Sho managed to beat dad home.

He had no idea where dad was or what he was doing and, really, he didn't care. The only thing that mattered was that he had beaten dad home. Now he wouldn't ever have to know what Sho had done. Now he would have one less thing to worry about. Dad never hit him unless he had a good reason, in his mind, to hit him. He never hit him hen big sis was around either, so Sho was in the clear. Now he could walk right through that door and everything would get back to normal. He would say sorry to big sis and little sis and then things would be normal. He would play with baby sis and big sis would boss him around and then one day would turn into another and then another and then another until it all sort of melted together like when you got a rainbow Popsicle and left it on the counter for too long so it melted and all the colors ran together into this weird reddish and brownish…color….thing.

Alright then.

It was either late or early depending on how you measured time. Big sis was asleep, so it would have bene late for her. He could feel her aura from right outside of the house. He could feel baby sis's aura too. She was awake. It was late for her. She should have been asleep. She was little and she needed all the sleep she could get, that way she could grow up big and strong…like he had. He was big and strong now, at least he was bigger and stronger than he'd been when he'd lived in the Castle, but he wasn't big enough or strong enough to…to do what he had to do.

To take down dad.

But that wasn't going to happen until he was older. He was glad that dad wasn't home…for dad's sake. He was glad that Fukuda hadn't insisted on walking him right up to the door. He might have done something that he regretted. He might have….well he might have done something that dad deserved a lot more than Fukuda. But dad wasn't home and Sho wasn't going to do anything stupid. He knew that he didn't stand a chance against dad. He wasn't anywhere near strong enough yet.

Maybe if he had help…

But he didn't. So there was no point in standing outside of his door thinking about how awesome it would have been to kick dad's ass from one division to another. From one HQ to another. From one side of the world to the other. To kick dad through every single wall he could see. To beat dad up so bad that he bled, that he couldn't move, that he thought that he was going to die. That he felt all small and scared and just…just….

He opened the door.

The house was dark. He didn't know what he had been expecting. There wasn't anyone here but big sis. She was the only one home…if this even counted as home. Maybe home was just a place where your family lived. Even if it was far from the place that you had been born, the place you grew up. Maybe a house was just four walls and a roof without a family living in it. If two people even counted as a family…one person when he wasn't around. Mukai didn't live here, Tsuchiya was really smart and knew better than to live with dad, so it had just been big sis. Did that mean that this place stopped being home? The Castle had stopped being home….

This was complicated.

Way too complicated for how late it was.

Sho kicked his shoes off in the genkan. They smacked into some other shoes, probably big sis's. She wouldn't mind. He had pushed her after all. Why would she care about some shoes when her own little brother pushed her to ground? She had…well it didn't matter what she did. He wasn't dad. He had to be better than that and being better meant apologizing and never pushing her again. She had kind of deserved it but not really, not like dad deserved it.

Dad was lucky that he was on the other side of the world or…or wherever he was.

Sho wasn't so lucky. He wasn't that good at seeing thigs with his mind's eye yet. He wound up tripping over a pair of shoes. Big sis's shoes, it felt like, which served him right for messing with them. He never got away with anything, it felt like. Not throwing his shoes around or running away or pushing big sis or-

Or coming home in the middle of the night and making a hell of a lot of noise.

"H-Hey, big sis." Said Sho. He closed his eyes as the lights came on. He didn't know if she would cry, he hated it when she cried, and there was also the chance that she would tell him that she wasn't happy with him…which he hated even more than the crying. Well whatever she had planned then she could get on with it already. He stood there in space between the genkan and the living room. He really should have moved but he couldn't. Not until he knew what she was going to do to him.

He could feel her.

She was coming up fast. He could sense her aura and kind of see her in his mind's eye. The shape of her, if that made any sense. Like he knew that she was there but he couldn't tell if she was about to cry or yell, well she never yelled, but there was a first time for everything. He hadn't pushed her in years. He knew something was coming to him and he was prepared for anything.

Even a hug.

"Little brother! You're home!" shouted Mob as she held her little brother as close as she could. She held him so tight that there wasn't even a fraction of a chance that he would escape. She couldn't let him go, never again….but not like she was going to keep him in a cage. That was cruel…unless there was a noncruel way to get Sho to stay in the cage…but then there was the issue of getting Sho into the cage in the first place. So she would have to settle for a hug. A hug that he wasn't trying to escape from. He normally tried to escape so…so this was nice.

Like he wanted to be near her.

"What…." Said Sho. There was red in his eyes, a lot of red. His first thought had been that he had pushed her so hard that her head had broken open and now she was covered in blood. But that didn't make sense. If she had broken her head opened when he had pushed her then he would have noticed and he would have stayed….so this wasn't blood.

"I missed you so much!" said Mob as she squeezed Sho. He smelled like….dust? Dust and something she couldn't place. Also there was the way he always smelled when he hadn't had a bath in a while but she didn't mind. She wasn't going to try and make him take a bath now. She didn't need him to leave again because of her. She had been so selfish…and she had paid for it…but now he was back. Now they could get back to normal and forget all about what had happened. Between them. There was no way she was going to forget…

She held Sho closer. She couldn't think about love and…stuff…if she was with her brother. It was impossible.

"Wait…" said Sho. He tried to get away. He had to…why was…her hair was red. Why was her hair red? She was the only one in their family who had normal hair! Why would she have just thrown it all away like that? Why…it wasn't blood. He just had to get away from her and then…and then he could figure al of this stuff out.

"I'm sorry that I didn't go after you, you just told me that you didn't want me to come with and-" said Mob as Sho tried to squirm away. She tried to hold onto him but it was no use, he just wound up squirming out of his jacket like Mukai did when she didn't want to come inside.

"Forget me, what happened to you!?" asked Sho. Big sis finally let him go. She took a step back and looked down at her feet. He followed her eyes. She was just in her normal Elsa socks. They weren't interesting…but they could have been! Her hair was red, who knew what else she could have changed!

"I…got a little sick…but I'm alright now, mostly." Said Mob. She didn't feel like she was going to throw up anymore. That was good. She didn't feel like she was going to have a baby, either, but also she had no idea what that even felt like. She didn't know anyone who'd had a baby before and Google wasn't helpful at all. But she wasn't going to be telling her little brother all of that. He was a boy. Maybe if he had been a girl then it would have been different, this was the kind of thing that sisters talked about, right? Like in this one fan story she read where Elsa was having a baby and Anna told her how great being a mom was but also they worked at a coffee shop and Olaf was the dad…

Talking to her little brother about this would have been weirder than that.

"You got sick and that made your hair turn red?" asked Sho

"No, no. My hair has nothing to do with that. It's just red because it's my hair and my body and I can do whatever I want with it…and I wanted it to be red." Said Mob

"But-but-but you have…you're the only one with black hair! Why would you do stuff like that? You…you…" said Sho

"I just wanted it red." Said Mob

"You had it so easy and….and dad's going to kill you! I mean I don't want him to but…but he will! Then you'll know…" said Sho. He didn't tell her that she would know what it was like to be him, she would know, when dad came home. He didn't want that…there was no way that he could have ever wanted that.

"Dad won't kill me. He can't. This is my hair, not his, and he doesn't get to tell me what to do with it." Said Mob. She knew how mad dad was going to be at her…but he didn't get to be mad. She hadn't done anything wrong when she colored her hair or…or the other stuff she had done…stuff that he could never, ever, find out about. Ever.

"You-you can't actually believe that." Said Sho. He was a good person and good people did not hit their big sisters. Good people didn't even think about hitting their big sisters. Good people kept their hands in their pockets and their auras close to their bodies. Good people…he was a good person. He had to be a good person right now. Even though she was pretty much bragging about how good she had it…how she could do whatever she wanted.

"Of course I do, because it's true. Dad doesn't get to tell me-" said Mob

"So dad gets to tell me who to love but he can't tell you what color your hair has to be?!" shouted Sho. He didn't push her, not even with his aura. He just yelled at her…which was bad…but nowhere near as bad as pushing her would have been.

"Dad doesn't get to tell you who to love either. He thinks he can but he can't. That's why you're in love with that boy…and I'm really, really sorry that you didn't get to see him." said Mob. She knew how much it had hurt every single time she'd had to say goodbye to Teru, that is before she knew what he was really like, and she knew Sho. He felt things really strongly, like dad did, but he didn't have dad's control over his feelings. He had been hurting so bad…so very bad….bad enough that he had pushed her. She had been the one to make him feel bad…she didn't exactly know how, since he had told her to stay away, but…but she still should have been there for him.

"It's not that I didn't get to see him, it's that he was an asshole and he lied to me. If he had told me where Ritsu was then I could have gone to him and then we never would have-have fought and stuff." Said Sho. She nodded….like she agreed….but she never agreed. Not when it came to disobeying dad in any way. She wasn't scared of him, no, she loved him…and somehow that was even worse.

"Yeah…Teru is kind of a…that word. You're right." Said Mob. Sho was the one who was holding onto her, now. He had his hands on her shoulders, he still felt cold from being outside. She reached up and held his hands in hers. There, now he could be warmer.

"Who are you and what have you done with my big sister?" asked Sho

"Sho, were you watching that body snatching movie again?" asked Mob

"That's exactly the kind of thing that a body snatched person would say! What happened? Did Minegishi get you with a body snatching plant? I'm going to fuck them up so bad-" said Sho

"No! Don't fight anyone! I didn't get body snatched, I just…I agree with you. Teru is a real…a-word." Said Mob

"But he's your boyfriend. Aren't you in love with him or something?" asked Sho

"I was but that was before we…before I found out what he was really like." Said Mob. Did she have to warn Sho about this? About how boys could be? How they could be so different than what you had imagined. How even after you did something, everything, with them they could just…kick you out? She knew that she had to warn Mukai because they were both girls but maybe it was different with boys.

"Did he do something to you? Do I need to fuck him up?" said Sho. Brothers, big and little, had to protect their sisters. Especially from guys. Sho knew how guys could be. How they liked to look up girl's dresses at the playground and grab their boobs and hit their butts and stuff. If anyone did that to his sister, either of them, then Sho would kill him. He would do all kinds of stuff like boil him alive or cover him in meat and feed him to wolves or even that thing he saw in this one movie where they sewed a bunch of people together….well he'd need other people for that. He left that idea on the idea shelf. It was ok, he had about a million others in his head….but none of them were good enough for the guy who had messed with his big sister!

"N-No! We didn't do-HE didn't do anything! Nothing happened. Nothing at all. Absolutely nothing. So we can stop talking about this. Um….how was the Castle?" asked Mob. She didn't even want to think about it, the old house, let alone talk about it. Talking about it was better than talking about Teru, though, and it hurt a lot less. She never wanted to even hear the name 'Teru' ever again…she had to be happy, to stay happy. Her little brother was here and he had been through a lot. He needed her to be happy.

"I don't want to talk about it…now what happened with Teru? If he's not your boyfriend then-" said Sho. He didn't want to talk about the biggest asshole he had ever met in his life but it was better than talking about the big, empty, house that used to be the Castle…their castle.

"I don't want to talk about it." Said Mob quickly. She didn't know what else there was to talk about…probably a lot of things…but Teru was the last person she ever wanted to talk about. She didn't care if they spent the whole night talking about…she didn't even know. The fight they'd had? How his heart had been smashed apart? How…how cold it was outside? What they wanted for Christmas?

Maybe she needed to go next door and get the deciding hat.

"Do you want to…uh…watch Frozen?" asked Sho. There were a lot things that they could talk about. How much more dad liked her than him. How she got to do whatever she wanted but he didn't even get to be with his boyfriend. How much it hurt even thinking about what happened…about their fight. There were so many things they could have talked about…so maybe they just needed to do something that didn't involve talking.

"No, do you want to watch Zootopia?" asked Mob. She knew that he didn't like Frozen, not like she did, but he did like Zootopia. Her feelings didn't matter, not when he was there. She could have at least done this for him, put his favorite movie on, even if she had been a bad big sister in every other way.

"No, I'm not a little kid anymore." Said Sho. He liked Zootopia…but not like he had when he'd been little. His Zootopia characters lived at the Castle now. Where the old Sho, little Sho, lived. He wasn't little Sho anymore, he was current times Sho, and current times Sho really didn't feel like watching Zootopia.

"Then what do you want to do?" asked Mob. She mostly wanted to go to bed but she didn't want to fight with Sho about it. She never wanted to fight with Sho ever again.

"Want to go to bed…and maybe you read. Not to me, just a little?" asked Sho. He wasn't little but he was tired…and he always slept better when she read. Not to him, no, when she read out loud. It helped her sleep, too, so it was ok. It wasn't baby-ish. He wasn't a baby anymore, he was himself, and he….he was…tired. Really tired.

He had beaten dad home and now he was tired. It was really late at night after all, or early in the morning, it just depended on how you looked at it.