Gift fic for lady_gemma
To: lady_gemma
From: honooko
SEASON'S GREETINGS!
Title: Anne
Pairing/Group: Ohmiya, Arashi
Rating: PG
Warnings: none
Notes: For lady_gemma’s request of ‘Future Ohmiya’!
Summary: As soon as Anne came into their lives, everything changed forever.
Ohno Satoshi adopted Ninomiya Kazunari under the newly made family name of ‘Ohmiya’. It was the closest to being “married” that the current law would let them be. They didn’t mind, particularly; the intention had been protecting their rights as family, not a title. After five years together, they didn’t need a piece of paper to tell them what they were to each other anyway. Not to mention it had set the stage for the family they both wanted.
At three months old, Ohmiya Anne was the most important thing her fathers’ lives, and also the most terrifying.
Anne had been theirs almost a month when the first nightmare struck. Nino, always more prone to plagued dreams, had clung to Ohno, shaking, more fear coursing through his veins than he could offhand recall feeling before. The dream had been vivid and direct; the image of Anne’s tiny body, deathly still and blue and cold, burned on the inside of his eyelids. Even worse was the baseless, crushing knowledge that it was his fault her small life had been snuffed out. Ohno calmed him down enough for his hands to stop shaking, but he still couldn’t go back to sleep. Instead, he kept silent vigil over her crib for the rest of the night.
“My sister gets them too,” Ohno said softly, his hand rubbing soothing circles on Nino’s back. “She says it’s all part of being a parent; you worry, even in your sleep.”
“Do they go away, once she’s bigger?” Nino asked, struggling to imagine Anne with a smile full of teeth and enough hair to put in pigtails.
“They come less,” Ohno replied. “But I think they probably never stop. You get them because you love her; as long as you love her, why should they stop?”
When Ohno phrased it like that, Nino hoped fiercely they never stopped.
The other members adored the tiny girl; Sho practically pushed Ohno and Nino out their door once a week, insisting that he was more than happy to baby sit, now get lost for a few hours, please. Jun took her wardrobe into his hands, designer baby clothes overflowing her yellow dresser (ducks painted on it by Ohno himself). Aiba took charge of toys, somehow having a knack for finding the sturdiest, more exciting toys around.
Anne’s first birthday was a party to remember. Jun (utterly charmed by the girl) declared himself in charge of decorating and promptly announced the theme to be puppies, something Anne (and Aiba) was thrilled about. Her cake was decorated with a sparkly pink collar for her to put on Sho’s gift of a stuffed dog larger than her, and Aiba’s family lent their restaurant and menagerie for the occasion. Nino wished to himself that Haru had not died three years before; it would have been nice, to share his love for the shiba inu with his daughter.
Ohno’s sister brought her daughter to the party, plus Aiba’s nephew, Jun’s niece and nephew, and for a reason nobody could quite explain (and to Sho’s dismay), Shibata Rie.
That night as they tucked Anne in, already worn out from the excitement of her party, Ohno and Nino marveled at how a girl barely a year old already had so many dear friends.
Nino’s father made very little effort to be involved in his son’s life, and when the day came for twenty-three year old Nino to inform his father that he was seriously involved with his friend and band mate, Ninomiya Sr. announced he wanted nothing to do with it. Kazunari was all too happy to cut ties. His father had not been invited to, or even informed of, the wedding, and it wasn’t until Anne-chan began to talk and question in earnest that his thoughts even drifted to the paternal side of his family.
Nino left a message on his father’s voicemail:
I have something to show you; if even a part of you considers yourself my father, please meet me at Mikayori-koen on Saturday at three.
He and Anne waited, playing on the swings. Nino was torn, not sure what to expect. He wanted to believe that his father cared, even a little, and would therefore come, but…
And then Anne squealed a gleeful, “Papa, look!” Nino’s gaze followed where she pointed and came to rest on the face that resembled his own, only decades older. Lifting his daughter from the swing, Nino set her down and they walked hand-in-hand to where Nino’s father stood.
“This is Anne. My daughter,” Nino said, not introducing the old man. If Ninomiya still wanted no part of this, then Anne need never know he was her grandfather.
“Yours?” Ninomiya said carefully. “You knock some poor woman up?”
“Satoshi and I are her parents,” Nino corrected, wincing at his father’s implication. “Ohmiya Anne is ours.” The emphasis on her family name was clear: Ohmiya. Not Ninomiya, not anymore.
Anne, annoyed at having been ignored so long, tugged her father’s hand.
“Papa,” she said with all the seriousness an eighteen-month-old could muster. “I’m bored.”
Nino couldn’t help it; he laughed. “More swings, then?” he asked, and Anne nodded.
“Not Papa!” she declared, pouting. “Ojii-chan!” This final statement was directed at Ninomiya. To Nino’s utter surprise, his father crouched, held out a hand to the girl, and said, “Lead on, Anne-chan.”
They spent the better part of the afternoon at the park, playing. Anne had her grandfather thoroughly charmed, and they parted ways with the promise to set up another play date soon.
At age three-and-three-quarters (she counted exactly, thank you) Anne’s favorite story was the one of how she came into her fathers’ lives. She asked for it at least once a week; bath time was Nino’s domain, but bedtime was strictly Ohno’s. He was more than happy to recite it as often as she wanted to hear, once he’d gotten comfortable with speaking for long periods of time entirely on his own.
“Tou-chan!” She declared in her overly loud child’s voice (Ohno was Tou-chan, Nino had always been Papa). “Tell the baby story!”
Ohno smiled, tucking the blanket around her as he sat on top of her bed beside her. His hand settled itself on her head, stroking softly as he began to speak.
“One day, about a year and a half after your Papa married me, he went for a walk. Papa likes walking sometimes, ne? When he’s a little sad or a little worried. He walks, and then he feels better. Well, that day, Papa went for a walk. He went by a combini, then a little shrine, then a shop run by a blue-haired Obaa-chan. And after that, he walked through a park.
“In the park there was a path that went by a pond, and a path that went by a baseball diamond. Papa went on the first path that day, even though-“
“Papa likes baseball!” Anne interrupted brightly. “But not on that day!”
“Right,” Ohno agreed, tickling her in the side. “Not that day. That day, Papa walked by the pond. And as he went by, he heard a funny sound; something crying. It wasn’t an animal crying; it was a baby. He heard a baby crying.
“So he followed the sound. He walked and walked until he found a trashcan. And inside the trashcan was a tiny, crying baby.”
“A baby girl,” Anne added, her voice soft with wonder.
“A baby girl,” Ohno agreed. “All alone, in the trashcan in the park. It was cold that day, and the baby was all by herself. Papa took off his coat and wrapped her up, and went to the hospital with her. The doctors at the hospital said she was very sick, and when the police tried to find her family, they couldn’t. She was all alone.”
“Poor baby,” Anne said sincerely. Ohno smiled and kissed her forehead.
“Your Papa called me. He said that he was at the hospital, and that I needed to come right away. At first I thought Papa was hurt, and I was scared. But then he said, ‘Not me, Satoshi. Her.’ So I came.
“Papa took me to a room full of tiny babies in nice, warm incubators. He pointed through the window and the baby he’d found and said, ‘That’s her. That’s the baby.’ He told me everything about finding her, and asked me if we could pay for her treatment, since she was all alone. I thought right then that somehow, she wouldn’t be all alone for much longer.
“So we paid for her to get better. For two and a half months, she was in the hospital, getting bigger and stronger and healthier. And every single day, Papa went to see her, holding her hand and talking to her. I saw her three or four times a week, but it was Papa who came every single day. He was falling in love with her.”
“The baby had a name,” Anne said, reminding her father.
“She did. Papa named her; a pretty name, a simple name that nobody would confuse for something else.”
“Anne!” The girl contributed.
“That’s right. He named her Anne. Little baby Anne-chan. And about a month before she was ready to leave the hospital, the doctors asked us what we planned to do with her. And I said, we’ll adopt her, of course. She’s our daughter. Papa said, ‘Everything that happened to her before doesn’t matter; she’s got a family now. We’re her family, now.’ And so we signed all the papers and in no time at all, the hospital said she could come home.
“And when she got home, her family was even bigger than she’d thought. She had two grandmothers who said she was the cutest, sweetest baby girl in the world. She had two aunts who said they were going to teach her everything about being a proper lady. She had three uncles her planned to spoil her completely. And she had two fathers who loved her more than anything else in the entire world,” Ohno finished. He looked down at the girl curled under the blankets, her breath puffing softly as she slept, and smiled.
“And everyday,” he added, kissing her goodnight on the forehead. “They love her a little bit more.”
Finding a preschool had been an adventure neither Ohno nor Nino had been quite prepared for. It had seemed to come awfully quickly; one day she was in diapers, wobbling unsteadily as she walked; the next, she was five years old and could count to twenty-five (in Japanese and Korean; Sho loved to teach her things). But they’d finally settled on a small school near to their home that boasted a real, true music class. Anne had shown music appreciation since she was a baby, tucked in Nino’s lap with a guitar in front of her, banging her little hands on the wood as Nino played.
They dropped her off for her first day together; Nino wasn’t entirely sure he could actually let go of her hand on his own, when the time came. Ohno promised to pry them apart if need be.
Ohno went to sign one last form in the office while Nino stood, his trepidation growing with each passing minute. A teacher approached, smiling warmly at them both, and Nino could feel Anne’s excitement growing in the way she started bouncing lightly on the balls of her feet.
“Hello!” The teacher said, bending to speak to Anne. “My name is Tamami-sensei. What’s yours?”
“Anne!” The girl responded instantly. “Ohmiya Anne, nice to meet you!”
Glancing up at Nino, Tamami-sensei said, “Anne-chan, would you like to come play on the playground with the other children?”
Anne looked at her father for approval.
“Do you want to?” Nino asked with a smile. Anne nodded. “What do you say when you want something?”
“...Sho-ji, buy it for me!” Anne answered. Nino laughed.
“What are you supposed to say when you want something?” He corrected himself.
“May I please go play? Please?” She replied, tugging his hand insistently.
“Okay,” Nino said, crouching to kiss her forehead. “Go have fun. Be careful.”
Anne grinned, and took off like a rocket, instantly going for the slide. The teacher watched her go, before glancing at Nino again. She bowed, and reintroduced herself with a smile.
“I’m Iwata Tamami; you’re very good to your sister.”
Nino blinked, before shaking his head, a bit sheepish. “Ah, no, I’m not her brother.”
“No?” Tamami asked, confused. “Ah-a cousin? A relative’s boyfriend?” It occurred to Nino that she couldn’t have been over twenty-five at the most, and that he himself still didn’t look much older than that.
“I’m her father,” He corrected, prepared for the slightly scandalized expression on her face. “And before you ask, I’m over thirty.”
“Ah,” She responded, surprised. “You-you don’t look it.”
“Neither does my partner,” Nino laughed, as he spotted Ohno coming back from the office, hands stuffed in his pockets. Ohno was watching the playground, scanning for Anne, grinning as he caught sight of her. He stopped next to Nino, their elbows brushing.
“You let go?” He teased Nino softly. “I thought we’d need a crowbar.”
“She said please,” Nino laughed. “When have I ever been able to say no in the face of a ‘please’?”
Tamami looked between them, putting two and two together. She blushed, clearly unsure as to whether or not she should comment, or ask, or react at all. Nino was used to this after so many years and took pity on her.
“Our daughter,” He said casually, as though what he was about to say was of no importance at all. “Does not think there is anything unusual about her family. She is not ashamed, not embarrassed, and not envious of other children. But she is at a point where it would not be terribly hard to convince her of any of these things.”
Ohno’s hand settled on the small of his back, not stopping him, only reminding him to be careful how he worded himself.
“If Anne could grow up without these things, that would be best. She would be happier. At some point though, she will face these questions,” He continued, looking out across the playground. “We don’t want her to face them anytime soon. Not here. Not now. Do not make our child think for an instant that she is worse off than anyone else just because of the choices her parents have made.”
Anne was laughing, talking with a small boy as he played in the dirt. She sat down to help him build dirt walls, pulling a handful of toy dogs from her coat pocket and handing some to him to put in his city. The boy stood, thanking her and kissing her on the cheek.
Nino let out a small cry and lunged; Ohno caught him before he could maul the boy. Anne seemed utterly unperturbed and continued to play.
“Her first kiss!” Nino wailed, struggling in Ohno’s grip. “He took it! He took my baby girl’s first kiss! I’ll kill him!”
“She doesn’t seem to mind, Kazu,” Ohno said patiently, his hold remaining firm.
“I forgot! I forgot to tell her not to let boys near her! I’m a failure as her father, what have I done?!” Nino whimpered pathetically, all the fight leaving him in a rush as he buried his face in his hands. Ohno hugged him, patting him on the back.
“There, there,” Ohno reassured him. “I’m sure she’ll still be able to marry.”
By the time she was seven, Anne was proving to be quiet the artist. She loved to sing and dance, entertaining her relatives endlessly with performances. She could play the piano and some guitar, and Nino spent every Saturday taking her to different musical performances, determined to expand her experience as much as possible. She even composed a few pieces of her own, to his absolute delight, and they played together often.
Sundays she spent in the spare bedroom-turned-workshop with Ohno. He gave her free reign over everything in the shop, be it paint or ink or clay. She learned kanji extremely quickly after he taught her the basic principles of calligraphy, and won a prize at school for her brush skill. Ohno was endlessly proud of her creative ability, and carried a small watercolor she had painted of a bird in his wallet at all times.
The only thing she never took to with any sort of liking was acting, despite being enrolled in a handful of classes. She disliked having to speak someone else’s words, far preferring her own thoughts and actions to those written down by a playwright. Her fathers accepted her decision to stop theater gracefully; they had sworn to each other never to push her to the point where she might come to hate something.
At age nine, Anne was invited to her first sleepover, an event her ‘uncle’ Jun demanded he be involved in. They spent an entire day together, finding the perfect nail polish to bring to share, the perfect PJ’s, the perfect movie to watch. Anne was completely prepared, but Jun still pulled Nino aside after they got home (Anne displaying her prizes to Ohno proudly).
“She’s looking forward to it,” Jun said seriously. “But it might not work out the way she wants.”
“What do you mean?” Nino asked, frowning, but Jun just shook his head.
“Just... don’t plan anything that would have you unable to pick her up if she calls.”
That night, at 10:03pm, Anne called her fathers and begged to be picked up. Nino could hear in her voice that she was near tears, even further highlighted in comparison of the happy giggles in the background. Ohno stayed home, calling Jun and requesting his presence, and Nino drove to her classmate’s house. She was silent as they got in the car; no other girls came to tell her goodbye.
“Anne?” Nino asked her after an unnerving five straight minutes of silence. “What happened?”
It was then that she started to cry. The girls had teased her endlessly, making her the butt of their jokes and purposely leaving her out of the fun. And the cause seemed to be the mere fact that she didn’t have a mother. One girl had upset her terribly just by asking, full of mock-innocence, if she had two fathers because no mothers wanted her.
Nino’s hands clenched on the steering wheel as he said, “Your two fathers wanted you more.”
“Mariko-chan said we’re not a real family.”
“Mariko-chan is a very stupid little girl who looks suspiciously like a mushroom. Don’t repeat that.”
Through her sniffles, Anne giggled. They arrived home and were welcomed by Ohno and Jun, who promptly informed her they were having their own sleepover. Sleeping bags were replaced by futons, piled across the living room floor. Jun painted her nails, Nino braided her hair, and Ohno made popcorn, then all four watched ‘The Little Mermaid’. Anne fell asleep curled between her fathers, a smile on her face.
“Thank you,” Nino said softly as they walked Jun out an hour or so later.
Nino had feared that come Junior High, Anne would be bullied. He remembered his own childhood vividly; he’d been beat up, shouted at, stolen from, and harassed to the point where he simply stopped talking to anyone at school. Eventually his stance of non-reaction had made them give up, but the time it took for that to happen had been hellish, and something he’d carried with him for years after. The thought of such things happening to his daughter filled him with a sick sort of dread because he knew, no matter what, he wouldn’t be able to protect her. He could only be there to teach her how to deal with it after.
But to his relief, Anne seemed to thrive in school. She had a few close friends she mentioned frequently and visited after class, and Nino was thrilled to see her so honestly happy. After a few months though, he realized that for all her attachment, Anne had yet to invite any of her friends to her house; she always went to theirs.
“She has a good reason for that,” Sho explained when Nino brought it up one afternoon. Sho came over once a week, no longer to baby sit, but to help Anne with her homework. He was far better at explaining things in a way that made sense than either of her fathers.
“What?” Nino asked, confused. “What do you mean?”
“I was sworn to secrecy,” Sho answered with a shrug. “But you might want to ask her about it.”
So, after consulting with Ohno on precise wording (“How about ‘Anne-chan, are your new friends actually evil monsters?’ That might work.”) Nino brought it up as they prepared dinner together.
“Anne,” Nino said carefully. “Why don’t you invite your friends over for dinner some time? It’s not polite to always go to their houses.”
“I can’t,” Anne said shortly.
“Why not?”
“Hokuto-chan needs to go straight home to baby-sit. Ren-chan lives kind of far and can’t take the train after dark. And Mitsu-chan has a lot of allergies and can’t eat a lot of stuff most people eat,” She said with an exasperated sigh, as if all this information was tremendously obvious. That had been the end of the matter, apparently, because Anne skillfully changed the subject.
A week later, Nino took matters into his own hands and decided to pick her up from school. He waited patiently outside the school gates, watching the crowd of children for Anne’s face, before finally spotting her as she came around a corner.
She was walking backwards, talking animatedly... to three boys.
“Anne,” He said seriously as she got within earshot. She whirled around, gaping at her father in surprise.
“Papa?!” She squeaked, glancing at her friends and wringing her hands a bit nervously. “What-what are you doing here?”
“I came to pick you up,” Nino said sweetly, his expression narrowing into a carefully cheerful smile edged with a hint of danger. “Who are your friends?” The final word was spoken as if it was a very suspicious, dirty term.
“Um,” Anne said, biting her lip. She pointed to each boy in turn. “Minami Hokuto, Yamazaki Ren, and Akidachi Mitsu.”
“Anne,” Nino said brightly. “Get in the car.”
The drive home was dead silent, Nino’s teeth gritted against the alternating surges of protectiveness over his daughter and violence towards the boys she had apparently been spending nearly every day with. Half an hour after they got home, Sho was pushing Nino into a chair insisting that Anne had called him and begged for assistance.
“Of course she didn’t tell you, she knew you’d take it entirely wrong,” Sho said briskly. “They’re her friends, there’s nothing wrong with that.”
“They are boys,” Nino snarled. “She goes to their houses for hours and hours-”
“Nino,” Sho interrupted (he’d never gotten out of the habit of using the nickname, even though it was a shortening of a name he no longer used). “Think for a minute about Anne’s life. She has two fathers and three uncles and spent the majority of her life with men. Is it really that unexpected that she gets along better with boys than girls?”
“Well, that-I just never really-it didn’t occur to me...” Nino finished lamely.
“We had noticed,” Sho said pointedly.
“Does-does Anne even like boys like that?” Nino asked suddenly, startled. “Wait, is she a lesbian?!”
“She’s twelve,” Sho sighed, putting his face in his hands. “She doesn’t like anybody yet.”
“Oh,” Nino said, deflating. “Oh. Right.”
Anne got to keep going to her friends’ houses.
At age sixteen, Anne declared her intentions to be a professional singer.
“No,” Nino said simply. Ohno was a bit more delicate, explaining gently that having been in the industry for a great many years, he could safely say that it really kind of sucked at times.
Anne announced tearfully that she hated them both, they didn’t understand her at all, and that she was running away to Korea to be a pop sensation. She then locked herself in her room.
“Oh,” Nino said after a beat. “She really is a girl, huh.”
Anne gave her fathers the silent treatment for three straight days, speaking only to her uncles. On the fourth day, Aiba informed Nino that Anne was especially mad at him.
“What?! Why?!” Nino asked.
“’Because he’s a jerk,’ she said,” Aiba explained with a shrug.
“You know, she really does have a nice voice,” Ohno said gently. “And she’s pretty, and we certainly have the connections to get her more than started.”
“They’d work her to death, she’d have no privacy, and for the first few years she’d have barely anything to live on,” Nino growled.
“But she likes music,” Ohno said. “It makes her happy.”
Nino said nothing.
That night, he knocked on her door softly, over and over, until she finally opened it.
“It’s hell,” he said simply, and she started to close the door again. “But if you want that, then I can’t stop you. I shouldn’t even try, if that’s what you want.”
“I want to sing, Papa,” She said, and Nino relaxed a touch. It was the first time he’d heard her voice in three days.
“Here,” He said, holding out a beaten leather case. “This thing has lasted me years and years, and is going to last you years more.”
Anne accepted the guitar silently, pensive.
“Is it really okay?” She asked quietly, and Nino guessed she was talking about more than the gift. He put a hand on her head.
“Dreams are important. And none of them are impossible if you really work hard. Don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t, or that you’re wrong. Just do what you have to do to be happy.”
“And anytime you need our help,” Ohno added softly, coming up behind Nino. “You just have to say so, okay?”
Anne looked at the guitar in her hands. It fit, the wood warming under her touch, the weight comforting. She looked at her home, small but full of careful touches to make it feel lived in and safe. She looked at her parents, the two men who had taken her literally from a dumpster and loved her unconditionally as their own child.
“I’m dating Takumi-senpai,” She said, her eyes sparkling with mischief.
Nino let out a wail of anguish, clinging to Ohno as the older man patted him on the head gently.
Anne laughed; she fully planned to keep her fathers’ on their toes.
From: honooko
SEASON'S GREETINGS!
Title: Anne
Pairing/Group: Ohmiya, Arashi
Rating: PG
Warnings: none
Notes: For lady_gemma’s request of ‘Future Ohmiya’!
Summary: As soon as Anne came into their lives, everything changed forever.
Ohno Satoshi adopted Ninomiya Kazunari under the newly made family name of ‘Ohmiya’. It was the closest to being “married” that the current law would let them be. They didn’t mind, particularly; the intention had been protecting their rights as family, not a title. After five years together, they didn’t need a piece of paper to tell them what they were to each other anyway. Not to mention it had set the stage for the family they both wanted.
At three months old, Ohmiya Anne was the most important thing her fathers’ lives, and also the most terrifying.
Anne had been theirs almost a month when the first nightmare struck. Nino, always more prone to plagued dreams, had clung to Ohno, shaking, more fear coursing through his veins than he could offhand recall feeling before. The dream had been vivid and direct; the image of Anne’s tiny body, deathly still and blue and cold, burned on the inside of his eyelids. Even worse was the baseless, crushing knowledge that it was his fault her small life had been snuffed out. Ohno calmed him down enough for his hands to stop shaking, but he still couldn’t go back to sleep. Instead, he kept silent vigil over her crib for the rest of the night.
“My sister gets them too,” Ohno said softly, his hand rubbing soothing circles on Nino’s back. “She says it’s all part of being a parent; you worry, even in your sleep.”
“Do they go away, once she’s bigger?” Nino asked, struggling to imagine Anne with a smile full of teeth and enough hair to put in pigtails.
“They come less,” Ohno replied. “But I think they probably never stop. You get them because you love her; as long as you love her, why should they stop?”
When Ohno phrased it like that, Nino hoped fiercely they never stopped.
The other members adored the tiny girl; Sho practically pushed Ohno and Nino out their door once a week, insisting that he was more than happy to baby sit, now get lost for a few hours, please. Jun took her wardrobe into his hands, designer baby clothes overflowing her yellow dresser (ducks painted on it by Ohno himself). Aiba took charge of toys, somehow having a knack for finding the sturdiest, more exciting toys around.
Anne’s first birthday was a party to remember. Jun (utterly charmed by the girl) declared himself in charge of decorating and promptly announced the theme to be puppies, something Anne (and Aiba) was thrilled about. Her cake was decorated with a sparkly pink collar for her to put on Sho’s gift of a stuffed dog larger than her, and Aiba’s family lent their restaurant and menagerie for the occasion. Nino wished to himself that Haru had not died three years before; it would have been nice, to share his love for the shiba inu with his daughter.
Ohno’s sister brought her daughter to the party, plus Aiba’s nephew, Jun’s niece and nephew, and for a reason nobody could quite explain (and to Sho’s dismay), Shibata Rie.
That night as they tucked Anne in, already worn out from the excitement of her party, Ohno and Nino marveled at how a girl barely a year old already had so many dear friends.
Nino’s father made very little effort to be involved in his son’s life, and when the day came for twenty-three year old Nino to inform his father that he was seriously involved with his friend and band mate, Ninomiya Sr. announced he wanted nothing to do with it. Kazunari was all too happy to cut ties. His father had not been invited to, or even informed of, the wedding, and it wasn’t until Anne-chan began to talk and question in earnest that his thoughts even drifted to the paternal side of his family.
Nino left a message on his father’s voicemail:
I have something to show you; if even a part of you considers yourself my father, please meet me at Mikayori-koen on Saturday at three.
He and Anne waited, playing on the swings. Nino was torn, not sure what to expect. He wanted to believe that his father cared, even a little, and would therefore come, but…
And then Anne squealed a gleeful, “Papa, look!” Nino’s gaze followed where she pointed and came to rest on the face that resembled his own, only decades older. Lifting his daughter from the swing, Nino set her down and they walked hand-in-hand to where Nino’s father stood.
“This is Anne. My daughter,” Nino said, not introducing the old man. If Ninomiya still wanted no part of this, then Anne need never know he was her grandfather.
“Yours?” Ninomiya said carefully. “You knock some poor woman up?”
“Satoshi and I are her parents,” Nino corrected, wincing at his father’s implication. “Ohmiya Anne is ours.” The emphasis on her family name was clear: Ohmiya. Not Ninomiya, not anymore.
Anne, annoyed at having been ignored so long, tugged her father’s hand.
“Papa,” she said with all the seriousness an eighteen-month-old could muster. “I’m bored.”
Nino couldn’t help it; he laughed. “More swings, then?” he asked, and Anne nodded.
“Not Papa!” she declared, pouting. “Ojii-chan!” This final statement was directed at Ninomiya. To Nino’s utter surprise, his father crouched, held out a hand to the girl, and said, “Lead on, Anne-chan.”
They spent the better part of the afternoon at the park, playing. Anne had her grandfather thoroughly charmed, and they parted ways with the promise to set up another play date soon.
At age three-and-three-quarters (she counted exactly, thank you) Anne’s favorite story was the one of how she came into her fathers’ lives. She asked for it at least once a week; bath time was Nino’s domain, but bedtime was strictly Ohno’s. He was more than happy to recite it as often as she wanted to hear, once he’d gotten comfortable with speaking for long periods of time entirely on his own.
“Tou-chan!” She declared in her overly loud child’s voice (Ohno was Tou-chan, Nino had always been Papa). “Tell the baby story!”
Ohno smiled, tucking the blanket around her as he sat on top of her bed beside her. His hand settled itself on her head, stroking softly as he began to speak.
“One day, about a year and a half after your Papa married me, he went for a walk. Papa likes walking sometimes, ne? When he’s a little sad or a little worried. He walks, and then he feels better. Well, that day, Papa went for a walk. He went by a combini, then a little shrine, then a shop run by a blue-haired Obaa-chan. And after that, he walked through a park.
“In the park there was a path that went by a pond, and a path that went by a baseball diamond. Papa went on the first path that day, even though-“
“Papa likes baseball!” Anne interrupted brightly. “But not on that day!”
“Right,” Ohno agreed, tickling her in the side. “Not that day. That day, Papa walked by the pond. And as he went by, he heard a funny sound; something crying. It wasn’t an animal crying; it was a baby. He heard a baby crying.
“So he followed the sound. He walked and walked until he found a trashcan. And inside the trashcan was a tiny, crying baby.”
“A baby girl,” Anne added, her voice soft with wonder.
“A baby girl,” Ohno agreed. “All alone, in the trashcan in the park. It was cold that day, and the baby was all by herself. Papa took off his coat and wrapped her up, and went to the hospital with her. The doctors at the hospital said she was very sick, and when the police tried to find her family, they couldn’t. She was all alone.”
“Poor baby,” Anne said sincerely. Ohno smiled and kissed her forehead.
“Your Papa called me. He said that he was at the hospital, and that I needed to come right away. At first I thought Papa was hurt, and I was scared. But then he said, ‘Not me, Satoshi. Her.’ So I came.
“Papa took me to a room full of tiny babies in nice, warm incubators. He pointed through the window and the baby he’d found and said, ‘That’s her. That’s the baby.’ He told me everything about finding her, and asked me if we could pay for her treatment, since she was all alone. I thought right then that somehow, she wouldn’t be all alone for much longer.
“So we paid for her to get better. For two and a half months, she was in the hospital, getting bigger and stronger and healthier. And every single day, Papa went to see her, holding her hand and talking to her. I saw her three or four times a week, but it was Papa who came every single day. He was falling in love with her.”
“The baby had a name,” Anne said, reminding her father.
“She did. Papa named her; a pretty name, a simple name that nobody would confuse for something else.”
“Anne!” The girl contributed.
“That’s right. He named her Anne. Little baby Anne-chan. And about a month before she was ready to leave the hospital, the doctors asked us what we planned to do with her. And I said, we’ll adopt her, of course. She’s our daughter. Papa said, ‘Everything that happened to her before doesn’t matter; she’s got a family now. We’re her family, now.’ And so we signed all the papers and in no time at all, the hospital said she could come home.
“And when she got home, her family was even bigger than she’d thought. She had two grandmothers who said she was the cutest, sweetest baby girl in the world. She had two aunts who said they were going to teach her everything about being a proper lady. She had three uncles her planned to spoil her completely. And she had two fathers who loved her more than anything else in the entire world,” Ohno finished. He looked down at the girl curled under the blankets, her breath puffing softly as she slept, and smiled.
“And everyday,” he added, kissing her goodnight on the forehead. “They love her a little bit more.”
Finding a preschool had been an adventure neither Ohno nor Nino had been quite prepared for. It had seemed to come awfully quickly; one day she was in diapers, wobbling unsteadily as she walked; the next, she was five years old and could count to twenty-five (in Japanese and Korean; Sho loved to teach her things). But they’d finally settled on a small school near to their home that boasted a real, true music class. Anne had shown music appreciation since she was a baby, tucked in Nino’s lap with a guitar in front of her, banging her little hands on the wood as Nino played.
They dropped her off for her first day together; Nino wasn’t entirely sure he could actually let go of her hand on his own, when the time came. Ohno promised to pry them apart if need be.
Ohno went to sign one last form in the office while Nino stood, his trepidation growing with each passing minute. A teacher approached, smiling warmly at them both, and Nino could feel Anne’s excitement growing in the way she started bouncing lightly on the balls of her feet.
“Hello!” The teacher said, bending to speak to Anne. “My name is Tamami-sensei. What’s yours?”
“Anne!” The girl responded instantly. “Ohmiya Anne, nice to meet you!”
Glancing up at Nino, Tamami-sensei said, “Anne-chan, would you like to come play on the playground with the other children?”
Anne looked at her father for approval.
“Do you want to?” Nino asked with a smile. Anne nodded. “What do you say when you want something?”
“...Sho-ji, buy it for me!” Anne answered. Nino laughed.
“What are you supposed to say when you want something?” He corrected himself.
“May I please go play? Please?” She replied, tugging his hand insistently.
“Okay,” Nino said, crouching to kiss her forehead. “Go have fun. Be careful.”
Anne grinned, and took off like a rocket, instantly going for the slide. The teacher watched her go, before glancing at Nino again. She bowed, and reintroduced herself with a smile.
“I’m Iwata Tamami; you’re very good to your sister.”
Nino blinked, before shaking his head, a bit sheepish. “Ah, no, I’m not her brother.”
“No?” Tamami asked, confused. “Ah-a cousin? A relative’s boyfriend?” It occurred to Nino that she couldn’t have been over twenty-five at the most, and that he himself still didn’t look much older than that.
“I’m her father,” He corrected, prepared for the slightly scandalized expression on her face. “And before you ask, I’m over thirty.”
“Ah,” She responded, surprised. “You-you don’t look it.”
“Neither does my partner,” Nino laughed, as he spotted Ohno coming back from the office, hands stuffed in his pockets. Ohno was watching the playground, scanning for Anne, grinning as he caught sight of her. He stopped next to Nino, their elbows brushing.
“You let go?” He teased Nino softly. “I thought we’d need a crowbar.”
“She said please,” Nino laughed. “When have I ever been able to say no in the face of a ‘please’?”
Tamami looked between them, putting two and two together. She blushed, clearly unsure as to whether or not she should comment, or ask, or react at all. Nino was used to this after so many years and took pity on her.
“Our daughter,” He said casually, as though what he was about to say was of no importance at all. “Does not think there is anything unusual about her family. She is not ashamed, not embarrassed, and not envious of other children. But she is at a point where it would not be terribly hard to convince her of any of these things.”
Ohno’s hand settled on the small of his back, not stopping him, only reminding him to be careful how he worded himself.
“If Anne could grow up without these things, that would be best. She would be happier. At some point though, she will face these questions,” He continued, looking out across the playground. “We don’t want her to face them anytime soon. Not here. Not now. Do not make our child think for an instant that she is worse off than anyone else just because of the choices her parents have made.”
Anne was laughing, talking with a small boy as he played in the dirt. She sat down to help him build dirt walls, pulling a handful of toy dogs from her coat pocket and handing some to him to put in his city. The boy stood, thanking her and kissing her on the cheek.
Nino let out a small cry and lunged; Ohno caught him before he could maul the boy. Anne seemed utterly unperturbed and continued to play.
“Her first kiss!” Nino wailed, struggling in Ohno’s grip. “He took it! He took my baby girl’s first kiss! I’ll kill him!”
“She doesn’t seem to mind, Kazu,” Ohno said patiently, his hold remaining firm.
“I forgot! I forgot to tell her not to let boys near her! I’m a failure as her father, what have I done?!” Nino whimpered pathetically, all the fight leaving him in a rush as he buried his face in his hands. Ohno hugged him, patting him on the back.
“There, there,” Ohno reassured him. “I’m sure she’ll still be able to marry.”
By the time she was seven, Anne was proving to be quiet the artist. She loved to sing and dance, entertaining her relatives endlessly with performances. She could play the piano and some guitar, and Nino spent every Saturday taking her to different musical performances, determined to expand her experience as much as possible. She even composed a few pieces of her own, to his absolute delight, and they played together often.
Sundays she spent in the spare bedroom-turned-workshop with Ohno. He gave her free reign over everything in the shop, be it paint or ink or clay. She learned kanji extremely quickly after he taught her the basic principles of calligraphy, and won a prize at school for her brush skill. Ohno was endlessly proud of her creative ability, and carried a small watercolor she had painted of a bird in his wallet at all times.
The only thing she never took to with any sort of liking was acting, despite being enrolled in a handful of classes. She disliked having to speak someone else’s words, far preferring her own thoughts and actions to those written down by a playwright. Her fathers accepted her decision to stop theater gracefully; they had sworn to each other never to push her to the point where she might come to hate something.
At age nine, Anne was invited to her first sleepover, an event her ‘uncle’ Jun demanded he be involved in. They spent an entire day together, finding the perfect nail polish to bring to share, the perfect PJ’s, the perfect movie to watch. Anne was completely prepared, but Jun still pulled Nino aside after they got home (Anne displaying her prizes to Ohno proudly).
“She’s looking forward to it,” Jun said seriously. “But it might not work out the way she wants.”
“What do you mean?” Nino asked, frowning, but Jun just shook his head.
“Just... don’t plan anything that would have you unable to pick her up if she calls.”
That night, at 10:03pm, Anne called her fathers and begged to be picked up. Nino could hear in her voice that she was near tears, even further highlighted in comparison of the happy giggles in the background. Ohno stayed home, calling Jun and requesting his presence, and Nino drove to her classmate’s house. She was silent as they got in the car; no other girls came to tell her goodbye.
“Anne?” Nino asked her after an unnerving five straight minutes of silence. “What happened?”
It was then that she started to cry. The girls had teased her endlessly, making her the butt of their jokes and purposely leaving her out of the fun. And the cause seemed to be the mere fact that she didn’t have a mother. One girl had upset her terribly just by asking, full of mock-innocence, if she had two fathers because no mothers wanted her.
Nino’s hands clenched on the steering wheel as he said, “Your two fathers wanted you more.”
“Mariko-chan said we’re not a real family.”
“Mariko-chan is a very stupid little girl who looks suspiciously like a mushroom. Don’t repeat that.”
Through her sniffles, Anne giggled. They arrived home and were welcomed by Ohno and Jun, who promptly informed her they were having their own sleepover. Sleeping bags were replaced by futons, piled across the living room floor. Jun painted her nails, Nino braided her hair, and Ohno made popcorn, then all four watched ‘The Little Mermaid’. Anne fell asleep curled between her fathers, a smile on her face.
“Thank you,” Nino said softly as they walked Jun out an hour or so later.
Nino had feared that come Junior High, Anne would be bullied. He remembered his own childhood vividly; he’d been beat up, shouted at, stolen from, and harassed to the point where he simply stopped talking to anyone at school. Eventually his stance of non-reaction had made them give up, but the time it took for that to happen had been hellish, and something he’d carried with him for years after. The thought of such things happening to his daughter filled him with a sick sort of dread because he knew, no matter what, he wouldn’t be able to protect her. He could only be there to teach her how to deal with it after.
But to his relief, Anne seemed to thrive in school. She had a few close friends she mentioned frequently and visited after class, and Nino was thrilled to see her so honestly happy. After a few months though, he realized that for all her attachment, Anne had yet to invite any of her friends to her house; she always went to theirs.
“She has a good reason for that,” Sho explained when Nino brought it up one afternoon. Sho came over once a week, no longer to baby sit, but to help Anne with her homework. He was far better at explaining things in a way that made sense than either of her fathers.
“What?” Nino asked, confused. “What do you mean?”
“I was sworn to secrecy,” Sho answered with a shrug. “But you might want to ask her about it.”
So, after consulting with Ohno on precise wording (“How about ‘Anne-chan, are your new friends actually evil monsters?’ That might work.”) Nino brought it up as they prepared dinner together.
“Anne,” Nino said carefully. “Why don’t you invite your friends over for dinner some time? It’s not polite to always go to their houses.”
“I can’t,” Anne said shortly.
“Why not?”
“Hokuto-chan needs to go straight home to baby-sit. Ren-chan lives kind of far and can’t take the train after dark. And Mitsu-chan has a lot of allergies and can’t eat a lot of stuff most people eat,” She said with an exasperated sigh, as if all this information was tremendously obvious. That had been the end of the matter, apparently, because Anne skillfully changed the subject.
A week later, Nino took matters into his own hands and decided to pick her up from school. He waited patiently outside the school gates, watching the crowd of children for Anne’s face, before finally spotting her as she came around a corner.
She was walking backwards, talking animatedly... to three boys.
“Anne,” He said seriously as she got within earshot. She whirled around, gaping at her father in surprise.
“Papa?!” She squeaked, glancing at her friends and wringing her hands a bit nervously. “What-what are you doing here?”
“I came to pick you up,” Nino said sweetly, his expression narrowing into a carefully cheerful smile edged with a hint of danger. “Who are your friends?” The final word was spoken as if it was a very suspicious, dirty term.
“Um,” Anne said, biting her lip. She pointed to each boy in turn. “Minami Hokuto, Yamazaki Ren, and Akidachi Mitsu.”
“Anne,” Nino said brightly. “Get in the car.”
The drive home was dead silent, Nino’s teeth gritted against the alternating surges of protectiveness over his daughter and violence towards the boys she had apparently been spending nearly every day with. Half an hour after they got home, Sho was pushing Nino into a chair insisting that Anne had called him and begged for assistance.
“Of course she didn’t tell you, she knew you’d take it entirely wrong,” Sho said briskly. “They’re her friends, there’s nothing wrong with that.”
“They are boys,” Nino snarled. “She goes to their houses for hours and hours-”
“Nino,” Sho interrupted (he’d never gotten out of the habit of using the nickname, even though it was a shortening of a name he no longer used). “Think for a minute about Anne’s life. She has two fathers and three uncles and spent the majority of her life with men. Is it really that unexpected that she gets along better with boys than girls?”
“Well, that-I just never really-it didn’t occur to me...” Nino finished lamely.
“We had noticed,” Sho said pointedly.
“Does-does Anne even like boys like that?” Nino asked suddenly, startled. “Wait, is she a lesbian?!”
“She’s twelve,” Sho sighed, putting his face in his hands. “She doesn’t like anybody yet.”
“Oh,” Nino said, deflating. “Oh. Right.”
Anne got to keep going to her friends’ houses.
At age sixteen, Anne declared her intentions to be a professional singer.
“No,” Nino said simply. Ohno was a bit more delicate, explaining gently that having been in the industry for a great many years, he could safely say that it really kind of sucked at times.
Anne announced tearfully that she hated them both, they didn’t understand her at all, and that she was running away to Korea to be a pop sensation. She then locked herself in her room.
“Oh,” Nino said after a beat. “She really is a girl, huh.”
Anne gave her fathers the silent treatment for three straight days, speaking only to her uncles. On the fourth day, Aiba informed Nino that Anne was especially mad at him.
“What?! Why?!” Nino asked.
“’Because he’s a jerk,’ she said,” Aiba explained with a shrug.
“You know, she really does have a nice voice,” Ohno said gently. “And she’s pretty, and we certainly have the connections to get her more than started.”
“They’d work her to death, she’d have no privacy, and for the first few years she’d have barely anything to live on,” Nino growled.
“But she likes music,” Ohno said. “It makes her happy.”
Nino said nothing.
That night, he knocked on her door softly, over and over, until she finally opened it.
“It’s hell,” he said simply, and she started to close the door again. “But if you want that, then I can’t stop you. I shouldn’t even try, if that’s what you want.”
“I want to sing, Papa,” She said, and Nino relaxed a touch. It was the first time he’d heard her voice in three days.
“Here,” He said, holding out a beaten leather case. “This thing has lasted me years and years, and is going to last you years more.”
Anne accepted the guitar silently, pensive.
“Is it really okay?” She asked quietly, and Nino guessed she was talking about more than the gift. He put a hand on her head.
“Dreams are important. And none of them are impossible if you really work hard. Don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t, or that you’re wrong. Just do what you have to do to be happy.”
“And anytime you need our help,” Ohno added softly, coming up behind Nino. “You just have to say so, okay?”
Anne looked at the guitar in her hands. It fit, the wood warming under her touch, the weight comforting. She looked at her home, small but full of careful touches to make it feel lived in and safe. She looked at her parents, the two men who had taken her literally from a dumpster and loved her unconditionally as their own child.
“I’m dating Takumi-senpai,” She said, her eyes sparkling with mischief.
Nino let out a wail of anguish, clinging to Ohno as the older man patted him on the head gently.
Anne laughed; she fully planned to keep her fathers’ on their toes.