That morning, Shinobu Kocho appeared to be less angry than usual.

Kaede stared at her as she ran around the Butterfly Estate, for once with a sweet smile on her face that wasn't sickening. Too much sugar on blood had always been something harmful, she wondered how the Insect Pillar could stand it, especially with such a small body.

It was only when she looked absentmindedly at Aoi, who tended the laundry, when Kaede realized that even if the little girls were with her, Yuu wasn't fluttering around her looking like an idiot. And she was smart enough to know that it had to do with Shinobu's sugar not being asphyxiating that day.

"What did you do with him?" She asked, breaking into her office unexpectedly. The gray smoke followed her like a dog followed its master. Shinobu had the nerve to play dumb.

"Hmmm? With who?" Her purple eyes looked up from the report she had been writing all morning.

Shinobu Kochou had spider eyes, Kaede noticed. No one saw to be able to distinguish the light shine of her spiderwebs knitted with silk, so everyone fell prey to them and she witnessed, rubbing her legs together and celebrating the wits that fed her.

But it wasn't only that everyone else didn't see it, Shinobu tried to hide the spider eyes she had with her sister's. Ah, the naive butterfly that wished to fly high, with hopes for wings, and because of butterfly eyes couldn't see the spider webs. The same eyes that Shinobu tried to hide behind, and those were the ones she pretended to have, even if both of them knew Shinobu was a spider and would always be. And that was why she was still alive.

What a terrifying person.

"Yuu," Kaede bit. "Where is he?"

Shinobu smiled but it wasn't any of those fake smiles Kaede could see through. The spider fangs peeked, as it rubbed its legs together to celebrate a trick that would get it a new fly.

"I sent him to get me medicine to some places," she said, bringing a hand to her cheek. "He's a very helpful boy, don't you think so?"

"That kid is a coward," she warned, furious over a possible harm done to a boy that was no grandchildren of hers. "If you've sent him to some dangerous place-"

"Ara, ara, he'll be okay," Shinobu dismissed it, waving her hand from side to side. "You worry too much, have you grown attached to him or something?"

Shinobu's office always smelled like disgusting wisteria.

"No one survives on the demon slaying corps," Kaede said, squinting. "Don't you dare tell me I worry too much."

Shinobu sighed and for a moment she looked smaller than she already was. When she stopped smiling her expression turned way less tight.

"I'll just say that this can have very positive results or… very negative results." She got up from the chair to settle a hand on her shoulder. "But I'm sure that I'll make that kid study medicine under my wing. And there's no other way except this one."

Of course, there was no way other than this if one was a spider.

But as much as she regretted it, Kaede was a spider too, one that could control storms, at the very least.

"Do you think…" Kaede started, whose gaze wandered to Aoi's white figure again. "That Yuu will stop being a coward after this and will finally talk to the girl like a normal person?"

The chair creaked when Shinobu sat down once again.

"I hope so. It's a pitiful sight."

Kaede nodded. "It is." Silence. "Back on my day the shy ones stayed single until their twenties."

"Don't get started, Kaede-san."

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Cold.

That was the first thing Ayaka felt.

There was no warmth anywhere, not on herself or, she noticed a second later, on the arms that hugged her from behind.

Ayaka got rid of the sturdy hands that grabbed at her abdomen and slowly slid from under the futon. Her own nudity didn't scare her away when looking on the mirror, although what did confuse her was the way her hair was done.

"Isn't this how married women put their hair up?" She wondered in a whisper, tapping the silver hairpin that kept the black strands on their place, on top of her head.

There was not a single hair out of place, and although she had just gotten up, everything was tidy on her looks. Not even rheum on the corner of her eyes.

She gave another discreet look at the head that peeked from under the futon and felt her own stomach. It was swollen, if not a bit hard. She feared having an infection, although knowing that had never happened.

Everything was shimmering, the room of a soft green seemed to shine on itself and Ayaka didn't find even a speck of dust on it.

"Okay, this is home," she said to herself when recognizing her own room. She gave another discreet look at the mirror and squeezed her cheeks, who had a light rosy tint. For a moment it felt strange for her hair to shine under the sunlight, for the lips not to be pale and for her not to be too thin, even her breasts were bigger and her face had acquired a mature air, proper only to years of polishing after puberty. She touched her stomach one last time and huffed. "I hope this is just a one time thing." She sent a glance to the head of black hair on the futon and scrunched her nose up. "Weird."

Preferring to ignore it, Ayaka slid the doors open. Everything was gold.

Abundant, beautiful and brimming, the rice extended until she couldn't see it. One could feed the entirety of Japan if wanted just with a small part of the fields, as they rocked back and forth along with the light summer breeze that didn't drag any warmth with it. She guessed the fire god had no power there. But the Buddha Amida was more than enough.

It was a golden sea in which she wouldn't have cared to drown. And that, she thought, was happiness.

«Are these rice fields really ours?» she wondered, because she was sure this was the place she was born in. «Are these really our village's riches?»

«They are» she told herself, and something so natural made her eyes water.

They could eat as much as they wanted, no one would ever be hungry, there was always going to be abundance and kindness in that place. The gods were generous, it was a blessing.

«They are truly ours» she repeated, drying the few tears that had escaped with the back of her hand and smiling. «They're ours, dad, the gods have blessed us.»

A slurred voice and an unknown hand took her out from her dreams, or rather brought her back to them. Just like the rice fields, they were cold.

"Why are you awake?"

Ayaka skipped a bit, and then, screamed bloody murder.

Yuu took his hand away from her and muttered an apology. That wasn't what Ayaka was worried about. There, in all his glory, Yuu was as equally naked as her.

"Put something on! Oh, gods, the thing, it's right there! Put something on your thing, Yuu!" Ayaka was fast enough to step back and reach for the futon to press it onto her breasts and intimacy.

"What the hell-!?" She continued, and had to stop because she choked with her own spit, moving back to the corner before Yuu's stranged expression. "What the hell did we do to be naked!?" And then she pressed her face against the covers, whispering. "Please gods spare me. Oh please, Amida Buddha, help me."

Yuu was too confused to tease her.

"We… had sex?" He slowly answered.

Ayaka, at hearing the words "sex" used with a "we" rolled her eyes back to her skull and fell back right then and there.

At the sudden crash, her father peeked inside the room without a worry, ever smiling and ever warm but never ending. "Are you guys ready yet?"

Yuu tugged at his unconscious wife's kimono to cover a breast that slightly out.

"Not exactly."

"What happened to A-chan?" Makoto wondered, looking over at his daughter's stunned expression.

"She fainted." Yuu shrugged. "Maybe it had something to do with the pregnancy.

Ayaka, who had barely lifted her face from the floor and was starting to regain consciousness, managed to hear Yuu's voice, and at the words "pregnancy" fell back once again.

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Updates will be bi weekly from now on because of my exams up until mid june, thanks for understanding!