Page 105 of Kotori
Confused, I feel around more carefully. Maybe I moved them and forgot? But no, the familiar pink packet isn't there. I check every bag, every shelf, every drawer, growing more frantic with each empty space.
"Looking for something?"
I spin around to find Kaito standing in the bathroom doorway.
In his hand, he holds my birth control pills.
"I..." I start, then stop. What can I say? That I hid them from him? That I've been preventing pregnancy this entire time while letting him believe otherwise?
"These?" He examines the packet with mild curiosity rather than anger.
"I need to take one," I say quietly. "I forgot today."
"Did you?" His voice carries no judgment, only patient understanding. "How unlike you. You're usually so careful about your health."
"Kaito-sama," I begin, but he shakes his head gently.
"These aren't necessary anymore, kotori." His voice is infinitely tender, like he's explaining something to a child. "Not when you're ready to embrace what your body was designed for."
"But I'm not ready," I whisper, and even as I say it, I know how weak the protest sounds.
"You think so?" He cups my face with his free hand, thumb stroking my cheekbone. "After today? After seeing how complete our family becomes when you accept your role as their mother?"
"That's different. They're already here, already grown. Having a baby..."
"Would make you truly theirs. And them truly yours." His smile is devastating in its gentleness. "Don't you want that, kotori? Don't you want to give them the sibling they dream of? Give me the child I've longed for?"
The way he frames it makes my resistance crumble. Not forced breeding, but gift-giving. Not loss of autonomy, but completion of purpose.
"I'm scared," I admit.
"Of course you are. But you weren't scared earlier tonight." His voice takes on a knowing quality that makes my stomach drop. "When you begged me to breed you. When you asked me to put my baby in you."
Heat floods my cheeks as the memory crashes over me. Those words, torn from my throat in the heat of passion, when nothing existed except need and want and the desperate hunger he'd awakened in me. "That was different," I whisper. " I was just saying things in the heat of the moment."
"You were honest," he says firmly. "You were telling me exactly what your body craves, what your heart wants. How can you say you're not ready when those words came from your own lips?"
"I was caught up in the moment. People say things during sex that they don't mean."
"Do they?" His eyes search mine with devastating intensity. "Or do they finally say what they've been too afraid to admit when they're sober?"
The question hits like a physical blow because I can't answer it. Because some part of me knows those words came from a place deeper than lust, from a longing I've been trying to deny since the day I arrived here.
"You begged me, kotori. In perfect Japanese: 'Haramasete kudasai.' Ha-ra-ma-se-te ku-da-sai." He repeats my words and each syllable makes me want to disappear. "You didn't just consent. You pleaded for exactly what I'm giving you."
I have no response to that. No defense against the truth of my own desperate words thrown back at me.
"Fear fades when love is strong enough," he continues, moving to the window and opening it to let in the cool night air. "And you love this family enough to give it what it needs."
"What are you doing?"
"Removing temptation." He empties the pills into his palm, then opens his hand. The small tablets scatter on the night breeze like confetti, disappearing into the darkness. "There. Now you won't have to worry about remembering anymore."
I feel an odd sense of relief. The choice has been taken from me, which means I don't have to make it.
"Your cycle should regulate within a few weeks. Soon, if we're blessed, you'll be growing our child." His hand finds my lower back, that claiming touch that always makes me melt. "Can you imagine? Telling the girls they're going to be big sisters? Watching your belly round with new life?"
The image he paints is devastatingly appealing. Mizuki's intellectual excitement about child development. Kohana's gentle nurturing nature extending to a baby sibling. Aya's pure joy at having someone smaller to teach and protect.
