Chapter Text
Another agonizing scream pierces the storm - like a cry of thunder, shattering the quiet.
Kagaya watches the shadows of the attendants flicker across the shoji doors. He hears the frenzied patter of feet against the wooden floorboards of his personal study, hastily remade into a birthing room.
Amidst the disquiet, Kagaya peers down at his sister lying across the tatami mat with her head on his lap. Tsutako had exhausted herself crying, worn out from the commotion that ensued with their new family member’s most surprising arrival. It had frightened her cold - seeing their mother collapse so suddenly, pain gnawing at her mid step.
Still, his younger sibling refused the Kakushi’s attempts to shield her from the horrors of childbirth, indignant not to be parted from their mother at her time of need. At the thought, Kagaya tucks the quilt closer to her chin and hopes it is enough to ward off the cold from settling on her skin.
Not a moment soon, a warm hand pressed on Kagaya’s head. He tilts his gaze up to meet imploring lavender eyes that mirror his.
“Aren’t you weary, little tsukki?” Their father inquires lowly and steadily, filling the space beside Kagaya with little regard for his silken robes.
He slowly shakes his head. Kagaya does not feel lethargic at all - utterly reluctant to rest when his mother’s condition is worsening by the hour.
The labor is longer, more unbearable than when she bore Tsutako.
“You need not worry, child. Your mother is strong. Your sibling as well,” He calmly assures. The hand that patted Kagaya’s head now rests on his right shoulder. “I only wish I could be there for both of them.”
At moments like this, his father’s pallor is almost porous - sunken eyes, thinning hair, hollowed cheeks. Kagaya felt as though he was gazing through a looking glass of his own future and the burdens that awaited him there.
His father, Ubayashiki Kazuhiko, was no longer permitted inside; his constitution was too frail to bear the strain that now seized his heart, amplified by his wife’s growing pains. Kagaya squeezes his father’s hand in comfort, as if he could lend back the strength already stolen away from those accursed bones.
There is a faint smile on his father’s face: a breath from a long dive undercurrent. Something delicately carved from gratitude rather than ease.
“Always so perceptive,” Kazuhiko tucks dark strands of hair behind his son’s ear. “What a gift you truly are, my tsukki.”
Kagaya’s face flushes at the remark, his shy smile puffing his cheeks.
Cross-legged on the floor as the storm pours outside, twin sets of eyes trained at the sliding panels before them - awaiting the doors to burst open with news. Their ears attuned to every sound, Tsutako flinching in her slumber at every sharp keen from the chamber; lips mouthing prayers and desperate pleas.
‘Lift your hand upon them, Kami-sama. Keep them safe… please.’ Kagaya looks at the ceiling as if the gods could reach out to assuage him from his fears, a hand to his chest.
Please. He begs.
-
The news was delivered to them with shining eyes and trembling lips, knees sinking to the floor beneath the weight of broken apologies.
“Oyakata-sama…Young Master…I’m terribly sorry.” She could no longer bear to say the words a second time.
His father rose on unsteady legs and dragged himself slowly to the birthing room, like a marionette held by the tide of an incoming wake.
Kagaya felt his eyes prick with tears, warm memories smeared in grey: their family by the engawa picking names, his mother’s hum as she caresses her protruding belly lulling them to sleep, kicks against his palms like sweet hellos.
His hands twitched in hesitation: Should he wake his sister or spare her the pain?
She had been so certain that the baby would be a boy. He could still picture her carefully circling her hand over their mother’s stomach, eyes alight with wonder. “You’ll see, niisan,” she laughed; the sweetness of it infectious. “He’ll have your nose!”
You were right, Tsutako. Kagaya breaks. You were right.
Visceral pain folds him inwardly like a flower beaten by rain. He tries to muffle his cries before it stirs his sister awake.
Hunched in his grief, a sound slips past him unnoticed. The attendant scrambles back inside, nearly slipping in her haste.
In his attempts to stifle sobs from spilling out his mouth, Kagaya lurches from thoughts that came at him wave after wave: his parents planting another plum sapling to honor the lost and what-could-have-beens.
Then a shadow startles Kagaya, soft fabric rustling as someone kneels before him. Dazed, he blinks up. The midwife’s comforting eyes crinkling as she smiles, her thumb wiping away tears.
“There’s no need to cry, young master. Not anymore.”
She gathers his sister in her arms, caressing her hair, before pulling Kagaya to stand with her by the crook of his arm. As they inched forward, Kagaya clutches her sleeves as if it were driftwood; a lifeline against the ocean that pulls him under.
He enters the room and sees his mother bathed under amber light, holding something swathed in fine cotton. Tiny, pudgy hands peeking through the folds.
Oh. Kagaya felt his shoulders quiver as he inhales. He’s alive! Kami-sama has granted my wishes!
His father now sits on the futon where his mother lay flushed against soft pillows and soiled blankets. He whispers words by the shell of her ear before pressing his lips on her temple, reverent in his love and the love she bore.
Kazuhiko then held his son with such care, stubbornly willing his arms to keep steady - to not fail him. He peers down at his precious cargo, forehead lowered atop the fabric before letting out a wet chuckle.
“You scared me, little one.” His lips trembled around a smile, his composure losing the fight to remain still. Nonetheless, his body hums in great joy.
In the sheer relief that ensnared him, he manages to call for Kagaya, beckoning him to come closer. His eyes fixate on the rise and fall of the newborn’s chest.
“Come and meet your baby brother, Kagaya.” His father said while slightly tilting his body, giving Kagaya a glimpse of raven wisps of hair and a tiny face flushed with life.
His hands fell back to his sides. The midwife’s hand on his back was reassuring, but it was his mother’s smile - dazzling, like light shimmering on water - that finally coaxes him forward.
The raging weather outside hummed to a lull, almost afraid to break the fragile trance lest the heavens stole back the breath it gave.
That day had been a treasure: the curse retreating its touch from the family. A mercy.
When tiny fingers curl around his own, Kagaya lets out a sound torn between a sob and a laugh. Relieved tears freely streaming down his cheeks as ocean-blue eyes flutter open for the first time. Nose scrunching up in his wake — utterly and adorably identical to Kagaya’s.
“Welcome back home, Giyuu.”