3 - Live, Laugh, Love
"Live every moment, laugh every day, love beyond words." – Unknown
Birthdays weren't Kai's specialty. He couldn't ever remember them, not even Hari's or Emi's, and when he did, that left about thirty minutes for him to actually plan anything. Lucky for him, neither his friend nor wife seemed to care that much. For Hari, he would find some random book in his assortment of books and toss it to him on his birthday - which Hari didn't seem to mind that much. For Emi, he would just take her somewhere for dinner at the last minute. Birthdays definitely weren't Kai's specialty, but he still got by somehow in the modern world where everyone under the age of forty seemed to cherish birthdays like their life.
Until Eri was born.
Given, her one-month birthday (Kai didn't seen the point of celebrating her one-month birthday when he already had so much trouble remembering her one-year birthday) didn't need any extra planning except figuring how to change a 45,000,000 into a 28,000. Preferably before the year ended.
Lucky for Kai, Lynda was a lot less bratty than he had imagined and she was very agreeable with the changes he and Hari had made. She was quite nice, actually, and she seemed to know that the price range she had first thought of was... unreachable, even if she was one of the most famous and popular models around. And so, on the day Eri turned one-month-old, Hari and Lynda were married. Safe to say, there was a lot snickering from Kai and congratulations from Emi, who was the more... sociable than the two.
"Sorry I couldn't be your maid of honor, Lyn!" Emi pouted, hugging her friend from the back.
Lynda shooed it off with a swish of her hand. "Really no worries, dear. I know little Eri's a bit of a trouble right now."
Kai made a tsk sound with his tongue while looking disdainfully at the bowl of spaghetti in front of him. "I didn't know you two were such good friends. Also-" He looked at Hari condescendingly. "-Why must we have spaghetti here? Where is the red rice and shrimp?"
The groom glanced across the rectangle reception table where they sat and gave him a you know why look. "Lynda insisted on 'ditching' the Japanese traditions as her American father insisted. Her mother may be Japanese but she moved to the States before Lynda was even born."
"Still, no red rice? No shrimp? No sea bream? Are you planning on-"
"While we are on the topic of discontentment," Hari interrupted, crossing his arms, smirk playing on his lips. "What in the world was that speech you gave earlier?"
Emi immediately started laughing, nearly dropping little Eri in the process. Luckily, the bride was close by and gave her friend a hand. Once the baby was safely clear of any harm and imminent danger, and once she had stopped rolling on the floor laughing, Emi continued.
"Like, Kai, seriously? You had a pretty good start actually! All that stuff about being sweet friends, funny one-liners, nice transition. Your spectacular speech would've probably covered for your not-very-spectacular delivery. Seriously - having Hari rip your mask off every ten seconds is distracting, Kai!"
Her husband was not amused. "I'm being sanitary."
Emi rolled her eyes and mimicked him in an exaggerated tone. "Oh yeah, I'm just being sanitary. Speaking of 'unsanitary', you had a wonderful speech until you ended it with Anyone who's not a mask either go out and buy one or leave. What. In. The. World."
Lynda choked back a laugh as her friend ended her little "rant". "Emi, dear, it wasn't that bad, really. The crowd took it as a joke."
Although she couldn't see since he was wearing a mask, Kai allowed himself an inward smirk. "See, Emi? It's was a joke."
A quiet sigh escaped from Hari before being replaced with a small but very-much-there smile. "Well, it's also Eri's one-month birthday, right? Let's celebrate it too!"
Eri's one-month birthday had been quick, simple, and required no planning - besides the 10-12 months Kai had spent helping Hari with the wedding. He had expected that it would be the same for her one-year-old birthday. Quick, simple, and above all, no plans at all on that day.
As he would soon learn that day, he clearly expected too much.
Apparently, Emi had expected him to plan something - he hadn't - so when it was the day of her birthday, they had their first fight.
Well, to say it was a fight would probably be inaccurate. What really happened was Emi yelling things incomprehensible and waving her hands around while Kai ate his breakfast silently (And occasionally yawned. He wasn't really an early bird).
"Hey!" Emi puffed, glaring at him. "Are you listening?"
Kai looked up from his miso soup and blinked twice before answering truthfully, "Not really."
After a moment of silence, the aqua-haired woman rolls her eyes, a smile already spreading across her face. "Kai, you're hilarious. Anyway! It's still Eri's birthday."
"So?"
Sitting down on the seat across from him, she groaned. "We already forgot her one-month-old birthday! We have to do something special for her very first one-year-old birthday!"
He blinked twice, clearly not convinced. "It's not like she'll remember it."
"That's not the point! We have to take pictures and show Eri when she's older! It's got to be something really special!"
Kai sighed, but stood up, placing his bowl in the sink. "Just pick somewhere that's at least half-decently clean."
Tilting her head in confusion, Emi followed her husband as he put on his coat and grabbed the car keys. "Hey," she started, eyes wide, "where are you going?"
He put his black mask on and opened the door. "Going to buy some smaller sizes of masks for Eri."
Emi gave him an exasperated smile. "Drive safely, I guess! I'll go get Eri ready for tonight."
And that was how Kai, Emi, and one-year-old Eri ended up sitting in seats eight, nine, and ten of the H row of the Regal Theaters.
"What movie are we watching?"
Emi looked up from fending herself from Eri's fidgety hands on the seat next to her. "Uh... I think... it was... The Rise of Gru? Or something?"
Kai was not amused. "Um, what is that? Also," He inched forward, his head bending to see his daughter in the middle of the red cushioned seat, looking so small and tiny on the huge chair. "Why did you even need to buy a seat for her? She could've just sat on your lap."
Her only response was a grin and an "Shh, the movie's starting!"
Sighing, he rested against the back of his chair and waited to meet his doom of... apparently the yellow, goggled things that were popping onto the screen.
"Are you kidding me?"
Emi's bubble popped, making the thin layer of gum fall flat onto her face. Pulling it away and disposing of it in the trash, she shrugged.
"Not really, no," she answered flatly without looking at him.
"You must be kidding me, Emi," Kai repeated.
They were currently in the living room of their two-story house, sitting on the wooly carpet and playing some sort of truck game with the almost two-year-old Eri. Although she giggled regularly, the toddler still had not said her first word, but Kai had refused to take her to the doctor. He had said that it would be fine and that she would talk when it was time.
Although he didn't speak much of his past, Emi knew it was somehow connected to his own childhood upbringing by incapable parents, and she shrugged, agreeing to whatever her husband had planned out. As long as Eri was still smiling and laughing, she wouldn't go to the doctor.
She shook her head cheerfully while making a zoom noise and letting one of the trucks speed across the handmade wood ramp. "Not at all, Kai! We have to do something today! It's Eri's birthday!"
The toddler perked up at the mention of her name. Eyes wide in curiosity, she tugged on her mom's sleeve, begging her to say more.
"See?" Emi grinned, picking her daughter up gently and cheerfully. "Eri wants to do something on her birthday!"
Kai sighed, massaging his forehead. Years after their first initial contact, he was still being attacked by the horror known as "being sleep-deprived". "You couldn't have told me earlier? Like, maybe before the day of? I come home at 6:00 P.M., there's no dinner on the table, and you're telling me that we have to do something today?"
She shrugged, the gleeful look in her eyes obviously telling him that she wasn't thinking about how being sleep-deprived could make somebody grumpy. "I mean, I figured we could go to an expensive restaurant or something for Eri's birthday."
"Are you sure you're not saying it for yourself?"
Mock horror and hurt all over her face, Emi stared at him with a gaping mouth and a hand over her heart. "How could you even joke about that, Kai? Of course not. Everything I do is for Eri!"
He was not amused. "Right, right." Half a minute passed before either of them said anything. They stared at each other, eyes wide, dead set on beating the other.
Finally, Kai rolled his eyes and stood up, yawning. "Fine. Where do you want to go?"
Emi's eyes lit up as she followed him, little Eri in hand. "Wait, really?"
The man shot her a warning glare while throwing her Eri's jacket. "I said Fine, didn't I?"
Helping her daughter slip her jacket over her hair, she laughed. "Whoa, no kidding? No pranks? No joke?"
"Only you joke, miss."
She nodded, grabbing her own coat from the rack near the front door. "Well then, lead the way, sir."
That night, at the French restaurant (Kai had typed in "expensive restaurant" and the French place was what he got), with the candles flickering, illuminating Emi's beaming face, Kai was once again reminded why he had fallen in love with her. After the dinner, they walked up the stairs of the restaurant to the balcony, where they laughed - at least, Emi laughed. Kai allowed himself a small, very small smile - and talked the night away.
They only remembered that Eri was still downstairs, in her highchair, when a waiter called them.
"Ugh, last year's was a total failure!" Emi exclaimed throwing herself onto the sofa, where Eri was flipping through a storybook.
Kai shook his head disapprovingly. "Sometimes I forget that you're way past eighteen."
She made a gun with her hands and pretended to shoot it at him, making the little girl giggle and copy her mother.
He blinked twice before giving the girl a look. "Don't. She shouldn't have watched that movie about the bearded man and hammers. It's going to-"
"Anyway!" Emi interrupted, shooing away his concerns with a swish of her hand. "What should we do this time? It's only 9:00 A.M. right now, so we have the whole day to plan something out!"
"Easy," he answered coolly, "Nothing."
She opened her mouth to speak, but was interrupted when a small, quiet, soft voice from her right said, "Mama, I want to go on a picnic."
Both Kai and Emi stopped their staring contest, whipped around, and let the shock that Eri actually spoke fade away.
"Mama?"
Emi was the first to respond. "OH MY GOODNESS! DID YOU JUST HEAR THAT, KAI?!"
Kai winced, since she was literally two inches from his ear. He did, however, bend down to scrutinize his daughter. "It would appear that Eri has just said her first sentence."
He definitely wasn't prepared when Emi started shaking his shoulder excitedly. "Not just that! Her first word was 'Mama'! I was her first word! HA!" She lifted Eri up triumphantly, beaming at her daughter. "I win this time, Kai!"
Looking at her with his bored, dead eyes, she immediately knew he wasn't amused.
"Aw," Emi pouted, bringing the toddler, who was making the same face as her mother, right in front of Kai's face. "Eri doesn't like it when you're a grumpy grump, Kai."
A grumpy grump? Is that a real term? "I will inform you that I am not a 'grumpy grump' as you put it. Whatever it means," he said, his last sentence hidden under a mumble.
"Mama, can we go on a picnic for lunch?" Eri repeated, still being held by her mother.
Wiping a happy, stray tear which she insisted didn't exist, Emi gingerly set her daughter down on the sofa and bent down, bopping her on the nose. "Of course. I'll go get ready!" Looking pointedly at her husband, she added a tad more forcefully than needed, "Right, Kai?"
Looking from his daughter's hopeful, expectant smile, to his wife's glare that really didn't give him a choice, he shook his head in mock annoyance and sighed. "Oh, whatever. Come on Eri, you can't wear so little in December. Go get your jacket."
Eri clapped her hands together and pounced on her father, hugging his right leg. "Thanks, Papa!"
Kai hated kids. He's always hated kids, to be honest. It was only because Emi had started trying to "convince" him, which was really her talking through the night repeating only one sentence. Safe to say, nobody could say Kids are great! without Kai having a heart attack. Although being a walking zombie in the morning was not a fun one, that feeling had already been impeded within his mind, so every time somebody brought up that kids were great, he would slide under the bed and hide there like a man.
Yeah, he hated kids, and he knew he was in for a lot when Hari told him about his cousins and the "hidden menace" in kids.
But... Eri was kind of... cute.
After her birthday last year when they had a picnic at a nearby park, Eri had become a total chatterbox. It didn't really help that, not to be bested, Emi tried matching her daughter's fast-paced rambling. It was amazing that they actually understood each other and could hold a proper conversation.
It was also amazing that they seemed to always forget that they were a family of three, not two, and that Kai was always sitting at the dining table, sometimes patiently, more oftentimes impatiently waiting for them to finish their string of incomprehensible words.
When he was incredibly bored and when their rambles went on longer than normal, he would wonder if this was his punishment from Eri for leaving her alone on her two-year-old birthday.
Sometimes, though, Eri would stop trying to best her mother and walk up to him, eyes innocent and big, smile sweet and small, hands carrying a small box of crayons. She would tentatively offer it to him and ask in her quiet, soft voice, "Papa, do you want to color with me?"
It was times like those when he decided she was definitely cute. And it was times like those he decided that it was okay to say… Sure.
Kai hated most kids, but he'd never, ever hate his own kid. So that was why, on her fourth birthday, he took a quick trip to a nearby Walmart and came home, loaded with various bags of vegetables (He had to stop Eri from throwing them away in the trash), meat, and bread.
Eri had always been open to other cultures' foods - unlike Kai - so he resolved that it was her birthday, and he would make the most delicious dinner she ever had.
"Hey Eri," he started, holding the piece of loose-leaf paper so close to his face he could barely see the words.
The little girl ran over to her father, who was in the kitchen, at the sound of her name. "Yes, Papa?"
He bent down and showed his daughter the handwritten recipe Emi had made for him. "What does this say? Emi needs to get better handwriting."
Eri giggled, remembering what her mother had told her before leaving with Lynda for shopping. Your papa's a bit of a wreck in the kitchen, so don't be surprised when he blames his frustration on my perfectly readable handwriting. When he does, however, I want you to go and sweep the spotlight right under his feet.
"Papa, before frying anything, you need to add oil to the pan," Eri instructed, pulling a stool over and hopping onto it to instruct her poor, poor father at cooking. "And also, you can't just crack the egg on the stove. If you were just going to crack the egg on the stove, what do you need the pan for?"
Kai shrugged while watching his daughter wipe the egg remains on the stove. "Frying the apples, of course."
Eri frowned slightly as he picked her up and plopped her on the floor, not to be distracted (or bested) by the little girl. "Frying apples?"
"Mm-hmm," he hummed absent-mindedly, working his magic - that didn't exist, mind you - in the kitchen. "Apparently they're really good if you make it correctly. Anyway, Eri, you can go bring your coloring book over to the table and draw while you wait. We'll eat dinner after Emi comes home."
She didn't bother telling her dad that he probably didn't have the skill to fry the apples. She was a sweet girl with a kind heart, after all, and she didn't relish breaking people's hearts and dreams.
"M'kay!" the little four-year-old replied cheerfully, quickly skipping to the dining table, coloring book in hand.
As the two worked away, the harsh rays of the orange afternoon sun faded away and gave way to the gentle, pale moon of the twinkling night sky. Miraculously, Kai had at least enough skill and finesse to stop a possible burning of the kitchen by turning the stove off. Meanwhile, on Eri's side, she had triumphantly finished her entire book and to her credit, all of the pages were beautifully filled in.
"Papa," Eri beamed, slipping off her chair and hopping over to her father, who was still in the kitchen "cooking and not slacking off like a certain somebody", as he claimed. "Is it time for dinner yet?"
Pouring oil into a nearby pan – at least he learned something – Kai nodded. "Almost, Eri. Learn to be patient. I'm almost done with the last dish." Noticing her observant eyes, he smirked, patting her on her head less-than-gently. "Don't worry, they're all edible. I hope."
Choosing to be a good girl and ignoring his muttered I hope at the end, she proceeded to poke a plate of pepperoni pizza. "When's Mama coming home?" she asked, eyes wide in curiosity. "It's already so dark outside."
He glanced out the window, immediately pushing away his thoughts of concern and doubts. "It is a bit dark, but knowing Lynda, they'll be out until the next morning at some mall."
Eri's big eyes flashed something close to worry as her face settled into a pout. "Will Mama be back to celebrate with us?"
Being brutally honest was another one of Kai's more prominent traits, but he had already allowed so many exceptions with Eri, he didn't see why he couldn't do it again. (He studied medicine, not logic.)
"Of course. You of all people should know Emi wouldn't miss your birthday for the world." At least that last sentence was true. The beginning part… not so much.
His answer satisfied Eri, however, and she contented herself with watching Kai put the finishing dishes on her birthday feast.
It was at least an hour later, the digital clock on the oven hitting seven p.m. sharp, when his iPhone rang and Kai lazily walked over to get it.
"Who's there?" he yawned. Cooking really drained one's strength.
"Good evening to you too, Kai." Hari chuckled from the other end.
After a moment or two of exchanging pleasantries, Kai clicked his tongue impatiently. "So do what do I owe the honor of you calling me? I still need to finish up dinner."
"Just calling to say happy birthday to Eri."
"That's all?"
"Yeah? But seriously, Kai. Didn't you text at, like, three in the afternoon that you had just started? It's already seven."
"Do not underestimate the art of cooking. Trust me, after today, I am done with the kitchen. Oh, by the way, could you tell your beloved to stop shopping around and bring Emi home alive?"
A muffled sound of surprise combined with static responded. "Lynda came home an hour ago. I thought Emi got home already."
Kai frowned slightly. "No? I thought she was with Lynda."
"I told you; Lynda came home an hour ago. Did you try calling her?"
"Oh yeah, I should probably do that. Wait-"
The front door burst open at that, and a grinning Emi jumped in, immediately crushing the nearby Eri in a hug.
"Sorry I was out so late!" the aqua-haired woman apologized, releasing her daughter – who was gasping for air – and placing a white box on the kitchen counter. She cupped her hands over her mouth in alarm when she saw Kai with his phone to his ear.
"Oh, you're in a call," she said, whispering not-so-discreetly, "sorry!"
Kai blinked twice before mumbling something about a "She came home" before hanging up and sending his wife a glare. "What in the world took you so long?"
Rubbing her neck, she smiled sheepishly. "Sorry! Don't blame Lynda! She let me off early because she knew it was Eri's birthday – oh, she says happy birthday, Eri – so I went out to buy some cake, but I ended up getting lost. Oh, but-"
She proudly presented the white rectangular box. "See? I got it in the end, even though it may have cost me a few extra hours."
Eri beamed cheerfully and hugged her mom assuringly. "Ooh, thanks! But Mama, I'm really hungry."
After a bit of setting up (And a lot of teasing from Emi about his peculiar experiences with the kitchen) the dishes were successfully placed on the dining table, and Eri was more than happy to wait the extra hour for the feast in front of her.
French on the right, Chinese on the left, American in the middle, Indian on the side, and Japanese at the corner, the table was filled with different cultures' foods and plates.
She was more than happy to wait the extra hour when her mother presented her a slice of cake and her father, giving her a fork, mumbled a Happy Birthday, Eri.
A/N: Haha, yes, "Only you joke, miss." is a reference to her Hero name, Ms. Joke XD Anyhoo, hoped you like it and just a warning that chapter 4 probably won't be out in a while because of school. Like, a really long while! But anyway, thanks for giving this a chance and have a great week!