October 9, 2000, early morning. Gelman and Shizuku's room at the Coastal Fortress.
Gelman opened his eyes, turned to look at the empty bed beside him, then glanced toward the bathroom.
He had actually woken up a while ago. When Shizuku got up, he'd already been awake, but she'd told him to go back to sleep, so he'd closed his eyes again.
But nearly ten minutes had passed, and Shizuku was still in the bathroom instead of coming back to bed. There was no way Gelman could fall back asleep under the circumstances.
He pushed off the warm covers, sat up, slipped on his slippers, and hurried toward the bathroom.
"En," or even "hearing her thoughts," couldn't compare to seeing for himself. Gelman wanted to check on Shizuku with his own eyes.
"Shizuku?" He called out, but his wife didn't answer. Instead, he heard her retch, so he immediately pushed the door open.
Still wearing her robe, Shizuku was crouched beside the toilet with its lid up, throwing up. After she began to feel a little better, she looked up at Gelman with a pitiful expression.
Gelman crouched beside her at once and asked with concern, "What's wrong? Was something wrong with last night's dinner?"
"I don't know." Shizuku shook her head. "It shouldn't have been..."
She was in good health, after all. Even if there had really been something wrong with the food, it shouldn't have made her throw up like this.
Gelman suddenly thought of another possibility, and his breath caught.
Since they'd gotten married, they'd stopped using protection, as they had before. They'd been doing that for two months now.
A little nervously, he leaned down and pressed his ear against Shizuku's stomach.
For an ordinary person, hearing anything would have seemed like something out of a