we'll always be the one tough act to follow

by Pied Piper

No one every really gets their love story right. Not the first time, anyway.

A small, round lump has formed about halfway down the soft linen duvet, and Takeru comes to a pause at the doorway. Smiling, he turns back to call down the stairs behind him, "He's in the bedroom," before crossing the threshold, quiet in his steps.

"No, he's not," comes Daisuke's grumpier reply, tinged in exhaustion, his work shift having ended only about an hour prior. One hand is down the back of his pants, scratching his ass as he yawns, "I just checked his room."

Takeru nods his chin towards the oddly shaped lump, which has not moved. Daisuke stops scratching, his mouth in an O of realization. Hikari, arriving last, comes up behind Daisuke to pull his hand out of his pants for him, pass the plate of cut up strawberries, peeled orange slices, and Digimon-shaped crackers she carries to Takeru, and retuck all four duvet corners back into their snug, neat place before taking a seat a polite distance from the lump, though still close enough to smooth out the cotton wrinkles stirring slightly around it.

She speaks kindly. "You miss Mama, don't you?"

The lump sniffles, but does not react beyond this.

"Yeah, I miss her, too," says Daisuke, clambering onto the bed from the other side. "Come have some of these snacks with me, or else I'll eat them all."

A soft gasp, but no other sounds answer, and Takeru grins. "Trade you the strawberries for the orange slices," a barter offered loudly, deliberate.

Daisuke winks back, feigning weighty thinking. "All of 'em?"

"And I'll give you the Koromon crackers."

"Those are the worst ones!" He groans, petulant, "Everyone knows the Tanemon crackers are the best tasting."

The lump squeaks, indignant, and Hikari bites at a laugh, clears her throat, mimes at both men to follow her lead (as though she'd ever have to ask, with either of them). "How about we play a game for it?"

Daisuke's brow raises. It's not immediately clear if he knows he's not the intended audience for such an obvious lure. "What kinda game?"

"Let's do a story game," says Takeru, setting the plate of cut fruit and crackers before Hikari's folded knees. "Since it's way past your bedtime."

"No way. Your stories are super boring." Daisuke immediately pitches over, spreading himself prone over the duvet, almost flattening the lump, which squeals, wiggling away towards safety, meaning where Hikari's seated.

"That's the game part. Tell a better story," and Takeru widens his pause, building interest, "and you can have the Tanemon crackers. 'kari can decide."

"We'll all vote for our favorite," says Hikari, smiling, her hand coming to a rest at the top of the lump, where the tender shape of a small face has pressed its profile to the hollow of her knee, the outline of an ear visible at the tiniest layer of the duvet blend, turned towards their conversation. "That'll be more fair."

"Fair's good." Daisuke's in a promising mood, rolling over onto his back. Stretches his arm out to lay over the bottom of the curled lump, protective. He looks up at the ceiling, brown eyes studying the new paint there as he begins plotting. "You first, Takaishi."

"Gladly," because there's no competition. Takeru finds a spot on a tastefully upholstered chaise, kicks his sock-covered feet onto the last free corner of the mattress, a handful of orange slices as his fuel. "But you have to decide what the story will be about. Some rules, you know."

Daisuke's arm tightens a bit around the lump. "How about how Mama met Papa? That sounds nice, right? Might make me miss them less."

There's another sniffle, and something suspiciously close to a politely worded, "Yeah," in high pitched child's speech.

"All right. How they met." Takeru thinks this over, or pretends to, his wicked grin making Hikari roll her eyes as she settles against the headboard, and Daisuke wrinkle his nose when he rolls onto his side. "So, you remember that old flat Jou had once, by the metro station near Miyako's family store? Well, one day…."

---

"Hey, I'm heading out—," Taichi pauses just long enough to adjust the shoulder strap of his messenger bag, interrupting their conversation with little regard and even less remorse, "—but I thought you should know your girl's Winnie-the-Pooh-ing out your bedroom window."

His flatmate stares back with such incomprehension it's Yamato who has to speak for him, though not with any more clarity. "The window?"

"Winnie the Pooh?" asks Koushiro, predictably picking out the least consequential part.

"My girl?" This, finally, from Jou, and then a yelp of realization, "Oh, shit—Mimi!"

A muffled wail echoes through the flat, needling and pathetic. "I'm stuck!"

All three on their feet, surging forward in synchronized panic. Taichi's out the front door and probably halfway down the block to the metro stop when they discover her, hips wedged between Jou's bedroom window panes. Her skirt's flared up past her waist, knee-high stockings slipping down to her ankles from the frantic flailing she'd started up when the effort to wriggle herself free had failed. She's not even wearing one of her nicer panties, just an old pair of purple cotton briefs printed in a honeybee motif, but Koushiro still vanishes into thin air, whole body as red as his darkest curls, stuttering excuses.

Yamato can't even tell himself to scowl, at a complete loss for words. Jou is immediately miserable. "Why would you do this?" He means, why would she do this to him, but he's always been too polite for his own good.

Mimi kicks the air behind her again, shrieking voice muted by the glass. "Just get me out!"

Jou takes hold of her waist, Yamato her left knee, but she's squeezed in tight. The worse the situation reveals itself to become, the more Jou's panic is expressed through stream of consciousness questioning. "How did you get in before? Why would you go back out the window? What were you thinking?"

"I was trying to surprise you!" The room decorated quite nicely, in truth, like a birthday confetti bomb had gone off sneakily sometime between their waking up and taking a second serving of coffee at the kitchen table, Koushiro having stopped by between cups to drop off his own gift for Jou before work.

"Yes, well done." Yamato tries another grip, grasping her by both shins. Hits a tickle spot and almost gets taken out, ducking just in time. Sora had been right; he should have just whisked Jou away for the weekend, a last getaway before his medical residency picked up all his spare hours. Instead here he is, wondering how much butter it will take to try to free his boyfriend's best friend from the flat's smallest window, genuinely wishing he hadn't used so much of it to make pistachio croissants for their breakfast. No one will ever believe this is how Yamato spent his morning.

Mimi's sobs have turned to strangled little hiccups as she bends weakly in half over the window ledge. Koushiro has returned, holding a plastic shoe horn. Yamato is now wondering how much money he could make bribing Mimi off of all future well-meaning, poorly-executed shenanigans if he gets a good enough recording of this equally ridiculous rescue attempt, knowing full well she wouldn't care at all about weird videos of herself floating around the Internet, but would lose her mind at unrecyclable plastic touching her bare skin.

Jou is patting Mimi on the back, trying to comfort her amidst the consequences of her own choices, a fool's errand. "Just hold on, we'll figure this out—," but evidently the wrong thing to say, she starts to flops her lower half around even more.

"I won't hold on! Get me out now! I have been calling for help for fifteen minutes!"

He's started to yell in time with her, their mutually assured tendency to dramatic panicking making Yamato sigh to himself as Jou cries back, glasses slipped down to his nose, "I'm sorry! We didn't know! Taichi only just told us and—" and catches his mistake too late, as Mimi has begun screeching again for an entirely new reason, the sounds out of her mouth closer to a feral animal.

"This wouldn't have happened if you let me move in instead of a total stranger!"

Jou winces, looks at Yamato, who gives him a pointed glance, expectant and resigned. Now or never. "Well, honey, I—that's what I wanted to tell you—I'm, we're actually moving out—or in, together."

Mimi falls still. Koushiro advances with the shoe horn. Yamato grabs him by the collar, hauls the both of them out. "Read the room," he tells him.

Jou leans forward, trying to get a glimpse of her face through the glass. She hangs limply, knees braced for the bedroom wall, propped up on her arms by hands that cling to the sill. He rubs her back. "Did you hear what I said?"

She heaves a gasp, the epitome of sorrow. "You're leaving me?"

"To be fair," as he tries to insert a little objectivity, "you were the one to introduce us."

Mimi starts wailing again, but he knows this kind, sitting back on his heels with a sigh and a smile. "Oh, so it's all my fault you're so happy?"

"Very much," and sets his hands around her waist again, a firmer grip. She wiggles back, twisting around, hoisting herself with both hands to the side panes of the open window, and when he gets an arm around beneath her and she angles her hips just so at the precise moment, something finally gives, and they tumble backwards onto his bedroom floor in a tangled mess, taking one look at each other before dissolving into relieved laughter. Jou catches his breath first, rolling over onto his side to look at her. "How did you even get through the window in the first place? We're on the second floor."

She lifts her arm, flexing the slender muscle. "You underestimate me, Kido."

"To my great detriment." Smiling kindly, "So you're okay with all this?"

Mimi shrugs, nonchalant and complacent, even agreeable, now that she'd escaped a mortal danger of her own making. "I mean, you'll never really escape me."

Jou chuckles, sitting up with her, fixing his glasses. "How about a flat-sit deal then? To really make sure I'll never be rid of you?"

Her pout makes her bottom lip jut nearly an inch. Impressive, really. "You could have let it to me from the start—,"

"You and whose money?" Yamato's back in the room now, cutting right to the chase.

"I have money!" A delusion so endearingly believed that even Koushiro holds himself back from pointing out what they all know, his tendency to speak to what's obvious not exactly the most convenient of superpowers.

Instead, Koushiro offers support, which Yamato privately reads as buying into the delusion himself. "Or you will after your big break, anyway."

Mimi gestures at him, glaring at Yamato, swiveling back around to Jou, "See! Kou believes in me!"

"Belief doesn't pay rent," starts Yamato, and Jou quickly sets to interrupt their inevitable squabble, seeking peace.

"Which is why you won't be, all by yourself, because you'll only be subletting my room, and the rest of it'll be split."

Mimi looks scandalized. "I can't live with a total stranger!"

"Taichi's not a stranger, and he's barely around anyway," assures Jou. "If he's not at work, he's at football practice, or his girlfriend's, or Sora's, or he's visiting his parents. You'll probably never even see him. His first month here felt like I was still on my own, I swear."

She stills appears doubtful, though somewhat abated. Glances meaningfully at Yamato and Koushiro, who are hovering by the doorway, impatient and long-suffering, respectively, while they wait for the pair to make a decision, get off the floor, and finish birthday breakfast festivities so all their work days can finally begin. Looks back at Jou at last, fresh pout. "Because you weren't here either." A last ditch effort to pretend she isn't quite interested, Jou's flat ideally located, in truth, and the proximity to her studios didn't count for nothing. Her parents had remained supportive of her career choices, offering loans and housing, but Mimi has been determined to make it on her own. It's hard enough having most people in the industry know who her father is without suspecting nepotism everywhere she went for an audition or a reading.

"That was to help you out," says Yamato.

"I don't need help!" Another lie, but she's more ruffled by the fact that Jou can't keep a secret, frowning at him when he looks sheepish.

Koushiro quite interested then, mostly because he can keep up with the conversation now, their subliminal manner of connection something he'd never quite caught onto. This, however, had been a subject never far from discussion, Mimi's various updates on the enduring saga that was her infatuation with Miyako's coolly confident older brother who managed the Inoue's corner store next to the metro stop a topic of which all three of them knew in more intimate detail than the various aspects to their own lives. "So you asked him on a date?"

"She hasn't," because Yamato knows her better than he's altogether very happy about, while his boyfriend vows, "She will!" because if there's one thing Jou is, it's stupid loyal.

Mimi, recognizing this, looks at her best friend with grateful eyes, waterworks renewed in earnest. "This is why you can't leave me!"

"But it's not like it's very far," Miyako's telling her now, her penchant for matter-of-fact reason balanced only by her tendency to be as emotionally aggressive as Mimi on their good days. Mimi considers this their best quality, and entirely the successful basis of their friendship. Yes, definitely these things and not at all the proximity by relationship to Mantarō, who is currently on hold with the franchise store's home office whilst transcribing a song he's been working on for months onto a composition sheet behind the cashier's desk. He has a new half-inch silver gauge in his left ear, which Mimi has always found to be his prettier ear, so she's in a very good mood.

"I've got to take three trains to get there, Miyako. Three! They might as well have moved across the prefecture." Mantarō has paused his songwriting to suck down more of his flavored ice, and Mimi feels her knees buckle. She takes hold of the shelf in the crisps aisle that Miyako is very poorly restocking with extremely minimal effort and tries to focus on her friend. "It's very inconsiderate."

"You don't mean that," smiles Miyako.

"No," but reluctantly given. She just wants to complain for a bit. Mimi doesn't stay discouraged for long, but the adjustment over the last few weeks has been a bit rough, the furthest she's ever lived from Jou since they were kids. For her undue suffering, she'd made Jou swear he'd name his firstborn after her, but Yamato had overheard and spoiled everything, as per usual. Still, even she hadn't missed the look on Jou's face when Yamato had snapped at her not to stop pre-naming "his kids," but to stop pre-naming "our kids," and it had been very difficult not to gush over the slippage or how madly Yamato had blushed when he realized what he'd said. These are the kinds of adorable things she's missing living so far from them, which is the real reason she's so grumpy about it. "I just want—,"

"—what they have, yeah, yeah. Mimi," and here Miyako pauses like she's not a founding apostle of this specific brand of social envy, "it's really not like you to hold yourself back. If your crush is available, then I say go for it. You finally have your own place (sort of), and you've started saving, and you're getting callbacks for your auditions, so," and trails off, picking up a prawns crisps packet to open during her tenth break in the last half hour alone.

Mimi accepts a handful, chewing in tiny bites, because she'd been very careful with her lipstick application this time and there is no way she's letting it smudge before she gets to the counter, every part to their imagined conversation rehearsed down to the millisecond. "So," she says instead, "I'm just—I'm waiting for things to click." Knows she's being insincerely evasive, and not like herself at all, but Mantarō hasn't looked up once in their direction despite Mimi having made sure she looked especially cute today, even changing outfits between her own part-time job as an office receptionist and walking to the Inoue corner store to pick up a few odd and wholly unnecessary items on a one-hundred-percent not meticulously timed casual drop-by. If this isn't like her, it's everyone else's fault for not following along. Honestly, the world makes things so needlessly challenging. Mimi cannot understand why she isn't simply put in charge of it.

Miyako rolls her eyes, cheeks stuffed with crisps. "Click how? You think there's gonna be a bell that goes off or something, when you finally meet your soulmate?"

The front door chimes, and both women glance over, Mimi immediately losing interest when Taichi barely passes her the courtesy of public recognition.

Miyako, to Mimi's visible chagrin, straightens where she's leaning against the shelves, beaming, offering her cheek. Taichi swoops there first, placing a soft kiss just below the round rims of her glasses, purple to match her new dye job. "You're late today," says Miyako, grinning up at him. "On the outs with my dearly annoying sister again already?"

"Don't tell her," Taichi warns, reaching past Mimi's head to grab the biggest packet of barbeque crisps they have in stock, still not looking at her. Winking at Miyako instead, "and I'll pass you the number of our new center forward."

Her eyes widen, overly eager. "How pretty is he, on a scale of one to me?"

"Well, I'm using him to bribe you out of telling Momoe I forgot our date again, so what do you think?" Taichi laughs, the dimples in his cheeks pinched deep. He cuts a tall, built figure even in jeans and an old uni sweatshirt, but Mimi has already committed to ignoring him right back, seeing as how that's all he's done around her for the past month. Takes advantage of their irritatingly friendly banter to eye Mantarō again, peeking around the end of the aisle. He's still on hold on the cordless store phone, but he's stopped writing in his composition notebook, pencil tucked behind his pretty left ear, looking out the windows by the counter. An opening at last. Mimi snaps straight, feeling the nervous butterflies crowd her stomach, her breath catching in her throat, clutching the last crisp so tightly in her first the starched, fried potato crumbles crushed between her fingers.

"I won't tell her about you if you tell him about me," Miyako's teasing now, but Mimi's no longer paying attention. Abandoning the pair, she instead grabs the closest confectionary off the closest shelf, not caring what's in her hand at all, and advancing up the aisle, timing her steps with her breathing, and feeling quite much more like her usual assured self by the time she gets to the counter.

"Hi, Mantarō!" she chirps, with the brightest grin.

Mantarō looks at her, and smiles, before she even makes it all the way to him. "Hey, Mimi. Didn't see you come in."

"'Cause her preferred method of entrance is the window," says Taichi, slapping down the bag of crisps and hoisting a pack of beer onto the counter, cutting over her heavily rehearsed greeting and invading all her personal space to boot, too.

Mimi is so shocked she can't speak, mouth dropped open in a wordless gape.

Mantarō stares at him, clueless. "The…window?"

Taichi shrugs. "I don't know what to tell you." They both look at her, and she's still too stunned to speak, or to prevent what happens next, because by some orchestration of all that is not good in the world, Taichi's still speaking: "Just that she's got a massive crush on you, dude, so maybe buck up the pace with whatever's going on here 'cause I am fucking tired of listening to her complain about you not picking up her hints to Jou over the phone every night."

There's a beat of silence, and then Miyako's horrified shriek from the back of the store, "That's who your crush is?!" while Mantarō bursts into a nervous chuckle, unable to even look at her, as Mimi experiences the intense desire to melt into the very earth for the first time ever in her life, and Taichi, finally acknowledging her in the most smug of smirks, salutes her as he walks out of the store.

---

Daisuke's head shoots up at once, his scowl extra large. "That's not how it happened at all!"

"You can't interrupt the storyteller." Takeru bites the leg off a Chibimon cracker while looking right at him, the sharp snap making Daisuke gasp sharply, scandalized.

"That's not a rule—'kari, that's not a rule—," and cuts himself off when she lifts a finger to her closed mouth, glancing down at her knees, where the lump under the duvet has migrated to lay half over her lap, the gentle even breathing the only disturbance to the spread fabric.

"Whether it's a rule or not," says Takeru, keeping his tone jovial even as he lowers his voice, "you're not supposed to interrupt."

"I think I'm allowed to when you're telling it all wrong." Still glaring, though his attempt to look gravely disapproving is negated by the chipmunk-like swell of his cheeks after he sucks up a couple of strawberry halves.

Takeru remains amused, mostly because Daisuke is unwittingly cutest when he's flustered and easy to harmlessly antagonize, but Hikari intervenes then, less for their benefit than hers. It'd always been hard to get her nephew to go to sleep, particularly when he was homesick, and she isn't going to risk this time over one of their silly squabbles. So she speaks up with a suggestion, redirecting the conversation without lifting a finger. "You can take your turn then, Dais."

"Yes, inflate the record."

"Correct the record," huffs Daisuke when Takeru grins again. "You made it sound like they weren't friends first."

"I mean, they weren't close," says Takeru, shrugging. "You saw."

"I did see, apparently way more than you did." Sighs deliberately as he scoffs this at him, and Hikari finally says something.

"He's got half a point, and so do you," when Takeru opens his mouth to interrupt, her eyes softening at him. "But they met before they lived together. They just weren't close after that because his ex was really touchy about the fact they used to be. Remember?"

He didn't, because this is the first time he's hearing about this bit of juicy gossip. Sits up straighter in the chaise, too. "Really?"

"You should pay more attention to the details. You know, as a writer." Daisuke's smugness earns him a mangled Chibimon cracker lobbed right at his head, and the resulting yelp stirs the lump back to life, whimpering at the disturbed sleep.

Hikari groans to herself, all her efforts foiled in the end. "It's all right, it's all right," she soothes, shooting Takeru a look, and Daisuke is decent enough to take half the blame, fixing sympathetic eyes at the lump's groggy wiggling.

"We were just getting ready for the second part to the story," he tells him, more affectionate this time. "You ready for Papa's side?"

A vaguely aware, "...Huh?" rouses from the lump's cuddled sprawl on Hikari's lap, but both men take it as an enthusiastic affirmative, and so Daisuke sits up to better project his voice about the dimming bedroom.

"Okay, so before that whole flat sublet ever happened (which definitely didn't happen like that )," throwing Takeru another disapproving glance that rolls right off him, "there was this kickboxing class at the community center she took on Saturday mornings. And one day…."

---

Before Taichi realizes what's happened he's on his back, wind knocked out, ears rung. Her face looms overhead, wide honey eyes peering down. Still doesn't know her name, but even knocked out he'd recognize those eyes anywhere, though he's sure she's always had just the two and not the six that seem to be swimming above him at the moment.

"You okay?" Sounding like a whisper, when actually she's speaking at normal volume, if not slightly louder to make herself heard over the other activity of the training ring's open floor plan.

With a grunt, Taichi pulls himself up to sit on the rubber mat, swallows the wince. Salutes her. G-d, why did he salute her? "I'm good, good." G-d, why is he this out of his breath? "Three out of—out of five." Was that a wheeze? G-d, why.

One of her eyebrows arches flawlessly. "You sure?" in this doubtful if bored tone, as though knocking him on his ass for the third time in a row were mere child's play. Taichi can't even be humiliated. He likes good competition.

"Yeah, I'm sure." Gets on his feet at last then, pushing damp brown curls off his forehead with his wrist. Her face is flushed, too. Pink sheen, bright shine. Had somehow gotten her left shoulder caught in the corner of his mouth, in the first or second round, and sets his jaw tight now to stop thinking about the taste. Wipes his chin with the back of his hand, palm open to her. Beckons. "You sure?"

It's a bad idea to taunt her, and he's not really. Sort of still in disbelief. By no means does he underestimate her. Yes, she seems to spend most of their overlapping gym hour socializing with the desk attendant and taking any number of calls on a pair of pink Bluetooth earbuds, but she also has a thorough routine, and never misses a rep. Sets a disciplined pace and adheres to a taxing regiment, watching soaps on the wall mounted monitors while benching the equivalent of a large dog. Always volunteers to spot, ever cheerful with encouraging pep talks provided to total strangers and gym friends alike. Got more membership and class sign ups than the actual staff, most likely.

He's still here, after all, and had been, since the first time they'd crossed paths at the gym's entranceway, him on the way in feeling a tense mix of lethargic and pent up from a bad work week and another drawn out argument with his recently basically ex-girlfriend, looking for an outlet, and her on the way out to the gym's adjoining all purpose room for a weekly kickboxing class that she swore would do the trick, speaking not to him at all but to her brown-haired green-eyed companion, who apparently had to be convinced to take the class with her, even up the point of their walking by at that moment to their first session.

Taichi, meanwhile, needed no convincing. He followed her right off that same moment, not a thought in his tired mind but the sound of her voice, then stared blankly when the instructor handed him a sign-up sheet and requested the large enrollment fee upfront, looking down at his own feet like he wasn't sure exactly how he ended up in the room at all. This is a feeling he will come to associate with her presence over the next several weeks, and how he finds himself here in front of her—or, more specifically, beneath her. Taichi likes this particular position a lot.

Tilts her head to the side now, gaze sweeping up from his waiting stance to his concentrated expression. She says something, and he tries to focus, really tries, but that's around when she pulls the hair tie loose, and her sweat ridden cinnamon blonde bangs have curled down her temples, and a strand has found itself stuck to the corner of her bottom lip, and she's just left it there, unbothered, while she redoes her high ponytail, knotting the band tight. So all he says is a vaguely aware, "Huh?" before she's already stepping back.

"If it's all the same to you, I'm cutting early." She's conversational, her breathing so calm and even, almost rested, like she were reading him the weather report. Which he would absolutely pay attention to for once, if it were her delivering it to him on his television screen. "But it was nice sparring with you again!" Grins as she adds, benevolent, "You're getting better."

Taichi snorts, wordless, watching her turn around without a second thought. Working on the mat next to theirs is the friend she always comes in with, his thin and wiry frame belying quite a bit of presence in the ring as far as Taichi could tell. she talks to him now, offering the same excuse for her early departure, and that's when Taichi finally catches his name, placing the face almost immediately.

"So, you're saying you've been taking a kickboxing class with your favorite underclassman from graduate school, and it took you three weeks to recognize each other?" Sora's asking him now, as she picks at the sliced chicken breast from his salad. She's across from him at her fancy new desk in her fancy new work digs, with all the bells and whistles of a renovated suite, and entirely the reason he steals off to her downtown office whenever their lunch breaks overlapped. Or, rather, whenever his allowed him enough time to skip out for a good chunk of the afternoon, because most of his colleagues worked through lunch like lunatics, much like Sora herself. Taichi's sure she'd forget to eat at all if he didn't invite himself over at least twice a week, toting one of those takeaway meals that came with double serving options to split without making the ploy that obvious.

"I wasn't exactly looking at him the entire time." A pitiful defense, but the truth nonetheless, and one that makes Sora smirk a bit, her mouth curling up at the corners.

"And you still don't know her name."

"She doesn't know mine either!" This he groans not as a defense but as a pitying statement of the fact, and the fact that this is not like him at all. He's not used to being out of his depth, and this recent spell has been going on for a while.

For all his rotten luck lately, Taichi's half convinced that somewhere Momoe is piercing another needle into a mini doll she'd fashioned after his likeness, but he supposes he can't really blame her. Her patience could stretch only so thin, and they'd been fighting a lot more, and over the dumbest things, like how often he'd go get lunch with Sora instead of taking the three metro stops over to her flat to talk in person over yet another rehearsed conversation about how they should try to be friends again, whether exes ever really could. It was the latter he had trouble with, because he knows they could be friends eventually, but only friends, and was where their assumptions diverged. It was easier to have her be mad at him for being so flaky than to tell her his feelings hadn't exactly changed, but just didn't really seem to be there anymore, friends or otherwise. The coward's way out, he knows, but she's got to know this by now, too. Even Sora does, because she knows him better than a lot of the people in his life, giving her license to judge him the most, too.

Like now, when she throws him a look usually reserved for the most obtuse clients at her boutique shop. "She doesn't need to know yours yet, because you still need to break up with Momoe."

Taichi sinks into the armchair, lunch abandoned entirely. "I did—,"

"Months ago, Taichi, meanwhile, you keep sleeping with her, so what's she supposed to think?"

"I'd love to know what she thinks," he snaps back, annoyed now by her tone most of all. "Or what any of you women thi—,"

"Oh, please finish that sentence," Sora leans forward, voice pitched, eyes flashing as red as her hair, "if you're feeling so brave today."

Taichi scoffs, a transparent attempt to not look rightly put in his place. Crosses his arms over his chest anyway, moody. "Fine. I'll call her from Jou's tomorrow."

At this, Sora perks up, even smiles warmly. "So you're going to take the spare room then?"

"If he can find a sublet for his," shrugs Taichi. Picks up a piece of chicken to eat with his bare fingers over her click of disapproval. "I can't afford the whole flat on my own."

"Good." Sora nods, pleased. "I'll tell Shuu it worked out."

"Or Shuu could just talk to his brother like a normal family."

"They do talk!" mouthing at him crossly. "You know how busy they all are."

"Last family event I'll ever go to, for family that's not mine." Steals the last chicken slice out of her chopsticks before it can reach her mouth, and she just sighs, used to his childishness. "I ended up talking to the wait staff the entire time, I was so bored."

Sora is unamused, her face flat. "What a charming summation of my wedding. So glad you could be there, too." Taichi grins, water under the bridge, and she rolls her eyes, unwilling to smile all the way. "Just get back to your own office already."

He's already off the chair, dusting his hands, when a knock at the door has him turning around as Sora switches instinctively to professional mode, her voice impeccably collegial. He almost does a double take at the sound of it, and then actually does a double take when he hears her behind him.

"Excuse me, Mrs Takenouchi?" Peering into Sora's office from the open doorway like a sign from the universe, and Taichi's mouth parts stupidly. She doesn't even look at him. "A package dropped off for you at the front desk."

Sora beams, grateful. Both arms outstretched, "Fantastic, thank you so much, Mimi."

"No problem!" She just about chirps as she walks into the room, striding by him, still unaddressed. Sets the large flat garment box onto the coffee table before the set of armchairs that make up the meeting corner in Sora's fancy suite. "I like doing these errands. It's like a pop quiz on office layout."

"You don't have to be glass half full about all office work," laughs Sora. "Some parts of the job can just be annoying."

Mimi shrugs, pepper toned. "Honest, I don't mind. Part time receptionist is better than full time on the market." Then she winks, hands behind her back, "Plus it gets my boyfriend to stop worrying about me being at home all day up to no good."

"Boyfriend?" Both women look at him, which is Taichi's only clue that he was the one who's spoken then. His mind goes blank. "Uh—,"

"Mimi," says Sora, taking pity on the second hand embarrassment that is willing to claim friendship with Taichi in public in general, "this is my old high school classmate, Tai—,"

"No, I know you! You go to my and Iori's gym," she realizes in a start. "You're, um, Taisei? Right?"

The two characters weren't remotely similar, but he's thinking the paperwork to change it couldn't be all that bad, if it'd help her remember him. His only goal here, really. Even just half his name in her mouth has got to be the best sound he's ever heard, so he finds himself replying before his brain can catch up, "Yeah. That's me," pointedly ignoring Sora rolling her eyes so hard in the background she almost takes out her own neck.

The woman smiles, honey eyes warming to a soft gold. "I knew it! I never forget a name."

"Evidently," says Taichi. She's a different pretty when she's not all sweaty from their sparring, but the fire's still there, her confidence and lightheartedness.

Her gaze sweeps up and down his frame. "I didn't recognize you standing up."

Again, Taichi ignores the narrowed glance Sora sends him from the corner of his eye, looking between the two, putting the messy pieces together in her head, and focuses on Mimi, who is still smiling, easygoing and unaffected. "Don't get used to it. I'll win next time."

"That's the spirit," like she genuinely means it, grinning. "But don't feel too bad with the sparring results. You do quite well on your back, seems to me."

Can't believe his ears, bringing his startled gaze over to her small smile. Feathered lashes, doe-eyes. Like anything he might hear skating beneath her innocent tone is his imagination entirely, if it weren't for that dimple ghosting the left corner of her mouth. Taichi has the distinct impression he is being played. He likes this impression a lot. "I'm always open to new positions."

It's only by a sliver, how her eyes change, but he takes notice. These are the kinds of things he never misses. "Is that so?" Her voice sweet, dripped in raw honey. Not that he should be thinking things like raw and honey around her, but then he's not supposed to be thinking about her at all, as Sora's very loud coughing fit reminds him then, from where she's sitting back down in one of the armchairs to open the garment delivery box.

He continues to ignore her, clears his throat instead, a planned attempt at nonchalance, like he does this all the time, actually, flirt with women way out of his league, noncommittal and never sure what he wants most days, least of what anyone else wants from him. "Sure. Yeah." A fraction of a hesitation, before seizing on the dare before his head can regret it, "You?"

Mimi nods, bobbing her small chin, thoughtful. "I suppose I'll try anything once." Smiles again, lashes fanning in an elegant curl. "Or however many times."

"Good to be adventurous," with a slightly more confident nod of his own.

She laughs. "I've always thought so."

Takes the bait, no longer caring how blatant it looks. "And are you, uh, thinking about one soon?"

"An adventure?"

"A risk." Holds his breath, playing it off. Badly, it seems, because the red in his cheeks is making him sweatier, and her nose wrinkles. In thought, it turns out, because she's looking him over, considered.

"Well, sure," says Mimi. Then she smiles, and Taichi knows he's well and truly fucked. "For the right position."

---

"Don't just stare at us like that," says Takeru, yawning into his elbow, stretching out his arms behind him until the joints crack. "Come in."

Miyako does not, astonished by what she'd just heard. "What on earth are you three talking about?"

Daisuke rolls onto his side, parallel with the lump now laying prone, finally asleep, between him and Hikari, who has also laid down. "C'mere and cuddle me, Ken," he mumbles sleepily into a pillow, and Ken instinctively moves to obey, stopped only by Takeru and Miyako taking either of his hands in theirs.

"Not until you say what's going on," says Miyako, a little cross. "Why are you talking about Taichi and my sister? That was ages ago."

"Yeah, question there," sighs Takeru, swinging the arm that holds onto Ken's. "This timeline is starting to fall apart. They were together the same time Mimi and your brother got together, right?"

"Wrong. It was the former, then the latter. No wait, reverse that. No, wait—," she stops herself, frowning. Looks at Ken, who has zero context for this conversation and, quite honestly, does not want to obtain it either. "When did all that happen?"

"You don't remember because you've made yourself block it all out," Ken answers matter-of-factly, if still kindly, "since it makes you sad to think about how you almost had the sister and brother you always wanted, instead of the ones you have."

Hikari lifts her head off her own pillow, laughing. "You don't mean that."

"And I take specific offense to it if you did," pouts Daisuke, though without much conviction.

"It specifically doesn't involve you," says Miyako.

Daisuke gestures at the lump, an emphatic refusal of such profound illogic. "Their kid is my kid."

"Ours, too." Takeru reaches out his foot to tap the bottom of the lump's stretched figure, the most affectionate of nudges. Even Miyako clicks her tongue, Ken eyeing the lump with the same anxiousness that Hikari does, all of them sighing in collective relief when the lump slumbers on, peaceful. It was no secret how immediately they'd all fallen in love with him, the pride and joy of the gang's second generation, though most were polite to keep it off the surface, as said generation grew.

Ken, after letting go of both Miyako and Takeru, finds a spot next to Hikari. "But why are you asking anyway?"

"It started off as a bedtime story, but then we got ourselves confused."

Takeru agrees with her, shrugging as he adds, "I think we were missing some parts to their story in the first place."

"Well, of course you would." Miyako admits, "It was sort of murky at the beginning."

"Maybe not to them. Maybe we just weren't involved," suggests Ken. They all stare at him, Daisuke and Hikari even lifting their heads off the bed again in unison, aghast. He balks a bit, uncertain. "Because we don't all have to be involved in all parts of our lives?"

Daisuke is the first to laugh, busting his face into the pillow. "You sure love talking crazy sometimes, Ichijoji."

"Honey, everyone knows everything in this circle," Miyako reminds him. "Like how your hair is so shiny because you still wash it with baby shampoo, or how Daisuke can't drive at night because of the ghosts, or how Takeru and Hikari were each other's first—,"

"Hey," which Takeru shouts way louder than is necessary, the others cringing again with another worried glance at the sleeping lump, "let's go back to the ghost thing, because I have questions."

"No, let's go back to the story," says Hikari, her face pinker than normal, avoiding Daisuke and Ken's curious frowns, and Miyako's knowing smirk. "Anyway, whether or not you believe which version of how they met or when, we all know what happened on Iori's birthday…."

---

The last thing Taichi had planned on was to spend his Thursday night subbing in as chaperone for a birthday party his flatmate was meant to be hosting in the first place. He'd come by on his sister's invitation, right from work, usually up for any chance to hang out with his favorite underclassman from graduate school, but after four hours and the departure of all his own friends, even the fashionably late excuse loses its applicability.

Iori looks up at him from beneath an obnoxiously large, wide brimmed beer funnel hat, to which someone (Taichi puts his bets on Takeru) has added a flower crown declaring Iori as the birthday girl that someone else (surely Miyako) has decorated with a feathery purple boa appended with tiny gold penises she swears looked like a judicial gavels in the thumbnail photo on the party prop website she'd used. "What?" the younger shouts over the music blaring from the bar's sound system, Hikari's arms around his neck as she hangs on for dear life and Daisuke passed out in Iori's lap, pantless for a reason no one seems really to be able to understand but also not at all surprised to see.

Taichi leans over the table, holding up a red-faced and very sweaty Ken by the back of his collar so he can find his way back to center gravity, and repeats, volunteering without having been asked, "I'll go check the flat. She might still be with Mantarō."

Iori just nods, glass eyed, sipping more beer out of the twisty straw attached to the hat and connecting the source of his birthday drinks to his mouth. Taichi pulls the hat off, and Takeru protests from under the table somewhere on the floor by Iori's feet; how he saw the gesture, Taichi doesn't bother to think about.

Miyako waves him off weakly from the other end of the table, unaware that she's addressing not Taichi exactly, but the wall to the left of Taichi's head, and by a very noticeable margin. "Don't let—let her talk to him long. They gotta set up some boundaries. Y'know?"

Taichi did know, intimately, and for that reason is deeply uninterested in having to take up this specific task for the night. Had walked in on them one too many times over the course of their rocky two-year situationship to not be scarred, but if Taichi is honest, he's sure Mimi would complain the same about him. They'd tried policies that ranged from socks on doorknobs to emoji text warnings, but they still ended up knowing way too much about each other for two people who still had their respective names saved into their contacts as "Sublet 1" and "Window Girl."

"I'll send her back here to close the party out," he tells the group, jokingly, but they're not listening at all, so he leaves out the part about promising to return with her. He doesn't bother trying to keep up with them anymore, already sober from the two beers he'd had with Sora and Shuu while Jou and Koushiro had been roped into a darts battle-off with Takeru and Daisuke. This could be why Ken is so drunk; Miyako had told him he could drink away the pain of getting darted in the shoulder, twice, despite having been standing on the other end of the room entirely by that point. Yamato had taken all the darts and both boards away after that, and as penance for suggesting the battle-off in the first place Sora had made Taichi promise he'd stay behind to keep an eye on the younger group until Mimi got there, and Momoe had gotten mad again when he'd agreed.

You do everything for her, she'd protested when he finally got her to use her words, which Taichi doesn't think is fair, or true. Yeah, he knew her schedule inside out, and they would leave each other their meals to finish, and they binged a lot of late night television laying end to end on Jou's tiny sofa, and, sure, he kept looking at the door to the bar all night wondering aloud where she was, ordered her favorite seltzer with ice refreshed on the bar counter ready and waiting, and checked his phone more than he might on average, but honestly he barely saw Mimi outside of normal shared space interactions, especially now that her television career began taking off.

But Momoe still wouldn't get past the fact that Mimi proudly displayed on their fridge a picture of herself sitting on Taichi's chest holding up a victory scoreboard from the tournament that had ended their summer kickboxing class, which Taichi had forgotten to tell Momoe they took together, because he honestly had had forgotten the whole thing. It had only been a four week class, and over two years before they ended up subletting from Jou, even if Mimi still delighted in the serendipitous comedy of it all after she found the picture on her phone as proof that they did in fact know each other when she was younger and he was cuter, in her teasing words, an eternal flirt at all times, which Momoe hadn't particularly seemed to enjoy hearing, though come to think of it neither had the girl he'd been seeing then, too. But like a good boyfriend, Taichi had reassured Momoe that he was just helping out a friend that night of Iori's party, and that Mimi kept that picture around for bragging rights and nothing more, and that he'd taken a half dozen classes at the community center altogether probably, and with any number of girls—evidently the wrong thing to tell Momoe, who had shrieked that they were really over for good this time and stomped out of the bar with Jun and Chizuru while Miyako waved an enthusiastic goodbye with the kind of open sarcasm unique to chaotic sibling dynamics the world over.

Taichi elects not to get involved when people get like this, which might be why he gets into trouble with his girlfriends so often, this lazy posture of non-interference. Except, apparently, tonight, when he finds Mimi not at their metro station, or the Inoue corner store, or talking to Mantarō, or inside their flat, but, in fact, still outside the front door.

Her fingers are almost blue, which tells him she'd been there for a while, and the Palmon flask in her hand empty, which tells him this is not going to end well. "Finally!" she shouts when she sees him coming up the staircase at the end of their floor, "I can't get this stupid door open!" and waves so hard then that she begins to tip backwards, dressed still for her latest television role, playing the part of a weatherwoman anchor in sensible nude heels, sheer stockings, and a patterned pink and beige plaid two-piece jacket and skirt number over a white blouse. The tags for the studio's costume department were still stapled to the back of her jacket, which his hand brushes when his arm comes around the bend of her back before her head can hit the railing, neck lolling gently.

"Couldn't try the window?" he asks, half in jest, righting her as she begins a protracted search through her purse, dropping the flash back into it. He waits until she's too distracted babbling energetically to herself (" — I don't — windows are not doors, which I said — you know, I even said, I said even that I didn't — and he was much wrong — as I told him, I said — the crew went for drinks, after, y'know — bad news, and, look, I said to him — ,") to extract her keys and open the door just as she gleefully produces a tube of pink lipstick which she proceeds to try to squeeze into the lock.

Knocking the lipstick out of her hand, Taichi kicks at the back of her heels so they fall off in the entranceway, then shepherds her to Jou's couch tucked in front a trio of awning windows tastefully encased in sea gray curtains, a Yamato touch from when Jou'd first bought the flat. She flings herself onto cushions, still talking nonsense, her hands clawing for something to warm herself, and it takes more effort than he anticipates to wrestle the drapes from her small but mighty fingers before her drunken strength can tear the curtain rods down. Tricking her with his overcoat, which she immediately snuggles under, he steps back as she slides down across the sofa.

"Water," she croaks out.

"Get it yourself," says Taichi, dismissive, and more than a little bothered that she'd apparently chosen to skip out on their friend's birthday to have her own fun instead. It isn't like her. Normally, she'd at least have given him a little emoji text warning, something stupid and theirs. He'd gotten used to that, if he's forced to be honest. "And then get yourself to Iori's. You're missing an entire party you planned, you know."

"You're—missing—my party," she mumbles, trailing off, closing her eyes.

Taichi rolls his. "I was at the whole thing, actually. Everyone was." Hesitates then, watching her mutter incoherently under her breath, like she'd already forgotten he was there. "So where were you?"

Her eyes still shut, Mimi instead throws her neck back over the armrest, scratching dramatically at her parched throat with her fingers, gasping for air. Taichi sighs, but follows through, bringing her just the bare minimum amount of water to be courteous. She's on her stomach when he comes out of the kitchen, squirming around into a starfish sprawl across the sofa, and he has to yank her by the elbow when her attempt to drink laying down ends with a drenched cushion, mouth missed entirely, lipstick staining the fabric lining.

"Mimi, get up," he tells her. She doesn't, of course, but at least he can say he tried. "Fine. I'm leaving you here then."

"Hm."

"Call Iori in the morning."

"Mm," and sighs, growing stiller and stiller by the minute.

He knees her shoulder where it's laying half-off the cushions. "Are you really sleeping out here when your bedroom is just down the hall?"

She mumbles something unintelligible again, ending in a large yawn. A final, resigned glance at his wristwatch, and he gives himself only a minute to hang his head, contemplating his life's choices to have led him to this insufferable moment, before getting to work. First pulls his jacket out of her hands along with the pillow she'd been snuggling, her yelp more of a sleepy snort when he carelessly heaves her over his shoulder like a sack of rice. Holding her knees to his chest with one arm for balance, he navigates them through the flat from simple muscle memory, and she has enough wherewithal to smack her palm to the light switch as he's carrying her into the bathroom, righting her onto the sink counter a little more roughly than she deserves, but it'd been a long night, and he's desperate to get to the end of it. "Second?"

She yawns again, a hooping grimace of exhaustion twisting her face, and squints with displeasure at the ceiling light fixture. "Third."

He finds the small round tin on the third shelf of their shared medicine cabinet and cracks it open one-handed. She's swinging her crossed ankles, nodding to herself or to whatever she's playing in her drunk mind, hands gripped to the countertop on either side. "Chin up." Mimi immediately stretches out her neck, presenting her face to him with her jaw jutting out, and Taichi feels a smile break through his exhaustion. "Less woodpecker-y, maybe."

Snaps her head up, posture impeccably straight, cosplaying her sober self with convincing accuracy. Her eyes are wide open and completely round. "More owlish, then?"

He chuckles, and she's beaming at him, pleased to have made a joke land. "You're a mess. You know that?" He motions for her to closer her eyes, bracing one hand to the back of her neck and using the other to carefully peel off her fake eyelashes. "A drunk mess."

"But not a messy drunk," she croons, tossing her hair back and forth to a song in her head as he returns the lashes to the tin and closes the cover.

"Tell that to Jou's curtains."

"Hm?"

"All the shoes in the entranceway. Or your clothes. Your face—,"

Kicks out her leg, the ball of her left foot digging into his knee. He ignores it, still smirking, and pumps cleanser onto a cotton round. "He thinks he knows everything about me," she mutters, lips pressed into the biggest pout.

Taichi cups her chin, taking advantage of her pulling face to wipe off her lipstick first. He follows the plump curve of her bottom lip with a damp pad, his thumb resting underneath, a gentle pressure. "I'd find that completely terrifying."

"Knowing me?" She mouths this as best as she can with his fingers pressed around her cheeks, exaggerating her pucker. "What do you know about me?"

He tosses the lip-stained pad into a small bin under the counter, then picks up two fresh pads, which he wets with an eye makeup remover. Holds both up to her for the next step in her routine, but she's still expecting him to answer her.

"Well?" in a demand punctuated by a smaller yawn.

That's when he strikes, presses the wet cotton rounds to her closed eyes. She titters, finally making an effort. Pushes his hands aside and holds the pads herself, her foot still kicking at his knee. He grabs her ankle, wrestling her to the edge of the counter over her mumbling whines, hands sliding up her skirt. Finds the elastic band of her waist-high sheer stockings and briskly rolls them past her hips, down her thighs. He makes it to her knees when her leg spasms, a reflex when he'd brushed a ticklish spot, and she socks him in the gut.

"Taichi!"

He groans, bending over as he staggers away from her. "Why do I help you?"

Mimi flails her legs around where they dangle off her perch by the sink, the half-done stockings bunching behind her now locked knees. "You call this help?"

Rubbing his sore stomach, he slowly straightens through a grimacing wince, traps her swinging ankles in one hand, using the other to pull off the rest of her stockings. When he drops his hold, she sits up, the cotton pads pinched between her thumbs and forefingers. He nudges over the wastebasket for her to toss the used rounds, rummaging around the medicine cabinet again.

"I told you, third," she complains now, grumbling over the wait. "Honestly, Taichi—this is—this is why you're always, y'know, you don't listen. You don't even—,"

He claps his palms to her cheeks, the oil cleanser he'd rubbed on them now soothing her skin without the shivering goosebumps that usually accompanied her own use of the product. She's silenced by this, his warming up the oil by massaging it into his palms before gently working the serum over her cheeks, across her forehead, the small of her chin. How she'd told him once, months back, how she hated anything cold on her skin. Mimi mumbles then, thoughtful, and voice very small, "That's why, you always get in trouble with Momoe." He stops, palms cupped to her jaw. She raises her hands to pat the backs of his, looking up at him with kinder eyes, face dewy with an oiled sheen. Remarkably sober in the moment, all things considered. "She needs you to at least try to understand her side, without having to ask."

He curls his fingers through hers, helping her off the counter. Lets her hold onto one of his hands while testing the temperature of the tap water with the other, pulling her up close to the sink when it's right. "You're really not going to say anything?"

"What's there to say?" He finds a clean hand towel in one of the under-sink cabinets, a blue threaded number with embroidered cornflowers on the short edges. A gift from Momoe.

Mimi frowns, displeased with the lackluster response, but only turns to the sink to wash her face. Bent with her eyes closed, she reaches blindly behind her, and he wordlessly hands her the towel, turns the tap off for her. She turns around while patting her face dry, blinking tiredly at him, where he hovers in the doorway. The routine helped in that her mind felt that much clearer, or at least priorities have come into place. Looks at him mournfully. "Is Iori upset?"

Taichi shakes his head. "I would be very impressed if anyone's even noticed the rest of us are gone."

This makes her more miserable. "They all left already?"

"It's a worknight," which he shouldn't have to point out, but then stares at her in a start, remembering part of her earlier rambling then. "Wait, did you—?"

"Get fired again?" Mimi smacks the towel onto the counter behind her, "Yup! Sure did!" She groans, bending over at the waist, pressing her palms to her temples. "Mantarō…'s right. I think. About me not being meant for—,"

"No," sharper than he means. Reigns it back, when her eyes find his, "I mean, you said, right, that it takes a long time. To really make it." He knew this not only from having listened to her ranting and bemoaning about her struggles with her auditions and dashed projects, but from having been recruited far more frequently into rehearsing for the tapes she'd film to send off to each open call, heeding her agent's advice while still stubbornly declining help from her well-meaning and connected father, and, more recently, from Mantarō's increasingly paternalistic input. "You'll get another chance."

She doesn't appear to be listening, head tilted to the side, her ear nearly touching her shrugged shoulder. "D'you think Sora's office'll…take me back part-time?" Her eyes are starting to water, the honey color dulled to a faded bronze.

Taichi is about to tell her he'd make Sora hire her back full-time, but Mimi's evidently moved on, letting out a pitying whimper as she runs the back of her hand over her wet eyes.

"It's not…supposed to be this hard. Why am I not…," a hiccup, her face in both hands now, "…why am I so bad at everything?"

He's in front of her, pulling her upright before she loses her footing slumping over herself, and she slips into him instead, slotting herself into his arms, a fit so natural he has never had to think about it. Or almost never, because the front door opens then, and Mantarō's saying her name in an apology now, and Mimi immediately goes, and Taichi lets her, because he's starting to realize that Momoe might be right, and he's trying to remember why it's important she be wrong.

---

"I do not recall any of those events."

"Of course, you don't," groans Daisuke, wiggling about the mattress to make more room for Miyako, who is spooning him, half-asleep herself. "Who remembers that party?"

"Pretty sure us not remembering is why we've all been banned from that bar." Takeru crosses his ankles stretched across the chaise, watching the lump's steady breathing. Remarkable really, how he could sleep through anything once you got him down for the night. Maybe kids weren't such a scary idea. Takeru glances over at Hikari, who is propped up half on the headrest, her bent elbow cradling the lump's head, stroking the duvet cover there in a soothing rhythm. They exchange smiles which, thankfully, go unnoticed by the rest, especially as Iori is talking again, leaning on the doorway with his hands in his pockets.

"Regardless, I think that retelling had too much creative license."

"We're telling bedtime stories," mumbles Miyako, "not submitting evidence to your highness."

Iori balks, confused. "Your highness?"

"Your man there," clarifies Daisuke, apparently helpfully, "with the robe and the little gavel and all the frowny faces."

One of Ken's eyes twitches as he stares at the two of them from the floor where he's sat cross legged on a pillow Hikari had given him for his comfort. "You address a courtroom judge as 'your honor,' not 'your highness.'"

"Oh." Daisuke shrugs. "Seems disrespectful, but okay."

"The point is," interrupts Hikari before either Iori and Ken can uncharacteristically lose their cool, as they at times do whenever their professions are the target of dismissive conversation, "it's just a story. It's okay to embellish a little."

"Does he know the difference?" Iori glances at the lump, and, much like the others, softens his expression at once when he looks at him.

"Oh, he's not paying attention." Takeru smiles again, waving Iori over to join him on the chaise, sitting up to make space. "This is definitely more for us."

Miyako agrees. "Which is why it's okay to have some fun with it."

"I think the truth is just as fun." Iori phrases this in his endearingly bland brand of humor, but they all roll their eyes anyway.

"You fill in the next gap then," says Daisuke. "If you think you can do better."

Iori nods sagely. "The truth is on my side," sidestepping the pillow Daisuke throws at him, taking the seat Takeru offers. Folds his arms over his chest, head bowed as he determines how he will begin. Revelation coming together, he smiles a little and lifts his gaze to each of them. "It was just before my birthday again, the following year, when they went on a work outing for his company. That night…."

---

Mimi cradles her hand on both chins, bored as she watches the hotel's front desk manage the long arrivals queue of the shareholders' annual meeting. "I can't believe this is the job you chose for yourself."

With an easy going laugh, Catherine hands her a refreshed flute of champagne, which Mimi eagerly accepts, mirroring her bright smile. "I had it chosen for me, you know." Sips thoughtfully, blue eyes narrowing into a winking glance. "But then I exceeded expectations, so now I choose everything else."

"This is why you are everyone's goal," extending her glass for a clinking toast.

"Not everyone." On Mimi's other side, Yamato downs the last of his whiskey, only to have it replaced and refreshed with a new glass within a second of his putting the empty one on their high top table. He looks at it with dismay, too polite to turn down what is served to him but already so tipsy he's unable to really muster being unhappy about it.

Beside him, Jou agrees, shivering awkwardly. The most either of them had to attend as supportive partners at work outings were symposia and keynotes with engineers and medical researchers. Our people, Jou'd told her once, and did not particularly appreciate her miming snoring at such a snooze fest. "All these fancy suits spook me."

While sympathetic to Jou's plight, because he was just too adorable, Catherine rolls her eyes at Yamato, quite used to her older cousin's cool and edgy front, and also well aware that beneath the almost fully transparent facade is the sweetest man she has ever known. It's why she forces him to join her on the more important work outings if they take place close to their grandfather's hometown, an excuse to get the family together—except Takeru, who Catherine had to learn the hard way cannot be permitted at these events unsupervised. Yamato, on the other hand, charms without even realizing he is, which helps with corporate schmoozing, a world in which people just want to feel superficially powerful, a synonym in certain circles for just being good-looking. "Go back to the rental if you want to, but you'll miss the main event."

Yamato frowns, Jou looks confused, and Mimi perks up. "What main event?"

"Me." His silk pressed tie wrapped around one fist as he knots it quickly, Taichi mutters a curse under his breath when he makes a mistake, moving too quick. Catherine reaches over to help, but he's already pulled the entire tie off, snapping the ends together with a grumble, and hands it to Mimi, an automatic gesture that makes Yamato close his mouth, eyebrow raised, and Jou sigh. "I've to introduce the host at dinner, if I can ever get this stupid thing right."

Mimi loops the tie around her neck, preparing it with practiced ease. "Who's doing all your ties without me?"

"No one," says Taichi, still pouting. It's a nervous one, though, paired with the tic of running his hand though his hair until the shape falls apart. "I just stopped wearing them."

"Sora's sent you ten videos alone," says Yamato, and Taichi laughs, distracted and dismissive.

"I filter all her emails, she knows that."

Jou makes a noncommittal noise of disappointment, helping Mimi lift the finished tie off from around her neck while keeping her immaculate updo as neat as possible. Beckons Taichi to bend a bit, securing the necktie over his head and under the lifted collar of his starched white button up. Taichi does, allowing Jou space to work, holding himself so awkwardly that even Catherine looks sorry for him.

"I know you hate these things, too," she tells him now, "but once this merger goes through, you can have your promotion and you'll never have to do these events again."

Taichi shoots her a pained look. "I don't think my new boss will let me to bunk off."

"I will put in a good word," grins Catherine. "I hear she's easy to please."

Having enough, Yamato steps back to literally perform his disdain with so openly toeing the line on human resources rules for workplace dalliances. "This is painful to listen to."

"It's called rapport, dear cousin."

There's a retort of some kind to that, one that Jou soon has to intervene within to make peace, but Mimi has stopped listening, simply happy to be included after a rough couple of weeks, and also because while he's not paying any of them much attention, Taichi is still running his fingers over the impeccably pretty Hanover knot she'd made for him, standing close enough to her that their elbows touch where they rest on the high top table.

This is the first time she's spent time with him since he'd been sent to a satellite office in preparation for the company merger they were celebrating tonight, and their apartment had gotten intolerably bigger in his absence, a fact that preoccupied her more than she had expected, since at first she'd been eager to have the whole flat to herself for uninterrupted once. But apparently this meant she also had to have all her meals by herself, remember where she put her keys on her own, binge bad reality television without commentary on a suddenly very large living room couch. For the first time since she first left her parents' home, Mimi didn't know what to do with herself.

She must have complained about being lonely enough times, because soon came an invitation from Jou to join them after Catherine had summoned Yamato to this joint shareholders gala to make her look better by proximity, wanting to even out their group into a quartet. It was an almost immediate yes, mostly because she'd always wanted to meet Yamato and Takeru's famed and fabulous French cousin, whose career she'd devoured reading about, the ambition incredibly attractive. But when Mimi had asked, Jou had said he didn't think Taichi would show up. He hates these kinds of things. When Mimi had asked Taichi the same question, a couple days later, texting him for the first time in a while, unable to really understand why they'd stopped, he told her he'll changed his mind if she promises to be there. need help with the tie, so u better come. It had put her in a good mood, hearing he needed her. It had been two weeks since Mantarō had told her he didn't. She's still too embarrassed to tell Jou.

Determined to think of anything else, she turns to Taichi now, swirling the champagne around in her glass, a little bolder. "You look weird when you're nervous. It's not like you."

"Thanks for the support." He stares about the room, watching for his supervisor's supervisor.

Mimi looks with him, not very sure for whom, but it'd always been fun to see the world through his eyes. His head was a very strange place. If she's honest, this is the real reason they had become friends.

"You don't have to be nervous, you know." She goes on conversationally, "Everything's going well."

"Not in the corporate world," he tells her. "That's when you need to pay attention."

Her snort is very inelegant, the alcohol that goes up her nose finally getting him to turn to her. "Since when do you pay attention to anything?"

"You think I don't?" Taichi smiles, looking at her.

Rooms don't feel empty when he looks at her like this. It strikes Mimi, then, that this is why she doesn't like being at the flat without him. She hopes this merger goes through quickly, and then suddenly remembers a way to help that along. "If you did," and points across the room, "you'd know he's actually going to be your new boss, not Catherine."

Summoned by her name alone, Catherine immediately abandons the drawn out squabble she'd been having with Yamato all this time, and closes in. "What did you say?" because Taichi's too surprised to ask it first.

Mimi gestures again, an offhanded wave. "I met him in the lobby when I came in. He said he's your new CEO."

Catherine's turn to go speechless, so Taichi holds onto Mimi's elbow, pulling at her arm as he lowers his voice. "Are you absolutely sure?"

Mimi tries to shake him off, though she doesn't really try all that hard, especially when his arm moves to her lower back, guiding her around as he steps between her and the direction she'd been pointing in, not realizing how loudly she'd spoken, or why people were looking over at her even more than people usually did. "Yes, I'm sure. He asked if I worked here, and I said no, and he said he would have noticed me if I had, and I said I have one of those faces, and he said he'd remember a face like mine, and I said he would one day because my cooking show just got picked up, and he asked if I was an actress, and I said not anymore, I'm a chef now, and he said—,"

"Mimi," interrupts Catherine, angelically patient, given the circumstances. Her face is pale. "You're saying he told you he was—,"

"The next CEO, yes," finishes Mimi, annoyed at having to repeat herself as much as being interrupted in her story. "He said he was about to sign the buyout." Glances back at Taichi then, who'd gone silent, his face blank. "Isn't that why you're being so strange? Because your merger isn't finished yet?"

Taichi looks at her, and then at Catherine. "It's not done?"

She sets her jaw tight, blue eyes going as cold as Yamato's when he's about to raze the earth. "It's about to be." Fists her hands, chin raised, and Mimi watches in something very close to adoring admiration when the older woman switches to boss mode, addressing Taichi first, "Go back to Yamato's rental, call headquarters on the landline there, not your cell. I'm going to find the board chair."

"What's going on?" Jou joins in with a worrying tone, possessing the uniquely useless superpower of sensing anxiety solely to leech off of it.

"We don't have a landline at our rental," says Yamato. Looks at Mimi, "But your hotel does."

Taichi's hand closes around hers before Yamato's even finished speaking. "Come with me."

She's distracted and flustered, trying to keep up with the sudden turn of everyone's mood, but just says, "Okay," when he's holding onto her in that way that makes the whole room empty apart from the two of them.

Mimi changes into pajamas in the hotel room's ensuite washroom while Taichi makes six different calls on the landline, the last to Catherine, reporting back what he'd learned. She's still not sure what's going on, though the words "hostile take over" sound especially bad, making her wonder if she'd inadvertently stirred things up the wrong way.

"You didn't," Taichi tells her after hanging up the phone at last. His tie's pulled all the way loose by then, but he's still in his nice button up and pressed slacks. It must have been a promising call, because he smiles finally, shaking his head at the water she'd brought him. "You'd make a pretty good corporate spy."

Mimi wrinkles her nose, sipping at her own cup. "And that's good?"

"For me," he laughs. "I'll send you my work events calendar. Be sure to clear your schedule."

"You clear yours!" Dropping next to him on the chaise, setting the mug on the small side table. "My show premieres next month. I'll be very busy after that." Pauses, and channeling the confidence she'd seen in almost everyone at that fancy company work party, reminds herself when she used to be as assured, too, and that she would be again. Life's eternal seasons. "Or at least for the thirteen episode order."

Taichi looks confused by her modesty, still smiling. "It'll get a full season. Your pilot was great."

Mimi stares in surprise. "You watched it?"

"I only filter half your emails." Grinning like the idiot he is, so she elbows him, cheeks warm. His arm opens, slung around her shoulders. "Thanks for tonight. I'll head out."

She remembers the empty flat, how loud the silences had gotten. Mantarō believed the true test of independence and maturity was to be able to be one's own company. Mimi had liked her own company a lot more, before him. She knows it's not all his fault, their not working out. She made mistakes, too. Knowing she was his mistake, though, was just so much worse. Jou'd lose it if she told him this, and Koushiro would try to fix it somehow. Even Yamato'd probably go out of his way to get her out of her own head. But she doesn't want anyone to save her, which is probably why she just pulls Taichi's hand down around her, fingers entwined. "Stay."

Taichi doesn't say anything at first, sitting still beside her. Her face heats up again. "Here?"

Mimi nods, curling her fingers between his, all that tighter. "Stay here," because it's easier to ask him this, than to ask him to come home, or to tell him how lonely he makes her, every time he hasn't.

---

"He's still asleep," Miyako announces in a whisper after she leaves the door just slightly ajar behind her, tiptoeing her way down the hall. Hikari has the tea steeped and and poured into an assortment of variously sized and mismatched teacups, Iori opening a package of thin mints to pass around.

"That has to be a record. I can never get him to go to sleep as fast when it's just me here." Daisuke yawns, settled onto the sofa next to Ken, who gratefully accepts the cup Hikari hands him.

"Maybe you're onto something with the piecemeal storytelling idea," says Iori.

"So you liked your turn to tell their story?" Hikari winks at him, and he smiles modestly.

"They make it easy, with what they have."

Miyako glances at the wall clock by the entrance to the foyer. "When are they back?"

"Probably any time now," says Takeru. He carries a handful of thin mints to the sofa, sharing with the other two waiting there for him. "I'm sure the last thing they want is to come home to six babysitters when they paid for just the one." His way of saying, he will not be sharing that part of the deal.

Daisuke is astonished, teacup frozen in place just below his open mouth. "They pay you?"

"You know Mimi and her union rights campaigns," says Ken.

"We're not in a union."

"We could be," though Iori continues to look doubtful at Takeru's response to his statement, not realizing it is half in jest.

Instead he repeats, suspiciously wording the proposal, "A babysitters union?"

Daisuke is still stuck on the first point, staring at Takeru. "Like, paid paid? With money?"

"No, with increasingly preposterous stories of their relationship."

"Now, Iori's turn was probably the most true," says Hikari, blowing on her tea before enjoying a gratifying sip. "That time in his company took a toll on him, remember? It's why he left."

Ken frowns, trying to. "I thought he left because—,"

Hikari's phone rings, and they all jump, the ensuing noise a startling interruption. She scrambles off the sofa, Iori and Miyako anxiously looking down the hallway to listen for any crying, and Ken and Daisuke trying to help Hikari with her spilt tea, and Takeru bringing her the phone from her purse hanging off the wall hooks in the foyer. She looks at the caller ID and becomes even more worried. "Speaking of—,"

"Take it in the office loft," Ken encourages her, pointing to the other shorter hallway, where a spiral staircase led to a small upstairs half-unit. Hikari nods, unable to keep the concern off her face, and scuttles from the room.

Daisuke is the one to break the silence after Iori confirms the lump slumbers on in the bedroom, and speaks directly to Miyako. "They're probably fine."

"It's probably good news." Ken puts his arm around her waist, pulling her closer. "Taichi texts when something's wrong, but calls when things are good."

Takeru, loosening the fists he hadn't realized he'd made, cookie crumbles in his palms, gestures for them to sit down again. "Let's keep going with the game."

Miyako the one to nod in agreement, though slowly at first. Looks at Ken, who smiles back at her, squeezing her hip. With a sigh, she steps away from him and takes a seat on the smaller end of the sofa, tucking her long hair behind her ears. "All right. Where were we?"

"Corporate espionage." Daisuke leans back on the cushions, arms folded. "Even though it was just eavesdropping at a work outing."

Which is when Takeru sits up. "Oh, do you remember Sora's work outing, though? A couple months later?"

"No, because we didn't get invited." Daisuke pouts into Ken's shoulder, closing his eyes.

"Well, I know what happened," says Miyako, her confidence returning, energized by this new distraction, eyes glittering behind her round glasses in a way that immediately put the men on bemused edge. "It was a retreat, not an outing, for starters. And Sora had told them to dress up, so…."

---

"No one told you to get the most elaborate costume possible," is the summation of Taichi's sigh when her voice shouts his name again, a mix of a cry and a command. He turns around to watch her waddle up the sidewalk, trailed by the fluorescent rainbow mermaid's tail that finishes the coral pink bralet wrapped around her chest.

She stops to breathe sharply through her nose, honey eyes lethal. "I did not get this costume. I would never get this costume."

He shrugs, already moving on, the masquerade party in full swing at the lakeshore retreat's clubhouse behind them. "I couldn't pass up a good sale." The two-for-one deal turning out to mean not that he'd have to wear a ridiculous tail for his matching costume, but a regency era fisherman's outfit complete with a woven tunic made to appear clingy and wet over his broad chest, black boots and pants tighter than a reasonable fisherman would ever actually wear, and a prop mermaid hook, which he'd at least had the kindness not to carry around the party, Mimi mortified by the allusions to such a torturous sport.

Mermaids and sirens aren't exactly feel good fairytales, Sora'd pointed out, before quickly piling onto blaming Taichi for the strange purchase, too, finding more faulty aspects to the choice to pick on with her. Both prided themselves in being sustainable consumers, and Mimi is very certain the origins of any one of these costumed garments did not pass equitable labor laws in their production. Plus it was itchy, and the bralet wire dug into her rib cage at the worst angles, and the senselessly long tail fastened to her waist prevented only the kind of movement that meant she took steps even a baby could outperform on their first walk. And the eyeshadows she'd brought didn't match a single item, and the glue for her false lashes was too tacky, and she'd lost an earring somewhere between getting from the car park to their assigned cabins, and her curls were frizzy.

And he looked like that.

She told Miyako she'd sworn off crushes entirely, focusing on her career, which this time truly has begun taking off, having just gotten the second season pick up notice earlier that week, the reason she'd agreed to join this weekend ostensibly to celebrate this fact with a last getaway whose expenses would be fronted entirely by Sora's boutique. So for this and many other factors, she knew the bubble that bloomed in her chest anytime Taichi looked at her wasn't a crush, but the impending discomfort of having to break the news that she had told Jou and Yamato she would not be renewing her sublet lease. It was extra silly she felt weird about it all, because he'd gone back to being barely around since he came home from the satellite office, busy with workplace changes after his company's acquisition went through, and whatever else he seemed to get up to in his newfound singledom. There'd be nothing to miss, since they'd gone back to how things had been at the start, single and unattached at the same time for once but still separate people with separate lives.

It's just that he looked like that.

Had he always looked like that?

Taichi props the cabin door open when he reaches it, which she counts as less chivalry than basic manners, because he doesn't help her heave the stupid tail over the threshold, nor does he stick around to try to undo the buttons to the complicated bottom piece of the costume set for her. Instead, he's in the kitchen, rummaging for snacks, finding only the packet of gummies she'd picked up at the petrol station where they'd stopped to refuel on the drive down, carpooling with Sora and Shuu, because he likes this kind of candy the most but can never remember the name of the brand.

Had the bag opened and four gummies in his mouth by the time she's finally figured how to step out of the gaudy mermaid tail, standing freed in just the bralet and her panties. Taichi gestures with the bag out to her, and Mimi sighs rather than accept any. "I'm going to bed," she tells him, the clarity that had come with being relieved of the costume's beguiling entrapments allowing her now to focus on regretting being so cross before. "Go back to the party."

"Nah. I was getting bored, actually."

Mimi has never felt so seen. Presses her palms to her cheeks, grateful to be so candid at last. "How can people who work in fashion and the arts be so dull?" she cries, letting out all her pent up feelings for the weirdness of the retreat so far. "I mean, pictionary? Board games? When everyone looks as hot as we do?"

He almost snorts a gummy up his nose. "As hot as we do? You were wearing a tail all night."

"Whose fault was that!" A rhetorical question, which is why she exclaims it so loudly, grabbing the bag after three quick strides to cross the room to him.

He has one gummy between his teeth, grinning at her. "Yours. What you get for leaving me on my own so much."

Not how she remembers the last few months at all, but if there's one thing being a minor cable television show host has taught her, it's how everyone's the center of their own universe. "Last thing I'll ever ask of you." And when his brow raises in a whisper of confusion, she adds quickly, "Tonight." His brow doesn't arch down, so she stops looking. Takes two gummies into her mouth, feeds him two more, and then walks to the kitchen.

He calls after her, mouth full, "Don't make coffee."

"I'm an adult!"

"Who can't handle caffeine even at the appropriate hour. It's half midnight now."

"It's decaf!"

Allows her to continue lying to herself, looking around the cabin in her absence. "Sora gave you the nicer one."

"I did actually work for her once." Speaking with him between rooms, but then this is why they'd gotten used to talking to each other, Jou's flat comfortably laid out for echoing conversations. "And it's still got quirks." All these lakeshore retreats notorious for kitschy themes and nonsensical decor.

"Has yours got a wall-less washroom in its bedroom?"

Mimi laughs, "No, but I've got a bunk bed instead of a real—,"

"What?" The most enthusiastic she's heard him sound all weekend, a little whoop of excitement when he rushes to the adjoining sleeping room and sees it for himself. "That's fucking awesome!"

He's already climbing up to the top bunk when she enters with her freshly brewed coffee. Mimi, half amused, doesn't bother with the scene until he starts wiggling out of the costume trousers, and she immediately protests. "You have your own cabin to sleep in!"

"It doesn't have a bunk bed!" Nostalgic, he tosses the fisherman pants aside and spreads himself over the twin mattress, far too small for the gait of him now. Still, his grin is euphoric when he lifts his chin to look at her. "I'm staying here, roomie."

Which he does, after another few hours spent raiding more of the cabin's stockpiled snacks, emptying all the junk food containers they could find until Mimi feels so sick even the coffee stops helping. She doesn't admit this, instead laying on the bottom bunk with the covers pulled to her chin and her stomach grumbling uncomfortably and her eyes wide open.

Above her, Taichi is already asleep, gone the moment his head hit the pillow. If she's finding the mattress small, he must either have not cared, or readily given over to what's out of his control, unbothered by the ankle he's let hang off over the side of the raised bed, his right arm dangling. Even in the dark she sees the callouses on the ridges of his knuckles, the life lines on his large palm, the languid bend to the thumb he'd pressed into her mouth when he fed her the last gummy.

Mimi sinks her left hand beneath the band of her pajama shorts. Imagines the finger she touches to her clit is his, and sighs, letting her thighs go slack. Adds another, keeps her eyes trained on his hand. Remembers the touch of his palm to the small of her back, gesturing her to step ahead of him into the masquerade party that night, drawing away when they reached their friends, chattering all the while with some of Sora's coworkers. Made friends wherever he went, just like her. From the tips of his thumb to his longest finger, he could have spanned nearly the width of her waist in one broad hand, a sure thing. The memory of it now drags a whimper from the pit of her stomach, bubbling up from her belly. Definitely nothing at all like a crush.

She moves against her hand, frustration mounting, because it's his fingerprints she wants all the way inside her, but all she has is the idea of them. Breathes through her nose as she picks up her pace, clenching around nothing, then gasps aloud when his arm disappears, pulled back to his side as he rolls over in his sleep. "No!" before she can curb the instinctive cry, startled. The mattress creaks, and she claps her free hand over her mouth, unfinished in the worst way.

He groans somewhere above her, an irritated grumble, woken against his will. A brief silence, and then his face dips over the top bunk, blinking groggily. Bedhair mussed to one side, sticking up at the oddest angles. "You okay?" He sounds disoriented, unsure of where he is. Looking around for her, like finding her in the dark could fix him in place, too.

"Yeah." Tongue tied up, squeaking into her palm, "Yes."

"Can't sleep?"

She doesn't answer right away, and then can't at all, not after he swings himself over the side of the bunk bed and drops to the ground in one swift movement, landing on bare feet. His tunic rides up in the act, and though she's seen his bare chest before, it means something different when she still has her hand between her legs, stilled against the softest parts of her.

Rubs his eyes with the back of his wrist. "Told you it was too late for that coffee. D'you want some water?"

Mimi can't speak, having lost trust in herself the moment her embarrassing fantasy had latched onto the deepest seat of her desire. Finds herself looking at his fingers again, scratching through the messy curls at the back of his head. It drives her knees back together, the involuntary whine catching his attention.

"Is that a no?" Isn't always good at forethought, knowing beforehand what someone needs, but figures this to be an easy guess. She'd kept glasses and cups and half-filled bottles all around her at Jou's old flat. He'd never known anyone so fixated on hydration, or litter. Told her the latter once, earning a hard pout over the top of a mug in the shape of a rhinoceros's behind, purportedly a heart. I like kitsch. A euphemism for hoarding, in his view, but a harmless impulse overall, collecting cute things to make herself happy.

Finds her voice at last, unprepared for how gravely it sounds. Moves her hand from her mouth. "It's—a headache."

"Water would help."

"I'm okay."

Hums, like he doesn't believe her, and she loses control of her breathing when he slides in next to her.

He's impossibly warm, the back of his hand grazing her shoulder, brushing her hair off her skin. He's touched her like this, casually, before, and they'd shared beds before, too, living together as flat mates and then friends, but somehow the ground's now gone beneath her feet, and she isn't sure she wants it back.

"Sorry you're feeling bad." Mutters this sleepily near her ear.

Her voice sticks to the back of her throat. "It's just a small headache."

"Mm." Nudges her further towards the wall. Scooches herself over to make more room for him on the twin bed, but he only rolls himself closer, cuddling her half-awake. Pulls her into the cradle of his arms, his left extended under her head, his right settling around her front. Halfway to sleep already, his body heavy against hers. "Just have to let it pass."

Mimi turns ever so carefully onto her side, her back to him. His right hand continues its soothing run up and down her arm. "Okay."

His touch moves aimlessly, the heat rolling off his skin doing nothing good to her nerves. This is stressful enough, because he is not supposed to be able to do anything to her nerves.

"Just relax," he's mumbling now. "Count some sleep."

"Sheep?"

"Them, too."

Her smile appears without her thinking it, then widens when she feels his smile through the hair bunched into the curve of her neck. He's gotten better at making her laugh, a fact he allows to go straight to his head every time it works, even if he doesn't think about why so much. She knows this, too, but she also knows she's not special. Taichi could get the grumpiest person in the world to cheer up just by being himself. Magnetic, on both accounts, his push and pull.

She's beginning to soften the tension in her spine when his touch absently travels down the length of her arm, low across her stomach, then comes to a curious pause near the wrist of her other hand. Her insides crush together the moment she knows he knows.

It lasts a fraction of a second, and then his hand resumes its reassuring movement up and down her forearm. His voice is even when he speaks again, ages later, into her shoulder. "That what helps?"

Mimi only has two choices before her.

Makes a third one before she can tell herself otherwise.

"Sometimes."

The flat of his palm stops near her abdomen.

Taking a shallow breath, Mimi makes a fourth choice, and covers his large hand with her small one, holding back a shiver of a feeling she can't bear to name when his fingers curl between hers, this heated promise in the making.

"Teach me."

Swallows the neediest moan, a soft little gasp of a sound he's never heard her make before. A night for learning all kinds of things. He shifts to push their entwined hands lower, wide awake, full attention. Her eyes close when his thumb draws a line down her stomach.

"I want to know." His nose pressed behind her ear, so she can't possibly mishear him. "Teach me."

Sighs again, her cheek turned into the curve of his muscled forearm. Parts her legs and brings his hand to join hers there. Shows him how she wants it, and where. The kind of pressure he should use to set off her nerves and melt through to the very core of her. He takes it all in, then follows through, obedience a look she didn't know she would like on him this much.

Feels nothing at all like she'd imagined it when he stretches her with one finger, then another. Thicker, and longer, than she'd thought, further inside her than she could ever reach on her own. The pad of his thumb teasing small patterns where she is especially sensitive, arching her hips to his slow if earnest movements, then gasping loud when he suddenly knees her legs wide, holding her open across his thigh, and reaches so deep she almost sobs from the whitehot pleasure that starts to roll through her body like sunkissed waves. Turns her face into his arm supporting her head, seeing the brightest stars burst at the edge of her vision, lips parted against his warm skin. Nearly breaks through it with her teeth when he palms her clit with the heel of his hand while his fingers curl inside her and she comes apart, firestruck.

Taichi doesn't say a word, but she can feel how deeply he's breathing from the press of his chest against her back. Her skin like live wire, body turned inside out, waiting for her sight to return. The bright, red proof of her blooming on his arm under her mouth.

They both appear to remember who they are to each other around the same time, and, mumbling something she doesn't catch, he separates himself from her, the slick feels and sounds of his hand withdrawing from her body making her choke over words she can't think to form yet, a first if there ever had been. The absence he leaves in her, newly discovered, slaps some of the sense back, at least.

"Oh," says Mimi. Her voice is hoarse, spread over loose gravel. A heated blush floods her when she remembers why. The idea that Taichi, of all people, now knows what she sounds like should slap the rest of the sense back into her, but she hasn't moved.

Neither, she realizes then, has he.

After another pause, the length of which she doesn't try to count, he asks, "All right?" Speaking hesitantly, or else just very lowly.

She whispers, too. "Yes."

Doesn't answer again for a while. Doesn't let go, either. "Good." He leaves a trail of his wet fingerprints across her bare stomach when he draws his arm tighter around her waist, leaning his weight against her, and she feels herself clench around nothing again, imagining him again. A night for teaching all kinds of things. "Should we go to sleep now?"

Mimi can't keep it to herself anymore. "I'm moving out of the flat."

The room feels heavy, like the center of gravity has shifted. When he draws back from her, she's not prepared for the loss. "Ah, shit." He laughs nervously, pushing himself onto an elbow, "Did I just—,"

"No," in a panic, rolling over onto her back to look up at him, realizing it's the first time she is, after what she's let him know about her. Closes her mouth until she knows what she wants to say. "We're okay, Taichi."

If he looks like he's going to say something, it must be her imagination, because he still lets her pull himself back down beside her, settle into sleep. Still there in the morning, too, dressing back in the stupid costumes they'd shed and joking about burning them as effigies, ridding the world of past sins to bring forward only the new and the good. Okay became more and more possible, and what she tells herself she wants, looking at him.

Then she sees it. The outline of her bite mark has already begun to leave the beginnings of a dark welt high on his arm, the sight of it peeking out from under his rolled up sleeve sending an unexpected jolt through her when he lifts the small rolling suitcase she'd packed into the boot of Shuu's rental and reaches up to close the door.

"Are you hungover, too?" groans Sora, rubbing her temples, huddled in Shuu's oversized cardigan with a ginger ale bottle in either pocket.

Mimi feels her face warm, looking quickly away from Taichi, though not before he catches on to where she had been staring, what she had been thinking. Dismayed, she rushes to answer Sora back instead, "Did my decaf coffee trick. Always works."

Shuu looks unconvinced, or as much as he can with the large sunglasses he'd borrowed off Taichi hiding his wincing frown from the brightness of the day. "I think this is going to be a very long drive."

"I'll take first shift," offers Taichi, in a suspiciously good mood, so much so that Sora appears about to put an end to any mischief, but Mimi steps in then, taking the keys Shuu's holding.

"You need to rest, too. I'll drive," she says, which while making Sora visibly relax as she moves to the other side of the car with Shuu trailing behind, supporting each other in their far-to-old-for-this regret for last night's choices, only rises a knowing smile from the corner of Taichi's mouth. "You said we'd be okay," warns Mimi, lowering her voice when the others are out of earshot.

"You said that," he reminds her, this easy tone of voice. "But I appreciate your looking out for me."

"Really?"

He grins, a little wicked, at all times. "Really." And Mimi relaxes her suspicion, or is about to, when he opens his mouth again. "I even promise to rest and take care of myself." Dangerously agreeable, speaking in a wistful tone. "Might start wearing gloves, moisturizing better. Magic fingers and all," and flexes both hands, and all affection snaps. The sign she needed. This is not a crush.

"Please jump off a cliff," and smiles sweetly up at him.

Taichi laughs, in that way he does sometimes, when anything becomes possible, something too tender feeling all too promised. "Well. Wanna fall with me?"

Rolling her eyes, she summons enough of herself to spin away from him, marching off to driver's side, settling into the front seat beside Shuu, waiting for Taichi to climb into the back with an already dozing Sora. The drive is chatty at the start, the three of them finding things to reminisce and joke about from the events of the weekend retreat, ranking their favorite costumes. Sees him looking back at her in the rear view mirror, every time she sneaks a glance. Wonders more than once if he's always looked like that.

She moves out the next weekend, and doesn't see him again for three years, seven months, and twenty-two days.

---

Great," groans Daisuke, slumped in his seat. "I'm sad and horny."

Iori's face a dark pink. "Was all that detail really quite necessary?"

Miyako scoffs, crossing her arms over her chest, rolling her eyes at each of them. "That was the censored version. You'd never be able to handle the things Mimi tells me. Like, one time, in her dressing room between show tapings, he s—,"

"There is a child sleeping down the hall," panic whispers Hikari after a shush, more scarred by having walked back in at the worst time in the story, and still couldn't bring herself to sit down on anything after Takeru'd pointed out the sofa was about the same size as a twin bunk bed when Ken had doubted the layout Miyako'd described and naively asked for a reference.

"Let's not forget the children who are here," as Daisuke tries to cover their youngest friend's ears with his hands, but Iori, who nonetheless held more degrees than all of them, shrugs him off, ticklish.

Leaving them to their squabbling, Takeru gets up to join Hikari in the kitchen, helping her clean up the remnants of both snack time and dinner, polishing off the last Tokomon crackers himself. He pauses to look at them, turning one over to admire the cute details. Hikari rests a hand on the back of his arm, just above his elbow, stepping behind him. With a quick glance at the others, he dips down closer to her ear. "Everything okay?"

She holds onto his arm just a fraction tighter, and he immediately turns to face her, attentive. But she only smiles. "Yes. It's good news."

Takeru breaks into a grin, posture relaxed. Runs the back of his fingers under her elbow, a gesture of reassurance. "Should we wake him up?"

Hikari shakes her head. "Taichi's on his way."

"But we haven't gotten to the end of the story!" calls Daisuke, his ears trained to pick up anything with his idol's name in it.

"You know the real end," says Takeru, amused, letting Hikari step back to rejoin the group in the living room, following close behind.

"And this was just for fun," she says. "But now we should—,"

"Finish the story," challenges Daisuke, punctuating each word with a slow clap.

Iori, for his part, doesn't dismiss him, and even Hikari just laughs a little, mood buoyed, so Miyako clears her throat, only for Ken to interrupt, eager to steer them all clear of things that weren't their business.

"I haven't gone yet," he points out instead, and Miyako concedes that that's a fair basis, the rest looking on expectantly.

He's not quite sure what to do with their attention, but at least this part is the one he's most confident in himself. Looks at Miyako, mirroring her smile when he does. His voice is affectionate, and soft. "It was our wedding."

She nods. "It was our wedding."

"And you were a little worried," continues Ken, "because it was going to be the first time that they'd have seen each other. So what I remember is, at the rehearsal the night before…."

---

Mimi walks right up to him, as she'd told herself she would the moment she'd see him, and all Mantarō does is smile. He's older, and his hair cropped closer to his hairline, and the silver gauge she'd always liked so much has been swapped for one whose modest design matches the color palette his youngest sister had picked out for her wedding. This made Mimi smile back, because for as many arguments as she'd witnessed in the first class chaos that was the average day in the Inoue household, this family showed up for each other. One day, she's going to have a big family, too.

"I was hoping you'd talk to me," he tells her, greeting her with an innocent kiss to her cheek. His wedding band clinks on the beer bottle in his hand, when he lifts it from the makeshift bucket Daisuke had used to keep the drinks cold by the refreshments table he and Iori had set up at the end of the store's enclosed parking lot. A private but obnoxiously loud family affair with fairy lights strung from the lamps and rooftop and music playing from the stereo of Takeru's car, windows and doors wide open. They were sure to get in trouble with the neighbors at some point, but Mimi likes the do-it-yourself spin to the after rehearsal's reception drinks and toasts. All I want is Ken, Miyako'd told her. I knew it the moment Taichi brought him to the store after one of their practices, their pretty new center forward. Mimi had told her to have the party there then, the most obvious solution. Everything goes back to the start.

"Wouldn't I have?" Looking at Mantarō wearing her most sincere grin, four sips of peach schnapps into the night's festivities, having found the stash Jou kept hidden from Yamato under the kitchen sink. It had been so odd being back in the flat, but with the way hotels had priced out the rapidly developing neighborhood, it had become clear this was her only option for a week's stay in a city she hadn't stepped foot in for years. It should have made her laugh, how coming up from the metro station and onto that familiar side road had felt like stepping back into time, this nostalgic pang striking the pit of her stomach, remembering who she'd been when she'd lived here.

Mantarō shrugs. "I would have wanted you to. I don't know if I can ask."

"You can ask a friend anything," says Mimi.

He grins back then, more than a little relieved. "You're the type who's friends with all your exes, aren't you?" Teasing her a bit, sounding so much younger.

Across the parking lot, Taichi has his arm around his sister's shoulders, laughing at something Koushiro hadn't meant to be a joke, accidentally funny more often than he realizes.

"Well, why wouldn't I be?" Smiles back at Mantarō, accepting the beer he opens and hands to her. "When I've got such good taste."

They spend the next hour proving this, filling the time catching up with Miyako and her siblings, doing her best to be extra nice to Momoe, who hasn't left her new boyfriend's side all evening, shooting watchful glances to where Taichi has stayed for the whole of the party, with Koushiro at the far end of the parking lot. Taichi mature enough, apparently, and finally, not to cross paths, giving them all space. The idea that she might be lumped into the latter hasn't left her mind, and so Mimi considers going over, or getting closer, more than a few times, but something always seems to come up. Ken wants her to meet his parents, Takeru and Daisuke challenge her to a karaoke sing-off. Even Mantarō distracts her, letting her listen to the latest commercial jingle he'd written and sold to a pet food company. Mimi has the idea of featuring the advert as a sponsor for her cooking show, but Iori tries to advise her against this, worried about the conflation of foods made for humans versus animals, and doubting the general intellect of her base viewership. Miyako says Daisuke's her most loyal viewer, and Iori says his point has been made. It's in the ensuing drunken squabble that Mimi finally looks back over to the end of the lot, and sees Koushiro call a cab for himself after hugging Hikari goodbye, and Taichi's gone.

"No, he's not," comes Hikari's soft whisper a moment later. Takeru's arm is around her waist, so she has to lean over considerably to reach for Mimi's hand, squeezing once. "Had to make a call. You know how bad the cell reception is here, except," and nods down the street, around the corner, that familiar path.

He's under a streetlight just in front of Jou's building, talking on the phone, when she retraces their old steps. If he hears her walk up behind him, he doesn't stop his conversation, back towards her. Instead, Taichi lowers his free arm, extends it behind him, open to her. Mimi takes his hand just as he hangs up with a soft, "Thanks, Dad, I'll be home soon," and turns to look at her.

"Hi," in this easy kind of laugh.

"Hi." Mimi smiles. There's never been butterflies with him, that nervousness that'd make her doubt herself, wonder what parts of herself to keep secret until it's safe to be known. He's still holding her hand. Leans closer to peer up at him, honey eyes squinting. "Is that grey hair?"

And he shoves her off him, "Take it back."

She shrieks, laughing, how easy all of this is, to slip back to the start. "You want me to lie to you?"

"For the rest of my life—," and pulls her upright before she can tumble off the sidewalk, bringing her next to him. Matching her wide grin, he steps forward, leaving her a little space off the curb, because he doesn't ask to be invited upstairs, and she doesn't think this will last much longer. For now, though, it's enough.

Smoothing out the skirt of her rehearsal dress, she waits for him to dust off another spot for himself on the curb. "I liked seeing you tonight."

"Apparently." Winks when she won't acknowledge this, the pink in her cheeks making her face glow. "Are you leaving after the ceremony?" he asks her now.

Mimi nods. "I'll go see Yamato and Jou first. I need to squeeze that baby's cheeks for an uninterrupted ten minutes or else I will go insane."

"Fair," laughs Taichi, "it's a fucking cute baby."

"Just like his cousin."

Taichi only nods himself then, a chuckle of agreement. Mimi goes for the opening this leaves her, the only question she hadn't been able to ask anyone else after hearing how he'd changed jobs, moved home for the help, started a new life. "So you and Catherine—,"

"Friends," he interrupts, quicker than he'd intended, so he adds, "which we're good at. He makes it easy though." Hard to mistake the proud blush in his cheeks, even in the dark.

Mimi holds out her hand, palm open. "Do you have a picture?"

Taichi grins, digging his phone out of his back pocket to hand to her. "Are you kidding? That's all I have on here anymore."

His passcode is the same, Hikari's birthday. She navigates to his photo app, which is right at the top of his disorganized home screen. Between the odd photo of friends and family, saved screenshots and the rare if random selfie, are hundreds of others. A small, miniature Taichi in every aspect, but with soft blue eyes.

Mimi smiles wide, her heart melting right out of her chest, the sweetest of feelings. "You've turned into one of those dads."

"I bought a bigger cloud subscription," he laughs, "or at least made Koushiro show me how to do that. Ran out of storage space after week three."

"He's two now?"

Taichi nods, using his thumb to scroll quickly forward to photos of the birthday festivities, now months past. "I had him that weekend, so we had a party at my parents' flat. Hikari and I did your confetti bomb prank for him." Finds the picture that captured their version of her signature move the best, a far cry from how she'd decorate but still approximate. "He probably thought it was a regular day, but he did eat a lot of the paper streamers, so I think he had fun."

"That's really sweet, Taichi." Mimi can't hold it in, even with the affection in his voice, "But it's just—the streamers are in the wrong place, and you have the banner going into the corner instead of across, and there's a way you can do the confetti without making—what!" because he's turned the phone off, sitting back within a smirk.

"You can do it right next year. Don't feel bad not being here for the ones before."

She closes her mouth.

Taichi puts the phone in his pocket. "I like the new season." The most obvious of segways, but she allows it.

Taking a breath, she hugs herself closer, conserving body warmth. Finds her voice. "I can't believe it'll be five on air soon."

"You're an industry veteran now."

Mimi wrinkles her nose. "That makes me sound old."

"You are old," and wheezes a bit at the face she makes, looking down at herself.

"Then I look good old," she declares in the end, and Taichi shakes his head.

"Was that in doubt?"

He's still trying to make her feel better, make her understand there's no ill will held, and had never been, which she recognizes. It's just that this particular thing has haunted her most. "I think I should have called you more, not just on the important days."

Taichi shrugs. "We both got busy."

"Too busy to be okay?" Watching his face carefully. But there's nothing to hide, or hold back.

"We've always been okay."

"I don't think," she admits carefully, after a long time. Easier when she closes her eyes, "that this has been okay."

He's stopped looking at her, too. "What's not?"

Being without you. She says it aloud this time. "Being without you."

A heavy sigh, his voice changed. "Mimi."

"I know." Helpless, she laughs into her palm, eyes still shut. "I have no right to say this. But I've missed you. I miss you. I'd miss you if we were in the same room. Which we were," and draws herself upright then, uncrossing her arms to fold them under her bent knees instead, hugging herself into a small hunched shape where they sit beside each other on the curb, "for years. So I've missed you for years."

Taichi says nothing, drops his gaze when she looks up at last. She's far more patient than she should be, but then there are not many chances left, and they both seem to know this, which is why, when he stands, she does, too. Why, when he walks her into the building, and up the staircase, back to their old flat, using her old keys, and goes inside, she does, too. Why, when he takes off his shoes, and then his jacket, and then all his clothes, she does, too, not letting her eyes fall from his, not even once.

Standing in the darkened living room, moonlight from the drawn curtained windows casting soft patterns onto the paneled floor at their feet, she reaches behind herself to undo the clasp of her strapless bra, pausing when he shakes his head. He doesn't do it for her, though, doesn't move at all, still an arm's length apart.

Instead he takes a sharp breath, and laughs.

Mimi's startled, the heady heat filling her head to toe slowing every thought. "Are you—,"

"I'm sorry," he says, another laugh, bringing the heel of one hand to the bridge of his nose, grinning. "You just—you're in—,"

Dumbfounded, because none of this is going the way she imagined, she looks down at the forest green lace of her silk thong, the fabric rose at the center matching the one sewn between the shaped cups of her lace bra. "It's supposed to match the rehearsal dress."

"It does—did," stepping forward, and over the same dress she'd kicked aside with her foot after unzipping from it. "It's nice."

Her eyes go round. "Nice?" in a scoff of surprised disbelief, almost scandalized. "It's—I'm more than nice, Taichi—,"

"Okay," still grinning, the wrinkles across his temples more pronounced with age, the cut of his high cheeks a handsome contrast, dimpling the corners of his mouth. "You're more than nice."

"I—," but loses her breath entirely, when his thumb runs the ribboned band along the side of her panties, over her hip, then tucks underneath, pulling the thin fabric taught. Her knees bend, tugged forward, and her palms come flat to his chest.

This lightness to his tone, softer now. Humming to himself, "I think I was just hoping for the purple ones."

"Purple?" Mimi struggles to think clearly when his hand continues trailing down, following the thong lining. Something builds up at the core of her body, which he finds a moment later, and her arms wrap around his shoulders, grasping the curls at the nape of his neck, her lips parting where she presses them at the corner of his jawline. She just wants him to kiss her. "I don't—I don't have purple—,"

"You did," breathing stuttering a fraction, when she angles herself onto his fingers between her legs, pressing herself closer, "once." Laughs again, after a sharp inhale, when her hand begins to return the favor, stroking him over his briefs, "When I found you half-hanging out Jou's window. Remember?"

"That's ages—back," and gasps, when he shifts the slant of his reach inside her. "A lifetime back."

"Yes," drawing back over her whine of protest, lifts her off the ground. "Lifetimes."

Her legs around his waist, carrying her to their old dining table. Sets her there, and pulls her forward to the edge, both hands helping roll her panties down but not all the way off, leaving them dangling around the ankle whose heel she uses to bring him to his knees. Kisses her, finally, where her body wants him most, until her legs tremble over his shoulders, back arched over the same table they'd used to share meals, drinks after work, long talks into the night.

When he looks up at her, mouth wet from her, she can see every single thread of her life come apart, from beginning to end. Fractured pathways, diverging into possibility, splintering only to cross again. She wants to be rooted in him. Anchored to just one moment in time, even just one. She'll take any one.

Instead, she grasps the hand he has high on her upper thigh, pulls him to his feet, then pulls at his boxer briefs until he's out of them, closing the distance. Almost chokes at the way her body opens for him, breathing through it together until there's no distance left. "No," when she tips forward. "Don't move, okay?" His brow furrowed, eyes lidded. His hands resting on the curves of her hips, fingerprints pressing lightly into her skin, like he's afraid of the mark he'll leave. "Let me look at you like this."

"Like this?" Her breath catching when she follows his gaze down to where he's pressed up into her, to the hilt. Ankles wrapped at his waist, thighs splayed apart, seated in full. Tilts her hips back a little to sit up, trying to see more of how well she's taking him, the movement dragging a sound so low from the back of his throat she immediately stops, heartbeat stuttering in her chest. His hand on her hip tightens where she holds herself in place around him, staying still over every impulse to move, to know what it would feel like to move with him. Lightheaded at just the idea, how close she is to knowing something like that. She's never wanted to know anything as badly.

He can't speak, nodding weakly after a moment. Hasn't taken his eyes from her, there, this perfect fit. His hands drawing lower with something like dazed wonder, thumbprints over the lines they make, at the meeting. Whimpers through her teeth when his touch finds her softest parts, all her big feelings welling up, pushing out through her throat, so much to say. His name enough. "Taichi."

Glances at her then, the look to his dark brown eyes silencing her. "You can't say my name like that, looking like this," mutters Taichi, hoarsely, a frantic smile at the corner of his mouth, "or I'm not gonna last."

Mimi draws a breath, hazy at the aching pressure building in soft places. How long of a wait. "Then don't make it last." All of her reaching for all of him. "Make this count."

---

Taichi opens the rear passenger door, careful to move softly. Undoes the safety latch around his son's waist, easing his thin arms out of the buckled straps to pick him up, pausing to make sure the jacket is zipped all the way. "Okay, come on," he tells him, when the boy whimpers the beginnings of a protest for having been awakened too early the next morning, rubbing small fists over his sleepy eyes, "we have someone we want you to meet."

"I don't want to," he's mumbling now, face buried in Taichi's neck.

"Not even if I ask nicely?"

"No."

"Yuichi."

"Nuh-uh."

He stops walking after getting off the elevator, the hallway ahead of him busy with clinical staff and visitors. Shifts the child's weight in his arms, hoists him up more securely. Yuichi clings stubbornly to his shoulder, small and angry breaths wheezing into the collar of Taichi's shirt. "Not even if we both ask nicely?"

The breathing slows at that, but the boy doesn't answer, and Taichi tries not to smile too widely, resuming the walk through the hospital corridor. Upon entering their room, he sees Keisuke first, sipping coffee with Satoe on the upholstered sofa under the window, her eyes are red and puffy even as she can't stop smiling. Seated with them, Susumu offers Taichi a sympathetic glance when Yuichi refuses to go to his namesake, but Yuuko doesn't take it personally, preoccupied by the sleeping infant in the bassinet by the bed where Mimi is sucking on some flavored ice. Yuichi does, however, stretch out his arms at once to Mimi, who laughs, putting the dessert on the bedside tray and exclaiming, "Oh, I missed you!" which is apparently the worst thing to say, as the boy bursts into tears, and everything cascades after that.

Susumu is cooing in panicked consolations, Satoe tries to gather all the candy in her purse to give him, Keisuke offers his phone to play his favorite games on, and Yuuko finally gives him her full attention, rushing to the bedside. But all Yuichi wants is Mimi, who cradles him tenderly in her lap, held to her chest, careful with her limited range of motion. Strokes the hair from his small face, kissing the tears off his cheeks. "Didn't you have fun with Auntie 'kari?"

Taichi bends over them, running his fingers through Yuichi's thick curls at the back of his head. "He was good with them, though I think they had more fun."

"Why do you make that sound ominous?" Susumu asks, eyebrow raised, and Taichi shakes his head, grinning when Mimi throws him a curious look.

"You should have heard the wild stories they were coming up with."

"Stories?" Satoe has never looked more confused, which is quite a testament, given her perpetually bewildered existence.

"It was nothing." Taichi's hand finds Mimi's cradling the back of Yuichi's head to her chest. "But it worked, keeping him distracted."

The effort continues now, grandparents trying their best to keep pacifying the crying child. "Why don't we get some of your favorite flavored ice, from the canteen? Hm?" Yuuko bending to meet Yuichi at eye level, but he only presses his face closer into the curve of Mimi's neck and aggressively shakes his head, clinging tightly.

"It's all right," Mimi tells her, speaking in a kind but exhausted voice, still weaker than she likes. "But you all should go, have some breakfast at least."

"Shall we bring you some, love?" Keisuke tucking his daughter's hair behind her ear.

"I'm okay." Hugs Yuichi a little closer, tucking her mouth near his little ear, so he can be sure to hear, "See? I'm okay. Don't worry."

Two sets of parents eventually find their way from the room, a protracted effort, no one really eager to be parted from each other in these soft moments. When the last set are finally on their own, Mimi continues to rock Yuichi slowly in her arms, watching Taichi roll the bassinet over to the now emptied sofa where he sits and folds his arms over the rim, chin propped on the back of his hands, scrutinizing every detail of the sleeping bundle that lays quietly on his back inside the padded hospital crib.

"What stories?" she asks, curious.

Taichi chuckles, not lifting his gaze. "Just some truly weird shit—,"

Mimi gasps aloud, Yuichi whimpers again, and even the bundle stirs, and Taichi resigns himself to being the only one in his family who doesn't naturally nurse a penchant for the dramatic.

"Weird stuff," he corrects, ignoring the way Mimi's nostrils flare in a warning. "I think they were playing a game."

"Hikari and Takeru?"

"Dais and Miyako, Ken, too. Even Iori. All of them in the biggest argument I've seen since when they're not all drunk—having fun," he clears his throat, walking the statement backwards to a more family-friendly euphemism. Mimi still keeps her eyes narrowed, suspicious, especially when all Taichi does is grin back at her, lazily happy. "They think they know how we met."

"Which time?" she snorts.

"The real time."

Mimi hums, tucking her cheek to Yuichi's forehead, the tears replaced now with only the odd sniffle. "They were all real." Smiles at him from over the top of the boy's head. "Did you call Catherine?"

Taichi nods, turned back to the bundle. "She wants to come next weekend, meet you both, pick up Yuichi. He has to start s-c-h-o-o-l the following week."

"It's not fair to spell it!" comes the unexpected shriek, and Taichi bites back the instinctive laugh, Mimi shooting him another look. She pulls Yuichi up, holding his face in her hands, setting him in her lap.

"We were talking about how you'll go to Mummy's next week. That'll be nice, right?" His lip trembles, and Mimi chuckles, pressing the pout back into place with her thumb. "You'll see all your friends again, and be so busy you won't miss me at all, I bet."

He's very quiet, sullen. And then, "You won't miss me either."

Taichi sits a little straighter, watching the pair closely. Mimi makes her voice very patient, "Why do you think that?"

Yuichi furrows his small brows, then turns to look at the sofa, where Taichi's arm is resting over the bassinet. "Because now you're…you have to be his Mama."

Taichi has to press his thumb over the bridge of his nose to not break into a grin, risk his son thinking he's making light of such a worry, while Mimi does her best not to burst into tears herself, over emotional for good reason. She kisses his forehead, making her hug extra tight. "I can be both. I promise."

Yuichi allows the shower of kisses, but looks unconvinced, even if his pout has faded and the splotchy red tear tracks marring his cheeks have started to return to his normal coloring. His blue eyes take in Mimi's kind smile, and at last seems to come to a kind of acceptance, so she nods at Taichi from over the top of his head. Rolling his sleeves up, Taichi stands again, lifting the bundle very carefully into his arms. Feeling his heart swell up in his chest, wider than he thought possible, enough for all three of them, and maybe more.

"Yuichi," he tells him, voice soft, settling onto the bed by Mimi's side, sitting up together, "this is Keitaro."

The child continues to frown, but studies the infant silently, looking at the wrinkled skin, the upturned nose, the tiny mouth. A curly lock of brown hair peeks out from under the cap tucked around his head, the color matching Yuichi's own.

"Can you say hello to your brother?" Mimi asks him, resting her cheek again to the top of Yuichi's head, meeting Taichi's gaze in a brief, warm moment.

Yuichi cannot, but apparently for good reason. "No. He's too ugly."

"Yu—," starts Taichi, abandoning the attempt to scold him when Mimi just starts laughing, and Yuichi almost kicks out his foot in frustration when, awakened by the commotion, Keitaro's tiny fist tries to reach for the sound of Mimi's voice. She takes hold of his foot, getting her revenge by tickling Yuichi under his armpits until he finally breaks into giggles, while Taichi quickly swoops the infant out of the striking zone. Sighs again, watching his chaotic family carry on. Only when Mimi finally looks at him again, her eyes bright with the most settled contentment, wet at the corners, does Taichi make her swear, "We're not telling anyone this is how they met."

Mimi snorts through her laugh, nodding weakly, barely able to breath from the hiccuping giggles. "Okay, okay," she agrees, wheezing. "We'll tell them something better."