A late New Year's entry, but better late than never, eh?

2.

Thankfully, there is no wind, but the air is so bitingly cold that he's glad he insisted Yotsuba wear two pairs of mittens. As it is, she's currently balling her fists and jamming them as far down in the pockets of her parka as they'll go, hopping from one foot to the other in a futile keep-from-freezing dance. "How much longer until midnight?" she whines.

The answer is lit up on a giant Seiko digital clock a few hundred feet away, but Fuuka smiles and checks her watch anyway. "Three hours, thirty-seven minutes."

"Three hours?" Yotsuba asks incredulously. "That's forever from now."

"We can go home, if you want," Koiwai responds nonchalantly, glancing toward the torii gate that shielded the sacred temple ground from the busy city intersection beyond. He tries to hide his smirk as his daughter thrusts out her lip in indignance. She's never successfully managed to stay awake until midnight on New Year's before, except for the previous year, when she was suffering from a nasty cold. He knows no matter how he taunts her, she won't agree to leave, but he can't resist. "It's nice and warm there, after all…I'll make some coffee, and we can just watch the whole thing on TV. Like last year. Last year was fun, wasn't it?"

He can't help it any more, smiling benignly in response to Yotsuba's sullen death glare. Fuuka giggles behind her gloved hand. That's another thing, he mulls—this is another milestone, his first New Year's with Fuuka, together. Even if they're the only ones who know that they are, in fact, officially "together".

"Hey, they're setting up the tables for the wishing balloons," intones Asagi as she strides up behind her sister. "Better get in line now, it's first come first serve." She turns to the still-pouting third-grader. "Hungry, Yotsuba-chan?"

Koiwai expects her to say no, since she DID just wolf down a handful of konpeito and a strawberry-stuffed crepe, but her face lights up and she nods. "Yeah!" He'd somehow forgotten he had a hollow-legged child.

"Okonomiyaki sound good?"

"Yeah!"

"Right on. Koiwai-san and I will go get it, you and Fuuka hold our places in line, all right?" Asagi winks at Yotsuba, then at her sister, who not only looks plainly horrified, but shakes her head in rapid dissonance. Asagi pretends not to notice and steers Koiwai away by the arm before he has a chance to so much as raise an eyebrow. He knows where this is going, and it has nothing at all to do with okonomiyaki. He decides to play along anyway.

"Work going all right?" Asagi asks conversationally as they watch the chef toss handfuls of cabbage onto the puddles of pancake batter sizzling on the large griddle.

"Fine. Same for you?" She was presently working as a hostess at an exclusive club in Shibuya—he supposed in a roundabout way it tied in to her communications studies at university, but he wagered it had more to do with the ample paycheck and constant attention from wealthy businessmen.

"Oh, it's going great." She flips a long blonde tendril over one shoulder and smiles. The chef glances up, eyeing them as he cracks eggs into each pool of batter.

"That's good to hear," he nods, leaning against the side of the okonomiyaki stand. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Fuuka and Yotsuba in the rapidly forming balloon line, Fuuka putting her hands over Yotsuba's exposed, cold-bitten ears, the both of them laughing at something.

"So how long have you been dating my sister, anyway?"

His breath rushes out in a chuckle. "I was wondering when you'd get around to asking that."

"Sorry. I tried," Asagi shrugs.

"So Fuuka hasn't talked to you about it?" Koiwai muses. She'd insisted she hadn't told anyone, but he had a hard time believing that nothing had passed between the two sisters at all. At least, he thought it rather depressing that Fuuka was too afraid to confide in her.

"Officially, no. But I'm hardly blind, and Fuuka is not nearly as…emotionally opaque as she'd like to think she is." Asagi smiles to herself as her line of sight follows Koiwai's over to her sister and young neighbor. "She knows I know, though, but she's determined to keep her secret as long as she can."

"I know," Koiwai says quietly, his breath forming clouds on the frosty air. "Because when she tells you, or when I tell Jumbo, or when we both tell Yotsuba, it won't be just between us anymore."

Asagi watches him in silence for a moment.

"It was the day she came back home, wasn't it?"

He smiles at the recollection of that day, the first time he pressed his lips to hers. "Yeah. That was the beginning of it. It's been slow going, though. She's got school, I've got Yotsuba, we've got our own routines—no sense in interrupting all that."

Asagi lets out a low whistle. "Still. Three months and change, though. You two thought about how you're going to break it to our parents?"

"Uh…yeah. I mean, no," Koiwai shifts uncomfortably. He's gone over that scenario seemingly a million times in his head, the outcome ranging from himself being hauled off by the police to Mr. Ayase chasing him down the street with a sharpened katana raised over his head. He knew full well how ridiculous it was. A katana was overkill. A bo staff seemed more feasible.

Asagi cackles. "Ease up, Koiwai-san. 'Tou-san's not going to kill you or anything, you know."

Had he articulated that paranoid fantasy, or was it just that obvious? "I know." He'd tried to put himself in the man's shoes before. If his daughter had come home and said she was dating the much older man next door…and then he had to stop, not wanting to entertain the notion that Yotsuba would ever be old enough to even consider thinking about looking at the opposite sex. Although, if Ena and Miura and their constant sighing over the latest boyband magazine were any indication, that'd be happening sooner rather than later.

"If nothing else, he'll be glad it's you and not another ronin with a fast car and no discernible future," Asagi reassures him. "But really, he and 'Kaa-san…they've considered you and Yotsuba-chan sort of extended family for a long time now. Two," she says to the chef, dropping a handful of hundred-yen coins into his palm.

"Well, Yotsuba didn't exactly give them much choice in the matter." He can't help but smile, though.

"That's true. Look, I'll sit Fuuka down when we get back tonight. I know how she feels, but the sooner it's out there, the sooner you two can…get on with it, you know?"

"Yeah, I know," he sighs as they carry the plastic containers over to where Fuuka and Yotsuba are standing in line. He was definitely ready to get on with it. There were nights when he found himself staring at the ceiling, unable to sleep for thinking about her, wishing she was beside him on the futon so that he could press close to her and doze off with his face half-buried in her hair. But he couldn't, so instead he'd sit up draining cup after cup of coffee and not realize the time until Yotsuba shuffled sleepily downstairs for breakfast. "Thanks, Asagi."

"No problem. Just promise me one thing," and she quirks an eyebrow in that mischievous way he's come to know all too well. "Don't knock her up until university's over, all right?"

Luckily, he pulls his jaw back up before she notices.