Chapter 40: Family Reunion
Hana didn’t drop the towels. She stood, frozen in the archway, her knuckles white around the terrycloth. Her eyes, wide and unblinking, traveled from Taichi’s bare chest to the four sleeping infants swaddled in silk against him, to Ryuu’s possessive, kneeling form, and back again. The silence stretched, punctuated only by the soft, snuffling breaths of the newborns.
“So,” she finally said, her voice miraculously steady. “The ‘special project’ you couldn’t talk about. This is… heavier than the Q3 audit.”
A weak, hysterical laugh bubbled out of Taichi. It broke the spell. “Yeah. A bit.”
Ryuu rose to his feet, his movements fluid and silently powerful. He took the towels from Hana’s rigid arms. “Your assistance is noted,” he said, his tone leaving no room for her to disagree. He began to methodically layer the soft cloth around Taichi and the babies, tucking and arranging with a surprising domestic precision.
Hana inched forward, one hesitant step at a time, as if approaching a fascinating, dangerous exhibit. “They’re… they’re real. They have… scales.” She pointed a trembling finger at the coppery dusting on the sturdy infant’s shoulder.
“They are dragon-kin,” Ryuu stated, as if explaining a mild corporate restructuring. “Their forms are unstable for the first year. This is merely one manifestation.”
“Right. Dragon-kin. Of course.” Hana sank onto a smooth, warm outcropping of obsidian, her legs giving out. “And you… fed them. I saw that part. From your… chest.”
Taichi felt a hot flush creep up his neck. “It’s not… it’s a magic thing. It stops soon.”
“A magic thing,” Hana repeated, nodding slowly. “Great. Super. My best friend is a magical wet nurse for a CEO dragon’s babies. I need to update my LinkedIn.” She buried her face in her hands for a second, shoulders shaking. When she looked up, her eyes were bright with unshed tears and wild humor. “Are they on the company health plan? Do they get shareholder dividends?”
Before Taichi or Ryuu could formulate a response to that, a clatter of scraping claws and high-pitched shrieks echoed down the corridor.
Two small, streamlined shapes shot into the chamber. They were about the size of large dogs, covered in shimmering scales—one a deep, forest green, the other a pale, silvery blue. They moved with a scrambling, tripping grace, wings half-unfurled for balance. Aki and Sora, in their half-dragon form.
They skidded to a halt on the polished floor, claws clicking, taking in the scene: their father standing guard, a pale and stunned Hana, and Taichi on the nest-moss, surrounded by tiny, sleeping… somethings.
The green one—Aki—sniffed the air, his long neck curling. Then, in a shimmer of displaced light, the form compacted, scales receding, wings folding in to become mere ridges along the spine of a human toddler. A boy of about three, with messy black hair and eyes the same vibrant green as his scales, stood naked and pointing.
“Babies!” he shouted, his voice echoing.
The silver-blue one—Sora—shifted a heartbeat later, becoming a girl of the same apparent age, her hair a startling shock of white-blonde. “Where from?” she demanded, marching forward with the imperiousness she’d inherited from her father. She peered at the bundle in Taichi’s left arm. “That one’s red.”
Taichi, overwhelmed, could only nod. “They… they hatched. These are your brothers and sisters.”
Aki didn’t wait for further explanation. He clambered right into Taichi’s lap, heedless of the newborns, his small, warm body pressing against them. He poked the cheek of the infant with the sapphire scales. “Small. Squishy.”
“Gently,” Ryuu rumbled, but there was no real reprimand in it. He watched, arms crossed, a faint, unguarded softness at the corners of his eyes.
Sora, more meticulous, knelt and examined each baby in turn with the intensity of a scientist. “This one feels hot. This one is cooler. Are they all dragons? Why are they so… blob-like?”
“They’re brand new, Sora,” Taichi said, adjusting his hold as the infant with the fiery eyes stirred at the commotion. “You were like this once.”
“I was not,” Sora stated with utter conviction. She looked up at Ryuu. “Father. I was formidable from the start. You said so.”
A faint smirk touched Ryuu’s lips. “You were loud from the start. That is not the same thing.”
Hana, from her rock, let out a choked sound. “They can talk. They’re three. And they negotiate.”
“They are eight months old, by dragon-kin development,” Ryuu corrected mildly. “And they are intelligent.”
As if to prove him wrong, Aki grabbed for the tiny, fist-sized obsidian shard that had popped off the first egg. He put it in his mouth.
“Aki! No!” Taichi cried, struggling to stop him with his arms full.
Ryuu was faster. In a motion too quick to follow, he plucked the shard from Aki’s mouth. “The shell is not sustenance. It is memory. You will eat the roasted goat the kitchens have prepared.”
Aki’s face screwed up, ready to wail, but Ryuu fixed him with a look. The wail died into a grumble.
The stirrings in Taichi’s arms became more urgent. The warm, full pressure built in his chest again. The hatchlings were waking, and their hunger was a palpable, psychic tug. A soft mewl escaped the red-scaled infant, and its form shimmered, tiny nubs of horns briefly piercing through its soft human scalp before vanishing.
“They’re hungry again,” Taichi said, a note of panic in his voice. It was too soon, he was still feeling hollowed out from the first feeding.
Ryuu nodded. He scooped up Aki and Sora under each arm, ignoring their squawks of protest. “Come. The first days are a cycle of feast and sleep. They will need him often.” He looked at Hana. “You may observe. Or you may return to the upper house. Your discretion.”
Hana stood up, her journalist’s curiosity finally overriding her shock. “Observe. I’m observing. This is the most insane parenting blog I’ve ever witnessed.”
Ryuu carried the toddlers toward a side archway that led to the sunlit play chamber. “Then make yourself useful. The amber teething rings are in the ivory chest. Warm them by the vent.”
As they left, the chamber quieted, but the pressure in Taichi did not. The four tiny minds were now fully awake, a crescendo of need radiating from the bundle in his arms. He looked down at their faces, now contorting with the first hints of newborn distress. Their eyes, when they flickered open, weren’t entirely human—the pupils were too slitted, the colors too metallic.
The sturdy, coppery one began to cry first, a thin, reedy sound that was immediately echoed by the others. Their skin shimmered, patches of scales flickering in and out of existence like faulty pixels. Their hunger was a physical force in the room.
Taichi took a shaky breath, the scent of rain and ancient stone filling his lungs. He fumbled with the towels, baring his chest once more. There was no hesitation this time from the hatchlings. They turned their heads, little mouths seeking instinctively.
As the first latched on, the sharp pull connecting directly to his core, Taichi let his head fall back against the warm moss. He watched the sunlight shift on the obsidian ceiling, a single, clear thought crystallizing through the fatigue and wonder: this was his life now. The accounting reports, the quiet apartment, the mundane commute—they were the dream. This straining, miraculous, overwhelming reality was the truth.
From the play chamber, he could hear Aki’s loud questions and Sora’s commanding tones, interspersed with Hana’s incredulous, whispered commentary and the low, steady rumble of Ryuu’s explanations.
Here, in the warm dark, tethered to four hungry, magical hearts, Taichi Yagami closed his eyes. He didn’t sleep. He simply endured, and nourished, and began the long, endless work of being a mother.