They had always lived in the castle. It was their home and it would always be their home.

And Sho was going to defend it!

"Sho! Enough with that stick! Mommy and Daddy are trying to sleep." Said mom. She and dad were in their room. They slept in a lot when dad came back from his trips. Sho didn't know what time it was but he knew that the sun was up and the shadows were staring to get short. It was getting close to no shadow time. That was when the sun was high and they had lunch.

"But there's monsters out here!" said Sho real loud so that mom and dad could hear him. There weren't real monsters, dad would never let them get into the house, but big sis could make their toys fly and he could hit them with the big stick he found on the ground the other day and that counted as defending the castle.

Mom and dad said some stuff from behind their door. It sounded like fighting, almost, but quieter. That made Sho quieter. He hated it when mom and dad got into fights. He wished that they could just get along. Like him and big sis, they got along great!

"Sho, remember, if you ever see a monster you just bow and be polite and it'll leave you alone. Ok? Now, please, mommy and daddy need to rest." Said mom. Sho didn't know what they needed to rest, for, because they had been resting all night. Maybe they were turning into old people. Old people needed sleep all the time, not that he knew any old people personally, he hadn't seen mom's mom and dad since he was a baby and he didn't even know if dad had a mom and a dad.

"Then I'll hit 'em with my stick!" said Sho because, of course, you couldn't just be polite to a real, live, monster. That would be stupid because unless you hit it with a stick then it would eat you. Dad said that the world worked liked that, you either got eaten or you were eaten.

Mom said that dad was just being silly when he said that.

"Sho, enough with the stick, ok? Sticks belong outside now go put it back where you found it." Said mom. Everything belonged outside it seemed. Sticks and stones and plants and grass and even all of the animals they found out there, too. He knew that it was mean to take animals out from the wild, it made them sad to be separated from their families, and Sho didn't want to make anything sad but it seemed like they would have been much happier in the castle. It was big and warm and they had plenty to eat and plenty of places to sleep. The castle was so big that there was a whole part of the house that they weren't even using!

Big sis said that their new little sis would have one of those rooms.

But Sho knew how it worked. First mom had to get really fat and then the fat would turn into a baby and it would crawl out of her stomach just like he had and so had big sis. That was why mom had that scar on her stomach that people stared at when they went to the pool. She didn't like the staring even though it wasn't a scar from doing bad things, it was a scar that she had gotten making new people she said, and dad said that he didn't like them going out in the world where the other people were and that he would have a pool built in the castle for them.

Sho didn't mind the other people that much.

Sometimes they stared at him and tried to touch his hair. Sometimes they spoke real slow to him and mom or just spoke English even though this was Japan and in Japan they spoke Japanese. Sometimes they only talked to big sis and told her to tell him and mom what they were saying. Sometimes they even asked weird questions like where big sis had come from or if they were watching her for someone else.

Big sis was his big sis. Why else would she live with them in the castle?

People could be weird sometimes. He didn't mind them that much, not really, ok a little bit really. Animals were better than people in a lot of ways, so he liked animals better, but he didn't dislike people. He liked the people he knew. He knew mom and big sis and dad and he liked them. They mostly liked him back, well it was dad who mostly didn't like him, but that was just because he was so different. He couldn't do the things that dad and big sis could do. But that was ok, mom couldn't either, and neither could most other people.

But he wanted to.

"Come on, mom said to put that stick back outside." Said his big sis who kept on telling people to call her Mob even though that was just people being mean to her. She didn't believe that, though, and Sho did feel bad about pushing those other kids too but people needed to be called by their names. Besides, it was a mean thing to call someone and mom was always saying how they had to be nice to people and stuff.

"I don't want to." Said Sho. This was a really big stick. If he left it outside then something could have happened to it. Girls just didn't get it. They played with boring stuff like dolls and dress up clothes and stuff.

"Mom said so and we have to do what mom says or dad'll get mad. Don't make dad mad, Sho." whispered big sis. She had a point about that. Last time dad got mad at him he got a punishment…and he was still sore from that. Not like the time when he was really little and his arm had extra corners and then Fukuda had to fix it. That had been a bad time, from what Sho could remember of it. Big sis remembered it better than he did, not that they were supposed to talk about things like that or anything.

"I'm not gonna!" said Sho maybe a little too loudly. He heard more talking from mom and dad's room and decided to run away before dad got out of bed. Big sis followed him. She was still making their stuff float, even when they got to the outside. The yard was big and had high walls around it. Around those walls were a bunch of trees which sometimes dropped really big sticks into their yard. Sho didn't much like the wall, if it wasn't there then there'd be more sticks and also he could climb the trees, but dad said that the wall was important.

It kept out other people.

Sho could hear them, sometimes, driving down the street. They lived in a city with more people than he could even count, he and big sis tried a bunch of times to count all of the different people they saw when mom took them places, but there weren't a lot of them by where they lived. This whole street was castles like theirs. Not like the kinds the samurai and shoguns lived in but castles none the less. They had high walls and big windows and were so big that there were entire parts of it all dusty and old and never, ever, used. The other kids at preschool lived in castles but also regular houses. Sho didn't like regular houses, they looked too small, and there wasn't enough room for all of your stuff it looked like. Also there wasn't any room for new little brothers, which were much better than new little sisters, even though big sis wanted a little sis.

The last thing they needed was more girls in the house.

"Sho, it's cold, let's go inside. We can play with the stuff dad got us." Said big sis

"No way! I wanna climb!" said Sho tossing his stick aside and going to their play structure. It was cold and metal and also kind of slippery but it was more fun than being inside and being real quiet so mom and dad could sleep. Also dad was less likely to get mad when they were outside.

"Mom says that we're not supposed to go to the top unless she's here, Sho, remember?" said big sis. Sho stuck out his tongue and kept on climbing. It was high up, their play structure, but he liked it that way. When he got to the top he could see over the wall and into other people's yards. He wondered what their castles were like. Which rooms weren't they using? Did they also have rooms with beds nobody slept in? Rooms with boxes full of papers in kanji that he couldn't read yet? Books full of pictures that weren't even in color? He couldn't see into their windows, they had curtains and blinds and stuff, but he could see into their yards and that had to be good enough he supposed. He wondered what people thought about their castle. Did they ever climb up high and look at it and try to imagine what his family was like?

"I'm not gonna fall!" said Sho

"Are too!" said big sis

"Am not!" said Sho. This could go on for a while. He usually won when they played 'am not, are too'. Well he was the last one talking, usually, when mom made them stop.

"Yes you are, you fell last time! Remember? When mom had to call Fukuda?" said big sis. Of course Sho remembered. He liked Fukuda. Fukuda was the family doctor but not like the one at the hospital who gave shots and had only citrus flavored lollipops. Maybe if he let go of the metal bars and let himself fall and get hurt then Fukuda would come over and make him better and play with him and big sis and stuff. Or maybe not the last part, he was different when dad was home. He didn't tell jokes or pick them up or play with them or anything. Everything was different when dad was home. Less fun. Mom didn't take them as many places, they never even went to the animal shelter or the dog hotel, and they had to be very neat and very quiet.

But Sho still loved dad.

"I'm not gonna fall! You come up here if you're so worried!" said Sho. Big sis wouldn't. She never climbed this high. Mostly because she never wore pants but also because she was afraid. The not wearing pants thing was an excuse. He didn't get girls, why they wore skirts and dresses and stuff, it just looked uncomfortable.

"I want to but I'm too scared. Mom says that we aren't supposed to go up so high unless she's here. You're gonna get in trouble." Said big sis. She was doing the thing where her hair was trying to fly away. She did that a lot when she was mad or sad or happy or anything. Sho reached up and felt his hair. It just stood up all the time regardless of what it was that he was doing.

"Both hands Sho!" she shouted. It was her shouting that made him lose his balance, nothing else, and he would have regained his balance too if she hadn't been shouting so much. But she was still shouting and he had still lost his balance and his feet slipped and now he was hanging by one hand.

"Don't fall Sho! It's cold out and the ground is hard!" said big sis. Sho didn't need her to tell him that the ground was hard, he remembered from the last time he fell, and he didn't need his big sister to remind him.

And he was not scared.

He was not scared of falling and hitting the ground and his arm having extra corners again. That had happened before and he had been fine. Fukuda fixed it and he'd fix it again so there was no reason to be scared. Sho wasn't afraid of anything. He was a big boy now. He wasn't scared and he wasn't going to cry, either, when he hit the ground. He had cried before but that was because dad wasn't around. Dad hated crying, he said that only babies and weaklings cried, and Sho was not a baby or a weakling. He was not going to let dad down again.

He tried to pull himself up.

The bars were too cold and his fingers were kind of frozen. He was cold all over. It hadn't snowed yet, mom said that it would snow any day now, but it was pretty cold outside. He wasn't wearing his jacket or hat or mittens or scarf. Mom would be mad about that but he would rather have mom upset with him than dad. Mom never punished him, not for real anyway, and she never got mad at him for real too. Mom was nice like that. If he fell and cried she wouldn't have been mad at him at all…but mom was not dad. Moms were not dads. Dads weren't as nice as moms.

"Just let go and I'll catch you!" said big sis. Sho's arm hurt. He couldn't pull himself up but…but if he fell and he couldn't help but cry dad would be mad at him…and also did might be mad at him for falling in the first place…dad never liked it when me messed up at stuff. Even at stuff that didn't matter as much as climbing and falling, like reading and writing. Dad always hated it when he messed up hiranga, which they were learning in school so he didn't mess up as badly, and kanji which they weren't supposed to learn about until they were older and he messed up all the time…

Dad didn't like failure.

"No! I can do it myself!" said Sho. Dad hated it when he messed up. Sho was not going to upset dad. He was going to pull himself up and keep on climbing until he got to the very top and he was going to do it all on his own! He was not a baby anymore and he could do things for himself! He had this. He just had to ignore how stiff and frozen his fingers were, how much his arm hurt, and how hard it was to even hold on now…he had to ignore it and be a big boy and pull himself up and make dad proud of him!

He tried to pull himself up.

It hurt.

His other hand couldn't hold him up anymore.

And then he fell.

The ground was coming in fast. He may have screamed, just a bit as he fell, and then again as he came to a sudden stop. It felt like something was holding him up but not like when mom picked him up. It was like he was being held up not by hands but, like, he had fallen onto an invisible wall. He could even see, sort of, a shimmery sort of color around him. Pink and blue. It seemed to move and shift around him as he stayed floating in the air. He looked up. He could still see over the wall. Not over the whole castle but over the wall. He wondered if anyone could see him.

He hoped that they couldn't.

He hoped that nobody could see that he had to have his big sister save him.

"Shigeko! Sho!" that was mom. She was running out of the house in her robe and slippers. Dad was behind her but he was walking. He didn't have his whole suit on, just the blue pants and white shirt, and to Sho it made dad look…weird. Less than himself. He always wore a suit, even to bed Sho imagined, though he had never woken up earlier to see if dad ever wore pajamas. Dad looked less like himself not just because he wasn't wearing his whole suit but because he looked….kinds happy.

"Daughter. I had no idea you could lift anything as heavy as a person." Dad even sounded happy. He wasn't even looking at Sho. He was looking at Shigeko. It wasn't fair! Just because she could do stuff like that…just because of that dad never punished her! Even though mom said that she wasn't supposed to use her powers on people! Even though mom said that she needed to be sweet and never, ever, ever use her powers against people!

At least mom didn't look happy.

"Shigeko! Put your brother down! Do you have any idea how dangerous this is!?" mom asked. She looked kind of scared, actually, even though Sho wasn't crying or anything. She probably thought that he was going to cry like a baby if he hit the ground. She probably thought that he was still a baby. It wasn't his fault that he was younger and it wasn't his fault that he couldn't do the same stuff sister and dad could do!

It wasn't his fault.

"But if I let go of Sho then he'll fall down. I don't want Sho to fall. I love him." said big sis

"I…I love him too but you can't just…I told you not to use your powers on your other people! And that includes your brother!" said mom

"Masami, don't discourage the girl. Daughter, that's an impressive display of control, especially from someone your age. Your mother is distressed, though, so why don't you try and let your brother down gently. As gently as you can. I'll be here to catch him if he falls." Dad even sounded different when he talked to big sis. All nice and stuff.

He never talked to Sho like that.

He at least made good on his word and caught Sho when big sis dropped him. Sho knew that she hadn't meant to drop him but he had still been mad anyway. Sometimes he got mad at her and sometimes he was her friend. He didn't know why he felt the way he did, just that he felt that way, and he had shouted.

And kicked. But mom had picked him up. She was rocking him and telling him that he was her good, gentle, boy. That she knew how scared he must have been. That big sis hadn't meant to scare him. That he was ok now. That she loved him. All the nice things that moms said to you when you were hurt.

But he wasn't hurt.

But at least mom was saying something to him. She wasn't mad at him, she hadn't known that he had been climbing, and at least she wasn't going to put him in time out of anything like that. Not that time out was a real punishment. Dad gave real punishments. Dad would have been mad for real. But he wasn't. He wasn't mad at Sho or anything.

He was talking to big sis.

He was telling her how strong she was.

He was telling her how proud of her he was.

He was telling her about all the things that she would be able to do when she got older.

He didn't say anything to Sho at all.