The bullet should have curved to the left.

Fukuda knew that it was a terrible thought to have, a downright evil one, but right now…right now he wished that the bullet had curved to the left. If Masami could have heard him, could have seen what he had been thinking, then she would have run away in disgust. If she had been there she would have taken one look at him and just…known. She would have known what he had been thinking and how he had gotten to this point in his life. She would have known everything…and she would have left.

Not much different from life.

He was no stranger to heartbreak. Letting her leave, helping her escape, had been the most difficult thing that he had ever done in his life. She was the love of his life. He had never loved another woman before her, not in the way that he had loved her, and…and he doubted that he would ever love again. He didn't have the time. He didn't know if he ever would. Not with the life he lived…the life that he had chosen…the life that he had made for himself.

This was all his fault.

"There. You're done." Said Fukuda as he pulled his aura back into his body. There. He was done. He had done all that he could have possibly done. Hatori was lucky that the bullet had gone clean through. He was lucky that it had entered and exited so clearly. He was lucky, too, that Suzuki had thought to cauterize the wound.

He was lucky that the bullet hadn't curved left.

"Wait, seriously? Is that all that you're going to do? You call this healed!?" shouted Hatori. This was Fukuda's fault. Not the fact that Hatori had gotten shot, he may have been sowing the seeds of dissent and he wasn't actively working against Suzuki, but the fact that he was here getting screamed at. Why he was getting a headache…Hatori was just the annoying. He was actually getting a headache and he had nobody to blame but himself. If he had just done something sooner, before it had gotten so close to the end game, then maybe he could have been anywhere but here.

He could have been anywhere else and anyone else.

"That's the best that I can do. Live with it and be grateful that you aren't dead right now." said Fukuda

"But-but-just look at it! It's still so…it's really fucking gross and the skin feels all…tight? Like it's hard to move." Said Hatori. He raised his arms and twisted his body like he was testing it. Fukuda rolled his eyes. He was always so dramatic.

"It's new skin, it's going to be kind of tight. That's a burn scar, too. It's not going to look any better than it does now. I can heal injuries, not scars." Said Fukuda

"So, what, I have to walk around like this for the rest of my life?" asked Hatori

"Unless you want me to grab a knife from the kitchen, flay you, and then regrow your skin then yes. This is your life from now on." Said Fukuda. Hatori turned stark white. Good. it wasn't like he was actually going to do it, he had never taken much pleasure in hurting others, but it was good to put the fear of God into the kid.

That was what he was, a kid.

Hatori was more of a kid than the actual kids. Shigeko was running Tokyo HQ now…and it hadn't burnt down. If she had been anyone else he would have been impressed that she had managed to do so well at the age of thirteen. Sho was still a kid but at least he knew not to carry on like this. He actually had a pretty high pain threshold and he never complained about his scars…and Hatori had the nerve to complain. Even Mukai was better at dealing with things than him. At least she had an excuse, being a toddler and all. Fukuda had no idea what it was that Suzuki saw in Hatori.

And he didn't care anymore.

Let Suzuki have him, he didn't care. So what if he was being replaced, if he had given his entire life up for Claw only to have been cast aside? That he'd done unspeakable things, things that he was going to take to his grave, for Claw…so what if he had sank so much of his life into this place. With Hatori at Suzuki's side then it was all going to crash and burn.

Good. He couldn't take it anymore.

"Fuck…and it's going to look like this for the rest of my life?" asked Hatori

"Scars fade but, yes, it's going to be pretty bad. I don't know why you care, though. It's not like anyone's ever going to be seeing it." Said Fukuda. Hatori started to sputter, words forming and then reforming, but nothing forming well enough to properly express his outrage and indignation in the face of the truth.

Fukuda took his victories where he could get them.

"Fuck you!" said Hatori

"Took you long enough to come up with that one." Said Fukuda

"No, seriously, fuck you!" said Hatori

"No thank you." said Fukuda. That got him more sputtering and waving. Even his aura was glowing…Fukuda felt his phone getting warm. He pulled it out of his pocket quickly. Hatori was harmless on his own but, like Minegishi, when he was in his element…and phones did tend to explode. He put it down on the table. Hatori was still going on and on.

Mostly some combination of 'fuck' and 'you'.

Sho had been more creative than that when he'd been ten….not that he would have ever encouraged Sho to curse, of course. But it was kind of sad that a kid his age could have been more creative than a twenty-two-year-old. Fukuda wondered how long he was planning on keeping this up for. He had places to be…sort of. He had promised that he'd come back to Seoul of he could…and he figured that he could. Suzuki had no reason to keep him here.

They were done, after all.

He'd been replaced, twice. As a friend by this kid, this overgrown child, and as a…whatever the hell else they had been by that Shiori woman. The person who Suzuki had been stupid enough to let get close to him, to let dig her nails into him. He was hers and now he was making the stupidest choices. Keeping Hatori at his side instead of someone who knew what he was doing, getting married when it hadn't exactly gone well the first time, planning for another kid when he had three he was already currently in the process of ruining. Giving Shigeko real power…she was wielding it well…but maybe too well.

This whole scenario had been too perfect.

"…like I'd ever even-" said Hatori

"That's right, you'll never. Between your personality, your looks, and the fact that you spend all of your time with Touichirou I doubt that you'll ever be able to find someone who can so much as stand to be in your presence for more than five minutes. God knows I can't." said Fukuda

"Just get lost. Go back to Seoul, the soap ladies miss you." said Hatori. Fukuda narrowed his eyes.

"You've been spying on me?" asked Fukuda. That was….not good. He'd taken to taping over the camera on his phone and taking his sim card out when he wasn't using it. For good measure he even took the battery out sometimes. The last thing he needed was Hatori listening in on certain sensitive conversations…well he knew that Hatori tended to passively listen in on people for the hell of it. His love of making people's search history public was the stuff of Claw legend, too. Hatori was a nosy little bastard…but if he was actually on Suzuki's radar…if Suzuki knew what he'd been planning….

Suzuki trusted him…or at least he had the last time they'd been together.

"So I was right about the soap ladies?" laughed Hatori. Fukuda kept calm, as always. He couldn't be relieved. As far as Suzuki and Hatori knew he had nothing at all to be relieved about.

"What I do with my time is none of your business. You'll understand if you ever get to that point in your life. Now if you don't have any more injuries for me to see to I think I'll get going." Said Fukuda. He patted Hatori on burn scar as he passed. Served him right for pretty much his entire life up to that point…trying to blackmail him took the cake.

The nerve of that kid.

If he didn't know any better he could have sworn that Hatori was Suzuki's actual son. He acted just like Suzuki…like he would have if he was less of an alien. That same propensity for violence, the fact that everything was so dramatic with them both, the rash in the moment decisions that ended up coming back to bite them in the end….it was like Hatori was his son and Sho was some kind of changeling…maybe Hatori and Sho had been switched at birth…

He'd been watching too much TV.

There hadn't been much else to do at first. He'd needed to decompress and there was no better way to do that than on Higashio and Otsuki's couch. He had decompressed, it had passed, and now he was here….and with two more converts to Sho's side. Two more than they'd had before. After all, if Suzuki could cast him out then he could have cast anyone out. Without any kind of security…well, people got desperate when they lost their security….two more than he'd had before…

Not enough.

But he had time. He had plenty of time if his theory was correct. This was a Claw house, another one. Who owned these houses, really, was not a matter of public record. A dummy company of a dummy company of another dummy company. It all led back to the Suzuki Conglomerate but it took a lot of digging to get that far. The only person who knew where all of these houses were…well a few people did…but only one person was close enough to Suzuki to know where exactly he would have been staying at the time…and for how long.

Two people…and one of them was Hatori.

The other was Shigeko…and she had every reason to do the unthinkable. Suzuki had made a massive mistake, several, when it came for her. He shouldn't have cast her aside, either. She obviously hadn't taken it well. This was probably the only time in her life where she'd ever had to face the consequences of her actions. She was, understandably, angry at Suzuki…and teenagers weren't the brightest people, especially when they were pissed off. She knew that people loved her and she had been using that to her advantage for years. It was easy to follow a cute, sweet, little girl who only wanted to make friends. She'd always been smart, too, about it. She had started with the Awakened. Now most of them were wearing blue ribbons. The Awakened were one of the cornerstones of Claw. Without them the Divisions would fall apart, and if the Divisions fell apart then there was no need for HQ, and with Claw gone…well it would all be over.

He, or she, who controlled the Awakened controlled Claw.

She had bided her time and now here she was. Thirteen and pissed off. She had Claw. It was all but hers. All she needed to do, really, if she was planning on cementing her power like he figured she was, would be to take out her father. It would have been easy. She had access to all the information she needed, where Suzuki would be and when, and she had access to the manpower, too. She had Shimazaki on her side, and Fukuda knew that man still had yakuza connections somewhere. Normal people made the best assassins, you never felt them coming. If he had been in her place then…well then he would have done exactly what he thought she was doing…

It served Suzuki right.

He needed to learn that, no, that was not the way you treated people. You didn't just cast them aside after they'd given their entire lives to you. You didn't get to push people to places that they never thought that they'd go, to cross bridges that they never would have thought to cross, to make…to make someone do the unthinkable…he couldn't do things like that without people having enough, without people pushing back. He just…he couldn't do that!

Not that Fukuda would have ever said anything to that effect.

"I'm done, he's a healthy as he's ever going to be." Said Fukuda. Suzuki was posted up on the couch, clacking away on his laptop. Fukuda leaned over. Minecraft again…it looked like he was going to try building a new kind of division. Something with spiked pagodas and turrets…another Division in China? They hadn't done anything new since Shanghai…

He didn't care anymore.

"Good." said Suzuki, not looking up. His hands hovered above his keyboard. The keys began to type on their own. He was tense. His aura had stopped moving. He was nervous…Fukuda didn't care.

"Can I go now or do you still need me?" asked Fukuda. If Touichirou had been a more romantic man he would have, Fukuda didn't know, picked him up and carried him off into the sunset. Suzuki was making an effort not to look at him, and he was starting to turn red. Fukuda knew that look. That was how he got whenever a woman gave him so much as the time of day...Fukuda hated it. He hated that it was his fault…that he'd done…

He hadn't had a choice.

"I…may still need you." said Suzuki. May…Fukuda kept his aura still. May was not a definite answer…he had to go. He had work to do, his own work, and he had to get back to Sho, too. He hoped that Sho forgave him for leaving. He'd be happy to know that Fukuda had gotten, well they'd had Higashio and Otsuki already, but Fukuda had gotten them off the fence. Hopefully that was enough for him…

It wasn't going to be.

Sho must have been so miserable right now. Someone else had left him…Fukuda wished that he could have said something at some point…but he was being watched. Sho wouldn't understand. He was so quick to anger…and Fukuda deserved it. He had left Sho. He had let all of this personal shit get in the way of what he should have been doing…what he had promised Masami. He had promised that he'd take care of Sho and…and he'd failed her….but it hadn't been his fault. Suzuki was the one who had crossed these lines in their relationship and Suzuki was the one who'd cast him aside.

Masami would have understood if she'd been there and not…and now wherever she had found herself.

"Do you want me to stay or are you just going to call me again?" asked Fukuda. He prayed to whoever was listening that he was free to go. He didn't want…he didn't want to stay. He didn't want anything else to do with Suzuki…no part of him wanted Suzuki to get down on the ground and kowtow to him. Apologize for everything that he'd said, everything that had passed between them. Casting him aside…crossing those lines….all of it. He didn't want or need an apology. He didn't care about any of that.

He really didn't.

"I...will call upon you when I need you. You may leave…leave me." said Suzuki after a moment. The longest moment of Fukuda's life. He let out a breath that he hadn't realized he'd been holding. He couldn't stay here. He just…he had too much to do when it came to Sho.

"Sure." Said Fukuda

"Tadashi?" asked Suzuki. Fukuda stopped in his tracks and did the best he could to keep calm. Suzuki was looking at him, he could feel it. He had to keep calm.

"Yes?" asked Fukuda, untensing his body and aura. There was a pause, a silence, one broken only by the distant sound of Suzuki's laptop. Fukuda didn't turn around. If he did then that might as well have been an invitation to speak…to keep this going. To take it back, what had happened, or to double down on it…

Fukuda wanted both...neither.

"Nothing. Leave me." said Suzuki. Fukuda didn't need to be told twice. The last thing he wanted to do was stick around until Touichirou changed his mind. Fukuda didn't care if he did or he didn't. He had been cast aside. They were done. What they'd had was gone….it had been gone for a while. It had been gone since that Christmas when they crossed that line…when Suzuki had made them cross that line…or maybe even before that. Maybe when he'd gotten to the point of starting what he had with Masami…when he'd fallen in love with her…or maybe it was before that, back when he'd realized that Suzuki had been serious about that game…about taking over the world.

They'd been at this point for a while.

This was where they were now. Done. They were done and…and that was for the best. For Fukuda, for the kids, and for the world. He held nothing in his heart for what they'd been. He didn't care. He didn't care if he'd been cast aside and…and replaced. He didn't even linger at the door, waiting…he wasn't waiting. He walked right out the door. He wasn't going to wait around for Suzuki to change his mind. He didn't want Suzuki to change his mind. He wanted to leave…so that was what he did, he left.

He walked down the hall and turned left…then down the stairs…and then he was gone.