The brunette blinked once as she looked to Charlie, holding her yogurt cup close as she slid the spoon out of her mouth and smiled. “You heard me, Charlie.” Rise giggled sweetly before lowering her spoon into the yogurt cup as she moved to place it on the table, leaning forward on it to look at him in the eyes.
“I want a baby. I’m pretttyyy sure I didn’t stutter the first time I said it though.” She huffed a bit before tilting her head a bit. “Why are you reacting like that anyway? I thought it was obvious?”
Well, Rise was putting all sorts of signs around. Binkies, diapers, all of the baby items.
Tensing up, she groaned before rubbing her face a bit as she exhaled gently. “Right, you are a bit dense.” The idol mumbled, huffing. “But no, I do want a baby. I figured you would like to know.” She smiled, lifting her yogurt cup up again.
Of course he’d noticed; he’d just kinda...denied it to himself, because it seemed ridiculous. He couldn’t have picked up a less opportune time if he had all the dates of past-and-future at his disposal. As terrible a time as you could pick. And even accepting this notion as a hypothesis, even then, the childcare stuff? Rise knew that you didn’t just jump from zero to baby, right? There was nine months or so of unpleasantness and worthless babyrearing equipment taking up space to muddle through.
“It’s just...a heck of a jump, Rise. We’re still working out how your career’s going to settle out with the new company.” Charlie didn’t wanna be a dad; he could admit that to himself, if nothing else. With how often he was out of town, dealing with this or that threat-to-the-world, the very notion of leaving a kid to grow up without a father was one he wouldn’t abide. Why? Simple -- it was how he’d grown up. Shoved around from relative to relative, hostel to hostel, nanny to nanny; his parents could’ve been the finest folks in the world, but given how little time he’d spent with them, he didn’t know. Dojima was the closest thing he’d had to a father figure in a long time, and even that teenager Charlie could tell that he was a pretty poor excuse for one.
Needed to be honest. “Between your job and mine...it doesn’t seem like a great environment to raise a kid. I can never be sure when I’ll be sent away from Tokyo, and never sure when I’ll be back. If I come back.” It was a grim thought, and he knew it, frowning. “I don’t want to tell you no. I just don’t think this is a great time.”
