One day, Yusuke was getting home from school and he'd just put down his bag when he saw his mom was home, and not drunk. Or at least not drunk yet. She was in her jeans and a sweater and she was stuffing an extra pack of cigarettes in her pockets for the night.
"Going out?" Yusuke asked, a hint of agitation in his voice. On nights like this he didn't know of she'd be back in the morning or next week.
"Yup, you'll take good care of the place, right?" She asked and paused while walking towards the door, remembering something she went back to her room. He could tell she'd already had a few by the way she moved fluidly and nearly bumped into her own door frame in her hurry.
"Yeah, I'll watch the apartment." He said and flipped on the TV before he headed towards the kitchen for something to eat.
"By the way, I did laundry today." Atsuko told him from her bedroom.
"Okay?" Yusuke wasn't particularly surprised, but he did end up doing his own laundry half the time when she was gone so this was a nice change for his otherwise unbearable morning at school. Yusuke was making himself a sandwich when his mother came in and she didn't seem her chipper self. She almost looked sober. Yusuke blinked as she walked up to him, "Mom, you're creeping me out."
"Look, I just..." She tapped her head with a few fingers, as if filtering through the alcohol haze to collect a string of words that made sense. Yusuke raised an eyebrow, a bit confused. He couldn't remember his mom looking so lost before, even while intoxicated. She took a deep breath and didn't exactly look her son in the eye, "I did your laundry." Yusuke's brows furrowed, confused.
"Okay, aaaand?" He wasn't sure where she was going with this. She'd been doing his laundry for most of his life. She cleared her throat.
"And I know you're becoming a man, and I know boys go though changes around your age..." She said and It took Yusuke a minute, frowning in confusion before his soiled shorts came to mind. A deep flush spread out on his face.
"Oh shit, you did the laundry..." his awareness grew on what his mother must have thought and his embarrassment grew. She only nodded briskly.
"And um... if you had any questions for me, about anything, you can ask me. I mean, I can at least try to answer..." She stood there, off kilter for a moment and Yusuke couldn't help but feel like a deer caught in headlights. "Did... did you have any questions-"
"NO." Yusuke cut her off and held his head, gripping his hair, his palms over his ears, "No, mom, I'm good, we don't need to have any stupid talk." He'd often heard of The Talk, where parents explained to their children about their bodies and things kids didn't need to hear from their PARENTS. Because parents didn't go through that sort of thing, they had no clue what was going on. And his MOTHER especially had NO clue what he was going through.
Atsuko actually looked relieved, "Okay, that's great." Yusuke uncovered his ears and Atsuko shoved something into his hand before she started backing out of the kitchen, "Just, if you EVER have sex with anyone, you MUST use these, okay. These equal sex, got it?" She wagged her finger at him one last time before leaving his sight. Yusuke looked down to see what 'these' was. He opened his hand and his eyes widened in horror to see they were packets of condoms. His face became a nice shade of crimson, "And if you ever need more, there are some in my top draw!" Atsuko called from the front door.
"Just leave already mom!" he yelled and he heard the door finally shut. Yusuke tossed away the condoms on the other side of the kitchen as if they burned him and he had completely lost his appetite. "That... had to be the most embarrassing conversation of my life." he said and went to the living room to repress the moment with some good old fashion action movie, and maybe one of his mom's beers.
Ah, Atsuko. She just doesn't want her son getting pregnant. I think that's a reasonable thing. This was one of my favorite scenes to write ^_^