Suzuki Toichirou didn't need anymore.
But his Daughter. He cared for his Daughter and in caring for her then it was completely normal to want to keep her beside him at all times. She was his Daughter and he was her father and as her father it was his job to keep her near to him. It was his job to keep her safe. It was his job to raise her properly and he couldn't raise her properly if she was away from him for too long.
So he had legitimate reasons to keep her near.
"Dad, I'm going to go take a break." Said Daughter. He didn't know what she was taking a break from. She had been watching television on her tablet all day. Well she had sent out some more of her little mass emails and also she'd answered some of his work emails but aside from that she hadn't been up to much at all.
"Do you have to?" asked Suzuki. He had no idea if she had to. He trusted her judgement. He didn't know how she was feeling and she was a child. Maybe she had to burn off some excessive energy. Son had the problem a lot of the time. That was why he had sent him to go and both someone else. He wasn't going to send Daughter out to go and bother someone else. Not that she was bothering him at all.
No, it was the direct opposite.
He enjoyed her presence while he worked. He'd always enjoyed her presence while he worked even when she had been a small child. He could remember those days when she had been small and they all lived in the old house…and she had been just as wonderful then as she was now. Maybe she was even more wonderful now that she was older and she was better for conversation and the like. He wanted to keep her there. He wanted to keep her beside him because…because she was good conversation. He might have felt like having a conversation at some point and then she wouldn't be there and then who would he talk to? Shibata? One of the Awakened? Himself like some sort of madman?
"Um…yes? I'm just going down to the lunchroom to have a snack. That's all." said Daughter. He frowned a bit. She had been eating a lot lately. Not as much as before, she had frightened him a bit before, but she had been hungrier than normal. Fukuda said that she was probably going through some sort of growth spirt. That would make sense. She was almost ten and a half and the internet had said that puberty was right around the corner…not that he was looking forward to that at all…
"You're hungry again?" asked Suzuki. He glanced at the clock. It was only two p.m. and they'd just eaten round noon. How much food did children need? He wasn't sure. He could barely remember how much he had eaten when he had been ten. Once he'd hit his teenage years he had been ravenous, as ravenous that Daughter was now, but he'd been going through puberty then. He'd been growing quickly physically, mentally, and also his powers had been growing exponentially too.
It had not been a good time.
He did not need his children to hit those years. There was no way to skip those years, though, because the children needed to grow up. Daughter needed to grow up. He wanted Son to grow up. He didn't want to deal with Son going through those years, he had been very violent and annoying lately and he was only ten. Suzuki shuddered to think of what his Son would be like in a few years. He didn't want Daughter to grow up. Son, he wanted Son to grow up and grow out of this…whatever he was going through, but Daughter….he wanted to freeze her at ten forever. He wanted a Daughter who…who was this Daughter. Who enjoyed spending time with him. Who did as she was told. Teenagers…he knew what teenagers were like….he had BEEN a teenager. A teenage boy. He'd heard that girls were worse. Whenever he would talk about her behavior back when she had been young Masami had always told him 'you just wait until she's thirteen'.
He didn't want her to be thirteen. He wanted her to be ten.
"Yes. I want a cookie." said Daughter. Suzuki wondered if he should do something about how much she ate. He wondered what he was even supposed to do. Food was not a battle he had ever liked waging with the children. They could eat whatever they felt like, he had always felt, but Daughter had been eating a lot…and also eating food that just was not good for her. He worried for her health even though they had Fukuda in case she ever truly got sick.
He was concerned for her.
He didn't like it. He didn't like caring for another being. He didn't like being concerned for her or for anyone else. It made him feel weak. It made him feel…but this was alright. He was supposed to be concerned for his Daughter. She was his child and he was supposed to worry about the wellbeing of his child. She was his, his, and only his.
She was his.
"But you just had lunch." Said Suzuki. He knew what time it was and he knew how to do basic math. She always left him around two p.m. and he had no idea why. She could just eat more at lunch or something. She didn't have to leave him.
"I know that we had lunch but I forgot to take a cookie. Don't you remember? We had lunch together." Said Daughter. Yes, he did remember, but he still didn't know why she had to leave him. She was always leaving him in some way…not that he cared. She wasn't leaving, not really, and she in fact could not leave. She was a child. She was ten. Where could she even go? Why would she even go? He made her happy. He provided for her and spent time with her and even showed her more frequent affection. What more did she ask for?
"Yes. Why are you eating again? Are you that hungry? Maybe you should eat more at your meals, then, so you don't have to eat between meals." Said Suzuki. He watched Daughter's aura. It had less of that sleepy quality to it. It came in closer to her, she was pulling it in, and he didn't know why. She had no reason to get defensive.
"Why can't I just eat whenever I want?" asked Daughter
"You can. I'm just trying to understand you." Said Suzuki. He didn't much like admitting it, that he was trying to understand her, that he needed to understand her. That was very close to admitting that he needed her. HE had already admitted to her that he needed her…and he hated himself for it…and he didn't want to admit it again. He isn't supposed to need her. He isn't supposed to need anymore. What she must have thought of him, of her father, being so needy and weak.
She must have been thinking something.
Her aura was drawn in much closer around her. Her aura was pulled in closer and she was looking at him, now, and her arms were drawn around her. As she moved some heavy electronic thing, he had no hope of understanding the children's various gadgets, hit the desk as she moved. They were sitting the both of them at his desk. He knew that she needed a desk of her own and probably an office of her own, too, because she was getting older and his desk was getting crowded….but he didn't want to give her a desk of her own let alone an office of her own. Not yet.
He wanted to keep her close. He wanted to keep her right by his side at all times. She was his. She was his and he wanted to be with her…but he knew that it made him so weak and needy. She was just so…her. He wanted to take her and bring her in close. He wanted to hold her close and…and also keep her at arm's length. He had to keep her at arm's length because…because he couldn't be like that…but also….
The whole thing was very complicated.
"Are you going to grab me again?" asked Daughter. She had her arms around herself now. Defensive. Why was she being defensive? He had no clue but he did know that these were defensive gestures. She was pulling her aura in close and also she was using her arms to protect her organs….he didn't understand.
"No. Should I?" asked Suzuki. Did she want him to hold her? She asked that of him sometimes. He didn't know why. Maybe she felt unsafe when she asked him for that. She was certainly acting, now, as though she felt unsafe even though she had no reason to. He was there. He would protect her from whatever it was that she feared.
"No. You don't have to." Said Daughter quickly. She dropped her defensive posture. She did, however, zip up the hooded jacket that she was wearing for some reason. Was she cold? The air conditioning wasn't even going full blast. It was set at sixty five. It could go a lot lower…but then again she was wearing less clothing than he was. She was just in another one of those costume dresses she always wore. He was in a full suit. He wondered when she would start wearing actual clothing. She had worn actual clothing when she had been younger. Now she seemed to exclusively wear these costumes…but he knew not to say anything. It was dangerous ground to criticize a woman's clothing.
"Are you going to leave, then?" asked Suzuki. She was glancing at the time like she had somewhere to be. But she had also zipper her coat and if she was planning on going out into the greater building then she would need to unzip that coat because the rest of the building was considerably warmer than his office.
"I'm coming back. You said 'leave like I'm never coming back but I will." Said Daughter. Suzuki thought for a moment. He was being irrational, wasn't he? She had a point. He was not going to leave him forever. He had nothing to worry about. She was his Daughter. She would never go anywhere. She was just a child. She couldn't leave him.
"…fine. But come back quickly and don't leave the building." Said Suzuki. What else could he say? He had no reason to keep her near him beyond his own feelings and those were irrational.
"Thanks, dad." Said Daughter. She said that and then she left and…and all he could do was watch her leave. She was going to come back. He didn't know why he felt like she was not going to come back. She was his Daughter. She was his. His. The word his calms him down. He clings to it. He clings to it like h wants to cling to her. He wants to cling to her and…and he knows that he shouldn't. She was his and his alone and she would come back. She was his and she was a child and she would come back. She always came back.
He checked the time.
Lunch ended at half past two. She did not have the power to extend lunchtime. She had power, some of it, but she did not have that kind of power. She stopped having her meals brought to her and…and he had no idea why she did that. She could have whatever she wanted brought to her. Daughter…he didn't understand her. Maybe she wanted to…socialize? He didn't know. He had never understood the urge to socialize…but he was not Daughter.
She was a different person from him. She was a totally different person and she was just….she had her own reasons for doing the things that she did. She had her own reasons and they were incomprehensible to him and he just had to accept that about her. He had no choice in that. He should have gotten himself sorted out first, anyway, before he tried to get her sorted out. He had been…he did not like the person who he had been lately. He was usually better at detaching from her, from everyone, from everything but now…
He checked the clock.
She should have been there by now. He should have been better than this. Here he sat with a mountain of work piling up on his desk just waiting for her to come back so they could sit there together again. He never should have given into her that first time. When he had decided to pick her up and carry her to his bed just because he had been missing her. He never should have done it again for the second night or the third and he certainly should not have let her come and voluntarily sleep next to him…but he had. He had and now they were….this.
He checked the clock again.
He never should have allowed her to sleep next to him. He never should have given in to her when she asked him for more affection. He never should have allowed himself to need her. He was supposed to be beyond this, beyond the idea of need, beyond needing anyone but himself. He never should have….he never should have allowed himself to…to give in to this growing need to be beside her. He had been her father for eight years now. Why did he just suddenly now want to be near her? Or had this been growing, insidiously, within him for years. This dependence he had on Daughter, on her presence. He had always enjoyed her presence.
He checked the clock again.
How long would she be gone for? She had already been gone for too long…and he did not like this. That she was gone and the way he was feeling. His desk was starting to rise up off the ground. Thank God he was alone. He didn't know how he would be able to explain this to anyone. His lack of control. He willed his desk to hit the ground. He sighed and rested his head in his hands. He would feel better when fall came. He would feel better when winter came. He would start to feel terrible again once spring came. He would be at his absolute worst as summer came, as it wore on, and he would get worse and worse and worse until fall came and the cycle continued.
He wanted this to stop.
He wished that there was some way to make this stop. He wished that there was some way to exorcise these emotions. He wished that he had better control over himself. He had to have control over himself. He was Suzuki Touichirou. He was the future ruler of the world. He just could not carry on like this. How could he do this? He was falling to pieces just because his Daughter had left him…and she had been worrying him….but he was the one who was probably worrying him. What she must have thought of him. What her mother must have thought of him. Masami had seen him like this, too.
She had seen him like this.
She had seen him weak and worried and alone and….and maybe that was why she had left. He had no idea why she had left, vanished completely, and he wished….he wished that she had just told him to his face that she was unhappy with him. That he had done something to be a bad husband. That she had seen him weak and vulnerable. She, of course, had wanted to go….or maybe that wasn't it. He didn't know. He had no idea what it was that had caused her to leave him. He wished that she had just left him a message or…or something. If she had just given him some indication of why it was that she was leaving.
He checked the clock again.
Daughter at least told him where she was going and why. She was someone who said what she meant and meant what she said. He liked that about her. She was so easy to understand….and also very complex. She had been so ravenously hungry lately…but he could he ask her about that later. He could ask her about it and she would give him clear and concise answers. He loved that about her. He loved her. He loved her so much because…because she was easy enough to understand…and she explained herself when he didn't understand her…and she made her needs perfectly clear. She was his Daughter and he loved her.
He checked the time again.
He decided that he'd had enough of waiting for her. She had been gone for too long and…and something might have happened to her. She could have…fallen and broken her legs….not likely. She could have gotten stopped by some Awakened…somewhat likely. Either way he was Suzuki Touichriou and he could go wherever he wanted and he could do whatever he wanted and he wanted to…to go and take a walk. Stretch his legs. Sitting down for long periods of time was bad for you or something. So he could get up and take a walk whenever he wanted to.
He got up too fast.
Back pain. Lower back pain from sitting too long. Fukuda could fix it but it would just be back again…and again. Forties. He was in his forties. At some point he had hit his forties, probably on 11:59 p.m. on his thirty ninth birthday, and now he was getting older and he would die some day…and he doesn't want to think about it. He doesn't want to think about in a few short years he'll be fifty and then sixty and seventy and eighty and then probably he'll be dead by then and then Daughter will inherit….then SON will inherit the Earth and Daughter…she will have to be without him…and she'll die without him.
He might have been just a bit too dramatic there.
He didn't want to think about it, getting old, the fact that he had hit middle age, and the fact that his Daughter was going to be all grown up soon. He didn't want to think about any of that. He was going to think about….about how she had been gone for a while and he was within his rights as her father to check on her…and also he really did need to get to walking. His joints hurt a little and his back popped a few times…he needed to figure out how to either deal with this or reverse the aging process…but then he could end up living forever as he reversed the aging process…and he didn't want that.
Well he could get a lot more done if he lived forever.
But then he would have to live forever and that meant that he would outlive Daughter. He didn't think that he could have stood to outlive her. That was not the natural order of things. He had brought her into this world and he could not see her leave it…well he hadn't brought her INTO the world but he had raised her…and either way he never wanted to see her dead. He loved her. He loved her so very much….and he had been saying it too often lately. It was detrimental to her, perhaps, or to him. He was the one going to pieces, not her.
He hated himself sometimes.
He hated the way he felt and the way he acted and the weakness he had shown her. She had seen him at his weakest and she must have thought less of him. Who wouldn't think less of their father when he acted like that, needy and clingy? No wonder she wanted to get away from him. No wonder she didn't want to stay by his side for every single hour of every single day. He shouldn't have wanted that from her, though, he shouldn't have needed that. He was Suzuki Touichirou and he shouldn't have needed anyone but himself.
He needed her.
He needed her and he did not have to go far to find her. She was exactly where she said that she was. She was in the cafeteria eating a cookie and talking to someone. The cafeteria was deserted, he spotted her immediately, and he knew that she must have noticed him. She paid him no mind, though, because she was in the middle of a conversation. He had no idea what she was talking about but whatever it was it must have been pretty engaging.
If she wanted to talk to someone she could have talked to him.
But she wasn't talking to him. She was talking to….he really needed to start learning people's names. Someone at that terrible in between stage between being a boy and being a man. All acne and awkwardness. Daughter was talking to him and smiling and her aura was….he had never seen her aura like that before. Hiccupping was the best word he could think of for it. Nervous. Not fear just…nervous. He didn't understand her one bit sometimes.
Also she had been away from him for too long.
He gave her aura a tap. Not enough to hurt, just enough to make her aware of him if she wasn't already. Daughter, to her credit, immediately sat up straight and left the table. Good. She had been gone for far too long. She was holding on to her hair with one hand and clutching her cookie in the other. He wondered what either of those gestures meant. He wondered a lot of things about her.
"Dad? How come you're here?" asked Daughter as she joined him at his side where she belonged.
"It's my building and my organization. I can go wherever I want." Said Suzuki. He wasn't about to admit to her that it had been difficult for him to be away from her. He didn't want to make himself look bad and also he got the feeling if he told her the depth of his feelings for her it would be…putting power over him in her hands? Maybe. That was just the feeling he got. The only person who he had ever let have power over him had been Masami and she had been his wife. Daughter was not his wife and he could not let her have power over him. If it even was that. He didn't know.
"Ok. That makes sense." Said Daughter as she walked beside him. He decided to make a lap around the building just so that people remembered that he was alive….and also because his joints had cried out in protest when he got up and he knew that was not a good sign at all.
Nothing had been a good sign lately.
The way that he had felt physically and emotionally. He had been setting the worst sort of example. Daughter was there at his side where she belonged and he was right there beside her where he belonged, he was leading her, but where was he leading her to? He didn't know. He didn't know where he was leading her to right now or….or even in life. He needed to be better for her, to be a better father, but he just did not know how. Not when he was all twisted up like this. Not when he had this need to be beside her, to cling to her, to spend every moment with her.
He hadn't felt like this since Masami.
He had needed Masami but now…now he had his Daughter.