Time Stamp: Early Adulthood

"I'm pregnant."

"What?!"

Ever since Akari had said those two words to him, Takei has been in a state of complete euphoria. He was unbelievably happy about his first child so his festive mood remained for a long, long time. Even at work, Eiji would always sigh and tease him about it.

To help him take his mind off it, Akari decided to buy him a bunch of video games to try and get him distracted. "Please don't leave the living room until you've finished all of those games. All of your coworkers have been begging me to stop you."

"Stop me from what?" Takei asked, confusedly.

"From being an overly doting father before your child is even born," Akari sighed. "Here here, come over and sit down."

She motioned for Takei to sit next to her on the couch. Doing as instructed, Takei sat down next to Akari and looked at her with expectant eyes. The girl that he had met on a random rainy afternoon had ended up becoming his lover and eventually his wife.

To say the least, Takei's heart was brimming with love towards the girl sitting next to him. "Hmm, Akari's very cute today, huh? I'm gonna go to work tomorrow and tell everyone about how my wife is the cutest!"

"Please don't do that," Akari shivered as her face got progressively redder from the embarrassment. "Anyways, there's something important that we need to talk about."

"What is it?"

"The name of our kid, of course. We have to decide what name we're going to give," Akari tousled his hair with a happy expression.

Ever since Akari had announced that she was pregnant, the both of them were too busy to realize that they had forgotten to choose a name for the baby. Although they didn't know which gender the baby would be yet, it wouldn't hurt to get a good start.

"Should we go through a list of names and decide on a few?" Akari proposed.

Takei nodded and opened up an online name list on his phone. "Can we..."

"No. We are not naming our kid after an anime character," Akari instantly cut him off.

"I didn't even say anything yet!" Takei cried in protest.

Akari shook her head. "You didn't have to say anything for me to know. How long have we been together?"

After Takei had failed to name his child after anime characters, the two of them spent a good amount of the afternoon scouring through the catalog of names for boys and girls. There were quite a couple of names that sounded cool to him, but Akari immediately shut him down after she saw his glistening eyes.

"How about Maximillion?" Takei suggested.

Akari sighed for the 87th time today and pinched Takei's cheeks. "How would you feel if you had to call your son Maximillion every day?"

"Tiring," Takei finally realized.

The whole afternoon became a back and forth between Takei who would choose a ridiculous name and Akari who would remind him about the outrageousness of such a name. Akari understood that this scenario was a result of Takei having a bad naming sense and him being excited about being a father so she didn't mind too much about him being all over the place.

"Hmm... We haven't been able to decide on any suitable names yet even though we've been looking for a few hours. Let's take a break and have dinner to refresh our minds," Akari decided.

Takei nodded as he realized that they were getting nowhere. "Do you want to get some pizza delivered? It's a bit late to start cooking."

"Ooh! Let's get a meat lover's pizza and an extra cheesy one!" Akari's face brightened as soon as she heard the word pizza.

"Yes, ma'am!"

Takei called a nearby chain pizza place called "Pizza World" and ordered the two pizzas that Akari wanted. He even told them to put on some extra cheese for the extra cheesy pizza since he knew that Akari was a big fan of cheese.

After about 25 minutes, the delivery driver dropped off the two pizzas that the couple had been so eagerly anticipating. Akari had basically bolted to the door the second the doorbell went off with her wallet in hand.

Once the pizzas were secured, Takei and Akari went to the living room coach and turned on the television. Usually they would eat at the dinner table, but they liked to eat delivery and take-out foods at the couch as a special occasion.

Takei flipped through a few channels until he finally found one with an interesting show. From the looks of it, the show seemed to be about a brother-and-sister duo trying their best to survive in a world full of devils. There was lots of sword-fighting and supernatural elements so it attracted the couple's attention relatively fast.

"How about this one?" Takei asked.

Akari agreed with her eyes since she was busily munching down on a slice of pizza. "Mmm!"

As they watched the show, both of them fell in love with the two main characters and sympathized with their troubles as they were just trying to survive in a very dangerous world. The boy tried his best to protect his sister, and the girl tried her best to protect her brother. It was such an endearing story that Takei and Akari started to cry after the episode ended because it had ended on a very sad note.

Turning to each other at the same time, Takei and Akari simultaneously nodded after deciding what to do. The story they had just witnessed would be something ingrained in their hearts for a very long time, so they decided to use the names of the main characters to their advantage.

"If it's a girl, then let's name her Marie. If it's a boy, then let's name him Akira. How does that sound?" Takei proposed with his first good choice of names all day.

Akari happily smiled as she realized that they had finally solved the problem they've been having.

"That sounds wonderful."

—

Small update: This chapter will be the last one for a while as I shift focus over to the new series that I'm working on. There will be a sneak peak chapter for the new series in the #sneak-peak channel in my discord, so be on the lookout!