A few days later Danika gazed at the broken cup in her hands and sighed. It had been one of her favorite tea cups. Handmade stoneware, with a little green dragon wound comfortably around it like a vine.
Mei would say that it was bad luck. For a modern girl with a love for all things spaceworthy, her cousin could be surprisingly old fashioned about her daily superstitions. Danika was pretty sure that reality was the other way around, and that bad luck was what had caused her hand to slip and the cup to break. It wasn't like she'd never dropped it before. Since it was one of her favorites it had definitely seen some hard use, but this time it had shattered into three pieces.
Ryuske's hand brushing past her cheek as his arms stretched over her shoulders from behind startled her. "What are you doing?" she asked a little querulously.
"Taking that," he replied calmly.
His voice was even deeper and more resonant so close to her ear, and his slender fingers deftly lifted the pieces of the cup out of her hands. Age had textured his hands somewhat like the artist had textured the cup, but the heavy stoneware didn't share the porcelain translucence of his skin.
She took a deep breath and clenched her hands as he stepped away, and then turned to look at him. He wasn't looking at her as he placed the pieces into a used delivery food container, but he set it on the counter instead of throwing it away immediately and turned back to her.
"Want to talk about it?" he asked.
Danika crossed her arms and grumbled, "What's there to talk about? Shinichi warned me before he left that six weeks was the minimum, and that it could be months."
Ryuske tilted his head a little and looked at her thoughtfully. "Okay," he agreed.
"What?" she demanded.
He shrugged and held up an open hand. "That wasn't what I thought you were upset about? But if that's all that's bothering you, it's an easy fix," he explained with a grin.
"How? We already asked if I could visit, and got told no," she complained. His grin widened and she asked suspiciously, "What did you think was bothering me?"
"Just wait, and that problem will go away, unlike most problems," he told her with a chuckle. He looked away from her before he answered her other question though. "I thought that you've seemed stressed every time you've seen one of your family members lately?"
"Ah," Danika responded without being able to argue.
He held up both his hands appeasingly and said quickly, "Given my own history of family relationships I can't really offer much helpful advice, but I can listen? If you want… If you don't want to talk about it, it's fine."
Danika uncrossed her arms and assured him, "It's not that I don't want to talk to you about them, it's just that there's nothing to do about it, with any of them."
He arched an eyebrow at her. "Maybe a different perspective?" he suggested.
She shrugged and explained, "Mei says that she's not mad about being rejected for the beta test, but she is, even though she told me not to ask for her. She's also mad because I refused to go to Hawaii with her and Aunt Hati after the wedding."
"Your father's wedding?" Ryuske questioned.
"Yeah, I'm already taking time off for it, but they want me to add an extra week! I really don't think we'll have the last demo finished that much ahead of time," she complained. She shot Ryuske a look and added, "Shinichi and I don't have ours scheduled. There's not really any rush, right?"
"How would I know?" he asked with amusement.
"I mean, you're in good health and everything?" she questioned a little anxiously.
"I'm fine," he assured her quickly. After a moment he prompted, "Your father?"
"As far as I know he's good," Danika replied with a sigh. She looked at Ryuske's expression and added, "But Haru can't have kids, and it seems like she's really looking forward to being a grandmother someday. That was the reason she wanted us to meet up alone, so she could confess that, which I probably shouldn't be telling you."
Ryuske opened his mouth and then shut it without saying anything.
"Sorry, um, too much information right? Don't worry about it," Danika told him quickly.
He ran his hand through his short hair and then asked, "Can you?"
"Can I?" she repeated blankly. Ryuske waved his hand in the air, and then looked away from her again, before she figured out what he was trying to ask. "I don't know of any reason that I can't have kids someday," she added dryly.
Ryuske grinned at her, and asked, "So the stressful part was the embarrassing questions that I'm adding to?"
Danika huffed a laugh, but replied seriously, "No, it was that I felt like if I'd told her I don't ever want kids, she might have called it off? Like I said, it's just another thing where there's nothing to actually do about it. I even kind of sympathize with her, but at the same time it really irritates me."
"You don't have to," he pointed out.
"I know, and to be fair, Haru was careful to say so too, I just…" she waved her hands without continuing.
"Kids are fun," he told her cheerfully.
His expression said that he was obviously talking about her, and she grumbled, "You only think that because you think people in general are fun!" She wasn't prepared for his shocked expression. He almost looked like she'd just slapped him. "Um…"
He held up his hands again but he looked at them and asked, "Wow, who is this old man who actually likes people?"
"Uh… from your songs, I'd have said you've always liked people?" she questioned uncertainly.
"My people," he replied promptly. Danika didn't know what to say. He stepped closer and ruffled her hair. "I guess that's what's changed. I have a lot more people that I can call my people."
Danika looked up at him, but all she could come up with was, "Okay."
He smiled down at her and added, "Thanks to my kids, my people even includes people who aren't actually people now."
"Like Tora?" she questioned.
"Cats have always been people, according to all of the cat people I know," Ryuske replied laughingly. "I was thinking of the game."
"Jade…" Danika said softly.
"Are you sure he's not a real boy?" Ryuske asked dryly. "He certainly whines just like a real kid."
Danika sighed without answering. When Lin Hao had tried to keep Kit from meeting Jade, Danika hadn't really realized that he was considering a future where Jade would be deleted, but that was going to be the fate of most of the game cores. The cores that didn't have Jade's memories were less complicated, but even the new blank core already seemed like a person to her.
"Danika?" Ryuske asked.
"I'm okay," she assured him with a tremulous smile. "It just depresses me a bit to think that some of 'my people' can just be deleted one day." She straightened her shoulders and added, "Shrubbery says that that's the real difference between people and AIs, that we mourn people who are gone, regardless of why they disappeared, and they don't really."
"She's a pretty bright young lady," Ryuske replied gently. "And a few extra weeks of separation are going to pass a lot quicker than you expect."
Danika grinned at him with a much brighter smile, pointed at her head and agreed, "I know that!" And then clutched her chest and complained dramatically, "But it's like foreverrrr!"
Ruyuske laughed and bent to hug her.
"I really am spoiled," she admitted as Shinichi's notification tone sang out on her phone.
"You're not spoiled," Ryuske objected.
"I am, I get to talk to him all the time, and hug him in VR at least every other day. Think of those wives who used to wait years between their husbands voyages and stuff, with maybe a few letters if they were lucky?" Danika protested laughingly, as she read the message with a smile.