Nine months and two weeks later…

"I'm telling you, we should've decided before her birth", Kouhta sighed for the seventeenth time.

"And I'm telling you we were right to wait", Nyu retorted. "After all, we want her advice, don't we?"

"I guess so", Kouhta sighed again. "Okay, so which is better: Yumi or Rikka?"

Nyu put a finger on her chin and gazed into space. Their little baby girl was sleeping in her bassinet, looking like an angel. Of course, both parents knew there would be hell to pay if they did anything that might wake her up. The last time they had woken her, she had cried and cried for so long, her piercing little voice so high and loud, the neighbors had come to complain about the noise in the middle of the night, all dressed up in their horrible striped pajamas. Nyu and Kouhta had tried to calm them down, but unfortunately Nyu had gotten "carried away" because of post pregnancy stress and had begun screaming at them even louder than her child. Strangely, it had caused the baby to suddenly calm down and fall asleep again, while the mother kept yelling at the neighbors –and vice versa. Kouhta had gotten a bit annoyed at that and then they had one of their fights in front of the neighbors. But nothing ever really got out of hand. They didn't get crazy with fury. They loved each other way too much for that.

The baby had small, white horns on the top of her head, exactly like her mother. Her face also looked like the spit image of Nyu, except that her hair was pitch black like Kouhta's. Her eyes changed colors: when she was happy, her eyes were bright pink; when she begun to get annoyed, her eyes became dark blue. The parents then knew that the screaming part was not far off. The only solution to calm her down then would be to sing Lilium to the child. The melody would appease her like a lullaby.

"I think Yumi is better", Nyu finally declared.

"But Rikka's way more poetic!"

"So? Do we want our little Yumi to be a poet when she grows up?"

"She's not Yumi and hell no, I certainly don't want her to become a poet later! Poets don't get paid a penny in their lives!"

"Exactly! That's why I say we should go with YUMI!"

"RIKKA!"

"YUMI!"

"RIKKA!"

Nyu and Kouhta looked at one another, then again at Yumi/Rikka. She looked so peaceful, so perfect in every detail. Her face, so familiar, so reassuring… It reminded Kouhta of his childhood, and particularly of a very, very special friend he had had then…

"Kaede", he whispered suddenly.

Nyu blinked. "What did you say?"

"What about Kaede?" Kouhta grinned. "She looks like you so much, it would be better to call her Nyu, but that would be daft since you have the same name. So what about Kaede then?"

Nyu hesitated a while, then asked suspiciously: "why Kaede?"

Kouhta pressed his forehead lightly to hers, a simple gesture that meant so much more for the two of them.

"Kaede was my childhood friend", he said softly. "And she was probably the best friend I ever had. And now she's my wife, the person I've always dreamed her to be for me. She's you. You are Kaede, and you are Nyu. Sometimes you're mixed together and it's quite freaky, but I love you all the same. You are not two different people; you are one and only person, and I love you. You were my childhood best friend. You made me feel better when I felt down. You still do. I want our baby to do the same one day for some very, very lucky guy. That's why I want her to have the same name as you. It's lucky you have two names. Nyu is already taken, so I'll just go for Kaede."

Kouhta paused for a short while, then took his forehead off of his wife's.

"So what d'you think?" he asked.

Nyu nodded and smiled. A smile Kouhta knew well. A smile he had first seen on Kaede's face, when they were splashing each other with the lake water, on that very hot day, after they went to the zoo.

"Kaede sounds good."

Kouhta's smile widened. So did Nyu's.

"Okay. So it's Kaede then."

"Yes. Kaede."

Kouhta kissed Nyu lightly on the lips, then looked at Kaede, the newly-named little baby girl.

"Should I?" he asked his wife.

She nodded.

"You have to. It's dinner time. She can't miss her meal."

Kouhta took a deep breath. "Okay, then. Wish me luck."

"Good luck, hubby", Nyu chuckled.

"Thanks. I'm gonna need it this time."

In fact, he did need a lot of luck. Unfortunately, all the luck didn't help him one bit. What had to happen happened: Kaede woke up suddenly, her eyes widened, she started crying, sobbing, then screaming. The neighbors came to complain again. Kouhta suggested they all went back to their own homes and did what they could to calm the baby down, but Nyu disagreed. She ordered Kouhta to go into the bedroom and sing Lilium to young Kaede (it didn't matter how badly he sang it, the melody always worked somehow) while she "settled some scores" with the neighbors.

So Kouhta took little Kaede in his arms and went into the bedroom. He sat down on the edge of the mattress. He began singing Lilium. To say the least of it, he wasn't the best singer in the world –but his daughter seemed to like hearing the sound of his voice combined with the screaming voice of her mother, for she giggled once, yawned a few times and closed her eyes. Kouhta noticed that her breathing had slowed down, and that her eyelids were fluttering.

"She's dreaming… Sweet dreams, my lovely baby girl. I can't even begin to tell you how much your mother and I love you. We've waited for you so long… But you were worth it, Kaede. You're everything we'd always expected. Well, maybe not EVERYTHING, since we expected you to have your mother's pink hair, but it doesn't matter. You're exactly like your mommy Nyu, Kaede. You remind me of her when she was playing with me in the mountains, when we were still very young children. I'm not going to hide the truth from you; you'd know one day anyway. Your mother… she did some nasty stuff when she was younger. She killed many people… only it wasn't her. I swear, it wasn't her. I didn't understand it at the time, but now I do. And you will, one day too, maybe soon or when you're much older, I don't have a clue, but you will understand one day. It wasn't her, so you don't need to be mad at her. She's done nothing wrong and we love her. You can hear her screaming right now, yelling at the neighbors because they were complaining about you. She's defending you. She's defending us. She's brave and naïve and sweet and the most wonderful person I have ever met and will ever meet. You're so lucky to have a mother like her, you have no idea. She made you from scratch, and she's going to protect you with every beating of her heart. She's going to be the best mother in the world to you."

Kouhta paused a while, looking at the sweet little face of Kaede. She was still asleep and calm –for now. She could wake up at any moment, he knew that. He decided he'd better finish what he had to say before Kaede opened her eyes and all hell broke loose.

"And I'll try to be the best father you can have, but I'm not promising anything", he finished jokingly, rocking the baby to and fro.

Nyu came into the room at that moment.

"Hi", she said, a wide grin spread on her face. "Dinner's ready! Kouhta, please be a sweetheart and wake her up", she added in a voice too honey-sweet to be sincere. "I have to go set the plates on the table. Meet you in a minute."

And she huffed out in a hurry before Kouhta could protest.

He looked at the baby again. So much had happened since the lighthouse incident… He had married Nyu and they had had a beautiful baby girl together. They had decided to call her Kaede, a clear proof that they hadn't forgotten the past and the mistakes and the pain, but that they had gradually accepted it. Indeed, Nyu's nightmares had stopped days after Kaede's birth, along with Kouhta's flashbacks.

The scars were still here. They didn't hurt, but they were there. They were there, but they didn't hurt. It was acceptance, not forgetting. Now, they both knew that forgetting was impossible and would be worse than seeing images of the past all the time. Acceptance had come, and over time they had forgiven each other for their past mistakes. Time heals all wounds. When a big ugly scar first appears, it is dark and disgusting. Over time, it becomes clearer and cleaner-looking. And indeed, the scars that they had caused each other were getting clearer and clearer. And it was partly thanks to Kaede.