The apartment was a ghost house. Their parents called every few days—Sakura let it ring until voicemail picked up, then deleted the notification without listening. Kazuki answered sometimes, short and flat, saying they were both busy with exams, that Sakura was buried in medical textbooks, that everything was fine. The lies came easy now. They'd had enough practice.
She woke to the familiar roll in her stomach. Not the gentle queasiness of early pregnancy—this was a fist, clenching and twisting, shoving bile up her throat before she could even open her eyes. She rolled off the futon, hit her knees, and crawled toward the bathroom.
The toilet bowl was cold against her palms. She heaved. Nothing came but thin, bitter fluid, the taste of stomach acid and the prenatal vitamin she'd choked down an hour ago. Her body kept trying, kept clenching, kept forcing her to retch until her throat burned and tears streamed down her face.
She hated this. She hated the baby. She hated the way her body had been stolen by something she'd wanted once, something she'd craved, something that was now a living punishment growing inside her. Her hand pressed against her belly—swollen, tight, round. She could feel it now. A presence. A weight. A thing that was hers and not hers.
The front door opened. She heard his keys hit the counter, the soft thud of his bag dropping. She tried to breathe, tried to quiet the sounds coming out of her, but her throat spasmed again and she gagged into the bowl, loud and wet.
"Sakura?"
His footsteps. Fast. Then his hand was on her back, warm through the thin fabric of her sleep shirt. She flinched. He didn't pull away.
"Hey," he said, softer. "Hey. I'm here."
She couldn't answer. She heaved again, nothing left, her stomach cramping around emptiness. His hand rubbed slow circles between her shoulder blades. The gesture was mechanical, almost reluctant—she could feel the stiffness in his fingers, the way he touched her like she was something fragile and something hated all at once.
"How long has this been happening?"
She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. "Couple days."
"A couple days?" His voice tightened. "And you didn't tell me?"
"What would you have done?" She said it into the bowl, not looking at him. "You're not—" She stopped. Swallowed. "You don't want to hear about it."
He was quiet. His hand stopped moving. Then it started again, slower, like he was forcing himself to finish the gesture.
"We need to go to the hospital."
"No."
"Sakura."
"I'm fine." She pulled away from his touch, pushed herself up, swayed on her feet. The bathroom spun. She grabbed the sink, knuckles white. "I've been fine. It's just morning sickness. It's normal."
"You're puking so hard you can't breathe. That's not normal."
She met his eyes in the mirror. Hazel green. Soft. Tired. Full of something that looked like obligation, not affection. He was wearing one of his baggy hoodies, gray, the sleeves pulled past his wrists. He always wore them now. She knew why. She knew the scars she'd put on him weren't the kind you could see.
"I'll get dressed," she said.
He nodded. Left the doorway. She heard him in the kitchen, running water, opening cabinets. When she came out in jeans and a loose sweater, he was holding a glass of water and a sleeve of saltines.
"Drink slow," he said. "Eat one cracker. If you keep it down for ten minutes, we go."
She took the glass. Their fingers didn't touch.
The hospital smelled like antiseptic and latex. Linoleum cold under her feet. Fluorescent lights hummed overhead, casting everything in the same flat, clinical white. Kazuki walked beside her, hands shoved in his pockets, shoulders hunched. He didn't touch her. He didn't need to. His presence was enough—a wall between her and the world, even if that wall was made of silence and resentment.
The waiting room was half-empty. An old man coughed in the corner. A woman held a crying toddler, bouncing him on her knee. Sakura sat in the plastic chair and watched the toddler's small hands grab at his mother's shirt, his face red and wet, and something twisted in her chest. Want. Shame. Hunger. She looked away.
Kazuki sat two seats over. Not close enough to be mistaken for a partner. Not far enough to be a stranger.
"Sakura Tanaka?"
A nurse with tired eyes held a clipboard. Sakura stood. Kazuki stood too, a beat behind, following like a shadow that didn't want to be there.
The exam room was small. Paper-covered table. A poster of fetal development stages on the wall, each week a tiny bean growing arms, legs, a face. Sakura stared at it. Week twenty. Week twenty-four. Week twenty-eight. She was past that now. Almost at the end. Almost at the thing she'd wanted and dreaded and couldn't undo.
The doctor was a woman in her forties, graying hair pulled back, reading glasses perched on her nose. She introduced herself—Dr. Matsu—and asked questions while she washed her hands. How far along? Any complications? Any bleeding? Sakura answered in monosyllables. Kazuki stood by the wall, arms crossed, looking at the floor.
"Let's check the baby's heartbeat," Dr. Matsu said, and Sakura's chest seized.
She lay back on the table. Cold gel on her belly. The doctor moved the ultrasound wand, searching, and then—
Whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh.
Fast. Steady. Alive.
Sakura's hand flew to her mouth. She hadn't heard that sound since the first appointment. The one she'd gone to alone, before Kazuki knew, before everything broke. The sound of a heart that wasn't hers beating inside her body.
Dr. Matsu smiled. "Strong heartbeat. Everything looks healthy. You're about thirty-two weeks now—you'll enter your last trimester soon. The baby's developed lungs, fingernails, everything it needs to survive outside the womb. You're in the home stretch."
Home stretch. Like this was a race. Like she wanted to cross the finish line.
Kazuki didn't move. Didn't speak. His arms stayed crossed, his eyes stayed on the floor, and when Dr. Matsuasked if he wanted to see the ultrasound image, he said, "No," so flat and final that the doctor's smile flickered.
She cleaned the gel off Sakura's stomach. "You should start preparing for delivery. Classes, a birth plan, that sort of thing. Do you have a support system?"
"Yes," Sakura said, before Kazuki could answer. "My brother."
Dr. Matsu looked at him. He didn't meet her eyes.
"Your partner?"
"No partner." Sakura's voice was steady. "Just him."
The doctor nodded, wrote something on her chart, and said they were free to go. She handed Sakura a pamphlet on third-trimester care and a referral for a childbirth class. Sakura took both. Folded them neatly. Put them in her pocket.
The car was quiet. Kazuki drove with both hands on the wheel, eyes fixed on the road, jaw tight. Sakura watched the city slide past the window—convenience stores, coffee shops, people living normal lives. She wondered what it felt like to be one of them. To wake up and not carry this weight.
"You don't have to do this." She said it without looking at him. "Take care of me. I know you hate it."
His hands tightened on the wheel. "I don't hate taking care of you."
"You hate the baby."
Silence. The longest silence. Then: "Yeah."
She'd known. Hearing it still hurt.
"I hate what it represents," he said, and his voice was careful, measured, like he was reading from a script he'd rehearsed. "I hate how it got there. I hate that you—" He stopped. Breathed. "I hate that you wanted it. That you still want it. That part of you is happy right now because you heard the heartbeat and it made you feel something."
She didn't deny it. She couldn't.
"But I don't hate you." He said it like he was trying to convince himself. "I don't know how. I've tried. I've spent months trying to hate you, and I can't."
Her eyes burned. She pressed her palm against them, hard, until she saw stars.
"I'm not doing this for the baby," he said. "I'm doing this because you're my sister. Because if I let you go through this alone, I'd never forgive myself. Because I still love you, even though I don't want to."
"Kazuki—"
"Don't." His voice cracked. "Don't say anything. Just let me get you home."
She didn't speak again. She watched the city blur past, one hand on her belly, feeling the faint movement inside her. A kick. A roll. The baby turning over, settling into a new position, alive and growing and waiting.
She hated it. She loved it. She didn't know the difference anymore.
The apartment was dark when they got back. Kazuki turned on the kitchen light, filled the kettle, set it to boil. Sakura stood in the doorway, watching him move through the familiar routine. He pulled out two mugs. A box of tea. The honey she liked.
"You don't have to do that," she said.
"I know." He dropped a tea bag into each mug. "Sit down. You look like you're going to fall over."
She sat at the small kitchen table. The pamphlet crinkled in her pocket. She pulled it out, smoothed it on the table, stared at the diagrams of breathing exercises and pushing positions. A birth plan. She was supposed to make a birth plan.
Kazuki set a mug in front of her. The steam curled up, warm and floral. He sat across from her, wrapped his hands around his own mug, and didn't drink.
"The doctor said you need classes," he said. "I'll drive you."
"You don't have to."
"I know."
The silence stretched. She could hear the refrigerator humming, the clock ticking, her own breathing. The baby kicked again, harder this time, like it wanted to remind her it was there.
"Do you want to know what it is?" she asked.
He looked up. "What?"
"The sex. The ultrasound could have shown it. I told the doctor not to tell me." She ran her finger along the edge of the mug. "I wanted it to be a surprise. Something to look forward to."
He was quiet for a long time. Then: "Do you want to know?"
"I don't know." She laughed, hollow. "I don't know anything anymore."
He didn't answer. He stood up, took his untouched tea, poured it down the sink. "I have studying to do. Eat something before you go to bed."
He walked past her, down the hall, and closed his door. She heard the lock click.
Sakura sat alone in the kitchen, her tea cooling in front of her, the pamphlet spread across the table like a map to a country she didn't want to visit. She pressed her hand to her belly and felt the baby move, felt the life she'd made and unmade and made again, and she didn't know if she was carrying hope or punishment or both.
She folded the pamphlet. Put it in her pocket. Drank her tea until it was cold, then washed the mug, dried it, and left it in the rack.
No note tonight. She didn't know what to say.
The days blurred into a rhythm she almost trusted. Wake. Eat. Study. Sleep. The baby kicked. She talked to it sometimes, quiet words in the dark of her room, telling it about the cherry blossoms that would bloom in spring, about the river near their grandparents' house where she used to catch fireflies. She never told it about its father. She didn't know how.
Then the pain came.
It started as a low ache in her lower back, the kind she'd learned to ignore. She was at the kitchen table, a textbook open in front of her, a cup of tea cooling at her elbow. She shifted in her chair, trying to find a comfortable position. The ache deepened, spread, coiled around her belly like a fist closing.
She gasped. Her hand flew to her stomach. The baby was still, for once, as if it knew something was wrong.
The second wave hit harder. Hot. Sharp. A blade twisting inside her. She cried out, the sound swallowed by the empty apartment. Her chair scraped back, clattering against the linoleum. She gripped the edge of the table, knuckles white, breathing through the spike of pain the way the childbirth pamphlet had described. In through the nose. Out through the mouth. In. Out. In—
The third wave came before she could finish the breath.
Her legs gave out. She hit the floor hard, her hip taking the impact, and she crawled toward the wall, dragging her belly, her hands clumsy and useless. The pain was a living thing now, a beast with teeth, tearing through her from the inside. She pressed her forehead against the cool plaster, sobbing, her breath ragged and wet.
"Kazuki," she whispered. "Kazuki, please—"
But he wasn't there. He was at his afternoon lecture, three hours of thermodynamics or fluid mechanics or something she couldn't remember because all she could think about was the pain, the pressure, the way her body was trying to push something out that wasn't ready to leave.
She reached for her phone on the table. Too far. She tried to stand, but her legs wouldn't hold her. The pain came again, and she screamed this time, a raw, animal sound that echoed off the empty walls.
Her mind split open. She hated herself. She hated this baby. She hated the night she'd drugged her brother, the way she'd taken what wasn't hers, the way she'd twisted his love into something monstrous. This was punishment. This pain. This child. She deserved every second of it.
And then she thought: I don't want to die alone.
The front door opened.
"Sakura?"
Kazuki's voice. Sharp. Panicked. She heard his bag hit the floor, his footsteps running, and then he was there, crouching beside her, his hands on her shoulders, his face pale.
"Sakura, what happened? What's wrong?"
"The baby," she gasped. "Something's wrong. The pain—"
He didn't hesitate. He slid one arm under her knees, the other behind her back, and lifted her. She was heavier now, full and round, but he carried her like she weighed nothing, his jaw tight, his eyes fixed on the door.
"Hold on," he said. "Just hold on."
She wrapped her arms around his neck, pressed her face into his shoulder, and let him carry her out of the apartment.
The hospital was white and cold and smelled of antiseptic. Nurses appeared, took her from Kazuki's arms, wheeled her into a room. She lost track of him in the blur of fluorescent lights and clipped voices. A doctor's face swam into view. A woman with kind eyes and a calm voice.
"You're in labor," the doctor said. "Thirty-four weeks. Early, but the baby's strong. We're going to take care of you."
Labor. The word didn't feel real. She'd read about it, watched videos in the childbirth class she'd attended alone, but nothing prepared her for the way her body became a battlefield, every muscle screaming, every nerve on fire.
Hours passed. Or minutes. She couldn't tell. The pain came in waves, each one higher than the last, and she rode them, gasping, crying, gripping the nurse's hand until her fingers ached.
"Where's Kazuki?" she asked, between contractions.
The nurse glanced at the door. "Your brother? He's in the waiting room."
"Can he—" She broke off as another wave hit, arching her back, a scream tearing from her throat.
When it passed, the nurse said, "He said he couldn't come in. Do you want me to ask him again?"
Sakura closed her eyes. She shook her head.
She understood. He couldn't watch this. Couldn't watch the baby that came from his own body, the baby he'd never wanted, the baby that was the physical proof of what she'd done to him. She didn't deserve to have him here. She didn't deserve anything.
She pushed anyway. Because the baby didn't care about deserving. The baby just wanted to be born.
The last push was the hardest. Her vision went white. She heard herself screaming, a distant sound, like someone else's voice. And then—
Silence.
A cry. Thin and reedy and perfect.
The doctor lifted the baby, a small, wet, squirming thing, and laid her on Sakura's chest. She looked down through tears she hadn't realized she was crying, and saw her daughter.
Black hair. Fine and soft, plastered to her tiny head. Hazel eyes, blinking up at her, unfocused and new. The same hazel as Kazuki's. The same shade she'd seen in his eyes when he'd carried her out of the apartment, when he'd held her in the dark of the club, when he'd looked at her with love and hate and everything in between.
The baby's hand curled around her finger. So small. So fragile. So alive.
Sakura forgot.
For one perfect, shimmering moment, she forgot how this baby was made. She forgot the drugged tea, the violated trust, the brother who wouldn't look at her. She forgot the shame and the guilt and the self-loathing that had been her constant companions for months. All she saw was her daughter. Her daughter's face. Her daughter's tiny fingers wrapped around hers.
"Hi," she whispered, her voice breaking. "Hi, baby. I'm your mama."
The baby's cry softened, settled into a hiccuping whimper. Sakura pressed her lips to the top of her head, breathing in the smell of new skin and hospital soap, and she smiled.
She couldn't help it. She smiled.
The nurses cleaned her up, checked her vitals, took the baby to weigh and measure. Sakura watched them move, still dazed, still floating in the space between pain and joy. When they brought the baby back, wrapped in a white blanket with a tiny pink hat on her head, Sakura reached for her with arms that trembled.
"Have you picked a name?" the nurse asked.
Sakura looked down at her daughter. The hazel eyes were closed now, the baby sleeping, her face peaceful and perfect.
"Hikari," she said. "Her name is Hikari."
Light. Because she was the first thing that had felt like light in months.
Kazuki came into the room an hour later. His face was drawn, his eyes hollow, his hands shoved deep into his pockets. He didn't look at the baby. He looked at the floor, the wall, the IV stand, anywhere but the small bundle in Sakura's arms.
"She's healthy," Sakura said. "The doctor said she's small, but she's strong. She'll need to stay a few days for observation, but—"
"I brought your bag." He set it on the chair by the window. "Toothbrush. Charger. The book you were reading."
"Kazuki—"
"I'll set up the crib tonight. I found one at a secondhand shop. It's clean. I'll put it in your room."
"You don't have to—"
"Yes, I do." His voice was flat. Mechanical. "She needs a place to sleep. You need diapers and formula and clothes. I'll get them."
He turned to leave.
"Don't you want to see her?"
He stopped. His hand was on the doorframe. His shoulders rose and fell with a breath that seemed to cost him everything.
"No," he said. And then, quieter: "I can't."
The door closed behind him.
Sakura looked down at Hikari, who slept on, oblivious, her tiny chest rising and falling. She wanted to cry. She wanted to scream. She wanted to run after him and make him look, make him see, make him love this perfect, innocent thing that had come from both of them.
But she couldn't. She'd lost the right to ask him for anything.
So she held her daughter closer, and she whispered, "It's okay. It's okay. We'll be okay."
The words felt hollow. But she kept saying them, because if she stopped, she might fall apart.
Three days later, she brought Hikari home.
The apartment had changed. A crib stood in the corner of her room, fitted with a soft mattress and a mobile of paper cranes. A stack of diapers sat on the dresser. Bottles. Formula. Tiny onesies, washed and folded, in a basket by the bed.
Kazuki had done all of it. Without being asked. Without saying a word.
Sakura stood in the doorway, Hikari in her arms, and stared at the crib. The mobile turned slowly in the breeze from the window, the cranes spinning, catching the afternoon light.
She started to cry.
She sat on the edge of the bed, cradling her daughter, and let the tears come. She cried for what she'd done. She cried for what she'd lost. She cried because her brother had bought a mobile with paper cranes, and she didn't know if it was love or duty or just the mechanical survival of a ghost.
Hikari stirred, made a small sound, and settled back to sleep.
Sakura wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and smiled. "You're hungry, aren't you?" She unbuttoned her shirt, guided the baby to her breast, and felt the small mouth latch on. The pull was strange and new and painful and wonderful, and she watched her daughter nurse, watched the tiny fingers curl against her skin, and she thought: I made you. I made you, and you're here, and you're mine.
She didn't hear Kazuki come home. She didn't hear him walk past her door, stop, stand in the hallway. She didn't see the way his hands tightened into fists, the way his jaw clenched, the way he looked at the crack of light under her door like it was a wound he couldn't close.
He stood there for a long time. Then he walked to his room, closed the door, and didn't come out until morning.
The days settled into a new rhythm. Feed. Change. Sleep. Repeat. Sakura learned to read Hikari's cries, to tell the difference between hungry and tired and wet. She learned to swaddle, to burp, to bathe a baby without drowning her. She learned the weight of her daughter in her arms, the warmth of her skin, the smell of her hair.
She loved it. She loved every second of it.
Kazuki left food on the counter. He refilled the diaper supply. He brought home a bassinet for the living room, a bouncer for the kitchen, a car seat that he installed in the back of his car without being asked. He did everything a father should do—except look at the baby.
He never held her. Never spoke to her. Never acknowledged her existence beyond the material support he provided. When Sakura sat on the couch nursing, he walked past without glancing at them. When Hikari cried in the night, he put in earbuds and turned up his music.
Sakura watched him shrink. His shoulders curved inward. His eyes lost their focus. He stopped cooking elaborate meals, stopped leaving notes, stopped pretending. He was a machine running on the last dregs of duty, and every day, the fuel ran a little lower.
She wanted to reach out. She wanted to say: Look at her. Look at her eyes. They're yours. She has your eyes.
But she couldn't. Because she knew that was the worst thing she could say. That was the wound she'd already opened, the one that would never heal.
So she held her daughter, and she loved her, and she let her brother disappear.
One night, Hikari wouldn't stop crying. Sakura walked the length of the apartment, bouncing her, singing lullabies, checking her diaper, offering the breast. Nothing worked. Hikari's face was red, her fists clenched, her wails filling the small space like smoke.
"Please," Sakura whispered. "Please, baby, please stop."
The crying continued.
Sakura's eyes burned. Her arms ached. She hadn't slept more than two hours at a stretch in days, and the exhaustion was a weight pressing down on her chest, making it hard to breathe. She leaned against the wall, slid down until she was sitting on the floor, and held Hikari against her shoulder, rocking, rocking, rocking.
"I don't know what I'm doing," she said, her voice cracking. "I don't know how to be a mother. I don't know how to be anything. I'm just—I'm just a girl who made a mistake, and now you're here, and I love you so much it hurts, but I don't know if that's enough."
Hikari's cries softened. Her breath hitched, hiccuped, and she fell asleep against Sakura's neck, her tiny body warm and heavy.
Sakura sat on the floor, holding her daughter, and felt the first fragile thread of something like hope.
She didn't know if she could do this. She didn't know if she deserved to. But she knew one thing: she would try. For Hikari, she would try.
In the next room, Kazuki sat on his bed, staring at the wall, his earbuds silent in his lap. He had heard everything. He pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes and didn't move for a long time.
Outside, the city hummed with lights and traffic and the ordinary noise of life continuing. Inside the apartment, two people and a baby existed in the same space, separated by a door and a wound neither of them knew how to close.
But Hikari slept. And Sakura held her. And somewhere in the dark, that was enough.