RECORDING

Chapter Thirty-One

The Thirty-First Chapter

Had Yui not smoked a cigarette, the weekend and the rest of the school year would have been different.

But Yui did smoke a cigarette in Azusa's presence. She had walked home with the kouhai, a chummy arm about her shoulders. When they had arrived at the Hirasawa residence Yui had taken Azusa in her arms, pressed a cold cheek against her girlfriend's, her voice a thick rattling wheeze of a whisper — making plans for tonight and saying some certain three words — and kissed her with enough warmth to melt the ice caps. It was one kiss: only a person who ate ashtrays for breakfast could bear more than that.

Yui and Azusa did all those things together, and the whole time the former had the stink of cigarettes on her clothes, hair, and breath.

So it stood to reason that Azusa's father, Hikaru, stopped her as she rushed past him after dinner toward the front door. Her pigtails streamed behind her as she darted past, and one of them brushed his nose. If they were characters from Negima!, this would be where Hikaru would sneeze Azusa's clothes off. But as it was, the man only paused as he caught the sour stench of cigarettes in his daughter's hair.

"Azusa," he called.

She was only a few steps away from him when she immediately halted and spun around, whipping her father with another snootful of smoke-smell. She pawed the floor impatiently with her foot, eager to leave and to go see Yui.

"Have you been smoking?"

At this there was a thwump! as Mitsuki set down her book on the living room couch and stared sharply at Azusa.

The guitarist's eyes widened as she realized the misunderstanding her parents were getting. She felt like smacking her head with a cinder block. Of course! It's because I smell like smoke! Why, oh why didn't I shower as soon as I got home? How could I be so stupid? She shook her head furiously, pigtails whipping to and fro. "No. It wasn't me. My gi—uhh, my friend has her eighteenth birthday today, and, y'know…she's…um…legal?"

Azusa trailed off. She could see by the looks on her parents' faces that this flimsy excuse was holding up about as well as a tree house in a typhoon. She started backing away towards the door, backpack over her shoulder and coat slung over her arm. "Um…Well…Bye." And she darted out the door, closing it deftly behind her. Neither Hikaru nor Mitsuki had time to ask her where she was going.

He put his hands on his hips, his babyish face bearing the exact same annoyed his daughter wore sometimes. "Her attitude sure is rotten these days."

Mitsuki nodded. "And she definitely has a boyfriend. In fact," she bleated, her right index finger shooting up, "she has a smoking boyfriend!"

"Are you still on that?"

"You know I'm right, Hikaru." She was leaning eagerly over the sofa arm. When she got like this he began to wonder if she had gotten over their high school days at all. "Remember last month, how she hardly ate and — for all we know — slept? She was definitely in love then."

He turned his garnet eyes upward. "Then why didn't you talk to her then?"

Mitsuki scowled. "I'm not gonna ask her if she's seeing anybody. I don't want to be that kind of mother."

What kind of mother do you think you're being right now?

"She has an older boyfriend," she mused, cupping her chin and grinning cat-like. "Azusa likes 'em older…She probably picked him in hopes that he could teach her a thing or two." She winked at her husband. "That's why you picked me, ne Hika-myuu?"

"I'm out of here," he grumbled, trudging toward the stairs. When Mitsuki began giving him high school girl nicknames he knew it was over. He had a lot to think about and no time for Mitsuki's games.

"Hikaru," Mitsuki sang. "Since Azusa's out of the house what would you say to a 'lesson'?"

The black-haired man paused on the stairs. He lifted his chin, feeling a spark of interest fluttering in his penis. When it came to Mitsuki's games he and that crazy trouser-mouse were never on the same page. "What kind of lesson?" He looked over his shoulder at her, trying to keep his face disinterested. But those signature burgundy eyes never lied.

Mitsuki shrugged, leaning on her elbows. She was wearing a low-cut red top displaying inches of yummy cleavage. "Come over here and you'll find out."

He felt he already knew what this would be a lesson in, and his feelings were confirmed when he arrived at her side to receive a sharp downward jerk of his zipper.

I can't believe I did all that back there! Azusa shivered for a multitude of reasons, the cold being the least of them. Steam whooshed from her mouth as she scurried along in the newfallen snow, as if she were a locomotive burning coal as she went. She had lied to her parents (again), outright refused to answer their question, and then ran on out when they were probably going to ban her from leaving. Her eyes repeatedly flicked toward the street, expecting her father's headlights. All this lying needs to stop, she thought desperately. And she thought for an angry moment that if she had to lie next time she wouldn't, and it would all come out, the truth.

Yeah, right.

Azusa arrived at the door with a dry mouth and racing heart. She glanced over her shoulder, thinking that if she turned back now and went home she would be returning to the same storm she'd probably encounter twenty-four hours later. If I'm going to get in trouble, I may as well get away with something. Besides, it was Yui's birthday, and she still had her present to give. She closed her eyes, smiling as she pictured the look on the senpai's face. She'll love it, the kouhai thought, blushing. I can't wait to give it to her!

She raised her small hand, and the door crunched open just as she rang the bell. Yui stood in the doorway, heavily shadowed by the foyer's buttery light, dressed down and casual in her Awesome Possum shirt.

Azusa blinked. "How did you know I was at the door?"

"It's weird," Yui smiled. "All of a sudden I thought, 'I wonder if Azu-nyan's here.'"

"You stole that line straight from a manga," the kouhai protested, cheeks puffing indignantly. If you're going to be romantic be original about it!

"I sure did," the senpai giggled. She took Azusa's hand and pulled her in, into the house and into her arms. They brushed lips in greeting, and the younger girl was pleased to taste cool mint on Yui's. She rewarded her girlfriend with a few more intense kisses that made the senpai groan softly. Her hands travelled up Yui's tummy — the brunette shivering as they grazed her sternum — to cup her face. It was then Azusa noticed that Yui's hair felt clumpish and wet. Her body also felt warmer than usual. She had just taken a shower.

"Hmph," the kouhai grunted, pulling back.

"What is it?" Yui asked.

"Nothing. Let's just say you're smarter than me."

Smiling despite her confusion, the elder girl led her girlfriend by the hand toward her bedroom. Azusa's heart sped up as she saw the door, and she berated herself for it. What am I getting so worked up for? I'm just giving her a birthday present. But anything could happen if Yui was moved enough by the present. Moved to the point of…that? No way, the kouhai thought, shaking her head.

Her heart rate kicked up exponentially as Yui closed the door behind her.

"Why're you closing the door?"

The senpai looked at her. "So Ui doesn't see us."

"Doesn't see us doing what?"

"Kiss and cuddle and stuff." Yui's face became thoughtfully troubled. "I think seeing us together upsets her for some reason."

She's in love with you. Azusa flinched as she remembered Ui's passionate declaration after her root canal. Ever since then a head-spinning myriad of emotions had racked the pigtailed girl. Guilt vied with annoyance. Guilt because she felt she had horned herself in and snapped Ui's love up from under her. Like stealing someone's boyfriend, a hanging offense in high school, never mind that Azusa had done it unintentionally. It should have been Ui-chan kissing you and cuddling you behind this closed door. Maybe that's the way it's really supposed to be. Why isn't it?

Because I got to you first. When Azusa was kissing Yui she always felt a perverse sort of pleasure, knowing she had claimed someone meant for somebody else. That was where the annoyance came in. Her hackles instinctively rose when she saw Ui with Yui, her palms would start prickling with needle-like sweat, and she would urgently think, Come on. Buzz off. She's mine. There's someone else out there for you. Why should Azusa give up what was rightfully and happily hers just so Ui would stop moping?

They sat together on Yui's bed, where the kouhai opened her pack to get her girlfriend's present. Fast-falling snow pelted the window, filling the eager silence with its tattoo. When she uncovered the present, shifting aside her pajamas to find it underneath, she smiled and peered at Yui from under her eyelashes. You are going to be so happy.

The brunette already looked incredibly happy. A genuine radiant smile had spread itself across her face, and her cheeks were rosy. Every part of Yui's face seemed to glow with happiness.

Is she actually blushing for me? Azusa thought. This wasn't very Yui-like. The kouhai couldn't remember one time in their relationship where she caught her girlfriend blushing…Oh, wait. There was that time after their concert at Hair. Never mind.

Yui gasped as her present was revealed: it was contained in a satin gift box with a green silk ribbon. Azusa had bought it at the Ginza market — the box, that is, not the gift. The gift had been purchased at Macy's.

"So fancy," the elder girl chirped, accepting the box. "What could it be?" She held it an inch away from her right ear and shook it. Whatever was inside thwumped softly — possibly another article of clothing? Her curiosity overflowing, she set it in her lap, wrestled the ribbon off with some help from Azusa, and pulled the top off with a muted satiny scrape.

What was inside, swathed with tissue paper, elicited another gasp from Yui: a faux-fur-lined hat that covered the ears and tied at the chin. It was the Russian sort whose name escaped both of them — it had a name, they didn't know what it was, but they both agreed it was super-cute upon finding it in a magazine's Winter Must-Haves article. Azusa saw the hat and thought that there was a quality about her girlfriend that was perfectly suited for it. For Yui, it would be the Russian furry hat, the one Azusa gave her for her eighteenth birthday. It meant more than the world to her. It meant the universe.

"Oh, Azu-nyan," she sighed, hugging the hat as if it were a precious pet. "Thank you so much."

"There's more," said the kouhai, tapping the box.

"More…?" Yui set aside the hat and plunged her hand inside the box, rattling and shuffling the tissue. It closed around a bundle of suede — the same material the hat was made of — and she withdrew a matching pair of gloves. "Wow!" she gasped, turning them around in front of her awestruck face. "These are amazing!" Though they were still attached by the plastic hook, she slipped a hand inside one of them. "The inside's line with fur!" she giggled, tightening her hand into a fist. "It's so warm!"

She dug through the box to see if there was anything more, and there was: a card. Yui was amused, though unsurprised, to find a cat on it. A grizzled old feline, possibly Photoshopped, crouched on its grey front paws before an awestruck tabby kitten.

Hallmark had expanded its repertoire to birthday-cards-for-senpai. Otherwise known as the Class B section.

Yui chuckled at the cheesy little joke, her heart warming at the little mash note Azusa had added inside. Tonight wasn't tonight for the two of them the way it was tonight for their friends three miles away, but tonight in a special way that was unique to them — a glistening relationship snowflake, like the ones skittering across Yui's windowpane. Their rattling allowed a familiar sort of comfort to steal over the two girls, whose relationship seemed to jump to a higher plane, giving them a wider range of love.

Azusa timidly lowered her gaze as a pink blush unfurled across her face; Yui could see her cheek lifting with a smile. "Well, um…Happy birthday."

"Thanks, Azu-nyan."

The kouhai looked up when she felt Yui's weight on the bed shift, heard a spring creak. Yui was drawing nearer on her hands and knees, like a natural predator stalking its prey. There was a vibrant eagerness in her face, an expression that just said, "I am going to kiss you." And kisses there were; one, two, and three; with the senpai's left arm clamped around Azusa's legs, pulling them perpendicularly across her own, the pigtailed girl all but in her lap, her right hand cupping her chin.

The dusty gentle brown of Yui's eyes filled Azusa's vision as she cracked open her own; then they withdrew to become the face of the person she was in love with. The person she loved was eighteen today, and they were spending this person's birthday together. This person was older than her, a senpai no less, but when Azusa was with this person she hardly thought about that. What was more — what was most of all — was that this person was so easygoing, so open, honest, and positive and uncomplicated that even a nitpicker like Azusa found it impossible to find a truly bad bone in this person's body. The kouhai knew that theirs was a better relationship than anyone could hope to have. She felt like a lucky girl to have this person.

But this person was a girl like herself.

Azusa didn't give a rat's chorizo what her classmates thought of her and Yui, but she did care a great deal about her parents. They wouldn't have to know the details, but she wanted them to know who she was in love with and meet Yui as her girlfriend (with her conscious and in the room). They would laugh together and ask each other questions, and one of her parents (probably her mother) would tell Yui one of those patented Embarrassing Stories From When Azusa Was Little. Her mother would bring out the photo album and show Yui that picture of three-year-old Azusa trying to eat a Crayola marker, her lips and teeth stained bright blue. After Yui left they probably would not say something along the lines of, "She's a looker. I get what you see in her," and for this the kouhai would be immensely relieved. Maybe they would talk about how much they liked her, how funny she was. But that wasn't likely; Hikaru and Mitsuki were harshly critical of all people except themselves.

Smiling, Azusa placed a hand on Yui's cheek, running her thumb over smooth feminine skin.

"Hey, I was wondering — have you told your parents about us?" she asked. Another question illuminated within her brain, and it overruled the first. "Where are your parents?"

Yui thoughtfully glanced at the ceiling. "In Rome now, I think."

"Rome?" Azusa sat up, knocking her legs out of her girlfriend's lap. "As in, Italy?"

"Rome's in Italy? I never knew that." Yui chuckled and brought her legs up, hugged them, and rested her chin on them. "They're almost constantly abroad. The last time I saw them was when I graduated middle school."

The pigtailed girl tilted her head, letting her shrewd (and often scarily accurate) intuition do some work. Two kids in close succession plus going abroad all the time plus the old lady she met over the summer (possible caretaker?) equaled something that reeked of irresponsibility. So, naturally, it went to ask…

"How old were they when they had you?"

Yui laughed nervously, her lower eyelids creeping up to make up for her lack of a smile. Her laugh was not her normal laugh but the strained imitation of one. Glancing aside at Azusa, the senpai hesitantly tipped her index finger toward her. "They were about your age."

"Seventeen? They weren't even third years!" Astonishment drowned out Azusa's brain, like an intellectual aneurysm, blowing it up like attire and letting numb shock settle over her for a few seconds. Never recently had the younger girl been so surprised. At my age they were giving birth to my girlfriend! Azusa had always thought of her own parents as extremely young, but it seemed Yui's had them beat in that respect, though not by much. She thought of how Mitsuki had to give up university to raise her; she ended up in community college years later. Hikaru's credentials didn't stretch even through all of high school.

Azusa asked, "Are they dropouts?"

Yui nodded, unable to look right at her girlfriend.

How can they afford all this globetrotting? It staggered Azusa to think that Mr. and Mrs. Hirasawa may have been to as many foreign countries as Mugi. Something's off here…

"So tell me about them," she said glibly. She settled next to Yui with her own arms wrapped around her own legs. The pattering of snowflakes on the window caught her attention, and she glanced out at the world, so big and cold and blank with snow, in contrast to their warm, intimate world.

Yui buried half her face in her sweatshirt, her nose resting on her arms, her voice — unusually solemn — muffled by the shirt. "You don't really want to hear, do you? They're, you know, NEETs."

"Oh, will you get off that? My mom's a college dropout," Azusa mumbled, rolling her eyes. "She belongs on a rapper's album cover dressed as a bear mascot."

At this Yui lost it, pressing the heels of her hands into her temples, howling with laughter until tears squeezed from her eyes. She leaned against the wall, hands clamped around her shuddering frame whilst her girlfriend shrugged, "Well, she does…"

Once her mirth died down the senpai brushed away her tears and, smiling, considered Azusa, her relationship with the kouhai. Maybe love was about so much more than the good and the beautiful. Maybe there was more to it than the scenes often sung about in songs: kissing in the rain, love declarations under the stars, holding hands on the beach, and all that other glamorous jobba-nobba. It had to get a little ugly, a little stormy, and maybe the best and strongest couples were the ones who could make it through the big nasties. Yui had an insecurity about winding up like her parents that was dreadful and secret.

If they were strong they could move past the hugs and the fur hats into something more potent.

"Alright," the older girl sighed. "I'll tell you about my parents."

1990 was sixteen-year-old Kadoma Tsubasa's lucky year. After sending in five hundred applications, suffering through fifteen interviews and two second interviews she was finally hired on as a waitress at Warrington's, located on Suishou Boulevard, a restaurant that would go out of business in 2002 and be replaced by a Zen House Chinese restaurant in '05. Not that Tsubasa very much needed the money; a few months earlier she received a handsome check in the mail with more digits in the slot amount than her own telephone number. A relative she had never known had died, and this check was a small bequest from his will.

Tsubasa's mother had been wary of the check, and she ended up depositing it into her daughter's savings. Saving the money for a university life Tsubasa would never experience…

In August Warrington's catered for the Sakura township's free-for-all softball games. After the sun set and the heat receded just abit from the air almost every boy from the ages of twelve to twenty-two would frequent the batting cage for a scratch game of softball, and half the town usually showed up to watch. The teams were like the Morning Musume girls in that they were never the same — the team you played for tonight could be the team you played against tomorrow.

Hirasawa Taiki, also sixteen in 1990, was one of the regular boys to play in the Warrington's games. He didn't play to work out his aggressions, like most of the others did, but because it was fun and he was good at it. Indeed he was a gem among the players, their star southpaw pitcher who threw a natural curve, and at bat he was a step closer to first base.

And so he was a step closer to first base and his fated meeting with Tsubasa on August 16, 1990.

Whff! "Steeee-rike two!"

Taiki flinched as the umpire's clear, foghorn-like voice rang in his ears, pealing through his helmet like some merciless bell. Usually this was a sound the boy Hirasawa loved, almost as much as he loved that clinking sound when the bat connects with the ball, sending vibrations through his long arms and the rest of his body, the power of the ball transferring to his legs as he dropped the bat and easily rounded the bases.

But this was not one of those nights. In his rush to make it to Warrington's on time Taiki had skipped his coffee and cake, thereby cutting off his energy and focus. He glanced apologetically over his shoulder at his yelling team mates in the dug-out. Sorry, guys. You'll have to rely on somebody else for your victory tonight.

Beyond them he noticed the Warrington's waitress struggling with the beer keg cart, which appeared to be stuck in a mudhole. Her face was hidden by the bill of her white baseball cap with its cerulean curlicued W, but he could see her long brown ponytail cascading from the back of her hat, her long tanned legs extending from her white shorts, her blue polo fitting snugly around her torso.

Who is that? he wondered, his glasses slipping down his sweaty beak. She looks like she could use some help.

At his team mates' hollering he faced front and cocked the bat, then struck out. The next guy in the batting line was surprised to not only receive the bat but Taiki's helmet as well.

"Not forfeitin, are ya?" he brayed in his Hanshin accent. "Ya can't quit, ya candy-ass!"

But Taiki could quit if he wanted to, when there were more important matters at hand. A hot summer breeze, like dry stifling air from an open oven, snapped at his Tokyo Yomiuri Giants shirt and ruffled his light brown hair. He squinted against the wind, focusing his wandering attention on the waitress. The shadow thrown by her hat obscured all her features save for her small chin and her mouth, which was now snarling with a combination of effort and frustration.

The ump yelped at him to get off the field, and Taiki complied, making for the waitress who stood away from the crowd, near the trees and shrubbery, tugging at the stubborn cart. Warrington's was a dusty brown block standing over them in the evening light. Taiki staggered over to her, ever plagued by a clumsiness in his legs made worse by him missing his coffee and cake.

"E-excuse me," he called when he was close enough.

The waitress looked up. The shadow cast by the cap's bill fell away, revealing round brown eyes — the very same ones she would pass on to both their daughters. One look into those eyes and the war was over before a single shot was fired; he belonged to her as surely as any young man belongs to any young woman.

She's cute, he thought with some amazement, his oily glasses slipping again. He had seen cute girls before, of course, but never any who could momentarily stop his heart just by looking at him. Her honey-brown ponytail fell softly to her shoulders like a pool of sleek topaz silk. Taiki found himself suddenly possessed by a need to know her name.

Confused by his silence, the waitress cocked her head and asked in a rich soprano voice, "Can I help you?"

Taiki's mouth fell open, and he stood there squirming in a titanic effort to get his thoughts out of it. The poor boy suffered from two speech impediments: a stammer and a stutter. "The cuh-cuh-cuh-art. Luh-let m-me help you w-w-w-with—with— it."

Whenever he talked to girls their faces would sort of draw away into themselves, or they would look away, or both. Any way, their actions spoke the same thing, loud and clear: Oh God. Not a stutterer. Girls laughed at him because of his stutter as much as they laughed at him because of his clumsiness.

But the waitress didn't laugh or turn away. She smiled at him, shocking him again with an even top row of teeth that were as brilliantly white as her shorts. "Sure. Thanks," she trilled, and her lovely voice — so sweet, so resonant, so maddeningly feminine — sapped what little coordinance the boy Hirasawa had in his long ungainly legs. When he reeled up to the cart one of his clumpish feet caught it and, yipping, he fell into the mud, smearing it on his jeans.

The waitress didn't laugh at him then, either. She helped him up — her hand so small and soft compared to the rough male grips he was used to — and asked him if he was alright.

"F-f-fine as freckles," he answered honestly. There was a rosy bloom along his cheekbones. "I sh-sh-sh-ould buh-be used to it b-b-by now."

She tilted her head, giggling a little. He knew what she was thinking, I could tell, and he liked her all the more for not saying it.

Taiki made his way around to the cart handles and gripped them. Just because he was clumsy didn't mean he wasn't strong, and just because he was skinny didn't mean he had no muscles. This waitress noticed the way they stood out as he yanked the cart with his left hand and held the keg steady with his right — lean but firm, blue cords roped around them. It took but a few tugs for Taiki to get the cart out; on the final tug he pulled just a bit too hard, and the cart suddenly flew up to bash the poor lad in the worst place he could be bashed.

"Oooof!" Taiki cried, falling like a ton of lead to the grass, his hands cupping his jeans, in which his bruised balls were undoubtedly trying to climb back inside him.

This time the waitress didn't bother asking him if he was alright — the answer was obvious. Before bolting back over to Warrington's she said frantically, "I'll get something cold for your — your — um…Don't move, okay?"

Oh, don't worry. I'm not going anywhere. Taiki would have said this if he could, but the stabs of pain lancing from his groin to the root of his navel had him dumb. Probably every boy his age had at least one or two nutcracker experiences he could recall, though Taiki had quite a few more than yer average. A year later he would wonder at how he could babby up a girl with his busted testicles. Now he could feel tears brimming dangerously on his eyelids. He roughly armed them away, afraid this kind pretty waitress would come back to find him crying like a candy-ass (though getting hit in the balls was the only thing that could make him cry).

She came back minutes later to find him curled up with his head straining back, his legs and hands clamped protectively over his crotch, his brown eyes shiny and wounded behind his glasses. Sympathy and remorse stung the backs of her eyes as she approached him. She started to think that she should have never let the club-footed stutterer/stammerer do this for her…but she pushed that thought away before it could get completely through. He was doing me a favor, she thought. If he hadn't come along my boss would've found me and laid into me.

She had a packet of frozen vegetables from Warrington's freezer wrapped in a rag she swiped from the sanitary bucket in the kitchen. She instructed Taiki to uncurl, and he haltingly complied, whimpering as the lances cut deeper into him. She started to place the vegetables on his lap, hesitated, and from where he laid he saw her face flush bright red. Then she went ahead and placed the cold pack between his quivering legs, then promptly withdrew her hands as if she touched fire. Taiki forgave her for her shyness, knowing if he were her in this situation he would do the same.

She murmured, "I don't know if it'll work, but I suppose it'll help," and she was right at that. The vegetables didn't clear away the pain in one fell swoop, but they did take the edge off, dulling the lances to throbs.

"I-i-i-it does. Th-th-th-ank you." He smiled a watery smile at her to show her he would be alright.

She sat in the grass beside where he laid, her long sun-kissed legs tucked underneath her. "I'm really sorry about that," she said, her eyes an ethereal mix of sweet and sad. She didn't add that he seemed so accident-prone for she knew that would offend him.

"Duh-duh-hon't sweat it. I'm f-fine. R-r-r-ruh-ruh—" He tried to say 'really' but then gave up. "This h-happens a luh-luh-lot."

"I still feel really bad." And she sounded like she truly meant it. "What can I do to make it up to you?"

"N-n-nothing. Y-you d-duh-duh…" That I can just lay here and talk to a wonderful girl like you really makes up for this a trillion times over. Taiki already knew this waitress was special among the other girls in the township. Years later he would say that he knew from the off that this was the girl he wanted to marry.

How do you know when you've met the right girl? You just know.

"But I do. That looked like it really hurt —" she shuddered "— and you didn't have to help me with that thing, so yeah…I owe you."

It did really hurt, that was for sure. It was an agony that she, being female, would never have the misfortune to know. Though he supposed she had some of her own agonies that he, being male, would never know.

"S-s-spend F-Friday night with m-me?" he suggested and steeled himself for rejection.

To his surprise she said brightly, "I was thinking the same thing myself." Her head was tilted, her eyebrows lifted. It was such a happy expression that he had never seen before on another girl. From her back pocket she whipped out a pen and a sheet of paper. She scrawled something and placed the folded paper upon his chest. "My phone number. It's my cell so you can call without fear of disturbing my crazy family. Call me and we'll plan Friday night a little more." She stood, brushing grass from her shins. "Now I have to get back to work, or else my boss will have a bird." As if the word 'bird' reminded her of something, she added, "I'm Tsubasa. Kadoma Tsubasa."

The Japanese word for soft down feathers. Tsubasa, Taiki thought. So that's what you name an angel. "Hirasawa T-T-Taiki…Um, y-you really want to tuh-tuh-tuh—speak with m-me on the ph-phone? Even though I st-st-stut-t-t-ter?"

Tsubasa nodded. "Yeah. I do." She grabbed the cart handles and began pushing the keg towards the bleachers. "I'll talk to you later, Taiki-kun."

"W-wait. The v-vegetables…"

"Don't worry. Warrington's gets inventory re-stock tomorrow and my boss could spare a cloth."

Tsubasa headed toward the bleachers, pausing to look over her shoulder at Taiki. She smiled, giggled a secret giggle when she saw him blush and avert his eyes a little too late. She continued with her work that night, humming a happy little tune. Yes, 1990 was a lucky year for Tsubasa, and it was looking even luckier.

The rest, as they say, is just courtin.

They were inseparable, Taiki and Tsubasa. They talked constantly on the phone (running up the T Mobile bill, to Mrs. Kadoma's annoyance) until his stutter lightened and eventually even seemed to disappear when he talked to her. They went out every Friday night and spent some Saturdays together as well, a coupla kids, a little puppy love as they called it in the old days, holding hands and kissing and feeling themselves merge emotionally into a good him-and-her. For Tsubasa her love was boundless and uncomplicated, a simple I-really-like-him feeling.

She attended Sakuragaoka. He attended Grant High School, the all-boys brother school to Sakuragaoka. In December, 1990 Taiki and Tsubasa danced in the schools' joint event, the Cherry Blossom Ball, and were elected best couple by the student bodies. Rumor had it that the Cherry Blossom Ball's best couple would be together forever, but Taiki and Tsubasa had more riding on that prospect than just the superlative.

One night in February, 1991 Taiki's parents were out of town and he invited Tsubasa over. She entered the house a virgin and left the next morning without her V card. They wouldn't find out until next month that they had made Yui, conceived her in love that was so raw and torrential that night they thought it would sweep them over the edge. They exploded together in an orgasm so powerful it could only be theirs. "You kids just think you invented sex," Tsubasa's mother was fond of saying, but hadn't they? With no instruction manual or federally enforced training period, hadn't they come away feeling like they had discovered something inexplicably modern?

On March 28, 1991 Tsubasa went to McKinley Clinic to learn that yes, she was pregnant. Congratulations, Tsubasa-san. Those words came from the doctor, not her mother, who spent the drive home scolding her daughter's ear off, her good opinion of Taiki suddenly turned foul. Tsubasa ignored her, preferring to think about what she should do. She rested her hand under the shelf where her tummy gave way to her pussy, thinking about what was growing inside her at this moment.

The first order of business was informing Taiki. She told her boyfriend, who sat stunned and white and silent, that she wanted to keep the baby but of course he should have a say in this decision as well. Taiki nodded, his stutter too strong for speaking, and he was glad she wanted to keep it for he did as well. He wanted her to do what she wanted to do, but he also wanted that baby. And with that decision made, Tsubasa was referred to her mother's OB, who in turn referred her to a decent midwife.

By May Tsubasa dropped out of high school, knowing it would interfere with the new life that would begin December 1, 1991 (by the OB's estimation) and preferring her classmates not watch her swell up like a balloon. Confused and desperate, she convinced her mother to transfer that huge check over to her own savings. Tsubasa used a fraction of it to place an offer on a house that would later become her daughters' home. She and Taiki moved in in June, much to their families' disapproval. "You'll be hot and starved," they said, "and you'll want us to pull your butts from the fire."

Hot they had been, starved they had not. There was a certain addictive quality to making love to Tsubasa while she was pregnant that Taiki couldn't quite put his finger on. But they were hooked on each other. With dozens of bills to pay they spent their evenings in, having fun that was one hundred percent free. Such was how they spent the second and third trimesters of Tsubasa's pregnancy.

The pregnancy had been normal, with an ultrasound near the end to evaluate excessive amniotic fluid. That was when Taiki and Tsubasa learned their baby would be a girl.

The morning of November 27, 1991 she went into labor. All day at Loyola Hospital she struggled to push this girl's huge head through her loins. The pain was like menstrual cramps on steroids (talk about pains that Taiki, being male, wouldn't have the misfortune of experiencing). At first it was mind-numbing and she had laid back on the bed, turning her sweat-slicked face to and fro and moaning, clutching Taiki's hand and squeezing harder as the pain got worse. When it became maddening, Tsubasa pounded the heels of her hands into her rotund tummy and screeched, "SOMEBODY JUST GET THIS THING OUT OF ME!"

"Don't worry, ma'am," the doctor grinned, poking his head up from between her legs. "Junior's on the Birthkansen bullet train."

"OH GOD, NOT A 'FUNNY' DOCTOR!"

The nurse was no better: a cheerleader. "C'mon, push," she chanted, as if giving birth was as easy as driving a car. "You can do it!"

"I CAN'T…!"

But at 2:01 P.M. she could, for that was when her daughter breathed and cried her first. Tsubasa didn't blame the baby for crying; after the sheer horror of that experience she felt a bit like crying herself. The doctor held up the baby, who looked like a gory screaming purple spud with a thick telephone cord twisting from her middle. But when he returned with her after the Apgar tests were completed (healthy scores all; good pink color, strong pulse, strong cry, average muscle activity, and strong respiration) she and Taiki found that their daughter now resembled an infant. She was swaddled in a pink wool blanket with a pink wool cap on her head. Everything about her was tiny. Even her breathing was tiny, sounding like the air had to travel no farther than the back of her proportionally large head to circulate. It was her skin that got Taiki — so fine and perfect it seemed to have no pores at all. She was unspoiled and beautiful.

"It's weird," Tsubasa whispered, holding the baby. "It's like suddenly there's a giraffe in the room or something."

"Yuh-yuh-yeah," Taiki agreed softly, extending a hesitant gentle hand to briefly lift the cap; he wanted to see what his daughter's hair looked like and he hoped that was okay. She made no objection as her hat was raised to reveal a fuzzy sweep of brown downy hair. Her round eyes were a greyish-blue that would eventually fade to brown.

"Hi, there," Tsubasa cooed. "You almost killed me back there, didn't you?"

They got Yui's birth certificate and took her prints — Baby's First Incarceration, Taiki joked — and she was theirs to take home.

Their first daughter had yet to get her first milk tooth when Tsubasa squeezed out their second daughter. Upon finding out about her second pregnancy (the baby was conceived just two months after the birth of Yui) Mrs. Kadoma insisted that if any woman worth her salt had to keep having babies the way Tsubasa was she should be married. And so Tsubasa and Taiki were wed near the softball field where they had met a year and a half ago on April 20, 1992.

Ui was their second daughter's name — a name that meant "gloomy" and "vexing," and it wouldn't be long before she lived up to that name.

The reasons for Yui's crying had been pretty straightforward and easy to resolve, typical infant problems. I'm hungry! I'm sick! I downloaded in my diaper! Yui as a baby had been so simple and easy to please, unlike Ui, who would screech and squawk 24/7 seemingly for no reason at all — or if there were reasons they were complicated and impossible to figure out. Taiki and Tsubasa actually began moving furniture to try and stop her crying. Maybe Ui doesn't like the couch over there. Let's move it a bit, and—nope. No soap. She wasn't hungry or sick or teething. She just wanted to scream.

"I c-can't satisfy her!" Taiki groaned, his head pounding with Ui's shrieks. He threw down the rattle he had tried shaking to placate her. "I-if she was e-e-eighteen this w-would be when we'd b-b-buh-break up!"

Tsubasa knew it was getting bad when she tried reasoning with Ui, talking things out with an ill-tempered baby. She sat up in the middle of the night, her third day in insomnia hell, her lower eyelids engorged and her eyes small, listless, and eerie. "C'mon, Ui, what is it?" she barked. 'I can't read your mind!"

Worst of all was when Ui's crying would get Yui started screaming, a circle in which screeching begat screeching. Yui would stop, however, if she got a ride in her stroller, outside and away from the constant din inside.

The crying did eventually stop, thanks to a certain elderly neighbor who showed up at the Hirasawa residence one Saturday afternoon. When Tsubasa heard the doorbell ring she had groaned, thinking, Well, a neighbor's finally decided to complain. Maybe someone called the Village to tell them I've been starving and abusing my baby. With a growing sense of dread rising in her throat like bile, she went to the door, opening it to find an old woman holding a baby chair.

Behind Tsubasa, Ui shrieked.

The old woman shrugged at the chair. "It worked on my grandson. Maybe it'll stop her crying."

She didn't sound presumptuous or condescending, wasn't angry or making accusations, and Tsubasa was willing to try anything (within reason) to get Ui to stop crying. Nodding, she stepped aside to let the old woman in.

Known to all who were younger than her as Obaachan (including Taiki and Tsubasa), the old woman followed the screams to the culprit, who sat in her own chair, her wailing dribbling mouth stretched wide open, her face scrunched in on itself, her shiny eyes streaming.

"What makes this chair so special?" Tsubasa queried.

With her kind permission, Obaachan lifted Ui out of her old chair and placed her into what would be her new one. She smiled at Tsubasa, "Watch and you'll find out." She flipped a switch on the chair's base, and with a soft brrrrr the thing began to vibrate.

Ui's crying stopped immediately.

Tsubasa's face opened with shock as silence — something she hadn't known the meaning of for the last few days — descended over the house. "It works!" she gasped breathlessly. "The chair's a miracle!"

"Something about the vibrations," Obaachan shrugged. "A lot of parents think it's controversial. But when my grandson was screaming his head off and I was ready to jump from the rooftop, controversy didn't matter in the least."

Tsubasa laughed. I hear that. It was so nice to see Ui's placid face, to get a good look at her eyes now that they were all the way open — they were brown, like Yui's. Ui's tongue poked dully from between her pursed little lips.

Obaachan chuckled dryly and lightly thumbed Ui's nose. Tsubasa, grinning, tickled her tummy, glad that she could at last do such things without having to worry about calming her down.

"Thank you…so much." Tsubasa inclined her head.

The old woman gazed at her thoughtfully before saying, "Hirasawa-san, you're not a bad mother."

Tsubasa smiled haggardly, for she had needed to hear that. She had looked like she needed to hear that: a run-down eighteen-year-old who had neither showered nor slept in days, needed a haircut, and smelled like barf. "I try not to be," she responded modestly.

"If so, then you're doing a good job."

It would turn out that Ui had been a colicky baby. At the age of six her pediatrician referred her to a children's allergist, who determined that she was allergic to dust. From then on Obaachan and Yui worked to keep the house dust-free.

A/N

Before anyone asks, yes there were cell phones in 1990...though they looked like huge old blocks with pixelated screens and thick antennae. That was back when you could play games on your cell phone for free. "Snake" had been my favorite.