Naota was worried. He didn’t go home when his shift finished, going instead to just sit there and watch Shinji sleep, trying not to annoy Ashara or make her even more worried than she was. Ibu-san came and Naota welcomed the distraction, taking the baby and playing with it for an hour while father spent [...]

Ibu Ashara could hardly sleep that night. She got up constantly, poking through the house, trying to find every little thing she thought her beautiful boy might want. Her husband tried, many times, to coerce her back to bed, sometimes with success and others not, but even when successful it did not last and after [...]

Kippei walked into the house after dark, having taken the long way home, just walking as if he could walk forever, straight out of his life or back into the past or somewhere, out of this nightmare. It was dark, and quiet, and he put his keys in his pocket and stood for a minute [...]

Kippei could not breathe. Everything in the world did hurt, but nothing so much as that look in Shinji’s eyes. Three years. Yeah, it had been three years. He had never thought he could hurt more than when they told him Shinji would never wake up again, over and over until he’d finally believed it; [...]