While Eric was out of the house farming good deeds in the Imperator's Cross, his wife Ruby was having an eventful day of her own, one that started far more quietly than his.
Sunlight had already crept halfway across the bedroom by the time Ruby woke, the sheets warm on the side of the bed that should have held Eric's weight and didn't. She blinked slowly, her head a little more clouded than usual, and remembered, half-formed, that Eric had woken her before dawn to say he wasn't going to work today, that he had somewhere else to be, before slipping out without much explanation.
It was strange for him to go out like that. The thought pulled last night's memory up with it. Eric sitting across from her with an expression she rarely saw on him, admitting quietly that he had been wanting a child, that the admission itself was what had made him so strange and distant these past few weeks.
Maybe he's gone to the library, she thought, a small smile tugging at her mouth despite herself. Reading books about babies, probably, sitting there all serious with some parenting guide.
She remembered the rest of it clearly too. She hadn't been angry, just tired and a little hurt that he'd carried something like that alone for so long. She had thanked him for finally telling her, scolded him lightly, and told him plainly that next time he needed to talk to her instead of bottling things up until they spilled over. Nothing more complicated than two people finally saying what needed to be said.
And yet, lying here now, she couldn't shake a strange, formless unease at the edges of the memory, something she couldn't name and didn't like the shape of. She frowned, chased the feeling for a moment, then gave up and got out of bed.
She showered, then filled the tub instead of draining it right away, lying there far longer than she normally allowed herself, her mind drifting somewhere she couldn't quite follow.
The apartment felt different with just her in it, quieter in a way that had nothing to do with actual sound. She didn't need to cook for two today, and something about that small fact settled oddly in her chest. With no husband to feed, she pulled up a handful of food videos on her tablet while she made herself a simple omelette sandwich, telling herself she was gathering ideas for Eric's dinner later. Mostly, she even believed it.
It was too sad, in a quiet, ordinary way, that the man she loved so much was somewhere across the city right now, talking to some stranger he'd probably decided needed his help more than his own breakfast table did.
She ate at the table, her gaze drifting to the window. The sky stretched out clear and blue. The omelette was good, she could tell that much objectively, but she couldn't quite taste it the way she normally would. Her eyes fell, without meaning to, on the corner of the counter where Eric's own breakfast sat untouched and long since cold. She looked at it a moment too long before turning back to her own plate.
She cleaned afterward, mostly out of habit, moving through the motions without much real attention behind them. An hour passed before she admitted there was nothing left worth cleaning. She felt tired in a way that had nothing to do with effort, and bored on top of it. She made tea and sat with the television remote, letting her feed of cooking videos wash over her, mostly Parisian pastries lately. Today nothing caught her eye. She waited for that familiar spark of curiosity that usually sent her into the kitchen, and it never came.
She glanced at the window again. The weather looked lovely, the kind of day that seemed to be asking to be spent outside. An idea took shape, small and unfamiliar. Maybe she should go out. It wasn't really like her. Ruby had always been content within four walls, rarely feeling any real pull toward the city outside. But today some restless little itch sat under her skin.
She wasn't about to go alone, though. She opened her chat with Zoe. Hey, are you free today? I was thinking of heading out for some shopping. Wanna come? She sent it before she could second-guess herself.
Next door, Zoe was elbow-deep in dirty dishes when her phone buzzed. She read the message, glanced around at the mess still scattered across her kitchen, crumbs she hadn't gotten to, half-washed pans. It wasn't even her mess, not really. Max ate like a small hurricane and left an equally chaotic trail wherever he went. She was tired of the dishes, tired of being cooped up doing housework all week.
She typed back a quick yes before she could talk herself out of it.
Ruby's phone buzzed on the table a moment later, and a small, genuine smile spread across her face. She was up and moving before her tea had even cooled, abandoning the mug without a second thought.
Standing in front of her closet mirror a few minutes later, she pulled dress after dress off their hangers, chasing some memory of a version of herself she hadn't visited in a while. How long has it been since I actually dressed up like this? She couldn't remember, and that alone felt strange enough to sit with.
She landed on a green gown that caught the color of her eyes and hair, a dark brown floppy hat with a single pink flower stitched to its brim, and short black heels. A touch of makeup, a light spray of perfume, and she stepped out of the apartment looking, without exaggeration, beautiful. Still in her twenties, her body had kept its youthful shape, enough to draw a few glances just from the hallway alone.
She walked the short distance to Zoe's door and knocked.
The door swung open about half a minute later. Zoe stood there in an orange maxi dress, matching heels, and a short white sunhat over long, wavy orange hair.
The two of them looked each other over for a moment.
"You look good!" Zoe said first, grinning.
"I can say the same about you," Ruby replied, a small laugh slipping out.
"Seriously though," Zoe said, tilting her head, eyeing the floppy hat with open approval. "Where did you even find that? I need one."
Ruby touched the brim self-consciously. "I have had it for years. Just never had a reason to wear it."
"Well, today's the day, apparently." Zoe pulled her door shut behind her and gave it a firm tug. "So, shopping. What's the occasion? You rarely want to go out."
Ruby shrugged lightly. "No occasion. I just felt like it today."
Zoe raised an eyebrow, clearly not entirely convinced, but let it go with an easy shrug of her own. "Fine by me. I was two dirty pans away from losing my mind anyway."
They walked together toward the elevator, their heels clicking against the hallway floor, conversation picking up almost immediately. Work, something ridiculous one of them had seen on Instagram, a recipe Ruby wanted to try, a dress Zoe had been eyeing online for weeks. None of it particularly mattered. It was a strange contrast to their husbands, Ruby thought idly at one point. Eric and Max, whenever they were actually in a room together, tended to fall into long, comfortable silences. She and Zoe had never quite mastered that particular skill.
If only they knew that their husbands had deep conversations in their minds through their Meditation Aura.
The elevator doors opened onto the lobby, and they made their way out through the front entrance together. The sun hit them full force the moment they stepped outside, sharp and bright, and both women winced and reached up to adjust their hats.
"Ugh," Zoe muttered, tugging uselessly at the brim of her white sunhat. She glanced sideways at Ruby, whose floppy brown hat cast a far more generous shadow, and felt a small, petty stab of envy. "Okay, I take back what I said earlier. I definitely need a bigger hat."
"Told you," Ruby said lightly.
Once their eyes adjusted, they turned right and started walking. The mall was close enough that a taxi felt unnecessary. The street around them was alive and loud, cars rolling past, the footpath crowded, voices overlapping into a low hum. A couple of tourists approached hesitantly and asked, in halting French, if they could take a picture together. Both women declined politely and kept walking.
For a while their conversation carried on loudly and enthusiastically, hopping from topic to topic, but slowly the topics ran thin. Their voices dropped without either of them quite noticing, until they were walking mostly in silence, side by side.
Ruby stared straight ahead as they walked, something turning over in her mind that she'd been carrying around all morning without deciding what to do with it. She glanced sideways at Zoe, then away again, hesitating. Should I even ask her this? She turned the question over a few more times before finally deciding the silence had gone on long enough.
"Hey, Zoe," she said slowly, "I have a question."
Zoe glanced over, waiting.
"Has Max been acting weird lately?"
Zoe stopped walking entirely. Her expression shifted fast, surprise flashing across her face as she turned to look at Ruby head on. Ruby felt a small flicker of panic, already halfway to regretting she'd asked at all.
But before she could take it back, Zoe spoke first, and what came out of her mouth caught Ruby just as off guard.
"You mean, Eric has also been acting weird lately?" Zoe said, and it was Ruby's turn to freeze in place.
"Huh."
The two of them stood there on the footpath, staring at each other, matching expressions of confusion on both their faces, neither one quite sure how to process that the other had been sitting on the same worry.
Before either of them could say anything more, a stroller rolled past them, pushed by a woman who couldn't have been much further along than seven or eight months, one hand resting on top of her rounded belly.
Ruby's eyes followed her without meaning to.
A few steps further, another woman crossed in front of them at the corner, hand pressed to the small of her back, clearly heavily along as well, laughing at something the man beside her had said.
Zoe blinked, glancing between the two women, then turned to Ruby. "Okay, is it just me, or..."
Ruby's brow furrowed as she scanned the street more deliberately now, and the moment she actually started looking, she realized it wasn't just her imagination. A woman sitting outside a café with one hand resting protectively over an obvious bump. Another crossing at the far end of the block, walking slowly, careful with her steps. A third stepping out of a boutique with a bag of what looked suspiciously like tiny clothes.
"That's four," Ruby said slowly, counting again just to be sure. "Four pregnant women. In like, two minutes."
"Five," Zoe corrected, nodding toward a bench across the street where another woman sat, visibly far along, fanning herself with a folded pamphlet.
"Is there something in the water here?" Zoe asked, only half joking.
"I don't know," Ruby said, still staring. "I never really notice this stuff, but now that you've pointed it out, I can't stop seeing it."
"Maybe it's a Paris thing," Zoe offered, though she didn't sound convinced. "Some kind of baby boom happening or something?"
Ruby shook her head slowly, arms crossing over her chest as a strange, prickling unease settled low in her stomach, the same unease that had been lingering at the edges of her all morning finally finding something to attach itself to. "It's weird, right? I'm not just imagining it being weird."
"No, it's definitely weird," Zoe agreed, finally tearing her eyes away from the bench. "I've lived in this city for months, and I don't think I've ever noticed this many pregnant women on one street before. Ever."
They started walking again, slower now, and sure enough the pattern didn't stop. A sixth woman passed them a block later, then a seventh near a pharmacy, each one perfectly ordinary on her own, and yet the sheer number of them left both women exchanging increasingly baffled looks.
"Okay, this is officially freaking me out a little," Zoe finally admitted, lowering her voice. "Especially with what you just asked me. About Eric. And what I was about to tell you. About Max."
Ruby's stomach tightened further. "You don't think it's connected, do you? Whatever's going on with them, and this?"
Zoe hesitated, glancing around the street full of soft, rounded bellies, and slowly shook her head. "I have no idea. But I don't love that it's the first thing my brain went to either."
They stood there unsettled for a moment before Zoe exhaled and forced a small, wry smile onto her face. "Come on. Let's just keep walking. You still owe me the full story about Eric, and I still owe you mine about Max. We can be confused together."
Zoe took her time answering once Ruby pressed her, chewing lightly at the inside of her cheek as she sorted through everything she hadn't quite let herself put into words until now.
"It mostly started when we moved to Paris," she said eventually. "At first it just felt like Moscow all over again, new city, new routine, figured he'd settle in eventually. But then." She paused. "The first thing I noticed was that he's gotten quieter. Quieter than usual."
Ruby blinked. Quieter? She very nearly laughed out loud. She could hear that man thundering around his apartment at midnight, laughing loudly enough through the shared wall that she sometimes wondered if he knew walls were supposed to block sound. And then there were the other nights, the ones where the noise had nothing to do with laughing at all, and. She cut that thought off immediately, cheeks warming, and pressed her lips together.
"What do you mean by quiet?" Ruby asked instead, keeping her voice carefully neutral.
"It may look the same to you," Zoe said, waving a hand as if to brush the shared memory away, "but I'm his wife. I notice things you wouldn't pick up on. It's hard to explain properly. Before, he'd talk endlessly about everything, no filter at all, you know how he is. But now there are these little pauses between his sentences that never used to be there. He doesn't bounce around the apartment as much. He mutters less in his sleep too, which used to drive me insane, so honestly I kind of miss it now that it's gone." She let out a small, humorless laugh. "Some of his smiles feel off too. Almost fake, and sometimes, when he's talking to me, I catch this flicker of something sad behind his eyes, just for a second, before it disappears again."
She turned to Ruby. "What about Eric?"
Ruby went quiet for a moment, thinking it over properly. "Eric's been strange too. I started noticing around the same time, honestly, right after we moved here. But it's kind of the opposite with him. He's gotten more talkative. He smiles a lot more too, except." She wrinkled her nose slightly. "Except the smiles feel fake. Really fake. It actually creeps me out a little, if I'm being honest. His eyes look hollow sometimes, like he's in pain, or confused about something he can't figure out."
She sighed, the sound small and a little heavy. "It's a horrible feeling, being his wife and knowing he's hurting but not feeling like he can actually talk to me about it. He just comes to me at night sometimes, lies with his head against me, cries a little, asks these strange questions out of nowhere, and then falls asleep before I can really respond. He's been complimenting me more too, way more than usual, like he's trying extra hard to make me feel better about something. It just made everything feel weirder, honestly, not less." She paused. "But yesterday he finally told me. After I sat him down and made him talk to me properly. He."
Ruby's fingers laced together in front of her, and she looked down at the pavement, her cheeks flushing a warm pink.
"He told me he wants to have a baby," she said, the words coming out quieter than she meant them to.
For a second, Zoe just stared at her. Then a slow, wicked grin spread across her face.
"LUCKY GIRL!" She grabbed Ruby's arm and shook it. "Oh my god, Ruby!"
"Zoe," Ruby hissed, glancing around at the passing pedestrians, mortified.
"No, no, this is important information!" Zoe elbowed her hard in the side. "You know Max won't even do it without protection? He's terrified he's gonna knock me up by accident. Meanwhile your husband is over here begging on his knees for a baby."
"He wasn't begging on his knees. He was crying into my chest at two in the morning like a lost puppy."
"Even better!" Zoe wheezed, wiping a fake tear from her eye. "I guess this phase comes for every man eventually." She composed herself just enough to actually look interested. "Okay, so what happened after he told you? Did you guys, you know."
"ZOE."
"What? It's a normal question!"
"It is NOT a normal question to ask in the middle of the street!" Ruby's face had gone fully red now, all the way to her ears. "We didn't. I just. I scolded him, okay? I screamed at him for hiding something so stupid from me in the first place. I was so mad. Do you know how worried I was? I thought something was actually wrong with him, and it turns out he just didn't want to tell me he wanted a baby, like that's some big terrible secret."
"Aww." Zoe's teasing grin softened, genuine warmth slipping in underneath it.
"Don't aww me," Ruby muttered, though the heat in her voice had already started fading. "Honestly, though, he had hinted at it before, a few times. I just didn't put it together. So I guess it's a little bit my fault too."
Zoe hummed thoughtfully. "Was he being weird and cryptic about it, or was it actually a hint you should've caught?"
"A little of both," Ruby admitted, and Zoe snorted.
"So it's fifty percent your fault. I'll allow it." Zoe nudged her again, gentler this time. "Okay, is that everything? Anything else weird?"
Ruby shook her head, thinking it over once more, then glanced sideways. "What about you? Anything else with Max?"
Zoe opened her mouth to say no, then stopped short. "Oh, wait, actually." She raised a finger, brow furrowing. "Every couple of days, he's been locking himself in the bathroom for a while. I didn't think much of it at first, everyone needs their alone time, but now that I'm actually thinking about it, he never used to do that. Not in years."
"That is weird," Ruby said, eyebrows lifting.
"Right?" Zoe frowned, chewing her lip for a second before shrugging it off. "Maybe he's just constipated. Who knows."
"Zoe!"
"What! It's possible!"
They kept trading theories back and forth as they walked the last stretch toward the mall, half bickering, half laughing, until neither of them could quite remember who'd technically won the argument.
By the time the wide glass entrance of Vigias Mall came into view, they'd more or less exhausted the topic, still no closer to any real answers, but feeling lighter for having talked it through together.
They stepped through the sliding doors, and the mall's air conditioning hit them almost instantly, cold and crisp against skin still damp from the walk over. Both women shivered at once and stood for a moment in the entryway, grateful for the relief of it.
They were ready to head up to the first floor and start trying on clothes. Max and Eric had spoiled them rotten, handing over their credit cards without a single word of protest. They'd both hesitated over that kind of spending before, but today, for whatever reason, they'd silently agreed between themselves to be completely shameless about it.
Just as they turned toward the escalators, a calm, unfamiliar voice drifted over from somewhere behind them.
"Ah. Finally some relief. What should I eat today?"
Ruby and Zoe both stopped and turned around at the same time.
Standing a few feet away was a woman with long, flowing green hair that matched her eyes almost perfectly, her arms stretched out at her sides as if she'd just finished a long stretch after stepping in from the heat. She wore a simple green dress that suited her effortlessly, and though she looked to be somewhere in her twenties, there was something in the easy, unbothered way she carried herself that made her a little hard to place.
She noticed the two of them looking at her and turned her head, meeting their gazes with open curiosity rather than embarrassment.
Then the green-haired woman's stomach let out a long, unmistakable growl.
Her face went red instantly, one hand flying up to press against her stomach. "That was not me," she said, with the kind of flat, hopeful denial that convinced absolutely no one.
Ruby and Zoe both burst out laughing at the same time.
"Sure it wasn't," Zoe said, grinning as she walked closer, Ruby trailing just a step behind, still giggling.
The woman huffed, cheeks still pink, though a small, sheepish smile had already started tugging at her mouth. "Fine. It was me. I skipped breakfast. And lunch, if I'm being honest."
"You skipped lunch too? Girl, no," Zoe said, shaking her head with mock disapproval. "That's a crime in this heat."
"I was low on money," the woman said simply, and neither Ruby nor Zoe pushed her on it.
"I'm Zoe," Zoe said instead, sticking her hand out. "And this is Ruby. We're heading up to shop for a bit, but honestly, food sounds like a much better first move now that you mention it."
"Kalamine," the woman said, shaking Zoe's hand, then Ruby's, her grip surprisingly firm. "It's nice to meet you both."
Ruby offered her a small, warm smile. "That's a really pretty name."
"Thank you." Kalamine's eyes flicked briefly toward the food court signs, and her stomach let out another quiet, traitorous growl. She winced.
Zoe burst out laughing again, and even Kalamine cracked a helpless laugh of her own.
"Okay, that settles it," Zoe said, still grinning. "You're eating with us. No arguing."
"I wasn't planning on arguing," Kalamine said, a genuine smile breaking through now. "I don't really know anyone in this city yet, honestly."
"Well, now you know us," Ruby offered warmly. "Come shopping with us after, too, if you want. We've got the whole day free."
Kalamine glanced between the two of them, something unreadable flickering briefly behind her green eyes before it settled into something softer.
"I'd like that," she said. "Thank you."
And just like that, without either of them quite planning it, Ruby and Zoe had made a new friend.