bigger family

Chapter 5

The next day at work, Shizuo keeps catching himself talking about Shinkei. Vorona is confused by his fascination and Tom seems to find it hilarious. They end up discussing babies and parenting at great length, not even realizing how lost they get in the topic until a long time later. By that point, it's gone on so long that they've each gotten more acquainted with each other's would-be parenting styles than ever expected.

Tom jokes that if any of them had a child, it might take all three of them to raise it, but it comes out sounding less like a joke than he expected.

~X~

Time passes quickly and Shinkei grows up even quicker. Even though Shinra ends up seeing her fairly often, he still feels like every time he sees her, she's grown way too much. He knows how fast kids are supposed to grow, but even so, seeing it up close like that is something else entirely. Celty is even more surprised, and frequently asks him if she's growing faster than she's supposed to, or if she's really old enough to be trying to walk already.

Having a baby sister at his age is more than a little weird, to say the least, and it's forced thoughts about his father and stepmother into his head that he would have been much better off never thinking about, but he's happy for the both of them. His family has never been a conventional one, after all, and even if he was a bit put off by a stepmother coming into his life unannounced- and a younger stepmother, at that- it wasn't long before he began to warm up to her, and it wasn't hard to see that Emilia and Shingen were really happy together. He can't say that he's upset with his father for remarrying, even with absolutely no notice, if Emilia makes him that happy.

And as for Emilia, it's been clear from the beginning that she married with family in mind, what with her attempts to try to be a maternal figure to him and Celty. Besides the age thing making it very weird, it was hard to adjust to something like that out of the blue, and she ended up as more of a friend than anything else. Now, she really is a mother to somebody, and anyone can tell that she's still overjoyed.

All in all, he thinks, having two new additions to his family wasn't so bad at all, and he had grown to love both Emilia and Shinkei.

~X~

"Do you think we could ask Shinra's parents if we could be babysitters next time?" asks Erika out of the blue one day. "I don't even care if we don't paid, I just think it would be fun to do again!"

"Oh, yeah, definitely!" Walker agrees.

"Hey, speak for yourselves," protests Saburo, despite the fact that he'd probably do it free of charge again as well.

"What?" asks Kadota. "Do you guys want us to become a group of babysitters or something?" He chuckles at the idea, given the group's usual activities.

"We could run a daycare service right out of the back of the van!" Erika says, not realizing how ridiculous the idea sounds.

"And then when a mysterious child with an equally mysterious older sister appears, then I could probably-"

"Get your own damn van, then!" Saburo interrupts.

"I think it'd be better if we stuck to watching one kid at a time," adds Kadota. "It took all four of us plus Anri to handle Shinkei, remember?"

"Okay, okay, okay, forget the daycare idea. But you do want to babysit her again, don't you, Dotachin?"

~X~

Anri sometimes asks after Shinkei, just to see how she's doing, and Celty gets in the habit of taking several pictures whenever she's over, so that she can show Anri just how much she's growing. She wants to see if Anri thinks it's unusual too, but the young woman usually gets too caught up in how cute the pictures are to comment on the strange growing patterns of human infants.

~X~

Leaving for work in the morning is always an ordeal, even months and months after Shinkei is born. The first several times they dropped her off at the daycare, Emilia cried, and even now, it's nearly impossible for Shingen to drag her away. Of course, he isn't much more keen on leaving- even he thinks a child should at least be a little bit older before being left without their parents- but work is work, and they aren't the first parents who've left their child in someone else's care during the daycare, and they won't be the last.

She's said a few times that she'd feel better if they could leave her with Shinra and Celty all the time, but he laughed at that, claiming that those two were hopeless with her and the fact that she made it out of their apartment relatively unscathed a few times was nothing but a fluke. This, of course, did not make Emilia feel much better, and it took him a lot of apologizing to convince her that he was joking and manage to soothe her.

Becoming a father again wasn't something he planned on, not even when they began dating, but as time went on, he began to realize just how much she wanted a family of her own. Sure, she would be welcomed into her, but he had known even then that that wouldn't always be enough for her, and so he had begun to think about what he would do if he ever had another child.

Her pregnancy hadn't been a surprise, and since they were trying for it, the symptoms had been incredibly obvious to him even at an early stage. Once it had been confirmed, the excitement in her eyes made everything so much more than worth it, and now, as he practically drags her to work, he's glad that he's been able to make her this happy. She deserves it, certainly, and he loves her and he loves their daughter, and he loves his son and how very accepting he's been of all these changes.

~X~

Emilia always finds herself counting the minutes when it's close to time to pick up Shinkei. After all these months, she's used to being separated from her daughter, but that doesn't mean she'll ever like it, and she'll always feel much better when the family is together, when the three of them are home, or when they're with the rest of their family. Yes, she definitely likes it best when all five of them are together, and she's glad her daughter has such a big, loving family, and so many good friends.

Shinkei is growing up so fast it's astounding, and it isn't long before she starts trying to walk, before she starts trying to mimic the sounds other make and trying to form them into words. When she takes her first steps, she toddles right into Emilia's arms; when she says her first word, when she calls Emilia "mama" for the first time, she isn't sure if she'll ever be able to stop smiling or to stop crying.