The second problem appeared late that night, long after the city of Tokyo had settled into a low electric hum.
Makoto was lost in a deep, dreamless sleep, the kind of rest that only came after a ten-hour shift at Clitify. He was violently yanked back to consciousness by someone shaking his shoulder. He sat up with a jolt.
"Makoto. Wake up."
He squinted in the darkness. Ayane was sitting on the edge of the bed. Her hair was a sleep-tousled mess, and her eyes had a desperate, almost feral glint in them. The moonlight filtering through the curtains caught the silver of her nipples through her thin tank top.
"Ayane?" he croaked, rubbing his eyes. "What's wrong? Is there a fire?"
"I need pickles," she said. Her voice was a whisper, as if she were sharing a state secret. "And vanilla ice cream, the good kind with the actual vanilla beans. And… and a bag of wasabi peas."
Makoto stared at her, confusion on his face. "What? It's three in the morning."
"I want it now, boss," she said, her voice dropping into an unreasonable tone. Her lower lip actually wobbled. "I can taste it. I can taste the combination in my head, and if I don't have it right now, I think I'm going to lose my mind."
"Wasabi peas and… ice cream?" Makoto felt a wave of nausea just hearing the words. "Ayane, you're going to give yourself a stomachache worse than Yuna's."
"Don't you dare judge my palate!" she hissed, grabbing his arm. Her grip was surprisingly strong. "Just go, please. The 7-Eleven on the corner has everything. I'll… I'll give you a reward when you get back."
It was an empty promise. Ayane looked too exhausted to follow through on anything sexual, but the desperation in her voice was real. Makoto sighed, rolled out of bed, and threw on a hoodie.
Half an hour later, Makoto returned with a plastic bag filled with the most bizarre shopping list of his life. He found Ayane sitting on the couch in the dark, the TV's blue light muted. She was watching a particularly heart-wrenching scene from Neon Genesis Evangelion, tears streaming down her face.
"Here," he muttered, handing her the bag.
Ayane snatched it with a cry of joy. She opened the ice cream, dumped a handful of wasabi peas into a bowl, and used a pickle as a scoop.
Makoto watched, horrified, as she took a massive crunchy bite. Ayane's eyes rolled back in her head, and she let out a moan of ecstatic joy. "Oh god," she whispered. "This is it. This is what was missing."
"Ayane, you're crying," Makoto said, sitting down beside her.
"It's just… Shinji and Asuka…" she sobbed, gesturing to the screen where a girl was simply holding hands with a boy. "They're so in love, Makoto! Why is the world so beautiful?!"
She turned and buried her face in his chest, weeping over the beauty of human connection while smelling strongly of vinegar and vanilla.
"Ayane is always so dramatic," he thought while stroking her hair with a fond exasperation. I guess her hormones are just reaching some kind of seasonal peak. "The stress of her part-time job and her gym training must be making her hyper-emotional. Still, that food combo… is really horrible."
The third and quietest problem was Mafuyu.
Throughout the month, she had slowly recovered since the last incident. Now, all the girls and Makoto shared the housework. However, she was still the one who kept the peace when Yuna and Ayane reached a boiling point, and the one who ensured Makoto always had a clean shirt for his morning stand-ups.
But Mafuyu had been different lately. She had been taking a lot of naps, often found dozing off in a sunbeam on the sofa with a half-sewn piece of trim in her lap and a calm smile on her face. Makoto had attributed it to her finally feeling safe enough to truly relax.
Then came the Friday evening of the Mackerel Incident. Makoto had decided to take over the kitchen so Mafuyu could have a night off. He'd bought fresh mackerel from the market, intending to grill it with a soy-glaze, one of his specialty dishes.
The moment the fish hit the hot pan, the rich, savory smell of searing oil and seafood filled the small apartment. Makoto was humming to himself, flipping the fillets, when he heard a sharp intake of breath behind him.
He turned to see Mafuyu standing in the kitchen doorway. Usually, she loved the smell of his cooking. But today, she swayed slightly, her hand pressed hard against her mouth.
"Mafuyu-nee? Dinner's almost—"
She didn't let him finish. She let out a choked whimper and turned on her heel, disappearing into her room with an inaudible murmur of an apology.
Makoto stood there with the spatula, bewildered. "She's finally relaxing too much," he thought, a proud smile on his face despite the concern. "Her body is probably just shutting down to recover from all the exhausting housework."
He finished the fish and started to cook some light rice porridge for her and Yuna instead.
Through it all, Mika was a watchful presence. She showed no outward symptoms: She didn't dash to the bathroom, nor did she demand pickles, nor did she turn pale at the scent of fish.
But she was observing and helping. It was Mika who quietly prepared a glass of ginger tea and left it on Yuna's nightstand after the food poisoning, her eyes tracking the younger girl with a caring gaze.
Mika was the one who added a bulk pack of pickles and three different brands of vanilla ice cream to the grocery list after Ayane's late-night craving, noting the frequency of the requests.
It was also Mika who had quietly opened the kitchen window and turned on the ventilation fan before Makoto had even noticed Mafuyu's distress, giving the older woman a look of quiet understanding that needed no words.
===
That night, long after the house had settled into sleep, Mika sat at her steaming rig in Yuna's room. The only light came from the pale glow of her table screen, which reflected in her glasses and cast a pinkish tint over her focused face.
She wasn't looking at the circle's revenue or Mi-sensei Vtuber livestream schedule, or the shipping logistics for the photobooks. She was looking at her period-tracking app and swiped through the calendar, her gaze lingering on a certain date from more than one month ago, the night after the Tokyo Anime Festival.
Her thumb hovered over the screen, showing all the notes she had been meticulously logging for the other three women over the past week: Yuna's morning sickness, Ayane's weird cravings and mood swings, Mafuyu's fatigue and smell sensitivity...
Mika looked down at her own stomach. She felt a strange warmth there, not pain, but a presence. A knowing smile touched her lips when she tapped a small icon on her calendar, adding a tiny plus sign to today's date.
Then, she opened her notes app and added a single line at the bottom of her Household Management folder. She turned the table off, plunging the room into darkness.
As Mika lay back against the pillows, her eyes were wide and bright in the gloom. "Just as planned," she whispered to the sleeping Yuna.