Cover for me.
That was what Mob had woken up to. There, written across her arm, in permanent marker. Cover for me. There was only one person who could have written that and that one person was Sho. Mukai didn't know how to write yet and dad never asked her to cover for him. He just sort of went places. She felt around with her aura. He was still here….but Sho wasn't. Sho was gone and she had to cover for him and…and she didn't really know how….but she would try her best.
The last thing she wanted to do was get her little brother in trouble.
She would do what he had said. She would cover for him. She just had to make it look like Sho was here when he wasn't. That wasn't so hard…was it? She looked around. It was too clean in here. She had cleaned and Sho hadn't made a mess…well that was something that she could do. She reached around with her powers and threw their toys around. Toys, clothes, books, all of it. She made a little hurricane in their room until there was a big mess everywhere….
A mess that she would have to clean up.
But that was normal. She was the only one who knew how to clean up. Dad just complained when things got dirty. He noticed something and then instead of cleaning up he asked her to…not that she was mad at him. She loved her dad and she was never going to get mad at dad. Well…not never but…but she didn't want to get mad at dad. There was nothing that she could possibly to so there was no point in getting mad. The same went with Sho. Sho just sort of did things and left her to clean up after him.
But that was her job and there was no point in complaining.
She would have said, if she had been allowed to complain, that Sho could have at least used a washable marker. She didn't know how to get permanent marker off. If dad saw this then he would ask her what it was about and then there would be no chance at all to for her to cover for Sho. Then Sho would get in trouble. He would get in big trouble and not only that but his boyfriend would get in trouble….and so would her sort of boyfriend. Teru wasn't her boyfriend, he was just a boy who she liked and who kissed her…and who was in the same city that she knew that Sho was going to….that was so close to here….
They needed to move.
She didn't like to think about it, how close but so far, Teru was. She didn't like to think about how, if she had wanted to, she could have gotten on a train and seen him. She could have asked how he'd been. She could have held his hand. She could have kissed him. She could have run away with him. She could have taken him by the hand and run away with him to a place where nobody would ever be able to find them. Then they'd be able to be boyfriend and girlfriend. Then they could kiss and hold hands. She didn't know what she would have done if that actually happened, besides being very happy, but she….she would have…if she'd been able to…
She was fine.
Sho was the one who got to see his boyfriend. Sho was the one who actually had a boyfriend…and a girlfriend. If Mob hadn't been his big sister she would have been upset that he had all of these people who loved him. She also would have been unhappy that he was out there cheating on a girl who loved him very much. She loved her little brother and she wasn't going to be mean to him…especially about stuff that she didn't have the answer to. She didn't know what he was supposed to do about this, she was going through the same thing he was, and for her it was worse…no. Minegishi had said that they knew and they weren't mad at her…so that was better but…but she didn't want to be better. She didn't want to be worse. She didn't want anyone to be anything but ok.
But what she wanted didn't matter.
Wishes didn't come true even if you folded two thousand paper cranes. She didn't know what she was supposed to do with her wishes, she couldn't help but waste them, but maybe it wasn't a waste. Wishes were born to be made and if she didn't make them then was that more of a waste? Or maybe it was just pointless. She didn't think that her wishes would come true. She didn't think that one day dad would tell her that she was allowed to have a boyfriend and that he would stop kidnapping people even on accident. She also didn't think that Sho was ever going to find a way to break up with his girlfriend in a way that doesn't make her sad at all. Wishes…they didn't make sense…life made sense.
Life was supposed to make sense.
Right now starting her day was what made sense. She tossed her nightie off and pulled a dress over her head. A long sleeved one. She was getting better at seeing things with her mind's eye. Dad would have been proud…maybe she could distract him by how good she was getting with her powers…or maybe they could just spend the day together…or maybe she could just make up something for dad to do that he had to leave Japan for…she hated lying…but she hated it even more when Sho got in trouble.
Sho came first.
Mob straightened out her dress. Sho came first. Sho would always come first. She just had to remind herself every so often. She didn't think that a good big sister had to remind herself that her little brother came first. She didn't know why she was so mean sometimes. She kind of…well she wondered if she had too much of mom in her. Mom had left and…and to leave she must have been very selfish…and Mob was her mother's daughter.
No, she could be better.
She was never leaving her family. She pulled her sleeve all the way down and left their bedroom. Dad walked right past her…and he didn't even say anything. He just kept on walking. He was even doing his tie up while he left…but it wasn't that late, was it? The sun didn't seem like it was up that high…but then again she had been losing time lately. For all she knew she could have slept for days and days and Sho could have been gone forever and-and-and if she hadn't been so sleepy then her little brother would have been safe…..
She needed to be better.
"Dad, what's going on?" asked Mob as she caught up with her dad. He slid a little in his socks. He reached out with his powers and caught himself. Mob would have caught him if she'd been able to…well if she'd been able to pay more attention and…and stuff. She was still thinking about Sho and mom and how everything just…it wasn't good and…and she hated thinking about this but she couldn't stop. It was like when Mukai told everyone not to think about her. Mob couldn't help it. Her brain was going too fast for her to tell it what to do. She didn't know what she was supposed to do to make it stop. She needed to smoke even if it was early in the morning. That always made her brain slow down long enough for her to think.
"Everything. Nothing. I'm needed away from here." Said Dad as he stopped in the kitchen. Mob pulled out a chair for him but he didn't sit down. He just went over to the coffee machine and poured himself a cup…and then spat it out in the sink.
"Shigeko…what is this?" asked dad
"Coffee." Said Mob
"What sort of coffee?" asked dad
"That's strawberry cake pop coffee." Said Mob. Dad made a face like she had told him that she had made it from sour milk and hamster water. Mob didn't know what he had been expecting. She had left the coffee right next to the machine. Dad didn't like the kind she liked but dad didn't ever think about these things. He just thought that the whole world and everything in it was for him. He drank whatever coffee he wanted and he used whatever bath bombs he saw and he used the last of the milk for his coffee….
Conceal don't feel.
That didn't just work for powers, it worked for feelings. She didn't have anything with her right now to make her feelings stop. She needed to stop her feelings before her powers got involved. Sometimes she wondered if there was something wrong with her. Maybe the same thing that had been wrong with mom was wrong with her and now she had no way to escape it. She would end up so selfish that she left her friends and her family and…and….
She couldn't let that happen.
"Why would you make something like this? Why would you drink this? Why would you…why was this even made?" asked dad. Mob rolled her eyes…and then stopped mid roll. It hurt to stop mid roll like that but she shouldn't have been rolling her eyes at her dad in the first place…even if he was being completely ridiculous.
"I like it, dad, and I made it yesterday because I wanted coffee. I didn't know that you had a busy day planned today, you didn't tell me." Said Mob
"I was not informed that this day would be busy either…make me coffee now. A fresh pot. The kind I like." Said dad. Mob didn't roll her eyes like she wanted to or stomp her food like she wanted to or…or tell dad that he was being completely and totally ridiculous.
"Do you want me to show you how? That was you can do it yourself?" asked Mob
"No. I know how. I just don't have time. Shigeko, make me coffee." Said dad
"….sure." said Mob. She wanted to tell him that he was right there and he had plenty of time to fill up the coffee makers with water and to put a new filter in and stuff. She didn't. She didn't want to make him mad. She wanted to distract him. Sho had asked her to…told her to. Sho hadn't given her a choice but she was a good big sister and she was going to cover for him…and she was a good daughter and she was going to make coffee.
So that was what she did.
She used her powers even though she wasn't that far from the coffee maker. She put some bread in the toaster for dad and got the ketchup out of the fridge too. There. Now he'd have some breakfast. She didn't know what he was doing today but she did know that whoever he was doing it to, whenever he rushed around like this someone had tried to betray him, but she did know that things would be better on the person if dad wasn't hungry. He got mean when he was hungry….
This was not the day to be making dad mad.
He didn't seem mad, though, he kept on looking at his phone but his aura wasn't mad. He even smiled a little and texted something…Mob leaned forwards. She leaned forwards as far as she could…which may have been too far. She leaned over too far and nearly toppled off the table. Dad didn't catch her with his powers. He just held his phone close to his chest and stared at her while she tried to get back into her chair.
She made it, of course, with no help from him.
"You didn't help me." Said Mob. She didn't know what she expected from him…maybe him saying that he was sorry. It would have been nice of him…but he wasn't very nice. He was dad nice, which wasn't that nice at all, but he had always been nice to her. He had always been nice, too nice, smothery nice. He used to smother her all the time…he used to spend all the time he could with her…and she hadn't had any space. The whole thing had been too much but now…now he was just going to sit there and let her tip over.
"You brought that on yourself. It's rude to look at someone else's phone. You know that. In fact you're always telling me to not even so much as glance at your phone." Said dad
"…that's different." Said Mob. She never looked up bad stuff when she was near other people…and she never looked up bad stuff at all. She just didn't need her dad to look over her shoulder and see that she read stories that people wrote about Anna and Kristoff kissing and being in love and stuff. Dad didn't need to know that she thought about that kind of stuff. He was always asking her about stuff like that, if she had a boyfriend and stuff, even though it was kind of none of his business….not that she had a boyfriend…Shimazaki wasn't her boyfriend so she wasn't lying and even if she did then it still wouldn't have been any of dad's business.
Just because dad was the President of Claw and the future kind of the world didn't mean that he had to…to bother her about personal stuff like that.
"No it isn't. There are parts of my life that you don't need to know about yet." Said dad
"What don't I need to know about yet? Is it about Christmas? Because I was thinking that for the party if it doesn't snow we could buy some and then have the Awakened take turns dropping it from the sky." Said Mob
"You want….what?" asked dad
"It's not complicated. We just go to where they sell snow, if they sell ice then they must sell snow, and then we just rent some planes or…or maybe planes are too fast. It's kind of fast and the snow should be slow so maybe a bunch of hot air balloons…or maybe we could buy some birds and teach them to fly around with bags of snow." Said Mob. That seemed like it would have been a good idea. There had been a weird amount of snow on the ground for the first Christmas party. It didn't seem like it was going to snow again and you couldn't have Christmas without snow. Also there was much to do for the party that dad might not have even had the time to notice that Sho wasn't even home.
"I have no idea if they even sell blocks of ice anymore let alone snow." Said dad
"They do in Norway." Said Mob
"Shigeko…Daughter. Wouldn't you rather just spend Christmas in Norway? You like Norway…and Norway is less….unnecessary." said dad
"We can't go to Norway. I have to be here for Minori's birthday party in January." Said Mob
"We'll come back by then. We have access to airplanes. We can return to Japan after the Christmas holiday." Said dad
"But I want to throw a party, a big Christmas party, for everyone in all of Claw. I haven't thrown one in a long time and if I don't throw a party then how will people have a Merry Christmas? It's important that everyone has a Merry Christmas and it's important that people know that we care about them. Don't you think so too?" asked Mob. She didn't think that dad cared, he didn't really care about people who weren't him, but he did care about her. This was weird for him. Normally he agreed to whatever she wanted….but that was back when she was his favorite and he loved her the….most…..
"They can look at the calendar and see that it is December twenty fifth. They can do with that information what they so choose…now stop arguing with me and pour me a cup of coffee. A party is…not out of the question….but I can't think about this right now. I have to leave." Said dad. Mob used her powers to pour him coffee into one of her travel mugs. He picked the one with the least amount of glitter. If dad wanted one without glitter then….then he could have said something. She wasn't a mind reader. She was telekinetic, not telepathic, and….and he was right there and he could have….he could have done a lot….
But he didn't.
"When are you coming home?" asked Mob as dad took the toast she passed him. He held it in his hands. She wondered if he was planning on running to work with a piece of toast in his mouth like an anime character…that would have been kind of funny actually.
"I have no idea. I may be away for some time. There is…something happening in Lower Back Pain City." Said dad
"Where's that?" asked Mob. Maybe if it was far enough away she could go to Seasoning City to…to get Sho back and….and also maybe to see Teru…to see if he was safe and stuff…and maybe if he wanted to kiss again….
"Far from hear. Near to Seasoning City...never you mind where it is and don't ask me about my agenda. I don't ask you about yours so don't ask me about mine….understood?" asked dad
"Yes, dad." Said Mob. When she had been little dad used to make her say 'understood' right back to him…but that was then and this was now. Things were different now and…and better. Right?
"Good, don't make dinner for me and at some point make sure that your brother is still alive. Goodbye." Said Dad before he put the toast in his mouth and walked out the door. Mob…well she could have laughed. It was funny, seeing dad like that, but she didn't have air enough in her lungs to laugh. She…she had to find Sho and bring him back because…um…it wasn't safe. If dad was near Seasoning City then he might have noticed that Sho was there so…so the only thing that she could do was go and get him. If she just so happened to see Teru again….she really was selfish…
After all, she was supposed to be covering for Sho, not collecting him.