Dad had never been home for this long before.
Mob and Sho didn't know what to make of it.
"Do you think he lives here now?" asked Sho as he raked a brush through his hair. It was time to get ready for school. Mom usually helped them but that morning she wasn't. She was talking to dad about something in hushed tones behind their bedroom door. He hoped that they weren't fighting.
"He's our dad. He's always lived here." Said Mob she took the brush from Sho and brushed his hair out herself. He was doing it wrong. You had to brush your hair in small sections, mom had taught her that. Mom usually brushed their hair for them but she and dad were talking. That wasn't weird, she and dad had been talking a lot lately, but Mob hoped that they had been talking about good things. Sho said that they had been upset, lately, but Mob couldn't see it. She was bad at things like that. That was ok, though, because she had Sho to tell her when people were mad and fighting and stuff.
"I mean all the time. I don't think that he's ever stayed this long at once before." Said Sho as his hair was brushed out. That made it stand up worse, which was the point. He liked that his hair stood up. Big sis had boring hair, it just hung straight down.
"Yeah…it's been a while…but this is a good thing I think. Maybe he'll stay forever." Said Mob as she finished Sho's hair. There, nice and spiky, just the way it was supposed to be.
"…I guess that would be a good thing." Said Sho as he looked at himself in the bathroom mirror.
"It is. That means that he can be here to play with us and-" said Mob as she tried to braid her hair with her powers. It was easier this way. Even if they were kind of uneven. Mom was much better at this than she was. Mom always knew how to do stuff like this…but she was busy. Closed doors meant don't come in and mom and dad's bedroom door was closed and had been all day. Mom had only come out to wake them up and tell them that they were going to school that day. They hadn't gone to school in a while and when they did it wasn't one day and then another. Dad said that they didn't need to go to school, that it wasn't safe out there, and that they needed to stay in the house forever where it was safe. Mob didn't know what he was so afraid of.
"Play with you, you mean." Said Sho as he glared at their reflections in the mirror. He looked like dad when he did that. That was the same face that dad made when he didn't like something. Dad was home, now, and for the first time in…Sho didn't even know, he wanted dad to get a move on and get back to work. Then it would just be him and mom and big sis and also Fukuda. He hadn't come over once since dad had been back. It wasn't fair.
"Yes. He plays with me but when you get your powers-" said Mob as she gave up on the braids and focused on buttoning up her school shirt with her powers. Dad said that power was nothing without control so she had to get better at having control. That way he would keep on liking her. He liked her because she was like him. That made sense. He loved all of them but he didn't like Sho. That also made some sense. They each got a parent. That was how it worked.
She got dad and Sho got mom.
Even though she wished that dad would be as nice to Sho as he was to her. It would all be different when Sho got his powers. Then they could all be together…well not mom. Mom didn't have any powers. Well she had mom powers, which were things like kissing scrapes and bruises better and being able to make rules and stuff, but she didn't have any esper powers. Not like she and dad had. Not like Sho would get. Why wouldn't Sho get his powers? He was her brother.
"I'm not going to get my powers." Said Sho quietly. Why didn't she see it? If he didn't get his powers now, and he was five already, he was never going to get them. He was just…Sho…and dad didn't like that. Dad wanted him to be like big sis. That was why dad wanted to have another kid, Sho had overheard his parents talking about it, because Sho didn't have any powers and he would never, ever, get them.
"Yes you are. We just have to wait. Good things come to those who wait. Mom said that and mom would not lie to us, ever. Moms aren't allowed to tell lies. It's against the law." Said Mob
"I've been waiting my whole life." Said Sho
"I guess that we just have to wait some more, then, that's all." Said Mob. If there had been some way to give her little brother her powers she would have done it. This just wasn't fair at all. Dad said that there were espers and there was everyone else and espers were better than everyone else, something Mob didn't fully believe, but even if it wasn't true she didn't want Sho to be like everyone else. She was the one who wanted to be like everyone else. She wished that she could just wrap her powers up in wrapping paper and give them to Sho for his birthday. Then they could both be happy. But that wasn't how it worked. Dad said so. Dad said that only one absolute being had the power to share their powers with others.
And Mob didn't want to be that absolute being.
"You didn't have to wait." Said Sho. It wasn't fair. Big sis had been born with her powers, mom and dad said so. Sho had only been born with eczema and a head that was shaped weird. He had no idea what was wrong with him, why he was the way he was. He didn't even know why mom and dad had even had another kid. They had gotten it right the first time.
"Yes, but dad says that most people have to wait. He says that most people aren't like me and him." Said Mob
"Why shouldn't I be like him? I'm his son!" said Sho. He knew that he shouldn't have been yelling. Dad didn't like yelling in the house. He didn't like much of anything. He just liked breakfast for dinner, which was very confusing for Sho, and big sis, which was much less confusing. Maybe dad would punish him for shouting in the house. Maybe dad would punish him so many times that he ended up getting sick of it and then he decided to go off to some other country and then the house could go back to the way it was. The way that it was supposed to be.
"Maybe….maybe you just take after mom. That might be it. Kids take after their parents. It's because they share DNA. Like how mom said. " Said Mob. She knew where people came from now, where they really came from, and it was terrible. Gross. Not nice at all. She wished that she didn't know, that Sho really had been lying, but he hadn't been. She wished that Sho had never found out. They were different like that. Sho was the kind of person that did things that he wasn't supposed to. Mob never did things that she wasn't supposed to. She wondered which parent she took after.
"So, what, you think that I'll never get powers, then?" asked Sho. The brush on the counter began to shake. He glared at it. He wished that he could do that. He wanted to be able to do that. It wasn't fair. He actually wanted powers! She didn't want powers. She didn't want anything. She didn't even want to be anything. She didn't even want to be herself. She wanted to be Mob. Sho at least wanted to be himself…or even her. Even if it meant turning into a girl and having to wear dresses and have long hair he still wanted more than anything to wake up and do a Freaky Friday swap with his big sis…but that was just in movies, not in life. In life things didn't work out all the time.
"No, I just meant that…um…maybe it'll just take longer because you're so much like her. You are a lot like her, you know? You both don't like citrus, and you both like animals, and you both like to play in the rain, and you both like-" said Mob grasping at all the ways Sho was like mom. He got mom and she got dad. He took after mom and she took after dad. That was how their family worked. That was how all of this worked. Even if it meant that if Sho really and truly took so much after their mom then…then he might never get his powers. It wasn't fair. Sho was her brother and he actually wanted these powers!
"So that means that I'm going to be like her, then, is what you're saying? Fine. I'd rather be like mom than dad. At least mom is nice. You can be best friends with dad for as long as you want. I don't care." Said Sho still glaring at the brush on the counter. It moved, just a little, and that was her doing it. Because she had powers and he didn't. Because she could do things that he couldn't and she just had to show off like that!
"Sho, you're going to be…you can be what you want to be. Like mom always says, we can be whatever we want to be. You'll get your powers, you just have to wait a little more-" said Mob even though she had no idea how long it would take or if it would even ever happen.
"I'm tired of waiting! You didn't have to wait!" said Sho. The bathroom was shaking, now, just a little and for a moment he wonders if it's going to explode. Good. At least if it exploded then dad would be mad at Shigeko. They already had to use the farther away bathroom, the one that was cold and in the scary part of the house, so if Shigeko broke this one then everyone would be mad at her…and he was such a bad person for wanting that.
He was a bad little brother.
"You and I are different people, Sho. You're you and I'm me. No two people are alike, even brothers and sisters, mom even said so." Said Mob
"No, we're not alike….you came out right and I came out wrong." Said Sho
"That's…that's not true. You are right. You're good and right, Sho, because you're my little brother." Said Mob. She didn't ever want to hear her little brother saying something so awful about himself ever again. He may have been annoying, sometimes, and occasionally he could be downright confusing, but he was still her little brother and she wanted him to love himself just as much as she loved him.
"No…that's not true and you know it. No matter what happens, how long I wait, it won't change the fact that you were born right and I was born wrong. You have powers and I don't. That's what dad cares about. He wants a kid with powers and he got you…and I don't know why he even bothered to have me." Said Sho. He didn't know, sometimes, why he had ever been born. So mom could have a kid like her? Well that wasn't what he wanted. He wanted to…he wanted to be who HE wanted to be, not who he was supposed to be. It wasn't fair, the way families worked, the way that each parent got a kid and in families with more than two kids one kid had no one at all. That wasn't a good system at all. The more he thought about it the more he felt like crying and yelling…and the way everything was shaking…that didn't help!
"Sho, please stop it. You're fine the way you are-" said Mob. She reached over to give Sho a hug, a squeeze, something for him to know that she was there for him and she loved him no matter what. She was then and would always be his big sister. Even if he was being kind of mean right then, to himself, and even if it hurt her when he was mean to himself.
He pushed her away.
He told her to leave him alone.
The brush flew off the bathroom counter and hit her in the head.
Nothing broke. That was good. Mob had already broken one bathroom. It still hadn't been put back together. This was a different bathroom. This one was farther from the part of the house that they used. This one was bigger than the old one and also a lot colder. This wasn't the part of the house that they were heating. This wasn't the part of the house that they were using. This house was so big that there were parts that they never even went into. That was good. If Mob accidentally broken this bathroom then there would at least be another spare somewhere.
She hated it when she broke things.
She was bad when she broke things. Dad didn't like it when she broke things. Dad got mad at her and stopped talking to her when she broke things…and that's just the worst. She doesn't like that, being ignored by dad, but it wasn't as bad as what dad did to Sho….what he would do to Sho when he found out that Sho had upset her to the point of-
She's so upset she thinks she sees dad's aura. Red. Red and upset.
But no, that's not dad's aura. Dad's aura is a darker red, and it had some yellow in it too, this aura was just bright red. Like mom's lipstick. Bright red without a trace of yellow….like the aura that she had seen before. Just like before as quick as it came it was gone…
But at least Mob knew, now, where that aura had come from.