Fukuda could admit to himself that he'd completely lost control of this situation.
The fish on the floor were a testament to that. Fish, broken glass, and tiny colorful rocks littered the floor of the office. Of Suzuki's office. Not Hatori's. No matter what delusions of grandeur that man came up with they were never going to come true. He was not in charge here. Suzuki hadn't left him in charge.
He was not Suzuki's son and he never would be.
Fukuda shook his head as he surveyed the damage around him. Suzuki was not going to be happy when he came back to this. If he came back…when. It was a question of when and not if. When he came back and saw his rug soaked through with aquarium water, dead fish littering his floor, more colorful rocks than Fukuda had ever even though in existence covered the entirety of his desk…he was not going to be happy. Hopefully he'd be angry, with Hatori and with himself too hopefully.
Hopefully Suzuki was going to be more than a little bit angry with himself.
"Come on, you two." Said Fukuda as he picked up and empty drinking glass and used it as a fish scoop. He could feel…they were still alive. Barely. There was a water bottle on the table. He picked it up, uncapped it, and dumped it into the drinking glass. He healed the fish as best as he could. Animals were harder than people….he did his best…
They were swimming again.
Fish could not survive for long in a drinking glass. He had no idea if there were even freshwater fish or not. They were colorful…didn't that mean tropical? The room didn't smell like saltwater. It smelled like mildew if anything…the mildew was setting in. He was going to have to send someone to clean up this office. After, of course, he found a home for these fish.
The fish came first.
Sho would have been proud of him. Sho, if he'd been here, would have been all over this. He would have snatched the fish out of Fukuda's hands and run to the nearest pet store. He would have come back with everything you needed to take care of a fish. A tank and a filter…food, probably. Those little aquarium rocks. Probably some decorations for them to play in…did fish play? Fukuda didn't know. He'd only ever had a goldfish before.
It hadn't lived long.
Suzuki had won it for him, actually, when they had been fourteen. It had been during the Seasoning City summer festival, that damn goldfish game. Mom and Dad never let him play it, they said that it was cruel to the fish, and they had never been big 'pet' people. Too much responsibility for too little return. It had always been about return with them. Returns and sunk costs. Keep playing the clarinet, it was expensive…no games of any kind at the summer festivals, the prizes weren't worth it. No videogames, they were a pointless waste of time…he had at least worn them down about that one. Not so much about the fish. He hadn't even wanted it to begin with and neither had Suzuki. He'd just wanted to see if Suzuki could have won without his powers.
He had.
After numerous attempts he won. He'd been flush with cash that day, a reward for a good kendo season and an even better testing period. He'd always been flush with cash, of course, provided that he hadn't wasted it at the arcade. He'd been about to…yes….now he remembered. They'd been debating the merits of videogames versus skill games and pacing around the festival grounds until they got to the games. Then Suzuki had decided to prove him wrong…yes…he had said…what had he said….
'You only like games you can win at and you only win by cheating.'
Something close to that. It wasn't like he'd been lying. Suzuki really did cheat a lot. He cheated the machines out of coins, he'd cheated the Claw machines out of prizes, he sometimes even used his powers to hit the buttons during fighting games that he otherwise would not have been able to reach. Fukuda had been feeling annoyed that day…he couldn't remember why. Something about Mom and Dad…not the allowance thing…oh, right. Bandcamp, the fight over it, and Fukuda's loss of that fight. He'd been annoyed…not that he'd had any great love of the school band. Actually he'd hated it. Everyone there had been such assholes to him…but there had been girls and band camp was notoriously poorly supervised. What fourteen year old could have said no to poorly supervised time with the opposite sex?
Well Suzuki, since he'd skipped the kendo trip.
He'd skipped it to spend his summer with Fukuda planning world domination…or at least that had been the plan. Really they'd done nothing, nearly nothing, all summer. Plenty of recklessness. Going up to the mountains and riding that wagon down until it finally broke…the time they went swimming in the river and nearly got taken out to sea…the time with the batteries and the microwave…all those times they'd braved the horrors of Suzuki's Dad's office to mess with his computer…
Reckless teenage boy things.
Non reckless things too. Going to the movies had been a constant, especially when that one girl was working the ticket window who was always wearing her shirt unbuttoned…of course they'd gotten banned for the rest of the summer after their fight in the aisles…yes, Star Wars was a better space movie series than Galaxy Express and Fukuda wasn't ashamed to have fought him about that. After being kicked out of every theatre in town, even the art one…trench coats and fedoras were not good disguises after all….well they'd had to occupy themselves with other things. Video Village had been their new source of movies, Suzuki had even braved going through the beaded curtain while Fukuda distracted the cashier…though why he'd gotten Betamax tapes Fukuda would never know…
'Because the picture and sound quality are superior to that of VHS cassettes. Any moron could tell you that.'
He could still hear it in, remember it, like it was yesterday. They'd run all the way home in the summer heat, tapes clutched under that stupid sweater Suzuki had always worn at the time, laughing the whole way…well Fukuda had been laughing the whole way home. Suzuki had treated it like the very serious mission that it had been. Though why…well he knew why he'd gotten Betamax tapes…though why he prioritized picture quality over accessibility was beyond Fukuda…
Or at least it had been at the time…
'What? We're just supposed to sit in your room and watch this together? This is why people think that we're gay, Suzuki.'
Yeah, he remembered that part like it had happened yesterday….not even. Earlier today. That was what it felt like. The sheer level of 'what the hell' of the whole situation. They'd planned their heist out down to the minute, it had taken weeks, and then he just went and…and Fukuda remembered how he replied. Something along the lines of 'but we are not homosexuals so therefore'….Fukuda hadn't let him get past the therefore. Suzuki had always been weird…that was what he'd called it back then. Just another moment of Suzuki being weird…it hadn't even crossed his mind that…
A lot of things hadn't crossed his mind back then.
They'd watched other movies back then, movies that didn't involve…anything like that. Hell, they must have seen that back to the future thing at least twenty times. Thank god for laser discs…another fight about picture quality. Anything that they both liked Suzuki got on some format that Fukuda had no hope of convincing his parents of getting. The VCR had been enough, Mom and Dad had said…and it was the more common format. Fukuda had gotten the feeling so many times before that Suzuki had just been trying to keep him at his house…that he was looking for reasons to keep Fukuda there….
They'd both been pretty lonely kids.
That was what Fukuda had chalked it up to. They both hadn't ever had friends before. Fukuda'd had people he'd hung out with, of course, but by the end of the year it had all fallen apart. People had been so…he didn't even know. Too faced, maybe? People acted like they liked him but by the end of the year there had been secrets parties and trips that he hadn't been included in…Suzuki hadn't been like that. Suzuki had always said what he meant and meant what he said. Sure he had been kind of an asshole but he'd always been…he'd always been there. He'd always….he'd always been that weird asshole that Fukuda'd hung out with…
Wasted a lot of time with.
That was what they'd done, wasted time. They'd spent so much time in front of the TV. Watching movies, playing videogames….oh God, the videogames. That was what had started the whole game argument. Suzuki had claimed that he didn't need his powers to win, that he was just good at most everything. Fukuda had disagreed. They had gotten closer and closer to fighting before he told Suzuki to put his money where his mouth was…and he had….
And then Fukuda had gotten a goldfish.
Suzuki has just won him a goldfish. He'd scooped up a fish and handed it to him and and…and then that was it. Fukuda'd had a goldfish. Suzuki had won him a goldfish…and of course people had noticed. Noticed and talked. Guys did not win fish for other guys. Not now and not in the eighties. That had lead to another fight, this one caused one hundred percent by Suzuki. Fukuda had told him to go and give it to a girl or back to the fish guy, one of the two. Suzuki had disagreed with more of the same. If they weren't gay then there was nothing wrong with what they did together. There was nothing wrong with all that weird stuff…the sleeping in the same bed and constantly hanging out…there was nothing wrong with it if they weren't together….or so Fukuda had said…
It had been another fight.
One that had taken them through the festival grounds and to the river. He hadn't gotten it, understood it, why Suzuki had been so hellbent on giving him the damn fish. Some weird Suzuki thing….that was what he had been thinking at the time. Just another weird Suzuki thing that he had no hope of understanding. He got weird sometimes. That was the only word Fukuda…it was the only word he'd had for it. He hadn't exactly had the best modern Japanese grades…so weird it was…
He had a better word for it now.
He just didn't…he didn't want to think about it. What he knew now, the word he had for it. The word he had for how weird Suzuki would get sometimes. When Fukuda hung out with other people, when Fukuda broke plans with him, when Suzuki's parents had gotten him a futon so they'd stop sleeping in the same bed…more times than that. Suzuki had just gotten so weird…so…so…
So jealous.
That was what he had been, jealous. He had been jealous and…and he'd wanted…Fukuda knew what he wanted. He wanted the same thing now that he'd wanted back then. The only difference was that now he had it. Now they'd actually….a lot of things had changed, a lot had happened, and it was probably going to happen again. Fukuda felt as powerless as that goldfish had. He wondered how it had felt, being carried all through town by two bickering fourteen year old morons. He wondered if it had been scared, or angry, or…or if fish even had emotions to begin with.
He held the glass up to his eyes.
There was no way in hell that these fish were happy in this glass. Maybe he needed to let them go…that was what he had done the last time he'd had fish. He and Suzuki had argued their way to the river where they eventually let the fish go…and then it had been immediately eaten by a bigger fish. Circle of life and all of that. Food chains. Fate sticking it's middle finger up…any other explanations that had come up in their next argument….they had fought a lot in those days. That had been before Fukuda had learned to just go with whatever Suzuki said…before he had learned to steer Suzuki in the direction he needed him to go. He had gotten better at it over the years…better and then worse…at some point he had lost complete and total control over the situation.
If he'd ever had it to begin with.
Nothing made sense anymore. Suzuki had, at some point, become…unrecognizable. He had called Masami unknowable but what in the hell did that make him. Masami's actions had at least made sense. She'd been lonely, unloved, hurt even. She'd made a mistake in marrying Suzuki and she'd been forced to live with it. If they'd met first…if he'd gone with Suzuki on that trip then…then everything could have been different. They could have been together, he could have been Sho's father, and Shigeko…she could have had an exponentially better life than she had now. Sure she wouldn't get her spontaneous trips to Disneyland and she would have had to live like everyone else but at least…well her life wouldn't have been that much better but he knew that everyone else's life would have been….
That his life would have been.
He felt like these fish in this glass. Swimming with no way out. The world, his world, had gotten so small…so crushingly small. He had no way out. He was, always had been, at the mercy of those stronger than him. He just hadn't realized it until years later…until Suzuki tore the band aid off of his emotions and then they'd actually…it wasn't like Fukuda had wanted to. It wasn't like he had ever once thought about it…but apparently Suzuki had…and now here they were.
Fukuda wished a river fish would have eaten him.
He wished that a gigantic fish would have just swam up and swallowed him like it had the fish with no name. That had been it's name…the fish with no name…Suzuki had agreed to it. After they'd fought about who's fault it was…they had never settled on it. The fireworks had started and then that argument had just sort of died under the glow of summertime…Fukuda wished that he could have forgotten that night. Suzuki leaning up to him, the itchiness of that damn rocket sweater he'd always worn…the way his hand kept on creeping new Fukuda's in a way that he knew better than to make excuses for. Fukuda…he was done making excuses for Suzuki. He was done trying to explain away everything….
He was just done.
As done as he could be. Nothing was ever done. Nothing was ever done when it came to him and Suzuki…he had to do something about these fish. There was no point in standing here in this trashed office. He had nothing to do here…he had come in to see about that meeting with the head of the first division. Sendai held no strategic importance. He'd managed to convince Suzuki that it did…he pretended that he didn't even know the meaning of the world 'sentimentality' but Fukuda knew better. He was a sucker for it…he still knew Suzuki…somewhat. He still knew…he still had some control over this situation.
He couldn't stop Suzuki…but he could sabotage him.
He could have just left these fish in here to die. Let Suzuki come back to an office reeking of dead fish and aquarium water. Let him see what happened when he left Hatori, the biggest idiot in all of Claw, in charge. Let him deal with…well that wouldn't have been fair to the fish. There should have been something that he could do…something else…but he would settle for this…
He didn't think that these fish would get eaten.
The cafeteria was full of empty plastic containers. There was plenty of space in there…then Sho could take over. He loved animals…mostly. He treated those hamsters of his like human beings when he was around. Shigeko had managed to talk him into yet another trip to Disneyland. Fukuda would have thought that he would have been bored of it right now…and he probably was. He just went along with whatever Shigeko asked of him…he was such a good little brother…
And he was going to be a good pet owner too.
Fukuda left the office without a word. He closed the door and walked into the cacophony of the hallway. At the end of the hall there was some sort of battle royale that Hatori had set up…even Sho would have known better. Whatever. Another thing that Suzuki would have to deal with. He needed to learn his lesson about Hatori…he needed to learn a lot of lessons…ones that he…Fukuda didn't want to think about him anymore. Fukuda didn't want to think about anything that had anything at all to do with Suzuki Touichirou…
He should have been enjoying the respite.
He should have been enjoying the break…but he wasn't. Not when everything was burning down around him, not when Sho was so far away, and not when Shigeko had managed to somehow come of out this smelling like a rose. Nothing. Suzuki hadn't even thought about punishing her…whatever. Fukuda had bigger things to worry about than Shigeko. He had to deal with Suzuki and whatever he was going to come back with…plans about having children…anger at Fukuda for what he'd done…whatever else he could come up with…things that it didn't even seem worth thinking over…whatever was going to happen was going to happen…
It wasn't like Fukuda had any control over this situation…the only thing he had control over right now was the fish.