Trapped.

Masami finally had a word for how she felt.

She felt trapped.

The word came to her while she was fixing lunch for her and Touichirou. She had been standing in the kitchen when it hit her. There was a window. She could see out of it. She could have climbed out of it. She wanted to climb out of it. She wanted to climb out of it and run across the yard and down the street and then far, far, far away.

But she couldn't.

Because someone had to make lunch.

So therefore, she was trapped.

This house was her home and her prison as well. She could not leave. Such a simple thing…she could not leave. Sure, she could have walked out the door, she'd find herself walking out the door later on to pick up the children from school, but then she would have to come back and then do it all again. Again, and again and again. She was…she was this person…she had not wanted to be this person. She had not dreamt of becoming this person…

The person she had become.

She found herself wishing that she could have swapped places with someone else, anyone else. This house…this was a beautiful house. Large. There were rooms that she wasn't even using for anything, not even storing junk, and her husband had even been talking about adding to it. The house next door, well what passed for 'next door' in this neighborhood was for sale. He wanted to buy it and connect it to their house…just as he had done when the house on the other side had been put on the market. She didn't know why they needed so much space. They were only four people….

Isolated.

Nobody on either side.

Her and the children. Forever.

Her, the children, and Touichirou. The Suzuki family. She hadn't wanted this when she married him. They had traveled when they had first gotten married. Before Sho. His work had always taken him all over the world, what that work entailed she was not sure if she wanted to know, but they had done some travelling…before she had been too big to travel. Well before he had said that she was too big to travel. It hadn't been smothering then, his concern, or what passed for concern with Touichirou back then. He hadn't been worried about her but who they had made….but in terms of his investment in Sho's creation.

Not in Sho as a person.

Not in her as a person.

The only person he cared about, truly cared about, was himself. Himself and Shigeko. His Daughter. She had been an investment too, it seemed. His greatest investment. He spent most of his time with her. Even last night…she had woken to find herself alone in her bed and for a moment, a wonderful moment, she had thought that he had left the country again and she could have had some peace…terrible thoughts to think about her husband, but instead she had found him and Shigeko in the living room. Shigeko had been asleep on the floor with a Chinese Checker board in front of her and Touichirou…well it had been adorable in a way. How he had fallen asleep slumped against the couch.

He always looked so peaceful when he slept.

Any and all good feeling that she had felt about the scene tableaux before her were chased away at the realization that they had been up all night playing Chinese checkers. Shigeko had school in the morning and instead of staying in bed like she knew she was supposed to she had been up all night. She thought, once again, that she could do whatever she wanted…and Touichirou had, once again, encouraged this…

Masami hated herself sometimes.

For how she caught herself feeling about her own Daughter. Shigeko may not have come from within her body but she was still her child just the same. It was so hard to reconcile the fact that despite their similarities Shigeko was not the second coming of her father. She was not a miniature version of her father. She was her own person and she was only seven and the thoughts that her own mother had about her…they would destroy her. Masami was a bad mother when it came to Shigeko.

And a terrible wife when it came to Touichirou.

This was what she had wanted to be, a wife and a mother. When she married Touichirou she'd had this picture in her mind…not pure domestic bliss but not…not what she had become. Who she had become. She had no reason to feel the way she did, to have become the woman she had become. Touichirou was distant but never cruel to her. He had never even so much as raised his voice to her. He provided for her. She had never…never in her life did she think that she would see as much money as was in their bank account. Never in her life did she think that she would live in a house this big. Her children…they went to the best schools the city had to offer…schools that Masami had never even been able to attend as a child. She had a good life for herself and her children…

But she still felt like this.

Trapped.

And she had no idea where it was that she even wanted to go. To her parents? Why, to get a big, fat, 'I told you so' from not only them but everyone else who had told her that marrying Touichirou was a mistake? To…to Fukuda? Who WORKED for her husband? Who she had put in a very bad and possibly dangerous position? No. She wanted…she did want to see him again. It had been months since she had seen or heard from him…and she wanted to be with him. If even to be in his arms for a moment. If only to have him listen to her…to listen and speak back. To just…to just be MASAMI with him. Not Mom. Not Wife…and she was amazed that Touichirou hadn't started calling her Wife yet…even though that was all she was to him. Just his wife. Just the woman who iron his shirts and cooked his meals and washed his dishes and bore his children and occasionally went to bed with him…not that they had done much of that since…

And she didn't even know why she wanted to.

To feel something? That must have been it. He had always been at his least guarded when they had sex. He actually emoted when they had sex. He looked at her….like he was really looking at her…and he held her afterwards, too…and it was…

She'd had better.

Not that it could ever happen again.

So maybe that was why she felt so trapped. Because she couldn't be with the man she wanted to be with. That, of course, made her just a terrible person. Touichirou had never given her a reason, a real reason, to do what she had done. It would have been another story if he had been out there womanizing…but she knew him. He may have been a cold man, a distant man, but he was also a man of his word. Marriage meant that they couldn't see other people. He had actually felt the need to inform her of that on their wedding day….and when she had asked if he had considered them to be nonexclusive up to that point he had said 'no' because they'd had the exclusivity talk already…and he had also said that he didn't even look at other women like that…he had said that he was just trying to make sure that they were on the same page when it came to the parameters of a marriage.

He had been so charmingly clueless back then.

That had gotten old fast.

She wished that he had been out there cheating on her. She wished that he'd had a woman in every country and that he was running off to be with mistresses and other families that he had started…even though the thought of him cheating on her makes her feel physically ill…but then she would have had an out. Then she would have had a reason to have cheated on him. She wished that he had vices, real vices not eating nothing but omelets and staying up late playing Chinese checkers and watching foreign documentaries, real vices that could have given her a reason to want to leave. If he had been out for weeks on end womanizing and drinking and gambling and pissing all of their money away…but he didn't. He wasn't that sort of man.

On paper he was perfect.

Aside from whatever Yakuza shit he was involved in. He had been the one to…to confirm that he was involved with them…and that they had been making attempts on his life…and that she…she had no idea…for years…but that was not enough to leave. Well it was but…but also not. That would take a lot of explaining….and she did not know how to explain…to justify…

To anyone.

Especially her children. If she ever were to leave then….then she would have to take them with her. She couldn't take them away from her husband, from their father, because…because they loved him. Even Sho who he was just so…so cold to. Sho was more of a momma's boy but Shigeko was firmly daddy's little girl…and she couldn't take care of Shigeko on her own anyway. Shigeko…she was getting older. The older she got the stronger she'd get…and the only person who had a hope of controlling her was Touichirou…and that was just how it was. If she had a choice between Shigeko and Sho…she did not like her answer to that question. She should not have even posed that question to herself. She should…she should…

Sho.

If she had a choice it would have been Sho.

Sho had powers too but nothing even close to what Shigeko could do. Sho…he still listened to her. He took after her. He looked almost exactly like his father, he hadn't inherited the eyebrows thank goodness, but he took after her. Shigeko…she looked like neither of them, she was adopted after all, but she took after Touichirou….and whether Masami wanted to admit it or not being what she was Shigeko would need her father. She would go through things that Masami had no idea how to guide her through. How was it, even, growing up as an esper? What was esper puberty like, even? Masami shudder to think about her Daughter's coming teenage years…Sho's too. They were children now but they wouldn't be for much longer….and she had no idea how to help an esper through that period of life or a little boy…not that she knew if Touichirou would be much help…

She couldn't take them with her.

And she couldn't leave, either, because….because then who would raise them? Sho needed her. He was such a sweet, sensitive, gentle boy…and Shigeko needed her mother. She was already a bad mother but she would be a piss poor excuse for one if she just up and abandoned her children….or just one of them. Sho…she had Sho to think about. Shigeko…Touichirou loved Shigeko the most in the entire family. It was so obvious that he favored her…and that he would have taken decent care of her…as decent as he was capable of…

She couldn't leave the children alone with their father.

And she couldn't take them with her.

So she was well and truly trapped. She wanted…she wanted to climb out that window and run. Run to her parents, to her lover, or just…away. Down the street in nothing but her house slippers. Down the street and into the horizon never to be seen again…like this was one of her dramas…but it wasn't. This was real life and she had to live with the choices she'd made.

She didn't climb out the window.

She didn't run away.

She finished lunch.

"Touichirou!"