It was getting harder and harder to get out of bed these days.

Touichirou was off to…somewhere in South America. Brazil. What he did there she did not know but she knew that he would be gone for at least a month if not more. She wondered if he went to just one country or multiple. She wonder what it was that he was doing down there. He said that there was an esper there that he was looking into, and that where there was one there would be others, he had said. What he was gathering other espers for she had no idea.

She didn't much care.

"Mom! Mom, are you awake yet!" That was Sho pounding on the door. She rolled over and checked the time on her phone. She should have been up ages ago. The children needed her. They were hungry. They needed their breakfasts and then they needed to head down to the library to exchange their books and then they needed to stop off at the animal shelter and help out for a couple hours and then they needed to have lunch and do their workbooks and then they needed to-

Second verse same as the first.

Her life revolved around them. She had…what had she done before them? She'd had friends, she'd had a job, she'd seen her family more than once every few years…she'd had so much but then…Touichirou had come into her life. She loved him. She still…she still loved him. She was his wife and she had made her choice. She still loved him and…and she had to. Even if he didn't…no…he loved her. He had to love her. Why else would he have married her? He could have had a woman in every country if he wanted to!

That would have been much simpler.

Then this feeling, this feeling that had been building since she had no idea when, would have made sense. If her husband had been unfaithful then her unhappiness would have made so much sense and then she would have been free to…she didn't even hazard to think. Besides, this was her life now. She knew what Touichirou was when she met him. A total pod person. It had been adorable, charming even, but now…now it was just draining. The way he just…didn't understand. Her. The children. The whole of humanity.

Such a pod person.

"Mom? Are you ok? You didn't make breakfast yet." There, pod person number two. Shigeko. Their daughter. Shigeko had been a welcome, but sudden, addition to the family. He had told her, not asked, told, that her that he had found an orphan that they needed to take in because she had been cast aside due to her powers. She was…she was so much like him that it was scary. Even now she was only thinking of herself just like Touichirou only thought about himself. What she could do for him. Nothing came from within with that man….and he didn't even understand why that was a problem.

"Mom! Mom, the door's locked!" Sho. Her baby boy. So wanted. A happy accident. She knew, approximately, when Sho had been conceived. It had been an act of love, she had thought, that very first time. She had brought him home to the apartment, that little shoebox, and they had shared a bottle of sake and then gotten to it. He was different when he drank, freer with himself, and it had been…an act of love. And then she had found herself married and pregnant and moved into this house. This castle.

This gilded cage.

"Maybe she's not in there. Maybe she climbed out the window or something." Said Sho. He had the right idea. Masami wished that she could just climb out the windows and run down the street in her nightgown and slippers until this house and Suzuki Touichirou were only distant memories. She couldn't, of course, because she could not abandon Sho.

The children.

She could not abandon both of the children.

Both of HER children.

"Why would she do that? I think that she'd be too afraid to climb down…and also she can use the doors like she's always telling us to. It doesn't make any sense." Said Shigeko. She was such a pragmatic, logical, child. Just like her father. If Masami didn't know better, Shigeko was obviously fully Japanese, she could have thought bad thoughts, insidious thoughts, thoughts that would have poisoned her against her only daughter. Touichirou thought that sex, the ultimate act of love, was pointless unless one was setting out to create a child…which raised questions about how drunk he had really been when they had made Sho….so of course he wouldn't have just slept with some random woman in Seasoning City, had a child with her, and then pretended that said child was an orphan in order to-

Crazy thoughts.

"Because it's fun to climb out the windows, duh! Girls are so weird sometimes, you guys have no idea what's fun and what isn't." said Sho. He was nothing like his father. He didn't think, he just acted, much like Masami had when she was younger. Heh. Younger. That had only been about six years ago. Why did she feel so old now? She couldn't even get herself out of bed.

She rolled over and faced the door.

She could see their shadows peeking out under the door. She wondered how long it would be until they got bored. She knew that she needed to get up and start the day. Maybe it would be easier when they went back to school…no it wouldn't be. That was even worse. Then it was just her alone in this house. She never wanted a house this big. She had never wanted to live behind such high walls, or any walls at all. She had wanted a small house with a garden and a yard for dogs and cats to run around in…but Suzuki wanted to keep the world out. He seemed downright afraid of it, sometimes, the world and the normal people in it.

Who knew with him?

"Mom wouldn't do something like that. What would she even do once she got outside? Her shoes are still by the door. She wouldn't just leave the house without them on. That's not right." Said Shigeko. Her voice was so flat. Sho was sounding distressed but she sounded disaffected as always. That was Shigeko. She had been disaffected even when she had first come home. Not immediately, no, when she got comfortable enough around them to show her true self…

Just like her father.

"Maybe she's sick, then, and she lost her voice or something? Break the lock!" said Sho. Masami closed her eyes. She did not want to deal with them. She just didn't have the strength…and she knew that she was being a terrible mother. She knew that she should have been up and out of bed ages ago. Her children were hungry. She was their mother. She had her role to fill.

That was what it all came down to, didn't it? Roles.

She tried to get up but felt a chill. Cold. She was cold, bone cold, too cold to get up. She laid back down and buried her face in the pillow below her head. No. She threw it out of the bed. It smelled like him. She rolled over, she had been on his side of the bed again. That smell, the shadow of him, used to comfort her in those long weeks when he would be away from home. Now it just reminded her of what she had. Who her husband was. The last time they had-

Pointless.

The worst part wasn't that he had called it, the last time they made love, pointless but instead that he hadn't even realized how cruel he had been. He never seemed to even hear the words that came out of his mouth. He said what he meant and he meant what he said. Without the potential to create another child, another being to pound on her bedroom door and demand their breakfast, then sex was pointless. She didn't even know why he wanted another child so badly, he hardly even spent time with the ones that they already had!

"I can't break the lock, Sho, because then she'll get mad at me. What if she's not sick, just really deep asleep and she wakes up and the lock's all broken? What then?" asked Shigeko. Masami pulled the blanket up over her head. Shigeko could have taken the entire door down if she had half a mind to. That was why Touichirou had taken her in, her powers, and that was why he spent what little time he had at home with Shigeko and not Sho, his actual child.

No.

Shigeko was their daughter.

"Then we run away and hide under our beds until she forgets that we broke the door." Said Sho. She smiled. Yup. That was a five year old boy. He sounded the way a five year old was supposed to sound. Shigeko was six, almost, and she sounded like….Masami didn't even know what. Not a six year old girl, that was for sure. A pod person. A mini pod person. Her father made into miniature and pulled into a dress and pigtails.

"But then the door will still be broken." Said Shigeko

"I don't care! I want my mom!" Sho was shouting, now, and the door was rattling. He was either pounding on it or kicking it, Masami would believe either, and she knew that she had to go out there and be the mother that they needed. They were her children and she…she was their mother and she had a role that she had agreed to fill…

She was so cold…and so tired.

Tired of life. Tired of all of this. Tired of being trapped in this house being Suzuki Touichirou's wife and the mother to his children that he had always wanted. She had no function beyond that. She was his wife and only his wife. Everything came back down to that, her role, didn't it? And she couldn't just sit there…well she could. It would have been so easy, too easy, to just lay there…

But she had a job to do.

That was what her life had turned into, this, a series of jobs. That was the role that she had agreed to fill. She used to take some enjoyment out of it, tried to anyway, and made countless excused for him…no matter what he did…and now she was just so tired…so very tired…

She was just so, very, incredibly tired. She had so much to do…and the to do list would only get longer and longer the more time she wasted there in bed…and she had to get out of bed and…and-and it was what she had to do…and she had to get out of bed now…

But she just…she just could not. She just could not get out of bed. She didn't see the point of it. Was that all she was, just someone filling a role? Could she have just been anyone? Anyone could have…Touichirou didn't see her and her…she was just his wife. His wife and the children's mother. That was who she was. She wasn't Masami. She wasn't Suzuki Masami anymore, no, she had ceased to be that person ages ago.

"Shigeko! Sho! I'm not feeling well today! Just…pour your own cereal." Said Masami, the blanket still over her head. She could feel a change in the atmosphere, the energy around her. That was Shigeko's doing. Her powers.

"But you said that we were too little!" said Shigeko. Sho was reminding her that their father had allowed them, Shigeko, to make them cereal and milk the other day. Touichirou couldn't even be bothered to make breakfast for his own children. Why would he? He was the husband. His job was to go out and put a roof over their heads and food in their bellies and clothes on their backs. Anything beyond that would have been too much to ask. A little kindness, a little understanding, a little affection…that was asking far too much of Suzuki Touichirou.

"I know what I said! Just…listen to what I'm saying now. You two are now, officially, old enough to make your own cereal. Ok?" said Masami

"But I want pancakes!" said Sho. Shigeko agreed with him. Masami should have cooked, that was her job, but she just…she did not feel like making anything. Especially not breakfast food. There was…Touichirou liked breakfast food…and he liked so little…

"And I want an omelet with cheese and ketchup." Said Shigeko. Masami screwed her eyes shut. Shigeko…she was so much like her father. Suzuki Shigeko. Suzuki Touichirou. She was kinder, sweeter, than her father…but she was only a child. Even Touichirou had to have been a child at some point…though that was hard to believe.

"It's cereal or nothing!" said Masami louder, harsher, than she had ever spoken to them before. It worked, though, and she could tell by the sound of their little sock feet hitting the floor as they ran away. She should have been nicer, better, a better mother to her children. She should have been…

She should have been a lot of things.

Wife. Mother. Mrs. Suzuki.

But it was hard.