Hatori Nozomu was a very strange man.
Not just because he was a homosexual. They made up ten percent of the world's population so that was not what made him strange. Statistically. To Suzuki that was one of the many things that made him strange. He was strange because of his proclivities as well as the fact that his aura was constantly pulled around him defensively even though there were no threats around, he seemed to be in a permanent state of perspiration even though the thermostat was set at eighteen degrees cold, and he seemed to have some kind of nervous disorder based on the way he jumped whenever he was addressed. Those were strange things about him.
Also he wore square glasses.
Why were they square? What purpose did square lenses serve? Did it have something to do with his poor vision? Did he just have square lenses in an attempt at being fashionable? But if he were trying to be fashionable then Suzuki would have noticed other people walking around with square lenses. He didn't…but then again he didn't notice a lot of people. The construction of the new Eighth Division did not give him a lot of time to mix with the general population…not that he had ever enjoyed doing that. Still, though, square lenses just seemed….strange.
Strange lenses for a very strange man.
"Um…boss? Everything alright?" asked Hatori. His voice wavered and his aura was pulled inwards. Suzuki would have thought that Hatori had been afraid, he had the markers of a few response there, but he had nothing to be afraid of. This was as close to a casual setting as Suzuki allowed himself to have with another human being outside of his family. He was playing…well designing Claw bases and working on his hand eye coordination….with Hatori. They were sitting there at the kitchen table side by side working to build a better virtual world.
Nothing to be afraid of there.
Suzuki so wished Fukuda had been there. He had always been very good with people. He would have been able to see how Hatori was acting and then tell Suzuki what it meant and what he was supposed to do about it. He was getting a strong sense of fear but that could not have been right. Hatori had nothing to be afraid of. He hadn't given Suzuki any reason to do anything to him, he and Daughter were sexually incompatible so there was no reason to tie a heavy stone to him and toss him into the ocean, and he said that he would never express interest in Son as well because…he was Son. No, Hatori had nothing to worry about when it came to Suzuki. He may not have understood the other man's proclivities, he had done his trying in his youth and come to the conclusion that homosexuality was both incompressible and not for him, but he wasn't going to punish him for it. Suzuki really didn't care so long as nobody asked him to do anything.
Also he wasn't going to harm one of Daughter's friends….especially when she was sleeping right there in her bedroom.
"Yes." said Suzuki. He didn't know why Hatori was looking at him like that. His pupils were so blown out that his irises could barely be seen. His eyes were brown, a very dark shade of brown, they bordered on black. It was difficult to tell when his irises ended and his pupils began…and Suzuki needed to be able to tell. That was important. That was another fear response. Wide eyes. Fear or arousal. He hoped that it was the former and not the later. He knew how to instill and deal with the former. The later…he had no interest in the later and he had thought that he had made himself clear about that. He so wished Fukuda could have been there. He was good at this sort of thing. Well so was Daughter but it was not Sunday and it was also past the hour when she usually retired. She needed sleep, she was a child, and he was not going to wake her up outside of their time together to explain why Hatori looked the way he did.
Maybe his eyes weren't afraid. Maybe it was just the lenses.
"Do you…do you want me to do something else?" asked Hatori. He stuttered then. That was something else that was odd about him. He stuttered even though he had no reason to. He was a very powerful esper. He had been born in the right generation to be a powerful esper. The world was reliant on technology, on the threads that phones and computers and whatever else he controlled could spin together, and Hatori could so easily cut those threads and sent their society spinning into chaos. He had no reason to stutter.
He was such a strange man.
"No, I need more wood. Keep cutting down trees. Mining them." Said Suzuki. He kept on watching Hatori. His eyes were brown, his irises were almost as dark as his pupils, but there was an odd sort of glare across his glasses. Maybe because they were square. How did lenses work? Convex or concave? Well how did the lenses being square effect that? What was even the point? He could see that Hatori's lenses were concave in shape. They reduced the focusing power of the eye. They were thinnest in the middle and that meant that light-
"Um….sir? Are you sure that you're ok?" asked Hatori. Suzuki kept his aura still. Now he had lost his train of thought. Wonderful.
"I'm fine. I have no idea why you're asking. Stop." Said Suzuki
"Sure…uh…it's just that you're staring at me." Said Hatori. Right. That was socially unacceptable…well it was when you stared at a woman. Fukuda had told him back when they had been in school together. Back when he'd had a new object of his affections every single week, it had felt like, and he wanted nothing more than to observe them and learn all that there was to know about them. That was an unacceptable way to treat a romantic partner, Fukuda had said, because women found it unnerving….but Hatori was not a woman…but he may have taken his staring not as fascination but as attraction….and Suzuki could not let that be. He did not sleep with his subordinates…..outside of an isolated incident….and that person had been female…and even if he had shared Hatori's proclivities he certainly could have done better.
"I'm not attracted to you." Said Suzuki. There. The air was cleared. Now they could go back to clearing this fortress. He was going to make houses here, a little Claw village, and he needed a lot of wood. Well stone would have been better but wood was more abundant.
"Um….ok?" asked Hatori. Was he hurt by that? Rejection could be very painful…but Suzuki really did not care if he caused Hatori pain. Daughter cared, though, about this man…so he needed to be…nice. Treat him like…well not an equal…treat him with care. Yes, that was what he would do. He would not harm him in any way or threaten to. Because he was special to Daughter and also he was very useful.
"Don't ever think that I am because I'm not. You're not attractive even if you were female." Said Suzuki. There. The air was clear and now they could get back to their very serious work. There. He didn't need Fukuda. He could handle this on his own. He didn't need to wake Daughter up. Well he wanted to, he wanted nothing more than to wake her up and have her bring her laptop and then she would work on her kingdom of ice and snow, or help it was her choice, and she would be so happy and also she could make them coffee because it was truly an obscene hour….
No, it was not Sunday.
When Sunday came then the two of them could play together….or do whatever she wanted. It was her day after all. Sundays were her day and he would focus on her and making her happy….he missed her so much….but he could at least distract himself. This game was both a good distraction and a good learning tool. He had so many new base designs…maybe he should knock the new Eighth Division down and start again….
But first he would have to design this new Claw village…as soon as Hatori got back to work.
"I…I didn't think that you were….I mean you have two kids so I know that you're….not interested in me." Said Hatori
"Good. I'm very glad that we understand each other." Said Suzuki
"But…um….if I do something wrong…I can change! I mean I can fix it! I mean only if you want me to! I mean….I mean that I'll do whatever you want me to." Said Hatori. He was breathing heavily now and the collar of his sweater was soaked through with sweat. Suzuki wondered why he didn't just take his sweater off if he was overheating so badly….but telling another man to get undressed…that seemed like the sort of thing that could be taken the wrong way. He didn't tell Hatori to get undressed but he did reach over with his powers and turn the thermostat down a tick.
Hatori jumped as his aura passed over him.
Which was not so unusual. People were instinctively afraid of him. He was just that powerful. He was used to people jumping when his powers and his aura passed near to them. That was the most normal thing that Hatori had done all night….but his aura was still turned inwards. Suzuki could feel it in the laptops on the table. It was like they were focusing only on Hatori….even though they were machines and couldn't focus on anything because they were not alive.
Hatori was so strange sometimes.
"You need water too." Said Suzuki. He used his powers to pour Hatori a glass of water. He knew that he should have told Hatori to get it himself but, well, this was simpler. Hatori was a jumpy man and a clumsy man….and it made no sense for him to be that way. He acted as though he expected Suzuki to do something terrible to him…but he had given Suzuki no reason to do anything terrible to him. Also he was Daughter's friend and Suzuki would never damage him in any serious way. Daughter's emotions would not be able to recover.
"W-what?" asked Hatori. He practically choked out the word. His voice was still breaking. He was little more than a boy…and Suzuki forgot how close he was in age to Daughter…but he could not be interested in Daughter because she was female. He would not be interested in Son, too, because he was Son….and also Son was probably not a homosexual and Suzuki's fears were unfounded. So he wore his sister's dresses and had never once, to his knowledge, expressed interest in the opposite sex…he was a boy and boys were slower than girls when it came to things like that…
Though he wished that Son and Daughter would swap places when it came to the opposite sex.
Daughter had noticed the opposite sex and they had noticed her right back. Suzuki had seen boys chatting her up on more than one occasion. That was what it was called when you spoke to a girl solely for the express purposes of getting a date with her and all the things that came later. Daughter did not tell these suitors to leave her alone, nor did she turn to him for help, she smiled and giggled and SPOKE to these boys, and…and Suzuki would not allow this. Not until she was older. She was a child and she needed to stay a child…and she did not need to be talking to boys like that…
He had been a boy at one point. He knew what they had on their minds.
He was a man now and he knew what he had on his mind…and it was not nearly as bad as when he had been her age. No, he had taken leave of his sense between the ages of around eleven or twelve until he started university. He had a brain, he had a penis, and all of his blood had only been going to one place. He knew how boys her age could be and she did not need to be the object of anyone's desires. She was his Daughter and…and he knew that one day she would be old enough for all of that…and he knew that the world needed more esper children in it…
But he would agonize over that when she chose some boy to present to him.
Daughter was getting ahead of herself and Son…Son was very worrying. He spent all of his time now just as he had when he had been a child. Playing games, building forts, and drawing pictures…and without even the beginnings of any interest in the opposite sex. Daughter would have told him if her brother had his eye on anyone at all. She seemed to have an obsession with love and romance…and he did not understand it…but he knew that she would not have been able to keep her mouth shut if her brother had been interested in anyone. He knew her. He knew her and he worried for her brother. Son…he also occasionally wore her clothes….and that may or may not have been worrying. Suzuki had worn yukatas before…and robes…which were similar to dresses….
But they were not dresses.
They were not female coded articles of clothing…and he did not want to worry about this. So he wouldn't. This was why he had this game, and he had the person beside him who was good at this game, because he just wanted to forget. When he entered this world, this world of his own creation and control, it seemed like all his troubles just faded away into the old world. He could understand young people better now, he thought, how they always had their noses buried in their phones. Their phones provided a much needed portal into the virtual world. The virtual world was one of stress free control and responsibility. Not like the world he lived in where he had children to raise and an organization to run.
He so wished that Hatori could put more of an effort into being less strange….because then he would have been able to focus on the game and not on the nervous, stuttering, sweaty man beside him.
"This is a cup of water. You need to drink it because you seem to have some sort of nervous disorder and you're going to dehydrate yourself. You are useless to me and my Daughter dead. Now drink this water." Said Suzuki. He used his powers to slide the glass across the table and over to Hatori. He took the glass with both hands and gulped down his water like a dying man in the desert. Suzuki looked away. He wanted to get back to what he had been doing.
"Thank you." Said Hatori breathlessly. Of course he was breathless. He had gone some time now without oxygen.
"You're welcome. Fill that cup when you get thirsty again. Now get back to work." Said Suzuki
"Sure thing President Suzuki…but….um….just to make everything perfectly clear….you're not mad at me, right?" asked Hatori. Suzuki…he had no clue what Hatori was on about.
"No. You have done nothing to make my angry…that I know of." Said Suzuki. It was a bit suspicious that he would think that Suzuki was angry with him. He had been getting up to something that would have made Suzuki angry? He was a small man, a nervous man, and he didn't look like he had a traitorous bone in his body…but if traitors were easy to spot then there would not have been any traitors to begin with.
"I haven't done anything! I mean I didn't break any rules or…or anything." Said Hatori
"Then why would you think that I was angry with you. Explain yourself to me right now." Said Suzuki
"You…you were staring at me…and I thought that you were angry with me…because of the staring. Not that you can't stare at me! I mean you can stare at whoever you want, you're the President of Claw, and this is your house! I mean they're all your houses but this house is the one that you're living in now and you invited me over…ordered me over….to play Minecraft with you and that means that you're in charge…not that you're not always in charge! You're the boss! I was just-" said Hatori
"You're growing tiresome. I was not staring at you out of anger. I was staring at you because you're strange to me. Your lenses are strange to me. They're square." Said Suzuki. Well at least Hatori hadn't gotten the wrong idea. That would always be a danger in….whatever this was. Him getting the wrong idea. Suzuki had no idea what to call Hatori but he knew that he would be spending quite a bit of time with Hatori in the future. He was good at Minecraft, like Daughter was, and his presence wasn't…unbearable. He was useful, very useful, and he filled a Fukuda shaped space.
He was sort of like Fukuda.
Not a companion. No, Fukuda was and would always be his one companion. The person who knew everything about him. The person who he could trust to know everything about him. Fukuda knew all of the little humiliations that Suzuki had gone through during his formative years. He had been there for every rejection, every social misstep, and all of those times in which he had lost track of himself and gone down various rabbit holes. Not literally, of close, but there had been times when he had discovered something new and fascinating and then before he knew it had had been awake for a week and he hadn't bathed or eaten in that time. Fukuda was good for pulling him out of his passions and back to the real world. Fukuda had always been his lifeline to the real world. So Hatori would never be Fukuda to him…
He was more like a Sherpa to the virtual world, not a lifeline to the real world.
"I'm sorry! I won't wear my glasses anymore!" said Hatori. He took his glasses off and immediately began to squint….and Suzuki wondered if he was slow or intoxicated or just a teenager. They were not a bright bunch, teenagers, well he had been but he had always been smarter and more rational than everyone else.
"Put your glasses back on. You're squinting which means that you can't see without them, I need you to be able to see. If you can't see then you can't play and then you're useless to me." Said Suzuki. He surpassed a sigh when Hatori immediately tried to put his glasses back on and stabbed himself in the eye. Honestly. He used his powers to put Hatori's glasses on the right way. He was such a child….because he was nineteen….he was old enough to be Suzuki's son…
Well then.
If he had met Masami back when he had been twenty four he could have had a son Hatori's age. He wished he had known about her back then. He would have sought her out. He had been securing funding for Claw back then. Securing funding and building the first division….and he so wished that he'd been aware of Masami's existence back then. He could have met her and they could have had some adult children by now. They could have raised their biological children to adulthood and then it could have just been him and her and Daughter. It could have been a perfect family…but he had met Masami in his thirties, not his twenties, and there was no use thinking of what could have been. He was here now and this was the life he was living.
So he had better make the most of it.
He had weapons to enchant and a Claw village to build and also he needed to maybe get some sleep at some point tonight because he had a big day tomorrow. He had to wrap up what he was needed for here because he had to move along…and also he wanted to be able to be all there for Daughter on Sundays. His mind wandered. He was easily distracted and he needed to be all there for Daughter. They would only have so much time alone together before Son came back. Fukuda has asked to take Son back to Japan to inspect the Seventh Division. Suzuki had of course allowed this. Son could be away for weeks and months and years. Suzuki didn't care. Just so long as he didn't die, undermine his work, or make the quality of Fukuda's work suffer. It would be difficult being without a healer but…but this was the price to pay to have Son out of his presence for a while.
"S-Sorry! Anyway you wanted me to clear out some forests? I-I'll do that. Sorry." said Hatori. Well at least he had apologized. He was a child. He could be forgiven for being odd. He was young enough to have been his son if his life had gone in a different direction. If there existed another version of himself who had married Masami when he had been ten years younger and then they had started their family immediately. He could have had ten more years with Masami…and he could have had several adult children by now…
But that was neither here nor there.
"See to it that you do. I want to get some real work done before it's time to go to sleep." Said Suzuki. He needed sleep. It was after midnight. He needed to get some sleep or he would be useless in the morning. He was forty four, not twenty four, and he needed sleep. He envied Hatori, just a bit, for his youth. He could do just about anything and still be able to get up in the morning. Getting old…even he could not stop his own extinction. He had to work faster, move faster, do more…in the morning. He would do more in the morning. When he was done here. He was…in a way he was working. Less stressful work. Stress…he had been dealing with so much of it…
Thank God he had a Sherpa into the stress free digital world.
"Um….sure. When…um…when do you think that would be? Now that this isn't awesome! It is! I just….know that you're a bust man." Said Hatori. Suzuki checked the time. He should have been in bed…well that was done now. He should have been in bed and the responsible thing to do would have to get some sleep and get back to work…but…well…he didn't understand himself sometimes. There were times when it felt like he was just going through the motions of his life until he got to spend time with Daughter. Until he got to hold her again. Until he got to make her happy again. It was such a gift to have her…and he wanted to spend every moment of his life with her…and he knew that he could not. He had things to do and she had to grow up.
So he had work to do.
The dream was still alive, it would never die, but…but there were two dreams now. There was the dream of taking his rightful place as ruler of this world but also the dream of being able to just…be with Daughter. Being able to rest. Being able to spend time with her. To have her and to hold her for the rest of his life. He just felt…good…when he was around her. She brightened his life. His mood was better and his control was better…and then as a consequence his mood and control had gotten so much worse in the rest of his life….
But Minecraft, ruling the world of it, really helped.
"Whenever I want it to be. Why? Do you need sleep? If so go make yourself a cup of coffee." Said Suzuki. He didn't need anyone with him…but having someone else there to gather materials really made time go faster. Also he knew a lot more about the game than even Daughter did. He was very useful, Hatori, even if he was very strange. Like now. Why would he want to go to sleep? He was a child. Children fought sleep every step of the way. How many nights had he sat awake in his bed listening to Son carrying on about not wanting to go to sleep, about how he didn't even need sleep?
Hatori was such a strange person.
"I…don't know how to make coffee…but I can Google it if you want me to make us some coffee." Said Hatori
"No, the coffee would be for you…and if you don't know how to make coffee than make yourself some tea then if you're so tired. If not then get back to work." Said Suzuki
"Work….you mean Minecraft?" asked Hatori. Suzuki had seen Son rolling his eyes before…and he wondered if he had inherited that from him and Suzuki had just not realized it. He felt like rolling his eyes. Hatori was….he was either slow or a child, Suzuki would believe either.
"Yes. What we've spent the past five hours and some minutes doing." Said Suzuki
"Five hours and twenty six minutes…..sorry. I didn't mean to correct you! I would never do that!" said Hatori. Good. He had better not have ever thought about correcting him. The only person who could correct him was Daughter and even then only under limited circumstances…well he had no idea what those limits were but he would find them...and it was really two people, only two in this world, who could correct him. Fukuda could correct him because, well, Fukuda knew more about social things than he did.
And he complained yes.
If they had been born in this era he and Fukuda would have spent hours if not days on this game. It would be like those times when they had stayed up all night on his floor playing Atari games. Well it had been Atari games at first. Atari and Pong though they had only played the Pong console a few times because he had Pong for the Atari. It had been Atari at first and then he had gotten a Master System and they had spent hours of their lives on that….but then Fukuda had gotten an Atari 7800 and they had spent one glorious weekend without sleeping once…well Suzuki hadn't slept until Fukuda had dragged him to the guest futon and ordered him to sleep because they had school in the morning…
Not that Suzuki was going to stop sleeping altogether again…and he did not need Fukuda to tell him when he did and did not need to sleep.
"If you know how long we've been doing this for then why would you ask if we would continue on the path we've been on? You aren't making any sense at all." said Suzuki
"I-I'm sorry. I just…we've been playing this for a while and…um….I wouldn't want you to get bored! I mean I have other games like…um….Miss Suzuki said that you liked Space Invaders and-" said Hatori
"Space Invaders? People still play Space Invaders?" asked Suzuki. He made sure to make eye contact because Fukuda said that you were supposed to do that. He had told Daughter about that…but they hadn't played….but she would love it. If they even still made Ataris. He didn't know. He had stopped playing games when he went to university. He hadn't thought that her generation would have had any interest in games from his era. Her era was…complicated. Three dimensional. Full of rules. There were entire shows on her YouTube network dedicated to explaining how her games could be played in the most efficient way. He hadn't thought that she would even have been interested in playing….
He knew what they would be doing this Sunday.
"Yeah, retro games are really cool right now. It's like everyone's looking back to the eighties and nineties and stuff and, yeah, those games were important historically but there's not a lot to those games when you get down to it. They're really simple." Said Hatori. It was like he was a different man. He wasn't stuttering, his eyes had stopped darting around, and his aura had relaxed with the rest of him. It was strange and unnerving, too, just a bit.
"There is nothing 'simple' about Space Invaders." Said Suzuki. Children. Well of course they would see simplicity in it. They were completely overstimulated. There was nothing simple about defending the world one pixel at a time. There were movements that needed timing and memorizing….there was a lot that needed to be done…not as much as this but….but there was still a lot.
"They only move in two directions and you can only shoot in one direction." Said Hatori
"Children. There is a lot to memorize there and it's a test of reflexes, too. Reflexes and memory." Said Suzuki
"Ok, it's good for reflexes and memory but we've made so many strides in gaming. Like…ok you like fixed shooters so you have to have played Galaga." Said Hatori
"I've dabbled." Said Suzuki. That had been more Tadashi's….more Fukuda's game. There was just too much going on there. Too many enemies to memorize and then when you memorized them you got even more new ones…and he just hadn't had the time for that game. That was why he had stopped playing. Not because New Friend had been able to get to stage twenty one on one hundred yen coin when he hadn't even been able to get past stage seven.
"Well then you've got to admit that even between 1978 and 1981 there were HUGE strides in terms of graphics, game play, enemy AI…it makes for a more interesting experience." Said Hatori
"Interesting is a subjective term." Said Suzuki
"Come on, it was a more challenging game at least." Said Hatori
"Yes, it was more challenging but that doesn't mean that it was a more enjoyable experience. Your generation has a fascination with everything being newer and bigger. There is a beauty to simplicity." Said Suzuki
"Well then why not just stick with Pong?" asked Hatori. He was leaned back in his chair now and his aura was less tense. He should have been more tense, though, because he had just said something truly ridiculous. Stick with Pong? Suzuki had no idea how he could have wasted so many hours of his life playing that ridiculous game. Well he had only been three when he had received that console for Christmas…but still. There were only so many days he could spend batting that square around. Also it had been very difficult to find an opponent. Father and Mother had never been able to keep up with him and New Friend hadn't been any better than playing against the computer. Pong. Honestly. Hatori was such a strange boy sometimes.
"Because it's a tedious and tiresome game." Said Suzuki
"Exactly, you've got to have something new. Like if they hadn't improved on Galaxian then we never would have gotten Galaga! Or…what's another game you'd know….you know Donkey Kong?" asked Hatori
"I'm Japanese aren't I?" Said Suzuki. Of course he knew Donkey Kong. He had beat that game in an afternoon when he had been…it had been 1981 so he had been….small. Eight years old. That game had been so short and not even worth using his powers to trick the game into thinking that he had put a coin in.
"Then you must know that if they hadn't come out with Donkey Kong, and improved on it then-" said Hatori
"You're very strange, you know that? How could anyone improve on Donkey Kong? It's such a short game. I finished it in an afternoon and didn't even bother getting it for the Atari." Said Suzuki. Young people. They knew nothing at all. What was the point of a game with an end? The only ending, the most satisfying ending, was when the game simply could not make any more levels. Then you knew that you had achieved something. Any idiot could get to a pre scripted ending. It took skill to get a game to break, to come to the limits of the computer, and he had been the one with that skill…and they had no right to throw him out of the arcade for what happened to the Pac-Man cabinet.
"The Famicom version was better." Said Hatori. Suzuki wondered if he was intoxicated or something. Why would he wasted his time on that game…let alone waste a Famicom on it? Games were expensive and parents could only provide so much while still making sure that they could keep a roof over your head. Of course he never had those problems but his parents had and he assumed that Hatori's parents had too before they perished.
"There were so many better games for the Famicom. I don't know why anyone would waste their money on something like that, a game with an ending." Said Suzuki
"What's wrong with an ending?" asked Hatori
"Any moron can get to a scripted ending. It takes skill to get to the point at which a game simply cannot create any more levels." Said Suzuki. Hatori was such a child…and a strange one. Something had gone wrong with his generation….and the one before his as well. New Friend…Fukuda had been the same way. He had been more interested in trying to get to the end of that roleplaying game he had gotten for the Master System while Suzuki had been trying to see how many levels Ms. Pacman could make before the game broke. 141…and it had been worth it to get to that point even though he had missed breakfast and lunch and also had been kicked out of the arcade nearest to his home and given a permanent ban. He had no clue what Tadashi had been so angry about. There had been plenty of other arcades around. So what if they had to walk more? They had working legs.
"Well that's only arcade games." Said Hatori
"Exactly. Arcades have always been where the best games are. The hardware is just better." Said Suzuki. He would have moved into the arcade as a child if mother and father hadn't asked him to come home…and also if they hadn't had all of those cameras….and if he had been smart enough at the time to do something to the cameras. Arcades had the better controllers and the better graphics and they always worked every single time. Cartridges were so annoying. The constantly blowing….and disks weren't any better. There was no greater waste of time or money than the Famicom disk system…and he couldn't believe that he and Best Friend had actually spent an entire day looking for a shop that had the disk system.
"So, wait, this is the only non-arcade game you play? That you've ever played?" asked Hatori. He reached under his glasses and rubbed his eyes.
"Yes…and I'm not playing a game, I'm designing bases for Claw…and also I need to keep my skills sharp so I can keep up with Daughter." Said Suzuki. He was not playing because forty four year old men did not play. They worked. They did not have time for such frivolity….and also they sometimes played games but that was only because they had Daughters who they needed to bond with. Men his age did not play games…and if they did then he would not be like those men because he had very serious work he did.
"Ok….we're not playing…but if we were then I'd point you in the direction of Terraria. You'd like it. It's a lot like this. There's action and fighting and magic and building." Said Hatori. Suzuki focused his full attention on him. There were more games like this? Why hadn't he been informed!? This was what Hatori was for. Everyone had their uses and Hatori…this was what he was for.
"Explain. Tell me more. Daughter might like that game." Said Suzuki. He was excited…because this could be a new activity for him and Daughter. That was all. He enjoyed spending time with his Daughter and she liked games and he liked to make her happy so, of course, he would make her happy by playing a game with her which was like her favorite game.
"Ok, so in Terraria-oh! It's 2D, I forgot to say. It looks like a Super Famicom game and also it's a sandbox game, which doesn't mean there's actual sand it means it's like this where you can do whatever, well not WHATEVER whatever…well there's modding you can do but actually modding is best done in Minecraft because-" said Hatori
"Hatori. Explain better." Said Suzuki. It was almost three in the morning. He did not need a long, rambling, disjointed explanation. He needed a cup of coffee. He needed a cup of coffee, a glass of ketchup, and a loaf of bread. Hatori could have some too. He was useless dead or hunger or sleep deprivation. He needed to wake up and he needed to know about this game and then he needed to play this game that way he could keep up with Daughter.
"Oh, sorry. I just got excited. Ok, so in Terraria-" said Hatori. Suzuki had been about to tell him to slow down so he could commit what he said to memory but he hadn't had the chance. He could feel a very familiar and very….perfect…aura moving through the house. She was so very perfect…but she should not have been up this late…or early? He didn't now. He just knew that she needed her sleep…but if she wanted to come in with her laptop and join them then….well he wouldn't STOP her. She was her own person and she could do whatever she wanted….
Even lurk in doorways.
"Dad….? Hatori….? Ex-explain…?" asked Daughter. He did not like being told to explain himself…but this was Daughter. She was a child and needed to have things explained to her and it was his job as her father to explain them. There. Simple.
"Hey Mob-kun…..Shiegeko-san…Suzuki-sama…" said Hatori. There it was again, his aura acting all strange like that. Suzuki would never understand this boy for as long as he lived.
"Hatori….why are you in my house? Talking to my dad? At three eleven in the morning? Drinking from Sho's special Zootopia glass?" asked Daughter. She was so perfect. Even with her hair sticking up in all directions and the neck of her nightgown pulled so far off to the side that he could see her undershirt, he fixed it for her with his powers, she was still so perfect. The most perfect Daughter who had ever lived. For a moment he wants to tip Hatori back in his chair for daring to speak to her…but then he remembers that Hatori is a homosexual so it's fine. He can trust Hatori around her. He's one of the few men immune to her.
"Sorry, I didn't know it was his glass….and your dad and I are just…working on Minecraft. Yeah, we're just working on Minecraft together at three in the morning. Normal stuff." Said Hatori
"Yes, we're working. Would you like to….why are you awake at this hour? Did we wake you? Can you go back to sleep? Do you need Fukuda? I can summon him for you. Shimazaki may be able to teleport that far…or I can send a plane. Or do you want a sleeping pill? Or a story? Do you need me to read to you? Get your book, the one about the cat, or the one about the ice queen." Said Suzuki. It was alright to spend time with her outside of Sunday if he was meeting her needs, he decided, because Fukuda was not there to put her to sleep….and he would gladly read whatever banal drivel she put in front of him so long as he got to get some sleep…and as long as he got to be near to her.
"Um…..I was just getting water…and I'll do that…and then I'll go back to bed…and then…um…you guys can just….do this…" said Daughter. She walked backwards to the sink, pulled a glass down….a blue ice queen glass, and filled it. She did all of that with her powers and all of that while facing him and staring at him. She probably wanted to join them but she knew that she needed sleep. She was a very responsible child like that. She was responsible enough that she drank her water, put her glass in the sink, and then went back to her room. She did it all while walking backwards. She really wanted to join them…
But she was too responsible for that.
She was a very responsible little girl and he…had been somewhat irresponsible…but…but he needed to go to bed. He would in a minute. He just had to get a few more things done like….like information gathering! Yes, that was what he was doing. He would listen to what Hatori had to say and then he would go to bed because he had to be awake and ready to start his day in less than three hours. He could live on less than three hours sleep. He would be fine, he was fine, and he just…Hatori was an important source of information.
He may have been a very strange boy, for numerous reasons, but he was a good source of information….and conversation as well.