On Give Me Candy Day people were supposed to wear costumes and get candy.

Mob was not wearing a costume.

But people kept giving her candy so she was not going to correct them. Correct them any more than she had been before, anyway.

"But I'm not a-" said Mob as one of dad's workers, not the copy paste aura guys but a different guy, tossed some candy into her bucket. Fukuda had given her and Sho buckets and told them to go around saying 'Trick or Treat'.

Mob didn't get it.

"Don't say anything, they might stop giving us candy." Whispered Sho in Japanese. The people here mostly spoke English, a weird kind of English he had trouble understanding, but he did understand candy. Mom never let them have candy that often back when they still had a mom. Now they could have all the candy they wanted, whatever they needed the weird aura guys got for them if they asked, but this was fun.

He liked Give Me Candy Day.

"But I'm not a princess, this is just my normal clothes." Said Mob. She was in her normal clothes, a new Elsa dress since her old one was too small, and Sho was in his pajamas. The ones that made him look like a dog if he put the hood up. Mob did not understand this country….were they in the same country? It had been a train ride this time, not a plane ride, but it had been a long one….the people here still spoke English, though, even if they talked funny.

This was a weird place.

"You got that at the Disney store, I think it's a costume if it comes from the Disney store….and stop complaining! They might stop giving us candy." Said Sho. He liked this place. Sho had no idea where he was, dad called it a compound, but he liked it. Fukuda said that on this day kids went around in costumes asking for candy. Dad said not to be underfoot but this was fine because it was the point of the holiday. At least that was what big sis had said and she was in charge so therefore she would be the one in trouble if dad had a problem with this.

He didn't know who he was kidding. He was always the one in trouble.

"But we shouldn't lie to people…and also I feel weird getting candy from strangers. Mo-we aren't supposed to take candy from strangers." Said Mob. Mom always said that they were never supposed to take candy from strangers. She was not supposed to mention mom, though, even though she sometimes wanted to. She knew that mom would not have like this holiday. She said that candy was for special occasions…which this was…but not in Japan. Mom was in Japan so she must not have…well maybe she wasn't in Japan. Mob didn't know.

She shook her bucket.

That was a lot of candy. Fukuda had gotten them buckets that looked like scary pumpkins. Well Sho's looked more like a pumpkin because his was orange. Her pumpkin was pink because she was a girl. Fukuda even said that he got her a pink one because she was a girl and she liked pink. Sometimes she wondered if she liked pink or people just told her that she liked pink. She wasn't going to complain, though, because that would have been rude and they were not supposed to be rude. Dad had said so. They were supposed to be on their best behavior because a lot of important people were here and while they had nothing to prove, dad had said, he still didn't want them to embarrass him or anything like that. Mob figured that this was ok because it was a holiday and Fukuda had said that this was ok. He had been walking with them until he was summoned.

Summoned was when Dad sent copy paste aura guys to find you because you weren't answering your phone.

"We aren't taking it from them, they're giving it to us, and they aren't strangers anyway. They work for dad which means that they work for us and since they work for us then it's ok for us to take all of their candy." Said Sho. Big sis could be so weird sometimes. Candy was awesome. She was trying to be mom again. She was always trying to be mom. He wished that he could have gone off with Fukuda. Before dad sent people to drag him away Fukuda said that if they split up they could cover more ground if they split up, but then big sis was all worried about being on her own.

Then Fukuda had to go, anyway, so it was just him and her.

But, hey, more candy for them that way. Big sis needed to stop trying to be a grown up and just have fun once in a while. Things were better if you kept on having fun, kept on moving, because that way you couldn't think bad thoughts. Like how it had been a year since you last saw your mom. How you hadn't been home in a year. How you hadn't been able to understand what the people around you were saying for a year. Stuff like that.

This was fun. The key to it all was to have fun.

"Um…ok. If you say so, Sho." said Mob. She reached over to take Sho's hand but he pulled it away. She let her hand hang there, that had hurt her feelings, but she didn't say anything. She didn't have to. Sho sighed and rolled his eyes and held her hand. She knew that she was too big to need to have her hand held but she had been feeling sort of…sad. Sometimes she just got sort of sad.

It was because she had been thinking about mom.

Well that and everything else. It was hard being so far from home. They never had holidays like this in Japan. Going up to people and asking for candy…the whole thing felt kind of weird. Kind of very weird. Sho didn't mind it but Sho didn't mind anything. Maybe he was better at getting used to things like this because he was younger than her, or maybe because he was les Japanese than she was. That was why he didn't miss home as much as she did, because he was less Japanese, even though they were both half Japanese.

Well mom had been half Japanese and dad had been half Japanese and two halves made a whole so therefore Mob got all of the Japanese parts of mom and dad and Sho got all of the parts of mom and dad that weren't Japanese.

At least that was how Mob saw it. She didn't see herself in either of her parents. Well she had having trouble remembering mom's face but she had pictures of mom on her tablet…even though she really should have deleted those like dad told her to….she didn't look like mom at all. Or dad. Sho looked like both of them. She didn't look like either of them. Maybe she looked like some of those people, the dead ones, who's pictures were in the Treasure Room back at the old house…their house…not that she was going to go back there and check any time soon.

They were never going home again.

Not back to the old house and not back to Japan either, probably. Mob didn't know. She didn't decide where they went and where they lived. That was up to dad and dad said that it was up to what needed to be done. Mob sometimes wished that it was up to her. She would have gone somewhere with an amusement park or something fun like that if it was up to her. Even the last place that they had lived had been more fun than this. There had been lots of trees with pretty colored leaves and also she and Sho had picked a bunch of apples. Fukuda had taken them. It had been fun.

Until they got separated.

That had been scary. So scary that Mob had dropped her apples…and then they had started to float…and then she had run away because she was losing control of her powers and she was not supposed to. She ran and hid behind an apple tree, the trees were kind of small so that people could pick apples from them without having to climb up, and then the tree had started getting bigger which had made her even more scared so she ran some more….

And then she had found Sho.

And she had took his hand and she hadn't let go of it for the entire day. She got more apples but that didn't matter, only being with her little brother mattered. Being separated from Sho was scary. Especially when they were at a new place….which was all the time. This was a new place too but it wasn't as fun as the apple picking place. It wasn't much fun at all. It was a bunch of buildings in the middle of nowhere.

Dad said it was a compound.

He said that this was where people went to become awakened. That was why some of the people had weird copy paste auras. He said that those were artificial espers. Artificial meant not real. Not real in the sense that they hadn't been born with their powers, not in the sense that they themselves were robots or something. People came to this place to get powers…people who hadn't been born with powers…

Dad told her not to tell Sho.

Because Sho had powers already. Sho sort of had powers, anyway. He could move things without touching them but only when he got super mad. He could make his aura show, too, but only when he got super mad. He was kind of like her. She lost control when she got super mad or super scared or super anything. Sho just showed his powers when he got super mad or super scared or super anything. He was like her but also not like her.

Sometimes it felt like there was no one in the whole wide world like her except for dad.

"I love this country. Even if people talk weird and stuff I love it here." Said Sho as they got more candy. Some people had bags of little candies with them, others just had the big ones from the machines, but candy was candy. Except for the guys who gave them citrus candy. Those people could go jump off the roof. If he had citrus he would die…not that he was about to tell anyone that. Dad said that if people found out that citrus could kill him then dad's enemies would use that to kill Sho and hurt dad.

And Sho did not want to almost die again.

That was why Fukuda had been with them. He was with them a lot more now than he had been before. That was because citrus was evil, like Sho had been saying for his entire life, and if he died then it would be bad. Fukuda was there in case he accidentally ate any citrus. It hadn't happened since the last time, big sis had even stopped drinking orange juice and dad had even stopped eating grapefruit, but it could happen again.

Pretty soon, too, if people didn't stop giving him tropical flavored candies.

He didn't know if it was all citrus that would kill him or just real fruits. Fukuda said that unless they were going to try stuff until he found out what killed him, not something that anyone wanted to do, then they would have to either avoid all citrus or go to a hospital and figure it out. They weren't allowed to go to hospitals so Fukuda was just supposed to be near them all the time. That was why dad had brought them with to this place.

Originally, he said, he was going to leave them in a place called Florida, which was a part of America, and he and big sis were supposed to live at Disney Land or the Ocean until dad settled the stuff that he had to settle here. That sounded a lot more fun than what they had been doing for the past few days. Nothing. A whole lot of nothing. There wasn't even a yard that they could play in. It was too hot here, too, even though it was supposed to be fall in this country. They had spent the past few days playing with toys, dad just bought them new ones for every place they stayed so they didn't have to pack, and playing videogames and also fighting even though they weren't supposed to…and Sho hated it when he turned into a jerk….

This was more fun than staying in their apartment.

But it would end and then they would have to go back in there and play videogames and stuff until they were bored. They weren't supposed to be underfoot but aside from school dad didn't give them anything to do. Sho hoped that he finished up with whatever it was that he was doing here so they could go somewhere fun. Like that Florida place. Even if it was sunny, which meant icky gross sunscreen, at least there would be something for him and big sis to do.

There might even be other kids.

Not that he and big sis were supposed to play with the other kids. No, they weren't, but sometimes they played near the other kids. Big games of tag at parks. Multiplayer games at arcades. Making sandcastles on the beach. Stuff like that. Fun stuff with other kids where he could pretend that he was allowed to have friends that weren't his big sis.

He loved his big sis.

But he wanted more friends. Friends who were boys, like him, because only playing with a girl got boring. Even an un-birthday tea party on the ceiling could be boring with big sis. It had been fun the first time but then she was all on him to stop spilling the tea and to use his manners and then she tried to get him to put on one of her princess costume dresses and that had been the very last straw. It was more fun to play his sorts of games. Jumping on their beds doing acrobatics, making forts, having wars, pretending to be dogs or cats or wolves or even fish when they took a bath. Fun stuff. Boy games. Games that girls hated.

Sisters could be so boring sometimes.

"I like it too…but not this place, not really. I mean I like candy but this place is kind of…creepy." Said Mob. Everything was grey and it was kind of dark and most of the people around them had these weird uniforms on. The copy paste aura people had those uniforms on. The other people, the ones with scars, looked like they were in costumes and Mob would have thought that they were participating in Give Me Candy Day if they hadn't been dressing like that every single day that she and Sho had been there.

"I'm not afraid of anything." Said Sho. This place was creepy. This place was so creepy that he kind of wanted to hide, sometimes, because without Fukuda it was kind of…big feeling. It felt big and it made him feel small. Not that he was going to say anything. There was candy. Candy was good and getting the candy was fun and, ok, the whole place felt kind of creepy and it felt weird being in his pajamas when not in bed and it felt way too big, too, but that was fine.

There was candy and candy made everything better.

"I know, Sho, I know. I didn't say that you were afraid I just said that I thought that it was creepy." Said Mob. They had been walking for a while. There weren't a lot of people around here. She could feel auras, a lot of them, but not too many that were close by. That was an important skill, dad had said, being able to find people based on their auras. It was easy to practice here. There were a lot of different auras here.

"It's not that bad." Said Sho. He stood by what he said even when something that sounded a lot like a ghost moaning, or at least what he thought a ghost would have sounded like, reverberated down the hallway. He felt something…weird. Like something reached inside of him and stirred his insides around like soup. That was…he hadn't liked that at all….

Big sis covered her eyes.

"It just went from creepy to scary." Said Mob. She had seen…she didn't know what she had just seen. There had been a loud sound, like someone being hurt or something, and then a flash of red. She covered her eyes but she could still see part of it sticking around. That was because she wasn't seeing it with her eyes, she was seeing it with her aura.

Someone ran past them.

A lab coat person. Mob didn't know if they were doctors or scientists. Sho didn't care, he said, he only cared about that fact that they didn't give them any candy. They didn't even seem to notice her and Sho. No, they just walked past them really fast. Mob turned to walk away.

Well she tried to.

But Sho was holding her hand tight and he was not moving.

"Sho, come on." Said Mob as she tried to tug on him. She could have moved him with her powers but that would have been mean and she did not want to be mean to her little brother. Even though she wanted nothing more than to get out of there. This place…it did not feel right at all.

"Where are you going? Come on, something's happening over there. Don't you want to see what it was?" asked Sho. He wanted to see where all of those people were going. He had seen…something. He didn't know what he had seen but it had been something and he wanted to know what it was and what was happening and also this place was boring, mostly, and this had been the first interesting thing that had happened in a while.

He wanted to take a look.

But she was still holding on to him.

"No. Not really. I want to go back and eat our candy. Well trade our candy first. I'll give you all of my chocolate for your citrus stuff. I'll even give you my chocolate taffies, too, and my black licorice." Said Mob

"Yuck. The only one who likes black licorice is dad. Give it to him." said Sho

"Ok, I will. Let's go back and we'll organize our candy and then make our trades and then we can watch Zootopia again. Or maybe something else? Like Totoro? Or maybe Castle in the Sky again? Or something new? Like I saw this movie that looked interesting about these magical girls and-" said Mob

"You go back and do all of that if you want to but I'm going to check it out." Said Sho. He shook his hand free of hers and started walking.

"But Sho! Um….I can't eat any of my candy until we trade. That way I won't end up eating something that you wanted." Said Mob. She did not want to go towards the…whatever that was. There were spirits there…or at least one. She was no stranger to seeing spirits. Out in the world they all just sort of hung out. In places like this, though, they were rare. They didn't like to hang out around powerful espers, dad had said, and that was why there had never been any in the Castle when they had lived there.

She saw a spirit.

And then it was exorcised.

"I like peanut butter cups, things with nuts, and thing with caramel….oh! And red m&m's. Save me all of those and I'll save you my citrus taffy, citrus hard candies, and those tiny lollipops you like that don't even have any gum inside." Said Sho as he started walking. The moaning had turned into screaming…and he had a bad feeling about all of this….but he had to see. He had to see and he had to know.

This place was creepy.

He was kind of scared.

He heard big sis' shoes slapping against the ground. She had a new pair of princess shoes and these were even louder than the ones she had been wearing before. He and dad agreed on something, for once, her shoes were super annoying and girls were weird for wearing shoes like that. He hoped that when he grew up and some girl caught him she didn't wear weird shoes or anything like that. Not that he liked thinking about gross stuff like that but it was nice thinking about how he was totally not going to die, either of eating citrus fruits or of whatever that noises and stuff was about, and he was totally going to not die and grow up and marry some girl who would probably want to kiss and also fix gross food for dinner and make him take baths and all the stuff that big sis did.

"Sho!...Please, wait for me." Said Mob as she caught up to him. She didn't want to go there, towards the noise and the spirit, but she didn't want to be on her own either.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm here." Said Sho. He tried his best not to look scared. He tried his best to be brave. Big sis was a girl and it was ok for her to be afraid. Well dad said that it wasn't ok for either of them to be afraid but it was less not ok for big sis to be afraid because she was a girl and girls had a lot more trouble conquering their feelings and stuff, according to dad. He was the boy and he was going to be brave.

But if she wanted to hold hands then they would hold hands.

They held hands as they went the same way those lab coat guys went. There was something happening there. With every single step they took Sho felt the hairs on his arms and the back of his neck stand up. He had to run away, that was what this feeling was telling him, but he was not going to listen to his feelings. Like dad had said…even though he was the biggest jerk in the whole wide world most of the time…

"Say something." Said Mob as they walked towards wherever the commotion was. She could see it. Hear it. Feel it. A cacophony of auras. Shouting. A lot of it. Shouting and moaning and also there were some spirits, here, and they asked her to exorcise them…so she did. As they walked she exorcised the spirits…even though based on what dad had said there should not have been any spirits there at all….

"What?" asked Sho as they got to a place where the lights started to flicked and the hallway got narrower. There weren't any more of those lab coat guys. They were all in the other room. He could sort of see them through the windows. They were standing at some machines….and something in Sho said that this was a very bad place.

He could see a lot of red.

"I don't know, anything." Said Mob. She wanted to hear the voices of the living, not the dead, and not screaming. Ghosts and spirits didn't usually scare her…and dad would have been so ashamed if he knew how scared she was feeling now. He would have been mad and ashamed, too, if he knew how she was acting. Holding Sho's hand and shaking so much that her candy was rattling around in her plastic pumpkin bucket…

"My name is Suzuki Sho and I'm waking. I'm walking and my name is Suzuki Sho." said Sho as he held her hand way too tight. He was seeing…something. People? Around them? No, something else. Something that was both the same but different. It was like trying to watch steam. Like when they would be in the tub and the steam would go into the air and then vanish….

But scary.

Just a little scary.

"That's good. My name is Mob and I'm walking. I'm walking and my name is Mob." Said Mob. That helped, it did, hearing his voice and hers. She didn't know why it helped, just that it did, and she did not want to question it now.

"That's not your name. Dad says that you're not allowed to call yourself that anymore." Said Sho. Fighting made him feel better. Fighting made him less afraid. He didn't know why acting like a jerk made him feel better, only that it did, and he wished that there was some other way. She must have felt worse, now, and now he felt worse because he had made her feel worse.

"Fine, my name is Suzuki Shigeko and I'm walking. I'm walking and my name is Suzuki Shigeko." Said Mob. She did not want to fight. A fight would have just made everything worse. She wanted to turn back. She wanted to turn back and to turn away from this place. She was short but not so short that she couldn't see out of the wall windows.

She didn't like the look of those machines.

She didn't like the shouting that she could hear. It was ringing in her head. She could hear the shouting and she didn't know why Sho would want to go towards the people shouting. She didn't know why anyone would go towards the shouting. This was the part of the scary movie where she wondered why anyone would ever do something that would obviously end badly.

Curiosity killed the cat.

She didn't know which cat that curiosity killed. She didn't like thinking about a cat dying. She wondered if curiosity killed the kids, too, as well as the cat. She got that feeling. She had a feeling that she was not supposed to be there, that it was a bad place to be, and that if she had been on her own she would have run away a long time ago.

But she was not on her own.

And if it was something that scared her then…then it was something that could hurt Sho. She did not want anything bad to happen to Sho. He was her little brother, the only little brother that she had, and she loved him more than anything or anyone else in the world. She loved him so much that she would have given him all of her candy from now until eternity if he would just turn back…

But he didn't.

"Hey, a door. Come on." Said Sho. There was a door that was big and metal and if this were a game there would have been a boss fight on the other side. But this was real life. This was real life and…and in real life there weren't boss fights…right? Even though he kind of expected a boss fight to be back there. He would have won it. In game or in life he would have won it.

Even against dad.

He could sort of feel dad's aura. There were a lot of those weird auras around but dad was there, too, he knew what his own da felt like. He maybe should have turned back…but that would have meant running away. He had to be brave. Dad couldn't punish him for being brave. He was always going on and on and on about him conquering his feelings like fear. Dad wasn't going to punish him for acting the way, the exact way, that dad was always telling him to act like.

"Sho…maybe we shouldn't. We might get in trouble. I can feel dad near…we might get in trouble." Said Mob. That was the last thing that she could tell him. She tried asking him nicely and she tried saying things that made sense and would appeal to him, dad always said that the first thing you should do is offer someone something that they want and then move towards violence…not that Mob was going to be mean like that to her little brother…but dad would be mean to him. Dad was scarier, sometimes, than anything that could have been behind that door.

"Then turn back, big sis, but I'm not stopping here." Said Sho. Contrary was something that dad called him sometimes. Contrary, annoying, underfoot, lots of mean words. He knew that he was being contrary now. He was not going to turn back just because she asked him to. She was not the boss of him. She was not their mom.

She was not the boss of him.

He opened the door.

She followed him.

They weren't noticed. They were not noticed as they opened the door and crept down the stairs, the door had opened to some very steep stairs, and walked down to where the lab coat guys were….and dad…and Fukuda! Sho was about to call out to him but big sis put her hand over his mouth. He licked her hand on instinct. That was what you were supposed to do when your big sis tried to make you shut up when you didn't want to.

"Dad." Whispered Mob. She tried to pull her aura in close. She saw dad's aura twitch, a little, at the same time as his shoulders. He might have noticed them or he might have just been reacting to the way the room was full of that weird aura….thing….that she had seen before.

She wanted to run away.

Sho had licked her hand. That was gross. She didn't say anything. She didn't say anything when Sho licked her hand, or tugged on her hair, or even when his candy bucket had shifted….and made a noise…but that noise was louder in her head than in life, maybe. She didn't say anything or do anything because then her aura might have moved and then dad might have noticed her.

And that would have been bad.

Because she was not supposed to be there and neither was Sho. She was supposed to be taking care of Sho. She was supposed to be keeping him from being underfoot. She was supposed to be in charge of him. Dad had asked her to, told her to, take care of her little brother. She was failing. She was being such a bad big sister. She was such a bad big sister and a bad Daughter and she…she…she deserved whatever was coming to her.

Dad turned around.

But he didn't look at them. One of those machines opened and someone fell out. He flopped out, the man, like Sho flopped around when he didn't want to go somewhere and he had to be dragged around. That was….that was different because at least Sho was still…breathing…when she dragged him to the tub and stuff. That guy just sort of laid there.

Then Fukuda knelt down and did his healing thing.

But he didn't move.

"Another failure." Said Dad. Mob shook a little, just a little, and she wished that she had just dragged Sho away. She had the power to do so. She hated using her powers on him, that was why she never used her powers on him, but maybe she should have. Maybe then she wouldn't have been there where this…whatever this was….was happening. This was so bad…so scary…and she just wanted to go home….

"Yes. Sorry boss. I did my-" said Fukuda

"Continue the tests. There is something I must attend to." Said Dad. He walked away from Fukuda. The lab coat guys carried the other man away…and Mob closed her eyes. The man wasn't dead. He wasn't dead. He wasn't dead.

"He's not dead." Said Sho. Big sis was whispering it so he was whispering it too. She knew when people were and were not dead. She knew because she could see ghosts. She knew and he believed her. He believed her and he knew that the other guy was not dead and he was not scared and he did not wish that he had just done what big sis said and gone back to their apartment and traded candy and watched movies and stuff.

Dad was looking at them.

He couldn't breathe.

Dad was walking towards them.

He was shaking.

Dad stopped walking.

Big sis spoke first

"Hi dad." Said Mob. She knew that it would only look worse if she just started explaining right then and there. He always asked them to explain first. That way she at least had time to figure out how to explain without lying but also with minimizing damage.

That was her job.

"Son. Daughter. Explain." Said Dad. Mob put her hand over Sho's mouth and didn't react at all when he licked her hand again.

"It's Give Me Candy Day. Fukuda said that in this country on this day people give kids candy when they wear costumes. We were getting candy." Said Mob. She wanted dad to pick her up. She wanted dad to hug her and tell her that she was going to be ok. She wanted dad to tell her that the other guy was not dead and she had not been seeing his spirit or any other people's spirits and that this was all ok and she was ok and that everything was going to be ok…

Like mom would have done.

But dad was not mom. Dad was not mom and he did not do the things that mom did. She was supposed to do those things now. She was going to have to tell Sho, when he was back and she was back and they were eating their candy, that everything was ok. That the guy hadn't died. That they were going to be ok. She would hold him and make him feel batter just like mom would have if she had been there with them instead of wherever it was that she had been for all of this time….

"Halloween. You mean Halloween." Said Dad. Mob nodded. She didn't uncover Sho's mouth even though he wanted to talk. Because he wanted to talk. It was always worse for him, for them, when he tried to fight with dad. She was not going to let him make any of this worse. She was handling this. She was supposed to keep him safe. She was supposed to make things better and easier for Sho. She was his big sister. She was supposed to be taking care of him.

"Yes. Halloween. That's what Fukuda called it. Halloween. The day where we're supposed to get candy. We were just looking for candy and now we have candy and we're going to go now if that's ok." Said Mob. She knew that it was best to ask. Sho never asked. That was why he wasn't supposed to talk, now, even if he licked her hand until he totally ran out of spit and dried up like a raisin. They were in trouble, that was a given, but she was not going to let them get into any worse trouble than they already were.

"Go. Go and don't come back here. You're both underfoot." Said Dad. Mob nodded and dragged Sho away. She did not want to be there. She knew that if something bad had happened dad would have said something….right? Or at least he would have been upset….or mad…or something. Anything other than calm.

His aura was so calm.

But hers wasn't. Not even when they got back to their apartment. Not even when she told Sho that, of course, that guy had not been dead. Not even when they traded their candy. Not even when she put a movie on for them, not a scary one, but one about a witch that went around delivering things. A nice movie. One that made them feel good.

She made sure that Sho was happy.

Even when she though that she couldn't. Even when she thought about what she had seen…she still made sure that her little brother was happy. Her little brother mattered most in the whole world. She was his big sister and she was supposed to take care of him even when she felt very scared and…and not good…

She was a good sister.

And she never once showed Sho that she was afraid. Conceal, don't feel. That was what she was supposed to do. Dad would have been proud of her if he had could have seen her. But he didn't. Not for a while. He had been so busy since they had come to the compound…and for once she couldn't wait until they moved again. She wanted her mom but she was gone. She wanted her dad but he was busy. He didn't come back until late at night, after she had put Sho to bed, and tried to go to bed herself. She had tried but instead ended up sitting up in bed just…waiting….for tomorrow to happen. She had waited like that until she felt dad's aura…and their front door had opened…and then footsteps…and then their bedroom door had opened.

She wanted to hide Sho for some reason.

But dad didn't punish Sho. No, he just left two apples on their nightstand. He pulled their covers up with his powers and swept their toys out of his path. She was still sitting up. She watched him. Her aura met his. He didn't seem mad…he didn't seem like anything. He just seemed like…himself. He felt like himself. Not mad but not happy or not…anything. Just…just dad.

He reached over and patted her on the head. She looked up at him. He wasn't mad at all…or scared…or anything. He had just come in to leave them apples…even though you were supposed to leave candy…but he didn't like candy. He liked apples…so he left them apples. For a moment she thinks that they're poisoned apples…but that's crazy. Dad wouldn't poison them. Dad loved them. She was not scared and she had no reason to be. It was just her dad. Normally she would have stayed up with him, watched TV and listened to his day, and she sort of wanted to…but she also didn't want to leave Sho. He needed her. He would have been scared if he woke up in the night, he got up at least once a night to pee, and he found out that she was gone. He had been scared, maybe, since she had been scared and she was older. If dad asked her to hang out she didn't know what she would do…

But he didn't ask her to hang out.

"Happy Halloween, Daughter." said Dad. He brushed her hair out of her face, laid her down, tucked her in, and left the room. She sort of wanted to be near him, even if they were just going to go to sleep or watch TV or anything really, but she needed to be with Sho. He was just a kid and he needed his big sister. She would always be there for him.

She would even give him all of her candy if he asked.