The room was quieter when Yuuto finally stood up.
Mirai's breathing had settled into a slow, uneven rhythm—still a little shaky, but calmer than before. A damp patch had formed on his shoulder where she'd cried, and his hoodie clung cold against his skin.
He eased his arm out from under her carefully, making sure not to jostle her too much. She mumbled something in her sleep, fingers loosening their grip on the blanket only after he gently tucked it closer around her.
For a moment, he just stood there, looking at her.
Her face, even swollen from crying, looked too young for what she now carried. There was a faint tension between her brows, as if even in sleep she was bracing for something.
"I've got you," he murmured under his breath, though she wasn't awake to hear it. "Even when you don't know it."
He turned off the brighter light, leaving only the soft desk lamp on, casting the room in a warm, muted glow. Then he stepped out, closing the door slowly until only a thin line of light remained—then that, too, disappeared.
The hallway felt longer on the way back.
The low murmur of his parents' voices reached him before he entered the living room. They weren't shouting anymore. Not like earlier. But the argument hadn't ended; it had only changed shape.
He slipped back into the room and sat down in his usual spot near the low table, the place he always took during dinner or on lazy Sunday afternoons. The familiarity of the position made the tension in the air feel even stranger, like sitting in a childhood photo that someone had scribbled over.
His father had his elbows on his knees again, fingers linked, hanging between them. His mother sat rigid in her chair, arms wrapped around herself, as if she were trying to hold in a storm.
They barely noticed him sit down.
"They'll talk," his mother was saying. Her voice was trembling again, but quieter now, the edges frayed with exhaustion. "All of them. The neighbors, the relatives… you know how they are. They notice everything. First it will be whispers about her… then about us. 'That family couldn't even raise their daughter properly.' 'Their son looks so serious, but look at what their daughter did.'"
His father exhaled through his nose.
"I know," he muttered. "At work, too. They'll pretend they're sympathetic but… it will spread. People remember these things. Promotions, trust—everything changes."
He rubbed his forehead.
"It's not just about gossip," he went on. "It's about her future. Who will accept her in university if this becomes known? Who will hire her? Who will…"
He trailed off.
Yuuto listened for a moment, pulse slowly beginning to climb.
His mother shook her head.
"We did everything right," she whispered. "We kept an eye on them. We taught them. We talked about these things. And still… this happens. What are we supposed to do? Send her to school like normal when her… stomach grows? Pretend nothing's wrong? People aren't stupid."
She laughed bitterly.
"I almost thought," she said, "for a second, that maybe what his parents said—"
She bit off the rest.
Yuuto's hands curled into fists on his knees.
He knew what sentence had almost slipped out. He knew exactly what his sister had heard at that house. He could hear Mirai's broken voice echoing in his head:
They told me to get rid of it.
He took a slow breath.
"Do you even hear yourselves?" he asked.
He hadn't meant for the words to come out aloud.
Both parents looked up, slightly startled, only now fully registering his presence.
His father frowned.
"Yuuto—"
"No," Yuuto cut in, more firmly than he usually would. He felt it—the faint crossing of a line he had always respected. But some lines became cages if you never pushed them.
His mother blinked, confusion and hurt flickering across her face.
"What do you mean?" she asked quietly.
He looked between them.
"You're talking about neighbors. Colleagues. Relatives," he said. His voice was calm, but there was a tightness under it now, a slow burn. "About what they'll say. What they'll think. Promotions. University applications. Reputation."
He swallowed.
"But in all this… have either of you asked yourselves what state she's in right now?"
His mother flinched slightly.
"Of course we have," she said. "She's our daughter. Do you think we don't care?"
He shook his head.
"I didn't say you don't care," he replied. "I said… you're not looking at the right thing."
His father's jaw tensed.
"And what is the 'right thing' then?" he asked. "Enlighten us. You're angry now, I can see that. But anger doesn't erase reality."
Yuuto held his gaze.
"Reality," he said, "is that there's a seventeen-year-old girl in that room who has spent days thinking she's ruined everyone's life. Who went to the boy's house alone because she was too scared to come to you. Who stood there while adults told her to erase her own child and vanish. Who then came home and finally did what you always told us to do when we're in trouble: tell your parents."
He paused.
"And when she did," he continued quietly, "what she met first was shouting. And words about shame. And fear. And neighbors. And work."
He didn't raise his voice. He didn't need to. The softness made each word land harder.
His mother's lips parted, but no sound came out.
"Do you understand," Yuuto went on, "how much courage it took for her to say anything at all?"
His father's fingers tightened where they were linked.
"You think we don't know she's afraid?" he asked, but the bluster in his tone had weakened.
"I think you know it," Yuuto said. "I'm not sure you've really looked at it."
He leaned back slightly, trying to steady his breathing.
"When I walked into her room," he said, "she asked me if I was disappointed in her."
The sentence hung there.
His mother's hand flew slowly to her mouth.
"She actually said that?" she whispered.
"Yes," Yuuto replied. "Because when everyone tells you 'your mistake, your fault, your responsibility', you start to believe you're nothing but a burden. She thought I would hate her. She thought you already did."
His father shut his eyes briefly, pain flickering across his face before he forced them open again.
"It's not that we hate her," he said. "We hate what she's done to herself. To—"
"To us?" Yuuto finished. "To your image? To the story you'd written in your head about how your children would grow up?"
His father's gaze hardened reflexively.
"Watch your tone," he warned. "We're still your parents."
"I know," Yuuto said. He didn't look away. "That's why I'm saying this to you, not to strangers."
His mother exhaled shakily.
"We're scared too, Yuuto," she said. "We're not thinking clearly. Everything feels like it's falling apart at once."
"I get that," he said. "I really do."
His hands relaxed slightly, fingers uncurling.
"I'm scared too," he admitted. "When I think about what she'll face at school. How people will look at her. How that boy gets to pretend nothing happened while she carries everything… I want to break something."
His throat tightened.
"But the difference is," he continued, "I don't want to break her."
His mother's eyes filled with tears.
"We didn't…" she began, then stopped. "We didn't mean to."
"I know you didn't mean to," he said. "But meaning and impact aren't always the same."
He leaned forward, elbows on his knees now, echoing his father's earlier posture, but with a different weight behind it.
"You say you raised us to be careful," he said. "You did. You say you taught us responsibility. You did that too. But you also taught us something else."
They both looked at him, distracted from their own spirals for a moment.
"You taught us that family comes first," he said. "That when something hurts us, we come home. That this house is not the world, it's… it's the place we retreat to when the world is cruel."
His voice softened.
"Mirai believed that," he said. "Even after that boy threw everything on her. Even after his parents made her feel like dirt. She still believed that if she told you… maybe you would help her carry it. Not erase it. Not magic it away. Just… be there."
His mother covered her eyes with one hand.
"And what did we do?" he asked, quieter now. "We made this house feel like the world she was already afraid of. We yelled the same words they did, just with different faces."
His father's face tightened, defensiveness rising for a second.
"We're not them," he said sharply. "Don't compare—"
"I'm not saying you're the same," Yuuto cut in gently. "You're not. You're here. You didn't slam the door in her face or tell her to disappear. You're still thinking of her future, even if it's tangled with your fear."
He took a breath.
"But right now, the person who needs you most is lying alone in her room, completely sure she's broken something that can't be fixed. And the two people she trusted most in this world are sitting here talking like she's a problem to be managed instead of a daughter who's hurting."
His mother's shoulders started to shake.
"We're just… we're just trying to think of what to do," she said weakly. "We don't know how to handle this. There's no… no manual. No right way. Everything feels wrong."
Her voice cracked.
"And yes, I thought about people talking," she said. "Because I know how cruel they are. I know what they'll say about her. I know how they'll look at her. At us. But maybe… maybe you're right. Maybe I was more worried about being seen as 'the mother who failed' than about the child in front of me who already feels like a failure."
The admission seemed to cost her something. Tears spilled freely now.
His father was quieter, eyes fixed somewhere on the table.
"I—" he started, then stopped. He tried again. "When she said his parents told her to get rid of it… something inside me burned. I wanted to go there and shout at them. Tell them they have no right to talk about my daughter like that."
He laughed once, short and humorless.
"And then," he said, "the next thought I had was, 'what will people think if they see me going there?'"
He looked at his hands.
"Fear makes you small," he said quietly. "I didn't realize how small I'd become until you said all that."
A heavy silence followed.
The clock ticked. A car passed outside. Somewhere, in another house, someone laughed, unaware of the storm in this one.
Yuuto let the quiet stretch just long enough for their words to settle.
"I'm not asking you to pretend you're okay with everything," he said eventually. "I'm not okay with everything either. I'm not saying actions don't have consequences. They do. Mirai knows that better than anyone right now."
He thought of her in the dim room, clutching the blanket, apologizing like it was the only language she had left.
"What I am asking," he continued, "is that you remember she came to you because she trusted you. Because she had nowhere else left to go. Because she hoped, even a little, that you would see more than just the mistake."
His voice thinned.
"She already blames herself for everything," he said. "She doesn't need her own parents to confirm that she's nothing but a burden."
His mother moved her hand away from her face, eyes swollen and red.
"How is she?" she asked. The question was soft, fragile.
He looked down the hallway for a second, as if he could see through the walls.
"Exhausted," he said. "Terrified. She hasn't slept properly in days. She thought you hated her. She thought I did too. She thinks the only thing she did is destroy everyone's life. All of ours. And yet… she's still thinking about us. She's still more afraid of what she's 'done to the family' than she is of what's happening to her own body."
His father swallowed, Adam's apple bobbing visibly.
"I told her," Yuuto added, "that I'm here. That I'm not leaving. Even if it gets ugly. Even if people talk. Even if I have to work more, fight more, explain more."
He met their eyes again.
"I'm your son," he said. "You raised me. This is the person I became because of that. I'm not saying this to accuse you. I'm saying this because I refuse to forget the meaning of 'family' when you're scared enough to start losing it."
The words landed somewhere deep.
His father stared at him for a long moment, and in his gaze there was something new—an uneasy mix of pride and shame.
"That's… the kind of son we raised," he said quietly, almost to himself. "And here he is… reminding us of things we taught him and then forgot to live up to."
His mother let out a small, broken laugh.
"You grew up," she said. "When did you grow up this much?"
He smiled faintly, but it didn't reach his eyes.
"Somebody had to," he said, half-lightly, half-true.
They sat in silence again.
This time it wasn't empty. It was heavy, but different. The arguments from before had lost some of their sharpness, their certainty.
Fear was still there. Shame, too. Worry about the future hadn't vanished.
But there was something else now—an ache that looked outward instead of inward. A recognition of the girl down the hall as more than the cause of their discomfort.
"We… need time," his father said finally. "I won't lie and say I can suddenly act like this is nothing. I don't know how to talk to her without… my fear coming out as anger."
Yuuto nodded.
"I know," he said. "I'm not expecting you to fix everything tonight."
He glanced toward Mirai's room again.
"But maybe," he added, "before you worry about what the neighbors will say… you can think about what she needs to hear from you. Not from me. From you."
His mother wiped her eyes with the heel of her hand.
"What does she need to hear?" she asked, voice small.
He thought of Mirai's cracked whisper:
"Are you disappointed in me?"
"That you still see her as your daughter," he said. "Not as a scandal. Not as a stain."
His father closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them again, looking older than he had an hour ago.
"I don't know if I can say that without my voice breaking," he admitted.
Yuuto gave a tired, gentle smile.
"Then let it break," he said. "It's better than letting her break alone."
His mother pressed her lips together, then nodded.
"I'll… talk to her," she said quietly. "Not tonight. She's probably exhausted. But… soon."
His father nodded slowly as well.
"I need to think," he said. "About work. About school. About… practical things. But I'll try… not to talk about her as if she isn't in the room when she is."
Yuuto exhaled, some of the tightness in his chest easing.
It wasn't a perfect resolution. There were no sudden apologies, no dramatic embraces.
But something had shifted.
They were no longer sitting as three separate islands—parents on one side, children on another. The distance hadn't closed, but a bridge had been placed. Fragile, narrow, incomplete—but a start.
Yuuto stood after a moment, bones protesting softly.
"I'll sleep late," he said. "In case she wakes up in the middle of the night."
His mother looked at him with complicated eyes.
"You're a good brother," she said.
He shrugged.
"I'm just doing what you always told me to do," he replied. "Look after family."
Their expressions stiffened at that, as if the words were a mirror they weren't fully ready to look into yet.
He didn't push further.
As he walked back toward his room, the house felt different again.
Still heavy. Still full of problems without answers. Still holding too many fears for one roof.
But it also held something else now.
A boy who refused to let his sister carry all the blame.
Parents who, for the first time since the word pregnant had entered their home, were looking not just at their reflection in society's eyes, but at the child behind the closed door.
In her room, Mirai shifted slightly in her sleep, fingers still curled lightly over her stomach.
She didn't know yet that outside the thin wall, her brother had sat her pain in front of their parents and refused to let them look away.
She didn't know yet that something had quietly changed downstairs.
But later, much later, when she looked back on this night, she would realize:
This was the moment the house stopped being only a place that hurt her—and began, slowly, painfully, to try and hold her again.