Crossover Fan Fiction ❯ From Beta To Sigma ❯ Wedded ( Chapter 9 )

Our wedding was a small family affair, since neither one of us were celebrities. With Yukino off the market for business mergers, there was no point inviting former groom applicants. Families sent minor gifts or cards with support messages, very perfunctory and not meant for me so much as her parents. Pledging continued support rather than lucrative offers of wealth they might have if my bride had been less smitten with me.

Who knows that Hiratsuka Shizuka had performed match making all those years ago in high school. She probably did. She was there at the wedding after all. Teary eyed, still single, and missed the thrown bouquet, which Komachi seized. Taishi looked sheepish, and not so small or skinny anymore. I nodded to him. He nodded to me. We could talk later.

The wedding reception party was at Yukinoshita’s family mansion, the servants assisting professionally. The need for a honeymoon was not truly required, since a honeymoon is meant to create a first child. Our last coupling in our tent had determined we were fruitful, and had multiplied. This required a rushed wedding, but again we weren’t complaining. Haruno was ridiculously smug and teasing Shizuka, who was turning red with embarrassment. My sister in law enjoyed poking bears with a stick. It was her hobby, I’m sure.

We completed our necessary observances, and took the limo back to my family home. There we stripped out of the formalwear and showered before pulling on the riding leathers. Loaded down with camping gear, we headed south of Chiba and took the bridge across, skipping Tokyo and cruised down the coast to Izu peninsula. There were many campgrounds there to experience, many places to sip tea and stare at the beautiful sea, cuddle together in our new double-bag, and basically be in love, despite the threat of snow.

“It was slow, of course,” Yukino said into my chest. We’d coupled again and were resting. “All that time together. You sniped back just as hard as I did. Not some pushover afraid of my father, or worse my domineering mother. You were my first male friend since Hayama broke my trust in Elementary school. Love grew so very slowly. Just a spark of something I could barely see, much less feel. Just a slowly growing feeling over time.”

“And it went from that to purple prose and a seven figure publishing salary?” I confirmed. She nodded, cuddling against me. “I already have ideas for the next book. I’m assembling a story based on this trip.”

“Our new place should be big enough for the baby, not as large as your place during high school, but bigger than I have now. It has a proper kitchen with an oven.”

“Oh, luxury!” she teased. “The staff hasn’t let me cook. I’m out of practice.”

“Then it’s something we can do together,” I promised. It was starting to get light outside. Wind swirled around the tent, riffling the fabric. The waves crashed below on the shoreline. Grains of sand spattered against the tent walls, and we held one another.

“I want to get up. What are our plans today?” Yukino asked, stretching in the chill morning air.

“There’s some interesting hikes and places to eat here. Having any cravings?” I asked her. There was a barely noticeable bump from two months of growth since conception. She was fortunate not to suffer morning sickness, but she also had expert medical care and nutrition. Since she did not drink alcohol, her folic acid levels, critical for a healthy baby, were excellent. I wasn’t a drinker either, liking to ride my bike. Alcohol and motorcycling are a bad combination, regardless of what movies will claim.

“I want a chocolate muffin, or maybe bran muffin with butter. Yes, that,” she decided after a moment. We cleaned up ourselves, dressed, and emerged with the dawn. We packed up our camp and headed out of the nice site to look for a roadside café for breakfast and good coffee. There were plenty of signs in the nearby village, but not all were open since this was the off-season.

A winter wedding wasn’t strictly traditional but we were in a hurry. Our trip timing was only imperfect for motorcycle journeys. We carried rain suits and this part of Japan isn’t as cold as Fuji or further North.

In Izu we wound our way through various historical and geologic landmarks, taking pictures, enjoying each other’s company like the years apart had never happened. We even got cell reception and a bunch of messages, including well wishes and homework assignments and publisher messages. Yukino showed me Yui’s baby pictures, her little son a ball of wrinkles and dark hair. She’d missed our wedding due to having just given birth a few days earlier. We planned to go see her after the honeymoon trip. The publisher wanted confirmation on draft updates and publishing appointments for interviews with critics. Yukino’s last book had gotten more popular after it was announced there’d be a manga made from her high school romance story.

“That’s going to be weird, isn’t it?” I considered. “All those people we knew, seeing themselves in the story as described by you then recreated by an artist that’s never met them. Caricatures two steps removed.”

“I only get a little money from that project for the original story and editing. The manga artists and the publisher get the rest,” she dismissed it.

Days passed, moving on from Izu further West, South of Fuji-san, following the coast down to Shizuoka and then multiple days through rice paddy roads and mountains and up and down river valleys before arriving in Nagoya, the largest concentration of automobile manufacturing in Japan. I spent several days visiting plants there like a tourist, and checking out the cost of housing and family living there. This is probably where I will end up after school.

We then rode through the mountains to Lake Biwa, which was polluted, then followed the shoreline  road to Kyoto. We hadn’t been there since the school trip, and visited different places from the overly commercial nonsense we’d done as teenagers. We spent our time in Kyoto visiting shrines, temples, restaurants and cafes. We grew tired of the place after four days and hit the road again.

Every five days of travel and camping we’d either find an Inn and get fully cleaned up, or visit a bathhouse or hot spring. Yukino wasn’t far enough along for any issues from that for months yet, but eventually she would not be able to enjoy hot baths. The heat would curdle the milk in her breasts and could cause serious problems once her pregnancy got further along closer to birth.

For now, we continued our trip until reaching a blizzard that closed the roads for two days. We found ourselves in a little inn near Toyama. We ate from its dining room run by a nice old lady who enjoyed slightly lewd puns for newlyweds. We spent our time together indoors. I purchased a cheap laptop and did homework from a small shop within walking distance. Yukino descended into writing with a portable Bluetooth keyboard on her smartphone. The type was small, but this did not stop her squinting as she went. I distracted her any time I saw her wincing, and read materials for school to keep up on my engineering homework. Just because I’m on a honeymoon doesn’t excuse me from school requirements.

Once the snow melted we ventured around Nagano and the long roads back to Tokyo, tired and cold from the trip. Healthy, but cold.

Our new place was near my university, a bit more upscale and with assigned parking spaces. We could have a car, and there was space for my bike too. We would be there another year and a half until I graduated and got a proper job with one of the big automakers, or one of the more interesting aftermarket parts firms trying to sell to the big automakers or make it big in the highly competitive international after-market parts for tuners. The apartment space was big enough for three, meaning us and a nursery for when the baby is born. Haruno had helped organize the move of my stuff into our new place, and Yukino’s stuff was in various boxes ready to be unpacked and put away in the places and order she preferred.

Haruno’s messages during our honeymoon trip were somewhat different. To me were commentary on the lack of printed pornography to examine. She repeatedly made requests for access to my computer login and password to find my browsing history. During my first two years of university I spent time at the gym instead of wasting my efforts on lust for unattainable women. I worked out, spending my testosterone on personal improvement and fitness. I wouldn’t turn into a typical fat Japanese man. It was probably part of the reason Haruno had come to visit me, two months ago, and gotten me to deal with Yukino. And why Yukino had agreed to a trip. I hadn’t let myself go, because I hadn’t wasted energy on porn or bad girlfriends like so many men in my program that were failing out. You can’t afford to lose focus. And despite what women say, they still choose men based on physical features and attractiveness. I’d managed that. And now I was married with a child on the way.

Yukino got to grocery shopping and I got back to classes. I turned in a series of assignments and papers, with attached math and statistics and various engineering studies I’d setup before leaving. My bike needs the next iteration, as the data logger from carrying two people plus luggage found that further refinement could be made with the carburetors and a potential fuel injection map might drastically increase power and fuel economy. Naturally, this was just theoretical until I could get a spare EFI system available and install it. Or I could save the money towards a minivan because babies don’t do well on motorcycles. I think Yukino would protest if I dismantled the bike. She wants that just for the two of us.

In the following weeks we found a structure to our lives. Yukino worked most of the day writing. I attended classes. She quickly finished her first draft of her new novel, about our honeymoon trip, and spent another week fixing errors and then forwarded it to her editor and publisher. They were interested, and she put more effort into prepping it for publication, meaning she was more busy, so I did some of the shopping and cooking. Her swelling pregnancy was not much of a hindrance at this early stage so she and I continued our physical relationship times together, and enjoyed each other’s company with occasional sniping humor and visits from our respective sisters.

Komachi had worked up the nerve to visit, using the trains from Chiba to Tokyo and Women Only cars to avoid molesters. Haruno would appear with little warning, probably because she liked to surprise us and see if she could catch us at a bad time. Sometimes she did, and revealed she had a key at the worst possible time. Despite this I was coming to understand her psychology. This was jealousy of her little sister, getting a man before she could. Having a stable relationship. Being stable, full stop. I felt pity for Haruno and tried to remind myself not to be mean to her about this or she’d end up bitter like Shizuka. That might happen after all, but I don’t need to be the cause of that.

Classes changed and I began work on a class project with teams assigned by the professors. Working with others was less bad than it had been in high school, but managing conflicting personalities and keeping everyone on task was hard work and prevented as much concentration as I’d like on my own aspects. Explaining this to Yukino one evening she reminded me that I was still responsible for my own productivity and this project was heavily weighted towards that rather than smooth operations of management. Did I want to be a manager or an engineer, because those aren’t the same job? I really thought about that, and refocused. I completed my part of the project to my satisfaction and left the others to muddle through on their own merits. Japan may claim to be all about cooperation, but hiring and pay scales were still about merit.

School had taught me a lot about automotive engineering. About a lot of subjects which have to work together in an affordable way, within budgets and time towards simple and reliable solutions. The best and most reliable cars ended up being sold overseas for decent profit, and generally more work for the production teams. Sometimes these good designs were built overseas, so the local team would focus on remaining markets and domestic production requirements. The industry was still absorbing the costs of damage from the Tohoku quake in 2011, since the area hardest hit was a major automotive parts manufacturing area. As a nation we cleaned up and rebuilt and adapted. Our classes in our final year were meeting with automotive company recruiters from Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Mazda, Subaru, Mitsubishi, and a number of parts makers were also showing up to promote themselves and their companies, looking for creative or highly skilled specialists from the university program. There were expert tuners, well beyond what I could do. And they got hired quickly, with signing bonuses and relocation assistance from their companies. Some showed particular ability to manage people and were pushed into the management track, despite being engineers. Engineers who can talk to people are worth a lot, after all. So much for the common wisdom. Some would wash out into sales or technical services, apparently.

Yukino grew larger in the last trimester of her pregnancy. She required more comfortable seating and a lot of frequent bathroom visits. Haruno visited more often, helping with shopping trips. Their mother turned up, withholding comment on the small apartment and having stilted discussion with Yukino filled with contextual meaning that distracted my wife and made her more emotional and angry than usual for days afterward.

The new book published and sold well. Lots of copies, more printing runs ordered. It was a welcome addition to our finances. As the day approached for end of term it was harder to continue studying for exams and I took breaks to cook meals for Yukino, setup a crib, a baby diaper changing table, and various other things. I got through exams and passed sufficiently well that contingent hiring issues were confirmed, leaving me to choose from several options. Then Yukino went into labor and we timed things until it was short enough to get to the hospital and the birth process. There was a fair amount of screaming until the epidural kicked in and our daughter was born after nine hours of labor. They say the first labor is the longest one for new mothers. It seems to be the case. Yukino nursed the just washed baby on her breast and let the exhaustion take over, relaxing finally. I stood there in scrubs marveling at my wife and new daughter.

“What is her name to be?” asked a nurse with a form.

“Mihoshi,” I answered, writing the characters. Soon enough we were escorted to a maternity ward where Yukino recovered from the drugs used to ease the pain of birth, and definitely made walking impossible. Mihoshi slept, woke, cried, ate again, slept some more. She was a quivering red bundle of needs. I took some pictures and forwarded them to family on both sides. There were congratulations messages. Yukino gradually came out of the fugue state and stared at the baby with intense love. So this is what it looks like from the outside?