Chapter 242: A surprise birthday party

“You both…” Ishiki interjected. “Keep quite while eating, will you?”

Both Shiro and Nina nodded and then ate their food without saying another word. The table was quite after the last question and the unexpected answer. It was pretty much as though no one was present there.

After the dinner finished…Nina ran to her room silently. Meanwhile, Ishiki bid farewell to Shiro and then closed the washing center as it was already dark.

He looked at the total income of today, it sat at the normal 1200 credits. It was not a lot, but after a whole month, it was quite generous.

Following that he went back in, washed the dishes and then silently went to his room. It was 9 pm, by the time he sat on his bed… finishing all the work.

He sat there in silence, looking at the wall in front of him. He thought about what happened at the table, and he couldn’t quite control himself…

He had thought about his own mother then, which was not something he did often. How she had made the food taste much better… by some quality he had observed in her his entire childhood and had never been able to name precisely. Presence, maybe.

He did not know if he had that quality.

It was not right, it was not at all. He felt something when Nina said that she doesn’t have a mother. How could he just ignore that? When he was a child… all he had was his mother.

He never had the courtesy of living with his dad, as that bastard ran off to somewhere. And it was long before the Neural Matrix system was introduced to the world.

He sighed. There was nothing much he could actually do about it… he could not just go ahead and marry a girl.

Nina is a dragon and not a normal human, if he told this to a normal human… yeah he would be getting weird looks and even the risk of exposure.

’Well… fuck that. Should I just say that her mom was a player and she went to a scenario and will be back soon? ’

But on a deeper thought that would not be a good thing to say to Nina… after all he was also a player and he was going to go too soon. That might just hurt her more than anything else.

Ishiki didn’t know when he went to sleep thinking about those things. He just realized it after he woke up the next day.

Everything went like normal and he didn’t see any unusual changes in Nina’s behavior for the next three days. It was a great thing, she was strong. Much stronger than the kids of her age group… well, physical age wise.

Today, Ishiki sat up in his office in silence with a myriad of documents opened in front of him. But his attention was once again away from them and on the ceiling.

Today is Nina’s birthday… well the day she hatched from the egg.

She would be turning 11… according to documents and well, 4 according to when she was actually born.

Ishiki sighed and closed the documents… he was free to work and go whenever he wanted. Such was his government post.

On his way, he picked up Shiro too and made him work in order to set up a special party house for Nina. He even invited a few neighbors as well.

Nina, didn’t had much friends because she had to change schools every six months, she was not good at making friends. That was inevitable.

At afternoon… as usual, he went to pick her up at school and drover back to home. Nina was kind of silent today… well he hadn’t wished her birthday so it was reasonable.

Ishiki dropped her in front of the house and went ahead to park the car in the garage.

Nina stood in front of the gate for a few seconds, but when Ishiki didn’t get out she gave up and pushed open the gate.

Then froze.

The front of the house had the string lights along the top of the gate. The hallway inside had the banner — Happy Birthday in a font that the shop had described as festive.

Mr. Takeda, their neighbor was in the front room with his brown cardigan and the expression of a man who had arrived somewhere and made himself at home.

Hana, his wife… was in the kitchen and had, without being asked and over Ishiki’s mild protests, taken control of two of the side dishes.

Shiro was standing at the side of the room with his jacket on, a weird expression on his face and a small wrapped package in his hands that he had clearly been holding for some time and did not know what to do with.

Nina stood in the doorway and looked at the lights, the banner. The cake on the kitchen table, visible through the doorway, with visible delight.

Ishiki stepped out of his room in his normal home cloths.

“You didn’t forget,” she gasped.

“You really thought I forgot,” Ishiki shrugged. “No way I would forget something like this.”

Her expression moved through something, but she did not cry. She blinked twice, pressed her lips together once, and then stepped inside.

“Hello, little lady,” Mr. Takeda said, in the warm unhurried voice he used for everything. “Happy birthday.”

“Thank you,” Nina said. Then, after a beat, with the precise care of someone minding her manners while being overwhelmed. She turned to the kitchen. “Hello, Auntie…”

“Happy birthday, dear,” Hana said from the kitchen doorway. “You look very well.”

Nina looked at Shiro.

Shiro held out the package. “Happy birthday,” he said. “From me.”

She took it with both hands, which was the polite way. She looked at it for a moment. “Can I open it now or—”

“Whenever you like,” Shiro said.

She opened it immediately. Inside was a story book, the main cover featured a man and a tree… she could not tell what it was about. But it looked very interesting.

“I thought you might want one,” Shiro said.

“I do,” Nina said. Then: “Thank you, Shiro-san.”

The evening had the warm informal quality of a small gathering that had no ceremony to it — just people in a house, eating together, the string lights doing their low intermittent glow along the top of the room.

Hana replenished things without being asked and told Nina she was a very beautiful young lady, which Nina received with the specific grace of someone who did not entirely know what to do with the compliment but was glad it had arrived.

Ishiki lit the candles.

Eleven of them, in a row, on the strawberry cream cake.

Nina looked at them with the focused expression, then she blew them out in one breath, all eleven, and the room clapped and Mr. Takeda said ’well done’ .

“What did you wish for?” Hana asked.

“You’re not supposed to say,” Nina said.

“Quite right,” Hana agreed and chuckled.

Nina looked at Ishiki across the table. He raised an eyebrow. She looked back at her cake with the corner of her mouth slightly up, which was as much as she was going to give him.

They ate the cake.

Mr. Takeda and Hana left at half past five, with the unhurried goodbye of people who were right next door and felt no pressure to make the parting significant.

Mr. Takeda patted Nina’s head once on the way out. Hana said she would bring something over tomorrow. Nina thanked them both.

Soon after Shiro left as well… Nina sat alone on the table looking at the book she had received from Shiro, while Ishiki went through the dishes and cleaning.

Then Nina said, very quietly:

“Do you think she would have come?”

Ishiki continued with his work and didn’t ask who.

“If I had one,” Nina said. She was looking at the book in her lap. “Do you think she would have come to my birthday.”

He brought a cup of water to the table and sat down across from her.

She was not looking at him. “Everyone at school has one. Even the ones who say their mom is annoying or doesn’t listen or always embarrasses them at the gate.” A pause.

Ishiki wrapped both hands around his cup.

“I don’t even know what she looks like,” Nina said. “I don’t know if she was nice or mean or if she would have liked me or—” Her voice caught on that one. She pressed her lips together… her eyes were bright. “I think it would have been nice. Just once, just for a birthday.” Two tears, quiet and fast, down her cheeks. She wiped them immediately with the back of her hand. “Sorry.”

’Now how do I say this,’ he thought, carefully. ’How do I handle this without making it worse. I can’t tell her that she’ll be coming soon.’

“Do you know how she looked like?” Nina asked out of curiosity.

“She’ll be coming soon.” Ishiki heard the words leave his mouth.

He stared at the table in a daze.

Nina looked up at him sharply. Her eyes were bright with tears that had been about to fall, but now they were forgotten.

“…What?” she said.

’What,’ Ishiki thought. ’What did I just—’

His corruption. Of all the moments. Of every possible moment it could have chosen.

“You said—” Nina sat up straighter. “You said she’ll be coming soon. Does that mean you know her? Is she — where is she, is she a Player, did she go into a Scenario—”

“Nina—”

“Is she coming back? When? How soon is soon, is it like a week or is it—”

’I am fucked… Am I not.’ Ishiki cursed inwardly.

She was looking at him with those purple eyes absolutely wide open, tears still sitting in them but completely overridden now by something that was almost frightening in its intensity — the look of someone who had been handed something they had stopped letting themselves want and was now gripping it with both hands before it could be taken back.

He had done this.

And now she was looking at him like he had just told her the most important thing she had ever heard and he had absolutely nothing behind it.

He could not take it back. She would never let him take it back.

He could not confirm it either…

He picked up his cup. Set it back down.

“Soon,” he said, carefully, “is not a specific time.”

Nina stared at him. “But she exists.”

A pause that lasted slightly too long.

“…Yes,” he said.

Nina sat back in her chair. “Is she a Player?” She asked again, quitter now.

Ishiki looked at his cup.

“…Yes,” he said… because what else was he going to say.

Nina was quiet for a long moment.

“Okay,” she said finally. She looked back down at her notebook and turned it over in her hands once. “Okay.”

She did not ask anything more that night and walked down the hallway. Her door closed softly behind her.

Ishiki sat at the kitchen table alone and stared at the wall.

’She will be coming soon,’ he thought. ’Now where the fuck do i find a dragon to marry? ’

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