Once Again: Nanami x OC

Chapter 28: when he knew

| ik last chapter was really heavy and dark so this chapter i'm going to do something soft so we can heal after learning more about saeko's backstory |

nanami watched saeko's eyebrows furrow in her sleep.

she must be having a bad dream...

he gently rubbed her cheek with his thumb, trying to comfort her while she slept in his arms. he remembered that she would often have bad dreams and usually, they were about her mom.

he had never met her mom before but saeko had opened up a bit about her before. she was selfish and narcissistic, she saw people as to how useful they could be to her and once they served their use, she threw them away like garbage. saeko had shared little bits of her childhood with him a long time ago, he could tell that they were painful memories for her to relive so he never pressed further.

he stroked her soft hair as she slept like he was trying to silently coax her out of her bad dream.

he lightly kissed the top of her forehead and snuggled closer to her, "i'm here", he whispered.

she seemed to relax after a bit, slowly but surely. nanami watched as the muscles in her pretty face relax as he took in her features. it was no exaggeration to say that she was gorgeous, anyone could say that. but for nanami, she was breathtaking, quite literally taking his breath away every time he saw her. even after all these years, he would still feel his heart stop every time he looked at her.

for him, it was everything about her: the way she always smelled like lilies, her long eyelashes that would leave marks on her sunglasses if she wore mascara, her chocolate brown eyes that seemed to sparkle, the soft contour of her face that was framed with her thick brown hair, her soft smile that always seemed to make him feel warm and fuzzy inside.

it wasn't just physical features that made her beautiful, it was the little things that she would do that would leave nanami in awe: like how she always carried around too many things in her purse because 'you never know when you might need something', how genuinely nice and generous she was with complete strangers, or how she would get super into the quiz game shows on TV and forget that she wasn't a contestant. it was these little things that she did that made nanami love her even more. it was like each day was a new day for him to fall in love with her again, another opportunity to learn something new about her he didn't know before.

nanami smiled and gently held her hand.

when did i know that i wanted to marry you?...ah that's right...

nanami thought back to when they had been about half a year into their relationship and were living together in his apartment. saeko was still working at the hostess club but she took off weekends for her and nanami to spend time together which nanami greatly enjoyed. he was still starting up at his salaryman job and was working full-time.

it was around this time that nanami had told saeko about his family and mentioning that his maternal grandmother was danish which was apparently very shocking to saeko.

this led to saeko opening up to nanami about her relationship with her mom and dad and how just like nanami, she didn't have a lot of contact with them but for different reasons. at the time, she didn't go into much detail but nanami could tell that it was something that bothered her and told her that she didn't have to talk about it if she wasn't ready to.

a few days had passed since they had talked about their families and it was a regular friday, nanami had just gotten off of work and was on his way home, excited for the weekend he had planned for them.