Prequel
Part Nine
"Tobio-Kun, time to wake up for school!" Tobio opened his eyes to see Nora standing beside his bed. Her softly glowing green eyes and her smiling mouth were his welcome to the new day. Tobio took a deep breath and smelled scrambled eggs and toast drifting up from downstairs. Since Nora was here with him, that meant that his father was doing the cooking in the kitchen. Tobio jumped out of bed, anxious to catch his father before he left for work. As soon as he pushed his blanket aside to get out of the bed he realized that he was naked. For a brief moment, Tobio wasn't sure if he should be embarrassed by his nudity in front of the female robot. He had never felt that way with his mother, he still remembered Hoshie bathing him, and the thought suddenly made him feel sad.
"Tobio!" The boy heard his father call him from downstairs. "Breakfast is ready for you!"
Well, there was no time to shower or get dressed, so he'd have to do that after breakfast. Tobio ran past Nora, down the stairs, and right into his father's arms.
"Dad!" the boy cried. "I'm so glad to see you!"
"I'm glad to see you too, but I didn't expect to see that much of you!" Uma laughed. He grabbed a clean dish towel from the closet and put it on top of Tobio's chair. "If you want to have your breakfast in your birthday suit that's fine with me, but here's a towel for you to sit on."
"Oops!" Tobio laughed. "I was so tired last night I guess I never got my pajamas on. I just woke up when you called me for breakfast, I'll shower and dress after I eat."
Dr. Tenma set a plate on the table in front of his son, with a knife and fork. He poured a glass of milk and set that down on the table as well. Then he poured himself a cup of tea and took that to the table, sitting down across from the boy.
"I''ll probably have to work late all week, son." Uma said. "I'll probably be leaving early the next few days as well. I thought that I'd better try and catch you before you left for school today, in fact, I'm going to drive you there myself."
"Do you have to work late?" Tobio wailed. "I'm so alone in the house by myself."
"You do have Nora." Dr. Tenma said.
"Yeah, she keeps me safe so you don't have to worry about me, but she's not like family. You're all that I have left now that mom and Urania are gone." Tobio said, almost starting to cry.
"Tobio, I'm near a breakthrough in my research. The work we did on Cobalt kick started my project, and now I think I can see my way though to actually getting it finished. But, it will take a bit of time and hard work. The improvements to robots will revolutionize the way that they are used." Uma said.
Tobio looked at his father with sad eyes.
"Are you going to use my Atom design?" Tobio asked.
"I think the ministry wants me to build the prototype as an adult size robot. They don't see any use in a child sized prototype, and I can see their point." Uma told his son. "But, I can draw up a set of blueprints for your idea as I develop the full sized model. Would you like to have a full set of Atom blueprints for your scrapbook?"
"A set of real blueprints! Yes I'd like that!" Tobio smiled.
"The Atom blueprints will be special" Uma promised his son. "They will have the super secret extra powers that won't be in my official design that the ministry wants."
"You mean like the rockets, lasers, and machine guns?" Tobio asked.
"Yes those and a few other things as well." Uma laughed.
Tobio finished his breakfast and helped carry the dirty dishes to the sink. Uma grabbed the towel off his son's chair, twilled it into a rat tail, and playfully slapped Tobio's bare bottom with it.
"Go upstairs and get showered and dressed. You can't go to school naked you know!" Uma laughed.
"I wish I could!" Tobio laughed as he ran upstairs.
Uma dropped his son off at the school and after wishing him a good day drove off. Tobio waved good bye as his father left, Uma returned the wave with his arm out the window.
Tobio's class was scheduled for their first physical education class of the term, which for the first time would include swimming lessons; something that he had been fearful of since he learned of the fact at the beginning of the school year. He'd never been in a pool before, and his father had told him it was high time that he'd learned how to swim. Tobio's elementary schoolshared the facilities of the middle school right next door. These included the athletic field, as well as the indoor swimming pool.
The first thing that the instructor did was to take out a cloth ruler and measure each of the students for swimsuits. The school provided each student with two swim suits in the official school colors; black with a wide green strip around the waist. After handing out the bathing suits, the class was instructed as to the rules of the pool, and they were told that actual instruction would start in the next class session. He then mentioned the junior swim team, and told them that if they were good enough, they could join. Tobio and Tamao were both excited about that.
As soon as he got home for school, Tobio tried on one of the swimsuits. He stripped off his clothes except for his long red stockings, and pulled the suit on. He was shocked at how brief the it was, but he thought that he looked rather good in it. He especially liked the look of the wide green accent strip at the waist. Tobio grabbed a blue towel and wrapped it around his neck as a cape and imagined himself as superman flying though the air. He held one arm up high with his hand balled into a fist to enhance the illusion, and smiled at the thought. Tobio then got out his sketch book and while looking in the mirror at himself, he drew a new version of his Atom robot design wearing the black and green swimsuit. He changed his red socks into tall red boots in his drawing.
Nora called Tobio down for dinner, and he quickly put his clothes back on, and left the two swimsuits he'd got from school on the laundry pile for the nanny.
When Dr. Tenma came home later that night and checked up on his son he saw the pile of laundry with the two bathing suits on top. He remembered that his son would have swimming lessons that semester at school, and that they would issue the students swim suits in the school colors. Tenma thought back to his own school days and how things had changed. "When I was a boy we wore fundoshi in the pool", he thought to himself.
Saturday morning Tobio got up early and ran downstairs to find his father making breakfast in the kitchen. He was dressed in the suit that he usually wore when he went to work at the institute, which Tobio noticed right away. Tenma had an apron on over his clothes to protect them from his kitchen duties.
"You're going into work today?" Tobio sighed.
"For a few hours at most, but I'm not leaving until we both have breakfast and talk. I haven't seen you most of the week, you know." Uma said. "I noticed that you've started your swimming class. How does it go?"
Tobio's eyes lit up as he started to talk.
"The teacher told me I swim like a fish!" He said. "I'm faster across the pool than many of the other kids who already knew how to swim." He bragged.
"How many lessons have you had already?" His father asked.
"Four." Tobio said. "I wasn't afraid of the water. I just dove right in and suddenly realized that I could float, so the rest was easy."
"A chip of the old block." Uma said. "I took the the water like a duck too when I was your age."
"Our school has a swim team, maybe if I practice I could join." Tobio said.
"Good idea." Dr. Tenma encouraged him. "Well, I have to be going. I'll be home for dinner."
Tobio watched his father's car drive off, and then jumped on his bicycle to head over to Tamao's house. Tamao's parents were about to leave with their son to go to the movie theater when Tobio arrived.
"Why don't you join us?" Mr. Ume asked him.
"Sure, thanks!" Tobio replied. He felt a bit mad at his father for having to work on the weekend, but spending time with a friend helped him forget about it.
That evening, Tobio and his father at their dinner quietly. Uma had come home from work well after dark. He had stopped to get sushi take out as an attempt to make up to his son for having not having spent the day with him. They played Chinese checkers after diner before Tobio went up to bed.
Sunday Uma worked at home on his computer. He emerged briefly from the office with a printout downloaded from the institute's design computer, and handed it to Tobio.
"Here is the rough blueprint I did from your Atom design, Tobio" Tenma said.
Tobio unrolled the paper on the floor and examined it closely.
"Thanks Dad! I'm going to hang this on my wall" he said.
Uma smiled and rubbed his son's head. He walked back into his home office and continued to work from his computer for the rest of the day. Tobio sat outside his father's office, reading manga magazines. He felt some comfort having his father nearby, but wished they could be doing something together.
Tamao and Tobio were poised at the edge of the pool. Each giving the other the evil eye. The teacher used a cap pistol to signal the students to dive into the pool, and the race was on! Tobio reached the other side of the pool and executed a quick flip turn to reverse direction. He saw that Tamao was a few strokes behind him. His friend gave it his all to catch up and they almost finished in a tie, but Tobio beat Tamao by touching the wall first.
Back in the locker room, the two boys were excited. They had both made the junior swim team.
"My parents are going to be be so proud of me, I'm sure they'll come to our first contest next week" Tamao said.
Tobio sighed. "I know my dad will tell me he's proud of me too. But he'll never come to watch me compete. He'll be too busy at work to show up, or he'll just forget."
"Sorry about your dad not showing up," Tamao said, as the two boys sat in the back seat of Mr. Ume's car. Tamao's dad had driven Tobio to school for the competition after his son's friend called to say that his father was still at work, but that he was still hoping to see him in the stands. Now they were heading back home.
"I told you my dad would be too busy. He promised me he'd show up when I told him about the competition." Tobio sighed.
Tobio fingered the silver ribbon he had received as an award for taking second place in his event. Tamao had the third place bronze ribbon around his neck. The car came to a stop in front of the Tenma residence, and Tobio got out.
"Thanks for the ride, Mr. Ume," he said waving goodbye from his front door as Nora took him inside.
Dr. Tenma made it home just before his son's bedtime. He walked into Tobio's room just as Nora was about to tuck him into bed.
"So now you show up?" Tobio said curtly.
His father face palmed. "The swim meet! I'm so sorry son, I completely forgot about it. I was so close this evening in making a breakthrough with my work, that your competition just slipped my mind. I'll make it for the next one, I promise."
"No you won't. You'll forget again, or will be too busy and will break your promise like you always do. I think you just like robots better than you do people, even me!" Tobio cried out.
"Sure I like working with robots." Uma said. "But don't tell me that they don't fascinate you as well. You've always admired my work, and even draw your own robot designs."
"Not like you do!" Tobio yelled back at his father. "I always thought I wanted to be a great engineer and robot designer like you. But I'd never want to so lose myself in my work as to forget about the people I love! Damn you father!" Tobio turned his head to face the wall. "Get out of my room! I hate you!"
