Hi folks, hope you all had a great holiday season. I don't know if I should be more sorry for the length of this fic or the level of angst - eek, please forgive me on both counts!

I can't thank you all enough for reading and for leaving kudos & comments on previous parts. I did my best to incorporate things mentioned in your comments and I hope you can excuse the absence of Shuichi this time around, I have big plans for him coming in a later installment. If this is the first you're reading of this series, you can definitely pick it up here.

Enjoy & a very happy new year to all.

Tonight, Makoto Naegi was a monster.

A monster whose mission it was to hunt one particular little boy around most of the house before wrangling him upstairs to the bath. Just the night before Makoto had been a wolf, and for most of the previous week a bear: it had become clear that four-year-old Koichi did not actually expect to evade bathtime, he just liked the thrill of the chase. Makoto was sure this could be attributed to having a detective as a mother, but his wife argued Koichi inherited his eagerness for action from him.

While Koichi scrambled to hide and Makoto counted to ten loudly and slowly, Kyoko was working. Since they had become parents and her apprentice had gone off to college, she was more selective about what work she took - investigating less minor mysteries, but throwing herself more deeply into the bigger cases. In practice, this translated to her being around a lot day to day, until a phone call would inevitably come that would drag her away for days, sometimes weeks. This time, it was some kind of government corruption and the suspiciously unreported death of a former mayor. Makoto was grateful it was at least in Japan, so she'd be home at some point to change and shower - the last case had been ten days of solo parenting while she was in another continent, and as much as he loved their kid, it sucked.

By the time he finished counting, there was silence. Wherever Koichi was hiding - and Makoto was fairly certain he'd heard the telltale squeak of the boy's running shoes on their kitchen linoleum floor - he was waiting to be found. Makoto made a few growl noises and pretended to search the couch, before stomping into the kitchen, where a loose shoelace was peeking out from under the tablecloth.

Makoto smirked at the easy catch. He crouched, giving another growl for good measure, before pulling the tablecloth back and scooping his arm around...nothing? He blinked into the dark space, empty but for just one of Koichi's shoes.

A foam sword poked his back repeatedly, startling him. "Take that, monster!" Koichi declared, triumphant. "Gotcha."

When Makoto turned to his son, who was smiling widely in front of the open kitchen cupboard he had presumably just climbed out of, he was a little impressed.

"You tricked me." It was the first time he'd been outsmarted by the boy, but Makoto doubted it would be the last. Koichi was his mother's son, after all.

"I tricked the monster," Koichi corrected, smart enough to understand that the distinction was his pass out of trouble. Then, happily, he added, "No bath tonight, Daddy. I win."

Makoto wasn't sure how to argue with such logic, so he just laughed. Later, when he relayed the story to his wife over the phone, she would snort at that part and ask him if he seriously allowed their four-year-old to cheat his way out of their nighttime routine.

"Hey, I can pick my battles," Makoto said. "I'll have him shower in the morning before school."

Kyoko made a noise of amusement. "Who knew you were so threatened by toy weapons?"

"I'm threatened by the determination in his eyes when he knows he's right," Makoto admitted. "That Kirigiri fierceness is pretty terrifying when you're on the receiving end of it."

"Hm." Kyoko paused. "Maybe the next one will be easier on you."

It took him a moment to realise what she meant by this - the next nightly game of hide and seek? - but just as he was about to question it, something clicked. The next kid.

It was the first time Kyoko had mentioned having another a child in over six months. When Koichi turned two, they decided to start trying for another - Makoto liked being close in age with his own sister, even if they hadn't always gotten along as kids, and Kyoko seemed keen to 'get it over with' so she could cultivate the rest of her career without having to factor in breaks for pregnancy. Given the trouble they'd had to conceive Koichi, they opted immediately for in vitro fertilization. It was expensive and certainly more stressful, but they ardently believed it would be less time consuming.

Two years and two failed cycles later, they had yet to strike lucky. The first time they'd been warned that it might not be successful, which somehow made the second disappointment an even greater knock. He knew not having a definitive answer as to why they were struggling so much was eating at Kyoko: for years, they'd attributed their trouble to the anecdote she'd taken to counteract the poison she'd been injected with, or maybe the poison itself, but the IVF process and the selection of only the healthiest embryos should have bypassed those issues. Maybe it wasn't Seiko's cure, Kyoko had said the night after the second failed embryo transfer, Maybe it's just me.

They agreed to take some time off from fertility treatments after that. Makoto loved being a father and of course he wanted another baby, but he couldn't take the way his wife pulled away from him a little more each time it didn't happen.

And so, to hear her imply that after all that they would have another child at all more than took him off guard. "Next one?" A thought struck him then, and his heart quickened. "Wait! Kyoko, are you - "

" - No," she said, quickly, but with audible remorse. "No, Makoto. I'm not pregnant."

"Oh." He sank back against the headboard of the bed, dejected.

"Sorry," she said, after a long pause. "I didn't mean to imply - "

He shrugged, although of course she couldn't see him. "It's fine. I was just dumb for a second."

"Not dumb, just optimistic. Your best asset, remember?"

"Yeah, yeah." He frowned. "You want to do another cycle?"

"I think so." Kyoko was rarely uncertain about anything, but Makoto understood completely why hesitation was creeping into her tone on this occasion. "Don't you?"

"It's not really up to me," he said, truthfully. If he was honest, the topic made his stomach tighten, and not with excitement, but he didn't know how to say that without making it about him, so he stayed quiet.

"Hm, maybe not ultimately," Kyoko admitted, tenderness creeping into her usually matter-of-fact tone, "but you certainly get a vote, Makoto."

"I dunno. I guess I'm happy either way." Yawning, Makoto slipped his legs under the duvet. The bed was cold without her. "You're staying out all night, I take it?"

"Yeah. I'll try and be around for bedtime tomorrow at least." There was a smile in her voice. "Can't have our son duping you too much."

"No," Makoto agreed, with a sigh of mock-resignation, "that's your job."

He was having the morning from hell and it wasn't yet 9am.

First, he'd slept through his alarm, the result of staying up a little too long worrying about Kyoko, the way he always did when she was out on a case. By the time he was shaken awake by a soft-voiced, "Daddy? Daaaddy?" he realised they were running almost thirty minutes late.

So, no shower for either of them. He dressed Koichi and fixed his hair hasilty - met with the usual resistance of "but I like how Mommy makes it look" - and used the last of the milk to pour him some cereal.

"Eat fast buddy," he insisted, fiddling with his tie. The dog, Nori, came into the kitchen barking for breakfast, earning Koichi's attention mid-spoonful and causing him to turn, hitting the bowl with his elbow in the process and knocking it into his lap.

"Oops." Koichi, not waiting for Makoto to stop wincing, hopped off his seat. The bowl predictably fell onto the floor and smashed, pieces of sharp ceramic scattering everywhere, along with the soggy cheerios. "Uh-oh."

"Don't move!" Makoto commanded, stopping Koichi in his tracks as he made an attempt to reach for one of the shards. He crossed the room and picked his son up, setting him down on the other side of the mess. "It's okay. It was an accident. I'll clean this up. You go change your clothes."

Koichi pouted. "I need you to help me."

Makoto couldn't keep from sighing. "Koichi, you don't." Every morning that Kyoko was here, he had no problem putting on the clothes she laid out for him - just like he could brush his teeth without assistance, and go to sleep in his own bed at night without protest. It was amazing the independence he selectively had when his mother was around and he wanted to make her proud. "Go on, be quick."

"But Daaaaaddy," Koichi wailed, flapping his hands to his sides in a huff. "I can't!"

"You can." Makoto tugged Koichi's milk and cheerio-covered trousers off as the child struggled against him and tossed them to the side. "If it has buttons or a zipper, I'll help you. Just go find something clean."

"No!"

"Koichi." Makoto tried to sound stern, but it came out exasperated. "I'm not asking," he said, but when the boy crossed his arms across his chest and scowled, Makoto found himself adding, a little helplessly, "Please?"

After a little more bargaining - Makoto may have promised pancakes and ice cream for dinner - Koichi disappeared upstairs and he went back to cleaning up the mess. He had tossed the pieces of the bowl into the trash and was dishing out wet food from a can for the dog when his cell rang.

It was Aoi Asahina.

"Hey." Makoto propped the cell between his ear and his shoulder as he dug around in one of the overhead cupboards for the box of oatmeal breakfast bars Kyoko stashed for mornings they were short on time. "I was gonna call you from the car. I'm running late."

"That's so not what I wanna hear right now, Makoto!"

"I know but my luck and my four-year-old are both conspiring against me today so - "

" - Wait, why aren't you more panicked?" Hina gasped. "Oh my God, Makoto, did you forget?"

It was probably redundant to respond with, 'forget what?' and it didn't seem like Makoto had the time to rack his brain, so instead, he said, nervously, "Uh, I guess so?"

"I knew you must have, there's no way you'd be crazy enough to deliberately schedule the twelfth grade 'Your Future is Bright' Day and the interviews for new deputy head at the same time."

"The same time?" Okay, so the interviews had genuinely slipped his mind, but too much planning went into the annual twelfth grade fayre for him to forget. "No. 'Your Future is Bright' isn't until this afternoon."

"Tell that to the four different college representatives setting up their presentations in the main hall, or the sixty parents and guardians who are scheduled to be here within the next half hour." Mournfully, she said, "You didn't proofread the invite you sent round, did you?"

"We've used the same template for years! It's always in the afternoon."

"It was held in the morning the first year we did it," Hina reminded him, "Byakuya must have changed it himself every year."

"Alright," he said, decidedly, "Cancel the interviews."

"This will be the third time we've had to cancel! Do you know how many candidates have dropped out?"

"Good," Makoto said, hoping to sound confident. "Then we're weeding them out. Win-win."

"Makoto!" Hina hissed. "You need to get down here and handle this."

"I know. I'm sorry. I'll be as quick as I can, promise." He hung up, abandoned the search for the breakfast bars and instead grabbed a banana, yogurt and a spoon. He slipped into his shoes at the door and then called to his son up the stairs.

Koichi materialised dressed in a shirt that was buttoned wrong and shorts.

"Koichi, it's ten degrees out."

Koichi wrinkled his nose. "I don't know what that means."

"Okay, you know what? It's fine. You'll be indoors all day anyway." Makoto grabbed Koichi's coat from the rack and mentally sighed, it will do. "Just let me fix your shirt."

This was melt with a recoil and a yelp. "Noooooooooo," the boy cried, "I like it like this! I did it myself."

Makoto let it go. He put Koichi in the car and gave him the banana and yogurt. "Be careful not to spill it," he warned. Koichi cheered up when the radio came on and sang along with the wrong words contentedly until they pulled up in front of his school. He was quiet as Makoto unbuckled him, and quieter still as Makoto led him inside by the hand. Koichi loved school and usually, he was the one leading Makoto impatiently, so he was already half-expecting it when Koichi stopped outside his classroom and tugged on the bottom of his suit jacket.

"Can Mommy pick me up today?"

"Mom's working." Makoto ruffled his son's hair. "Aunt Komaru will come get you."

Koichi frowned and brushed his face against Makoto's trouser leg, a little arm coming to wrap around his thigh. "I want Mommy."

"I know buddy. You can call her after school, okay?" Kyoko had said she'd be home tonight, but Makoto had learned the hard way that telling Koichi she would be somewhere ahead of time would only lead the greater devastation if something came up and she couldn't be, which was the case more often than not when she was working.

Sometimes, Makoto was guilty of getting caught up in the fact nothing seemed to scare Koichi - that he liked stories about monsters and dragons, that he didn't ask them to check under his bed or in his closet - and sometimes, Makoto mistook his son's cleverness, his stubbornness, for maturity. Sometimes, he forgot how small he still was and how he misbehaved when his mother wasn't around not only because he was testing boundaries, but because he missed her.

For a long moment, Makoto forgot about the deputy head interviews and the twelfth grade future day and instead, he crouched down to be eye level with his son.

"You know, I miss Mom too. You wanna know a trick to make the time go faster till we can see her again?"

Koichi nodded, his eyes wide and unblinking. Trusting.

"The more fun you have, the sooner she'll be back." Makoto gestured to Koichi's classroom, where kids were climbing over each other on a rainbow print rug."If you have a good time with your friends today, she'll be home before you know it."

"Okay." Koichi let out a sigh and Makoto stood again.

"Atta boy. You be good, okay? I'll see you later."

Koichi got as far as the classroom door before turning back. "You gotta have fun too, Daddy," he warned, his brow furrowed, "It'll make time go extra quick."

Unfortunately, Koichi's sweet wish for him was not set to come true. Makoto arrived at Hope's Peak Academy to the word 'DESPAIR' graffitied across his designated parking spot. He sighed, but didn't have time to dwell on it before jogging up the stairs to the main hall.

Hina was waiting for him in the corridor with a clipboard. She thrust it at him. "You need to get a new deputy. I had to miss my morning swim with my homeroom class to hold down the fort."

"I'll buy you a donut at lunch to make up for it," Makoto promised his friend. He glanced at the clipboard, a sign-in sheet of all the parents. "Hey, impressive turn out."

"Yeah and they were all getting pretty antsy waiting for a speech from their kids headmaster like, fifteen minutes ago."

"Got it. Thanks, Hina."

"Two donuts!" She called after him as he made his way into the gymnasium.

Speeches didn't make him nervous - at least, not any more. If anything, it was the silence as he approach the podium that unnerved him. His nerves eased immediately when he opened with a (half)joke about what a terror his son had been that morning as an explanation for his tardiness and the room broke into laughter. The understanding from other parents made him feel less like a figurehead and more like a person. He hoped it helped them see him that way, too.

After he made all the necessary points and garnered a few more laughs, he stepped back to let the employability teacher talk about the different avenues available to the students post-high school. Then, the recruitment fayre started and students filled in, most seeking their adults out in the crowd before mingling with the college, army and business representatives located around the room.

He hung back for the most part, chatting to the occasional parent who approached him and doing the rounds to thank the recruiters who had volunteered their morning to help the pupils decide what they wanted to do with their lives. And then his eyes fell on one student who was not milling around with brochures and free pens and an attentive adult like the others: Itoh Sotan was sitting alone on the edge of the stage, earphones tucked in his ears, the track team hoodie he wore under his school blazer pulled over his head.

Makoto approached him and motioned to the space beside him. "Mind if I sit?"

Itoh didn't take his earphones out. "I don't care."

Makoto sat and looked across the room at the crowd of loud chattering. "Your grandmother couldn't make it?"

Itoh was an orphan, like a lot of the older kids at Hope's Peak - hell, like a lot of the world, after the year of despair and the rocky aftermath. It had been a long time since then, but on days when it slipped from Makoto's mind, he would receive a complaint from a teacher saying Itoh was smoking in class, or that his freshman girlfriend, Maida, had stormed out of her counselling session with the student guidance counsellor for the third time this week; he'd be tasked to retrieve permission slips for a school trip, only to have a teenager look him directly in the eye and tell him they didn't have anybody to sign it; he would note his shock on days like this, when there were enough adults in the lives of his students to fill a room.

"Nah," Itoh said, shrugging. "She had a doctor's appointment."

"Ah." Makoto wanted to ask, but knew better. "I'll go around with you, if you want - to talk to the professors and the recruiters."

Itoh didn't look at him. "No point."

"Ah. You already know what you want to be?"

"A professional runner, duh." Itoh was, as far as Makoto knew, an excellent athlete, but not quite 'Ultimate' tier. Still, that was the whole point of dissolving the idea of ultimates and reserves that he had campaigned for so much when the school reopened: he wanted the kids of his Hope's Peak to have equal opportunities and encouragement.

"Sure, but it doesn't hurt to have a backup plan in case you change your mind," Makoto said, gently.

"Was being a headmaster your backup plan?" Itoh asked, flatly.

Makoto frowned. "Well, I mean, I guess - "

"I figured. No offense, but I think I'll stick to aiming high." Itoh reached for his rucksack, discarded on the floor. "Can I go to the library? I need to use the computers. Mine at home is busted."

Reluctantly, Makoto let the teenager go. He'd tried a lot with Itoh over the years, sometimes at the request of his grandmother who always seemed to be at the end of her rope with his piercings, the company he kept, his obsession with track at the cost of his studies. For a while a year ago, he'd talked Itoh into getting a job to help his grandmother out with bills and save for a car; he'd also managed to secure extra tutoring for Itoh in the subjects he was struggling in, certain it wasn't all a lack of effort, and had been starting to see positive results that affirmed he'd been correct. But then summer break had come and Itoh had returned in the fall with more piercings and a new girlfriend and an even greater chip on his shoulder.

In the staff lunchroom later that afternoon, he cracked open the box of donuts he'd gotten his secretary to pick up and asked Itoh's homeroom teacher if he'd been in class that morning.

"When is he ever?" Mr. Nemoto scoffed. "Why? He try and steal breakfast from the food bank donation box again?"

"Um, no, but that's definitely also a concern," Makoto said, frowning. "Someone graffitied my parking spot this morning. The paint was still wet when I got there, so it had to be someone who wasn't already in class."

Beside him, Hina wiped her mouth of icing on the back of her hand. "What did the graffiti say?"

"Despair. In capital letters."

"Oh." Hina reached for another donut, hesitating as she debated between iced and glazed. "That's original."

"Yeah." It wasn't unusual. Every few months or so they were forced to deal with instances of pranks or vandalism or idle gossip referencing the dark history of Hope's Peak. Usually, the guilty party would get bored before they were caught or, even if it did get to the point of punishment, it would phase out quickly - that was both the best and the worst thing about teenagers: they had pretty short attention spans.

"Should get Kyoko on it," Hina suggested, around a mouth full of donut, "if you're worried, I mean."

"Nah. It's more than a little below her expertise and anyway, it's nothing I can't handle."

When Nemoto excused himself to make a phone call, they were alone in the teacher's lounge, and Hina turned to him. "How is Kyoko?" she asked, seriously.

"She's good." Makoto blinked at his friend, confused as to why she was still looking at him expectantly. "Um, why wouldn't she be?"

"I mean, with all the infertility stuff." At the sight of his eyes widening, Hina clarified, "Relax, Makoto. I didn't guess from you - although I totally knew something was up. She told me."

"Kyoko told you? She talked about it with you?" Makoto couldn't hide his disbelief and only just managed to hide his hurt. She'd barely talked about it with him.

"I think it was easier to talk to someone who wasn't involved," Hina said, sympathetically. "She wanted me to keep an eye on you at work, let her know if you were spiralling." Hina gave a wry smile. "You do that sometimes, you know."

Makoto was aware of that tendency. He had deliberately worked to not spiral on this occasion, though. Kyoko needed him to be consistent, reliable, steady. Evidently, she had not had much faith in his ability to be any of those things, if she'd requested Hina's help to look after him.

"What did you tell her?"

"To talk to you about it herself, tell you she was worried." Hina shrugged. "I'm gonna guess she didn't do that."

"Neither of you need to worry about me. I'm fine," Makoto said, defensively. "Wait, you asked about her - you think she's not okay?"

"No. She sounded fine when she told me, but you know Kyoko. She bounces back from things pretty quick."

It made him think of her on the phone the night before, about how she wanted to do another cycle of IVF. He worried, not for the first time, that Kyoko's determination to have a baby had more to do with her resenting being told no by the universe than it did a genuine desire to grow their family.

"I'll drop it." Hina held up her hands. "What I won't drop is that you need to stop grieving for Byakuya and hire someone else to fill his spot."

"I'm not 'grieving.' Jeez, you make it sound like he died."

In reality, he'd just quit. It wasn't unexpected - he'd insisted from day one that he was only acting as deputy head until they could find someone more suitable because he had better things to do. Makoto had foolishly come to believe he was just pretending like he was doing them a favour to save face, but then he hadn't known that in the background, Byakuya was rebuilding Togami Corp by investing his wages in the stock market.

Makoto hadn't been mad when Byakuya told them (via group text) that he was leaving,

but he had been a little sad about it. It sucked to be left high and dry professionally, but it sucked even more because Byakuya was more than a colleague. He'd been the first to go back to the academy when they agreed to reopen it, to spare the rest of them the wreckage; he'd been best man at Makoto's wedding. For years, he'd been privy to the best and worst moments of Makoto's life and to suddenly just not have him around was taking some getting used to.

There was a part of Makoto that was a little jealous too. In the beginning, Kyoko had helped him run the school, but then she went back to detective work; Hiro abandoned his role too in favour of setting up his own clairvoyance business; even the school library couldn't hold Toko's attention, and she left after just a few months to write novels full-time from home. Besides him and Hina, everyone else had moved on, as if Hope's Peak was just a stop on their way to what they were supposed to be doing. Prior to Byakuya's leaving, it had been a while since Makoto had been reminded of the fact he was the one without a proper talent among his friends.

It was not that Makoto wanted to be somewhere else professionally - it was that he, unlike the others, didn't know where else he could go. Being the headmaster of Hope's Peak was a great job, a rewarding job, even - but Itoh Sotan hadn't be wrong, earlier. It wasn't were Makoto thought he would end up. And somewhere between Kyoko's gripping mysteries and Byakuya's instagram pictures of his fancy new office, it had started to feel a little like the consolation prize.

"When was the last time you spoke to him?" Hina asked, the implication being that Byakuya had all but dropped off the face of the earth, save for an obnoxious social media presence.

"He's a busy guy," Makoto reasoned, fairly. "I left him a voicemail last week. I'm sure he'll get back to me."

Hina didn't push further, but she did sigh. "He's not going to come back, Makoto. You don't need to keep the position open."

"I know. I'll get on it, okay?"

A man of his word, Makoto returned to his office and called each candidate individually to apologise for the last minute cancellation of their interviews and to reschedule. He was inputting the information into his calendar, setting notifications to his phone in the hopes that next time, he wouldn't forget, when he got a text from Kyoko, letting him know she'd picked Koichi up from school and that she'd see him at home, so he knew he didn't need to stop by his sister's on the way home to retrieve the boy.

That evening, he came through the door to a house that was quiet but for the low hum of the television. He made his way down the hall and paused in the doorway to the living room for a second, just to admire the sight of Koichi leaning against Kyoko's side, his thumb in his mouth, eyes intently fixed on whatever animation was on screen, while his mother flipped through some papers in her lap. They were sharing a blanket.

Kyoko caught him staring sooner than he would have liked, but then she smiled at him and he decided he didn't mind so much.

"You wrapped up the case?"

She shook her head. "No. I just had some thinking to do." As she said this, she was stroking Koichi's hair idly. "How was your day?"

"It just went from a three to a nine so, pretty good." Makoto crossed the room to kiss her cheek and then stole another from her lips. "I missed you. What do you want for dinner? I'll cook."

"I was told you promised pancakes."

"Oh yeah." Makoto sighed. "Don't judge me. I would have promised him a pony if it meant we got out of the house this morning."

"Komaru said she'd watch him tonight," Kyoko suggested. "We could go out."

Makoto couldn't remember the last time they'd had a date night. They'd been pretty terrible at observing even their anniversary the last few years - it fell a week after Koichi's birthday, which meant they were at first too busy with a newborn to remember, much less celebrate. The year after, Makoto had had to attend a retreat with one of his classes after another teacher dropped out last minute; for the next two years, Kyoko had been so busy with detective work that they managed only a belated take out at home with candles and this year, despite the best laid plans and the restaurant reservation it had taken weeks to get, an hour before they were supposed to go, Koichi developed a fever and a stomach ache and they hadn't even had to a have a conversation about it - one look, exchanged between them as their son shivered, impossibly small in their bed, and Kyoko was kicking off her heels to climb in beside him and Makoto was calling his sister to tell her they wouldn't need her to babysit after all.

Parenthood trumped romance and they both understood that. Which was why, however much Makoto wanted Kyoko to himself tonight, he knew Koichi needed her more. "Let's take a rain check on that," he said, "I think we should have a family night."

Kyoko followed his eyes to their son, who hadn't looked up from the television, but cuddled closer to his mother, his head now tucked under her arm.

"Sure," she said, taking the hint. That night as she tucked their son into bed, Makoto listened from the hallway as Koichi pleaded with her to be there in the morning when he woke up.

"You know how he gets when he's overtired," Makoto said, in an attempt to make her feel better as she slipped into bed beside him after. "The other night he threw a fit because I dared to wash the shampoo out of his hair. He kept insisting I'd ruined it."

Kyoko didn't say anything for a long time. She laid on her back and looked up at the ceiling. Makoto shut off the bedside lamp and inched closer to her, until his chin was resting on her shoulder and they were sharing a pillow.

"I thought I'd understand my father more when I had a child of my own," she admitted, quietly. "I thought I'd get it, finally."

Makoto snaked an arm around her waist. She leaned into his touch. "You're nothing like your dad, Kyoko. You're working, not leaving. Koichi knows you're coming back."

"Exactly - and it's still difficult." Kyoko paused, and then, something inside her seemed to crack and an uncharacteristically vulnerable, "How did he just walk out?" spilled out.

"Kyoko." Makoto pressed a kiss to her temple. "He was a complicated guy. Things between him and your grandfather were messy. He did what he thought was best."

"That's a cop out." She sounded petulant. She sounded sad. Makoto's hold on her tightened and he nuzzled her shoulder. "Even if you and I hated each other, even if we couldn't make it work and I thought Koichi was better off with you, I could never just - " She broke off and rubbed her face. "I don't know why I'm talking about this. I don't care. It's been too long to still care."

"That's not how it works. There's nothing wrong with thinking about it, or talking about it. It's a good thing to care."

"I don't want to anymore." Kyoko shrugged out of his hold and for a second, Makoto thought he'd lost her, until she climbed on top of him and kissed him, hard. "Anyway, I'll be home with Koichi more when I get pregnant again."

Makoto couldn't help but scoff at that. "I'll bet."

"I will," she insisted, and Makoto wasn't sure who she was bargaining with - him, or fate. "I'll take time off this time. I won't take any new cases. I'll be around so much you'll get tired of seeing me."

"I doubt that very much." Makoto brought a hand up to cup her face. "You told Hina."

Kyoko nodded. "I wanted you to have someone to talk about it with."

I only wanted to talk about it with you, Makoto thought, but he knew saying this aloud now, months later, would only cause more harm than good.

"I appreciate that, but you don't need to worry." He gave her hand a squeeze. "I'm okay as long as you are."

Kyoko took that as confirmation that he was ready to try again, obviously, because when her case finished up three days later they were back to appointments at the fertility clinic and hormone shots and everything else that came with what their doctor classed as 'secondary infertility.'

It didn't take long for Makoto's anxiety to dissipate, giving way to excitement. Perhaps part of it was that he had less to worry about at work - he'd found a new deputy, for one thing. Yuugo Kane was older than Makoto, but too young for his hair to be greying at the sides like it was. According to his resume, he'd spent most of his adult life in third world countries advocating for the education of poor children, where he developed a love of teaching and an even greater passion for equality within education. At his interview, he'd smiled at Makoto and said that it was for the latter reason that he was so impressed with Hope's Peak. "It's amazing to me how you took a school with such a reputation for being well... elitist and made it such a place of inclusion," Kane had said earnestly. "I really admire your ethos that every child is special and valuable, regardless of perceived talents or skills."

And so, in Makoto's mind, he was perfect for the job. Hina approved too, and although the others were all cc'd in on the email he'd sent around with the candidate profile attached, he'd received no replies. One night, as he and Kyoko folded laundry in the kitchen after Koichi was in bed, he asked her what she thought and she'd responded with a flippant, distracted, "sure, whatever you think," which was how he knew she was too wrapped up in the fertility stuff to spare a thought for much else. He took his as a sign to make more of an effort to take her mind off things, and with Kane relieving the pressure at work, was able to get away at least once a week for romantic lunches.

"You've been a huge help. I really can't thank you enough," Makoto said, when Kane covered for him one afternoon so he could go to an appointment at the fertility clinic with Kyoko.

Kane had waved him off, but a flicker of something crossed his face. "Don't mention it Naegi. Family comes first."

Makoto had hesitated in the doorway. "Do you have any? Family, I mean."

"No." Kane looked away and, after a beat, he shook his head. "They died."

"Oh, Kane, I'm so sorry." The words sounded so useless, so empty. "I didn't know you were married."

"I wasn't." He gave a pained smile. "My partner was a man." Right - because gay marriage wasn't yet legal in Japan. "We adopted our daughter a year before they were both murdered in a hate crime."

"That's... horrible."

"It was a long time ago. I've dedicated my life to doing something good with the loss. I had to make their deaths mean something." Yuugo Kane glanced at the clock. "Naegi, you shouldn't keep your wife waiting."

The appointment was disappointing - something about inconsistent hormone levels meaning they would have to push back the embryo transfer another month. That evening, Makoto came into the kitchen to check on dinner to find Kyoko staring out the window, watching their son stomping around happily in the garden in his pokemon mud boots. Makoto hooked his arm around around Kyoko's waist and joined her in admiring the view. He thought of Kane.

"We're so lucky, you know." When Kyoko scoffed, he pressed a kiss to her temple. "I mean it. We have each other. We have a healthy, happy kid." He paused, trying to think of the best way to say what he was thinking. "Do you think we're ungrateful for wanting more?"

"You can be happy with what you have and still want other things," Kyoko replied. "They're not mutually exclusive."

"Yeah, but sometimes I wonder if...I don't know, if maybe we're just supposed to have one kid. And if that's the case, I mean, it's not bad thing, right?"

Kyoko sighed, her eyes still on their son, waving around a stick he found. Makoto couldn't tell if it was a weapon for fending off imaginary enemies, or if he was trying to cast a spell on the dog. "He's always playing by himself," she said, quietly. "I want him to have a brother or sister."

"Was it lonely being an only child?" Makoto didn't think it was the kind of thing that would bother Kyoko, who was both fiercely independent and a loner. But then, there were a number of things he didn't think she'd care about - the importance of stories before bed, their son witnessing them being affectionate with one another, nurturing all of Koichi's dreams even those that did not involve detective work - that she'd surprised him by making a priority when it came to parenting. From what he could gather, she was trying to give their child the things she hadn't had.

"I didn't really think about it," Kyoko admitted. "But Koichi's like you - he's social. And if anything happened to us, I wouldn't want him to be alone."

Makoto sighed. Since becoming a mother, Kyoko had developed a weird fear that they would die unexpectedly and leave their kid orphaned. It was why they both had a detailed will, despite not even being thirty yet, outlining who would raise Koichi in their absence - Hina, the only one they could trust to be equal parts tender and tough. Even thinking about it kinda depressed Makoto, but it had put Kyoko's mind at ease. Until now, it seemed.

"Kyoko, we're not going to die."

"Well, we definitely are."

"Right, someday when we're really old." Makoto turned her around to look at him. "Koichi is gonna have us for a really long time. We're not gonna be leaving him alone anytime soon."

"I'm sure my mother thought the same thing," she said, stepping out of his hold to check on the pasta. "Besides, Koichi's just one part of it. You want a daughter."

"I don't," he protested, but Kyoko gave him a look and he stopped pretending. "Okay, so I do, but I'd be just as happy with another boy."

His reasons for wanting a girl specifically were dumb anyway - curiosity, really, as to how he and Kyoko's genetics would combine in a little girl, if she would have her mother's eyes and ability to wrap him around her finger in an instant. Maybe, a part of it was that Koichi and Kyoko were so close that sometimes, for a few seconds every now and then, he felt left out. It wasn't like he was actually bothered by it - he'd loved watching their bond develop over the years; it was nothing short of adorable how much Koichi worshipped his mother, and loving their son unlocked so many wonderful qualities of Kyoko's that Makoto hadn't been able to; and anyway, he'd been closer to his mother growing up, too. Mothers and sons had that a unique kind of relationship and so, supposedly, did fathers and daughters.

But, if it was ungrateful to want another kid when people like Kane had to bury theirs, it was worse still to be picky about it. Ultimately, Makoto would have still given anything for another little boy to look up at Kyoko like she hung the moon.

"I know you would. But we've said for years we wanted another. Since when do we give up?"

"I'm not saying we should, I'm just...I dunno." He wanted to tell her about Kane - he'd meant to, actually, to pick her brains about the death of his boyfriend and daughter. It sounded too straightforward to be a case of hers, but there weren't many violent murders in Japan in the last few years that she hadn't at least heard about. Before Makoto could bring it up, however, Koichi came into the kitchen from the backdoor.

"Is dinner ready yet?" he whined, stepping out of his boots and tugging off his scarf. "I'm hungry."

"Set the table," Kyoko commanded, and Koichi obeyed without argument. As he passed by her to the utensil drawer, she touched her hand to his hair. "Thank you." She turned back to Makoto as she flipped the switch on the stove. "You were saying?"

Koichi was still within ear shot, so Makoto was not about to talk openly about a family being murdered. "I just feel like I need to put things in perspective, you know? I know it's rough right now and it seems like we're not getting the thing that we want most, but once, you were what I wanted most, and then he was. I remember how it felt, both times, to think that I'd gotten so much more than I deserved and that I'd never ask for anything else ever again. I don't ever want to ever stop feeling lucky for what we have because we're too busy wishing for something else." As he took the pot of pasta from her and began to dish it out, he noticed her staring at him. "What?" he said, puzzled.

"Nothing." She looked away, but when she looked back, she was smiling. "You just reminded me of someone for a second there."

"Who?"

"You," Kyoko said. "The you from before."

Makoto's first thought, when he cracked open his eyes to the complete darkness of his bedroom, was that there was a reason he had woken open. His second thought was sparked by the muffled ring of his cellphone under his pillow. He felt around for it and struggled to sit up in bed, bringing it to his ear without looking at the caller ID.

Still half-asleep, he expected Kyoko, until he realised Kyoko was stirring in the space next to him.

"Hello?" he said, groggily. There was silence on the other end of the line. He pulled the phone back to check the line was still connected, and it was then that he recognised the number. It was the academy, and the extension was his office.

"Hello?" he repeated. By now, Kyoko had groaned and forced her eyelids open to frown up at him.

Who is it, she mouthed. He shrugged, shaking off the last bit of sleep. His senses were sharper now, enough to place the sound of breathing on the other end of the line. Almost as soon as he recognised the noise, the line went dead. He pulled the phone back from his ear again and this time, he just blinked at it.

"Wrong number?" Kyoko asked, sounding bored.

"No. I...I think someone's in my office." Makoto scratched the back of his head. "I could hear breathing."

"Breathing?" Suddenly, Kyoko's interest was piqued. She sat up in bed and readjusted her ponytail. "Male or female?"

"I don't know."

She sighed, as if his answer defeated her. "Well, was it shallow or deep? Did it sound breathless or controlled?"

"Kyoko, it was like a quarter of a second and it's," he glanced at the bedside clock, "3:23am. I wasn't taking notes."

"Alright, well, one way to find out." She threw back the covers and slipped out of bed. "Your keys are downstairs, right?"

"Where are you going?" Only then did Makoto realise he was supposed to be doing something. "I should call the police."

Kyoko pulled a face. "I mean, if you want, but do me a favour and give me a headstart."

"You're not going anywhere." He tried to grab her wrist, but Kyoko was too quick for him. She was already pulling on jeans over her pajama shorts. "I should go. It's my school."

"Fine, then we'll both go."

Nodding, Makoto grabbed the t-shirt he'd discarded on the floor earlier that night. When he looked up, they met each other's eyes and in unison, they realised. "Koichi."

Less than five minutes later, Makoto was bundling the little boy wrapped in a blanket, asleep, into the car while Kyoko started the engine. "We are terrible parents," he said wearily, buckling the car seat as Koichi's head rolled to the side and he let out a small noise of discontentment. "What if it's dangerous?"

"It won't be. It's probably just kids playing a prank," Kyoko said, and she sounded confident, but when they pulled up around the back of the school, she turned to look at Koichi and told Makoto to call the police. Then, she opened the car door.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm just going to take a walk around. I'll be back in a minute."

"Kyoko!" He hissed, but she'd already closed the door on him. He dialled the police emergency lined and reported a potential break-in. The operator logged it but informed him the police were unusually busy tonight so there might be a delay. He cursed his luck and squinted through the windscreen, trying and failing to make out Kyoko in the darkness.

When she came back to the car after what felt like an eternity, he was startled by the opening of the car door. "No obvious signs of a break in. I secured the place and I didn't see anyone."

"So, ghosts?" Makoto joked.

"Unlikely." Kyoko beckoned to him. "Come on. There's something you need to see."

This time she carried Koichi while Makoto came behind them with a torch. If Kyoko was unnerved at all, she did not seem to be, and something about her fearlessness had always been infectious to him. It would be a lie to say that he was not a little lost in the thrill of it all as they crept down familiar hallways to his office.

By his secretary's desk, there was a couch for students to wait to see him. Here, Kyoko laid their son down and fixed the blanket around him. His eyelids fluttered open before she could back away. "Mommy?" he mumbled, sleepily.

"Shh, darling," she said, softly. "You're dreaming."

When he stilled again, she turned to Makoto and nodded toward his office door. "Look inside."

A little gingerly, he pushed open the door, expecting to find the place ransacked. Instead, it looked just as he'd left it. He turned to her, a question on his lips, but as he took a breath to do so, he realised there was horrible smell - like damp, but more metallic.

Kyoko's expression was blank, inferring he had to figure this out himself. He walked toward his desk and sure enough, on his chair, was the source of the smell. Beady eyes stared back at him, dark and dead. It was… an animal? A dead cat, to be exact.

He looked to Kyoko, quizzically. "Someone left it here?"

She leaned against the doorway, her arms folded. "I imagine someone's trying to spook you."

"To what? Buy a different chair?"

Kyoko tapped her foot, unamused. "I had a look around and nothing seems to be taken, but you should check for yourself."

He did as he was told. At some point during this, Koichi wandered in to stand beside his mother, blanket draped over his shoulders like a cape.

"You lied," he said to Kyoko, yawning. "It's not a dream. You can't dream faces you don't know. What's that smell?"

"Nothing. Hey, you want to help?" Kyoko said.

Makoto stopped what he was doing to glare at her, but Koichi simply shrugged and pulled the blanket tighter around himself. "I guess."

"Stand by the window," Kyoko instructed. "Tell me when you see police lights outside."

The windows were on the wall opposite Makoto's desk. It was a good call on her part at keeping Koichi busy without traumatising him by the exposure to a dead animal.

"I usually keep this locked," Makoto said, pulling out a drawer of his file cabinet where he kept background information on the students, filed alphabetically.

"Could you have left it open this time?" Kyoko pressed.

Makoto leafed through the files, but it was impossible to tell without pulling everything out and pouring over each individual folder if anything had been taken. "It's possible."

"Why did you call the police anyway?" Koichi asked moodily, rubbing his eyes. "Grandpa Kiri says the police are hopeless and syrupt-ted."

"Corrupted," Kyoko corrected. "And he's bitter because when he was young detective, a cop outsmarted him."

"What's your excuse?" Makoto asked, smirking.

"Loyalty," she replied, lifting her chin a fraction.

"Alright, so let's say nothing was stolen. Someone broke in, cold called my cell in the middle of the night and left a - um, you know what, in my office to... spook me?"

"Hm. You make a good point - why the call? You'd have found the ca-thing anyway in the morning. It's like they were trying to lure you here - but why, if it would only increase the risk of them being caught?" Kyoko frowned in thought. "Who, besides you, has the keys to the school?"

"Just the caretaker." Kyoko did not stop staring and under her scrutiny, Makoto winced. "Hina has a copy of the master keys too - sometimes her swim team trials run late and she needs to lock up. I guess Kane has a set too, but I don't know if he's ever even used them."

"Well, I think we can rule out Hina. This Kane - does he keep the keys in his office, or on him?"

"I have no idea. I can check."

Kyoko handed him the ring of his own keys. "The deputy office is locked. I didn't have time to try each one."

Makoto flipped through a few before realising he did not actually have a key to that room. Byakuya had insisted he didn't want Makoto coming and going whenever he wanted, so he'd surrendered it years ago. When he explained this to Kyoko, she rolled her eyes.

"You idiot."

While Kyoko demanded Makoto call poor Kane right that moment and insist he come down to the school, Koichi blew breath onto the window pane so he could draw stick figures in the steam. "I bet the bad guys have a cooler car than us," he said, mournfully. His most recent obsession was cars - his favourite were sports cars in bright colours.

"There are no bad guys here, Koichi," Makoto said, relenting finally and taking out his phone to call Kane.

"Well, duh, daddy. She already left."

At this, Kyoko's head whipped round. Makoto abandoned the search in his contacts for his deputy headmaster. "She?" they chorused.

Koichi gave a pained sigh. "I told you. You can't dream faces you haven't seen before."

"Where did you see someone?" Kyoko asked, skeptical.

Koichi pointed to the waiting area outside the office, where they'd laid him down. "Over there."

"Impossible," Kyoko argued. She turned to Makoto. "I checked this floor twice. I was thorough. There's been no one here but us."

"She came out of the other room," Koichi said. The other room that adjoined to the waiting area - the deputy's office. "She did this," he brought his finger to his lips, in a 'sush' motion, before shrugging. "And then she just left."

"Why didn't you call to us?" Makoto was skeptical himself, but maybe he just didn't want to believe they had potentially put their son's life in danger.

"Because," Koichi said, as if it were obvious, "she did this," he repeated the motion pointedly. "She's a bad guy. I didn't want to make her mad."

Makoto looked at Kyoko, who he could tell was still hesitant to believe their son. He crossed the room to put an arm around Koichi, while through the window police lights came into view. "You did the right thing, buddy. Very clever. Now let's get out of here and you can give the police some help figuring out who it was, okay?"

They left the room together, but when they made it to the corridor, Makoto noticed Kyoko wasn't beside him. He looked back and saw her hesitating by the deputy's door. Meeting his eye, she tried the handle. The door, locked when she'd tried it before, now opened easily.

Koichi hadn't been lying.

Begrudgingly, he gave the police a description of the girl he'd seen. Makoto had a hunch early on who he was describing, but he didn't interject. The police said they'd take some fingerprints and examine the cat for evidence, but of course the security cameras on the entire floor had mysteriously malfunctioned earlier in the day, so they didn't have much to go on. As they turned away, Koichi sighed and declared, "Grandpa Kiri's right about the police," and so Makoto quickly pulled him toward the car.

"You know who it is," Kyoko said, matter-of-factly, as they put on their seatbelts. "But you didn't tell them. Why?"

"She's a student," Makoto explained. "A freshman. She's just a kid."

"A kid who has it out for you," Kyoko pointed out. When they reversed out of the parking lot, she put her hand on his knee. "It's not your job to protect her, Makoto."

Makoto threaded his hand through Kyoko's, the image of Maida Yuji in his mind - another kid who'd been robbed of a family and a normal life because of the despair year. Over his shoulder, he looked back at his own child, drifting back off to sleep in the backseat, even amid all the excitement - who, at no point during the night had exhibited even a smidge of fear, who had never had reason to, because the world he lived in was safe and he trusted his parents to keep it that way.

"If I don't," Makoto wondered aloud as he turned back to his wife, "who will?"

The next morning, Kane was stricken. "We were discussing her disruptive behaviour in class - I left her alone in my office for just a moment while I took a call. She must have swiped the keys when I wasn't looking. Heaven knows how she was able to hack into the security cameras and initiate their shut down." Frown lines creased on his forehead, his green eyes looked heavy with regret. "I'm so sorry, Naegi."

"It's fine, Kane - I'm sorry you had to get tangled up in this. Once I talk to her, I'm going to speak to police again and get them to drop the investigation."

Or at least, that was his plan. When he summoned Maida to his office, she was chewing gum and missing her school tie. The three top buttons of her shirt were exposed to reveal a tattoo along her collar bone: a cursive 'bite me.'

"Do you know why you're here, Maida?" he asked, when she'd sat down in front of him and Kane, who stood by his side.

"I figure it's cause of last night," she said, bluntly.

Makoto hadn't been expecting her to cop to it right away. He tried to mask his shock with a stern look. "It is. Would you like to explain to me what that was all about?"

Maida smirked. "I think you got the message."

Beside him, Kane shifted. "This is a serious offence, young lady," he said, his stare harsh. "Not only is it a major violation of school policy, it's a crime. You could be facing time in jail - are you aware of that?"

"More importantly," Makoto added quickly, "It's a breach of trust. Why would you do something like this, Maida?"

She chewed her gum thoughtfully, and then she folded her hands together in her lap and said, simply, "Because I hate you."

Makoto's mouth fell open a little in shock, and for a few seconds, there was just silence. Kane cleared his throat, uncomfortable, and looked to Makoto, seemingly waiting for him to speak. But he couldn't - because he didn't know what he was supposed to say to that, besides um, why?

"I think we've heard enough from you," Kane announced, turning to Maida. "Three weeks suspension, beginning today. We'll reassess then."

"No jail?" Maida mocked with a pout. "Shame. I really wanted my picture in the newspaper."

Maida hopped to her feet and gave him a little wave over her shoulder as Kane led her out and a strange wave of nostalgia hit Makoto - as if a weird memory was trapped somewhere in the fog of his brain, but with each passing second, it faded more and more. By the time Kane had returned, it was gone completely, and all he was left with was a shudder.

"Thanks for taking over there," Makoto said, turning his attention back to the matter in hand. "I wasn't expecting her to be quite so...blunt."

"I'm just glad to be useful."

"I should go after her. Try and figure out what this is really about." As he made to get up from his chair, Kane put his hand on his shoulder, and gently pushed him back down.

"I don't think that would be a very...wise move on your part." Kane looked away, awkward. "Naegi - I do not want to speak out of place."

"You're not. I want to hear what you have to say." Makoto leaned forward in his chair. "Kane, what is it?"

"I truly admire your humility and your...eagerness to connect with your students."

"Thanks. I just think it's important we respect them as people, you know? I mean, everyone's got a story and - "

" - but," Kane continued, shaking his head, "I'm not trying to criticise you, please know I am speaking from a place of respect - however, as your deputy, I feel responsible for ensuring your credibility as the principal of this school."

Makoto blinked at the other man, confused. "My...credibility?"

"There's been some talk among the staff that your approach isn't the most effective when it comes to wrangling the more...problematic pupils."

"Oh." Makoto felt his cheeks burn. "Um, what's being said exactly?"

"The general consensus seems to be that you're much too lenient - that you care more about being liked than you do about being listened to and that, as a result, there's a serious problem with the behaviour of a number of students." Kane shook his head a second time. "I'm sorry, Naegi, I didn't want to be the one to bring this to you - however, I am a man who believes in loyalty."

"No, no, it's fine." Makoto tried to paste on a smile. "I appreciate the feedback and I'll take it on board. Thank you."

He busied himself for as long as he could with paperwork before heading off towards the gym, where Hina was coaching the volleyball team. He stood in the doorway until Hina blew the whistle and the game ended, and kids filed out of the room high-fiving.

"Hey you." Hina smiled widely when she spotted him. "How did it go with Maida?"

"She admitted to it. She's suspended for the next three weeks."

Hina raised an eyebrow. "Suspension? That's not like you."

Her tone, or maybe it was his sensitivity to her tone, made him bristle. "I'm trying a new tactic."

"Oh." Hina bounced the ball she was holding against the ground and caught it again. "Cool. So, what's up? You need something?"

"I feel dumb asking this," Makoto admitted, rubbing his neck. "People around here aren't...talking about me, are they?"

He expected Hina to be surprised by this question, but instead, her eyes widened in recognition and she ducked her head, a little guilty. "How do you mean?"

"I dunno. Saying things about my approach - that I'm too soft, or something."

"Makoto," Hina said, sympathetically. "You are soft. And that's great, ya know? That's you, that's how you've always been. It's just that...not everyone is gonna agree with you all the time."

"I know that." It wasn't a dictatorship. He didn't care if people had different opinions than his. He cared that they all seemed to share the same opinion - namely, that he sucked at his job, and that no one had told him it until now. "Why didn't you say something to me?"

Hina sighed. "I didn't want to hurt your feelings."

He thought about what Kane said, I am a man who believes in loyalty. "But you're my friend. Didn't you think it would be better to hear it from you?"

"I get that, but...Makoto, it's not always easy to be your friend and be a member of your staff." Even as she said this, Hina looked like she was regretting it. Her shoulders slumped in defeat. "Listen, you know I love you. But sometimes...I don't think you thought this far ahead."

"What does that mean?"

"In the beginning, re-opening the academy was this exciting thing, right? It was all about showing that hope had won. And then it was re-branding, taking in kids with and without talent, especially kids who'd had it tough because of all the despair. We were doing good and taking a stand. But now - well, now it's budgets and academic targets and I just...I know this isn't the part you signed up for." Hina looked at him then, finally, but she seemed to wish she hadn't, if the way she was fidgeting was an indication. "And every now and then, other people can tell too."

"Oh." Makoto backed out of the gym. "Thanks a lot for the heads up, Hina," he said, wounded.

"Makoto!" She made a move to follow, but he let the gym doors slam behind him so that she couldn't.

When he got home from work, Koichi was asleep on the couch. He hadn't napped during the day in months so to see him curled up and peaceful while it was still light outside gave him pause.

"Is he sick?" he asked, finding his wife at the kitchen table with a mug of coffee and case file.

"Nope. We went to the park with my grandfather after school." Kyoko took a sip of coffee. "It was a treasure hunt this time - thirty clues, which is excessive even for him. Still, it's one way to tire Koichi out."

"Ah." Although Koichi thought his mom had the coolest job ever, he hadn't shown much natural interest in detective work himself. Still, that did not stop Fuhito from trying to inspire it on the occasions when they allowed. "How'd he do?"

"Our son is a cheater and a thief," Kyoko sighed. "I caught him trying to memorise the map from my grandfather's notebook."

Makoto chuckled as he pulled off his tie. "Did you rat him out?"

"I wanted to, but it had been hours by that point and the clues were asking a lot from a four-year old, so I let it go. He fooled Fuhito anyway: he took us out for dinner to celebrate because he was so pleased with Koichi's performance."

"Well, as long as Fuhito's happy." Makoto opened the fridge, poked around inside for something to make himself, and then decided he wasn't all that hungry. Finding out everyone thought you sucked at your job was kind of an appetite killer.

"Mm. How was your day?" Kyoko looked up from whatever she was reading. "What happened with the girl who broke into your office?"

Makoto leaned against the kitchen bench and folded his arms. "Kyoko, what am I good at?"

"What kind of question is that?" She asked, frowning as she closed over the case file in front of her.

"A serious one. List three things I'm good at - besides all the hope and positivity stuff."

"Hm. Well, you're patient. You're brave. You're intuitive."

Makoto couldn't hide his disappointment. "That stuff makes me a good person - but what am I actually good at, practically? Forget the emotional stuff for a second. What are my skills?"

"The emotional stuff is a skill. Who told you it wasn't?"

Makoto sighed, but he sat down next to Kyoko at the table. "Everyone at work thinks the whole dead cat in the office thing is because I'm a pushover."

"No," Kyoko said carefully, "the 'dead cat in the office thing' is because teenagers notoriously dislike authority figures."

"Yeah well, word on the street is I'm not much of an authority figure." Makoto slumped against the back of the chair.

"I'm sure you're being oversensitive."

"That's easy for you to say. You've always had a purpose." Makoto threw his hands up in the air. "This was supposed to be mine and apparently, I'm no good at it."

"That's not true." Kyoko tilted her head. "Since when did you let other people psych you into giving up?"

"I'm not."

"Then stop feeling sorry for yourself and show them they're wrong." Kyoko said this like it was easy, but Makoto knew she wasn't trying to minimise it - it was that for someone like her, someone focused and brilliant and so sure of herself, proving people wrong was easy. It was something they'd never been quite able to relate on.

In actual fact, Makoto did spend the best part of the next few days feeling sorry for himself. Perhaps it would have gone on longer, if not for the upcoming embryo transfer and the two weeks after when it was still too early to test, when sleep became a distant memory and he felt like one of dog's toys, the one with stretchy arms and legs, like he was being tugged between anxiety and excitement while the middle of his chest fraying in two. When finally, a blood test confirmed Kyoko was pregnant again and the doctor congratulated them, it was as if the two opposing forces let go of him, stretchy limbs snapped back into place, he felt weak and full all at once and he cried as he shook the doctor's hand, his other hand holding onto his wife's.

Although things at work weren't improving - Maida had returned from suspension, and had stepped up her antics to slashing his car tires - knowing he was going to be a dad again made it a lot more bearable. Not everyone was supposed to be a career person, he'd begun to reason with himself. Maybe his talent wasn't being a principal and maybe that was okay - because maybe, the thing he was supposed to be all along was a husband and father.

Still, it did not stop his thoughts wondering to what Hina had said. Did people really think he only wanted to be headmaster of Hope's Peak for the optics?

Did he?

He was pondering it, still, when Kane brought an issue with the mid-term budget to his attention. "There's more going out than coming in," he explained, simply, handing Makoto a copy of the spreadsheet he was working from. "Who usually manages financials around here?"

The answer was, of course, Byakuya - because the rest of them had been deemed 'incapable' by him years ago. "Um. The position is vacant at the moment."

Kane's raised eyebrows suggested that this was even stupider than it sounded. "I see. Well, in the meantime, I'm happy to keep an eye on things. Now, may I make a few suggestions?"

Most of Kane's suggestions were minor, until his finger lingered over the physical education budget. "This is a serious issue. I recommend halfing it, at least."

They moved around numbers elsewhere, but it was no use. Kane made a good point - that the money that went toward physical education could be better spent on advertising, where they lacking. It was a shitty decision to make, but part of being a principal meant he had to make shitty decisions, and wasn't that was he was trying to prove: that he was capable of going with the boring and the sensible; that he was mature enough to know that sometimes, that was the right choice?

He planned to tell Hina during the school's lunch break. Maybe, to soften the blow, he'd tell her about the baby too. He knew Kyoko would understand.

But when he got to the staff room, Hina was laughing over the coffee machine with the health teacher, and it occurred to him that maybe, they were joking about him.

Even if he knew he was being paranoid, he had another reason for turning away and going back to his office. He should follow Hina's lead and keep their friendship separate from work - and so he composed an email instead, the way he would if she were any other department head.

The next morning, she was waiting outside his office with her arms folded. "What the hell, Makoto?" she demanded.

"I have meetings this morning. I have some free time this afternoon if you want to schedule - "

Undeterred, she pushed past him to storm into his office. "You don't get to be mad at me for being honest with you after you asked me to be. And even if you do, you don't get to take it out on my students."

"Hina," he sighed, "it's not personal."

"Yeah, I figured you thought that since I found out via email." Hina turned on him, fierce. "You know the kids who will be affected by this will be the ones who need it the most. Kids who rely on sports as an outlet for the crap they've got going on at home, kids who can't afford to join private teams or classes."

She was talking, specifically, about an after school programme she named for her brother: Yuta training. When Makoto had given it the green light three years ago, she'd burst into tears and hugged him so tight he hadn't been able to breathe. When they broke apart, she told him he was the best friend ever.

"I know, and I feel horrible about that but Hina - it needs to be done." He looked up at her, genuinely regretful. "Maybe next semester, we can reassess."

Hina's eyes were wide, but focused, like she was seeing him for the first time. "I've always had your back, Makoto." She gestured to the room they were standing in. "I was the first one to support you when you said you wanted to reopen. I stayed, even when everyone else bailed."

"I know, and I appreciate that." He sat down at his desk and shook his head. "I'm sorry you're upset, but you were right - I do need to take more control of things around here. The practical stuff. This is me trying to do that."

"Right." Hina turned away. "I just didn't think that to do that, you'd sell out the kids you wanted to help in the first place."

He let her go, certain she would calm down. When he came downstairs from putting Koichi to bed that night to Kyoko hanging up the phone with a 'Bye, Hina' he knew she hadn't.

"Everything okay?" he asked, trying to sound nonchalant.

"Her boss is a jerk, apparently."

"Yeah, I heard." He flopped down beside his wife and yawned. "Screw that guy."

Kyoko gave him a measured look. "You'd tell me if you needed something, wouldn't you? At work, I mean. If you're stressed, I can help."

"You do help." Makoto threaded their fingers together and smiled, slipping his other hand across to rest on her stomach. "You guys are the best part of my day. Just keep doing what you're doing."

The softness in Kyoko's face dissolved as her gaze flicked past him to the television screen. Makoto followed her stare to the nightly news broadcast. The images on the screen were of brutality and a war that every night, seemed to inch closer and closer to their part of the world. No one really knew who the terrorists were, or even what they wanted, although the West seemed to think it was all about oil. Kyoko reached forward, for the remote control abandoned on the coffee table and promptly turned the news off.

"Do you worry about it?" he asked her, when she settled beside him again. "Does it make you scared about the kind of world our kids are going to grow up in?"

She shook her head. "The world isn't raising our kids," Kyoko said, as stubborn and sure as ever. "We are."