Packing up shouldn't have been this hard.
It wasn't as though this place had been an actual home. This had been nothing more than a series of rooms she had been living in, like a long stay hotel. She hadn't done any decorating, not so much as a painting on the wall, and she hadn't chosen the furniture or the colors or…or anything. This was just a cheap apartment. This was just a place that she had been living, a stopover on the journey of her life.
A journey with many twists and turns.
She had managed to pack up what little had actually been hers. The few clothes she had taken, nice labels she knew that she was never going to be able to afford again, false documents she'd had Fukuda make up for her, a few toiletries…Masaoka Masami had very little to her name. She hadn't left any kind of mark on this place, not that she could have. The rules had been clear about putting holes in the walls. This place, this series of rooms, would house someone else soon. Hopefully someone in better circumstances than Masami had been. Hopefully someone with more to her, or his, name than Masami had.
She had so little.
The only exception was Sho's room…the room. The spare room. The room full of toys and clothes and…and things that Sho was never going to use. Things that would serve this new baby well, if it was a boy. She hoped that it was a boy. Then she could…well, not name it Sho or anything, that would have been weird. He was a person, not a dog that had run away. It would have just been easier to fill the void her son had left if she wound up having another boy.
Better a boy than a girl.
A son than a daughter. She'd had a daughter already…sort of. She had been open to the idea, when Touichirou had presented it in an uncharacteristic bought of selflessness. Adopting a little orphan girl, opening their home so someone who had nothing, growing their household by one more. She had been so young, then, so naïve, and so idealistic. She'd had all this visions of tea parties, makeovers, fashion shows, and all the other things that she could have done with a daughter and not a son. What she had gotten was a tiny version of Touichirou. Someone silent and stone faced. Someone who could barely find it in herself to crack a smile let alone enjoy spending time with her family. She always loved shutting herself away, just like her father…
Nature or nurture.
She didn't know. She and Touichirou shared the same…quirk of genetics. That was what she was going to call it from now on. That was how she would explain it to Eiji if it came up. Sho only had one psychic parent and he, sort of, hard powers. Nothing close to what Touichirou or Shigeko could do. This baby had a psychic parent too….and she would let Eiji think whatever he wanted.
She saw no need to tell him the whole truth.
Which was how she had found herself here, alone in Sho's room, packing his things up. She had told him that she had just gotten a few things for the baby. If this had been Touichirou he wouldn't have taken two looks at the pile of children's toys and clothes in front of her. Touichirou could barely remember that he had children half the time, let alone what size they were supposed to be. Eiji had children. Children he almost never saw, their mother had taken them to the other end of the country to be with her family, but that wasn't his fault. They had been amicable, like adults, he had said…well, not the 'like adults' part…that had been her invention. It should have been simple like this. She should have just been able to ask for a divorce and then taken the children and now, here, she should have been living with her parents-
-near her parents.
She didn't need to hear them sing 'I told you so' from sunup until sundown, with Mom and Dad each taking separate shifts so neither of them got too fatigued carrying their self-righteousness around with them everywhere. She didn't need to hear them tell her over and over again how they had been right. She hadn't been ready to leave home, she hadn't been ready to get married, she knew nothing about picking men, she rushed into things like a reckless fool, she only ever saw the things she wanted to see, that she should have sent Touichirou packing the moment she realized that she had been pregnant, that she should have just come home and raised her child with her parents, that she should have been their eternal dependent…that she was incapable of living on her, being her own person…
She hit the box.
It had been full of clothes, thankfully, nothing fragile. Clothes that would be long out of style by the time this baby wore them. So even if by some miracle she had managed to hurt these clothes it wouldn't have mattered…not that she would have been able to afford anything nice for this baby. Not like she had gotten for Sho and…and Shigeko. She pressed a hand to her stomach.
The one good thing about having a daughter.
Shigeko, especially when she had been little, had been a very adorable doll. Once Masami realized that wrestling her into pants wasn't worth the damage to the house dressing her had been easy. Adorable dresses, expensive dresses, outfits that Masami would have bristled at. Lace and silk, satin and bows, that sparkle phase she and Shigeko had gone through when she had been three….
She pressed a hand to her stomach again.
"Please be a boy." Said Masami softly. As nice as it would have been to have had a little living doll she needed a son. A son would have reminded her of Sho but a daughter would have reminded her of her failure. She had done her best with Sho. She had tried, she'd had Fukuda's word that he would have brought her Sho as soon as he could, but he hadn't. This wasn't her fault. She had done her part and it was Fukuda who had failed. She had failed, though, when it came to Shigeko. She hadn't been able to love her enough, to understand her well enough, to counteract Touichirou's influence…and now she was who she was.
She was Touichirou the second. More his child than Sho had ever been.
"it's alright, baby, we're alright." Said Masami as she crawled over and retrieved the box she had hit. She had to finish packing this box. The warm pants and shirts Sho would never wear, the animal pajamas, the Zootopia sweater…she knew he'd probably even outgrown these by now…
She hoped she had a boy.
"Please be a boy." Whispered Masami as she got back to folding tiny clothes…tiny-ish clothes. She'd have to get actual tiny clothes later. That had been one of the best parts of being pregnant. Before Sho had been born she'd had no idea who he was or what he would have liked, so she could have gotten him anything. Not like now. Now he mostly just wore sweatpants and shirts with animals on them. Even when he had been a baby he had never wanted to just be her little doll…not like Shigeko. He fought and kicked and screamed when she had tried to put him into anything with buttons or a collar or even those little bowties she had gotten him. She hoped that he didn't end up wanting to go to the same school Shigeko went to.
He was school aged now.
Not kindergarten but real school. First grade. Hopefully not one with uniforms. Touichirou had innumerable people working for him, surely he had two people who knew how to drive a couple of kids to school. There was no way Sho was going to tolerate wearing a uniform, not like Shigeko. She had chosen that school specifically because of the uniforms.
What kind of a little kid wanted to wear a uniform?
Masami hadn't needed to wear one until middle school and even then she had hated it. A sailor suit just like everyone else's. Shigeko, though, was looking forward to wearing a sailor suit, and then an 'even bigger girl' uniform. Shigeko in middle school…Shigeko in high school. It was almost as difficult to imagine as Shigeko in the…in the second grade.
The box was full.
She taped it up. Now all she had to do was pack up the toys and she'd be done with all of this. The last box, the last room, and then…and then she'd be out of here. It was just something that she had to do. This had always been a temporary stop on the road away from Touichirou, she and Sho were just supposed to meet up, but Fukuda had proven to be unreliable…yes. That was good.
Better than the other option.
Better than Touichirou having had found out and done whatever he did to people who spirited his wife away…and slept with her. She didn't know what Touichirou did to people but she knew that he did something, something to hold onto power that she didn't even fully know about, something that she probably could have been questioned about had anyone known. She couldn't believe that she had ever married that man, a man that she hadn't even known.
She had been so young then.
She put another box together and got to work on the toys. The toys were the last of it and then she'd be done and…and back to square one, a voice that wasn't unlike her mother's sang in her mind. This was, in some ways, the same thing that had happened before. She had gotten pregnant and looked to another person to save her. A man. She had clung to what little relationship there had been like a drowning man clung to a life preserver in the open ocean. She knew Eiji about as well as she knew Touichirou…but Eiji was a better man. More normal. Touichirou had been strange when they had met. A strange way of looking at the world, strange eating habits, strange turns of phrase…but that had been a different sort of strange. Touichirou had been reserved where Eiji was open. Touichirou had been cold where Eiji was warm. Touichirou had thought of her in solely material terms, her physical needs, where Eiji cared for her as a person.
This was not the same.
She was not repeating the same mistakes she had made in life, and she wasn't making new ones either. She was moving forward in the only way she could. it was better than languishing here until either by some miracle Sho came back or she died. She had to move forward and to move forward she had to move in with Eiji and…and lie to him. So many lies already. Lies and half-truths…but she could never tell him the truth. The actual and full truth. She'd either wind up in a mental hospital if she started going on about crazy things like psychics and such or she'd be hunted down. She may not have known much about Touichirou but she did know that he wouldn't have taken kindly to any kind of betrayal…and if she said anything not only would it be betrayal on top of betrayal but she'd be putting a target on Eiji's head too…and she couldn't do that.
No.
She finished the last box, tossing the last of the toys in carelessly, and sealed it up. The room was empty. Somehow that felt more right anything else. The room was empty, she was done, and it was time to move on to the next chapter of her life.