The park is just about a ten minute walk from both our houses. It's actually a pretty large park by Japanese standards, complete with a baseball park nearby where local amateur baseball teams practice day in and day out and a playground for kids. There's also a shallow but large pool where the local pigeons and birds like to hang out. The pigeons got scared by the twins the first time we brought them here, but over the years, it appears that the subsequent generations of pigeons have grown used to our twins' shenanigans and don't think twice about them.
It's a beautiful day outside: the ocean breeze that rolls in from the sea soothes the morning summer heat that warms up the earth, and the blue sky conducts along the puffy white clouds along lazily. It reminds me of our days back at Yokosuka - this is one of the scenes that we'd see. Yuudachi, Shigure, and I used to hang out at the piers with our shoes and socks off and kick the water while we sat at the end of the pier at high tide.
"Kiri-chaaaan, Yuudahachi-chan, Sandachi-chan, don't go too far from us!" Shigure calls out as the kids dance along the clear road that leads to the park. Kirisame, Shigure's daughter and my niece, is eagerly following Yuudahachi as Sandachi leads the pack proudly, running round and round in circles while laughing hysterically like it's the most amount of fun she's ever had.
"Aw, Shigure, just let 'em go, they're having so much fun, poi!" Yuudachi calms Shigure down. "There's nothing around anyway that we need to worry about. C'mon, doesn't that remind you of what we were like before too?"
I glance over at Shigure, who pouts quietly at her sister.
"D-Don't be like that, Yuudachi..." Shigure mumbles. "It's...that's embarrassing..."
"Awww, if that's embarrassin' for you, how'd you even give birth to such a cute daughter like Kiri-chan?" Yuudachi teases Shigure and pokes her cheek, and Shigure blushes even harder and tries to swat at Yuudachi's finger, much to everyone else's amusement. Then, Kirisame toddles over to us with a pretty blue flower and offers it up to her mother.
"Mommy..." Kirisame says so softly that the breeze rolling by is louder than her voice, "this...for you..."
Shigure kneels down and takes the flower from her daughter. "For me, sweetie?"
Kirisame nods shyly, and Yuudahachi walks up behind Kirisame and holds her hand.
"She saw it over there," Yuudahachi points to the grassy side of the road, where there're a lot of flowers soaking up the summer sun. "She said it'd go really good with her mommy."
Shigure's lips break into a moved smile. She sticks it in her hair like a hairpin, much to Kirisame's delight.
"How's that? Does that look good on me?" Shigure asks her daughter, who fervently nods. That's one of the rare times when I see my niece be enthusiastic about something. "Thank you, sweetie..."
As a reward, Shigure puts her hands on Kirisame's head and strokes those hair flaps that she's inherited from her mother, just like how Sandachi got her own hair flaps from her mother's second remodel. Kirisame loves when we stroke her hair laps. Yuudachi and I had to babysit Kirisame once while her parents went away on a shopping trip to get her a surprise present for her birthday, and I spent an entire afternoon sitting in the living room watching TV while stroking Kirisame's hair flaps, and she literally wanted nothing else. Eventually Yuudahachi and Sandachi, and even my own wife, saw what I was doing and dogpiled me, asking me to give them the same treatment too. So if you can imagine me surrounded by three Pois and my niece, and my hands alternating head pats and hair flap strokes, that was basically what happened.
Shigure lets Kirisame go, and she promptly joins the twins and our pets in their little parade down the road while we follow closely behind. Sandachi acts like a train conductor as we walk along like she's seen on television, and the dogs eagerly follow her like she's the alpha dog of the pack.
"Hey, honey," Yuudachi grabs my arm lovingly, "don't you ever wonder sometimes that having kids was something incredible? Like, I never thought we'd have such wonderful children."
I just laugh out loud. "Well, I told you before, I was the kind of guy whose parents always nagged on him to go get married as soon as possible because I was just a good-for-nothing around the house. Hey, Shintaro, you remember, don't you?"
Shintaro grins, remembering. "Yeah...Mom was always like, 'I want to see my grandchildren before I die, at least' like she was straight out of a Korean drama. She did end up getting what she wanted, though, so she can't complain about us anymore."
My brother and I chuckle together. Yuudachi turns to her own sister.
"Shigure, what about you, poi?" Yuudachi tilts her head cutely.
Shigure gives another one of her cute, embarrassed smiles. I can see why my brother fell in love with her, seeing that alone.
"I think it's...surreal," Shigure admits. "Even to this day, I...I sometimes can't believe I'm a mother, that - that we're all parents now. I'm...I feel blessed. Truly blessed..."
"She's not mentioning the part when before we found out Shigure was pregnant, she was all worried about how the child would turn out," my brother teases, much to his wife's chagrin. "She was like, 'oh, what if the child turns out to be rebellious? What if she won't listen to us? What if something happens to her?' She was worrying about so many things before then - ow, ow, ow! Shigure, stop, I give, I give!"
Shigure starts to bop her husband on the side of his arm with the bottom of her fists to make him be quiet.
"Why must you tease me so too, like Colonel did before?!" Shigure whines with a bit of a tear in her eye. "Oh, I can't believe you! I thought Colonel was bad enough, now I must have you making things worse!"
I laugh again at the memories. I used to tease Shigure and Harusame a lot because of their timid personalities, and they'd get mad at me for teasing them. It was all light teasing and done in good humor. I never saw the point in teasing Yuudachi because she was (and still is, to a certain extent) happy-go-lucky and never really got mad over anything. I still manage to tease Yuudachi a bit from time to time, though, if her guard's down.
"But it's all good now, isn't it?" I point out. "Kirisame's the sweetest kid on Planet Earth. I think you shouldn't have anything to worry about when it comes to her, Shigure."
Shigure gives me a thankful smile back. "Thank you, Colonel, but...but if it were not for the twins, I'm not sure...about how I would get her to make friends with others. She's...she's just so timid all the time...I do wish that she was a bit more outgoing like the twins..."
"Oh, don't worry, Shigure, she'll learn! Remember? You used to be really timid around Colonel too, but you got better with people over the years," Yuudachi reminds Shigure. "I'm sure Kiri-chan'll be the same, poi."
"I hope so, too," Shigure agrees. We watch the kids romp around with the dogs and Marisa the cat, rolling around in the grass on the side of the road, screaming and giggling all the while.
About five minutes into our walk to the park, I spy Sandachi and Yuudahachi freeze on their feet. If you've ever seen hamsters sense something and stand up tall and still to listen for audio cues, that's what the twins look like they're doing. Sandachi's ear-like hair flaps twitch and bob, turning like radars trying to pick up a frequency in the air. I'm sure if Yuudahachi had hair flaps, she'd be doing the same thing, too.
"I found the target!" I hear Sandachi yell, "proceeding to investigate the target!"
"Roger that, proceed to investigate target!" Yuudahachi repeats cheerfully, and Kirisame, too, raises her hands in the air very awkwardly, not knowing what's going on. Sandachi dashes down the road towards a few family shops and restaurants that line the road and are popular among the locals around here (the locals include us, too). The dogs and Marisa the cat, sniffing the air, know what's up and dash after the twins in hot pursuit. Watching them, Yuudachi and I laugh at their antics while Shigure and Shintaro stare at us, wondering what's going on.
"Oh, you two don't know yet," I tell them after I'm done laughing, "apparently, the twins found out that they've got a special skill."
"A special skill?" Shigure tilts her head in interest. "What - what could it be? What is their skill?"
I point at the shop that the kids're running towards.
"They can detect doughnuts!" I declare, much to Yuudachi's amusement. Shigure and Shintaro, unable to take me seriously, also break into laughter as well.
"Nooo...that can't be right," my brother smirks while rolling his eyes, "your kids do not have a skill like that!"
"No, I swear they do. My wife can vouch for it," I argue, "because the other day, I brought home some doughnuts and put them in my room without letting the twins know, and somehow, after dinner, when they'd never gone into my room, they both stood up and went straight to my room and brought out the doughnuts and complained to me why I was hogging all the doughnuts to myself. I'm not lying!"
"What an...interesting skill," Shigure giggles. "I wonder if Kiri-chan has a skill like that too...?"
We reach the doughnut shop that I'd bought those doughnuts that I mentioned from earlier, and the kids are already inside. The Furukawas, the family who runs the doughnut shop (it's really a bakery, but doughnuts are their specialty, so everyone just calls the bakery the doughnut shop), know the kids very well and the pets, so when we head inside and greet the Furukawas, the kids are already pressing their faces against the glass displays behind which sit mounds of doughnuts of all kinds and flavors.
"Targets located and discovered!" Sandachi jumps at us triumphantly, and I can almost see a movie effect-like "TA-DA!" pop out over her head. "Sandachi demands payment for a successful raid, poi!"
"Yeah, Tou-san, we want our dough - er, payment!" Yuudahachi also mimics her younger twin.
Meanwhile, Kirisame, having picked out something, toddles over to her mother again and lifts up a small plastic-wrapped cream-filled bread.
"Oh, sweetie, do you want this?" Shigure asks. "I can buy that for you."
But Kirisame shakes her head shyly.
"Um..." she mumbles, pressing the plastic against her mouth, "this...for...for Mommy..."
Shigure can't believe her ears. "E-Eh? For me, sweetie...?"
Kirisame nods harder. "I want - Mommy, you - eat this." She shakes the plastic-wrapped bread at her mother, and Shigure, moved greatly by her own daughter's nosebleed-inducing kindness, smothers her own daughter into her chest in a big hug and then rubs cheeks with her.
Seeing this causes me to put my hand powerfully on my younger brother's shoulder.
"You win this time, Taro-kun," I feign the voice of a defeated yakuza who's swearing revenge, "but next time, my children will prove cuter! Don't think this's over!"
My younger brother just gives me an odd look.
"We're not in an anime, Tora-nii..." he rolls his eyes. "Or maybe you were making some kind of obscure reference to a manzai?"
I frown, pulling my hand away. "C'mon, dude, you totally ruined it."
"What was I supposed to do...?"
"Play it off, geez! My younger brother's the world's smartest nerd, but when it comes to things like this, he's clueless! How can he be a fulfilling father to my cute niece?" I lament dramatically, making my brother bop me on the head.
"Ah, cut it out already, buy your kids what they want already," he advises me.
"Fine, fine," I agree. "Okay, payment is approved! What would'ja like, girls?"
"Pooooooi!" Yuudachi, Yuudahachi, and Sandachi all cheer.
"Wait, Yuudachi, why're you cheering with them too!?"
"Because I want doughnuts too, poi! So buy them for me!"
"YOU HAVE YOUR OWN MONEY! WHAT'S THE MOTHER DOING ASKING FOR ME TO BUY HER DOUGHNUTS!?"
Everyone, including the Furukawas who are tending their bakery, laughs, much to my chagrin, but my family of poi's don't care, for there are doughnuts to be had and eaten.