It was important to always knock on doors.

So that was why Mob had spent the whole day knocking on door. She had spent the whole day at work with dad and she had knocked on every single door she could. She knocked on dad's office door and she had knocked on the cafeteria door and she had knocked on every single door of every single office that she had to bring notes and memos and files and dad's orders to. Even if the doors were opened she still knocked.

She was not going to make the same mistake twice.

That was why she was knocking on dad's door, now, instead of just going in. Even though his door was opened she was still going to get into the habit of knocking. Even though dad and mom were never going to be together again to even say so much as 'hi' she was still going to knock. It was a good habit to get into. It was a habit that she should have had already.

Even though she knew for a fact that dad was just sitting up in bed and watching TV she still was always going to knock.

"Daughter. Do you need something?" asked Suzuki. He had been trying to wind down so he could get some sleep. It had been odd, being away from Son for so long, but not unpleasant. There had been this worry in the back of his mind towards Son's wellbeing, though, which he could not understand. Son was a capable esper and he was in Fukuda's capable hands. He had no clue why he should have been concerned.

Emotions could be so annoying sometimes.

Like now. Daughter was back. She had been near to him all day. It had been enjoyable. He had assumed that she would have spent the day with her friend, he didn't have any assignments for Minegishi so he would have assumed that Daughter would have jumped at the chance to spend time with them, and it had been a pleasant surprise when she had elected to spend the day with him. Daughter's presence was preferable to Son's after all.

And now she was back.

He was happy that she was back. He had assumed that she would be watching her own programs or films or playing with her toys or one of her videogames or even visiting her friends as she tended to do in the middle of the night but, not, she had decided to spend her time with him…and he is happy…but he is also unhappy with himself for being happy. He is a full and complete person on his own. He shouldn't have this need to be beside her.

But he did.

"Can I sleep next to you tonight? I can't sleep all by myself. I tried to before but I can't." said Mob. She wondered if this was ok to ask. Sometimes she fell asleep when she and dad were watching TV and sometimes she fell asleep on the couch and she woke up in dad's bed. So dad must have liked sleeping next to her…but also sometimes he pushed her away and got mad at her for no reason…so it was hard to tell with him sometimes.

"Fine." Said Suzuki. He was happy that she had come to him. He had been wanting to be near her, which was why he had stayed away. There were layers to that. The first of which being the fact that he should not have needed her. He had always felt at his lowest when he found himself seeking out another human being. That had always been when he put the most distance between himself and others. Especially people who he cared for. He had put distance between himself and his parents when he had been young and himself and Masami when they had been married…when they had been together.

Now he needed to put some distance between himself and Daughter.

He needed her to become so much better than what he could be. Her control her been wonderful these past few weeks. Her aura had this sort of…hazy or tired….quality to it but she hadn't lost control of her powers once. Not even the other night…well he had woken up to the feel of her aura…but she had been in her bed under the covers when he had gone to check on her. She must have just been having a bad dream. He could not fault her for that.

She used to come to him when she had bad dreams.

But now she didn't. She was older now. Ten. At the edge of childhood. The last gasp of it. She was getting older now and that was the second layer to why he hadn't sought her out. Last time he had sought her out they'd ended up having a very unpleasant conversation. He had no idea why he'd been so squeamish. Sex and love were things that he knew existed and that were parts of being human. They were parts of being human that he was attempting to transcend but they were still there. She was human the same as him and she, of course, would have the same sorts of feelings towards the opposite sex that he had.

He just wished that she had waited a few years before having those sorts of feelings.

He had never imagined that he would ever even have been capable of being so squeamish. These were the facts of life, sex and love, and his children were not immune to them. Daughter was not immune to them. He didn't care what Son did…imagining Son having those feelings for someone didn't inspire nearly the same levels of unpleasant feelings as imagining Daughter in the same position did….so it must have just been something about her gender. That societal conditioning that told him, the stupid parts of his brain, that these feelings were not for women to have. The smart part of his brain, the part that could use logic, knew that the species could not reproduce itself if women did not have the same sorts of feelings and desires that men did.

Even his own Daughter.

His own Daughter who could have done so much better in choosing a potential partner. That was the third layer of it all. Daughter had chosen poorly because he had been a very poor father to her. Her choice of partner was a reflection of who he was as a man. They said that people chose partners who best reflected their opposite gender parent after all. He had been a poor father to her, letting his emotions rule him, and she had in turn chosen a very poor choice of male partner as well. She had chosen a man who was ruled by his own whims and emotions, who had never thought an action through to the end in his entire life, and who if rumors were to be believed was a bigger womanizer…and whatever the term for someone who slept with many men as well was….than Suzuki had ever been in his life.

He had to be something better than what he was now. For her sake.

But he was not. He was only himself and as of now he was ashamed of himself. For letting that happen to her. Also for distressing her…which he should not have felt bad about at all. She had been cross with him for what he had done to the man she…had feelings for…and she had even told him to his face that she would have preferred if he kept his more violent impulses in check. She said it in the same way in which Masami had aired her grievances with him, before, only in more of a…Daughter-esque….way. If that made sense.

It had hurt him knowing that she had been cross.

And now he felt relieved that she had sought him out. He was a mess. His emotions were a mess. He did not need her, he did not need anyone, and the intelligent thing to do would have been to kick her out of his bed instead of making room for her. He had been sitting in the middle and he made his way to the side so she could lay down beside him.

Masami's side.

"Thanks, dad." Said Mob as she made herself comfortable. She was still mad at him about what he did but she also didn't want to be alone. She was mad at him for hurting someone because of her but she also was not able to sleep alone. She just wasn't. So she sat in the dark with dad and watched TV. Even though she was still mad at him over what she did.

She was more embarrassed, though, over what she had done.

And her embarrassment won out against her being upset with dad. She knew that she and Minegishi were still friends and all but she just felt…embarrassed. She had seen something that she was not supposed to see. She had been there for something that she was not supposed to be there for. She knew that it was over now and they never had to talk about it again…but she also knew that she could not just pretend that it never happened…and that she just needed more time so that the memory could fade a little bit.

Or a lot.

"Any preference towards what we watch?" asked Suzuki. He wasn't watching, not really. He was trying to get some sleep. He was trying to get some reprieve from the thoughts running through his mind. Thoughts of his Son's wellbeing, his Daughter's first foray into the world of love and attraction, and his wife's whereabouts. Thoughts that he would have preferred not to have. Her being near to him helped, somewhat, but not totally.

But he did enjoy having her near.

"No. Your show is fine. What are they talking about in this episode?" asked Mob as she got the pillows behind her to the right height. She was a lot shorter than dad, after all, and he made his bed with his own comforts in mind. He would have had to fix her bed the way he liked it if he ever decided to hang out in her room…which of course he wouldn't. He was dad. She came to him, not the other way around.

"School lunches." Said Suzuki. He had only half been watching. It was always interesting to see a foreigner's perspective on Japan. He had no idea why people found the country of his birth so fascinating…besides the fact that it was the greatest culture on Earth. Though why people were so fascinated with school lunches of all things was beyond him. Noodle soup, a bottle of milk, and an apple or a pear. What was so amazing about that? Though things may have changed in Daughter's era. He didn't know, the show hadn't gotten to her era yet and she didn't go to school so she couldn't tell him if things had changed.

He wondered if she ever missed it.

School. Being around others her own age. She may have needed to be around people her own age. He had always found his peers to be quite tiresome but he was different from her. Men and women were different. Woman tended to be more social beings than men. She may have been lonely for people her own age. She certainly seemed to be missing her brother and he could not for the life of him imagine why. He was terrible to her and to everyone else around him. Yet she still missed him….

She missed the companionship of someone her own age.

There weren't any other espers her own age. He had managed to find one and he had slipped right through his fingers. A pity. He could have been for Daughter. Suzuki didn't know a thing about the boy but he did know what literally anyone else would have been better for Daughter than Shimazaki. She had only been attracted to him, probably, because of Suzuki's poor parenting and the fact that she didn't know anyone her own age. Well she could wait for all of that until she got older and when she did…either he found someone her own age or she chose from the pool of espers who were NOT Shimazaki Ryou.

He somehow couldn't wait for her to grow up but also wanted to freeze her in time as a ten year old.

"Really? Why? That's such a boring thing to make a whole episode about." Said Mob

"I thought so as well but it appears that the NHK had money to spend educating the English speaking world about what our schoolchildren typically have for their midday meal. I have no idea why anyone would find school meals fascinating." Said Suzuki

"Me neither. Back when I went to school the food wasn't that good. It always tasted boring and it was always the same things every single week. Curry and rice with miso, grilled meat and rice with salad and miso, meat sandwiches with salad and miso…they were really into miso…they made us a lot of miso." Said Mob. They had other things, too, but she mostly just remembered the never ending bowls of miso soup. Not even the good kind mom made from scratch. She had seen the cooks making it. It came from packets. Mom said that soup from the packet wasn't very good and Mob agreed. It had hardly any taste at all. She wondered if she ever would have gotten used to it.

Of course to get used to it she would have had to have stayed in school.

She would have been going into the fifth grade…or maybe the sixth. She wasn't sure. She had moved around so much and been in so many different countries that she had lost count of even what grade she would have been in. Still grade school though, not middle school, and she was sad that she wouldn't be able to go to middle school and high school. She wanted to have middle school and high school adventures. She wanted to make friends and join a club and have a boyfriend…

One who dad wouldn't end up beating up.

She got the feeling that dad was going to beat up every single boy who he ever thought liked her. Even if she didn't like him back dad was going to end up beating him up. Mob didn't want to be responsible for anyone else getting hurt…but she did want a boyfriend. Someone who loved her no matter what. Someone who loved her no matter how clueless she was or how often she messed up. Someone who would hold her hand and kiss her but in the normal way. Not the way where it seemed like two people were eating each other. She didn't really want to do that.

But she did want someone to love and who could love her in return…and who dad wouldn't end up beating up.

"We ate a lot of noodle soup, I remember, endless bowls of noodle soup. Occasionally we had something better like curry or stew but it was mostly noodle soup when I was your age. By the time I started to just eat a very large breakfast and skip lunch all together." Said Suzuki

"What did you eat for breakfast?" asked Mob

"Why do you want to know?" asked Suzuki

"Because I like it when you talk about what things were like when you were a kid. I like it when you share things with me." Said Mob. She liked it when dad talked to her like they were…well not equals…but when he talked to her like she was a person the same as him. When he told her about the way things used to be. She tried to picture him as a kid, as someone her age, as someone she could have known if her life had been different. If mom had stayed. If she had been born to a different family forty years ago. If her life had been normal.

But her life was not normal.

There was no point at all in wishing for a normal life. She didn't even fully want one. She got a lot of good things. Lots and lots of good things happened in her life. She had a little brother who she loved more than anything else in the world, good friends even though things were sort of awkward now, and also she didn't have to do the boring parts of being a kid like sitting through school all day or having a bed time or stuff like that. She also got whatever she wanted, mostly, and got to travel all over the world with her friends and little brother.

Who could ever ask for more?

An ungrateful person, that was who. Someone who took everything good that dad gave them and threw it right back in his face. Someone who didn't know how good she had it. Someone who watched too much TV and read too much manga. She was happy with that she had and she had to stay happy. Her life could have been much different if things had been different. If she had different parents or had been born in a different country or a different time…but she had not been born in a different country or a different time. She had been born in this country in this time to Suzuki Masami and Suzuki Touichirou and she was Suzuki Shigeko and that…that was all that she could be.

So there was no point at all in thinking about a different life. Different wouldn't always mean better.

"Really? I would have imagined that my era would have seemed boring to you. Yours is so much more...just more, I supposed. Your world is both larger and smaller than mine. Gratification is more instant and pleasures are more fleeting. For example, when I was your age we had a very limited number of television stations and they had a limited number of broadcast hours. If you didn't like what was being broadcast then you needed to find some other way to entertain yourself. Information was more difficult to come by as well. Computers weren't all linked together and the whole of human knowledge could not be carried around in your pocket. Yes, your era is a much better era than mine, I think." Said Suzuki. He could have done so much more with his life if he had been born in her era. He had conceived of Claw when he was a little older than her, in middle school, but he hadn't gotten it off the ground until his twenties. Yes, if he had been born in this era he could have been ruling the world by now.

Patience.

He had to have patience. The time would come. He gathered more money and more manpower by the day. Within in a few short years he would be able to finally wage war upon the world. He would come out victorious and at his rightful place as ruler of the world. He just needed to wait, that was all. Wait to make a better world for himself and his Daughter.

"I don't think that it would be boring, I think that it would be interesting because it's so different from what I'm used to." Said Mob

"The mind does crave novelty." Said Suzuki

"I think that it does, too. Like how I'm always getting new manga even though I have a lot of manga. Or like how Sho starts a lot of drawings and doesn't always finish them….I hope that he gets some done while he's away, though. He's really good at drawing." Said Mob

"I hope that he gets some work done. I sent him to the Seventh Division to gain some field experience, not draw pictures." Said Suzuki. Son was a good artist but now was not the time to be drawing pictures. He was weary to send Son to Seasoning City but this…this would be good for him. He had been so restless lately…and Fukuda would keep him on task. He maybe had a tendency to overstep and overindulge the children but when it came to work the man was all business.

"He can do both." Said Mob. She hoped that he was enjoying himself in some way. She knew how much he hated Awakening Labs. She just wanted him to be happy. She wished that she could have gone in his place. She wondered why he had gone at all. She was older and she had already proven that she could follow dad's orders and even replace him if he ever needed to go on another long mission or something.

"Maybe." Said Suzuki. He hoped that Son was doing something productive with his time. All of his hopes for the future rested on that child…since without Masami he could not have another child….nor did he particularly want another one.

"Hey dad? Will….will I have to go on missions too?" asked Mob after a moment. On the TV they were talking about the sorts of school lunches that she had eaten when she had gone to school. She wasn't really paying attention.

"You? Of course not. You're my Daughter and your place is here by my side." Said Suzuki. Of all the ridiculous things to come out of her mouth. Honestly. She knew that she would never, ever, ever be apart from him. She was his Daughter. He would never let her go.

"Oh….I get it. It's one of those boy and girl things….I get it." Said Mob. Sometimes it felt unfair that just because she was a girl she couldn't do some things. She didn't get it and she had never gotten it. So she was a girl? That didn't mean anything. She had long hair and wore dresses and had to sit down to pee. She didn't see how something like that, something that didn't even matter, could dictate how she lived her life and stuff. Maybe Minegishi had the right idea. They weren't a boy or a girl, they were just themselves, and they did whatever they felt like…though Mob knew that she could never be like that. She could never do whatever she felt like.

She was Suzuki Shigeko after all.

"Yes, you are my Daughter and you'll always be by my side." Said Suzuki. It may have been her gender that made him want to protect her even though she was a capable esper in her own right. It may also have been the fact that she could leave. She could leave him and then…and then he would be without a Daughter. He was already without a wife. He did not want to be without a Daughter as well. Being without a Son….he didn't much care…but being without a Daughter would have been like…like being without Masami…

And he hated himself for feeling this way.

"Even when I'm an adult?" asked Mob

"Yes." said Suzuki

"Even when I'm your age?" asked Mob

"If I'm still alive, Daughter, yes." said Suzuki

"….even if I get married?" asked Mob

"Yes." said Suzuki

"Even if I have a baby?" asked Mob

"Yes." said Suzuki

"But you said that I'm not allowed to like people. You said that I was too young and then you went and beat up Shimazaki….and I don't even like him like that." Said Mob

"Yes. You're too young to form those sorts of relationships with the opposite sex yet. When you're a teenager then you can form those sorts of relationships. At that point, the point at which you become old enough to choose a partner, I will not harm him. I do not wish to alienate you. It would serve no purpose. You belong at my side and I will not have someone at my side who resents me. It would make no sense what so ever." Said Suzuki. He was not looking forward to that day, the day she told him that there was a man in her life, but he knew that it was coming. He knew that one day she would meet a man and he would be her most perfect person and there would be nothing that he could do about it without running the risk of alienating her….and he did not want to do that. So he would deal, then, with whatever idiot it was that she chose to bring into her life. To keep her by his side he would endure it.

"….so we're always going to be together?" asked Mob

"Yes. We will always be together until the day I die. Or you die, I suppose, but you're thirty three years younger than I am." Said Suzuki. He didn't like to think about it, his inevitable demise. He accepted it, though, that one day he would cease and she would be on her own. Well she would have her own family but he would no longer be there to guide her or to protect her…and then one day she would cease as well. That was existence. The point of existence was coming to terms with your inevitable nonexistence…and making your mark upon the world while you existed.

"…ok." Said Mob. She didn't know how to feel. On the one hand she loved her dad so much but on the other…she didn't know what she would do when she was a grown up. Her whole life had been planned out for her already. She would work for Claw and work with dad and then she would come home and hang out with dad and then the same thing over and over again….and again and again and again…

Forever.

She knew who she was and she knew what she had to do. She was dad's Daughter and that meant that she had to do what dad said and live the life that he'd planned for her. There was no point at all in wanting something else or thinking about what her life would have been like if she had been someone else or…or something. There was no changing who she was and even thinking about wanting something different made her ungrateful. She had a good life coming to her. She would be with her dad forever and he loved her so much…and she also had Sho and he loved her so much…so really she just had to look at all of the good things she had. Lots of people didn't have dads and brothers who loved them. Lots of people didn't even know what they were going to do with their lives. Not her. She knew exactly who she was and who she was going to be.

Suzuki Shigeko. Daughter of Suzuki Touichirou.

"Good, I'm glad that you understand." Said Suzuki. Was it wrong to look forward to a life with his Daughter? He was her father and he was supposed to care for her. She was his child and he was supposed to want her by his side….even though it made him weak. He wanted her by his side to satiate his own desire for companionship. Not to teach her or to mold her but instead to be near her…to have her by his side.

Was that ok?

Was it ok that he was…happy…that she had come to him? That she wanted to be near him? That she had come knocking at his door?