Mob missed dad.

He had gone on another one of his trips. He said that he would be back soon. That should have been good. It should have made her not miss him because he would be back soon…but she had no idea what 'soon meant'. A day? A week? A month? Month months? It was hard to tell with dad. The best thing to do was just to go with it, though, because dad didn't like it when they questioned him. He didn't like a lot of things and it was their job, her and Sho's, to not do the things that made him mad. They had to be good like that.

Being good was very important.

Good and sweet. Mom always said that she was her sweet girl. Dad said that she was a good daughter. That was his nickname for her, Daughter. That was kind of weird, dad said that nicknames weren't ok, but then he went and called her Daughter all the time. She didn't see how being called Daughter was that much different from being called Mob. Neither of those were her real name, Shigeko. Daughter was just like Mob. Not a name but instead a description of what she was. When she was at school she was Mob, she was quiet and blended in to the background and there was nothing special about her. At home she was Daughter because, well, she was the daughter. She was the daughter and Sho was the son.

Dad called Sho Boy, too.

Which was a lot like being called Mob. There was no description there. Nicknames were about some kind of description of the person, like the kid in her class that everyone called Horsey because his teeth were really big, or Worm Eater, the kid who got caught eating worms…boys were weird like that. Mob was called Mob because she looked and acted like a background character. Sho was called Boy because he was a boy…Son was a better nickname because it at least described his place in their family.

Dad never used their names.

Mob had asked mom, once, if dad knew their names. It would have made sense if he had forgotten, the way he never used them, because at this point it may have been awkward to ask. What would he even say? Hey, kids, I forgot your names? He had certainly been away long enough to forget their names. It would have made sense. Mom just said that she was being ridiculous. Of course dad knew their names, he was their dad. He knew their names and their ages and everything about them. He was their dad and he loved them. Even if he didn't know how to show it.

He really didn't, sometimes.

Like sometimes he said nice things, like she was a good Daughter and Sho was a good drawer, but then in the very next sentence he would tell Sho that he was being a disappointment and then he would tell her that he expected better from her. He expected her to be able to control her powers, to be able to help Sho with his powers, to help mom out more, to just be better. A better person. A good Daughter. Mob was trying, she really was, but it was hard. Dad wanted so much…or maybe she was just capable of so little. That might have been it. She might have just been incapable…incompetent….like he called the people who worked for him.

Useless.

Dad said that he was going on this trip to deal with some useless people. He said that he had left someone in charge of something very important and they had proved themselves to be a bunch of useless incompetents and now he had to go fix what they broke. Mob hoped that it didn't take too long. Sometimes fixing thigs took a long time, like when she and Sho accidentally broke a plate and had to glue it back together. She hoped that dad came back soon. She didn't care if he came back with presents, she just wanted dad back.

She missed him.

He wasn't so bad…to her. He had even bene really nice to Sho, too. He took one of Sho's drawings, it was a drawing of the castle, and put it up on his office wall. Mom was always the one to put their pictures up. It was nice of dad to do something like that. Very nice of him. He did it, he said, because Sho wrote the title in kanji. Suzuki Family Castle. Dad was proud of him, too, even if he didn't say it. Dad was proud of them for things besides powers, Sho thought that he wasn't but Mob knew better, she had known dad for a whole extra year after all. Since she was a year older…wait…

If she was a year older, a whole year older, then her birthday would have been on December first of the previous year…

Her birthday was in May. May was…one, two, three, four, five months after December…so she wasn't a whole year older…well their ages did overlap….huh. She had never thought about it before. Mom and dad must have been in a big hurry to have another kid then. Mob had asked mom, once, why she had a little brother. A lot of families only had one kid. Some had two. Some had no kids at all. A man on the TV said that there weren't enough kids to replace the old people when they died. She wondered why some people had kids, some didn't, some had a lot, some had one, some had girls, some had boys, and some had one of each.

Mom just said that every family was different.

She said that they had Sho so that she would have a friend to grow up with. That was weird. Little brothers were not friends. Little brothers were their own thing. Maybe. Mob wouldn't have known. She didn't have any friends, not really, because she never went to people's houses and they never went to hers. She went places with mom and Sho, of course, and she played with kids at the park and at school and stuff but she didn't have the sorts of friends that the other kids had….and she didn't really know how to feel about that. She wanted friends but Sho was her little brother…and she should have been happy with who she had…

Plus dad said that he didn't like it when she and Sho played with the other kids.

He said that once he had the world he'd find a whole bunch of people like them and then they'd have people they could hang out with and stuff. Other psychics. Other espers. Dad said that psychics were the best kind of people…but Mob didn't agree. Where did that leave mom? She didn't have any psychic powers. She had mom powers, of course, like being able to look out the window and tell if it was cold outside or the ability to put her hand on their foreheads to tell if they had temperatures, but she didn't have psychic powers or anything like that…but she was still their mom and she was just as good as anyone else.

Mob didn't understand dad sometimes.

"I don't understand your father sometimes….I swear…." Said Mom. Mob looked up from what she was doing. Math homework for school. Sums. Sho was in the living watching one of his shows. That one was a live feed of a bunch of hamsters in a tank. She wondered if the hamsters were uncomfortable being stared at by the whole world all the time. She'd ask Sho later. He was lucky, his school didn't give homework.

"What's wrong, mom? Do you want me to lift that box for you?" asked Mob as mom carried a big box into the kitchen and put it on the table. It could have been presents from dad. She hoped that it was presents from dad. She didn't ask though, that would have been greedy. Plus she had to ask how mom was feeling. That was the polite thing to do when talking to mom. Mom said that it was important to take an interest in what other people were thinking and feeling. Dad was different. He got annoyed, he said, when people went prying into how he felt and stuff. He said that it was nobody's business but his own how he felt.

"No, I've got it…your father sent us…I have no idea what he sent us." Said mom. Then she muttered some stuff that mob couldn't hear. Mom went to get the kitchen scissors. Mob got up and went over to the box. It smelled like cardboard. She didn't know what she expected. Maybe she expected it to smell of wherever dad had gone to. He said that he had to go to America again. Mob wondered what America smelled like. She wondered what Japan smelled like. Did Japan have a smell and she was just used to it? Was it like going to a new classroom and it smelled funny but then you got used to it? Were houses like that? Did her house have a smell? Was it like how mom said that they had to wash their clothes and take baths when they came back from the animal shelter because they smelled funny?

"We've got presents!" said Sho. He ran in from the living room and bumped into the table. His socks slipped on the floor. Mom had just waxed it. The floor was always slippery after it was waxed. Mob wished that she had been fast enough to catch him. She caught her glass of strawberry milk, though, because it had fallen off the table and was about to hit the floor that mom had just cleaned and waxed.

"Shigeko. Not in the house." Said Mom. Mob reached over with her hand and put her glass back on the table like normal. The rules were different when dad was gone. Dad liked it when they used their powers. Mom didn't. She wanted them to do things the regular way…and Mob didn't get it at all.

Also Sho was not supposed to run in the house.

But mom didn't say anything….and that was ok. That was fine. Sho got punished enough by dad anyway. He needed someone to be nice to him. If mom being nice to Sho meant that she was mean, not even mean, to Mob then that was fine.

"What'd dad get us? What'd he get us?" asked Sho. He jumped up and down with his hands on the table so he could get up higher. That was a trick that he wasn't supposed to do. That was how the coffee table in the living room got messed up. Mom didn't tell him to stop, then, either, but that was ok. Dad was always telling Sho what he was doing wrong. Dad was always on Sho's back so it made sense that when he was gone Mom wouldn't be on his back. The reverse was true, too. When dad was around he was almost never on Mob's back. Therefore it made sense that mom was on her back like that. It was only fair.

"Give me a second to get this box opened…he always uses so much tape…or at least his people do." Said Mom. She meant dad's workers. He had a lot of them and they were all incompetent, he said. Mob didn't think that he should have been calling the people who worked for them dumb. You weren't supposed to call anyone names, actually, because it was mean. Dad didn't know that he was being mean, though, because he didn't understand the difference between mean and nice. Mob wished that she could just sit him down and explain to him that words could hurt…but he would have probably gotten mad at her if she did that.

"Can I have the tape when you're done, mom?" asked Sho

"For what, honey?" asked Mom

"Taping things." Said Sho

"Fine, but don't get it in anyone's hair or eyes." Said Mom. She smiled when she said that. She had been in a good mood since dad had left. Maybe because she wasn't sick anymore. She had started to get better in the days leading up to when dad left, she took them to the pool and to the park and even to the animal shelter where they groomed the cats…those cats had no liked being groomed….maybe because the brush was pointy…but it had still been fun. It had been a while since mom had done anything fun for them. She had even been sick on Christmas….

But now she was ok.

She was smiling and she had made her hair all pretty and she had makeup on and she was wearing her pretty dress, the one with the birds on it, and that meant that she was better. Mob wished that dad could have been there to see that mom had gotten better. He worried about her. He never said that he worried about her, he never talked about his feelings, but he asked Mob if mom had been sick a lot, what her symptoms were, things like that. He asked a lot. That meant that he was worried. Because he loved her, probably.

Mom and dad were in love and that was not gross no matter what Sho said.

Even if they did do very gross things to one another because that was how adults showed love…ick…

"But the world looks cook through tape vision…and my eyelashes grew back." Said Sho

"No hair, no eyes…ok?" said Mom

"Ok…" said Sho. Mom reached down and touched his hair. Sho was happier now that dad was gone, too. Mom had less rules, he said, and she never looked at him like he was gum. Mob didn't know what was wrong with gum. Gum came in a million flavors, was fun to chew on, and even more fun to blow bubbles with.

"Ok, let's see what dad sent us this time from…New York City, New York, U.S.A. Well they're creative over there, now aren't they?" asked Mom with a smile.

"No, because they used the same name twice. At least I don't think so." Said Mob. Dad said that foreign people were weird but they thought that Japanese people were weird too so it was all even. He said that it was important to understand the world and the people in it if they were going to rule it. Mob didn't want to rule the world but she did like the foreign candy and snacks that dad sent some times.

"Shigeko…you're so adorable…and sweet." Said Mom. She didn't pat Mob on the head. Mob didn't mind. That just meant that there would be more head pats for Sho. Sho needed them more than she did. Sometimes he cried at night when he thought that she was asleep. She tried, sometimes, to go to his bed while he cried and to make him feel better but then he just kicked her out and told her to mind her own business. She stopped doing that after they got too loud and woke dad up and then he got mad at Sho for being quarrelsome, which meant starting fights, even though they weren't fighting at all…

Mob pretended to sleep, now, when Sho cried at night.

He was happy now, though, which was good. Mom was pulling out smaller boxes from the big box. The boxes had their names on them in kanji and English. They had to learn those characters too. The English ones. Dad said that the only languages you really needed were Japanese, Mandarin, English, and maybe Hindi. That was a lot of languages. They had just started English in school and it was already really hard.

"Ok looks like…oh, chocolates. Ok, Shigeko and I got Valentine's day chocolates…I have no idea why…" said Mom

"Maybe dad is going to be gone for White Day, too, and wanted to make sure that we got our candy." Said Mob. That would have made sense. Sometimes dad's presents didn't make it in time for holidays. Shipping things from overseas was hard, he said, and also sometimes he just forgot. He didn't say that he forgot, mom did, last year when they got their Christmas gifts in February.

"Can I have some?" asked Sho

"Ok. You can have half of mine." Said Mob

"But not if they're the gross kind. I hate the gross kind. Who puts fruit in chocolate?" asked Sho. Mob shrugged. Sho thought that the weirdest things were gross. Like orange juice. He said that citrus tasted gross and made his mouth itch. Mob didn't say anything, of course, she was the same way with cilantro. Well it didn't make her mouth itch but it did taste like soap. So gross.

"Lets see…oh, he sent a note. According to your father there is no White Day in the country he's in and he knows that we like chocolates. Also he says, once again, not to get him candy because he hates sweet foods…and he wishes us all well….and he says that he'll be back when he's back." Said Mom

"That doesn't make sense. Of course he'll be back when he's back. Where else would he be?" asked Mob. She didn't get it one bit…but she didn't get a lot of things.

"That means he doesn't know when he's coming back." Said Sho. Mob nodded. Sho really was better at this than she was. A lot better.

"He'll be back eventually…now let's see what else he got us!" said Mom. Then she got a bunch more stuff from the box. Sho got citrus candy, dad forgot that citrus was the thing that Sho didn't like, but mob traded him all of her chocolate for his citrus gummies and hard candies. Mom got a pretty bottle of perfume. She didn't put any on, she must have been saving it for a special occasion. Not that they had many of those. Or maybe she was just saving it so it was nice like the others. Mom collected perfume, she had a whole shelf of it in her room. Dad was always getting her perfume and stuff so she must have liked it.

Dad sent Sho stuff too.

More artist's pencils. Sho had a bunch but he could always use more, he said. He was happy about what she he got. Mob was happy about what she got. She got a doll that looked like her. Dad said that, well he said in a note, that there was a place that could make dolls that looked like you. He said that he passed it on his way to where he was going so he sent someone with a picture of her and now she had a doll that looked just like her.

It had long black hair in braids like hers.

It had brown eyes like hers.

It's eyes were shaped like hers were.

It even had on clothes that looked like her school uniform.

Dad said that it was a friend for her. He always called her dolls that, friends for her. He either sent her a new doll shipped in a box from another country or he handed it to her himself. 'Here Shigeko, a friend for you' was what he would say. He said that they were good for 'modeling social interaction' too. Mob, if she had been a meaner person, would have said that she wanted other kids for friends, not dolls, but that would have been a mean and ungrateful thing to say to her dad. He didn't have to get them anything and it really was a nice doll.

Not creepy at all.

Sho said that it was creepy but Mob didn't agree. To agree would have been ungrateful. This doll…she was grateful for it. Even if it felt like…like it was looking at her…maybe dad should have kept it. Maybe he would be able to remember her name if he had a doll that looked like him. Maybe he should have had dolls made of her and Sho so then maybe he could remember things about them. Like their names. Or that Mob had dolls already and that Sho hated citrus and liked crayons better than pencils because you could get more color from a crayon or that mom already had a million bottles of pretty perfumes….

But saying those things would have been ungrateful. Dad didn't like it when they were ungrateful.

Mob should have been grateful. There were kids in this world who didn't have any dolls at all. Any dads at all. She stuffed all of her bad feelings down, conceal don't feel like from Frozen, except she wasn't going to run away to live on the mountain of ice…but she did feel like she was going to maybe explode….but she still stuffed all of her mean and ungrateful feelings down.

She had to be sweet.

She had to be a good daughter.

She had to miss her dad.