Ideal Breathing Exercises

by: sonofon

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"Seriously, why do I even bother?" Hikaru moaned in disbelief.

"I'm feeling kind, so I'll take that as a rhetorical question," Renge answered, a smile on her lips, "just be quiet and listen to the instructor."

"Like hell."

Hikaru felt trapped. He always did with Renge. She sucked the life out of him until he became a dry corpse of nothing, withering away from a lack of oxygen. Renge would make a good Grim Reaper, he mused, she really would.

Right now, they were taking breathing classes. Really!

It was one of those childbirth classes that you had to prepay for where an instructor taught you – guess what? – how to breathe. Of course, it was breathing for when you would be delivering a child, which made all the difference in the world, he supposed.

To be deemed a 'good' parent, one had to first successfully bring the child into the world, and to do that, one needed to breathe.

Thus was the premise, and apparently, it made perfect sense to everyone except Hikaru, who was still grumbling about a waste of time, upcoming deadlines, and this and that. And of course, Renge ignored him.

They'd brought the pillows and all the other supplies needed, too. Renge had pretty much bought a pillow store. The ones they used now had a crème color casing, and Hikaru vaguely noticed how they were the only couple to use matching pillowcases and ones that didn't have any sort of stains on it. Commoners, they were surrounded by.

First, they practiced breathing with the woman on the ground. Renge would only lie on her back after much protesting of germs and bacteria, and oh! when was the last time they'd cleaned this place?

Hikaru resorted to roughly shoving her down, prompting the instructor to scold him, "Your wife is pregnant."

Well, duh. Why else were they here?

While Renge practiced breathing, Hikaru practiced timing. He held the stopwatch in his hand and timed how long Renge's breaths were. He became a professional in that two-hour long period. Really, he did.

The idea was that holding your breath to a certain extent and exhaling was going to help you during labor. Or, Hikaru thought, you could just pass out from holding your breath too long. Then when you woke up, the kid was going to be in fifth grade.

That would be, he decided, ideal.

A/N: Part 2 of 3. Read and Review!