aggressive’, tie your hair higher when you patrol.
Tighnari blinked at that line when he read it, ears pricking.
“…So you noticed, after all,” he muttered, but there was a faint smile tugging at his mouth as he folded the letter away.
He did not, however, answer the question directly.
—
By the end of the first year, his hair reached his waist when he let it down.
Washing it became a small project. Drying it took even longer. He started timing it like an experiment: how many minutes from soaked to only damp, how many from damp to fully dry in the forest wind.
Some nights, exhausted, he’d sit on the balcony railing with his hair loose, letting the night breeze comb through it. The weight sweeping across his back, the slight drag when he shifted his shoulders—those things anchored him to the passage of time more reliably than any calendar did.
He wrote:
This year’s firefly population is higher than last year’s. Collei nearly walked into a tree watching them.
I’ve had to adjust some patrol routes—too many low branches lately. The forest is picking a fight with me, it seems. I’m being bullied…
Cyno, far away in a city with sharp stone lines and snow-heavy roofs, imagined Tighnari ducking under vines and low branches, scolding everything in his path.
He smiled, just a little, and wrote back:
The mission is entering its final phase. We will likely conclude within six months.
When I return, I will verify in person whether your “bullying branches” complaint is justified.
He didn’t write: I want to see what you look like now.
He didn’t need to. The thought sat between every line.
—
Love at First Sight, Again
Two years later, the rainforest still smelled the same.
Cyno stepped onto the familiar root-tangled path as the sun slanted low, turning the leaves molten at the edges. The journey back from the border had stripped sand and foreign dust from his clothes, but some things clung to him anyway—distant courtrooms, snowfields, unfamiliar laws spoken in unfamiliar accents.
He had reported to the Akademiya and the Matra first. Duty before everything else: that rule hadn’t changed.
Now, with his final mission report sealed and delivered, he let himself follow the path his feet had been wanting since he crossed into Sumeru:
Up, toward Gandharva Ville.
Lanterns were already lit along the platforms when he reached the clearing. Voices drifted among the trees: rangers swapping shifts, laughter, someone complaining about being stuck on late patrol.
Over it all, clear and sharp, came a voice he knew as well as his own heartbeat.
“How many times have I told you this? These spores only need one gust of wind to cover that entire slope.”
Cyno’s steps slowed.
“That patch you stepped on might ‘look okay, but if you’re not careful, next time the whole hill will not be okay.”
Same cadence. Same rhythm of irritation layered over genuine concern.
He turned the corner onto the main platform. And stopped dead.
From behind, he saw a figure in forest green and white, tail flicking in annoyance, one hand on his hip as he lectured a ranger who looked like he’d rather sink into the floor.
That part was familiar.
The hair was not.
Long, dark-green strands fell all the way to the small of his back, heavier near the ends, the bright front streak grown into a silk ribbon that framed his face and slipped down over his chest. When he moved, it swung like a river of colour, catching lamplight along its edges.
For one ridiculous heartbeat, Cyno thought:
Who is that?
Then the figure shifted. Ears, pink inside and black at the tips, twitched in a way Cyno had seen a hundred times, annoyed, but listening. The tail curved, the same impatient arc. The profile turned just enough to show the angle of his jaw, the familiar fall of that green streak across one amber eye.
…Of course it was him.
But Cyno’s heart still went through the full motion of dropping and landing, as if it had to re-learn the distance all over again.
The ranger being scolded spotted Cyno first. His eyes went huge.
“G-General Mahamatra?!”
Tighnari’s ears snapped upright. He turned completely, the rest of his sentence dying on his tongue.
For a moment, neither of them spoke.
Two years had left marks on both of them. Cyno saw it in the slightly deeper creases at the corners of Tighnari’s eyes, in the steadier way he stood; Tighnari saw it in the faint changes to Cyno’s armor, the new emblem from a foreign court at his belt, the quiet weight in his gaze.
But everything underneath—
Everything underneath slipped back into place like it had just been waiting.
“…You’re back,” Tighnari said at last. His voice sounded steadier than he felt.
“Mn. I’m back.” Cyno swallowed. “I’m back.”
There were hundreds of things one could say after two years apart: I missed you. Are you all right? I read every letter until the edges wore soft.
“Your hair grew.” Cyno said, utterly sincere.
Behind Tighnari, the ranger made a strangled noise and very wisely fled. The others on the platform melted away too, suddenly fascinated by anything that wasn’t their chief ranger’s love life.
Left alone, Tighnari blinked once, then huffed out a laugh that shook a little at the end.
“You finally noticed?” He lifted a hand to his hair, ears twitching. “Haven’t cut it in two years. If you couldn’t tell, I’d say there’s something wrong with your eyes.”
His tone was dry; his tail, sweeping once in an uncontrolled happy arc, ruined the effect.
Cyno took a step forward. Then another.
He stopped at arm’s length. Tighnari tilted his head up to look at him properly, and Cyno felt that strange, quiet shock again: recognition layered over discovery.
This was the same person who’d shoved medicine down his throat and scolded him back to life. Also, somehow, more. Older, in ways that felt like rings in a tree trunk; sharper and softer at the same time. And beautiful in a way that made all his carefully trained composure feel suddenly fragile.
He raised his hand slowly, giving Tighnari time to pull away. Tighnari didn’t.
Cyno’s fingers brushed a lock of hair near his shoulder. It was thicker than before, smoother, heavier; it slid over his skin like water. He followed it down, watching how the strands fell back into place.
“I’d recognise you from anywhere,” he said quietly.
He hesitated, then added, a little clumsy but honest:
“It’s just… seeing you like this makes me feel like I’ve fallen in love with you all over again.”
Tighnari’s ears flushed pink from root to tip.
“That’s disgustingly cheesy,” he muttered.
His fingers, however, curled into Cyno’s cloak and did not let go.
“But, as long as you’re back…,” he said, voice low, the tightness in it impossible to hide. “Now, stop standing there saying things like that and come here.”
Cyno went.
The embrace wasn’t elegant. Cyno’s cloak got half-trapped between them; Tighnari’s tail thumped against his thigh; a curtain of long hair tried to wrap both their arms.
None of it mattered.
For the first time in two years, Cyno could feel Tighnari’s heartbeat not through ink and paper, but under his own palm. Steady and warm.
“You’re thinner,” Tighnari mumbled into his shoulder.
“Your hair is a lot longer,” Cyno replied.
“…Obviously,” Tighnari said.
They stayed like that until the sky deepened and fireflies began blinking to life between the trees. Eventually, the practicalities of breathing and the awareness that at least one junior ranger had walked past twice pretending to see nothing made them separate.
“Come on.” Tighnari let go, giving Cyno’s cloak one last tug. “We can talk inside.”
—
Tighnari’s room looked almost the same as Cyno remembered: shelves packed with labeled jars, scrolls stacked in precarious piles, a desk buried under three different reports and at least seven species of mushroom.
Only one thing was new.
On the wall above the desk, a small pale-wood comb hung from a hook. Wrapped around the handle was a short strand of dark-green hair, tied there with a strip of green thread.
Cyno’s gaze lingered on it. Tighnari followed his eyes and coughed.
“Don’t look at that.” He reached up as if to snatch it down. “Tied it there on a whim. It looks stupid now.”
Cyno caught his wrist before he could reach it.
“When did you put it there?” he asked.
“Not long after you left,” Tighnari admitted, eyes sliding away. “To keep track of the length… and to make sure I wasn’t miscounting the days.”
He said it like he was discussing an experiment. Old habits died harder than insects in preservation.
Cyno released his wrist only to take the comb down himself. Up close, the strand tied around the handle was much shorter than the hair currently trailing down Tighnari’s back.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked, straightforward as always.
“What for?” Tighnari shrugged, though his ears folded back slightly. “My letters were long enough. Adding this kind of useless detail would just distract you.”
He looked away, voice dropping:
“This was… my own thing. Like a secret promise.”
Cyno stood very still.
He thought of foreign courts and cold rooms; of reading letters until the paper grew soft along the folds; of offhand lines about “low branches” and “getting smacked in the face.”
He’d assumed all of it was about the forest.
It turned out some of it had been about this.
“You were waiting for me,” he said, like delivering a verdict.
Tighnari rolled his eyes, but the motion was weak. “Well, what else would I be doing?”
He plucked the comb from Cyno’s hand, thrust it back at his chest, then deliberately turned his back and sat down on the low stool by the bed.
His long hair spilled down like a dark waterfall, almost touching the floor.
“Since you’ve seen it now,” he said, ears flicking once, “help me brush it, will you?”
Cyno closed his fingers around the comb.
He’d wielded polearms, shackles, stamps that sealed criminals’ fates. None of those had ever felt as oddly heavy as this simple piece of wood did now.
He stepped behind Tighnari, careful not to step on the trailing ends of his hair, and let his fingers sink into the strands at the top. They were smooth, thicker than he remembered; they flowed through his hands like the forest streams in flood season.
“When did it get this long?” he couldn’t help asking.
“Didn’t I say?” Tighnari’s voice came muffled but clear. “After you left.”
“Oh… it looks good. Long hair, it suits you.” Cyno says softly.
Tighnari hesitated, then added:
“I had planned to cut it the moment you came back, actually. End those two years in one go.”
Cyno drew the comb slowly from roots to ends, more gentle than he was with any piece of evidence. “And now?”
“Now?” Tighnari’s ears twitched. “Didn’t you just say it ‘looks good’?”
He let out a quiet huff that was half smug, half shy.
“Since you like it, I’ll keep it a while longer.”
Cyno’s hand stilled for a heartbeat.
He looked down at the bright green front strand twined around his fingers and felt something in his chest click into place. Not pain, but a late, solid sense of this is real.
Two years hadn’t been empty. Someone had been here, in this forest, marking that time with every inch of growth.
“Then don’t cut it,” he said softly. “At least… not yet.”
Tighnari snorted. “Look at you, encouraging trouble for once. That’s rare.”
“This isn’t trouble,” Cyno said after a moment’s thought, giving it a name that satisfied him. “It’s evidence.”
Tighnari glanced back at him, eyes curving. “Evidence of what?”
“Evidence that someone spent two whole years here waiting for me,” Cyno said, each word careful. “And that I did, in fact, come back.”
Silence settled around them, soft and full.
Tighnari’s ears turned red.
“You’re being so sappy,” he muttered.
After a beat, quieter:
“…But I’ll allow it.”
Cyno let out a small laugh, hiding it in the next slow pass of the comb.
He teased out every knot, smoothed every tangle. When he finished, he didn’t tie it into the practical high ponytail Tighnari usually wore; instead he gathered the top half and secured it loosely with a cloth tie, letting the rest fall in a sleek curtain down his back.
It looked practical enough for patrol. It also, Cyno thought with uncharacteristic bias, looked very, very good.
“Like this,” he said, stepping back a half pace. “Is this okay?”
Tighnari stood, turning so the hair swept in a soft arc behind him. He studied Cyno for a long moment, then smiled, ears tilting forward.
“If you’re the one doing it, of course it’s okay.” He stretched, tail swaying. “From now on, let’s make it a rule. Whoever thinks it’s too troublesome, will be the one who cuts it.”
Cyno almost didn’t hesitate.
“Then that day probably won’t come.”
Tighnari’s smile deepened. “Good.”
He took one step forward, long hair sliding over his shoulder like a dark wave, and Cyno opened his arms as if that was the only place for him to go.
This time, nothing knocked against the furniture. They knew each other’s height, weight, the exact spot where their breaths synced, like two people who’d been practicing this for years—even if two of those years had been spent apart.
Outside, the rainforest’s night wind passed through the leaves, making the lantern flame shiver.
“Welcome home, Cyno,” Tighnari murmured, pressing his forehead briefly against Cyno’s chest. The tip of one long ear brushed his jaw. “I’ll settle the rest of your ‘debts’ with you later.”
“Alright, alright,” Cyno said, holding him closer. “Take your time.”
For the first time in two years, he let himself fully relax, sinking into the scent of herbs and rain and the faint, warm weight of hair that had grown just to mark the days until he returned.
Two years ago, he’d walked away from this forest without looking back.
Two years later, he had come back to the same trees, the same platforms, and found a whole head of hair grown down to the waist, a wall hung with a strand tied like a tick mark, and someone who had spent every day quietly weaving “come back” into every extra inch of length.
Now, they were both here.
And this time, he had no intention of leaving.