Masami really was the most beautiful woman in the entire world.

Suzuki knew this to be true. He had been all over the world after all and he had never seen a woman who could ever compare to her. Not that he spent a lot of his time looking at other women. He had a woman, what did he need another one for? He had the most beautiful, intelligent, woman in the entire world. Well the parts of it that he had seen….but he was not about to go travelling the world looking to see if there was a woman who could eclipse her.

There probably wasn't.

"What?" asked Masami as she sat at her vanity table and brushed out her hair. Shigeko had braided it again. It had been more knots than braids, honestly, but it had made her happy. That was what mattered the most, making the other members of her family happy, even at her own expense.

"Nothing, I'm just looking at you." Said Suzuki. She had been so irritable lately. She had been so distant lately…and he had no idea why. She hadn't even so much as kissed him in…in however many weeks it had been…and he knew that he should not have been craving her, a kiss from her, so badly that he was starting to even dream of it…or badly at all. The two of them…they were already a couple…so why did he want to…to continue to couple with her. He wished that he knew what was wrong with him. He felt out of control.

He hated feeling out of control.

"Well can you stop? God, I feel like I'm under a microscope." Said Masami as she brushed out her hair a little more vigorously than necessary. What, was he getting his staring in now since he had spent the entire day locked away in his office again?

"I'll stop if you want me to." Said Suzuki. He stopped looking at her but, instead, looked at her reflection in the mirror. He couldn't see as much of her, then. Just her face and her hair and her neck and her collar bones…and he had no idea why his eyes were tracing the path that her collar bones made beneath her nightshirt…well he did, she was a very attractive woman, but it made no sense. He had seen her naked a thousand and one times….

So why did he want to again?

Because she was beautiful. Because she was attractive. Because it had been a very long time since they had last been together physically. He knew that it was a normal human need…and he also knew that he was not a normal human and that he should have been above normal human needs. Besides, at the end of the day it would have been pointless. She did not want to have any more children…even though he wanted more children….but he was not the only person making that decision….and he got the feeling that it wasn't even about that…

He wanted to have more children.

But he wanted her, more.

He wanted to pick her up and sit her down on the table, her makeup table, and kiss her until she could not be kissed anymore. He wanted to pull her nightshirt up over her head and then worship at the altar of her body like he had when they had been younger, when they had first been starting out…and had it been seven years already? Seven years ago….seven years ago he would have given in to this feeling. He would have given in because he had been younger and his control over himself had not been what it is today….and even now his control was slopping. There, on her table, he could see some of her hair pins rising into the air. Light things floated first. Light then heavy and then…he did not want to think about what happened next. What the next stage of losing control was.

He could never fully lose control. Not again.

He wouldn't allow himself to.

"You're still staring at me." Said Masami. She could feel the tingle in the air, that hanging static electricity, his aura. Him. His attention was focused fully on her…and she wished that he would just go back to his office or stay up all night with Shigeko again or something like that. She was getting ready for bed. She was in her nightclothes and she was getting her hair ready and then the lotion and then bed. She had already started her bedtime's ritual. He had already completed his.

He brushed his teeth and took off his suit coat and tie.

He would have slept fully dressed if it didn't weird her out so much. How he could just…sleep…like that. He also slept on his back with his hands folded like a corpse. Like when they put a corpse out for viewing before they buried it. The only thing that kept him from looking dead, when he slept, was the rise and fall of his chest as well as the fact that, occasionally, their bed would lift off into the air. It would only hover a few centimeters off the ground but that had always been enough to ruin her sleep totally and completely.

She wondered if she'd be able to get any sleep at all tonight.

"No, I'm staring at your reflection." Said Suzuki. His phone lit up on the bedside table. Not good news, it was never good news, but he had been getting a very long and unbroken stream of bad news lately. A failed coup. Of all the things for people to waste his time with….

"Fine, you can stare at me if you want to…not that I have any idea why you want to…" said Masami as she finished her hair. She turned the vanity lights off and went over to the bed. She felt Touichirou's eyes following her. What was he staring at? Had he been away for so long that he had forgotten what his own wife looked like?

"Because you're beautiful." Said Suzuki after a few moments. He had taken his time picking out just the right way to phrase that. If had had just spoken without thinking he would have told her something like 'I want to go to bed with you right now' or 'I feel like I haven't touched you in years even though I know that it has only been a few months' or 'I wish that I could put you in some sort of hermetically sealed bubble for your own safety and never let you out but that would be a bad idea because in trying to keep you safe I would be destroying your immune system and also that may be a form of imprisonment and if I have no reason to imprison you because you are my wife and I trust you totally and completely and also you used to smell like cinnamon and now you don't and I want to pour cinnamon on you until you smell how you're supposed to and also I miss the way your skin feels against mine and also I miss the way your nose crinkles when you laugh and also I miss the way you bite your lower lip when you watch your dramas and also I love the way you tell me that I'm being ridiculous when I point out the inaccuracies in your dramas and also you are the only person who is allowed to call me ridiculous and that's because I care for you so much and I want nothing more than to pull you down next to me and go through all of your favorites until you're nothing more than a quivering puddle beneath me'…

Or something like that.

But he doesn't say any of that, of course, because then what would she think?

"Oh." Said Masami. She had her lotion uncapped and was about to empty the proper amount into her hands and then spread it where it needed to be spread and rub it where it needed to be rubbed before her skin got dry and itchy. She had been about to do that when he decided to throw her a curveball. It wasn't the first time he had called her beautiful. No, on their first date he had said in that same matter of fact tone that she was the most beautiful woman that he had ever seen in his life up to that point. He said it just now in that same tone.

The one that she had found charming, back then.

And it was still…he could be charming in his honest. Charming and also brutal. He could be so brutally honest sometimes…all the times. Towards her. Towards what he thought of her. He didn't love her…not in the way that she loved him. He loved her in the sense that he loved the function that she served. She was brought back to that day…that day when she leanred just how brutally honest her husband could be…

Pointless.

He had called making love with her pointless.

But pleasurable.

He had also called it pleasurable…but it was so much more than that. If she had just been after pleasure she had something in her bedside drawer that was just as good and didn't cause her nearly so much grief. It wasn't just pleasure she had been after…at any point. With him or with…and she should not have been thinking about that. Her eyes flickered to her phone. She hadn't gotten so much as a text from him in so long.

"That's just the way I feel. I feel…that you're the most beautiful woman that I've ever seen and I enjoy watching you." Said Suzuki. He caught her lotion with his powers. She had just sort of frozen…and of course she had. She had been shocked because he had never come out and said it like that. That he needed her. That her been the layer underneath it all. He needed her and he missed her and…and he wanted her so badly…

The bed was starting to raise up off the ground.

He got himself under control.

"Really? I'm the most beautiful?" Said Masami. She reached out and took her lotion from where it was floating in the air. She smiled, just a little, just as much as she was feeling. That tone…that tone could be so cold…but he also be so…so…him. She made a point not to look at him. She knew that if she looked at him then all of those feelings would start up again. The ones that reminded her why she married him in the first place. She didn't…she didn't know why she felt the way she felt. Like she wanted to be with him but…but she also…she also had no idea if she…she just didn't know. Inside of her were a whirlwind of contradictions. She loved him and she wanted to run far away. She wanted to be held and she wanted to slap him across the face. She wanted him to get out of her life and she wanted to nail the doors and windows shut so she could never be without him ever again. She didn't know how she felt about him. Beneath the secrets and the cold exterior there was something else, something that only she could see, and sometimes she could see it and she just wanted…she didn't know what she wanted.

She wanted her husband back.

If she had ever had him in the first place.

"Yes. I say what I mean and I mean what I say." Said Suzuki. He wished that there was some way where she could just…understand him. If there was some way that she could just understand him totally and completely. Without him having to tell her what he imagined and thought and felt…because he thought and feelings and slipped into fantasies that he knew that he shouldn't have slipped in to…

He hated himself for how weak he was.

And if she knew then she would hate him right back.

And he could not handle her hating him.

"And that's what all the staring is about?" asked Masami as she worked her lotion into her skin. She could feel it again, his eyes on her, and she felt…she didn't know how she felt. She loved him. She loved him and also…it was hard to love him. Buried beneath all the anger and resentment that had been building and building and building there was still that core of…of love. For him. For how much of a pod person he could be. For how…how sweet he could be, sometimes, even though he was mostly sour. He was like the sour candy the kids ate by the boxful. Sour on the outside and then sweet on the inside…though the sweetness was often overpowers by the sourness.

"Yes. You're beautiful and I like to look at you." Said Suzuki. It had been far too long since they'd had any physical intimacy at all…and he was feeling it. He watched the path her hands took across her thighs. Had her nightshirt always been so short? This was the one with the kitten coming out of the sunflower on it…and he remembered, now, that there was a set of very itchy feeling pajama pants that went with that. He wondered why she wasn't wearing the matching pants.

He was not about to question it now.

"Like a work of art?" asked Masami. That had been one of their dates. Her husband didn't like art, not really, not in any way beyond a superficial 'that's a pretty picture' sort of way. He had taken her to the city art museum and spent exactly thirty seconds looking at each and every picture with the intensity that only he possessed. That was how he looked at her, too, it seemed. Like she was just there to be stared at and enjoyed on a purely superficial level.

"Yes. Like the one you like. The one of the woman at the piano. I forget the name of it but you remind me of her." said Suzuki. That had been one of their first dates. She cared for art more than he did. He didn't dislike art, no, he could appreciate it on a technical and ascetic level. She appreciated it on a different level, it seemed, and that was why he had taken her to art museum. Well that and he also hadn't known much about her back then. Not as much as he knew now. He knew, now, that her favorite genre of anything was historical drama. Another thing that he had learned about her was that she loved Spanish perfume more than any other kind. He knew more than her likes and dislikes, too, he also knew her various idiosyncrasies. Like how she always started everything on the left side even though she was right handed. Or like how she always feel asleep on her left, rolled over to her right, and woke up on her stomach. Or like how she always painted her finger nails red but would paint her toenails every other color but red.

She was so fascinating.

"Woman and Piano." Said Masami with a smile, a small one, but one that was slightly bigger than the one she had been wearing before.

"Yes, that one." said Suzuki. She was smiling again. There truly was no sight better in this world than her smile.

"That's the name of the painting. Woman and Piano." Said Masami. She capped her lotion and put it back. She was chilled, slightly, and debated whether or not she should wear her pajama pants too. The room was chilled but she'd warm up as she slept…but she was chilled now. It was spring, now, and the chill in the air hadn't quite gone away yet. She wasn't about to turn the heater back on, it wasn't that cold yet…and it would have been wasteful…and also the kids would wake up in the night and she'd find them watching bizarre television shows at midnight again.

"Not very creative." Said Suzuki. He made a mental note to remember the name of her favorite painting. When he ruled the world he'd have all of her favorites hung in the house for her. All of the best art in the world would be hers to look at for as long as she wanted. Everything in the world that she wanted would be hers. He'd give her the world a thousand times over and she was right to ask it.

"No. Not really." Said Masami. She decided on wearing the matching pants. She could always kick them off if she got hot later. It was very hot, sleeping next to another person, and her husband had been gone from her for long so that she had forgotten what a furnace he turned into at night.

"What are you doing?" asked Suzuki. She turned her back to him…and now that feeling was back. That tightness in his chest…he had the irrational feeling that she was turning his back on him in a more final sense than a literal one. Bu that was insane. She was his wife, she would never have turned her back on him, that was what marriage was after all.

"Getting pants. It's freezing in here." Said Masami as she looked through her drawers for the matching pants to this. She could feel the shirt riding up as she bent down. She pulled it down in the back. She could feel his eyes on her. She wished that he would just stop with all the staring already…and she also wished that he would never stop. At least he was showing her some appreciation for once in their marriage.

"You can come to bed. It's warm here." Said Suzuki. He made room for her even though there was already plenty of room…and he also didn't really want to be away from her. He wanted to be near her, as near to her s two people possibly could be.

"In a minute. Let me find my pants." Said Masami. It was getting late and she had to be up early to get the kids ready for school…and to beat Shigeko up. At some point she had turned into a vampire. Masami did not want to wake up to the smell of cooking and the sight of her husband and her daughter eating breakfast together…the breakfast that Touichirou had let their seven year old daughter cook on her own. She wished that she could have told him to knock that off, letting Shigeko cook, because one day there would be a terrible accident. One day Touichirou would not be there to stop there from being a terrible accident and then Masami would be the one to deal with the consequences.

"I can get you another blanket if you want. We have so many of them." Said Suzuki. He opened their closet with his powers. He did not want…she was a grown woman and she could wear whatever she wanted…but he just didn't want her any more dressed than she was now. Even this was too much…and at some point he had turned back into an adolescent. She didn't want to have another child therefore there would be no point in surrendering himself to her, in losing control with her….

"No, let me find my pants." Said Masami, her back still to him. Not that it helped. She could still feel his eyes on her. If she hadn't known any better she would have thought that he had been checking her out…but of course she knew better. There hadn't been a single time in their entire relationship that she had not been the one to initiate. Never once had he ever told her that he wanted to have sex. He had pretty much zero sex drive and she accepted that about him.

He wasn't the one she wanted to go to bed with, anyway.

And wasn't that just the worst? That even after all of this time she still thought of Fukuda. It wasn't about the sex. If Masami just wanted to get off she had a phone and a toy for that…and her husband who always got right to it when she asked. She had his body, it was the rest of him that she wanted. She wanted someone who wouldn't just roll off of her and tell her that unless they were making another mouth to feed and back to clothe the whole thing was pointless. Someone who actually held her afterwards and enjoyed it. Someone who…someone she….

Someone else.

"Do you have to?" asked Suzuki

"What?" asked Masami. There had been a note of…something…in his voice. Which was weird because there was never a note of anything in his voice. She stopped what she had been doing. She debated turning around…but then she would have to deal with whatever that had been. She was not in the mood to deal with anything right then.

"Find your pants? Do you have to?" asked Suzuki

"Yes, I do. What is with you tonight?" asked Masami

"I want…" said Suzuki. He choked on his words. He could not just come out and say it…but she was going to get dressed…and right then and there that was the last thing that he wanted. Her legs…she had such nice legs. He hadn't seen her legs, he hadn't seen much of her, since…since he couldn't even remember the date. He wanted her in that bed right then and there beside him. He wanted her thighs on either side of his head while he did that thing she liked….and that other thing…and then he wanted her nails to dig into his back while he brought them both to mutual satisfaction…

Be he could never ask her for that.

"Yes?" asked Masami as she dug through her dresser drawers. She had to find the pair that matched otherwise her whole rotation would be thrown off.

"I would not mind it if you joined me here, in our bed, in your current state of…being." Said Suzuki. The words tasted like ashes in his mouth. He could not believe that he had just admitted to needing her. How could he have admitted such weakness? He was complete all on his own. He had to be.

"Oh…alright." Said Masami. Well this was…odd of him. He never cared about how she looked beyond asking her, whenever she decided to have a barefaced pajama day, if she was sick again. He never expressed a preference before…for how she slept. Negligee or nightgown it was all the same to him. She could have been stark naked and he wouldn't have given a damn.

"Here." Said Touichirou as he used his powers to carry over a blanket from their closet. He covered her with is after she laid down beside him. He flicked the light switch and they laid down together in blissful darkness.

"Masami?" asked Suzuki as she settled into the bed next to him. The bed dipped with her weight. He smelled coconuts and tropical fruit. Her lotion.

"Yes?" asked Masami as she got comfortable.

"There's a distance between us." Said Suzuki. He chose his words carefully. He couldn't admit to himself let alone to her that he felt incomplete without her. That would have been well and truly awful.

"There is." Said Masami. She wondered what he was getting at. If he was cold then he should have gotten himself one of the blankets that he was piling onto her.

"Why?" asked Suzuki

"Why what?" asked Masami

"Why is there a distance between us?" asked Suzuki. She was laying so far away…but that was becoming her habit, now…and he did not care for it one bit.

"Because it's a big bed." Said Masami simply. She had plenty of bed. There was no need to crowd him. He needed his space and she would give it to him.

"That's true…but you used to come much closer to me." Said Suzuki. Had she changed? Had something changed in his long absence? The children had grown taller and his wife had grown…far more distant….

"Do you want me to come closer to you?" asked Masami. She wished that he would have said yes…or better yet just pulled her close. Puller her close and said that he loved her and that he was sorry for everything and that he would change and…and she had been watching way too much TV.

"If you want to." Said Suzuki. There, that was a good way to phrase it. That was it would have been her idea and he could have been absolved from the guilt of having let himself down so totally and completely.

"Don't give me that. Would it kill you to tell me what you want once in a while? I hate how it's always on me. I have to be the one to ask for everything. It's like you don't even give a damn." Said Masami. She crossed her arms as best as she could in a laying down position. What was he so afraid of? If he didn't want to be with her anymore then he should have said it. He should have just come out with it and then they both could have been free of each other already.

"That's not true. I care about you." Said Suzuki. That had wounded him, it had. How could she think that he was uncaring? After all that he did for her?

"You never show it." Said Masami. What she would have given for a kiss when she woke up. Being held as she slept. Even a simple 'how was your day, dear?' when he finally decided to emerge from his office and remember that he was not the only person living in the house.

"Yes I do. I support you and the children." Said Suzuki. How was that not showing it? If he hadn't cared for her then he would have just walked away and never come back. Women were so strange. Wives were so strange. She was so strange.

"…well you won't let me work." Said Masami after a moment. She missed it, the world of work. She had never wanted to crawl out the window and run down the street in her slipper back when she'd had a job. It hadn't been much of a job, taking care of the animals, but it had gotten her out of the house and she had been around other adults. She loved her children but this house…it wasn't so stifling when her husband wasn't there….but he was there and it was so stifling and he was so smothering, now, his presence and his aura and the blankets he kept on piling on top of her….

"You…want to work? Why?" asked Suzuki. He saw his aura, there, but that had not been the shocking part. Why did Masami want to work? She was well taken care of. Was there something she wanted to purchase? If there was she should have bought it. She should have done something with the truly obscene amount of money they had. The Japanese government was starting to look into his finances again…and that was always such a bother….

"I don't know, it's just a thought. I just…I feel so trapped in this house all the time…I only go outside to drop the kids off or pick the kids up or do something with the kids….I haven't even been down to the animals shelter since Shigeko's birthday…" said Masami. There were people there that she had never seen before, now, people that called her the newcomer. Her life's work had been the animals. That is before she had given her entire life to Touichirou. Before she had put everything on hold to be his wife and a mother to his children.

"You don't have to feel trapped. I would never stop you from leaving." Said Suzuki. She wasn't a prisoner…and he had no idea why she felt like one. He had prisoners, plenty of them, and she was not a prisoner in any way shape or form…not that he would be telling her about the prisoners anytime soon. No, she would not have approved at all…

"…do you want me to leave?" asked Masami

"Not at this hour, it isn't safe…but if you have somewhere to be then I can have you followed by a full security detail." Said Suzuki. He always had her followed when she left the house, it was for her own safety, but she never left the house this late at night…and the world was full of truly despicable people. He'd have her surrounded by his best men at all times. There would be marksmen in the trees and on top of buildings, too, in case anyone decided to make an attempt on her life. He wondered if there was some way to give her some sort of artificial force field…or a bubble made out of diamond…or some sort of suit of armor….power armor….or maybe some sort of giant mech…

And now he had regressed into his childhood self.

"I don't have anywhere to be and I don't want a full security detail….and I wouldn't even need one in the first place. This is a good neighborhood. The worst we have is people swiping Amazon packages and even that's rare." Said Masami. So now he chose to care about her wellbeing? She shifted a little closer to him. It was sweet, in a way, in his own personal way…but she did not want a full security detail following her around while she picked the kids up from school tomorrow or whatever else she had to do.

"I know. I had him dealt with." Said Suzuki. The audacity of some people. Thinking that they could steal from his family. It was a good thing he had the house occasionally watched. Not all the time, he couldn't spare the manpower yet, but enough times that he had noticed that someone had been stealing the things Masami bought.

Nobody stole from his family.

"Touichirou….is that more yakuza shit?" asked Masami. She wanted to squirm away from him, back to her side of the bed, but he had his arm around her. There was no way out.

"I haven't had need to them for quite some time. It's none of your concern, anyway, Masami. Just know that I would do anything to keep you safe." Said Suzuki. She was so warm…it felt good. Having her in his arms. She was….she was perfect…and not just because she was half naked and smelled like a scientist's interpretation of a tropical island. She was perfect because she was his. She was his and he…he was hers.

This was so perfect.

"Touichirou…why won't you just…just tell me what you do? We've been married for almost seven years, now, and I still have no idea what you do…or if it's going to put me and the kids in danger." Said Masami

"I would never put your or the children in danger. What I do…it's complicated. It's complicated and I know that there are parts of it that you would not approve of. Just know that I'm making a better world for myself and the children. Our children." Said Suzuki. He wanted to explain it to her, his dreams, and his plans…but she would never approve. She abhorred violence in all it's forms…and also his plan sounded insane on paper. He didn't think that it sounded insane but enough people's last words had been 'you're insane' or some version of it…and it was starting to…to stick. But he was not insane.

The world was.

What kind of a world was it where the powerful had to hide from the powerless? What kind of a world would it be where his daughter would not be acknowledged as the wonder that she was? What kind of a world would it be if he let history repeat itself for his daughter? And his son, too, if he ever planned on showing a modicum of talent. He needed to take over this world and remake it to what it was meant to be.

As something better than what it was.

"But are we….are we in danger? Please I just…I have no idea what you do. The day to day of it. I just know that…that you have to regularly put oceans between us…and that's just…it's just…..this whole thing is hard for me. You know? Well you don't…actually…" said Masami

"What's difficult for you? Masami…I can't tell you the whole of what I do. If I were to tell you the whole of what I do…you would not be happy…and you would be in danger. Just know that I'm gathering espers and that I'm trying…I'm trying to make a better world for our children. A better world than the one I grew up in." said Suzuki. He also spent last month hunting down traitors like dogs and destroying them in ways that he had never thought possible…but she did not need to know that.

"I told you already. Time and time again I have told you. The secrets are difficult for me, having you away for weeks or sometimes months on end is difficult for me….being alone in the house all day with the kids is difficult for me…and before you say anything I do not want servants in the house! I don't want a bunch of strangers in my house touching my things and bothering my children. I just want…I want my husband by my side. That's all I've ever wanted." Said Masami

"I am by your side. I'm right here and I won't go anywhere. I care for you and…and I won't have to put any oceans in between us…not for a while. I'm right here, by your side, and I always will be." Said Suzuki. He kissed the top of her head as he said it. There. Cinnamon.

He kissed her again.

"I know you are…I know." Said Masami. She didn't…she didn't know how to feel. It would have been so much easier if she had stopped loving him, if any and all of her feelings for him had died…but they hadn't. Even now, knowing that he was into some shady yakuza shit…she still loved him…and she wished that she didn't.

She really did.

But he was being uncharacteristically open with her, now. He was kissing the top of her head and burying his face in her hair. He did love her…in his own way. He could initiate sometimes….those times were just so rare that she could barely recall the last time….

Oh.

Right.

The time they had traumatized Sho.

"You smell like cinnamon." Said Suzuki. He pulled her close. In for a penny, in for a pound, he supposed. It was like a dam had broken. He had kissed her once, on impulse, and now he just could not stop. He was ever so slowly losing control. He was letting it slip through his fingers…and he sort of…it was not all bad. This was not the sort of loss of control that ended in death and destruction….

But he still should not have been losing control like this.

"I know. Sho threw a cinnamon shaker across the table at breakfast." Said Masami. She did not know what was wrong with that child. He had been so aggressive lately….nothing like either of his parents. Her husband may have had a temper but he never took it out on his family…so she at least had that to be grateful for….

"Are you alright?" asked Suzuki as he ran his fingers through her hair. That child…he does not want to think about the children now. He'd punish Boy later for hurting his mother. That was just not done. He knew better. It was one thing to be quarrelsome with his sister, children were quarrelsome little goblins, but it was another to throw something at the woman who had to be fileted like a fish to bring him into the world.

"Fine. No concussions, contusions, or abrasions." Said Masami. She almost wished that it had done some damage just so that she could see…him…again. But no, the Suzuki family had been in remarkable heath these past few months.

"Good. I'm glad that you're unharmed." Said Suzuki. He kissed her. She, eventually, kissed him back…and it was odd. Maybe she was just…tired? Upset with him? But he had done nothing to upset her. She was…women were a mystery to him.

"Touichirou…" said Masami when there was a moment between kisses. She wanted…she didn't know what she wanted. She wanted someone who…who was there for her. Who she could trust….and she wasn't sure if she trusted him. How could she trust a man who kept secrets from her? Who did things that she knew to be illegal?

"Masami….I lo….I want to…I care for you immensely." Said Suzuki. There. That had been…sort of what he meant. What he would have told her, if he had to tell her the absolute truth of his feelings, would have been something along the lines of 'The sun rises and sets with you and I have no idea what I would do without you and if I could I would build you a beautiful cage and never let you out so that I could keep you safe and happy for the rest of eternity and also can we have sex?' or something like that.

"I…I know you do…I know." Said Masami. She let him kiss her again. She kissed him back, eventually. It was better if she closed her eyes. If she closed her eyes she could remember…things that she should not have been remembering. The way that it had…just…been. So intimate. She wished…she had been without him…or anyone…for so long…

And it wasn't bad.

It was…ok.

Because she still loved her husband. Even after all that he put her through…she still loved him. Even though, afterwards, she felt so trapped. She was trapped there, with him, in that bed and that room…and she wanted so badly to climb out the window…to climb out and just….just run away….she had no idea where…but she waned to…

But she didn't.

"Masami…you're so…you're so beautiful."

But she really wanted to.