A beat. Then a small voice from the other side.
"Okay."
He turned the handle.
She was sitting cross-legged in the middle of her bed with Beom-Beom in her lap and both her hands wrapped around his middle. Her face had the constructed look that hurt more to see than crying. Mouth set. Eyes too wide. Chin held very, very still.
Daniil did not go to the bed. He sat down on the floor beside it, his back against the mattress, so his head was below hers. I sat down next to him. We both made ourselves smaller than her. I felt the rightness of it before I understood it.
She looked down at us. She looked at Beom-Beom. She looked back at us.
"Sorry for ruining the moment." Very small. Very honest.
"You didn't ruin anything." It came out of me before I had to think about it.
Her chin trembled. She made it stop. "I just can't stop thinking that if you have your own baby, I won't be that important anymore."
I felt my whole chest break open. Across from me, Daniil's jaw did a thing, a slow tight thing, and then his face softened into something I didn't know his face could do.
"Rhea." He said her name like he was setting it down carefully. "Listen to me. You are my sister. You will always be mysister. There is no version of this family where you are not at the center of my house. A baby does not change what you are to me. A baby adds to my house. It does not subtract."
I reached up and took her free hand in both of mine. It was small and warm. The nails were painted a pale chipped pink Lily had done for her last week.
"You're not going to get less of us, sweet girl. You're going to get more. You're going to be a big sister. Do you know what a big sister gets to do? She gets to show the baby who Beom-Beom is. She gets to be the one who knows where everything is. She gets the loudest say in what we name the baby."
She blinked. A small spark of interest cracked through the careful face.
"I get to help name them?"
"Loudest vote at the table. Daniil and I are the deciders, but yours counts most."
She thought about that. She looked at Daniil, sideways, testing.
"What if I love the baby more than I love you?"
Daniil did not even pause. Dry, and sweet, and immediate.
"Then I will know I raised you right."
A small laugh broke out of her and surprised her. Her hand twitched in mine.
"That was a joke."
"Most of it."
She looked at him for one long second and her face stopped holding itself. She slid off the bed into the small space between us on the floor, Beom-Beom coming with her, and she fit herself against my side with her head against my shoulder and her feet tucked under Daniil's leg. He shifted to make room. His hand came up and rested at the top of her braid, light as breath.
We sat like that.
I felt her breathing slow. I felt the warm small weight of her against my ribs. I felt Daniil's other hand find mine on the carpet between us and lace our fingers together.
Outside the room the apartment was very quiet. Down the hall I could hear, faintly, Lily saying something low to Jade, and Jade answering, and Sienna laughing once, soft. The good sound of a house with people in it who had decided to wait.
"I love you both." It came out of Rhea muffled into my collar, sleepy already.
"We love you, sweet girl," I whispered into her hair.
Daniil's thumb moved against my knuckles. He did not speak. He did not have to.
