Masami had beautiful hands.

Suzuki watched her hands as she braided Daughter's hair. Daughter sat very still for this procedure, not out of any inborn ability to suppress her childish nature for more than a quarter of a second at a time but, instead, due to the little beeping electronic device in her hands. Masami hated those things, games and tablets, and insisted that they were detrimental to the children's development. Suzuki disagreed. They kept Son and Daughter quiet and that was greater than any sort of detriment that a few toys could bring to the children's development.

"Dad! Dad, look! I drew you! Dad!" that was Son. He was bouncing up and down with a piece of paper clutched between two hands. Suzuki slid him out of the way with his powers. Not hard, no, gently enough that the boy could barely even feel it.

"Dad! Come on! Look!" said Son again. Masami was looking at him now, and frowning, Her hands had stopped their work. He disliked it when she frowned. It was out of place on her face, beautiful and not yet ravaged by time. He couldn't imagine it, her being ravaged by time, just as he could not conceive of a time in which Son would not be something of a pest.

"it's lovely. Thank you." Said Suzuki glancing down at what the boy had drawn. His motor skills were not the best but he was progressing away from drawing tadpole people. That was good. Suzuki may not have had Masami's maternal instincts but he had done his research. The children were developing just fine, actually quicker than they should have been, despite what Masami feared from the detrimental effects of electronic toys and television watching.

"See, I drew you red because big sis said that you are. See dad? You see? I used the right kind of red from the box. See dad?" asked Son. It wasn't that he didn't care for son, he could be something of a pest but he was still Suzuki's son, it was just that Son could be so, very, annoying.

Truly.

Not like Daughter. Daughter was, if anything, unobtrusive. Quiet. Pensive. She thought deeply before she acted. Son just acted. Perhaps it was due to her gender. Masami had the same way about her. Thoughtful. Quiet. Deliberate. Though Suzuki could never remember being anything close to the pest that Son was. Not that he had many clear memories from this time in his life. Being three years old. Being four years old. His early childhood must have been very uneventful since he could barely remember it.

"It's very nice, Sho." said Suzuki. There. Masami was smiling again. That was good, her smiles, the ones that lit up her entire face were the best but those were her rarest smiles. The little ones, the one she did now as she braided Daughter's hair, were wonderful as well.

"What's wrong, dad?" asked Daughter. Yes. She could see his aura. It was flaring a bit. He needed to control himself. Grand displays of power were simple but keeping a grip on himself, keeping his aura level and making sure that his power did not surge was difficult. It always had been for as long as he could remember. Still, though, he had to set a good example for Son and Daughter. Daughter was in the same boat as him, it seemed, though Son was looking to be something of a late bloomer.

"Shigeko, hold still." Said Masami. Her hands worked quickly, now, putting daughter's hair into it's final braid. It was tied off at the end with a pink elastic band. Masami had color coded the children. The girl was pink and the boy was blue. The girl should have had both colors since those were both of her colors. He had no idea what the boy's colors would be. He was still such a late bloomer.

"Nothing, Daughter." Said Suzuki. Daughter had, seemingly, abandoned the toy in her hands. Her hair was finished and she had been sat down on her bed. The house had enough space for the children to have their own rooms but they had some kind of irrational fear of being separated at night. Fear of the dark was common but his children were not common. They should have had enough sense to know that the house was the same whether in the light or the dark. Nobody would ever harm his family, assassin or stranger lurking in the darkness. They had nothing to fear.

No harm would ever come to his family. They were his. Any harm that came to them was as if someone was bringing harm to him…and nobody would ever be so stupid as to try and harm him.

"Come on, now, to bed you two. It's eight thirty." Said Masami. Daughter said nothing. She used her powers to untuck her covers, themed with some animated character from one of her programs, and then laid herself down. Her pajamas had that same theme to them. He wondered what it was about that program that had captured her attention. To him it seemed the same as any other program that girl played incessantly on the television or her tablet. Other girls in impractical dresses using their powers for what the creators deemed to be 'good' along with a talking animal…usually a cat. Girl seemed to like cats. Son and Daughter had been hounding him for one, they had even turned Masami to their side, but Suzuki was holding firm.

He was not getting a cat or any other useless animal.

"Can't we stay up late?" asked Son. Always defiant. Always annoying. Masami indulged him far too much. Daughter was in her bed laying down and waiting for whatever the next part of this nighttime ritual would be next. Suzuki knew that when he had been their age there had been some sort of ritual to get him to sleep. Being carried high on his father's shoulders, his mother singing him a son though he could not for the life of him remember what it was. His mother had a lovely voice, he remembered, though he could not for the life of him remember what it was that she had sang.

He had so few memories of his parents.

"No, Sho, it's late enough as it is. Come on now, off to bed." Said Masami. Suzuki knew what would come next. Boy would beg and plead and whine and Masami would give in because that was just the way that mothers were. His own mother was much more lenient than his father, he remembered, though neither parent had any command over him for long. Masami probably already felt that she had no command over the children. That was why she was always so lenient with them.

"…ok…" said Son. He glanced Suzuki's way as he said it. Suzuki did not have as soft a heart as Masami did for the children. Masami loved he children, but in the vague and imprecise sense of the word. She loved them no matter what they did or how they acted. Suzuki loved them in the concrete way in which parents were meant to love their children. He loved them when they obeyed and when the met or exceeded expectations. Simple. Easy. Precise. Daughter understood this fact. She constantly exceeded his expectations of her. Always obedient, always powerful, though she was also a very impassive child.

She allowed herself to be called by that wretched little nickname.

Suzuki wondered if that was how she felt about herself. If that was her understanding of herself, of her place in the world, then it was a very inaccurate one. She was not the protagonist of this world but she was not one of the faceless masses. She was his daughter, he had chosen her out of all of the other esper children in the world….well if there had been any other esper children that were also orphans she would have been his first choice, and that seemed to something intangibly…more….than what Sho was. Sho was just a random act of genetics. He hadn't set out to create Sho, no, Sho had just come.

He had chosen Daughter.

He had ended up with Son.

Son was…Son. He knew that he was supposed to have some irrational feelings of favoritism to Son. Son was male and he had been conditioned by the society in which he had been born into to value male children because they continued the family line. Son was also the only one of the children who shared his genes. Daughter could not be his. He had never been free with physical intimacy, not in his adult years anyway, and he had never been unfaithful to Masami either. That was the bargain that a man and a woman made when they entered into a relationship in order to assure that the children produced from this union carried both of their genetic codes.

Daughter had neither his nor her genes.

Daughter was an anomaly. By all accounts she should not have existed. A child esper of her skill, and a female at that, should have been unheard of. Suzuki didn't have all the pieces of the puzzle that made them, them, but he had gathered enough data to know how badly male espers outnumbered female espers. Daughter was a rare find. He was lucky to have found her.

He loved her.

Her eyes met his across the room. She laid in her bed, he sat down in the rocking chair that Masami had picked out for herself when she had been pregnant with Sho. Good back support, good for nursing, good for sitting with long periods of time with an infant who could not sleep without human contact. He had been weak as a child, Sho. Daughter had no such irrational needs. Even now Masami had so sit in the bed with Sho as she read through a children's book, some story about a cat looking for it's mother. Son still had that irrational need for contact with his mother even though he could do so much for himself now…

Daughter laid down in her bed and listened.

And Masami read. She read even though she had been teaching the children to read. Suzuki would have had the children read themselves to sleep if they couldn't go to sleep on their own. He could understand that. Reading helped slow the mind down from the stressors of the day. He could understand why the children needed the restful calm of the printed word. He could understand, also, why the children needed the lights dimmed but not darkened after their mother was done reading. They were small and could not protect themselves, even Daughter, and they were not used to his presence so they still feared for their own safety.

They had no reason to. If there was even the slightest chance that any harm would come to his family Suzuki would have taken precautions to bring that chance down to zero. Nobody stole from him. Nobody harmed what was his. This family was his, he had made it himself, and nobody else's.

He could even understand their desire for affection.

He had even shared such a desire, then, when he was their age. He could remember…warm hands. Soft voices. Safety. A sense of safety in a world that he did not yet feel safe in. A world that was not yet his. That he had not yet held in the palm of his hand.

He was not small anymore.

They were small and forming attachments. Masami was their rock, the person who kept them tethered in a large and loud world that they were still too small to understand. Masami was the rock that kept them tethered to the world but he would be the one to remake it. That would have made a far better story than a cat who cried about it's lost mother. It was no use crying. It got you nowhere. Emotions were the things that clouded the mind, twisted and turned the world until it resembled something out of Wonderland or some other fantasy world the children would have been familiar with from their stories.

He'd have to get them new books.

He expressed that to Masami as they retired to their own bedroom.

"You don't have to buy books, Touichirou, the kids love going to the library and I love taking them. They have story time on Tuesdays with lemonade and cookies…though I think Sho may be allergic to citrus. Last time he had some his mouth itched for hours. I tried everything, even coating the inside of his mouth with aloe, but in the end I had to call in Fukuda. Not that the kids minded one bit. They love Fukuda so much you should have seen it, they were clinging to him like monkeys when he had to leave. Well mostly Sho. Shigeko's quicker to say goodbye. Poor little thing. Sometimes I wonder if she remembers…she just looks at me like I'm a stranger sometimes…but then I remember that it's just her resting face. She really was happy to have you there for bedtime. It's just hard to get a read on her sometimes. I swear to God that is the most serious four year old I have ever met." Said Masami. Her hands were hard at work again. It was time for her bedtime ritual, though she would not be retiring for a couple more hours, and this was far more fascinating than watching her plait their child's hair.

The room smelled of artificial berries. As close to fresh berries as the scientists in whatever lab concocted the creation that she would spread across her arms, legs, and stomach every night before she retired and every morning after she bathed. To keep her skin soft, she had said, and it worked. In the quiet moments they shared, moments that had become rare once the children had come into existence and Claw grew to it's current size, he would close his eyes and map the wide expanse of the silky softness of her skin with his hands. Not sexually, no, just to know what it was that she felt like.

He was not, truly, above the irrational need for human touch.

She spoke at length. She always spoke in bucket the closer it got to his departure date. He spent more time out of the country of his birth than within it. He spent more times in airplanes than on the ground. He had circumnavigated the globe more times than he could count one foot, and even more times than that by air and sea. He listened to the sound of her voice. The way it rose and fell. She was perfect. That was why he had chosen her. She was the most perfect person, the very best, in the entire world.

He would know considering how many times he had travelled it.

"Maybe you could read to them next time. It would really mean a lot to them, especially Sho. I know how he is and how he presses your buttons but he's only like that because he misses you. They both do, Shigeko just doesn't show it like Sho does." Said Masami. The bed dipped as she sat down next to him. Her lotion had been capped and put on her nightstand beside the framed drawings that the children had done. The desire to create art was a human one, Touichirou had even drawn as a child, though he stopped when he realized that he could only replicate and not create. The children did that too, replicate the things that they saw in their world. It seemed repetitive, honestly, to see so many crude drawings of the cloistered world of this house, its yard, and the public park/library.

"I would much rather they learn to read to themselves. They're getting older and I want them to do well." Said Suzuki. He used his powers to hand her the television remote and she only hit the play button. Some soft music, instrumental, played. She knew him. He could not stand music with lyrics. So very distracting.

"Touichirou. They're in preschool." Said Masami. He knew that tone, that incredulous tone. Her nose scrunched up when she said that and so did her eyes. She smiled, though, because she thought that it was funny. Ridiculous. She thought that he was ridiculous. She had so many times in the past…and he didn't mind. She was his person, his most perfect person, and from her he would put up with quite a bit.

"They, or at least Daughter, can read hiranga and some kanji. They're much more capable than we are of learning new things. Why not take advantage while we can?" asked Suzuki. She shook her head and smiled. She wasn't as exasperated with him as she tried to seem.

"Because they're children." Said Masami

"I am aware of that. I am also aware of the fact that they have a greater capacity for learning than we do. All they have to do is put the work in and they could be years above others their age." Said Suzuki. Not peers, never peers, because his children were peerless. His children would one day inherit the world. There weren't children alive that could even stand in their shadows.

"Let them do the work of growing up. Honestly, Touichirou, sometimes I think that you forget that they're only children." Said Masami

"I know how old they are, three and four." Said Suzuki

"That's not what I mean. It's just…Sho's just a little boy. He's not Shigeko. Shigeko is an unusually….reserved…child. Sho is just a boisterous little boy who wants some positive attention from you. I know you love him, Touichirou, but sometimes…he's very small and he might not be able to see that you love him. Not that I would ever question whether or not you loved us. I know you do. I know that you love us and you would never….I know that you love us." Said Masami using that word, that vague word again. Love. Such a vague concept when she spoke of it. He had concrete terms with his love.

He loved the children when they were obedient and lived up to his expectations.

He loved his wife because she was a good companion to him. She took care of their home and their children and him, when he allowed himself to be weak around her, and that was a need in and of itself, the need to be weak around someone. It was a need that he had no yet conquered but a need just the same. Even now he allowed himself to be weak, vulnerable, around her. He was less than fully dressed. He wore only his button down and slacks. His suit was a shield, no, a container for what he was. He was a man of power and he dressed the part.

He felt naked then, around her, which made no sense because she had seen him truly physically naked more times than he could count. Not as often as she had before the children but they had their moments despite the fact that she was adamant about not having another child until Son and Daughter had entered elementary school.

"I love all of you." Said Suzuki after a moment. He did not mean it in the same way that she did but it was in his best interest to keep her happy. She was his after all and he wanted her to be happy. She smiled when she was happy. Like now. She was smiling at him, now, and took his hand in hers. She rested her head on his chest and sighed.

"We love you too."