“Aqua, what’s a father?”
Ruby smirked at Aqua’s reaction to Cobie’s next inciting question of the day. It wasn’t one of the more incredulous questions from him, but it still came out abruptly enough that Aqua choked on his drink. Sitting on the living room sofa, Ruby chuckled as he strained out coughs, his entire front stained with orange juice.
“Do you know, Ruby?” Cobalt asked from his perch on the corner backrest. The three of them were watching a kid’s movie, one Aqua had apparently already seen when he was a kid. He usually skipped out on these kinds of flicks, but his presence today seemed to spark the innate inquisitiveness in Cobie with more questions.
“You don’t need to know what a father is, Cobie,” Ruby said confidently.
Cobalt took another bite of his muffin. “Why?”
“Fathers are unimportant. All that matters is our mother, who obviously conceived us with no influence from a man to begin with.”
She felt Aqua’s frown without looking at him. Wordlessly, he left the couch, probably to clean himself up.
Ruby could hardly remember Sarina Tendouji’s father. The only parental figure she could name and see in her mind’s eye by the end was her mother.
And now Sarina has been reborn with the best mother she could have ever asked for: Ai the idol! Some no-name father would be totally redundant and unnecessary.
A private part of her once thought having to share Ai with two brothers was less than ideal, but she’s since learned better and has banished that thought away forever.
Sarina Tendouji didn’t have any siblings, so Ruby Hoshino was in new ground whilst growing up with Aqua and Cobalt.
Getting used to Aqua was easy enough, since he was also reincarnated and so pretty simple to talk with. He might be annoying sometimes, but he had obviously died in his last life as an adult. He was smart, finding ways Ruby couldn’t readily think of to work around the restrictions around the apartment placed by Mama and Miyako. He was also very mature about supporting Mama in her life at home and in her career. Ruby had her own share of clever ideas, which Aqua did acknowledge when he knew he couldn’t deny them, but Aqua still was quite the valuable ally. It helped a lot that he was also a genuine fan of Mama who continued to love her, so he and Ruby always had something to relate to despite their differences in life experience.
Cobalt… was adorable!
Just in day-to-day life, Ruby easily preferred being with Cobie. Him being a real baby didn’t bother her much. His joy in just breathing air and being alive was infectious, so Ruby never hesitated to play with him with his stuffed animals and action figures unless something with Ai was playing on TV, at which point she dragged Cobie to watch with her. He never complained, because even though he was only now as a four-year-old learning how important Ai was as an idol, he certainly understood Ai was their mother who deserved all of their love.
She couldn’t quite say she loved Aqua yet without pausing. The mental age gap made it feel off to think about, but she’s getting there. Cobalt, on the other hand, she could easily hold closest to her heart second only to Ai.
Well… first Ai, then Sensei. Then Cobalt, and after, Aqua. Miyako and President Ichigo occupied the same general spot at last.
In any case, Ruby loved Cobalt, and he should forget about any more rambling questions on a non-existent father. After Ai, Ruby, and Aqua, Cobalt should save all the spare love he has for any children Miyako and Ichigo might have, who will by default become their little brothers and sisters. When he’s older, Cobalt’s love will also go to an approved girlfriend who Ruby can instantly regard as a sister. Maybe one Ruby can call a big sister? It’d fill out all the basic family roles nicely.
“What’s ‘conceive’ mean?” Cobie asked next.
“She’s play-lying to you,” Aqua called out as he strolled out the bathroom. Ruby stuck her tongue at him. “Play-lying” had become their go-to clarification for when they were making a joke or playfully twisting the truth and didn’t want Cobalt taking their words too seriously. Aqua used it more often than Ruby liked when she was teaching Cobie things.
“Oh. But are moms and fathers really related?”
“Why are you asking? What do you think is a father?”
“I thought it had to do something with grandpas. ‘Cause we have to call aunt Miyako ‘mom’ sometimes and she’s married to grandpa Ichigo.”
Ruby still remembered the indignant flush on the president’s face when Cobie had first called him “grandpa.” Cobie only listened to not call him that in public, still badgering good old grandpa Ichigo whenever he visited the apartment.
“And mom in the last show we watched was the best friend to a princess who saw her grandpa king die.” Ruby suppressed a shudder. Mama’s character had given up her own life for the princess in that opening episode – offscreen, thankfully, under a falling building without any graphic details, but it had still hurt to watch. “The princess’ father was the villain, so the way mom explained it to me, it sounded like fathers were evil sons of grandpas.”
As Cobalt loudly swallowed another bite of his snack, he pointed at the TV screen, depicting the kid main character piggybacking his dad as they ran away from a gaggle of armed henchmen. “But that guy’s father is really nice. I don’t get it. Did mom have a stupid moment and explain what a father is wrong? Or did I have the stupid moment and not get what a father really is?”
Mama is not stupid! was on the tip of Ruby’s tongue, but she’s since learned better to not react so abrasively on a dime toward her little brother. Cobalt was only trying to make sense of things when he said such extremely misguided assertions. “A father is just the son of a grandpa,” she said instead. “They can be good or evil. It depends on the dad.”
“Oh. Can moms be good and evil, too?”
“Yeah. The princess’ mom in that fantasy drama was also evil. Our real mom isn’t.”
Cobalt chewed thoughtfully. He switched back to the movie. Ruby patted his knee, proud at how quickly he had absorbed the explanation, and also turned back to the TV. Even Aqua didn’t utter a single complaint as he plopped down next to her.
Once Cobalt finished the rest of his muffin, he pulled out a napkin to gather up the crumbs that had inevitably scattered all over the sofa and the floor around him. It was Aqua’s turn to help clean up after Cobalt today, so he went to work with the trash bin and a small broom. Ruby hopped off the couch to refill her drink.
“You’ve got another question in you, Cobalt,” Aqua said. “Ask it.”
“Oh. How can you tell?”
“You’re chewing your lip again.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
“And the question you were thinking about before?”
“Is our father a good dad or an evil dad?”
Now Ruby was the one who couldn’t stop herself from choking on her lemonade.
“Ruby was play-lying when she said our father doesn’t matter, right? But most of our classmates and a lot of the people on TV have dads. Our father is never with us, so is he busy doing something good or evil?”
Their father did not matter. That was no lie, playing or otherwise.
“Ask that when you’re older,” Aqua said before Ruby could voice her take on it. She couldn’t see the expression on Aqua’s face from where she was on the other side of the room, but she was sure she saw his legs stagger for a second.
Cobalt stared blankly at Aqua. “Ask when you’re older” was their last resort to shut down Cobalt’s line of questioning when they couldn’t adequately quell his curiosity. Ruby was sure he knew that it was a cop-out answer, but Cobalt was always too nice to say anything about it. He would just stare uncomfortably at you. He even did it to Mama, though his flat look always morphed back to his chipper smile once Mama changed the subject.
“Ai will be home soon,” Aqua said after a pause. “Go wash your hands.”
“Okay!”
Without a moment’s hesitation, Cobalt dumped his crumbs in the trash and waddled to the kitchen.
Ruby quietly strolled to Aqua and was immediately given an answer to her own unspoken question.
“I admit I am curious who our father is,” he said, “but… just thinking about it makes my heart sink.”
Sad that his favorite idol had children? No, Aqua wouldn’t be that petty, Ruby thought. He must be sympathetic to Ai being abandoned by whoever fathered her children.
He used to be an adult before. Had he once been someone’s father, too?
“Cobalt is also curious, but it doesn’t sadden him not to know who he is. Some fathers aren’t worth knowing. Until Ai decides she wants to tell us who ours is, I think we should respect her silence.”
Ruby can live with that. What they and Cobalt didn’t know won’t hurt any of them. “Okay. It’s not like we even need a deadbeat dad butting into our lives.”
Aqua only hummed in response.
----------------------------------------
President Ichigo would probably be pulling his hair if he knew that Ai was lying lazily in bed with two of her sleeping children cuddled beside her when B-Komachi had made more vital preparations today for the upcoming Tokyo Dome concert. After that night last week of him and Miyako hosting a little celebration party with Ai and the kids, Ichigo had sobered up quick and was micromanaging a lot more than necessary to make sure everything for the concert was perfect. She didn’t blame the worrywart dealing with the pressure the best way he knew how, but that wouldn’t stop Ai from also decompressing however she can, too.
Ruby, still exhausted from another session of practicing Ai’s own dance routines yesterday, gently snored. Aqua, who had stayed up late playing with his smartphone until Ai woke up for some water and dragged him to bed, was cutely drooling. Ai raised her phone to snap a private photo of the three of them together.
Cobalt in between them all would have been the cherry on top, but he was already on his feet, threatening to knock the walls down.
Ai still remembered when her two oldest babies went viral with their synchronized high-speed cheer a few years ago, before they could even stand on their own. Thanks to personal training from Ruby, and Aqua pitching in some, Cobalt was ready to join his siblings in another cheer to be captured online and sure to spread across Japan for the dome event.
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As long as he didn’t keep losing his grip on his glowsticks, like he was now, another series of colorful rods slipping out of his fingers and bouncing against the ceiling, the glass window, the mirror he was practicing in front of, and the wall behind Ai. She caught one of the batons before it dropped on her face.
“Sorry, mom!”
“You only need two glowsticks in your hands for the cheer Ruby showed you,” Ai reminded him.
“But she and Aqua only want to cheer for you. That wouldn’t be fair to the rest of the Komachi band, wouldn’t it? I want to cheer for all of you!”
Was it selfish of Ai to want all of her children to dance and chant for her and her only? Yes. Shamelessly so. In spite of that, she still felt a surge of pride at Cobalt’s compassion for the rest of the girls in her idol group.
Someone rang the doorbell, the noise echoing throughout the apartment.
“I’ll get it!”
Careful not to disturb her other children, Ai rose out of the bed to quickly chase after him. “No, wait, Cobie!”
Visitors rarely came to Ai’s apartment, since she didn’t exactly have many friends and any deliveries usually came through the Saitous’ address as the middleman. Whoever was ringing the doorbell had to be President Ichigo – who would be yelling a storm at Ai for not stopping Cobalt before he opened the front door alone again – or Miyako – who would be glomped by an enthusiastic hug with an energy she could only meet half-way at this hour.
There was a third option if Ai’s call from a phone booth a couple days ago had meant anything to the man on the other end…
Ai rushed out the bedroom just in time to see Cobalt down the corridor at the front of the door. He was already turning the knob as she absently closed the door behind her.
“Cobie–”
The morning sun brightened the apartment as the door swung open.
White petals and green stems floundered under a thin stream of red, showering over Cobalt’s tiny head. A man in a hoodie stood in the doorway. There was a sudden cry of pain from Cobalt. It was absolutely deafening to Ai. She watched her child stumble back from the stained kitchen knife the stranger was holding.
Ai couldn’t turn her eyes away from Cobalt clutching his face. She heard the man speak. “Why did you… Where is…”
Cobalt’s response broke Ai’s heart. “Wow, mister,” he said, upbeat exactly as he was mere seconds ago. “This really stings! Like a big bite from a bee!”
He always had a high pain tolerance for someone his age, and the family always played little games to make light of the periodic scrapes and tumbles to not scare Cobalt while also trying to stress the importance of safety, but right now, dismissing whatever horrible cut he had on his face as like a tiny bug bite…
Then the stranger’s and Ai’s eyes met. His shocked confusion turned into a desperate anger.
“You! You bitch!”
Ai tried to dash forward, but there was no hope of her covering the distance in time. She stopped short once the stranger manhandled Cobalt by the neck, the knife hovering awfully close to the bloody streak sliced through Cobalt's nose and forehead. One of his eyes was shut. Ai couldn’t tell at all if it had also been cut.
Cobalt was still smiling… Surely he could understand the pain he was feeling right this second? Hadn’t he learned how to recognize when he was in danger? When they weren’t playing and he was genuinely hurt? Why was he smiling?
“You went and had kids even though you’re a fucking idol!” ranted the stranger – a stalker, then. “You slut, treating your fans like we don’t exist. You’re just a damn liar.”
Aqua or Ruby or them both were calling out from the bedroom. The door only locked from their side. With the stalker still ranting, Ai stretched her leg back to slide a nearby chair to lock itself between the doorknob and the floor, jamming the door shut when Aqua and Ruby tried opening it. All the while, Ai kept her eyes on her smiling boy and the crying, hysterical stalker.
“Whatever pain your fucking kid feels, mine is even worse! A thousand times worse for being stabbed in the back by a dirty liar like you! With all that ‘I love you’ bullshit–”
“Mom hurt you, mister?”
“Shut up!”
She wanted to scream. To beg. To hold Cobalt and never let him go. To tear out the stalker’s throat.
Her baby boy smiled up at his captor. “Are you my dad?”
The stalker was stunned into silence.
Ai wasn’t doing much better.
Cobalt would always come up with the silliest of conclusions with the way logic worked out in his head…
“Mom’s said, ‘I love you’, to you before, right? She says it all the time to people when she’s dancing and acting, and people are always so happy when she says it. But she never says it to me or Ruby or Aqua.
“We love her this much,” Cobalt said as he pushed out his arms, “and it hurts inside when she says she loves everyone else and not us. It’s a different kind of hurt than when my classmates at school treat me stupid, because they don’t love me. But if mom’s said she loves you, and you really hurt, too, then you must be really special to her. Since a lot of people love her, you must be something else to also be hurt by her at the same time.”
So Cobalt always knew… He always knew Ai was lying to him and his siblings… And that was more important to him than bleeding from his face or being held by the stranger who made the cut.
“What are you even saying?” mumbled the stalker. “I’m not…”
“So! Are you my dad?”
“Of course not, you dumb kid!”
“But you hurt me, too! It feels pretty bad. If you love and hurt mom, doesn’t that mean you also love me?”
Ai couldn’t believe the words coming out of Cobalt's mouth. Was this what he was thinking whenever Ai never properly answered back to his declarations of love? Did Aqua and Ruby feel the same way? Did Cobalt always recklessly let himself get hurt because he thought going through pain meant he would feel love?
“Aqua also said once that his heart drowns in his chest when he thinks about our father. Now I’ve got blood on my face! Like when you gulp in water when you dip your head in the bathtub, it's like the blood from my heart is flooding up to–”
“Just stop talking already!” the stalker shouted. “The hell is your–”
“No…” Ai finally spoke up. She couldn’t keep quiet any longer.
Both Cobalt and the stalker looked to her. Seeing Cobalt’s innocent smile again, Ai instinctively matched it in spite of the bile rising up her throat. In spite of how dangerously close the knife wavered near him.
“No, Cobie, this man is not your father.” Ai couldn’t stop herself from confessing. “But he’s right when calls me a liar. I never understood what it meant to love someone. So instead, I told everyone pretty lies, always hoping that one day those lies would become the truth.
“I put everything I had into telling such beautiful lies. Lies are love to me, the only way I could express it. I don’t know if I was able to really love my fans, you and all the others… but as I sang those songs and stood on stage, I always thought to myself how much I wanted to. Hoping, begging that the love I gave out and the love you gave back would become true.”
Ai stared into the dark, brooding soul of the broken man before her, and she finally recognized who he was. Not just any simple fan, but a worshiper.
“I love my children, but even now…” Ai reached forward with an inviting hand, beckoning the stalker to come closer and take it. “Even now, I want to show how much I love you.”
If she had more easily returned the love the stalker had for her, could he have loved her so much back that he wouldn’t have cared about his cherished idol having kids? Could she have found the strength to tell her children outright how she loved them?
“No,” the stalker stuttered, “you’re just lying again. You don’t even remember me, do you? Too busy making your stupid kid think hurting people means they–”
“You’re Ryosuke,” Ai interrupted. “You often came to the handshake events.” She moved slightly toward him, stopping when he dragged one foot back along the floor. “Ah, I might be wrong. Sorry, I’ve never been very good with remembering names.” She played the reliable cheeky-wink-and-tilted-head card to showcase the endearing airhead that had enamored so many of her fans. “I was happy when I got that star sand from you as a present. I’ve still got it displayed in my living room. Cobie thought it was so cool. I promised we’d go to the beach one day to collect his own batch.”
Cobalt gasped. “Wow, you were the one who gave mom the star sand, mister? Can you take us to where you got them?”
The stalker’s grips on Cobalt and the knife loosened. He was losing more and more of any semblance of self-assurance in his actions, muttering bemused comments to himself. “What the hell… Ai should… That’s not what I…”
“We can all go together,” Ai offered in another excited lie, taking more steps forward. The knocks and yells from Ruby and Aqua from the bedroom were growing louder. “Then maybe, Ryosuke, you can show me how much love–”
The stalker’s temper reignited. “Just shut it!” His knife hand shaking, he pointed the weapon at Ai; more importantly, away from Cobalt. “None of this is right! You and your kid are just messing with my head. I’m not stupid. You love your kid, and you just want me to walk away and let you go. Like hell I am! You need to pay, feel your heart be torn apart, know what it's like for a false love to throw away all the passion I treasured you with!”
“Oh, so that’s how you’re gonna show how much you love mom!” Cobalt cheered with a brightness Ai wanted him to show to anyone but this intruder. “By hurting her like you were hurt!”
“Yeah… Yeah, fine! That’s exactly what I’m going to do!”
The stalker raised his knife high, but Ai was just over an arm’s length away now. She charged in.
The tangle of shoving limbs and cries of panic went by in a flash. In the future, Ai will only remember snapshots of moments in this immediate encounter. Grasping the stalker’s wrists. Cobalt tackling her. The stalker’s incoherent shrieks. A sharp pain digging into a place underneath the side of her neck.
In the present, Ai blinked. Cobalt was holding her from her front. She fell backward. She hit the bedroom door, the chair getting knocked over, but the weight of herself and Cobalt still kept Aqua and Ruby from opening it. Between the increased noise coming from her other two children, Cobalt was laughing, his face red with blood.
Too much blood… because, Ai realized, she had been stabbed in the shoulder, the knife lodged in her skin. A splatter of her own blood was now covering Cobalt.
Yet Cobalt wasn’t afraid. Save for a brief moment when the stalker had first struck him, he never showed a hint of fear or apprehension. Maybe idiotically so, but Ai was nevertheless compelled to match his energy.
“Wow,” she said in the same tone of amazement he often used. “Wow, you were right, Cobie. It really does feel like a giant bee sting!” Ai gripped the knife handle, careful not to move it too much. “Or maybe it's more like a giant needle, like at the doctor’s when you have your checkups?”
“Yay! Now we’re both hurt!”
Ai tickled Cobalt’s nose. “That’s not a good thing, you know. Getting hurt… well, hurts.”
“Yeah, but the love feels nice enough to forget about how hurt the hurting feels.”
“Ah, mama must have had a really stupid moment to make you have your stupid moment over this!” Ai raised Cobalt’s head up by his chin and wiped some of the blood off his cheeks. She only made more of a mess in the process, really.
“Whoa,” Cobie breathed out with a wincing grin. “It also stings when you touch it, like a real bug bite, too!”
Ai looked again at the stalker. His entire body was shaking with each unsteady step he took back toward the entrance. Away from Ai and her family.
Her head against the bedroom door, she could better make out Aqua’s yells. “I called the police!” her genius boy said. “They’ll be here any minute, but come inside before–”
“Hey, Ryosuke,” Ai said to the stalker, freezing him on the spot. “If I love by lying, do you love by causing pain? That’s not a good lesson to teach one of my kids. What kind of example are you trying to set for the next generation? You naughty fan.”
The stalker’s shrill scream did little to phase Ai. “No, no! None of this is right! Ai isn’t supposed to be so… so creepy. It doesn’t make sense at all! What have you been teaching your kids?
“Why the fuck are you still smiling?”
“Why aren’t you smiling, mister?” Cobie asked. “Lying or not lying, mom smiling is always nice to see! If you feel bad, smiling back can make up for it!”
The stalker started bawling tears. Before Ai or Cobalt could get another word in, the stalker tripped and scrambled to his feet to make a mad dash out of the apartment.
He was gone. Ai’s family was safe.
Good thing Aqua called the police… They can fix up Cobie’s nasty cut… and probably Ai’s own wound, too… She should also probably call the president…
Ai was shaken awake by Cobalt. He was still locked in their embrace, but he was able to stand and push her body, removing the pressure on the door so Cobalt’s sibling could finally escape.
She let Ruby, her face wet with tears, slide herself into the group hug. Aqua also kept close, except he was holding bandages and other medical supplies spilling out of the first aid kit strapped to his side. Cobalt’s general roughhousing had made Aqua the first responder in their home before Ai or Miyako took over. Now it seemed like Aqua was going through the familiar motions, looking over both Ai and Cobalt.
“You’re going to be okay,” was practically a chorus sung out of sync between her babies, interjected by Cobalt’s classic comments questioning everything.
Cobalt’s beautiful smile found its way back to the center of Ai’s vision. “Are you not okay, mom?” he asked. “Does it hurt too much for you?”
Yes.
“I’m sorry, Cobie. I’ve been a bad mom,” she said. Her confession wasn’t over yet. “I spent so long never knowing how to love, refusing to understand and accept my feelings, that I made you mistake the difference between love and pain. I’m a liar who hurt you because I was afraid if I ever told any of my children that I loved you, it would have been a lie. So I just avoided saying it entirely.”
Cobalt tilted his head. He looked at Ai like she was being silly. “But you do love us, mom,” he affirmed. ”Even if you never say it, even if it hurt to not hear it, that’s the truth.”
Ai’s voice fell to a whisper. “How can you be so sure?”
“Because we love you! Do we need any other reasons?”
Ai couldn’t stop herself. She laughed, making the knife in her shoulder burn hotter with each shudder. Cobalt’s answer was just so innocent. So cute. So honest that she couldn’t be anything but happy at Cobalt’s easygoing attitude at what she had struggled with all her life.
“Stop moving, Ai. Please.”
“We’ve always loved you, Mama! Never doubt it! Never ever ever!”
The stars in the eyes of Ai’s children told no lies.
“Cobalt, Aqua, Ruby… I love you.”
For a split second, Aqua and Ruby froze. They kept on babbling and holding her immediately after, but that was the proof Ai needed to know they had been conscious of their mother never truly showing her love for them.
She was going to do better from now on. For them.
“I finally said it.” Ai was crying with them now. Only Cobie’s eyes lacked any tears. “I’m so sorry I never did until now. I’m sorry for hurting you!”
“It’s okay,” sweet, precious, lovable Cobalt reassured. “I can never not love you, mom.”