"It doesn't hurt!" said Sho as he showed his mom the owie he got. He had been trying to climb up the walls and walk across but he had fallen into the berry bushes. It didn't hurt but big sis freaked out and yanked him out too fast and his skin got caught on the thorns. It barely even hurt. Mom was just freaking out over nothing.

"Really, it doesn't hurt at all. I'm not a baby." Said Sho as he tried to pull his arm away. Mom just picked him up and started carrying him inside the house. Big sis was following them and talking about how sorry she was.

"If I've told you once I've told you a thousand times…" said Mom real quiet, so quiet that Sho could barely hear her and he was in her arms. He didn't know who mom was talking to, him or big sis, because she had told them both a bunch of things at least a thousand times. He wasn't supposed to climb the walls under any circumstances and big sis was not supposed to use her powers on him unless there were extenuating circumstances.

A word which meant 'not unless there's an emergency' or something like that.

"I didn't mean to hurt you, Sho! I'm telling the truth, it was an accident! Really!" said big sis while she tugged on mom's skirt. Mom did that thing where she took in a really long breath, held it, and then let it out for even longer. Sho knew what that meant, she was upset with them, and he knew why. It was because big sis used her powers. Mom never got this upset when he tried to climb the wall. She shouted, sometimes, but she would always carry him inside and make him sit on his bed for some reason.

She said that it was a punishment.

He was not about to go telling her what a real punishment was.

"Really! I just got scared because that bush has thorns in it and I thought that you were being stabbed to death or something! Really, I just thought that you were getting hurt!" big sis was tugging really hard on mom's skirt, now. They were in the bathroom and there wasn't a lot of room. Sho cradled his arm in his hand. It didn't hurt that much, he didn't know what big sis was so worried about.

"Shigeko! Please!" said Mom. She didn't have to say please 'what', Sho knew that please meant 'shut up and leave me alone' but big sis was super clueless.

"Please what, mom?" asked big sis

"Please go to your room, ok? I need to see…I need to make sure your brother is ok, ok?" said Mom

"But I want to help." Said big sis. She was using her powers, now, to get the first aid stuff out of the drawers. Mom was poking his wrist bone with her fingers. It didn't hurt that bad, it was just changing colors a little bit, and the blood only looked like a lot of blood because big sis had yanked him out of the bushes too fast. That was all.

He was not a baby and he was not going to cry.

Dad said that he was much too old to cry. He said that crying accomplished nothing and that only the weaklings of the world cried. Dad said that his kids couldn't cry because they had to be strong enough to inherit the world when they grew up. Besides, Sho was not a girl. Girls cried all the time, it was how they were, but boys had to be strong. Dad said that he had to be strong, like him, because one day he'd have a family that he had to keep safe. Sho knew that he'd take good care of his family when he grew up…even if he had to kiss a girl and stuff when he grew up. Yuck. But that was what grown ups did…because they were nuts.

Mom sure was going nuts.

"Mom! Mom, I found the band aids! And the antibiotic cream! And the thermometer! See! I can help!" said big sis. There were all kinds of first aid type things floating in the air now. Sho tried to kick at the stuff flying around him but mom grabbed his foot.

"This is sprained…if not broken….it should not be changing color like that…" mom was talking to herself again. Big sis was tugging on her dress and still making stuff fly. The tap turned on and a bar of soap, new soap, flew out of the cabinet.

"Mom, they said at school that when you get a cut you're supposed to clean it. If we start a new bar of soap then it won't have any germs on it…right? Does soap have any germs? They said that germs are everywhere and on everything but they also said that soap kills germs. Do germs live on soap, mom?" big sis was asking again even though mom didn't like it when they bothered her while she was talking to herself.

"He hates it when I take you to the hospital….God he's so paranoid…" said mom as she ran her fingers over his wrist. Sho couldn't help it, he winced, even though that was weak. He wasn't supposed to wince or cry or yell, that just made it worse. You were never, ever, ever supposed to show when something hurt. That was what weak people did and Sho was not weak.

He was four. He was a big boy now.

"Should I get the hand sanitizer too? The one from your purse? And the cinnamon to make it all better? And the magic lipstick? Should I, mom?" asked big sis. Sho wished that mom would get the cinnamon and the magic lipstick. The lipstick was magic because it had glitter in it. It was silver with silver glitter. The cinnamon and the lipstick together could make any owie better, that was why mom had them.

Sho wished that she would just kiss it better already.

"Sho, baby, does this hurt?" said mom as she squeezed the purple part of his arm. He closed his eyes and tried to keep his breathing level. That was what you were supposed to do when something hurt. He wished that she would just kiss it better…if it was the kind of owie that could be kissed better. Sometimes they got owies that mom couldn't kiss better…and also sometimes he got owies that mom wasn't supposed to know about.

Because she freaked out a lot.

And also it was Sho's fault that he got those owies. Dad wouldn't have had to punish him if he hadn't been so bad.

"Mom, hey mom….mom?" said big sis. She tugged on mom's skirt really hard and she had to pull it up because her shirt ends were popping out of it. Mom did that thing where she closed her eyes for a while. She held onto the purple part of his arm even harder and he saw spots in his vision…and then he cried out…but only a little! And dad wasn't around so he wouldn't get punished for real. That was good.

"Shigeko! Go to your room, now!" said mom. Big sis let go and looked at them for a while before she left. After she left all the things that she had been holding up with her powers fell down to the ground. Mom said some bad words when that happened. That was bad. Mom almost never said bad words. Sometimes she said bad words when they did bad things, or when bad things happened like when she burnt her hand when she was cooking, or when she and dad jumped on the bed in the middle of the night and she bumped her head on the wall…or maybe the ceiling since she was super tall. She was saying a few bad words, now, and he didn't say anything.

He didn't even breathe.

Mom had never punished him for real before but she could always start…or she could tell dad.

"I'm going to have to call him…." said mom still talking to herself. Sho's eyes widened. She was talking about Fukuda. Fukuda worked for dad and he had powers, too. He couldn't move things without touching them or anything like that but he would heal any owie. Well the bad owies, the really bad ones, took a while but they got all better eventually. He was the one who fixed him up when dad had to punish him.

"Sho…stay here and don't move your arm." Said mom. She went to get her phone. He climbed down from the counter and put his ear to the vent to listen. You could hear everything through the vents. He heard mom talking, she sounded real quiet and stuff so he couldn't really hear what she was saying. She was so quiet that he couldn't even hear her above big sis' crying.

"Big sis! Hey!" whispered Sho into the vent. He didn't get what she was crying about. She wasn't the one who had gotten hurt and she wasn't the one who was going to get punished once dad heard about this. Dad never punished her, he liked her the best, but he would like Sho the best, too, once he got his powers.

"S-Sho? Is that you?" said big sis

"Who else could it be?" asked Sho rolling his eyes even though she couldn't see him through the vent. She could sense people, she said, but only people with colors. That was why she was the first person to know when dad was getting close to the house. Sho knew that if dad were to come back, mom usually didn't tell them until the day before but he got the feeling that dad would be coming through the door any minute to punish him, big sis would warn him.

"A vent spirit, maybe? I see spirits sometimes, but not usually around here." Said big sis. That was another thing that she could do. She said that she could see good, bad, and neither spirits. The neither spirits were just hanging out and doing their own thing. The good spirits were super rare, like a cat with blue eyes, and there were a lot of bad spirits. She got rid of one, well she said that she was getting rid of one, once when they were little but Sho hadn't been able to see anything.

He would get his powers when he got bigger.

"No, it's me. Stop crying or dad's going to give you something to cry about." Said Sho

"He's not here. He's in a whole other country." Said big sis

"I know but he can still find out that you cried, and he hates crying, so when he comes back you'll be in for it." Said Sho. He didn't want his big sister to be in for it….even though she had never been in for it once in her life. Dad never punished her because she was a girl and she had powers and stuff. It wasn't fair. Maybe dad would have been nicer to him if he were a girl…but that wouldn't be good either. If he were a girl then he would have to wear dresses and he didn't much like dresses. Also his hair would have had to be long and long hair took too much trouble. Also he'd only have boring old dolls to play with and he'd go crazy if he only had dolls to play with.

"Are you going to tell on me?" asked big sis

"No." said Sho. There were few things in this world worse than a tattle tale and Sho was not going to be one of them. He didn't want his big sis to be punished, not really, even though if dad punished her like he punished him then things would have been much fairer….

He didn't know if he wanted things to be fairer.

"Is mom mad at me?" asked big sis

"No. At least she doesn't sound mad. She's calling Fukuda now and he's going to fix my arm. It hurts, but not too bad, but it's changing colors and I can't really move it too good." Said Sho. He was still cradling his arm. He wondered what was wrong with it. It hurt way, way, way more than a little but he'd had worse. Besides, there was no use crying over it anyway. Crying wouldn't make it all better and it would only upset dad when he heard about it. Dad would know, he always knew, and he'd rather dad just be a little mad that he was climbing the castle walls than be very mad that he had been crying like a weak little baby.

"…I didn't mean to hurt you, Sho, it's the truth. I just got scared and that's why I picked you up." Said big sis

"Yeah, I know. You freak out so easily about stuff. I was fine. Nobody ever died from falling into a thorny bush." Said Sho

"I know but people also die from losing too much blood and falling from very high up. The wall is super high, it's taller than mom! And also you got a lot of cuts and scratches and stuff. You could have died, little brother." Said big sis. Girls were always freaking out over every little thing. Dad agreed, he said that girls had a tendency to overreact, which meant that they were always freaking out. He wished, sometimes, that he had a big brother instead of a big sister. If he'd had a big brother then he could have had someone to run and jump and climb and fight and play with. Not someone who only wanted to play house and needed his help going down the big slide.

"Could not have. It wasn't high enough to kill me. People only die if they fall off of mountains or roofs or skyscrapers or something like that. You know, like on TV." Said Sho

"I…I guess….but I really am sorry about what happened…" said big sis

"Stop saying sorry, I'm not crying so I'm fine. Besides, Fukuda's coming!" said Sho

"Do you think he'll play with us?" asked big sis. Sho had to think about that for a moment. Fukuda played with them sometimes but dad didn't like it. Sometimes it seemed like dad didn't like anything at all. He almost never played with them and even when he did he just sat on the floor and watched them play. That was not playing with someone at all. When Fukuda played with them he threw balls around with them and also played games that Sho liked, like menagerie zoo circus animals with dinosaurs, or boring games that sister liked, like house or kitchen or restaurant. Girl games were the most boring games ever!

"Yeah, probably, but we have to do that thing where we hold onto his legs to he can't leave." Said Sho. Dad really didn't like it when Fukuda hung out with them. He said that Fukuda had his own things to do for the organization, that was where dad worked, and that he shouldn't have let himself be distracted by little pests, that was what dad called him and big sis sometimes. Dad also called them Son and Daughter or even just Boy and Girl.

Maybe that was why mom said that the baby factory was closed, because Dad had enough trouble remembering two kids' names.

Fukuda always remembered their names, though, and he was always really nice. Even if he didn't bring them presents from far off countries where people looked different and spoke whole different languages. Fukuda played with them which was nicer than the presents, though Sho was not about to complain about presents. Dad might stop bringing them presents all together like he had that one time…well he had brought something for big sis…and not for Sho…

Because Sho had been acting like such a baby.

He really had been. There was no reason to have cried so much. He had no reason to have been afraid when mom stated taking him to preschool. He had been in places that weren't the castle before. They went to the pool and the park and the library and mom's work at the animal shelter before so he didn't see, now, looking back what had been so very different about going to preschool. It was just a room with kids. But the room had been too small and there had been too many kids and he didn't know any of the other kids and they all looked at him weird and they tried to touch his hair a lot and he was all alone because big sis had to go to a different classroom and mom had left him all alone and…

And he had been such a baby.

He was three then. He was four now and four year olds did not act like babies. That was why he didn't cry even though his arm hurt a lot. It hurt even after mom picked him up and took him to the living room and put frozen vegetables on his arm. She let him watch whatever he wanted on TV, within reason she said, which meant that he couldn't watch anything cool like Six Headed Shark Attack even though it was educational because it showed you what would happen if you were attacked by a six headed shark. He watched the other animal show, though, the one where they went all over the world and talked about the different animals there. Today they were in a place called Zanzibar. It was far away and the people looked different and didn't speak Japanese at all.

Dad went to those sorts of places.

Maybe he could go to those places with dad when he was a bigger boy and got his powers.

Because he was getting to be a bigger boy and he was going to get his powers soon, maybe. He was a big enough boy not to cry, at least, even though his arm hurt so bad that he thought that it might have been better just to chop it off and then attach one of those cool steel claws that people had. Dad was going to be so proud when he heard how Sho was such a brave boy. He was even brave when mom left him all alone to go and talk to big sis. He didn't like it, being all alone in the castle, because it was so big and he was so small…

But he wasn't small, he was big too, and it was stupid to be scared when he was all alone.

It was stupid to ever be scared. Dad said that being afraid made you weak. If Sho was weak then he would never inherit the world like dad said that he would. It was so cool! One day he'd be in charge of the whole world! He could see all the animals that he wanted! He could fill the castle with cats and dogs and hamster and gerbils and Guinea pigs and regular pigs and sharks and lizards and narwhals and griffins…ok, maybe not griffins. They might not have been real. But he could fill the house with all of those other animals.

It would be great.

He thought about animals and not his arm. He didn't know how long he had spent thinking but it had been long enough for big sis to come running out of her room even though mom had said to stay in there. Mom had come back to him, eventually, and held him on the couch while they watched TV. It was nice. He wished that dad and big sis could have been there but it was still nice. Dad didn't like TV that much anyway, though, but he also didn't really like much of anything at all.

"Shigeko! What did I say?!" said Mom. Sho didn't know why mom kept on asking big sis that. Big sis didn't get it, she was so clueless that she didn't even get it that when mom asked that she was really saying that big sis was being disobedient. Big sis usually answered with everything that mom had said that day. Mom always told her not to be smart.

Which even Sho didn't understand. He didn't know what was so bad about being smart.

"But Fukuda's here!" said big sis. She was waiting by the door, the inner front door, and she had to wait for a while before Fukuda got there. Dad was always saying nice things to Shigeko about her powers. He said that her range was impressive. He never said that Sho was impressive but he would, one day, when he got his powers. He'd probably be even more impressive than big sis!

Big sis would never have been able to keep quiet if her arm had hurt this much.

Fukuda fixed his arm up. It didn't hurt.

That was the first thing that he did, well after he took off his shoes, he went right over to Sho and fixed his arm. He did it by making himself glow green, like a lamp, and then he touched Sho's arm. It didn't hurt, not really, actually it kind of tickled. Sho couldn't tell, really, if it was a good feeling or a bad feeling. Like being tickled. Being tickled made you laugh but it wasn't a good sort of laughing.

It felt better, though, than having a messed up arm.

"There you go little guy, good as new." Said Fukuda as he let go of Sho's arm. Sho waved his arm around. It didn't hurt one bit. He banged it against the side of the couch a couple times before mom grabbed his arm and told him to stop.

"What about you little lady? Any concussions, contusions, or abrasions I should look at?" said Fukuda. He smiled when he said that. It was always kind of weird at first seeing him smile. Dad never smiled and he was a man so it was weird to see men smile like that. Sho didn't know a lot of men, just dad and Fukuda. His mom was a lady and all of his teachers were ladies and the librarians were ladies and only moms came to the park and moms were ladies.

It was nice having another boy around.

"No, she's fine." Said mom. Shigeko was standing on her tip toes behind the couch. She always got really quiet and sniffly when mom punished her even though mom never punished her for real.

"Play with us!" said Sho. He threw his arms around Fukuda even though he wasn't that heavy at all. Mom sighed. She sighed like that when she was really tired. Sho didn't know why she was so tired for, it wasn't even dinner time yet. She could be tired after dinner because that was wind down time. After dinner they did their workbooks and took baths and watched a little TV before it was time to go to bed.

"Please, Fukuda….will you play with us? Please? We don't have to play for very long." Said big sis. She was quieter, girls were real quiet and polite like that. Mom started to say that it was getting late, which of course was not true at all because it wasn't even dinner time yet, and that Fukuda was busy, which was not true either because dad was out of the country and Fukuda was less busy when dad was out of the country.

"If your mom says it's ok." Said Fukuda. He looked at mom when he said that. Mom looked away even though the polite thing to do when someone was talking to you was to look at them.

"You know how he is." Said Mom quietly. Fukuda reached over and almost put his hand on mom's but then didn't. That was good. Holding hands didn't mean that you were in love with someone, mom and dad were in love anyway, but it was still super gross to hold hands with a girl who wasn't your sister. Sho didn't have anything against everyone holding hands, there was nothing wrong with holding hands with your sister, and sometimes it even felt nice like when, at school, they made everyone line up and hold hands for their daily walk and sometimes he wound up holding hands with Akira, he was nice and had two dogs and a hamster, and it was always a very nice walk then they had to hold hands.

He wondered why mom didn't seem like she wanted to be friends with Fukuda.

"Then let me be the one to deal with him." said Fukuda. Sho had no idea what that was about, he was as clueless as big sis when it came to adults and their ways, but it ended with Fukuda playing menagerie but also with dolls, which was good. Fukuda even stayed for dinner, too, even though it was getting late like mom kept on saying.

She kept on saying it but…but not like she meant it.

Which was good, because if she had meant it for real than Fukuda would have had to go home. Like that time when Sho got punished but had to tell mom he fell down the stairs and he hurt a lot, before he could keep himself from crying, and then Fukuda came to fix him and then he and mom got into a fight and mom told him to get out of her house and also she said bad words, too.

But this was not like that time.

Fukuda stayed for dinner and hung out after bath time, which was shorter than normal because they had company, and he helped them with their Japanese workbooks and then played with them some more and even read to them before bed. It was nice, really nice…

Why couldn't dad be nice like that?