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Rei has no way to measure her pregnancy with Touya. There is nothing to compare it to, nothing to define it by. He is her first child. This is her first pregnancy. She is not lonely in the large house with marble floors not so different from her own. She does not wear socks as she walks the halls, hand on her ever-growing stomach. It swells more and more by the day, and Rei forgets to be lonely; the child inside her stays, every minute.
Enji is not a bad man. A prideful one, but he will be ever so devoted to her children. They will have the attention he’s not obligated to give her. No matter. She is fulfilling her duty, his dreams, her wishes. She is pregnant with a child, and Rei is never lonely.
Her son is born in a crescendo of silent screams. There is pain she does not acknowledge and blood that seeps through towels and tears that do not fall. There is a child no longer inside her. She freezes over the bed she lays on, and Touya takes his first breath in biting cold air.
He cries loudly, squalls in that ugly way that babies do. The sound is like a herald. Rei presses his head to her chest. Enji does not enter, and Rei spends the first week of her child’s life alone with him.
Touya does not stay a newborn for long. He grows. She finds that her child has red hair like Enji’s. (It bothers her.)
The first time he toddles away from Rei she claps her hands and kisses his soft cheeks.
She doesn't clap for long, as she becomes very familiar with the sight of Touya walking away. He does it a lot. Always following Enji, always chasing Enji, always looking at Enji.
Rei is alone more often than not. Somehow, the cold has started to hurt. It’s never cold when Touya is around.
On Touya’s third birthday, he squirms out of her morning hug and she doesn’t see him for the rest of the day. His little cupcake that she managed to sneak in goes untouched, and she never lights him a candle.
Alone in her bed that night, she coughs and she can't stop until a single white gardenia petal, wrinkled and shredded and bloodied, far from pristine, hits her hand.
Dread settles in her chest. There is no one in her life but Touya and Enji, and she has never felt anything like love for Enji. She knows who the petal is for.
It doesn’t go away. Rei’s throat is shredded by soft petals, she coughs up blood that stains towels and it reminds her of Touya’s birth. Every drop is a too-late echo of his cries, a mournful howl in the night. Loss, maybe of something she never really had in the first place.
Enji does not notice. His hands are settled on Touya’s shoulders, his eyes settled on Touya’s quirk. He studies her son with laser focus, and Touya responds in kind.
Enji is a bonfire, and Touya cannot look away. Her child looks at Enji with stars that light flames in his eyes. He still does not look at her.
She coughs and coughs and coughs (pathetic, she thinks, whoever heard of a mother with hanahaki for her child?) and the house grows colder. She ceases to feel the sharp sting of loneliness.
Enji comments on the scent of gardenias. She tells him it’s a new perfume. He grunts and walks away.
Touya's fourth birthday marks the one-month anniversary of his last visit. She still counts it by the second, time with Touya and time without.
She doesn't know if she loves him or the idea of him, really. She has plenty of time for introspection, and Rei has realizes that Touya never loved her. The baby Touya took milk from her breast, the toddler Touya fell and was caught by her. But Touya's eyes have never looked alight when he looked at her, and he never looks at her.
It doesn't matter. She still chokes on petals for him.
When he is four years old and she celebrates alone, Enji looks Rei in the eyes, tells her Touya (her child, her child) has died, and in the same breath tells her to come to his room that night.
She chokes on one more flower. One last flower, one last gardenia to add to the buried, rotting bouquet she never got to give her child. She chokes on it, then goes to Enji's room.
A week later, Rei is pregnant again. She tries not to compare it to her first, but she ends up doing it anyway. She remembers little of Touya, now, she’s forgotten him now that petals no longer remind her daily of her child that does not love her as a child should. This child, this second child, is different. She doesn’t touch her stomach nearly so much but she feels the child all the same. She feels her shifting inside, demanding attention that died with every dismission from Touya.
Rei has nothing to give Fuyumi when she is born. Fuyumi cries and Rei places her head on Rei’s shoulder, and she lets a tear slip from her eyes, this time.
Fuyumi looks at her. Fuyumi looks at her with love in her eyes. Rei does not notice. She has nothing left to give.