Evening settled in layers — not sudden, not dramatic. The kind of quiet that came after routine had done its work.
Maejima Shinji closed the door behind him with care, not out of habit alone, but awareness. Noise carried differently in a house like this. It lingered. It interrupted.
His shoes came off neatly at the threshold, placed side by side without thought. Jacket folded once over his arm before being set aside. Every motion deliberate, economical — a man who conserved energy even in stillness.
Unit reports were clean today. Minor fluctuation, corrected early. Good team. They listen before things become problems.
The faint, uneven thud from somewhere deeper in the house pulled his attention.
Followed by a sharp voice—
“This tastes weird.”
“That’s because you don’t eat anything normal,” another snapped back.
“I said I don’t like it, not that it’s poison—”
A smaller, far more irritated voice cut through both of them.
“Just eat it or don’t, damn it—”
Maejima exhaled softly.
Kiyomi again.
He stepped into the main room.
The air hit him first — layered, unmistakable. Tangerine, faint lavender, something herbal and clean beneath it, grounded by a deeper warmth he never quite named. It was never just one scent with you. It shifted, overlapped, contradicted itself.
Like you.
You stood near the table, shoulders slightly angled, one hand braced against the edge as if steadying yourself without acknowledging it. Your hair — too long, too uncontained — spilled down your back in a way that would have been inconvenient to anyone else. On you, it simply… existed. There you were, his beloved wife, his Gina.
There was a faint tension in your posture — not dramatic, not new.
She moved too quickly again. Missed a step somewhere. Or bumped into something. She won’t mention it.
Your eyes lifted briefly, catching his presence.
No greeting.
Just that look — direct, searching, a little too deep for something as simple as “he’s home.”
Maejima inclined his head slightly. Enough.
The girls barely paused.
Konomi was picking at her plate with visible disdain, inspecting it like it had personally offended her. Nene, in contrast, had already pushed everything aside in favor of a carefully arranged cluster of fruit. Kiyomi sat back in her chair, arms crossed, muttering something under her breath that was absolutely not appropriate for her age.
Three separate systems. Three entirely different failure patterns.
He moved forward, not to interrupt, but to enter the flow of it.
“What’s the issue?” he asked calmly.
“She won’t eat,” Nene said immediately.
“It’s overcooked,” Konomi countered.
“It’s food,” Kiyomi added flatly. “Eat it or starve.”
Maejima crouched slightly beside the table, eye level — not imposing, not distant.
“Konomi,” he said evenly, “what specifically is wrong with it?”
A pause.
Too specific. She hesitated.
“It’s… the texture.”
“Then eat around it,” he replied without judgment. “You don’t need to like everything to eat enough.”
No argument. Just a solution.
He straightened, gaze shifting briefly toward Nene.
“You’ve only eaten fruit.”
“It’s healthy,” she defended.
“It’s incomplete,” he corrected, just as calmly.
Then Kiyomi.
She met his look without flinching.
He held it a second longer than necessary.
“No swearing at the table.”
A beat.
“…fine,” she muttered.
Resolved.
Not perfectly. Not permanently.
But stabilized.
Maejima turned then — back to you.
You hadn’t moved much. Still standing, still slightly off-balance in a way most wouldn’t notice.
She’s somewhere else. Thinking in circles again.
He stepped closer, not abrupt, not hesitant.
His hand came to rest lightly against your wrist first — a pause, a check. Then shifted, more securely, guiding you toward the chair without forcing it.
“You should sit,” he said quietly.
Not an order.
Not quite a suggestion either.
His hand lingered a moment longer than necessary before releasing.
She won’t take care of herself unless something interrupts the pattern.