Chapter Text
one.
Finding the time to meet with her friends on a regular basis was difficult for Kaede, if not only because she had to contend with their schedules, but with Shuichi’s as well. She couldn’t exactly leave home if he wasn’t there, and knowing when he’d be there was more often than not guesswork. At least Maki and Tenko both had more consistent times they were both available, and they were (somewhat) understanding of the challenges currently going on in Kaede’s life.
Whenever it was a night that she knew the other two would be free, and Shuichi came home from the office early enough for her to be able to arrange a time with the others, she would give him a pleading look the moment he came in the front door. “You know, I never took you as someone who’d want to be going out to the gym with her friends,” he would teasingly reply every day, the current one no exception, making sure to close the door tightly and lock it, before approaching her to steal a quick kiss. “But, like always, you know I’ll keep things under control here while you’re out.”
“Just have to make sure you don’t, like, have other plans that would make you have to leave,” she pointed out, knowing very well that the life of a detective had always meant that there was a chance him coming home was not an indication that he would be staying there. Some days she wished he would have to back out on his word, as the workouts she had to endure with the others were incredibly far from fun, but going through them was something she felt obligated to do. As much as she loved being a mother, she still hadn’t fully accepted some of the changes that she’d gone through to get there, and with her friends supporting her she was working to get herself back to as close to how she’d looked before she’d had the baby in the first place.
And speaking of that baby… “So, where’s Aika right now?” Shuichi asked, stepping around Kaede to take a look around their otherwise empty-of-people living room. “Did you put her somewhere and forget about her?”
“How could I ever do that?” It was quite unusual for her to greet him at the door without having Aika either in her arms or within a few steps of where she was, but Kaede knew exactly where the baby was: laying in her crib for a nap, which had started not but half an hour before. After telling him that, she added, “But I know that if she’s asleep now, she’ll be wide awake while I’m gone, and if you don’t want to deal with that after everything you put up with at work, I totally get it.”
“Sometimes I think you don’t want to actually go as much as you pretend you do,” he said, watching his wife squirm at his correct deduction. “Come on, Kaede, you know that they’ll understand if you stop going with them. I’ve been in that position before, except with Kaito at the helm of the decision-making. Saying no gets things done.”
She inhaled deeply, before turning to head elsewhere in the house, hoping he wasn’t going to follow her. There was no such luck, as he came into their bedroom right after she did. “I know I could just say no, but I know why they want me to go with them and I agree with the reason, I really do. It just...sometimes it’s not fun to be there without you.”
“You could always start working out at home instead,” Shuichi suggested, slipping his arms out of his dress jacket he’d been wearing for work to set it carefully down on the bed. “It wouldn’t be quite the same, but unless we’re going to arrange for someone to babysit, that’s the only option I see to make that happen.”
It was a thought that had crossed Kaede’s mind a few times in the month she’d been meeting with her friends at the gym, but she knew why that wasn’t something she felt would benefit her. “I’m not getting rid of my piano to make space for all of the machines we’d need if anything was ever going to get done,” she told him, as she began to play with the ends of her long, unwashed hair. Going out to the gym had become such a part of her routine that she saved her infrequent shower times for after she’d come home from one such outing, so that she wasn’t spending all of her time hiding out in the water. “Maki says that there’s no way I’m going to make any progress without some of those machines, and Tenko doesn’t think there’s enough space in here with the piano to do a good floor setup.”
“And they’d certainly know more about this than me, sorry to suggest it.” Now unbuttoning the stuffy shirt he’d been wearing under his jacket, Shuichi made quick work of getting it off and switching into something much less formal and more comfortable, before noticing that all Kaede was doing was fiddling with her hair and pacing back and forth. “Something’s telling me this isn’t all that’s on your mind. Anything else you want to talk to me about?”
“I’m not really sure how to put any of this into words,” she admitted, stopping her pacing right where she could see her reflection in the mirror in the bathroom. “But I guess I feel obligated to listen to them because they both want what’s best for me and how I look, and even though it’s super hard to commit with everything going on, I want to be the best me I can be. Which I guess is the old me, in terms of how I look.” Her finger untwirled itself from her hair as it moved to stroke her jawline, which had become slightly more rounded when she’d been pregnant, and hadn’t changed after (much like the rest of her). “I just want to be attractive and skinny and light enough for you to lift and carry around and—”
“Are you listening to yourself right now? You’re forgetting something incredibly important and I need you to think that through for a moment!” Rushing over to her to wrap her in a tender hug, Shuichi could feel her giving a long sigh as he pressed his head against hers, letting her know that he was there for her no matter what. “Kaede, I can’t say that I understand why you feel how you do, or even what you’re feeling at all, but I can say that you’re being unrealistic and rude to yourself and you need to stop.”
“—and why would you say that?” Now with him in the reflection she felt that the extent of all of the little curves and lumps she’d gained over the previous year was all the more prominent, being compared against his still-thin frame. “I think it’s perfectly reasonable for someone to want to go back to how they looked before.”
He nodded, before letting go of her to take a step back. “It is reasonable to want that, sure, but you’re beating yourself up over something natural and life-changing. You look the way you look because you grew someone inside you, Kaede, please don’t forget that part of it.”
Her lower lip trembled, that fact being something that she could never forget but it also not being something that she felt could justify her appearance still being as it was, but before she could say anything a whine came into the room, flooding their ears via the speaker set up by their bed. “I’ll go check on her so you can finish changing,” she said, a saddened tone to her voice, and she walked out without making sure he was fine with that arrangement. Aika’s room took five seconds to get to, and when she entered she was treated to hearing that same whine at a louder volume. “Oh, it’s going to be okay,” she mumbled, approaching the crib to see the squirming dark-haired girl laying on the bottom, her face reddened in frustration. As she picked her up, she said, “Mama’s got you, you’re safe with me right now.”
Just the act of picking her up was not enough to get Aika to stop fussing, but after walking out of the room with her and taking her over to the piano bench, she’d quieted down to a softer level, until the walking stopped as Kaede was sitting down with her. Hearing the crying picking up out in the living room, Shuichi took that as his cue to get changed faster and to see what he could do to help, but when he got to the bedroom door he heard the distinct sound of live piano music beginning to be played, followed by the crying becoming softer and softer until it wasn’t audible any longer.
It was the same song played every time that the piano was selected as the way to calm Aika down, and even though it had been the choice for nearly four months straight, it wasn’t anything either parent had grown tired of. Aika’s Lullaby was fulfilling its duty and neither of them could complain about that, especially since it had bought them countless quiet hours after sending the baby back to sleep with its calming notes. “We should find a way to record this in the best quality possible, so that when you’re not here I have access to it,” Shuichi had said once upon a time, to which Kaede had laughed and insisted that a recording wouldn’t have the same impact, and he was inclined to agree with it after hearing how fast it worked time and time again.
When he got out to near the piano, he could see that Kaede was playing the song with her eyes closed, humming the notes along with her fingers hitting the keys, while Aika was propped up against her, not quite asleep but much calmer than she had been before. When she noticed that she was no longer the only adult in the room the playing slowed until the last note lingered in the air for a few calm seconds. “You know, you’re allowed to sit and listen to me play, you don’t have to stand back in awe,” she whispered, turning her head to see Shuichi hovering behind her. “I’m not afraid to play to an audience.”
“I’m aware, but sometimes it’s best to stay standing, just in case I need to do something like this.” He came forward and carefully, with tender fingers that meant no harm, grabbed Aika and picked her up, cradling her in the crook of one elbow with the other hand for support. “I assume it’ll be like usual and we’ll eat when you get back?”
“Yeah, that’ll be the plan we go with.” Realizing that she hadn’t told either Maki or Tenko that she was down to go that night, Kaede considered telling Shuichi that she’d be out even later but kept it to herself, in case it would make him proud of her for going a bit longer. “I’ll get ready and head out now, but only if you’re sure you’ve got this tonight.”
With a no-nonsense tone, he replied, “Kaede, this isn’t the first time I’ve been left here with her, I’ve done it all those other times and I’ll do it tonight as well. Don’t go if you don’t want to, that’s all I’m going to say.” He was pushing that perspective, much to her dismay and reluctance to listen to it, but she couldn’t give in to his side of things and so she changed into the workout clothes she’d been convinced to buy, made sure she had everything she needed for the night, and headed out after one more kiss with her husband and several soft pecks onto her daughter’s forehead.
Once she was outside the house, Kaede finally sent messages to her friends to let them know to meet her at the gym as soon as they could get there, and that she was on her way. The drive was uneventful, her barely able to check her rearview mirror whenever she needed to for fear of seeing her reflection and seeing her true feelings towards what was going on plastered across her face. She hated these workouts, even if they were with friends and meant to make her feel better about herself; she hated being away from Shuichi during time they should have been spending together and she hated being away from Aika for any amount of time, her heart wholly belonging to that little girl. If it wasn’t for the fact that she knew she’d never hear the end of it from at least one of the two friends if she decided to stop attending the workouts, she would do it without missing a beat, at least for a little while.
By the time she arrived in the gym parking lot, she could already see Tenko standing outside the front doors, her toned body on full display in her choice of workout gear, giving off a level of confidence with her appearance that made Kaede ultimately feel worse about herself. She’d never been one who’d been able to share that much skin on a regular basis, but she’d at least formerly indulged in bikinis and cute lingerie every so often, but she felt that doing so with her current, post-baby body would be doing a disservice to anyone who had to see it. “This is all being done to help me,” she reminded herself, taking a few deep breaths in her car before getting out and heading up to meet Tenko, who greeted her with a smile.
“Every time I see you coming up here, I see a bit more of the old, confident Kaede,” Tenko said to her as she waved her over, making Kaede shrink into her shoulders for a moment. “I mean that as a compliment! When we first got you here, you were so ashamed of how you looked, but now you’re at least not hiding under a jacket in summer weather, which is progress if I’ve ever seen it!”
“Oh, right, thank you,” she replied, having forgotten about how, after they’d initially bought the workout clothes, she’d been mortified to see how they clung tightly to all of her excesses, to the point that she’d come in wearing one of her jackets she’d bought late in her pregnancy, letting it bury her in extra fabric she couldn’t believe she’d stretched out just months before. “I guess all of this has done at least a little work, but there’s still a lot to get sorted out before I’m truly my confident self again.”
“Then let’s not stand here talking and get right to the warm-up!” Thrusting both of her hands into the air in excited pumps, Tenko turned and jogged into the building, the automatic doors moving just fast enough for her to not run into them. Lacking all of the enthusiasm her friend shared, Kaede walked in after her, occasionally checking over her shoulder to see if Maki was following her but finding no one there.
They met up again in one of the back rooms, the floor and walls padded and reinforced, and by the time Kaede had gotten there Tenko had already gotten out two mats for them to work on. “We’ll start with some stretching, then get into the cardio, and hopefully Maki will be here by then so we can go out onto the machines with her. Otherwise, I’ll be having you work on some self-defense skills while we wait, which are incredibly important to have, unless you wanna rely on that string-bean of a degenerate to protect you and your precious little one,” Tenko rambled, taking her spot at the head of one of the mats while Kaede silently prayed that Maki would be there sooner rather than later, no matter how useful self-defense would have been.
Together they stretched for several minutes, giving special attention to legs and the core, which were the two biggest problem spots that Kaede felt she had, and while the stretches were not easy in the slightest, she did better with them then than she had the first time she’d ever been there, or even the previous time she’d done a workout. The progress did not go unnoticed by Tenko, who was beaming when she counted off higher-than-usual numbers for Kaede’s stretches. Once they’d finished up there it was to laps, which they ran around the perimeter of the room, Tenko making sure she didn’t outpace Kaede to keep her motivated, and they set the number there to one higher than they’d done the meeting before.
But when they hit that number of laps, Maki still hadn’t come in, and to keep from breaking into the training she didn’t want from Tenko in particular, Kaede suggested, “Let’s run a few more laps, I feel like I have the energy to do it right now.” In reality her legs were already feeling like jelly and her heart was racing in a chest that ached with every breath, but she was trying to buy time however she could.
“Those are words I was not expecting from you,” Tenko admitted, stretching her legs seemingly in preparation for another run, “but if you’re feeling like you have energy, I have a much more challenging task for you. Come on, back to your mat.” Kaede’s whole demeanor dropped at the perceived failure, but when it was all said and done she wished she’d not said anything at all and had just let Tenko start training her instead. The task she’d come up with was a rapid-fire set of four different workouts in numbered increments, dropping a repetition every time they’d finished a set, and it took all of her dwindling strength at the end for Kaede not to drop on the floor with how much her legs ached.
Now that she was thoroughly exhausted, she didn’t know what was going to get accomplished, and things were not made any better by that being when Maki finally came into their room, her long hair pulled up into a high ponytail that swung neatly behind her with every step. “Why does Kaede look like you’ve put her through hell?” she asked, seeing how Kaede was literally swaying where she stood. “Tenko, we’ve talked about this, you’re not working with someone with endurance like I’ve got, you’re working with someone we’re trying to build up.”
“She’s the one who asked for it,” Tenko retorted, putting her hands on her hips. “Besides, she can take a breather while you stretch yourself out.”
“Already took care of that while I waited for Kaito to get his ass in gear to bring me over here.” Throwing her belongings down against the wall where everyone else’s was, Maki bent down to pick up Kaede’s water bottle and bring it to her, as a gesture of kindness. “I didn’t know he was going to take that long to get ready to go, I’d have just walked if I’d known.”
While Kaede took her water and started drinking it forcefully, the feeling of the cold liquid down her throat somewhat like heaven, Tenko began ragging on Kaito like she had nothing better to do, creating a look of murderous intent in Maki’s eyes with every word, which resulted in the two of them having a race to settle things non-violently. Unable to do much more than watch them, Kaede downed half her water before they’d finished up, only to start feeling like it was going to make her sick if she did anything more than sit down right then. Her stomach was churning when her friends remembered she was there and stopped their dispute to get back to the reason they were there in the first place, and it only got worse as they left the room and headed out to some of the machines.
For a while, as they were working on ellipticals and stair-steppers, it seemed like things were calming down and that she was going to be fine, but once they moved over to some of the weight machines and she had to lay down to use them, she could feel the pressuring building back up inside her. “I’m not feeling very good,” she had to tell them while her body was contorted to have her legs pressing out a weight that was hanging above her, her knees getting close to her face due to it. “I think I drank too much water while you were racing earlier, I think I’m going to throw up.”
“That’d be a sensation you’d be familiar with, wouldn’t it?” Maki asked her, working to remove weights from the machine to get her out from under it. “Go, take care of that so we’re not here scrubbing metal and concrete until midnight. Tenko can do her reps while you’re gone, and I’m not playing easy with her tonight.”
Nodding, thankful that Maki wasn’t considering her a faker or a liar for what she’d said, Kaede excused herself and went right to the closest bathroom, where she sat on the cold floor and hoped that the feeling would pass her quickly. Any heaves she gave were dry ones, thankfully, and when she finally stood up without having expelled anything she didn’t feel nearly as bad as she had before. After washing her hands and trying to not look at her engorged chest (which she knew was a sign that going home would be something that happened sooner rather than later), she went back out to meet her friends at the same machine they’d been at before, Tenko lying flat on the bench with her leg muscles twitching every few seconds.
“She had me pressing twice my weight,” Tenko gasped, slowly sitting up and rubbing at the muscles that were spasming. “Which I know isn’t as much as I could do, probably, but it wasn’t what I was expecting, that’s for sure.”
“I said I wasn’t playing easy,” Maki reminded, before giving Kaede a once-over. “You don’t seem like you were in there blowing chunks, so what’s up? False feeling?”
Kaede shrugged, waiting for Tenko to move so that she could take back the bench and resume her workout. “It just sort of passed without doing anything, which is really a waste of time when I have to get home to feed a baby.”
Due to the machine being in the way, she was unable to see the sour expression on Maki’s face when she’d heard those last few words. “Tragic, guess you’ll have to work a bit harder while you’re still here, then,” she said, putting weights back into the machine. “I’ll be easier on you than I was on Tenko, but I’m not going to have you doing the bare minimum. If you really want to look like you never had a kid, you’ve got to put in the work for it.”
“Trust me, I’m aware.” She could hear the bitterness in Maki’s voice, although it came as no surprise to hear it. No matter what she’d done, no matter how many times she’d let Maki be with Aika, it hadn’t changed her outlook on children in general, and she’d almost given up on there ever being any change on that perspective. If Maki wanted to stay stubborn and disliking children for reasons she could easily get over, that was her choice. “I’m glad that didn’t actually make me sick, though, I’d hate if I got home and had to pump instead of actually feed Aika because I was still throwing up.”
“Yeah, what a tragedy, she’d be broken if she couldn’t latch onto her mother one time in her life.” Dropping the last weight she needed into place, Maki came around the machine and stared Kaede down with a smile. “There, it’s ready for you. Go ahead and get working.”
The weight put into the machine was much greater than it had been previously, but not enough to make Kaede feel like she couldn’t do anything about it. Her legs ached as she pushed the machine back and forth, but seeing the smile on Maki’s face turn into an impressed look made her feel like it was worth it, and when she hit her twenty-five repetitions and the machine was pulled away, she felt like she could do at least a few more. “How much was that?” she asked, curious about what it was she’d just been working with. “Last time it was twenty, but that did not feel like twenty-five or even thirty.”
“Fifty.” The answer was short, sweet, and filled with Maki’s impressed tone that explained her expression. “It was fifty kilos.”
Stunned, Kaede managed to stammer, “…Excuse me? Fifty?”
“I don’t know why I chose to do it without telling you. My first thought was to have you press your goal weight, but then I thought that’d be cruel because I wouldn’t want to do that without warning, so why would you, so I just kind of settled on something easy to set up with the smaller weights. And you crushed it.” Maki pressed her hands together in front of her face, watching Kaede’s facial expression turn from stunned to accepting, proud of what she’d done. “Next time we do this I’m just putting in two twentys and a ten, and then building from there, since you need it. Those legs are going to be firm before any other part of you gets close.”
Resisting adding in a snarky comment about her chest at that moment, Kaede sat up and let her legs dangle over the edge of the bench, her feet brushing against the ground. “It isn’t what I’d hope for, but it’s progress,” she said confidently, Maki nodding at the truth of the statement. “Someday we’ll be able to get me to, like, two hundred sit-ups easy and then I’ll be making progress where I want it most.”
“This’ll help with that too, you know,” Tenko added, drumming fingers on her countable abs. “I mean, do you think I got looking like this just with sit-ups and all that? No way, there’s a lot of weight machines responsible for this body.”
“Right! Well, then, next time we can start at fifty on this and go from there.” Of all the machines that she was forced to use, that was one of the easier ones for her, so Kaede was not going to complain if that was what was going to give her the body she wanted back. “But I don’t have much time before I have to get home, so let’s go do something else to finish up, please? I want to make more progress while I can.”
“You’re really surprising me right now,” Maki remarked, even offering a hand to Kaede to help her to her feet. “Chugging that water must’ve flipped a switch in your head to make you get into working out, and I am not going to complain about having someone else to do this with that isn’t Tenko.”
They all shared a laugh at that, even though Tenko’s was a bit hurt by the statement, and off they went to other weight machines before finishing up doing a few minutes on the treadmill, which was Kaede’s least-favorite way of winding down but it was the one they went with that day. Once that had wrapped up, they were back to the padded room to grab their things and off they went on their separate ways, Kaede begging her body to hold on long enough to get her home before it started trying to express milk everywhere, knowing that she had a definitely hungry baby waiting for her when she got back.
The first thing she did when she got in the house was hunt down Shuichi, who she found in their bed reading to Aika, despite her being far too small to understand a word he was saying. He was able to know what was about to happen just based on a single look, and he handed her over as she was sitting down and pulling her shirt up, knowing that their own dinner was going to have to wait until Aika’s was done.
Such was the life of being parents, they knew.
two.
Waking up the next morning after the workout, Kaede knew her body would be screaming at her for how far she’d pushed it, but she hadn’t expected to wake up with the same upset stomach she’d had while at the gym. It was slightly more persistent in its aching, and she considered getting out of bed to attempt throwing up, but the last thing she wanted was to concern Shuichi with anything. Besides, getting out of bed with how her legs were screaming in pain and her stomach muscles were in a state of constant contracting was not going to be easy on her own, and if she could lay down as long as possible she would’ve preferred that. Thankfully, she was married to someone who knew that the day after a workout would be a rough one, so he’d taken it upon himself to get Aika when she woke up and tend to her, as well as have most things Kaede would need within an arm’s reach of where she was laying.
But even after she’d done some pumping to relieve the pressure in her chest, her stomach still felt like it was in knots, and she ended up having to painfully get herself out of bed to make a dash for the bathroom before everything she’d eaten the previous night ended up outside of her body. It felt more difficult than usual to be crouched down at the toilet, thanks to the aching feeling she was experiencing everywhere, but she’d figured that what she was going through then was the ultimate ending to what she’d done to herself at the gym and it would end right then and there.
It was not the case, as the next few days she spent feeling sickly off and on, occasionally having to go throw up but doing it discreetly and making sure that Shuichi was unaware of how she was feeling. She didn’t want to panic him when she was certain she’d caused it to herself, but just in case she scheduled an appointment with her doctor to cover all her bases—fearing she’d damaged something internally when she’d been working out, or that she’d contracted something out of nowhere. Her biggest fear was that whatever bug she’d gotten was something she could pass to Aika, and the thought of seeing that little girl sick made her heart break in half.
By the time it was five days post-workout she was still throwing up on occasion and beginning to consider if there were any other possibilities besides having picked something up somewhere. Her mind kept fluttering to one rather large possibility, but she couldn’t bring herself to take it seriously for one specific reason: in the four months since Aika’s birth she’d had something remotely close to a cycle exactly one time, and that made that seem like an implausibility, not a possibility. Even still, she kept it in her mind when she had to take her daughter to her four-month appointment that day, the doctor there one that had been part of the team assisting with her birth. If there ever was a time to ask someone about how likely it could have been to be pregnant again, that would have been it, but Kaede was so certain that couldn’t be the case that she didn’t bring it up.
However, as she was walking her now-fussing baby out of the office after her shots and the conclusion of the exam, she picked up a pamphlet from the lobby on the topic (specifically about subsequent pregnancies after the first), and sat out in the parking lot reading through it, realizing that her excuse for why that couldn’t be the case wasn’t going to hold any water. Just the thought that it could be possible made her chest tighten, but she knew that if it was possible, it was something she had to look into, so a trip to the store was made on the way home, to grab some tests and some various other groceries to make the charge on the account less suspicious. To make sure that no judgments were made by any strangers around her, she took her groceries and the still-fussy Aika through the self-checkouts, but seeing each test ring up made her hope more and more that she was being overly cautious and that she was jumping to the worst possible conclusion.
She rushed home as fast as she could, trying to obey all traffic laws while still wasting no time in getting back, and once she and Aika were safely inside with their haul from the store she steeled herself for what was to come. This was so different from when she’d been in that position before, scared of what could happen but excited because she knew they wanted children. Now she knew what it was like to go through the whole ordeal, and was terrified to be facing down that reality again.
After spending some time getting Aika calmed down from her experience at the doctor, Kaede was able to put her into her crib for a nap and sneak out of the tiny bedroom and into the bedroom, picking up the bag that still held all of the pregnancy tests before taking them into the bathroom with her. She could feel herself breathing heavy, anticipating what she was fearful would come, as she opened and unwrapped half of what she bought and tucked the other half underneath the sink for safekeeping. Five minutes later, almost all of which were spent pacing back and forth running through all of the options she had for each possible outcome, they were ready to be checked and she had to convince herself everything would work out regardless of what they said before she picked one up and looked at it.
Her hand trembling as she held it in front of her face, seeing the lack of a line on it made her whole body feel like it was melting. But she’d not just taken one, and there were several others that needed to be checked to reinforce the negative result, or else she’d have quite the story to tell when she saw her own doctor the next day to discuss why she was sick. The nightmare scenario started to descend onto her as she checked the next one, which was also negative, only for every single other one to be showing a positive. Blood running cold through her veins as she checked and re-checked each of them to make sure she was reading them correctly, Kaede wasn’t sure how she was supposed to interpret anything right then but she knew one thing for certain: she was not saying a word of it to Shuichi until she had a straight answer to give him.
Thankfully enough for her, he wasn’t able to read through the situation based solely on her behavior, which she tried to make seem as least-panicked as possible once he got home. They made small talk, him finding it curious that he came home early but she had no intentions of going out for a workout, until she let it slip that she’d made her deal with Maki about how much extra she’d have to do the next time she went. “Okay, I’d definitely avoid going if I knew that was looming over me,” he said, making her feel justified in her lie, “but are you sure that’s all that’s going on? You’ve been a bit off lately.”
“Definitely sure that’s all,” she told him, hoping that he wouldn’t see right through her and press further. “Just have had a lot on my mind, and you know that I had to take Aika in today so that’s been eating at me too.”
“How did that go, by the way? She take it well?” He was holding her at the time, looking at the bandages that were still stuck to her chunky thighs, and when Kaede nodded he smiled. “I like to hear that; sorry I couldn’t be there with you for it. I’d asked if I could take a longer lunch but the case we were working required me to take a shorter one. I’ll get to go with you for one of her checkups someday, I’m sure.”
“They’re not that exciting, Shuichi, you don’t have to want to go to one of them, I promise.” If he had been able to go, she wouldn’t have gotten the chance to snag that pamphlet or make the purchases that she had, and she wouldn’t have been sitting there feeling like she had something she needed to tell him. “But who knows, maybe you’ll get to go to the next one, or the one after that.”
His smile faltered as he touched one of the bandages, watching Aika kick her leg out at the pressure. “It’d be nice to be more involved in her life, rather than just getting the weekends and nights, but if I was involved, where’d the money be coming from? We’re making a decent living as it is, but any changes like that would make it hard to continue on.”
“If you wanted to step into her life more, I’d get back into doing piano instruction, but I can’t really do that if I’ve got her with me all day.” Kaede wasn’t very happy about this turn of conversation, making her stomach start to churn in fear of what was to come, but she maintained a façade of happiness as she said, “Honestly, I miss teaching students how to play, it hasn’t been quite the same just playing for Aika all the time.”
“You could bring people into the house and have them practice here, if you miss it that badly. I can’t just quit working under the assumption that you’ll be able to find work, unfortunately.” Shuichi’s suggestion was a valid one, and it was something she’d thought about a time or two, but she wasn’t going to truly consider it if she didn’t have to. The thought of inviting strangers into her home with such a small child always made her uncomfortable to think about for too long. “This is just how it’s going to have to be for right now, until something changes.”
“Yeah, it’s all just wishful thinking,” she agreed, before realizing that if she was going to be going to her appointment the next day, she’d need someone to watch Aika for her, unless she wanted to be scolded for potentially making harmful choices. “Actually, Shuichi, can I ask a favor of you? I have to go to the doctor tomorrow and don’t want Aika going with.”
He looked stunned by the request. “Er, is everything okay? This is the first I’m hearing about this, you know.”
“It totally slipped my mind until now. Yes, everything’s fine, I’m just going for a follow-up of my own, kinda like Aika went to hers today. No big deal.” She wanted to talk about how it could very well be a big deal, but adding any further layers of suspicion to her behavior was not something she needed to be doing when her husband was a detective. “It’s in the afternoon, so you could drive to work tomorrow for a change, instead of getting a ride, then come back at lunch and stay here.”
“I don’t know if they’ll let me do that on such short notice, but I suppose I can figure out a way to make it work.” He paused, looking from Aika and her blank stare up to her mother, who was fidgeting where she sat. “Are you sure everything’s okay, Kaede? This isn’t any time to lie to me about something.”
He was figuring out that she was leaving out the truth, but she couldn’t give in and tell him what she thought was going on, not without solid proof in either direction. “Yes! I am absolutely sure everything’s okay, and if it’s not then you’ll hear about it tomorrow. That’s a promise from me to you, and I intend on keeping it.”
His eyes lingered on her for a few seconds, before he was back to looking at Aika, picking up her legs and playing with her socked feet, causing her to giggle her loud baby giggle. “I’m going to trust you on this, but please don’t let me down. If you’re dying, and you’re keeping it from me, I’m not going to get over that easily.”
“If I was dying, you’d be the first to know.” His guess was going in the wrong direction, but it seemed like a good clue that she wasn’t about to be caught if he wasn’t suspecting anything close to the truth. “I love you, Shuichi, and I really mean everything I say.”
“I love you too, Kaede. Please don’t keep secrets.”
three.
In all honesty, the secret she was potentially keeping was not one that Kaede wanted to be bearing at that moment, nor was it one she’d expected to find herself contending with for quite a long time. They hadn’t ever discussed when they’d actually want a second child, even if it had been jokingly been brought up from time to time. He’d been an only child and she’d had a younger sister that, like the rest of her family, had grown distant when she’d thrown her pianist ambitions aside to get married to a detective, so it wasn’t like they had much to work with in terms of firsthand knowledge about siblings with an age gap. It had been fairly common knowledge that they did want Aika to have a younger brother or sister someday, but that was as far into the decision-making process as they had gotten.
Sitting in the waiting room that afternoon was one of the more worrisome times Kaede had ever spent at a doctor’s office, and she knew she had no one to blame but herself for it. She was wracking her brain for the answers to all of the questions she knew were going to get lobbed at her once she was in with her doctor; she could say, with certainty, when the first day of her last period had been, but it was far from regular and could very well mean nothing at all. Her only real, solid clue to her potentially being pregnant was the sickness and the feeling of not being all there, which she’d used the first time around, but it wasn’t something that could be used as proof, not after the mixed answers from the previous day’s tests.
When she was called back, she told herself that no matter what happened there in that office that day, she was going to carry herself and her life with pride and grace, because she was a strong, capable woman who could handle anything. True to her planning, once she’d set the stage for why she was visiting, her doctor asked her the magic question, and she had to answer that she wasn’t sure, followed by talking about the last cycle and how there’d only been the one in the months since she’d given birth.
“That was four months ago, correct?” the doctor asked, writing something down on the notepad she was holding, and when Kaede told her yes, she nodded and scribbled down a few more words. “Do you have any reason to believe it could or couldn’t be possible that you are pregnant right now?”
“I mean, I don’t, but…” All at once, time seemed to freeze in Kaede’s life and she was left sitting there thinking about her answer to that particular question. Was she merely thinking it was possible because she wanted to have two children close in age, or was she thinking it because that was her current greatest fear? How was she going to explain to Shuichi, or to anyone, if she found out that she was pregnant there in that office? There were so many variables, so many possibilities, so many things that could and would go wrong if given the chance, and she had to process them all right away. “I just want to know if I am, really.”
“Were any at-home tests administered?” continued the doctor, aware of the mental turmoil her patient was going through but unable to do anything beyond proceeding with the appointment. “Those would give you a rough idea of if you are or not.”
She grimaced, thinking about how much money she’d spent the day prior for that reason. “I did a few, to mixed results, which is why I bring it up now. This appointment was going to be for me feeling sick, until I really thought about why that could be.”
The doctor’s plan of attack was to do another test there at the office, and then verify it with a blood test, which Kaede understood the reason for but wanted nothing to do with. If the in-office test couldn’t be trusted, that meant she still had to wait several days to know the truth, which meant several more days of dancing around the subject with the man she shared a home with. But she felt the doctor knew best in the situation and so she went through with both, getting the blood drawn and giving the sample to be analyzed there in the office. While they waited for the first results, the doctor dove into other potential causes for the illness, some of which were psychological and some of which were more physical, citing changing post-partum hormones for other reasons as a large possible factor.
Those discussions came to a halt when the results came in, so that they could go through them together, and the doctor, her eyes shining with amusement, had one thing to ask: “You said you previously took tests and they came back with mixed results. When was this, exactly? Last week?”
“Yesterday, actually. Why do you ask?” Kaede knew that the expression the doctor was wearing was nothing but trouble, but she felt like making assumptions at that point was a dangerous thing to do. “It doesn’t look like I’m lying about that, does it?”
“It’s curious, that’s all. If you handed me this printout and told me that this patient had received a negative test in the past several weeks, I would have laughed you out of my office, except I know you wouldn’t be lying about something like that. This is why you take multiple, my dear, just as you did.” Handing the paper over, after circling some crucial parts of it, the doctor allowed Kaede to see exactly what it was that was amusing her. But what was amusing for one was not amusing for both, and just seeing in print that she was, without a doubt, growing something within her was easily more nerve-wracking than anything else would have been. “The blood test should do nothing but defend these results, but in case it does not or turns anything else up, I will get in touch with you. Do you have any other questions or concerns?”
The biggest question in her mind was if everything was going to end up okay, with her first child still being so young and this one existing at all, but she swallowed down that thought and said that she had nothing at all. That changed by the time she was leaving the building, all of the fears about what her future would hold beginning to envelop her and put a stranglehold on her throat. She knew that she could do this, theoretically, but all of the things that could go wrong could happen as well, and in a battle between fate and her decisions she would lose every single time.
There was something else looming overhead that had her gasping for breath against the raging sea of fears and emotions, that being letting Shuichi know what was going on. She knew that he’d find out that night, one way or another, and breaking the news to him the right way was absolutely a must, lest he not be supportive of the whole ordeal. But clumsy thinking and even clumsier hiding of evidence did her in, as when she got home with that test result in hand, Shuichi met her at the door was something of his own—or, rather, her own, that she’d carelessly forgotten to toss out.
“I’m going to suggest two different possibilities, both of which feel as unlikely as the other,” he said to her, crinkling the top of the receipt paper he was holding while trying not to look at what she had to offer. “Either these are for you, or they’re for someone you’re close to, such as Maki. Am I right on one of these options?”
Unlike him having the power to keep his eyes off her offering, she couldn’t bear to not look at the receipt and see the almost comically long list of duplicate items she’d purchased the day before. “Trying to drown all that out with other purchases doesn’t work if I let you find the receipt, huh?” she replied, pulling her eyes off the paper long enough to look into his unamused face. “You’re right on one option, yes, but you’re not going to like which one it’s ended up being.”
Dropping the receipt and letting it drift to the floor, Shuichi’s now-empty hand beckoned for what Kaede was holding in hers, and she reluctantly passed it over while trying to look around the room for where he might’ve left Aika to greet her as he had. “I’m just…how long did you know about this?” he asked her, causing her attention to snap back to their conversation. “I don’t even know when this could’ve happened…”
“Um, I’m going to take a wild guess and say it’s from your birthday, since it’s either that or there’s something very wrong happening here.” She couldn’t resist meekly smiling after pointing that out, but the exasperated, almost worried expression Shuichi gave her in return was unsettling at best. “But I started suspecting something was wrong last week, I didn’t think it was, well, this until yesterday.”
“And how, just how, did you start to consider this was even a possibility?”
“At Aika’s appointment, I might’ve grabbed something that explained the likelihood of it and I thought hey, maybe it’s possible that we got careless and…well, you know how it’s going to go from here.” It felt almost wrong to be talking about something this life-changing in such a casual manner, but she knew that he was running through all the problems this was about to bring into their lives and the last thing she wanted was to add more to his plate. “I’m not really sure what to do from here, though.”
His eyes glazing over the paper for what felt like the tenth time since he’d received it, Shuichi finally was able to pull himself away from it to look at Kaede with eyes wide and darting back and forth. “Acting like nothing’s going on isn’t an option, but I’m not looking forward to everyone else’s reactions when they find out. Can you imagine how they’re all going to take this? It’s going to be chaos!”
“You’re taking it better than I thought you would, so maybe everyone else will too.” It was beyond optimistic to think that way, and Kaede knew that they were going to be talking about how to proceed for the rest of the night. She already knew the basic topics they were going to hit on off the top of her head, but Shuichi was one to think through things deeper, so it was highly likely he’d have more. But continuing on their talks right then wasn’t something she wanted, not with her shaking legs from the fear of how it would go over and her aching chest from her need to feed the child they already had.
It wasn’t until she’d gotten Aika from her room that it sank it a bit more than sooner, rather than much later, was going to be when this girl was going to be a big sister, and the mere thought that a baby could be a big sister was enough to nearly knock her onto the floor. At least she was able to maintain her stance until she’d made it to the chair, but when Shuichi found her minutes later she was sobbing, stroking the back of Aika’s dark hair and occasionally mumbling something about how much of a failure of a mother she’d become. “I wouldn’t say you’re a failure by any means,” he assured her, taking a seat on the floor at her feet and looking up at them both. “I’d say quite the opposite, really. As unexpected as it is, the fact that you’re—damn it Kaede, you’re pregnant again, that’s got to count for something in terms of being a good mother.”
“It means I’m good at making them, but how am I going to raise two little ones at once? How are we going to do this, Shuichi?” Her sobs were body-shaking, but Aika wasn’t disturbed from her eating by them, so that was a single positive to be had. “I’m not sure I can do it, not without a lot of help.”
“I’ll support as much as I can, and I’m sure our friends will as well, but we’ve got time before we have to worry about how we’re going to do this.” His tone was soft and offering the support she felt she needed in the moment, and she appreciated that in her distraught state. “Did you discuss when you’re supposed to go back?”
She coughed out another sob before replying, “In a few weeks, to do a scan and all that stuff. I wasn’t thinking about telling anyone before then, except you of course, and I’d like it if you could come with me that day. We’ll have to arrange for someone to watch Aika, but for an occasion like that I think it would be worth it.”
“I’ll talk to Kaito about it, since he’s the only one I can think of that’d be willing to do it and not start suspecting anything. You focus on caring for yourself, Aika, and the new baby, and leave that to me.” Shuichi froze after he said that, his eyes casting downward for a moment before he followed up with, “That’s by far the strangest thing I’ve had to say in a long time, and I suppose it’s only going to get stranger from here, huh?”
four.
True to his word, Shuichi was the one who took the task of finding a babysitter for a couple hours on an otherwise ordinary Thursday, and it was Kaito that he ultimately went with for the exact reason he’d initially come up with. The only part of the task that Kaede had to do herself was set up the appointment and have a time ready for when the favor was asked, but she felt she’d never really stopped having to make appointments at that particular office so she was okay with doing it.
The weeks between her initially finding out that she was most definitely pregnant again and when they could get their first glimpse of the baby felt like they dragged on incredibly long, but part of that was thanks to the amount of time they were back to spending together at the house. Even though she’d looked into it to see what kinds of workouts she could do without causing any harm to a growing child, Kaede felt that showing up to the gym to meet with Maki and Tenko and telling them both that she wasn’t going to do most of the extreme stuff would out her secret immediately. Since she knew at least one of them was not going to take things well, it felt better to insist the absence was due to Shuichi pulling a lot of late nights at the office, because that was at least a plausible excuse that could’ve been happening.
It would have been, honestly, if he’d had anything to keep him working late, but the cases were slim at the time and he could barely fit them to his current hours, let alone extra ones. “I’ll find a way to get some more work in, since we’ll be needing that money in the future,” he promised, speaking with an assuring tone to calm Kaede’s frantic heart, as she knew very well that if things didn’t fall in their favor, they could easily be in a lot of trouble.
When the day of the appointment came, they had to take Aika over to Kaito and Maki’s place, since Kaito didn’t want to be watching a child somewhere that wasn’t his own home, just in case something went wrong. Him implying anything could or would go wrong was terrifying to Kaede, who wasn’t fully convinced that Kaito was going to be able to watch Aika in the first place, but Shuichi was able to make sure that she knew that he was just being overly careful and that he wasn’t expecting anything to happen. But it was an unpleasant first sign when they got to their apartment and it was Maki who answered the door, giving them both a bit of a disgusted look.
“I can’t believe you roped Kaito into watching her here,” she said, not allowing for Shuichi to explain exactly what he’d already explained to Kaede on the way over. “I wish I had anywhere else to be right now except here.” That was when she took a glance at Kaede, giving her a similar once-over to the one she’d given her that night at the gym. “You’re not working out while you’re sitting playing mommy, are you?”
Not having realized that her physical state had changed any in the weeks since she’d last gone for a workout, Kaede shrugged. “Here and there I’ve been doing it, but you try getting your hands free long enough to do anything when you’ve got an infant around who needs constant care.”
“And that’s another point for never having children,” Maki muttered, before turning her head behind the door to holler for Kaito, looking back at the couple out in the hallway while they all waited. “So, what’s the occasion for today, anyway? Hot date? Need some time away from the kid?”
An excuse to cover them on where they were going was something that neither of them had come up with, but thinking fast on his feet Shuichi replied, “I’m having a get-together this afternoon at work and it’s no children allowed. Nothing too important or long, so we’ll be back within a couple hours.”
“Don’t you worry, I’ve got this all under control!” Kaito bellowed, jumping into sight behind his short wife and leaning over her to look out at his friends and their child. “I’ve never done too much babysitting before, but with Maki Roll here to help me if I need it, this’ll be a breeze among breezes! Aika’s going to be fine with me!”
“If she gets hungry, she’s got some bottles in the bag, but don’t let her eat all of them at once, they need to be rationed so that she doesn’t get sick.” Pressing a finger to her chin as she handed off the bag she’d been holding on her shoulder, which Maki took and walked away with, Kaede looked at Kaito and his goofy grin and felt like she was making a big mistake in trusting him with her child. “Are you sure you’re going to be able to handle this? We can just not go to the get-together if you’re not certain.”
“I’m one thousand percent positive I can handle a baby for a few hours, Kaede. I’m not completely incapable with everything.” He flashed her a grin, and she gave a shaky laugh in response, still not trusting him fully but knowing she wasn’t going to get anyone else to cover for them while they went to the appointment. “Now hand ‘er over, I’m ready for this fun time to start!”
After allowing for Kaede to bend down and kiss Aika’s cheek gently, Shuichi handed her in her seat over to Kaito’s waiting hands. “Make sure she doesn’t stay in that the whole time you’ve got her, let her out and laying on a blanket on the floor. She prefers being set down on her back, but do please put her on her stomach for at least a little while.”
“Thanks for the tip, sidekick! Your baby’s going to be fine with me, don’t worry!” Kaito’s grin grew larger before he kicked the door closed, leaving the two out in the hallway without any guarantee that his word was true.
There wasn’t any good that would be done if they stood around trying to listen in to what could have been happening on the other side, not when they had somewhere important to go. Every few steps they took down back to where they’d parked, Kaede would look over her shoulder and consider running back to check, but Shuichi kept her grounded and focused on what they needed to do right then, and soon enough they were on their way. It felt almost like they were retracing steps from the past as they drove to the office, and entering the front doors it was like they’d been there quite recently (even though they had been, all things kept in mind). The receptionist recognized them from before and welcomed them with a warm greeting, but that only made the fact that they were there way sooner than they’d expected they’d ever be more obvious.
The time they spent sitting there waiting to get called back was nerve-wracking, with Kaede bouncing her leg and thinking nonstop about what could have been going wrong with Aika at that moment. She started drumming her fingers against her leg, slowly turning the anxious habit into playing the notes for the lullaby she’d written, but after pretending to play through it a couple times she froze her hand mid-note. “I have to write another song,” she whispered to Shuichi, who looked at her in confusion until she elaborated, “I can’t write one for one kid but not do it for the other.”
“I don’t know where you’re going to find the time for that,” he replied, scratching under the back of the hat he was wearing to mask the fact that he’d forgotten to actually wash his hair recently. “It’s already rough finding time of your own, and you’re not exactly going to find more of it any time soon.”
“Thanks for reminding me of that.” It had already been so difficult to get the time to go to the gym when she’d been doing that, so even though playing the piano was something she would be doing at home, she would’ve been contending with a noise level that could have been too much for the baby in the house. “I hope this one can forgive me if their song isn’t any different than Aika’s.”
His reaction was to give the conversation some thought, before shaking his head. “We’ll think of some way to make that not happen, they deserve their own lullaby just like her.”
“It’s worked wonders so far, so maybe that’ll be the case with the second one. I like having a child who appreciates my piano music, so let’s go two-for-two, huh?” She laughed, before her hand slowly drifted from her leg to her stomach, another old habit that she’d had but one that had been rather situational. “I still can’t believe we’re going through this again, I still have dreams about the whole thing last time and now I’ll be living it.”
“That’s how it goes,” he said, leaning his head onto her shoulder, “but we’re going to make the best of everything. We’re going to love Aika and this second one the same, no matter how they end up compared to her.”
The receptionist called out for them to come to the door not long after that, and together they stood and headed for the fateful meeting that was going to change the fabric of their lives forever. This doctor was another one that had been prominent in their lives over the past year, and she greeted Kaede and Shuichi both by name and with eager handshakes, leading them back into her office. “You should remember the drill here, yes?” she asked, closing the door on the three of them in the room. “I’ll get machines rolling, you strip down and get on the table.”
By the time the doctor was back with her wand in hand, Shuichi was sitting in the chair next to the table with Kaede’s things in his lap and his fingers laced in hers, while Kaede was laying on the table with her other hand pushing her bangs back from her face. “I’m not looking forward to any surprises here, so please don’t give me any,” she begged, trying to make eye contact with the doctor, who merely laughed at the statement. “Seriously, if you’re going to tell me anything other than there being one baby, I am not interested.”
“I’ll tell you exactly what the doppler picks up, whether it’s one or more.” Waving the wand around, the doctor pointed it directly towards Kaede’s face before getting her ready for it to be used. The gel was just as uncomfortable as she’d remembered it being, but she was too worried about something being shown that wasn’t what she was expecting that she couldn’t be bothered caring about it. The doctor hummed as she began rolling the wand back and forth across the now-gelled skin, searching for some sign of life on the grayscale screen.
The first clue that they were close was the sound of the rapid-fire heartbeat being picked up, which had the clasped hands gripping each other a bit tighter, followed by the sight of something small and blob-like coming up on the screen. “There it is,” Kaede said, feeling breathless at the sight flickering with each beat that pulsed. “I can’t believe it.”
“And only one, unless there’s something hiding elsewhere, but I’m not going to hold my breath about it. Congratulations, Saihara family, because your lives are officially changing forever. Again.” The doctor pressed some buttons to print out the sonograms for their keeping, before letting the image linger on the screen for a while longer. “Based on the information that got sent over here from the other office, and based on what I’m seeing, I’m estimating…late May as the due date, but don’t quote me on that right now, we’ll need to measure when they’re a bit bigger.”
At that, the couple shared a look between them, both with narrowing eyes as they tried to process what they’d just heard. “Er, I don’t mean to question your process at all,” Shuichi started, catching an amused look from the doctor, “but Aika’s birthday is in late May, so are you saying there’s a chance that they could end up—”
“My babies are going to be exactly a year apart?” Kaede blurted out, sitting up slightly and causing the machine to lose focus on the flickering image. “How did we manage that?”
“—that was what I was going to ask about, but it seems she’s said it for me.”
Laughing, the doctor began to shut down the machine now that she’d lost her reading on it. “I never said they would be, I even specifically said ‘don’t quote me on that’, now didn’t I? We’ll get a better idea of how close to a year apart they’ll be next time we do a scan, but right now we’re going to shoot for the end of the month. Hard to tell when we don’t have a good set of data working for us.”
“Then we’ll not tell people that they’ll be that close then, understood.” Giving a quick nod in her direction, Shuichi looked over at Kaede to see her still-shocked, mouth-slightly-ajar expression. “Please, Kaede, don’t say a thing about that until we know for sure, let’s let that come as a later part to the surprise.”
“I’m fine with just telling them May, sure,” she replied, laying back down so that the excitement of the moment didn’t make her start to get dizzy, as she waited for the remaining gel to be wiped off her body. “It’s not going to hurt anyone if they don’t get the full story right away, especially not…some of our friends.”
He let his eyes linger on her for a moment, watching as she closed her mouth and began to look pensive in regards to something. “Let me guess, you’re talking about Maki and Tenko, aren’t you?”
“They’re going to be so upset when they find out, because they’d really wanted me to be working out and when they find out why I haven’t been, it’s going to be war.” Cue the doctor trying to give input about safe workouts that one could do while pregnant, but it wasn’t anything Kaede wanted to hear, or explain the reason for why it didn’t matter if there was something she could do. “This is all so exciting and scary and all that, but possibly losing their friendship isn’t what I wanted whenever we decided to have a second kid.”
“You’re overthinking it,” Shuichi told her, beginning to take on a gnawing feeling in the pit of his stomach at how he could very well have been lying to her right then, given who in particular they were talking about. The last thing he wanted was for any of their friends to cause added stress in their lives right then, but when dealing with those two nothing was ever guaranteed to be easy. “Come on, let’s not worry about that right now and instead think about how we’re going to break this news to them. You had fun with that last time, didn’t you? Aren’t you looking forward to doing it again?”
She didn’t respond until she had the copies of the sonograms in her hands, looking at them as if she was looking down on a tangible baby, not just pictures of a grayscale blip against a dark background. “I guess half the fun of being pregnant last time was getting to tell everyone all about it, so maybe that’ll be where I have my fun this time too.”
“Don’t get too wrapped up in having fun with that that you forget to come back and visit us here,” the doctor reminded them, showing why they trusted her with this medical care the second time around. “Set up your next appointment before you leave, take that stress off your shoulders and…make sure you take it easy. Don’t need you causing yourself any harm with everything you’ve got on your plate this time around.”
They thanked her, Kaede even giving her a big hug once she was back to being fully dressed and ready to go, and headed out back into the lobby arm-in-arm. The next appointment was scheduled for a few weeks out, for the main purpose of making sure everything was still going well and to get a better grasp on the due date, and knowing that they’d have the information to drop the second potential bombshell on their friends at that time, they left to start discussing what they were going to do in order to drop the first one.