Kouki is about to go mad...

"Like you think you are just better than me?" Setsuko yells at her mother.

"Well I have done this before," Azami brags briefly and just keeps breathing steadily and calmly.

"Whatever, Grandma," Setsuko jabs and that scores a hit on her mother’s cool resolve.

"I’ll have you know…" She starts back in on her daughter, but I’ve had enough of this.

"Both of you, shut it!" I yelled and that got them to stop their incessant bickering for at least a moment. "If you want me to stay you are going to do as I say and be quiet!" I’ve never delivered a baby before, much less two at the same time, and since Yuki’s grandmother passed away I don’t really have anyone else to ask who had. I cannot believe I have to do this, but I guess that is just what it means to be family.

"I’m sorry, Kouki," Setsuko says first before another contraction of pain grips her.

"Me too," struggled Azami as her contraction seemed to synchronize with her daughter. But still, she gasped. "You are a great daughter-in-law." I really wasn’t yet, as no one had married anyone, but I guess that was just a formality at this point. In fact, she might have said sister-in-law for the reality of it.

I never would have guessed that my dorky brother could somehow knock up both of them in the same night, much less put up with either of them. Setsuko was okay in small doses, and while Azami was a bitch it was nice sometimes to have a mother again. I still laughed at how Shinji reacted on coming home from the war to find his fiancée and her mother both pregnant by Kenji. It was strange and crazy, but love is like that, which is why he proposed to me last month.

I wonder if Kenji will actually marry either of them? Well technically Azami is still married, but since she refused to allow Mister Takahashi back into his home… There was more there than I knew since he seemed to only demand Chizu and then left the town completely. Everyone had stories going around that he’d been fucking her as his love **** since before he’d left for the war, or that Azami had been denying him her bed for years and that was why she hadn’t had any more children until now, but all that was academic. The truth was both of these women were about to give birth at any moment, and like always they seemed to make it a competition.

"Oh, here it comes," Setsuko shouted first in pain as the head of her baby started to breach.

"Way ahead of you!" Azami shouted back as her child’s head emerged bloody from her womb as well.

"Slowly!" I scolded again these two arrogant and crazy bitches who refused to listen and wondered again how Kenji could still sleep in the same bed with both of them each night.