Before moving to a rural village, Roset and Hino were set up with an apartment in the city.
They didn't move far.
The government provided a modest apartment near the university district, two rooms, a compact kitchen, and a balcony just wide enough for a folding chair and a pot of basil Hino brought home one afternoon without explanation.
The place smelled like fresh wood and rice steam most days.
Their first few weeks together were careful.
Kind.
They navigated around each other like respectful travellers in a shared space. She learned Hino liked his coffee black and his laundry hung with military precision. He learned Roset played music while she cooked and never left a light on in a room she wasn't in.
Each night, they took turns making dinner. She introduced him to shepherd's pie and toast with beans. He taught her how to roll rice balls and slice daikon paper-thin.
They slept in separate beds at first, not from discomfort, but from mutual patience.
They were partners now, yes. But that didn't mean rushing intimacy.
One evening, Roset left her notebook open on the coffee table. Hino picked it up, curious. Inside were short stories. Some half-finished, some just lines of dialogue. One was about a girl who could hear echoes of the future in her dreams.
"This is yours?" he asked.
She looked up from the sink, drying her hands. "Yeah. Just something I've always done."
He turned a page. "You should publish."
She laughed. "I do, sometimes. Quietly. Online."
He didn't say more, but later that week, a small printer appeared in the corner of the apartment. "For drafts," he said, almost shyly.
Small things became shared things.
They went grocery shopping together. Took evening walks to the canal. She read while he worked late on local council reports. They shared stories of their childhoods. His quiet and lonely, hers messy and loud.
They talked about children, sometimes. Softly. As if not to jinx it.
Roset still hadn't told him everything about the miscarriage. But he never asked her to. He only reminded her, with words and gestures, that whatever came next would come together.
And then, one early morning, almost seven weeks after their ceremony, she woke with a heaviness in her chest.
Nausea. A pull low in her belly. Something… off.
She didn't panic. Not yet.
She walked to the drugstore just after it opened, heart rattling in her chest the whole way back.
She waited until Kazuo left for work to take the test.
When she saw the result, she sat on the bathroom floor in silence, knees pulled to her chest.
There it was.
A faint line.
Pregnant.
For the second time in her life, her body held something more than herself.
But this time, she wasn't alone