tw: blood, physical violence, mental breakdowns
As easy as it would have been for both of them to use the other's problems to fall completely apart, there were two reasons why they couldn't afford to do that: Tsukia and Luka. One was the light of their lives, the brightest star in the universe, and the other was a child so dependent on them that neglecting themselves hurt him more than anything else. It was hard to keep pulling herself back up when Kaito was dragging her down with his nightmares and moments of blacking out and panicking he was back on the space station with a literal corpse, but Maki had made the choice to stay as strong as she could until he was managing his problems better. Once he was less unstable, then she could afford to slip here and there.
They began to drag each other down, though, when she found herself unable to sleep through the night because he'd taken to grabbing her, to holding her tightly and clutching her hair, her hands, her face. Going without sleep would've been bad enough, but to begin to feel like she was back in that dressing room, with a man's hand pulling her hair, or back in the hospital bed with a mask over her face, she was stuck dealing with the floodgates opening on those memories she'd been trying so hard to finally forget. Kaito couldn't help it that he was causing her that sort of pain, he was delusional when it was happening and he wouldn't have been doing it otherwise, but the truth was that he was doing it and it was harming her every time it happened.
By the time it was a month post-return, he may have physically recovered from the ordeal but mentally he was as broken as he was the day he'd come back, and she was right there with him. It had become far too easy to put on the façade of everything being okay to fool everyone else, especially as Maki really was doing everything she could to try and halt the process of her mental illness spiraling out of control. She was taking her medication, she was going to her appointments, she was just stuck living with someone who wasn't doing anything to help their own mental state and she couldn't fight things when it was her husband causing them. "I promise I'm fine, Maki Roll," he told her as they sat at their little dining room table one morning, the house quiet as Tsukia wasn't home (she was at school, somewhere she hated being and usually didn't end up going). "I'm just goin' through a rough patch, you know how it is."
"I do know how it is, but I worry about you. You're not yourself anymore." The same could be said for her, living the shell of a life she'd already escaped once, but Maki didn't want to make things about herself. "You need to talk to someone about this. Someone who isn't me."
"Yeah? Who do you suggest? I know that I've got all these ears wanting to hear me talk but my mouth's not going to do it. I'm fine." He was aware of his nightly outbursts, he knew that he was waking her up from fitful sleep by calling out another man's name, but he was actively choosing to ignore it for the sake of looking like he was stable. "I'm not going to talk to someone about something that's not that big of a problem, sorry."
Maki wanted to tell him that it was a problem, but her refusal to make it about herself reared its ugly head. He was right, he wasn't going to talk about the bits that were the most problematic because they weren't happening while he was awake and alert, and because they were relegated to while he was sleeping it wasn't like anyone else would know they were happening. "That's fine, I'll just start sleeping in Tsukia's room or something until you get it sorted out. I'm sure there's enough room in her bed for me to crash there."
"I mean, you're definitely small enough to make it work, but are you sure that's the way we want to handle this? Can't you go get help with this, since it's you that's bothered by whatever I'm doing?" Kaito seemed to be genuinely suggesting for the person who'd been doing nothing but go to appointments to try and stabilize her mental state for years to continue doing what she already was doing, and his suggestion rubbed her the wrong way.
In fact, it was just bothersome enough that she stood up from her seat and headed for the door, sliding her shoes back on and getting the keys to their car on her way out. "I'm going to go somewhere that isn't here," she said, malice in her voice as she felt nothing but rage at how he was pretending that he couldn't have any problems. "Make sure you don't hurt yourself while I'm gone, and make sure Luka gets out of the bedroom."
She slammed the door on the house without him giving her any sort of rebuttal, strange but not unusual given that he was most likely stunned speechless at how she'd quickly decided to leave. But it wasn't a quick decision, it was one that she'd been considering for days upon days and finally reached the level of anger needed to act on it. She loved Kaito, he'd been her first and true love and that would never change, but she couldn't sit around and let him keep dragging her down under the water when she'd worked so hard to stay afloat. Her hands were shaky as she started driving around town, not going anywhere in specific but rather just getting out of the house—but when she ended up outside of the Saihara house she knew that she was looking for help wherever she could find it.
Her situation was different than Kaito's, in that she knew exactly what was causing it, how she needed to treat it, and what she could do to escape it. For over six years she'd been holding in the truth of the situation that had caused her so much pain, and she was beginning to consider the fact that perhaps by letting go of the baggage she still held, she could allow herself to better escape from the cycle she found herself in. Telling Kaede the exact, honest truth of what had happened that night in her dressing room would be a start, and from there she could find the strength to tell Kaito, she was certain. And once she told him, perhaps he'd see how hard that was for her and realize that he wasn't going to get better unless he started talking out his problem, and he could grow from there.
The world had funny ways of preventing plans from going the way they were meant to, as it proved time and time again, and the first sign that this decision wasn't going to work out as intended was that Maki was the only one there at the house, everyone else out for the day for various reasons. She couldn't exactly tell Kaede something if she wasn't there to hear it, and with a lack of closure but with a newfound sense of direction Maki headed back to her own home, retracing the steps she'd taken when she stormed out but with a completely different mindset on the matter.
What she found waiting for her at the house was Kaito, sitting in the middle of the floor with Luka held tightly in his arms, the boy somewhat blue in the face as Kaito was screaming his father's name at him, tears cascading down his cheeks. "Holy shit, Kaito, let go of him right now!" she bellowed, throwing the keys from her hand and lunging to pry his hands off of Luka, which was resisted entirely.
"No, you're not gonna take him from me, he doesn't deserve to be cast out like you're gonna do to him! I'm gonna make sure he makes it home!" It was clear that Kaito was trapped in one of his nightmares, a flashback to what he'd endured on the space station, and Maki knew if she didn't act fast enough he would have the blood of an innocent boy on his hands. She was pleading with him to let go, to stop strangling Luka like he was, but he insisted that it was a corpse in his arms, something he was protecting with all his strength.
Every second was precious, with how the boy was clearly struggling to breathe given how he was being held, but because he couldn't fight back to prove he wasn't his dead father it was up to Maki to save him. She leaned back from the situation for a split second, before giving up on prying Kaito's hands off of Luka and instead choosing to try breaking the illusion he'd gotten trapped in by throwing her lips onto his, forcing him to focus on kissing her rather than the nightmare he was living. Watching him come back to reality hurt, but what hurt more was seeing the absolute regret in his eyes when he saw what he'd done to Luka, who was still wheezing and gasping, even without the hands and arms wrapped around him.
"I…I didn't know I was holding him," Kaito admitted once he'd found it within himself to talk about what he'd just been a part of. "I wasn't here, I was back up in space with the guys, and they were fighting me and I just…I failed him, Maki Roll. I brought him back where he belonged but I didn't save his life."
"And you almost killed his son over it," she replied, her attention having moved to making sure that Luka wasn't hurt thanks to what had happened. She was aware that guilting Kaito wouldn't end well for either of them, but she was shaken by what she'd seen and was worried about the child's safety. "But you're fine, there's nothing wrong, I'm overreacting when I say that you've got serious problems that you're taking out on us. What's next, I'm going to walk into Tsukia's room one night to see you choking her out?"
"Why would you think I'd do that?" He paused, eyes falling onto Luka and realizing that she thought he'd do that because he'd just done it to the other child in their care. There was a moment where he attempted to defend himself from her accusation, but the fact that she was right and that it was possible he would do that remained true no matter how many different ways he tried spinning what happened. If he fell into another trance, there was no guarantee he wouldn't bring his hands to anyone, and the shame of that truth sank into his heart, rendering him unable to speak on the matter.
She, however, still could speak and wasn't done working through her anger. "I'm not leaving you alone with either of them until I know you're getting help, but since that's never going to happen I guess that means they're always with me now, huh?" It was like she was spitting pure venom at him, her attention focused more on making sure that Luka was going to remember how to breathe than being gentle with Kaito's feelings. "But don't just assume I'm going to let you walk out on this one, nope. I'm not giving up on you, even if you're refusing to help yourself."
"I'll get help, I promise! I can't lose any of you, not like this!" Kaito threw his hands to the sides of his face, clutching his head almost as tightly as he'd been holding Luka before. "I just didn't…I thought that…getting help's the weak way out and I was gonna power through this, I thought I could do it!"
Even though she knew he was talking to try and defend himself from what she'd seen, Maki felt that every word he added was only digging him a deeper hole, and by making that comment he'd completely lost her right then. "Stay away from us until you admit you're weak and get help," she slowly, angrily said, picking Luka up and walking with him into the bedroom, setting him down to lock the door behind her. She could hear him banging on the door, asking her to open it and talk through things with her, but she was so lost in her anger that she wasn't going to budge on keeping him out.
The only times that day she played friendly with him were when Tsukia was around after she was done with school, but if their daughter wasn't within earshot she wasn't saying a word to him, even though he'd shoot her begging glances and would plead for her to talk. She felt so personally attacked by him saying that getting help was weak, when she'd needed more help than she'd ever imagined to pull her out of her dark places, something that he knew to be true. But even if she was beyond furious with him right in the moment, she knew that dragging Tsukia into yet another one of their problems wasn't the right way to handle things—even if, by dragging Luka's bed into her little room that night, the girl was already aware something bad was happening between her parents.
Over the following days, the tensions cooled in the house, although there were two constants that Maki held everything to. One was that no one else, outside of them, were to know about what she'd walked into, no matter how much it was eating at her to get her own problem off her chest with someone (because she knew the moment she opened up about one thing, everything else would follow). The other was that she could not, and would not, leave either child alone in a room with Kaito for so much as a minute, just in case he was masking being in a fragile mental state. Neither of them were easy for her, and she could feel herself beginning to lose her footing on her own mentality, but until she heard him tell her he was getting the help she needed she couldn't back down on either.
Just like always, right when Maki felt she was getting the upper hand on the world around her, the plans she made came crashing to the ground. This time, it came one morning when she woke up, curled up alone in Tsukia's bed where she'd been sleeping to keep herself safe from Kaito's vicious grasp. It was beyond strange for the little girl to not be laying next to her so early in the day, when she typically was pretending to stay asleep just to try and stay home from school, and the absence was enough to put Maki into an immediate panic.
Her mind racing with the possibilities of what could have happened, she got out of the bed and went to check the first place she feared her daughter might have gone—to her father's side, looking for his company when she'd been denied it. The master bedroom was quiet, Kaito still fast asleep with no sign of anyone around him, and as much as it made Maki's heart pang to see her side of the bed completely undisturbed she knew she couldn't return to it until he made good on his word. In that moment she had something more important to be worrying with, and so she went to check the next place that Tsukia going seemed likely.
The bathroom door was mostly closed and the light was on inside when she got there, and a sense of relief came over Maki when she knocked and she heard her daughter's little voice inside saying she was there. "You scared me for a minute," she started telling her, pushing the door open, "because I thought that—" Her words were replaced with a scream as she saw the state Tsukia was in, sitting on her hands and knees on the bathroom floor.
Blood. It was nothing but blood dribbling down the girl's mouth and chin, pooling on the rug beneath her face. "Mommy, I…I'm sick," Tsukia said, her voice sounding less like she was actively bleeding out of her mouth and more like she was having a good time. "I woke up and my tummy felt bad and I came in and I got sick and now there's blood."
Swallowing down the feeling of herself getting sick, Maki got down more on the girl's level and said, "Y-yeah, there sure is blood, isn't there? You didn't do anything else besides come in here and get sick, right?"
The girl nodded, before she slumped forward, her whole body working with her as she threw up on the floor, the contents almost exclusively blood. When she finished, she looked up at her mother with wide, scared eyes that shone just like her father's when he'd been looking for forgiveness. "I don't like this, Mommy. Can you make it stop?"
"I can try, but I…" Maki didn't want to tell the girl that she had no idea what to do in order to make that happen. She knew that taking her to a doctor was the only option she had, but there were decisions that had to be made before that; she couldn't exactly grab Tsukia and run out the door with her, leaving Kaito once again in charge of watching Luka. But she didn't have much of a choice for anything else, as time was precious and she didn't have the slightest clue as to what was wrong with the girl. "Here, go get a bag or something in case you need to throw up again, we'll go get this looked at."
Tsukia was absolutely shaking when she got to her feet, her whole body tremoring like she was about to collapse and start seizing on the floor. She remained strong, though, following her mother's word and heading out to the kitchen to find an empty trash bag, while Maki was left asking herself what to do about the mess there in the bathroom, let alone what to do about the others at the house. It was an impossible decision, and she knew that no matter what she chose something would go wrong, so she had to prioritize her daughter's health above everything and everyone else and focus solely on getting her where she needed to go.
That didn't stop her from going back into her own bedroom and, while changing into more appropriate clothes to leave the house in, choosing to slam ever drawer and door she could to get Kaito to wake up. He looked to have at least woken up a little by the time she was ready to go, and in the steadiest, most serious voice she could put on she told him, "Our child woke up incredibly sick and I'm taking her to get looked at, if I find out you laid even a finger on Luka while we're gone there's going to be trouble." She could hear Kaito's half-awake attempt to understand what she was saying, but she didn't have the time to wait around to make sure he was coherent enough to have processed it all.
With her mind set on her decision she grabbed the keys, lifted Tsukia up to carry her so she wasn't straining herself, and slid her shoes on as she left the house, breaking several laws as she got over to the local walk-in clinic as fast as she could. If it were an incident without blood, they could have expected to sit in the waiting area upon entry, but the nurse at the desk saw the blood running from the corners of the girl's mouth and got them checked in as fast as possible, citing the biohazard she could become if she got the blood anywhere in the waiting room. The time they spent in that tiny exam room felt like hours dragging on before they were seen by anyone, Tsukia laying on her side on the table, the bag she'd brought next to her, collecting more and more blood every time she started heaving. To see her daughter in such a state made Maki feel horrible, and she was trying her best to look like she was keeping herself together as they waited.
Eventually, a different nurse entered the room and began the initial parts of the exam, getting the girl's height and weight, as well as her vitals and finding out what was going on. On a typical doctor's visit, they always got an earful about how she was in the bottom percentile for her age in terms of weight, and fairly close to it in terms of height, but this nurse was more rightfully concerned with the blood issue than anything else. While they were in there with that nurse, Maki's phone began buzzing in her pocket, somewhere she'd honestly not realized she'd put it, and when she checked it she saw that it was Kaito trying to call her. To answer the call she'd have to step out of the room, and she couldn't leave Tsukia's side right then, so she ignored the call and sent him a message explaining where they were and what was going on.
Given the warning she'd made before they'd left, Maki completely expected that to be the end of things, but when Kaito came into the room before the doctor themselves did, she was caught completely by surprise. "I was callin' you to tell you that I'd gotten Kirumi to come over to watch Luka for me so I could be here with you," he explained, standing beside the exam table so that he could stroke Tsukia's hair. "You know that I'd do anything for you both, and when you told me earlier that she was sick I thought you meant a cough or a fever, not whatever any of this is."
"I figured you'd be more interested in going back to sleep than dealing with this," Maki replied, watching the exact placement of both of his hands at all times. "We're still waiting to know what's going on, so you could've stayed home."
"What kind of dad would I be if I chose to stay home and sleep over being here for my baby girl when she needs it?" He sounded offended at Maki's statement, but he had to have understood that she was speaking out of a mindset of protecting the girl from him. "I'm not leaving her side until we know what's happening to her. Which I, uh, I'm sure I could make a guess or two but we're gonna hope that—"
Even though she trusted Tsukia's word on the matter, hearing Kaito say that he could guess what happened made Maki interrupt him with, "That this wasn't caused by you strangling her? Yeah, me too."
"—whoa there, Maki Roll! That's not where I was goin' with that at all!" Kaito sounded hurt, offended that she'd jumped to that conclusion right then, and when she saw the pain in his eyes over the situation she regretted doing it. "I was just…damn, I don't even know how to say it without comin' off as a complete idiot, but it sure wasn't anything like that!"
"Mommy, Daddy, please be nice," Tsukia whined, her little body curling up on the table as she clearly was fighting off the urge to vomit once more. "I don't wanna hear you fight."
"I suppose I can be nice, for her sake." Maki's initial reaction to what Kaito had said was going to be to call him an idiot anyway, but now that she knew that Tsukia did not want to hear a word of it she decided to play nice. "What is there that you could know about this sort of thing that could tell you what's going on? You secretly hiding something?"
He tensed up at her accusation, but slowly let his shoulders sink, his head turned away from her so she couldn't see whatever look he had in his eyes. "It's not much of a secret, it's just that I've been through something like this before. Still go through it sometimes, depends on the weather and how much water I've had, but I'm usually good about swallowin' it down and going on with my business. It's made me a pro at hidin' hangovers, or at least, it used to, back before I started getting bad ones."
"Hold on, you're telling me that you've been through this before?" For as long as she'd known Kaito, since they were dumb teenagers doing reckless things and trying not to ruin their futures, she'd known him to be a strong, able-bodied person, and even when he'd fallen into his mentally unstable state he was still physically capable. Hearing him talk about dealing with something similar to the complete weakness that Tsukia was going through was something that just did not make sense to Maki, and she wasn't going to simply take what he said at face value. "I don't believe it, I'd have to have known by now. We've been married how long? Known each other how long?"
"It's not exactly something I wanted people knowing, since it's not like the space program would take in a guy who's known for throwing up blood at random." Kaito went to scratch the back of his head but found himself distracted at the touch of his unshaven cheek, rubbing his hand up and down over his jawline. "I guess now that I'm not doin' that sort of thing anymore I can come clean about this, but I didn't expect do be baring that kind of a secret in a place like this."
"Better than the secrets I've got to bare to you," Maki replied, her eyes finally finding a new place to rest that wasn't watching her husband's hands, but rather watching his facial expression. She knew what saying that to him was going to cause, she knew that she was taking a step she could never undo—and yet, when she spoke next with him curiously looking at her, what she said was not the secret her heart was yearning to share. "I've seen Tsukia like this before, sort of. It wasn't blood she was puking that time, it was mostly water, but I've seen her like this."
"Why would she have been throwing up water?"
"'Cause I almost drowned," the girl answered, barely aware that the question wasn't meant to be answered by herself. "I fell into a fountain and Mommy said not to tell you, except now she's telling you."
Exactly as Maki had predicted, Kaito's facial expression radically changed at that news being delivered to him. First it was shock, then trying to figure out when it could have happened, then a sense of understanding in his saddened eyes. "This was why you guys were gone so long that night at the space dinner, I bet. That's the only place I can think of that's got a fountain that she could fall into."
"That would be right, and it was a complete accident and I felt horrible about it. I just…never thought that I'd have to see her anywhere close to like that again, and now that we're here it's all I can think about." He'd taken it better than she'd expected him to, going silent and just nodding in understanding with what she was saying, but Maki knew that a lot of his silence came with their current situation, not with what she'd told him. They would always be able to talk it out further once they were back home, once things were looking a lot better than they currently were.
The doctor came in not long after that, finding the family waiting quietly for his appearance, and he began asking a lot of the same questions that the nurse had posed before. With Kaito and his personal experience with the particular issue that seemed to be ailing the girl, the answers that were given were a lot clearer, and the doctor was able to come up with some quick solution to the problem, not a permanent fix but enough to get them by until they could go to a specialist for the issue. Knowing that there was a way to stop things made Maki feel better about the situation, and the moment that the medication the doctor gave Tsukia kicked in, seeing her brighten up and not look as sickly was even more soothing.
Once they knew what they needed to do to keep the girl from getting sick like that again, they were allowed to leave, and it was while they were headed to the car that Maki realized that she had no idea how Kaito had gotten there in the first place. He couldn't help but chuckle when she asked him about it. "Oh, yeah, Kirumi had a job she was working so she came by, got me and Luka, brought me here, and took him with her. She said to just let her know whenever you were ready for him back."
"That's really nice of her to do that, but I'm sure she can handle watching him a bit longer than we were actually here." She didn't explain why she said that until they were home and Tsukia was laying in her bed, trying to rest after the crazy start to the day she'd had, after the follow-up appointment for the girl was made for the next day and they'd both agreed to go to it. They were in their room, Kaito sitting on the bed and Maki standing by the door, listening just in case she heard any cries from the other room, but after she'd heard nothing for long enough she went and joined him on the bed, laying so that her head was resting in his lap and she was looking up at him.
That was when she finally let the burden of over six years off of her chest, dropping it on him without prefacing it with anything more than here's why I wanted to be alone longer, words that he may have thought were leading towards something more risqué when he first heard them. She told him the extent of her involvement in her own brutal attack, how she'd known that they were going to be there but she went into the dressing room anyway, how it would have been her or Kaede and she let herself take the attack to save her friend, how she'd grappled with that choice ever since she'd woken up in that hospital bed with him there at her side. She wasn't sure when she started crying, but when she began tearing up she could see him above her doing the same, and by the time she'd finished getting everything out in the open he had leaned onto her, his whole body shaking as he sobbed.
"Maki Roll, if…if you'd let me know this sooner it wouldn't have been so bad," he said, his voice choppy from crying. "None of it would've been, for you or for me. I kept blamin' myself about it, thinking that I should've gone with you, or made you not go, but you went to protect Kaede and I would've wanted to do that too, you know? You didn't have to keep this all on yourself."
"I protected Kaede and it almost cost me my life, and Tsukia hers, and you think I wanted you to know that? I thought you'd blame me for us almost dying." Her scarred hand had idly tracked to where it had been trying to cover her when she'd been stabbed, the dark wounds lining up through her shirt. "I'm just telling you this now so that my mental health bullshit works itself out, I'm tired of slipping and I need you to know that carrying burdens isn't the way to solve any problems."
It was a two-pronged point she was making, and she hoped that both ends would pierce his heart the way she intended for them. One side was her commenting on the secret he'd been holding about what they'd seen their daughter going through, the other side was her once again reminding him that he needed help with the problems he was facing. He lay over her for a while, collecting himself from the crying he'd been doing, but when he sat up there was determination in his eyes, a sense of direction that she knew he needed. "You're right, it's time to stop beating around the bush and just jump into the help I need," he decided, giving a nod at his own words. "From here on, the Momota family isn't going to keep secrets, we're gonna own our choices and make the best ones we can for ourselves!" His proclamation came with another silence, where she couldn't help but smile and burst back into tears, and he grabbed her hands in his own and held them tightly as he asked, "Hey, uh, do you think you can get me in with your doctor, since they've done such a good job fixing your head?"
The road to recovering from everything that they'd been through was dark and took wild curves backwards to places they'd already been, but once they were on the straight path they seemed to both make leaps and bounds in the right direction. Maki had been right about her problem relating back to keeping the truth secret for so long, and once she cleared the air with Kaito she rarely found herself slipping down into her bad places. He continued having moments of breaking down for a while, but once he'd found a doctor that worked for him and got himself taken care of he was beginning to get back to the man he'd been before that ill-fated space mission.
They couldn't just worry about themselves, though, not when Tsukia had problems of her own that she was facing. While it would have been easier for her to be told that she had a minor problem that would fix itself over time, she was given a diagnosis of a chest infection that had gone completely off the rails in terms of how it was manifesting itself in her lungs. At first Maki thought she was to blame for it, given that she'd never told any medical professionals about her near-drowning experience, but when she was assured that it had nothing to do with that she was able to feel a bit better. It still stung that their little fighter of a daughter had yet another issue to tackle, but if anyone was going to push past it with zero problems it would be Tsukia. She was still sickly, still sputtering up blood at times, but the prognosis was rather positive when it came to that coming to an end at some point. All she had to do was take a whole course of medications, go to what felt like five appointments a week, and rest her tired body until it healed.
That made for a busy schedule for the family, between both parents needing to go to appointments of their own and her needing one (or both) of them to go with her to hers. As there wasn't much else going on in their lives, they made it work without many issues, the worst part always being needing to drag Luka with them because he was their responsibility, not the responsibility of their friends. He didn't do anything except lay around quietly, which made him being present almost forgettable, until another parent in the waiting room at the children's clinic noticed him and asked Maki and Kaito if she could see him for a moment. "He's, uh, not really big on strangers," Kaito started, but when Maki punched him in the thigh for his response he yelped, getting Tsukia to laugh and the other parent to raise an eyebrow. "I mean, I guess you can go for it."
"I've seen him in here a few times and I…" The parent picked Luka up and sat him flat on his bottom in one of the chairs, the boy slumping to one side but not falling forward. In his new position, he slowly looked around the room, eyes squinted from the light. "I've been wondering if he would react well to sitting like this. Have you thought of investing in a wheelchair for him, so he can sit and see the world?"
"A wheelchair? Can't say that we have." Maki looked at Kaito, before they both were looking at Luka and how peaceful he looked even if he was confused at what was going on around him. Tsukia got out of her chair and knelt down in front of his, waving her hands in his face and chattering at him to try and get any response, and the boy seemed to actually notice that she was there. "I think it'd be worth a shot, but what do you think, Kaito?"
Watching how, for the first time, it looked like his daughter was actually getting to interact with the boy, Kaito replied, "If he actually sits in it and keeps acting like this, I think it'd be great for him! Thanks for the idea, Mr…?"
The man shook his head, walking towards the door to go back towards the actual offices. "My name isn't important, just knowing that the boy's going to get a new lease on life is what matters here. I've got just the chair for you to start with, I'll make sure who you're here to see has it waiting for you." Even though they both started calling for him to say his name, the man refused and left the waiting room, leaving them there with the two kids meeting each other eye-to-eye and enjoying it.
The situation began perfect sense when they got to go back to see Tsukia's doctor, and she had a lightly-used wheelchair in the room with her. She explained that the man was a parent of a child who had been born with multiple disabilities that had left him unable to do anything on his own, and they had just recently made the call to put the child into a care home to live out the rest of his days. When they asked her for his name, she shook her head and said that she'd been given permission to explain why they were being given the gift, but that was all she could do. "Think of him as another angel watching over your Luka," she said, "one that may have been sent to him by his father, no less."
"Wouldn't that be something," Maki muttered, while Kaito worked on getting Luka sitting in the chair as well as trying to figure out how it worked for himself. The wheelchair was motorized, with a little control panel on one armrest that looked like it was disabled for use, and while the doctor was spending time with her patient, he was using that same time trying to get the panel to turn on. It didn't work, he made zero progress on it the whole time they were there, but the chair still moved if it was pushed and that already made it easier to move it out of the room and out to the parking lot outside the building.
There was the issue of transporting it back to their house, but before they even considered doing that they had to see if it was even worth taking it with them. That resulted in calling up the most tech-savvy person they knew to come meet them over at the clinic, and when Miu showed up she seemed beyond excited to get to tinker with the chair. In fact, she was so excited about it that, after giving them both an earful of crude remarks as well as a couple cheek-pinches for Tsukia, she offered to take the chair home with her and bring it to their house to them once she'd finished making all the modifications she wanted to on it. Telling her no seemed pointless, and so they let her take the chair, figuring they'd never actually see it again.
Miu brought it back a few days later, and while the chair looked mostly the same as it had when they'd given it to her, its functionality was completely different. The control panel was unlocked and made easier for someone to use, with simple buttons for all directions that she was sure Luka would learn to navigate. Some of its bulkier parts were swapped out for lighter ones, or ones that were more suitable for easy stowage and transport, which meant that they'd be able to fold it up and put it in the back of their car. "It's basically the best fuckin' wheelchair the kid could ask for," she claimed, putting her hands on her hips and snorting in laugher. "No need to thank me for it, it was all my pleasure. I sure do love helping other people's crotch goblins, especially when they're not your nasty one."
"I'm not nasty," Tsukia retorted. "You pinch my cheeks whenever you see me."
"Damn straight I do." Cue Miu going in for another cheek pinch, which Tsukia allowed, albeit with a pout on her face. "But seriously, doing this was my good deed for the year, thanks for calling on me to make it happen, losers. If you need anything else like it, you know where I'll be."
"I think we've missed a step here, we haven't even tested to see if it works." Kaito was holding Luka, ready to set him in the chair so that he could get a feel for it, and Miu seemed shocked as she looked at them, almost as if she was offended that he would assume it wouldn't work. That led to her stepping aside and allowing for the boy to be seated in it, and while Luka wasn't immediately able to play with the buttons or even acknowledge that anything was different about where he was, the potential was there.
Standing to the side watching everything, Maki shook her head at just how perfect things seemed to be going in regards to getting the child mobile. "I'm sorry, but there's a catch here, isn't there? Woman genius Miu Iruma doesn't just help out her friends without making them beg for mercy."
"You know, I considered making the two of you kiss my ass—quite literally, might I add—but I realized that it just wouldn't be right. You've been through enough to get you here to this point, I can be nice for once in my damn life and not go through the vulgar motions." Winking, Miu turned so that she was facing Maki at an angle, arching her back so that she was making her assets all more prominent. "However, I'm not going to turn down some body worship from you, if you're offering."
"I'd rather get stabbed again than touch you," Maki replied without hesitation, finding it slightly liberating to be able to make that joke without causing herself any kind of mental distress, and by weaponizing her attack she seemed to surprise Miu into straightening up and getting somewhat squirmy. "But seriously, thanks for doing this for us, we appreciate your willingness to be nice."
The kind gesture was lost on someone present, though, as Tsukia looked at Miu and told her, "Mommy and Daddy might like you, but I don't."
"Hey now, let's not be putting words into my mouth there, kid!" Still making sure that Luka was sitting comfortably and would eventually be able to make use of the buttons right underneath his hand, Kaito almost didn't realize he'd spoken out loud until Maki gently smacked the back of his head, after which he looked over at Miu and how she seemed to be getting more troubled by being put down. "Oh, right, maybe I shouldn't have said that where she could hear me, huh?"
"I…I'm going to go now, I can't exactly take care of myself in front of kids," Miu quickly spat out, signaling her exit from their lives for the moment. She might not have been around as much as anyone else they knew, but she did more for them in that one gesture than some people they knew ever had, and she'd be able to return home knowing that she'd done something incredibly kind.
The modifications she made on that wheelchair were a game-changer for Luka, as he slowly came to understand what the buttons on it did. He may have spent almost all of his life being treated like he wasn't going to learn anything, and that he wasn't meant for more than taking up space in a room, but between the "guardian angel" at the clinic and Miu, he was given a brand new lease on life with his wheelchair. He could sit up and watch everything around him, he was able to eat without being on the floor to do so, and he eventually came to know how to move without people pushing him; all of these were things that would have never happened had things gone as intended with the space mission, Maki realized, and as much as she knew that his dad dying was a bad thing, she almost was glad that it had happened. Luka was thriving in her and Kaito's care, and he wouldn't have gotten that chance otherwise.
Over the following months, there were nothing but positive steps for all of them in that house, between the adults' mental health finally hitting high points that neither of them had hit and sustained in years (as Kaito had been impacted by the knife attack as well, he'd just masked it until he had his own trauma to deal with), Tsukia getting completely over the illness that she'd gotten, and Luka learning how to use his wheelchair on his own. Things weren't perfect, there were always moments where things looked darker than they were, but they were headed in the right direction.
The biggest misstep came when they were contacted by the space program, looking to find out what Kaito's plans for the future were, and if he would be interested in going for a fourth flight as a senior astronaut on the team. He was so surprised by the call in the first place that he hung up on them, only for them to then choose to come visit the home in person, needing an answer from the man who had once been the face of the tragedy on the space station. There was no denying that he still loved space, and that he would've gone up again if he could guarantee that it would be a flawless mission, but that was the problem: there was no guaranteeing anything. He could go with a bunch of young, new astronauts and have every single one of them die on his watch, and he wouldn't be able to mentally handle that.
Turning down their offer was hard enough, but what he decided to do to prevent another offer from coming in was harder. The media all knew who he was, all the news sources having loved airing the videos documenting his breakdown as they got them viewers, and he felt he owed it to them to give them one last piece of his career. That was how he ended up giving a televised "retirement" speech, completely written by him and checked by the people he'd worked for, just so that the world could know that the man they'd watched fall apart in space was fine, and that he was not planning on ever doing that again. The preparation that went into the speech was minimal, and Kaito honestly threw the words onto the paper the day he took it to get approved, so it wasn't like there was much meaning to it beyond getting the world off his back about returning to space.
Yet, as he was on the stage presenting the speech to the crowd of interested people who'd gathered to hear it, there was a sense of sadness in the whole scenario. He had spent his whole life preparing to get to go to space, then the moment he found out he was going the first time his life changed forever. That wasn't something he told everyone that was there, but it was something that his friends and family had in their minds as he was talking, especially those who knew the details of the alcohol-fueled binges, the wild parties and time spent living on the edge. Maki was sure that if the crowd was made up a little bit differently, if it wasn't so many strangers there, he might've gotten a bit more into those details, but at the same time if there were more people he knew he might've stayed quiet anyway. She was sitting in the front row to support him, Luka in his wheelchair on one side and Tsukia on the other, with Kaito's grandparents on the other side of the girl.
The fact that they were there for the speech, over everything else that had happened in their family over the past nearly seven years, did rub Maki the wrong way, because as far as she knew this was the first time they'd properly met their great-granddaughter. They were an older couple, sure, and there were most likely reasons as to why they'd never reached out to them, but for them to show up at the conclusion of their grandson's career after having never been around for most of it was just weird. The icing on that cake was how, despite sitting next to Tsukia the entire time, they barely said a word to her during the speech or after it, only bothering to learn her name at the start; they never really acknowledged that Maki was there either, and they'd met her way beforehand.
After the speech was concluded and the whole thing was finally put behind them, Kaito didn't even get much of a chance to say anything to his grandparents, them barely giving him hugs and kisses before they were toddling off with the majority of the crowd. "Why did they show up if they were just going to treat all of us like that?" Maki asked him after explaining how they'd treated her and their daughter. "You should be glad they're old, I would've fought them over it."
"This is the first time they've been allowed to get out of where they're living in years, they probably didn't even understand why they were here until they got to see me up close," he replied, before giving a small sniffle. "I guess we should've done better to keep in touch with them, I think we screwed up keepin' this whole family together."
She could tell how sad he was to have seen them and have them not really recognize anyone, and immediately she regretted the feelings of spite she'd had towards them. "It's whatever, they didn't look too upset by it, and they got to hear you talk about how you're going to try leading a better life now. They've got to be proud of that."
"Yeah, they've gotta be. And if they're not?" He looked off in the direction they'd headed, seeing nothing but the crowd of attendees off in the distance, no one in specific sticking out. However, around them he not only had his family, but as many friends that could make it as possible, all of them waiting around to get to talk to him. Sighing, he finished, "If they're not, it's no big deal. I've got you and Tsukia and Luka and just about everyone else I know who's proud of me, and that's what matters!"
"That's right, it's what matters," Maki repeated, letting their words linger in the air for a moment before hugging him tightly, Tsukia joining in the moment she saw that her parents were mid-hug. Slowly, people around them noticed what was happening and joined in, until they were a large pile of people, all crowded around the man who'd just put the final nail in the coffin of his greatest dream, showing that they loved and supported him no matter what.
For Tsukia's seventh birthday, she insisted on having the largest party that a girl her age could have, complete with face-painting and balloons as far as the eye could see. There were so many details to her plan that, as she was telling her mom everything she wanted, Maki could see Kaito mouthing all of the requests next to her, almost as if she'd run it by her father before presenting it elsewhere. Of course, there was zero reason to deny the girl any of her wishes after the year she'd had, and that was where Maki was sure that it wasn't exactly just Tsukia who'd come up with all of the details.
"So maybe I gave her a couple pointers for what she could do, but what of it?" he asked when confronted about it. "I'm just doin' what I can to make sure my baby girl gets what she wants out of her birthday party, and I know just who can help us make it all happen." That last part was exactly what Maki had been expecting him to say, with all of those extremely specific details that just happened to line up with the interests of people they knew. She hadn't been expecting him to say that he'd already talked with people to get a place for the party, as well as a date and time and have invitations already in the works—this was nearly a month in advance and that much forethought felt somewhat risky.
Once she learned that there was that much pre-planning because of the sheer number of kids invited, Maki's level of being okay with the party began to wane, but when she was reminded that there would be so many other adults around that she wasn't going to have to be in charge of the entire gaggle of children she felt more at ease with things. "As long as no one gets hurt, I suppose it'll be fine. What's the worst that can happen, someone gets a paintbrush in the eye? A bird lands in someone's hair? It's not like there's going to be fireworks or anything like that."
"Exactly my thinking, Maki Roll! But if Tsukia wanted those, I'm sure we know someone who could make it happen." Smiling to counteract her scowl in his direction, Kaito gave her a strong thumbs-up and watched as her scowl softened into a neutral expression. "I know that this is gonna be, well, a lot going on, but everyone's willing to help and I think it's kind of important that it happens just like Tsukia wants."
"And why might that be?" she asked, expecting his answer to be something cheesy or inspirational, or even just plain wrong. What she got instead was a shake of the head, a lack of solid response, and when she pressed further he said he'd explain later.
She didn't think that later would turn into the morning of the party, after all of the kids attending had said they'd be there, after all of the events had been arranged and the place it was happening was completely set up for the mob of children running through it. She didn't think that the explanation would come as they were standing outside of Tenko's dojo, balloons in their hands to hand off to anyone who came inside, underneath the banner announcing that there was a birthday party inside. What his reason for wanting to go all-out for their daughter's birthday was the furthest thing from her mind as they stood out there, greeting all of the guests and their parents for a day of fun.
"I'm horrible at keepin' secrets, especially when they're good ones, so not talkin' about this with you sooner has been killing me. So here goes, I think we've gotta move away from this place," he suddenly said, looking to where Maki was standing on the other side of the door, her quickly turning to face him with her eyes narrowing. "It's not that it's a bad place, and it's not that we're not getting along with people anymore, it's just that…the memories are getting to me too much some days. I've gotta find somewhere else to live."
"That's out of the blue," she replied, the thought of packing up the house they'd lived in since they were young and stupidly in love and moving elsewhere making her shift her stance uncomfortably. "I get it, a lot has happened around here, but moving? Are you sure that's the answer?"
He nodded, before pretending like they weren't having a serious conversation as another child came into view. Once that kid was inside, he was back to looking over at his wife, as she tried understanding where he was coming from. "I've been thinking about it since I gave the retirement speech, it'd be nice to kick back and find somewhere new to live out the rest of our lives, since I'm getting paid to do nothing for what I went through. We could find a nice, quiet town, you could pick up a hobby and I could work on fixing up our new home, Tsukia could go to a small school and make new friends, Luka would have new sights to see, it'd be…I don't wanna say perfect, but it'd be close to it."
"We'd be leaving everyone behind. All of our friends. All of—Kaito, is this why you wanted this party to go like this?" The thought hadn't ever occurred to Maki that the extravagance of the party could be related to some much larger plan, she thought it was to do with the fragility of life or their daughter's health scare or something along those lines. When he nodded again, she faced away from him, feeling her face warm up at how stupid she was to not figure things out sooner. "I'm sorry, but I can't walk out of the lives of everyone who was there for us when we needed it."
"No one said we'd be walkin' out of anywhere, don't be silly! Look, I've been talking about this with Shuichi, and he thinks that it's a good idea. They'd miss us, but it'd be what's best for us at the same time." Now that she was looking away, Kaito turned back to facing where the guests would be walking in from, just to make sure he didn't miss anyone. He could hear Maki working through his suggestion, but he didn't want to keep pushing the issue and make things worse, since she already seemed to disagree with it.
She wasn't in complete disagreement, but she also wasn't exactly keen on starting their lives over again. That feeling of not wanting to leave stuck with her the whole day, but it was strongest when they went inside after the last guests had arrived, entering into a completely decorated dojo that usually looked to be so empty when they'd come by. Streamers of every color of the rainbow hung from all available surfaces, with the balloons the kids had been given sticking to them at random. In one corner was a beautiful piano, where Kaede was playing music for some of the children, chasing each other in circles until she stopped, and directly across the room from it was the face-painting station that Angie had set up, a line of kids waiting patiently for her to decorate their faces. Another corner was blocked off by curtains, but they could hear the cheering coming from the other side, that being where Himiko was treating kids to a bit of a magic show. The final corner of the room was where the snacks had been set up, as well as chairs for the parents to sit in as they watched their kids having a great time.
Most notable of all, though, was the group in the middle of the room, taking advantage of the owner's special talents to learn some basic self-defense. That was where Tsukia and Luka both were, among several other children who looked to be in awe at whatever it was that Tenko was telling them. "I'm going to go see what they're doing, see if she's teaching them useful things or just to beat up boys," Maki told Kaito, after realizing that the only boy among the group was Luka. "I doubt parents would be happy with us if their daughters learned that from this party."
"Yeah, you do that, I'm gonna…chill or something," Kaito replied, looking around for someone to go talk to. "You have fun dealing with Tenko, she was the least-happy to have to do something for today."
Maki gave a hollow laugh, starting to head towards the group of kids. "That doesn't surprise me at all. Go have fun with whoever, I'll have plenty of fun with Tenko." He waved her off as she walked, and she came up to the group of kids trying her best not to still be laughing at Kaito and his behavior.
She seemed to have walked up right as the conversation stopped and the demonstration began, as no one was talking and Tenko was standing in front of all of the children, one hand resting on her hip and the other dramatically stroking her chin. "I need a volunteer to help me with this part, because I can't do it all on my own," she told them, looking over each and every one of the girls that was there (even giving Maki a quick nod to acknowledge that she was present), before her eyes fell on Luka in his chair. "Normally I don't pick boys, because they're icky, never forget that ladies, but I think I'm going to have Luka come here to help."
All of the girls watched silently as Luka rolled his chair up to being next to Tenko, carefully maneuvering it to face her with his typically blank stare. "Okay bud, here's what you're going to do. Just follow me, okay?" Since there was never any response from the boy, she glanced over at all of the young girls before pulling both of her arms up in front of her, holding them in a defensive position. "This is a good starting stance for if you need to protect yourself. Luka, will you show everyone how to do this too?"
Everyone's eyes fell onto the boy, who was clearly looking at what Tenko was doing but wasn't making any movements of his own until he shakily lifted his arms, getting as close to what she was doing as he physically could. They all erupted into cheers, some of the girls making comments to Tsukia about how cool her brother was, while the birthday girl was jumping up and down, cheering loudest of all. Maki felt her heart soar at the way these girls were being so kind about a boy who was not able-bodied like they were, but what got her most was that Tsukia clearly referred to Luka as her brother, if that was how the other kids knew him. He'd been in their life for just over a year and yet the girl felt strongly enough about him to tell everyone they were related, and that was the cutest thing.
There was more to the demonstration, some of which Luka was able to do alongside Tenko's direction, but a lot of it he wasn't capable of due to being in his chair. It didn't matter, though, because being included was making him the happiest any of them had ever seen him. He was actually smiling, making excited noises and trying his hardest to say anything to the people around him, and even as the group of girls all got to practice what he had been doing he was still having the time of his life. That didn't change when the demonstration was over and they were allowed to disperse to other stations in the room, Tsukia and a couple of her friends walking alongside Luka as they went on their way.
"I want you to know that I was going to use him as my buddy before I even saw you there," Tenko claimed, hunching over to catch her breath after having used the last of the high energy of the group of girls required. "He was…really going to be my choice, he deserved it…damn it that tired me out. How am I going to keep doing that all day?" She stood back up, arching backwards as she stretched her back and arms, before straightening up. "I knew that I'd be exhausted at the end, but after group one? Kill me now!"
"You're the one who insisted you do something beyond lend us your place," Maki reminded her, as they started to head towards the part of the room filled with chairs. "Which, by the way, thanks for doing that. I doubt this would be going half as well if we didn't have so much room to use for it."
The second there was an empty chair within reach, Tenko grabbed it and sat down, letting herself slide down until she was barely on the chair, her back arched to try stretching it once more. "I know, I know, Kaito really had to bug me to get me to let you use it, but now I'm thinking I really should've given that degenerate exactly what he wanted and nothing more. I think I, uh, might be a bit too pregnant for this…"
As impolite as it was, Maki snorted as she took the chair next to Tenko's, keeping her eyes off of what her friend was doing and instead watching the groups of children wandering around the room together. "I still can't believe you went through with it for them, and now you understand why I didn't think you'd do it, don't you?" She got a sputtering whine in response, which made her snort again. "It's only going to get worse for you, I hope you know. Especially if doing some basic self-defense moves is tiring you out right now, how are you going to keep working through it?"
"I don't know, I didn't think it would be like this when I agreed to fully commit to doing it for them. Plus, like, you can't talk to me about how bad it's going to be, you had things relatively easy up until it ended. I've already told Kaede she can't give me any advice, now I'm banning you from doing it too!" Sitting properly in the chair, Tenko let her hands idly rest on her lap, her thumbs brushing up against the curve of her still-small stomach. "This is going to go differently than things did for either of you, especially since I…I don't know, I don't have any attachment to the little parasites? All I hope is that they don't both belong to Angie, I'd have to get attached to them real quick if they do."
"You're a lot stronger of a woman than I could ever be, Tenko, putting yourself through that for someone else. Or, I guess, two someone elses, if it all works out?" Shaking her head, Maki looked for where Tsukia was among everyone, and when she found her still at Luka's side, over at the face-painting station, she then looked for Kaito and saw him hanging around the curtain with the magic show. "As much as I love my child, I wouldn't have ever had her if it had been my own choice, so you making that choice for others is…"
"Crazy? Stupid? Bat-shit insane? Yeah, I'm aware, but it's me or no babies at all and I guess I'm not using my body too much to not offer it to them." There was a moment of silence between the two, before Tenko grumbled and got back to her feet. "I should go make myself available for if more kids want to learn to fight, hopefully I don't manage to get more tired from here, huh?"
Watching her continue stretching before she moved, Maki shook her head and said, "It's not going to magically get easier for you, you know. Just don't overwork yourself, there's other lives you've got to focus on now, and since they're not yours, something going wrong might hurt you more than you'd expect."
"Thanks for the advice that I didn't ask for. I said you're banned, remember?" That got both of them laughing, and it was nice to see that Tenko was finding ways to have fun with the situation she'd been so hesitant to get into in the first place.
That interaction lingered on Maki's mind for the rest of the day, as the kids wore themselves out running between the different stations, then moved on to snacks and presents for the birthday girl, only to go back to the activities. It was evening when everyone was gone, and later still when everything was cleaned up (minus the piano, as it was too big for any of them to move, and the streamers, which the ladies of the dojo insisted could stay hanging), but when they were on their way home with both kids asleep in the backseat, Maki looked at Kaito with a new perspective on what he'd presented to her before. "I think moving might not be such a bad idea after all," she told him, "and if it's what you think you want to do, I'm willing to give it a shot. No point in saying no when it's not going to be the end of the world if we leave this place."
"We'll haveta talk about it with the others, see if they've got any suggestions for where we can go," he replied, smiling at how her view had changed in such a short amount of time. "It's not like it's a decision we've gotta make right now, we've got all the time in the world to make that choice."
They finished moving their furniture into their new home on the one-year anniversary of the flight that had changed their lives, something that neither of them had realized until one of their friends brought it up as a coincidence. It was too far of a drive for them to have moved everything on their own over several trips, but it was close enough that many of their friends volunteered their time and their energy to helping complete the move in one go. Leaving the home they'd shared so many memories in had been hard, but seeing the new place filled with boxes and the beginning stages of organization with the furniture gave them both the reminder that what they'd decided to do was best for them, giving them somewhere to make new memories.
"It's getting late, I'm sure all of you want to head back to your own homes, but thanks for comin' out here to help us get all this here," Kaito said to the group gathered in the bare-bones living room of the house, everyone listening to his every word. "We might not be as close to ya as we were, but we're still all gonna be friends for life. We'll come visit whenever we can, you guys should come out here to visit us too."
There were some mumbles of agreement, but what was more notable was Kaede's cry of, "I'm not sure how I'm going to live without being able to drop by whenever! Can't you guys just move back, find somewhere closer or something? This is going to be hard!"
"If you miss us so much, just come out here, we'll have the space for you," Maki told her, leaving Kaito's side to hug her friend. That was a mistake, as the moment they began hugging Kaede started crying, which in turn made Maki start tearing up, and soon nearly everyone there was crying to some degree. The only ones who hadn't fallen victim to the waterworks were the four children off to the side, talking amongst themselves like they didn't know what was going on. That changed, though, when it was time to leave and Sonata, much like her mother, couldn't handle the idea of leaving Tsukia and Luka in their new home and started blubbering like a baby.
"We'll all be friends forever," Tsukia assured her, pushing her own cheeks up into a smile. "Me and you and Conan and Luka, we'll all be the bestest friends anyone could ask for!" It wasn't enough to get Sonata to stop crying, but it was enough to get her brother to start sniffling, and that was where the goodbyes kicked up until it was only the family left at their house, ready to start their new lives.
The following years were kind to them, the change of pace and scenery enough to give them all motivation to try new things and go new places. Tsukia loved her new school that she went to, quickly making friends with almost everyone in her class and frequently inviting students over to spend time at her house. Her classmates all loved Luka almost as much as they loved the friend they were there for, and after a while it was impossible to tell if the kids were coming over for one child or the other. Referring to him as her brother became the norm, a choice that was solidified when the family legally, officially adopted him, having gotten tired of only being recognized as his legal caretakers.
As for the adults themselves, they spent most of their time around home, caring first and foremost for the children but also taking on new interests of their own. In lieu of his dreams of going to space, Kaito decided to devote his spare time to setting up a makeshift observatory behind the house, but he only got as far as building a small deck before getting bored with the project. There was enough room on it for a couple of benches and a decent-sized telescope, which he spent many nights out at, showing the kids different objects in the dark sky. He thought that the quiet little town they'd found was perfect for doing some stargazing, there being few lights around to disrupt the view.
Maki, on the other hand, began working with Luka as much as she could to see how much he could learn. He'd changed so much in the first year they'd had him around that she knew, without a doubt, that there was more potential within him that could be unlocked, and she spent several afternoons a week walking around the town with him, testing his physical and mental capabilities. He wasn't ever able to walk, or even stand on his own, but he did figure out how to use his hands rather well and even began grasping basic language to the point that they could have very simple conversations on their walks.
At first, visiting their friends back home was a regular thing, but as they grew more comfortable in their quiet lives that slowly tapered off, until at most they'd exchange a call or some messages every month or two with someone that they'd left behind. It wasn't that they didn't care, but rather that there was so much there in their new lives that they couldn't exactly put it all down for a weekend back visiting old friends. Those kinds of visits required planning, actual thought put into them, and it wasn't something they did often.
It was a few months before Tsukia's thirteenth birthday when they got an envelope in the mail, addressed simply to the Momota family. She was the one who saw it first, and when she took it to her parents she jokingly suggested that it was an early birthday card for her, something that was shot down by how it was addressed. "I know, jeez, I was just making a joke, don't we like jokes around here?" she replied, pretending to be offended. "I saw that it's from the Saiharas, I just…I kinda miss them."
"Yeah, it's been a long time since we last saw them, hasn't it?" Kaito asked, looking to Maki for an answer while she was investigating the envelope. When she said nothing but merely began opening the mail, he chuckled. "I mean, it has been a long time, I know that. Pretty sure last time we were all together, none of us really had any gray hairs, and now…"
He trailed off as he reached up towards his head, where the sides of his hair were speckled with little gray patches, which he always claimed made him look cooler than he'd ever been.
That was in contrast to Maki's hair, which had a couple spots where she had several inches worth of gray strands hidden here and there, something she had embraced after everything she'd survived. "I'm sure that neither of them have any, shut up," she said, getting the envelope open and pulling the contents out. It was an invitation, written in a lovely font, asking them to attend a graduation ceremony for one Sonata Saihara. Attached to it was a picture of the girl, her having grown up to look like a dark-haired version of her mother, down to the way her eyes looked when she smiled. "She's old enough to be graduating, huh? I can't believe it, there's no way that's possible."
"It's gotta be, they wouldn't send us a lie in an invitation." His attention turning to the picture that Maki was holding, Kaito looked from it to Tsukia, at how she was staring at both of her parents waiting for her turn to see what they had. "I mean, last time I talked to Shuichi, he was telling me how she's doin' super well with her animal classes, and how her brother's been getting invites to different major choir performances, and how he was proud of both of them."
"Maybe we'll get treated to some singing if we go, if the boy's so good at it." Maki noticed that Tsukia was waiting as well, and she lay the invitation flat so that she could see it for herself. "What am I saying, if we go? We're going, I'm not missing the chance to make them feel older than they probably already do."
"Mom, that's rude," Tsukia scolded, her eyes taking in all they could of the girl in the picture. "If her parents feel old, what does that make you? Old too, right?"
"She is not old," another voice added into the conversation, and they all looked away from the picture to see Luka rolling in, his eyes focused on making sure he didn't hit anyone but his ears on what they were saying. "That is not nice."
Tsukia gasped at how she'd been told off, flipping her hair out of her eyes and glaring at her brother for what he'd said. Maki saw the interaction and smiled. "He's right, I'm not old, but if they're old enough to have a kid graduating from high school, they definitely are."
"C'mon, let's just agree that we all are, I think it feels nicer that way," Kaito said, grabbing Maki with one arm and wrapping himself around her, nearly making her drop the invitation that she was still holding. "We got to grow up old together, and sayin' that after everything just makes me all warm and tingly inside. Isn't that better than fighting that we aren't old, Maki Roll?"
Her smile still on her lips, and the feeling of love that hearing him still use that nickname for her after everything they'd been through together, inspired her to reply, "I guess it might be, maybe a little."
"You know, it's really funny. Here I was, always thinkin' that I wanted to grow old and find a place for love up among the stars, somewhere that maybe someday we'd be able to go together but…" Kaito shook his head, hugging Maki tighter. "All I ever needed was to find a quiet place here on Earth with our family, and with you."
A/N: I had been building towards this ending since the start, and it feels really nice having made it here. I hope that everyone enjoyed their time reading this fic, I certainly enjoyed writing it, and I hope you'll continue reading stories of mine in the future!