Fukuda had never really cared for the north.

It was cold up here, cold and dark. He had been born in Seasoning City and grown up there, too, and it had never once gotten this cold. Not even that one winter when the powerlines had frozen and that big ice storm hit. He could feel this cold in his bones, though his jacket, through his sweater, through his gloves and right down to the bone. Through flesh. Flesh that healed as soon as the cold touched it. It felt worse in some ways because he never did truly get accustomed to it. That was how you survived up here, right? You got accustomed to it?

It was amazing what a person could get accustomed to.

It was a bit like boiling a frog. Fukuda was ashamed to admit that he and Touichirou had boiled more than a few frogs in their day just too see if the rumors were true. They were. A frog dropped into a boiling pot jumped out but one dropped into a cold pot that you put to boil would stay in no matter how hot the water got. Looking back on it he could see how cruel he had been, how cruel they had been. Even if he had healed the poor frogs the damage had still been done. They'd still been boiled and the house had still smelled like boiling frogs. Not a pleasant smell at all…not good times at all…though at the time they had been.

Teenage boys were morons.

So were grown men. He had been such a fool, such a moron, and it had gotten him here. Walking through the streets of Sapporo as the day died. A good walk usually did him good, gave him a chance to clear his head and regroup, though it was difficult to clear his head when each step brought him pain. each gust of wind cut right through him. The dying sunlight did nothing at all to alleviate the cold. He doubted that anything would or could….anything out here, anyway.

What he wouldn't have given for a good kotatsu table.

Some of the best times of his life had been spent around a kotatsu table. Long, then boring, winter days in front of the TV. Curled up with a good book. Scribbling down plans for the new world…there had been so much time back then. He wished he had used it better. He wished he had been using the time he had right now better. He wished…he wished for so many things. He wished that he had never started all of this. He wished that he had done better with what he had. He wished he had seen this coming…any of this. He had thought that he knew everything, that he could have seen everything coming, that he could deal with whatever life threw at him…he had been wrong…so wrong.

And here he was, freezing his ass off in Sapporo, while his former best friend/lover drove himself insane looking for a woman that obviously wanted nothing to do with him.

Fukuda pulled his coat close around himself. He had no idea how Masami had managed to spend so much of her life here. This was where she had been born, and where she had grown up too. That was why she had chosen this place to run away to, all those years ago. He had wanted to get her out of the country, back to where her people had come from, her and Sho. She didn't know where her people had come from, she had never met them. She and Touichirou had been in the same boat growing up. A parent who had crossed the world to be with the other, a world that didn't look kindly on those sorts of couplings at the time, and then a long and lonely childhood being treated like a stranger in a strange land despite being born here…

That was what had drawn her to him.

He had asked her, he didn't know why he had asked her, it had just been one of those things that he'd been curious about. It had been one of those nights, the ones they'd shared, when it felt like he was both on top of the world and the lowest human being who had ever lived. He had, after all, gone and let her marry Touichirou despite knowing the kind of man he was. He hadn't known her well, he and Touichirou had been deep into their work back then, in fact the first time they had met it had been the wedding. She had been beautiful that day…she had always been beautiful…even that night. Even the night she had told him exactly how she had met him…what had drawn her to him…and why she had stayed.

Curiosity killed the cat.

She had met Touichirou at the Sapporo train station. They had a series of safe houses up here, but she hadn't know that back then. She had just been soliciting donations for the animal shelter she worked at, the only job her parents had let her get, but her heart hadn't been in it. Most people just walked past her, like she had been invisible. She had felt invisible that day. He couldn't imagine it, her feeling invisible, since she was so bright that she shined like the sun…the way it got caught in her hair. The way the setting sun got caught in her brown, nearly blonde, hair…it had been one of the first things that he'd noticed about her…

One of the first things that Touichirou had noticed, too.

He knew the other half of that story. Touichirou had called him and told him, actually called him, to tell him about the truly amazing woman that he'd met. He'd gotten her phone number without even asking. He'd actually been nervous…it had felt just like old times, back before these times were old times. He had seen her hair first, the sun caught in it, and he had thought for a moment that he had seen into the spirit world. Masami had felt the same, without the part about the spirit world. She had seen the sun caught in his hair, she'd never seen red hair before, and immediately she'd been drawn to him…and then nine months later Sho had been born.

Two weeks.

In those two weeks they'd managed to create Sho…it would have been so easy for her to leave, then. She had said that her parents had been very angry at her, and would have been even angrier if a marriage hadn't been coming following the happy news, but a couple of disapproving parents would have been better than giving the best years of her life to Suzuki Touichirou. Her parents, she had said, had never been the type to approve of anything so it wouldn't have been that bad, not as bad as things had gone. If even the Suzuki's, if they had been alive, would have approved and he couldn't imagine anyone more disapproving than those two. Fukuda's own parents, had they been alive, would have been happy…even if he hadn't done the right thing they would have been happy…

But they had been long dead at this point and, anyway, if he had met her first it wasn't like he would have been that careless.

She had confessed to him that she knew that she had been careless, that she hadn't cared at the time, and that part of her had wanted a child. Fukuda knew how it usually went with Suzuki, when they had been younger he had been something of an over sharer, so of course it had only been a matter of time before something like that happened…before someone like Sho happened. Fukuda had always been more careful than that. No kids for him…

Maybe Touichirou had the right idea.

He hadn't done it to get her to stay. He had tried to tell her that he had, more for himself than her, but she hadn't wanted to hear of it. She'd had her part to play, she'd said, and she was happy with how it had gone. She was happy that she'd had Sho, she was just unhappy with who she'd had him with. At the time, the two of them curled up that Valentine's Day, their lives and secrets laid bare it had seemed perfect…she had said. They had been the same, it had felt like, her and him. The same lonely sorts of lives…but there were lots of people with long, lonely lives…he had been one of them…

If only he had met her first.

But there had been no chance of that. He hadn't set foot in Sapporo at any point in his life, at that time. He had passed through the city once on a band trip but that had been it. Maybe he had passed her. Maybe he had driven down this very street…he maybe had even passed her. How different it would have been if he'd met her back then, or at any point before that fateful day. How different, how much better, both of their lives would have been….

In another world.

Not this one. Not this cold one. Not this lonely one. Not this world full of regrets. There was no world where he had been the one to run into her, where he had been the one she'd met first, where he had been the one she'd chosen. There was as much a point in wishing for that world as there was wishing that he would pass her on the street. That she would be one of the women walking past him, all bundled up in a coat and scarf, her hair hidden. Her face tucked downwards. Her entire self surrounded in a tomb of cloth…he knew that none of these women were Masami. None of these women were the love of his life…it wasn't like he was looking for her. It wasn't like there was any point in looking for her anymore.

There was about as much point in looking for her as there was in looking for Shiori.

When a woman wanted to disappear and never be seen again then there was nothing that you could do. She didn't know what she had done, Masami, in leaving. She had felt trapped, probably, trapped and alone…he had never managed to get Sho to her…but there had been time. There had been so much time and…and she should have just waited. But she left, she ran away, disappeared into the world never to be seen again…at least she'd had a good reason. This woman, this Shiori, was cut from a different cloth…a whole different type of fabric.

She was no Masami.

And yet she had stolen Suzuki from him…not that he cared. Not that he wanted him…not like that. Not in bed, or anything adjacent to bed. That was just a means to an end. He didn't even care about the times that…the times that had nothing to do with bed. The times when they just sat and talked…made all kinds of insane plans for the future. Plans that never should have gone anywhere…but then why had he made them? Why had he played the game for so long, long enough that it had turned into something else entirely. It wasn't as though he had believed in all of this, he hadn't, and he still didn't. It had been for himself…it had been because he had been…been lonely. It had been a long and lonely life before Touichirou and he'd clung to the first source of real friendship he'd ever had like a dying man in the desert clung to the first source of water he found…and he had stayed because he craved that safety, that acceptance, that Touichirou had given him…until it was too late. Now he couldn't leave. Even though he wasn't wanted he could never leave. The two of them were too inextricably linked. It wasn't that he wanted to be here…it wasn't that he enjoyed it…it wasn't that he cared for Touichirou…

Worried for him.

Worried that he was going to end up destroying himself…it would have been a good thing, the end of all of this madness, if he did end up destroying himself. That chill that went through him at the thought of it, the thought of Touichirou losing it all, was just the cold. The extreme cold. It cut through him like a knife right down to his heart. He shuddered. That was all…it was the cold…and maybe in a small way the thought of the complete and utter chaos that would follow Touichirou's fall. Shigeko would pick up where her father left off, they were two of a kind, and then….he didn't even know what her plans were. To drink milk and put makeup on? Daily showing of that Frozen musical? Functional alcoholism for all? He shuddered to think…and that wasn't from the cold. No, it was in his best interests that power stayed in Touichirou's hands for as long as possible, long enough for him to send the whole thing tumbling down…then it would be over.

That was what he wanted.

It was normal to feel a twinge of sadness at the thought of losing what was essentially your life's work, and your best friend, though…though they hadn't been friends for a very long time. Touichirou had seen to that. All of that was over now and here they were, together, but not really…not that he wanted that. Part of him should have been happy, joyful even, that they weren't together…but it was just…just matters of practicality that sent his heart fluttering and his stomach into a full set of acrobatics…that fluttery twisty feeling…

That and his phone.

He pulled his phone from his pocket. Sho had texted him…a lot. He slid his finger across the screen and checked his messages. There were so many pictures…a dusty house, barely furnished, cold enough that he could see Sho's breath…part of a baseball bat…a long string of words. Sho wasn't always the best speller, especially not when he was excited. Fukuda really should have done more for the children's, for Sho's, education….he really should have done more for Sho in general. So much had gone wrong in Sho's life and there was so little that he could do…but he at least could have made sure that he learned to spell…

And learned not to join the yakuza.

"Yakuza detective shit…." Muttered Fukuda as he scrolled up. His eyes went wide. The cold stung them, he didn't care. Someone walked into him. He didn't care. The cold tore right through his coat. He didn't care. Sho….Sho'd been given one job and that had been to stay put at the Seventh Division. He'd left. He was then given another job, pet shit for Shiori until Suzuki came to his senses and realized that he drove women off, and he'd decided to leave that job too. Now, somehow, he and Shimazaki had gotten it in their heads that they were yakuza detectives like this was some kind of shlocky night time drama.

He couldn't leave Sho alone for five minutes.

'Stay where you are, I'm coming,' typed Fukuda with shaky fingers. The cold was cutting right through his gloves…he didn't care. He had to save Sho before he did something he was going to regret for the rest of his life…and he had to get Sho away from Shimazaki. He didn't care what Shigeko got up to, she was pretty much thirteen going on twenty anyway, but Sho was just a little boy and he didn't need to be exposed to any of this!

This was not his place.

'Good. Meet us here. Bring weapons. We found clues.' Replied Sho. Then he sent an address. Somewhere in Osaka, Fukuda didn't know it, and if he didn't know it then neither did Sho. Shiori had left of her own accord but that didn't mean that the kidnapping theory didn't entirely come from nothing. There were people out there who would have given their firstborn son to hurt Suzuki…and what better way than to kidnap HIS firstborn son.

His only son.

This was…this was something that he could handle. He looked up from his phone. He could feel, if he really focused, Suzuki's aura over the horizon…he had to go. He wanted to stay but he needed to go. Sho was worth more than the plan, more than getting into Suzuki's good graces. Sho was…Sho was practically his son and he came first. He may not have been able to do the right thing and reunite him with Masami but he could keep him from throwing his life away…from ruining his life…from becoming the very thing that Fukuda had worked so hard to keep him from becoming…

From throwing years and years of hard work down the drain.

He had spent more time raising Sho than either of his parents had. He had spent so long trying to keep him on the right path, trying to keep him from becoming another Suzuki, from becoming his sister…he had focused so much of his time and effort on Sho that he had completely neglected Shigeko…that was on him. He could at least make sure that his work hadn't been in vain. He could at least…he could save Sho. The choice wasn't really a choice. He had to go to Osaka, he had to go to save Sho from his own mistakes, and he had to leave Touichirou. It hurt, in ways that he had never expected it to, but he had to leave Touichirou…it hurt so much…but at least he got to be with Sho again, and at least he got to leave the north.

He had never really cared for the north. At least the climate in Osaka would have been a little more bearable…he sincerely hoped so.