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CRAVINGS WILL BE RESPECTED
A Story About Appetite, Power, and the Repeated Decision to Simply Comply and Live
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The thing about Shinobu Kochou's pregnancy was that it was going spectacularly.
Not for anyone else. For anyone else in her immediate orbit - specifically one Tomioka Giyuu, cardiologist, husband, man of considerable composure that was being tested daily - it was going like a natural disaster that had decided to be beautiful about it.
For Shinobu personally?
Fantastic. Wonderful. The best she'd looked in years, possibly ever, and she knew it with the serene confidence of a woman who had checked the mirror that morning and simply nodded at her own reflection like yes, correct, as expected.
Month five.
Twenty-two weeks.
The bump was present, rounded, and had been incorporated into Shinobu's wardrobe strategy with the same ruthless aesthetic consideration she applied to everything else, meaning she had gone shopping approximately six times in the past two months and had acquired maternity clothes that cost more than most people's rent and looked like editorial spreads rather than accommodations.
She was not going to be an unflattering pregnant woman.
She had made this decision early and she was executing it perfectly.
She stood in front of the mirror on a Thursday morning in a deep plum wrap dress that hit mid-calf, silk, fitted everywhere it needed to be and draped beautifully everywhere else, and she looked at herself and thought: devastating.
She was devastatingly pregnant.
The glow people talked about? She had it. Aggressively. Her skin was doing something luminous and infuriating and she was leaning into it completely. Her hair was longer, somehow, shinier, the kind of shine that pregnancy produced in certain women who had apparently won some biological lottery, and she had won it.
She looked at her stomach in the mirror.
The stomach where, as of this morning's appointment, Giichiro Kochou-Tomioka was currently existing with apparent enthusiasm.
She put a hand on it.
"You are making me look extraordinary," she told the bump. "I'm choosing to see this as a gift."
The bump did not respond, but she felt a small movement, which she was choosing to interpret as agreement.
She was already having a good morning.
Then she stepped on the scale.
She looked at the number.
She looked at it for a long time.
"No," she said.
The scale said nothing.
"Absolutely not," she said.
The scale continued to say the same number.
She stepped off it. She stepped back on it. In case the first reading had been wrong, which it had not been, but she was going to check.
Same number.
She stood there in her plum wrap dress and did the arithmetic and came to the clinical conclusion that she had, over the past month, gained a quantity of weight that was completely appropriate for fetal development and maternal health and that her obstetrician had specifically said was ideal.
She went downstairs and ate a full breakfast anyway.
Giyuu was at the kitchen island with his tea, reading something medical, and he looked up when she came in.
He did the thing he did.
The thing where he looked at her and his expression did its very small, very warm shift, the one that meant she'd registered and she'd registered as good, which had happened reliably since month two of their marriage and had escalated significantly since month five of her pregnancy, and she had catalogued every instance.
"You look-" he started.
"I know," she said.
She sat down at the island and pulled the fruit bowl toward her and started eating.
"I gained a kilogram," she said.
He said nothing.
"That's a lot," she said.
"It's appropriate."
"It's a kilogram."
"You're growing a person," he said.
"I'm aware of what I'm doing, I designed the process." She ate more fruit. "My obstetrician said it was ideal."
"It is."
"I know." She ate a piece of mango. "I just want to be acknowledged."
He looked at her.
"One kilogram," she said. "That's a lot."
"You look extraordinary," he said.
She pointed at him. "That's the correct response. Continue."
He went back to his reading.
She made herself coffee - decaf, which was an ongoing grievance she had with the situation, real coffee being one of the things she'd modified, and she was managing it with the dignity of someone who had accepted a sacrifice and wanted occasional recognition for it.
She drank the decaf and ate the fruit and then looked at the stove.
"I want mapo tofu," she said.
Giyuu looked up from his reading.
"It's eight AM," he said.
"I'm aware of the time."
"Mapo tofu is not a breakfast food."
"I'm pregnant," she said. "The concept of breakfast foods has been suspended."
He looked at her.
She looked back.
She was aware this was a lot to ask. She was aware that mapo tofu at eight in the morning was, by most reasonable standards, a request that should not be made. She was aware that any sensible person would suggest something else, something more morning-appropriate, something that didn't involve a full spice-forward preparation before nine AM.
She was also aware that Giyuu was going to make it.
He closed his book.
He went to the kitchen.
She watched him pull ingredients out of the refrigerator at eight in the morning with the equanimity of a man who had made peace with where his life had gone, and she felt the specific warm smugness of someone who had married correctly.
"You're a very good husband," she said.
"Mm," he said.
"Most men would not make mapo tofu at eight AM."
"Most men are not married to you."
She tilted her head. "Was that a complaint?"
He started cooking. "No."
She smiled into her decaf.
The mapo tofu was, as always, extraordinary. He made it properly - spicy, which was what she needed, the real numbing-pepper situation that she'd been specifically craving all week, not the adapted version, the full thing. Her obstetrician had said mild spice was fine. Shinobu had interpreted this liberally and Giyuu had made his peace with providing it.
She ate two bowls.
She ate two bowls of mapo tofu at eight-fifty in the morning and she had no regrets and Giyuu ate his regular breakfast beside her and read his article and occasionally checked the expression on her face with the peripheral attentiveness of a man monitoring a situation he'd accepted.
"Another bowl?" he asked, when she'd clearly finished the second but was looking at the pot.
"No," she said.
A pause.
"Maybe a small one," she said.
He served her a small one.
She ate it.
She put the spoon down and looked at him.
"I'm going to be a very good mother," she said.
He looked at her. "You are," he said, with the direct simplicity of a statement he'd already decided.
She blinked.
She had not fully prepared for that and it landed with the specific warmth of something true said without decoration, and she looked at her bowl and said "obviously" in a voice that was slightly less composed than she'd intended.
He went back to his article.
She finished her third bowl and thought about the kilogram.
She had absolutely no regrets.
Later that morning she was in the living room.
She was watching something.
Specifically, she was watching a true crime documentary about a series of murders that had occurred in rural Germany in the nineties, which was excellently produced and extremely specific about the forensic evidence, and she was watching it with the focused attention of someone who was genuinely entertained.
She had a bowl of ice cream.
Mango sorbet. She'd specifically requested that Giyuu make it from actual mangoes, not packaged, and he had, because he was Giyuu and she had asked, and it was perfect.
She ate the mango sorbet and watched the German forensic pathologist describe the state of the crime scene in detail.
Giyuu came into the living room.
He looked at the television.
He looked at it for a moment with the expression of a man taking stock of a situation.
The documentary was currently showing evidence photographs.
"What are you watching," he said.
"True crime," she said. "German. Very good."
He looked at the screen.
The forensic pathologist was being very thorough.
"You're-" he looked at her bowl, "-eating ice cream."
"Mango sorbet," she corrected.
"While watching-"
"It's educational," she said. "Forensic pathology is adjacent to my field."
"You're a neurologist."
"Neurology and forensic pathology have significant overlap."
He looked at the screen again.
The documentary had moved to a dramatic re-enactment.
"Are you comfortable with-" he started.
"I love this episode," she said. "Sit down if you want."
He did not sit down.
He stood behind the sofa and watched approximately forty-five seconds of the re-enactment with the expression of a man reconsidering several things.
"You're pregnant," he said.
"I'm aware."
"You're watching-"
"Giyuu." She looked up at him. "I did my residency. I have seen things that would make this documentary look like a nature program. Sit down."
He sat down.
He lasted six minutes.
"I'm going to get tea," he said.
"You already have tea," she said, pointing at his mug on the coffee table.
"More tea," he said.
He went to the kitchen.
She watched him go with the expression of someone who had identified what was happening and found it extremely funny.
"It gets worse in the third act," she called after him.
A pause from the kitchen.
"Great," he said, in the tone of someone for whom this was not great.
She turned back to the documentary with the smile of a woman who was completely at peace with her viewing choices and the chaos they produced.
The documentary did get worse in the third act.
Giyuu returned with his tea and lasted another four minutes before he picked up a book and held it at an angle that was very suspicious given the direction he was facing.
"You're using the book as a visual barrier," she said.
"I'm reading."
"You haven't turned a page in seven minutes."
A pause.
"It's a dense passage," he said.
She looked at him with the full warmth of a woman who had married a man who was mildly disturbed by her crime documentaries and was too composed to say so directly, and she thought: I love him so much it's almost a problem.
She didn't say this.
She said: "Do you want me to turn it off?"
He looked at her.
"No," he said.
"You're scared," she said.
"I'm not scared."
"Of a documentary."
"I'm not-" he put the book down, "-I'm not scared. I'm concerned about the content relative to your-"
"Relative to my what."
He gestured at her stomach.
She looked at her stomach. She looked at him.
"The baby," she said, "cannot watch television yet."
"Studies on prenatal sensory-"
"Giyuu." She reached over and put a hand on his arm. "Giichiro is going to be fine. He's going to be perfectly well-adjusted. He will have no knowledge of this documentary." She paused. "He might be a forensic pathologist. We don't know."
Giyuu looked at her hand on his arm.
He looked at the screen.
"Can we watch something else," he said.
"After this episode," she said.
He picked up the book again.
He didn't read it.
But he stayed.
She ate the rest of her mango sorbet and finished the episode and was satisfied, and the next thing she put on was a different documentary, this one about a cold case in the Pacific Northwest.
Giyuu looked at the title card.
"Shinobu," he said.
"This one is less graphic," she said. "Primarily investigative."
He looked at her.
"Primarily," she repeated.
He put the book down properly this time and looked at the screen with the resigned composure of a man who had chosen his battles and this was not the one.
This was marriage, specifically her marriage, and he had made his peace.
The afternoon arrived and with it the specific category of event that had been occurring with increasing frequency since approximately month four.
Shinobu had a craving.
Not a mild craving. Not a this sounds nice craving. A full, specific, non-negotiable craving with complete details attached.
She wanted spicy Korean rice cakes, the specific kind, made with a gochujang sauce that was homemade, not packaged, with fish cake and vegetables and the exact texture that came from being made correctly and not approximately.
She wanted them now.
It was three in the afternoon.
She went to find Giyuu.
He was in his study. Reading patient notes, which was actual work, which she was absolutely going to interrupt.
She came in.
She looked at him at his desk.
He was in a loose dark sweater and his reading glasses - she had significant feelings about the reading glasses that she never acknowledged verbally and that he had definitely noticed - and he looked up when she came in.
"Hi," she said.
"Hi," he said.
He waited, because after seventeen months of marriage he had developed the specific awareness that he delivered in this particular tone was a prelude.
She went to his chair.
She positioned herself in his lap.
This was a process that required coordination at five months pregnant, executed with the focused determination of a woman who had decided where she was going and got there. She arranged herself - his arms coming around her automatically, which they always did, which she counted on, which she was using - and put her arms around his neck.
She looked at him.
He looked at her.
"Hi," she said again.
"You said that," he said.
"I'm creating atmosphere," she said.
He waited.
She shifted slightly in his lap, getting comfortable, and felt him adjust to accommodate her with the automatic ease of someone who had done this many times and had a system. She looked at his face - at those eyes that were still, seventeen months in, the specific shade of blue that she'd describe as unfair if pressed - and she smiled.
Not the sharp one. Not the performed one.
The other one. The one that was just warmth, that she had spent the first four months of this marriage carefully rationing and now dispensed more freely because rationing it had turned out to serve no one.
She took his hand from around her waist.
She guided it to her stomach.
He went still in the specific way he went still when this happened - not rigid, not tense, just completely present, all of his attention arriving in the same place at once, and his hand was warm and large against the bump and she watched his face do the thing it did when he was feeling something he wasn't going to describe.
She'd catalogued this face. The way it went quiet and soft simultaneously. The way his eyes dropped briefly to where his hand was and then came back to hers.
She loved him so much it was almost medically concerning.
"I want tteok-bokki," she said.
He looked at her.
"Homemade," she added. "Gochujang. Proper. With fish cake."
A pause.
"It's three PM," he said.
"I know."
"You had mapo tofu at eight AM."
"That was breakfast." She tilted her head. "This is a snack."
He looked at her.
She held his gaze and pressed a soft kiss to the corner of his jaw.
Then his cheek.
He exhaled, which was his version of several responses she'd learned to decode.
"You're doing the thing," he said.
"What thing," she said, pressing another kiss to the side of his neck.
"The thing where you-" he stopped because she was cradling his jaw now, which she'd learned was specific and effective, "-Shinobu."
"Giyuu," she said sweetly.
He looked at the ceiling for approximately three seconds.
"I'll make the tteok-bokki," he said.
"I love you," she said, immediately.
"I know," he said.
"You're the best husband," she said. "The best one available. I chose correctly."
He looked at her with the very faint expression that was his version of you chose the only one. He didn't say it. He didn't have to.
She got off his lap with the same determined coordination of arrival and went to the kitchen to supervise, which was what she called watching him cook while eating whatever was accessible.
He made the tteok-bokki.
He made it properly, from scratch, with real gochujang and the right ratio of sweet to heat and the fish cake cut correctly, and when he put the plate in front of her at three-fifteen in the afternoon on a Thursday, she ate it with the focus of someone receiving something they had specifically required.
It was perfect.
Of course it was perfect.
"You're unbelievable," she told him.
"The rice cake or me?"
"Both." She ate another piece. "Mostly you. The rice cake is also good."
He sat across from her with tea and watched her eat with the expression he'd developed for this specific activity, which was the intersection of pleased and quietly satisfied and something else she didn't have a word for but that made her want to put her face against his neck and stay there.
She didn't do that.
She ate her tteok-bokki.
"I've been thinking," she said.
"About what."
"The plan," she said.
He waited.
"This one," she gestured at the bump, "and then one more. Then IUD." She ate another rice cake. "Two kids. That's the correct number."
He was quiet for a moment.
"You've decided," he said.
"I've decided."
"When did you decide?"
"Month four," she said. "I thought about it and two is correct. Enough to be interesting, not so many that the chaos becomes unmanageable."
"The chaos," he said.
"Of having children."
"You're watching documentary evidence of violent crimes for entertainment while pregnant," he said. "The chaos is already a baseline."
She pointed at him. "That's different. That's my chaos. Children add a separate chaos."
"I see the distinction."
"You support the distinction."
A pause.
"Two kids," he said, like he was testing the weight of it.
"Two kids," she confirmed. "Giichiro first. He'll be wonderful. Then one more. Then we're done and I will be very thin again and I will wear every piece of clothing I've been planning-"
"You've been planning clothing."
"For post-second-pregnancy. I have a whole list."
He looked at her.
She looked back with the serenity of someone whose internal planning horizons extended three to five years out and who saw nothing unusual about this.
"You're already planning your post-second-pregnancy wardrobe," he said.
"Preparation is-"
"You're five months into your first pregnancy."
"Which is why it's the perfect time to plan," she said. "I have context now. I know what works. I've learned things."
He looked at the ceiling.
"Two kids," he said again.
"And then I want my body back," she said. "Fully. With the IUD. And we will have had two beautiful children and I will look extraordinary and we will be very happy."
"We're already happy," he said.
She blinked.
This kept happening. He kept saying things like that, direct and without ceremony, and she kept being caught off guard by them despite seventeen months of empirical evidence that he did this regularly.
"Yes," she said, after a moment. "We are."
She ate the last rice cake.
She looked at the plate.
She looked at the pot.
"Is there-"
"Yes," he said, and refilled her plate before she'd finished the question.
She looked at the refilled plate.
She looked at him.
"I gained a kilogram this month," she said.
"I know," he said.
"That's a lot."
"It's appropriate."
"You have to say that."
"I mean it," he said.
She ate the second plate.
She had absolutely no regrets.
The next crisis of the day arrived at approximately ten-thirty PM.
They were in bed. Giyuu was reading - his current philosophical text, which he read with the patient thoroughness of someone extracting real meaning rather than completing a task. Shinobu had been reading her own book, a forensic thriller that she'd described to Giyuu as very gripping and that he'd looked at the back cover of with an expression of controlled reaction.
But she wasn't reading anymore.
She was thinking about tom yum.
Not generic tom yum. Specific tom yum. Her obstetrician had mentioned Thai food being generally compatible with her pregnancy and her brain had taken this and sprinted with it, and now she could think of nothing except a very specific bowl of tom yum soup made with real lemongrass and kaffir lime leaves and galangal.
She looked at the time.
Ten thirty-two PM.
She looked at Giyuu.
He was reading.
He was reading philosophy at ten-thirty PM, which was very him, unaware that he was approximately thirty seconds from being requisitioned.
She put her book down.
She shifted.
She arrived in his lap with the determination that had gotten her tteok-bokki at three PM and would get her what she currently needed.
He lowered his book by approximately an inch.
"Shinobu," he said.
"Hi," she said.
"It's ten-thirty."
"I know."
"You just ate two hours ago."
"That was dinner," she said. "This is a craving. Separate category."
She settled against him. She was aware she was using her situation - the bump, the glow, the fact that he was constitutionally unable to tell her no when she was looking at him like this - and she was at absolute peace with this.
She took his hand and placed it on the bump.
She felt him immediately shift to that still, attentive quality.
She looked at him.
He looked at her.
"Tom yum," she said softly.
A long pause.
"Tom yum," he said.
"Real lemongrass. Kaffir lime. Not packaged. Prawns."
He looked at her with the expression of a man who was going to make tom yum at ten-thirty PM and had already decided this and was simply completing the process of arriving at that decision visibly.
"You're doing the thing again," he said.
"What thing," she said, pressing a kiss to his cheek.
"The-" she kissed the other cheek, "-the lap thing."
"I just wanted to be close to you," she said, which was true, which was the thing that was always also true underneath the strategic maneuvering, and he looked at her and saw it, because he always saw it.
"Tom yum," he said.
"Please," she said.
He moved her gently, stood up, and went to the kitchen.
At ten-thirty at night.
To make tom yum from scratch.
Shinobu sat in the bed and listened to the sounds of him moving in the kitchen below, the particular sounds she knew, and she put her hand on her stomach and said, quietly, to Giichiro: "Your father is making me soup at eleven PM. You should know who you're dealing with."
A small movement.
She smiled.
She was going to be a very good mother.
She was going to be a smug, gorgeous, crime-documentary-watching, Lamborghini-driving, exceptionally well-fed mother, and she had already decided that Giichiro was going to be wonderful, and she was going to be wonderful, and Giyuu was going to make soup at unreasonable hours for the foreseeable future and she was going to let him.
The soup arrived minutes later.
It was perfect.
She ate it sitting cross-legged in bed with the bowl in her lap, and it was exactly what she'd wanted - the lemongrass bright and real, the heat building properly, the prawns done exactly right - and she ate the whole thing and handed the empty bowl back to Giyuu who took it with the equanimity of a man who had made peace with his existence.
"You're extraordinary," she told him.
"Mm," he said.
"I mean it."
"I know you do," he said, taking the bowl back to the kitchen.
She lay back against the pillows and thought about this for a moment.
About Giyuu making her mapo tofu at eight AM and tteok-bokki at three PM and tom yum at ten-thirty PM, all on the same day, all without significant complaint, all with the focused patient care of someone who took this is what she needs and converted it directly to I will provide it.
About the way he'd looked at her in the mirror that morning without knowing she'd caught him.
About his hand on the bump and the specific quality of stillness he had in those moments, like the world had narrowed to that single point.
About seventeen months of a marriage that had started as an arrangement and was now just - her life, their life, the specific warmth of this house with the garden she'd planted and the professional-grade kitchen and the man who read philosophy at night and carried her up stairs when she was on day two and made soup from scratch at unreasonable hours.
About Giichiro, who would arrive in approximately four months and who would have Giyuu's looks and Shinobu's everything else and who was already, she decided, going to be wonderful.
She was so happy it was almost suspicious.
She didn't trust happiness that felt this complete. She'd spent years keeping a certain controlled distance from it. It had seemed safer. Less exposed.
Giyuu came back to bed.
He settled beside her with the comfortable certainty of someone who knew where they were supposed to be.
She shifted to put her head against his shoulder.
His arm came around her.
"Thank you," she said, quietly. "For the soup."
"Don't mention it," he said.
"I'm mentioning it."
A pause.
"You're welcome," he said.
She put her hand over his where it rested at her side.
"I've been thinking about the driving situation," she said.
He was immediately alert in the very still way that meant this is a topic I have opinions about.
"What about it," he said.
"I'm going to keep driving the Lamborghini," she said. "Until my obstetrician says otherwise."
"Shinobu-"
"She hasn't said otherwise."
"You drive it at-"
"At appropriate speeds for the road conditions," she said.
A silence.
"You drove it at a hundred and twenty last week," he said.
"The conditions were excellent."
"It was a residential-"
"Giyuu." She looked up at him. "I have full motor function, excellent reflexes, years of clean driving record, and a certified sports vehicle. I'm fine."
He looked at her.
She looked back.
"Also," she said, "I genuinely enjoy it."
He exhaled.
"I know," he said, which was both I know you enjoy it and I know I'm not winning this one and I will be concerned about it anyway all at once.
She put her cheek back against his shoulder.
"I'll tell you every time I go out in it," she said. "And I'll text you when I arrive."
A pause.
"Thank you," he said.
"You're very anxious about me," she said. "It's sweet."
"I'm a cardiologist with a pregnant wife who drives a supercar at significant speeds," he said. "My concern is clinically justified."
She smiled.
"I'm the picture of health," she said. "Your child is thriving. I have excellent judgment."
"You watched three hours of violent crime documentaries today while eating ice cream."
"Entertainment judgment," she said. "My operational judgment is excellent."
He was quiet for a moment.
Then, in the dry specific tone she'd identified around month four as his version of genuine humor: "The distinction is important."
"Critically," she said.
She felt him exhale, the slow and almost amused exhale, and she tucked further into his side and closed her eyes.
The villa was quiet.
The garden outside was dark.
Giichiro was doing whatever it was Giichiro did at eleven PM inside her, which was apparently moving around with the same opinion-having energy she'd been told, by multiple sources, that she herself had possessed as a child.
Her mother had said, at the last family dinner, with an expression of serene satisfaction: you were chaos incarnate as a baby, Shinobu. Completely unbothered and extremely opinionated from the first week.
Giyuu had looked at Shinobu.
Shinobu had said, with complete composure, "I've grown."
The table had reacted to this in various ways.
Sanemi had made a sound.
Kanae had covered her smile with her hand.
Giyuu had said nothing and his eyes had said everything.
She thought about this now in the dark and smiled.
Giichiro was going to be like Giyuu, she knew it somehow, the same quiet attentive way, the same steadiness - but with more of her underneath it. Sharper. More likely to have an opinion and deploy it efficiently. He was going to be remarkable.
She was already planning it.
She was already planning the way she was going to be with him, the things she was going to teach him, the absolute non-negotiable standards she intended to uphold about raising a person who was kind and capable and knew what they were worth.
She was going to be an exceptional mother.
She was already smug about it.
She was five months pregnant and already pre-emptively smug about what a wonderful mother she was going to be, which was possibly the most Shinobu thing she'd done all day and that was a category with significant competition.
"Giyuu," she said.
"Mm."
"We're going to be good at this," she said.
A pause.
"Yes," he said. Not a question. Not hesitation.
Just yes, with the same directness as everything he meant.
She closed her eyes properly this time.
"Good," she said.
"Go to sleep," he said.
"I'm almost asleep."
"You're talking."
"I can be almost asleep and talking simultaneously."
"You cannot."
"I'm a neurologist. I understand sleep states."
"Shinobu."
"I'm sleeping," she said. "This is what it looks like."
He was quiet for a moment.
"If you need anything else tonight-"
"I'll ask," she said. "Obviously."
"I know," he said.
She was quiet.
Then: "The tom yum was perfect."
"I know," he said, and she could hear the small warm thing in it, the thing that was him being pleased she'd said so, which he'd never say but which she could read fluently by now.
"Goodnight," she said.
"Goodnight," he said.
She slept.
Deeply, comfortably, in the specific warm certainty of someone who had everything she needed in exactly the configuration she'd chosen, with tomorrow's cravings still TBD and approximately zero concerns about her ability to handle whatever they turned out to be.
Giyuu stayed awake for another twenty minutes.
He read his philosophy.
He had one hand on her back.
He looked at her occasionally - the way he did when she was asleep and he could do it without her cataloguing it and using it against him, which she absolutely would.
She was extraordinary.
She was chaotic and fierce and slightly terrifying and she drove too fast and watched violent content with the casual enjoyment of a person who had made peace with the full range of human darkness and she argued with her own scale and ate three servings of mapo tofu and maneuvered into his lap with the precision of a woman who knew exactly what she was doing.
She was five months pregnant and the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen and she knew it and she wielded it with the cheerful ruthlessness of someone who had identified an advantage and was using it, which was so specifically her that he couldn't be anything about it except quietly, thoroughly, helplessly fond.
He put his book down.
He turned off the lamp.
He stayed exactly where he was, her against his side, his hand on her back, the house quiet around them.
Outside, the Kyoto night held its peace.
Inside, Giichiro Kochou-Tomioka made his opinions known with a small movement that Giyuu felt and that Shinobu, asleep, apparently also felt because she made a soft sound and pressed closer.
He put his hand over where hers was.
He closed his eyes.
Two kids, she'd said. Then we're done.
He thought about two.
He thought about the specific chaos of one Shinobu Kochou replicated with variations, which was what two children with her would certainly produce, and he thought about it with the equanimity of a man who had already accepted that his life was going to be a particular kind of loud and beautiful and completely unpredictable.
He had made peace with this in month three of their marriage.
He had made more peace with it every month since.
He was, by now, at complete peace.
End.
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