Sakata Shiori could do whatever she wanted to do…and that included getting dinner from a convenience store like a college student.
She was forty years old. She should have been making herself something home cooked and nutritious every single night, like adults did, but the beauty of being an adult was being able to do whatever she wanted to do. That included a dinner of cheap fried chicken, fries, and a giant mocha ball for dessert. Not ketchup for the fries….Touichirou would have been rolling over in his grave if he'd been dead.
No, he was very much alive.
There was talk, well there was always talk, but this talk had to do with Touichirou. Some kind of big clean up he'd done in Tokyo. People, her people, were worried that Osaka would be next. Shiori knew better. Touichirou would leave her be…well he would leave her work alone. He wouldn't leave her alone, of course, he loved her. She had never asked him to love her but he did…and it was alright. It wasn't like he was malicious, like he was planning on putting her in a cage or something, so…so that was alright. Tolerable.
So long as he kept his mouth shut then it was tolerable.
The car slowing down to follow her, on the other hand, was not. She rolled her eyes. She was too old this nonsense. Suspicious greetings, that was what they were called now. When she had been young there hadn't been a word for it, when men would slow down and try and get you into their cars. Probably to chop you up into little pieces after they were done having their way with you. Skinning you alive was optional, of course, but always did make for a much more sensational news story. This would have been page one stuff. Forty year old Christmas cake still has it, more on page two. She rolled her eyes.
She did not have time for this.
"Excuse, Miss-" said a voice from behind her. She rolled her eyes and kept walking.
"Fuck off." Said Shiori. She did not have time for this nonsense. She had been putting out fires all day, one of them literal. Someone had actually tried to burn down her headquarters. She didn't know who and she had to find out before Touichirou did. She knew him. She knew that he had spies everywhere and she knew that he loved her. Some people showed their love with stalking and unwanted gifts….and marriage proposals over the phone….and whatever else Touichirou had up his sleeves.
At least he kept things interesting.
"If you'll just-" said the man. Shiori didn't stop walking. She had no desire to end up chopped up and stuffed into someone's freezer, thank you very much. Not that she couldn't defend herself, she was perfectly capable of defending herself without Touichirou thank you very much. She felt her aura…she so disliked fighting normal people….
But she had to do what she had to do.
"I said fuck off." Said Shiori with a flick of her wrist. She didn't turn around, she didn't have to, the sound of crashing metal and honking horns was enough. Well it served that asshole right, if he hadn't want to die by having his car flung into traffic then he shouldn't have fucked with her. That had been easy…easier than it would have been for pretty much every other esper. She felt drained…she shouldn't have done that on an empty stomach. She was powerful in her own right but she wasn't up there in whatever percent Touichirou and the rest of the Suzuki family were at…but she could protect herself…
Not that Touichirou got the message.
She felt her phone vibrating in her bag….she didn't even have to check to see who it was. He could have at least made some effort to hide the fact that he had her followed. Any other man would have at least done his stalking himself, and better than the idiots who tripped over themselves following her down the street. Not that she wanted to be stalked, of course, it was so annoying.
Touichirou could be a VERY annoying man sometimes.
"Hey Touichirou." Said Shiori. She didn't even have to check. Who else would be calling her at her personal number at this hour…or at all? Besides her parents…if they had decided to unburn that bridge. Why did she even have a personal phone if she didn't want to hear from the only people who had this number?
Well…not that she DIDN'T want to hear from Touichirou…she just didn't want to deal with any more of his…Touichirou-ness.
"Shiori. Are you-" said Touichirou. She rolled her eyes.
"I'm fine, Touichirou." Said Shiori
"How did you-" said Touichirou
"I know you're having me followed. I'm not an idiot, I do noticed the espers following me wherever I go." Said Shiori
"Oh…I'll be sure to have someone less obtrusive on the next shift." Said Touichirou
"Or you could just not have shifts at all. I can take care of myself. You know I can, hell, I just did." Said Shiori
"I am aware of the fact that you're a powerful esper…but I am also aware of the fact that if you were to die or become seriously injured that I would not be able to live with myself." Said Touichirou. That would have been romantic…if he had been anyone else. Not being able to go on without her. He meant it. When someone meant it then the statement went from romantic to unnecessarily intense.
She was barely even his girlfriend.
She hadn't even agreed to being his girlfriend. He had just declared her to be his girlfriend and then the rest was history. She would have enjoyed being informed and if had been anyone else then she would have walked a long time ago. But Touichirou wasn't just anyone he. He was impossibly sweet, thoughtful, amazing in bed, and powerful. If he had been anyone else she would have left but he wasn't anyone else, he was Suzuki Touichirou.
And, amazingly enough, she had him wrapped around her finger.
"You'd meet someone else." Said Shiori. She swore that she heard him gasp. If someone had told her even two years ago that she would have had the great Suzuki Touichirou wrapped around her finger she would have laughed in their face. Him? The great high and mighty Suzuki Touichirou? No way. The only way she would have crossed paths with him would have been on the battle field. She had come so far in a year…nearly year and a half. She didn't know if this was a good thing or a bad thing. On the one hand he was Suzuki Touichirou, the self-proclaimed most powerful man in the world, and even having him physically was an accomplishment, but on the other hand he was Suzuki Touichirou. He was clingier than she ever would have imagined, clingier and needier, and…she was dealing with that as best as she could.
Which barely counted as dealing with it at all.
"I don't want to. I just want to know that you're safe…and why are you walking? You have a car and if you don't feel like driving then I can send someone to-" said Touichirou
"No thanks." Said Shiori
"Really, he'd take you wherever you wished to go-" said Touichirou
"I said no thanks." Said Shiori. What was it with men? It was like they were born without the ability to take 'no' for an answer.
"I…don't understand." Said Touichirou
"Well it's been a few years since Modern Japanese 101 but to the best of my memory the word no thanks means, and I can't stress this enough, no thank you. As in 'no thank you, Touichirou, I'm perfectly capable of walking down the street on my own and I can defend myself if I need to.' If you want me to use it in another sentence then I'd be happy to." Said Shiori
"No, I understood the context from the one you just gave me…and that's not what I meant. I meant that I don't understand why you would choose to walk. It's nearly winter, is has to be freezing out." Said Touichirou. Shiori rolled her eyes again. She wondered if they really would roll out of her head and down the street like mom had always promised.
"Because I felt like walking. I'm forty years old, Touichirou, I can walk down the street if I want to. Also I'm wearing a coat, of course I planned for the weather. It's not even that cold out. No colder than Tokyo I'd imagine." Said Shiori. If she had been looking for a fight then she would have told him to save that concern for his terrible kids….but she wasn't looking for a fight. Not with him, anyway. She couldn't win an actual fight against him or a verbal one…well…she got the feeling that he would let her win. He did love her after all.
Whatever that meant.
He said that he loved her and he wanted to marry her and have kids with her. She could think of at least two things wrong with that picture. First of all she had never agreed to is proposal and second of all they were both a little too old to be having kids. She still didn't fully know if she wanted them. There was something to be said about continuing her legacy, about putting more espers into the world, but there was something else to be said about the complete and total loss of freedom that came with having kids. Touichirou, of course, wouldn't have known about that. He wasn't actually raising any of his kids. He'd adopted out his youngest child and from what he said the older two were raising themselves. Complete and total brats from what she'd heard…and she didn't need Touichirou turning her child, their child, into a brat like the three that he already had were. There was also the level of commitment that he was asking from her…commitment from a man who had run right out the door the second he finished and realized that, no, it hadn't been his wife…his first wife…his ex-wife on her knees in front of him. He had a habit of running away and then what, exactly, she was all alone with a baby that she wasn't sure if she even wanted…and anyway she was forty and he was forty five. Who knew if they could even still conceive without A LOT of medical interventions…ones which she didn't want to go through…
Touichirou was lucky that he was worth this headache. Any other man would have been shown the door a long time ago.
"I have no idea how cold it is in Tokyo, I'm in Hong Kong, but I assume that it's cold…forgive me. I'm just…concerned about you. I did not mean to imply that you were unable to leave you home. I just…I worry about you. I care for you a great deal and I don't know if I could cope emotionally if something happened to you." Said Touichirou
"The worst that could happen to me is that I get indigestion from this greasy convenience store fried chicken." Said Shiori with a laugh. She couldn't help it. Suzuki Touichirou. The man who was going to conquer the world. The man who sent people running away in fear. The man who was challenging the entire wore and winning. The great Suzuki Touichirou was a worrywart.
It was funny, not rib-crackingly hilarious, but funny.
"The worst thing that could happen to you is death." Said Touichirou. She stopped in her tracks. Her boots squeaked as they scarped against the pavement. She wasn't going to laugh. There was nothing funny about what he just said. That wasn't hyperbole. That was the danger of their work…the danger of being espers. She felt around with her aura. Normal people…she could defend herself against normal people, but if he knew something…if there were plots in the works.
"Who's after me this time?" asked Shiori. She could think of…well nobody, actually, that would go so far as to plan out her death. She hadn't done anything on that level. She mostly just held the city, and even then just barely.
"Nobody that I know of." Said Touichirou
"Then why in the hell did you just tell me that I was going to die? Honestly, Touichirou, honestly." Said Shiori as she got back to walking. The sole of this boot felt like it was separating…great. Something else that she would have to worry about.
"I didn't mean soon. I just meant that the worst thing that could happen to you was your death." Said Touichirou
"Touichirou….you're ridiculous." Said Shiori. There was some exhaustion, there, since he was an exhausting man…but some mirth. Some joy. Some little spark of something that drew her to him. He was thoughtful in a way that no other man had ever been to her before. Not even…well that was in the past. He was a sweet man, a kind man, and a caring man…but he was also so annoying and smothering and needy….
So, in other words, he was Suzuki Touichirou…and he was exhaustingly adorable.
"I'm sorry-" said Touichirou
"Don't apologize. I love that about you. You're so ridiculously adorable…emphasis on the ridiculous." Said Shiori. She expected him to come back with more confusion or maybe even a compliment of his own if, by some miracle, he understood what she had been going for. She wasn't going to hold her breath, of course, because this was Touichirou. You had to be very precise with him or he was completely clueless.
"I love you too." Said Touichirou. Maybe she was the one who was clueless. Maybe she was the one who…she should have thought that one through. She loved…she liked him a lot. She didn't dislike him. He was cute, smart, adorable, and amazing in bed. He was thoughtful and caring in his own, stalker-ish, way, and…and she didn't want either of them to walk away…
Though they didn't have to walk so close.
"So, how's Hong Kong?" asked Shiori quickly. She was nearly home. When she got home then she would hang up under the pretext of having dinner. She'd call him back tomorrow or the day after. Maybe by then he'd have all of this out of his system and they could talk about the state of the world or the underworld or what had happened in one of their shows or maybe they could just trade interesting facts. Anything other than all of this love talk.
"Warm, very warm. It's the heat island affect that cities have. I can feel it in Tokyo too though not as badly. It's unpleasant. This time of year should not be warm for this part of the world." Said Touichirou
"Hey, don't knock climate change. It may be slowly killing us all but at least we didn't have a lot of snow last year." Said Shiori
"You don't enjoy the snow?" asked Touichirou
"I'm not ten years old. The snow stopped being fun the second I was too old to play in it and old enough that I had to shovel." Said Shiori
"I see your point though there is a beauty in it. When it's freshly fallen, I mean, not when it's been on the ground for some time and grey with filth. When it's untouched and it spreads out as far as you can see…and then further. Especially as the sun sets. It just goes on forever." Said Touichirou. There was something in his voice, here, that made her insides turn to butter in a way that she hadn't felt since she was a lot younger and a lot stupider. When she fell for pretty words like that. When she stayed even when the pretty words wound up being just that, words. When she woke up one day with decades of her life gone to someone who-
Touichirou painted a pretty picture…and that was the only level Shiori would enjoy it on. The level of a picture.
"You paint a pretty picture." Said Shiori
"What?" asked Touichirou
"I meant mentally. What you said, it painted a nice picture in my mind." Said Shiori
"You should see it in person then." Said Touichirou
"What? The snow festival up in Sapporo? I've been. It's not that great." Said Shiori. The art was amazing but the crowds were annoying. Also Sapporo was cold as hell in the winter. Touichirou may have disagreed with her…or she had offended him. He went very quiet, if she hadn't known any better she would have sworn that the line was dead. It wasn't, she could still hear him breathing. She must have said something…huh. Who would have thought that Touichirou would have been so into snow?
"What? You disagree?" asked Shiori
"No, it's just that my ex-wife was from Sapporo and I have unpleasant associations with that city. I would rather not visit and…and I wasn't speaking about the snow festival there, though it is very impressive. I was speaking of the arctic. It's beautiful. People say it's a wasteland but it's not. It's a place of very sparse beauty." Said Touichirou. Well she had said the wrong thing…but not in the way she had thought. Missus Suzuki. The first Missus Suzuki. Probably the only Missus Suzuki. Touichirou never mentioned her…and now she knew a little bit more. She was from Sapporo. She was a woman who had been married to Touichirou, bore two of his children, and she was from Sapporo. She hadn't known this about her, she hadn't wanted to know anything about her, but now she did and…and it was great.
Missus Suzuki of Sapporo.
"I'd rather go to the arctic than Sapporo. Less crowded." Joked Shiori
"I can't take you until after the first. That's my son's birthday and he gets very upset if it's not observed on the exact date of his birth." Said Touichirou taking everything that she had said in the most literal way imaginable as usual.
"You'd seriously plan an entire arctic expedition for me?" asked Shiori. Hopefully Touichirou wouldn't notice the blatant way she was steering the conversation…of course he wouldn't notice. This was Touichirou.
"It wouldn't be an expedition. I'm perfectly capable of surviving the elements on my own and I'm confident that I could protect you as well. We wouldn't stay long, of course, just long enough to explore. Long enough that you're satisfied." Said Touichirou. He, of course, was probably completely and totally unaware of the double entendre in what he just said. She wasn't. She unzipped her coat a bit. That would have been…something. Being possibly the only two people to ever make love in the arctic…right there on the ice…under the wide opened sky…with nobody in the world who could tell them that they couldn't….
"Well it probably wouldn't take very long…not with you, anyway." Said Shiori. She wondered if he'd see the compliment in there. That may have been a little too subtle for him. Maybe she just needed to get home and show him what she meant. A picture was worth a thousand words after all.
"I can move quickly when I need to, you're right." Said Touichirou. Of course he'd missed it.
"Quickly, then slowly, then quickly again." said Shiori. She was red and she knew it. This was not the conversation to have while walking down the street. Anyone who passed her and listened for more than two seconds would know what she was talking about and probably admonish her for bringing that out into the streets…well forget them. She could do whatever she wanted. She was Sakata Shiori. There wasn't a thing in the world that could stop her.
"I…what?" asked Touichirou
"That was a double entendre." Said Shiori
"Oh…" said Touichirou. His voice squeaked there….adorable.
"I…that was not my intention." Said Touichirou. She didn't need to see him to know that he must have been beet red. For a man that could get her there in five minutes or less if he really put his mind to it he sure could be bashful.
"Well that's where my mind went." Said Shiori
"If you want to have sex then I'm amenable to that." Said Touichirou. Shiori…well it had been a while. They had never agreed to a relationship but they had agreed to a certain level of monogamy…not that she didn't miss the men, no, the idea of them. She'd had very few good partners, not even great just good, but that was the nature of dating culture these days. If you even could get a man to come out and meet you he was usually woefully inexperienced or counted pornography as enough experience that he was ready to have sex with a real live woman instead of a mannequin. It had been nice to have had the option, though, even if nobody had been worth keeping around long enough to learn her body.
Touichirou was a fast learner. Hypercognition and all that.
"Here or in the arctic?" asked Shiori
"Wherever you wish…though your bed would be the most practical." Said Touichirou. She shook her head. For a man who was planning on ruling the world he certainly lacked in creativity.
"Forget practically. I want to have you in my yard, on my roof, in the arctic, and anywhere else you can take me." Said Shiori
"That….would take some time…though I wouldn't mind it. After the first, of course, I have to be present for my son's birthday at least long enough to give him his gift. Then I can leave. Slipping away to see you…it's going to be much easier than slipping away to Hong Kong." Said Touichirou
"Slipping away? Don't tell me that your daughter isn't letting you leave or something." Said Shiori. Touichirou needed to lay down the law with that little brat. What did he think was going to happen once she hit her teen years? Did he think that it was going to get easier? Well it wasn't and she knew that he was in for one harsh wakeup call…which he would then call her about. He would call her whining about how out of control his kids were…and then he would ask her to make some more so he could try again despite being nearly fifty.
If at first you don't succeed then try, try again until you've repopulated Japan.
"No, they don't know when I leave. They'll, the boy and the oldest girl, will ask questions if they see me leaving and I don't have answers for them." Said Touichirou
"Well, yeah, they shouldn't be questioning you but what in the hell do they even care? What, do they think that world domination happens on it's own?" asked Shiori
"No, they're well aware of Claw's inner workings…at least Shigeko is. Sho…I do not have the patience to teach Sho right now. Maybe when he grows up and matures. Not now. It's not the work, anyway, that they would have cared about. They know that I usually take them and…and I didn't think that now was the time to tell them why we haven't left Japan in months." Said Touichirou
"Don't tell me you're staying here for me." Said Shiori. Of course he was. Of course he was staying right here waiting for the perfect time to introduce his kids to their new stepmother. He was just waiting for her to come around….even though she said that she might never end up coming around. He just assumed that she would come around to his way of thinking….that she would just give up everything that she had earned in her life so far for him. Because they were in love….because he was in love with her. Because she liked him a whole lot…not as much as he liked her…but she liked him a lot.
Most of the time.
"I'm keeping a close proximity to you, yes, because-" said Touichirou
"I'm nearly home now. We'll talk later, ok? Tomorrow or the day afterwards. I have to eat dinner now and then unwind so…bye." Said Shiori
"Oh…goodbye, I love-" said Touichirou. She didn't wait to hear the end of that. She took her phone away from her ear and hung up. She knew how he felt, she didn't need to hear it again. He loved her and she….she cared about him. She was ready to accept the fact that they were dating…if it could even be called dating. He hadn't exactly given her a choice. So if she wanted to then she would have been free to declare that they were in one of those open relationships, since they were making these unilateral decisions now….not that she wanted to get back out there.
It wasn't fun out there.
Well…some of it was fun. Meeting someone new and getting to know someone. Getting down to it with someone new…the feeling she got knowing that she could have any man. Well most any man…and she had Touichirou so she didn't need anyone else. She had him and at that point then what in hell was she looking for. She had always wanted a man who worshipped the ground she walked on, who would bend over backwards for her, who actually loved her…and she had him but…but there was so much about him that she hadn't wanted. The clinginess. The neediness. The fact that he couldn't do anything in half measures. He was either running out her door in shame because he cheated on his wife or he was divorcing his wife and making immediate plans to replace the mysterious Missus Suzuki of Sapporo. She didn't know which one she wanted…she didn't know what she wanted. What she wanted from him or…or even from life.
It was supposed to be get easier.
She had thought that by forty she would have known what she wanted out of life. Before that she had assumed that she would have settled on something at thirty five…thirty….twenty…eighteen…maybe she would never know what she doing. Maybe she just couldn't be trusted to know what she wanted to do with her life. Maybe she should just go with it…she had no idea what she wanted after all…she got to her front door. She wanted…she wanted….dinner. She wanted to eat dinner…and she could do whatever she wanted to do…and what she wanted to do was eat unhealthy convenience store food in front of the TV. So that was what she would do, alone, or maybe with her phone in hand.
She could do whatever she wanted to do…and if she wanted to maybe browse through Tinder and see what was out there, not to make plans but to see what her options would have been if she had been out there again like a singleton, then that was what she was going to do.