Mob could count the number of times she had ridden in a car on one hand.

Sho could, too, so maybe they would need two hands to count the number of times they had ridden in cars. That was what they were doing, now, because dad had told them to amuse themselves.

"There was the time when a car came to take me and…you….to school." Said Mob as she raised another finger into the air.

"And there was the time, too, when a car came to take us to that big park with the slide that you were too scared to go down." Said Sho raising one of his fingers into the air. They didn't have a lot of times when they had ridden in cars. It was just not something that they did. They had usually just walked everywhere…with mom….

It hurt to think about her.

So he went back to thinking of times when they had ridden in cars. He liked this, riding in the car. It was fun to watch the world go by. Also there windows went up and down with a button. There was even a button to open up the window on the roof of the car. This was fun. Well Sho thought that it was fun. Dad had just said that they were being annoying.

"I went down the slide. I mean it took a while for me to be brave enough but I went down the slide." Said Mob. It was better to think of good things. Times they had gone for rides in the car, fun places they had gone, times when they were happy. They had to think of good things and talk about good things because that way they wouldn't think about what was happening now.

Mom had been gone for a long time.

And Dad was finally taking them on a trip!

"Yeah, because I had to go down with you. Those big kids were all like 'go, little kids, go' and we were all like 'no, big kids, no' and then we had to go down the slide together even though we could have gotten stuck and died." Said Sho. Mom was the one who said that it wasn't safe to go down the tube slides together. She said that the slides with the opened tops were ok but they could have gotten stuck in the tube slides. She had been worried when they came out the bottom. She had run so fast over to them…

And now she was far away from them.

And they were going far away from her, too. Dad was taking them on a trip. Fukuda had come by and offered to take care of them but dad had said that it would have been stupid to leave them in the house where they would probably end up burning it down or something. Then a bunch of those weird guys, the ones who called dad 'President Suzuki' came in and packed up a bunch of their clothes and some of their toys and their tablets and stuff and then dad said that they would all be going on a trip to a country that Sho had forgotten the name of.

Dad was finally taking them with him!

…..but mom wasn't coming.

"I remember. Thank you for sliding with me even though we didn't slide as fast because we were too people and also I kept on slowing us down. It was still nice of you to help me, Sho." said Mob. She wondered if there were any big parks where they were going. Dad said that they had to be on their best behavior and not to embarrass him. He looked at Sho when he said that. She was supposed to make sure that Sho was good. Dad didn't say that but Mob knew that her job as the big sister was to take care of her little brother. She had to make sure that he was good and he was safe and all of that important stuff. Mom used to do that.

But Mom wasn't around anymore.

Mob had never prayed before. Mom said that she was a Buddhist when she was a kid and that dad wasn't a religious person, which meant that neither of her parents believed in God, but Mom had also said that she could make her own choices about those things. She didn't know who she was praying to or how to pray but she prayed to whoever was listening, these past few nights, to bring her mom back. She even left an offering of cookies and milk. If it worked for Santa Clause then maybe it worked for whoever was in charge of bringing moms back, too.

She had just told Sho and dad that she was practicing for Christmas.

Which was not a lie. If Santa was the one who decided to bring mom back then she really had been practicing for Christmas. Maybe she would wake up on Christmas morning there would be a big box with shiny paper and a big bow on it and then she'd open the box, well she would wait or Sho first because that was the polite thing to do, and then they would open the box and mom would be in there! And she wouldn't have suffocated either because the box would have had air holes or something. Mom would have been back and everything would have been ok again and-

It was nowhere near Christmas.

"Hey, well, I couldn't let you hold up the line all day. We still had to jump in the ball pit and do the zip line and stuff." Said Sho

"I remember that. The ball pit was fun but I didn't try the zip line. It was too scary." Said Mob

"No, you were just afraid of people seeing your underwear. I don't know why you won't just put on pants." Said Sho

"Because pants are uncomfortable. I don't know how boys can go around wearing pants all day. I'd hate it." Said Mob. She was kind of cold, though. This car had cold seats. That was because they were made of leather and also dad made the driver, who was named Driver, turn the air conditioner up all the way. Mob sort of wished that she had been wearing long socks or even tights under his skirt. She wondered if the country they were going to would be warm. Or maybe it was like how they talked about seasons and the hemisphere's in school and they were going to the other side of the world and it would be winter and she would have forgotten to put on tights but it would be ok because it would be Christmas because Christmas came in the winter and then mom would be back…or something like that.

"I don't know how girls can go around with no pants on all day. You always have to be worried about people seeing your underwear. Who needs that?" said Sho

"You don't always have to worry about that, just when you're running and jumping and stuff. Stuff that you're not supposed to." Said Mob

"That's just stuff that you say I'm not supposed to do…and you're not the boss of me anyway." Said Sho. She thought that just because she was older and a girl she got to replace mom. Well she didn't. Sho would listen to dad, he was scary, but not to big sis. No matter how much she thought that she was mom, now. She wasn't mom. Mom was mom and even if she wasn't there she would always be mom.

"Ok, I'm not the boss of you but dad is. Dad said that we aren't supposed to run around or jump or do stuff like that." Said Mob. The list of things that they were not allowed to do seemed longer, sometimes, than the list of things that they were allowed to do…but it was just easier if she didn't go around questioning dad. He didn't like that at all.

"Dad says a lot of things…" muttered Sho. He eyed dad. He was looking at his phone. They were all in the backseat together. Well dad was sitting in front of them. This car had a lot of space in the back. Usually the cars that came for dad were little cars. He'd probably gotten this especially for him and big sis. Maybe he even…wanted…them to come. That makes no sense though, knowing dad, he was probably just mad because there was no one to watch them.

Dad said that Fukuda couldn't watch them.

Then dad said that Fukuda was overstepping again, whatever that meant. Dad should have left them with Fukuda. Maybe then mom would have come back. He and big sis suspected that mom and Fukuda were secretly best friends. That was why they used to hang out together all the time and have sleepovers and stuff. Maybe if mom wouldn't come back for them she would at least come back for her best friend.

Sho missed mom so much he could have sworn that he smelled her when he hugged Fukuda goodbye.

She smelled like cinnamon a lot of the time. Cinnamon was her favorite thing to put on everything. Cinnamon was awesome. Maybe that was why Fukuda had smelled like cinnamon, because it was awesome, and not because he missed mom so much that he poured out a bunch of cinnamon on himself so he could smell like mom.

Sho pulled his shirt up over his nose and breathed in.

"Yes, I do, and I hear a lot of things as well." Said Suzuki. A trip with the children. A work trip, not a wander aimlessly and try to make sense of the world around him, trip. He had waited for as long as he could for Masami to either come to her senses or come back to him dead…he didn't want that last one at all but he accepted the possibility that something terrible had happened to her…and he simply could not wait anymore. Some matters demanded his in person attention…

And he would have gone mad had he stayed in that house any longer.

She lingered in their home like a spirit he could not exorcise. She was in the scent she left in their bed, the clothes she left in their closet, the bottle of soap on the side of their bathtub. She was everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Every moment in that house put more and more strain on his control until he just…could not be there anymore. His work had been piling up anyway. Fukuda has reminded him of that.

He may have been an overstepping brownnoser but he had a point.

He had come to their door earlier offering up his services as a nanny so that Suzuki could attend to the business of running Claw. At first there had been anger…but then came shame. He had been building Claw up since before he had even known that Masami existed and now he was falling apart due to her absence. He was no kind of leader and he was setting no kind of example for Son and Daughter. What kind of man would Son become if he saw his father falling to pieces like that? What kind of man would Daughter choose when she came of age if her only example of what to expect in a man was her father losing control like that? He had them to think about, his two greatest….his greatest investment. He had to be the man he knew himself to be, not the man who he had allowed himself to be. He had to work for who he was.

He could not lose control.

And he could not go to pieces.

So he told Fukuda to pack and meet him at the First Division. He didn't feel like travelling with the man. No, he was becoming too much of a sycophant. He had hired Fukuda to be a healer, not a kiss up, and while Suzuki did enjoy some kissing up even he had his limits. No, he didn't need that right now. Now he needed to work. Now he needed to forget.

And now he needed to figure out what to do with the children.

Very few people knew that he had children. Daughter was…Daughter would be impossible to hide. She shone too brightly. She was too much. Son hardly shone at all. He would be easier to hide…but that wouldn't work either. Son and Daughter, for irrational reasons that he was not privy to, became frightened when they were separated. Nothing good came of Daughter becoming frightened. There was enough damage in the house to prove that fact.

Nothing good came of striking Daughter.

Not that he was planning to. Daughter was a good child, she just needed to work on keeping Son in line. He was a very busy man and he could not attend to his children…so he had might as well let people figure out that the two little humans trailing off behind him were his children. Yes…that would be fine. He had already dealt with anyone who had been stupid enough to plot against him. Nobody would try to harm him by going through his children.

Or his wife.

It was clear that she did not want to be found. She had found a way to disappear completely and never be found and he…he had no idea why. He had always treated her so well. No matter what she wanted he gave it to her…aside from a pet…but the children were kind of like pets. Like squawking birds or yapping dogs. They were small and annoying creatures that required constant care…though maybe he should have just let Masami get a pet if it meant that much to her…

She hadn't left because of a pet.

He had no idea why she left but he knew that it had nothing at all to do with the fact that he had no allowed her to get a dog or a cat or a whatever it was that she wanted. People did not leave because of flimsy reasons like that….though people had not always made the most sense to him. Take the children and their constant chatter. They were off to a whole other country, they so rarely even left the boundaries of their neighborhood, but they were chattering endlessly about places that they had been in the prison that had been their existence. There was a whole world out there and since the day that had been born, Son had been born, he had been looking forward to the day when he could show it to him.

Of course in this fantasy, in the rare times when he would permit himself this fantasy, Son was a grown man.

Also there hadn't been a Daughter at the start of this fantasy. She came later. Masami occasionally featured but he knew that the things he did were far too dangerous for her. She could not climb Everest in her plain shoes. She could not dive down into the Mariana's Trench to see what existed in the depths. She could not fly to the North Pole and just watch the glaciers move. She was so fragile….

And he could have kept her safe.

But then she had decided to leave him. He did not and would never understand why she had left. He had never been cruel to her, never even treated her poorly. She had everything, almost everything, that she had ever wanted. He did not understand her. He could not begin to understand her. She was gone from the house and she was gone from his fantasy of taking his adult children with him to see the world as he had seen it when he was young. Younger. He wasn't old yet.

But oh how these children would age him.

There were charging ports on the plane. They could charge their tablets and give him a moment's peace and quiet. There was internet….not all of his planes had internet….and that was something that he would have to look into. He would have to look into clothes for them, too, because they grew like weeds. He would also have to look into tutors for them because only was he going to become permanently nomadic, no sense in going back to the house now, he was not going to put them in school so they could be ruined by the other children.

There really was no need to have any other children around Son and Daughter at all.

They had each other and they would socialize with each other and become functional people with each other. They would grow up together to become full and complete people just like he was. Why wouldn't' they? They were his children…one of them was his child…no, they both were. He had raised them both after all. Yes, they might even be better off being raised by him full time.

They would need new shoes and clothes eventually.

They would need to be fed three times a day.

They would need more playthings.

They would need to learn English, Mandarin, and Hindi just to get by.

They would need to learn a lot of things because he was not raising idiots.

These children were a collection of needs that he was now expected to fulfil. He was not overwhelmed…even though now he was expected to be both father and mother at the same time…but he was not overwhelmed. Just fulfil their needs and find ways to occupy their time. Humans had been raising children since there had been humans on this Earth. He could do this. He would do this.

He had no choice but to do this.

The children were making a racket now as they approached the airfield. He knew that plane and yes, it did have internet. Good. At least the children would be kept occupied…and they needed to be occupied. They were both getting excited, even Daughter, and he had no idea why. It was just an airplane. A metal box that flew in the sky. There was nothing worth noting about it…but then again they had been reminiscing about the times that they had been in cars…the few and far between times…this was their first time seeing a plane. This was their first time flying.

They'd soon get used to flying.