Author's Notes: First off, Happy New Year!

Finally, after two months since my first release, I am now more than happy to give you my second offering for the PMMM fandom (and I swear, I'm not drunk!). What I'm going to tell you is this clocks in at around 6K plus words, so for the sake of the story's structure I didn't split it into chapters. I don't see any reason why to do so, as other one-shots can go on for at least 10K words. But I implemented a 'Scenes' system that I adopted (read: plagiarized) from the 'Acts' system Elias Pedro uses in 'Magia, Pacem, Bellum Terrarum'. It's a good idea, so it'd be nice if I could use it in this little fic and see if it makes the story's flow a little more decipherable. If anybody says there's something wrong with this, then I will just quote one of my most favorite characters in literature, Ivan Karamazov: "I am base."

(I just hope E.P. won't sue me or something. My lawyer/personal dealer is still passed out drunk in an alley somewhere in Amsterdam because of New Year's [LOL]. For any grievances, please PM me immediately so we can patch things up)

In the spirit of keeping this A.N. short and trite ([reads above]: "Riiight…"), I have no ending for these words so I will just take a little bow. Please enjoy.

Prologue

When Tomohisa Kaname heard something ring in his pocket, it was not clear to him that it was actually his cellphone.

So immersed in his own thoughts, the ringing pulled him out of his mind suddenly like a fish out of water, leaving him dazed in a vague state of panic. Only when his rational mind set in did he realize that his wife, Junko, had sent him a text message.

'Forgot my lunch. Haven't eaten for hours. Can you bring me some?'

He was busy smoking in their backyard garden while he read this. The Lucky Strike burning between his right index and middle finger, Tomohisa made a deep sigh.

Typical, he thought to himself.

Instantly he brought his mind to what lunch box she would like to have a breaded chicken cutlet in. Pink or blue? Maybe the vermillion one?

He put his cellphone back into his pocket, scratched the back of his head, and drove his cigarette into a clean ashtray. His only stick for that day, and a half-stick at that.

He had no plans to go out of the house, only to just stagnate and stay in the Kaname Residence indefinitely, a stay-home dad. But now he had a reason to go there. Junko might get hungry.

Was there any meaning to all of this?

The First Scene

His bedroom, his garden, his life

Earlier that day, Tomohisa opened his eyes to an alarm on his phone. Feeling around the nightstand to shut it off, he ended up taking his glasses instead by mistake. When he did get his phone, he squinted to see the bright LED display on his alarm clock app. 6:00 AM.

Everybody should still be asleep at this time. Not fully awake, he would tell himself that a few more minutes of dozing off wouldn't hurt. But he had made his alarms in such a way that one would go off every 5 minutes up until 6:30, a continuous barrage of noise that would eventually send him groaning from his bed. Luckily Junko was still sound asleep next to him, a little girl still nestled in the clutch of dreams. If it managed to wake her up somehow, she would have chucked his cellphone into the wall.

Fully awake to reality, he set his mind up to what should be done. After changing into his normal t-shirt and jeans, he went to his backyard garden to water the baby tomatoes he had been raising since January. Essentially, this was a spice garden, where he grew cilantro along with bay leaves, onion leaks, basil and other things. It beat having to rush out to a store, and they were totally fresh and free too. He had taken a liking to planting things since he started taking more and more charge cleaning a house than collecting a paycheck, and his little hobby had not only given him personal enjoyment, it also helped him save money too.

The sun was just rising up, the air was crisp, and the plants glowed in the early morning light. The perfect morning, the one he had always wanted to have.

Beautiful, he thought to himself. Just beautiful.

The Second Scene

Morning at the Kaname Residence

After that he prepared breakfast for the household.

Last night he had already planned to make low-cal veggie omelets, despite protests from his wife.

At this time Madoka or Tatsu should already wake up from all the sounds he made in the kitchen. That morning it was his little boy Tatsu, looking around the dining table with groggy eyes, seeming not to grasp that breakfast had to be cooked first before he got to eat it.

While Tomohisa beat the eggs with cream, the boy would tug at his pants, asking where mama was. Kaname the elder would give his son the duty to wake the sleeping beast, who slumbered in her lair upstairs. Overjoyed from receiving this quest, the boy would make a goofy smile, shouting 'Yay!' before running off to the stairs.

'Well, that takes care of him,' Tomohisa praised himself. A wake up call from their own son should be enough to get Junko up from her hangover-induced slump last night.

The sound of frying eggs on his stove then attracted his daughter Madoka. She ambled towards the dining table in her pajamas, the same groggy look on her face that somehow resembled his wife after a few shots of the hard stuff, before making it to the fridge and rummaging for whatever was inside. She took out a carton of milk which she poured into an empty glass and drank, before making a loud yawn. The drink seemed to have reinvigorated her. It was as if milk for Madoka worked the same way as coffee did for adults.

"Hey there Madoka, good morning," he greeted her, looking for some early-morning small talk.

Half-empty glass of milk still cusped in both hands, she turned her head towards him and made a bright smile. "Good morning papa."

"Just woke up?"

She downed the rest of her milk. "Uh-huh."

"Madoka," He ran a finger between his nose and upper lip. "Mustache."

Her eyes widened and she instinctively wiped her mouth. Finding the white remains of milk on the back of her hand, she chuckled. "Oh, thanks papa."

"You'd better wake up your mom," he told her. "Breakfast is almost ready."

She nodded. "Mmm-hmn, sure."

"Hurry, Tatsu's already gotten there by now. I'll take care of that glass for you, so leave it in the sink."

As he turned his attention again to the vegetable omelet, he heard his daughter running out of the kitchen. He could faintly hear his son upstairs, chuckling, his voice followed by loud grumbling sounds.

Junko will definitely wake up now.

When he was already setting the plates down on the table, all three of them were coming into the kitchen, his wife looking the worst for wear with her disheveled deep pink hair and lines under her eyes. Working in an office everyday did that to a person, an unhealthy way to live he reminded himself. Your complexion goes shallow, your body's resistance goes to the dumps, and not to mention the stress...

How Junko managed to put up with though was an ancient secret. But the fact was that she put up with it, and Tomohisa respected her for that. Hence why he decided to have her eat fresh, healthy stuff for a change. In his opinion, a homemade veggie omelet at home was way better than a croissant and a latte from Starbucks at a noisy office desk.

"And what's this…?" Junko asked as she sat down on the table, staring dubiously at the yellow thing on her plate.

"Vegetable omelets, honey," he told her as she gave Madoka and Tatsu their shares. They smiled and started on their food rabidly. "Thought that we should eat something nice and fresh for a change."

She brought the plate close to her face and inspected the omelet closely, as if the green and red things inside the eggs were foreign contaminants of sorts. Junko wasn't really that big on vegetables in the first place. He would be lucky if he managed to make her take even one bite. "What's in it?"

"All sorts of healthy things," he said with artisanal pride. "Onions, tomatoes, red peppers, I sautéed them all and then made them into this omelet mix with a little cream. Just how you'd like normal omelets."

Madoka looked up at him. "Mmmm, it's good papa!"

Tatsu kept chuckling as he spooned the omelet into his mouth. That should only mean good too, probably.

"Well, if they think it's good… Alright." Junko shook her shoulders and took a deep breath. "Oookay, let's give this baby a whirl then..." Tomohisa observed his wife's features as they bent and twisted somewhat approvingly to the taste of her breakfast.

Junko's was a discerning palate; so meticulous that he had used her as a testbed for many of his culinary experiments. Yesterday it was his take on Minestrone Soup. The day before that, it was Pasta Aglio e Olio. And the day before that it was his own rendition of Western-style Collard Greens. He could always depend on his wife to make out any sort of opinion about his cooking and how he should improve it, but making sure she was healthy with veggies was the real object.

And this morning, his experiment became yet another success; without another word she scarfed it down, leaving nothing on her plate except a desire to fill it with seconds.

At this rate he might be able to make her eat more healthy things, like that bitter green melon recipe he saw the other day…

The Third Scene

'Likewise…'

"Thanks for the breakfast, papa!" His daughter said as she went upstairs to get ready for school.

"More omelet! More omelet!" Tatsu yelled. "Gimme, gimme!"

"I'm going to take a bath now, Tomohisa," his wife said as she put her plate next to the sink for him to clean up. "If anyone calls me, tell them to call back within fifteen minutes, okay?"

He nodded. "Fifteen minutes, got it. What about Okazaki, though?"

When she heard that name, she made a strange face. "That guy?" Okazaki was some sort of coworker she kept complaining about in-between her bouts of whiskey-induced euphoria last night. She fanned a hand by the side of her smirk, as if stopping Tomohisa from doing something. "Eh, tell him I've… already gone out; I don't want to deal with anybody from work now. It'll just ruin my morning."

"Oh, I see." Whoever that guy was, he must have really screwed up something for Junko. Tomohisa wouldn't want to see how that went down. "Alright, no problems. You've already left half an hour ago, so he'll probably have to wait for you at the office then."

She grinned at him and kept at it for a few moments before giving him a light kiss on the cheek. "I can always count on you."

He looked at her and reciprocated with a smile of his own. "Thanks. I appreciate it."

His wife beamed at him again before walking away. As he wiped a plate with his sponge, something came to mind. "By the way, I'll also get your coffee ready before you leave."

Junko said something, and he guessed that it was in the affirmative so that was enough. He eventually finished the dishes and wiped the dining table clean. Tatsu was still begging for more breakfast, but he took care of him with fresh orange juice in a sippy cup. Later both girls emerged in the kitchen again, Madoka wearing her school uniform and Junko in her black office dress. Both girls were going to leave pretty early that morning, so they had time for some orange juice and the coffee his wife treated as an elixir.

He bade both of them goodbye and a safe trip. They went on their way, and he watched them make small talk with each other.

Seeing them like that, mother and daughter getting along in the morning sunlight, it was just like looking at his garden again. It reminded him that being a father was kind of worth it.

Tomohisa then had to get his son to the day care center. His 'big man' had to get bathed, dressed, and ready for his 9:00 stay, so they went through all the basics: he tested Tatsu on how to brush his own teeth ("Try to do it in a circle, not just straight. Really get those teeth sparkling. There we go…"), got him to take a bath on his own ("And make sure to rub behind those ears. Alright, let me do it. You get the loofa behind it like this…"), and assessed his post-mortem potty training ("What do you do with the toilet first?" "Pull the seat up!" "Very good!"). Now that Tatsu was already dressed up in his yellow jacket and blue corduroy pants, Tomohisa was ready to leave when suddenly the house phone rang.

He was still packing his son's lunch into a small backpack when he took it up. "Kaname residence."

"Ah, yes, good morning," It was a male voice, obviously shaken from the first word that came from his mouth. "I'm Okazaki, Production Liason Associate for Y Enterprises. I was wondering if I could speak with Miss Junko Kaname in regards to a Sales Plan on the eleventh..."

So this was the guy Junko kept talking about. He sounded like one of those well-meaning, nervous sorts of guys who never make it past a year in an office. He knew a lot of them in his own office years.

"This is her husband speaking. I'm sorry, but my wife had already left half an hour ago."

And it was now actually the truth. He never thought that he'd actually end up saying it either.

The other line muttered something like, 'Damn it.' He obviously didn't know that he could be heard over the line. Tomohisa could easily imagine Okazaki sweating bullets, rubbing the back of his neck in frustration while thinking some sort of contingency plan. Poor guy.

"Ah, um… is that so?" the other line finally spoke, "Well, I uh, apologize for taking your time, sir..."

"No, no, its fine, it's fine. No need to apologize. In fact, I'm the one who should be sorry because I wasn't able to help you that much." And he really was. "How about… Okay, I can send word to my wife that someone called for her and she can call you back. Would you like that?"

"Uh, ah, no, th-that's fine, Mi-Mister Kaname, you don't need to bother. I will just ah, talk with Mrs. Kaname personally once she arrives at the office…"

"Oh, is that so? Well sure, if that's what you want. No problems then."

"Th-thank you for your time, Mi-Mister Kaname. I… I'm sorry if I disturbed you. I hope that you enjoy the rest of your morning, s-sir..."

"Likewise, Mister Okazaki. Likewise."

They exchanged goodbyes, and he heard faint swearing before the call disconnected.

Tomohisa put back the wireless on its wall rack and shook his head. He couldn't blame the guy. Whoever he was, Junko was definitely going to tear him a new one. He wondered what kind of person his wife was in the office to warrant such fear, and then decided that it was not something he wanted to find out.

Tatsu was already packed up with his teddy-bear backpack, so father and son left their home, father carefully locking front door as they did.

The Fourth Scene

Baby Whitefish and Spinach

The good thing about Tatsu's daycare center was that it only took a pleasant fifteen-minutes of walking to reach it. He just loved how his son would buzz around, gawking at cars at the side of the road and the people who often footed it to work.

The daycare lady was very nice, a woman in her late twenties that Tomohisa often had small talk with, most of the time about cooking. Tatsu usually got along with most of his daycare-mates fine, his own perkiness attracting many friends to himself.

Tomohisa believed that his son was a natural in getting along with people, and he liked to think that Tatsu naturally took after him.

After pledging to come back for his son in the afternoon, he was left alone and free in the outside world, enveloped in a Spring 2011 sunlight. At least physically. Inside his pockets he had his phone, where Junko, Madoka and the daycare lady had him at their beck and call at any time.

From approximately 9:00 AM to 6:00 PM (when Madoka usually arrived from school), Tomohisa Kaname had 9 hours all to himself. In truth, only 3 hours, and those 3 hours always had the tendency to be collapsed to as little as five minutes whenever the daycare lady called and said that Tatsu hit one of his classmates again.

Before he returned home, he dropped by the Kinokuniya Supermarket in Mitakihara. The famous Supermarket chain decided to take advantage of the post-industrial, service-oriented capitalism that engulfed the corporate city, flooding it with high-quality vegetables and expensive household items.

He remembered reading in a book that vegetables from Kinokuniya were fresher for a longer period of time than ordinary veggies. It suggested that they were put into intense training in concentration camps, surrounded by barbed wire and machine-gun nests to be the freshest vegetables they can be. As long as they tasted fine sautéed with a cold beer on the side, he wasn't complaining.

After offloading his groceries at home, Tomohisa vacuumed the living room, wiped all of the countertops in the kitchen, scrubbed the bathtub clean with a toothbrush, watered all the little plants in his garden with meticulous care…

He was consumed by an overwhelming desire to work. He didn't care what sort of work, as long as it got him tired and a little jaded, he would take on anything. Tomohisa harvested some of his baby tomatoes and a little cilantro, making sure that he cut the branches carefully with his scissors and not end up destroying the whole branch…

While doing this, he considered putting a machine gun somewhere around the entrance, surrounding the fences in Concertina wire (barbed wire's sharper, more durable cousin), to train his grassroots veggies into Kinokuniya-grade veggies. All sorts of nonsense tended to get into his mind at this time of day.

At the end of it, it was already a little past 1:00, and he was famished. He boiled some spinach, seasoning it with mirin before mixing it with baby whitefish, a recipe that went with a single bottle of Asahi. He brought it along with his plate to the living room, where he loaded a Blu-Ray of Akira.

Of all the things he could watch, it had to be Akira.

He ate in silence, sipping beer as he watched Neo-Tokyo crumble with in a swathe of bright neon lights. A regular bachelor's life.

When the movie came to the climax between Tetsuo and his old friend, Tomohisa had practically memorized all of the lines, muttering them under his breath with a faint effort to act them all out. Then his mind went towards other places.

The last time he ever watched Akira was probably when he was still a young yuppie in 1997, a Master Bachelor in Economics that wanted to take the offices of Mitakihara by storm. Hocked up by visions of Wall Street and Charlie Sheen bathing in riches and bitches and gold, he packed his bags and moved into a small studio-type apartment in Mitakihara Upper Town, the only place he could ever afford. From there he clawed his way up, from making calls and struggling to get commissions from increasingly-fearful buyers (remember, this was the middle of Japan's 'Lost Decade'. The market had already stagnated to ridiculous levels), he went up to becoming a sales manager, telling brokers and sellers what to push and what not to push all for the sake of making goddamn money.

But it wasn't the market stagnation that got him off the job. It was a little something called 'Madoka'...

A nice memory of a nice time, he supposed. But there was no time like the present.

Tomohisa looked at the bottle in his hand. He'd already finished off his spinach-whitefish concoction, and the thought of having nothing much else for himself in the fridge made him shake his head.

He turned off the Blu-Ray and brought himself to the kitchen, where he washed dishes while his mind floated above himself, preoccupied with past glories. It was almost 2:30, and the wind outside looked nice. He went up to his cupboard and put his hands into a few pots, eventually producing a lighter and a half-empty pack of Lucky Strikes.

In truth he'd already stopped smoking a few years ago. It really was. To him, smoking was the daily consumption of cigarettes. It didn't say anything about the weekly consumption of cigarettes, did it?

In his garden he sat down on the grass, next to the sliding door with his back on the wall. This was how he repolarized his mind towards reality, coming to terms with himself, pretending to accept that the past had already gone and he could only make imitations of it in sudden, intermittent bursts. Was he always this desperate?

He sucked on the cigarette harder, before letting it out in all its glory as a white hazy mess, the skill the Yakuza had made into an art form in most gangster movies.

Back then he would have gone through 2, 5, 10 cigarettes, sometimes a whole pack was needed to handle his job. Nutritional risk aside, he didn't really give a damn. At least then he was actually doing something. High-stress, high-octane virulent stress that would eat a normal person alive, that was the kind of environment he wanted. The kind of environment where he thrived. The slow, strangely peaceful pace his life had taken in the past years was way too bleedingly unrealistic. But what was he supposed to do? Complain? He should have done that when Tatsuya was born, but nooo…

Tomohisa sighed and shook his head. He knew how pathetic he was. A stay-home dad who depended on his wife to make money for the family, a deadbeat who had already let the best of his years go by. You can call him a chauvinist, but Tomohisa honestly believed that it was a man's job to take charge of his family's life, not just sit by the sidelines. He had been feeling this all week. A sort of lethargy that told him, 'Coward!'

He was being unmanned.

But self-pity and Lucky Strikes and Akira weren't going to solve his problems. What was his problem anyway? He questioned himself each any every time. Sure he was a stay-home dad, but look at what he had: a nice life, a beautiful wife, two healthy children, a great house complete with token garden, everything any man could ask for. Why was he still complaining?

Because his discourse always ended with one question: was he just any man?

Then something in his pocket rang. Forgot my lunch. Typical. Pink, blue or vermillion. Clean ashtray. And there he was, falling into the trap. Was there any meaning to all of this?

The Fifth Scene

Water-cooler Talk

The Chicken Cutlet was a bit rushed, but he made sure that it was fully cooked so Junko wouldn't get a stomachache. A vermillion lunch box went into a small carry-all market bag which Tomohisa took to a box-shaped office in Mitakihara's Central Financial District. A homage to Frank Gehry that was dwarfed by all of the glittering skyscrapers, it was a wide and modest design that where people ebbed and flowed out of into the streets. Among the black ties and three-piece suits and black suede shoes, Tomohisa stuck out like a sore thumb with his blue V-Neck T-shirt, khakis and loafers. Despite this, the guards on duty simply let him through.

Surely they wouldn't block off the Sales and Production Manager's husband, would they?

Tomohisa ambled calmly through the grey, tiled corridors. Some employees eyed him, maybe thinking that they had seen him before, and then walked off deciding that they didn't have the time. He rode an elevator packed with men in black suits and holding grey suitcases in perfectly robotic synchronization, and they all stared at his green market bag and lack of an employee badge. But they couldn't be bothered either, and left at the floor below where Tomohisa wanted to go. When he got to the 5th floor, the elevator doors opened to a wide courtyard surrounded by all four sides of Y Enterprises' offices. It was lined with delicately cared-for Linden trees, and plant boxes that were primarily used as ashtrays whenever possible. Outside the building may have seemed like a wide chunk of concrete, glass and steel, but in truth it this courtyard made it hollow.

Just like many other things.

The sun was already in retreat, and the air in the courtyard was cool. At least where he was. The northern side was wrapped in sunlight, so he had to stay in the southern side for shade. Tomohisa took a deep breath, and wondered why he had left this sort of life. The artificial, papery smell of an office never really left his nose. He wanted it. In fact, he craved it sometimes.

He looked around, trying to peer into all the windows inside the little glass lives led by little people. A gofer carrying a pile of paperwork, two clerks talking pointlessly next to a coffee maker , some manager shouting at a hapless rookie, it was as if he was looking at the panorama of his own life.

Funny how things try to show themselves to you after all this time, looking so alluring while all you can remember about them are the beautiful things, never the bad ones.

Eventually, his sights fell down to ground level and he saw a thin man with some files in hand. He wasn't wearing a blazer and his white shirt was disheveled. His necktie looked crooked, and it was as if he had witnessed the end of time all by himself.

The typical Salaryman. Poor office drone who works unpaid overtime and drinks away whatever remains of his free time. At one point, Tomohisa would have been in his shoes, beating the streets with several beepers ringing on his belt, a cellphone to his ear, overloading himself with work. That was what people expected. You worked yourself to death every day because it was the right thing to do. This guy, he wasn't so different.

The salaryman stopped a few feet away from him and faced the courtyard. He yanked a cigarette out of his pocket and tried to light it. Apparently his lighter was the cheap kind, and it refused to spark. After a few more frustrated attempts, he furrowed his brow and sighed. It seemed that he had caught Tomohisa by the edge of his eye, turning to him and putting out a hand. "You have a light?"

Tomohisa instinctively shook out his Zippo. "Here."

"Thanks." The man flicked it and touched the flame to his cigarette. Smoke flowed out of his mouth into a thick gray cloud, instantly evaporating as it made first contact with the air. He then gave back the lighter and silence came between them again.

Tomohisa would have usually made some small talk, but a large bump in the back of his head did not allow him. He didn't like talking to office workers in general. He knew what most of them were made of, courtesy of the many times he had observed himself and his wife.

Was he nervous? Nervous of talking to another office worker again after so many years? The silence was slowly becoming unbearable for him. He had to say something, anything that would come along the lines of, 'Hey, I used to hold a job too. I was useful.'

Fortunately, it was the man that broke the silence. "So uh…" He seemed to consider his words carefully before letting them out of his mouth. "You're waiting for someone?"

Tomohisa explained that his wife forgot her lunch.

"What are you doing here, then?" he asked, a little surprised. "Shouldn't you be at work?"

Immediately a flush of self-awareness came over him and his mouth rolled off the first thing that came to mind. "It's my day off."

The salaryman raised his brows in an 'oh-I-see' kind of fashion and nodded slowly, before flicking off the ashes on his cigarette. "Well… what do you do, then?"

Tomohisa didn't know exactly what this lie would bring him to, but he had to roll with it. "Quarterly analysis for post-sales trends."

Upon hearing those words, the man smirked and shuddered at the same time, as if he had heard some great blasphemy. "…Shit." He shook his head. "That's tough."

He nodded, knowing full well it was. "Yeah… But I manage."

"The bi-quarterly reports must be a real bitch, huh?"

"You said it. Crap doesn't even begin to justify the salary."

He waved his hand. "Eh. What job does, right?"

"You're right about that." A familiar feeling came to Tomohisa as he spoke. This was water-cooler talk, the sort where everybody had to pretend that they were outgoing and open-minded while keeping to themselves. Mutually Assured Deception. He missed this kind of feeling. Made him feel young again. "So, what do you do?"

"Liaison for Production and Sales," he said. "Basically, I'm the guy who tells the factory that the reason we can't sell the product is because it looks like crap."

"Now that's a real tough job. You go back and forth between here and the site?"

"Yeah, and they gave me a car and everything. I don't have any complaints. Pay's good, and the company's set up a small expense account for me too."

Tomohisa whistled. "Hmmm, an expense account. Nice."

"It's a pain to do all the accounting though. Most of it goes to the wife, and unfortunately she's not that good with keeping receipts."

"Heh, agreed. My wife has trouble keeping her bank account in check."

"What does your wife do?"

Tomohisa said something about Public Relations being a good field for career women these days.

"Oh, I see. Must be pretty nice of you then, bringing your wife lunch," he commented. "If this was my day off I'd still be here, working."

"No, usually I'd be at a sushi bar until my phone rings at twelve. This was just an exception."

The salaryman touched his hand to his chin quizzically. "No wonder I think I've seen you there before…"

Tomohisa sniggered. "Yeah, right. There aren't any places like that in Mitakihara."

A sheepish grin came up the side of his face. "There are if you know where to look."

He glanced at him, interested. "Really now?"

"You didn't get this from me but there's this one place that fronts as a party service. Makes really official-looking receipts, so you can write them off as expenses. Good place, great people. Its members only though, reserved for the up-and-up. Hell, I've just heard of it myself. They say that the women are gorgeous though, real showstoppers."

"Real showstoppers…" Tomohisa repeated, letting his thoughts hang around those words for a while. "Would like to spend some time there myself."

"You have kids?" he asked suddenly.

For some reason, a flash of panic came over him, his thoughts quickly connecting his comment with the fact that he already had a wife. "Yeah. Two, why?"

The salaryman took another whiff of his cigarette. "So it's still the same for everybody then, even if you already have kids."

Tomohisa immediately understood. "Well, even if you have kids you don't stop feeling it. Comes to you every once in a while."

"Hah, right. I can see that happening." He looked up. "Just because you have kids doesn't mean that you can just dash the cup into the ground like that."

"Do you have kids?"

"One on the way. Wife's been beating the hell out of me for almost everything, hence the expenses."

"I see..." He crossed his arms. "You have a whole lot ahead of you."

"Yeah, a whole lot ahead of me… Seems kind of a large responsibility sometimes, though."

Tomohisa simply nodded.

The salaryman took a final whiff on the cigarette, and it burned to the very tip of the filter between his two fingers. "So… you have any advice?"

"Advice, huh?" He shrugged. "Not a whole lot, really. Stay decent, keep your job, keep the wife happy, the kids in a decent school…" As these words rolled off his lips, Tomohisa questioned how valid he was to say them. Was he allowed to give such advice? Did he really know how to be a good husband, a good father? Did he really know how to take responsibility?

He wasn't sure. Not at all.

"You have to give up a lot of things, though." Tomohisa didn't know why he added this, but it suddenly came to him from the tangle of thoughts swirling in his mind. "Things you enjoy, most of all. I don't know what you like, but what I liked got in the way. So I had to give it up, no questions. Not that I'm making myself out as some sort of hero; I chose to have kids so I got what was coming to me, I suppose."

The salaryman stared at him for a few moments, his eyes steady, observant. Afterwards, he nodded. "That's what I think will happen to me too. And you're right; we brought this upon ourselves. There's no sense in running away, huh?"

Tomohisa nodded. "No sense at all. You just have to man up."

After a brief period of silence, the salaryman threw his cigarette butt into a rubbish bin. He then shook out his Lucky Strikes and offered them to him.

Tomohisa waved his hand. "I'm good."

He nodded and looked at his watch, looking like he had realized something. "Well, my break's done. Back to the grind, I guess."

Both men shook hands, said that it was nice talking with each other and parted ways. He watched him gather his folders under his arm and walk into the eastern entrance off the courtyard.

Only when the doors shut did Tomohisa realize that he had neglected to take the man's name.

An intense collision was about to commence, some sort of meteor that was set to hit the Earth and render all humanity extinct. Along the entrance was a clear window, some sort of set for a really good stage play. It was along a hall where someone familiar came out.

The salaryman's manager, whoever she was, exploded on him, pointing at him, shouting like crazy, making him spill all of his folders onto the floor in bloody repentance for being late by one minute. 'Yes ma'am, sorry ma'am,' he was probably saying as he kept bowing repeatedly, 'Of course ma'am, I'll clean this up ma'am, it will never happen again ma'am.' A few moments later, and he was gone, retreating into the doors that led into the Sales Department.

The manager kept staring until the doors stopped moving, and disappeared as she walked towards the entrance. The doors opened, and Tomohisa saw Junko.

Epilogue

Smokes

She walked up to him and didn't speak for a while. Her face had aged a few years, her dark pink eyes had lost their glow, and there might have been a few wrinkles here and there. She looked out into the wide expanse of the courtyard, admiring how sharply the afternoon sunlight had solidly split it into light and dark. She went into her pockets, producing a pack of Virginia Slims and a lighter, both pieces she used to make a light. Her husband watched her let the smoke flow between her two red lips, slowly as they formed swirling, exotic flowers that faded in the sunlight.

Tomohisa felt a warm glow come from below his body up to his face, and it made him smile. "You seem stressed."

His wife's face relaxed a little and shrugged. "I manage."

He brought up the market bag. "It's chicken cutlet with vegetable sides."

"Mmmm…" Cigarette sticking out of her mouth, she took out the vermillion lunch box within and stared with craving. "Good, I'm famished." Junko looked up at him. "Thanks for bringing this."

He nodded. "Of course. No problems."

They stood by each other for a few moments, and Tomohisa waited for his wife to finish. When she did, she disposed the butt in the same bin the salaryman did his.

"I'll eat this at my office, then." She returned the lunch back into the bag. "I'd kiss you, but… you know."

"You should really cut down on that smoking of yours," he commented.

She thought about this for a while and then made a quick snigger. "Maybe some other time. Like, if I'm the housewife and you're the breadwinner, then we'll talk."

"Just concerned about your health." He then shrugged. "Eh, at least I tried."

She smiled at him softly. "I know. That's why I can always count on you."

He returned the favor with a smile of his own. "You always do."

"Hah! You're right. I'd be nowhere if you weren't around."

He kept that smile on his face as his wife waved her hand and went back into the entrance.

When the doors closed, he thought of what else he had to do that day: He still had to pick up Tatsuya up from daycare. He still had to make Madoka dinner. He still had to grow up. There was still meaning in all of this.

Author's Notes: Well, that sums it up. Tomohisa gets over his frustration at being a stay-home dad… I guess. I just wanted to know how a man like him can realistically live in his state during the PMMM series, and it interested me to deconstruct some parts of his personality. I don't know if I got it right, but hopefully I hit 'some' marks.

Hmmm, what else? Well, I have another fic written up, but god knows when I'll get that into decent shape any time soon. Also, I'm planning on doing a revision of 'The Worth of Her Sacrifice' to make it more Nihilist-errifc and to get out the (many) kinks out of it, technical and otherwise.

Finally, thanks for reading. And again, reviews will be greatly appreciated… and on second thought, is anybody available for being a Beta Reader? It would really be great to have someone's second opinion before releasing fics, something I plan to do in the early months of 2015. That, and also it will help me decrease the number of literary brain bleach I dish out with every single fic [ o ].