Chapter 61: Chapter 59 — Phase Five
The second formal house meeting was called with considerably more nervousness than the first.
Saki had spent two days deciding whether to call it at all. She had a folder this time, not just a notebook — an actual folder, color-tabbed, sitting on her lap like something fragile.
"This one’s different," she said, once everyone had gathered in the living room. "The other phases were about getting things moving. This one is about something further ahead, and I want to be careful how I say it, because it’s not really my decision to make. I just couldn’t stop thinking about it."
Nana, beside her, put a steadying hand on her daughter’s shoulder. "Take your time."
Saki opened the folder.
"I started looking into venue logistics for weddings," she said. "Specifically the kind that don’t fit normal templates. Most wedding planning guides assume one couple. I wanted to know what happens legally and practically when it’s — more than that."
The room went very quiet.
"I found three venues that have hosted multi-partner ceremonies before," Saki continued, flipping through printed pages with tabs and highlighted sections. "Not common, but legal precedent exists, especially for the kind of staged ceremony where ceremonies happen separately but the celebration afterward is shared. I also found a family law specialist who’s worked specifically with households like — like ours. I emailed her. She responded. She said she’d be happy to consult, free of charge, because she found the legal questions interesting."
Kaito sat very still, listening.
"I’m not saying anyone has to do anything," Saki said, looking up, her composure cracking slightly at the edges now that the speech was actually happening instead of just rehearsed. "I just know that eventually, this is going to be a real question. Not an abstract one. And I didn’t want Kaito-san to have to figure out the logistics completely alone, the way Mama had to figure out everything alone after Papa left. I wanted there to already be a path, if anyone wanted to walk it."
Yoru’s eyes had gone bright. Tsukasa had both hands pressed against her mouth. Even Satsuki, usually composed past the point of visible emotion, looked unmistakably moved.
"Saki," Kaito said quietly. "How long have you been working on this?"
"Since the house meeting," she said. "The one where I explained the law school thing. I realized that night that I wanted to actually help with something real, not just observe and document. So I started researching."
"Two months," Nana said softly, looking at her daughter with something between pride and quiet astonishment. "You’ve been doing legal research for two months and didn’t tell anyone."
"I wanted to have something complete before I brought it up," Saki said. "Half-finished plans don’t help anyone."
Hana, who had been unusually quiet through the whole presentation, finally spoke. "Does this mean there’s going to be a wedding?"
"Eventually," Saki said carefully. "Maybe. If everyone wants that. I’m not deciding that part. I just wanted the how to already exist, so the if isn’t blocked by something practical."
The room was silent for a long moment.
Kaito finally stood, crossed the room, and knelt in front of Saki the way Nana had during the law school reveal.
"You didn’t have to do this," he said.
"I know," Saki said. "I wanted to. There’s a difference. You taught me that, actually — back when I asked if I had to fix everything and you said I didn’t, and I said I knew, but I liked doing it anyway." She looked at him directly. "This is the same thing. I’m not trying to push you into anything. I just don’t want the logistics to be the reason something good gets delayed, when it could have already been figured out."
He looked at her for a long moment, something working in his expression that he wasn’t fully managing.
"Thank you," he said.
"You’re welcome," Saki said, and then, because the moment had gotten heavier than she was entirely comfortable with, added briskly: "The folder has contact information for the consultant if you want it. I also included notes on the three venues, with pros and cons. Venue two has the best garden for a ceremony, but venue three has better parking for elderly guests, which matters because Grandma’s knees aren’t what they used to be."
The room dissolved, gratefully, into something lighter — Hana laughing, Riku asking if there was a section in the folder about food options, Kenji immediately volunteering to be in charge of cake tasting "for quality control purposes."
Later that night, Kaito sat alone on the balcony with Saki’s folder open in his lap, reading through pages of careful, methodical research done by a nine-year-old who had decided that love deserved infrastructure, not just feeling.
Yoru found him there.
"She’s something else," Yoru said, sitting beside him, looking at the open folder.
"She is," Kaito said. "I keep thinking about what she said — that she didn’t want me figuring this out alone the way Nana had to figure everything out alone." He closed the folder gently. "I think I’ve been putting off even thinking about this seriously. Not because I don’t want it. Because it felt too big to approach without a plan, and I didn’t know where to start."
"And now you have a start," Yoru said.
"Now I have a start," he agreed.
She leaned against his shoulder, looking out at the dark garden, at Hana’s claimed flat section, at the covered area where so much quiet strategy had unfolded over the past months.
"Are you scared?" she asked.
He considered the question honestly.
"A little," he admitted. "Not of wanting it. Of getting the how wrong. Of someone feeling like an afterthought in something that’s supposed to be about all of you equally."
"That’s why Saki’s folder matters," Yoru said. "She already thought about the part that scares you most. You don’t have to solve it alone anymore."
He looked at her.
"When did you all get so wise," he said.
"We had a good teacher," Yoru said. "Someone who showed us, every day, what it actually looks like to take care of people properly. We just learned to do it back."
He pulled her closer, the folder resting closed on the table beside them, the garden quiet and full of futures neither of them had fully named yet but both of them, finally, could see clearly enough to walk toward.
Chapter 60 — The One Who Laughs at Everything
Her name was Saori, and Yoru had known her since they were sixteen — back when "home" meant a string of temporary arrangements and Saori had been the one constant friend who never asked too many questions about why Yoru kept disappearing between apartments.
She showed up at the house on a Wednesday afternoon, unannounced, having gotten the address from Yoru weeks earlier and finally deciding to use it.
"So this is the harem mansion," she said, the moment Yoru opened the door, grinning before Yoru could react. "I expected something more dramatic. Where’s the smoke machine?"
"Saori," Yoru said, somewhere between exasperated and delighted. "You can’t just say that at the door."
"I absolutely can," Saori said, stepping inside without waiting for an invitation, surveying the entrance hall with open curiosity. "Nice shoes collection, by the way. There’s like fifteen pairs here. This is either a very organized family or a very chaotic one."
"Both," Yoru admitted.
Saori turned around fully then, taking in the house properly, and her teasing expression shifted — just slightly, just for a second — into something more sincere.
"You actually look happy," she said. "Like, properly happy. Not the surviving kind. The actual kind."
Yoru looked at her for a moment.
"Yeah," she said. "I am."
Saori met everyone over the course of the afternoon, treating each introduction with the same irreverent warmth.
She told Nana her cooking smelled "suspiciously like something that’s going to make me jealous of this entire arrangement." She asked Satsuki, with a completely straight face, whether the spreadsheet had a column for "friends who show up uninvited and eat your snacks," to which Satsuki, after a beat of genuine surprise, replied that she could certainly add one. She told Hana her headband collection was "elite" and immediately lost twenty minutes to Hana’s insistence on showing her every single one.
By the time she reached Kaito — who had been in the garden checking on something with Elena’s herbs — her teasing had built up a full head of momentum.
"So you’re the guy," she said, looking him over with theatrical scrutiny. "The infamous Shirogane Kaito. I expected someone taller. Or shinier. Or—" She gestured vaguely. "I don’t know, more obviously dangerous, given the reputation."
"What reputation," he said.
"Yoru told me everything," Saori said. "The alley. The bankbook. The organ-harvesting theory, which, by the way, I fully support as a reasonable hypothesis given the numbers involved."
He looked at Yoru.
"She tells her friends everything," Yoru said, unbothered.
"I’m her best friend," Saori said. "Best friends get full disclosure. That’s the rule."
It was over tea, an hour later, that the teasing settled into something more grounded.
"You don’t recognize me, do you," Saori said suddenly, looking at Kaito directly.
He studied her face.
"I should?" he said, genuinely searching.
"Two years ago," she said. "Winter. There was a guy following me from the train station — I’d noticed him three stops in a row, getting closer each time. I was about to just start running when some random guy in a dojo gi cut across the street and just... stood between us. Didn’t even say much. Just stood there until the creep got nervous and left." She looked at him. "That was you."
Kaito’s expression shifted slowly into recognition.
"The girl with the red coat," he said. "Near Nishi station."
"That’s me," Saori said, the teasing dropping away entirely now, replaced by something more honest. "I never even got your name. You just left after, like it wasn’t a big deal. I’ve thought about that night more than you’d probably guess."
The room had gone quieter, Yoru watching with sudden understanding.
"You never told me that story," Yoru said.
"Because I didn’t know how to explain it without sounding insane," Saori said. "Some random guy saves you from a stalker and then just walks off into the night like a ghost? That’s not a normal thing to bring up casually." She looked at Kaito. "And then Yoru starts telling me about this guy from her building, and the details kept lining up, and I thought — no, that’s impossible, that’s way too coincidental, except apparently it isn’t, because here we are."
Kaito looked at her properly now, the playful stranger reframed into someone with actual history.
"Were you okay," he said. "After."
"Eventually," Saori said. "Changed my route home for a while. Therapy helped more than the route change, honestly. But that night — you being there, not making it a thing, just handling it and leaving — that stuck with me. Made me believe, for like five minutes, that maybe there were actually decent people in this world who didn’t want anything in return."
"There are," Yoru said quietly. "More than you’d think, if you know where to look."
Saori looked at her best friend — at the house around them, at the warmth radiating from every corner of it, at the boy who’d apparently been quietly saving strangers in alleys for years before any of this became his actual life.
"Yeah," she said, the teasing edge returning, lighter now, genuinely happy rather than deflecting. "I’m starting to see that."
She stayed for dinner, inserting herself into the kitchen chaos with the easy confidence of someone who’d clearly never met a room she couldn’t charm.
"So is there, like, an application process," she asked Satsuki, completely deadpan, while helping set the table. "Or do I just need to get randomly rescued by him at some point to qualify?"
"There’s no formal application," Satsuki said, equally deadpan now, clearly enjoying this. "Though I do maintain documentation, if that’s the kind of thing you’re asking about."
"Oh, I like her," Saori said to Yoru. "She’s terrifying. I respect it."
By the end of the night, as Saori was finally leaving, she hugged Yoru tightly at the door.
"I’m glad you found this," she said, all the teasing gone now, just sincerity. "After everything. You deserve exactly this much chaos and warmth."
"Come back soon," Yoru said. "Everyone liked you. Even Saki, and Saki doesn’t like anyone immediately."
"Saki likes me because I asked good follow-up questions about her legal research," Saori said. "That kid’s going places. Possibly the Supreme Court. Possibly running this household as a benevolent dictator. Could go either way."
She waved at the house generally, called out a final "nice meeting you, mystery man" toward the kitchen where Kaito was washing dishes, and disappeared down the street with the easy confidence of someone who already knew she’d be back.
Later, Kaito found Yoru on the balcony, looking out at the dark garden.
"She’s good for you," he said. "The teasing. I don’t think anyone else in the house does that."
"Everyone here is so careful with me," Yoru said. "Understandably. Given everything. But Saori’s known me since before all of it got heavy. She remembers the version of me that could just laugh at things without it meaning something deeper." She looked at him. "It’s nice. Having someone who isn’t part of the — the everything of this house. Someone who’s just mine, separately."
"You should keep that," he said. "Whatever this is. Don’t let the house swallow every part of your life."
She smiled, leaning against him.
"She already invited herself to dinner again next week," Yoru said. "Apparently Nana’s cooking has ruined her standards for normal food permanently."
"Good," Kaito said. "I like her."
"Everyone likes her," Yoru said. "Even Satsuki, somehow, and Satsuki doesn’t like sharing space with unpredictable variables."
"She added a column for her," Kaito said. "I saw it on the laptop earlier."
"What did the column say," Yoru asked.
"’Saori — chaos-positive, monitor for entertainment value,’" he said.
Yoru laughed, the sound carrying out into the dark garden, and somewhere below, Saki, working late in the covered area, smiled to herself without looking up from her notebook, already adding a new name to a different, much smaller list she hadn’t shown anyone yet.
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