I am nothing without you, but I don't know who you are...
Title: Convergence
Fandom: Lawful Drug/xxxHoLic
Rating: PG
Genre: Character/relationship study
Characters/Pairings: Yuuko, Kakei, implied Kakei/Saiga
Wordcount: 2,830
Description: How Kakei met Yuuko and how he met Saiga, the source of and reason for Saiga’s sunglasses, and hints of what the future may hold. Written for ariadnechan in dimension_shop.
Disclaimer: I do not own any CLAMP works. This is just my personal headcanon.
***
The first time Yuuko had met Kakei, he had followed her home like a stray cat. She had turned and watched, mildly amused, as he stopped at the gate with a lost expression. “I don’t suppose you can come in?” she asked him, and he didn’t answer, which meant he didn’t hear-so she knew that even if he was meant to enter one day, it would not be that day.
He had been a teenager then, thin and lanky with slightly vacant eyes and ridiculous hair, not so different from the runaways she saw wandering the streets, but she had felt the aura of something shimmer around him, so she had kept him in the back of her mind, certain they would meet again.
***
She saw him again a few days later, sitting with his back against her fence, legs drawn close so he could rest his too-sharp chin on his knees. He looked like he barely got enough to eat. “Have you been waiting for me?” she asked him.
“Yes,” he responded, and rose from the ground, his movements surprisingly graceful for a body that was all angles. “Though I didn’t know when you would come. Or if you would.”
The pale brown of his eyes was glazed and hazy; she didn’t need the mildly sweet scent clinging to his clothing to infer drugs. Despite that, there was still an air of something other about him, so she didn’t dismiss him out of hand. She stood and looked at him, and he looked back. There was sharp intelligence in his eyes despite the haze, and he was studying her intently, as though trying to comprehend something he had never encountered before. “You look lost,” she said to him.
“I’m not used to… not knowing,” he replied after a moment.
“Ah,” Yuuko said, because she understood, suddenly. “I see.”
“I’m glad one of us does,” he said, and treated her to a hesitant smile. It lit up his thin face and made him unexpectedly beautiful.
“You can’t come in?” she asked.
He looked at the gate and shook his head. “There’s nothing there.”
“Not yet,” she told him, then sighed. “This isn’t the way I generally do things.”
“Same here,” he replied.
“Tell me your name,” she said.
“I go by Kakei.”
“Your full name,” she clarified. “Don’t lie.”
He smiled again, which meant he had probably been considering it. Then he told her the truth.
***
She saw him occasionally after that, from which she deduced that he had made it a habit to haunt the streets surrounding her shop. She didn’t mind his company, exactly-he was an intelligent child, though watching him destroy himself the way he was doing was difficult. Then again, she had seen many people do the same over the course of her many long years, and had learned to let them be. Interfering wasn’t something she did by the very nature of what she was. He had to ask for her help to receive it, and he seemed quite content to go along as he had been, with the possible exception of occasionally having her buy him nikuman from the street vendor when he appeared by her side looking hopeful and hungry.
He would appear regardless of time of day, from which she inferred that he didn’t attend school. Though she was sure he had no family, he was always clean and well-groomed, and he spoke to her with extreme politeness and deference, so she assumed that he hadn’t always been out on the street. By the way he carried himself and the way others his age looked at him as he passed, she thought he must be fairly high in the hierarchy of one of the local gangs. He didn’t offer the information; she didn’t pry. She knew what she needed to know, for now.
“That man will die tomorrow,” he said once, following a sullen businessman with his gaze. She turned and looked at the man who she had allowed to pass by her without a second thought and realized the boy was right.
“Yes,” Yuuko agreed, “he will.” He was silent, so she prompted, “Do you intend to do something about it?”
Kakei shrugged and resumed walking. “It’s too much trouble,” he said. Then, after a moment, “I might have tried, once. But if that car doesn’t hit him, who knows what it will hit. It doesn’t always turn out for the better, does it?”
“No, not always. There’s enormous risk involved in changing the future.”
He just kept walking, looking unconcerned. “He doesn’t look particularly happy to be alive, anyway.”
“Maybe not.”
That appeared to be that, as far as he was concerned.
***
It was mid-January when she found him curled up on her porch, moderately beaten, half-frozen, and seemingly asleep. She had Maru and Moro bring him inside and lay him on a futon under a pile of blankets, and when he woke, she was waiting for him. She handed him a cup of tea, and he took a long sip, his eyes never leaving hers. He looked sharper than she had ever seen him despite his multiple injuries; most of the haze over him was gone. “It looks like there was something here, after all,” he said, nonchalant, but his hands betrayed him, trembling slightly around the warmth of the teacup.
“Yes. If you are here…”
“…I must have a wish I want granted,” the boy said, “that I cannot grant myself. Yes.”
“And?”
She was greeted with a long silence. When he spoke again, his words were hesitant much as they had been the time he had told her he was unaccustomed to not knowing things. “I’m... not certain. Or rather… Hmm, I suppose it would be more correct to say I don’t remember. Quite.” He shrugged apologetically, a gesture she was beginning to suspect was a nice affectation to hide the strength of his mind under seeming uncertainty. “There’s a bit of a hole in my memory, it seems. But I think I know someone who needs your help.”
“Shouldn’t this someone be here in your place?” she asked, amused.
“I do not think he knows to come,” Kakei said. Then after a moment of deep thought, he amended, “I do not think he is able to come.”
“And so you came for him,” she stated. “Unusual, for you. You want to change his future?”
“Yes,” Kakei said firmly. “I think I must change his future.”
“You know the risks involved,” she said.
“Yes,” he agreed. “And I know there will be a price.”
“Yes, there is always a price. Is he so important to you?”
“I can’t say that, as I’m not entirely certain of having met him. Yet.” Kakei smiled, that beautiful smile that transformed his face. “But I think that one day, he will be.”
***
He was brought in blindfolded, led through the gate by Kakei’s hand in his. There was a scowl on his face and he looked far less civilized than her usual sort of visitor, dressed in black jeans and a beaten black leather jacket, but his knuckles were white from clutching the hand that led him and the set of his jaw betrayed fear as much as obstinacy. “Take off the blindfold,” she said. First things first.
“I don’t think that’s a very good-”
“He will have to take it off,” she interrupted Kakei. “You may step back if you prefer.”
“I will not.” Kakei’s face was impassive, but she could tell he was angry with her. “Have it your way, then.” He reached up from behind the taller boy and untied the scrap of black fabric over his eyes. He stayed there, just behind him, almost close enough to touch but not quite.
The boy squinted at the floor. “You may open your eyes,” she instructed him. “Look at me.”
“But…” That was the first she heard his voice, low and surprisingly rich for someone she had no doubt smoked a pack a day.
“Do not pick up Kakei’s bad habit of talking back to me,” she said. “I asked you to look at me.”
He did, and there was a buzzing at the back of her mind. She reinforced her mental defenses and studied him even as something a little wild and untrained battered at her head. “Ah,” she said, much as she had with Kakei. “I see.” His eyes, like his voice, did not suit him-they were clear and bright and thickly lashed, and a shade of soft, nearly translucent blue. “What is your name?”
“Saiga,” he replied after a moment’s hesitation. “As for family name, your guess is as good as mine.”
He wasn’t lying, so she only nodded and kept studying him. He was still squinting at her, and she didn’t think it was in an effort to protect her any longer. “You have been in the dark a long time, haven’t you?” The shock on his face was answer enough. “Don’t look so surprised,” she told him. “This room is half-lit at best, but you’re having a difficult time, aren’t you?”
He swallowed and nodded. “Yeah, if I don’t stay in the dark, I might accidentally…”
“Yes, of course.” She touched the side of his face and felt him try not to stiffen. He seemed uncertain whether to bolt. “That would have been inconvenient.”
“It has been very lonely,” Kakei murmured from behind him.
“I never said that much.” There was a faint blush across his cheeks. “It works for me that people are scared of me. I only came because I was curious what sort of person someone like him could trust so much, you know,” he said at last. “The people who meet me in the light don’t tend to have so much to say, usually. You’re the second one after him to get out more than a sentence.”
“Don’t judge me so highly,” Kakei said with a soft laugh. “I still have no idea what happened the first time I met you. Or what I said to you, after. Or what you look like, precisely.” But despite denying all these things, he took a step closer, his hand settling protectively on the taller boy’s side.
“Hmm, yes, it’s a curious loophole,” Yuuko mused, observing how Saiga relaxed fractionally at the touch. “You wouldn’t have the memories he took from you, but you would know that someday there will be other things to remember.” She narrowed her eyes. “Better things, hopefully.” Saiga swallowed audibly. “I trust you do not intend to repeat that silliness.”
“No,” he said. She thought that he would be forever grateful that Kakei no longer had the memory of their first meeting. She doubted he would be standing so close, his face so gentle, if he knew.
“Very well then,” she said. She knew enough now to proceed. “Maru, Moro, bring it to me.”
The two scurried into the room, Maru carrying a small case. Yuuko opened it and removed a very plain-looking pair of sunglasses which she had once received in payment for a very large favor she had done for a certain acquaintance. As always, destiny tended to provide such random items for very specific reasons, so she was glad to see them going to the person who most needed them. She slipped them onto Saiga’s face and the buzzing at the edges of her consciousness ceased. She let out a breath. “Much better. They suit your image considerably better, in any case. You may turn, if you wish. It’s perfectly safe now.”
She gave them a moment, because even though Saiga still looked disoriented and uncertain, Kakei was smiling one of his rare beautiful smiles. He reached up and put his hand on Saiga’s cheek, where Yuuko’s had been, and closed his eyes, looking happier than she had ever seen him. “Ah. Well then. Hello.”
“…Yeah,” Saiga said at length, “okay. Is anyone going to explain to me what just happened here?”
“Wear them,” Yuuko told him by way of answering. “Wear them always, even while sleeping; though I really do think it would be to your advantage to learn some control. Your gift would be a terrible thing to waste, and I will likely need to make use of it in the future.”
She knew exactly what she would do with these two now that she had them here. The time was coming when she wouldn’t have the opportunity to clean up moderately sized messes because she’d have a very large one on hand, but she didn’t like things to slip through the cracks if she could help it. All things considered, that child would be safe enough with these two, as long as they cleaned up a little and learned how to present themselves. “Now, as for the question of payment.” She circled them once, watching how already they aligned themselves together as a single unit. She wondered if Saiga realized he was doing it. She knew that Kakei did. “There will come a time in the not so distant future when I will need a safe house for a certain person,” she said. “I will be unable to help him at the time of his coming, but I think you should be fine on your own. You must protect him and the one who will come to be dear to him from harm. One day, when they are ready, you will bring the two of them to me-but remember, not a moment before they are ready.”
“That’s all?” Kakei said, blinking at her in apparent confusion. She wondered what he had expected to give.
“It isn’t as simple as you think, but if you feel you’ve gotten a bargain, I’ve done my job well. That is your price, Kakei. As for you.”
Saiga turned to look at her, and she could feel his gaze even through the heavily warded lenses. “What about me?”
“You will stay with him,” she said, gesturing to Kakei. She knew he would do so even if she didn’t say a word, but it was better to make things very clear from the beginning and balance the scales. “Feed him occasionally, by the way. He’s practically transparent. And when I need you, you will come to me.”
“Need me how, exactly?” Saiga asked suspiciously.
She smiled at him, a little wickedly. “However appears to be necessary,” she told him. “It will be at my discretion. I hope you’ve learned to be marginally presentable by then.”
“Hey!”
She felt the shifting that signified a crisis averted and her smile grew fractionally. Once again, balance was restored.
***
“I don’t believe I ever properly thanked you.”
He was sitting across from her, this man who was no longer a boy whose life she had perhaps saved once. But then, perhaps he would have saved himself, eventually, and perhaps she had doomed him instead. It was a bit early to say, but she was feeling optimistic.
“It isn’t a matter of gratitude. You are still paying,” she pointed out.
“Yes,” he said with a soft smile. He smiled often, now, and his face had filled out enough that his beauty remained even when the smile did not. His eyes were bright and clear behind the lenses of glasses she knew perfectly well he didn’t need. Still, they did age him a little, which was probably for the best. “In installments,” he added, jokingly. “That doesn’t mean I can’t thank you for doing such a lovely, neat job of it all.”
“Flatterer,” she told him, but she had to smile too. “If you really wish to thank me, have Saiga-san write down the recipe for these lovely tarts you’ve brought. It would be nice to have Watanuki know how to make them.”
“I’m sure he will be more than happy to oblige.”
They sipped tea in silence for awhile, enjoying the gentle warmth of the early spring day. “Are your children almost ready?” she asked at last, switching the conversation to more serious matters. She had put this off long enough; busy as she was, it wouldn’t do to neglect it further.
“Nearly, I believe. It’s a matter of a few months now, I think.” He looked down into his teacup. “I still don’t feel completely at ease… not knowing.”
“I know,” she said. “We never do, but sometimes it is necessary. When the time comes…”
“…I will come blind, much as I did the first time,” he said. “Yes. It is fortunate that I trust you,” he toasted her with his teacup, “to always do the inevitable.”
She nodded her head and acknowledged the double-sided compliment as it was meant. “Then perhaps you should wait until that day to thank me.”
“Perhaps.” He set his teacup on the tray. “I suppose I only wanted you to know that I was planning on it.”
“So noted.” They smiled at each other in perfect understanding.
Fandom: Lawful Drug/xxxHoLic
Rating: PG
Genre: Character/relationship study
Characters/Pairings: Yuuko, Kakei, implied Kakei/Saiga
Wordcount: 2,830
Description: How Kakei met Yuuko and how he met Saiga, the source of and reason for Saiga’s sunglasses, and hints of what the future may hold. Written for ariadnechan in dimension_shop.
Disclaimer: I do not own any CLAMP works. This is just my personal headcanon.
***
The first time Yuuko had met Kakei, he had followed her home like a stray cat. She had turned and watched, mildly amused, as he stopped at the gate with a lost expression. “I don’t suppose you can come in?” she asked him, and he didn’t answer, which meant he didn’t hear-so she knew that even if he was meant to enter one day, it would not be that day.
He had been a teenager then, thin and lanky with slightly vacant eyes and ridiculous hair, not so different from the runaways she saw wandering the streets, but she had felt the aura of something shimmer around him, so she had kept him in the back of her mind, certain they would meet again.
***
She saw him again a few days later, sitting with his back against her fence, legs drawn close so he could rest his too-sharp chin on his knees. He looked like he barely got enough to eat. “Have you been waiting for me?” she asked him.
“Yes,” he responded, and rose from the ground, his movements surprisingly graceful for a body that was all angles. “Though I didn’t know when you would come. Or if you would.”
The pale brown of his eyes was glazed and hazy; she didn’t need the mildly sweet scent clinging to his clothing to infer drugs. Despite that, there was still an air of something other about him, so she didn’t dismiss him out of hand. She stood and looked at him, and he looked back. There was sharp intelligence in his eyes despite the haze, and he was studying her intently, as though trying to comprehend something he had never encountered before. “You look lost,” she said to him.
“I’m not used to… not knowing,” he replied after a moment.
“Ah,” Yuuko said, because she understood, suddenly. “I see.”
“I’m glad one of us does,” he said, and treated her to a hesitant smile. It lit up his thin face and made him unexpectedly beautiful.
“You can’t come in?” she asked.
He looked at the gate and shook his head. “There’s nothing there.”
“Not yet,” she told him, then sighed. “This isn’t the way I generally do things.”
“Same here,” he replied.
“Tell me your name,” she said.
“I go by Kakei.”
“Your full name,” she clarified. “Don’t lie.”
He smiled again, which meant he had probably been considering it. Then he told her the truth.
***
She saw him occasionally after that, from which she deduced that he had made it a habit to haunt the streets surrounding her shop. She didn’t mind his company, exactly-he was an intelligent child, though watching him destroy himself the way he was doing was difficult. Then again, she had seen many people do the same over the course of her many long years, and had learned to let them be. Interfering wasn’t something she did by the very nature of what she was. He had to ask for her help to receive it, and he seemed quite content to go along as he had been, with the possible exception of occasionally having her buy him nikuman from the street vendor when he appeared by her side looking hopeful and hungry.
He would appear regardless of time of day, from which she inferred that he didn’t attend school. Though she was sure he had no family, he was always clean and well-groomed, and he spoke to her with extreme politeness and deference, so she assumed that he hadn’t always been out on the street. By the way he carried himself and the way others his age looked at him as he passed, she thought he must be fairly high in the hierarchy of one of the local gangs. He didn’t offer the information; she didn’t pry. She knew what she needed to know, for now.
“That man will die tomorrow,” he said once, following a sullen businessman with his gaze. She turned and looked at the man who she had allowed to pass by her without a second thought and realized the boy was right.
“Yes,” Yuuko agreed, “he will.” He was silent, so she prompted, “Do you intend to do something about it?”
Kakei shrugged and resumed walking. “It’s too much trouble,” he said. Then, after a moment, “I might have tried, once. But if that car doesn’t hit him, who knows what it will hit. It doesn’t always turn out for the better, does it?”
“No, not always. There’s enormous risk involved in changing the future.”
He just kept walking, looking unconcerned. “He doesn’t look particularly happy to be alive, anyway.”
“Maybe not.”
That appeared to be that, as far as he was concerned.
***
It was mid-January when she found him curled up on her porch, moderately beaten, half-frozen, and seemingly asleep. She had Maru and Moro bring him inside and lay him on a futon under a pile of blankets, and when he woke, she was waiting for him. She handed him a cup of tea, and he took a long sip, his eyes never leaving hers. He looked sharper than she had ever seen him despite his multiple injuries; most of the haze over him was gone. “It looks like there was something here, after all,” he said, nonchalant, but his hands betrayed him, trembling slightly around the warmth of the teacup.
“Yes. If you are here…”
“…I must have a wish I want granted,” the boy said, “that I cannot grant myself. Yes.”
“And?”
She was greeted with a long silence. When he spoke again, his words were hesitant much as they had been the time he had told her he was unaccustomed to not knowing things. “I’m... not certain. Or rather… Hmm, I suppose it would be more correct to say I don’t remember. Quite.” He shrugged apologetically, a gesture she was beginning to suspect was a nice affectation to hide the strength of his mind under seeming uncertainty. “There’s a bit of a hole in my memory, it seems. But I think I know someone who needs your help.”
“Shouldn’t this someone be here in your place?” she asked, amused.
“I do not think he knows to come,” Kakei said. Then after a moment of deep thought, he amended, “I do not think he is able to come.”
“And so you came for him,” she stated. “Unusual, for you. You want to change his future?”
“Yes,” Kakei said firmly. “I think I must change his future.”
“You know the risks involved,” she said.
“Yes,” he agreed. “And I know there will be a price.”
“Yes, there is always a price. Is he so important to you?”
“I can’t say that, as I’m not entirely certain of having met him. Yet.” Kakei smiled, that beautiful smile that transformed his face. “But I think that one day, he will be.”
***
He was brought in blindfolded, led through the gate by Kakei’s hand in his. There was a scowl on his face and he looked far less civilized than her usual sort of visitor, dressed in black jeans and a beaten black leather jacket, but his knuckles were white from clutching the hand that led him and the set of his jaw betrayed fear as much as obstinacy. “Take off the blindfold,” she said. First things first.
“I don’t think that’s a very good-”
“He will have to take it off,” she interrupted Kakei. “You may step back if you prefer.”
“I will not.” Kakei’s face was impassive, but she could tell he was angry with her. “Have it your way, then.” He reached up from behind the taller boy and untied the scrap of black fabric over his eyes. He stayed there, just behind him, almost close enough to touch but not quite.
The boy squinted at the floor. “You may open your eyes,” she instructed him. “Look at me.”
“But…” That was the first she heard his voice, low and surprisingly rich for someone she had no doubt smoked a pack a day.
“Do not pick up Kakei’s bad habit of talking back to me,” she said. “I asked you to look at me.”
He did, and there was a buzzing at the back of her mind. She reinforced her mental defenses and studied him even as something a little wild and untrained battered at her head. “Ah,” she said, much as she had with Kakei. “I see.” His eyes, like his voice, did not suit him-they were clear and bright and thickly lashed, and a shade of soft, nearly translucent blue. “What is your name?”
“Saiga,” he replied after a moment’s hesitation. “As for family name, your guess is as good as mine.”
He wasn’t lying, so she only nodded and kept studying him. He was still squinting at her, and she didn’t think it was in an effort to protect her any longer. “You have been in the dark a long time, haven’t you?” The shock on his face was answer enough. “Don’t look so surprised,” she told him. “This room is half-lit at best, but you’re having a difficult time, aren’t you?”
He swallowed and nodded. “Yeah, if I don’t stay in the dark, I might accidentally…”
“Yes, of course.” She touched the side of his face and felt him try not to stiffen. He seemed uncertain whether to bolt. “That would have been inconvenient.”
“It has been very lonely,” Kakei murmured from behind him.
“I never said that much.” There was a faint blush across his cheeks. “It works for me that people are scared of me. I only came because I was curious what sort of person someone like him could trust so much, you know,” he said at last. “The people who meet me in the light don’t tend to have so much to say, usually. You’re the second one after him to get out more than a sentence.”
“Don’t judge me so highly,” Kakei said with a soft laugh. “I still have no idea what happened the first time I met you. Or what I said to you, after. Or what you look like, precisely.” But despite denying all these things, he took a step closer, his hand settling protectively on the taller boy’s side.
“Hmm, yes, it’s a curious loophole,” Yuuko mused, observing how Saiga relaxed fractionally at the touch. “You wouldn’t have the memories he took from you, but you would know that someday there will be other things to remember.” She narrowed her eyes. “Better things, hopefully.” Saiga swallowed audibly. “I trust you do not intend to repeat that silliness.”
“No,” he said. She thought that he would be forever grateful that Kakei no longer had the memory of their first meeting. She doubted he would be standing so close, his face so gentle, if he knew.
“Very well then,” she said. She knew enough now to proceed. “Maru, Moro, bring it to me.”
The two scurried into the room, Maru carrying a small case. Yuuko opened it and removed a very plain-looking pair of sunglasses which she had once received in payment for a very large favor she had done for a certain acquaintance. As always, destiny tended to provide such random items for very specific reasons, so she was glad to see them going to the person who most needed them. She slipped them onto Saiga’s face and the buzzing at the edges of her consciousness ceased. She let out a breath. “Much better. They suit your image considerably better, in any case. You may turn, if you wish. It’s perfectly safe now.”
She gave them a moment, because even though Saiga still looked disoriented and uncertain, Kakei was smiling one of his rare beautiful smiles. He reached up and put his hand on Saiga’s cheek, where Yuuko’s had been, and closed his eyes, looking happier than she had ever seen him. “Ah. Well then. Hello.”
“…Yeah,” Saiga said at length, “okay. Is anyone going to explain to me what just happened here?”
“Wear them,” Yuuko told him by way of answering. “Wear them always, even while sleeping; though I really do think it would be to your advantage to learn some control. Your gift would be a terrible thing to waste, and I will likely need to make use of it in the future.”
She knew exactly what she would do with these two now that she had them here. The time was coming when she wouldn’t have the opportunity to clean up moderately sized messes because she’d have a very large one on hand, but she didn’t like things to slip through the cracks if she could help it. All things considered, that child would be safe enough with these two, as long as they cleaned up a little and learned how to present themselves. “Now, as for the question of payment.” She circled them once, watching how already they aligned themselves together as a single unit. She wondered if Saiga realized he was doing it. She knew that Kakei did. “There will come a time in the not so distant future when I will need a safe house for a certain person,” she said. “I will be unable to help him at the time of his coming, but I think you should be fine on your own. You must protect him and the one who will come to be dear to him from harm. One day, when they are ready, you will bring the two of them to me-but remember, not a moment before they are ready.”
“That’s all?” Kakei said, blinking at her in apparent confusion. She wondered what he had expected to give.
“It isn’t as simple as you think, but if you feel you’ve gotten a bargain, I’ve done my job well. That is your price, Kakei. As for you.”
Saiga turned to look at her, and she could feel his gaze even through the heavily warded lenses. “What about me?”
“You will stay with him,” she said, gesturing to Kakei. She knew he would do so even if she didn’t say a word, but it was better to make things very clear from the beginning and balance the scales. “Feed him occasionally, by the way. He’s practically transparent. And when I need you, you will come to me.”
“Need me how, exactly?” Saiga asked suspiciously.
She smiled at him, a little wickedly. “However appears to be necessary,” she told him. “It will be at my discretion. I hope you’ve learned to be marginally presentable by then.”
“Hey!”
She felt the shifting that signified a crisis averted and her smile grew fractionally. Once again, balance was restored.
***
“I don’t believe I ever properly thanked you.”
He was sitting across from her, this man who was no longer a boy whose life she had perhaps saved once. But then, perhaps he would have saved himself, eventually, and perhaps she had doomed him instead. It was a bit early to say, but she was feeling optimistic.
“It isn’t a matter of gratitude. You are still paying,” she pointed out.
“Yes,” he said with a soft smile. He smiled often, now, and his face had filled out enough that his beauty remained even when the smile did not. His eyes were bright and clear behind the lenses of glasses she knew perfectly well he didn’t need. Still, they did age him a little, which was probably for the best. “In installments,” he added, jokingly. “That doesn’t mean I can’t thank you for doing such a lovely, neat job of it all.”
“Flatterer,” she told him, but she had to smile too. “If you really wish to thank me, have Saiga-san write down the recipe for these lovely tarts you’ve brought. It would be nice to have Watanuki know how to make them.”
“I’m sure he will be more than happy to oblige.”
They sipped tea in silence for awhile, enjoying the gentle warmth of the early spring day. “Are your children almost ready?” she asked at last, switching the conversation to more serious matters. She had put this off long enough; busy as she was, it wouldn’t do to neglect it further.
“Nearly, I believe. It’s a matter of a few months now, I think.” He looked down into his teacup. “I still don’t feel completely at ease… not knowing.”
“I know,” she said. “We never do, but sometimes it is necessary. When the time comes…”
“…I will come blind, much as I did the first time,” he said. “Yes. It is fortunate that I trust you,” he toasted her with his teacup, “to always do the inevitable.”
She nodded her head and acknowledged the double-sided compliment as it was meant. “Then perhaps you should wait until that day to thank me.”
“Perhaps.” He set his teacup on the tray. “I suppose I only wanted you to know that I was planning on it.”
“So noted.” They smiled at each other in perfect understanding.