Suzuki Touichirou did, in fact, care for his family.
That was why he did the things he did. All the things he did. Be it sending valuable people to keep his family safe, spending the entire night searching for some unknown esper, or playing with his children.
"Daughter, be careful. This is an exercise in control, not power." Said Touichirou. He was relaxing with his favorite child, now. The other night had been an exercise in futility and frustration. He had felt, for a brief moment, another esper in his home. Such a thing could not be allowed to pass. So he did what any sane and reasonable person did and went to find and end the man who thought that he could intrude into Suzuki's home. Really, it could not be allowed to pass.
"I'm trying dad but the cards keep on trying to fall down." Said Mob. She was…she was happy to be playing with dad, he hardly ever played with them, but she was worried. She was worried about how many auras there were near their house. Mob had only felt dad and Fukuda's auras before. She had never felt so many strangers before in her life…and she didn't know how to feel about that. One that on hand it was kind of scary but on the other hand she had no idea that there were so many people out there in the world like her.
Which was neat.
She hadn't realized how alone she'd felt all these years. It had just been and dad and also Fukuda who had powers. She had never felt so many different auras before and she kind of wanted to power through her nervousness and meet the people that they were attached to…but dad said not to bother the people hanging out outside of their house. They had a job to do.
"So you need to try harder. Remember, power is nothing without control, Daughter." Said Touichirou. Being able to build a house of cards at her age with only her powers was an impressive feat, one which took his mind off of the invasion of his home by some unknown esper. It was one thing to make attempts on his life but to come after his family…well that was something else entirely. The only member of his family with a hope of defending themselves was Daughter but she was still so raw. Power without control. There could have been collateral damage if she had ever been forced to use her powers in self-defense. The house could be repaired but the people in it….Masami was irreplaceable.
"Are you two still at it?" asked Masami looking up from her phone. These people lurking just outside of her home were making her squirrely. Touichirou was involved in something shady, she knew this now, and his little comment about the Yakuza working for him….were those Yakuza outside? She didn't want to know. Well she did and she didn't at the same time. She had been too naïve over the years. This house must have cost millions upon billions of yen. The way they lived…of course her husband was up to something shady.
And she was a silent accomplice.
"Yes. Daughter, for all of her self-doubt, if proving to be quite adept at this. We may very well run out of playing cards soon." Said Suzuki. He was not embellishing. They had already gone through two packs of playing cards doing this. One of which he had brought back from a hotel ages ago when he hadn't had the chance to get the children proper gifts and the other was, apparently, from a Go Fish game based on that terrible Rainbow Fish book the children loved so much. Such a bad influence. The Fish gave away everything that made it special just to be accepted by the masses. That book had 'disappeared' ages ago. He hoped that it hadn't made any sort of impression on the children. Daughter, or at least her aura, shone so brightly….Boy still had no aura to speak of. Boy was…he didn't even know where Boy was or how he was doing. He didn't much care. He so rarely got to spend time with Daughter like this. Boy would come out of wherever he was hiding at some point.
"Thanks dad." Said Mob. Adept must have meant something good. Dad said something good about her. That alone was almost enough to make her forget that there were a bunch of strangers outside of her house. The mom and dad had been freaking out yesterday about the aura that she felt for a millisecond. The weird one that sort of felt familiar but not really. The fact that Sho wouldn't come out of their room. He hadn't come out for breakfast or to play with dad.
She hoped that Sho wasn't getting sick.
Because he might have caught what mom had. She didn't know what it was that her mother had been sick with but she did know that it was serious enough that Fukuda had to come over to the house all the time. That must have been a very serious illness if it did that to a grown up. Sho was just a little kid. She hoped that he was ok…
"There should be some more Go Fish cards in the kids' room." Said Masami as she scrolled through her phone. Fukuda said that they hadn't found anyone and that he was nearby in case something happened. The whole thing…this whole thing was…she didn't even know. Her husband had, and she didn't have another word for it, goons. He had goons and those goons were outside of her house, parked up and down her street, looking or some unknown esper that posed some sort of threat to them. This was not how she had imagined her life going. This was not what she had expected at all.
Her husband and daughter spending actual time together.
Well that was something that she had always wanted…and it took all of this madness to get it. She was still under house arrest, it felt like, and that tempered any feelings of joy or gratitude that she could get from the scene before her. She so loved it when Touichirou acted as an actual father to his children…but she could not shake yesterday's events. Her part in them. She had apologized for…she had been on dangerous ground there. He could have put two and two together and…and she had no idea what it was that he was capable of.
Yakuza shit.
"Hopefully not with the Rainbow Fish on them." Said Touichirou as he placed another card at the top of their house. Daughter did the same. The house of cards had not toppled yet. This had been a game that Touichirou had enjoyed when he was younger. An exercise in precision and control. Something to make him better in his adult life. He hadn't been so adept at this when he had been six, he thought, but then again his father had not been able to teach him.
His Daughter was a wonderful thing.
There was something to this fatherhood thing. There was something to raising a smaller being and teaching it all the things that it needed to know. To have someone mirror you in all things. To have someone who looked at you and decided that whatever you did they would do it too. It all meant something to her, it seemed, every little thing he did. This was different than how he mattered to others. Daughter did not worship him as a God or fear the power he held. That was…the fact of that was very refreshing.
He enjoyed this, being a father.
"What's wrong with the Rainbow Fish?" asked Mob. She liked that book. The fish had a lot of pretty scales that the other fish didn't have to instead of being a braggy jerk about it the fish shared his pretty scales with everyone…even though pulling them off like that must have hurt. Still, if Mob could have taken her powers and ripped them off and shared them with other people she would have. If everyone had powers then having powers wouldn't be special and she could just be Mob, then, and not be special. Dad was always saying how special she was. How she was going to inherit the world someday. How she was a princess of the world or whatever and how she was going to have the best life ever when he gave her and Sho the world.
She didn't want the world.
And she didn't want to be the ruler of it.
She was a Suzuki and that was what Suzuki's were for, Dad had said, ruling the world. Well in that case she didn't want to be Suzuki Shigeko. She didn't want to be anything. She just wanted to be Mob. That was all. Even though she knew that she was not Mob because she was someone, Suzuki Shigeko, or just Shigeko, or just Suzuki, or Big Sis, or Daughter. That was who she was….and she had to be Suzuki Shigeko even though she didn't much want to be.
Not that she would ever tell dad that.
She would never hurt his feelings like that.
"That book is terrible and I won't have you reading it." Said Suzuki as he finished off the pack of cards. Daughter was staring at him, now. What, did she expect an explanation? She may have been his child and that entitled her to more of his time than most other people but he was not in the habit of explaining himself to anyone other than his wife. Daughter was not and would never be that person to him. There would always be that power imbalance and that imbalance meant that he did not have to explain his reasoning to her.
"You don't like any of our books." Said Mob. Dad hated reading to them. He always made up his own stories even though they were all the same. They were all about how great their lives would be once they had the world. They were about how much more special they were because they were his kids. They were about how there would be so many other espers around for her to be friends with and then to grow up and marry and have babies with when she got old.
Boring stories.
"They're children's books. I am not a child. I'm sure that you wouldn't enjoy any of the books that I read, either. They don't have any pictures, for one thing." Said Suzuki. He wasn't an avid reader but he did enjoy reading to learn about the world around him. Cultural books occupied a lot of his time. Not all of his job was brute forcing people to his side. He did not rule the world, yet, and that meant that when he was in Rome he would do as the Romans did. Or wherever else he found himself.
"But then…if your books don't have pictures then what do you read?" asked Mob. All the best books had pictures, everyone knew that. Even some of mom's books had pictures. Those were called manga books, mom had said, and some of them were ok. They were about people falling in love and stuff. Mob thought that was the best part of any book or movie. Sho said that the parts where the people fell in love and kissed were the worst parts of anything.
Boys were weird, sometimes.
"Cultural guides, mostly. I don't read for pleasure, I read to learn things." Said Suzuki. He saw the confusion in her eyes. She was still so young. He wondered when she would be old enough to join him on his trips. She still went to school and that took up a lot of her time but at some point she would have to become familiar with the day-to-day running of Claw as well as the special missions and such that he did. She would never inherit it, no, she was female and not his blood on top of that. She would still be expected to take her place within it. Maybe as a Division head….or that other idea that he'd had. If he ever found espers as powerful as, or as skilled as, he was…by half. Nobody could ever meet his skill not even his own children…but if he did meet some exceptionally powerful espers they would be by his side at all times.
He'd call them the Ultimate…whatever number he ended up at.
And Daughter, of course, would be one of them.
Son…the jury was still out about him. He knew that he had to care for Son regardless of whether or not he had powers…but that was a tall order when someone like Daughter was around. Son ay have had too much of his mother in him…and that could be a real problem. For insurance, if anything, he so wished that Masami would give him another child. She had said that she would consider it when the children, both of them, were in elementary school…so another year at least.
He did not understand her one bit, that woman.
"That sounds boring, dad." Said Mob
"That's because we're at completely different stages of life. When you get older then you'll see." Said Suzuki
"When we're the same age?" asked Mob
"We'll never be the same age, daughter, I will always be older than you. You'll get older, though, and when that happens you and I will be able to understand each other better I'd imagine." Said Suzuki. Daughter was a bit like him. She was strong, like him, and she had trouble understanding the world and it's people just like he did. There was a certain kinship that he could feel between them. One greater than the one he felt with his biological son, anyway.
"Sure you will." Said Masami under her breath. She couldn't imagine her husband getting along with anyone. He was…he was a lot like Shigeko but Shigeko at least tried to make friends and live in the world with people. Her husband didn't want to live in the world, no, he wanted to rule over it. At least Shigeko would never have wanted anything like that.
"What?" asked Suzuki. He so hated it when she whispered. Maybe his hearing was just starting to go. He was getting very close to forty after all…all the more reason for him and Masami to have another child…but that was not the thing to mention in front of Daughter. Children were supposed to be shielded from even the mere thought of human reproduction until they were older. He didn't know how old, pubescent, probably, and he didn't know why they needed to be shielded from such things but he trusted Masami's judgement on that as he did on all things related to the children.
"Nothing. I'll go and get you two another deck of cards. That really is a very impressive house of cards you've built for yourselves." Said Masami as she got off the couch quickly before she said something that she regretted. Shigeko called out a happy 'thank you' that followed Masami down the hallway and to the kids' room.
Where someone had taped up a sign which told her to 'go away' in hiranga.
She took it down, of course, because she could not condone a sign which was so rude…and also her husband was obsessed with the children learning kanji as soon as possible. Masami understood wanting the children to excel in life but there was such a thing as putting too much pressure on them. Her husband always put so much pressure on them when he was around…
She didn't blame Sho for hiding in his room.
Masami knocked as she entered. She knocked to show some politeness but this was her house and she was going to come in either way. That would change when the children hit their teen years, there were things that teenagers did alone in their rooms that Masami did not want to walk in on, but right now they were children and she was their mother and she would not be barred from portions of her own house.
"Can't you read?" asked Sho from the fort he had made out of his and big sis' covers and pillows and stuffed animals.
"Sho, you know not to be rude to people like that." Said Masami as she entered the room. The blinds were drawn and the nightlight was on. The television was on but muted. She stepped over a sea of plastic animals and building blocks, he had been playing menagerie again it seemed, and sat down on the floor beside a lump of pillows and blankets that may or may not have been her son.
"Sorry mom." Said Sho. He had been mean to his mother…he felt like he was going to cry. She had so many problems that she didn't need him adding to them like that! Not with dad and her fighting and stuff. You weren't supposed to fight girls like that. Ever. You weren't supposed to fight anyone at all, that was a rule at school and also in life, but you especially were not ever supposed to fight a girl. Even if she was your sister and she was being super annoying. Even if she was your wife and…and he didn't even know why dad had fought her. He could understand being all freaked out if a girl tried to kiss you, he hated it when girls tried to play catch and kiss with you even though they knew you hated it, but dad had been the one to kiss mom!
Buyer's remorse?
"It's ok my sweet, gentle, boy. I know you didn't mean it." Said Masami. She pulled up one of the blankets and ran her hand through his hair. There had been a lot of stress in his voice. Something was bothering him. Masami frowned and reached over to his bed with her other hand. Well he hadn't wet the bed, thank God, so that was one theory crossed off of her list. He hadn't been punished, either, he hadn't been anywhere near his father in a very long time, it seemed, so he hadn't had any opportunity to upset his father.
"Mom…I love you so much…" said Sho. What had be done to deserve a mom like this? She may have made up all sorts of rules that she herself did not follow, she may have made him take a bath even when he didn't need it, and she may have punished him sometimes…well what she called punishment…but she did not deserve to have dad treating her like that!
"Sho, baby, tell mommy what's bothering you. Are you worried about all of the strangers daddy brought to the house? Because he says that they're here to keep us safe-" said Masami
"From him?" asked Sho. Mom stopped playing with his hair, then, and he knew that he had said the wrong thing. Unlike big sis he was totally capable of getting a clue.
"Sho…why would we need to be kept safe from your father. He loves us. He would never hurt us." Said Masami. She knew that Touichirou punished the children…well he punished Sho…but he never went beyond punishment. That was how he had been brought up. She had been brought up in a similar way but…well she didn't agree with him but parenting was about compromise.
"Because…because you and him were fighting." Said Sho softly. He pulled his shirt up over his eyes. He knew that mom could still see him there, he hadn't disappeared, but he didn't want her to see him crying. He felt like he was about to cry. His eyes were wet and prickly. His nose was getting stuffy. He could not cry. Crying was weak and he…he had been weak enough already. He hadn't been able to keep her safe.
"Sho…your father and I may have exchanged some…some heated words last night but we were just…we were both just worried and stressed. Sometimes when we get stressed we…we feel cornered and lose control of our mouths. Sometimes we use words that we know we shouldn't, or speak in mean tones, but that does not mean that we don't love each other. You and Shigeko fight sometimes but you always make up-" said Masami. She had lost control of her mouth last night. She knew that she shouldn't have raised her voice where the children could hear her. She had been hurt, she had been worried, but that was no excuse to distress them so…or just Sho. Shigeko…nothing could ever get to her. She was her father's daughter after all.
"Big sis and I never fight…not like that. I would never hit her or any girl. You're not supposed to hit girls. Only the biggest losers in the world go around hitting girls." Said Sho, his face still in his shirt. Before he knew what was happening it was being pulled down.
"Sho…your father has never hit me…and I don't know where you've gotten this idea from but-" said Masami
"I heard you guys fighting." Said Sho
"Sho…I may have raised my voice last night-" said Masami
"No, not then. I mean…I mean before bedtime. Before all of these guys showed up. Back when…when big sis and I were playing hide and seek. I was…please don't be mad but I was hiding in your closet and then you and a dad came in and I didn't want to come out because I didn't want to get in trouble and stuff." Said Sho. Mom looked…she looked really scared. Not mad. He expected her to get really mad at him for hiding in her room. He expected her to make him stand in the corner or to take his desert away that night or something like that.
But instead she looked scared.
And he got it. Dad could be very scary sometimes. All of the times. He wished that he was bigger and stronger. That way he could he kept her safe. But he wasn't big and strong, no, he was just five and little and weak and he didn't even have any powers too. There was no way for him to keep his mom safe.
"You…you were in the closet….the whole time?" asked Masami. Well. Well then. Ok. Ok then. That was….oh God. Oh merciful God in heaven….
"Yeah. I was in there when you and dad came in to put the clothes away and then I was still in there when you guys kissed but then I hid under one of your dresses when you and dad started fighting." Said Sho. He reached up and patted his mom on the hand. She was so sad that she couldn't even look at him. When he grew up then he would be able to keep her safe…and he wished that he would just grow up quicker already!
"The…the whole time?" asked Masami. It felt like the floor had been pulled out from under her and now she was in freefall. She was so…so embarrassed….and just….well it wasn't like the same thing hadn't happened to her when she was around his age. She had gotten up in the middle of the night because she thought that a ghost was in the house…and then she had opened her parents' bedroom door without knocking…and then…well the rest was something that she knew that she should have described to a therapist at some point.
Poor Sho.
Poor Sho? Poor her!
She was the one who was going to have to sit down and explain….well maybe her husband should have been there with her to explain. Both of her parents had been there to explain just what it was that she had seen that night all those years ago…but then again no. Touichirou…he did not understand the concept of 'age appropriateness'. No. This, like everything when it came to raising the kids, fell squarely onto her shoulders.
"Yeah, the whole time." Said Sho. Mom winced, then, like she had gotten hurt. Sho felt as clueless as big sis in that moment. He knew that mom was hurt, feelings wise and body wise, and he just…he didn't know what to do or how to stop making it worse.
"And you…you didn't see anything?" asked Masami hopefully. Well that was…this was not as bad as it could have been. Sho might not have been traumatized for the rest of his life.
"No, I didn't see anything. I mean I saw you guys kissing….that was so gross….but I didn't see it when you guys started fighting," said Sho softly. He felt Mom's hands hook him under the armpits and she picked him up and sat him next to her on his bed.
"Mom, what're you doing? I was fine on the floor." Said Sho a bit more meanly than he should have. He was not a baby, he did not need to be picked up, but if it made mom happy then he needed to swallow all of his upset feelings…even though he was not a baby anymore and did not need his mom picking him up like he was one. Also he had been fine in his fort. That was why he had made the fort, so he could have had somewhere to be.
"Sho…I want to talk to you about what you heard." Said Masami taking a deep breath. She could not be squeamish about this. This was…this was a talk that she had wanted to wait a couple more years to have with her children. They were still so young…but she could not let Sho go around thinking that his parents had gotten into a fistfight. No, that would have been far more traumatic than what had really happened.
"About how you and dad were fighting? I'm sorry that I didn't protect you-" said Sho
"No, honey it's not your job to protect me, first of all, and second of all there wasn't anything for you to protect me from." Said Masami
"But I heard you and dad fighting." Said Sho
"Your dad and I…we weren't fighting. I know that you think that you heard us fighting but we weren't. We were...do you remember when we talked about big kid feelings?" asked Masami
"…yes…" said Sho. He knew what big kid feelings were. They were those feelings that were good and bad at the same time and made you do stuff like jump off of swings when you were near the person you felt that way about. You wanted to both be with them and run far away from them, too…but what did fighting have to do with big kid feelings. He sometimes felt like pushing people he felt like that about, mostly when they got too close and he got too many of those weird feelings, but he never did. That would have been mean and he did not want to ever become a mean person.
"Well there are also grown-up feelings. Grown-up feelings are a lot like big kid feelings. When grown-ups have feelings like that they…they want to express those feelings physically." Said Masami
"…like when I want to push Akira sometimes?" asked Sho
"You pushed him?" asked Masami
"No, I never pushed him before but sometimes I want to. Like when teacher makes us all hold hands when we go on our walks and I get paired with him and it feels kind of good and bad and I want to push him because it's a lot of feelings and stuff. That's why you and dad were fighting? Because you felt bad about kissing each other?" asked Sho. Well he could understand feeling weird about kissing someone. He'd never kissed anyone before, out of his own free will or anything…..girls loved to play catch and kiss…but the thought of kissing someone makes him want to both throw up and run away at the same time.
"No…Sho, your father and I weren't fighting. Your father and I…we love each other very much. When people love each other very much they get a lot of those sorts of feelings and they want to express them. That's why people hold hands and kiss." Said Masami
"That's disgusting." Said Sho sticking out his tongue so mom knew just how gross it was. Moms should not have been allowed to talk about gross stuff like that. It was bad enough that stuff like that was in all of the movies big sis liked. He thought that stuff like that should stay in movie world, not come out into the real world where he lived and stuff.
"You'll change your tune when you get older, trust me on this. One day you'll grow up and meet a girl-a person who you feel very strongly about too. Feelings like that are a part of growing up." Said Masami
"So all grown-ups feel like that all the time? Like they just want to go around kissing each other?" asked Sho
"Some people are like that and some people aren't. Some people want to kiss everyone, some people only want to kiss the person they're in love with, and some people never want to kiss anyone at all. Some people want to kiss boys, some people want to kiss girls, and some people don't want to ever do any kissing at all. They're all perfectly ok just the way they are. You're perfectly ok just the way you are, too." Said Masami. She didn't much care who the children ended up falling in love with. She just wanted them to end up doing better than she did. She knew how Sho was, well the signs he was showing, and it was best to make sure that he knew that however it was that he turned out Masami would always be ok with it. She would always love her son.
"So then why did you and dad fight?" asked Sho. He still didn't get it. If they loved each other so much then why fight? And he still thought that they had fought. They had to have been fighting. What else could they have been doing? Jumping on the bed?
Actually, maybe that was it after all.
"Sho…we weren't fighting. Listen, when two people love each other very much they…they want to express it. Sometimes they kiss or they hold hands or they do…something else. Something that only grown-ups are allowed to do. Not kids. Not with other kids and certainly never with grown-ups…and if a grown-up ever asks you to then you tell me and you will not get in any trouble. Ok?" asked Masami
"Do what?" asked Sho
"You know how boys and girls are different, right? Well boys and girls are different because there's something that happens when they get older. Sometimes men and women have very strong feelings that they want to express so they…" said Masami. She gave him the best, child friendly, explanation of what it was that he overheard. His eyes widened as she explained, quickly, how people expressed their love.
It was a short explanation.
And it was straight to the point.
And she didn't go into any specifics besides the fact that people fit together, sometimes, and that was how babies were made.
And even though he came out of that talk with a thousand yard stare she still felt that she had done the right thing. As difficult as that had been she knew that she could not have had him go through life thinking that his parents regularly got into fistfights with each other. No, that had been…she couldn't imagine being five years old and having all of that hanging around in her mind. Yes, she had done the right thing by explaining all of this to Sho.
Next was Shigeko.
But maybe that could wait a moment. Just a moment. She was not going to rip her away from her father to explain the awful truth of creation to her.
"Mom…." Said Sho. That was…grown-ups were….people actually….
"Sho? if you have any questions feel free to ask them. You can always ask me anything." Said Masami
"Am I getting another brother or sister?" asked Sho finally. That was the most pressing matter at hand. Well that and informing big sis of the terrible things that grown-ups did with one another when they thought that they were alone. She needed to know. Everyone needed to know.
"No. Not any time soon, anyway. You two are enough work as it is." Said Masami. She hoped that he didn't start up about wanting a little brother again. She was not having any more children for the foreseeable future. They had the two children and that was enough. Touichirou wanted more children but he hardly ever enjoyed the children that they already had.
"Ok…I have to go now…to another place…" said Sho. Masami let him get up and walk, slowly, out of the room. His thousand yard stare would go away eventually. She would have waited a few more years to talk to the kids about this but the awful truth was better than the terrible idea that he'd constructed in his mind.
Touichirou may have been a lot of things but he never would have hurt her.
He never would have hurt any of them. She had no idea what he was involved in but she knew that he would never harm her or the children. She was not afraid of him. She was annoyed by him, exasperated by him, and still in love with him but she was not nor would she ever be afraid of him. He was her husband. She had no reason to be afraid of him.
She had no reason to be afraid of him.
She had no reason to think that he would ever hurt her…or put the family in danger. Even though he was involved in some very shady shit. Even though he was, apparently, doing God knows what out there in the world and she had no idea of it and….and she needed to stop thinking about it. She would never get answers out of him. Even Fukuda was sugarcoating it, what he told her. There was no point in getting upset over this…there was nothing that she could do about it.
"Mom! Sho's telling lies!"
But there was something that she could do about that. Her daughter needed her. There was something that she could do. She could be a mother to the children. She was a mother to the children. She was their mother and a damn good one at that. She may have had no control over what her husband did but she could at least raise her children and…and make the most out of that.
So that was what she did.
"Shigeko, come here. Mommy has something important to talk to you about."