Kaede Mazino boarded the train, her suitcase awkwardly bumping behind her, the pressure of her bloated belly causing her to shift just a little bit in the center, making it a slow, calculated dance to walk. Every set of eyes looked her way—blonde hair pulled back behind her ears, baggy coat concealing a maternity dress, her hands wrapped around the shape of eight-month certainty.
She despised this. Not the pregnancy—okay, fine, maybe a little—but the stares. The curiosity. The unspoken judgment of a woman who had the audacity to travel on public transport looking as if she might give birth during midsentence. Yet she moved as always: like her brain was already six steps ahead, already planning the next corridor, the best seat, and the closest emergency exit in case things took a turn for the worse.
Her fingers twitched like they missed a chessboard.
Her thoughts continued to revolve in the same tight, worried loop: What if I lose? The Hokkaido Winter Invitation was a cakewalk. She had the country's best ELO. She'd defeated grandmasters twice her age, men who'd counted her out the moment she sat down. She'd won while concealing morning sickness behind quiet, deliberate moves.
But this time, she was not in disguise. The bump was now visible. Unapologetically. She caught a glimpse of herself in the train window—keen blue eyes, the type that never faltered in high-stakes endgames, over a face that attempted to smile but always ended up looking suspicious of the world.
Chess was the only place where the world had meaning. Where silence was meaningful, where all the pieces were bound by the rules. Where you could win simply by noticing what another person didn't.
But life? Life was chaos in a dress.
The train lurched as it left the station, and Kaede held on to the handrail. A man in front of her got up and left his seat, and she took it with a silent nod that wasn't quite thank you but truce masquerading as pragmatism. Her back hurt. Her knees had opinions. The baby kicked inside her as if she was trying to practice an opening gambit of her own.
She leaned back in the seat and placed her hands on her stomach, gazing out the window as the snowy edge of Sapporo slid by.
She attempted to breathe. Slow. In. Out.
The tournament was still 19 hours away.
She hadn't slept for days.
She hadn't played a single game of blitz all week, fearing she'd do something wrong, miscalculate, and give her opponents cause to believe she was weakening. Fading. Human.
But she wasn't.
She was Kaede Mazino. Grandmaster. 38 months unbeaten. She had fought champions through a wave of nausea, migraines, and Braxton Hicks contractions. She was still going to win—because that was the only thing she could still control.
The one thing that did not react back or kick from within her ribcage.
As the train cut through the still frost of northern Japan, Kaede shut her eyes—not to sleep, not precisely—but to drill. Line by line, opening by opening. The Sicilian. The Caro-Kann. The Queen's Gambit Declined.
.....
"Ahhhhh… my stomach… shit," Kaede swore softly, holding on to the metal beam above her with one hand and the lower region of her bloated belly with the other. The train lurched ahead, packed to capacity, and not a single damn seat was available.
Her boots scraped to get hold on the shuddering floor, her back already sore. A jab of pain coursed through her back. She gasped. Someone's elbow grazed over her shoulder; another man's bag almost kicked her ribs. No one gave a second look. Not even at the telltale baby bump bulging under her coat.
She gazed down the rows—nothing. Every seat was taken. Pretentious sleeping old men. Teens glued to their phones. Salarymen with earbuds in, eyes shut as if their conscience was on leave.
Kaede inhaled through her nose, struggling to push aside the wave of tiredness creeping over her legs. Her thighs were trembling. Two days without sleep. Her coat was too warm, her maternity tights too tight, and Hiroki—her son—was rolling over inside like he was running late for a tournament as well.
I told you so, she thought, smiling bitterly. I knew I should have splurged for a reserved seat. For a taxi. For getting home from NYC like a sane, rational pregnant woman who doesn't have to prove a point.
But here she was. Thirty-five weeks, swollen ankles, waiting like an idiot on a crowded commuter train in Hokkaido because she couldn't stand the thought of giving up a tournament—even now.
She readjusted her weight and massaged her belly in gentle circles, speaking softly against the roar of the train. "It's alright, Hiroki. Just a bit longer. We'll be seated soon."
The infant kicked, seemingly unconcerned.
Her head spun with known patterns of chess and new worries. Her purse held her vitamins, a snack bar, her prenatal history, and a bottle of water she couldn't even reach now. She had packed expertly. She had not prepared for this—the humiliation of being there helpless and ignored while her body cried out for sleep.
How many stops before the next? Kaede scanned the train map of stops, her heart beating at a faster rate than it deserved for a woman who'd drawn breath through seventy-six-move endgames. Three. Three stops.
She swallowed hard. Her mouth was dry. Her back was sore. Her feet had some numbness between Sapporo Station and now. She bit her cheek to keep her face neutral, trying not to turn into the sweaty, puffy mess she felt like.
You are Kaede Mazino, she reminded herself. Grandmaster. Five-time national champion. Youngest woman ever to dominate the Sendai Blitz.
And yet, right now?
Just another expectant woman holding onto a cold steel pole in one hand and her sore belly in the other on a crowded city train full of people trying their best not to notice her.
She could hear her own heart beat louder than the wheels on the tracks.
But then—
She spotted it. Him.
Something moved in her peripheral vision. Not an empty space. Not redemption. But something.
Tiny. Round. Suspiciously alone.
She blinked. And blinked again.
Baby?" She said it out loud before she even knew it.
There, sitting on one of the priority seats looking as though he'd paid his taxes and requested the seat himself, was a baby. Not any baby—a fiercely round, suspiciously clean baby sporting a plump white diaper and a teeny red shirt with big white letters that spelled out, "They Don't Know I'm A Lesbian."
Kaede's mouth opened a fraction. "What the actual?"
The baby blinked up at her. Silver hair, spiky in a way that indicated it had never listened to gravity in its existence. Red eyes. Not baby red, crimson. He gazed at her with an attitude that expressed, I don't know why I'm here either, lady.
He narrowed his eyes. "Gao," he said in deadpan seriousness.
Kaede looked around desperately. Someone—anyone—must have left him there for a minute or two. A mother with coffee. A father fiddling with a stroller. A sibling distracted by vending machines. But no. The area around him was oddly, unnervingly vacant.
No caregiver, she breathed. Her forehead creased. "Why would a baby so tiny be abandoned?
Shotaro simply blinked at her. Slowly. Like a cat considering whether or not to tip a glass over the table.
She glanced over at him. Her tired, overworked, sweaty head forgot how to create words at all for a solid five seconds. The train rattled on, packed with the blind and the indifferent. And Kaede Mazino found herself in a staring battle with a diaper-clad gremlin whose otherworldliness appeared to emanate from the strange, unexplainable presence of an entity that most assuredly was not as adorable as it appeared.
The train rattled beneath her feet, steel grinding on steel, every jolt another jab into Kaede's swollen lower back. The overhead lights buzzed softly, casting a sterile glow over the packed car. The stale scent of cold bodies, old wool coats, and canned coffee mixed with the faint perfume of someone's morning regret. Kaede stood, one hand on the rail, the other rubbing her belly in slow circles as Hiroki somersaulted inside her like he was trying to escape.
Across from her, that goddamn baby sat comfortably.
Still.
Alone.
Perfectly content in his little throne of injustice, fat legs splayed like a Roman emperor in a daycare toga. Red shirt. Fat diaper. Crimson eyes locked onto her with maddening indifference. Like he knew.
Kaede offered a smile. Tight. Polite. The kind that always preceded a carefully disguised plea.
"Hey there, little guy. Mind if I take your seat?" she said softly, shifting her weight to her left foot. "I'm more than happy to hold you on my lap. It's just—this kid in me isn't really into standing."
The baby stared.
Didn't blink.
Didn't move.
"Gao," he said.
A non-answer. A challenge.
Kaede exhaled and tried again. "Listen. I'm pregnant. Very pregnant. My ankles are—" she looked down and winced, "—let's just say I no longer have ankles. I have soft-serve cones at the end of my legs. Please."
Still no reaction. Just that blank stare, a slow baby blink, like she'd inconvenienced his nap by being alive.
"Look, I can sit, and you can sit on me. We both win. Isn't that great?" she tried, adding a little sing-song lilt like she was in a commercial for patience she didn't have.
Nothing.
"I'm serious, I could faint. Pass out right here. Do you want me to faint? You want this train to derail because of a woman fainting on the yellow line?"
The baby did not care.
She leaned in a little. "I'm carrying a child. You are a child. This is unity. This is symbolic. I'm begging you."
Shotaro tilted his head slowly. His eyes squinted just enough to suggest thought. Calculation.
And then he said: "Gwah."
Firm. Final.
"No," she whispered, her eye twitching. "No. He didn't just say no. That was baby 'no.'"
She tried again, one last desperate attempt, voice cracking: "Please, I really need to sit. Just for five minutes. Just until the next stop. My back feels like it's going to explode and my son is—"
"Gwah."
That was the fifth time.
The realization hit her mid-thigh cramp. That this wasn't misunderstanding. This wasn't baby randomness. This wasn't an unguarded toddler on a train.
This was a willing act of passive evil.
He wanted her to suffer.
The train rocked slightly as it curved along the elevated track, soft screeches of metal echoing through the car. The crowd jostled together with indifferent inertia—shoulder to shoulder in winter coats and office fatigue—while the artificial light hummed above them like a headache. Kaede's feet ached. Her belly throbbed. She tasted copper at the back of her throat from holding in the groan building inside her chest.
And across from her, smug as sin, that round little bastard was sitting like he paid rent.
He wanted her to be in pain. Not just to inconvenience—be in pain. His denial had not been a childish confusion or misinterpretation. It had been deliberate. She felt it in her bones. The deliberate stare. The empty face that was far from empty. He liked that she was in pain.
He wanted her to lose the baby. Just for the chaos. For the thrill of watching her fall.
Her mouth parted, her dry breath catching in her throat. It couldn't be fear. Not yet. It couldn't be. It was something worse. It was an instinctual warning, the sense that the thing under your bed didn't just move—it was smiling.
"You… you're evil," she panted, almost whispering, but her eyes locked on him.
Gao, the infant responded deadpan, as if verifying the charge.
She stared, heartbeat skipping. Her expression twisted—tired, flushed with disbelief, flitting between aggression and absurdity. Her shoulders trembled slightly with a sudden spike of adrenaline. And then, just as suddenly, it snapped.
"Wait a minute," she growled. Her voice rising. "Wait just a goddamn minute."
She laughed—brief, sudden, and unbelieving.
How come I am requesting your consent?
Her grip was not formal. She reached out, slumped over slightly despite the ache in her hip, and picked up the baby. He was phenomenally light, not even a foot tall, and warm as a small space heater wrapped in malevolence. His diaper compressed loudly against her coat. His shirt creased under her fingers.
"You stupid ass infant," she said, mouth twitching with righteous fury.
"Gwah!" Shotaro stuttered in outraged indignation, his tiny arms waving, his hand slapping at her shoulder as if she had offended the royal court. His face contorted in sheer incredulity, as if unable to believe she had had the temerity to touch him.
"Thought I was gonna let you break my back for pride?" she snapped, shoving him aside with one arm while she slid slowly, triumphantly, into the soft contours of the empty seat. "Thought I was gonna let a damn baby win?"
Her breath escaped in a quivering exhalation as her thighs at last settled into the cushion, the pressure off her ankles a baptism of relief.
Shotaro wriggled, blazing red eyes slit into thin lines of utter betrayal. He slapped her with the intensity of a beanbag and let out some sort of baby war cry.
"Aye, wee man, cry about it," she grumbled, pinching him up against her breast with the sour satisfaction of a woman who had finally reclaimed her seat from Satan in Pampers.
She simply sat there, for a moment. Her hand on her belly. Her body relaxing into the rhythm of the train. Her jaw relaxing.
The train rumbled on beneath them, a steady throb-thump of the floor and up through Kaede's aching legs. She let out a soft sigh of relief, finally getting to sit, her back against the creased but lightly padded priority seat. Her muscles slid into the moment like they'd had their breath caught for weeks. Hiroki rolled beneath her ribs again, a subtle shift against her palm as she worked slow circles into her belly.
Shotaro sat on her lap, strangely motionless.
For all his protest—his outraged babble and tantrum miniaturized—he now sat with a defeated slump, side of his face against the curved stretch of her belly. He didn't glance at her. Didn't struggle. Just sat like a sulky cat shoved into a sweater. His arms hung at his sides, and his little diapered legs stuck out stiffly like he wouldn't acknowledge how warm and snuggly it actually was.
Kaede blinked at him, confused. Suspicious.
".Wait," she said, her brow raising, curling a finger into the silky silver hair—soft, like silk brushed. "You like pregnant women or what?"
Shotaro said nothing. Of course not. He was an infant. But he pushed his face deeper into her belly as if trying to hide the accusation—or to agree to it. It was difficult to say with him.
Kaede's lip curled in incredulity, half-smirk on her face. "Pregnant woman fetish? Or you think I'm your mom now?
Her voice wasn't mean, only shocked and a little amused. The sheer ridiculousness of the situation was not lost on her—a grandmaster warring verbally with a diapered chaos god among a busy train filled with oblivious bystanders. And now this? This soft, clinging disintegration in her lap as if she were a sanctuary?
His small fists curled over softly, resting just above the curve of her belly — not clenching, not grasping, just resting, as if he were checking for heat. No smile in his face, but no cruelty, either. Just that same old impossible deadpan look, relaxed a little by the way his cheek was digging into her coat.
Kaede let out a slow breath, sweeping a strand of silver hair back from his face, her fingers tracing over the baby's abnormally smooth head. It was like stroking a doll's wig. An extremely expensive doll. An extremely damned one.
"You're so strange," she grumbled, not really hoping for an answer.
Gwah, he replied quickly, eyes still shut.
She blinked. "Wait… what?
The baby rolled over a little, clearly irritated that he had to tell him twice, and growled again. "Gwah."
"Hmm, oh, your name is Shotaro?" Kaede raised an eyebrow and slumped back in the seat as if her body had just realized it was exhausted. "Huh. Adorable name, I suppose. I'm Kaede. Kaede Fubuki — well, Mazino now. age 21. Grandmaster of Chess. Ranked 1 in Japan. ELO 3455. Not that I'm going to make a gremlin like you wow with it."
She smiled to herself, sweeping away a crumb from her belly.
But then she stopped.
Wait.
She stared ahead.
Wait a minute.
The train thrummed along the frozen rails, a gentle metal whine interwoven with the murmur of steel and electricity. Beyond the windows, the flat Hokkaido winter landscape slipped by in white and grey smudges, broken only by the occasional frozen pine or a faraway farmhouse twinkling through the mist. Within, the heat of the packed cabin pushed against every surface — coats rubbing, breath misting, bodies swaying in the motion of travel. Kaede sat with her loose hand draped over her bump, her fingers tracing small circles unconsciously where Hiroki slept or sulked — she couldn't say which anymore. On her lap, curled up as he ought to have been all along, was Shotaro. One foot hung precariously over the edge of her coat, his cheek smooshed lazily against her bump as if it were the greatest pillow he'd ever discovered.
Her mouth opened.
She looked down at him slowly. He was half-asleep, his hand running along his face across her stomach in slow, broad strokes, exhaling like a small spa client. His silver hair was tousled from the collar of her jacket, and he had one eye half-open — just enough to indicate that he knew he was caught.
You never mentioned your name, she panted, slowly closing her eyes. "I heard it.".
Shotaro blinked once. Then shut his eye again, like a bad guy who would not give a monologue.
Kaede's back bristled just slightly. The sound of the train appeared to recede for an instant, buried beneath the crushing weight of realization careening about in her mind like a loose pawn on a mad board.
I can understand you," she gasped. "Oh god. I can understand you.
She looked around the train. No one looked up. A college student was sleeping with his hoodie two rows ahead of her. A woman in a surgical mask was watching cat videos in silence. No one noticed the glitch unfolding in Kaede's lap. No one noticed the silent truce between a pregnant chess grandmaster and the most unruly baby in Japan.
Are you… speaking?" she panted, furrowed brows. "Or am I just — am I just cracking?
Shotaro yawned with complete apathy and leaned forward to lick the metallic zip of her jacket.
Kaede winced with a soft grunt. "Oh god, I'm bonding with a freak of nature."
The train jolted into a sudden tunnel, shadows leaping across their faces. And yet. it was oddly natural, somehow, his little body against hers, the still warmth of it. Not comfort, but familiarity.
"Gwah!" he suddenly piped, his tone sharper, focused. His eyes locked onto hers as if he'd posed a question.
Kaede blinked once more. "Wait… you're asking where myhusband is?
He repeated another question, saying "Gao?
"Oh. He's in Musashi no Yamato," she said, reclining slightly. "MNY. Not too far from Tokyo."
"Gwah."
Her gaze narrowed ever so slightly. "He's… a Yakuza boss.".
There was a pause.
"Been for tmore than 10 now," she whispered, almost in the conversational tone. "He is 31, doing that since he was sixteen."
Shotaro's face didn't change. But something was different about his stillness — less relaxed, more calculating. His tiny eyebrows creased in baby puzzlement. His lips parted slightly, and a small "Gao…?" escaped.
Kaede smiled. "Hehehe. You do look bamboozled."
She leaned forward and playfully stroked his forehead.
He blinked as if she'd hit him with the mention of taxes.
"Might you not actually know what a Yakuza is," she teased.
"Gao."
No!" she snapped, annoyed rather than furious. "Yakuza is not a procession of drag queens!
A couple of heads swiveled momentarily, but she did not mind.
The train clacked steadily along below them, the mechanical pulse thrumming through the soles of Kaede's boots and up into her spine. The fluorescent lights overhead flickered as they passed through a long tunnel, bathing the cabin for a moment in a faint, flickering gray. She exhaled and leaned back a little, watching the small, indignant creature pouting in her lap.
Shotaro hadn't budged—his red, wide eyes were still fixed on her, not a single blink, his tiny body as tense as a dropped popsicle. He appeared to have been given a Rubik's Cube and punched in the gut simultaneously.
His silver hair stood on end with electricity, his tiny fingers curled around the lapel of her coat as if he held on to the tattered ends of his sanity.
Kaede breathed slowly. Placed her hand over her face. "Dear lord," she whispered. "I'm teaching organized crime to a baby.".
She glanced over her shoulder at him.
"Okay," she said, pushing a strand of his hair back behind his eyes. "Yakuza. Listen. They're not. dancers. They're not superheroes. They're not some leather-jacket boy band."
Shotaro's eyebrows furrowed even more, as if in pain.
"They're a crime syndicate," she went on. "Like. organized criminals. Actual ones. Gambling, racketeering, smuggling. You know—bad guys."
She hesitated, frowning. "Wait. You would like that."
Shotaro blinked. Once. Then again. His face still lingered between awe and disbelief, as though the individual who now knew their favorite was an evil-doer was uncertain.
Kaede continued, her tone level but with that thick fatigue that characterizes third-trimester women and federal agents alone.
"My business partner—Hiroki's father—he's been calling the shots since he was a kid. He's smart. Menacing. A bit of a bastard. But he's got this thing about protecting people, especially the ones who don't even ask for it. That's his take. Honor among thugs."
Shotaro rolled over slowly and leaned his cheek on her belly once more, his body loosened now, his breathing a gentle, even whoosh against her fur.
Kaede watched him settle in like a laptop that is cooling off. Yes," she replied with a gentle smile. "Now you see.". A quiet gao escaped from under her coat. And for once—it didn't sound evil. Just… thoughtful.