The point of a door was to open.

There were a lot of doors in the castle. Mob and Sho had tried, once, to count them all but they ended up getting too scared. That had been years ago though, when they had been three and four. Now they were six and seven, much too old to get scared by their own house. Well it was kind of scary…but not if they were together. The house was big and they were small but together they were big.

They could always stand on each other's shoulders and pretend to be a giant if they ran into something scary.

Though that one might have just worked on bears. There weren't any bears in the house, they weren't stupid, but spirits were a whole other story. Mob could see spirits, she knew that they were real, and she knew that they could be evil, sometimes. She knew that she had to exorcise the evil ones…though she had not run into an evil spirit in ages….and there might not even have been any in the castle. Dad said that there weren't a lot of spirits because of his and Mob's auras…

But still.

"It doesn't open." Said Mob as she tried to turn the knob. They were bored. Mom was watching TV in the living room, she said that she was too tired to play with them, and dad was working in his office. When they got bored they got ideas. Usually those ideas involved playing with their toys or their Wii, Mob had gotten some new games for her birthday, or playing outside. Not this time. Mob had been playing on her own in Dad's office while he worked but then Sho had come in and dad said that if they were going to be underfoot then they had to get out…

…and then Sho had the idea that if dad didn't want them around then they wouldn't be around.

Which led them to going deeper into the castle than they normally went.

"It's a door. Doors are meant to open. If they didn't want us to open this door then they would have just built a wall here." Said Sho. He pushed on the door. It wouldn't move. This was so unfair. It was his house and he'd go wherever he wanted to go in it!

"But doors also have locks on them. When a door is locked then you aren't supposed to go in." said Mob as she felt the door with her powers. She could feel the lock…it was one of those same sorts of locks that some of the doors had. The ones that mom could open from the outside with a coin. Mob could have opened this door but…but when a door was locked you weren't supposed to open it.

She didn't want to make mom madder than she already was.

Not that mom had come out and told Mob to her face that she was mad at her. She just…seemed mad. She was always quiet towards Mob…and she stopped doing a lot of the things that she used to. She never brushed Mob's hair or let Mob brush hers, she stopped helping Mob get dressed in the morning, they never played dolls together anymore…

Mom was mad and Mob had no idea why.

"That rule is just for the bathroom and stuff so you don't see someone naked or something. There's no naked people on the other side of this door." Said Sho. No locked door could keep him out. He lived her and he would go wherever he felt like and he would do whatever he felt like. He was just as much a member of the family as anyone else. He was Suzuki Sho and this was Castle Suzuki and therefore the castle and everything in it were his even if he was an underfoot nuisance.

"No but the door is locked. Come on, there's lots of other rooms in this part of the house. Rooms that we've never even gone into." Said Mob tugging on Sho's shirt. He batted her hand away.

"Come on big sis, just undo the lock. I'd do it myself but I don't have a coin." Said Sho. He didn't also say that he didn't have powers. He didn't need to be reminded of the fact that he did not have powers. He did not need to be reminded of the fact that he had been born wrong and she had been born right. Dad had done a good enough job of that already.

"But what if there's something back there that we aren't supposed to see? I don't want mom to get mad at us. I'm not even sure if we're supposed to be back here in the first place. I know that we aren't supposed to go to the crawl space or the attic or the-" said Mob. The castle was big. Dad said that the castle was really old and had actually been built up over the years. He had made it even bigger when he got it, he said, because he wanted to have all of his most trusted people living with him. He changed his mind after Sho was born, he said, because he didn't want people near his family. They were his and his alone, he said, which felt more like he was talking about a family of dolls in Mob's opinion. People did not belong to other people. That wasn't how things worked at all…not that she was in any position to tell her dad how things did and did not work. She was the child and he was the adult. He told her how things were, not the other way around.

"Mom never gets mad at you….nobody ever gets mad at you…" said Sho. She was the favorite in the whole, entire, house. She used her powers in public and she only had to have late dinner. Dad didn't hit her and mom didn't yell at her or tell her that she expected better from her, which was so much worse than the yelling in a lot of ways, and it just wasn't fair…but he couldn't stay mad at her.

He shouldn't have gotten mad at her in the first place.

Because good little brothers did not get mad at their big sisters. Good little brothers were nice to their sisters and never wished such awful things on them. Sho had been such a bad little brother lately…and giving her a chocolate bar the day after White Day had not made up for it at all…

He wished that he knew what was wrong with him.

"Ok. I'll open the door." Said Mob even though she really didn't want to. She knew what would come next when Sho started talking like that. He would get sad about how dad was mean to him and how mom was always sick and tired all the time….and Mob was getting sick and tired of her being sick and tired…though she would never say something so awful to her own mother. She wouldn't even say such an awful thing to a stranger on the street let alone her own mother…

Mob shouldn't have felt like that in the first place.

She should have been happy that mom was well enough to get up and sit on the couch with them and watch TV until TV got boring. Until Mob got bored enough to go and spend time with dad. Until Sho had decided that he wanted to be included too even though Dad didn't like having him around, it seemed. Even though-

"It's a treasure room!" said Sho. Wow! Every castle had a treasure room, usually guarded by a dragon, and their castle was no exception! There were boxes stacked so high that they almost touched the ceiling! There was a layer of dust on everything, and it was getting up his nose, but this was still so cool! There were treasures untold right there under their very noses! And he had been the one to discover them!

Well big sis had helped….

"It looks more like a junk room to me." Said Mob. There were a few junk rooms in the castle. There was one that had her and Sho's baby stuff, the crib they slept in and their old toys and baby clothes and stuff, and there was another one where they put their Christmas tree and decorations when there weren't using it, and probably a whole bunch of other ones, too.

"You're just being a spoilsport. Come on, let's see what the treasures are!" said Sho as he picked a box and opened it. It didn't have any treasures, just a lot plates all wrapped up in newspaper…he was careful not to break them. He wondered why mom ordered new plates from Amazon even though they had a whole box of them. Cups too. Tea cups, mugs, saucers. All in such nice colors, too. Yellow and blue and green…but the brown ones were kind of ugly…

Maybe it was a junk room.

"You're right, Sho, it is a treasure room. Look what I found!" said Mob as she pulled a pretty hat out of a box. It was a straw hat like the one mom wore when it was sunny out except it had a white ribbon around it and a white veil, too….and…oh! There, at the bottom of the box, were some plastic white flowers. Mob picked them up and put them in the hat's ribbon.

"That's just a hat." Said Sho. Girls cared about the dumbest stuff. Treasures were things like gold coins and swords and armor and stuff. Not frilly hats…though he might have said the wrong thing. The right thing would not have been the mean thing…and he had said something mean again without even realizing it.

"You look pretty. It's like you're getting married or something." Said Sho. He had to be a good little brother, a better little brother, the best little brother that a sister could ask for!

"Thank you." Said Mob. She left the hat on. She felt nice wearing it. Even if it was too big and covered her eyes just a bit. Also it was dusty…but that was ok. A little dust never hurt. Maybe they could clean the dust out of this room and make it into a proper treasure room. They could take all of these treasures out of their boxes and make a treasure museum or something.

"What do you think all of this stuff is?" asked Sho as he opened another box. This smelled nice. He dipped his head in and breathed deep…which was a bad move because he immediately started sneezing.

"Bless you." Said Mob as she looked in the box that Sho had stuck his head in. There were candles and incense sticks in there…and a picture of two people she had never seen before. They were smiling in the picture. There were two of them. One of the people, the man, looked Japanese. The woman didn't look Japanese at all but she might have been half Japanese. Half Japanese people were still Japanese even if they had red hair and blue eyes. Like Sho. He was half Japanese and he had red hair and blue eyes and he was still just as Japanese as Mob was…well she was half Japanese too but she just got all the Japanese genes mom had said. She picked up the picture…and then immediately put it down. That picture…it did not want to be touched.

"It's treasures, like I said before." Said Sho even though a lot of this stuff didn't feel like treasures at all. This box smelled nice, it had candles and incense and stuff, but those were not treasures. Neither were pictures of strangers. Some of them were so old they weren't even in color.

"Sho. Don't." said Mob. She took his hand before he could touch another one of the pictures. They did not want to be touched. That was the feeling that Mob was getting and she decided to listen to it.

"They're in my house so they're my pictures and I'll touch them if I want to." Said Sho. She was not dad. She did not get to tell him what to touch and what not to touch. He'd touch whatever he felt like!

"They don't want to be touched." Said Mob

"They're pictures, they don't want anything." Said Sho. He moved his hand out of her grasp. He tried to reach down and look at the pictures, there were a few in there, but the box closed itself and then slid across the room. A stack of boxes lifted itself up and the box he had been looking through went to the bottom of the stack.

"I said not to." Said Mob even though she wasn't supposed to use her powers inside the house…but dad liked it when she used her powers…but mom didn't…but that box had felt wrong and she had been protecting Sho and protecting Sho made it ok.

"Fine. You take that side of the room and I'll take this side if that's the way you're going to be." Said Sho. She was acting just like dad. She was acting like just because she had powers she could be the boss of him. Well she couldn't. He wasn't afraid of her…and he had no reason to be. She was his sister and she….she would never hurt him…

So why had he felt like she would?

"Ok. That's a good idea. That way we can look through everything faster." Said Mob. She decided to give him some space. His aura was showing again. That wasn't a good thing at all. She knew that sometimes he got upset, she could be upsetting, but she had been doing it for his own good. Those pictures hadn't wanted to be touched and Sho needed to understand that he couldn't just do whatever he wanted. Sometimes it was better to do what you were told.

All the times, actually.

Mob did what Sho told her to do and she looked through the boxes on her side of the room. She found a lot of neat stuff. Some old dolls, pretty ones made of porcelain and in pretty dresses, as well as ones that were in pretty kimonos and didn't look like they were for playing with. She also found pretty silk kimonos. She wanted to try them on but they were adult sized…and also she had never worn a kimono before. Besides, she had this hat.

It felt weird.

Not bad just…weird.

"Can I look at these pictures, your majesty? Or are you going to freak out again?" asked Sho as he held up a photo album. It was big and dusty but might have had something cool inside. Big sis walked over to him and touched it. She closed her eyes and for a moment he could see her colors. Well he could always see the pink and the blue but they were never so…loud…if that made any sense at all. At least he was getting better at seeing colors…

"These feel fine." Said Mob. These pictures didn't feel like they wanted anything, which was exactly how pictures were supposed to feel. Pictures were supposed to feel like nothing at all. Mob didn't know a lot but she did know that when things started feeling like they had thoughts and feelings it was a bad sign.

"These are so old…there aren't even any colors." Said Sho as he flipped through the pictures. These were so old the people were still wearing kimonos and stuff like in the dramas that mom liked. He was so glad he got to wear pants. Anything without legs looked like it was just way too much trouble.

"Maybe they're the people who lived in this house before." Said Mob as they flipped through the pictures. There were a lot of people in there…people who were probably dead. These didn't have any colors at all and if they didn't have color it meant that they were old. One of the pictures had a kid in it…a kid like her…who was probably either old or dead…

One day Mob would be an old person and then she would die, also, because everyone died eventually…so she would die….

And so would Sho.

And mom would die and dad would die and everyone she ever knew would be dead and all that would be left would be pictures.

Mob decided to stop thinking about that.

"We've always lived in the castle." Said Sho. He didn't want to think about who might have lived in the castle before. The people in these pictures…this was an old photo album…the kids in these pictures must have all been grown up or even dead by now. He would grow up one day. He'd grow up to be mean and boring like dad…and then his eyebrows would look like caterpillars. Then he would die.

He didn't want any of that.

"But someone must have lived in the castle before us. Dad said that he bought this house. This isn't where he's from. Someone had this house before it became Castle Suzuki." Said Mob. She wondered where dad had come from. He never said. Mom never said where she had come from, either. Was it a secret? When she became an adult would she have to keep secrets from her kids, too?

"Well it doesn't matter because it's our castle and it will always be our castle." Said Sho with a shrug. He didn't want to talk about that or think about it. It didn't matter where these pictures had come from or who the people in them were. They were just pictures.

"Sho, don't flip the pages so fast." Said Mob. One of the pictures came out. It was of an old person with a pretty kimono on. She looked like she could have been someone's grandmother…not that Mob had any experience with those. She seemed nice, though, from what Mob could tell.

"There's something written on the back of that." Said Sho

"Suzuki….I know that one, it's our family name…but this one looks like mom's name. Just the Masa part, though, not the ami…not Masami…" said Mob as she read the back of the picture. Sho took it from her and tried to read it himself even though Mob knew that he knew that she was the better reader.

"See, I told you that we've always lived in the castle. These are Suzuki's and we're Suzuki's so that means that a Suzuki has always lived in the castle." Said Sho

"But dad said that he bought the castle before we were born." Said Mob

"Doesn't matter. These are Suzuki's and we're Suzuki's." said Sho

"But not everyone named Suzuki is related. Like how when we were at the pool that one time and we thought that those big kids were calling us but really they were calling their friend who was also named Suzuki." Said Mob

"Nope. We're always lived in the castle." Said Sho. This castle was theirs and always had been and always would be. This would be their castle from back in the shogun days all the way until people were just heads in jars and ate fish food and had robot bodies.

"Ok." Said Mob. She went back to looking through boxes. She did not want to fight with him about this or anything. She knew what dad had told her and if Sho didn't believe her then he could ask dad. She knew that dad would never have lied to her. Sho was just being Sho, that was all, he just didn't like to be wrong. He and dad were alike like that.

She wanted to believe him, though.

About the people in those pictures also being part of the Suzuki family. The one they were a part of. There were a lot of people in Japan called Suzuki and mom explained, back when they were little, that not everyone in the world that had the same family name as them was related to them. That wasn't how it worked. Back in the olden days there were just only so many family names to go around. Not everyone had one, too, just the fancy people. Well one day other people decided that they wanted to be fancy so they picked last names too.

They weren't related to anyone who didn't live in the castle.

The other kids talked about their cousins and grandparents and aunts and uncles and stuff…but she and Sho didn't have any of those. They just had each other. They had each other and mom and dad and that was enough…even though sometimes it felt like it wasn't. Mob wished that she had other people in her family to know…to look like. Mom and dad were both half Japanese. That made her and Sho half Japanese too…even though her teacher had laughed when she said that she was half Japanese…because she didn't look like she was half Japanese. She looked like everyone else…outside of the family.

She wondered if any of the people in the pictures looked like her.