Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

“There’s a war brewing, I’m telling you. You could feel it in the air, that suffocating tension filling every available square centimeter of Tokyo Big Sight like someone released an experimental nerve agent undetectable to all but a handful of individuals born with a rare genetic mutation.” Walker Yumasaki was perched at the very edge of his seat in the back of the wagon as he shared his story, infusing the firsthand testimony with all the Urobuchi-esque gravitas that it warranted.

Kyohei Kadota, stationed as always in the front passenger seat, gave a noncommittal grunt and said, “That sounds like something from an anime.”

“Oh, believe me,” said Walker, “if it were an anime, there would’ve been an ominous, violin-heavy leitmotif playing in the background.”

“Wait, who’s going to war?” asked Saburo Togusa, who occupied the driver’s seat.

Walker sighed. “You aren’t even paying attention, are you? I’m talking about the imminent war between the Fujoshi Faction and the Lolicon Faction. Go ahead, dismiss it as a petty geek spat now, but soon the designated combatants will awaken to their latent psychic powers and lay Tokyo—nay, all of Japan—to waste! To the victor will go not only supreme control of Comiket, but—in due course—complete world domination!” Impassioned by his own apocalyptic vision, he lunged forward and grabbed the back of Saburo’s seat, causing the driver to start and the wagon to lurch briefly.

“Hmm,” said Kyohei, his eyes closed and his arms folded in front of him—one of his myriad contemplative poses. “And this prospect worries you because it would pit you and Karisawa on opposing sides of Earth’s final battlefield?”

Sinking back into his seat glumly, Walker let out another long, desolate sigh. The way Kyohei said “prospect” and “battlefield”—with an unmistakable whiff of awkward amusement—indicated that he didn’t take this seriously at all. But by now Walker was thoroughly accustomed to not being taken seriously by these two, and that wasn’t really what had caused his enthusiasm to dissipate so quickly anyway.

“Only if she hasn’t fully deserted the cause by then,” he muttered, half to himself, as his eyes roamed over to the empty space next to him. Well no, it wasn’t exactly empty—currently the entire bench, save for the spot occupied by Walker’s weedy body, was packed tightly with double-bagged parcels of dojinshi and other glorious fanmade merchandise—but the absence of the fourth member of their group was a glaring void and Kyohei had just reminded him of it.

In the rearview mirror, a tiny hint of wry smile lifted the corner of Kyohei’s mouth. “She missed one winter Comiket to work, I don’t think that’s reason enough for you to jump to the conclusion that she’s going to renounce her otaku ways.”

“Especially when she gave you that ridiculously long list of books to buy for her,” Saburo added.

Walker scanned his collection of bags, over half of which were for Erika, and felt a small wave of relief, like a gulp of cold water sluicing over an ulcer. “I just hope she appreciates what I went through to get all the BL titles she wanted. Cute cosplayer girls were giggling at me as if I were some sort of pervert. Do you know how humiliating that is for cool leading man type like me?”

Kyohei shrugged, still smiling in that easy way of his. “Well if that’s not a sign of true friendship, I don’t know what is.” Then he made eye contact with Walker by way of the rearview mirror and said, “Seriously, Yumasaki, don’t worry about it. Even if Karisawa has to divert attention to the 3D world every now and then, I don’t believe anything could ever change her priorities. Come what may, the pair of you are two nuts on the same sundae.” There was a note of resignation in his tone, not like he disapproved of their shared otaku psychology, but like it wasn’t even worth having an opinion about because he was, as ever, powerless to change it.

After a protracted moment of silence Walker asked, “Are you sure you can’t make it to Kishitani and Celty’s tonight?”

“Sorry,” said Kyohei, shaking his head. “I have to finish the bathrooms in this hotel by the end of the year if I want to collect the bonus the manager promised. I’ll probably pull an all-nighter tonight.”

Walker turned to the driver. “Et tu, Togusa?”

“Afraid not. My brother caught a nasty cold so I’ve got to finish collecting this month’s rents for him.”

“Even though there’s a chance that Ruri Hajiribe might show up?” Walker dangled the statement in front of him like a bloody steak in front of a dog.

Saburo’s posture went visibly rigid and a very long second passed before he was able to reply. “Well, in the very unlikely event that she does make an appearance, it will no doubt be on the arm of her movie star fiancée, and I can do without looking at that.” His objection was reasonable, but it sounded painfully forced. “And like I said, I have to work,” he quickly tacked onto the end, as if to lock in his decision.

“Is work really that important to you guys?” Walker sighed for what felt like the tenth time in as many minutes.

“It’s important to most adults,” said Kyohei. “Even you care enough to earn what you need to support yourself and your—”

“Don’t say hobbies!” Walker interrupted sharply.

This time it was Kyohei who sighed. “I was going to say lifestyle.”

“Obsessions or addictions also would’ve sufficed,” added Saburo. “And I say that with all due respect since you know I have my own.”

“I bet you wouldn’t miss a Ruri concert just so you could work,” Walker mumbled as the wagon rolled to a stop.

“Cheer up, Yumasaki,” said Kyohei, twisting around to face Walker with a stalwart expression. “Look, you’ve arrived at Kishitani’s apartment building. In just a few minutes, you and Karisawa will be talking about the usual and everything will be the way it always is.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right,” Walker said, pushing optimism up onto his features as he opened the door to the wagon. “Crazy things are always happening around us, but our gang never changes, does it?”

“I tend to think of our unit as stable rather than stagnant,” Kyohei mused while Walker gathered up his bounty. “But I suppose you are more or less right. Say hello to Karisawa and everyone else from us, okay?”

“Will do.” Despite his arms being full, Walker managed to give a respectful salute to the only authority figure he truly respected. Then, as the wagon pulled away, he headed for the front entrance of the upscale apartment building.

Shinra Kishitani welcomed Walker into the apartment with a grand sweeping gesture, his eyes twinkling behind his glasses. “Ah, Yumasaki. Come in, come in! From the sounds of sizzling pans and delicate voices emanating behind me you may have already surmised that your lovely companion is in the kitchen with my sweet honey-bun, the two of them undoubtedly engaging in all manner girlish talk whilst cooking.”

Walker wondered how the headless Dullahan could simultaneously cook and carry out a conversation typing on her PDA, but decided this wasn’t the best time to ask her lover about it. Shinra wasn’t paying attention to him anyway, having gotten lost in some lovey-dovey reverie.

“Ah, just thinking about Celty’s divine cooking, every bite filled with her love, makes my salivary glands water and my taste buds start to sing!” Such shameless displays of devotion were rarely seen outside of anime and manga and Walker couldn’t help admiring this 3D man so deeply in love.

After toeing off his shoes at the entranceway, Walker padded towards the kitchen and as he drew closer his ears picked up the sound of Erika’s voice.

“I’m serious, Cel-chi. Next time you want to surprise Shin-nya when he comes home from working, you should wait for him wearing nothing but an apron. You could even make it out of your black shadowy stuff if that’s how it works. But it has to be an apron with nothing else on underneath.”

Now close enough to observe the scene, Walker could see that both women—or the woman and the female fairy—were currently clad in aprons, though they were both fully clothed beneath, in matching black attire. While Erika attended to a skillet, Celty stirred the contents of a saucepan, but she set down the spoon to grab her PDA and type a response to Erika’s suggestion.

Erika glanced at the handheld device and grinned wickedly. “Oh yeah, he’ll definitely like it. It’s a fantasy all men share, must be a part Jung’s collective unconsciousness or something. Just remember to act really coquettish when he shows up and deliver the line just like I told you.” Here Erika adopted a flirtatious pose and coy expression, and in a seductively affected voice said, “What would you like first? Dinner? A shower? Or me?”

“But what if Kishitani would prefer a French maid uniform?” Walker piped in as a means of announcing his presence.

Erika beamed at him. “Yumacchi! You made it.” Her gaze fell to his burden of shopping bags and sheer joy sparkled in her dark eyes. “And you brought the booty! Did you find all the books on my list?”

The corners of Walker’s mouth curled down in chagrin as he was forced to mentally revisit the BL trenches of Comiket. “I found most of them,” he said. “But some of those circles were too horrifying for me to even approach. All those posters of half-naked men—I have a reputation to maintain, you know.”

“You really are pathetic sometimes,” Erika said, teasing but not without affection. Then she carried on in a lofty tone. “I’ve never been embarrassed to be seen buying bishojo and panchira books. Moé transcends gender lines. Come on, we’ve talked about this so many times already.”

“Er, I don’t really think our situations are the same,” Walker said sheepishly. The predominant emotion he felt, though, was relief; the familiar parlance of otaku spilling from Erika’s lips was a balm for his anxious brain, reassuring him that what Kyohei said was true. Erika missing one Comiket did not portend her abandonment of the 2D world.

“You can set down those bags in the den,” she said “Mikapon, Masakichi, and Anri-chan are playing video games in there if you want to join them. The vegetables will take me a few more minutes, but after that I’ll come find you and make you tell me everything.” Pausing, she craned her neck to scan the apartment. “So I guess Dotachin and Togusacchi really couldn’t make it, huh?”

“The dastards,” Walker said, but good-naturedly.

Erika just shrugged, and with nary a hint of disappointment, said, “Sometimes you have to put work first.” Then she turned her attention back to the vegetables.

That last remark stuck in Walker like a caltrop in an elephant’s foot and followed him all the way to the den. It figured that just when his worries had been effectively assuaged, she would go and say something so completely antithetical to the Erika he knew and loved.

Sometimes you have to put work first? Really?

Well, maybe it wasn’t such a big deal to miss a group dinner with friends, but she’d just eschewed Comiket—Comiket!—in favor of working. And now she was making casual statements to imply that such a choice was no big deal?

Walker wasn’t ready to panic just yet, but he knew that he would have to have a talk with her about this as soon as possible, if only to reinstate his sense of security.

After saying hello to the three younger guests, who were considerate enough to pause their game for a few seconds and return the sentiment, Walker deposited his bags of carefully wrapped gay porn in a chair and slumped to the floor, where he sat pensively with his chin in his hands. The youthful exuberance and camaraderie emanating from the gaming trio didn’t help his mood; it just reminded him that his own best friend was acting suspiciously out of character. It was probably nothing, he reasoned to himself. Nothing. Probably. He was overreacting and her explanation was going to make him feel like an idiot and probably a little bit of an asshole as well. He could hardly wait to get told.

“Alright Yumacchi, it’s time to talk Comiket!” Erika called out as she removed her apron. An eager smile lit up her face as she hurried over to where Walker was hunched, but upon seeing what a dejected state he was in, she rolled her eyes. “Oh, quit sulking. I didn’t make you wait that long. Or is this still about the kinky books I requested?”

“What? No. It’s not the books or the wait. It’s nothing.” Walker tried to mold his features into a more lighthearted expression, but he couldn’t fool Erika, who leaned down to scrutinize him with pursed lips and one raised eyebrow.

“Nothing?”

Walker darted a glance at the kids on the couch and even though they were acting oblivious to anything besides their game and each other he looked back to Erika and said, “Why don’t we go out on the balcony so we don’t disrupt the youngsters.”

“Okay,” she said in a tone that conveyed another eye-roll without her having to give it.

Fortunately, Tokyo was in the grip of a brief mild spell in an otherwise chilly winter, so the clothes they had on were suitable for being outside. Still, Erika pulled the sleeves of her turtleneck down to cover her hands and chaffed her arms to warm them. Her attire was monochrome, as always, and her long black hair was coiled up into a perfectly round bun, which sat atop her head like a maraschino cherry on a parfait. For several seconds she watched him in silence, her face utterly neutral as she waited for him to speak first, but Walker found himself strangely tongue-tied. Finally Erika gave in with a sigh and asked, “So what’s wrong, Yumacchi?”

“N-nothing,” he stammered. “I told you it’s nothing.”

“Mn-hn.” She flashed that suspicious look again, the one with the tight mouth and raised eyebrow, but she held it for only a second before replacing it with a wide grin. Apparently she was giving him the benefit of a doubt. “Okay then! Tell me all about FuyuComi! I want to hear everything, starting from day one! What were the top ten most cosplayed characters? Which circles sold out first?” As she spoke her face and her body language grew more animated, like an animal set free in its natural habitat.

Walker remained wary. “If you were this excited over it, you should’ve just come with me. Would’ve been a lot more fun and I wouldn’t have had to put myself at risk by trespassing into BL territory.”

Erika pouted severely in his direction. “Don’t be a sourpuss, Yumacchi. I thought you said you weren’t really upset about the BL stuff. And you know why I had to miss this Comiket. I got that rush order from a cosplay club in Niigata and had to make four dozen custom Vongola rings.”

“You could’ve declined,” said Walker. “I mean, you already knew about FuyuComi long before that order came your way.”

She responded with infuriating insouciance. “I figured I would make up for it at NatsuComi. I mean, everyone knows the summer Comiket is better.”

“But you’ve never missed a Comiket—winter of summer—since the first one we went to together!” This came out more vehemently than Walker had intended and Erika scowled at him suitably.

“The customer offered to pay nearly triple my going rate. I didn’t want to pass up that kind of money.”

“Money?” Walker nearly gagged on the word.

“Yeah,” she said, crossing her arms defiantly. “I’m trying to save up a bit. Is there something wrong with that?”

Walker threw his hands up like claws and wrung the air in front of him. “Save up for what? Comiket is one of the main events you save up for! So what’s the point of saving if you aren’t even going to go? It’s just money for money’s sake and that’s not you!”

Now she looked at him with worry. “Lighten up, Yumacchi. It was one FuyuComi. It’s not that big a deal.”

Even though he knew that she was right, Walker couldn’t stop his brain from ticking out a chain of worst-case of events. “First it’s FuyuComi, next thing I know you’ll be skipping out on NatsuComi and WonFes! And after that it’s just a matter of time before I’ll ask you about last night’s anime and you’ll tell me you forgot to watch it! There will be no going back at that point, the hideous, money-loving, 3D, real world will own your very soul!”

Erika heaved a sigh and said, “You’re being completely ridiculous, you know.”

“Okay, so maybe I am being a little ridiculous.” Yes, he knew he definitely was. “But could you please just reassure me that this was a one-time occurrence and you aren’t going to turn to the dark side? Prove to me that I am acting crazy over nothing by promising me that nothing is going to change.”

“Yumacchi—” She was averting her gaze, down and to the side, and her stance, with arms still folded over her middle, looked far more self-conscious than it had just moments ago. Her voice was soft, her expression regretful.

Dread spread through Walker’s psyche like ink in water. His fear was not unfounded after all. “Ah fuck! It’s true, isn’t it? You’ve decided you want to live in the 3D world. I bet you think you can still be a casual otaku. But you can’t! Once you commit yourself to real life and the pursuit of money, it will always take precedence. So what is it you’re saving for? Are you going to study to go to law school? Medical school? Join an accounting firm?” He felt the sting of encroaching tears and clenched his teeth. I can’t lose her. I can’t lose her.

“Yumacchi!” She snapped it this time.

Walker shook his head over and over, muttering, “I don’t want to hear it! I don’t want to hear it!”

“Yumacchi, I’m pregnant.”

That stopped his head shaking instantly. In fact, those three words froze every interrogation, indictment, and desperate plea he had lined up to assail her with as surely as if his brain had been doused in liquid nitrogen. He stared mutely, mouth open, for at least a minute before regaining the ability to speak. “Pregnant? As in—pregnant?” The sound was more croak than human speech.

Erika exhaled the word, “Yeah.”

“Oh man,” Walker said hoarsely. “Oh fuck. This is serious. I mean shit. This is really serious. Pregnant? Fuck. Seriously, fuck! Why couldn’t it just be law school?”

“I understand that this must be hard for you,” Erika said in an unsympathetic monotone. “Is there anything I can do to help you cope with this huge, life-altering event?”

Like a whack to the skull with last month’s Gangan, her heavy-handed sarcasm knocked him back to a rational perspective. “Sorry,” he said, head bowed and palms pressed together. “Sorry. Sorry. It’s just so hard to believe because, well, it’s you. You. Having a b—a baby.”

“Why is that so unbelievable?” asked Erika, voice steeped in anger or hurt—Walker couldn’t tell which, or maybe it was both. “I am a woman after all.”

“Yes you are,” he responded cautiously, still half anticipating the reveal that this was all a horribly unfunny joke. “But you’re my best friend.” His tongue lumped up like a gastropod in his mouth. In front of his eyes, Erika’s expression softened into—What? What was this emotion he was seeing? Contentment? Apprehension? It was a reprieve and that was all that mattered.

“I didn’t mean to snap at you like that,” she said. “I’ve been kind of moody lately.”

“I’d say you have every right to be moody.” Walker left off the bit about how he hoped she would’t inflict it on him too much. Another two seconds passed before he asked, delicately, “So then, are you absolutely sure?”

“One-hundred percent,” she sighed. “Doctor confirmed it this morning, but I already took three different home tests last week and I suspected it even before that. So that’s it. Now you know the reason I bailed on Comiket to make some extra money. Figured the sooner I start saving the better.”

The implication that she was going to continue with this pregnancy relieved Walker of one incredibly awkward question. But another question, even harder to broach, still remained. After all, it took two people to start a baby. Scratching the back of his neck, he said softly, “I, uh—I didn’t know you were seeing somebody.”

Erika drank in a long breath and said, “I’m not.” It came out with the reluctance of a confession, but without a hint shame or guilt—more like there was a complicated backstory that she didn’t want to get into just yet. Then, as if to deter Walker from asking any follow-up questions, she turned on her heel and stepped over to the balustrade to look out over the city.

He waited a silent count of ten before he joined her, resting his elbows on the railing next to hers and casting his eyes on the wide expanse of Ikebukuro. “You can’t beat the view from Shinra and Celty’s,” he said. Idle prattle. “I suppose that’s a standard feature on a place like this, being the sort of posh residence that only an unlicensed doctor whose clientele includes Tokyo’s richest and seediest criminals could afford.” He gave a half-hearted laugh and then went quiet again, watching Erika watch the fairy lights below.

“It happened about six weeks ago.” She hadn’t bothered to turn her head to look at him or acknowledge his presence in any way, so the clear, faintly wistful sound of her voice came unexpectedly. “It was a one-time thing. Spontaneous. Heat-of-the-moment. Never going to happen again. We took precautions, of course—we aren’t stupid. But there must’ve been a critical contraceptive failure.”

Walker wondered if she realized that she’d just rolled this guy into an inclusive pronoun. We. Even though they weren’t seeing each other and only spent one night together, she and he were still we.

“So you’re saying it was a one-night stand?” Walker asked as his memory rewinded to the period in question. Six weeks ago was right around the time he took that two-day trip to Nagano to carve a centerpiece for the opening of a new ski resort.

She turned, and offering him a wan smile said, “Something like that.”

His head was swimming. That Erika had a one-night stand was no less incongruous with everything he thought he knew about her than if she’d had a long-term secret lover. This was a woman who loudly and proudly declared her preference for the “imagined ideal” of love over any cumbersome fleshly entanglements based in boring old reality. Walker had always suspected that was the reason why so many of her championed 3D couples—like Shizuo with Izaya and Kyohei with Rokujo Chikage—were hopeless cases who would never actually hook up. The imagined ideal could never disappoint her. Erika herself didn’t go on dates. Or at least that’s what Walker had always believed. She’d never been lacking in admirers, though; beautiful as she was, men unaware of her true nature asked her out quite often and all of them were soundly rejected.

So to what man had she finally said yes?

Walker had to bite back the urge to ask for the name—it was none of his business and Erika was not fool enough to give him a target for any possible violent impulses. In the end, the man’s identity didn’t matter. The deed was done—the seed planted so to speak—and now everything was going to change. Radically. Terribly.

“So—a baby, huh?” Walker said, forcing his tone into neutrality.

As if sensing his anxiety, Erika sighed and said, “Yeah, I know. It’s about as real as real gets. Scary real. Having a baby is pretty much the ultimate investment in the 3D world. And that goes for time and money.”

“Have you thought about what you’re going to do?” Walker asked, and just to clarify that he wasn’t referring to any personal decision about her body, hastily added, “I mean, are you going to try to expand your freelance business? Or will you look for a full time job?”

“I haven’t figured that out yet,” she answered.

“How will you manage to keep up with all the new anime and manga and light novels? And what about cosplay events? You’re not going to give up any of those things, right? You’ll raise your baby in the 2D world?” Panic tightened his throat, straining his voice. “I know I’m being selfish here, but I don’t want to lose you, Erika. More than that, I don’t want you to lose you.”

After an admission like that—with a first name drop bonus—he expected a well-deserved rebuke, but instead he received another uncertain smile. “You’ve more or less summed up what’s been going through my head for the past two weeks,” she said, and though her tone was serene, a tiny crease between her eyebrows belied that her feelings ran deeper. “I don’t want to leave behind our beautiful fantasy life, Yumacchi. I guess the gravity of the situation still hasn’t fully set in yet. I didn’t plan this, after all. I want to believe that I will come up with the answers. It’s still early so I figure I have time. The only thing I’m certain of is that I don’t—I don’t not want it.”

In other words, she wanted “it” and she was going to keep “it”—it being her unborn baby. She had no idea what she was going to do, but she was ready to face unflinchingly the terrifying unknown that loomed ahead of her. When Walker considered it that way, her stance was remarkably in character.

With a cluck of her tongue she continued. “Don’t think I’m not aware of what people will say when they find out. Or just think to themselves, if they’re too polite to vocalize it. You might even be thinking it right now, Yumacchi.”

“I’m not thinking anything.” Walker put up his hands reflexively. “Honest.”

She cocked a blade-thin eyebrow. “Really? So then it never passed through your mind that I am the least qualified woman in Ikebukuro—maybe in all of Tokyo—to become a mother? Or that I am the last person anyone would expect to want to be a mother?”

He was mentally cornered again. The woman was a demon. “I—well—that is, I wouldn’t say it passed through my mind. Flitted maybe—very briefly.” Seeing Erika’s mouth tighten, he changed tack. “Having a baby without a, uh—without a partner is a challenge for anyone, really. Qualifications have nothing to do with it.”

Mollified, she unclenched and said, “I know it won’t be easy.”

“Could you get any financial help from the, er, responsible party?” Walker wasn’t sure if the question was safe, but at least he knew better than to use the word “father.”

Erika separated from the balustrade and readopted her earlier pose with arms braced across her middle. “I can’t ask him for help,” she said, and after a brief pause added, “for certain reasons.”

That vague explanation piqued Walker’s curiosity, but the expression on Erika’s pale face was impenetrable. What emotion was in her dark, half-lidded eyes? Melancholy? Regret? Longing? It wasn’t bliss—that much he could read. But only that much. Was she always this good at being unfathomable? He couldn’t prod her. He could, however, take this opportunity to say something cool and manly, offer her the sort of comfort that an anime hero would say to his most treasured friend.

“You know I’ll always have your back, right?” It slipped out as a question, which somewhat diminished the cool factor, but it was sincere and that was what mattered. “I’m not flush with money, but I’ll help as much as I can. And I am sure Kadota and Togusa will support you in any way they can, too. You aren’t alone, Karisawa.”

“Thank you, Yumacchi,” Erika said, flashing him a grateful smile and touching him on the shoulder. “I’m not quite up to telling anyone yet, though, so if you wouldn’t mind keeping this a secret for a little while longer, I’d really appreciate it. I need more time to get used to the idea myself before I bring anyone else into the situation.”

Walker bobbed his head in agreement. “I won’t tell anyone.”

“You can’t even tell Dotachin and Togusacchi, got it?”

“I got it. Not a word.” He made a motion in front of his mouth like he was zipping a zipper. “But I’m glad you decided to entrust me with this information.” He would’ve been gladder if this weren’t happening at all, but since it was and since he couldn’t do anything about it, he felt he’d rather know than not know.

Her smile curled to one side, morphing into a smirk. “You kind of left me no choice with the tantrum you were throwing.”

“Yeah, uh, sorry about that. I—”

Walker’s sheepish apology was cut short by the swish of the sliding door and Masaomi Kida’s face grinned from the narrow opening. “Oi! Yumasaki! Karisawa! Dinner!”

“We’ll be right in, Masakichi!”

Like the snap-back of a rubber band, Erika instantly returned to her usual, chipper self, all the serious emotions she’d revealed to Walker locked back up inside her. It was as if the conversation had never happened. Maybe it hadn’t. Walker could think of dozens of perfectly sound explanations for why that might be the case: brain chips, alien possession, mind altering drugs, an onmyoji’s curse, government conspiracy, blackmail by the mafia, and so on and so forth. The only problem was that he didn’t believe any of them.

Erika, having already slipped through the door, called back to him brightly. “Come on, Yumacchi! Dinner awaits!”

For as long as she maintained the façade that everything was still normal, Walker would play along and try not to think about the upheaval only the two of them knew was coming.

After dinner and a lot of rowdy, overlapping conversation, Walker and Erika said their goodbyes and took the elevator down to the lobby. Once they exited the apartment building, they would be going in different directions, so Walker felt like he should say his last words of the night now. But he couldn’t think of any. Funny, he’d never found himself at a loss for something to talk about with her before. Erika had performed her part flawlessly the entire evening, not showing the slightest hint that anything was different about her. How could she act so natural? The fact that some nameless man had gotten her pregnant and she was going to give birth to an actual living baby was all Walker had been able to think about since he found out about it.

“Thanks again for picking up the books I wanted, Yumacchi,” Erika chirped. They were standing outside of the apartment building in the cone of soft, buttery light cast by a streetlamp. “Even if you didn’t get all of them. Whatever you missed, I can probably find at Mandarake. The best books almost always get reprints so there is also a second chance at NatsuComi.” As soon as the last word left her mouth, the mirth dissipated from her face.

Walker felt it, too, the icy splash of reality that came with looking ahead to Summer Comiket. Erika would be huge by then, which was guaranteed to make navigating the event more difficult. She might not even feel up to going at all. “Are you going to be okay?” Walker asked.

“Of course,” she said as her hands gripped and twisted the strap of her messenger bag. “I’m going to be fine. Everything will work out in the end.” It sounded like she was trying to convince herself as much as him. “And I’m actually glad that you know about it, Yumacchi. It makes it feel more real, which is scary—terrifying, actually—but at least I don’t feel totally alone.”

“Like I told you, I’ve always got your back. As a very wise man once said: Listen up, Karisawa. Don’t believe in yourself. Believe in me! Believe in the Yumasaki who believes in you!” The line—a spot-on perfect imitation of Kamina—had the desired effect of bringing the smile back to her face.

“Thanks,” she said once again, and Walker knew she wasn’t talking about the dojinshi this time. Then she did something she never had before: she leaned in and kissed him on the cheek, her lips as soft and dry as a leaf brushing against his skin.

He stood in place and watched her walk away, and after she vanished around a corner, he reached up and touches the spot where she placed her platonic kiss. It tingled faintly under his fingertips like the lingering effervescence of a witch’s spell.

What he felt as he began the hike back to his apartment, however, was the opposite of magic. Everything around him had become drab and dirty and entirely too real—dead plants, brown and mummified in their bird shit stained planters, sticky food wrappers clinging to the gaping maws of waste bins, salarymen and office ladies filing into bars with listless eyes and worn-out faces.

The disillusionment spell extended inward, as well, leeching the surplus energy from his bones and turning his feet to lead. He wasn’t an anime hero tonight, just a half-blooded Japanese misfit hoofing his way through Ikebukuro, powerless to help his best friend as she stood on the brink of cataclysm. Yes, everything was going to change. Despite his wholehearted resolution to be unselfish about the impending baby-pocalypse, Walker couldn’t help but consider the possibility that he’d soon be losing his one true comrade-in-arms in the battle of hope.

Shit. If he was this torn up about it, he couldn’t even fathom what Erika must be going through. This would probably be the routine for a while, trying his best not to twist the situation to make it about him and having to chastise himself every time he slipped up.

Eager to escape the maddening crowd and reunite with his manga and his anime and his cozy futon, he took a right turn down a narrow alley that would get him home a little more quickly and a lot more quietly. Just a few steps into the embracing solitude, however, the purr of a familiar voice stopped him in his tracks.

“Well, well, well. What have we here? Do my eyes deceive me, or has Kadota’s little firebug just stumbled into my presence?”

Walker clutched the shoulder straps of his backpack and let out a growl of annoyance through gritted teeth. “Didn’t stumble,” he said impatiently. “Just walking to my apartment the way I always go. So unless you have some particular business with me, Chikage, I’ll be on my way.”

Predictably, Rokujo Chikage took the rebuff as his cue to slink out from the shadows with his hands up and put himself in Walker’s path. “Easy there, fox-face. I come in peace.” It was condescension lacquered up with oily charm.

Formerly an enemy of the Dollars, Rokujo’s downgraded threat-level and tentative ally status meant that Walker wasn’t allowed to set him on fire or pull out his teeth without sufficient provocation. A real pity as Walker would have loved to have found a makeshift bat and gone Paranoia Agent on the guy. But with Kyohei’s good faith at stake, he had incentive to play nice. For now.

“What the hell do you want, Chikage?” he said brusquely—playing nice didn’t mean he had to be nice, and he was in no mood to hang around and chitchat.

“Want?” Rokujo replied, splaying a hand over his chest to emphasize his feigned shock. “What have I done to earn your suspicion after merely saying hello?” He pressed the back of his other hand against his forehead in a mocking swoon of lament. “You wound me, Yumasaki. I thought we were all thick as thieves now, and yet here you are, casting aspersions on me. Your chums in the van have made their peace with me so why can’t you?”

This reeked of a baited trap—as if Rokujo’s use of the word chum weren’t clue enough—and Walker didn’t want to get ensnared. “I don’t—” he began but couldn’t get past the first two words.

“Trying to say you don’t hate me?” Rokujo had shed the vestiges of his pretend hurt feelings in favor of a genuine sly grin. “But you can’t do it, can you? The hostility emanating from you right now could strip the chrome off of my bike. If I had it with me. You hate my guts, Yumasaki.” There was a perverse pleasure in the way he said it.

Walker couldn’t deny it but he was running out of patience, so he sighed and said, “If you have a point, could you get to it already?”

“Well now I am feeling rather curious as to why it is you hate me so. And I am sure that you would love to tear into me. Here is your chance to vent everything you’ve held back on Kadota’s orders. This is just to satisfy my own interest so nothing you say will reach his ears.”

A number of nastily honest answers played in Walker’s imagination:

Why do I hate you? Where do I even start? Let’s see, how about the fact that you clearly think you’re hot shit, prowling the streets on that bike, all decked out in tokkofuku like some old school yankee. But you really just look like an asshole.

And then there are the ladies—how a sleazebag like you manages to lure so many cute women into his entourage is baffling enough to cause offense, but far more egregious is the fact that you show no respect for the art of balanced harem building. I’ve even seen you in the company of two flagrantly tsundere types at once while not a single shy megane type or impassive waif type could be spotted in the vicinity. A man with so little appreciation for harem aesthetics should not be allowed to have one.

Oh right, and I can’t leave out that stupid porkpie hat—or trilby, fedora, whatever—set at a stupid angle, over your stupid shaggy hair.

Walker didn’t share these answers out loud, of course—though Rokujo was right in assuming that he would love to. “I’m not a complete fucking moron, you know. And I won’t be lured into a fight just because you have nothing better to do on a Saturday night. Now if you don’t mind, I’d like to be on my way.”

Pivoting on one foot, Rokujo swung aside like a subway gate and granted Walker passage with a sweeping gesture of his hand, all false obsequiousness again. “If you’re in a hurry then by all means go. I wouldn’t dream of holding you up, especially if there’s a lady waiting for you. By which I mean a real lady, mind you, not one printed on a pillowcase. I’ll be meeting up with three myself, a bit later in the night. All of the flesh and blood variety, of course.”

It was a taunt, a jab at Walker’s perceived lack of sex appeal meant to spur him into violence, but he wouldn’t let it get to him. He said a silent oath to himself that he wouldn’t. He was going to leave this shithead behind and go back to his comfy lair where he would spend the rest of his evening reading light novels and trying not to worry about his best friend. He lifted his foot and set it down, one small step for a man resuming his journey home—

“Would you happen to be on your way to see Miss Karisawa?”

Walker froze in place. There was a marked shift in Rokujo’s voice, a change in pitch and timbre and mood. Why it almost sounded like the shithead cared—but that couldn’t be right.

“I figure that must be where you’re headed,” Rokujo continued. “I’ve seen her without you, but never you without her.”

Walker’s fists tightened at his sides until multiple knuckles popped in chorus. This guy had definitely picked the wrong night to go sniffing after Erika Karisawa. “Don’t talk about Karisawa like she’s your buddy or something,” Walker hissed contemptuously. “She may have made peace with you, as you say, but that doesn’t mean she likes your wannabe Onizuka ass.” He saw confusion flash in Rokujo’s eyes and snapped, “He’s the hero of a manga and the greatest teacher ever!”

“Sorry, sorry,” Rokujo muttered. He looked like a chastised puppy. “So I guess she’s still mad at me then, huh?”

“Uh—” Caught off guard by the question, Walker let his mouth hang open for only a split second before recovering. He was poised and ready to play along. “I don’t know what makes you think I’d talk about it with you,” he said disdainfully. “Not after what you did.”

What the hell did he do? That’s what Walker was aiming to learn.

Off came the hat as Rokujo combed long, tapered fingers up into his messy hair. “I knew she would tell you about it.” He mumbled his words slightly and didn’t make eye contact. “Look Yumasaki, whatever she told you about what transpired on our date, you’ve got to know that I didn’t intend for it to go that way.”

Muscles twitched throughout Walker’s body as his brain fed them contradictory messages: Fight! Not Yet. Punch the bastard! Stay cool. The word “date” throbbed hotly in his ears long after Rokujo had muttered it. A date. They’d gone on a date, Rokujo and Erika. No, she wouldn’t. He had to be lying about it. So where was the trademark smugness? Had he hidden it away as part of this elaborate ruse? No. Rokujo was a shit actor. And he really seemed to think that Walker had already heard a one-sided version of what happened on this date. And Walker was going to play along with it. Walker was not a shit actor. The only thing he had to be careful about was keeping his rage in check.

“And why should I believe your word over that of my best friend?” he asked with pitch-perfect nastiness. “She painted a pretty appalling picture of you, you know. Not that I held you in particularly high esteem beforehand.” Something twinged in the very center of his chest, like a tiny stitch pulled too tight. If this date had really happened—and he was edging steadily closer to the conclusion that it had—Erika hadn’t breathed a word of it to him. She must have had her reasons for keeping it a secret. Going out with Rokujo Chikage didn’t strike Walker as something to brag about, but it certainly wasn’t shameful, and Erika wasn’t the type to experience shame over such things anyways. It wasn’t a matter of trust, Walker knew, since she’d put her greatest secret of all in his care just hours ago. So why not this secret?

In that instant, comprehension uncoiled inside his belly: what if they weren’t two different secrets at all, but two halves of just one hideous whole?

Rokujo didn’t seem to have noticed any change in Walker, didn’t realize the bomb in front of him had a freshly lit fuse, and he let the impudence creep back into his voice as he spoke. “She may be your best friend, fox-face, but you and I both know that Karisawa is no angel. Don’t get me wrong, I love all women, even if they are a bit freaky, but your friend is really something else.”

“What exactly are you trying to accuse her of?” Walker sneered, sizzling closer to the brink of explosion.

“Nothing,” said Rokujo briskly. “No accusations here. I’m just giving you my side of the story. I’m sure Karisawa regaled you with an elaborate tale of how I took advantage of her, but I swear it on my life—better yet, on my bike—that it didn’t go down like that. If anything, she took advantage of me. I mean, shit, I didn’t have any ulterior motive in asking her out. Even an otaku like you who doesn’t get it up for real girls has got to agree she’s a knockout. I was genuinely into her. And she was into me, too, I swear. You were out of town that weekend so you didn’t get to see her level of enthusiasm when she said yes, but you can ask your boys Kadota and Togusa and they’ll back me up. I’m just a helpless romantic who took it to mean that she was interested in—”

Bam! Walker’s fist shot out like a pinball launcher and connected with Rokujo’s jaw, sending his head into a spin and effectively shutting down his story.

When he finished reeling, Rokujo spat out a tooth with a slimy looking gobbet of blood still attached. Then, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, he cast a glare at Walker that was simultaneously affronted and bewildered. “What the fuck was that for?”

“You—” The word stretched long as it streamed like dragon’s breath from Walker’s curled lips and flared nostrils. The sucker punch had fired automatically as soon as his brain had sufficient evidence to back its suspicion, but it was only now that his brain finished parsing that evidence into a coherent, despicable narrative: This man—this piece of human-shaped trash named Rokujo Chikage—had manipulated Erika into his bed somehow, gotten her pregnant, and then skipped town.

“Me?” Rokujo groaned, delicately probing his swollen cheek with the tips of his fingers. “You’re the one who just slugged me in the face without warning. That fucking hurt, man!”

“I meant it to!” In truth, he hadn’t even been thinking about it, but he didn’t regret the attack or the pain it caused.

“Look, I’m all about standing up for women, but that was uncalled for. This really should be a matter just between me and Karisawa.”

“Ah, but it’s too late for that now,” Walker said through a fanged rictus. “I’m inextricably involved now and I am going to make sure you get exactly what’s coming to you after what you did.” He cocked back his fist for another strike and Rokujo cringed, cowered, threw his hands in front of his face instead of fighting back like he normally would. “Come on and hit me, Chikage! I’m not a woman, so why are you holding back?”

Rokujo wrenched his head to the side just in time to dodge Walker’s follow-up punch. “If I were to hit you, Yumasaki, satisfying as that would be, it would greatly upset Miss Karisawa and I don’t want to hurt her any more than I already have.”

The answer was a splash of gasoline on the fire in Walker’s belly and his next swing was faster, catching Rokujo in the ear. “You don’t get to worry about her, you philandering fuck!”

Cupping a hand over his clipped ear, Rokujo barked right back. “Please, Yumasaki! Whatever Karisawa told you it was just a humiliatingly bad date. And I could smooth everything out if she would just let me talk to her. Please—since you are involved and you are her best friend—please tell her to accept my phone calls, or at least respond to my texts or emails. How long is she going to stay pissed off at me? It’s been six weeks already!”

“Six weeks you say?” The words slithered out between Walker’s clenched teeth. Timeline confirmed, he felt an influx of righteous fury, chemicals surging through his bloodstream, making him giddy. With the last dregs of his dwindling self-control, he performed a deep, graceful bow. Then he charged skull first into Rokujo, who wheezed like a concertina and dropped bonelessly to the concrete.

Rokujo barely had time to refill his lung with a hoarse gasp before Walker was on top of him, straddling his waist to pin him to the ground and raining down punches with both fists. “Wha’ the—fuck—!” Rokujo barked between packing blows to his cheek, jaw, nose, temple. “Ge’off me—!”

But Walker was too far past gone for his victim’s voice to move him. “Sub-mammalian sack of shit!” Cartilage crunched deliciously against his knuckles—Rokujo’s superhuman durability meant there was no need to hold back. When Rokujo finally started to retaliate with punches of his own, Walker didn’t even feel it, fully anaesthetized on nothing but adrenaline. And for all his earnest struggling, Rokujo couldn’t throw him off.

Wet choking sound. Warm spray. Coppery tang of blood. Red bloomed behind Walker’s eyes. He was going to fucking kill this guy.

And suddenly there were arms strapping his chest, yanking him up and off as his fists swooshed through empty air. The butcher’s shop noises had stopped and now there were only heaving, raspy breaths and the scuffles of shoed feet. Wait, those were his ragged breaths. And those were his shoed feet, dangling a few centimeters above the ground and scrabbling for purchase so he could tear away from his captor. As soon as he realized this, he stopped thrashing. His breathing slowed and he felt his feet regain contact with terra firma, though the arms continued to restrain him.

“Okay, what the hell is going on here?” It was Kyohei’s voice, right behind him. Kyohei was the one who’d stopped the fight and was currently holding him in lockdown. Of course.

Rokujo was still splayed on the concrete, his injuries looking too gruesome to be compatible with consciousness—broken nose, two swollen eyes, busted lip, and blood around his mouth already starting to crust—and yet he remained miraculously awake and alert. “Your psychopathic buddy here attacked me.” He propped himself up on his elbows, wincing.

“Is it safe to let go of you, Yumasaki?” asked Kyohei calmly.

“Yeah,” Walker said. After a half-second of hesitation, Kyohei released his hold and Walker watched bitterly as he helped Rokujo to stand up.

Kyohei leveled Walker a reproachful look. “And how would you describe the incident?”

“It’s just like he said. I attacked him.” The truth came without hesitation as Walker considered why he did it and fire licked inside his belly. “And if I had it to do over, I would do it again and again and again.” He snarled at Rokujo and Kyohei threw out an arm between them like a traffic barrier.

“Why did you attack him?”

Although the question was clearly for Walker, Rokujo took it upon himself to answer. “Because he’s a fucking basket case, that’s why. He beat the shit out of me just for one lousy date with Karisawa.”

“I beat the shit out of you for getting her pregnant!” Walker lunged like a wild animal but Kyohei caught him and held him back, barely.

“What?” Rokujo squawked, eyes wide. “Pregnant? No way! She can’t be! Or if she is, it sure as hell isn’t mine!”

In an instant, Kyohei spun Walker around to face him. His expression was as grave as Walker had ever seen it. “Is this something that Karisawa told you directly and could it have been a joke?”

Walker blinked several times as a long-absent sense of composure washed over him, the heat of the moment rapidly cooling. Shit. Assaulting Rokujo was one thing, but now he’d just blurted out the secret Erika had entrusted to him. To Kyohei, of all people, the guy least likely to just let it slide and pretend he didn’t hear. With those dark eyes fixed on him, Walker wouldn’t even try to cover his ass. “Yeah,” he sighed. “She told me.”

“Liar!” Rokujo shouted in the background, though it was unclear if he was referring to Walker or to Erika.

“That is, she told me that she’s pregnant,” Walker clarified. “And, come on, you know she wouldn’t joke about that, Kadota. She didn’t say that Chikage was the one that did it, but I figured it out on my own.”

Having sidled up close, Rokujo let out an affronted snort. “Figured out? Based on what?”

“Based on the fact that it happened right about the time you had your date,” Walker snapped, injecting the last word with particular disgust. “You know, the date where you took advantage of her?”

“Hey, I didn’t lay a finger on her!” Rokujo protested brashly, but shrunk back as soon as Kyohei turned a glare on him. “I—I swear I didn’t, Kadota. You saw how that date ended. You really think she’d let me touch her—after that?”

Kyohei closed his eyes and sighed. “He’s telling the truth, Yumasaki. I can vouch for it. Like he said, I ran into the two of them while they were having their date and based on what I saw, I’d say the odds of Karisawa ever engaging with Chikage in a manner that could result in pregnancy are infinitesimally small.”

“Ouch,” Rokujo mumbled. “Well that’s a harsh way of putting it, but thank you.”

“But if it wasn’t him—” Walker’s voice shriveled on his tongue as his brain groped for an answer that wasn’t there.

“Pardon my intrusion,” said Rokujo, surprisingly civil for all he’d just been through. “I know it’s not really any of my business, but have you considered the possibility that Miss Karisawa purposefully withheld the name of the man who impregnated her because she didn’t want you to murder him?” Unsurprisingly, his brand of civility came tinged with sarcasm.

Loosing another sigh, Kyohei shifted his attention from Walker to Rokujo. “I’m terribly sorry that you had to get mixed up in this, Chikage. I think it is pretty clear now that Yumasaki’s actions tonight were impelled by a combination of misunderstanding, happenstance, and just plain bad judgment. That doesn’t make it okay by any means—I’m not condoning assault—but I hope, under the circumstances, you’ll let me be the one to deal with him.”

Shame baked Walker’s face as he listened to Kyohei defend him, like the dog that bit the neighbor’s kid. Misunderstanding and happenstance and bad judgment really had been critical factors in how the situation had played out, though—things would have gone very differently if Walker hadn’t run into Rokujo in this alley; if Rokujo had spoken of his date with Erika in less ambiguous terms; if Walker had asked more questions for clarification before attacking; if Kyohei hadn’t arrived when he did and pulled Walker off of Rokujo.

Hmm. Thinking it out like this, Kyohei’s intervention suddenly seemed too well timed to be just another coincidence. Wasn’t he supposed to have been working an all-nighter? And what were the odds that he would just happen to stumble upon the two of them?

Belatedly, Walker noticed that Kyohei was still in his workman’s coveralls with a bandana in place of his hat, and his uniform, hands, and face were decorated with daubs of tile cement. Belatedly, Walker realized that Kyohei must have left his job in a hurry and hadn’t had time to change or get cleaned up.

“Eh, don’t worry, Kadota,” Rokujo said. “I won’t seek retribution for this. Can’t say I enjoyed being wrongly accused, convicted, and sentenced by your boy here, but I am not unsympathetic to his cause. Believing that a woman he cares about has been wronged can make even a sane man lose his cool, so in Yumasaki’s case—well, need I say more?”

The only thing protecting Rokujo’s tenderized face from further brutality right now was Kyohei’s presence and Walker was damn sure Rokujo knew it. At least Kyohei looked irritated—the cheeky bastard act could go unpunished but not unnoticed.

“I’ll make sure you’re compensated for any medical treatment you need,” said Kyohei, conveniently not naming a fund source.

Rokujo waved a hand dismissively. “Not necessary. Just a bit of soft tissue damage. I’ve gotten far worse before. Love is the best medicine after all, and at present I am making three beautiful women wait for me, so I’d best be on my way.”

Kyohei opened his mouth to say something but before he could make so much as a sound, Rokujo piped in again.

“Your concern is touching, and I do appreciate it, but really I must be going.” As if anyone was trying to stop him. “And it sounds like you two have a lot to talk about, eh? I’ve got to admit, the idea of that Karisawa with a baby—I still can’t wrap my brain around it.” The smirk that played on Rokujo’s blood-caked lips gave the distinct impression that he’d love to stick around and keep talking on this topic but Kyohei extinguished his enthusiasm with a weren’t-you-about-to-leave look. “Well then, this is where I leave you. Thank you, Kadota, for responding so quickly to my text message.”

“Uh, thank you for letting me know what was going on,” said Kyohei, his voice weary and wary.

Fortunately, Rokujo didn’t employ any further stalling techniques. He simply pivoted around and threw a goodbye wave over his shoulder before loping away with just the smallest hint of a limp. “See you around.”

Now it was just the two of them and Walker knew he was about to face something far more dreadful than wrath—because Kyohei Kadota didn’t do wrath. No, what Walker had coming was a healthy dose of disappointment from one of the only people in the world whose opinion of him actually mattered. At least he’d gotten an answer to the question of how Kyohei knew where to find him.

Kyohei cleared his throat and asked, “Anything you want to say, Yumasaki?” His tone was stern but not angry, which just made Walker feel worse because anger was what he felt he truly deserved.

“I just lost it, okay?” Walker snapped, unintentionally defensive. His ears were burning hotly and he couldn’t make himself look at Kyohei’s face. “I fucked up bad and I know it so you don’t need to lecture me.”

“You could have triggered a new conflict between the Dollars and Toramaru. You know that, right?”

“Of course I know that! I’m not an idiot!”

“And you know that you got very lucky with Chikage letting you off the hook, right?”

With his eyes aimed down at his feet, Walker sighed, and when he answered this time his voice was low and ashamed. “Yeah, I know. I know. What I did was impulsive and risky and stupid. And I should probably feel a whole lot worse about potentially endangering my fellow Dollars than I actually do. But compared to betraying Karisawa’s trust—” His hand moved to his chest and grabbed up a fistful of hoodie as the ache of genuine guilt blossomed beneath his sternum. “Shit. I really fucked up. She gave me such a huge, personal secret to keep, and I couldn’t even make it to the next day before I blurted it out in front of Chikage and you.”

“Hmm…” A thoughtful sound from Kyohei compelled Walker to at last look up and meet his gaze. Kyohei’s mouth was pressed into a hard, inscrutable line, his eyes fixed and serious. “Well, you’ve known Karisawa longer than I have. In the course of your friendship, there must have been some misunderstandings and fights between the two of you—that’s how any long-lasting friendship is—but you’ve always managed to patch things back up.”

“Never something this big.”

Nodding sagely, Kyohei said, “Perhaps. But it might not be as bad as you fear. Karisawa’s secret—” He paused to swallow and for a half-second he looked like he might actually be perturbed, muscles in his jaw feathering almost imperceptibly, but as soon as he resumed speaking he was the unflappable Kyohei Kadota once again. “There is a time limit for how long it can stay a secret and she knows that. She knows that it is going to come out before too long, and while she hadn’t intended it to happen tonight courtesy of your big mouth, it was going to happen eventually. And you only told two people.”

Walker felt somewhat mollified, but almost immediately a new dread welled up in him. “Do you think Chikage will spread the story around? Shit. Should’ve made him promise not to tell anyone. But then, I promised Karisawa the same thing and look what happened.”

“I don’t think you need to worry about Chikage,” said Kyohei. “I know you aren’t a fan of the guy, and he certainly can be irritating, but he follows a personal code of honor when it comes to women. He wouldn’t disclose private knowledge about Karisawa to anyone without her consent.”

“Right,” Walker muttered as his focus sank back downward to settle on Kyohei’s shoes. “I’m sorry you got called away from work because of me, Kadota.”

“Eh, I was due for a break anyways. And my worksite is close to this alley.”

Kyohei’s casual dismissal of any personal grudge brought Walker a modicum of relief, but it also reminded him that the most crucial apology was still to come. And that was when he heard the demon whisper inside his head: Does she really have to know? His stomach cringed at the selfishness of that unbidden thought. But maybe it wasn’t all that selfish—if anything, confessing to Erika that he’d shared her secret would only cause her stress and anger, and that couldn’t be good for her health right now. As long as Kyohei’s assessment of Rokujo’s trustworthiness was sound, Erika wouldn’t find out on her own.

Or maybe he was just trying to rationalize protecting his own sorry ass.

Luckily, his moral compass was standing right in front of him. “So do I tell Karisawa what happened? You know a lot more about these kinds of things—etiquette or whatever—than I do, Kadota.” In the absence of Kyohei’s guidance, Walker tended to base his decisions on what he imagined would make for the most exciting manga plotlines.

With arms folded in front of his chest, Kyohei’s radiated the aura of a wise big brother character. “This isn’t so much an question of etiquette as it is a personal moral dilemma regarding your friendship with Karisawa. So I’m afraid I can’t tell you what is the right thing to do. All I can offer is my own point of view as a bystander.”

“I still want to hear it.”

“Well,” Kyohei started, a bit slowly, “I think you need to consider carefully the potential risks and consequences of telling her versus not telling her. Which would be worse, a guarantee of mild Karisawa rage or a slim possibility of major Karisawa rage? And if she doesn’t find out, is protecting her from undue stress a good enough justification for your conscience? You need to think beyond immediate outcomes to the long-term effect your decision will have on your friendship.”

It was all very sound advice, just what one would expect from Ikebukuro’s number one good guy, but it failed to deliver the clear-cut easy answer that Walker had been hoping for. In the end, the onus was still his and his alone. “I guess I’ve got a lot to think about,” he said, trying his best not to sound disappointed.

“I’m sorry that I can’t be of more help in this situation, Yumasaki.” Whether or not he’d sensed Walker’s mood, Kyohei’s tone carried genuine regret. “I will say one more thing, though: If you do decide to tell Karisawa what you did with her secret, do it face-to-face rather than electronically, and do it sooner rather than later. It’s nearly midnight now so I wouldn’t expect you to go to her tonight, but tomorrow would be good. That is, if you decide to tell her.”

Walker bobbed his head, taking these tips as seriously as Kyohei had given them. “R-right. I will. I mean, if I do.”

Kyohei placed a hand on Walker’s shoulder, a gesture that Walker would have found infuriatingly patronizing from anyone else. “I have faith in you, Yumasaki. Now I think you’d better go home and I’d better get back to work. Goodnight.”

It felt like a rather abrupt end to the conversation, but Walker replied with, “Okay. Goodnight, Kadota.”

Kyohei started to walk away and as he neared the end of the alley where it connected to the busy main road, he called back to Walker. “Stay out of trouble, okay?” Then, before Walker could respond, he was gone.

For several minutes, Walker stood motionless, as if his feet were screwed to the pavement. Everything that had transpired in this alley, from Rokujo’s entrance to Kyohei’s exit, took on a dreamlike quality in retrospect. Not anime-like or manga-like or light novel-like, because it still felt half-real. His brain was finally letting those pain signals from his body through to be processed and every spot Rokujo had hit either throbbed or twinged—so maybe it was more than half-real.

The strangest part had to have been his talk with Kyohei. There was something decidedly off about the way Kyohei was acting, but Walker had been too inwardly focused to give it any thought at the time. Now he understood what it was. How odd that during the entire course of his lecturing, Kyohei never brought up the actual content of Erika’s big secret for discussion. Walker had thought that once Kyohei was finished upbraiding him, the talk would’ve naturally turned to the fact that their best friend—their Erika—was going to have a baby—a living, breathing, wriggling, barfing little human. But it hadn’t happened. In fact, Kyohei had only uttered the p-word once and he hadn’t mentioned the b-word at all. And then there was that split-second right after he obliquely referenced Erika’s condition when he’d come dangerously close to looking uncool. It was almost as if he was profoundly anxious over the knowledge that Erika was pregnant and was actively trying not to think about it while at the same time maintaining the outward appearance of the unflappable Kyohei Kadota.

Or maybe he just didn’t have time to talk about it before going back to work.

Still, Walker couldn’t help but consider the possibility that Kyohei was just as shaken by the news as he himself was. It would almost certainly please Erika if Kyohei were worried about her, even more so if it came with a bit of envy and resentment towards her one-night lover. Walker knew his best friend’s heart better than she thought he did. He knew that Kyohei’s concern and affection meant something different to her than his did.

Of course, he wouldn’t get to tell her about Kyohei’s barely concealed vexation until after he confessed to blabbermouthery (and fisticuffs as well in order to really tell the story right). That is, if he confessed.

It was the big if.

Walker cast his gaze down the alley in the direction he’d been heading, the route that would take him home. Then he turned to look in the direction from which he’d come, the route that would take him to Erika’s apartment. The clock on his phone read 12:05, just over the threshold of a new day, but Walker knew that she was still awake and would be for a few more hours. Kyohei told him it could wait until tomorrow, but Walker didn’t like to procrastinate, especially when it was a task he dreaded. If he was going to tell her, he was going to do it tonight.

Once he’d made up his mind, his feet started to move and didn’t stop until he’d reached his destination.

Erika tapped the eraser end of her mechanical pencil against a blank white page of her sketchbook, the same blank white page that had been staring at her from her desk for the past ten minutes, daring her to turn the pencil around and alleviate its unbearable emptiness. Conditions were optimal—she’d taken her shower, pulled her hair back into a neat ponytail, and changed into an old high school gym uniform (not her old high school gym uniform, but a comfortably oversized boys uniform from Raijin High)—and the time was right—the dark, quiet hours between 10 PM and 2 AM had always been her zone of peak productivity—but inspiration was elusive tonight.

Ordinarily, she would just start drawing and the mere motion of her hand would act as a catalyst for the creative center in her brain. Brilliant cosplay designs would reveal themselves in curving lines of graphite without need of conscious premeditation. It was a phenomenon that could only be described as magic. But tonight the magic was switched off and the sea of crumpled up paper boulders surrounding her attested to her many failed attempts to reignite it. The problem was that every times she began to limn the shape of a female figure, it came out with a hugely rounded stomach, which was just plain stupid since she wasn’t even trying to design for herself, but for Anri Sonohara.

Erika simply couldn’t concentrate on cosplay right now and there was no point in denying the reason why: she had baby on the brain.

“Why is this only setting in now?” she grumbled to herself, though she already knew the answer. She hadn’t really put much thought into her parting comment to Walker—that his knowing about her pregnancy made it feel more real to her—but she was realizing now just how right she had been. Yeah, getting the doctor’s confirmation that morning might also have been a contributing factor to her sudden increase in prenatal preoccupation, but she’d already known for weeks in her deepest deep-down place that she was knocked up so it wasn’t exactly a revelation.

But now somebody else knew, too. Not just any somebody, either; her oldest and truest friend now knew of the existence of her womb’s tiny tenant and that made it real in an entirely different way.

Before she’d told Walker about it, the pregnancy was real only to her and it was still more of an abstract concept than an incipient human being she’d chosen to bear. The simple act of sharing her secret with her best friend forced her brain to extrapolate into the future. Walker was the first to know, but soon the others would, too. The baby was a growing thing inside of her that would eventually make its presence known to outsiders, whether she told them about it or not. And in a matter of months, this baby would emerge into the world as an actual baby, a person with a mind of its own, separate from her but completely dependent on her.

Her pulse quickened.

For the first time in Erika Karisawa’s life, somebody was going to need her. What if she failed? Considering the upbringing she’d had, failure seemed a likelier outcome than success.

Her breaths grew heavier.

She would have the support of her friends, Walker had assured her, and she believed him. But what if she relied on them too much and became a burden? Her boys were the sorts who would continue to help her out for as long as she asked, purely out of a sense of obligation. That was something she absolutely had to avoid. She couldn’t make them resent her, or worse her baby. This was her baby, her responsibility. She couldn’t put the load on anyone else.

Her face flushed.

At Shinra and Celty’s dinner party, the demands of socialization had been enough to keep these worries at bay, confined to a reservoir of semi-consciousness in the back of her brain. Now she was all alone, unable to achieve distraction. Now the worries dropped into the forefront of her mind one after another, like capsules in a gachapon machine that was being commandeered by a resolute otaku with an endless supply of coins.

Gacha! What if I’m too cold-hearted to be a mother? Gacha! What if I can’t make my child happy? Gacha! What if I make a mistake and my child gets hurt because of it?

On the verge of hyperventilation, she searched the apartment for something reassuring—any material indication of her worthiness as a responsible adult would do—but her darting eyes fell only on counterevidence. A dress form studded with sharp pins. Scissors. Toxic paints and glues. Tiny beads and jagged scraps of metal. Welding torch. X-acto knife. Power drill. An entire shelf filled with R-18 doujinshi. Anime figurines clad in meticulously rendered pointy armor wielding meticulously rendered pointy weapons.

My apartment is the most child unfriendly place in Ikebukuro! Shit!

Just thinking that bit of mild profanity made her slap a hand over her mouth. But her lungs kept pumping fast and furious, chest heaving like bellows, air hissing from her nostrils and over her fingers. Sweat blossomed on her clean skin. Her stomach cramped. Despite how rare they’d become in the past several years, she instantly recognized the start of a panic attack. Desperately, she tried to recall the words of wisdom Walker had bestowed upon her the first time he’d witnessed her having one. How did it go again? Something about control—Start by acknowledging what is happening and realizing that you can control it?

No. No good. Her heart was pounding too hard for her to think straight, reverberating in her ear canals, drowning out her already patchy memory of Walker’s advice.

Tmp-Tmp-Tmp-Tmp-Tmp-Tmp-Tmp-Tmp-Tmp-Tmp—

The beats were coming too fast. Faster than the ratcheting parts of any gachapon machine could produce without jamming. Faster than a human heart could produce without rupturing.

In a sudden burst of mental clarity, her attention snapped down to the mechanical pencil, still clutched in her greasy fingers, eraser end drumming against her sketchbook with the ferocity of a woodpecker on methamphetamine. Here was the source of her impossible tachycardia. She dropped the pencil immediately, gulped in a huge breath as she rubbed her hand dry on the soft cotton of a pair of Raijin High boys gym shorts.

As panic attacks went, this one had been of such a small magnitude that it barely even qualified, but Erika still got the distinct feeling of coming down as her respiration gradually slowed and shallowed. Regardless of the intensity of the attack, it was frightening to have had one at all after so many symptom free years. Worry free years, essentially. So was this a first taste of her new mental state? Was her psyche doomed to fall to pieces because her life was about to get more complicated?

Wise brown eyes gleamed in her memory as a steady, guileless voice spoke: “You have a very strong heart, Karisawa, and that is a treasure far more precious than you realize.”

That’s right, she thought, steeling her resolve. It isn’t just that my circumstances became more stable. I became stronger. When he saved me, I was reborn. He taught me what real strength is. I can handle anything. Even this—

Erika slipped her hand up under the hem of her t-shirt and down into waistband of her shorts, pressed her clammy hand against her flat belly. No changes yet, a reassurance of how much time she still had. Her tenant was no bigger than an edamame bean at this stage—at least according to the in-depth pregnancy website she had perused and then immediately purged from her browser history just to be safe—and an unobtrusive little bean at that, which made it all the more frustrating that she was wasting what might be one of her last peaceful late nights on pointless anxiety. This lack of discomfort wouldn’t go on much longer. Pretty soon bean would start making all kinds of demands of her: “Take a nap! Eat this! Changed my mind, puke it up! Take another nap! Scream at Yumacchi! Cry for no reason at all!”

Grinning, she slouched in her chair as her hand rubbed soft circles on her tummy. Imagining a bossy voice for her unborn baby made her feel a great upwelling of affection for it. She wanted this baby so badly and she didn’t care what kind of personality it had.

Who are you going to be, little human bean? Are you going to take after me? Cunning, passionate, creative? Or will you be more like—

Bin-bon!

Her belly-directed thoughts were interrupted by the chime of her doorbell, a sound so crisp and so sudden that it made her bolt upright with a gasp.

“Coming!” she called out as she sprang up from the chair. There was only one person in the world who would show up at her apartment after midnight, so the only mystery was whether he’d come to talk some more about their exchange on the balcony or just to watch anime together and put it behind them. Erika didn’t care either way; she was grateful just to have his unexpected presence right when she needed it.

“Hey, Yumacchi,” she greeted as she opened the door, but her cheery smile turned to blinking surprise when saw her visitor’s handsome face—not that Walker’s face wasn’t attractive, she just always considered him more on the cute side, especially compared to the guy she was looking at now. “Dotachin? What’re you doing here? Shouldn’t you be at work?”

Giving Kyohei a very quick head-to-toe, Erika realized that he must have come straight from his jobsite because he was still in his stained workman’s coveralls. Had he run here? His face was glazed in perspiration but strangely pale. Icicle talons raked her chest—something was very wrong. Reflexively, her brain regurgitated a vivid memory of a phone call, Mr. Kadota’s voice barely holding its shape as he told her that Kyohei had been struck by a car. Her heart leapt up into her throat and accelerated back towards its previous gallop.

“What happened?” She asked, grabbing the front of Kyohei’s coveralls with both fists. “Is somebody hurt? It’s Yumacchi, isn’t it? That’s why you came to me first, isn’t it?”

“Huh?” Kyohei regarded her distress with a stunned expression. “Yumasaki isn’t hurt.” Relieved, she let go of his clothing and he continued. “Well, I suppose that’s not really accurate. He’s hurt, but it’s nothing serious. Just a few bumps and bruises. Chikage got it far worse.” And before she could interject, he hastily added, “But he’ll be fine, too. They got into a fight. Or, more precisely, Yumasaki attacked Chikage.”

Erika sighed, her tensed back and shoulders slackening. It was a serious situation, but at least nobody’s life was in imminent danger. Yet. Tonight was certainly turning into an emotional rollercoaster; she hoped all the rapid changes in her heart rate didn’t have any negative effect on the baby.

“May I come in?” Kyohei asked.

“Right, of course,” Erika answered, gesturing him into her apartment. “This isn’t a conversation we want to have in the hallway.”

It wasn’t a conversation she wanted to have at all, but if Walker was in trouble it categorically concerned her. Walker belonged to her in a way that he didn’t belong to Kyohei and Saburo. He’d been attached to her since before they all coalesced into a foursome, and their shared history and shared obsessions ensured that they would always be considered a matched set. Though they lived their lives under the umbrella of Kyohei’s guardianship, Erika was, in a sense, Walker’s keeper, and he was hers.

While Kyohei was taking off his boots, she hastily gathered up the paper snowballs that were scattered about the floor and deposited them into her recycling bin. She wasn’t ashamed of a little mess, but if Kyohei were to uncrumple one of those discarded sketchbook pages and find doodles upon doodles pregnant women, it would no doubt raise some questions in his mind, even if he was too polite to ask them. There was nothing else in the apartment that might advertise her condition, but Kyohei’s presence in her home made her self-conscious and excited in a way that Walker or Anri or her cosplay friends would not. He was a rare guest—so rare that she couldn’t actually remember the last time he’d set foot inside her apartment. The way his eyes roamed over the environment, drinking in every detail like he was seeing it for the first time, bespoke of a long absence.

“I see you’ve still got the complete series of Zettai Ronin Yukimaru in tankobon,” he said, scrutinizing the contents of one of her many, many bookshelves.

Heat seeped into Erika’s face, but she responded coolly. “Are you kidding? I’m never getting rid of those. That series is too important.” Kyohei already knew that much, but she wasn’t sure if he had even an inkling of just how deeply important Yukimaru was to her, or that he was half the reason why. As for the other half, only Walker knew.

Kyohei nodded. “No arguments on that front. I just thought you’d have upgraded to the bunkobon version by now.”

“I have both sets, of course. Plus the three character books, two color illustration books, and the special anniversary fan book.” A proud little grin played on Erika’s mouth when she shared this and then quickly disappeared when Kyohei’s pensive, unsmiling mien reminded her why he had come. “That Yumacchi,” she sighed. “Not to intentionally delay things, but I think this is a conversation that will require liquid refreshment. I’ll grab us some tea. Make yourself comfortable wherever, Dotachin.”

Her apartment was furbished with amble seating to accommodate meetings of her cosplay group, but she had a feeling he would choose the two-seater sofa rather than one of the cushions or zaisu. She turned her back on the scene, stepped lightly on bare feet to the refrigerator, expecting to hear the telltale sound of foam and old springs compressing under an exhausted body. Instead, silence. Not an empty silence, but an occupied silence, a silence filled with Kyohei’s cloudy aura behind her—she could feel him staring at her.

Swiveling around, she flashed him a playfully accusatory look. “What? Don’t tell me you have a thing for ponytails like Kyon, Dotachin.”

Kyohei, who had indeed been staring, responded with an inaudible sigh that seemed to say, “I wish I didn’t get that reference, but thanks to you I do.” What he actually said next was, “It’s not your hair that I was ogling, it’s your attire. Is that my high school gym uniform?”

“Yeah,” she said, blinking guiltlessly down at the Raijin High School crest emblazoned on her chest. “I always sleep in old clothes swiped from you or Yumacchi. I’ve tried to poach something from Togusacchi—you know, just to have everyone represented—but he’s oddly protective of his wardrobe. His stuff would probably be too tight in the chest anyway.” She paused for a moment, brow furrowing. “I’ll give it back if you want.” Then she grabbed the bottom hem of the oversized shirt with both hands and began to lift, having absolutely no intention of actually taking it off because she knew Kyohei wouldn’t let it get that far.

“Keep it!” Kyohei stammered. His mouth was arranged in a sharp frown, but his cheeks were tinged the delicate pink of a cherry blossom. At moments like this, his cuteness surpassed Walker’s, hands down.

Erika’s gut clenched when she thought of Walker, reminding her once again that this was no time for lighthearted teasing. The gravity of the situation wrapped around her like a wet, heavy shroud and for reasons unfathomable her hand itched to touch her belly. Reassuringly? Protectively? She fought back hard against the urge, a task made more difficult by the fact that Kyohei’s eyes were still aimed at her previously exposed navel. It was still too early for the baby to move around, but she imagined it squirming inside her, revealed by his x-ray gaze.

“Go sit, Dotachin,” she commanded. “I will bring you tea.” Doglike, he did as he was told without objection and she turned back to the refrigerator. The only thing she had on hand besides tap water was a big bottle of Ito-En oolong, but that would do just fine as both she and Kyohei were unfussy when it came to beverages. From the cupboard she retrieved two etched glass tumblers that she’d won in an Animage giveaway and poured out roughly equal portions of the golden liquid. Then she homed in on the side-by-side menisci as she added minute increments to each to make them exactly even. As she said, though, not to intentionally delay things.

“Tiger or Bunny?” she asked Kyohei once she’d finally achieved perfect equilibrium and (with tiny, deliberate steps) carried the drinks over to the sofa where he sat.

It took a second for the question to penetrate his distracted, blurry state and illicit and answer. “I’ll just take whichever one you don’t want.”

Erika handed him the tumbler with Kotetsu on it, not because she favored Barnaby, but because she thought the veteran hero suited Kyohei more than the flashy rookie. Then, clutching her own glass in both hands, she sank down onto the sofa besides him. Her elbow bumped against his and since he’d rolled up the sleeves of his coveralls it was direct skin-to-skin contact, which made the hairs on her arm prick up keenly. She wanted to turn and look at him, to reach with her eyes for the feelings of safety and acceptance that his prepossessing face instilled in her, but she was afraid that it would only make this conversation more difficult.

“So Yumacchi is fighting with our allies,” she said ruefully then took a slurp of tea and let her brain cartwheel as she waited for Kyohei to give her the full story.

One small spot of solace that she could cling to was her steadfast belief that Kyohei would never kick Walker out of their group. Kyohei genuinely liked Walker—weirdness and all—and Walker genuinely liked—and revered—Kyohei in return. But, as Erika knew better than anyone else, Walker was a volatile element. He wasn’t evil, or even bad. He knew the difference between right and wrong and he earnestly did what he thought was right; it was his methodology that was questionable. Erika understood because the moral landscape of her own psyche was just as warped. The major difference between the two of them was that over the years she’d managed to cultivate better control over her sadistic impulses.

Perhaps the saddest part in all of this was that Walker had been doing so well at staying out of trouble for the past year or so. The new era of non-aggression that had fallen over Ikebukuro extended beyond the gang leaders and major players, like Shizuo and Mikado and Anri, to those on the fringes, like their little wagon-based faction of the Dollars, and Walker appeared as grateful as the rest of them for the peace. That is, he didn’t act like he was squirmish for a skirmish. So what could’ve set him off tonight? He couldn’t have been so upset by the news of her pregnancy that he would go around picking fights, right? Even he wasn’t that hotheaded. But even if that were the case, Erika would not let herself think that his actions were her fault.

And why, of all people, had it been Rokujo Chikage that Walker attacked?

Again, she felt that itch to put a hand on her belly, stronger this time and more distinctly protective. At some point in the last thirty seconds, a dark sense of foreboding had enveloped her like storm clouds blackening a pale gray sky.

Finally, Kyohei spoke. “Yeah.”

Erika waited another half-minute before determining that he wasn’t going to volunteer more and asked, “So what happened? I mean, how bad is the damage and what kind of fallout are we looking at from Toramaru?”

“Well—” he began slowly, too slowly for Erika’s rapidly swelling unease; she set her glass on the coffee table and rounded on him.

“What’s going to happen to Yumacchi? Out with it already!”

Kyohei flinched. His face was still drawn and pallid.

Sheepishly, Erika shrank back down in her seat. “Sorry,” she mumbled, picking her glass back up and fixing her eyes on it. “I’m a little edgy tonight.”

“I can see that,” said Kyohei. “But I can at least ease your mind about Yumasaki. Chikage texted me in the midst of the attack so I was able to break it up before it got out of hand. I talked to him afterwards and I don’t think he or Toramaru will hold a grudge.”

“Oh,” said Erika, a perfectly round sound. “So then—” She was about to ask him why he’d rushed straight to her apartment if there wasn’t an emergency when he interrupted.

“Yumasaki found out about that date you went on with Chikage. I’m pretty sure it was just a coincidence that their paths crossed tonight, but somehow that story came out.”

“Are you saying that’s why Yumacchi assaulted Rochi? A ruined dress, some shattered crystal, and publicly exposed underwear?” It was almost too stupid to be believed and her incredulity came through in her tone. But buried under that incredulity was fear and when she saw ripples on the surface of her tea, she realized she was shaking with it.

He knows! He knows! He knows! Inner Erika taunted.

“Not exactly.” There was a barely detectable rattled quality to Kyohei’s voice. “It wasn’t the date itself that triggered Yumasaki, but a misunderstanding about it.” Long, long, painfully long pause, and then, “Somehow he got the idea that Chikage had gotten you pregnant, Karisawa.”

Ice water replaced her warm bodily fluids in spite of Inner Erika’s warning. She couldn’t coax her lumpen tongue to speak. She couldn’t even manage a phony laugh—something she usually excelled at—to indicate how ridiculous Walker’s gaffe was. So she took another slow gulp of tea.

As the liquid slid down her throat, Kyohei asked, sotto voce, “So is it true, Karisawa? Are you—?”

He couldn’t say the word so Erika swallowed, put down her glass, and said it for him. “Pregnant?” This was the real reason he had come, to hear the answer to this question. It wouldn’t be fair of her to deny it now only to redact that denial in a few weeks so she told the truth. “Yeah. Blood test and everything.”

Without turning to look at him, she listened to the sounds of Kyohei pulling off his bandana and raking his fingers through his hair, shuddery inhales and exhales she could tell he was trying to keep steady. It took a while for him to speak and when he did the words came in stops and starts, so unlike him. “I, uh—I think you know—what I’m—uh, what I’m going to ask—you next, Karisawa. Is it—?”

He probably could’ve finished this time, but his faltering discomfort prompted Erika to intervene. “Yes,” she said plainly. “I do know what you’re going to ask me next. And the answer is yes. It’s definitely yours, Dotachin.” The definitely may have been a bit forceful, but she couldn’t bear to hear him ask her if she was sure.

For a good long stretch Kyohei made no sound and didn’t move, just sat there radiating tension like a livewire. And Erika let him because she imagined it was the sort of news a man had to digest very thoroughly. But after a certain amount of waiting, she decided he needed a poke. “Dotachin?” she said, turning her body towards his. “You okay?”

“What? Yeah. No, I’m fine.” He looked and sounded like someone who’d just been returned to Earth by his alien abductors. “I suppose there is a lesson about respecting the expiration dates on condoms to be found in all this.” It was probably meant as a joke, but his complete lack of amusement killed it. He showed no trace of anger or disbelief, but then he must have had his suspicions or he wouldn’t have come to ask her directly.

“This isn’t how I wanted you to find out,” said Erika, though she hoped that much was obvious. “I didn’t really want to tell Yumacchi yet, either, to be honest, but, well, shit happens.” She thought on that expression briefly and found it strangely apt for just about every event in this chain. Shit happens. Oh boy does it ever.

“So now what?” Kyohei asked. He’d regained his composure and for the first time since he’d arrived he was looking her dead in the eyes. “Are you going to—” He started down a potentially fraught path but quickly course-corrected. “What’s the next step?”

Because she was free to do so now, Erika placed a curved hand over the lower half of her belly. What she had to say made the center of her chest ache and the corners of her eyes burn, but when she looked down at her stomach, even though it bore no hints of what was inside, she couldn’t repress a tender smile. “I’m going to have a baby,” she said. I, not we, she made it very clear.

“Okay,” said Kyohei slowly, nodding his head. “And what would you have from me?”

She forced a smile onto her face to stop the tears that were forming in her eyes. Kyohei Kadota was so good, so kind, so responsible. He had already given her so much. He’d saved her from a life of ruin, plucked her from the darkest pit and made a place for her in his inner circle, and done the same for the best friend she couldn’t live without. He never tried to make her change who she was, inside or out, but just being around him made her want to be the best version of herself: brilliant and dangerous, but also brave and loyal and open-hearted. He made her feel like she could be that Erika. And even though it hadn’t been on purpose, he’d given her half the DNA for her precious little human bean.

So how could she possibly ask him for anything more?

“Nothing,” she answered him. “I don’t need anything from you, Dotachin.” She swallowed, dry and unsatisfying, and added, “I don’t want anything from you.”

Liar! Liar! Liar! Inner Erika accused. You want everything from him! And now’s your chance to claim it!

“Nothing?” he said in a frail, tinny voice.

The hollow expression on Kyohei’s face was one that Erika had never seen and resisted precise translation. Maybe he felt wounded by her refusal, but more likely it was just a benumbed shock. There might have been a touch of relief in there as well, which he was fighting hard to keep from outwardly showing. And whether he wore it on his features or not, she knew he was experiencing guilt, because that was the kind of person he was.

A ribbon of sigh unspooled from Erika’s mouth. “It’s okay, Dotachin. I’m not going to hold you responsible for defunct condoms, even if you did purchase them around the time of the Nagano Olympics. You didn’t choose to get me pregnant. But I am choosing to stay pregnant and I’m choosing to have this baby. I will take care of it. So please, just keep on treating me the way you always have. That is what I want from you.”

Kyohei dropped his face into his hands, scrubbed his eyes with the balls of his thumbs. Then he lifted his head, looked in her eyes again, and asked, “Are you sure?”

She had to turn her face away to escape his spotlight gaze. “It’s after one, Dotachin,” she said. “And I’m tired. Do you think would could talk about this some other time?”

He opened his mouth and then closed it without speaking. She knew he wouldn’t keep a pregnant woman up all night, but she really was tired—emotionally exhausted might be a better way to put it—so it wasn’t really an act of manipulation. It was merely cowardice.

“Tomorrow?” he asked.

“Maybe,” she answered, still looking askance.

“But we will talk more about this.” It was halfway between a question and a declaration.

She bobbed her head twice. “We will. I promise.”

Moving with android-like detachment, Kyohei stood, set down his empty glass, shoved his bandana into the pocket of his coveralls. All the while his eyes remained beseechingly on Erika, as if he were waiting for some closing statement from her. When he figured out that none was coming he said, “I guess this is goodnight then, Karisawa.” Then he patted her on the top of the head and went to put on his shoes.

The warmth of his hand against her hair had made her heart miss a beat and she wished it could have stayed there longer—ideally, until the sun rose in the morning sky and they woke up together, but she’d be happy for just an extra minute or two. But mere friends didn’t let their touches linger, even if they had spent one night together six weeks ago. “Goodnight, Dotachin,” she said. “Take care of yourself.”

“You too,” he said as he opened the door. He had one foot over the threshold when he stopped and turned to her as if he’d forgotten something. “By the way, Yumasaki will probably come to you first thing in the morning to beg forgiveness for divulging your secret. Please don’t be too hard on him, Karisawa. He feels genuinely rotten about it.”

Erika nodded. “Okay.”

Then Kyohei left and she was, with the exception of her uncommunicative little tenant, alone. She washed out her Kotetsu and Barnaby tumblers and set them on the drying mat by the sink. She brushed and flossed her teeth and splashed cold water on her face to rinse of the film of sweat leftover from her mini panic attack. She took a multivitamin with extra calcium and folic acid. Finally, she peeled back the corner of her comforter and burrowed into her cozy nest of a bed. Sleep would not come easily, she predicted, so she grabbed her phone off her nightstand to check her messages and Twitter feed. There was just one message, from Walker, and he’d marked it as urgent.

KARISAWA I NEED TO TALK TO YOU AS EARLY AS POSSIBLE TOMORROW! NOBODY IS IN DANGER. NO GASTREA OR UNDERTAKER OR ILL-INTENTIONED VISITORS FROM THE DEMON REALM, I PROMISE. BUT I DID KIND OF MESS SOMETHING UP AND I WANT YOU TO HEAR ABOUT FIRST FROM ME. IN PERSON. ANIMATE & TORA NO ANA AFTERWARDS.

Though she could’ve left it until morning, Erika promptly wrote Walker a response telling him to meet her at ten at a certain cross-dressing butler café, and after sending the message on its merry way, she turned off the phone, turned off the light, and pulled the comforter up over her head. Trumping her prediction, sleep found her within minutes.