Stone Cold | Tanjirou Kamado (old version)

8. You're either born weak or strong

Ayaka Iwamoto was born weak.

The first breath she took in this world as a living being was small and ragged, not enough to keep her heart pumping. The arms that held her weren't her mother's, but the village's doctor, Nozomi Kobayashi.

A scream pierced through the air in the main room of the Iwamoto's house. Kaori Iwamoto had gone into labor.

Her hand desperately grabbed her husband's, her face extremely pale and soaked in sweat, shaking in exhaustion for the many hours she had spent like that, with the only comfort of her husband's hand and her mother's on the other side, who looked even more nervous as she squeezed Kaori's shoulder.

"Don't worry, Iwamoto-san, just a bit longer, I promise!" Nozomi yelled, the tightness on her face as a sign of the many hours she had also been there. She moved swiftly and expertly through the room even with her son Yuu at her back, not much older than a year (who stayed glaring around the room, strangely calm). Meanwhile, Nozomi runned from one place to another, carrying hot towels as her husband, Tamaki Kobayashi, came in through the door with a hot water bucket.

Makoto fastly took a piece of cloth and soaked it into the water, then tried as best as he could to clean off the sweat from his wife's forehead with trembling hands, either in excitement or nervousness.

Who could blame him, if the child he had waited so long for would be on his arms in just a few more hours?

"This will all end in a moment, so take in a deep breath, Kaori," he tried to cheer her up as he drowned in his own nervousness, taking his own advice and inhaling deeply.

Kaori tried to muffle another scream as she bit her lip. Her knuckles were as white as they could be as she squeezed her husband's hand, and it was no secret Makoto Iwamoto wasn't able to feel her fingers until a few hours later.

"You aren't helping, dammit Mako! Fuck off!" she cursed, as all Fujiokas did during hard times, because it felt like she was gonna die right there and then, along with the baby's she had cherished so much.

"Okay, Kaori, sweetie, it's okay. Doc said we're already at the end, right, Nozomi-san? I'll finally have a grandchild to spoil with mochi, think about that all you can," Kaede tried to say as she squeezed her daughter's shoulder once again. If she calmed down Kaori's nerves or her own, no one could tell.

As it was quite clear, the Iwamoto family was close to losing their minds.

"Iwamoto-san, you're close, just another push!" Nozomi asked by Kaori's feet, a clean piece of cloth on her hands.

And with another scream piercing through the room from her mother, Ayaka Iwamoto breathed for the first time.

"It's a girl!" Nozomi yelled with a smile as she wrapped the baby on the cloth.

Kaori immediately collapsed out of exhaustion with a final huff.

However, the bizarre silence that fell over the room was something that worried her.

"Why isn't she crying? Mako, why isn't our daughter crying?" she wondered with hazy eyes.

She slipped between consciousness, but still made the effort to listen, and there was no weeping.

It was popular knowledge when healthy babies came to this world they were accompanied by crying, moaning and screaming, letting out all the feelings in their little hearts so the world heard them.

"There's something wrong," Nozomi muttered to herself, eyebrows knitted in confusion.

Instead of letting the mother hold the baby, which was natural, Nozomi held it on her arms, looking cautiously at her chest. Her breathing wasn't ordinary, heavy, as if it hurt. It's probably a fever, she thought, as she stared at the baby coughing from time to time.