I drive to Matsumoto with the windows rolled down.
It's not extremely hot, but I just like the fresh air, and it's good for Kimiko anyway.
Last week, I told my Aunt Asuka and Uncle Seiji that I was finally moving in with them, after three years of them mailing me once a month reminding me that if I ever needed a place to stay, I was welcome with them. That's more than my mother has ever done for me, and my father is dead, so there isn't much to say there. But he was a good father, until he passed away. My mother didn't have any custody rights to me when I was a child. Now I'm an adult and no one has custody of me.
I lived with my grandmother after Dad died, but then I got pregnant and she threw me out. That's how I got saddled with Kimiko and no definite place to live. But Asuka and Seiji understand; my parents literally got married because my mother, Desiree, was pregnant. When I was five she and Dad got divorced, and Desiree remarried and moved to America. I hear she has a daughter with her new husband. I also hear that her new husband did some horrible thing or another and got a life sentence in prison. But that's Desiree's problem. I haven't seen her since the divorce. Unlike her and Dad, I know I can drop Kimiko off with her father if I have to, though I aslo know Zac would prefer I didn't.
He can't exactly take his two-year-old to his concerts.
I drive a red Chevy with some of the paint peeling and leather seats that smell like tobacco and an engine that is ridiculously loud. The radio works, though, so at least there is that. The roaring of my truck might very well kill me if I couldn't play music. Right now I have a playlist on that my dad and I made years ago, shuffled, and currently "Pretty Fly (For a White Guy)" by The Offspring is playing.
Kimiko can talk, but she doesn't exactly know what a lot of words mean, so I can play whatever I want; I doubt she's even really listening. The only thing I really have to be careful about is people saying words I'd prefer she didn't start repeating.
The engine makes a particularly awful noise, and I seriously think about springing for a better car, but then I realize I really don't have the money for that. Cars cost a lot, especially new ones.
This one is special, anyway. I got it from an old teacher of Dad's, who bought from some locally famous kid's dad who's in a wheelchair and can't drive anymore. Kurenai is the family's name, I think. I also think I might've gone to school with the kid at one point, but I don't remember his first name. I think he's about a year younger than me, so seventeen now.
We pull up in front of a little house painted butter yellow. It looks like a cottage out of the children's books I read to Kimiko at bedtime, with hot lips bursting up from the boxes under the windowsill and and poppies littered about the front garden. There are wind chimes under the awning that sparkle in the sunlight. The mailbox reads HIROSE in pale purple letters. Uncle Seji and Dad's surname. My name.
"We're here, sweetheart," I say, climbing out of my seat and unbuckling Kimiko from her car seat before setting her on the front lawn.
Uncle Seiji and Aunt Asuka come out.
Uncle Seiji is in his early fifties, much older than my father. His hair as begun to turn gray and he's a bit stocky, but still fairly athletic. He played football from his teens to his thirties, but retired young, as do most athletes. He's still well over six feet tall, though, and overall makes me wonder what my dad would look like now.
Aunt Asuka is about five-foot-three, with bright red hair and freckles. She's about forty-eight, I think, and likes to dress like she's a nineteen fifties housewife. I don't blame her. If my husband still drove a hot rod even though it's 2024, I'd dress like that too, because the hot rod is part of what makes Uncle Seiji cool; it's older than my truck and makes the noise to prove it, but the hot rod at least has an excuse to be loud.
"Kazue!" Aunt Asuka calls. "It's been so long, oh my gosh!" She takes this minute to crush me in a bear hug.
"Hey, Aunt Asuka." I smile.
Uncle Seiji picks me up and spins me around. "Look at you!" He chuckles. "What're you now, thirty-three?"
"Eighteen." I laugh. "Do I look that old to you?"
"Momma!" Kimiko says. "Momma, I go in?"
"Sure thing." I smile at her. "Go tell Auntie you want to go in, okay?"
Kimiko runs toward Aunt Asuka. "Auntie! Want go in!"
"Okay, sweetie." Aunt Asuka picks her up and starts carrying her inside. "D'you want to meet the doggie?"
"Doggie!" Kimiko squeals.
"She's very little, and her name is Nymeria," says Aunt Asuka. "Let's go meet Nymeria, okay?"
"Doggie!" Kimiko says again. Aunt Asuka takes her inside.
My room is on the east side of the house, near Kimiko's. I realize as I'm putting books on the shelves that, for the first time since Kimiko was born, I am not sharing a room with her.
Aunt Asuka and Uncle Seiji's house has exactly four bedrooms, because they wanted two kids, a boy and a girl, but then it turned out, when they went to a doctor about having a baby, that Aunt Asuka can't have kids.
This is why I moved in with them; I dropped out of high school in my sophomore year when I got knocked up, and I've wanted to go back ever since, but I couldn't exactly attend school with a baby on my hip. Now I have someone to watch Kimiko who won't be upset about having to watch Kimiko because they always wanted to have kids but couldn't and now they can treat their grandniece like their kid.
What I am afraid of, though, is that the kids at the K-12 school I used to attend will figure out that I'm a mom. I'm not ashamed of it; it's just that a few months ago, when I was with Lui and Team Rideout, they poured all their time with me into figuring out how to help me so I could practice blading rather than be stuck with my kid all the time and not be able to do much of anything.
I originally got back into it after I had Kimiko because I wanted to lose the baby weight. Much like Kimiko, I didn't hate the way it made me look, but the weight was a reminder of the mistake I made, and I hated reminders.
Not Kimiko. I love Kimiko, and I don't blame her for the fact that I was fifteen when I found out she was coming and sixteen when she did come, but I do blame myself for the fact that I made a poor decision and worked double shifts at a Starbucks with my daughter in a high chair at a table the manager would always set aside for her. I still remember how ashamed I used to feel when people asked whose baby it was and I'd have to say she was mine because that was the truth because the manager likely wouldn't like me lying to customers.
I slam A Court of Thorns and Roses into the bookshelf, thinking how unfair it is that I couldn't just say no to my boyfriend and stay a kid. I could have graduated high school a year ago. I could be in college now. I could be winning Beyblade tournaments and making a name for myself, the way Dad and I always used to talk about because he'd been great at it as a teenager and here I am, nothing close to what he was. I could be somebody by now, but no, I threw away my girlhood because some barely-an-adult pop star wanted to take me out on a date and it got too serious; because that barely-an-adult pop star couldn't grow a pair and take responsibility for the decision we made the way I had to.
The second I told him, he called up his lawyer and they drew up a custody agreement— without consulting me— that said he had no right to any sort of custody of the baby. So I said, "Okay, well if you don't get the legal right to have them live with you, you don't get the legal right to see them either."
And all of this was after we'd broken up and I was with this girl Vivienne Takamiya, who used to be the National Beyblade Champion, before Lui Shirosagi, my latest ex, beat her when he was only six years old. He's now held the Championship for nine years, which was how long Viv held it, too. She was the one who helped me track down Zac to tell him. She was the one who convinced me that if Zac didn't want anything to do with the baby, he shouldn't be allowed to have anything to do with the baby. She gave me a home while I was pregnant, took me to those doctor's appointments, and even got me to the hospital when I went into labor. She named Kimiko. If anyone has the right to call themselves Kimiko's other parent, it's her. We broke up after a little while, but she still let me live with her because I had a baby.
"Kazue!" I hear Aunt Asuka call. "Kazue, dinner's ready!"
I quickly take a second to put A Court of Mist and Fury next to A Court of Thorns and Roses before heading downstairs.