He was still half-running when he hit the building entrance.
Phone pressed to his ear. Jacket still half-on from leaving the café. The specific energy of someone who had heard mama won't wake up properly and let their body make all subsequent decisions.
He called the number back.
One ring.
"Onii-san?"
Hana's voice. Small. But — he caught it now, arriving at the destination and hearing properly — not actually wobbling. More like someone trying to sound wobbling.
He stopped at the entrance.
"Hana," he said carefully. "Where are you."
"Ah—" A pause. Very small. Very guilty. "Friend's house."
"Which friend."
"Um. Mika-chan."
"And Saki?"
"...Also Mika-chan's house."
He leaned against the wall. Looked at the sky. "Is your mother actually hurt."
A longer pause.
"She fell asleep," Hana said, in the voice of someone whose script had become inconvenient. "On the sofa. She looked very tired. We thought—"
"Hana."
"...Yes?"
"Is she okay."
"She's fine," Hana said. Smaller now. Fully guilty. "She just fell asleep. We're having a sleepover at Mika-chan's. We told Mama. She said okay."
He breathed out.
One long complete breath.
"Okay," he said.
"Sorry," Hana said. Then immediately, at speed: "Can you check on her? She looked really tired and we don't want her to be alone and—"
"I'll check on her."
"Thank you Onii-san."
The call ended.
Down the street, in Mika-chan's room, two girls sat with a phone between them.
Saki looked at Hana.
Hana looked at Saki.
"He's going to check on her," Hana said.
"I know," Saki said.
"Phase one complete," Hana said.
Saki was nine and considered herself too mature for dramatic declarations.
She fist-bumped her sister anyway.
He knocked twice.
No answer.
Spare key. Third pot plant. Month two, she'd told him, for emergencies. He'd never used it until now.
He let himself in quietly.
Living room dim. Curtains half-drawn. Dishes from this morning unwashed on the counter — tired enough to leave them. That detail landed somewhere specific.
She was on the sofa.
Curled on her side, cushion half under her head. Dark hair loose, the strand that always escaped more escaped than usual. Soft home clothes. The complete stillness of someone deeply, peacefully asleep — the kind that arrives after a day that has been too much.
He looked at the unwashed dishes.
Made a decision.
He called Yoru from the kitchen.
"I'm downstairs. Nana-san's place. The girls are at a friend's, she fell asleep — I'm making sure there's food when she wakes up."
"Oh." Yoru's voice, warm, slightly distracted — shopping sounds behind her. "I'm still out. Home in an hour."
"Take your time. Eat if you're hungry."
"I'm fine. Don't worry about me." A pause. Quieter: "Take care of her."
He looked at the refrigerator he'd already started cataloguing. "I will."
"Kaito."
"Mm."
A pause. The smile-shaped kind of nothing. "See you later."
She hung up.
He put the phone in his pocket.
Started making dinner.
Nana woke up to the smell of food.
Real food. Warm food. Dashi, something with ginger, the rice cooker doing its thing.
Brain loading.
Saki. Hana. Dinner. I fell asleep. What time—
She sat up fast. Looked at the clock.
Eight forty-seven PM.
"SAKI—" On her feet before the word finished. "HANA I'M SORRY I FELL ASLEEP I'LL MAKE DINNER RIGHT NOW—"
She turned toward the kitchen.
Stopped.
Brain delivered, in rapid sequence:
One — daughters not in apartment.
Two — person in kitchen.
Three — that person was Kaito.
Four — he had turned around at the sound of her shouting.
Five — she was standing in the very thin comfortable home clothes she only wore completely alone, hair entirely undone, sleep-flushed, having just woken up from a three-hour nap with zero warning about visitors.
"KYAAAAA—"
Full volume. Zero hesitation.
She turned, went back to the bedroom, slammed the door with the commitment of someone putting everything they had into a single action.
Stood on the other side.
Both hands on her face.
Her face was — it was — he had SEEN — the clothes were completely — she was going to — THOSE—
"THOSE DAUGHTERS OF MINE," she announced, to the door, at considerable volume.
From the kitchen: very careful silence.
She stood in her bedroom and pressed her hands harder to her face and breathed and felt the mortification working its way through her system with absolute thoroughness.
Composed, she told herself. You are a composed woman. You have raised two children alone. You have rebuilt your life twice. You can walk back into that kitchen.
She found her proper blouse. Proper trousers. Fixed her hair — the strand escaped immediately. She breathed. Composed. Re-composed. Breathed again.
Opened the door.
Walked back to the kitchen with the measured pace of someone who had absolutely not just screamed and slammed a door in their own home.
He was at the stove looking at the pan with the focused attention of someone who had decided the pan was the most interesting thing in the room and intended to maintain this position.
"The girls called me," he said, to the pan. "From their friend's house. Asked me to check on you."
She stopped at the doorway. "They called you."
"Hana did."
"Of course she did." She looked at the ceiling. "She is seven years old and entirely too much."
"She seemed very concerned."
"She is seven years old," Nana repeated, with feeling, "and running an operation."
He said nothing.
She looked at the stove. At him. At the stove again. "You didn't have to—"
"Sit down," he said. "It's almost ready."
She sat.
Then immediately stood. "I should help—"
"Sit."
She sat.
She watched him move through her kitchen — the counter he knew, the cabinet he reached without looking, the ease of him that she had been trying to catalogue and failing to adequately describe to herself for eight months.
She tried to be formal about it.
She managed approximately forty seconds of formal.
Then the warmth came through the way it always did around him — the particular warmth of someone in the presence of the specific person their life had quietly rearranged itself toward.
She tried to contain the warmth.
The smile came instead.
She looked at the table before he could see it.
Husband, her brain offered, unhelpfully, the way it always did in this kitchen watching this particular person.
If he came home to this, she thought. Every evening. If the girls came back to find him at the stove. If I could sit at this table and this was just — normal. If someday there was a ring and then one night just us and then—
She pressed her lips together.
Hana and Saki would want a sister, she thought. School runs for three. Homework at the low table. Someone telling Saki she's brilliant and Hana her ideas are good even the chaotic ones. Every evening dinner and then—
"Dinner's ready."
She surfaced.
Plate in front of her. Steam rising. The other plate on the other side of the table. He straightened, confirmed his standards were met, reached for his jacket.
"You can eat," he said. "I'll head up. Yoru's probably home."
He picked up his jacket.
"Kaito-kun."
Her own voice. Slightly surprising her.
He stopped.
She looked at him across the table — two plates, warm light, the smell of the dinner he'd made in her kitchen while she slept on her sofa.
"Eat with me," she said.
Not quite a request. The voice of a woman who had decided something and said it before she could un-decide it.
He looked at her.
The strand of hair had escaped again. The blouse wasn't perfectly straight. He had seen her before she'd fixed any of it and she was sitting at her kitchen table asking him to stay with the quiet directness of someone who had run out of pretending.
He looked at her eyes.
She let him look.