.

.

The convenience store manager still had no tact.

"Oh my!" she said, as Morioka shuffled toward the register. "You're absolutely glowing! You're so big now! When are you due?"

"Actually," Morioka flushed. "I already had the baby last week."

The manager's hand fluttered. "O-oh. My..."

"If you excuse me," Morioka said, bowing quickly, and she grabbed her bags and ran out of the store.

xXx

.

"What? You don't look pregnant, she's crazy," Sakurai said.

Morioka was moaning in the bedroom, head face-down in a pillow while Sakurai wore the baby with a sling. He sat next to her and rubbed her back soothingly.

"She said I looked big and that I was glowing."

"She probably just got confused because she didn't see you with the baby," Sakurai said. Morioka sniffed into the pillow, miserably.

When she was pregnant, she tried hard to keep herself somewhat presentable: she plucked her eyebrows and tried to remember to get her hair trimmed, and even when her stomach got big and it got harder to see her legs, she still somehow managed to shave. But after the baby was born, it was like she reverted back to her NEET ways: her eyebrows grew back in, her clothes were all stretched out and stained, and her hair was as wild and unkempt as ever.

"What happened to my nipples?!" Morioka said. She stared at her breasts in the mirror, aghast. Her nipples were now the size of dinner plates, and her once full breasts had started to sag.

"Hmm, I heard about that," Himeralda said. "I think it's because the breast milk destroys the breast tissue." Himeralda was listening sympathetically as Lily sat on the barstool, depressed. (Morioka had borrowed Sakurai's Lily; it was easier just to use her than to explain Hayashi wasn't a man.)

"It's just embarrassing, and I don't like to complain to Hayashi." Morioka frowned at the monitor. It felt vaguely like talking about herself in the third person.

"Well don't worry about it, Lily-chan! Raising a baby is hard! My sister has two of them, and they drive her crazy!"

Himeralda didn't have any advice; she was too busy loving the child-free life. Morioka sagged. In the bassinet behind her, the baby started crying.

"You like my big saggy titty, don't you?" Morioka said to the baby, as it rooted around, trying to latch. She held her boob like a sandwich, stuffing it toward the baby. The baby suckled and Morioka sighed tiredly.

It was dark now, and the doorknob to the front door shifted. "I'm home," Sakurai called. He took off his shoes and looked around for Morioka.

She was snoring softly, holding the baby and leaning against the couch. She wasn't wearing any pants and one of her breasts was hanging out.

Sakurai laughed, softly. He bent over to kiss Morioka, then gently picked up the baby.

"Eh?" Morioka's eyes blearily opened. She blinked until Sakurai and the baby came into focus. Then she realized her boob was hanging out.

"EHHH?!"

"You fell asleep," Sakurai said, smiling, as Morioka cringed and tugged up her neckline, curling her knees to her chest and pulling at her shirt to cover her lack of pants.

"Oh my god, Yuta, I can't believe you saw me!" She stuffed her boob back in her shirt. "I look like a trainwreck. I'm so sorry."

"Don't apologize! I'm your husband," he said, and he blushed happily. "Moriko actually looks really really cute!"

I knew it, Morioka thought, miserably. Lack of sleep has made Yuta delusional!