Chapter 1

A staged car accident kills a Westalian diplomat in Ostania, and the intelligence agency WISE reads it as the work of the far-right National Unity Party, a provocation meant to reignite war between East and West. Their answer is Twilight, introduced mid-operation as he blackmails a politician while wearing another man's face, then discards the girlfriend attached to his cover without a flicker of regret. Coded orders hidden in a newspaper on the Berlint train assign him Operation Strix: get close to Donovan Desmond, the party's reclusive leader, who surfaces only at social functions hosted by his son's elite school, Eden Academy. The mission demands a wife and child within a week, a requirement that makes the unflappable agent spit out his coffee.

Posing as psychiatrist "Loid Forger," Twilight adopts Anya from a rundown orphanage after she proves her literacy on a crossword. What he cannot know is that the tiny girl, once a laboratory test subject designated 007, escaped an experiment that left her telepathic; she craves adventure and is delighted to discover her new father's real trade. Cohabitation proves rocky. Her mind reading collides with his guarded thoughts, her tears at the idea of being replaced baffle him, and every parenting manual fails him. While Loid obtains exam materials from the information broker Franky Franklin, whose background check shows Anya cycling through foster homes under multiple names, the bored girl cracks open his locked spy gear and fires off a gibberish transmission that his recent blackmail victim, Edgar, traces straight back to the apartment.

Edgar's gang seizes Anya as a hostage. Twilight infiltrates their hideout by swapping clothes with a captured thug, walks the girl out unnoticed, and points her toward a police station, planning to restart the mission without a child. Returning to finish the job, he silently recalls why he became a spy at all: to make a world where children do not have to cry. Anya hears every word of it telepathically. After dismantling the gang in a flour-cloud ambush and terrorizing Edgar into permanent silence, Twilight finds the girl still waiting for him outside and brings her home. She passes the Eden Academy exam through his tutoring rather than her failed attempt at psychic cheating, but the acceptance letter carries a complication: stage two of admissions is a family interview requiring both parents, and no mother exists.

WISE launches Operation Strix after a diplomat's assassination threatens the fragile East-West peace.

Twilight creates the Loid Forger identity and adopts Anya, a secret telepath and former test subject.

Anya's accidental radio transmission triggers her kidnapping by Edgar's gang; her rescue exposes Loid's true motives to her telepathy.

Anya passes the Eden Academy entrance exam.

The admissions interview requirement that both parents attend sets up the search for a mother.

The first digital release drew the diplomat's car on an ordinary street; the Volume 1 printing corrects the panel to a highway overpass. The East-West map mirrors the actual division of Cold War Germany, and the paper Loid reads aboard the train nods to real events of 2018.

Loid's door code, 6110, can be read as "Loid" in Japanese. Anya's application number, K-212, derives from a postal code for Kawasaki, where author Tatsuya Endo once worked, and the shot of Anya cuddling into the sleeping Loid's arms pays homage to a scene from Yoko Maki's Aishiteruze Baby.