Fifteen years passed, fifteen years since they all graduated high school and went their own ways. The three girls who'd once been closer than sisters all became cousins, but that didn't change the closeness between them. Tooru and Saki, of course, were bound together by Kazuma and Kyo, although they couldn't always meet and they certainly were very busy with their homes and their young families. Tooru's son and Saki's two daughters sometimes plagued their mothers, but that is, naturally, the precise function of young children.
And their third sister, the last corner of the triangle, though certainly not least. Arisa was no longer an Uotani, at least not in name. Like Tooru before her and Saki after her, she took the name Souma when she married the love of her life, Souma Kureno.
These days they live in a small, quiet town in the Chugoku region in the south. From there, the pair are about as far from the Souma estate in the Kanto province as Kyou and Tooru are, up north near Sapporo. It's the only reason Arisa is happy they're obligated to attend the New Year's festivities; her best friends will be there too, and their husbands. She likes Kazuma, thinks he's good for Saki, but she actually misses Kyou and Yuki sometimes. More the carrot-top than the Prince, since Yuki had never been good for a satisfying row.
Arisa and Kureno have one very young daughter, only three years old. They'd tried for so long, but maybe it was his gut wound, or her gang time and all the beatings and drugs that had entailed, but they couldn't seem to have a baby. She'd miscarried four times, and with Hanari they'd told themselves that it was the last time, the last try. If this baby died, clearly they weren't meant to have kids.
They'd still been terrified that something would go wrong, up until the moment Arisa held the tiny bundle and cried with relief and fatigue.
The little girl is asleep in her father's arms as they make their quiet way to the main hall of the compound. Hanari is wrapped up and adorable in a puff coat, because it's cold here and she's from the south. Arisa is tired and elegant, and Kureno is tall and clumsy and leaning just slightly on his wife because the cold climate is giving the site of his old wound grief.
Steam rises from their breath, and Kureno absorbs and savors the tranquility that he was raised in. Despite the horrors he saw as a juunishi, there is something about the tradition of the main house, the smell of the wood and the feel of the grass, that makes him nostalgic and calm.
He shakes his head and smiles at Arisa, the woman who has made him happier than he ever thought he could be, especially considering the barriers that existed between them at first. She'd been in high school when they met, while he was four, nearly five years out of college, and had that not been enough, there had been the weighty matter of the curse. Now, she grins at him and holds out a hand. He lifts Hanari slightly to indicate, sorry, I've got a dead weight here, and she smiles more softly.
Arisa had not wanted children. It was one of the only things she'd been adamant about when she began cohabitating with her boyfriend of a year. Five years later, when they'd mutually decided enough time had passed to warrant marriage, she had not changed her mind.
Then she'd gotten pregnant the first time. Between the throwing up and the dizziness and the absurd cravings for things she didn't even like, Arisa reaffirmed with herself that she didn't want kids. But at that first appointment with the doctor, Kureno sitting there with her, readying herself to ask for an abortion as they pressed a cold, slick ultrasound sensor to her as-of-yet unrounded stomach...She looked at the monitor when she was told and saw the tiny bean on the screen and looked at Kureno and thought, That's our baby. It's ours, and it's the size of the first joint on my pinky and I already love it. Her smile lit up the room and he squeezed her hand, alternating between staring at the monitor in awe and grinning at her.
"I changed my mind," she declared grumpily as they walked out of the clinic arm in arm, having failed to schedule, or even bring up the possibility of, an abortion. "I guess I want kids after all."
Three weeks later they were in the hospital, Arisa pale and unhappy as her husband held her hand, and they wept.
And again. And again. Their doctor grew a little wary of the couple, whenever they came back to her, Arisa pregnant and hoping against hope that this one will last nine months, or eight at least.
After the third miscarriage, she told young Souma-san and her husband that they really ought to stop trying because at this rate Arisa-san was going to sustain some kind of damage.
Just one more, they said. Then another after that. The last one, they'd said.
When Arisa had come in for her first appointment of the fifth month, her doctor had cried with her at the news that the baby was doing well; she'd never seen her for an appointment beyond the fourth month before.
The little girl was the beginning and end of their joys some days. Kureno's job was six days a week, Arisa's four, but only from home, and on the seventh day they often sat on the couch and simply embraced while their daughter ran about and played, keeping one lazy eye on her each.
Arisa misses the couch now, as they continue through the maze of the Souma estate. In ten years of being a Souma herself, she still can't find her way through the compound, and in the long run she suspects she never quite will. From the guest quarters to the main hall, she can navigate, albeit unsteadily. Anywhere else requires a map and compass, not at all like her husband, who knows every back alley shortcut like the back of his hand.
At the edge of her hearing there are now sounds of life; talking, muffled laughter, all faint enough to be her imagination. She sends a questioning look to her husband, who smiles, nods.
Arisa grins at him cheekily and takes off running towards the light and noise, where her sisters are waiting for her. Tooru hugs her fervently, and Saki joins in, and all three women are smiling and crying. Kureno is entering the room, and she smiles at him with watery eyes as he kneels and lays their little girl down on the cushions near Saki's youngest.
Soon it's time for the banque—something anyone can attend now, from inside the gate or out, zodiac or not, because the curse is long broken. Yuki and Hatsuharu would be dancing together this year, Tooru surmises, if the curse were still intact. Yuki, who is sitting next to Machi, smiles and laments his two left feet. Machi smiles at him her low key, quiet way, and Arisa feels a wave of affection for her. There is so much she, Saki, Tooru, and Machi share. They are almost like war wives, the girls who weren't Souma, nursing husbands with scars from the curse. She remembers the first day Kureno woke up crying after a dream of flying, explaining in halting whispers some of the curse. The rest had trickled out over time, until Arisa knew the whole of it.
She doesn't know how Saki and Machi learned about it, and suspects she never will; she herself isn't ever planning on sharing the broken tones in her husband's voice as he told her his tale, and the traumas that they'd been through could hardly have produced a confession in any other vein. She remembers Hana's voice on the phone, asking leadingly if she knew Kyo's secret, remembers the first time they'd all been together, all knowing what their friends, now family, had suffered, and able for the first time to talk about it. Tooru's tears of relief that she didn't have to hide any longer, and Hana's peaceful smile as they talked late into that night.
But little Machi, not quite so little now as she used to be, round with seven month's worth of baby boy, wasn't part of that. Tooru knew her and liked her, but she wasn't one of their inner circle, and whenever she'd been told about the Souma's curse, she hadn't reached out to them. She'd had no support system for her discovery, just her husband of two years, to cleave to or leave.
She'd stayed, and as Arisa looks around the table she thinks everyone might just have healed by now. Kureno is in soft conversation with Kazuma and Hatori, who sits with his wife, Souma Mayuko, née Shiraki. Akito and Shigure sit together at the head of the table, with Ayame and Mine and their adorable and overdressed babies nearby. Kisa and Hiro sit across from one another, and next to them respectively are Haru and Rin. Momiji and his girlfriend sit with Kagura and her husband. Down the table a bit are Ritsu and Mit-chan, Shigure's former editor. This gathering is for the heart of the clan, the ones who were once cursed and their families, but there are more people here than ever before, parents and children and spouses.
Everyone is happy. The children—and goodness, are there a lot of little Soumas now—sit at their own table, creating havoc and laughter. Arisa grins to herself, then to her sisters, who smile back as she catches their eyes. Even Machi, shy though she is, looks relaxed tonight.
This is her family now, after all. Machi's, Arisa's, Saki's, Tooru's. They're Souma.