Note/s: this is just a one-time drabble warm-up to write off plot bunnies, titled after a Gundam song. I live for romantic drama in modern AUs as you all know. If you spot errors, I wrote this at 3 am so it's expected, I'll find time to fix them later.

mirai no futari ni

Entering the quaint traditional sweet shop seemed like the most daunting task for the well-dressed man standing outside of it. He'd been loitering outside for half an hour, wringing a matching hat to his suit that tightened from the bunching of his muscles. Jack had not been this nervous since his wedding day…five years ago. The memory of the fiasco played out in perfect detail and the self-loathing seeped into his very bones.

Swallowing a lump of courage, he straightened his posture and quickly strode inside the shop before he could change his mind. Drafts of sweet air instantly assailed his nose the moment he pushed past the noren, assortments of neatly packaged sweets filled the displays with beckoning temptation. Despite having already eaten, his mouth watered, craving a sample of the roasted chestnuts and anko paste that was prevalent in the ingredients.

"Irasshaimase!" a voice chimed from a small room behind the counter, and Jack felt his breath ghost away as a young woman appeared with stacked box trays of fresh confections. The few seconds before awareness caught her eye, Jack was struck with a feeling other than shame and guilt—awe.

Ashi had never been a homely creature by any means, she had always been pretty but he could never fully bring himself to admit it at that time—not even when they had gotten married. His heart had been pinned on someone else and Ashi was an innocent victim paying for his cowardice. He had done something that made being left at the altar preferable—he had left her on their wedding night.

The last he'd seen her, she was adorned in a radiant shiromuku of the finest brocade. Now here she was, dressed in a plain striped yukata with an apron yet somehow, he could not take his eyes off of her. In the half-decade he was gone, she had changed. No, his mind reconciled, if anything, the years only enhanced what he had refused to see.

Jack had always considered Ashi the safe traditional route his parents had wanted for him, a far cry from the worldly western sophistication the older Ikra had been deeply entrenched in. With Ikra, there had been no pressure of family duty that had been browbeaten to him since childhood, she did as she pleased and Jack could not help but be enthralled with her cognizant ways. In his infatuation, he thought it romantic to run away with her, only later realizing the painful price for his actions.

"Oh." Ashi recovered from her own less fanciful shock at seeing him. "You're here." There was no anger in her voice, only a cool indifference that made Jack's insides turn in discomfort. Carefully, he set down his hat on the counter and offered a watery smile.

"Hello, Ashi…" The words sounded garbled to his ears. "I..uh received your letter."

Ashi regarded him disdainfully with a look that could only be described as one reserved for a fraudulent salesman. She put down the fresh batch of sweets and moved away from the counter. Jack followed her with uncertainty.

Near one of the displays, she unboxed some dorayaki to lay out on a samples tray, talking as she did. "I didn't expect you to be here so soon. Then again, you have been waiting on me to grant you a divorce for years."

When Jack first offered Ashi a divorce as an out from their embarrassing marriage, she had stunned him by refusing it. It took a few more denials to realize she was doing it out of spite, as to prevent him from marrying the woman he abandoned her for. He did not badger her after some time, having resigned to an informal relationship with Ikra.

Then, just a week ago, after years of no communication, Ashi wrote to him saying she was finally going to give him what he wanted. Just that, in one sentence, no salutations.

"How is she?" Ashi asked as she she moved on to another display.

Jack winced, answering with great hesitancy. "We're um…taking a break right now…to settle personal matters." That was the best he could say without outright admitting to his wronged wife that things were going downhill with the perceived mistress.

Ashi snorted. "Don't worry, soon you'll soon be free from your matrimonial obligations. I have the papers in the—oof!" Jack had followed too closely and Ashi crashed into him the moment she turned around. His hands clapped on her shoulders to steady her, and almost immediately, the skin on his fingers itched with a spice-like heat out of place inside a sweet shop.

She was close. The closest he had ever been with her. Jack could make out the little specks of light in her eyes and the sparkling sugar crystals that dusted her cheeks. He felt a sudden urge to thumb them away. But just as the thought materialized in his brain, she pulled away, furiously dusting her sleeves and front of her uniform as though to remove his touch.

"As I was saying, it's in the safe. Come."

Less than a minute later, he was sitting inside a cramped space of an office, the documents laid out between them on the chabudai.

"It just needs your signature." She said. "Then we can forward it to the registry."

She handed him a pen, a cutesy one with a bread-themed mascot at the top that was taking its role of helping end a marriage a little too jovially.

As he poised the tip of the pen. He could not help the nagging feeling inside of him and looked to her.

"I know this sounds foolish…but what made you finally decide to do this?"

She shrugged. "I'm ready to move on to bigger things."

"Bigger things?"

"I want to have a baby."

He made a comical noise as he choked on his own breath. "Wh-what?"

Ashi was unfazed, her manicured nails clicking impatiently on the polished table.

"You heard me."

"You mean you found someone"—

"Dear god no." She cut him off with an appalled face. "After my last quote and quote relationship, I'm better off a single mother." She pulled out more papers from a messy stack behind her, laying each of them like cards. "Your parents are handing me the deed to this shop provided I still come around to help in the ryokan." Something that had been expected of him.

"There's a clinic in Shizuoka. I already have a donor picked out. But I'm not as liberal as you, It doesn't sit right with me to have a child when I'm still legally tied to you. So…." She pointedly eyed the paper he was about to sign. "Hurry up."

He knew she was right.

What he had done to her was beyond reproach. Jack would never be able to make up for it, not even if Buddha himself came down from the heavens to pardon him. Signing the papers was the least he could do. And he should.

But.

"No."

Something in him just couldn't.