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Buzzed. Now that was a feeling she could get used to. She had gone through five drinks in the span of an hour.
The lights were low and the floor was packed with people, holding their drinks, conversing. At a table, there were a few men furiously holding cards and the pile of money in the center. Reiko Natsume stood at the corner closest to the door. There was a line of yokai and Reiko made sure to smile at them. Perfunctory smiles, of course. They knew who she was. Reiko Natsume. Natsume Reiko. The wild girl with the Book of Names, and if you messed with her, she would take your name and enslave you. Cowardly Yokai left her alone. The brave ones however…
A man made his way through the crowd of people to come to her.
“You’ve been around, for a while. Lonely, tonight?”
Reiko looked up from the drink she had been nursing. The man was tall. About six feet. Dark hair, dark eyes, white smile, dimples. He wore a trench coat and a hat.
“Are you trying to be mysterious?” She asked flatly.
“Well… is it working?”
His voice had a lilt to it.
“No.”
Reiko downed her drink. There was something off about him. He seemed to droop, like a wilting flower.
“ Oh. Am… Am I not attractive enough?”
Reiko shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. And, maybe I am lonely. What are you going to do about it?”
His mouth dropped and suddenly, she was reminded of koi fish, with their mouth gaping wide open and then snapping shut.
“... would you like to go… somewhere with me?” He managed to squeak out, cheeks turning pinker than the cherry blossoms she would see every year.
“Sure.” She set the glass down, somewhere, and looped her arm around his.
It was probably the alcohol talking, but she was lonely. It was around Valentine’s Day, a time of love and partnership, and all Reiko could do was look at the fact that she had no love and she had no partnership. She had no parental love. No sibling love. No friends. No lover… It was the alcohol making her feel this- not to mention the two hours she spent in the bar just watching everyone go in and out in pairs or groups. But for tonight, and just for tonight, she’d have a lover all to herself.
Reiko was leaning over the toilet of her tiny apartment.
“What the hell was I thinking last night?” She grumbled.
All she could remember was a stupid trenchcoat and then, next she knew, she woke up in a stranger’s bed. The trenchcoat wasn’t there and it hadn’t been thrown around. She grabbed her clothes and then ran off half naked, yanking her clothes on as she ran. She let out a soft snort of amusement. Maybe that would be in the papers today.
‘Crazy, Half-Naked Woman Runs Through The Streets!’ would be the headline.
Not that she cared. A surge of nausea overwhelmed her and she tilted her head into the toilet bowl as acid ran up her throat and out of her mouth.
‘I’m going to be staying here for a long time.’ She thought, a dark expression marring her face.
“That’ll be 10800 yen.”
Reiko slid the sum over in coins and looked over her chosen ten bento boxes as the cashier counted the money. Tonkatsu cutlet, tamagoyaki, hamburger steak, rice balls, and more were crammed into those little cute bento boxes. Memories of her mother waking her up to a homemade meal wafted out before Reiko slammed the memory box shut.
“Uh, Ma’am, will you need help with that?”
Reiko shook her head. “No, it’s fine, just put five boxes in two bags.”
“Are you sure?...” The cashier’s eyes raked down her face to where her belly would be, despite her wearing baggy pants and a sweater three sizes too big for her.
“I am.” She barked. “Maybe I’m just really hungry.”
She wasn’t an invalid. She grabbed the two bags after the cashier hastily bagged them and walked to the bus stop just outside.
“How are you doing today, my dear?” A wrinkled little raisin of an old lady asked Reiko. “Do you need some help with those bags?”
Yamamoto Akemi. Always there when Reiko went on her weekly bento-buying spree. Always offered to help. Fussed over her like how a mother would her pregnant daughter. Solidly suspicious. Well, not really, but when was the last time someone engaged with Reiko and it ended well?
“No, I’m fine.” Reiko said calmly, averting her eyes from the little lady.
“Are you sure?”
The bus turned around the corner and came into view. Reiko kept her eyes on the bus, counting the seconds till the bus creaked to a stop right in front of the bus stop, right on time. Reiko immediately entered, swiped her card, and sat at the front. Short entrance, short exit. She set her bags on the seat next to herself. And of course, the old woman sat right across from her, though she didn’t try to talk, thankfully. Reiko sighed and turned her gaze to the window, her right arm cradling her bags of bentos and her left arm cradling her now visible belly.
“Mommy, her tummy is so big!”
Reiko’s head immediately twisted to see a mother and daughter pair boarding. The little girl was pointing at Reiko’s belly with her mouth gaping wide open.
“Mina!” Her mother immediately shushed. “It’s rude to point.”
“But why is her belly so big??”
Would she be like that with her daughter? Reiko absentmindedly rubbed her belly. Just two more months…
“She’s pregnant! She’s going to have a baby, just like how I had you.”
“Wait, I was in your belly like that??”
Reiko turned her eyes to the window once more. It was going to be a long ride.
“Byeeee pregnant lady!!” Mina waved to Reiko.
Reiko’s gaze connected with hers for a moment before she exited the bus, with the bags still in her arms. The walk back to her apartment wasn’t a long one. The yokai were quiet, though Reiko made sure of that in the earlier months of her pregnancy. Better safe than sorry till Sachiko was born.
“Hey! Need some help?”
She set the bags down at her doorstep and kept her eyes averted from the man steadily approaching from the corners of her eye.
“Reikoooo.” He whined. “Don’t ignore me. We’ve been neighbors for months!”
She rolled her eyes and jabbed her key into the door, quickly opening it and kicking the bento boxes in. She made to enter as well, but not fast enough. A hand landed on her shoulder.
“Reiko! How’s the baby?”
She smacked it off, turning on her heel, glare fixated on him as she walked backwards. Using her momentum, she held onto the doorknob and slammed it shut in his face. She kept her hand on the doorknob. Her wrist had gotten used to flicking the locks shut, but Reiko, poor little Reiko, the little girl inside her never trusted locks. That’s why she’d gotten five. If one failed, there were four others. After five minutes, she peeped through the eyehole.
That man and his annoying trench coat was gone. She sighed and turned to pick up her kicked over bento boxes.
Reiko had a stool next to her toilet. Every morning, she made a beeline over there to hang her head over the toilet. Nothing like a nice taste of bile to start her day off, of course. She wiped her mouth before slowly standing up. Well, it was more like pulling herself up. She had a hand on the wall and another on the toilet top and it was a battle against gravity every time. Her belly always yanked her down while all Reiko wanted to do was stand up.
She sighed as she flushed the toilet. As she exited the bathroom, her eyes instinctively went to the calendar she hung. Half the dates had a big, black ‘X’. Reiko added another to the date of today. She flipped over the current October page to look at the big circle in the middle of the November page.
“Just one more month.” She rubbed her belly.
Her feet ached. Today, she had to go to buy more bentos. She had a stockpile of perishables, but would they be good enough for Sachiko? Bentos were healthy, with egg, meat, rice, even soup (which really helped soothe her morning belly). All Reiko had were cans of peaches, jerky, soups, sodas, and bottled water.
Sachiko deserved better than what Reiko had been raised on.
Canned peaches. That was her breakfast.
For lunch, she played outside or drank water from the tap. She probably drank gallons of water in a week.
For dinner was rice and some soup. She kept her head down as the monsters in the shadows taunted her. She kept her head down as her father yelled and her mother screamed. She kept her head down as a bottle came whirring past her head and smashed into the wall behind her. She kept her head down as the monsters screamed and yelled and walked on her head, taunting and jeering.
She opened the door, shoes on. On her doorstep were ten-- no, twenty bento boxes, double what she got in a week.
“What the fuck?...”
She side-stepped around the bento boxes and looked around outside. Her neighbor was on his doorstep, smoking. Reiko wrinkled her nose in disgust.
“Oi! You!”
It took a while, but she eventually got his attention. Reiko had been close to chucking a rock at the briefcase leaning next to him. It was bad taste to sit on a doorstep in a suit, but when did Reiko ever care about taste?
“Yeah?” was what Reiko assumed he was saying. He was so damn quiet.
“Did you get me this??” She pointed at the bento boxes with big, sweeping movements. Sachiko was kicking her for this.
He shook his head no with a shrug and went back to smoking. Reiko lugged the bentos inside and sat down, kicking off her shoes to the relief of her swollen feet.
It was too soon. Just one week had passed. Water dripped down the space between her legs. Reiko stood frozen, eyes glued to the dripping. The doctor did say that the due date wasn’t exact and Sachiko could come earlier, most likely later, but not this early, right?... The hospital was twenty minutes away by bus. If Reiko hurried, she could catch the bus in five minutes…
She let out a hiss at the contractions as she slipped on her shoes. Four minutes. She could waddle over there in three, maybe.
“Reiko!”
She had been halfway to the bus stop before her neighbor called out to her.
“Get in my car, c’mon, I’ll drive you to the hospital. Don’t wait for the bus.”
She paused before nearly dropping to her knees.
“Alright, alright, let’s go.”
He swung his arm around her waist and had her hold onto his shoulder.
“T-my car is right there, just a bit farther than the bus stop.” His voice was tight. Being so pressed to him as she was, she could feel him nearly hyperventilating through the trench coat as they spoke.
“You seem more panicked than I am.” She snickered. “And I’m the pregnant one here.”
She had a hand on her belly.
Sachiko please wait.
The drive to the hospital was filled with Reiko muttering to herself and rubbing her belly. Her neighbor was cursing under his breath, fingers tapping on the steering wheel. Once they actually were at the hospital, everything was a blur. Paperwork was shoved in her face, they pulled her into some room, injected some shit, and next thing Reiko knew, there was a screaming baby in the room and she reached to Sachiko , but everything hurt, but everything felt right.
“Sachiko. She’s Sachiko, now give her to me. ”
The doctors had to pry Sachiko from her when it was time to give Sachiko up for a checkup. They insisted that Reiko had to rest, that Sachiko would be returned to her as soon as she woke up and that they’d even have her crib right next to Reiko’s hospital bed. Her grip on the doctor’s wrist tightened and she snarled.
“If she isn’t, you’ll be dead.”
Then, she passed out.
When she awoke, Sachiko was indeed in a crib next to her hospital bed, with her name labeled on it too. Reiko immediately reached for her.
“You’re awake--”
Reiko nearly snarled at the intruder sitting on the opposite bedside before she realized-- her neighbor.
“Uh, I was just looking at… her, y’know. Sachiko. I’ll be going now.” He said as he took one last look at Sachiko before standing up.
Reiko held her baby in her arms, staring at his retreating form.
“Come to me in your real form next time, trench coat demon.”
“So you actually came.”
Reiko was sitting on her doorstep, holding Sachiko. Her eyes lazily tracked the dark-colored shadow wearing a… trench coat that was steadily getting closer as it weaved from shadow to shadow.
“And I see you never got rid of that trench coat either.”
“No…” A distinctly feminine voice comes from the shadow. “It’s nice.”
Reiko sighed. “What’s your name? Don’t try to lie. I deserve honesty, at least. You were the one who got me pregnant. And the one who got me those bento. And the one who possessed my neighbor to stalk me.”
If Reiko was told nine months ago that a trenchcoat filled with black mist acts like a puppy, Reiko would have laughed the person off while kicking them to the curb.
“I’m sorry.” The yokai started. “I never meant for…”
A black tendril gestured to Sachiko and Reiko instinctively held her baby closer, to the point of almost smushing Sachiko’s face into her breast. Sachiko let out a gurgle and Reiko held a handkerchief to her mouth to wipe up the milk. Immediately, the yokai backed away.
“I’m sorry!! Did I scare her? Is she okay?”
Reiko rolled her eyes. “She’s a baby that’s being fed. I don’t even know if she can see you. Your name, now.”
“Azami. I’m an enenra that was born of the fires farmers would light to burn their crops…” Azami trailed off.
“And now they don’t, so you’re free to wander as that.” Reiko nodded at her free-form, able to wander off in semi-smoke, semi-human form. “And you were interested in me.”
Azami ducked her head. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for it to happen, I just… you seemed so lonely… and you were so pretty and I know humans wouldn’t want to talk to yokai like me. I‘m not a powerful god, nor do I have the power to do beautiful things like a stonewasher… I’m just…” If Azami had hair, she sure would be pulling on it right now with the way the yokai twisted and turned like a highschool girl with a crush.
“Well, it did.” said Reiko with a soft shrug. She lifted Sachiko and put her over her shoulder to lightly burp her back. “Thanks for all the help though. I’m surprised you stuck around. Most human men wouldn’t.” She snorted.
“It felt wrong to leave you after I found out what happened…” Azami slipped into the shadows once more, only to come back up in the shade of Reiko’s doorstep. “She’s so cute…”
“And are you going to leave now?” Reiko shifted Sachiko so that she was facing directly towards Azami. Sachiko cooed and giggled, reaching her tiny hands towards the shadow.
“Will you let me stay?” Soft and hesitant was what her voice sounded like.
“Sure. Sachiko likes you anyway. But don’t possess my neighbor again.” Reiko snorted. “He was scared shitless when he realized he was in the hospital and late to work by a few hours. Poor guy couldn’t even find his car. Besides, you’re nice as you are now.”
Azami was warm as she leaned into Reiko. If she didn’t know any better, she’d think Azami was smiling. Sachiko was giggling as she shoved her hand into the warm black smoke.
“Okay!”