Kairi

(Akane's PoV)

—

I took a deep breath.

"Hold me tight, please," I said, aiming for a joking tone and landing somewhere just short of it, "because I might start crying again at any moment without any warning. Sudden floods. It's a documented risk."

Shin's chest moved under my cheek with a quiet laugh.

"Don't worry," he said, tightening his arm around me. "This hoodie was made for you, just in case."

A small giggle escaped me before I could stop it.

"Idiot. My idiot." I said.

Then, the giggle faded, and the ceiling above the couch became very interesting. I felt my fingers find his hands under the blanket, both of them, gathering them into mine like something I needed to hold onto before jumping.

And then, after waiting a few moments, I started from the very beginning.

"My father... he never wanted to know the sex of the baby my mother was carrying," I said quietly. "Not until the very last moment. He refused the ultrasounds, refused the envelope, refused everything. He was absolutely convinced it was a boy because 'it was destiny'. He didn't consider any other possibility. In his head, the story was already written."

My thumbs traced slow lines along the back of Shin's hands.

"Back then, my mother was deeply in love with him. That's the thing you need to understand first, or nothing else makes sense. She always insisted he was a good person: kind, generous, misunderstood. But the facts tell a different story. A man who started from nothing and built an empire in the space of a few years. I won't go too deep into the details of how." My voice flattened. "Because to me, my father will always be a monster. That's the only detail that matters to me."

Shin didn't say anything. He pressed a slow kiss to the top of my head instead, like he was saying 'I'm listening', and his hands stayed still and warm inside mine.

"When I was born," I continued, "my mother almost died. There were complications. Bad ones. She was in surgery for hours, and for a while it could have gone either way. But in the end she made it, and they put me in her arms, and she was — " something caught briefly in my throat " — she was overjoyed. She told me about it once, when I was little. She said the first time she held me, the whole world went quiet."

I paused.

"But... my father was not overjoyed, of course." I sighed.

Shin's hands tensed, one small degree, inside mine.

"He wanted a boy at all costs. A male heir for the empire — that was the plan, that was the story he'd already written. And when the doctors told him that because of the complications my mother would never be able to have another child—" I let out a slow breath through my nose. "That's when he started, piece by piece, going quietly insane not all at once. It was slow. Like watching a house develop cracks."

I then stared at the ceiling, like I was seeing a movie of my own life.

"He was always an absent father. Always. When I was small — but old enough to understand words — my mother used to tell me, 'he needs time. He's very busy, but he loves us dearly!' That was her answer for everything. He needs time. But he started spending every day at work, every evening, every weekend, and he couldn't give me the attention a child is supposed to have, and my mother kept saying it. He needs time. He needs time." A dry, small laugh left me. "He had all these years. He never found any."

Shin's thumb moved slowly against my palm.

"The real problems started when my mother finally said something," I continued, and my voice dropped lower. "That day, she pointed out his absence because she was so attached to him. She just wanted to spend some time with her husband and her precious baby together; that's all she was asking for. But he didn't listen. He just shoved her away and said — "

I heard the sentence in my head first, in his voice, the way I had been hearing it for thirteen years.

" — 'You had only one job, Kairi. You're useless now.'" 

The kitchen of that house assembled itself around me in the dark behind my eyes.

I remembered the cold tiles, the smell of his cologne, and the specific pitch of the silence before things broke.

"After hearing his words, my mother slapped him with tears in her eyes," I said.

Shin went very still under me.

"She slapped him across the face, and she said, 'Don't you dare speak that way about my precious baby, Hiroto.'" I swallowed. "I was four years old, Shin. Four. I was standing in the doorway in my socks. And I remember everything. Every detail. The sound. The light. The way the clock on the wall kept ticking like nothing was happening."

My grip on his hands tightened.

"But then... he hit her back twice as hard. And she fell. She just — she went down onto the floor, and she put her hand against her cheek, and he stood over her and screamed, 'Don't you ever dare do that again, whore.' And my mother—" my voice wavered, and I forced it flat again "—my mother didn't even cry. That's what I remember most. She was in too much shock to cry. She just looked up at him from the floor, trembling, and said, 'What have you become, Hiroto?'"

I closed my eyes.

"His reply? He spat on her, called her 'ungrateful bitch', and walked out."

Silence.

The apartment around us was warm and quiet and belonged to a different universe than the one I was describing.

Shin's heartbeat kept its steady rhythm under my ear. His hands had closed firmly around mine now, holding on.

"Akane," he said softly. "If you want to stop, it's okay."

I took a deep breath.

"No." I shook my head against his chest. "I... need this."

Shin kissed the top of my head, and I could feel my body softening.

I took another deep breath. In through the nose. Out slow.

"After he left, I ran to her," I said. "I was four, I didn't understand anything except that my mother was on the floor, so I did the only thing a four-year-old knows how to do. I hugged her. And she—" my throat tightened "—she held me like I was the only thing still anchoring her to this world. Like if she let go of me she would fall off the planet. And she whispered — 'You're my precious baby... you're my treasure... mommy will always be here with you...'"

I let out a small laugh that had nothing to do with humor.

"I still get chills remembering those words, but for the exact opposite reason I should."

Shin's arms shifted, gathering me in closer.

"After that day, the abuse got worse," I continued, quieter now. "Because my mother was still in love with him. She was also terrified of his infidelity, terrified of losing him, so she absorbed everything and stayed. But then, he started coming after me too. Small things first. Then not so small."

The trembling started somewhere in my hands. I felt it move up my arms.

"When I was six, after another one of their fights, I tried to protect her. I got between them. Six years old, in pajamas, arms out like I could stop anything." My voice went thin. "He grabbed me and threw me against the wall. Hard. He called me 'parasite.' My mother screamed and — that's it. That's where the memory ends. There's nothing after the scream. I woke up in my bed the next morning, and nobody in that house ever spoke about it. Not once. Not ever."

The trembling reached my shoulders.

Shin moved without a word, both arms wrapping fully around me, one hand cradling the back of my head, his lips pressing against my hair, his breathing deliberately slow and deep against me, giving my body a rhythm to copy. I held onto him and copied it.

Slowly, the shaking dulled, and I found the force to speak again.

"After that day," I murmured into his hoodie, "my mother started detaching from me too. I think — I think looking at me hurt her. I was the reminder of everything. The wrong child, the broken body, the marriage rotting from the inside. So she drifted. And that's the exact moment I started learning to do everything alone. Cooking. Homework. Waking myself up for school. Sewing buttons. I was seven, and I was already running my own little life inside that giant house, like a mouse living in the walls of a mansion."

I stared at the far wall.

"Then, after many years, Kenji entered the house. And everything got worse when my mother discovered the cheating. All of it, years of it, the whole ocean of lies. And instead of finally breaking her attachment to him, it broke what was left between her and me. Every silence in that house started weighing on me like it was my fault. Silently. Nobody ever said it out loud. It was just... understood. If I had been born right, none of this would have happened."

I laughed softly. It came out crooked.

"At first, my mother hated him. I saw her constantly crying alone in her bedroom, cursing him and her husband's infidelity. But... as soon as my father said, 'I will never cheat on you ever again. We are a real family now.' She changed. She believed his words, completely forgetting about her 'precious baby'. Funny, right?" I said.

Shin kept listening in silence, but I could feel that he was feeling the same pain as me.

"So... my routine was total solitude. No friends. None. Not even in elementary school, Shin... do you know how hard you have to work to have zero friends in elementary school? Children will befriend a rock. But I was afraid of everything. Every person, every question, every hand raised in my direction. So I made myself unapproachable, and it worked."

My thumb traced along his knuckles.

"And I started dressing like a boy," I said. "That's the part almost nobody knows. At first it was — it was for them. Some desperate little-kid logic: if I look like their son, maybe they'll love me like their son. Pathetic, right?" I shook my head slowly. "But then something strange happened. The style started actually to feel like mine. The boots, the jackets, the way of taking up space... it stopped being a costume and became armor, and then it stopped being armor and just became me. And out of all of that, piece by piece, I built the Ren you met."

I tilted my head back and looked up at him, at his dark eyes watching me from above, soft and completely present, and I felt my own gaze go warm in a way I didn't try to hide.

Shin smiled.

"About the rest of the story... you already know it," I said, settling back against his chest. "As I said, Kenji entered my family, and my mother started loving him. She genuinely loved him like her own son. Because when he arrived, my father stopped cheating on her. Funny, right?" My laugh came out paper-thin. "The living proof of his betrayal walks through the front door, and that's what fixes the marriage. That's the kind of house I grew up in. Logic ran backward there."

I went quiet for a moment.

Then I said it, lightly, with my heart hammering underneath it:

"So. Now you know every detail of me. Every single one. You're still in time to run, honey."

But my hands betrayed the joke completely. They were gripping his hoodie, both of them, knuckles pale, holding onto him the way you hold a railing over deep water.

Shin looked down at me for a long moment.

Then he spoke, quiet and unhurried.

"Akane. Past can't be erased. But future can be created anew." His hand moved slowly through my hair. "And after all of it — after everything you just told me, after everything that house did — you still came out of it as the amazing person you are. And, more importantly, I saw you smiling despite the hell you saw, for real. That's not luck. That's you. That's who you decided to be, one day at a time, alone, with nobody helping you."

His arms tightened.

"And I'm really glad you saved me from that roof on Valentine's Day," he murmured. "And I'm also happy you just told me all of this. I've always wanted someone who would speak their heart out to me. Both of those things are gifts, and I know exactly how much they cost."

Something in my chest folded.

"Shin..." My voice came out soft. Softer than I meant it to.

"But—" he continued, gently, "—something tells me your mother never stopped caring about you, somewhere under all of it. And Akane... in the end, you became who you are through the pain they caused you. All of it led here. And now we finally have the chance to be happy. Together. That part, nobody gets to touch."

I smiled against his chest.

"I don't care what my mother feels, Shin," I said quietly. "Actions speak for themselves. And as much as one part of me wants answers... the other part only wants to build something with you. Something completely new. That part's winning." I burrowed deeper into him, my nose against his collarbone. "You saved my life too, you know, in your own way. You should be aware of that. Even now you saved me."

I felt him start to protest, so I cut him off the only sensible way: I tilted my face up and kissed him.

Slow this time. Unhurried. A kiss with no storm in it.

"Thank you," I whispered against his mouth. "Really. Thank you for everything."

We stayed like that for a while, forehead to forehead, breathing the same air.

Then I pulled back a few centimeters and looked at him with great seriousness. His eyes were full of love.

"Can I lie on you and listen to your breathing, Shin?" That was my request.

He blinked and laughed. "Yes... but why are you asking?"

"For politeness, obviously," I replied.

And I threw myself onto him with my full weight, flattening him into the couch cushions, arms spread across his chest like a starfish claiming territory.

"Ahhh!" I let out a long, theatrical sigh of contentment. "How wonderful is my beloved boyfriend!"

"Akane — ribs — " He tried to protest.

"Shh. The ribs belong to me now. Breathe. I'm listening." I whispered.

And he laughed with that low, warm laugh I felt through my whole body, and gave up, with one hand settling into my hair. For a few perfect minutes there was nothing in the world except the rise and fall of his chest under my ear and the slow drum of his heart.

But then my phone rang, making me and Shin snap immediately.

This time, it was not a message. It was a call, and the opening riff of a metal song came screaming out of the speaker at full volume, shredding the domestic silence like a chainsaw through silk.

I lifted my head.

And a slow smirk spread across my face, because there was exactly one person on this planet assigned to that ringtone.

"Ohh," I said, pushing myself up off Shin's chest. "So Hoshiko finally decided to show up, I guess."