Mob finally looked like a Suzuki.
She had spent her whole life as the only Suzuki with black hair…but that was over now. She had red hair like she had always wanted. When she had been little she had asked mom when her hair would turn red. Mom always just told her that her hair was black, it was always going to be black, and that she should have been happy to look the way she looked. When mom had been a kid, she said, she had wished for black hair more than anything. Sho felt the same way. When they had been little people had always stopped on the sidewalks and stuff to say that he had cool hair and to try and touch it and stuff.
They had never noticed Mob.
When she had been out of the house she had looked like everyone else…but inside of the house she had always looked different. Well now she looked just like dad and Sho and Mukai. Not mom, her hair had been this weird brownish blonde, but everyone else had red hair.
She held her phone in front of her with her powers and took a picture. It was alright. She was limited in how she could move. She had to stay laying done, every single time she got up the room spun and her stomach hurt. She had already thrown up once and she didn't want to do it again. Ever. So she was stuck laying down.
It really limited her picture options.
"How does this one look?" asked Mob as she passed Minegishi her phone with her powers. She had to get this picture right. She finally looked like a Suzuki. She had red hair. Really read hair. Not orange like dad, Sho's, and Mukai's was. It was red like a crayon. Minegishi said that they didn't know how to get natural looking colors but Mob didn't mind. This was good.
She thought she looked good but that was just what she thought. She had to look good too.
"Looks fine, just like the last twenty." Said Minegishi as they glanced down at Mob's phone. They didn't know what her sudden selfie obsession was but they weren't going to stop her. She was off the baby thing, that was what mattered. Mob was a Suzuki and they were a determined people. Her dad was taking over the world, her brother had run away, and now Mob had come up with her own terrible Suzuki idea.
The last thing anyone needed was a baby. Mob included.
"But does it look good?" asked Mob as she took her phone back. She stayed on her back and reached over with her powers. She had to look better than good. She had to take a good picture or Minori would yell at her. She took picture taking very seriously. Also she had kind of told Mob that she wasn't allowed to color her hair without Minori's approval. They had to stick to their colors, she said, so people could tell that they were best friends. Like with bracelets but better, Minori had said. Mob knew that she had messed up, that Minori was going to be mad, but she could at least make sure her friend was a little less mad.
"Yes, just like the last twenty." Said Minegishi with a sigh. They closed their book and put it down by their feet. They hadn't gotten more than a page and a half in, anyway, since they had finished up with Mob's hair. Somehow they just couldn't focus with the very small problem of Mob's very terrible idea hanging over them. A baby. She had actually considered it. Dyeing her hair had distracted her but the novelty of having red hair would wear off fast. They knew. The first time they had ever colored their hair they'd spent half an hour in front of the mirror before they got bored and went about their day…and Mob didn't have even half their attention span. They had to figure out how to get her off of this baby thing. She'd had sex, the cat was out of the bag there, but she didn't need to grow up any faster than she already had. Minegishi had to be the person to stop her.
The only problem was that they had no idea how.
"But do you think that it looks good enough that Minori won't yell at me?" asked Mob
"Why in the hell are you friends with this girl if she yells at you?" asked Minegishi. Minori. Mob the living embodiment of love and friendship, she could have made friends with whoever she wanted to. Why she wasted her time with that girl Minegishi would never know. This was a lesson that Mob was going to have to learn on her own. Minegishi had done their best to warn her, to try and talk some sense into her, but at some point Mob was just going to have to learn her lessons on her own.
Some of her lessons. Not all of them.
"Sometimes your friends yell at you. You've yelled at me before." Said Mob. Minori wasn't very nice, she had known that from the day they'd met, but she was still Mob's friend. Sure she didn't always have fun with Minori or want to be around her but she was Minori's best friend. She couldn't just stop talking to Minori just because most of the time she didn't like hanging out with her. Sometimes friends were mean. Minegishi was mean to everyone, even Mob sometimes, but they still had friends. Shimazaki was the meanest person in the house, he liked to mess with people even when it wasn't funny at all, but everyone still loved him. Friendship wasn't so fragile that it could be broken apart by something like a few mean words.
"That's different. I yell at you when you do something stupid." Said Minegishi. Was THAT how Mob saw it? That Minegishi was just an asshole for the sake of being an asshole? They knew that they were an asshole but that was mostly because they were surrounded by idiots…and Mob was becoming one of those idiots. Maybe this was just Mob becoming a teenager. For as good of friends as they were seventeen years was a hell of an age gap. They were an adult and Mob wasn't even a teenager yet. Mob thought she was an adult…and sometimes she was. Sometimes she was the most adult person in the entire house. But she wasn't an adult. She acted like she was, she thought that she was, but she wasn't. Minegishi knew how they'd have reacted if another adult tried to tell them how to live, the bodies would never be found, and Mob was just as human as everyone else.
Not that Minegishi was going to stop telling her how to live….well they had no right to…they were the adult in this situation, the actual adult, and that was what mattered.
"So does Minori." Said Mob
"Mob, you're giving me a headache here." Said Minegishi as they rubbed their temples. Their messenger bag flew up from the ground and into their lap.
"Do you want to smoke some more? That helps." Said Mob. She crossed her fingers. Minegishi was picking up their bag and….and then they put it back down on the floor. She tried to keep her aura under control. Minegishi had said f-word moderation but apparently that was over now. She didn't want to be moderated, she wanted her stomach to stop hurting. She wanted to get back to normal. She wanted to make sure that she didn't throw up again. Throwing up was gross and it made your mouth taste bad and it made your throat burn. She almost missed Fukuda….almost. Throwing up was kind of tied with talking to him. She hoped that Sho was ok with him. He probably was, Fukuda hadn't stopped liking him like he'd stopped liking Mob…but it could happen at any time. She didn't know what she would do if Fukuda treated Sho like he treated her…but it would be something.
Maybe even something that involved her getting up off of this couch.
"I'd rather not, and you've had enough for today." said Minegishi. They had let her smoke and now she was done. She had sobered up. It was done with. They had given Mob enough of their bad habits, they didn't need to make her any worse.
"But I needed it because of my stomach." Said Mob
"Does it still hurt?" asked Minegishi
"Only when I sit up or move too much." Said Mob
"You haven't thrown up, have you?" asked Minegishi
"I-" said Mob. She had to tell the truth. She couldn't just lie to Minegishi like that. Sure Minegishi could be mean sometimes but they were still her friend and friends didn't lie to friends. She didn't know why someone would lie to her friend. Sure she knew that she was going to get yelled at, or at least spoken meanly too, but that was better than Minegishi not wanting to be friends with her because she had lied.
Minegishi would be mad at her but at least they would still want to be her friend.
She didn't get a chance to tell the truth, though. The front door swung opened and hit the wall. The whole house felt like it was shaking. She didn't know why Mukai had to make the house shake like that. She was…Mob could feel her aura. She was mad. She didn't need to get up to tell. Actually she couldn't. She tried but her stomach stopped her.
She hoped that Mukai didn't end up having these kinds of problems when she got older and did…all the things.
"Where Sho go?! Where Sho go, mama?!" shouted Mukai as mama took off her shoes. Sho should have been there! That was why she had made sure to feed the ham-hams really fast. Sho was supposed to be here and they were supposed to play. She shook her foot to get mama to work faster. She felt the ham-ham in her overalls start to run around. She reached into her overalls to get it to stop. It was being a bad ham-ham!
"I don't know, Mukai, I don't know. We'll just have to wait for him, alright? We need to calm down and wait for him." said Tsuchiya. Mukai was kicking and squirming worse than the time President Suzuki let her try coffee. She needed a nap. She needed a nap and a stretch, too, they hadn't done any mommy and me yoga in a long time. She should have been using this time, the time when President Suzuki was off doing whatever it was he did, to correct at least some of the damage he did. Tsuchiya knew that she should have had something planned, something more than a nap, but she didn't.
She really needed that nap.
"No calm down! Don't want to!" shouted Mukai. Mama reached out to pick her up. She pushed mama's hands away….oh no! The ham-ham ran out of her pants! She turned around and around and around in a circle but she couldn't see the ham-ham anywhere!
"Come on, in for four and out for four. In for-" said Tsuchiya. Mukai was playing the dizzy game now. Nothing good ever came from Mukai playing the dizzy game. She reached out again and tried to grab Mukai but she twisted right out of Tsuchiya's hands.
"No, mama, no!" shouted Mukai as she got away from mama. No napping now! She had to find the ham-ham! She had to find it right now! She ran out of the genkan and over to where Shigeko and Mine were. She couldn't see the ham-ham but maybe it was hiding. The living room was a good place to hide. One time she hid so good that Sho, Ryou, mama, and Shibata couldn't find her. She crawled under the couch. That was the best hiding place.
"Sho is…he's going to come home. Don't worry." Said Mob as Mukai hid under the couch. She must have been so scared. She was little. Mob had been little once before, too, and she knew how scary it was when you woke up and someone was just gone for no reason. Mukai was too little to understand that Sho had run away. She was too little to understand a lot of things.
How was Mob supposed to warn her about things like this?
"Where Sho go? Sho…ham-hams…where ham-ham go?" asked Mukai as she came back up from under the couch. It wasn't there! There wasn't anything under there besides chips and candles. She had tried a chip and it tasted bad. This candle was alright, though. She held it between her teeth but didn't swallow it, like Ryou had said.
"The hamsters are at Fukuda's house, Mukai, now come on. Let's try and nap. See? Look, your big sister is napping." Said Tsuchiya as she took the candle from Mukai's mouth. She tucked it into her shirt. Mukai, thankfully, had a short attention span. After two or three grabs she ran off to the kitchen…
"I'm not napping, I'm sick." Said Mob. She pulled the blanket up to her chest. Tsuchiya wasn't looking at her now, she was getting comfortable in Shibata's chair, but if she did look then she might have been able to tell. Mob didn't know if she wanted Tsuchiya to know. She was nice and she never made fun of Mob, and she was a girl too, but also if she knew then she would have told her that she had done something wrong or…or something. She didn't know, actually, what would happen.
She didn't know if she wanted to know.
"Sick or dying?" asked Tsuchiya. Shigeko looked sick…actually she looked like Minegishi had tried to stab her to death. There was red along her hairline, on her ears, and down the front of her shirt. She knew, of course, that it was only hair dye. Shigeko had dyed her hair red, probably to match the rest of her family, though it could have been her rebellious phase. Tsuchiya didn't have anything to say about that. Shigeko dyeing her hair didn't come close to even a tenth of the things Tsuchiya got up to in her rebellious phase…though she was young…but at this point it was much better than what she got up to in her daily life.
"Mob's business." Said Minegishi quickly.
"I-I'm sick…that's all. Nothing else, alright? Uh…um…how are the hamsters?" asked Mob
"They're fed. I may not have followed all of your brother's directions but they've been fed." Said Tsuchiya
"There are instructions? How many steps can 'put food in bowl' possibly be stretched out to?" asked Minegishi. Tsuchiya sighed and took her phone from her pocket and opened her messages before passing it over to Minegishi. They took it and scrolled down…and down….and down. Sho needed a new hobby. He needed several new hobbies. He apparently had enough time in his day to make tiny salads and pancakes and read tiny stories. That was what he had called them. Apparently he made tiny hamster sized books to read to his hamsters.
Minegishi wished that they had that kind of time and energy to waste.
They passed the phone over to Mob. She seemed much less surprised. Well of course she wouldn't have been, she was used to Sho. She was a Suzuki so Suzuki family weirdness didn't faze her. Minegishi wondered if they would ever get used to it. Just when they thought that they were used to Mob at least she went above and beyond any expectations/fears Minegishi had for her.
The world had enough Suzuki's in it as it was.
"Sho really loves his hamsters. He likes to take care of things…normally he does it all himself. He should have come home by now…" said Mob
"He's fine. He's with our only healer, Mob, he's literally in the best possible hands." Said Minegishi as they took the phone from Mob and passed it back to Tsuchiya.
"Did he say when he was coming back? Mukai is starting to get anxious, I think. She really misses her big brother." Said Tsuchiya
"I-I don't know-" said Mob
"That's up to him. When he feels like putting his big boy pants on and coming home then he can. If he wants to carry on like this then he can rot in Sendai." Said Minegishi with a wave of their hand. The last thing that Mob, or anyone, needed to worry about was Sho. He wanted to run away? Fine. At least they knew where he was and that he was safe. Mob was the one they had to worry about. They didn't have any more headspace left for anything or anyone else. They didn't even have enough headspace left to read a book.
"I…I don't want him to rot. I just want him to come home but…but he's safe and if I try and make him come home when he doesn't want tot then he might get mad." Said Mob
"Stop worrying about him. Worry about yourself." Said Minegishi
"Why do we have to worry about Shigeko? You didn't actually try and kill her, did you?" asked Tsuchiya. Something had passed between Minegishi and Shigeko. She didn't know what. Hopefully nothing…but knowing Shigeko it could have been something.
"This isn't blood, it's just hair dye. My hair is red now…but you probably already noticed." Said Mob
"I did, it looks good. Very…grown up." Said Tsuchiya. Minegishi was glaring daggers. She had no idea what their problem was this time…well it could have been anything. They had gone through a lot. She took a deep breath and shelved her less than friendly thoughts. Minegishi could glare at whoever they wanted to…not that they even had any reason to glare. It wasn't like she had said anything. That was why Shigeko had done it, right? To seem more grown up?
"Gr-grown up?" asked Mob. Did that mean that Tsuchiya could tell? She hadn't thought that she looked any different but…but maybe it was just one of those things that she couldn't notice on her own. She needed another blanket. She needed all the blankets in the house.
"You look normal. She looks normal." Said Minegishi. Mob didn't need any ideas. She was still twelve and she needed at act like it. At least a little, that was all they asked, at least a little.
"She looks pretty." Said Tsuchiya. That was way too red, like someone had dumped a cherry soda over Shigeko's head, but it wasn't any worse than what she normally got up to. At least she wasn't smoking or drinking…any more so than she normally did.
"I-I do?" asked Mob. Did she want that? She wanted to look nice but pretty was…Teru had said that she was pretty...and Shimazaki thought so too. He was always saying that she had a cute face and that she had it going on. She didn't want to have it going on, boys liked you when you had it going on….but she did want to have it going on, since boys liked you when you had it going on.
"You know that you do." Said Minegishi
"I-…um…I-" said Mob. She knew…she didn't know what she knew. She didn't even know if she wanted to know. She wanted…she needed…there was a loud crash from the kitchen. There. She needed to know what that was. Crashes from the kitchen happened all the time, especially if Shibata was trying a new recipe, but Mukai crying like that…that wasn't normal.
Kind of scary, actually.
Tsuchiya was the first to get up. She could move fast, really fast. Mob sat up and followed her. She heard Minegishi sigh as they got up. They must have cared…right? It was their kitchen too and Mukai was their friend. They must have been worried, right? Not that Mob knew what there was to be worried about. She couldn't even see into the kitchen, not with Shibata in the doorway.
"Excuse me." Said Tsuchiya as she squeezed past Shibata and into the kitchen where…well her first thought, when seeing all the red on the floor, was that he had broken a jar of pasta sauce. But that wasn't what had happened. Jars didn't squeak when they broke.
"I-I-I-" said Shibata. He hadn't meant to. One minute he had been grating carrots and then the next something had popped under his foot. Of course he hadn't been trying to-to-to-
"Ham-ham, mama, over there" shouted Mukai. She pointed at the ham-ham. Shibata had broken it! All of it's colors had come out and it wasn't moving!
"Don't look!" shouted Shibata as Tsuchiya pushed past him.
"What the-" said Tsuchiya as she picked Mukai up. That was…fur. Fur and…oh no. Sho was going to kill her. That was either cookie or world ender, she couldn't remember which. She knew that Sho would have known….she knew that he was going to notice….
"Maybe you shouldn't look." Said Minegishi as they covered Mob's eyes. Well this was wonderful now wasn't it? Sho was going to have a mental breakdown and then Mob was going to follow. Lovely.
"What can't I look at?" asked Mob as Minegishi covered her eyes.
"Nothing, just go back to the couch and relax some more before you make yourself any sicker than you are right now." Said Minegishi as they turned Mob around.
"Um….ok." said Mob. She was turned around and only then was she allowed to see again. She didn't know what was going on, what she had to do, but she…well she didn't want to do anything. She just wanted to lay down. Her stomach was doing flips and flops. She needed to lay down…and maybe this wasn't selfish.
She was sick after all.
She had to look after her friends, that was what it meant to be a good friend. A good friend was always there whenever they were needed…but also she was sick. So being sick cancelled the whole thing out. She would help next time, when she felt better, just like she knew that everyone would help her when or if she had Shoko. All of her friends would be there and they would love her daughter just as much as they loved her.
All of her friends, even the ones who needed the most care.
"M-Miss Suzuki? Are you ok? I mean I know that you've been sick all day but then I thought that you might have been feeling better but then there was all that yelling so I thought that there might have been something going on and then I thought that you weren't ok and…um….I don't know what I was going to do if you weren't but….um…" said Serizawa as he, finally, came to a stop in front of Miss Suzuki. The walk from his room might as well have been a walk around the world. The house was so loud and busy…but she was here….and she needed him.
Or maybe he was the one who needed her.
"It's ok, Serizawa, I get it. I'm ok, still sick but not as much as I was this morning." Said Mob. She sat up and smiled. No matter how bad she felt she knew that she couldn't let it show. Conceal don't feel. It didn't work, you had to smoke your problems away, but she didn't have anything to smoke right now. She had to do this how dad taught her. Serizawa got scared so easily. He got scared and worried and when that happened he exploded…and the last thing that anyone needed was him exploding.
They'd had enough to deal with from her, her explosion, anyway.
"Th-that's good. I was worried. I was worried and then I tried not to worry, like you told me too, but then I got even more worried so I had to hide under my umbrella and it was like you being there and I felt better but then I remembered that you were sick and I felt worse but then I thought that you might have been feeling better so I came out to see you but then everyone started yelling and…and…um…." Said Serizawa
"Do you want to sit here with me? I think that would make you feel better." Said Mob. She hadn't even finished her sentence before he practically threw himself onto the ground in front of the couch. She hadn't meant the floor…but that might have just been where he felt like sitting. She didn't know and she didn't want to make him think that he had to do anything that he wasn't one hundred percent sure about.
"Th-thank you!" said Serizawa as he sat down in front of her. He could have sat down beside her but…but he wasn't sure if that was even ok. He still wasn't sure if he had all of his manners or not.
"You're welcome. You can sit with me whenever you want to, you know? We're friends. You can come out of your room and hang out with me whenever you want." Said Mob
"I-I know but you hang out with Minegishi a lot and…and um…" said Serizawa. He loved them…maybe…or maybe he just wanted to kiss them again? Nobody had ever wanted to kiss him before. It had felt amazing and scary. Scarily amazing. Amazingly scary. He wanted to kiss them again…but also he wished that he'd never done it. Not that he would have told Miss Suzuki anything about that. It was bad enough that he had told her about the whole kiss thing. Boys did not tell girls that sort of thing…but maybe it was ok because they were such good friends.
"I know what you mean…and it's ok. I don't think that it's weird for them. There are much worse things that you guys could have done." Said Mob. He was still weirded out because Minegishi had kissed him. It had seemed like such a big deal when he told her but now…now it was like nearly nothing. Maybe this was how adults felt about this sort of thing. They went around kissing each other and doing more than kissing…doing all the things…with whoever they felt like.
"Like what?" asked Serizawa
"N-nothing! Nothing at all!" said Mob
"A-Alright. Sometimes when people say nothing but they mean something but if you say nothing then I know that you mean nothing." Said Serizawa
"I would never lie to you." Said Mob
"I know. We're friends." Said Serizawa. Friends never lied to friends. She had said so and anyway that wasn't the sort of thing that a person needed to be told.
"Yeah, we're….we're friends. We're friends and everything's normal." Said Mob quickly.
"It is." Said Serizawa. He was finally normal. He had friends and he left his room. That was…a good feeling. Being normal.
"I….I'm normal, right? Like you don't think that there's anything different about me?" asked Mob. She looked normal…right? Tsuchiya had said that she looked different but…but maybe it was something that only girls could see…that would have made sense.
"Th-there is….something different I mean…um…" said Serizawa as he rubbed the back of his head. She had red hair. President Suzuki had said, before, that criticizing a woman's appearance was dangerous ground. Sometimes people thought that you were criticizing them even when you weren't…and he didn't know what he would have done if she thought that he had been criticizing her.
"Th-there is?" asked Mob. It felt like the times when Sho used to dump snow down her back. Cold and scary and…and like she wanted it to end but she didn't know how to make it end and jumping around was just going to make it worse and sitting still wasn't an option and she had to pick one but she wasn't sure and the water was soaking into her shirt and making it stick to her and-
"Y-Yes! Your hair is different….it's red! It looks really-really pretty on you. You looked really pretty. I mean you always look pretty but now you look extra pretty." Said Serizawa. She was getting upset…he'd really messed up! Now she was mad and….and he didn't know how to fix it! She was red and-and maybe she was sick or-or-or he didn't even know what!
"You just think that I'm pretty?" asked Mob. She pulled the blanket tight along her chest. Did he mean…what did he mean? Teru had said that she was pretty and then they did…all the things that they did…and also Shimazaki said that she was pretty and he wanted to do all the thing with her…and…and did Serizawa want to do…all the things…with her? He…he had never said that he did but….but that was how boys were…right?
"I….I think that you're extra pretty?" asked Serizawa. That was good…right? That couldn't be taken in any way at all as a criticism.
"But not like I have it going on?" asked Mob
"Like you have what going on?" asked Serizawa. He kind of knew what that meant but he wouldn't have said that about Miss Suzuki…wait, was that mean? Was he supposed to think that she had it going on? But she was a lot younger than him and also she kind of didn't have 'it' going on. He knew what it was, not that he was ever going to say it out loud, especially when he was right next to Miss Suzuki!
"Nothing, nothing at all. Um…do you want to play more Animal Crossing? Or Harvest Moon? Or maybe we could have a playdate for our dogs?" asked Mob. Of course Serizawa didn't think about her like that. Serizawa was just a friend….it was nice to have just a friend. A boy who was just a friend and not someone who wanted to kiss her or other stuff…stuff that she knew about now. Stuff that she didn't want to think about. It had happened and now it was done and now she was sick…but she was with her friends, now. She was with her friends, her friend, and…and she was starting to feel better. Sho was alright. Something was happening in the kitchen but…but she was out here. She didn't have to worry about that. She could just lay here and relax with her friend…what could be better than hanging out with her friend?
Nothing, not even finally having red hair.