Disclaimer: I don't own Love so Life.
A/N: A day late and rather pointless. But here it is, a mother's day special.
It was an innocent question his curious mind had conceived thanks to the caretakers at the daycare. But Shiharu hadn't seen it coming and found herself fumbling when Aoi turned his big shiny eyes at her on the way back and asked her, "Shiharu-tan, what is mud'urs day?"
"Eh?" it took her a minute to decode his sentence and another to recover her smile before she could answer.
"Mother's day, Aoi-kun," she corrected him. "You know mother as in mama?"
"Mama?" Aoi and Akane both looked up at the sky.
Of course, the twins hadn't forgotten the day Shiharu had told them that their mama lived up in the sky. They both remembered her in the pictures. But the question he posed now was a rather difficult one.
"Aoi-kun, Akane-chan," she knelt in front of them and explained. "Mother's day is a very special day for all the mamas. We celebrate it to thank them for loving us and caring for us all through the year. It makes them very happy, you see, when children make them little gifts for mothers' day."
"Like birthday?" Akane clapped.
"Yes, like birthday, Akane-chan," Shiharu ruffled her hair before they started walking back again.
She remembered asking her own mother when she was young why she took a particular day off every year to spend it with Shiharu and bake her a cake. 'You see, Shiharu, it's a very special day for mama,' she'd said. 'Because mama gets to love and care for her angel all year.' And so she'd made her cards every year that day and received a gift from her in return. It was only a few years after she'd been taken into the orphanage that she realized mother's day and her birthday weren't the same thing. It had been painful to know all these years, she'd celebrated her own birthday and not really done much for her mother.
The next day, carrying a little bit of that old heartache, she visited her mother's grave and prayed-it was still rather strange she looked up at the sky when she thought of her mother. But she was surprised when Aoi and Akane both came running up to her as she entered their house and presented her with a card yelling "Happy mud'urs day, Shiharu-tan" rather loudly. As she stared at their cutest and most colorful sketch yet-a girl labeled Shiharu-tan holding hands with little Akane-chan and Aoi-kun (Aoi had successfully added a little cosmic rangers sword on his side and an exhausted Sei-tan lying on the ground in the back), she was too overwhelmed to react and a rather guilty feeling of joy stole its way into her heart before she could reason with it.
"Why for me, Akane-chan, Aoi-kun?" she said, blinking away a tear before they could see.
"Because Shiharu-tan cares for us ," Aoi said with a very serious face.
"All thru the year," Akane added.
Before she could decide how to explain it to them again and more simply, Shiharu hugged them to herself and shed a silent tear. The old heartache might have started healing bit by bit. She might not have her mother with her anymore… but Shiharu was grateful she had a family.
Standing half-hidden in the doorway and a silent witness to all this, Seiji decided the twins were growing up faster and demanding more than what his capabilities could offer.