There was no way to undo the regrets of the past.

Not that Suzuki Touichirou had many regrets. He tried not to. He tried not to do anything that he wasn't totally certain of. He tried to always act in a place of rationality and logic. He never lost control, at least he tried not to lose control, and in those rare times when he did lose control…when he did things that he regretted…and he did regret this…he dealt with what it was that he had done. He had to deal with this. He had to…he had to do something because he had…he had…

He had lost control.

He had lost control. His control had slipped through his fingers and now he had to deal with the consequences. He almost wished that he had lost control in the usual way. He wished that his powers had slipped through his grasp as they tended to do. He wished that he had simply lost control and…and just lost control. He hated when that happened and he hated himself for losing control like that….in that way…but it was preferable to the way in which he had just lost control….

"President Suzuki? We're here."

Home. Home but not home. The place he was staying with his children. His children…who he should not have sent home. He could feel their auras. They had gotten bored so he sent them away. They were annoying when they were bored…but maybe he should have just sat it through. Their restless boredom. It would have been better to have had them near. He wouldn't have lost control in the way that he had if his children had been near. Well he might have lost control, they had been trying him all day, but at least it wouldn't have been in the way that he had lost control…

He needed a bath.

That was what he would do. He would go inside and take a bath and then just….just stop feeling everything that he was feeling. The shame. The disappointment in himself. The anger he felt towards himself. The vulnerability. That was the worst of it, the vulnerability, because he did not do vulnerability. He was not vulnerable….he could not be. He was untouchable. He was Suzuki Touichirou and he was untouchable.

Well obviously he wasn't.

"Dad! You came back!" said Daughter. She jumped down from the ceiling as soon as he came through the door. The ceiling was covered in what looked like footprints. They had been playing up there again. He didn't care, this wasn't his permanent home, and they could have burnt it down for all he cared. In fact he would have preferred it if they had burnt it to the ground. He would have preferred coming back to smoldering ashes where the house had been. It would have been preferable to coming home to his Daughter jumping down from the ceiling and attempting to embrace him even though he had not been gone for very long at all.

He put up a barrier.

"Sorry dad, I didn't know that you didn't want to be hugged. I won't try to do it again. I just missed you, that's all." said Daughter. He had no idea why she would have missed him. He had last seen her six hours ago. Six hours was not long enough to miss someone. She had no reason to miss him anyway. She knew that he was coming back. There was no need for her to react the way she was now. No reason at all. Maybe she took after him. Maybe she was just as irrationally emotional as her father. Not that he even was her father. Maybe he had just imprinted on her and now she had picked up his worst traits and in a few shorts years she would be making the same mistakes that he had made.

She was still standing there.

He pushed her to the side with his powers. Not hard enough to hurt her. Not hard enough to send her flying into the wall…even though he sort of did. Even though he wanted to lash out at someone…and she was there. She was there and she was…she had done nothing wrong. She never did anything wrong, not really. He hoped that he didn't cross paths with Son.

"Leave me alone for the rest of the night." Said Suzuki. He did not want to deal with either of his children. He did not want to deal with anyone ever again. He needed to be alone. He needed to be alone…even though he was never alone. He was himself. He was always with himself. There was nowhere that he could go that his mind wouldn't follow. That his mistakes wouldn't follow.

Maybe he could drown them in the bath.

He scrubbed himself down as the bath filled up. He had fallen out of the habit of doing this, or taking actual baths, but maybe he should have gotten in the habit of it. Maybe he could wash away his mistake, his weakness, his loss of control…but those were irrational feelings. The irrational feelings of an irrational man. A man who had allowed himself to be a slave to his emotions. The emotions that he should have had enough control to exorcise before they even got to that point. There was no scrubbing his mistakes from himself. There was nothing that he could do about the past.

The only thing he was scrubbing off was a layer of skin.

Skin and sweat and saliva…she had been fond of kissing him. Masami had never kissed him that much. She had been so fond of kissing every inch of skin that she could find…not that she had been able to fund a lot of it. They had mostly been fully dressed. He'd never wear that suit again. He had others, a closet full of the same suit, so really this one would not have been missed. It was just clothing. He shouldn't have had such irrational feelings towards clothing. He shouldn't have had such irrational feelings end of discussion. But he did have such irrational feelings. His feelings were the most irrational and he was being irrational and-

The mirror broke.

The tile around the mirror broke.

The tile beneath his feet cracked.

He was losing control. This was a better loss of control than…than what had just happened. He didn't even know how it happened. They had just been talking and then the next thing he knew he was taking her and she was asking him to take her…so he took her…and it had felt so good…at the time. It had felt amazing. He hadn't been with anyone like that in years. He had missed it. Mouth to mouth, lust to lust, skin to skin, sweat and salvia and…and other things mixing…..a hand in his hair…the other one digging into his back….

He could still see himself in the mirror.

A row of red marks leading from his neck down to and across his collarbone. He turns so he can see is back. Red with raised lines…her nails had been digging into him during….and Masami had never dug her nails into him like that. She had never….well she had…but in the beginning. The very beginning. But then she had stopped scratching him and started exploring his skin more slowly while he…well they'd had more time after that. The first time that they had been together like that it had been fast and heavy and…and it had felt like they had to get to it before the opportunity passed them by…but then they got married and it had gotten slower, languid even, because they'd had all the time world it seemed like.

They hadn't.

"Dad? Are you ok? The house shook and your aura was-" said Daughter. Concerned, she as concerned for him. Usually he would have liked that about her. Her capacity for concern was one of the better female traits. It was different now. He wanted to be alone now and he had told her that. Masami had been like that too. She had always followed him around asking what was wrong when he had told her to give him some room to breathe.

"What's wrong? Dad? Are you-" said Daughter

"What part of leave me alone didn't you understand?" asked Suzuki. He did not raise his voice. He was not going to raise his voice. His Daughter had done nothing wrong….aside from disobey him…but if he raised his voice then she might become emotionally unstable and then he would have to deal with that…and he did not have the capacity to deal with anything at that moment.

"I-I understand. I was just worried because the house was shaking and-" said Daughter

"Do you need something?" asked Suzuki

"No. I just wanted to know if you were ok. I'll go away now." Said Daughter. He heard her footsteps and watched her aura move farther and farther away. Good. He did not want to deal with her right then and there. He needed a bath. He needed a bath and he needed to think. He needed to act, not think, but he had no idea what it was that he was even supposed to do.

He got in the bath.

The water was too hot. He didn't care. Let it be too hot. Let him boil himself alive. He didn't care. He just wanted…he didn't know what he wanted. The ability to go back in time and tell his past self not to be an irrational idiot. That would have been just wonderful. He couldn't believe himself. He couldn't believe that he had lost control like that.

He couldn't believe that he had betrayed Masami like that.

He had betrayed her. They were still married and he had betrayed her. It hurts knowing that he'd hurt her…even though it shouldn't hurt at all. She was a traitor. She had left him. For all he knew she was out there with some other man-

The house shakes again.

This time Daughter stays away. He can see her aura. She's still far away and she shows no signs of investigating what happened. Good. He is not going to explain to her what happened. She was a child, first of all, and second of all even if she had been a grown woman and not a little nine year old girl this still would have been none of her business. It was nobody's business but his own who he slept with…not that he was ever going to do that again. Lose control again. Allow someone to make him lose control again. Allow someone to reach out and touch him…to lean in and kiss him…and if anyone ever did try and kiss him well the he would push them away and ask them what the hell they thought that they were doing.

That was what he should have done.

But he hadn't. He'd allowed himself to be kissed. He'd allowed himself to be touched. He'd allowed her to kiss him and touch him and…and he had not been a passive actor through it either. His hands had found their way under her clothes. He had been the one to pick her up and…and there was no greater cliché. Taking a woman on his desk like it was the setup to some tired old bit of pornography. A man and a woman alone in an office with a desk.

Clichéd.

Crass.

Filthy.

And above all else wrong. It had been wrong of him to give in, wrong of him to enjoy it, and wrong of him to want to do it again. That was what most disgusted him about all of this. He wanted to do it again. To speak to her. To see her. To touch her. To continue their conversation about the merits of kendo vs kumdo….and how they had gone from kendo and kumdo to having sex on his desk he didn't quite understand….and maybe he should have made more of an effort to understand. If he understood how it happened then he could make sure that it never happened again.

Because it couldn't happen again.

He leaned back in the tub. Too shallow. Long but shallow. The tub he'd had in his home when he had been young had been deep enough to drown in. Not that he was about to go off and try and drown himself. He wasn't that upset with himself. He was not going to drown himself or anything like that. He was just going to feel sorry about himself, it seemed, sit there in that tub and feel sorry for himself because he had given into his worst impulses.

He could not let that happen again.

He could not allow himself to lose control like that again. He wouldn't. He had no reason to. He had only lost control like that because he hadn't been touched by a woman in years. That was all. Nothing compared to being touched by someone else. To having someone else not just touching him but kissing him and caressing him and digging her nails into him. Nothing, absolutely nothing, compared to the feeling of a living breathing woman-

At some point he had become a womanizing, self-defiling, slave to his own pleasure.

He pressed his palms hard into his eyes. How could he have been so-so-so he didn't even know a word bad enough to properly describe what he had done. He didn't even have a word to describe the shame he felt. The shame and self-loathing that ran through his body. He had betrayed himself and he had betrayed Masami….and he knew that feeling like he had betrayed her was the most irrational part of all of this. His wife had left him. She had been the one to betray him. She had no say whatsoever in whether or not he slept with other women. He could have had a woman for every day of the week and she wouldn't have had any say in it at all…because she had betrayed him. She had been the one to betray him. She had been the one to leave…and all she had done was leave. She hadn't taken a lover…not that Suzuki had taken Pang as a lover…once did not count…and anyway it didn't matter. He should not have had any thought at all for Masami.

For all he knew she had found someone else.

The bathroom floods.

He lost control again. The thought of Masami with another man…at least it makes him feel less ashamed of himself. At least he felt sickened, now, and hurt instead of ashamed of himself. At least he felt like make he should have drowned himself because the thought of her with someone else…the thought of her touching another man like she had touched him….the thought of her under someone else…calling someone else…

Not Touichi.

Unless she met another Touichirou and decided to be with him…and that was so absurd…the thought was so absurd that he was brought from the bad place he had found himself in mentally. He was cold now, the water from the tub was everywhere but in the tub now, but at least the thought of her leaving him for another man named Touichirou…the thought makes him feel almost like he's going to laugh…and he has no idea why. He just…

He doesn't understand himself.

But he does understand that he made a second mistake. He had barely been in the bath and now it was ruined. The whole bathroom was ruined. His doing. He always ruined everything when he lost control. Story of his life. That was why he had spent so much of his life struggling not to lose control….and right now it didn't matter how much he tried to keep his powers under control. He had still lost control and broken the mirror and flooded the bathroom. It didn't matter if he was angry with himself. The past was in the past. The past was in the past and the present was the present and the future was full of unknowns.

How was he supposed to go back to work now?

What did he even want? He wanted to put a stop to all of these emotions. He wanted to put a stop to everything that he felt. He wanted to feel nothing, nothing at all, but he couldn't stop feeling everything that he felt because…because it had been a lot. It went without saying that he had ruined everything and now he could never return to the Fifth Division no matter what happened….because then she would seek him out…and before he had even looked forward to when she sought him out. That had been before they had….

He couldn't go back.

Awkward. The whole thing would have been awkward. The whole thing would have been too awkward, much too awkward, and he did not do awkward. He was in control of every situation…and he was not in control of this one…but he could be. He would be. He would simply never speak to her again. That was another cliché. Bedding a woman and then never speaking to her again. Getting what he wanted and then disappearing into the night. At some point he had become that sort of man. At some point he had become the sort of man who…who just picked women up and rested them on his desk and took them and…

And enjoyed it.

A womanizing slave to his own joy. That was what he was. That was what he had become in Masami's absence. A slave to his own pleasure, his own joy, and that was what it had been. Joyous pleasure. The summit of all pleasure. Not just for him, no, no matter how badly he lost control he always made sure he did the best he could. He had no idea how good it had been for her, he hadn't had enough opportunity to learn her body, nor she his…and there would be no further opportunity.

He got a robe from the bathroom cabinet and put it on.

He made his way to his bedroom. The children were still awake, or at least the television was still on, and he made sure not to alert them to his presence. To alert Daughter to his presence. Son didn't care about him, not in the way that Daughter did, and he was not in the mood for her to follow him around like Masami had…all those years ago.

He did not need her concern.

And he did not need to talk about this with anyone. Masami had always asked him to talk to her about what was bothering him. He had no idea why she wanted to know. If it was something that concerned her then, of course, he would have told her. Talking about things was supposed to make him feel better. That was the way it was for women, anyway, based on how often he had overheard Daughter telling Son to tell her what was wrong.

Even though he had no idea what sorts of problems children their ages would even have had.

Nothing like his problems, anyway, problems of his own making. He hoped that the children didn't have these sorts of problems when they got older. He hoped that they were better than this. That they were better than giving into their worst impulses. Their worst, most base, and most crass impulses. He hoped that they were capable of being so much more, so much better, than what he could be.

He got dressed.

He didn't much want to leave. Not that he had any attachment to this place, he didn't, it was always such a hassle to do a sudden move. This was his fault. This was all on him. He hadn't been forced into anything. He had gone along with what she wanted. He should have been better than that. He should have been better than wanting to stumble his way to satisfaction in his desk with someone who worked for him. Such a cliché. The worst sort of a cliché.

He laid down on his bed.

He hadn't bothered to get fully dressed. He never slept in a full suit, usually just a button down and pants, but now he had left the button down and was just in an undershirt and pants. He was cold. He was aware of his body. He was cold and aware of his body and the fact that he was cold. He could feel his skin, if that made any sense, which it didn't. He was just so hyperaware of himself…and he always was after he had sex. He had spent his life keeping people at arm's length. It was always a lot when he touched someone, kissed someone, allowed himself to be touched and kissed, put a part of himself within another person….

He was fleeing the country. It was the only rational thing to do.

"Dad? Do you still want to be alone?" asked Daughter. She was just outside his door. She hadn't bothered knocking. There was no point. She knew that he could sense her the same that was she could sense him. Son was around too but Son knew to stay away from him when he didn't want company. Daughter's concern overrode her basic sense of self preservation. That was something both admirable and annoying about her.

"Do you have any plans of actually leaving me alone?" asked Suzuki. If she had been Son then he would have slammed her into a wall and ended it…but she was not Son. She was Daughter. He was loathe to hurt her. Because of her gender, maybe, or maybe because he liked her best…or maybe because she had lost control and killed seventeen people without any memory of it. He didn't know. All he knew was that she was not going to leave him alone no matter how many times he asked her to, it seemed.

"Um….maybe? I just….I'm worried about you. Also it's Sho's turn to pick what we watch on TV and he picked this movie about a man who's kidnapped and put in a prison for fifteen years and then he came out for revenge and there's a lot of fighting and I don't like it so I kind of wanted to spend time with you but you seem mad…not mad like how you're usually mad but just kind of sort of mad and I'm worried and stuff." Said Daughter. Suzuki sighed and waved his door opened with a twitch of his fingers.

"If you aren't going to leave me alone then you had might as well join me." Said Suzuki. He didn't much want to be alone and he hated himself for it. He hated the way he felt, vulnerable and alone, but at least Daughter wouldn't judge him…even though he was setting a terrible example for her. Losing control like he did….she did not need to grow up thinking that it was acceptable to lose control like this.

In any way.

But he was not talking with her about anything even tangibly related to THAT. She was nine years old. She wouldn't have to struggle with that particular facet of life for a few more years at least. A few more years until he has to warn her no to overindulge. Not to let herself be vulnerable. Not to…not to do as he had done. Not to let some irrational moron bend her over his desk, either, though if anyone even tried to lay a finger on his Daughter they would soon find themselves quite dead. He doesn't want to get into this or anything even a little bit related to this with her.

He just wants to be near her.

"Thanks dad. I really missed you today after me and Sho left. It was lonely without you. I guess that I just got more used to you being around and stuff. I'm sorry the Sho and I were fighting. We fight a lot, even Minegishi says so. They said 'hi' by the way. Well I was talking about you, about how we watched that documentary about the pacific war together, and they said to tell you that they said 'hi'. I don't know why they didn't just say that to you themselves. They aren't shy at all. I thought that they were but then…" said Daughter. She was sitting beside him on the bed. He was still laying down. He just let her talk. He wasn't really listening to the long tale of her day. He just wanted to be near her.

She took his mind off of everything.

It was hard to dwell on his mistakes when she was near. His sexual ones, anyway, because that was his child and he was not going to think about that sort of thing while his child was near. She was easy to get lost in, her stories, the way even though her voice never wavered her aura told its own story.

She'd had quite the day it seemed.

"…..Sho said that he wanted a turn so I gave him one and then he picked this really scary movie with a lot of fighting and stuff and I didn't like it so I was waiting for you to come home and then you did come home…" she prattled on. She certainly had an eventful day. They both had…and he's not going to think about any of that. He's going to think about…about where the next stop on the never ending Suzuki family express would be.

Where would she like to go?

He focuses on her so he doesn't have to focus on anything else. She may like Norway. Her favorite princess was from Norway. No, wait, the platinum blonde was a queen and the brown haired one was a princess. They were related to the long blonde haired princess….and he knew way too much about this. Well he'd might as well think about that than all of the other things that could have run through his mind. Like what he had done.

Maybe Daughter would have liked Norway.

There was a whole world that they could have traversed. The only thing was that they had to steer clear of Korea for the rest of their natural lives. Really it was the only rational thing to do. Otherwise he would have to talk about what happened…and move forward somehow…but moving away was the same thing as moving forward. Moving far away and reminding himself that he was never, ever, to lose control like that again.

That he was never going to put himself in a position where he could lose control again.

"….in this weir prison with a TV and stuff and he was in there for fifteen whole years and I don't know why but he got out and then he met this woman who made sushi…." Said Daughter. He would keep her near. If she, or Son, had been near than the thought wouldn't have eve crossed his mind. The thought that what he had been doing had been ok. It hadn't been ok.

And he was not running away.

He'd take the children somewhere. Maybe far from work…or maybe the opposite. Maybe he just hadn't been working hard enough. Maybe he had been leaving himself too much headspace to be filled with things like this. Maybe if he worked himself to the very bone he wouldn't lose control like he had. Maybe…there were a lot of maybes. Not a lot of certainty.

He needed certainty.

"….made sushi in Korea. I mean I've never had any but I never really go anywhere. They had a lot of coffee here, though, and coffee places have little cakes. Even though I shouldn't eat refined sugar. Minegishi says that refined sugar is poison but they also drink beer and stuff and that's also a form of poisoning. I don't know. I just didn't know that they had sushi in Korea. Maybe it's like how they have kendo but call it something different. Why are there so many Japanese things in Korea, dad?" asked Daughter. It takes him a moment to realize that her monologue is over and she's addressing him.

"Because we tried colonize them. It didn't work out but they took on a lot of our culture." Said Suzuki. She was good at distracting him. Now his mind wen to a very interesting documentary he had seen and that he knew that she would enjoy. It was in Korean but her Korean was actually better than his. Probably because she had to learn how to read it fluently. He hadn't even realized that she liked books. Who knew what else she liked? How else she had changed? Really he needed to focus on his Daughter more. That was just good parenting and he considered himself to be a very good father.

He needed to spend more time with her.

Because then he wouldn't have the opportunity to get himself into these sorts of predicaments.

"Oh. I didn't know that we did that. But if they borrowed so much from us then why do they still read backwards?" asked Daughter. Suzuki sat up and patted her on the head. Adorable. Truly adorable.

"Or maybe they think that we read backwards." Said Suzuki

"Oh. I guess that would make sense. Not everywhere is Japan. Some people think that stuff about Japan is weird just like we think that their stuff is weird. Maybe that's just how the whole world is. Maybe everyone just thinks that everyone else is weird and that's why we have countries and stuff so we can all be weird in our own ways without other people thinking that we're weird." Said Daughter. Suzuki thought about what she said. People wanted to be with their own people, that was what he got from it, and it made sense. There was no place like home after all.

And they hadn't been home in years.

He has the urge, then, to go back to Japan. He can't, though, because Masami lives there…and that's irrational. He's been nothing but irrational lately. Millions of people lived in Japan. He was not going to let one of them keep him out. Especially not someone who betrayed him and his Daughter. His children. He had betrayed Masami….and that's an irrational feeling. She betrayed him first. He's done nothing wrong.

"Daughter?" asked Suzuki

"Yes dad?" asked Daughter. She was tucking her legs into her nightgown now. She reminded him of a turtle then even though turtles crouched into their shells, they didn't bring their shells down over themselves…but she still reminds him of a turtle. He wants to touch her head again, tussle her hair, but he doesn't. He has no need to show her affection. She knows that he cares for her. If he didn't care for her then he would have sent her away.

"Do you want to go back to Japan?" asked Suzuki. For a moment he thinks that he's asked the wrong question. Her aura begins to glow and expand and her hair begins to float. For a moment he thinks that she's going to lose control and make herself an orphan again.

"Yes. I would love that. Thank you dad!" said Daughter. Then she leaned forward. He put up a barrier on instinct, his heart wasn't in it, and that was why she smashed through it like she did. She threw her arms around him and he just sat there until she got her fill of him. He didn't much want to be touched by anyone right then let alone his own Daughter….so he pushes her away when her embrace becomes excessive.

"Good. We'll leave tomorrow. Inform your brother." Said Suzuki. He laid down as Daughter ran off to do just that. This was perfectly fine. Suzuki was not going to be kept out of the nation of his birth just because his wife was probably still there. He didn't even care anymore. It had been two years. That was well past the point at which he should have been over her….

He needed to move on.

So he would move out. Moving out was the same as moving on.

He couldn't undo the mistakes of his past but he could at least move past them.