11 July 2019: Hello lovely readers, I hope all of you have been well. I, unfortunately, have not, thus the delay in updating. Finally feeling better and have the strength and brainpower to do some writing.

I know I promised Fuu's birthday celebration in this chapter, but I decided to split this part off from that and let it stand alone. I'm hard at work sorting my draft for the next chapter and filling in the gaps. I hope you enjoy the update.

And, as always, a very big thank you to Dragon of Winter Nights for editing this and adding to my terrible jokes.

Chapter 24
In which Umi makes the papers

After the fortnightly guild administration meeting, Clef dragged the frighteningly high pile of his notes together and looked over at Sandero. Taking a breath and doing his best to ignore the others in the room, he asked, "Are you able to take on a new student in a few months?" He'd promised Umi she'd get her education, and Sandero was his first pick to guide her through it. He had been trying to find a chance to speak to Sandero alone for the past fortnight, with no luck.

"Are we talking mostly teaching practical work, or mentoring?"

"Mentoring, mostly. Probably. For the moment, anyway." Clef said. "But I need someone who's strong enough to help her deal with her particular… enthusiasm?"

Sandero studied him a moment. His eyebrow raised and the smallest hint of a grin tugged at the corner of his mouth. "Are we talking about the individual I think we're talking about?"

"Yes or no?" Clef asked, doing his best not to pull a face back at him. Livina and Talbot had both stopped what they were doing to listen, and Clef wished he'd just given in and jammed a private meeting with Sandero somewhere in their schedules. Surely he'd have been able to find five minutes somewhere if he'd done it officially.

"Are you asking me to tutor your new pretty-young-thing?" Sandero asked, voice drawling slightly, resting his chin on his hands. "From what I've heard, she's learned a lot already."

Clef eyed him. "I don't know which kind of innuendo you intended that to be, but I am at least a week's worth of lessons short of formally being her teacher. She's had no formal training the past year and a half, and a very patchwork background before that."

"Well, better you than me," Livina said to Sandero, tapping her papers on the table to straighten them. "If she's always as argumentative as she was at Ouran's, I don't think we'd get on too well."

"She was right," Clef pointed out, unable to help himself. Livina sighed at him, but the corner of her mouth did twitch slightly.

"Yes. Another reason I wouldn't get on too well with her."

"Well, we know she'd have to be pretty stubborn and argumentative to get you into bed at all, Clef - let alone more than once. You're a challenge to seduce." Sandero grinned brightly at him, and Clef regretted he was too far away to swat with the sheaf of notepaper in his hands.

"I don't want to know that," Talbot complained, before glancing at Clef to add, "I don't have the time to take on someone of that strength, if we are talking about the person who was involved with the Honda incident."

Clef nodded. "I know." He didn't add that he would rather Umi wait for the academy than try to learn with Talbot. He was a very good teacher for those who were nervous in their magic and needed a steady, regular and repetitive lessons to gain confidence. He was less adept with those who were likely to stop listening halfway through your explanation the first time and start experimenting before you turned around.

Sandero, on the other hand, had both the flexibility and steadiness that had made it easy for Clef to work with him.

"Have you told her about -" Sandero waved a hand between them.

"It hasn't been relevant before this, but I will mention it." Before Sandero could confuse Umi with the overly dramatic flirting that hadn't been serious in centuries. "That was nearly four hundred years ago, you realise."

"But it still holds a special place in my heart," Sandero said with a fond sigh.

Clef rolled his eyes, and Talbot let out a groan beside him.

Growing more serious, Sandero summoned a small notebook out of the bracelet on his left hand. "Where do you think I would need to start with her? Is she fully recovered yet, or is she restricted to light magic use only or just theory? That was some serious magic, slamming the wards back together. I imagine it took its toll."

"Yes. It did." In more ways than one. Clef closed his eyes for a moment and made himself breathe through the overwhelming guilt for a moment until he was composed again. "Umi's disallowed practical lessons for the next few months, and it may be touch and go from there. She has basically no theory background whatsoever and as she cannot read Cephiran, cannot access any of the texts she needs. She wants to enter the Academy, so she needs someone to verbally take her all the way through to entrance exam level at least." He grinned, suddenly. "She's likely to ask every question you never expected to be debating with a student, to be perfectly honest."

With a nod, Sandero jotted down a few notes with a pen. "I'll start reading up on any obscure topics I can think of, then. Let me know closer to time, but I should be able to fit her in. A few of my current students are going to be up for the next set of exams."

"She plans to move here permanently near the end of the fourth month of this year, so perhaps the first or second week of the fifth would be good? She's not patient enough to wait much longer than that."

"Oh, I gathered that." Sandero winked, vanishing the notebook back into the gem of his bracelet. But for all the teasing, he paused as he rounded the table, and lay a hand on Clef's shoulder until Clef looked up at him. "I'll do my absolute best for her," he promised, levity gone from his voice.

"Thank you, Sandero."

.*.*.*.

Umi had thought it bad enough when Clef suggested she take some time away from Cephiro to rest. But then her parents made the same suggestion when she told them the healer's diagnosis, then took things a step further by insisting Umi be chauffeured to and from school, which made it seem more like a punishment than anything else.

It was exactly what they'd done the last time she'd gotten in trouble; it kept her from being able to linger after school with her friends or go do anything at all without express permission.

To add insult to injury, any arguments she might have had that she was perfectly fine to go about her normal routine were crushed by the horrible cold that had her sulking in bed by the end of the week - completely dashing any vague hope that she'd be able to sneak off and see Clef.

She missed him.

"I hate this," she hissed, when her mother came in to bring her a cup of tea with at least two teaspoons of honey in it despite Umi's grouching about anything sweet contaminating her drink. "I bet in Cephiro they'd be able to cure this."

"You're the one who insisted you want to stay and finish school," Mama said, placidly. "You said you weren't ready to move yet."

"You wouldn't have let me quit school if I wasn't pregnant!" Umi argued, crossing her arms and glaring. "Now just because I'm growing a person, you think I should?"

Mama just smiled, which was even more irritating that any sharp comeback. Any further grouchy comment Umi might have had was interrupted by the phone ringing and Papa appearing in the doorway a few moments later with the cordless phone.

"It's Miss Mako," he said to Umi. "Do you want to talk to her?"

Umi reached out for the phone and shooed her parents out of the room.

"Please tell me something that doesn't have to do with doctors, medicine, or resting," Umi demanded.

Normally, that would result in Mako launching into the latest school gossip. But this time, her first words were "Did you get married last week?"

"What?" Umi stared blankly at the bedroom door.

"Were you and your mother at the ward office last week? I guess you could have been there about the baby. There's a lot of paperwork about that too, right? So someone could have just gotten the wrong idea about why you were there, and-"

"Mako! What are you talking about?"

"Your 'secret marriage' is all over the gossip magazines," Mako explained. Umi could hear Huki cracking up somewhere in the background.

"That's not public information!"

"Well, it's public now. Seems someone recognised your mother and claims to have overheard you talking to the clerk. I suppose that bit might be true, but the rest is total lies."

Huki snorted loud enough Umi heard, before his laughter was cut short by a thump and a yelp.

"What sort of lies?" Umi ventured, somewhat worried about what would get that sort of reaction from Huki.

"You've apparently been married off to some European businessman in a bid to take over a foreign tech company. The rest I really can't repeat or I'd have smother Huki to make him shut up again. It's ridiculous, but it will definitely be the talk of school on Monday, and I thought you should know."

Umi groaned. "Please tell me there aren't any photos."

"Nothing new. They reused a few from last year, though. I think you know which ones."

Hand over her face, Umi sank back into her pillows with a groan. She had a pretty good idea which photos Mako meant even before Huki called out "I'm totally heartbroken! That part's true!" loud enough she could hear it.

There were plenty of reasons getting drunk at fancy society parties was a bad idea.

"It's an unnamed source, so it just looks like your run-of-the-mill gossip, people won't really believe it," Mako assured her before going on to talk about some happening at fencing club that week.

Umi wasn't paying much attention.

She wondered if her parents had seen the article yet, then decided they probably had but had neglected to tell her in her 'delicate condition'. Aunty Kumiko had probably shown Mama nearly as soon as it hit the newsstands. She was too tired to be angry, just annoyed.

One thing was for sure; Umi wasn't looking forward to Monday.

.*.*.*.

Clef was surprised when Umi didn't turn up the next week. He hadn't expected her to actually listen to his suggestion. Especially not when she was supposed to be too busy to visit the two weekends after that before their visit to Chizeta.

His surprise didn't take long to morph into fretting, escalating rapidly when Hikaru informed him Umi was home ill, not just resting. All Hikaru's assurances it was 'only a cold' didn't help much, but there was nothing he could do, and staying away - not trying to throw herself between worlds - was the best thing Umi could do right now.

None of that meant he liked it, but there was enough work to overwhelm him.

The invitations to Chizeta had arrived, and his had heavily implied - in the politest and most formal of court language - that for Clef not to attend would be a grave political insult. While that made it simpler to excuse himself from his duties for a week and a half, Clef wasn't looking forward to still being obliged to visit if Umi were deemed too ill to travel. Explaining it was all a ruse to let him have a holiday with the partner he wasn't allowed would hardly go down well.

Then again, Umi might be fine to travel. He needed to stop worrying about the things he couldn't change and work on the things he could.

At the very least, he had a few more hours to do much-needed work without distraction in her absence, even if he still found himself expecting to see Umi sitting across the desk from him - draped over the chair in her usual fashion.

Her absence was almost as much of a distraction as her presence, but much less welcome. By dinner time when Clef gave up on work and decided to just go home for the night.

Walking into the kitchen in Mazda a day early got him a few confused looks. "Umi's not very well," he explained before anyone could ask, grabbing crockery to set a place for himself and taking the empty seat between Kalos and Elysion. "Just a cold, apparently, but she's being sensible for once and stayed home."

"I hope she feels better soon," Aveo said.

"Sorry she's not feeling well," Kalos said, passing Clef the bread. "But it's nice to see you. It feels like you're never here anymore."

"Because he's always buried in those big old books when he is here," Aygo muttered.

To which Getz asked, "And how's your reading going, mate?"

Aygo shoved a large spoonful of stew in his mouth so he didn't have to answer.

Brisa looked across the table at Clef. "Do you have a draft you need me to look over yet?"

Clef shook his head. He'd decided to wait to draft the next bill until the second was out of committee, so he could take into account any changes made to the second through the debate process, which also allowed him a few weeks to focus more attention on the new changes they were pushing through the guild. But there was something else he'd been meaning to ask Brisa about.

"So, how much trouble would it cause if I happened to enter into a legal agreement to become part of Umi's family?" Clef asked, more out of curiosity than any real concern.

Heads came up around the table and Brisa looked at him steadily. "What exactly does this agreement entail?"

"No idea." Clef shrugged. "I couldn't read any of it. I just signed where Umi's parents told me to."

Kalos's spoon clanked down into her bowl, splattering enough onto the tablecloth to draw a "Hey!" from Aveo. "You're only just telling us that you signed an unknown legal document two weeks ago?" Kalos demanded. "One that could have serious consequences if it involves promising support."

"In Umi's Tokyo, it's her family who has the means to do any sort of supporting. As I have joined their family and apparently taken on their family name, they would be the ones supporting me. As I am not from their land, Umi has to be the head of our family unit whether we cared about such things or not." Clef calmly dunked a scrap of bread into his bowl. "It's a legal and cultural expectation there that I join their family given the… situation."

"Do you mean having sex?" Aygo said, pulling a face at him. "You can just say sex. We're not babies. You don't need to use grown-up code words for things."

"Why does that mean you have to join Umi's family?" Elysion asked, voice wobbling as she looked up at him. "Do you have to go join her household too?"

"Oh! If you're moving, can I have your room?" Aygo asked. "No, the whole floor!"

"Clef's not going anywhere," Aveo said firmly, with a sharp warning look at Clef. "If anyone is changing household, it will most likely be Umi coming to live with us, will it not?"

"She should be moving to Cephiro in about three months," Clef agreed.

"So, you're not leaving us, then?" Elysion asked.

Clef wrapped an arm about her shoulders and gave her a reassuring squeeze. "I'm not planning to go anywhere."

"Except perhaps to gaol," Kalos said. "Honestly, Clef, now is not the time to be careless."

Brisa put a hand on Kalos's shoulder and sighed. "If it just means you've been recognised as a part of their family like an adoption or something similar, I don't think it should be a problem."

"It's their equivalent to an arrangement like a Chizetan handfasting, or something like that," he said with a shrug. "It may make Umi responsible for my actions, at least while we are in her land. I suppose that might mean she's technically the head of this household too, if Cephiro's laws would take that into account? Given you all ignore me anyway, that's hardly going to change anything."

Getz snorted. "Well, she might be more sensible than you, so we might listen to her."

Shaking her head, Kalos reached over and patted the back of Clef's hand. "It's okay, Uncle, we all know that Mum's the one really in charge around here."

.*.*.*.

It wasn't new for Umi to find her classmates grouped around each other's desks gossiping when she walked in, but the topic wasn't usually her love life.

"Well, that explains why Umi hasn't been hanging out with us so much," Nao said just as she opened the door, stifling a giggle as she leaned over Yui's desk, where a magazine was spread open. The other girls in the corner with her burst into laughter.

When Umi was halfway to her desk, Yui held up the magazine. "Hey, Umi! What's it like being married?"

"Boring," Umi retorted. "Especially when I still live with my parents."

Before she'd even gotten into the car that morning, Umi had decided she'd just answer her classmates' questions honestly. There wasn't any point trying to lie when the truth was even more unbelievable than whatever was printed on that page. Since everyone still thought her being pregnant was a joke, they would probably take this in the same way.

Umi took the magazine out of Yui's hands and pulled a face at the article. Not only was there speculation that she'd been auctioned off in some business deal, but that she'd left Huki broken-hearted as apparently everyone had been counting on them marrying as part of a Ryuuzaki-Aihara merger in the next five years. And just to complete the awfulness, they had included photographs from that disastrous party last winter.

"Where do they come up with this garbage," Rika said, tugging the magazine out of Umi's hand, closing it, and setting it back on Yui's desk. "It's hardly like getting married is the only reason to go to the municipal offices."

"They could have seen someone from our school," Aoi offered. "Maybe not Umi, but someone else could have been married off to secure a favourable male heir."

"Or registering a new seal, or changing address, or looking at the employment information," Rika continued, rolling her eyes. "Not all of our year is going on to University."

Aoi shrugged. "That's hardly so fun to speculate about, though."

That led the conversation onto who might have parents willing to marry their teenage daughter off for a business deal. Most bets were on Mariko in Class C until someone suggested it could have been one of the second years.

Yui grimaced. "I can't even imagine being married at sixteen, can you?"

Flopping into her seat, Umi shrugged. "My mother was sixteen when my parents married."

"But that was ages ago. Times have changed," Yui said.

"It was less than eighteen years ago," Umi countered. "I was a honeymoon baby."

"Can we talk about something else?" Satomi snapped. "I'm tired of hearing about Umi's secret marriage to some corporate bigwig."

"He's actually a politician," Umi corrected, much to Satomi's annoyance.

"What would you rather talk about?" Rika said.

"I don't know. What about our winter break?" Satomi suggested. "What if we go somewhere together? We break up before most places, so we could go somewhere fun before it gets too crowded."

Yui and Rika and a few others agreed that would be fun, but Umi shook her head. "I can't. I'm already going somewhere at the beginning of winter break, then I'll be gone again over New Year."

"We all know you're going to Kyoto for New Year." Rika grinned at her. "You're bringing us back sweets again this year, right? Where are your parents dragging you before that?"

"I'm not going with my parents," Umi said as she searched through her bag for the notebook she needed for their first lesson.

"What do you mean, you're not going with your parents?" Satomi asked. "Who are you spending Christmas with?"

"Are you going somewhere with your boyfriend?" Yui asked, and Umi nodded.

Moe leaned in. "Your parents are okay with that?"

"Of course they are," Umi said, looking up at her friends with a mischievous grin. "They let me marry him, didn't they?"

"Be serious." Satomi gave her a shove in the shoulder. "Are you really going away with your boyfriend? With your parents' blessing?"

"Alone?" Yui chimed in, eyes wide.

"Well, it's better than going without them knowing," Umi said. "That didn't end so well."

"A Christmas holiday…" Moe said, dreamily. "How romantic."

"Are you gonna… you know… do it with him?" Rika asked in a rushed whisper, her face flushing brightly.

"Probably." Umi shrugged.

Satomi stared at her, "What do you mean 'probably'?"

"It wouldn't be the first time," she admitted, trying to fight back a laugh. She knew it wasn't nice to tease Satomi, but she couldn't help herself. It wasn't like she was actually lying. "I mean, how else do you think I got pregnant?"

The face Satomi pulled was hilarious.

The other girls snickered, and Yui waved the magazine. "I mean, you are married, so it is expected," she said before bursting out laughing.

A moment later when the teacher walked in and shushed them. The other girls slipped back to their seats as the lesson began. Satomi shot Umi a glare while Moe and Yui were still stifling giggles.

The rest of the day carried on almost as normal. There were only a few more mentions of the article and one or two mundane questions about Umi's 'boyfriend'. By the end of the day, her classmates knew she was in a relationship with a foreign politician and would be moving to live with him after graduation, which was all perfectly true. It just sounded so ordinary Umi was disappointed she couldn't really tell anyone that she was married to a powerful wizard who lived in a castle in a magical world accessed through Tokyo Tower.

.*.*.*.

When she got home from school, Umi hardly had time to drop her bag and step out of her shoes before Mama called for her from the parlour. Sighing, Umi went to see what she wanted, even though all Umi wanted to do was change into something more comfortable and find something to eat.

"This came for you today," Mama said, sliding a small parcel across the table toward Umi.

While the package itself wasn't interesting enough to have Umi sitting down, the tea tray of snacks had her on the sofa beside her mother only a moment later. Eyeing the package with suspicion, Umi picked it up and swallowed when she recognised the precise handwriting of her great-grandmother. It contained a half dozen fluffy pairs of socks and a short note instructing her to keep her ankles warm, so the baby wouldn't catch a cold.

"You told Granny!" Umi stared at her mother.

"Would you have rather she had found out from the gossip magazines?" Mama shook her head, pouring them both a cup of tea. "We have no plans to keep this child a secret. Were you planning on keeping it from her while we visit over New Year?"

Umi hadn't really thought that far ahead. She couldn't imagine Granny had taken the news calmly. "Why didn't you give me any warning?"

"I didn't think it would be a surprise. This is a family matter, after all, and Grandmother is head of this family." Mama carefully sipped her tea. "She would like to meet your Clef when we visit."

"She wants to-" Umi flailed her hands at the thought of her great-grandmother and Clef in the same room, nearly throwing the cracker she was holding across the room. "When am I supposed to ask him if he could come? I won't see him for three weeks!"

"I'm sure you'll find the time. We should only be at the shrine for the morning of the fifteenth. You'll have the afternoon free to visit."

"And what if he can't come to Kyoto?" Umi asked, slouching back into the sofa. "It's not like he can really take another holiday right after we're gone to Chizeta if he's trying to keep his job."

"We'll make his excuses if we have to, but Grandmother would like to meet him before you move." Her mother took another drink, but her lips twitched up a little, putting Umi on guard before she started talking again. "If he cannot come with us, you may find yourself taking Grandmother to him. I don't suppose Kyoto Tower would work as a stand-in for Tokyo?"

"Mama!"

Laughing, her mother reached across and patted Umi on the hand. "It will all work out somehow, dear. You'll see."

Sighing, Umi picked up her tea, staring into the golden liquid. "I hope so," she muttered.

.*.*.*.

To be continued...

Author's Note: Thank you for all the lovely reviews and comments so far. I try to reply to everyone who was signed in via PM.

As always, if you want to chat about this fic, or Rayearth or Umi and Clef, please feel free to send me an email (address in my profile) or a PM. 3