One

"Gackt-chan!" Jin hollered as he came in the bedroom. "What did I tell you about getting in Okaasanishi's dresser?"

Gackt-chan turned around on the chair she had dragged up to the dresser, the inch-wide stripe of bright red around her lips not really augmenting her pout. "But I want to be pretty like Okaasanishi and Pi-tousan!"

"You already are, sweetie," Jin said, palming Gackt-chan's hair smooth as he came forward to survey the damage to the make-up. He winced when he saw the mascara he'd borrowed from Pi earlier in the week streaked across the tabletop, the tip slightly bent.

"Noooo," Gackt-chan wriggled, catching at Jin's hand and tilting her head up at him. "The other kind. The fake kind of pretty."

Jin looked down and examined Gackt-chan's make-up job, chuckling wryly to himself because Ryo had been right after all: Gackt-chan's understanding of the Jimusho was entirely too accurate, and it was definitely time to take away her Barbies and give her something more innocuous to play with.

"Okay, let's see what we can do." Jin picked Gackt-chan up and resettled them in the chair, Gackt-chan in his lap. He reached over to snatch a tissue out of the box and began scrubbing away the lipstick disaster from Gactk-chan's face whlie she squirmed and giggled. "This lipstick has to go, but the eyeliner…"

Jin caught Gackt-chan's gaze in the mirror and they grinned at each other, Gackt-chan's eyelids highlighted with a inch of green and electric blue.

"The eyeliner is dead-on," he said, and Gackt-chan puffed out her chest in pride.

Two

"Okaasanishiiii," Gackt-chan whined, grabbing at Jin's knees, and Jin had to take a really deep breath before he could keep from shouting at her to go away so he could finish his makeup and his photoshoot and go home and sleep for maybe fifteen minutes before the whole idol thing started up all over again.

Deep breath, just like Ueda said. "What, baby?"

"It won't go!" Gackt-chan informed him, slapping a plastic pony into Jin's lap. The pony was lime green and had violently purple hair, and all in all looked a lot like a promotional item from Kis-My-Ft2's last single.

"What won't go?" Jin asked, wondering how long before it was Pi's turn to baby-sit.

"Her hair!" Gackt-chan slapped at the pony with a chubby hand, and Jin looked down to see the pony's hair sticking out in three directions in tangled loops. "It's supposed to look like Uebo's!"

Jin squinted for a moment longer at the pony, then looked up at Ueda, who was having his own solo shots done just then. Ueda was in one of his emo phases, where he learned another foreign language and refused to cut his hair. "You mean a french braid?"

"Like Uebo's!" Gackt-chan insisted, holding the pony up and giving Jin a wibbly lip.

"Okay," Jin said, because if all parenting required of him at this moment was french braiding, he could probably manage that. "Get another pony and I'll show you."

Gackt-chan was giving it a try, glancing over at Jin's fingers tangled in the pony's hair, tongue stuck out in concentration, when the photographer called, "Akanishi-kun!"

But Jin made them all wait until Gackt-chan gave a shriek of glee and held up her very first recognizable french braid before he got up to step onto the set.

Three

"All I'm saying is," Jin tried to keep his voice soothing, "is that sometimes other colors look good with pink too. Sometimes other colors make the pink look even better!"

Gackt-chan, wearing one of Yamapi's T-shirts so that it came down to her knees, and Yamapi, wearing one of Gackt-chan's hats on his head, both gave Jin a skeptical and belittling look.

"Don't you even start," Jin said, pointing his finger at Yamapi, and Gackt-chan glanced between her parents as Yamapi held up his hands in surrender and took a step back.

Gackt-chan crossed her arms and looked stubborn.

"What about your ponies?" Jin coaxed, sticking a thumb out towards the crate full of the rubbery horses that sat in his living room, presents from every debuted JE member and most of the juniors. "You don't just like the pink ones, right? Sometimes you like blue and green and purple too, don't you?"

"But the pink ones are the best," Gackt-chan said, looking towards the crate with a furrowed brow.

Yamapi was snickering behind his hand, and Jin gave him a dirty look. "But not the ones that are all pink with pink hair and pink tinsel, right?"

"They don't make that one," Gackt-chan sighed, looking wistful.

"And I'll tell you why," Jin said triumphantly. "Because without the dark purple and the bright orange and the simple white, the pink isn't nearly as pretty! It's all about accessorizing, ne, Gack-chan?"

"That’s not 'cessorizing!" Gackt-chan crossed her arms and glared. "'Cessorizing is bows and cute shoes and Pi-tousan's bellybutton shiny!"

"You're making our child a moron, you know," Jin informed Yamapi, who was leaning bodily against the wall as he clutched his stomach and howled with laughter. "Sweetheart, come here a second."

Jin kneeled down to Gackt-chan's level, and when she toddled forward, turned her around so she was still tucked into his arms but facing Yamapi.

"What color are Pi-tousan's eyes?" he asked.

"Brown!" Gackt-chan answered immediately.

"Good girl." Jin kissed Gackt-chan's temple. "Don't they look pretty underneath his hat? All dark when the pink hat is bright? You wouldn't want them to be pink, would you?"

Gack-chan tilted her head to the side and made a thinky sort of noise, but Jin wasn't really paying attention to her anyway, focused instead on the sharp and affectionate gaze Yamapi was brushing over his skin, making promises of stripping Jin of all of his accessories after Gackt-chan went to bed.

Four

"Don't wanna," Gackt-chan said, hands on her hips.

"Gackt-chan, we talked about this." Jin put his hands on his own hips and met her gaze evenly, trying to keep his face serious no matter how silly his voice sounded echoing off the tile of the bathroom. "Big girls use the potty. You're a big girl, aren't you?"

"I like the princesses!" was Gackt-chan's response, referring to the Disney characters on her pullups, which Yamapi gushed about the cuteness of just a little too often, in Jin's opinion.

Jin, however, because he was sometimes smarter than a three-year-old, had a counter argument ready.

"But big girls get to wear big girl Disney princess underwear," Jin informed her, pulling a package of the underwear in question out from behind his back and presenting them to Gackt-chan.

They were the Sleeping Beauty kind, Jin had made sure, and featured a completely disgusting amount of pink as well as a good amount of pink glittery thread. They looked a little scratchy, with the glitter thread and all, but as the youngest junior ever, Gackt-chan had long ago learned to make sacrifices for fashion.

"Okay," Gackt-chan finally said. "But only if there's still princesses."

"Of course there are," Jin assured her, wondering what exactly Gackt-chan would be wearing under her robes when she attended her university graduation ceremony.

Five

"That's a good start," Jin said, trying valiantly not to laugh at the shoebox Gackt-chan was presenting him with, which he knew for a fact contained only a package of chocolate cupcakes. "But let's see if we can make Pi-tousan a normal bento, okay?"

There was still some rice in the warmer, so Jin made a couple rice balls with the leftover tuna from the night before, letting Gackt-chan stick on lop-sided smileys with a few strips of processed cheese. Then they used the flower-shaped cutters Gackt-chan found in a lower cabinet to cut out pieces of sweet potato.

They were out of soybeans or anything else traditional, but they had plenty of Cheerios lying around, so Jin mixed them in with the sweet potato flowers and examined the result with satisfaction.

"Okay," he said, "now stick in the cupcakes," and scooped up Gackt-chan so that she could drop them on top and put the lid on the bento box with a pleased nod.

"Hey, what are my pretty girls up to so early?" Yamapi asked from the doorway.

"Jerk." Jin turned to find Yamapi leaning against the doorframe, showered and dressed in a half-buttoned black dress shirt, but with eyes sleepy enough to still be blinking at Jin from mussed silk sheets. It was mostly the eyes that made Jin relent when Yamapi crossed the room and leaned in for a good morning kiss, Gackt-chan clinging to his legs.

"Pi-tousan!" she hollered, grinning so hard that her eyes were little Tego-slits. "Pi-tousan, I made you lunch!"

"I see that," he answered, smoothing Jin's hair back from his face and giving him the warm twist of lips that went with the sleepy eyes. "You know, I always have the best bentos out of anybody in NewS, which means that I'm the one who has people who love him the most."

"That's so," Jin replied, giving Yamapi back the good morning kiss that went with the warm twist of lips and sleepy eyes.

"It's cause of the cupcakes!" Gackt-chan insisted, making Jin laugh into Yamapi's mouth and squeeze them both tight.