This world is inhabited by creatures that we call pokemon. People and pokemon live together by supporting each other, but now the scourge threatens the safety of the entire region. Kohaku has become a dangerous place, where children stay at home and only brave souls go adventuring.
Welcome to KOHAKU. Come for the nightmares. Stay for the tea and crumpets.
The season is SUMMER. It is easy for survivors to forage for food from the land, as there are entire abandoned farms ready for harvest. On the downside, you can smell the corpses.
swarms
GRAND OPENING !
Welcome to KOHAKU REGION's grand opening! If you're interested in joining, come check out our grand opening giveaway!
J took the bottle and downed the rest of it. the effects of alcohol clouded his mind briefly, and he polished off the rest of the tofu without difficulty. but soon enough, the buzz was gone, and J returned to his normal state. it was hard getting drunk the way he was.
J tried the radish.
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he was still mid-bite before he let go of the slice of radish. it fell back into the bowl, and J dropped his chopsticks.
Neo watched him drink the entire bottle dry. She was pretty certain if she tried drinking that'd much in one go, she'd end up at the hospital.
So the entire list of solid food J could eat so far: 1) rice, 2) tofu. She wondered if he could eat chocolate. He could digest cocoa, so chocolate didn't seem like too far a step. What if she doused an entire meal in rice wine? Then could he eat it?
She looked at him. He was a fairly pitiably sight. She'd have to try getting a meal into him at some point, she decided, but not at this point.
"Good enough," she said, relenting. Neo took the bowl away from him. Something close to a smile crossed her face; it was supposed to be positive reinforcement, but it was tired and out of practice. "Are you feeling better? Need more wine?"
the oden cart owner glanced over at his two customers, raised an eyebrow, and made no comment.
J was glad to see the bowl taken away from him. he shook his head at the suggestion for more wine; that was enough food and drink for a night. the salmon and radish combination was enough to set him off the idea of eating for quite a while.
"okay," he said, exhaling. "i'm okay. i think." J himself wasn't sure, but he figured that if he remained seated, his chances of passing out was close to zero.
he glanced at neo, then shifted his gaze back to the broth bubbling before them.
She took another pair of disposable chopsticks from the oden cart and tried the fishball for herself. It was pretty good; J was missing out.
(Chocolate cake, maybe. Or perhaps she should test how well he handled normal flour products first. Bread? That defeated the purpose of testing a familiar substance though. It had to be something with cocoa.)
She hadn't expected him to notice the dress. Then again, Neo didn't wear dresses very often while she traveled, for obvious reasons. She didn't plan on going very far anytime soon, and she felt that dresses disguised the bump better anyhow.
"Yes. I went shopping," she said. "It was fun. You should come with, next time."
Neo ate the squid too, which wasn't as good as the fishball. J wasn't missing out on that one.
he watched neo eat the fishball and then the squid. he didn't even wonder what they tasted like. some time ago, he had been consuming these kind of foods without issue; now, he had simply gotten used to eating very little, or not at all.
"where do you usually shop?" J asked, which seemed like a logical follow-up to the conversation.
"Same place everyone else does. Vesta." Well, maybe not J. She'd seen him in a grand total of a single outfit.
There were little boutiques and other such designer stores that were simply too good for the department stores, but they carried runway fashion, not maternity clothing.
Neo realized then--she supposed she'd always known--that he didn't know. She also realized that he'd find out sooner or later just by seeing her sometime in the next few weeks.
"They have a sizable maternity section there." That wasn't opaque enough. Neo didn't like side-stepping the issue, so she added, without much fanfare, "I'm pregnant."
vesta? J didn't visit often. when he did, it involved a lot of shouting and screaming, not on his part. one time, he went there for soda pops; some times, it was for tms. but that was honestly it. most of his shopping was done in the mefitis underground.
J nodded at the revelation. he supposed it was something to be noted, being pregnant and all. he didn't exactly have any opinion or thought on the subject at the very moment.
"okay," said J, in an understatement. "explains the no alcohol bit."
"Yes. No alcohol, and no to other things to. I'm supposed to stay in Nerio until the baby's born. Maybe four months from now."
The scourge-fighting lifestyle was not conducive to childbirth, apparently. She supposed that went without saying. Then again, the grossly underweight thing was her own problem.
"One of these days, you need to tell me how not a stick, with the way you eat. I need to know your secret. You know, before four months is up."
At the rate she was going, there was no way she'd survive childbirth.
J weighed his knowledge of pregnancy against his own living habits, and realized they were just as likely to kill neo as giving birth would.
he also wondered what staying in one place for a long time would do to someone like neo. make her restless, maybe. send her out hunting for scourge, maybe. he didn't know, but he figured that a person who was eight-months pregnant couldn't be running around dodging hyper beams.
he eventually came to a conclusion. "bitter powder," said J, "i used to have bitter powder with tea to maintain a good immune system."
somewhere along the line, he had abandoned tea and opted for just the powder.
...She wasn't going to touch bitter powder, not willingly, and not unless she had just been bleeding to death.
Neo made a face. "You know how I feel about bitter powder. Does it taste better with tea?"
Check-ups were weekly, which she suspected was just a part of the hospital's plot to keep her rooted in Nerio. It hadn't worked that well, but Neo couldn't roam any further than a day or two away from the city.
"Friday. It's every Friday, at ten in the morning. Then they send me to a dietitian every Monday afternoon. I think it's part of their diabolical plot to keep me grounded here over the weekend."
"it does," J said, but then again, he had always had a high opinion of bitter powder. had he not started rejecting tea, he would have continued the habit -- it was uncannily nice how tea brought out the better side of bitter powder. (less bitter, more taste of the original components, which included ginseng.)
J nodded. "i see," he said. "you would fight scourge while you still could."
"Fighting them's my only source of entertainment. Shopping can only keep me busy for so long." And she didn't like working at the Bellona campus' laboratories. She didn't like working with the university in general.
"But I'll stop when I have to. I'm not going to kill an unborn child just to keep myself entertained. I'll find some other hobby."
Neo watched him drink the entire bottle dry. She was pretty certain if she tried drinking that'd much in one go, she'd end up at the hospital.
