The best reason to wake up in France were the omelets.

He had an irrational longing to go home. There was no other word to describe it as besides irrational. A home was just a house, four walls and a roof, at this point. Without Masami he had no reason to go home. The children were here, his wife was gone, and French omelets were delicious. Light and buttery. Simple and unpretencious. Delicious. Masami always used too many eggs and put way too many fillings in when she made her omelets. Not enough butter, too, when she made them. Really the omelets here were much better.

They were.

And he had to get up, have breakfast, and start his day. Meetings, endless meetings. At some point those shell companies he owned actually turned into real companies that made real money, not just places to store the money he already had, and he needed to be there for some of the running of those companies so…yes, he needed to get up. Any minute now.

Any minute now.

The sun wasn't up yet. His body had sort of adjusted to the time change. It didn't matter. The minute he got used to the time change he'd have to leave again and race the sun across the globe, again, and mess up his sleep schedule….again. Well at least it was easier for him to deal with than the children. They had been insufferable on those first few days. Children, apparently, did not deal with exhaustion well.

They did not deal with anything well, it seemed.

Or maybe it was just Son. Daughter was coping very well with the changes in her life. She was a very adaptable child. He hardly ever even had to correct her these days. There had been a period where he'd had t corrected her in the same manner he did Son but she actually learned and became a better person for it. She really was a very good child.

He wished he had more of her.

If he had more of her then his life would have been a lot easier. No sign of Masami….but that was to be expected. He didn't know why he cared so much. She had already proven herself to be a traitor…so he didn't care if he ever saw her again. He hardly even thought about her now. There was no point in giving her any more power over him.

His bed felt too big, too cold, and too empty.

He got up. He had to get up. He had to start his day. It was just easier to start his day when others were accustomed to starting theirs. That was just the most efficient way of doing things. Besides, he didn't need any more sleep than he had already gotten. When he ruled the world then he could sleep in as much as he wanted….when he passed the world down to Son then he could sleep as much as he wanted. Alone. All on his own…because without Masami there was no need to retire to the walled in city. The city in bottle. The city he had been planning on creating for her….

He changed clothes.

He didn't much care for how his clothes were folded. Masami had her own way of folding….but she was gone and his clothes had been folded and that was what mattered. He so wished that Masami would have taught Daughter how to properly fold clothes. She just sort of stuffed clothes in…because she was very small. She was small and she hadn't had the time to learn all the things that her mother was going to teach her. All the little things that Masami did….that she would never do again….

It was too early for this.

He changed clothes quickly. There was no thought to it. His clothes were not the same, just very similar, and it was more efficient that way. That and, well, his own vanity. At some point in his life he had found the perfect suit and, of course, that was what he was going to wear. It just made the most sense. Masami hadn't been like that. There was no rhyme or reason to the clothing she wore. She wore brightly colored dresses, sometimes, or sometimes things with patterns. Sometimes she wore pants and t-shirts, and sometimes she just wore pajamas all day. Women were strange like that, never sticking to one style of clothing even though the whole thing made shopping easier.

Son had the right idea.

Son always wore jeans and a t-shirt with one of the characters he liked on it. Simple. A bit too simple considering just how creative he was. He always thought that artists were a bit more….more…but Son was still very young…and also Son had come from him. Son hated getting dressed in the mornings, he would rather have just worn the same thing all the time, and Suzuki did not blame him one iota. Changing clothes was such a chore sometimes.

He wondered how Daughter did it.

Daughter seemed to have a new dress for ever day of the week. They looked like costumes to Suzuki but he had learned ages ago that questioning a woman's clothing choices was an incredibly ill-advised action. Daughter had taken to dressing like the princess she was. She never wore crowns but she did wear miniature ball gowns everywhere. They looked cheaply made, though he did not voice that opinion either. Masami used to complain about how hard the children were on their clothes…and she always bought them very expensive things. Well expensive by her standards. Daughter seemed to have gone the opposite route. Quite a few very cheap things to wear.

Or not, he had no idea how women's clothing was judged.

He wondered when the children would outgrow their clothing. He wondered when the children would start growing. Their growth had always been very dramatic to him. He would return home from abroad and they would have shot up several centimeters seemingly overnight. It was over the course of several weeks, though, obviously. He could see no measurable growth from the children….but they must have still been growing. That was one of those things that Masami had been on top of, making sure that the children were developing properly, and things of that nature.

He had no idea by what metric he was supposed to measure the children.

There was the metric of their powers, though that was not a reasonable way to measure them. Daughter was a prodigy second only to him and Son…Son was still little better than one of the Awakened. That would have to be fixed at some point. Even as a child Suzuki had been able to do more than make his aura glow and, occasionally, throw something across the room when he got up. No, he had been able to shake the whole house….the entire neighborhood….how he had wound up with a child like his Son he did not know.

Son was still asleep.

Daughter was still awake.

He was groomed and dressed and his breakfast was waiting for him and then he would get going and start his day. His day began long before the children's did. The children spent their days at the amusement park, he knew that he needed to find someone to educate them but as of right now it was just more efficient to let them exhaust themselves there, and he knew that they would head back over there today as well. They were small and it was a place designed to occupy the time of small people like them. They were happy there.

Though not happy enough that they should have been up at this ungodly hour.

They normally came in between ten and eleven at night. Much later than their old bedtime. That was good, it meant that he didn't have to see them very often. They were sleeping when he left and about to go to sleep when he came home. Easy. Caring for them was not an efficient use of his time….though he could have cared for them if he had to. He knew what to do, he couldn't do it at Masami's level but he knew what to do. He just had to keep them fed and watered and sheltered and educated and occupied and he had to model good behaviors for them and make sure that they were socialized at least somewhat and make sure that they were eating healthily even though they only liked-

"Good morning, Dad." Said Daughter. She was at the kitchen table. She was groomed and dressed and ready for her day. She was in another one of her ball gowns, this one was pink, and one of her princess characters was on the broach she wore….and he did not know the name of that one. He did not know the names of most of them. Daughter didn't seem to mind. Not like Son, no, that child got so upset when Suzuki couldn't remember the names of his characters and such. Children….or maybe just Son.

"Good morning, Daughter. Why are you awake at this hour?" asked Suzuki. Children did not deal well with being tired. Children needed more sleep than adults. These were things he knew about children. Daughter was a child even though then, at that moment, she looked more like an adult in miniature. She had her breakfast in front of her, sweet crepes for some ungodly reasons, and a warm mug of something that looked like coffee but had a cloying sweetness to it. She was sitting at the table with her tablet in her lap and her fork hovering in mid-air. Across from her was a covered dish. His breakfast.

He sat down to join her.

"I couldn't sleep. Sho kept on kicking me out of bed." Said Daughter. She put her tablet on the table and put her fork down onto her plate. She was giving him her full attention. Good. Son never did that.

"Was something wrong with your bed?" asked Suzuki. Daughter shook her head.

"No, I mean yes, I mean….it's not my bed. My bed from home I mean." Said Daughter

"Oh. That's understandable. You've been sleeping on the same mattress for your entire life. There is a period of adjustment." Said Suzuki. He'd had trouble travelling too, when he had been young. Even that first school trip had been too much for her. Son seemed to be more adaptable than Daughter in that respect. That was something that Suzuki had not foreseen.

"Does it take a long time? Because I had the same problem back in Shanghai and Hong Kong." Said Daughter. She knew how valuable sleep was. He made a mental note to have the sorts of beds they had back in their home in Japan sent to the various living spaces he cycled through. There were a few that he always reused…and those were only made for him. He'd have to get some larger accommodations on standby. The children needed space as well. Children needed a lot of things.

But he was, if anything, a good provider.

"It can. Eventually you won't even noticed that you're far from home. Human beings can become accustomed to anything, you know. We aren't the first nomads and we won't be the last." Said Suzuki

"You mean like gypsies?" asked Daughter

"Yes, a bit like them, though we aren't going to be living in caravans anytime soon." Said Suzuki. He began to eat, which was her signal that it was alright to keep eating. Never eat before the highest ranked person. A lesson that Daughter had taught herself and Son had missed the memo on. He always went straight to shoveling his food down his throat, Son, while Daughter waited until it was socially appropriate and even then ate at a normal pace.

"It looks fun, though." said Daughter

"What would you know about gypsies?" asked Suzuki

"Only from this movie." Said Daughter. Then she hit play. Oh, finally, he knew this one. The Hunchback. He had seen another adaptation of this…though it had not been so very colorful. How did they even managed to adapt this for children? It was his impression that they had to be shielded from the evils of the world. He didn't much see the point in shielding the children, they would have to learn about the world at some point, but Masami had always been big on keeping the children as, well, children….and he had trusted her judgement.

Even now.

Even after she had left. Even after she had created this space within him that could only be described as a wound. Open and raw and gaping and there and it just refused to close…or maybe he just refused to stop picking at it. Maybe if he just stopped thinking about her, exorcised her from his mind, then the wound would close. But he just…he couldn't. Not when she was everything. Not when she could be seen in everything from a glance at a woman with long brown hair to something as simple as the smell of cinnamon…the scrape of a fork on a plate…rolling over in the middle of the night and finding nothing and no one….just more bed…

And in his children, too.

"That was better than the other film you like, the one about that rats who cook. Truly disturbing." Said Suzuki. Masami loved movies from this studio…and so did Daughter. Son, too, though not as much as Daughter it seemed. It was odd, a little bit, to see her eating off a plain white plate. Hers always had a character on it. So did Masami's. She was so much like her mother.

But she would never betray him.

"Disturbing?" asked Daughter as she brought her tablet back down onto her lap. Her fork and mug hung in the air. She used her powers more these days….though usually when Son was not around. He so wished that she would set a good example for Son. Maybe then he would try and be something more than what he was. There was too much of Masami in him. Not just in the way that had so little power to him he had might as well be a normal person. No, he challenged him, too, just as his mother had. He had his own ideas about things and he just would not….he was too much like his mother…

But hopefully his Son would not betray him.

He would not allow it.

Though Son never listened to him. Not like Daughter. She generally did whatever it was that she was told. She was good like that. His favorite child. Masami had told him ages ago not to play favorites but that made no sense. Obviously Daughter was the superior child. Powerful but obedient. Capable. Unusually mature for her age, if Son was anything to go off of, though perhaps Son was just a particularly immature child. There was no way to have a functional conversation with Son. Not like with Daughter.

"Yes. The thought of rats having a society comparable to that of humans as well as being able to pilot humans like mechs doesn't disturb you?" asked Suzuki

"Um….I never thought about it like that. I think that it would be neat, though, if rats were like people. Then it would be ok to keep them as pets…not that I want a pet. Because I know that I can't have one. But if I did have a pet then I would want it to be smart so we could be friends and also it would be cool if it knew how to cook." Said Daughter

"You'd have an easier time running a rat through a maze than teaching it to cook." Said Suzuki

"Through a maze? Rats like to do that?" asked Daughter

"I have no idea if they derive any enjoyment from it but I know that people often run rats through mazes to test their intelligence." Said Suzuki

"They do that to people too, I think. In Hong Kong there was a garden maze and a lot of people got very lost. Me and Sho didn't. We got through it really fast. Sho thought that it was boring." Said Daughter

"Of course you two made it out. You're my children." Said Suzuki. They were very intelligent children. They had to be. They were half of him….Son was half of him. He forgot, sometimes, that he did not father Daughter. She had come from strangers. She was like a flower that grew out of a pot of dirt. She was not half of him and half of Masami…she seemed so much like she was….

Irrational feelings.

Pain. He should not have been in pain. There should not have been any pain at all when he looked at Daughter, at his Daughter. She was….she was not Masami and she was not Masami's Daughter and he should not have been reminded of Masami when he looked at her and even if he was reminded of Masami he should not have been in pain because he was better than that. Stronger than that.

"I know. That's why you call us Son and Daughter. So that we don't forget that we're your kids and that you're our dad." Said Daughter

"I suppose so." Said Suzuki. He did not like to use their names. They had names, they were called Shigeko and Sho, but Son and Daughter just fit better. That was who they were. A Son and a Daughter. A Boy and a Girl…though he didn't like to think of Daughter as Girl. Daughter was his Daughter. He was so rarely cross enough with her to think of her as being only Girl. Son could be Boy, though, because he was so, incredibly, aggravating.

"It's like how we're supposed to call you dad even though you have a given name. That's just how our family works, I think. Some families call their kids by their names though. I see them when me and Sho are out. Why are some families so different?" asked Daughter

"Sho and I." said Suzuki

"Huh?" asked Daughter

"You said 'me and Sho' when you should have said 'Sho and I'." said Suzuki

"Oh. I'm sorry. I'll be better in the future." Said Daughter. He liked that about her, how she always admitted her mistakes. She didn't sit there and argue like Son did. She was agreeable. Maybe she came from agreeable people. He didn't know. He hadn't had her birth family followed in a while. He had them checked up on occasionally just to see if her biological brother had even a modicum of ability. He did not.

And Suzuki didn't want another Son.

He wanted more girl children. They were so much easier to care for. So much more agreeable. They wouldn't cause a crisis of succession either. No, his boy children would kill each other for the world he would leave them. Girls weren't like that. They would share the world. They would be kind to each other.

He so wished he had another Daughter.

Not enough to go out and do something about it, though.

"See to it that you do." Said Suzuki

"I will, dad, don't worry." Said Daughter

"Good." Said Suzuki. There was some silence, then, broken only by the scraping of forks. They fell into these simple silences sometimes. It was nice. There was always so little silence when Son was around. He had a need to fill the atmosphere much like his mother had. He and Masami had been able to talk about anything and everything, before, before she…

Even before she left something had gone wrong.

She spoke less to him. He should have known that something was wrong when she stopped initiating conversations with him. He had been grateful for the quiet. He hadn't known, then, what a gift it was to be able to speak with her. What a gift it was to be able to hear her voice. He would never hear her voice again. He would never see her face or hear her voice ever again….

"….because I think that Sho wants to go. I don't want anything, not really, just for Sho to be happy. You too." Said Daughter. Right. She had started speaking at some point. What the subject of her speech had been he did not know. Something about her brother…but he was still asleep as he should have been at this hour….he tried to think of what it was that she had been talking about. He came up with nothing. She was looking up at him like she expected him to say something…

"I know you want your brother to be happy. You care for him a great deal as you should." Said Suzuki responding to the tail end of what he had heard.

"I do, that's why I don't care if we go soon. Sho's getting bored, I think, and also I think he might still be mad at me because of how I didn't tell that girl who was following us to go away. I'm sorry, I know that I'm not supposed to play with the other kids, but we weren't playing with her. She just kind of started following us…and I think that Sho might be mad at me, still, because I didn't stop her. I feel bad." Said Daughter. Oh. The children wanted to leave. He could understand that, wanderlust, the wanderlust that came when you realized just how but the world could be.

"We won't be staying for much longer, I think. Things are still up in the air. Don't worry, we'll keep moving. I know how boring staying in one place can be." Said Suzuki. Children craved newness. That was just how their minds worked. They sought out new experiences because they were at a critical stage of learning and development.

He really needed to get back to the business of educating them.

He'd have to find tutors, or set someone to finding tutors, and they would have to be espers….or it would be best if they were espers. There were so few of them in the world. He knew that he needed to get on fixing that, too, but he just…he did not have the inclination to people the world with espers. Not again. He just…he was irrational. He knew that he had genes that needed passing on and he needed more data on how ESP was even passed down and the only way to get that data was to people the world with espers but…

But that would be a lot.

Sho…Sho had been an accident. A happy accident as Masami called him. Daughter had been a blessing. His word for her. Children were….there was more to children than just waiting nine months for them to finish growing. There was so much more to making them than fifteen to twenty minutes of exhausting pleasure. There was so much more to having children than just…having children. And there was so much more to choosing who you had children with than just…not being careful. Than rolling the dice and hoping that the odds were in your favor. He so wished that he were female. Then he could have just had children with no though to who he was having them with.

He could not replace Masami.

Even though she was not irreplaceable. She was just a woman, a normal woman, and the world was peopled with normal women. She was not special in that regard….even though she was. Even though he knew that there were billions of people on this Earth and that, objectively, Masami could not have been the most perfect of all of them…especially after what she had done…

She had left him in a position where anyone could betray him.

"….don't know why she did that. I mean I love Sho too but I don't want to kiss him. Ick. I never understood why some girls did that. Catch and kiss never seemed like a fun game…and you're not supposed to kiss the boy on the mouth anyway. That's just not nice. I don't do stuff like that, don't worry…" Daughter was talking again. He must have looked interested. Well his aura was focused on her even though he was polishing off the last of his breakfast. Daughter would never leave him, never betray him, right? She seemed loyal now…but maybe she was just biding her time like his mother had…no. Daughter had no relation to Masami. Daughter was her own person and she would never betray him, never leave him.

He loved her for that.

He wondered if there was some way to make her grow up more quickly. She was such a good person, a useful person, and such good company now at seven he wondered what she would be like at seventeen. Or twenty seven? Or thirty seven? What would she be like? Much like this? Would she trade in her cheap facsimiles of ball gowns for the real thing? Would her idols turn from princesses to queens? Or would her interests go in an entirely different direction?

He couldn't wait to meet the person she became when she grew up.

There was a world of promise in her. One day she would grow up, though he wasn't quite sure how to measure that, and then they would be…something closer to equals then they were now. When did one measure adulthood? He knew that it was measured, for simplicity's sake, chronologically. Though he had felt like an adult long before the laws of Japan told him he was. Somewhere around thirteen or fourteen, maybe even fifteen, he had felt like an adult. Females reached maturity quicker, didn't they? They grew faster and reached sexual maturity quicker. Maybe he should have cherished the time he had with her as a child in that case.

Because women were very complex beings.

And teenagers, from what he could gather, were sent from the pits of hell to torment their parents. Though he could not imagine a greater torment than whatever Son was planning on throwing at him. He could not imagine Daughter being even a millionth of a percent the terror that he was sure that Son would become. Daughter…she was a good person. No matter what age she became, what stage of life she hit, she would always be a good person.

And seeing the person she was becoming was a pretty good reason to be getting up at this ungodly hour for.