The last thing Suzuki Touichirou wanted to do right now was play videogames.

"Come on, Suzuki, just one round. Come on, you know you want to." Said Hatori as he held out a controller with way more buttons than anything had a right to have. Suzuki would have said no on the basis of the controller alone had he been in better spirits…but he was not in better spirits. He wasn't even in good spirits. He was in…not bad spirits. No, that feeling had passed. He was in….he didn't even know. Malaise spirits? The sorts of spirits that made him not want to say anything or do anything or be….anything.

What was the point of doing anything if Shigeko wasn't by his side?

She was gone. She was back in Japan and he was here. She…she didn't want him…and he didn't blame her. He didn't want himself either. He'd made one mistake, on misstep, and now…now everything had come down over his head. It was like the time he and Fukuda tried to make that house of cards without using his powers. They had managed to get it high off the ground when one of them, most likely Fukuda, mover wrong…just once…and just a bit. Then the whole thing came tumbling down, the living room was covered in playing cards, and mother was extremely upset with the both of them. This was just like that only…only now he had nobody but himself to blame.

He was the one who'd made…a mistake.

"No, I don't." said Suzuki. There was nothing less that he wanted to do in the world than sit there and play…whatever it was that Hatori wanted to play. He stare down at his phone's lock screen. Him and Shigeko. She was smiling, he was not. He remembered when she took this. She had told him that nobody used the lock screen that came with their phone and that he needed a picture. The only person he would have wanted a picture of was her…maybe Masami….no, not Masami. The last thing that he would have wanted was to see her face staring up at him day in and day out.

It was hard enough seeing Shigeko's.

She hated him. His own daughter…she hated him…and she had every reason to. She knew. She knew exactly what sort of man her own father was. He was an adulterer. He was the sort of man who not only betrayed his wife but also….also was responsible for the existence of a human being. Well he was responsible for Son…but also he had…another Daughter. A baby. He had even named her. She was Mukai and…and that was all he knew about her. She was two years old…that was something else….and she had his hair and eyes. She had Pang' Sujin's face, though, very round. Her eye shape too. His eye color and Pang Sujin's eye shape…or maybe she had gotten the hooded eyes from him since he did have the genetic potential for it…he didn't know and he wasn't about to go and see her and find out. She was…better off without him.

And he was better off without her.

"Are you sure? Come on, you've been working all day." Said Hatori. Suzuki shook his head and pulled out his phone. He might not have been the best socially but he knew that when someone was buried in their phone then that might as well have been a neon sign saying 'leave me alone'. Maybe he needed to start investing in neon signs. Maybe then Hatori would take a hint.

He didn't want to play. It wasn't that hard to understand.

He didn't want to play anything. He didn't want to do anything. He just wanted to sit there on the couch staring at his lock screen until he fell asleep. Then he would wake up in the morning with the worst back pain ever felt by man rested and ready to start the day. He really should have been in his room…but then he wouldn't end up with the back pain and he needed the back pain. If his back didn't hurt then he would have had more space in his mind to think about what…what he had done….but now he was thinking about it…

And also his back hurt…great.

"I don't want to. Play on your own." said Suzuki as he leaned backwards…a bit too hard. The couch groaned under his weight…and he hadn't gained that much weight, had he? He'd been stress eating, he knew that he'd been stress eating, and stress eating was better than the alternative. Stress…stressing….he'd find a better word later. Fifty thousand kanji and he didn't know the word for when his mind got stuck on a problem and wouldn't let it go. God….if mother and father had been alive then they would have…well they would have been angry. Mother would have insisted, as usual, that any mistake he made was something he had done on purpose to hurt her. She would have locked herself in her room and shouted about how he must have hated his mother, how everything he did was calculated to show her how much he hated her, and how the only option she had left in life was to lay down and die.

Then she would have pretended that he didn't exist because, in her mind, he wished that he'd never even had a mother.

Father would have been upset with him as well. Not just for upsetting mother, though that was a serious sin in their household, but for doing the direct opposite of what he had been told to do…well not to do. Never cheat on your wife. When you cheated on your wife you broke the bargain that men and women made with each other. Men and women married one another with the assumption that their offspring, the ones that they had between them, and also it was just wrong to cheat on your wife. That was for other people, not the Son of Suzuki Yoshio. That was just….wrong. His father…would have been right in beating him with a shinai….without armor…for what he had done.

Hell, he wanted to beat himself with a shinai.

"You sure?" asked Hatori. Suzuki wanted to push him off the couch. He reached over but pulled his hand back. That would have been…not….advantageous. Right now the only right hand man he had was Hatori. Fukuda was gone…somewhere. Alive out in the world…and he had no idea where…and he had no idea if he wanted to have any idea. Fukuda…thinking….him….just….pain. There was a pain there. A pain that he wanted nothing more than to make someone else feel, like passing it on to someone, like how when he'd been small he'd had the thought in his head that the only way to get over a cold was to pass it on…but that was not how it worked.

He was a grown man. He knew how things worked.

If he could have passed this pain on then it would have been…perfect. Just being able to pass this pain on, to cast it off, like a sweaty shirt at the end of a hot summer's day. God…he could not wait to leave Germany….Europe in general. Japan may have been hot and muggy in the summers but at least people had thought to build around the climate there. Even when he stayed in places without air condition it had never been as bad as this. It was like sleeping over at Fukuda's house when they'd been small, when his mother had forbidden them from opening the windows because she was convinced that letting in the air would make them sick somehow…he wondered if Fukuda had ever truly believed that….he wondered if Fukuda was also way too hot wherever he was….

Suzuki hoped that he burned, wherever he had found himself in this world, he hoped that he burned like a bag of popcorn left too long on the stove….even though it was good when it was a little bit burnt and Tadashi had no idea how to make Jiffy Pop and he never would.

"Yes. Obviously I'm sure. I wouldn't have told you no if I wasn't sure." Said Suzuki. He crossed his arms and kept his eyes on his phone. The screen was going dim now. He didn't know if he wanted to wake it back up. He didn't know if he wanted to see Shigeko's face or his own face reflected back up at him in the tiny black mirror. He knew, though, that he did not want to make eye contact with Hatori. Hatori was looking over at him, his game was over now hence the 'game over' screen, and he was doing that thing with his eyes and his aura that signaled that he wanted to make eye contact.

Suzuki avoided it.

He had never liked making eye contact, even as a child. People had always called his eyes 'creepy' and 'weird' and 'off putting'. He had gotten mother's eye color and father's eye…shape? Pupils? He knew that he had unusually small pupils. He knew that he didn't blink as often as normal people. He knew that making eye contact made it feel like the time he and Tadashi had laid down, without knowing, on that ant hill…but…inside of himself….well as close as he could approximate the sensation of having ants crawling around inside of his body. He looked down at his phone.

The screen had gone black.

"Well….the offer is still there if you want it." Said Hatori

"I know. Just like it was there last night and the night before that and the night before that." Said Suzuki. The offer had come every single night since they'd gotten here. He assumed that the offer would come when they reached their next destination too…and their next….and their next. For the rest of their lives that offer would come. Hatori was like one of his children sometimes, when they'd been younger, the constant demands for his attention. When the children had been young it had been 'play with me, dad, play with me' all night and all day. Sho and Shigeko….now they both hated him. Sho…had hated him for some time now…and he didn't care about that. Shigeko on the other hand…she would never come to him, doll in hand, asking him to play with her…or with her laptop…or just…ready to spend time with him…that had been a gift. There had been a gift to seeing her, to being near her, to being able to hold her.

He would never see her again.

The thought pains him…and this time he does….well he almost…hits Hatori. He wants to. Hatori knows that he wants to. He flinches. His entire body and his aura…there's even something in his eyes. Damn…so they are making eye contact. Fine, if Hatori wants to make eye contact then Suzuki can maintain it. He does.

Hatori breaks first.

"Yeah….it's kind of an open offer…" said Hatori. He plays with his glasses, now, and breaks eye contact. Suzuki almost braces himself, almost thinks for a moment that Hatori is going to say that his eyes are weird and that he needs to look somewhere else. He even almost reaches down for those stupid 3D glasses that he used to wear when he'd been young.

That had been a weird phase.

Back when he'd been fourteen he'd come into a pair of 3D glasses, well he'd stolen them from Tadashi, and for half a year he'd worn them whenever he had to be seen by other people. Even though he had gotten daily headaches. Even though both of his parents had told him that he looked ridiculous. Even though he'd had to argue for what felt like years with the school since the rules specifically said no sunglasses and 3D glasses were not sunglasses. Even though his Tadashi had told him that until he stopped being ridiculous they could not be seen together…well that part hadn't lasted. He so wished that he could have hidden though turned the world to cyan and scarlet, but…well he was a grown man and grown men did not hide.

He was the worst sort of man…wasn't he?

"Why do you keep pestering me?" asked Suzuki with a sigh.

"Because you've been down lately." Said Hatori with a shrug. Suzuki sighed. Hatori shrugged. They went back and forth like that for a moment.

"Who's winning?" asked Hatori as he pushed his glasses back up the bridge of his nose.

"I wasn't aware that this was a competition." Said Suzuki. Well that was over…whatever the hell that was.

"If it was then I guess it's a tie." Said Hatori

"I'm amenable to that…now get back to your own game and I'll be here….doing…this." said Suzuki. He…well he hadn't been thinking about…things….but he need to think about them. He needed to think about what he'd done. He didn't have the right to be happy…and in fact he no longer had the ability to be happy…not with Shigeko. Not without his actual child. He hadn't created her, Masami hadn't given birth to her, but Shigeko was more his child than any of his other children were. Sho was a curse. God, or one of them, had seen fit to curse him with a son like Sho. His…other daughter…Mukai…he had no idea what she was even like. She could have been just like Shigeko…or like him…or someone totally new…

He just didn't know.

He…never should have made…but he had made her and…and he had another child. Another child from his own blood. If she had been a boy…well then that would have been even worse. It was one thing to leave a daughter but a son…another chance…but he had a daughter and he didn't need another chance with his daughter…he had Shigeko. For ten year's he'd had Shigeko. Now…now he did not. Now he only had…he had….

This person right here.

"Hey Suzuki? You know that you can talk to me, right?" asked Hatori. What kind of a question was that? Of course he knew that he could talk to Hatori. He was Suzuki Touichirou. He could speak to whoever he wanted to speak to whenever he wanted to speak to them and about whatever subject he saw fit to speak about. He didn't need permission from anyone, especially not his…especially not a child.

"I know that I can speak to you. I can speak to whoever I want to. I don't need your permission or anyone else's." said Suzuki

"I didn't mean it like that. I just meant that this whole thing with your kids is pretty fucking-" said Hatori

"Don't curse." Said Suzuki

"Fine. I know that it's been pretty hard on you and you've been weird lately. I mean…hell. You said no to Asteroids and I know that you like Asteroids. Not as much as Space Invaders but I've seen you play it." Said Hatori

"That…was not Asteroids. I've logged more hours into that game than you've been alive for. Asteroids has no color and is in vectors. That was in colors and was not in vectors…and everyone knows that vector graphics are the most superior of all graphics. Even Tada…never mind." Said Suzuki

"Even what about Fukuda?" asked Hatori

"Even Fukuda agreed with me…when we debated this…it was our shortest debate….I don't want to talk about him anymore." Said Suzuki. He didn't want to think about how good it had felt, back then, when Tadashi had agreed with him. When they had been standing there side by side at the big arcade, before they'd gotten banned for two lifetimes, him at Asteroids and Tadashi at…he couldn't remember what Tadashi had been playing….but he did remember that….full body warmth that had overtaken him…and that still occasionally did….even though now it was mixed with searing rage…

He almost shoved Hatori that time.

He pulled his hand away just as he made contact. Hatori jumped, his body and his aura, but he didn't run away. Even though Hatori's eyes had been darting over towards the bathroom. He wanted to hide. He wanted to run and hide and…and Hatori didn't deserve…well to be hit. Suzuki…he was the one who deserved to be hit…also Sho because surely at this point he had done something to deserve it…and Tadashi deserved to be beaten until he bled for what he did….but Hatori had done nothing.

He was a good…friend.

"You….ok? I mean…if I pissed you off or…"said Hatori. Suzuki shook his head. He decided to let the cursing go for now. He was just a child and he didn't know what he was saying…and he wasn't one of Suzuki's children. Suzuki…well he had three children…not four. He didn't have a chance of having four children…or of being Hatori's father…even though it wouldn't have been so bad if he had been. Hatori was a good person and…and if he'd been his secret son then…well at least this would have happened…..his conception would have taken place….long before Suzuki had met Masami. No, he hadn't met her until his thirties…and he had been….well there was no chance of it….not that he wanted one….

"No….you didn't….now play your game. Leave me." Said Suzuki. He turned and looked down, again, at his phone. He wanted to hit someone…or something…but there was nothing to hit! There was nothing here to hit but…well there was always tomorrow. There was always tomorrow and the next day…and then…maybe he could feel better…even though he didn't deserve to feel better. He deserved to feel everything that he was feeling right now. All the pain and stress and back pain and whatever this feeling that he had for Tadashi, this warmth and pain and…and want…and searing hatred…he deserved to feel all of it….

The last thing he wanted to do was feel the way he felt…and the second to last thing he wanted to do was play videogames with Hatori….but watching him play was a nice distraction.