It was a wonderful meal…if only they had been having it under better circumstances.

"Eat, eat, you're both skin and bones." Said Ichimaro. Ritsu didn't even look up. He'd been so dejected lately. He was so incredibly hurt…it wasn't fair at all what had happened to him. He couldn't have possibly been held to the same behavior standards as the other kids, he was only twelve!

There was a good reason why kids his age didn't go to middle school.

It had been an experiment. Ritsu was clearly smart enough that he didn't need that last year of elementary school. Schools in other countries skipped their kids ahead. It had been an experiment that hadn't worked out. It may have worked for other places but here…it had only taken one strike to get Ritsu out of middle school…and it hadn't even been a whole semester. One strike…but to be fair it had been a hell of a strike.

Ichimaro knew that it was wrong but his twelve year old had beaten up a third year in middle school. Badly…and that had been a big kid!

"Something wrong, boys? I made it the way I always do." Said Hana as she watched Ritsu pick at his dinner. He loved boiled pork and tofu, if it had been up to him that was all he would have eaten, but he hadn't even touched his dinner. She would have thought that this would have been the thing to break him out of this slump he was in…

It hadn't been.

"It's fine." Said Ritsu as he stabbed a piece of tofu. He really was just fine. He just…he was fine. It wasn't even about school, though it would have been nice to finish early. It was about what was happening. There were so many more Claw members around. He could feel them. There were so many and…and it would have been nice to know why.

It would have been nice to have been warned, why.

Warned by…by his boyfriend. By Sho. By the person he couldn't even remember…he could barely remember the last time they'd spoken. What they'd talked about…how Sho's voice had sounded…how it had felt to be near him. Ritsu could barely remember. Sho was busy, it was hard to sneak down here, and…and there wasn't a zero percent chance that he hadn't been found out….

But Sho was smarter than that.

"I'm trying to cut down on meat." Said Teru, putting his hand on Ritsu's wrist. Partially because his parents were watching them and partially because Ritsu really needed it. That had been one hell of a fight, Teru didn't care if Ritsu cheated and used his powers it was worth it, and it had been worth it…even if Ritsu had kind of gotten kicked back down to elementary school. That really wasn't so bad. Ritsu would end up going to middle school next year like he should have and now people would know not to fuck with him.

Ritsu could be so dramatic sometimes. He was lucky he was cute.

"I'm not hungry." Said Ritsu, smashing a piece of tofu, shaking Teru's hand off of his.

"Are you sure? It's your favorite." Said Hana

"I'm not hungry, Mom, ok? That's all." Said Ritsu, his fork scraping loudly against his plate as he made it completely through his piece of tofu. Teru reached over and tugged on his wrist. Their auras met. Ritsu let go of his fork. Teru was right, he needed to calm down.

"He's had kind of a big day, Frau Kageyama." Said Teru in his best parent pleasing tone. It worked on Reigen all the time and he wasn't even a parent. He made sure to give them the most innocent look he could. Parents ate that stuff up. Other people's parents, of course, not his. His parents…he cared as much about his parents as they cared about him.

"I know, Teru, I know…we all know that it's been a big day for you, Ritsu, but you have to come eat something. You're skin and bones. Starving yourself isn't going to change what happened." Said Hana. She knew that she should have punished him…but he'd been punished enough. All of his hopes and dreams had been dashed like that…but somehow the boy who had been teasing him was allowed to stay in school? If anything Ritsu had been defending himself. He was only twelve years old, he shouldn't have had to deal with all of that, and to hell with the school saying that he'd brought it on himself.

To hell with that.

Ritsu was a sweet, sensitive, intelligent, and above all else mature boy. He wouldn't have done what he'd done unless there had been a good reason. A better reason than 'boys fight, it's what they do' as Ichimaro had put it. Honestly. Ritsu wasn't one to fight unless he had a good reason, really fight, not the play fighting that he and Teru did sometimes. Maybe it was better, in some ways, that he'd been bumped back down to elementary school.

At least now they knew what to be prepared for and by next year…well by next year things might have looked up.

"I'm not starving myself, I'm just not hungry. Human beings can go for a full month without food. I'm not going to die just because I'm not eating dinner tonight." Said Ritsu

"He's got you there, Hana." Said Ichimaro

"Ichimaro!" said Hana. She gave him a look, a long one. Honestly. They needed to encourage Ritsu to move on from what he was feeling, not to dwell on it. When you dwelled too much on your feelings your judgement got clouded and you…sometimes you had the craziest sort of ideas. Ideas about undoing what you had done, what had been the best thing for you to do….the best thing for everyone.

Ritsu was her son. No wonder he was dwelling on things like this…

"Don't worry, Ritsu, you're going to be ok…but try and eat something, please? For your mother and I. We know that a person can go a whole month without eating but maybe we shouldn't go down that road. I feel like those people at child services would have something to say about that." Said Ichimaro. That…may have been the wrong thing. Ritsu was just the same but now Teru was staring down at his food….damn it. He never said the wrong thing, it was amazing that he had made it this far in life.

"If you guys were starving me then I wouldn't say anything. The last thing I want is to end up in an orphanage." Said Ritsu. Claw got a lot of their espers from orphanages. Ritsu wasn't going to end up walking right into their hands after escaping…not without a plan. Not that he would ever do something as crazy as run away from home, pretend to be an orphan, get sent to an orphanage, and then willingly join Claw so that he could see Sho again and they could take Claw down from the inside. There were too many things that could go wrong. First of all Claw sometimes made their own orphans and he didn't want Mom and Dad to burn to death or anything like that. Second of all if he ran away from home people would have been worried about them and looked for them…that time he and Reigen got captured Mom and Dad had blanketed the whole city in missing person posters. Third of all he couldn't leave Teru here on his own. What if some girl decided to honey trap him again? Nope. Teru could not be trusted to be here on his own. He was probably going to do something stupid…

Not that Ritsu had given this plan, this crazy plan, very much thought at all.

"Aww, you're a good boy Ritsu…but your mother and I would never do that to you. Not even if this was wartime." Said Ichimaro

"If it was wartime then we probably would have all died a long time ago in a firebombing. Teru, too, just in another country." Said Ritsu

"You're really great dinner conversation, you know that?" asked Teru

"Shut up." Said Ritsu

"You shut up." Said Teru

"No, you shut-" said Ritsu

"Anyway, Ritsu, you have to eat. Alright? Starving yourself isn't going to change what happened. What's done is done and you can only move forwards from this. It'll be ok, Ritsu, there's always next year. Remember, you can always try again next year." Said Hana, spooning him some more tofu. Her poor little guy. Even Teru couldn't make him feel better…he really wasn't taking this well. She didn't know what she could have done about this, about him. He wasn't a little boy anymore. It wasn't enough to read him a story or take him to the park…he was twelve now.

There was always next year…that was the best that she could do.

"Yeah! And look at it this way, you'll be the same age as every other kid in class." Said Ichimaro, clapping his hands. Ritsu looked less than enthused.

"Why does that even matter?" asked Ritsu. He didn't care about his age, he had been trying to get done with school faster. The less school he had to do the more time he would have to work on taking down Claw. He didn't know when they would make their move and he had to be ready a year from now or ten years from now.

"It matters because…because…" said Hana. She didn't know where she had been going with that. Ritsu would have been with his friends…he only had two of them…he would have felt less left out…he didn't care about being left out…he would have another year of practice…he didn't need any more practice. He had taught himself how to read when he was four. He didn't need any more time to learn…she had nothing. She tapped Ichimaro's foot with hers and gave him a look.

This was no time to be clueless.

"Well, um, look at it this way. You…uh….you won't be any more different than you are now." said Ichimaro. The other kids didn't need another reason to make fun of him, he had meant. He wouldn't have had to beat anyone else up, he had meant to say. He would have been able to focus on having a good, normal, middle school experience, he had meant to say. The only problem was that somewhere between his brain and his mouth his thoughts had gotten…jumbled up.

He blamed Hana for distracting him.

"Ichimaro!" said Hana, stomping on his foot. She had no idea how that could have come out of her husband's mouth. How could he have possibly been that clueless? Ritsu did not need to feel any worse than he did now. He had never failed at anything before and he was so young….her poor baby.

"I don't care about that." Said Ritsu, poking his pork with his fork. He was even less hungry now than he had been before. He really didn't. What did he care what people thought? He had more important things to worry about than what other people thought of him…and they were idiots for even caring about who he liked and stuff like that….and it wasn't even about that!

He couldn't tell anyone what is was…

Well, he could tell Teru, but Teru wouldn't have had anything to add. There was no way that he could have helped. If anything Ritsu was the one in charge. Teru just kind of did what Ritsu told him to do…or at least he should have. Teru never knew what to do. If Ritsu didn't know what to do then…then there was nothing that they could do. He wished, sometimes, that there was someone he could…someone who could tell him what to do. How he could…he wished that he had more people to help besides Teru. Not even Reigen could help, he was just a normal person, and even if he hadn't been he Was an adult. Adults always thought that they knew best. Well, they didn't. Nobody knew more about Claw than Ritsu…

So they were all doomed, then.

"Your father didn't mean any of that. He was just putting his foot in his mouth and he's sorry. Aren't you, Ichimaro?" asked Hana, digging her heel into her husband's foot.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Hana, I really am! You can stop now." said Ichimaro. Hana got her foot off of his…she was lucky that he loved her so much…and that he could admit when he was wrong. He was glad that Ritsu hadn't inherited it from him, the cluelessness. Ritsu took after Hana if anything. He was always so cool headed…even now.

He was just poking at his food.

Ichimaro wouldn't have taken it well if he had been in Ritsu's place. If he had been twelve years old and all his hopes and dreams had been dashed. If his father had just made him feel like…well Dad had put his foot in his mouth plenty of times when Ichimaro had been a kid. Up until the day he died he told that story, that stupid roller skate story, any chance he could. No matter how many times Ichimaro asked him to stop. He had thought, when he had been Ritsu's age, that he would have been better than his own Dad had been.

So much for that.

"Don't say it to me, say it to Ritsu." Said Hana as she let up. Ritsu didn't seem to care…or he was trying really hard not to care. Teru was laughing from behind his hand. Well at least one of her boys was happy.

"I'm sorry, Ritsu, I should have thought more before I spoke….think you can forgive your old man?" asked Ichimaro. Ritsu nodded.

"I have to forgive you, you're my Dad." Said Ritsu. He didn't want to hold anything against his parents. They hadn't done anything wrong. Sometimes it felt like…sometimes he wished that they could have helped him…but that was just him being dumb. He loved his parents and they did the best that they could. Mom and Dad, his Mom and Dad, were a hell of a lot nicer than some people's parents. At least his spoke to him on his birthday…and every other day too.

"There, now we're ok…so…how…how are things going with…with Reigen? How's business?" asked Hana. Her eyes met Ritsu's. He shrugged.

"He bought a bunch of iodine but then he gave it away." Said Ritsu

"Iodine? They still sell that?" asked Hana, shuddering. They used to use that for cleaning injuries…when her mother had been a child.

"Yeah, what's happening with that? Some internet thing?" asked Ichimaro. He really had no idea, none at all. It defied everything that he had ever been taught or seen in his entire career.

"Nothing that I've seen." Said Teru quickly. Ritsu had all kinds of ideas about the iodine thing. Some people on the Claw message boards said that they had bought it for all kinds of crazy reasons…reasons that didn't always make sense but got Ritsu worked up anyway. Teru was worried too, he had every reason to worry about Claw, but he wanted something concrete to worry about.

Without something concrete to worry about he would just end up worrying about anything and everything….and he didn't think that he could live like that anymore.

"Yeah….nothing that I've seen." Said Ritsu, giving Teru a look. Teru gave him one right back.

"Ichi, how's work going?" asked Hana

"Work is amazing, as usual. All of you wait and see, we're going to be eating wagyu every single night." Said Ichimaro

"I don't like red meat." Said Teru

"I don't like beef." Said Ritsu

"I don't like getting people's hopes up. I know that things are going well at work for you, they are for me too, but we both know that this isn't going to last. This isn't the first time some company or whatever decided that they're going to revitalize Seasoning City. It never lasts." Said Hana. She loved her husband, she really did, but he did have a habit of counting his eggs before they hatched. That was how Shigeko had spent the first year of her life with a blue bedroom.

"I don't know what those people are doing but they keep on asking for me specifically so I'm not going to complain." Said Ichimaro

"I'm not saying 'don't be happy' I'm just asking you not to get the boys' hopes up…and we are not spending this windfall on overpriced beef. I've had it before and it's not that amazing…and Ritsu doesn't even like beef. We're better off putting that money into a fund for Ritsu's education-" said Hana

"Can I go to Black Vinegar? You guys are making a lot of money now and I missed the cutoff date for admission this year but there's always next year, like you said." Said Ritsu. He just wanted to get school done with, he didn't care about Black Vinegar as a school besides thinking that their uniform sucked, it was just easier to go to school with Teru. Less logistics to worry about. So far it was them against the world so they had might as well stick together. Middle school, high school, university, getting jobs, playing mahjong in the park when they got old…Teru couldn't be trusted on his own. He needed Ritsu there with him.

"Ritsu…" said Hana. She made eye contact with Ichimaro. They had talked about this before…and it was a good windfall…but that school cost as much for three years as a university education…but this was their son…

The debate went on.

"Your mother and I need more time to think about this. Like she said, we don't know how long these people are going to stick around for. They might just be trying to flip things…businesses, real estate…though I'm not quite sure what the bid for the Cultural Tower is about…" said Ichimaro

"It's the tallest building in the whole city. They probably want it so that everyone knows how important it is. My father made a bid for Tokyo Tower when I was little but the TV company said that it wasn't for sale." Said Teru. The whole thing seemed kind of stupid to him but what did he know? He wasn't running the company yet…and he wasn't sure if he ever would….

"Neither is the Cultural Tower…and what would they even do with it? Honestly. Ichi, I'm really not sure how much faith you can put in this company." Said Hana

"Relax, I haven't invested our life's savings. They're doing well but I'll admit that they kind of do throw their money around. I mean they're having a company outing to that theme park in Osaka…I can't remember the name." said Ichimaro

"Hirakata Park?" asked Hana. That was…a strange place for a company outing. The last one she'd had they'd just gone to a restaurant. An amusement park? Was this company run by children?

"No, the American one, Universal something or other. I can't tell if they have money for this or they're living beyond their means, like the American companies do before they go belly up. They're very tight about their exact financial situation…so either they're doing poorly or they're hiding from the taxman." Said Ichimaro

"They can just do that in the Cayman Islands, or Switzerland. They don't ask a lot of questions there." Said Teru

"The things I learn about your parents." Said Ichimaro. Well that was more than he had known before about the mysterious Mister and Missus Hanazawa. That might have even explained why they'd just up and abandoned their son like that.

"An amusement park? That's a strange place for a company outing." Said Hana, changing the subject before her husband put his foot in his mouth.

"Some people think that amusement parks are fun." Said Ritsu. He used to think so, back when he'd been little. Mom and Dad used to take him and Shigeko, back when she'd been around, to Storybook Village. He'd seen the pictures. He'd been having fun, they both had, though by that year's Halloween visit nobody had looked happy…

Some people liked amusement parks. Not him.

"I know, right? Inconvenient too. If it was somewhere in the city, or even Tokyo, then I could have gone. I mean I would have had to pay my own way but I could have been seen by some of the big bosses. Then we would have been eating good…not that there's anything wrong with this!" said Ichimaro

"I know what you mean…but even if they had been having their company outing closer to home. Stick with your job, Ichimaro, you already left one company…and if this conglomerate is really doing as well as they say they are they're going to want someone new that they can train up themselves." Said Hana

"You're so…if you say so, Hana." Said Ichimaro. He wasn't going to get into it with her right in front of the kids like that. He had always hated it when his parents fought in front of him…and Teru wasn't even his kid.

"If you want to make an outing out of it, though, we can. I bet the boys would have a good time. Right, boys?" Said Hana. She had gone too far. Ichi could be so sensitive sometimes…it would have been a good outing. Ritsu needed it. He needed space to act his age. She couldn't remember the last time he'd acted his age….he needed this. They all did.

"I don't-" said Ritsu. They didn't have time to do things like that. They had to stay in the city, this was where Claw was, and for all they knew they could come back to a burnt down house or…or one of the other terrible things that Claw did to people.

"We would love to go." Said Teru. Ritsu practically crushed Teru under his aura and glared at him. Teru pretended not to notice. It was…it was safe for them to leave the city. Safer. That way their movements could be unpredictable. That was all. It had nothing to do with the fact that he had never been to a theme park with someone…someone who hadn't been paid to take him.

"Wonderful! We'll have to find a good weekend where we're all free." Said Hana. There. This would help. Ritsu seemed somewhat excited…or at least less upset. He was eating now, at least.

"Yeah, wonderful. Just wonderful." Muttered Ritsu as he ate. He wasn't hungry but he had to eat. If he didn't then he might have said something even worse to Teru, something that he didn't want his parents to hear him say.

"That's the spirit! See, I told you you'd feel better." said Ichimaro. This was going better than he had thought. If only all of parenting had been this easy…actually it kind of was when it came to Ritsu. No matter how much grief he gave them things never got too bad. No tantrums, no slamming doors, no fighting at all. He had a pretty great son, didn't he?

He did.

He couldn't speak for…Shigeko was probably a lot like Ritsu, too. Or maybe she was more like Hana. Hopefully nothing like him. He had no idea and there was no way to know…so he just kept eating. He was sure that wherever she was, wherever life had taken her, Shigeko was doing well. There was no way they could have given her a good life no matter how much they were pulling in these days. Shigeko needed so much more than trips and dinners and all the other things he could provide. She needed to…to be with her own people and…and he knew that she was doing well.

She was probably having a wonderful meal with her family….her new family.