Chapter Text
The call comes up on your phone as you’re walking from class from with a group of friends. Tadashi, or as he’s listed on your phone The Brother.
You stop and hold up a hand, halting the pack of lean young students in their tracks. The girls are largely younger than you, even the handful who took a year or two to perfect their college entrance scores, so they take the deferential mode of juniors despite your protestations.
“Please, go on ahead,” you insist, “I have to take a call.”
They amble forward to the cafeteria. Ducking behind a tree for some extra privacy you accept the videocall.
“Hello,” Tadashi greets you, his face filling up the screen. You’re all very careful with privacy, aware of the risks engendered by a politician with a secret child. Especially now that the child actually resembles him, is no longer a formless squirmy pink blob and has become instead a little person with familiar eyelashes and a sharp nose.
“Hey,” you respond, “We’re alone.” Just to make sure you won’t be overheard you wander further away from the path.
Tadashi nods and shifts the camera, revealing sunlight and an Okinawan garden. “Mari wanted to show you her skateboarding.”
Another face pops into screen, this one small and round, big sage eyes framed by dark hair. “Auntie! I can do circles!”
Ever since her father (the one who spoils her) gave her her a skateboard for her second birthday she’s been wild about the sport. Every other day she calls with another story of some milestone; she can go down hills, she’s can stop without help, she run real fast and jump onto her board. Since you’re her favorite person (not totally true, her favorite person is uncle Kaoru because he’s pretty and terrified of children as a concept, you’re her favorite person who doesn’t live within driving distance) you have to hear about every triumph.
“Show me your circles,” you encourage.
Mari runs to her skateboard, set in the center of the garden terrace. In the background you can see your father, carefully tending his roses, barely minding the chaos as long as it doesn’t interfere with his work. He adores Mari, he really does, but when her fathers are there she’s their problem.
Shindo is standing by to supervise as Tadashi films, steady-handed. With encouragement and frequent glances back to the camera she tilts and pushes her way through a wide loop, then another. When she leaps off you applaud, as expected.
“See?” Mari asks as she’s carried back to the phone in her dad’s arms. Every day she gets bigger, by the time you visit this summer she’ll be up to your waist.
“It’s very good,” Tadashi agrees. “Now, we need to let your Auntie go to lunch, she has a busy day today.” You’ve long resigned yourself to the fact that he’s memorized your class schedule. “Give auntie kisses?”
There’s a moment of darkness as she presses her face to the screen, obscuring the light. “Kiss kiss!”
“We should have lunch too,” Shindo says. “The crab cakes with soup?”
How they manage to keep eating like gourmands despite the toddler in their midst is a mystery. It’s probably the money, and Tadashi’s careful labor. That and the fact that Mari is an obligingly flexible kid, willing to eat finest steak, critically reviewed Italian takeout, or junk food delivered by teen babysitters.
“Stop trying to make me jealous!” You tell him, laughing. “I like the food here. Kisses, Mari. I’ll see you later.”
She’s lovable. Even Mom brings herself to love her, holds no grudges when Tadashi brings his daughter to her hospital bed. Her existence is a wound, like Tadashi’s love, like your choice of allies. But wounds heal. Both parties have found a compromise predicated on feigned ignorance, the remaining psychic scar tissue is long mended.
“Bye-bye!” Mari blows another kiss. You hang up, just after Tadashi does, and then run to catch up with your friends.
They are already sitting with their lunches, you packed a box today and don’t have to stand in line.
“My niece,” you explain, though no one asks for explanation. “She loves to talk.”
“Oh, that’s so cute, Minori-sempai.” One of you classmates says, picking at her rice. “Is she the baby on your lockscreen?”
“Yes.” A little concession to pride. Mari was unrecognizable at that age, just sort of red and wrinkly. You made that! It’s not a fact you go around bragging about, though sometimes you feel unrecognized for your good work. Even without any other parental instincts you have modesty.
“They’re so nice at that age,” another classmate coos over her drink. “I want a baby.” She’s all of twenty so you’re pretty sure she doesn’t.
“I helped my brother watch her before I came back to school,” you poke your chopsticks in her direction. “It’s not easy.” There had been four of you during those first sleepless days home from the hospital and it had still been exhausting. The memory of the leaking, the fog, the high pitched cries at 3am, it makes your breasts twinge.
“Maybe Rei just wants someone to give her a baby,” another girl comments, and the entire knot of them dissolves into giggles.
Your phone pings and you slide it under the table before swiping up to reveal a photo of Mari with half a crab cake in her fist. Little monster. Shindo-san makes up for the fact that it’s not judicious for him to be photographed with his daughter by taking lots of photographs of her; a thousand candids of the same baby growing up. Then he steals Tadashi’s phone to text them to you.
Anyone smart could put the pieces together. The resemblance is obvious, she’s a Shindo and a Kikuchi. She’s still registered under your name, which means there’s a clear connection to Tadashi. The timeline is child’s play to put together, you worked in the Shindo home for a few months then left and five months later had a baby. What the three of you hope is that any keen observer will simply assume she’s the abandoned result of a brief fling, not a very much intended baby being raised by a current commited couple.
Hopes don’t pay for houses. Even the best laid plans can’t protect children from political fallout.
For now, at least, she’s happy.
cute!! you text back, then add a kitten sticker.
You think yourself a better aunt than your predecessors, all you ask is that she’s protected, that she’s wholeheartedly and unselfishly loved. Tadashi and Ainosuke have enough affection to spare.