We somehow manage to disentangle our children from the frenzy of kittens and puppies from the pet store. It took a lot of explaining and refusals to make the kids understand that we weren't going to ruin our own lives buying out the entire pet store's stock of kittens and puppies. ("Even if you give me those looks, we can't!")
"C'mon, you two, you can't let the kids just run amok in there!" I scold both Shigure and Yuudachi after we leave the pet store. There was a lot of apologizing by me afterwards, you can be sure of that, to the employees, although Erika, the store clerk I was talking with, didn't seem to mind so much. At least not as much as her coworker, who gave me that kind of disappointed look, as if he were asking me mentally what I was doing wrong as a father to let something like that happen. "I know we all love our children very much, but things like that? Come on now, we're better than that..."
Yuudachi, my wife, is looking down at the floor, her head bowed and her hair flaps bowed as well. She doesn't like it when I scold her for these things, but at the same time she knows that her course of actions in the pet store just now weren't exactly befitting of her status as a mother. Yuudachi's never been too great at taking criticism or being told that she's done something wrong - it's just part of who she is. She much prefers being excited or happy; she doesn't like it when she has to deal with more serious stuff.
"Poooii..." Yuudachi whines when I stop my scolding for a moment. "B-But it was a lot of fun, a-and - and it's important for the kids to have fun - "
"Yes, well, not at the expense of others! Do you know how much inconvenience we caused those poor employees there? Honestly, I'd be surprised if they told us the kids couldn't go near the kitten and puppy pens the next time we go there, if we ever do," I sigh. "And Shigure, don't freakin' text my brother those pictures you took of Kiri-chan while I'm talking to you!"
Shigure pouts at me, having been caught sending the pictures she's snapped of an extremely happy and sparkling Kirisame covered from head to toe in kittens to her husband on her smartphone behind her back. I know for a fact that Shigure and Kirisame will return home later today and find him in his room, dying from a huge, epic nosebleed.
"U-Um, Lieutenant, it's - it's, um, it's alright for now, isn't it? It's not like there was anything terrible that came out of it, kamo..." Akitsushima, who came in with Chibi Akitsushima towards the end to see me take the heat from that pet store coworker guy, tries to calm me down, but I refuse to give ground.
"No, sorry, not this time. This isn't the first time this's happened, and I asked Yuudachi to refrain from doing that back then, too," I say steadfastly, referring to this one time when Yuudachi went absolutely nuts when we visited this one park where a group of locals had a little dog-owner's club going on, and she and the dogs there went wild, and just like this time, I had to apologize quite profusely to the members of that dog-owner's club.
"I-I'm sorry, Colonel, so please, can we just get past this? Please? Pretty please, pooooi~?" Yuudachi begs me like a dog begging for doggie treats. "I-I know! Let's go to the curry shop here on the second floor! It's a little bit past lunch, but we're still hungry for some food, right? Right?"
Yuudachi looks back and forth from me and her sister with that kind of hopeful look that's trying desperately to change the subject, but with me simply continuing to give her a look of tired disapproval and Shigure's reluctance to help her sister out, Yuudachi begins to grow puppy-dog eyes and resorts to her very last tactic.
"I-I'll make you your favorite dessert when we get back home! I'll do anything, so - so don't look at me like that, I don't like it when you look at me like thaaaaat...!" Yuudachi whines terribly, and she starts bopping the fronts of my shoulders in a bit of a motherly tantrum, if that makes any sense. Not only does Yuudachi not like taking criticism for her questionable actions, but she hates it even more when I'm the one doing it, because she feels like I'm bullying her.
"Mom, Dad..." Yuudahachi's voice peeps out from below, and my wife and I glance down to see our twin daughters looking up at us apprehensively. "Please...don't fight, poi..."
"Yeah...it's - it's no fun if you two fight...we don't like it, poi..." Sandachi also mumbles, her usual happy-go-lucky, carefree smile temporarily disabled from her face.
I sigh. Once the children get involved, it's instantly become a losing effort.
"Okay, I'll lay off. But please, you two, don't let yourselves get carried away," I sigh. I am honestly a bit ticked off because I had to be the one to take the flak from that pet store employee, the coworker guy, and I'm the type of guy who admittedly doesn't really let go of even little things like this that honestly, in hindsight, shouldnt really matter, at least not until the day's over. "Let's go to that curry shop, then. Is anyone hungry?"
The twins immediately rebound and start prancing about around me. "Me, me, me!" they both chant, because the two of them really love their curry. Yuudachi does too, and I sigh again before we all start making our way towards the curry shop that Yuudachi has mentioned.
It's not primarily because I'm weak to my own daughters that I'm suddenly so willing to let something like this go, even though as a dutiful husband I need to let Yuudachi know that she's not a teenager anymore like we both used to be back in the days of our active military service. Well, it's a reason, but not the main reason. The main reason is because a year ago, Yuudachi and I had a pretty big fight over something honestly kind of stupid. For the twins' birthday, I wanted to bake a cake for them myself, since at the time I baked a lot as a hobby. I told my wife that she didn't need to go out and buy a whole lot of bakeries as she often tends to do on the twins' birthday, but for whatever reason she ignored me and bought a lot of cookies, doughnuts, and a huge strawberry and lemon drip cake from the bakery that we usually go to, the Furukawas', and before she came home, I'd already baked a lot of muffins, cupcakes, and a large angel food cake. So I berated Yuudachi for not listening to me, and Yuudachi reacted quite strongly back to me as well, and we went at it for about half an hour, and it was vicious.
I usually don't have a temper, but since like I said, I can get easily annoyed by little things that shouldn't really matter, and because Yuudachi has the ferocity of a warhound, the resulting fight we had was pretty brutal. No actual violence, since I'm positive that Yuudachi can whoop my butt in a straight-up fight, but we said a lot of things that are better off not being said. And since we both served in the military, we know how to say some pretty crude things. We got so into it that the twins got wind of it, and since they'd never seen us get so vicious at each other before, it's safe to say that they'd been forever scarred. Both Yuudachi and I realized too late the damage we left on them, so we both promised never to have another fight anywhere near that level of viciousness ever again. There have been times when it came close, but every single time after that we both remember that one incident and we just immediately forget about getting angry.
It's for the kids, is what I'm trying to get at. It's not because I'm so blinded by my love and affection for my daughters that I do this for their sake. It's in the hopes that when Yuudahachi and Sandachi both grow up, fall in love, and go get married, they won't have these kinds of conflicts with their own spouses. Love and forgiveness is what I want to teach them, and the best way to teach them is to practice it myself.
Plus, sadness and frowns don't belong on my daughters' faces. It's just weird for me to see them frowning or being sad. The Yuudahachi and Sandachi I know are always cheerful, always happy, and always enjoying themselves and enjoying life. Given their mother's dark past, both my wife and I don't want them to have the kind of bleak childhood that Yuudachi's had, and I'm certain that applies to all children of the ship girls of the Japanese navy.
Inside the curry shop, after being seated, while Akitsushima, Yuudachi, and Shigure talk about some navy stuff, I watch the kids play around with their wooden disposable chopsticks. Normally, here in Japan, cafes and restaurants like these have a box of plastic or metal chopsticks that occupants of the table take to use, but because this shopping mall has only recently opened and thus the curry shop hasn't had a lot of time to get started, they're making do with just cheap, disposable wooden chopsticks for now. The kids are easily amused by them, and they've all taken a pair of chopsticks each and are trying to split them dead evenly down the middle, as the natural instinct for humans snapping disposable wooden chopsticks apart tends to be.
Sandachi is first - with the most amount of concentration I've ever seen in a six-year-old girl, she puts all her efforts into splitting the chopsticks perfectly down the middle, and little by little, the chopsticks begin to give way. The other girls watch intensely, like this is a life-or-death situation that they're all in.
Snap!
Sandachi holds the two chopsticks in her fingers, blinking at them. The chopstick in her right hand still has a bit of the other along the top.
"Awwww..." Sandachi hangs her head in disappointment at her failure. "Shucks...I thought I had it, too, poi..."
"Lemme try, lemme try..." Yuudahachi, her sister, also gives it a go with her own pair of wooden chopsticks.
Snap!
Yuudahachi holds up two perfectly even wooden chopsticks, confirming her success.
"Yay!" Yuudahachi gives a little cute cheer, looking very satisfied with herself while Sandachi pouts, jealous of her sister's success over her own failure and reaches for another paper cover that holds the wooden chopsticks, but I interfere.
"Sandachi, don't waste chopsticks needlessly. You can try it again sometime later, but don't waste them," I firmly say, and Sandachi has no choice but to watch the others.
Chibi Akitsushima tries her hand at it too.
Snap!
Another perfect score, and Chibi Akitsushima gives her victory chant of "Kamo?!" in her pleasant surprise.
Kirisame, a bit pressured seeing all of her friends doing it, also tries it on her own, but her timidness is her downfall as she's too scared to actually pull the chopsticks all the way apart. I know it's wrong to think this, but it's so cute watching Kiri-chan exert all of her effort trying to pull apart those chopsticks while she's also being restrained by her timidness and childish fear of the chopsticks doing something crazy when she does pull them apart. Unhappy adorable goodness. But at this rate, she's going to be at it until our food comes, so I reach over and help Kiri-chan break apart the chopsticks, and to our luck, I help her split it right down the middle evenly. Happily surprised by this, Kiri-chan gives me a big, thankful smile, making my little contribution ever so worth it.
"Th-Thanks, Uncle Shintora-shan...!" she squeaks nervously, but I can tell she's pretty stoked about her success. Not surprisingly, Sandachi gets wind of this and pouts at me heavily.