While Mizuki was at work, Sora got them a room at the place where they'd stayed after the wedding.

Mizuki showed up with a bag full of candy that she'd purchased from the end-of-holiday sale on her break. Sora looked at the candy dubiously for a moment, there were several kinds, but he wasn't fond of any of them. He observed her happy expression as she laid them out one by one, then grinned and fed her a piece before he kissed her.

When Mizuki discovered that he had even packed her some clean clothes, she exclaimed, "Wow Sora, you're awesome!"

He couldn't help laughing as he asked, "Why are you so amazed?"

She shrugged. "I don't know? Because somehow I wasn't expecting you to pack for me?"

They took a shower together, as usual at the end of one of her shifts, but it felt more luxurious than at home. When Sora pinned her against the shower wall, Mizuki told him breathlessly, "When we live together, we really need a place with the kind of shower that we can do this in."

Sora agreed immediately, "Gods yes." A while later he admitted with some embarrassment, "The place I have now has a shower we could probably do this in, but it's basically a closet."

A while later Mizuki asked curiously, "Why are you living in a place small enough that you'd call it a closet?"

"Because I want to be able to replace my savings, as well as my vehicles," he replied uncomfortably.

She looked at him for a moment, while he avoided her eyes, and then asked, "Why do you find that embarrassing Sora?"

He shrugged, but then met her curious gaze and admitted, "Because it's not the kind of place you'd usually invite a girl to?"

"You'd better not be inviting girls to it," she warned him. He blinked at her in surprise. "I don't care where you're living as long as it's reasonably clean and safe Sora."

"It's both, and I'm never going to cheat on you Mizuki," he assured her. She grinned at him and he returned her smile for a moment, but then suddenly sobered and asked, "Why do you tease your sister with exaggerated love plays with her husband?"

She chuckled. "But you can tell that we're joking already can't you?"

Sora shrugged. "I'm pretty sure that you're joking but it's not entirely comfortable to watch, and I think it hurts your sister?"

"We're not doing it just to be mean to Aka-nee-chan," Mizuki told him reassuringly. "Someday she's going to realize what Kyo-nii-chan is doing."

"Aside from flirting with you?" he asked a bit dryly.

"Yeah! See, when they started dating she told him that it sounded fake when he'd tell her she was beautiful, so he never ever exaggerates when he tells her how much he loves her, or compliments her," she explained cheerfully. "She's the only one he always tells the exact truth to, not that he ever lies, apart from the ridiculous bedtime stories he tells his children. We're just showing her the difference between that and the flowery things, and exaggerations like, 'I'll tell you a million times'."

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Sora looked at her doubtfully. "Okay."

Mizuki asked more hesitantly, "Does it really bother you?"

He shrugged, but replied after a moment, "I don't know. You never act that way with me so it mostly looks like you're just playing."

She considered it before asking, "Would you like it if I acted more affectionate?"

He reached out, pulled her into his lap, and cupped her cheek, before assuring her seriously, "You're plenty affectionate with me Mizuki. I adore you." He kissed her.

After a few minutes of kissing she stopped and told him seriously, "Sora, if you decide later that it really bothers you, I'll tell Kyo-nii-chan that we have to stop teasing Aka-nee-chan."

"Is it okay if I just remind your sister that you're just teasing her?" Sora questioned.

"Of course!" Mizuki replied promptly. "It's not a secret!" she insisted laughingly.

He asked a few other things, but not about how she'd told her family she would marry him, as she'd kind of expected. It was getting late by the time she told him about how she'd met Kyohei.

"When I met him he was crying on a bench in the park I went to play at. He and Aka-nee-chan both tend to cry easily." Mizuki grinned at Sora as she told him, "I offered him half of my jelly sandwich, but it was a little squished by then and he just stared at me."

"I asked him why he was crying in the park and he explained that he'd just been fired from his first job. When I demanded to know why that was worth crying over he told me I was too young to understand. I told him he'd better not be one of those idiots like in daytime dramas, who commit suicide because they think they can't tell their family that some idiot fired them." She paused, then added, "I hate those shows."

"Anyway, that made him laugh and he swore that he wasn't anything like that silly. We talked for quite awhile before I went home, and I figured I'd never see him again. But when we went on a class fieldtrip he was working at his new job at that place," she said with amusement.

"Destiny?" he asked dryly.

Mizuki laughed as she exclaimed, "You should have seen the look of shock on his face when I ran up to him and greeted him by name! His coworkers teased him about his 'girlfriend' showing up to his workplace, but he was cool and didn't pretend he didn't know me."

"I feel a little sorry for him," Sora commented.

Mizuki glared at Sora for a moment before laughing again and admitting, "I guess it was kind of hard on him. When Aka-nee-chan's boyfriend broke up with her she kept crying, and it reminded me of him, so I went back a couple weeks later to ask Kyo-nii-chan if he'd consider dating."

She grimaced. "He asked me not to come to his work anymore, I had to agree to get his phone number, and then he got all worried about even talking to me on the phone. He wouldn't agree to meet Aka-nee-chan, even though he's only a couple years older than she is, until she'd turned 18! So we pretty much only exchanged holiday greetings for a couple of years."

"How, um, terrible that must have been for you?" Sora asked facetiously.

Mizuki frowned at him and protested, "But when they did finally meet each other, all they did was stand around and blush, because they both liked each other right away! He wasted two whole years! And then Aka-nee-chan insisted that they date for two more years before she finally agreed to marry him."

Sora laughed and then asked her dryly, "Why do I feel like a big part of what they had in common was struggling beneath your manipulative claws?"

She frowned at him but then sighed. "Because you pay attention? I tried lots of times to get them to meet before her birthday," she admitted.

Sora laughed again, and kissed her before he reached out and pulled her under the covers.