It was a normal day.
"Who are we fighting today, dad?"
Son was practically jumping up and down. Suzuki didn't know what he was so excited about. That had barely been a fight. Once he figured out how to undo the gravity control ability it had ended quickly. He had barely even taken any damage. It was mostly annoying, honestly, because that Scar hadn't known when to quit. He would have shown Son a real fight if he could, that Shimazaki or even Minegishi had been pretty eventful, but he was not about to go calling people into his office just to fight them.
Well I was something in his power to do but he wasn't going to.
Because as much as he wanted to fight someone, as much as he wanted to show his Son what a real fight was, he wasn't about to do something as stupid as disrupting everyone's work. No, that would have been just terrible for productivity. Besides, he didn't exist to entertain Son…even if it was nice that Son was finally taking an interest in something other than drawing pictures and quarrelling with his older sister. He probably would have quarreled with her again if given half the chance. If she hadn't been sent off. She should have returned by now. She was probably sidetracked. She would come back. She always came back. She always would come back. She was Daughter.
"First of all there is no 'we'. You are eight years old and nobody is going to be proving themselves against you. The very thought is absurd. You're only eight years old." Said Suzuki looking up from his work. Son had both hands on his desk and was jumping up and down, practically, and caused several loose things from his desk. He caught a rolling pen with his powers and put it back in the pen holder. Son was undeterred. There was something to admire in his tenacity. There was also something annoying in it as well.
"I know that I'm eight." Said Sho
"There. Now you understand." Said Suzuki
"No, I don't." said Sho
"What's not to understand? I thought that I made myself perfectly clear. You are not going to be fighting anyone. You're too young." Said Suzuki. The Scars proved themselves against him, not his Son, because to be asked to prove themselves against an eight year old boy…it would have been an insult. He'd might as well have them fight Daughter while he was it. Not that he ever would. She was both too unstable and too delicate for something like that.
"But you even said that I was as strong as most adults." Said Sho. If he was as strong as an adult then why couldn't he fight like one too? It wasn't fair. Dad still thought that he was weak. For all of his talk of Sho getting older and being able to handle more and stuff like that dad still thought that he was a little kid. What was even the point of going through that whole awakening thing if dad was just going to treat him like a baby?
"Yes, but that doesn't change the fact that you are not an adult." Said Suzuki. He wondered if he had been like this as a child. Probably. There had been few people in the world to tell him no. Though he remembered that he had at least obeyed his parents for the most part. Of course that had changed once he reached adolescence…but Son was nowhere near that age. He was only eight years old. If anything Daughter was closer to adolescence…which may have been why she had been distancing herself from him lately…but that meant nothing. That was the normal course of things. Daughter would distance herself from him and Son would fight him tooth and nail for things that were just not going to happen.
"But why does that matter? If I'm just as strong as an adult-" said Sho. Dad wouldn't have been like this if he had been big sis. Dad would have been all about her fighting. He still liked her best. Even though being awakened meant more than being born with your powers, because of how much it hurt and stuff, he still thought that she was…she was better than him…
And she wasn't even there.
Dad had sent her away. She had to tell something to someone at some place for some reason. Dad was always sending her off to do things. Sho helped dad with the things that he could do from right there. For when he got older, dad said, even though he never said how much older Sho had to get. He was already older. He was eight and had been eight for a while. Dad was still treating him like he was seven in some ways….but that was just how dad was….because Sho was not and would never be as good as big sis….
"Because you are not an adult yet, Son, and you never will be with that attitude. I would never ask you to do something as absurd as fight a grown adult. First of all they have to prove themselves against me, not you, because Claw is not yours yet. When you're a grown man and Claw is yours then you can allow as many people to prove themselves against you as you like. That time is not now and you are going to do as you're told and let this matter drop. Do I make myself clear?" asked Suzuki. He did not want to quarrel with Son. He didn't enjoy it, for one thing, and Son was starting to fight back, too. Son was no match for him, no man could be his equal let alone a little boy, but he still did not like fighting with the Boy. He could have gotten hurt and it was just stupid to hurt his own Son. Fukuda had, well he had overstepped, but he had said that since he only planned on having the one Son it would have been in his best interests not to damage the Son he had.
"You wouldn't say the same thing if it was big sis who was asking you." Said Sho. He crossed his arms and sat back down on his spot on the floor. His drawing stuff was all on the ground around him. He had been drawing with charcoal. He had been drawing a city with a dome on it, he and dad had been talking about that a few days ago, but he didn't want to keep drawing it now. He just wanted to sit there and cross his arms and kick, too, while he was at it.
"Stop that." Said Suzuki. Son was older, an older child, but still a child. He acted as a child did. Daughter was a child too but she almost never acted as a child did. Maybe it was because girls matured faster than boys. He'd heard that somewhere before. Girls matured faster than boys. Or maybe it was Masami's influence. He didn't know. He did know, however, that Son was annoying sometimes.
"You never answered my question." Said Sho
"You never asked one." said Suzuki. He didn't even look up at Son. Let him sulk. He could sulk all he wanted to. He could sulk for the rest of his life. Suzuki didn't care. Suzuki was not going to go and beg his Son not to act like a child. He couldn't help it. It was instinctual. Children were such children sometimes.
"Yes it did. I asked you if you would say the same thing to big sis." Said Sho
"No, you never asked a question. You made a statement, an incorrect one not worth justifying, and I said nothing." Said Suzuki
"That's the same as asking a question." Said Sho
"No, it isn't." said Suzuki. He didn't know how he had gotten into this fight with his Son. He didn't much want to be fighting with Son. Son was…he was annoying…he was annoying and underfoot and a lot of things…but he had been worse in the past. This was hardly a fight, anyway, and even if he could have ended it he wouldn't.
Because he felt Daughter's aura.
She had left his immediate range. He could have looked for her but he didn't want to. That would involve spreading his aura out and if he did that then he would feel literally everyone within his radius. He had been told, before, that it felt off putting. Not that he cared about being off putting. He knew that he could be off putting, he had been called creepy for his entire life, and he also knew that nobody in their right mind would call him creepy again….so he could be as off putting as he wanted to be…
But social rules were meant to be followed.
"Fine. Would you say the same thing to big sis if she asked to fight the next future Scar?" asked Sho through gritted teeth. Dad knew what he meant, he was just being a jerk as usual.
"Your sister would never ask that of me and you know it. She has an aversion to violence." Said Suzuki. The day Daughter asked to fight some upstart esper…well he would have been proud, actually, and then he would have had Fukuda or someone check her for signs of insanity. That would have been so out of character for her…but he would have been proud….but he would never ask that of her. At least not yet. They never even sparred together. Maybe it was her gender or her age or Masami's influence. It didn't matter. Daughter was a little girl, he could excuse her aversion to violence, it would have been much worse if she had been a boy.
He thanked whoever was listening that he hadn't had two boys.
Because then they would have killed each other long ago. Even now Son was unusually violent with his sister. Suzuki wondered where that had come from. He never went around just starting fights and neither had Masami. Maybe that was just some inborn trait of Son's that had appeared at random. Son was…Son was his Son…and sometimes he could be a bigger mystery than Daughter.
"But if she did I know you would say 'yes'….because you always say 'yes' to her….and it isn't fair." Said Son
"Don't exaggerate. I don't always say 'yes' to your sister." Said Suzuki. Honestly. If anything Son had much more freedom than Daughter did. Daughter was always stuck to his side, or she had been until lately, and she had always been so….fearful? Yes, he would apply that word to her. That was why she clung to him. That was why she climbed into his bed and cling to him. She was afraid of the world, maybe, because of how overstimulating it was. How it made it so easy to lose control…or maybe he was just projecting. She was a mystery to him and always would be and maybe there was no point in trying to puzzle her out.
"Then why did you let her go?" asked Sho. When he asked to go dad always made him say where he was going and to warn him not to be underfoot. He could just send big sis out with something to do and she could come back whenever and go wherever and…and that just wasn't fair. Dad never cared what she did. He let her do whatever she wanted whenever she wanted. Probably because he liked her best and he always would.
"I didn't 'let' her go, I told her to go. I had something for her to do and I sent her to do it. Her tasks are different from your tasks. You have your own things to learn how to do. I don't understand where this is coming from at all." said Suzuki. Son was still sitting and still sulking. His drawings laid abandoned. That was a pity. He had started working with charcoal and his drawings were, as always, very good.
"So if I was just gone for hours and hours then you wouldn't mind at all?" said Sho even though he knew full well that dad wouldn't care if he was gone for hours and hours. He could have walked right out the door and off into the city never to be seen again and dad wouldn't even care. He only cared about big sis. He had always only cared about big sis. At least that was what it had always felt like.
"Your sister has not been gone for hours and hours." Said Suzuki. So much hyperbole. Children. Did they always have to be so very childish?
"It feels like it." Said Sho
"Well it hasn't been. Now stop this. It's tiresome." Said Suzuki. Son was less tiresome than he had been when he was small but he was still very tiresome. What he wouldn't have given to have had Daughter back at his side…and she had been gone for some time…but it's wrong for him to anxious. She's Daughter. She's fine. She was stronger than every other esper alive barring him. Besides, he always had eyes on her. The Awakened were everywhere and they would not lose track of her….not like Masami…because Daughter was an esper. Her aura was so bright that even at this distance he was able to feel her. He didn't know exactly where she was but he could still feel a vague sort of awareness of her.
"…whatever…" said Sho. He went back to drawing. Whatever. He didn't care. He was going to draw. Dad could feel however he wanted to and he could think whatever he wanted. Sho didn't care. He had stuff to do. Drawings to do. That was what he was good at. Dad had even said that his drawings were good. He didn't think that this drawing was very good. Charcoal smeared. The lines weren't very clean. Clean lines were better. It was easier to see what it was that you were supposed to be drawing. He didn't even fully know what it was that he was even drawing. It had started up as a room. He didn't know which room.
Maybe it was his room.
He hadn't been in his room for so long. Maybe it wasn't his room. This room only had one bed. His room had two beds in it. One for him and one for big sis. That was how it always was. This wasn't his room that he was drawing. It was a room. The walls of the room weren't straight. The lines couldn't be shaky like this. When the lines were shaky then the effect of depth was ruined. But the lines were shaky because charcoal was terrible for drawing with and he never should have tried this. He never should have tried this and he should have just stuck to pencils and now he had to start all over and there was no point because it was always going to suck and then-
"It's very nice." Said Suzuki. He craned his neck over to see what Son was scribbling at. Some attempt at abstraction. He didn't understand abreaction, or most art, but he did know that it looked nice. Son was drawing with bits of charcoal. Messy but it created a nice light and dark effect.
"You're just saying that….you always say that." Said Sho. The picture in his hands floated up in the air and over to dad's desk. Sho didn't look. He didn't need to. He knew what dad was doing. Dad sometimes took his drawings and stuck them up on the wall with tacks. Sho didn't understand why. That wasn't even his best work. That was mostly just stuff that he either discarded or wasn't even finished with.
"I know I do. That's because I enjoy your work." Said Suzuki as he tacked up his Son's drawing. These really were very good. He had these up in a few of his offices. The ones that he had visited with the children. He didn't know much about art but he would rather have had art from his own flesh and blood than from some long dead stranger. He didn't care about technique or composition or any of that. He just knew that he liked things that looked nice and Son's drawings looked very nice.
"You just say that to make me feel better….or whatever." Said Sho. Dad just said things like that to make him feel better because when he got upset he was 'annoying' and 'tiresome' and all of that. Dad didn't like it when he acted up. Dad didn't like…he didn't like anything. Most of anything, anyway, it seemed like.
"No. I don't lie. I don't waste my time with lies." Said Suzuki. He didn't understand his child one bit. Why would he lie? What would he have to gain? Son was, well, Son. He had talent, he knew he had talent, so why would he think that his father would lie to him about the talent that he had been honing for his entire life? He could work hard and he did work hard so why would he think so poorly of himself. Was this really his child? Suzuki had never felt poorly and lowly about himself even once in his life.
"Ok, you don't lie. Sure." Said Sho. Dad lied. Dad said that mom was a traitor and stuff because she left. Mom was not a traitor…because she was mom. Dad even made some dumb rule about how they weren't supposed to talk about mom or even remember that they had ever had a mom….and it was hard…and sometimes Sho just wanted to take dad and yell at him to just…to just stop it!
"Good. I'm glad you understand." Said Suzuki. Well that had been rather painless. Good. Son was coming around. Son was coming around and that was good. Maybe this would end up being a low stress day. This was one of those periods of long inactivity. The sorts of times in which he would have been long back at the family home. But he was never going back to the family home so he had no other choice but to work, to find something to do.
He was a bit like Son in that regard.
Son had an inability to be still. He always had to be running or jumping or climbing or drawing or quarreling. Suzuki was the same way. He always needed to be occupied by something. Ever since he was a child he had always been consumed by work. Not school work, no, but instead the world he would build when he grew up. The world made by an esper for espers. A world where he didn't have to be alone. Not that he was alone. He was never alone. He was always surrounded by his children after all.
His children.
Daughter was getting closer. He could feel her aura and it felt….jittery? Jittery was the best word for it. He was, for a moment, anxious. Had something startled her? Frightened her? But what in the world could have frightened her? She was so strong…but she was still just a little girl. She wasn't like Son. Son was a fighter. Daughter was anything but. That was the difference between boy children and girl children. Men and women, too, when he thought about it. The opposite sex was just that, opposite, and it was a wonder that the human race had managed to progress as far as it did. He wondered if he would ever be able to understand his Daughter…or his Son…or anyone for that matter. Not that anyone….not that he had to understand anyone. He understood himself. That was what mattered.
"Hi. I have coffee." Said Mob as she walked through the door. She sat down next to Sho and passed a coffee to her brother and dad. Minegishi said that if she drank enough coffee she would learn to like it. It would, eventually, taste good. Well it didn't taste good and her heart was beating funny but at least she'd had fun with her friend…and she even had another super thick book to read in a language that she barely understood so….good?
"Yes….you do." Said Suzuki as he was passed a warm cup of coffee. He preferred tea but anything worked when he was tired…and he was somewhat tired. He didn't know what had gotten him this tired. Or maybe he did. Maybe it had been Son. He was tiring, so tiring, dealing with Son.
"Why do you have coffee?" asked Sho as big sis at down next to him. She was kind of squirmy. She kept on playing with her skirt and she was even making his papers rock back and forth.
"Because I do." Said Mob. There was no reason for it, not really, no big reason anyway. That was what she did. She went and had coffee with her friend because that was what she wanted to do. She didn't even mind that it taster terrible or made her heart beat funny. This was fine and she was fine. Really.
"Should you be drinking coffee?" asked Suzuki. She seemed….jittery and agitated. Children weren't mean to have coffee, right? Well she did drink tea, black tea, and that was caffeinated…and she did drink a lot of soft drinks too…but wouldn't coffee stunt her growth?
"You never said that I wasn't allowed to." Said Mob
"We can't have coffee, we're kids." Said Sho
"We do a lot of things that kids aren't allowed to do. We don't go to school and we stay up late and eat junk food all the time and play unlimited videogames and stuff like that." Said Mob
"That's true….but coffee is for grownups. Also you're acting weird." Said Sho
"Well dad never said that I couldn't. Right dad?" asked Mob. She needed to move. She needed to get up and move but also sit still and also make her heart stop beating so fact but not with her powers because she might have ended up accidentally killing herself if she did something like that. She just wanted this feeling to stop but she knew that it would stop in time. All of her feelings eventually stopped in time.
"You can have all the coffee you want." Said Suzuki. He didn't much know why she wanted to drink coffee but the only reason he could think to be opposed to it was the fact that she would stunt her growth…but part of him wanted her to stay small forever so her stunting her growth was fine by him.
"I had four cups." Said Mob quickly. She didn't want to have four cups of coffee but Minegishi kept on getting refills so she kept on getting refills and then one refill was another and another and then Minegishi had to cut her off because she was making things float and stuff.
"That….is a truly excessive amount of caffeine, Daughter." Said Suzuki. He wondered if that much caffeine was dangerous for a child. He truly had no idea. The only thing he knew was that they couldn't have any alcohol or else they would end up with brain damage. Caffeine was…was that dangerous? He didn't know. He'd see how this turned out.
"I think so too. Also it tasked bad." Said Mob
"Then why did you drink four cups of it?" asked Sho. Big sis was weird sometimes. Everyone knew that when something was poisonous it warned you with its bad taste. That was why mom said to never eat the berries that grew at the park. Also why you weren't supposed to eat vegetables unless they had been deep-fried in tempura batter…and dad was crazy for saying otherwise.
"Because-" said Mob. She would have told Sho that she had drank four cups because that was what Minegishi had drank and they were a grownup and Mob was a kid but that didn't mean that Mob had to act like a kid when something shifted. Someone's aura entered her range…her close range….and she knew that aura.
She did not like the person attached to that aura one bit.
Minegishi said that the person attached to that aura, Mob knew her name but didn't want to use it even though that was mean, wanted to be dad's girlfriend. Dad was married and because he was married he couldn't have a girlfriend. That was called cheating, also known as adultery, and that was not right. Mom would never come back if she knew that dad had cheated on her….and mom could still come back. Nothing was stopping her. Well something would be stopping her if dad let this lady trick him into falling in love with her. That would not have been good at all.
Mob already had a mom. She just wasn't there, that was all, but she was still mom.
"Hey, that lady's coming back. Can you feel her?" asked Sho. He already knew why big sis drank that much coffee, because she was weird like that, and that was too normal to be interesting. Not like this. This lady was interesting. She was someone who actually liked hanging out with dad. Nobody made her. That was weird considering how normal she seemed.
Also when she was around dad acted weird. That was kind of funny or at least amusing.
"Both of you quiet down." Said Suzuki. He checked the clock. Yes, it was the time again. She usually came by around this time. Sometimes she had news, other times she had things that he needed to sign off on, and occasionally she had a proposal. He wondered what she would come by with today. Not that he cared, work was work, and not that he looked forward to seeing her or anything like that. He was just curious as to what she brought.
Tea this time.
"Hello Suzuki-san and children." said Pang.
"Hello. Good afternoon." Said Mob. She stood up and bowed like was polite. She may not have liked this lady but she was not going to be mean or rude to her. That would have been wrong. She still had to be polite. That was fine. Even though this lady was trying to make dad fall in love with her even though he had a wife, that ring that married people wore showed other people that they were married, and that wife was still alive and out there and she could come back at any time.
"Hi." Said Sho as big sis tugged him to his feet. Right, you were supposed to bow when you said hello. The rules were different in every country. Sometimes people looked at you funny when you bowed and sometimes they even laughed. He wished that the rules were the same everywhere. That would have saved him a lot of thinking.
"Hello children. How have you been?" asked Pang
"We've been fine. How have you been?" asked Mob. She was having trouble keeping her aura steady. Her powers kept on trying to lift things. She was bouncing from foot to foot. She knew that she should have stayed still, that dad would be mad at her, but she just couldn't help it.
"I've been fine, just seeing if your dad wants a cup of tea. It's good tea today." Said Pang
"If it's so good then why didn't you bring us some?" asked Mob. That may have been the wrong thing to say, it might have even been mean, but it had just popped into her head…and also she could kind of understand Sho better now, maybe.
"Tea sucks." Said Sho. If he could he would have drank nothing but cola but that was bad for him, Fukuda said, and he had a lot to do as it was, Fukuda had also said.
"Son. Daughter." Said Suzuki. He had expected that from Son but not Daughter…if she had even been rude. It had seemed like a question but she had a tone there…so he didn't know. He always had trouble thinking when she, he knew her name he just didn't want to acknowledge that he knew it, was around.
"I had no idea that you too drank tea. Though from the way you're dancing around I wouldn't want to give you any liquids." Said Pang.
"You're right, I don't want anything else to drink. I have to go to the bathroom. So does Sho. Excuse us." Said Mob. She took Sho's hand and dragged him out of dad's office. She didn't want to be there. If she spent any more time there she might have ended up saying something even meaner. Dad had already given her aura a warning tap. She had been rude. She was Suzuki Shigeko, she was not supposed to be anything other than sweet, mom had said so back when she had still been around.
"But I don't have to pee!" said Sho as big sis dragged him away. She was strong, sometimes, when she put her powers into it. He could have broken free but that might have counted as fighting with her and dad hated it when he and big sis fought. Dad already seemed like he was starting to get mad at them. Nothing good came of making it worse.
"I apologize for the children." Said Suzuki after they left. He sat at his desk and pretended to work. That was what worked best. Pretending to work. That way his eyes, at least, couldn't betray him. Not like his aura was trying to do.
A cup of tea was sat down on his desk.
"You don't have to. Those two are just too cute sometimes." Said Pang. Suzuki expected her to stay standing and tell him what the real reason she had sought him out was. She didn't stay standing, she sat in one of the seldom used chairs across his desk, and she just sort of…looked at him. He wondered if he was supposed to respond now. He probably did. The art of conversation eluded him at the best of times. He knew that he had to say something. He had to look at her and say something but he just didn't know what. Maybe he should have looked at her first. That way after he looked at her he might have gotten some idea as to what to say to her.
He risked looking at her.
She had done something with her hair but he didn't know what. All he knew was that it looked nice. She looked nice. More than nice. He kept his eyes resting on the bridge of her nose. That seemed like a safe place to look. He had never been one for eye contact unless he was trying to intimidate someone. The bridge of her nose seemed safe. That way his eyes wouldn't rest too intensely on her…or drift downwards…as they tended to do because apparently he turned into an adolescent every time a woman gave him so much as the time of day. Well he was not an adolescent, he was in his early mid forties, and he was beyond this. There was no reason for him to feel like this anyway. He had a wife. She may have been gone….missing….but he still had one.
He had a wife and therefore the way he was feeling right then was irrational. Therefore there was nothing stopping him from having a conversation with her. With those emotions exorcised he was free to have a conversation with Pang-san from finance…even though the subject was his children and not finance…and he had no idea why she would want to talk about his children….maybe because, according to her file, she had none….and that must have been it. She wasn't seeking him out socially. The thought was preposterous. Nobody but his own children sought him out socially and he had made them…one of them….
"You don't have to live with them." Said Suzuki. That was the only thing that came to mind. Yes, they could be adorable sometimes, but they were little terrors too. Mostly Son but Daughter, when provoked by Son, had her moments too. Maybe that had been the wrong thing to say. He didn't know. All he knew was that there was a woman in the chair across from him and a cup of tea on his desk and he had no idea how he was supposed to navigate this situation.
"That I don't. Still, they are sweet, especially your daughter. Such a polite little girl. Like her dad." Said Pang
"She does take after me." Said Suzuki. Daughter really did despite the fact that he didn't share a drop of blood with her. Talking about Daughter….he could do that. He wasn't sure what it was that made this woman want to talk about his children…or talk to him at all about something other than work…and he knew that he should have put a stop to this…and he was going to…any minute now…
"She looks like you too, it's the eyes." Said Pang
"Her eyes are brown." Said Suzuki reflectively.
"True, but she has that same look in her eyes that you do." Said Pang
"She takes after me." Said Suzuki. He tried to keep his eyes on the bridge of her nose. His eyes wanted to drift upwards, to her hair, or lower to her mouth. He liked to watch her talk, he had discovered that about himself not too long ago, and right after discovering this fact he decided to put a stop to that before it could get any worse. He should not have felt the way he felt or…or wanted the things he wanted…because there was no reason for it. He already had the most perfect person in the world. He already…he had already had her…and now she was gone….but that was fine. He still had her…even though he didn't….but he didn't need anyone else.
His eyes met hers.
Was he supposed to look away? Or would that have been awkward? Or was it more awkward for him to keep eye contact with her? He had been told so many times that he was creepy, that his eyes were creepy, that his stare was creepy…he had been called creepy so many times…but those times were over and nobody would ever call him that again.
She was looking at him.
She was playing with her hair. She was playing with her hair and drumming her nails against her tea cup…and it wasn't annoying even if he knew that it should have been. Maybe I it had been a proper teacup instead of a paper carryout cup. Maybe if her long red nails had been drumming against a porcelain cup it would have been annoying. Maybe he wished that she had been annoying. Maybe if she had been annoying obnoxious then he wouldn't have been feeling like that and everything would have been a thousand times easier.
Her aura was knocking into his and then shrinking away.
And he had no idea what any of this was. He had no idea what he was supposed to do or say in this situation…and he wished that the children had been there just to distract him…but they were off on their own and he was all alone with…and that was fine. That was fine and everything was fine and he just needed to exorcise these emotions….even though they were so stubborn.
"So…Suzuki-san…" said Pang
"Yes?" asked Suzuki maybe a little bit too loudly or too quickly or…or something like that. Wrong. He always did something wrong when it came to being social. The only person that had ever looked past it had been…was still…or not anymore. He didn't know. He didn't want to think about the last woman who had sought him out socially and looked past his many social shortcomings…not that he wanted to even acknowledge the fact that he had any shortcomings….
"I've noticed…." Said Pang. Her eyes were darting downwards but he didn't have the time to look away from her because as soon as he tried to move his eyes away from hers she looked back up at him.
"Yes?" asked Suzuki a lot calmer that time. Mostly because this time was his second time saying it. Maybe he should have used more than one word. One word answers weren't polite…and why did he care whether or not he was polite?
"Suzuki-san...um…your son? Does he take after you as well or…" said Pang. She motioned towards his hand….oh. He still wore his wedding ring. Of course he still wore his wedding ring. He was still married. He still had Masami…even if she didn't…even if she didn't want to be with him…even if she was gone…
"He takes after his mother." Said Suzuki. He reached down and played with wedding ring. He was still married. He was still married and he had to get back to work and…and that was what he was supposed to do.
But he didn't have anything to do.
Well that wasn't true. There was always something for him to do. Only thing was that he couldn't even think of what it was that he had to do. Not when there was a woman sitting across from him and another one of his mind…and he so wished that the children would have just come back already. Things were always so much simpler when the children were around. They always gave him something to think about. To worry about. To do. If they had been there then they would have been quarreling or something else, some other fire for him to put out, and at this point he would have welcomed even a real fire….
"That one's new." Said Pang pointing behind him. He was confused, for a moment, before he remembered that Son had drawn him something new.
"My Son drew that earlier." Said Suzuki
"It looks like a ship. A spaceship, not an ocean liner." Said Pang. Suzuki turned to look at it. He didn't see it. It was…it was some sort of space….but he couldn't see any objects in it. It was a bit like that magic eye book the children had been driving themselves crazy over. He was grateful, though, to have had an excuse to look at something other than her.
"I just see space." Said Suzuki
"Me too. It's the sort of ship that bends space around it. A much better way to travel the cosmos if you ask me." Said Pang
"Too dangerous." Said Suzuki. He had looked into different ways to explore deep space. The only thing that he had come to a definitive conclusion was the fact that one did not mess with wormholes. You never knew where you were going to be spat out…not that he had allocated a lot of time or money to the validity of deep space exploration…and certainly not with trains…
"You think so?" asked Pang
"You disagree?" asked Suzuki
"A quick jump is a lot safer than putting people into stasis. I wouldn't trust my body to a machine for the needed centuries to travel in deep space. I've seen pretty much every movie ever, I know how it goes, and I figure that since we need to trust machines anyway if we're going to be traveling through deep space I would rather trust a machine for a short jump." Said Pang
"That's true. You can never fully trust a sentient machine. I still wouldn't bother with jumps. You have no way of knowing where it is that you're going to be…you're going to exit." Said Suzuki. He hadn't had a conversation like that since…well Masami had told him that he was ridiculous, after a while, and he had been. He was being ridiculous now. Those were his childhood dreams. He was not a child. The children were children. He was an adult. He had to have realistic goals, like world domination, and not deep space travel.
"That's part of the fun, though, don't you think?" asked Pang. There was something in her voice, something that made him turn around and dace…and he wished that he hadn't. He made eye contact with her again. Her eyes were brown…brownish green…and he wanted to ask her why they were that color. He wanted to ask if she had put in contacts or if she had been born like that. She isn't pure Korean, she looks maybe part Japanese…in her face…but her eyes seemed more…and not he was staring at her again. He was staring and he needed to stop staring because he had no reason to stare because not only was it socially inappropriate but, also, he had already had the most perfect person in the whole world….so there was no reason to look at her like that…or at all.
"Thank you very much for the tea." Said Suzuki. He opened the door to his office without moving a muscle. It takes her a moment to get a clue. She seems….well her aura seems…he doesn't know. He doesn't look into it. He goes back to work. There was no shortage of work. Even if sometimes it felt like there was…there was no shortage of work…and he had to work…
He heard his children quarreling….and he had never been so grateful to hear the sound of his children quarreling.
"Dad, can you tell big sis that they totally could play kendo with katanas is they wanted to?" asked Sho. He wasn't sure how they had gotten to katanas, well he knew that it was because they had seen some Scar carrying a katana, but he needed big sis to acknwoldge the fact that kendo would have been less boring if the guys were stabbing each other with super sharp katanas.
"That's not kendo anymore, Sho, it's only kendo if you use a real shinai. That's why it's not kendo when you hit me with a stick. Dad'll tell you if you don't believe me." Said Mob. She didn't understand Sho sometimes. It always came back to fighting with him. Boys were so weird like that…though she may have been too into that conversation, before, probably because of all the coffee she had been drinking that day. Well even this was better than watching that woman make dad be all weird.
Thank God she had gone back to her own department to do her own work far away from Dad.
"It's not kendo if there's no shinai. What you're thinking of is something incredibly dangerous and not worth the effort one would go through to have a real katana forged." Said Suzuki. He was so grateful to have them back and ridiculous. He had never been so grateful to deal with the ridiculousness of children.
Better than his own ridiculousness.
"You always take her side." Said Sho. He crossed his arms and sat down on the floor. That was normal. No matter what happened dad would always take big sis' side. He shouldn't have expected anything else.
"Are you going to drink that?" asked Mob. She let Sho sit on the ground and be upset. That was ok. She wished that he hadn't been upset but this was one of those times when he needed to be left alone. Besides, that cup of tea was still on dad's desk. He hated takeout cups. He only drank tea from real cups. He probably wanted her to drink it or pour it out or something. If he wanted a cup of tea she would have made him an actual cup of tea…even though she wasn't that good at making tea yet….but she would gladly spend the next million years making tea for dad if it meant that he didn't drink that tea right there on his desk that he hadn't even asked for…
"Eventually." Said Suzuki. He pulled it closer with his powers. No sense in wasting tea. This was…it was a cup of tea. He drank tea all the time. This was normal. He normally drank tea around this time. That was normal.
This had been a normal day.