The people didn't look a thing like ants from up here.

Shimazaki had heard that expression every single time he'd been on a plane. He had never gotten it. People could never look like ants…right? Ants were small and kind of annoying. The way they moved under your feet, the way that they were everywhere, the way that it was so easy to get lost in their little ant world. There were millions of them and they were everywhere and they just kept moving. How did they know where to go? How did they know what to do? They didn't talk to one another, they didn't make any sound at all actually, but they just…kept moving. They kept going. They stole food and dug their tunnels and fought off other insects…they always knew what they were doing, not like people. No, people just kind of walked around, then they stopped, then they walked so more. Nobody knew what they were doing….

Or maybe that was just Shimazaki.

Well he knew WHAT he was doing, hanging out in a tree and watching some woman drink bubble tea. That was his life now. hanging out just outside of this woman's aural range, hers kind of sucked, and watching her go about her business. Her very boring business. She was a boss of some kind, trying to start her own family it felt like. She had espers, or at least a bunch of gifted people, working for her. The boring kind of work. People thought that their line of work was all beating people up, shooting people, and fighting with each other. Whoever wrote all those yakuza shows greatly exaggerated how interesting their lives were.

The nature of the work was pretty damn boring.

Now ants, they were interesting. There were a bunch walking up and down from the tree that he was in. He didn't know what they were after, this wasn't a fruit tree, but they just kept marching up the tree and down the tree…it must have been nice, knowing what you had to do with your life…of course their lives were boring so maybe they were actually living in their own personal hell every moment of every day…or maybe they didn't know any better….or maybe they were in that place that was one step above hell but below heaven. The boring place…damn it…Toshi would have known. They were good with words…

He could always just ask them.

"Hey Toshi, what's that place between heaven and hell where you're bored all the time?" said Shimazaki. His phone read it back to him. Sounded good, not too long and rambling. Toshi didn't like his long and rambling messages, they'd said so. He had gotten way too drunk and poured his heart out to them and all they had said in response was 'thanks for filling my voicemail box' so he'd switched to texting and all they'd said, they'd called him and said, was 'you can't expect me to read that much' and…and he kind of did because they loved to read. Or maybe they hated it now. He hadn't seen them in a while. For all he knew they could have been a completely different person.

Toshi would always be Toshi.

Even if they stopped reading, even if they stopped yelling at their garden when they were upset, even if they stopped putting that stuff on their hair that made it feel all stiff and dry, even if they stopped taking up most of the bed, even if they stopped sleeping all day like a cat, even if they stopped smoking in the tub without him because they wanted to be alone, even if they stopped with all the day drinking, even if…even if when he got back to them they had turned into a completely different person they would always still be Toshi to him.

If. If he came back.

He didn't have an end date to this assignment. Just watch this woman. Make sure nothing bad happened to her. Make sure that he wasn't seen. It was him and three other guys, Suzuki at least realized that he needed to sleep at some point, watching this woman. So far she went to work, did the boring parts of running a family, went home, and occasionally stopped for bubble tea. On the weekends she went to the pet store, the garden center, and the aquarium. One time she bought a new pair of shoes.

Suzuki was torturing him.

That was the only explanation. Suzuki did this to torment him. Or he had a thing for this woman and he was too busy to stalk her himself. That would have made sense. He did have a girlfriend or something. Sho had said so and Sho wouldn't have lied about something like that. He didn't lie a lot, actually. Shimazaki liked that. You always knew where you stood with Sho…he wondered what Sho was up to. Probably drawing, or raising hell, or just raising his hamsters. Taking care of those little fuzz balls was boring as hell but at least sometimes they tried to run away. That was interesting. This was…not interesting. This probably was Suzuki's mysterious girlfriend now that he thought about it, she was certainly boring enough to have been.

Huh. Suzuki with a girlfriend.

Shimazaki had no idea if she was attractive or not. He had a different definition of attractive than most people. He liked a person's, the way the smelled, even something as simple as they way they walked. He hadn't gotten close enough to her to know how she smelled or sounded and she kind of stomped when she walked, she scared the ants actually, and that wasn't really…eh, whatever. A person was a person. If Shimazaki had decided to have a death wish then he could have popped down and introduced himself. Most women, and a larger number of men than a lot of people would have thought, were at least a little into him. He was apparently really good looking. He also, apparently, had the personality of a dumpster fire. That last part he didn't get, of course. He'd been working in Claw for over a decade now, he knew some real dumpster fires and he was confidant that he wasn't anywhere near that level.

Suzuki on the other hand…

It would have been vengeance, like in the count of…the sandwich guy. That book Toshi liked. Vengeance sound pretty good right now no matter what the title was. Suzuki, after all, had…well Shimazaki had kind of slept with his daughter. A lot. A whole lot. So, yeah, Suzuki was kind of justified in his whole 'nobody sleeps with my daughter but me' thing….but only in kicking Shimazaki's ass! Not in the whole 'reassigning him to the middle of nowhere' thing! Seriously! There wasn't a lot of work, most of the time, in the inner circle. Mob wasn't big on sending him after people and Suzuki's enemies mostly knew how to fight him outright. Even in Tokyo. He would rather have been bored in Tokyo than bored here. At least he knew Tokyo, parts of it, anyway. It just kept going. He had never been in a city as big as Tokyo…and he'd been a lot of places. Osaka might as well have been a sleepy country town compared to Tokyo. At least Mob was in Tokyo, too. She was the head of Tokyo HQ now…good for her. She could finally do all the things she wanted to do, make all the changes she wanted to make, like…like maybe reassigning him back to where he belonged…

He wasn't going to ask her again.

Toshi sometimes called him back, mainly to tell him to stop calling them so much, but he at least heard their voice. Mob never replied. Ever. They were done…probably. Ghosting was the word for what she was doing. Toshi was a ketchup packet right now, and still spitting mad at him, but at least they talked to him. Mob just…nothing. Silence. He didn't know what he had done to piss her off so badly, he had honestly thought that she had told Toshi, and he had apologized too for not confirming that they knew…but still, nothing from her. She had always been kind of distant. It was always either 'Ryou, fuck me until I can't walk' or 'Sorry Ryou, I'm too busy for you right now, check back in a month or two' without any in between. She had never been like that before….back when they'd just been friends…and if she wanted to downgrade their relationship back to being just friends then he would have gladly taken it. Anything was better than…than this.

The silence.

The boredom that came with the silence. The boredom that came with the fact that he was far away from where everything interesting was happening. He barely even got Claw news, all the emojis Mob used were not easy at all on his screen reader, and what he heard…well he would have liked to go to the company trip to that other, non-Disneyland, theme park that he forgot the name of. He would have liked to at least have seen Sho and Mukai again, if Mob was too pissed at him or whatever. He missed his kids…the kids, not his kids. He hadn't even met any of his kids, which was for the best considering the fact that he hid in trees and stalked people for a living. Plus all the, much more interesting, things he did before this.

Like bodyguard work. That was interesting.

The woman had gotten up now…and she was being followed. He focused on her. An esper…no, just someone gifted. Between a normal person and an esper. Like an Awakened…but not one of theirs. All of the Awakened felt like Suzuki. Honestly it was kind of creepy. It was like being surrounded by him…and who the hell wanted that? This guy felt…weak. Natural but barely anything…so what was he doing matching that woman step for step?

Finally, something interesting!

He stuck to the trees, thick ones. He knew better than to draw attention to himself. This could have been nothing or it could have been the thing that saved him before the madness set in…still matching her step for step. Amateur. That was not how you followed people. You kept your fucking distance! That was the first thing they taught you about stalking a target. The second thing they taught you was not to stroke your gun like that…and that was a gun. Shimazaki had been around enough guns to know what they felt like.

Huh. So this was going to get interesting…maybe too interesting.

Originally he had wanted to just kick the guy's ass into the ground but if he was planning on shooting at her…well Shimazaki was going to have to end this quickly. There was no sound he hated more in this world than gunshots. They were nearly as bad as fireworks. It was like someone had taken the sound of a firework and concentrated it into the more ear splitting, headache inducing, sound imaginable. Toshi had told him, before, that he heard like a safecracker…which was weird because the tumblers in safes were loud as fuck. Other people couldn't hear them, huh?

Well, yeah, if they went around shooting guns all day then it made sense that they were kind of deaf.

Shimazaki didn't feel like going deaf today, and he didn't feel like letting Suzuki's girlfriend get shot either. Or introducing himself to her…that would have been a pretty great 'fuck you' to Suzuki. Fucking his girlfriend. Saving her life, women loved it when you saved their lives, and then introducing himself to her. He'd have known in the first ten seconds if she was even a little into him. Then all he had to do was ask…that would have been pretty great. It would have been the last thing that he ever did, of course, but it would have been pretty great…

But he didn't feel like deafening himself so….

Off he went. He decided to do this quick. He teleported out of the tree, put one foot on the ground and one hand around the guy's neck, and then teleported to a place where he couldn't really feel any people around. He could be quick when he wanted to be. When he needed to be. He hated being quick. He would much rather have beaten that guy down right where he stood but, yeah, this was supposed to be a recon mission and all of that. So it was back to boring for him.

He hadn't done this in a while.

This was what the old boss liked. Keep it quick and clean. Long, drawn out, deaths were for traitors to the family, not enemies. Enemies weren't worth that kind of time. So enemies just got their neck broken, traitors got dropped into the machines at the rendering plant…did Osaka even have a rendering plant? That would have been fun-

-oh, right, the gun.

"You can't take me! They promised that I wouldn't-" said the guy as he reached for his gun. Shimazaki shook his head and teleported behind him. A kick to the back of the knee, the back of the spine, and then a couple to the back of his neck and he was done for. The human body was such a fragile thing. Only a few kicks and then it was over. Life was precious and fragile or whatever.

Short, too.

Life was short. He was amazed, really, that he had lived this long. Not that he was complaining, mostly, though he did wish that he had more to do with his life. Boredom might as well have been death…though death was also like death. He actually had no idea what death was like. For all he knew it might have been boring or it might have been…what was the opposite of boring.

Toshi would have known.

But Toshi wasn't there. Shimazaki kicked the guy one more time. Yup, he was dead. If Toshi still worked body disposal he could have at least run into them…but of course they weren't. They were a ketchup packet right now so they wouldn't be doing much of anything for a while. Also they worked for Mob, with Mob, or just…were they fighting now? No, Toshi wouldn't have fought with Mob. That had been a weird thought. He was nothing but weird thoughts right now…had been nothing but weird thoughts….he was getting so sick of thinking. Thinking was boring. He kicked the guy one more time…yup, definitely dead…

No aura.

That guy had been gifted, not an esper but gifted. Huh. Why pick a fight with an esper….that was weird. He bent down and felt the guy's body. Gun…heavy…well all guns were heavy. Yeah, he didn't know a lot about guns. He tossed it to the side. He felt around…clothes…skin…times like these he wished that he had some other way of…well, seeing. This guy might have just been interesting after all. Most espers stayed on their own level, or punched down. Stronger espers fought weaker espers…but they never went after anyone stronger. This was weird. He felt around….if this was a yakuza thing than this was by far the worst hitman that Shimazaki had ever met in his life.

Really.

There was an art to it. You went in, you did what you had to do, and then you left. You didn't follow someone footstep for footstep and you certainly didn't shoot anyone in broad daylight. Not unless you were planning on making some kind of point and that lady didn't seem like she was worth making any points over…then again it might have been a thing against Suzuki. If she was, in fact, Suzuki's then, yeah, whoever had sent this guy had every reason to send a message. Normally he would have just thought, fuck Suzuki, but if someone was trying to send a message then Mib would have, of course, been next on the list…

Not yakuza.

No tattoo scars, all of his fingers, nothing on his face…something on his side. Huh. He felt along it. That was deep…deep and long. Like a stab wound…no, a slash. A big slash. Like a sword, maybe? Who used swords? For real, not those boring ass ceremonies…he couldn't think of anyone who used swords…maybe that curse guy from the Seventh Division? Huh. This was shaping up to be quite the mystery, wasn't it? Toshi would have been all over this, they loved mysteries, when they had the energy for it. If they had been around it would have just been Shimazaki and Toshi solving the mystery of the guy with the weird scar and zero hitman game….and maybe Mob, too, if she had wanted to come….but she wouldn't have. She would either have been busy or just…busy.

Whatever.

This was a job for body disposal anyway. Shimazaki had a full day ahead of him of sitting in trees and stalking people…and trying to get ahold of Toshi. They sometimes replied…they would have had their theories about this…and they would respond, too, since Mob was in danger and they loved her. Not in the way that he loved her, of course, that would have been weird as hell. Toshi loved Mob and shit and they would have cared….he texted them.

Nothing.

They might have been sleeping or reading or just…or just busy. Just because he was bored as fuck didn't mean that everyone else was. They had jobs and lived and shit…and so did he. He had a lot to do. He had a full day planned of hanging out in trees and stalking and…he didn't know? Maybe podcasts? He could listen to something interesting…or something. He'd figure it out some amazing new way to be bored later.

Nothing to do now but call body disposal and get back up into his tree. Maybe watch more ants go by.