Mob still wasn't so good at braiding hair.

But mom was showing her how! She was sitting on mom's bed with her and mom was showing her how to braid her hair and this was so good! This meant that mom was getting better! Fukuda really could heal anything. He had been by their house a lot since she accidentally broke the good bathroom. Mom said that it was fine and they'd get it fixed later. Mom also said that she was sorry.

Mob didn't know what there was to be sorry about. She was the one who broke the bathroom.

"Which color ribbons do you want?" asked Masami. She had sat like this with her mother, before, when she was Shigeko's age. The scene was the same, mother and daughter sitting together with a brush and a box of hair clips, ties, and ribbons. Shigeko loved having her hair brushed. Shigeko had such long, thick, hair. Not wavy like Masami's or gravity defying like Sho's, and Touichirou's too when he let it grow out.

She wasn't exactly like her father.

She needed to stop seeing Touichirou in her. She needed to see Shigeko for who she was. She wasn't even his biological child so, really, there was no resemblance. None. Not in appearance or attitude. Any of his mannerisms that she had picked up were purely the result of what little time she spent with him, that was all. She was her own person.

She was different from him.

And Masami needed to stop seeing Shigeko as Touichirou in feminine miniature. She may have shared some common traits with him but she was not…she was her own person. And she was wanted. She was an orphan that they had taken in and she was a part of their family. She was Suzuki Shigeko…and Masami loved her.

A pair of soft pink ribbons hovered out of the box and into Masami's hand.

"These ones match my dress." Said Mob. Mom was still in bed but she had put on clothes, which was good, and she made them waffles for breakfast. That meant that she was beating whatever kind of cold she had or whatever it was.

"They do, good eye Shigeko." Said Masami. There was a prickle, there, when she took the ribbons from Shigeko. A tickly, a prickly, sort of static electricity. Her powers. She had…she had used her powers and that was fine. They were a part of her. This was fine.

This was fine.

"Can I braid your hair next, mom?" asked Mob. Mom had such pretty hair. Her hair was lighter than Mob's, much lighter, and had waves in it. Sho's hair had spikes. Dad's hair was spikey like Sho's when it got long, mom had said, but Mob had never seen Dad with longer hair before. Sometimes she even forgot what dad's hair looked like now. What he looked like now. She wished that he would come home.

But she also didn't.

Because things were more fun when dad wasn't around. Fukuda was around more and he played with them and stuff. Mom even let them have extra electronics time, she was timing them again, and they all played Wii resort. It was fun even if mom didn't play for very long. Dad thought that games were a waste of time. He liked educational things. He said that she and Sho had to be the smartest kids ever if they were going to inherit the earth when they grew up and he died. Mob didn't much care about inhering the earth, she'd rather have been a magical girl than a princess, she just wanted dad to love her. He liked her and Sho best when they listened.

She wished dad could have been more like mom.

Or Fukuda. He was only supposed to come over when one of them was hurt. Dad had been very clear about that. Well mom was still kind of sick, she said that she was too tired to play with them for very long and she had laid down for a while, so it was ok that Fukuda was there. He had made them lunch, curry, and he had played with them in the yard, too. Not like how dad made her practice with her powers. He helped them climb on the monkey bars and played catch with them and played house with her. Sho even played for a little bit but he was the zookeeper not the baby. He had to be the baby because he was the littlest but Fukuda said that she had to be flexible sometimes.

That meant don't be bossy. Nobody likes a bossy person.

She hoped that Fukuda could be with them for a while. She also hoped that mom got better but not all the way. Better enough that she could get out of bed but not so much better that Fukuda had to go back to his own house. Well, he said that he lived in an apartment, which was smaller even than a regular house. He could have come to live with them in the castle. There was plenty of room.

Lots of room without dad around.

"You can try." Said Masami turning so her back was to her daughter. She could see Shigeko in the closet mirror. She really was so small. Fukuda said that she was as strong as an adult. That seemed like the sort of thing that Touichirou should have mentioned. Shigeko had lost control because she had too much power for someone her age. Masami…she scared herself. She had seen the adult power and not the little girl that was stuck with it.

She had gone to Sho, first.

Had she been more like her husband she could have appealed to biology. Of course she would have wanted to protect the child that shared her genes first. That was just good survival. That was also a cold, cruel, way to look at the world. They were more than their instincts. They were not cats and dogs, they were human beings and were capable of thinking beyond their immediate survival. She should have thought….she should have gone to Shigeko. Shigeko had been hurt and…and she had needed her mother.

Well her mother was right there, now, where she belonged.

"Why is your hair like this, mom?" asked Mob as she dragged her Sailor Moon brush through her mom's hair. The brush didn't make it smoother like it did hers. The brush made mom's hair stick up and out like a poodles.

"Because you're brushing it while it's dry. It's ok, I don't mind." Said Masami. If anything this would give her an excuse to take a bath later. She needed one. She had been wallowing too much lately. So what if it felt like the walls were closing in on her and she had given her entire life away to a man who was incapable of love. Of showing love. He loved her in his own way. She just wished that he could love her in the way that husbands were supposed to love their wives. She had agreed to this union, this marriage, this promise of forever with the idea in mind that it would be a true union. Not him jetting off all over the world and leaving her alone in this…this dollhouse. That was what it felt like. A dollhouse that he could come over and play with whenever he wanted. Mother, daughter, and son. A complete set if not for the chronic lack of father. Not that Masami even knew why she wanted her husband to come back. He had been so cruel, before, and he hadn't even realized it. It would have been better if he had set out to be cruel, then she would have had reason to feel like…like she wanted out.

A tug at her hair.

There was no out. Not while they had these children together. There was no way that he would let them go…or at least Shigeko. She wondered if he even knew he had a son. Shigeko was his pride and joy and he would never, ever, let her go. Sho was his son and he might have ignored and neglected him but…but Touichirou still would not have let his children go.

And she could not leave them alone with him.

"Sorry mom." Said Mob. She hadn't meant to hurt her mom but she had. That was all she could do, wasn't it? Hurt people.

"It's ok…you didn't mean it." Said Masami softly. Shigeko was just a child. She needed to remember that Shigeko was just a child. She hadn't meant to pull her hair and she hadn't meant to do what she had done the other night, too. She was only six years old.

"I didn't. It was an accident." said Mob. Dad said that was no excuse, that something was an accident, because she was supposed to be better than that. She didn't know why she was supposed to be better than that, just that dad said that she was supposed to be better than that.

"So then it's ok. You…you don't need to feel bad about things that are accidents. Sometimes things happen that are out of our control and that's ok. There's nothing that we can do about them." Said Masami

"I should be more careful. If I'm more careful then I won't do things that hurt people." Said Mob

"…we all make mistakes." Said Masami

"Yes, but my mistakes hurt people." Said Mob

"We can all make the sorts of mistakes that hurt people, Shigeko, but the important thing is that we learn from and fix our mistakes." Said Masami. She took the brush from her daughter's hand and showed her the right way to do it. In small sections, not just tearing the brush right through. Not that Masami's hair liked to be brushed when it was dry. That didn't matter, this made Shigeko happy.

"Even if we keep making them?" asked Mob

"Well…sometimes things are beyond our control….and sometimes they're not. If something is within your control then you can try and stop it from happening but sometimes things just…happen." Said Masami. Touichirou couldn't help being the way that he was. Maybe it was better, not worse, that he hadn't intentionally been cruel to her. There was something different about him, and not just his powers, something in the way that his mind worked was different than hers and most other people's minds as well. He was just…that was something out of his control…and he was trying. He must have been trying. He must have been trying because, otherwise, why would be burden himself with a family. Yes, he wasn't selfish at all but…but just someone who was very different and was just trying his best. Hell, if Shigeko was anything to go off of then it was something that had to do with having psychic powers. She and Touichirou were just two of a kind in a lot of ways.

But not Sho.

Sho was normal. He smiled and cried and made eye contact when he was a baby and hit all of his milestones and could play with the other children, to a degree, and knew how to be selfless. He…he was more like her. Whatever was wrong with Touichirou had not been passed down to Sho. He was…he was normal.

She loved both of the children.

"Control…" said Mob. Dad was always saying about how she needed to have better control. Dad said that raw power was absolutely nothing without control. Mom wanted her to have control too. She hadn't had control back when she made the bathroom explode. The water had just been so hot…and it hurt so much…but she needed to get better at her control. She needed to get better at ignoring when she was hurt. She needed to be more like Sho. He never cried, well almost never cried, when he got hurt. He'd been hurt more times than she had, too. He was always either getting punished or getting hurt. He knew that he would get hurt but he just kept on doing the stuff he did.

Boys were weird.

And Sho was a boy so he was weird. Maybe that was why they were so different. He was a boy and she was a girl. Boys and girls were totally different. That was just how it went. They had some stuff in common but they were still so different. They even looked totally different. His hair was red and hers was black. His eyes were blue and hers were brown. His hair was spiky and hers was straight. He burned in the sun and she just got darker. They both had pale skin but he had so many freckles that they could play connect the dots with them.

Sho looked a lot like dad…and also mom.

Mob didn't look like either of her parents. Her parents didn't look like most people, though. They had light hair and blue eyes and stuff. Their hair was different, too, it stood up and stuff. Mob looked like everyone else. She had pale skin and brown eyes and black hair. Her eyes were different too. Mom and dad's eyes were weird, too, and so were Sho's. They had different eyelids than she did…than most everyone did. Sometimes people asked her where her family was from and when she said Japan, because this was Japan that they were living in, they asked where they were really from.

That was if people believed that mom was her mom and Sho was her little brother.

She wondered how it all got figured out, how people looked. This was why she was Mob, she looked like everyone else, while the rest of her family looked different from everyone else. She was just like everyone else…except for her powers. But that could not be seen. She wondered when her hair would turn red. If Sho was going to get powers like her than it would only be even if her hair turned red like Sho's.

"Mom? When is my hair going to change colors?" asked Mob as she brushed mom's hair the way she had shown her.

"Why? Did you find a grey hair?" asked Masami. Not even forty yet and already going grey. Well being married to Suzuki Touichirou would age anyone.

"No, all of your hair is brown. I was just wondering when my hair would change." Said Mob

"Oh, well in about…forty years, I guess. Give or take." Said Masami

"My hair is going to turn red in forty years?" asked Mob

"Red? No, Shigeko, grey. Grey or white." Said Mom

"But when will it turn red?" asked Mob

"Shigeko…unless you color it when you get older then it's going to stay black." Said Masami. She wondered where this had come from. She should have been happy to have had black hair. Masami would have traded everything that she owned, back when she was a kid, for black hair just like everyone else. Had things really changed so much since she had been a child?

"But I want to look like you and dad and Sho. I don't look like anyone in my whole family…" said Mob. Now she was done brushing. She was too sad to brush. The brush didn't agree, it tried to float out of her hand, but she clutched it tight. The bed shifted and she found herself being hugged by mom.

"Shigeko….you're fine just the way you are." Said Masami. She had known that this day had been coming, Shigeko was starting to ask the uncomfortable questions. Of course she could never be told that she was adopted. It would just cause her distress. Besides, it didn't matter. She was Suzuki Shigeko, not whatever her old family name had been Shigeko, and she had a family who loved her. Her real, no, biological family, had given her up because of her powers and Touichirou had…had taken her in.

Because of her powers.

Or because, maybe, he saw himself in her. They did have some very similar mannerisms even if she didn't look a thing like him. Shigeko was their daughter, her daughter, and that was that. Masami….how could she have been so cold to her own child…cold enough that her child was asking these sorts of questions. She hadn't been herself, at least she told herself that she hadn't been herself, because she could never have behaved that way towards one of her children.

And Shigeko was her child.

"But why am I the way I am?" asked Mob. She was so different and she had no idea why. Why couldn't she be more like the rest of her family? The only person she was like was dad, because they both had powers, or maybe mom too because they both were girls. She wished that she could have swapped places with Sho, then he could have had her powers and she could have at least looked more like the rest of her family.

"Because….because that's just the way it all worked out." Said Masami. What else could she say? She could not ever tell Shigeko that she was adopted and as for why she had powers…that was a complete and utter mystery. She figured it was something in environment or genes or something. She didn't know, she was not a scientist or anything like that. All she knew was that her daughter was starting to ask some really big questions that Masami was not even close to being ready to answer.

"But why did it work out like this? Why do I look so different? And why do only I have powers? Why do some people have powers and some people don't? Why doesn't Sho have powers even though he's my brother? Why does he have red hair like dad but I don't have brown hair like you? Why do I-" said Mob

"Shigeko, stop. You are the way you because….because that's just how it worked out. Ok? There is no rhyme or reason to it. Some people have powers, some people don't. That's how it works." Said Masami with a sigh. She was so tired. Dealing with Shigeko could be so draining…dealing with both of them could be so draining.

"Ok….but people are supposed to look like their parents too, right?" asked Mob

"Shigeko-" said Masami

"I have black hair and nobody else does and-" said Mob

"My mother had black hair, so did your father's father. Your father and I are half Japanese and you…you just came out looking totally Japanese. That's all." Said Masami pulling lies out of the air. She regretted it almost as soon as she said it. She had never mentioned the children's grandparents before and for good reason. There was no way to explain to them why they had never….well her parents had seen Sho as a baby…but they didn't even know about Shigeko….and Touichirou's parents…she didn't even know if they were still living. They hadn't even come to the wedding.

She didn't blame them.

Touichirou…he could be a pod person a lot of the time. She was curious about where he came from, what his parents were like, all of it but it never came up. Not really. He never wanted to talk about them and he had nothing good to say about his childhood. They couldn't have been very good parents, anyway, if they never saw that something was amiss with their son…

Pot, kettle.

"Oh. So I look like grandma and grandpa?" asked Mob. She had never met her grandparents…or known that she had grandparents. That made sense…right? Her parents must have come from their parents and their parents also had parents and…and was it just a never ending chain of parents? Was it parents all the way down until…what? Where did people come from? Why did they have kids? Why was she there? Why was anyone there? Who made people? Where did dead people go after she exorcised them? What would happen to her after she died? Would she have kids, too? Didn't everybody? Wait, no, Fukuda didn't have any kids. How did people decide who had kids and who didn't? And how many kids? And-

"Am I going to have to braid my own hair?" asked Masami. Shigeko had gone very quiet. Too quiet. She might have been thinking about…about things that Masami was not ready to talk about. There was no nice way to tell someone that their father was so disliked by their grandparents that they didn't even know that you existed.

At this point telling her parents that she had a six year old daughter would have just been…odd. Too much. Too many questions asked. Too many hurt feelings. Too many people saying 'I told you so' once the initial anger passed. Her parents had never liked Touichirou…and maybe they had been right about him…but that was neither here nor there. This was her life, now, and she had might as well make of it what she could.

"No, mom, I'll do it. I was just thinking-" said Mob

"Remember how I showed you, Shigeko, two equal parts." Said Masami tuning around and shaking her hair out. She felt her daughter's hands in her hair. She was still so quiet…but she was always quiet…but like her father there were different kinds of quiet to her.

"Mom? How come grandma and grandpa never come to visit?" asked Mob

"Because we live very far away and my parents are too old to travel." Said Masami quickly.

"Oh…ok….but then how come we never go and visit them then?" asked Mob

"Because…because we have to be here when daddy comes back from his trips. You know how he likes us to be at home when he comes back." Said Masami. She wondered if her nose was growing from all of these lies. It was surprisingly easy to lie to her daughter. Too easy.

But she couldn't tell the truth.

"Ok…I guess…but then why don't we all go and visit? I mean when dad comes back from his trips." Said Mob

"Because he's tired from travelling, Shigeko, and the last thing your father wants to do when he comes back from travelling abroad is to travel again. Alright? And be careful not to make knots in my hair." Said Masami. She didn't want to get into this now or at any time. This was…there was no way to have this conversation. She wished that Shigeko could just get a clue already…but of course she couldn't. She was only six years old and Touichirou's daughter, too.

"Ok….I get it." Said Mob. Sometimes it felt like there were more things that she couldn't do than she could. Dad had a lot of rules, well not rules like how mom had rules but rules just the same. Mom had rules that she said were rules, like how they weren't supposed to wear shoes in the house or watch TV after bed time or play on their tablets and stuff outside of screen time. She and Sho had to have time outs and got stuff taken away when they broke those rules. Dad had a lot of rules but he didn't come out and say that they were rules.

Until he got mad that they had done something that he hadn't wanted.

Like how dad hated it when they cried. Or when they played with other kids. Or when they talked about school and stuff like that. Dad hated it when they were weak and did weak things and also when they talked to the other kids and stuff. He said that there was no point in them being friends with normal people because they were going to inherit the world and stuff. He got mad, mostly at Sho, when they broke one of his unsaid rules. She wished that dad could have gotten mad at her instead but that wasn't what dad was like.

He liked her, not Sho, sometimes.

But he loved them both. He was their dad and dads had to love their kids. He just had a lot of rules and could be really grumpy sometimes. That was it. Dad still loved them. Dad had always loved them.

"Good, now get the green ribbons and show me how well you can tie a bow." Said Masami. Well that had been short. Good. She would tell Shigeko, tell both of her children, the truth. One day, just not now. She knew that she could not say anything to tarnish their father in their eyes. They were just children, they had their whole life to shatter their image of him.

And she would not, could not, be the one to shatter it.