"Touichirou, you shed like a cat. You know that, right?"
No, Suzuki hadn't known that. He looked down. He had been brushing his hair rather rigorously, he would give her that. He put his brush down. There. That was….a lot of hair. He looked down on the counter. It was red. It had been white but now it was red…reddish brown, actually. It had been more red before, when he'd been younger, the last time he'd ever lost this much hair to a brush.
Suzuki needed a haircut.
"Seriously, it's like you're shedding your winter coat." Said Shiori as she took some hair off of his shoulder. She held it between her fingers before she let it join it's brothers littering the bathroom counter. He looked away. Right. He lived with someone else now….another adult. Shiori had said that since he was an adult he was going to have to live like one and that she had no interest in being his Mother. She was nothing like Mother.
Mother would have shouted at him for this.
His hair had been longer, this long, when he'd been a child. Mother had occasionally trimmed it down but this was the length he had liked. Long enough that it stood up just so. Not like whatever Sho was letting his hair grow into. This was…this had been a good length but with this length came the need to brush it. That was the only way to get it shaped…but with brushing came the shedding of hair and with the shedding of hair came Mother's many complaints.
He braced himself.
"I'll clean it up." Said Suzuki quickly. He just needed to finish…it looked alright. Down in the back and sloped slightly upwards in the front. He could live with this. He risked a glance at Shiori. She seemed….well he had never been the best at reading faces but he did know auras and she seemed….perfectly neutral.
"Here, let me." Said Shiori as she took his brush from the counter. She held it over the garbage can and began to pull the hair from it. She didn't complain, not once. Not even Masami had cleaned his brush for him. That had been a big reason why he had kept it so short over the years. That and because it was a lot less work when it was short….he needed to cut it again. He was much too old for hair this long.
"Thank you…and I apologize. I don't normally let my hair get this long." Said Suzuki. Shiori shrugged and kept on pulling the hair from his brush. He let her. His brush needed it and for all he knew she enjoyed. She had just gotten done telling him that she wouldn't be cooking and cleaning up after him but now she was doing that. She must have enjoyed it, then, especially considering that her brush was immaculate.
"You should leave it this way, I like it. It makes you look young." Said Shiori as she put his brush down on the counter. She reached over with her other hand and ran it through his hair. She had ruined the shape of it, of course, but he found himself not minding. He found himself leaning into her touch.
She was so soft.
First thing in the morning, the very first thing she did, was soften her skin. He could smell the lotion on her. Where Masami had smelled like berries Shiori smelled like coconuts. She smelled like she had just come from some tropical place, the sort of place where people swam in the ocean and baked in the sun on the beach. The sort of place where the women walked around barely dressed and dragged poor, unsuspecting, sailors off of their boats and had their way with them…
Not the time, Touichirou.
"It…does?" asked Suzuki. He swallowed. She was very close, she smelled good, and she was barely dressed. She had borrowed one of his shirts again, one of his t-shirts. A garment which fit him like a shirt but her like a very short dress. She wasn't wearing anything else, he knew that she wasn't wearing anything else because he had seen her getting ready for bed…but this was not the time. He had to…they had plans, real plans, and plans which were time sensitive. They had to get to the aquarium before it opened so Shiori could be first in line for the touch tanks. Why she wanted to be first he did not know but he knew that he was going to do whatever he could to keep her plans…planned…on schedule….
He pulled away from her.
"Yeah, you don't look a day over forty-five." Said Shiori. Her hands were on her hips, now. He didn't understand why…but it did help. He could think again...he caught sight of himself in the mirror. A day over forty five…he was several days over forty five….but that wasn't very long at all.
"That…is not much younger than I am now….but thank you, I suppose." Said Suzuki
"Hey, come on, don't be like that. You know why you lost some points." Said Shiori
"What are you talking about?" asked Suzuki
"Here." Said Shiori. She reached a hand out and spread her fingers. A mirror, a small hand mirror, flew into her palm. She closed her fingers around it and then held it to the back of his head. He could see, there, in the medicine cabinet mirror…a patch of silver. Small. Barely there. Suzuki wouldn't have even noticed unless Shiori had pointed it out to him. Behind his ear was a streak of silver.
Not grey. Not white. Silver.
He had he urge to rip it out, to rip all the hair out of his head, but he resisted. The only thing that ripped was the towel hanging up beside him. It tore right down the middle…which as a miracle all things considered. This was….he needed to….this was time. This was time's passage, evidence of it, written right across the back of his head. He reached over with his telekinesis and grabbed the mirror from Shiori's hand. There. Now he couldn't see…but he knew that it was there. He could feel his hair growing…that was insane….but he could….he had to put this mirror down. So he did.
It shattered.
"Wow…thanks for that." Said Shiori as she used her powers to put the broken glass and plastic into the trashcan where it belonged. He brushed his hair, the hair he'd lost, right into the trashcan with it. Some of it may have been silver, some of it may have been red, he didn't know and he didn't care to know. There was no point in caring about this, there was nothing that he could do.
Well he could call Shigeko.
Hair dying was a woman's game and she played it…well? She had said that she liked it, the unnatural red color she had dyed her hair, but it was just so hideous…but it was better than silver. Anything was better than silver. Silver…silver was a color for old men. Old men who played mahjong in the park, fed koi fish, and practiced tai chi…he hated tai chi! It was such a waste of time and his back would never have allowed for it, either…wait…old men had back problems too, didn't they?
Suzuki Touichirou was not an old man.
"…with me to Don Quixote since, apparently, we're breaking things this morni-" said Shiori
"I'm not old." Said Suzuki, more to reassure himself than anything. He shouldn't have needed more reassurance. He should have been perfectly fine. He should have been able to accept this inevitability like he accepted all other inevitabilities. One day Mukai would turn into Shigeko, Shiori would leave him either in death or running away, Sho would always find a way to ruin anything that he was a part of, and Suzuki would one day grow old and die. That was how time worked. Even he couldn't change the course of time. He knew, he'd tried. This was…this was what was happening now…he was getting older.
But he wasn't an old man. Not yet.
"I never said you were. I said that you were an overreactor and that you were coming to Don Quixote with me but I never said that you were old." Said Shiori
"No, no, that wasn't for you. That was for myself, to reassure myself that I'm not…as old as I felt just now. I apologize. I shouldn't need to reassure myself." Said Suzuki
"Well, yeah, you should know who you are but you don't have to apologize for reassuring yourself. What you should be apologizing to me for is my broken mirror." Said Shiori
"I'm sorry for that too." Said Suzuki
"Good, now stop freaking out. It's just a little grey-" said Shiori
"Silver. My hair is silver. It was bright red when I was born and then it got darker and now…and now it's silver." Said Suzuki. Saying it all out loud like that really put it into perspective…and he didn't like this perspective at all. He felt small, as though he were being observed from an airplane…he didn't like it. Time was bigger than he was, he couldn't fight time, and he couldn't use what time he had left to try…what little time he had left. He was forty six. In another thirty to forty years he'd be dead…dead and then the only legacy he would leave to the world would be….what? Claw was still growing…he needed to advance his timetable…but he was already working at a breakneck pace…he had to do something….
"Fine then, silver. You know that's barely anything, though, right?" asked Shiori. He had no idea how she could have said something like that. Maybe because she had black hair…and maybe because so many years separated them. Half a decade. She didn't know, yet, what was coming. How one day she would wake up old and completely incapacitated. How everything she was now would be gone. She was five years younger than him and it hadn't been anything, not when he met her, but now the years that separated them felt like lifetimes.
"You don't understand." Said Suzuki
"What are you going on about now?" asked Shiori
"You're still young, you have no idea how it feels to-" said Suzuki before he wound up with a mouthful of hair. She had tossed her hair in his face…it smelled just as amazing as the rest of her but right now he wasn't too happy about the fact that she seemed to have been trying to asphyxiate him.
"Really? I don't understand?" asked Shiori as she tossed her hair in his face one more time. He didn't understand this…and if she didn't understand either than that meant that they were in some real trouble.
"No, I mean….one of us needs to understand what's happening right now." Said Suzuki
"Well apparently I don't." said Shiori. She was holding her hair, now, in her hand…he still had no idea what she meant by any of this. She may have been easy to understand but she was still a woman and he couldn't think of any being in the universe that could have possibly been more complex than a woman.
"I don't either. Explain…would you be so kind as to explain yourself to be right now?" asked Suzuki
"Why yes, Touichirou, I would be so kind as to explain the fact that, yes, I know what it's like to go gray. I've had this thing in my hair since I was thirty one after all." said Shiori. Now Suzuki could see it. She was holding her grey streak…but that was barely anything. Just one streak….and anyway she was a woman, she could have just colored it. He was a man, he had to live with this, and he had to show it to the rest of the world, too. He was Suzuki Touichirou and he was getting old.
Wonderful.
"It's not the same. You're a woman." Said Suzuki
"You don't honestly think that we have it easier? You, you go grey or silver or whatever and people say you look distinguished. Me? I start to go grey and I just look old." Said Shiori
"You don't look old at all." said Suzuki
"Then you need to get your eyes checked. I've got this thing in my hair, I've got crow's feet and laugh lines, and you've seen me naked. Don't tell me that I still look like I'm twenty two." Said Shiori
"No, when you're undressed you look somewhere between twenty five and forty one, though I have not seen many women undressed in my lifetime and if I had I don't think that you would have wanted to be compared to them. I do think that you're beautiful, though, and I hadn't even noticed the things you described yourself as having. I still can't see them." Said Suzuki
"Are you being serious right now or are you just trying to butter me up so we can have sex again? Because you don't have to, you know. You can just ask." Said Shiori
"I'm being sincere, this is not an attempt to initiate intercourse with you…but I would be amenable, if you were also." Said Suzuki
"Well I'd be a lot more 'amenable' if you didn't start talking about things you didn't have the first clue about. It's not at all easier for women and I have no idea why you'd think that it was. You've seen how long it takes me to get ready in the morning." Said Shiori
"I have but I just think that it would be easier because you can better avoid time and it's effect on the body. You can color your hair or put on cosmetics and you can look younger. I do not have that option. It's as if the whole world…I know that it sounds insane but it feels as though the whole world is watching me right now and….and it has declared me to be one step closer to becoming an old man and losing complete control of my faculties before the release of death." Said Suzuki. Shiori's face went through every expression he had ever seen before she settled on very soft eyes. Her aura was soft, too, soft and inviting like the hand that had found his.
"You really feel this self-conscious?" asked Shiori
"…yes….I suppose I am." Said Suzuki. He could admit this to her, right? She made a soft noise, everything about her was so soft right now, and took his other hand in hers. Masami would have just told him that he was being ridiculous….he had no idea why his mind had just gone to Masami. Maybe because of the way the light got caught on Shiori's ring…or maybe because he just liked to torment himself. She was gone, she was never coming back, and even if she had seen fit to track him down it wouldn't have mattered because he had divorced her and found someone new…someone better….
Shiori.
"Well stop it. Everyone's hair changes when they get to our age. It doesn't mean that you're an old man or whatever, it just means that you aren't as young as you used to be. You can either gracefully fall into middle age as I have or you can have a midlife crisis and, I don't know, go out and trade me in for a girl young enough to be your daughter." Said Shiori
"That….is disturbing. My daughters are twelve and three." Said Suzuki. Shiori rolled her eyes.
"No, I meant a woman that could, conceivably, be your daughter. Like a twentysomething." Said Shiori. Suzuki shook his head.
"I'm not attracted to women that young." Said Suzuki
"Alright, men then." Said Shiori. Suzuki didn't need to look in the mirror to know that he'd gone red. That was…not something that he wanted to discuss with her. It was just not done, discussing one's previous lovers with their current fiancée…though she hadn't mentioned Tadashi by name, or even age group.
"I'm not attracted to men of that age either." Said Suzuki. She had been talking about a man Hatori's age…Hatori….no thank you. Hatori was handsome but he was just so….Hatori.
"Well then I suppose you won't be having that midlife crisis after all." said Shiori
"No…and even if I had chosen to I would never have left you. Ever. I love you." Said Suzuki. Shiori let go of his hands, her warmth and softness were missed for only a second, before her hands found him again. His face that time. She took either side of his face in her hands and pulled him down to her level….he had never noticed how much smaller she was then him….and he had never noticed how soft her lips were, either. He kissed her back, of course, but after a short delay. He had needed that minute, that moment, just to sit there and feel her. To truly feel her.
She was there. She was real. She was his.
"Stop stressing about this, Touichirou, you look great and you've still got a lot of time left before you're an old man arguing with ducks at the park. Stop worrying, you're only going to give yourself more grey hair…trust me, I know. Now get out of my bathroom, you're not the only one with unruly hair that needs taming." Said Shiori. Suzuki did as she asked. He had no reason to argue with her….not about the use of her bathroom, anyway. She did spend a lot of time taming her hair out of it's bedhead. He had no reason to stand there and argue with her about the appropriate division of time when sharing a bathroom.
He had other things to argue with her about.
He didn't, of course.
That would have been counterproductive. This week was to test and see if they could exist together in the same home. If this went well then they would be married and then they could have their son. Suzuki held his tongue. He needed another son, he needed Tetsuro, and he needed him soon. He was getting old and, no, he couldn't just stop stressing himself out over it. He didn't have time to just be so…so lackadaisical. He had goals to reach and a world to rule.
All he needed was a wife to rule with him and a son, a real Son, to inherit the world after he passed….and also, at some point, a haircut to make the silver patch less noticeable.