Masami was gone.
Vanished into thin air. Gone. There was no trace of her. He had turned the city upside down looking for her and still…nothing. He checked neighboring cities. Nothing. He was starting to look for her outside of Japan's borders. He had to find her. She was not…people did not just vanish into thin air. Well they did but Masami was no teleporter. He would have noticed, by now, if she was.
She was just gone.
In those first few days he had suspected foul play. He had lost count of the people who wanted him dead or at least hurt. It would have made sense that someone would have taken his wife just to hurt him. For ransom or for murder or for all of the other reasons that people kidnapped women for. It had taken days to sort out all of his known enemies. Most were either dead or were wishing they were. Still none of them had taken Masami. Most of them hadn't even known that he was married…
That was the truth. A telepathy saw to that.
After his enemies had been crushed and defeated he allowed another, much worse, thought to enter his mind. She had left of her own volition. Once a search of every hospital, police station, and women's shelter turned up cold he decided that…since she had not been taken or hurt she must have just…left. His first thought, well before he suspected that she had been kidnapped, was that some harm had come to her. Normal people were so fragile. She could have been murdered or hit by a car or gotten heat stroke or even just gotten lost. So he looked for her…and he did not find her….
He even checked the morgue.
He checked several morgues. The city morgue, the morgues of hospitals, any morgue that he could find. Because she was fragile. Because her life could have ended at any time. He had known this to be a fact since the day he had first realized his feelings for her. She was fragile and he cared if she lived or died. She was the only person he could ever remember caring about in that way. It would have been distressing if one of the children were to perish, Daughter was valuable and Son was…his son…but their deaths did not inspire nearly the amount of bone crushing, heart stopping, pain that Masami's would have.
She was not in any morgue.
This left the last option. She had left of her own volition. This brings with it it's own brand of heart stopping, bone crushing, pain. She had last been seen at the underground shopping center getting a cup of coffee. She had just…vanished….according to the idiots he had sent to follow her. She had been there one moment and then she had been gone the next. That was not possible. Everyone was somewhere and she had to be somewhere…had to have been hiding somewhere….hiding from him….
But why?
He cared for her. He had always cared for her since the day he had met her. When he walked away from that chance encounter with a phone number and an unpleasantly pleasant feeling settling into his chest. He had cared for her and taken care of her since they'd wed. She was happy here. She had no reason to be unhappy. The house was spacious, the money was abundant, and she had two children to dote on. He had been a good husband and had provided her with everything that she had ever wanted or needed….except for a pet…but she would not have just…just left…for that reason….right? That was not a good reason for someone to leave at all. A good reason would have been if he had been a subpar provider or a womanizer or if he had treated her cruelly. But he had never done anything of the sort. He had always been good to her. He had always treated her like the queen she was…so why had she left?
He wished that it were foul play.
He wished that she had been injured.
He wished that she had simply lost her way.
He almost wished that she were dead. He didn't know which would have hurt worse. Her being dead or having had left him. Both were…both made him almost lose control. He had lost control, before, and taken part of the house with him. When he had gotten word that his wife was nowhere to be found. When that idiot had darkened his doorstep and told him that the search had turned up nothing. When he slammed the door shut…and then remembered nothing….but now the genkan and dining room are one continuous space….and the children had been quite frightened.
"Sho! Don't go in there! You remember what happened!" said Daughter. He could see and hear her clearly through the bedroom wall. He was in his room, now, the one he and Masami had shared since before Son was born. He was on the bed he and Masami had shared countless times. What he wouldn't have given to have shared this bed with her one more time. Not even sexually, just to have woken up and watched her sleep…she was so beautiful when she slept….what he wouldn't have given….
"You're not the boss of me! You're not mom!"…and what he would have given for a moment's peace! Honestly. Without their mother the children had taken to following him around like a pair of ducklings. He normally would not have minded, well he would not have minded Daughter, but now Son and Daughter….they were little aggravations.
"I know I'm not mom, Sho, but dad said that we weren't supposed to bother him unless we were hungry or the house was on fire. We just ate lunch and the house isn't on fire so we need to leave him alone." Said Daughter. He would have thought that she would have been able to take better care of her brother. It had been almost two weeks since their mother left…vanished…and Daughter had proven that while she had some skill to her she was no Masami. She had little control over Son and she was, frankly, not the best at keeping house or cooking meals. Perhaps it was her age. He didn't know.
All the little things that Masami had done for him….they weren't being done now.
"It's not on fire yet." Said Son. Suzuki wondered if it would have been worth it to roll out of bed and knock some sense into Son. The last thing he needed was a fire. A fire would have meant work would have needed to be done on the house, he still needed to find someone to fix the genkan wall, and also the children could have injured themselves. If they injured themselves then he would have had to pull Fukuda off of the search for Masami.
Currently his job was to stakeout the places she frequented. He couldn't move Fukuda far from the children. They were accident prone little monsters after all.
"Sho! If you go and start a fire you know that dad's going to punish you! And then mom'll be mad too, once she comes home." Said Daughter. Suzuki wanted to knock some sense into Daughter, too, and he disliked striking her. He hadn't had to strike her before this, before she starting making an annoyance out of herself, and he did not like it. Maybe it was her gender or maybe it was the fact that she tended to lose control when she was struck…and also Son became insufferable….or maybe he was just tired. Maybe he was just tired of having to deal with them nonstop day in and day out.
Maybe he needed a nanny.
"She isn't coming back and you know it." Said Son. Now Suzuki was ready to strike him. He had made it clear to both of them that they were not to mention their mother ever again. He would rescind the order when Masami was found, of course, but as of now he did not want to hear about her. He did not want to think about her….and he did not want to think about how irrational he was being. She was gone. When she was found, and it was a when, he would…he did not know what he would do. Become angry with her? Throw himself on the ground and cling to her ankles as if he were one of the children? Cast her aside?
He could never cast her aside.
And he would never do anything to punish her.
So maybe the best course of action would be to pretend that she had been on holiday….and just forget all of this nastiness. He could….he would just exorcise all of this from his memory. Yes, if Masami were to step through that doorway as if nothing had gone wrong then he would have….he would have pretended that nothing had happened. Maybe she had just been afflicted with some wanderlust, he knew it well, and she had just decided to leave….without telling anyone where she was going…and leaving her phone…and taking tens of thousands of yen from their bank account…and leaving her checkbook and credit cards….and all of her jewelry….
She wasn't planning on coming back.
"She is too coming back, Sho, you know she is. She's our mom and she wouldn't just leave us like this. She's our mom and…and she loves us." Said Daughter. He can feel his powers threatening to spill from his vessel. He can see his aura flaring. He had told them time and time again not to mention their mother and to leave him alone unless they needed something. He would have expected this level of disobedience from Son but not from Daughter of all people….
How was he supposed to deal with the two of them?
He had been planning, before, on leaving the country. Not for a long time, there was no coup to deal with, but he had been planning on leaving…and now he couldn't. Not without Masami. Not without knowing that she would be back here waiting for him. He didn't care if, when he returned, she was waiting for him in her best dress with her makeup on and her hair set nicely and the kitchen full of warm breakfast types foods…he didn't care. He just wanted to come back home to her.
He would gladly have spent his entire life coming home to her.
"She is not!" shouted Son. There was a flash of his aura and a crash and that, well, that had been the last of it. Really. He had no idea what he was supposed to do with them without Masami…in her absence. She would come back. She had to come back. He would just….he could wait…he had no choice but to wait for her. He could not just take the children with him. They were hard enough to deal with in their own home. He could not take them with him.
He could barely deal with them now.
He got out of bed. They were being quarrelsome again. They tended to do that. Had they always been this quarrelsome? He did not know. Masami dealt with them. He couldn't…he didn't want to deal with them. There was very little in this world that he could not do. There were plenty of things in this world that he did not want to do, however.
Like this.
"Son. Daughter. Stop this." said Suzuki as he threw opened the door. Daughter was on the ground and Son was standing over her. Of course Son would have started it. He always started it. He was such an annoyance. Such an aggravation. Such a little-
He slammed Son back against the wall.
"Dad! Me and Sho were just-" said Daughter. She was prepared to come up with some excuse for Son's poor behavior. For her inability to control her brother. He had left her in charge. She was proving to be useless. He was sick and tired of dealing with useless people.
He slammed her against the wall, too.
With his powers, of course, because he was a cruel man. He so rarely actually struck his children. That was such a base and barbaric way to discipline them. He wasn't actually hurting them. They carried on, well Son carried on, Daughter apologized for making him strike her. Such a good Girl. She at least learned from her mistakes. Not like Son.
He let the children carry on.
He went back to his office. He had matters to attend to, many matters, and he had been letting them slip since Masami vanished. Left. Vanished. He had….he had to focus and get his work done because he was the linchpin of this organization. He was the only thing keeping Claw together. He was Claw. He could not let his mind get clouded with these matters. He had a wife. Now she was gone. Now he had to…to plan for the future….in case she never returned….
She would return.
But it could be some time before she returned. In that interim he had to….to get his own household in order before he attended to anything else. He needed….he was running out of clean clothes. Daughter…she was not much of a housekeeper….but she was only seven years old….and he had no idea what to expect from a seven year old. All of his research into children had taken place when they were toddlers. At this point he would have expected them to have been capable of taking care of themselves. They could read and had infinite information machines. They should have been able to take care of themselves…at least beyond what he had seen of them. Daughter, at least, should have been able to step in for her mother. She had been Masami's protégé for all of these years…right?
Or maybe Daughter was his protégé. Not Masami's.
He saw so much of Masami in their daughter. There was so much patience, there, and caring. She put up with her younger brother after all. Masami was adept at household management. It must have been difficult, the children were the neediest people he had ever encountered in his life, and somehow Masami had managed to keep them alive without losing her mind for all of these years…
Or maybe she had lost her mind.
Maybe that was why she had left. He didn't know. All he knew was that she was gone and now he was expected to take care of these needy little monsters all on his own…and it would be on his own. He was not getting a nanny, even temporarily, because that would be…if he made even semi-permanent arrangements….then it would be like assuming that Masami was gone forever…and she was not gone forever. She was just…
She was coming back.
He felt that pain in his chest again. In his eyes too, the corners of them, and for a moment he thinks that he's going to lose control and just….just cry. Like one of the children. Like a child. A small, weak, child. He wants…he wants….he wants Masami. He can't remember the last time he felt like this. Maybe…when Masami had been giving birth….and they had to filet her like a fish…and he was not exaggerating even though she said that he had been. He remembered her, on her recovery bed, her mid-section freshly stitched and their son sleeping in her arms…he remembered…
She took his hand.
She told him that everything was going to be alright.
And then she had called it ridiculous, the way he was being, because it had only been a little surgery. A routine surgery. She had even let him push her blanket to the side and pull her hospital shirt up and see the space where she had been bandaged…and stitched up…and he had felt like this. Women died in childbirth every single day. Seeing that her surgery had gone well…it hadn't put him at ease. It had made everything worse. It had…it had made him feel like this…
He had almost lost control.
And their new baby, Son, Boy, had started crying…
And Masami had…she had kissed him on the forehead and told him to stop being ridiculous. Then she rocked Boy until he stopped crying. Then she fed him. Even after she'd gone through….through all of that…she had still managed to hold it together. She was so strong…in some ways she was stronger than him…and that was one of the things that drew her to him…
That was one of the reasons he loved her.
That was what it was. As long as he was being weak…he could admit that he loved her. He loved her even though it was an imprecise word…a word that didn't even come close to encompassing the way he truly felt about her. How the sun rose and set with her. How she…she was perfect. She was perfection poured into the form of a woman. The woman. The most perfect woman in the history of existence. She was…she was his everything…and now she was gone. Now she was gone and now he had nothing. He was nothing. He had this feeling of…nothing…inside of him. Painful nothing. Like he had a black hole inside of himself and it was sucking everything inside of him dry….like he had nothing…and he was nothing…and…
And he needed Masami.
He needed her like he needed air. He would die without her. He felt it and he knew it. Instantly. He would die without her….and it hurt…and he was weak…and he hated himself. He hated himself so much in that moment that he wished for nothing more than the ability to exorcise himself…..and he should have…and maybe…
He was a complete person all on his own.
He exorcised that emotion. All of it. He took it and destroyed it like it was a stray spirit. He was not going to….to give into these feelings. He was not…he was a complete person all on his own and that…that was the way he was supposed to be. He was supposed to be…he was supposed to be better than this…better than what he was…
He was supposed to be better than this.
He lifted his head. He hadn't even been aware that he had put his head down. His head was down and everything that wasn't bolted down was up. Up in the air…and he was losing control…and he had to stop it. He had to stop it and….and he had to…he had to…
He had to be better than this.
He put everything back where it belonged. He was Suzuki Touichirou. He was better than this. He had spent his entire life trying to be better than this. He was…he was fine. So what if Masami was gone? She would either come back or she wouldn't. Him going to pieces wouldn't solve the problem. He had his own problems, immediate ones, to deal with. He had fire after fire after fire to put out so he had might as well get to it and-
An aura.
Another fire to put out. Not one of the Awakened, no, a natural esper….he knew that aura. Fukuda. But why would Fukuda be there? He wasn't injured…and the children…perhaps he had lost control, a little, when he punished them. Oh. He hoped that he hadn't truly harmed them. He was not a cruel man, not to his family, and even if he had been a cruel man he would not have risked damaging his own offspring or the child he had acquired.
He so hated when he lost control.
He went to see what it was that was the matter with the children. What was so wrong that Fukuda had to be called away from searching for their mother for. Their mother was missing and they were…well if he had hurt them then he was truly sorry. The two of them…his children…he was not going to lose his children as well.
Never.
He made his way to through the house. It was a mess. The children had, at some point, forgotten how to pick up after themselves. He swept the toys and books and bits and pieces of whatever to the side and he walked down the hallway. It seemed longer, then, but that must have been a trick of his perceptions due to his emotional state…and he shouldn't have even had an emotional state to begin with. He should have been fine. He should have been able to control his emotions and his powers. What sort of an example was he setting for his Daughter? What sort of an example was he setting for himself? He couldn't even control his most simple and basic of emotions….
He tried.
And he managed to succeed. Fukuda was in his house…and he had no reason to feel these irrational feelings. Even though Fukuda had overstepped time and time again when it came to his family…but that was just a sign of devotions. Devotion or…or just general kissing up. Either way he should not have bore Fukuda any ill will. He was a good and loyal employee. Good and loyal. Two things he had been soundly lacking. He was an asset, really, a real asset to Claw and to Suzuki himself.
He trusted Fukuda.
"You stay and keep your dad company, ok Little Lady?" he heard the tail end of whatever it was that they were talking about. Son had blood down the front of his shirt. His shirt was yellow. The blood showed. Had he shoved Son face first into the wall? He shouldn't have done that. He so hated damaging the children. They were his, after all, his and his alone….
Because their mother was gone.
"….I have to keep dad company…you're right." Said Daughter. Suzuki hung back. He watched the interactions between them all, the familiar way Fukuda was for his children, and…and he knew that the way he felt was irrational. He could trust Fukuda. He could trust Fukuda and…and he had no reason to worry.
Even though they were in the genkan.
And Son's shoes were on.
Daughter's were not.
Suzuki exorcised the emotions that he felt, that this brought forth inside of him. Son…there was no reason for Son to be going anywhere. There was no reason for him to even think of going anywhere. There was no reason for anyone in his family to be going anywhere. There was no reason to…he forced himself to calm down.
His aura had been visible.
And he was being watched.
"Hi dad. Sho's nose was bleeding a lot and it was crooked. Fukuda fixed it. He didn't cry once." Said Daughter. Son looked frightened, a little bit, and that…that was not what he had taught him. He looked….he had no reason to be frightened. At least his aura was showing, though, which was something.
"I take it he's better now." Said Suzuki. He watched Fukuda. Fukuda seemed perfectly calm. His aura was calm and he was calm….and he didn't even know what it was that he was even looking for. This was Fukuda. The man may have frequently overstepped, which was annoying, but he did not have a disloyal bone in his body. He was a healer. They were the good and loyal sorts. The kind of people who wouldn't dare do something so stupid as….as he didn't even know what he had been thinking. Sleep. He needed sleep. He hadn't slept in…he didn't even know. The bed…it was too empty and too big and too cold…the whole goddamned house was too cold….
Not a reason to wear shoes in the house, though.
"Yeah, I patched him up. He's fine now, boss." Said Fukuda. Calmly. Always so calmly. Well this wouldn't panic him, now would it? Masami was nothing to him, maybe a friend…a friendly acquaintance. Losing Masami would not have pulled the rug out from under him. He was probably just grateful to be out of the heat. What was it outside? 32? 34? He didn't know. Hot. It was high summer as Masami was fond of calling it.
"I'm fine, dad." Said Son. He was reluctant to make eye contact. He was clinging to Fukuda, too, even though he had no reason to be. Really, what was he so frightened of?
"I can see that. Why are you wearing shoes?" asked Suzuki
"Dad, I'm still in the genkan." Said Son
"He's still in the genkan." Said Daughter.
"Just thought we'd hang out in the yard for a little bit. Just seemed like you could use some peace, boss." Said Fukuda. Suzuki watched him carefully….not that he had any idea what it was the he was looking for. This was just Fukuda overstepping as usual. Suzuki really did need the peace. Son and Daughter…this house was not big enough for the three of them….
This was three houses strung together with wood and plaster. There was plenty of room.
"Fukuda. Do not overstep." Said Suzuki. There was plenty of room in the house and he…he had some irrational worries about letting Son out of his sight…even though Son was not always in sight…but he still….he did not like this feeling at all…
So he exorcised it.
"Sorry sir, really, the thing is that I was just thinking that-" said Fukuda
"You are not paid to think, you're paid to heal. Since you've healed my son you have no more reason to be here. Go back to searching for my wife. That is an order, Fukuda, not a request." Said Suzuki. Son protested. Daughter said nothing. She said nothing beyond bidding Fukuda adieu.
Really, that man needed to learn to stop overstepping so much. It wasn't earning him any points in Suzuki's book. He had a job to do, one far more important than giving into the children's constant neediness. He had to find Masami. She had to be found because she was somewhere. Everyone was somewhere and…and he knew how big the world could be…
But people did not just vanish into thin air. Normal people did not vanish into thin air.
Masami was not gone.