Chapter Ten

The epilogue. Call me a sap, but I do love giving people happy endings. =)

Thank you to everyone who read this story, and an extra special thanks for all of you who reviewed. It really kept me inspired to write.

If you've been a silent reader, take a moment and let me know what your favorite part was, things you'd like to see for Nanako's story, or anything else!

Thank you all so much for reading! I love you all!

Reita knew there was something was strange about his life, but he couldn't quite put his finger on it until a month or two after he had graduated. He and his mom were sitting around the kitchen table, talking about the pros and cons of the different universities he had been gotten into. There were two that were fairly far away, one of which didn't really have the academic program he wanted, and while the other one had a few great courses, it was rather expensive. The nearer one, Aoyama University, wasn't cheap either, but offered some good scholarship opportunities.

"If I went to Niigata, I'd have to live in a box and eat nothing but ramen." Reita remarked, looking up from the brochure.

"Well, it's not like you eat anything but ramen anyways," his mother joked, laughing at herself and eliciting a smile from Reita.

It was that moment, when Reita looked up to meet his mother's grin, that he realized what felt so strange about his life.

He liked it.

He liked spend time with his parent, talking and remembering and telling her other stories about Yankumi. He liked being able to come home and tell her things, to just know that if he wanted to talk to her, he could.

He was about to try and find a way to articulate that when his mom's phone rang.

"One sec," she said, then answered. "Hello? Yes, this is she. Oh! Yes, I-I did. Really? Well, I…" Her voice faded as she headed to her room. Reita shrugged and went back to trying to decide how much he wanted to eat packaged ramen for the next four years of his life.

When he glanced back up, his mom was standing in the doorway, staring at the floor in a vaguely shocked manner.

"Mom? What's going on?"

"I… I got a job." She looked up at him in disbelief.

"Huh?"

"I… I applied for this position at a magazine in Osaka, mostly because it was my dream job, but I never thought that it would actually… that it was even possible… They said that they read my sample article and really liked it and want me to start in two weeks."

"That's great!"

"But…" Her voice and eyes became unsure. "I'd have to move to Osaka. So… I don't know if I should take it."

And it was that tone, that hesitancy, that helped Reita realize what his mom was trying to say – that she was putting their relationship, putting him, ahead of something she wanted. For perhaps the first time in Reita's memory.

It was that epiphany that allowed him to say, "I think you should go."

Saiga Miku glanced up in both surprise and growing hope. "Really? I didn't know if…"

"If it's a job you really want, you should go for it."

Blinking back tears, she hugged Reita tightly, then abruptly pulled back. "Wait. If I move, where will you stay?"

Reita shrugged. "It's college. That's usually when kids move out anyway. I can crash with Tawara or someone until I figure it out."

Miku looked down, then slowly offered, "I think… I would feel better if you stayed with the Sawada-senseis."

Reita could only stare in utter surprise.

"I just… I know that they'd take care of you. Do you think you could ask them?"

Biting back a smile, Reita nodded. "Yeah. I'll ask."

.

.

.

After his calls went unanswered, Reita just decided to head over to the Oedo house and ask in person. Since the school year was over, he figured that at least Yankumi would be home. As he walked up to the door, he took a deep breath in to just enjoy the calm and tranquility that the front garden inspired.

The illusion of serenity shattered as soon as he knocked on the door.

There was a series of panicked shouts and pounding footsteps from inside, then some urgent whispers, then the door slid open slowly, revealing Yankumi, Shin, Kuroda-san, Tetsu, Minoru, Wakamatsu, and Makoto all lined up and starting to bow. At least, he thought it was all of them. Shin was the only one dressed normally. Everyone else was dressed in what Reita assumed they thought were civilian clothes.

Kuroda was still wearing his kimono, but the minions were all wearing white suits, black open shirts, gold chain necklaces and sandals that couldn't have screamed 'yakuza members' any louder. Yankumi was wearing a matching tweed suit jacket and skirt that almost made her look like a studious librarian, not the weird Yankumi he knew.

As he stared at this completely bizarre scene, Yankumi looked up from the bow and shouted, "Oh good, it's only Saiga." The other yakuza members glanced up and started to smile until Yankumi continued, "Alright everyone! Back to cleaning! We only have a short time, so move move move!"

"What... is going on?" Reita managed to ask.

"Oh! The Sawada-sans are visiting, so we're making sure everything looks perfect and normal!" Minoru smiled widely. "That's why we're dressed legit!"

"Legit?" Reita repeated in confusion.

"Normally." Shin supplied, then rubbed his face in resignation.

Minoru nodded and smiled even wider.

Trying to muster up a smile of his own, Reita responded, "Oh. I… see."

A loud cry echoed from upstairs.

"Minoru! The baby!" Yankumi yelled from down the hall.

"I got her!" He shouted back, then shot Reita and Shin an enthusiastic thumbs up before leaving.

Shin sighed loudly and Reita glanced over.

"So… what's going on again?" He asked.

"My parents are coming over."

"And what's the big occasion? Besides the baby, I mean."

"Well, they've never come over before."

Reita looked up in surprise. "Never?"

"We usually go over to their place. It's nice, it's in town, it's not in yakuza territory, and it's…" Shin shrugged, "normal. But with the baby here, they insisted they come to us. Hence why everyone is running around like crazy. I think they want to impress my parents, or something."

"Shin! Is this bathroom clean enough? Which way should the toilet paper go? Roll up from below, or down from top? Do we need more incense? I think we need more incense. Tetsu! Bring me incense now!"

Sighing loudly, Shin patted Reita's shoulder and told him, "She's spinning out. I'd better go help."

Reita nodded, then watched Shin head down the hallway, shouting, "Kumiko! It already smells like a friggin' temple in here! More incense is the last thing we need!"

Shaking his head with a small smile, Reita headed to a different part of the house, keeping an eye out for anything he could do to help. Turning a corner, he saw Minoru holding Nanako and cooing at her.

"Aw, you're a beautiful Ojou-chan, aren't you? Yes, you are. Look! There's Reita! Say hello!" Taking her tiny hand in his huge one, Minoru waved at Reita.

His smile growing a bit, Reita walked over and looked at the baby. She had a large amount of short, dark hair, and wide, brown eyes that stared intensely at everything.

"Isn't she beautiful?" Minoru asked proudly. Wanting to be polite, and not really knowing what most babies looked like anyway, Reita nodded in agreement. A smoky smell reaching his nose, he looked around.

"Is something burning?"

Minoru gasped. "My fish! Oh no! Quick, take Ojou-chan!"

"Wait, what? Oh no, I don't think…"

Ignoring Reita's shocked protests, Minoru placed the baby in Reita's arms and scurried off to the kitchen to rescue his cooking fish.

Frozen in surprise, Reita stared at the infant, who stared right back.

Clearing his throat nervously, Reita felt like he should say something. "Well hello there, little… baby. Person. Thing."

Nanako seemed unimpressed.

"I'm, uh, Saiga Reita. I'm a, well, I used to be a student of your mom's, but now I guess, I'm more of a… friend. I think."

Nanako furrowed her eyebrows, seemingly contemplating this new information. Suddenly coming to a decision, she waved her arm around regally.

Unsure of what arm waving meant in baby culture, Reita hesitantly reached out to hold her tiny hand. She responded by grabbing onto his finger, which Reita took to be a friendly gesture.

"You're not so scary for a baby." He observed, then winced as her grip tightened. "Hey! Ow! I need that finger!" As he tried to release his captive digit from her surprisingly strong grasp, he muttered, "Well, at least we know you weren't adopted."

A giggle came from the doorway. "I think she likes you."

Shaking his head as he looked up, Reita started, "Oh, I doubt…", then stopped suddenly.

Standing before him was a girl about his age, with reddish hair and light brown eyes, grinning openly at his predicament. Coming forward, she smiled at Nanako, who Reita believed looked very pleased with herself.

"Can I hold my niece?" She asked, looked up at Reita, who was still somewhat stunned, for some reason.

"Huh?"

"My niece. Can I hold her?"

"Oh, uh, yes, of course." As he glanced back and forth between the girl and the baby, he wondered how people actually transferred babies.

Laughing again, the girl seemed to understand his trouble, and slid her arms underneath baby Nanako and lifted. Nanako looked to be content with the exchange, but maintained her iron grip on Reita's finger, probably to prove that she could. It was then that the girl's words actually made it to Reita's brain.

"Wait… niece? Which means that you're…"

"Oh, I'm sorry. How rude of me. I'm Sawada Natsumi." She bowed slightly, then straightened as Nanako glared in disapproval of the motion.

"Sawada? So you're Shin's…"

"Sister. Yeah. Little sister, as he constantly reminds me." Natsumi rolled her eyes with a small smile. "And you are?"

"Oh, I'm Saiga Reita." He attempted to bow with his hand still captive, but felt rather ridiculous.

Natsumi looked up from shifting Nanako to a better position. "Wait… Saiga Reita? The Saiga Reita?"

Looking around in confusion, he asked, "Is there more than one?"

Laughing again (she had a really beautiful laugh, Reita realized), Natsumi explained, "No, it's just that Onii-chan told me that a Saiga Reita had rescued Yankumi from a gang and saved her life. Is that true?"

Now, usually when people asked him about the events of the end of the school year, Reita tried to make it clear that he had received a lot of help, that it was really a group effort, and that they owed their lives to all of Yankumi's other students. But suddenly, this didn't really seem like a good time to explain all that.

"Well, yes. It is true. I mean, I had some help, but really, I organized most of the whole thing. So yeah, that was me."

Eyes widening in amazement, she asked, "So you really faced down a drug kingpin and a motorcycle gang?"

"Yep. They weren't that scary, when you got down to it."

"And you swooped in front of a thousand guys and sprinted Yankumi to safety?"

"Um… more or less. Yeah."

"Wow. That's really amazing." And with a look of such obvious admiration, Reita couldn't help but smile back, despite Nanako furrowing her brows at him.

"Natsumi! Natsumi! There you… are." Shin poked his head into the room, then slowed his speech as he glanced back and forth between the two smiling occupants.

"Oh, hey Onii-chan." Natsumi greeted, which did not lessen the look of suspicion Shin had.

"Natsumi, can I talk to you for a minute?" Shin asked in a deceptively calm voice.

"Sure." Giving Reita one last smile, Natsumi went over to join her brother outside the doorway. Reita didn't want to be obvious, but he did rather want to hear what was being said. Leaning as unobtrusively as he could, he still could only make out bits of sentences.

"… just talking. And what do you care?"

He heard Shin's voice speaking urgently.

"Oh come on. Besides, you said no one in your class."

Reita took a step closer.

"… two years older than him!"

He could see Natsumi raise both her eyebrows at her brother.

"Seriously? Seriously? You're giving me the age difference excuse?"

Shin's tone took on what might have been chagrin. "I'm just saying," he muttered.

"I'm just saying! You and Yankumi were telling me all about how proud of him you were, and how well he's done, and how bright you think his future is." She put the hand that wasn't holding Nanako on her hip. "What's changed?"

Shin furrowed his eyebrows at her and peered around the door frame. Reita made a show of being very focused on his phone.

Coming back and letting out a loud breath, Shin mumbled, "Nothing."

Satisfied, Natsumi readjusted Nanako, who was also sporting a look of approval. "Exactly. Now, either you can let me talk to this very nice boy, who you actually approve of, or I can revisit the idea of dating one of your classmates."

Shin glared. "They've all got girlfriends."

"Noda doesn't." Natsumi countered.

Reita slowly peeked around to see Shin's eyes widen. "You wouldn't."

"I certainly could." After a moment, Natsumi took pity on him. "Oh, don't look so grumpy, Onii-chan. Just let me talk to him, okay?"

Shin took a moment, then gave up. "Has anyone told you that you've gotten feistier since you moved out?"

"Just taking after my big brother." She teased.

Giving Reita one last dubious look, Shin attempted one last warning. "Alright. Just don't do anything…" He paused, searching for the word.

"Crazy?"

"Yeah. Nothing crazy."

"Like marrying my high school teacher?"

Shin shot her a caustic look.

Natsumi held up Nanako in front of her and spoke in a high-pitched voice. "Daddy! Don't glare at my favorite aunt! She's just trying to find true love – like you and Yankumi!"

Raising an eyebrow, Shin said, "Don't use my daughter as a prop, Natsumi."

"But I'm such a cute prop! You can't resist my powers of adorableness!"

Shaking his head, Shin couldn't help a grin. "Alright. Nothing crazy." He pointed as emphasis.

Raising her hand, Natsumi smiled and affirmed, "Nothing crazy."

As she came back into the room, Reita tried to look as non-eavesdropping as possible.

"Hey, sorry about that."

"No problem at all. I didn't mean to get you in trouble."

"Oh, don't mind him. He just needs his tail pulled every now and then. Sister privilege." She confided, and Nanako spoke a firm, "Ah," in agreement.

"So, uh, what do you do? I mean, are you working, or…?" Reita tried to hide how much he wanted to know everything about her.

"I'm actually a student at university."

"Oh really? Which one?"

"Aoyama University. It's actually fairly close to here. What about you?"

Suddenly finding great clarity in which university was the most attractive, Reita only took a moment before he answered, "Me too!"

Natsumi stared in confusion.

"I mean, I'm going to Aoyama too. In the fall. As a first-year. Soon."

"That's great! It's a really good school. I think you'll like it." Natsumi encouraged, then turned as her name was called from another room.

"Oh, I suppose we should share Nanako with everyone else."

Reita took that as a sort of dismissal. "Yeah, you guys seem pretty busy. I should probably go."

"Have you met my parents?"

Blinking at the suddenness of the question, Reita could only answer, "No."

"I think you should. C'mon."

Grabbing his hand with her free one, she pulled him out of the room. As he followed Natsumi down the hall, he thought that he would be completely content following her anywhere.

And that was how he met the elder Sawadas, who were not nearly as frightening as the minions had made them out to be. Mrs. Sawada was very nice, and spent much of the time holding Nanako and talking to Yankumi about mom stuff. Kuroda-san and Mr. Sawada seemed to find a lot in common in how they believed the new generation differed from the older one, and Kuroda-san made an effort to ask Shin and Reita what they thought about generational differences.

Reita offered to leave before lunch, in case there wasn't enough food, but Wakamatsu insisted that Minoru always made too much, and Yankumi said that she kept forgetting he didn't live there anymore and had set a place for him anyways. That led to Mrs. Sawada inquiring about how he had come to live there, which ended in Yankumi telling a very poorly edited version of Reita's rescue that sounded more like a Michael Bay movie than what had actually happened. Everyone at the table looked thoroughly impressed (except Nanako, who was furrowing her brows much like Shin had earlier, possibly doubting the reliability of her mother's storytelling skills).

After an hour or so of general conversation, Nanako decided to loudly declare her own need for lunch, and the Sawada family took it as a sign that they should probably get going. Reita bid goodbye to Mr. and Mrs. Sawada, then made his way over to Natsumi.

"It was really nice to meet you, Reita." She told him, smiling softly.

"It was… great meeting you." He answered, and thought he saw her blush in response.

They stared at each other for a few moments, then heard Natsumi's parents calling her.

"So, I guess we'll see each other around." She offered.

"Yeah. I'm sure we will."

She gave him one last smile as she headed out the door. Reita turned his head to watch her go, then caught sight of everyone else at the Oedo house beaming at him down the line (except for Shin, who still looked rather skeptical).

The sensation of being smiled at by half a dozen people quickly became overwhelming.

"What?" He demanded, which was apparently a sign for everyone to come over and pat him on the back while Yankumi ruffled his hair.

"Oh! You're growing up so fast, Saiga!" Yankumi declared.

Reita cast about for some way to distract them from the teasing that he was sure was coming, then remembered the whole purpose of his visit.

"Wait! I have something to ask you!" He said, then sighed in relief as they all stepped back and looked at him expectantly.

"Well, um, I've decided to go to Aoyama University," He began, then was interrupted with a loud "Congratulations!" from Yankumi as Shin's look of suspicion grew.

"That's not the news." Reita admonished.

"Oh. Sorry. Continue."

"Anyway, I was going to stay with my mom, but she actually got a job in Osaka-"

"That's great!" Yankumi shouted, then wilted under the looks from Reita and Shin. "Sorry."

"So, she got a job in Osaka, but she's got to move in two weeks, and I was wondering if…" He realized that all the yakuza members were leaning closer to him with every word. "I… could… stay… here."

This time everyone started cheering, Yankumi declared, "Of course!" and slapped him on the back so hard he nearly fell over, and Minoru burst into tears as Tetsu patted his back comfortingly.

Once he had his breath back (he'd forgotten how strong Yankumi was), Shin shook his head and confided, "They couldn't bear to clean out your room, so everything is still there."

"I'd only be staying for a year." Reita told him, then jumped a little as Kuroda (gently) put his hand on his shoulder.

"Stay as long as you like, Saiga Reita. We never turn family away."

And because he could find no words to say, Reita simply bowed deeply.

Yankumi insisted that he hold Nanako before he left, and completely ignored his protests that he had actually already held her earlier in the day.

Her mood improved from a full stomach and a good nap, Nanako permitted Reita to hold her with only a minor amount of glaring.

"You know, if you keep frowning, your face is going to get stuck like that." He told her.

Nanako's eyebrows shot up, and Reita laughed a little. As she grasped his finger again, Reita regarded her for a moment, then remarked, "You know what, Nanako? You make a pretty good wingbaby."

Nanako thought about that for a moment, then said, "Ah!" in a tone that he took to mean she couldn't agree more.

And as he stood there, he realized that not only did he like his life, but for the first time in his memory, he was absolutely certain that it was only going to get better.