This was the only way.

There was no other way. Masami he tried every other way. There was none. There was nothing else that she could do. Even now, in the early hours of the morning, she was thinking. She was trying to think up some brilliant plan, some eureka moment, in which she could leave with both of her children in two. Shigeko and Sho. There had to be some way where she could leave with both of them and start a new life. A life far away from this place.

There was no way.

Shigeko's aura was too bright. Masami would only get away if she could slip away, become a needle in a haystack, and she couldn't do that with her daughter. Sho had the same problem. Fukuda said that Sho had an aura, it was there but not as bright as his sister's. He was noticeable too. The people who followed her, the people her husband hired, were bad at following her when she was on her own. It took a while but she could shake them. She couldn't shake them with both of her children.

Or even just one.

She had tried to run away just her and Sho. She had spent the entire day ta the train station trying to leave with him. To leave with him and never look back…but she just couldn't shake the people following her. Not with Sho in tow. She would have to leave her son behind…and her daughter…and there was nothing that she could do.

This was the only way.

Today was the day. Fukuda said that Touichirou would be leaving the country again soon. There was something that he needed to look into and apparently it was important. So important that it could have turned into another long trip. The last long trip had taken months…and Masami….she couldn't have taken the children with her even if her husband was away. Apparently when he was out of the country he had teams of people watching her every move. Now there were people just sort of…around. She knew that there was a guard posted outside of their house twenty four hours a day but the rest of them he had to order to follow her. When he was away it was even worse…

She wouldn't get past the front door.

This was the only way. It was now or never. Today or never. She had tried with both of the kids, then with just Sho, and she knew that her best bet was by herself. She had to…to abandon her children. Shigeko. She was abandoning Shigeko. Sho was different. Touichirou had been disappointed in Sho….and he had always loved Shigeko. He would never let Shigeko go for as long as they both lived. Sho…Masami wondered if he even wanted Sho.

There was a plan.

Fukuda was invaluable. He was close to Touichirou. They had known each other for years, since before she had even met Touichirou, and he was trusted completely. He was also close to the family. To the children. Touichirou…he would not have taken the children with him and if by some miracle he did…she knew which child he would be ok with leaving behind. With losing. Hell, this might even be a good thing for Touichirou. Now he could go to the orphanage and pick out the son he'd always wanted, too. He could stop off on the way home and pick out the perfect wife, too, whatever it was he wanted in a wife. In a partner. It was obvious to Masami that she was nowhere near enough for him.

If she had been enough for him he would have held her without being told.

If she had been enough for him he would have kissed her without being told.

If she had been enough for him he would have stuck around and not gone traipsing all over the world without a thought to his own wife.

If she had been enough for him then he wouldn't have been involved in all of the shady shit he was involved in. He would have given some thought to the danger he was putting her and the children in.

If she had been enough for him he wouldn't have sent people to stalk her even before the thought of leaving had ever even crossed her mind.

If she had been enough for him then he would have been laying in that bed beside her. He wasn't. It was early, the sky had just started turning blue, and he was off in his office doing whatever it was that he did. According to Fukuda she was better off not knowing. She was better off not knowing even a tenth of what her husband got up to….shady shit. All of the shady shit that she could think up he was probably involved in.

She was better off without him.

But she also wanted…she wanted to have been able to look at him for one last time. She had been asleep when he came to bed and hadn't even noticed him getting up. She wasn't going to stop by his office and offer her goodbyes. Tell him that she was going and that he had pushed her to it. No…that would have been stupid. The stupidest thing that she could have done. She'd leave a note in the kitchen. She'd tell him that she was headed off to the store to get some fresh fish or vegetables or something. Or that she was headed off to Starbucks or something.

Not that she was headed off to parts unknown.

She sat up from her bed for the last time. This had been their bed for seven years now. She had moved in with him long before Sho had been born. Right about the time when the test came back positive and she was making some hard choices. She had been amazed, swept off her feet, that he had stepped up so quickly. There had been no discussion of options. She had told him that she was pregnant and then he just said that they could get married…and then he came back with a ring for her…and then the rest was history. He hadn't even asked her what she wanted…

It was Touichirou's world. She just lived in it.

This was Touichirou's house…and she didn't live in it anymore. She wasn't taking anything with her. Not even clothes. She would even ditch her purse as soon as she could. Fukuda had another for her at his place. He had clothes and a bag and even new shoes for her. Drab things. Things that she never would have worn. Her closet was opened. She should have closed it. Touichirou was slightly paranoid about one of the kids hiding in there again. Well he was slightly paranoid about everything. It wasn't like they were doing anything that would traumatize the kids anyway. They hadn't since that night after he came back. For such a selfish man he was very giving in bed….which was about the only thing that she would miss about him.

She got out of bed for the last time.

She wouldn't miss the way he stared at her. She wouldn't miss the way he was incapable, totally incapable, of holding her even though they had been apart for weeks or even months. She wouldn't miss the way he treated her more like a maid and short order cook instead of a wife. A partner. She would miss the way he never even though about her, how she felt or what she wanted, and lived his life as if he were the only one in the world. Like the rest of them were CPU characters in one of the kids' games…

She went to her closet for the last time.

No kids back there. No, they'd still be in bed. They slept later and later as the summer went on…Touichirou would have a hell of a time getting them up for school…she was not crying. She brushed the back of her hand across her eyes and flipped through her clothes. The last time she would ever stand there and wonder what dress to wear. She'd never get to dress like this again. The colors and patterns…and the expensive labels…she would never dress like this again. She couldn't. She had a drab wardrobe of cheap white, grey, brown, and black things waiting for her all packed up at Fukuda's…he was risking his life for her and here she was lamenting the fact that she would never wear the violet dress with the velvet collar again….her clothes didn't matter. Nothing mattered but getting out and figuring out what she would do next.

She took her yellow dress out of her closet.

Shigeko loved this dress. She loved the color and the texture of the fabric and the fact that it was the best dress for twirling around in that Masami owned by far. She had promised this dress to Shigeko when she grew up. She had…she had promised Shigeko a lot of things. She had promised to walk her into her new classroom this year…she had promised to teach her to paint her nails…she had promised to teach her how to wear makeup…she had promised to take her to the cat shelter again…she had made so many promises to her daughter. She was going to miss out on so much in Shigeko's life. Going through elementary school…middle school….high school…university. Her first love. Marriage. The birth of her children. Masami would miss all of it….and Touichirou would be…but he wouldn't give a damn…

She couldn't take Shigeko with her.

Shigeko would be all alone with Touichirou. She'd grow up without a mother. There were so many things in Shigeko's life that needed a mother's touch. Things that Touichirou wouldn't have been able to help her with even if he could get away from his shady work and be a father for ten seconds. Shigeko…she was only seven…but she wouldn't be seven forever. She'd be eight and then nine and ten and eleven and twelve and then she'd start puberty around those years and Touichirou had no idea how to help her through that. Through any of it. Her first real crush. Her first bra. Her first period. Pretty much anything that she would have needed help with. There was still so much to teach her…

Masami tossed her nighshirt into the hamper and put her yellow dress on.

There was still so much she had to teach both of the kids. Sho…she was leaving Sho…for the time being at least. Fukuda said that Shigeko was the jewel in Touichirou's and he would never let her go but Sho….they had never gotten on. If Sho were to go missing one day…Fukuda said that it most likely wouldn't have been a manhunt to find him again. Sho would come back to her one day…and then she could teach him all the things he needed to know. How to be sweet and kind and gentle and nothing like his father. How to be a man, a real man, not like his father. How being a man meant more than getting a woman pregnant and then providing for her and the child. How being a man meant being there for his wife…or whoever else he chose to be with. It might have been too early to tell, Sho was only six after all, but she knew that she would love him no matter who he chose to spend his life with. Touichirou…he never would have accepted Sho…and he didn't accept him now. Sho…one way or another he would come back to her.

Masami went to her drawers and put some socks on.

She would get her son back. She would be there for him. She had made her choice…not that there was any choice at all. Shigeko….he would turn the Earth upside down and inside out searching for her. For his wife and son….well he had never paid them much attention to begin with. He had said, before, that he would have noticed if she just swapped places with another woman…but Masami doubted that. He didn't want a wife. He wanted a maid and a nanny and a cook and an occasional call girl. He was rich as all get out, he could afford to have all the help he needed. He never even said that he loved her…it didn't matter. She was done with him.

She tied her hair back.

No time to shower. If she showered then she might have started to have second thoughts. No. The best thing to do was to get up and get out and just…leave all of this behind. This life she had been living. This life that she had been going through the motions of. She would miss her children but she would not live this life. The life of a kept woman. That was what she was at the end of the day, a kept woman. She wouldn't miss it. Life would be hard, especially after living like this, but she would survive. She hadn't worked in years and couldn't go to her family for support, that would be the first place he would look, and she couldn't indulge in her wild fantasies of running away with Fukuda either. She'd have to truly support herself for the first time in her life. She had lived with her parents for her entire life, barring a few years in the dorms at her university, and after she had gotten pregnant with Sho she lived here….she hadn't even had to work, not for real, since she had been….

She grabbed her purse.

She had money. A lot of it. The money was free as the air in the Suzuki household. Touichirou never checked the family finances. There was always money for whatever he needed. Whatever they needed. Even things that they didn't need. Why the children needed their own tablets…she would never heard the dueling sounds of them trying to play their games at full volume while sitting side by side again….she was not crying. She could not cry. She would not cry because…because she could not have seconds thoughts. She could go, save herself, save Sho later on, and then they could live their best lives or the entire family could stay here and just…carry on. Carry on as they had been carrying on for years. She could not carry on anymore…

She checked her phone.

And then put it back on the charger.

She had a burner phone. She had a burner phone, almost two million yen in cash and jewelry, and a hair dye kit. She would not take her phone. She would ditch her bag as soon as she could. She would lose her stalkers and then head over to Fukuda's apartment by way of back roads, cutting through two shopping centers, and walking under a bridge. He was watched too but not nearly as stringently as her family was. Plus it was still early. The shift change hadn't happened yet and according to him a lot of the people following her were useless. Not even proper espers, he had said, Awakened….whatever that meant. She didn't have an aura, anyway, so once she lost them she'd become a needle in a haystack. Once she cut and dyed her hair…

She'd be unrecognizable.

She had a very common name. Suzuki. Suzuki Masami. She would dye her hair a common shade of black and cut it short…and then wear the drabbest clothes imaginable…and then she would just…disappear. Live off her savings until Fukuda told her the heat died down and then…start her new life. It was…she felt like vomiting. A new life. She'd….the sky was the limit…she could do…not anything. She had no CV anyway. Nothing but volunteering and a university degree in nonsense. She did speak fluent English and Japanese….

Not the best job.

But she had money and that would keep her afloat. She'd have to be the soul breadwinner. Money wouldn't grow on trees anymore. Sho…he would need so much. School uniforms and school fees and doctor's fees, she wouldn't use his insurance card unless she absolutely had to, and toys and food and…and she would do it. She would provide for her son. She would give him the life that he should have had from the beginning. A life filled with love, all the love that she should have been giving him over the years…the love that his father should have been giving him. Even if it was in some tiny shoebox apartment in a terrible neighborhood in some far off city she would give him the best life she could.

She made her bed for the last time.

She would give Sho the best life that she could. Him and her. No father. She did not want…she did not want that. Not with anyone but Fukuda…and that could never happen. Fukuda was in too deep, he said, and for him the only way out was death. Touichirou was planning something bug but unfeasible. That was what Fukuda had said. Touichirou was planning on ruling the world…it would blow up in his face, of course, but to think that all these years…the stories that he had been telling the children were real…he really was planning on taking over the world….

She closed her bedroom door for the last time.

The house was freezing, as usual. Touichirou had never had an air conditioner as a child. Now he pair and arm and a leg to turn this house, three houses put together in actuality, into a walk in freezer. She hoped…she hoped that the children would be warm while she was gone. That they'd be good to each other. They had been fighting like cats and dogs lately…she wished that she could have taken…taken them both…even if Shigeko wouldn't have wanted to go. Even if she was so much like her father it was uncanny. Even though she was seven going on forty, it seemed, and even though she didn't much care for her own mother….she had said that given the choice she would choose her father….and she was so much like him already…Masami knew that she could not save her daughter. It was too late. She couldn't give Shigeko the life she needed. Sho was barely an esper. Shigeko…she was a prodigy. Fukuda had said so as had Touichirou. That was why she had been abandoned by her biological parents in the first place. She was an esper, a powerful one, and she could not always control that power…and Masami had no way of stopping her once she lost control….so she was better off.

Masami walked down the hallway for the last time.

There were plastic animals all over the floor. She turned her dress into a basket and collected them. She was…this was the last time she would ever clean up one of their messes. How many times had she done this before? Without even a thought? Now she was…this was the last time….she would see Sho again. Fukuda said that he would bring her Sho the first chance he got. Sho would join her and they would have a new life together and then he would leave his toys all over the floor and she'd pick them up for him and-and-and-

She opened her children's bedroom door for the last time.

The curtains were drawn. The room was dark. There were more toys on the floor. Masami put Sho's plastic animals in his plastic animal bin. This room was a disaster area. There were toys everywhere…the pieces to a puzzle…socks without matches….legos….clothes…so many clothes. Some of which were Shigeko's. Masami picked up a dress. Clean. Shigeko had left a clean, thirty thousand yen, dress right on the floor…though that might have been Sho's doing. He could be so destructive when he got upset. She had always tried to teach him to be a sweet, gentle, boy…and he would. When she started her new life and the heat died down Sho would be the sweet, kind, gentle little boy that she had always wanted him to be. That she had always known that he could be.

She tucked her son in for the last time.

He had kicked his covers off in his sleep. He needed to stay covered. It was freezing in their room and thee were his summer Zootopia pajamas, not his winter Zootopia pajamas. He could get chilled…he got chilled so easily…even though he was so warm now. He was so warm and soft…she had forgotten how soft his skin was. She had marveled at it, when he had been born, how soft his skin was. Even though he had been covered in eczema his skin was so soft….and his hair had been so soft….and it still was. Her boy. Her sweet little boy…she let her hand linger on his back. He turned around but did not wake up.

She spoke to her son for what felt like the last time.

"Sho…mommy loves you. Mommy will always love you even if…if even she's not right there with you. Mommy loves you and she is always thinking of you. You're my sweet, kind, gentle boy and we…we'll be together again. Someday we'll be together and…and I can give you the life you should have had. One with friends and…and a mother who can always be there for you…and you'll be so happy. We'll even get you a cat or a dog or a hamster or a canary…whatever you want….whatever you want because…you are so loved. I love you so much." Said Masami. She whispered it softly, so softly she could barely even hear her own voice. She wished that he would have woken up. Woken up and thrown his arms around her and begged her to stay…

He did not.

Masami kissed the top of his head for what felt like the last time. He was asleep. Had he been awake he would have shouted at her that he was not a baby anymore and he would have rubbed her kiss off like it was the kiss of death. But he was not awake. He was asleep and he couldn't do a thing to stop her from showing him just how much she loved him. He was six….she didn't hold the way he was against him…and she had no idea when she would see him again? Would he be seven? Eight? Nine? Ten? Older? Would the damage have already been done by then? Would he have even wanted to be near her, to go with Fukuda to be with her? Or would he….would he resent her? She didn't know and she wasn't about to go and find the kids' magic eight ball and ask it. She just knew…she knew that this was the only way…even though she so desperately wished that there was some other way…

She kissed her son on the head again.

And then she crossed the room and kissed her daughter.

For the last time. This would be the last time that she ever laid on eyes Shigeko. Her daughter. The little orphan that her husband had brought home half a decade ago. She had been so small then…and she was still so small. She was so small and helpless and…and Masami had taught her what she could. She wouldn't be there to help Shigeko become a woman. She was still a little girl…and there was still so much to teach her. She was so…she needed her mother…but Masami was no kind of mother to her. Even before this she hadn't been what Shigeko needed. Who she needed. Now…now there was no other way. This was goodbye.

She took the box of chocolates from Shigeko's hands.

Old. Very old. These were from White Day….Masami remembered that day. The day she had caught Shigeko using her powers. The day she had…the day her daughter had gotten her first ever box of White Day chocolates, apparently. Shigeko…she hadn't told her. Her first crush….or at least the first time a boy had ever shown interest in her…and Masami hadn't known. She put the box of chocolates on Shigeko's nightstand. She wanted to wake her daughter up and get all the details…how had she missed this? Her own Daughter's first romantic experience…Shigeko hadn't come to her with it…well of course she hadn't. Why would she have? Masami had been so angry with her that day…this was on her. Everything about their relationship up to this point was on her…

She spoke to her daughter for the last time.

"Shigeko….I love you. I know that you and I…things have been difficult lately…but know that I love you. It hasn't been easy all these years but I do love you. I would…I would take you if I could but I can't. You…you deserve so much better than what I can be. You need someone other than me. Shigeko…when you were two years old…you came to us. You came to us as a gift. When God sends you a blessing you…you're supposed to treat it better than I've treated you. I have...I have to go now but you'll always be with me and I will always be with you…you will always be with me. Even if I won't be with you physically. Even if I won't be around to watch you grow up and become a woman….I will always be with you and you will always be with me. You…you will always be my daughter." Said Masami. She said nothing more. A tear, a single one, hit the mattress with a plop. It was time to go. It was time to go because if she didn't go now then she would never go. Not that she wanted to go, to leave her son and daughter, but she had to.

She had no choice.

This was the only way.