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Echizen counts two separate eyebrows and wonders if the swaddled brat could actually be Horio's. But Horio is proud of this thing like he's proud of his eleven years of tennis experience; something that is definitely, undeniably his. He's flitting around the kitchenette, clambering with pots and pans on the stovetop.
(And really he holds a panhandle the same as he holds a racket, still awkward and clunky and still so unaware of it.)
Ryuuzaki doesn't seem to worry over any of this (because if anything, she has changed a little at least. Or maybe she's just accustomed to it all by now. As it is, maybe Echizen is too.) She chuckles and covers it up with the back of her hand, nodding for Momo--who will never have a little brat of his own--to take the child into his arms.
Finally the child open its mouth, looking for food, and begins screeching. (Horio squaks and rushes over.) She's showing off an impressive pair of lungs that make him wonder if they're both sure Osakada Tomoka is not the mother. But he guesses if Ryuuzaki was present at the birth she would know, wouldn't she?
Regardless, as the parents (and Momo, really, probably he shouldn't be suprised) try to pacify the kid, he thinks if it really does belong to them, then it's rather unfortunate; the baby has little to no chance of ever exhibiting any sort of tennis ability, given the combined talents of its parents. It's too bad.
The teakettle goes off on the other side of the room and Horio returns to ineptly tending to that—-but then the brat chucks its rattle, bull's eye, precisely square in the middle of Momo's forehead (he has been bent over cooing at it—-and he knows exactly how annoying this is.) Ryuuzaki immediately scolds, "Sumire!" and apologizes up and down. Echizen rethinks things. Maybe the kid does have a shot after all.
