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They move to the countryside.
It doesn’t happen right away—Miri’s still in daycare until the end of winter, and all the books say you shouldn’t pull sudden changes on children like that. Besides, she’s made so many friends, and she loves Teacher Anna so much—
But they need a fresh start from Tokyo, all of them together. Even with a clean goodbye from the organization, Rei knows Kazuki would keep looking over his shoulder, waiting for the other shoe to drop. He would have, too.
So in March, they pack up their apartment, fit it into Kazuki’s stupidly tiny car, and get on the road. They tell Miri it’ll be like a really long field trip, passing through cities and towns and roads that seem to stretch on ahead the same way the roads continue to stretch on behind them.
“I found a place,” Kazuki tells Rei on the second day of their seemingly never-ending drive. “I think it’s far enough. Next to the sea, sort of. I was thinking we could—”
It’s more of a plan than Rei has, even if it turns out to be a fixer-upper of a restaurant with an apartment on the second floor.
“Kyuu-chan says we owe him,” Kazuki says, glancing at Rei like Miri does when she’s done something she isn’t sure she was supposed to. “I thought maybe, you know, if we own the restaurant on the first floor, then no one’s gonna ask us for references—”
Rei glances at the highway, the sparkling blue ocean on the other side of it. He wonders, for the first time in years, how much he’d actually been able to sock away in his bank account, working all those jobs for the organization. Maybe they don’t even have to owe Kyuutarou for long. “When you said it was sort of next to the sea—”
“There’s a crossing right there!” Kazuki points about a few meters away. “We’ll teach Miri to cross it properly, then she can play on the beach after school. And look, the apartment’s got three rooms—you know you can’t keep sleeping in a tub anymore, right? That’s Tokyo Rei behavior; we’re leaving that behind.”
Rei raises an eyebrow. “And what am I now?”
“Just—just regular Rei,” Kazuki says, lopsided grin and all. “Papa Rei?”
Rei glances back at the ocean. The restaurant’s gonna need a lot of work. It’s a good thing they have a lot of time on their hands. “Miri,” he says, waking the girl sleeping in the back of the car. “Come look at what Papa Kazuki found us.”
And so, they move to the countryside.
Getting Miri into a new school is easy—as with the restaurant, Kazuki makes arrangements ahead of time, sending in the paperwork long before they even arrive.
“What if we hated the new place?” Rei asks him, frowning at the school pamphlet Kazuki has magically produced from one of his bags.
“Do you hate the new place?” Kazuki wants to know. He at least has the grace to look a little guilty, running his hand through his hair as he explains. “It’s by the sea—you and Miri said once you both liked the beach. That you’d like to live near it.”
Rei vaguely remembers that conversation, a casual overlay during one of Rei’s multiple attempts at French toast. “I wasn’t aware you were asking about our immediate future.”
“With everything going on, I didn’t know how much you would have wanted to figure all of this stuff out, so I just—you hate the place. Do you want to move? We can move, just give me—”
“I don’t hate the place.”
Rei doesn’t. Sure, it’s a little shabby, and yes, it could definitely use a lot more work before they can even begin to start serving customers here, but it looks like somewhere that was once well-loved. Kazuki had mentioned Kyuutarou getting it from a retired couple. It could be well-loved again. It’s just that— “We’re partners, though. Next time, we figure all of this stuff out as a team.”
Kazuki blinks, but the tension on his face bleeds out into a look of relief. “Oh,” he says, grinning. “Okay. I just didn’t think you would—well, then if you really don’t hate it here, what do you think about calling it Yadorigi 2.0? Turn it into a café and bar like—”
Rei snorts. “That’s a terrible name. Kyuutarou-san is going to ask us for this place back when he finds out.”
“No, he won’t—will he?” Kazuki asks, his brow knitting with such sudden concern it makes Rei laugh.
“Besides, this looks more like an American-style diner,” Rei says, glancing around at the homey decor, the faded red on the bar stools, the griddle set just behind the counter. “If we open a restaurant that serves breakfast and lunch, we can close down in the afternoons and leave our evenings free for Miri. She’s gonna need help with homework, probably.”
“Oh.” Kazuki looks around, but when he smiles he’s looking at Rei. “You’re right. I didn’t even think about that. That would be perfect.”
“See?” Rei says. “I told you we should be figuring all this stuff out as a team.”
And it’s as a team that they settle on the name Diner Nest, later on, even though it’s Kazuki who thinks of the word ‘nest’.
“You know, like birds,” he says, almost shyly, “because that’s sort of what we’re doing, isn’t it? With all of this?”
“Yeah,” Rei agrees, and for the first time since they left Tokyo, he starts to feel like maybe they’ve found home.
A postcard arrives for Kazuki one day, with a pretty girl grinning in front of some kind of European landmark. Rei isn’t sure where, to be honest—he’s never paid attention to those kinds of things—more caught off-guard by the fact that she doesn’t look like Kazuki’s usual type of woman.
And that, apparently, Kazuki has given her his new address.
“Who’s she?” Miri asks for Rei, eyes wide as she looks at the photo first, turning the card around to try and read the note there. “She’s so pretty!”
Kazuki doesn’t answer her outright, laughing it off and saying something about an old friend before he snatches the postcard from Miri, scolding her lightly for reading things that aren’t meant for her. They bicker over that for a bit, and then eventually, Kazuki steers the topic away from the mystery woman.
“She was my wife’s sister,” he tells Rei later that evening, unprompted. Miri’s gone to bed and the two of them are doing their nightly run of the household chores before they go to sleep themselves—Kazuki setting up Miri’s packed lunch for the next day, Rei studiously scrubbing the dishes from dinner.
Kazuki runs his hand against the back of his neck. “I mean. Obviously she’s still my wife’s sister, it’s just that my wife’s—”
Oh.
Rei doesn’t really know about this. There are things he’s heard about—bits of information Kyuutarou’s let slip, things agents from the organization have said about Kazuki.
The way Kazuki looks, sometimes, when it’s raining.
Kazuki used to be married. That much Rei knows. He isn’t sure what happened to his wife, exactly, but he doesn’t think Kazuki would be here now if there was anything at all he could still do about being with her.
“You don’t have to tell me,” Rei says to the unusually stubborn bits of burnt meat stuck to the bottom of the pan. He might be scrubbing too hard—his right arm aches, but that might also just be phantom pangs of pain from his old injury. “If you don’t want to.”
“Her name’s Karin,” Kazuki says after a moment of quiet. “My sister-in-law, that is. She promised she’d show me, that’s all, once she makes it to France. She’s always wanted to go. She said—she’s the one who said it would be okay, if I had Miri.”
Rei steals a glance at Kazuki, who’s painstakingly cutting out dried seaweed to decorate Miri’s lunch with. “Do you think Miri might want to meet her?” he asks. “Someday. Whenever she’s back in Japan.”
There’s a ghost of a smile playing on Kazuki’s face. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, I think she probably would.”
Miri wakes up with a nightmare that night, sniffling for her mama while she sleep-stumbles her way into Rei’s room, crawling into bed with him. His arms wrap around her automatically, rubbing her back gently and counting the seconds until she asks, in a small wobbly voice, “Papa Kazuki?”
Rei picks her up, carrying her with his good arm while she buries her wet face in his neck and clings to him. He only has to knock on Kazuki’s door twice, waiting for the faint sound of Kazuki calling Miri’s name before he lets them both in.
“Nightmare?” Kazuki asks, holding his arms out for Miri and peppering the top of her head with kisses. “Papa’s here, Miri.”
“Couldn’t sleep?” Rei whisper-asks, catching the book Kazuki set on his night table before taking Miri, the reading lamp he still has on. Kazuki only ever tries to read when he wants to put himself to sleep.
“Just one of those days,” Kazuki murmurs, settling back down in his bed, Miri curling up next to him.
Rei pulls the blanket up to get in on the other side of Miri. It’s not often these days they sleep three to a bed like this, and Rei sometimes wonders why they don’t. It feels kind of nice.
“Yeah,” he says, stroking the top of Miri’s hair to soothe her.
But when he looks up, Kazuki’s already dozed off.
“Retirement’s looking good on you,” Kyuutarou says when he drops by, a year or so later. He says it’s to check on his favorite customer, but Miri’s still at school, practicing with the glee club. She’s been so excited about joining clubs, now that she’s in elementary school.
Kazuki puffs up his chest, hands on his hips as he beams. “It’s the country air,” he says. “You should think about leaving the city too, Kyuu-chan. Bet it’ll do you good.”
“I was talking to Rei,” Kyuutarou says, smirking. “He looks like he’s put on some more muscle; it’s good to see him looking healthier. You, on the other hand—are you sure about that goatee?”
“The ladies love it!” Kazuki shrieks, defensively stroking his godawful patch of blond hair, even as Kyuutarou shakes with laughter and Rei rolls his eyes at him.
“Don’t bother,” Rei tells Kyuutarou. “Miri and I have tried so many times, but he’s dying on that hill.”
“You don’t mean to tell me any self-respecting lady actually finds that attractive,” Kyuutarou says. He arches an eyebrow, shooting a glance at Rei as he adds, “So some things haven’t changed, huh?”
Rei isn’t sure who Kyuutarou is asking, but that’s when Miri rushes in, breathless and excited.
“Kyuu-chan!” she exclaims. “You’ll never believe what I saw today!”
“I’m sure it can wait, Kazuki—you’re soaking wet, let’s get you dried up first—”
“It’ll be quick, and I’ll end up getting wet again anyway,” Kazuki says, grabbing Rei by the arm. It’s about a quarter to closing time, the diner practically empty thanks to the summer storm raging outside. “Just—just come with me. I wanna show you something.”
It’s rare for Kazuki to sound so urgent about anything, so Rei sighs, tossing a towel at Kazuki while he grabs umbrellas for the both of them.
“Didn’t you go out with an umbrella?” he asks Kazuki as they head out the door, Rei remembering to turn the sign over to indicate they’re closed for the day.
Kazuki doesn’t answer him, but they don’t walk very far either—Kazuki had only gone out to get some supplies from the store down the street, and it looks like he never quite made it there.
The umbrella he’d brought with him is laying on the side of the street, opened fully and positioned so carefully that Rei doubts Kazuki had thrown it away in his rush to get back.
Like it was set there to protect something from the rain, in fact.
“I didn’t want you to say I brought him home on my own when I didn’t let you before,” Kazuki’s saying next to Rei. He approaches the umbrella, moving it around so it’s not covering whatever it’s hiding from the street.
It’s a box—Rei can see it now—stuffed with some wet newspaper and soaked rags. Kazuki kneels over it carefully, holding his hand out as he makes a soft, soothing noise.
“Hey, little guy,” he says, and out comes the tiniest, saddest meow in response. “I told you I’d be back, didn’t I?”
All Rei can see is a blob of black. Two pointy ears coming out, tentatively, framing big green eyes and a tiny pink tongue poking out from beneath a black nose.
“Did somebody leave him behind?” Rei asks, but the box doesn’t have a message on it, unlike last time. There isn’t even any food in the box with him—maybe he was just a stray who’d found the box by himself. “Do you want us to keep him?”
“You can decide,” Kazuki says. “We can—before, it was—but I mean, now, we’re a little more—but it should be your decision. I think.”
Rei shoots Kazuki a glare. “You really think I’d say no to taking in a cat in this rain?” he asks, holding his own hand out for the cat to inspect and sniff. He gives him a little bit of time, letting him get comfortable before he picks him up with care, balancing his umbrella against his inner elbow as he hunches over to make sure the cat is protected from the rain.
“No,” Kazuki agrees, bending over to pick up the umbrella from the ground. “You used to take in every stray you ran into. I just—I’m sorry I didn’t let you keep them before.”
“Says the biggest stray I picked up,” Rei mutters under his breath.
Kazuki lets out an airy laugh. “I kind of was, wasn’t I?” he muses. “Hey.”
Rei looks over at Kazuki.
“What are you gonna name him?”
Time passes just like that, a steady pattern of seasons changing as Rei, Kazuki, Miri, and now, Inku, settle into patterns of their own.
Once Miri heads out to her first day of high school—after taking the now-traditional family picture in front of their diner—Rei sets off to start the morning prep before their first regulars arrive. Meanwhile, Kazuki continues to sniffle pathetically about how quickly time passes, and how much Miri’s grown, and how thankful he is that she never broke bad.
“She’s a good kid, you know,” Rei tells him, cracking eggs into a big bowl for scrambling. “She was never going to break bad.”
“I’m a parent; I worry!” Kazuki points out. “Don’t you?”
Rei shrugs. “You tend to make sure she’s on top of her responsibilities,” is all he says. “And if you get too uptight about it, well. That’s what I’m there for.”
“Team Papas?” Kazuki asks, the corner of his lips curling up into a half-smile.
“Exactly,” Rei says, just as Kazuki flips their sign to officially open the diner and their first customer walks in.
Mornings at the diner have fallen into a comfortable pattern, too—the gray-haired grandpa settling down at the corner table for his daily cup of coffee while he pores over the newspaper, the old grandmothers coming by for their breakfast not long after, one by one as they wait for their group to reach quorum before they all make their way to the community center. The high school teacher who drags himself in to slowly wake up over a plate of scrambled eggs, hair a bird’s nest and sleep still heavy in his eyes. The woman with long black hair and glasses who always sits at the counter with her order of French toast and black coffee. Tanaka, from next door, who comes in hungover half the time (perky as the summer sun the other half) but always with the juiciest morsels of gossip for Kazuki.
She’s only here for a cup of coffee, she tells Rei (Kazuki’s busy sweeping up the front of the shop), before she has to rush out on a job. She waves goodbye as she swings open the door, stepping back to let another customer in.
The woman who walks in is not a regular yet—she’s starting to be, though; right now she’s slowly working her way through the diner’s menu. She nods hello to Rei, tucking a long lock of blonde hair behind her ear while she scans the diner for an open spot—she hasn’t found her table yet, either—and eventually settling on a counter seat instead.
Right in front of Rei, two seats down from French Toast and Black Coffee.
“Good morning, Suwa-san!” she greets him.
“Coffee to start?” Rei asks, even as he slides a menu over to her. “Three creams, three sugars?” That, at least, she’s been consistent with.
Yachi’s a transplant too, but unlike Kazuki and Rei, she’s still very new to the town. Three months new, even. Rei isn’t sure about the details—Kazuki told him once, after he managed to get it out of her—but it sounded like she’d had a fancy Tokyo job at a fancy Tokyo company until the hours burnt her out, so she’s freelancing now.
“Thank you, yes, please!” she says, picking up the menu and just sort of—staring at it. The apples of her cheeks are a little red. “Um.”
“Take your time,” Rei says.
“Actually,” Yachi starts, folding the menu closed and pressing it close to her chest. She leans forward, her voice a little lower. “I wanted to thank you for letting me steal your husband last night.”
Rei blinks. “Um.” When Tanaka says it, she means it like a joke, Rei thinks, complete with the laugh in her voice and the knowing wink she gives Rei. But the way Yachi says it— “I don’t think—”
“Yacchin!” Kazuki greets her, coming in from outside and slinging an arm around her shoulders. “Nice to see you can handle your drinks after all! No hangover?”
“None at all,” Yachi tells him, beaming. “But I think I might want to get something really big and really greasy, just in case?”
Kazuki laughs, making his way into the kitchen with Rei and washing his hands before he gives Yachi a salute. “Something really big and really greasy, coming right up!”
The day has ended by the time Rei realizes he never did get to clear up the misunderstanding with Yachi earlier. She’d simply grinned at Kazuki after breakfast was over, still rosy-cheeked and sweet, before heading off.
The thing is—
“We need an office or something,” Kazuki says, scrunching his nose up as he writes things down on his ledger.
Miri’s in her room, chatting with one of her friends on the phone, while he and Kazuki have about a billion little bits and pieces of paper spread out on the kitchen table. Receipts from their supply runs. Sales they made from the day. A running list of inventory materials still available, things they need to order more of, minor fixes they need to make.
“We don’t have space for an office,” Rei reminds him. This is not a new conversation they’re having. “It’s not the space that needs work, anyway. Didn’t Kyuutarou-san suggest digitizing all of this?”
“Digitizing leaves too many paper trails behind, ironically,” Kazuki mutters under his breath. He scratches at his temple with the eraser-end of a pencil. “Hey, do you think we need to start doing seasonal menus? One of the grannies says they’re all the rage with teens these days. But that means we’ll need to re-print our menus every time—”
Rei doesn’t fully hear the rest; Kazuki’s muttering fades into a white noise as he thinks about what happened earlier that morning with Yachi and why he can’t get it out of his head.
Because the thing is.
Rei knows why Yachi seems to be under the impression that she’s under. Why she didn’t seem to be joking when she said what she said.
Rei is not an idiot. He knows what they look like and what other people think when two unrelated-looking men show up to a small town with a young daughter who calls both of them papa.
“Oy, Rei? Are you listening?” Kazuki asks, punctuating his question with a poke of the sharpened point of his pencil at Rei’s arm.
“What if she actually likes you?” comes out of Rei’s mouth before he can stop himself.
Kazuki blinks. “I certainly hope Futakuchi-baasan does, since we haven’t really done anything for her to be mad at us, right? Unless—”
“I meant Yachi-san,” Rei says. “She seems like a nice person. And sweet.”
“Oh.” Kazuki shrugs. “I hope so? I mean, it’s been a while since we had someone new in town, so—”
“No, I mean like. She’s a nice person. And she’s sweet. And if she likes you, and you like her, I mean, I guess if it works out between the two of you—”
“Between the two of us?” Kazuki asks. “Me and Yachi, you mean?”
Rei shrugs. “Just, logistically speaking. I’m just thinking about Miri. Where she’d fit in.” Where Rei would fit in. “You know not all new wives would—”
“Rei,” Kazuki says, placing a warm, solid palm on Rei’s shoulder. “That’s what you’ve been noodling on all night? If Miri would be accepted by her hypothetical new stepmom?”
“She seems nice,” Rei mutters. Not like most of the women Kazuki goes out drinking with, because usually, girls like Yachi don’t tend to look at Kazuki like someone they could be with. That’s why Rei hasn’t really thought about— “I’m just—I was just asking.”
“Yeah, Yachi’s really nice,” Kazuki says. “And I asked her to go drinking last night because I noticed she’s been eyeing Shimizu-san every day she’s come to the diner, and I was telling her to man up and talk to her already!”
“Shimizu-san—”
“Black coffee. French toast.” Kazuki grins. “Yachi’s not interested in me like that. Okay?”
“Oh,” Rei says. “Okay.”
Okay.
So he doesn’t have to worry about Kazuki being taken away from Miri by some new woman now.
But Rei isn’t sure what this feeling in his chest is. Why it’s blooming into a tight tension that settles in the pit of his stomach.
“What about you?” Kazuki asks.
“Me?” Rei looks up from the sink he’s cleaning. Kazuki’s filing receipts away into the little expandable envelope they use for keeping important paperwork, having put away most everything else they’ve been working on.
Maybe they do need an office. At the very least, a bigger filing cabinet.
“Maybe not Yachi, but what if it turns out Shimizu-san visits every day because she’s interested in you?” Kazuki asks, puttering around the table. His back’s to Rei as he pushes the dining table chairs in.
“She’s not—”
“What if she is?” Kazuki presses. “What happens to—what about Miri?”
“I’m not leaving Miri behind,” Rei says.
“Even if Shimizu-san is okay with a high schooler for a stepdaughter?”
“I’m not interested in Shimizu-san!”
“Is it because you’re not interested in anyone?”
“No, I—” Rei turns around. Kazuki is hunched over, tightly gripping onto a chair, his back still turned to Rei. “I’m not… not interested in anyone. I just. I just thought they weren’t interested in me.”
Kazuki glances over his shoulder at Rei, his brow furrowed in bemusement. He finally turns around, crossing both arms in front of his chest. “Eleven years with a kid and a cat?”
“But you never—”
“I didn’t think you were interested in any of—” Kazuki waves his hands around, his cheeks flushing the kind of deep red he usually gets whenever he’s had one drink too many. “You never dated, never mentioned any kind of—do you even—”
Rei feels the heat creep up on his face at the crude gesture Kazuki makes. “I can be very quiet,” he says, defensive.
“And I thought I was being respectful,” Kazuki says. He runs his hands through his hair, leaving it even messier than before. “Not all families are the same, we tell Miri so often, and you know, we lived in Tokyo. I know not everyone feels the same about—about people. Not the same way I would, anyway, so I figured—”
“You’d keep your space?”
“So did you,” Kazuki points out. He’s chewing on his lower lip, looking everywhere but at Rei. “Are you actually telling me—”
“Eleven years with a kid and a cat, Kazuki,” Rei reminds him. “What do you think?”
Kazuki gives Rei a half-smile, lopsided, fond, and so heartachingly handsome. “I think maybe you should come over here,” he suggests, and Rei realizes that maybe Kazuki’s always looked at him this way before. That maybe this was how Rei’s always looked at Kazuki, too. “And maybe convince me a little bit.”
It takes Rei the better part of the night to very thoroughly convince Kazuki. (And, just for good measure, he convinces him twice more.)
“You know what I think?” Kazuki asks later, soft and bleary and completely sated.
“That we’ve been idiots this whole time?” Rei asks, unable to resist leaning over to taste Kazuki’s full lips against his. This whole time, he reminds himself! He could have been having—
Kazuki laughs against his kiss, his palm rough when he brushes Rei’s hair away from his face. “I think maybe you should move into this room,” he says. “You shouldn’t keep sleeping in a guest bedroom anymore, alright? That’s Oblivious Rei behavior; we’re leaving that behind.”
Rei raises an eyebrow. “Yeah? And the fact you’ve been complaining about needing an office space has nothing at all to do with this?”
Kazuki laughs. “Imagine pining after you for years and only finally making my move because I wanted office space.”
“It does sound silly when you put it that way,” Rei agrees. “What am I now, then?”
“My Rei, I hope,” Kazuki murmurs. “Is that a yes on the new office? I mean—on moving in?”
Rei snorts. “I knew it,” he says, but he nods, curling up against Kazuki’s chest. He’s beginning to doubt anything could pull him out of Kazuki’s room at this rate, anyway. “I’ll move in, but not now. Let’s start tomorrow, when—wait.”
“Wait what?” Kazuki asks, brow furrowing at the way Rei sits up, seized by a sudden thought.
“But what do we tell Miri?”