Shiori did not need to be watched.

"Hello over there." Said Shiori as she waved to the not entirely inconspicuous people wearing trench coats and fedoras. Touichirou's people. Honestly. He needed to focus less on traveling the world and gathering more people and more on staying put and training the people that he already had. If Shiori had been a target then she would have left town the minute she noticed the strange men following her around dressed like noir detectives. She couldn't leave town, though, she had far too much to do.

Far too much.

She had to finish tracking down the rest of the traitors and vultures, broker entirely new sets of deals, start prepping her garden for spring, get the cat dewormed, find a present for Touichirou, and at some point deal with the nightmares constantly plaguing her and interrupting what little sleep she got….well she was already kind of dealing with that last one already. She had taken a day off today, a day off from being Sakata Shiori, a day to just sit and center herself in the most calming place there was.

Well, the second most calming place there was.

She laid back down. She knew for a fact that people weren't allowed to lay on the floor but right now she really didn't care. It wasn't like they were going to kick her out and if they did she would just show them who was boss…or, better yet, she would come back when enough time had passed that they forgot her face. She didn't need to draw any more attention to herself. Touichirou had done enough of that already.

What was it that he'd said? Something about personally coming after anyone who threatened her?

Touichirou loved to make grand announcements like that. Apparently anyone who went after her would have to deal with him personally. Something about ripping people apart, turning their organs into confetti, turning them inside out, making them beg for a death that would never come…she was mostly going off of what she'd heard. A long game of Chinese Whispers. She didn't need an exact copy of his speech to all of esper kind to know that whatever he was planning it was going to be violent. That was just how Touichirou operated and, really, it was the best way to strike fear into people's hearts.

Shiori didn't need help striking fear into anyone's heart.

People had already been plenty afraid of her when she came back, before they even know what Touichirou had done. Before the game of Chinese Whispers reached Osaka. Touichirou essentially destroyed an entire organization, that was big, big enough to make waves. Things had been quiet for her, much too quiet for what had happened. Her people had either come back to grovel at her feet or had attempted to run for their lives with whatever money of hers that they could take. She had caught them, of course, the ones she had been aware of. Touichirou's people had found the rest. He hadn't even asked her…he had just acted on his own…

She didn't need his help.

She fixed her eyes on the reef in front of her. Fish had the right idea when it came to pairing up. The female laid her eggs, the male did his thing, and then tiny little fish were born and went off into the world. They didn't have to deal with each other after that. The female didn't have to deal with the male undermining her at every turn. The male didn't have to twist himself into a pretzel trying to figure out the best way to keep the female safe so she could live on and bear his offspring. Even bearing offspring, really, made no sense when you got down to it. Being incapacitated not just for the duration of your pregnancy but also for years afterwards since human babies came into the world more helpless than the offspring of any other living thing.

She pressed her hand to her stomach.

The red tide had come, a bit later than normal, but it had come. She and Touichirou, once the dust had settled, had found their mood and gotten back to it. Honestly. They were like a couple of kids when she really thought about it. The minute they were alone together the clothes came off and they got right to it. It didn't matter how angry she was with him, not that she had been truly angry with him that day, she had been mostly angry with herself. She had been the one who had failed, the one who had gotten captured, and the one who hadn't been able to save herself. Touichirou shouldn't have intervened but that was just…that was just the kind of person that he was. She couldn't change him, she had a better chance of telling the tide not to come in than to change Touichirou…or any man, really. Person. People didn't change.

Not really.

She took her hand from her stomach. Just bloating, the same thing she'd had to deal with every thirty one days for the past thirty years. No little human to take care of, not yet, not that she wanted…she was back to not knowing what she wanted. If she had been a fish, any kind of fish, then it would have been easier. She could have just laid her eggs and kept going. Her eggs would have hatched, her genes would have been passed on, and she could have gotten back to sucking algae off of rocks or eating the parasites off of bigger fish or, if she had been in the deepest parts of the ocean, luring smaller fish close with whatever bioluminescence she had…

Or maybe she would have just been one of those creatures eating plankton off of the ocean floor never having seen the sunlight and being adapted to deal with pressures equivalent to five hundred or so atmospheres.

Not fun. No, she wouldn't have been one of the true bottom feeders. She would have been an angler fish, or one of those sharks that lived on the ocean floor and subsisted on whale carcasses, or an immortal jellyfish, or a giant squid, or…or anything else. Anything that mattered. That was what she did, she mattered, she wasn't just Shiori…she was herself. She wasn't just…just whatever she was. A forty one, nearly forty two, year old woman with nothing better to do on a Tuesday afternoon than lay down on the floor of the aquarium and imagine herself as anything other than a speck on the face of the planet…as anything other than just…just a drop in the ocean of people. As anything other than ordinary. She was extraordinary. There was always a bigger fish, no matter where you went there was always a bigger fish, but she was still a big fish on her own…yes. She just had to keep reminding herself of that fact.

Though it was a difficult thing to remember, really, when the biggest fish in the entire ocean was always watching you.

"Hello Touichirou, and Hatori too, how's it going?" asked Shiori as she waved at the security camera above her. She could feel it, Hatori's presence. Once you knew what to look for it was surprisingly easy to spot the kid. His aura didn't feel like a true aura, not like actually having another human being standing over you staring at you like a creep on the last train of the night, more like what normal people described being under an aura as. The hair on the back of your neck standing up. The nagging feeling that you were being watched. You mind conjuring up shapes out of the shadows. The feeling of being watched, being able to pinpoint it, that was what it was to be watched by Hatori…or was she supposed to call him Nozomu now? Was he still Hatori or was he a Suzuki? Did it even matter?

As long as she wasn't expected to be his mother it didn't matter.

If she had been his mother then she would have had all kind of words with him about invading her privacy like that. She knew that he was just following orders but at some point he needed to look Touichirou in the eye and tell him that he was acting ridiculous. Of course he was going to have to run like hell afterwards since Touichirou, like most people, hated being questioned or challenged…she laughed a bit under her breath at the thought of Hatori running anywhere. The kid may have been a beanpole but he mostly lived on chips and soda. She doubted he would have moved half a meter before collapsing.

Something else she would have had a word with him about if she had been his mother…but thankfully she wasn't.

Her phone vibrated in her pocket. She may not have bene his mother but she was, essentially, Touichirou's wife. She was the love of his life at least and that meant dealing with him when he got…like this. When he decided to show his love. His stifling, suffocating, obsessive love. She sat up and pulled her phone out of her pocket, the view a little less calming. What was the point of a tunnel of you weren't going to look up?

Maybe Touichirou could explain it to her since he had so much explaining to do.

"You've got some explaining to do, Touichirou, some premium top tier explaining." Said Shiori as she picked up her phone. There was a pause and some heavy breathing. She rolled her eyes. Was this the part of the movie where the killer told her that the calls were coming from inside the house? Wait, no, that was the police that said that…it had been a while since she watched any horrors movies.

Maybe something for her to do, it hadn't been exactly ten meters long yet.

"He made me do it!" gasped out Hatori. It sounded like he was running, or just scared. Knowing Touichirou and what he got up to it could have been either, really. There was the sound of a phone being fumbled with. She wondered if the call was about to drop.

She didn't know if she would have minded that or not.

"Shiori?" asked Touichirou, sounding much calmer. Of course he always sounded calm…usually. He usually sounded calm. You really had to know him to know when something had him on edge. Right now he was as calm as he'd ever been. Of course he was, he was watching over her and he knew that she was safe, and it wasn't like he had anything else in his life to obsess over. No, just his poor, helpless, little Shiori in the big, dangerous world.

"Touichirou." said Shiori. She watched. She could hear the muffled sound of Touichirou calling someone a moron and then the sound of some distant crashing. At least one of them was having a productive day. The sound of distant failure was replaced by fumbling, static, and then finally crystal clarity.

"I apologize." Said Touichirou

"For spying on me? Good, at least now we're getting somewhere." Said Shiori

"No, no, I would never apologize for that. I need to know that you're safe. I apologize for my previous moment of distraction. Things are not going entirely as planned." Said Touichirou

"Maybe they would be if you spent more time working and less time watching me watch fish." Said Shiori

"I'd rather watch you." said Touichirou

"Why? So you know that I'm safe?" asked Shiori, the word safe coming out like a verboten word. Touichirou, predictably, didn't notice.

"No, well yes, but I find you much more pleasant to watch than the failures that I am surrounded by day in and day out…yes, Nozomu, you are currently in that category…I don't care if they have their own technopath, you're the best in the world…because you're my son….yes I mean that now get back to work!" said Touichirou. Shiori couldn't help but smile. He could be so funny, sometimes, and sweet. It was hard to reconcile the Touichirou who turned an entire compound into human meat paste with the man praising his adoptive son in the most backhanded way imaginable…or the man who drove her insane and turned her hair greyer than it was with the man who could be so impossibly sweet….

She was such a kid when it came to him. Just a girl going to pieces because a boy she liked said something nice about her. Maybe she should have been here with Shigeko, since they were on the same level.

"Be nice to Hatori, he's just a kid." Said Shiori

"Fragile is the word I've seen used." Said Touichirou. She could hear Hatori protesting. No, he was not a child and he was not fragile, according to him. She could understand, or at least empathize, with him…but if he wanted to be seen as a man, and a capable one at that, then he needed to start acting like it. He couldn't just sit there and beg to be seen as a person, he had to act like it…

Oh.

"Yeah, it's a good word for him, but not me. Touichirou, I love you more than anything and I know that you love me too, and this is how you show your love, but I need space…I need room to breathe." Said Shiori. She was essentially walking on thin ice right now, dangerous ground. She had to be as precise as humanly possibly when it came to explaining things to Touichirou. He tended to take things not only the wrong way but in the worse, most bizarre direction possible and she didn't have the energy to do any course correcting right now.

"So stop suffocating me…not literally. I am physically fine right now and you don't need to send anyone." Said Shiori as she felt several of those red, nearly identical auras closing in on her. There was some silence on the other end. Touichirou was thinking. She could just see him now, his eyebrows coming together, his eyes narrowing, his mind running through every single thing that she possibly could have meant.

"But I just need some space. You know how I hate it when you worry about me…like this. I like how you worry about me, I know that this is how you express your love for me, and you can. Just express it at a distance." Said Shiori. She felt the auras around her beginning to recede. Good. She could hear Touichirou breathing, too. Worried breaths. Probably for her, though it did sound like something big was happening on his end.

"I'm in Beijing, how much more space do you need between us?" asked Touichirou. Shiori rolled her eyes.

"I meant stop having your men follow me…so closely. I don't want to be able to see them." said Shiori

"You shouldn't be able to see them at all. I was very clear in my instructions. They are not to be seen by you or to do anything at all to draw your attention." Said Touichirou. Shiori could feel herself being watched. The trench coat committee was back.

"Well, I can, so maybe you weren't as clear as you thought you were." Said Shiori

"I suppose I wasn't." said Touichirou

"But I was." Said Shiori

"Very well, I'll be sure to-what do you think you're doing?!" said Touichirou. Shiori pulled the phone away from her ear. That didn't sound good at all. There was the sound of something breaking, shouting, and what sounded like…fire?

"Shiori, I care for you, but I have to go now. I apologize and hope that you don't take my sudden departure as a lack of caring." Said Touichirou quickly.

"I know you love me, Touichi...Touichi?" asked Shiori. The line went dead. She clicked her phone off and put it back. Well then, that had been…something. It had maybe even been something possibly productive. The trench coat committee was still there but one of them seemed to have enough sense to pull the others away. The message would be received eventually. Touichirou was just tied up in something right now. That was pretty much what the life was, putting out fire after fire, a never ending series of fires until you either gave up or died…

Shiori wasn't going to give up.

She was just taking a much needed break, that was all. She just needed to center herself and this was the place to do it…though it was hard with all of the auras surrounding her. The normal people, too. She could hear what sounded like a heard of people stomping their way over to her. She got up, she had to, the last thing she wanted was to be stepped on or asked to leave. It shouldn't have been this busy today. It was a Tuesday afternoon…who in the world had the time to go to the aquarium on a Tuesday afternoon?

Besides kids.

A school group. Girls, a lot of them, in some very smart blazer sets too. A group of adults herding them. herding cats would have been easier. It would have been more productive too. What were these girls supposed to get out of that exactly? She could hear the tour guide quickly going over everything living in the artificial reef with the barest descriptions of how they all related to each other. What about life cycles? Social behavior? Or just why they were even all there in the first place? Why even….Shiori had too much time on her hands. What did she care what the snot nosed brats of the aristocracy thought about her humble little aquarium?

She didn't.

She had important things to think about. She had a life to rebuild…to rebuild without Touichirou's help. He loved her, she loved him, and that was where this ended. She didn't need a keeper. She didn't need someone standing behind her ready to attack anyone that looked at her for too long. She needed to be able to stand on her own two feet…she was standing on her own two feet right now, and those feet were going to carry her out of here.

They had to.

She had to go. Now. She felt…in addition to the auras that surrounded her she felt something that could only be described as…wrong. It felt like sticking her hand inside of a rotting melon. It felt like biting into a peach with a rotten core. It felt like taking a chance on Chinese leftovers and biting into a piece of fuzzy meat. The auras around her left. She watched as the trench coat committee ran away, actually fell over each other to run away. Some of the less conspicuous watchers followed them, the ones in plain clothes. She could only feel the thing and…and another aura, a purple one, one that felt like it…traveled? Moved from place to place, sort of like Hatori's…but not a technopath. Something similar…it reached hers…

She left.

Whatever that was it was beyond her paygrade. At least right now. She had never been one to trifle with the spirits, and that was the only thing it could have been. A wandering spirit…a powerful one. Spirits existed wherever people existed. Not everyone passed on after all. So someone had died here…she couldn't recall any reports of grizzly aquarium deaths but there must have been one. That was the only explanation for what she had felt. A powerful, wandering spirit…let Touichirou's men handle it. After her time with Jodo she'd had her fill of spirits…though controlling something like that would have given her the edge she needed…

But she wasn't a medium.

She pulled her scarf close around her neck as she walked, nearly ran, away. Mediums communed with spirits. Espers exorcised them…and not even true exorcisms. Jodo could truly exorcise a spirit, help it pass on peacefully. Shiori wasn't quite so talented. She could destroy a spirit, make it suffer, fill it so full of her energy that it exploded but she couldn't commune with it. Control it. Help it pass on. Make it her slave. She'd even heard stories of mediums that could absorb spirits into their own metaphysical selves…

She couldn't imagine anything more wrong.

So maybe a spirit wasn't the way to go…she didn't need anything else to instill fear into the hearts of others aside from her own powers. Her own will. Her own self. She was Sakata Shiori. She didn't need an attack dog on a leash. She didn't need any kind of deterrent. She was a deterrent. She could feel her hair rising up around her as she stepped outside, a combination of the cold air and her powers…she let it wash over her. Yes, she was Sakata Shiori and she didn't need anyone. She could and would rise up again on her own. She didn't need Touichirou's help or protection…and she didn't need to be watched either. She knew that this was how Touichirou showed his love for her, treating her like she was a glass doll, but that didn't mean that she had to like it. If they were going to be together for the long haul then he was going to have to show her some respect and learn to leave his worries behind…as best as he could.

At least enough to stop watching her wherever she went…she eyed the security camera above her…that didn't seem like too much to ask at all.