Hey everyone! I'm back with chapter 3. A lot happens in this one, so I'll just let you get to it. I hope you enjoy it. Please review.

Chapter 3: Encounters

Yamato woke up when the first rays of the sun illuminated him. He forcefully shut his eyes harder to block the clarity, in vain. So he decided it was better to open them anyway. It took him a while to understand that he had fallen asleep on the couch. A terrible pain came in his forehead when he tried to get up. Hangover. He groaned when he forced himself to stand up. While heading to the kitchen, he noticed at least five bottles of beer spread around the apartment. His headache made a lot of sense to him then.

He was thankful it was Saturday and Aiko was going to spend the day with Takeru and Hikari. The last thing Yamato wanted was for his daughter to see his miserable state. He went to the bathroom to wash his face and then tried to put on his best smile, so she wouldn't be scared of him. A noise that sounded like a sigh of frustration came out of his lips when he looked at his reflection in the mirror. He still looked awful, no matter how much effort he put in trying to look otherwise. He shook his head, in a desperate attempt to push such thoughts away.

The sudden change of clarity when he opened the door of Aiko's bedroom made Yamato close his eyes and give a few steps back. When he was fully adjusted to it, he walked inside and noticed she was still sleeping peacefully. He softly stroked her red hair and a small smile appeared on her lips. Not too long after that, she yawned and her blue eyes slowly opened.
"Good morning, sunshine." Yamato said as he continued to stroke her hair. "Did you sleep well?"
"Yes." Aiko replied a little lazily and rubbed her eyes.
"Are you excited to spend the day with uncle Takeru and aunt Hikari?"
The little girl simply stretched her arms towards Yamato and he picked her up with a smile, holding her tight against his chest.

Aiko was playing with some toys in the living room while Yamato has having breakfast in the table nearby. He was watching her when the doorbell rang. She immediately stopped playing and ran to the door before Yamato even had the chance to get up and answer to it himself.
"Uncle Takeru!"
"Hello, Aiko! How's my princess today?" Takeru bent down and picked her up.
"I'm good."
"That's nice. And where's my big hug?"
Aiko giggled and then hugged her uncle as tight as she could.
"Morning." Yamato said as he stood up and collected the dirty utensils from the table.
"Good morning. You look awful."
"Thanks a lot."
Takeru looked around and saw a few bottles of beer spread in the room. He sighed. Yamato looked down with embarrassment. No further words were necessary.
"Yamato..."
"Please spare me of your lecture, Takeru." He said firmly. "I know it was a terrible thing to do. I just couldn't control myself."
"I thought you had stopped doing this."
"I have. I just had an awful day at work yesterday. I was supposed to have only one bottle. But then..." Yamato placed his palm over his forehead, as if he was checking himself to see if he had a fever. "Then I thought about Sora and ended up drinking four more."
"Fuck, Yamato!" Right after the words slipped Takeru's mouth, he realized Aiko still was in his arms and his eyes widened, and the gesture was mirrored by his brother. "I mean, we'll talk about this later. I'll bring Aiko over tomorrow night."
"Thank you, Takeru." Yamato said in a low tone and grabbed a light yellow bag full of Aiko's accessories and clothes. He walked to them and put it on his brother's shoulder. "Be good to uncle Takeru, aunt Hikari and cousin Yamazaki, okay? Daddy will miss you." He kissed her head softly.
Yamato followed Takeru outside and Aiko threw her arms and leaned towards her father, giving him another hug. As much as he was happy to have some time on his own for the weekend, his heart was pounding for being away from his daughter even though it wasn't the first time that happened. He watched his brother walk down the hall while Aiko looked at him with tearful eyes and waved bye. Yamato waved back and put his arm down when they disappeared from view. He was about to go back inside when a something in the corner of his eyes caught his attention. He slowly looked to his right and his heart almost skipped a beat.

"Our daughter is growing stronger each day." Sora came out from the place she was hiding. "Hello, Yamato."
Yamato could barely believe his eyes. The woman he had loved since his teenage years was standing right across him. He had to fight the urge to hold her in his arms and kiss her to make up for their time apart with everything he had. Instead, the tone of his voice was as cold as it could be. "Sora."
"You haven't changed at all." Sora gave a few steps towards him and smiled satisfied when he remained where he was. "You are still the same handsome man I knew. If not more."
Yamato knew this trick quite well. It may have worked on him when they shared the same roof, but the situation was completely different now. He was not going to fall for this again. "Cut the crap, Sora. What are you doing here?"
"Harsh, ouch. I guess I deserve that. I came back."
"What kind of joke is this?!"
"It's not a joke." She walked closer to him again and this time he walked backwards. Sora licked her lips and had a look on her face that told him she was enjoying this little game they were playing. "I am back for good."
"So you disappear for two years, leaving all of us desperate. You change your phone number, so no one can contact you during this time. And you think you can show up after all this time and act like nothing happened. Fuck, you left our daughter behind!" Yamato was shouting now. "Aiko wasn't even one year old!"
"I know that what I did was terrible and has no excuse what so ever." She said calmly. "There wasn't a single day that went by and I hadn't thought about you and her."
"Oh geez, that makes everything so much better now."
"I was wrong in doing all these things you mentioned and I would act differently if I could go back in time. Unfortunately, I can't. But I can prove to you I'm a different person today."
"You don't have to prove anything to me, Sora." Yamato's cold tone and expression were like a stab in her heart. "You have made it all pretty clear when you turned your back on all of us. I could understand your reasons if we were going through a hard moment, but you know as well as I do it wasn't the case. We were happy!"
"I know, Yamato, but if you could just listen to me…"
"I don't want to listen to anything you have to say! You weren't the one who had to hear our daughter ask about you! Do you know how difficult was to look into her eyes and have to tell her you wouldn't come back home that day? No, you don't!"
"I can't believe you're gonna hold it against me forever."
"What were you expecting? Huh? That you would show up here and I would just accept you with open arms like nothing happened? I can't do that. It was two years, Sora! Two fucking years!"
"Yamato…" Sora was on the verge of breaking down. She was aware it wouldn't be easy, but she still wasn't expecting him to be so cold to her. She couldn't blame him though.
"Go away, Sora. It's what you do best anyway."
"Fine." She walked towards him and stared intensely at him.
Yamato kept looking at the door in front of him, but she could tell he was getting tense and he could see her eyes on him from the corner of his eye. There was something mysterious about them that made him uneasy.
"Just know I'm not giving up on you. I'm not giving up on us."
"Just fucking go away."
"Is that what you really want?"
"Yes, it is."
"Fine." Sora sighed and then started walking towards the door at the end of the hall.
Yamato tried his best not to look at her while she walked away, but failed miserably. His left hand was turned into a fist and he slammed it softly against the wall in front of him as he lowered his head.

Yamato rubbed his blonde hair with much more aggressiveness than he was supposed to. The cold water falling from the shower made him shiver, even with the high temperature in Odaiba. He knew he needed it even more that morning: to cure his terrible headache and also to cool his head. One encounter with Sora and she had already managed to unbalance him, even if it was just a little. Yamato couldn't stop thinking about her. Not that he ever had stopped in the first place. Her touch still lingered on his skin, no matter how hard he tried to brush it away. The way she looked when their eyes met, she was beautiful as he remembered. Hell, she was prettier than ever, actually.
"Stop it, Yamato." He whispered to himself as he stood under the cold water and let it fall all over his body again. "You cannot fall for Sora's charms again. This is exactly what she wants and she's not having her way. Not this time."

Yamato roughly dried his hair with the towel while he walked out of the bathroom. Even after taking shower, he could still feel Sora's perfume on his skin, though faintly. He entered his bedroom and stared at the bed. Everything was still the same as it was when she left. He never felt the need to change anything. Or maybe he didn't want to. They chose every single detail together, and Sora was thoughtful enough to have it decorated with some items that reminded each one of them of their previous bedrooms, so they wouldn't feel that homesick. The bed was the first place they had tested. Yamato could still see himself guiding Sora through the door towards the bed while kissing her furiously and falling over her on the new mattress. To him, that was one of their best sex sessions ever.

Then something in the corner of his eye caught his attention. Yamato looked over to the chest of drawers and saw a picture frame. He walked towards it and picked it up, looking at it intensely. It was a picture Hikari had taken of them when they were leaving the hospital after Sora gave birth to Aiko. He couldn't help but think it seemed forever ago. A lot has happened since then. Yamato specially paid attention to Sora's smile. She looked so happy. He wondered where everything had gone wrong.

.

Koushiro seemed spaced out when Taichi walked into the living room. He was so concentrated in his thoughts that didn't realize his roommate had called him several times until Taichi waved his hand in front of his eyes.
"What?"
"It's your turn to take out the garbage."
"Oh okay. I will do that by the end of the afternoon."
"I was joking." Taichi started laughing. "Today is Saturday; we don't take it out on weekends."
"Oh right. I remember that."
"If I were to take a wild guess here, you were thinking about Mimi's proposal, right?"
"Well, yeah. Aren't you?" Koushiro looked at him. "I could barely sleep last night."
"Dude, you are taking this way too seriously."
"Of course. She asked us to be the father of her baby. This is huge."
"Are you seriously considering it? I always thought I'd be the one more likely to say yes."
"This might be my only chance to become a father."
"I'm twenty-nine and without a girlfriend. Even if I find one, it'll take years for us to get married and have children. We're not getting any younger, you know?"
"When you put it like that…" Taichi's voice trailed off. "So she's gonna choose only one of us. She most likely will want to analyze us in a sort of competition. We're gonna have to compete against each other in a way."
"She's gonna choose her sperm donor. There will be several things she'll take into account."
"Well, I think you're the best choice here." Taichi looked at his red haired roommate, who looked back at him with eyebrows raised.
"Why's that?"
"Well, to start, you're smarter than me."
"That's true, but intelligence isn't everything. You're generally better at sports than me."
"So what do we do now?"
"I have an idea. What about we never know who the real father is? That way we both can be the child's fathers."
"That's actually a great idea. We won't fight about this and we both can spend time with him or her at the same time."
"Exactly."
"So, I think it's settled."

.

Yamato unlocked the door of his apartment and walked inside with a few bags. He had gone to the supermarket to buy a few snacks and several cans and bottles of beer. Taichi, Koushiro and Jou were coming over later to hang out. It was his suggestion and the other three men quickly agreed to the idea, but didn't know why he wanted to do this. He put the beer in his freezer and picked up a couple of trays for the snacks. It was around 5pm and the boys wouldn't arrive until 8pm, so he still had a few hours for himself. He decided to start partying earlier and grabbed a can of beer before walking to the balcony.

Yamato had already lost count of how many times he had gone to his balcony in the past two days. Everything made sense to him now. He was drawn to the outside of his apartment because Sora was on the other side of the Tokyo Bay. When he had a feeling there was someone very familiar to him over there it was her. It was beyond his understandings how he could still feel her presence even after she had been away for so long. He supposed it was because of the many years they spent together. He took a long sip of his beer, without taking his eyes off the opposite side.

.

Takeru and Hikari had taken Yamazaki and Aiko for a stroll at a square nearby to enjoy the beautiful sunset from Odaiba. Hikari had gone away for a moment to buy some ice cream and Takeru had looked away from the children playing in the playground when Yamazaki came to him with a terrified expression. It was as if he was about to cry.
"Yamazaki, what happened?" Takeru's voice sounded alarmed. "Where's your cousin?"
"I don't know, dad. She just disappeared."
"What do you mean she disappeared?" He stood up and began to look around desperately. "Weren't you two playing together?"
"We were. But this woman with black hair came to us and started talking to her. I had gone up the slide again and when I came down, they were gone."
When Hikari came back with four ice cream, she sensed the despair and the tension in the air. She immediately knew something was wrong, but the words slipped her mouth before she could control them. "Baby, what's wrong?"
"We lost Aiko."
The bag with the ice cream fell to the floor as Hikari covered her mouth. She knew they had to do something, but she was feeling glued to the ground. She couldn't react at all. "What happened? She wasn't that far from us. Weren't you paying attention to her?"
"I had turned away for just a second."
"Takeru! She's just a toddler! You can't keep your eyes off her for not even a second! What are we going to do now?"
"I don't know." Takeru said desperately. "Yamato is going to kill me."
"Okay, she's little, so she must not have gone far. Let's split up and start looking for her. Remember to look in all corners carefully. She can fit anywhere."
Takeru and Yamazaki looked carefully anywhere they went in the park. Takeru was holding his son's hand so he wouldn't get lost too.
"Yamazaki, do you remember if the woman had long or short hair?"
"It was long hair, daddy. Here." The child put his fingers on his waist to show the length of the woman's hair.
"I don't know anyone who might have black hair waist length."
"Daddy, she's over there!"
Takeru was sure his heart skipped a beat and he went pale after following his son's finger. If someone told him he would meet his sister-in-law like this, he would laugh at the person and tell them they must be joking. Instead, there she was, holding Aiko in her arms.
"Daddy, why aren't we going to pick her up?" Yamazaki looked at his father. "This woman can take Aiko away. We need to do something."
"You're right." Takeru swallowed hard before addressing to the woman. "Sora."