Fukuda had never killed anyone before…but he could kind of see the appeal.

"Yeah, well fuck you!" said Hatori from his corner of the office. He had been like this for hours. Hours and hours of 'fuck this' and 'fuck you' and whatever else he could come up with. Fukuda had no idea how he was expected to get any work done at all when he had to deal with this…though that might have been the point.

It was hard to see this as anything other than a punishment.

"Yeah, well, fuck your mom then!" said Hatori. This one had all the vitriol that the last one had…and the one before that…and the one before that. Really. Fukuda knew that Suzuki didn't actually expect him to put up with this guy. No, Suzuki was doing this to torment him. Hatori was his so called 'assistant' but the only thing that he'd been assisting with so far was giving Fukuda the beginnings of a headache Every time it started to get bad his powers would kick in and fix it. A temporary solution, of course, because Hatori just would not stop.

Really. It was endless with this guy.

"Fine, I fucked your sister then!" said Hatori. Fukuda had no idea who he was talking to, who was on the other end of that headset, but he sincerely doubted that Hatori had done any of that. He wondered how Suzuki would have felt knowing Hatori was lying to him and had been for some time. Broke his trust…if anyone was breaking his trust it was Hatori.

Fukuda had never once broken Suzuki's trust….in a way that he could find out about.

"Well then I fucked your aunt or…whatever! Fuck you! Fuck you and your mom and your sister-what do you mean you're an orphan?! You just…fuck you!" said Hatori. He actually kicked his desk that time. Empty cans of energy drink fell to the ground…near empty cans. Apparently Hatori didn't feel like actually finishing the cans of neon sugar he drank instead of water. The room smelled like energy drink, now, energy drink and Doritos. That was enough to give Fukuda a headache, one that his powers were even having trouble keeping up with. Hatori was acting like Sho but Fukuda…well he could deal with Sho. Sho actually had an excuse. He was eleven.

Hatori was twenty one, he didn't have an excuse.

They were supposed to be working. Fukuda wasn't exactly dreaming of the day when Claw took over the world, he hadn't exactly been working happily to help all of Suzuki's dreams come true, but he at least knew to do just enough to make sure things still went smoothly. People needed to get paid. Buildings needed to be kept up. Awakened needed to be trained and placed. There were a thousand and one thigs that needed to be done and right now Fukuda was the only one doing them…which would have been fine if Hatori had been something other than the most annoying person Fukuda had ever had the misfortune of sharing an office with. Hatori either didn't care that he was annoying or he, like Suzuki, completely lacked any and all self-awareness. That would have made sense….well if he lacked self-awareness then it looked like Fukuda was going to have to be the one to teach it to him.

Because, really, this had all be more than enough.

"Are you done yet?" asked Fukuda. Hatori practically tipped over in his chair. He had spun around like he was trying out for the chair Olympics that the Awakened had going on. Apparently Shigeko had finally decided to put an end to chair jousting, too violent her memo had said, and now there were chair Olympics instead. Chair races, chair sprints, synchronized chair dancing, and anything else that she could think up. All chair based….she was such a child sometimes. She could be very selective about how childlike she was. He wondered if she was capable of teaching Hatori that trick…

Because Fukuda was more than done with dealing with a twenty one year old child.

"What?" asked Hatori, taking his head set off with one hand and steadying himself with the other. Fukuda wondered if he noticed or cared at all about the mess that he'd just made. One of his many half eaten bags of chips joined the half drank cans on the floor. There might have even been a full meal down there…great…now he had that to worry about in addition to everything else that he had on his plate.

Wonderful.

"Can you please be quiet? You've been doing…whatever that is…for hours. Can you just stop it?" asked Fukuda

"If you don't like it then put headphones on and listen to something else." Said Hatori. He put his headset on…and then went back to it. Fukuda decided to let it go. There was no stopping him, not unless he felt like starting a fight, but he didn't. if he started a fight with Hatori then it might have ended up getting back to Suzuki…and he didn't know who Suzuki would side with. He'd had Hatori by his side for months. Apparently they had grown close…close enough for Hatori to replace him. He had always fantasized about the day in which Suzuki would find a new best friend….

He should have been more careful.

Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it. Fukuda had heard that a thousand times from a thousand different places…and he finally got it. Suzuki may have been a lot of things, insane being at the top of the list, but he still protected Fukuda. Kept him safe. Insulated him from…well…Claw. The many personalities it attracted. Fukuda knew that he didn't have a lot of friends in this organization and he knew that a twenty one year old child was the least of the enemies he'd made. He knew that he should have been grateful that the worst he had to deal with right now was Hatori….

It was difficult.

Dealing with Hatori, dealing with everything, was more difficult than dealing with the tangled up pair of earbuds that he kept in the back of his desk drawer. He hadn't had need of these for a while, he hadn't been to work in a while, and when he had been…well Sho had been around to keep him company. But Sho was off doing his own thing, hopefully getting over how angry he'd been at Fukuda, so…yeah. He had to untangle these earbuds…and deal with Hatori…and deal with how pissed Suzuki was at him. Broke his trust…Fukuda had done no such thing…well he had but there was no need for Suzuki to be so over dramatic about the whole thing.

Fukuda was getting very sick of all of these dramatics.

"Really….really?!" said Hatori. Fukuda rolled his eyes. Yes, really. He had no idea what was going on but, yes, really was the word that fit. This was really happening. This was really his life. This was really it. This was somehow what he'd always wanted and his worst nightmare all rolled into one. Suzuki was done with him. No more dealing with his weirdness, no more tapering his insanity, no more dealing with whatever emotional problems it was the Suzuki had…but also…no more protection…no more trust….and maybe even no more life if Suzuki could feel out how to kill him. Fukuda wasn't sure if it was even possible. He'd lived through a lot of psychic explosions in his time…but Suzuki…he might have been planning on purposely…

No, Suzuki would never do that.

Suzuki may not have trusted him any more, and he may have been completely out of his mind and riddled with God only knew how many social and emotional disorders, but he wasn't an idiot. He knew how rare it was to find a healer. He knew that he was a lot of things but invulnerable wasn't one of them. He knew how many people tried to shoot at him a week. Suzuki would probably keep him around for quite a while…

Just here. In this room. With Hatori.

"Seriously?! Seriously?! Well then-what do you mean you don't speak Japanese! You were speaking it just now!" said Hatori. Fukuda rolled his eyes and popped his ear buds in. Working mix number three, that would drown all of this out. Fukuda set his phone to max volume. It asked him if he wanted to risk damaging his hearing.

Of course he did.

He didn't know if he could get tinnitus, actually. He and Suzuki had spent hours with their ears pressed up against the hi-fi speaker trying to figure out exactly what the lyrics of the song which would not be mentioned ever again were…the first one. The second one was a lot less ambiguous. The song was called 'tiny dancer' so of course it went hold me closer tiny dancer, not Tony Danza, and it had been worth it to not only buy that song on twelve inch, ten inch, and seven inch record…along with getting it on CD and cassette, and also calling the radio station nonstop for an hour until they played it….to settle that fight once and for all.

They'd been such idiots back then.

Back when they'd been two kids in a club with a President, a Vice President, and no members. Back when there hadn't been any stakes to anything that they did. Back when Claw had been big talk and bigger dreams. Back when their biggest problems in life had been going to school, diving the mysteries of girls, and trying their best to make it through adolescence alive with most of their sanity intact. Suzuki….may not have succeeded in that last endeavor….or maybe he had always been crazy. He'd been weird when they'd met all those years ago. He'd been the weird looking kid who stared at everyone, almost never spoke, but also made sure to remind their teacher when he forgot to assign homework. Fukuda had been less friendless, a hell of a lot friendlier, and not nearly as devoted to succeeding in middle school. They'd against all odds made friends…and now three decades or so later they were here.

They were here and they were…whatever their relationship could be classified as now.

Fukuda didn't know. He didn't want to ask. He didn't want to hear Suzuki say something like 'of course we aren't friends anymore' or 'I'm reassigning you to some out of the way place where you'll never see Sho again' or even 'I know you're in love with my wife and for that I'm going to turn you inside out with my telekinesis while you're still alive' which was a thing he could do…those were all things that Suzuki could do without any effort at all…but he wouldn't do them. He needed Fukuda. He would always needed Fukuda. Even if they weren't friends anymore Suzuki would always need Fukuda.

Fukuda…may have needed him, too.

"Hey Mob! I need you real quick!" shouted Hatori. Fukuda hadn't even gotten through the overture of one song before Hatori was back at it again. That was…it took Fukuda a moment to realize that Hatori hadn't been cursing…that he'd been addressing someone…someone Fukuda hadn't wanted to see.

Two someones he hadn't wanted to see.

"Hat…tor….i! Hatori!" shouted Mukai. She was…not someone he wanted to see. He didn't dislike her, she was cute as hell, but he didn't much want to be around her either. She looked just like Suzuki…and she acted just like Sho did at her age…and also she was kind of the cause of all of this. He knew, logically, that Mukai didn't get a say into when she was conceived or how…but if she hadn't come around then things would have been a hell of a lot more stable around here. She was just a baby, though, actually a toddler….and she didn't get a say in it.

Also she was so, incredibly, cute.

She was wearing one of Shigeko's old princess costumes and sitting in a rolling chair like she was royalty…which she kind of was. Suzuki was publically acknowledging her as his daughter. She didn't need the crown for everyone to know that she was the princess around here. Shigeko had never worn one despite her old love of princess costumes. When a person had power they didn't need to announce it to the world. That had always been Suzuki's thinking and apparently he'd passed it on to his favorite child as well. Shigeko had never shown it, the power she had, she just walked into her father's office one day and started giving orders. She hadn't had to convince anyone. Her power was just as absolute as Suzuki's…as absolute as it would have been if Suzuki had actually been the one to father her.

Fukuda wondered…and worried….what Mukai was going to end up becoming.

"Faster! Go faster!" shouted Mukai. Well she was certainly demanding…but that made sense. She was smackdab in the middle of her terrible twos. Shigeko had been the same age when he met her. She had been a lot quieter, though, and her eyes had been so haunting…she'd been better at speaking, too. The first thing that she'd ever said to him had been 'I have an owie' in full and complete Japanese. It had been cute, then, if not a little creepy….getting a full sentence out of someone so young…or maybe that was just the present clouding the past.

It was hard to divorce the person Shigeko was now from the person she had been once been.

"I can't, we're on a carpet." Said Shigeko as she pushed a rolling chair into Fukuda's office. She had reordered them after Suzuki had ordered them all destroyed after the debacle that had been the last chair jousting tournament. Shigeko was always undermining him…and he was always letting her. She was his favorite after all…and his oldest…though he had an actual daughter now. Fukuda wondered if Shigeko had figured it out yet. She didn't look a thing like either parent. Both of Suzuki's blood children had inherited his hair and eyes. Sho had gotten a lot of his facial structure from Masami, and a lot of his personality too. Shigeko was nothing like her mother. From the color and texture of her hair, the shape of her face, the way she acted…not a single part of her resembled Masami one bit. She acted like Suzuki, though, in some ways…so maybe that was why she hadn't figured it out yet.

Shigeko made eye contact with him and then pushed Mukai closer to Hatori's desk.

"Hi Hatori. What's up? Do you want me to help you clean up?" asked Shigeko. She didn't wait for an answer, she just started cleaning the mess up with her powers. She kept part of her aura on him the whole time. What? Did she think that he was going to do something? What could he possibly have done to her? She could have killed him in ten different ways before he even knew what happened….well that wasn't her way of doing things…but she still had the power to do so. She was a powerful esper and she knew it.

Hence this little display of power.

Telekinesis was a common gift. Shigeko was just uncommonly gifted at it. The way she could hold up multiple objects, the way she could split her focus between him and what she was doing, even the way she managed to pick up something as delicate as the potato chips on the ground without crushing them into powder. All of it was a display of power and all of it was displayed at him. She'd had some kind of vendetta against him for a while now. The only thing that had changed was that she was showing it…well that was fine. It was good to get these things out in the open. Now at least he knew where he stood with her.

Across the room at his desk.

"I help too! Over there!" shouted Mukai. She reached out with her aura too…but she was still too young to do anything. He prayed to God, or the Gods, that she developed her powers before Suzuki got impatient and stuck her in an awakening machine. He didn't know if she would have been able to survive that…Suzuki demanded so much of his offspring…and ironically enough it was the child that he hadn't fathered who could live up to his expectations. He wondered if there were any hard feelings between her and Sho yet, she was technically the reason Sho had been put through the awakening process in the first place, but maybe Sho didn't see it that way. He was so much like Masami in that way.

"It's not about that, thanks by the way. I just need you to tell someone something in Korean really quick." Said Hatori

"I kind of speak Korean but my dad is much better…he's on the phone now, though." said Shigeko

"Go away!" said Mukai

"She didn't mean for you to go away. She just means that dad told us to go away." said Shigeko

"Caterpillars….go away!" said Mukai

"That what she calls dad because his eyebrows look like caterpillars…but don't tell him that I said that." Said Shigeko

"My lips are sealed…now please, Mob, tell this guy in your best Korean to choke on…uh…tell him he doesn't know how to play the game and his parents should be ashamed that they brought him into the world." Said Hatori. He handed Shigeko his headset. She held up her hand and shook her head no.

"That's mean, Hatori, and I don't like to be mean to people…especially strangers…and especially over games." Said Shigeko. He wondered how much of that was an act. She was perfectly capable of being mean, just as much as her father, if not more so. Suzuki, for all of his insanity and probable emotional and personality disorders, had never said that talking to him was like menstruating. Suzuki had called him annoying on more than one occasion, told him to drop dead, and asked why he bothered to exist if he was just going to be himself…but he had never gone that far…and he had never been that crass before, either, even when the two of them had been barely a year older than Shigeko was now.

"Well he was an asshole first, doesn't that count for something?" asked Hatori

"Two wrongs don't make a right." Said Shigeko

"Right!" said Mukai as she held up her left hand.

"In theory, no." said Hatori

"No, that's a fact, not a theory. My dad can tell you if you don't believe me…but don't ask him to help you with this either. Don't ask Sho or dad. Sho is…he's busy today…and dad would probably get mad at you if you asked him to help you with this. He doesn't like cursing and he doesn't like to be bothered. He's in a very important phone call…with that lady…" said Shigeko. There it was, the anger that she tried so hard to pretend that she couldn't feel. That was one way that she'd miscalculated. Suzuki knew that there was no point in putting on a front, it was too much to maintain, so at the end of the day he had nothing to fall from. He wondered how people would feel if they knew that the great Suzuki Shigeko got angry over nothing just like everyone else…

Wait…did she say LADY?

"Shiori!" shouted Mukai

"Yes….that's her name. That's what my dad calls her…and that's what she's called in his phone…" said Shigeko. Fukuda…hoped that this was nothing. A woman…Suzuki was talking to a woman…that didn't mean anything. Actually it was probably nothing. He knew that name from…somewhere….wait. Hadn't that been the given name of the woman that Suzuki had fooled around with? Sakata…Sakata what? She had been Sakata something….but….Suzuki wasn't still talking to her. He must have learned his lesson by now….

If he needed a reminder then all he had to do was look over at his two year old.

"Oh, yeah, her." said Hatori. Fukuda practically fell out of his chair. Hatori knew about this. Hatori knew about this…before Fukuda…maybe there was nothing to know. Maybe this was just a work thing. That woman…her name was not Shiori….it sounded familiar but Suzuki…there was no way that he was going to make the same mistake twice….and anyway no woman would have stuck with him for this long anyway. Suzuki was weird…awkward….and unpleasant to be around for long periods of time. There was no way…no way….

There was no way.

"You know her?" asked Shigeko

"Yeah. She and your dad are….they're friends. Really good friends." Said Hatori. Fukuda was openly staring at this point. He wasn't Shigeko, and he wasn't Suzuki, he could read between the lines. Good friends…he knew what that meant. Suzuki…no. He would have….he would have said something. He would have done something before it went this far. The last time he fooled around with a woman he panicked and ran away….women weren't fans of men who ran out on them….and….and now that he thought about it that must have been the very same woman…and….well now he felt like a moron. Not only for forgetting but for…he should have been on top of this. Mukai was kicking her feet and rocking her chair back and forth…in nine months there could have been another one of her…another one of her and…and maybe more….

He could not let that happen.

"I think she might like him. She's always calling him, I know, I check his call history." Said Shigeko

"You don't check his messages, do you?" asked Hatori. He was white, now, and his aura had jumped right into the laptop on his desk. Fukuda…well he shared the sentiment. He knew that Shigeko was not going to take it well when she found out the truth.

"No, he told me not to but he didn't say anything about his call history. She calls him at least once a day…I think she might like him…." said Shigeko

"I like you! Over there!" shouted Mukai. She pointed at everyone…even him. Well that was nice…he wished that he'd had his phone out. That would have been a great picture. She was like a little Sho but with pigtails.

"Not like that Mukai. Like…well you're too little to know what I mean." Said Shigeko

"I know what you mean, don't worry…and don't worry about your dad, either. He knows what he's doing." Said Hatori

"What's he doing? Because I'm really confused. I mean I have friends who are boys but….I don't know. This seems different." Said Shigeko. Different or the same, that was what he wanted to ask her. He knew how she was with men old enough to be her father. She carried on in her way, ways that he didn't like to think about…ways that were becoming increasingly difficult to ignore. How could he with the way she was dressed? She used to wear giant sweaters…now she wore unnecessarily small t-shirts and skirts that led him to believe that there was a fabric shortage going on. Of course she would be suspicious of her father…with the way she carried on….

"Your dad…you know what? He's got his own stuff going on just like you have your own stuff going on." Said Hatori without any of the grace Fukuda assumed he saw himself as having. That would have been a red flag to anyone else. Thank God he was talking to Shigeko.

"He's going to be in the chair Olympics too?" asked Shigeko

"No…but he has other stuff going. Like…uh…sometimes adults-" said Hatori. There was a shift in the energy around them. Fukuda imagined that Hatori had never been so grateful to have been dropped in on. Fukuda on the other hand…well he did not hold Hatori's sentiments. He had less than a second before the person he least wanted to see in the entire world dropped into his office….without shoes on…

"Hello! Ryou over there! Hatori over there! Fuck-u-da over there!" shouted Mukai. Shimazaki reached over and patted Mukai on the head like she was a puppy of some kind. She and Shigeko were the only people who were happy to see him. Hatori shrunk back into his chair. Fukuda didn't blame him. He wanted to hide under his desk, too, or at least…well anywhere that he could have hidden. Shimazaki Ryou…the most annoying human being who had ever lived…and the very worst that Claw had to offer…

Didn't he have somewhere else to be? Literally anywhere else?

"Hi Shima-Ryou. Hi." Said Shigeko. Ryou….that was new…a lot of things were new. Like the fact that Shimazaki was staring at her. Actually staring. He was facing her and his aura was practically on top of hers, too. His hand had found it's way to her lower back. A surge of protectiveness ran through Fukuda…one that made no sense. This wasn't his daughter. This was Suzuki's daughter and if he was alright with…whatever was happening between her and a man twenty years older than her….then that was his business.

There was no stopping Shigeko from doing whatever she wanted to do.

Right now she wanted Shimazaki Ryou to put his hand on her lower back. Fukuda knew what that meant. There was no innocent way to put your hand on a woman's lower back…or a twelve year old girl's…he had no idea what to count her as. She was clearly not a little girl anymore and hadn't acted like one even before all of these new…developments. Still…that….was not ok. Not that he got a say in it…and even if he got one Shigeko didn't want to hear it.

Talking to him was like having a period, after all.

"Hi Shimazaki…" said Hatori

"Good, everyone's said hi to me. Anyway Mob, two things. The first of which being….this." said Shimazaki. He reached into his coat and pulled out a small bottle of strawberry milk. That…was not just milk. That was something else. The way he was holding it out of her…the look on his face…his aura…the fact that he was completely blind so that must have taken effort…not to mention the fact that his hand was right back on the small of her back the minute she took the milk from his hands.

He held his tongue.

"Me? Gifts for me! Snacks for me!" shouted Mukai

"You shouldn't just get things for me, Mukai feels left out." Said Shigeko. She was nonplussed by all of this. Well of course she was. This had been going on for...well he didn't even know. This was just out in the open now. Why? Because she'd finally hit puberty and it became a little less socially unacceptable to be…whatever Shimazaki was with her? Fukuda didn't know….and he didn't think that he would ever know. Contrary to popular belief he didn't look at twelve year old girls so he had no way of putting himself in the mindset of someone who did.

Also drugs and alcohol never stayed in his system long enough for him to get into anything even approaching Shimazaki's mindset.

"Sorry. You like it though, right? It's the kind you like?" asked Shimazaki. There was something needy in his voice that Fukuda had never heard before. This whole thing was news to Hatori, too, judging by the looks he was giving Shimazaki.

"Yes, it's strawberry. Thank you." Said Shigeko. Shimazaki…oh God…he was nervous. He was shifting in place and staring at her…was he even a little red? Was that….what the fuck? What in the…that was…Fukuda was not Shigeko's father. Her actual father had dealt with this when she…oh God…ten….and he would deal with it again…if he wanted to deal with it. He had this weird obsession with having grandkids…but...he had a two year old. He needed to enjoy the two year old he had instead of breathing down his kids' necks about grandkids…

Or letting his twelve year old daughter date grown men.

"So…are you coming to the sock skating competition?" asked Shimazaki

"I thought it was a chair race." Said Shigeko

It's two things now." Said Shimazaki

"Um…maybe. Mukai's really into chairs right now." Said Shigeko

"Chairs go fast!" shouted Mukai. She kicked her feet some more. Someone was excited to move on…good. Maybe Shigeko would get back to whatever they had been doing before she dropped in on them…and maybe she could take Shimazaki and Hatori out with her too. Then maybe Fukuda could have some peace for once.

"So…you aren't coming? Because I can get us down there in less than a second…but you knew that already. I mean you know that I teleport…yeah. That was stupid." Said Shimazaki

"Don't ever call yourself stupid, you're not stupid, and I'm not sure….ok. Mukai and I can come with you since it means a lot to you but I don't have socks on, just sandals, so I can only watch." Said Shigeko

"Hey, I'll take what I can get." Said Shimazaki before he teleported them all away. Now there was a…hole…in the atmosphere where he'd been. That made sense since Shimazaki took up pretty much all the atmosphere wherever he went. Now he was gone…it was just Hatori…who was staring at him…or maybe he'd been staring first.

He couldn't help it. That had been….something.

"Don't say a word." Said Hatori. He was trying to sound angry, dangerous, but instead he sounded like a kid trying his best to sound like a teenager. His voice even squeaked there. He would have been adorable if he'd been the same age that he insisted on pretending he was.

"What are you talking about?" asked Fukuda

"Don't say anything about that. About Mob. You're weird with her and-" said Hatori

"I'm weird with her? Did you not just see Shimazaki-" said Fukuda

"He's stirring shit, alright? That's just how he is. He's got to be stirring shit like he always does." Said Hatori. He was defending Shimazaki? Didn't he have anything else to do with his life? What? He was in favor of this? Of whatever the fuck that was…

That was none of his business.

"You now what? This is none of my business so, like you asked, I won't say a word about the fact that Shigeko is seeing a man who's even older than you are." Said Fukuda. He went back to his laptop….and then got hit in the head with an empty can. Another one was launched at him but this one, thankfully, just hit the wall. The next one hit the desk…and it wasn't empty.

"Hold still so I can hit you!" said Hatori as he threw another empty can at him. Fukuda caught that one and then dropped it on the floor. Hatori hunted around his desk but, thankfully, found nothing. What was his problem? Upset that his not even middle school aged ex had moved on?

"Are you done yet?" asked Fukuda with a groan. What was he carrying on about now? God…he was like the worst of Sho…but with none of the things that made him good. He had no idea why Suzuki wanted to keep around an older, more poorly behaved, version of his son when he had a perfectly good kid….somewhere. Sho had been gone for a while now…but maybe that was for the best.

The last thing he wanted was for Sho to be around to see any of this.

"Are you?" asked Hatori

"I wasn't doing anything at all." Said Fukuda

"Bullshit! You were being weird with Mob again. Like…seriously! What is your problem with her?! She's twelve, you're forty…whatever! However old Suzuki is! What are you being so weird about this shit for?" asked Hatori

"I am not the weird one here." Said Fukuda. This whole place was an insane asylum but he, at least, wasn't one of the inmates. What did Hatori think that he could do? Hatori had seen it. Shigeko had destroyed an entire division on accident…and that was after what she had done to the eighth division. Hatori may not have been there but he was constantly going through the records. He must have seen the pictures and put two and two together. Shigeko was her own person, there was no way to stop her from doing whatever she wanted to do, even when she was making mistake after mistake….

So many mistakes.

If Masami had been there, if she had seen what he'd let her daughter become, she would have hated him. She would have told him to his face that she hated him. He wouldn't have been able to blame her…even though she knew why she'd had to leave Shigeko behind. She knew how powerful Shigeko was. She'd been uncontrollable even as a toddler, that was how she'd ended up in the system in the first place, and Fukuda…he had no way of controlling her. The only person who could control her was Suzuki and he had no interest in stopping her from doing whatever the hell she felt like. He had no idea…he had no idea what Masami expected him to do…what anyone expected him to do….

Shigeko was hell bent on learning from her mistakes as anyone else.

"You are! Just…fuck you, man, fuck you. I'm going to go see if Suzuki's done talking to his girlfriend. You just…stay here and live with yourself." Said Hatori. He got up, took his laptop, and left. Suzuki could have him. Fukuda was glad that Hatori was gone. This was what he wanted….live with himself…whatever. He didn't need to have the last word. He just needed to have his peace…and he had it…and now he could get back to work in peace….

At least he would try to.

Shigeko was one worry…and Suzuki was another. Sho…Sho was off doing his own thing. He'd probably come back with another pet to keep in Fukuda's house or something. That was fine. Sho…he deserved to be happy. Sho was the least of his problems, anyway. Shigeko was back to doing whatever she was getting up to with Shimazaki. That was…so wrong. She wasn't Fukuda's responsibility. She was her own person and if she wanted to do…whatever…with a man with more problems than there were days in a year then that was fine.

All kinds of problems….

Like his inability to learn from his mistakes. Sleeping with the boss's underage daughter. That was what had brought him here in the first place, well it had been the last straw, he'd done…just about everything else that a person could do wrong before all of that…yeah. Even if Shigeko had been the grown woman she thought she was this would have been a bad idea. He…well he understood why she made so many terrible decisions when it came to romance.

All a person had to do was look at her father.

Suzuki…apparently had a girlfriend now…an honest to God girlfriend. He had divorced Masami. Masami was his wife to divorce…Fukuda had no idea why he even cared. He should have been happy. She was free of him now. Not only that but Suzuki had replaced her in his life. She was free to…well…be free. She loved Sho…and Shigeko…and now maybe he could get the kids to her…Sho. Maybe if she just told him where she was, since Suzuki wasn't looking for her anymore, Fukuda could finally do what he had promised to do years ago. He…he should have been happy. He should have been happy that she was free of Suzuki but…but in being free of Suzuki she was free of him, too. It felt like…like the last string connecting them was gone…like he would never be able to get Sho to her…like he would never see her again…or speak to her….or…

Well that was the way that it had been for a while.

Masami was gone. She had left him…and he was never going to see her again. Neither would Sho. She was well and truly gone. Suzuki had even replaced her…moron that he was. He was going to end up with another illegitimate kid. He was going to end up with a broken heart. He was going to end up with another runaway wife. He was going to end up with another cheating….no. Masami hadn't been cheating on him, she'd been given no choice, and…and this woman…this Shiori…would also have no choice. Suzuki…this whole thing was going to explode in his face….and Fukuda…he wasn't going to be able to stop this from happening. He wasn't going to be able to save Suzuki from himself.

He didn't even know if he wanted to…not if Suzuki didn't want his help.