Big sis had the absolute worst taste in movies.

It was almost Valentine's Day and that meant that they had watch gross movies with love and kissing in them. Why she would torment him with this Sho would never know. It was gross and wrong, watching people kiss and stuff. They didn't kiss until the end but Sho would have preferred it if they got it over with in the very beginning. That way the worst of it could have been over. Like how it was best to wash your hair before anything else. Big sis never got the worst of it over with first. She always watched the kissing parts of the movies at the end and washed her hair last and even ate her vegetables last too instead of choking them down at the beginning so dad didn't get mad.

He did not understand her one bit.

"Can we PLEASE watch something else? Anything else? This is torture!" said Sho. He threw himself back onto the couch and kicked. He was stuck inside next to her. They had moved to a place where it was cold out, it was winter in the northern hemisphere, and he couldn't go outside because it was cold and snowy. Even dad was home but he was working in his room. Sho wished that he could have gone outside. The snow wasn't that bad. He could still kind of see the outside world for at least half a meter.

"But it's not even half over yet." Said Mob. She hadn't seen this movie before but she liked it. It was about these two older kids and they were in high school and they were in love but they were too shy to admit it and also one of them could see ghosts. It was beautiful.

"You know how it's going to end! It's always the same. The boy and the girl realize that they like each other and then they kiss and a song plays and then it's over. All of your movies end the same way. They're so boring!" said Sho. He didn't understand her one bit. He had put up with enough of this, he figured, because he had been kind of a jerk to her lately. He hadn't almost drowned her again or scratched her but he had been kind of mean. He didn't know why he was so mean. She was bossy and annoying and was always trying to be their mom but he had been such a jerk to her lately….and that wasn't good. Even if Fukuda said that he would never tell on him….

Being mean to big sis was still wrong.

"The ending is the best part." Said Mob

"You're crazy." Said Sho

"No I'm not. I just….I just think that the ending is the best part. Also it's almost Valentine's Day and that means that we should watch movies about love." Said Mob

"Well then you can watch gross stuff all on your own." Said Sho. He got up off the couch. He could feel her looking at him, her aura was resting on him and her eyes probably were too, so of course he turned around and faced her.

"You can change it if you want. I just want to hang out with you." Said Mob. She didn't much feel like being all alone. She wanted to watch the things she liked but she also wanted to be near her little brother. They used to be better friends, she felt like, and she wanted to go back to being the way that they had been when they were little. They were older now, he was nine and she would be ten in May, and maybe this was what happened when you got older…you stopped being good friends with your little brother….and it really was not…good. They used to play together all the time. She hated how things had changed. Maybe she just wasn't making enough of an effort. She sometimes avoided him because he could be kind of mean to her…and that wasn't right. She should not have been avoiding her little brother even if he could be mean….

"Fine, I'll stay…and we can watch what you want." Said Sho. The words tasted like ashes in his mouth. Why did she had to look at him like that? He was being kind of a jerk again…and he needed to stop being a jerk. He was nine now and…and he had been too much of a jerk lately…well all of the time.

"No, we can change it." Said Mob. She didn't want to be too bossy. He was always telling her that she was too bossy. It was hard not to be bossy when dad told her that she had to be the boss of him. Even when dad was home she still had to be the boss of Sho. She had never asked for this, to be in charge, but without mom being there and with dad busy all the time she had to be in charge because she was the oldest.

"Don't make me change my mind." Said Sho. He threw himself back down on the couch and decided to grit his teeth and bare the grossness. What was with her? What was even the point of watching people fall in love and kiss and stuff? Girls were so weird. They were crazy about love. He had never once been able to understand them in his whole nine years of life.

"Why don't you like this?" asked Mob. She would never understand her little brother. Most boys, actually, were hard to understand. What was wrong with love? What did boys have against kissing? Well not all boys, obviously, but most of them had something again falling in love and kissing. She would never understand boys. It was a miracle that people still got married and had babies with the attitude that boys had.

"I just said, because they all end the same way and it's super boring." Said Sho with a shrug.

"But a lot of the things that you watch all end the same way, too. In your shows the good guys always win and the bad guys always lose." Said Mob

"Whatever. It's not the journey, it's the destination." Said Sho recalling a very good piece of cookie based wisdom. He wondered why more deserts didn't have fortunes in them. You could probably fit more wisdom in something like a mochi or a whole cake or a bowl of ice cream.

"You got that from a fortune cookie." Said Mob motioning to the fortunes covering the coffee table. They had eaten a box of fortune cookies for lunch. They weren't the best cookies but it was fun to see what your fortune was. Dad said that they were ridiculous but not in the way that meant that he was mad at them so that meant that it was ok to eat and entire box of fortune cookies for one meal.

"There's a lot of wisdom in those cookies. Don't knock the cookies!" said Sho. He used his powers to send the little scraps of paper flying into her hair. That wasn't a jerk thing to do because they were just pieces of paper and they couldn't hurt her…unless she ended up with cuts on her face or something…but Fukuda would fix her up and not even tell dad on him. He was a nice guy like that

"I wasn't knocking the cookies." Said Mob shaking the pieces of paper out of her hair. They fell down into her lap like how it was snowing outside. She picked one up and read it. This had been one of hers. Eat more fortune cookies. She got a bunch of those, and a bunch of empty cookies too. Sho got the ones with advice in them and stuff, better advice than saying to eat more fortune cookies anyway, and he even got one with two fortunes in it once. He always got lucky like that. He got to get two fortunes and he got to go to work with dad sometimes and he got to be born a boy, too. Boys had it better in a lot of ways. They got hit more often, which was bad, but they got to spend more time with dad because they got to inherit the world. Mob didn't much want to inherit the world but it did feel unfair, sometimes, that she couldn't just because she was born a girl. It wasn't fair…but maybe she only felt that way because Minegishi had told her that it was unfair that dad treated her and Sho differently just because Sho was a boy and she was a girl.

"Well it sounded like you were. Never knock the cookies, they have a lot of wisdom and advice in them." Said Sho

"Even if they tell you to eat more cookies sometimes." Said Mob

"That's good advice, if you eat more cookies then you might get a better fortune, so you should eat cookies until there's aren't any left…and then when there aren't any left you've got to go and buy another box." Said Sho

"Do you want to eat another box of fortune cookies?" asked Mob. She didn't want to eat another box of cookies, they'd had one for lunch already having one for dinner would have been just too much, but if Sho wanted them to eat another box of fortune cookies then she would…because she loved him and she wanted to make him happy more than anything else in the whole world.

"Maybe. I'm kind of tired of them. After a while they just taste boring. Like how watching the same thing over and over again is boring." Said Sho. How could she just keep on watching this? Now was the part where the guy did something that looked bad and he was all 'I can explain' but the girl didn't let him and then they were broken up for a little bit. They'd end up realizing by the end that they were in love the whole time and kiss in the cherry blossoms or something. Gross enough to make him feel like he was going to throw up his half of the fortune cookies.

"But it doesn't matter if all these movies go the same way. It's not the journey, it's the destination like you said." Said Mob

"The destination is super gross." Said Sho sticking his tongue out.

"It's not…it's nice." Said Mob. She smiled and ducked her head low. She knew firsthand how nice it was…but nobody needed to know that. Well Minegishi knew that but they could keep a secret…and also they were not her little brother. She did not want to talk about this with her little brother, and not just because if she told him what happened he would figure out that she was the one who betrayed dad, she was not going to tell him because this was just not the thing that you talked about with your little brother. A little sister maybe but she didn't have one of those, just the little brother, and she was happy to have Sho…even if she sometimes wanted a Shoko instead of a Sho. At least that way dad would have treated them the same. They might have gotten along better, too. Girls didn't hit, usually, but they could be mean in other ways…it was pointless to think about what life would have been like if she'd had a little sister instead of a little brother. She got what she got.

"Yeah, if you're a lovesick girl." Said Sho. He knew firsthand how not nice it was when you were a boy. Girls were always trying to kiss him. Big sis said that girls liked him because they could tell that he was awesome. He knew that he was awesome but that didn't mean that he wanted random girls kissing him. He didn't go around kissing random people. He thought that Shimazaki was awesome but he didn't just go and try and kiss him…and also he wouldn't because he could not kiss another guy. That was not the way that it worked. Dad would have killed him, anyway, because dad hated it when he was different. When he did things that deviated from dad's plan of raising the perfect kids. Dad had said, before, that he had to grow up and get married and have kids of his own. He said that once Sho had kids of his own to be tormented by then he would know why dad was the way he was. Sho didn't much want to have kids, you had to do unspeakable things with a girl to have kids, but he did know that once his kids were born he wasn't going to be the way that dad was with him. He wasn't going to hit his kids or make them feel like the gum you got on the bottom of your shoe. He was going to be nice to them and make them happy and also treat them the same even if one had powers and one didn't or if one was a boy and the other was a girl.

Girls had it so easy.

Girls hardly ever got hit. Dad hardly ever hit big sis and had never once hit mom. You weren't supposed to hit girls, anyway, everyone knew that…which was why Sho was the biggest jerk ever. He wished that he had a brother instead of a sister. A Shigeo instead of a Shigeko. Then maybe it would have been ok to fight him…but also that would suck. As much work as it was to run the world Sho was happy to do it. That was why dad needed him. If dad had a Shigeo instead of a Shigeko then he would never have had to have a Sho at all.

"I-I'm not lovesick!" said Mob. Nope. No way could her little brother know about this. How could he tell? Was it written all over her face?! Well she wasn't in love…not really….because she would never see him again…but she did think about him a lot….

"Are too. All girls are. That's why they spend all day watching movies about love and also chase you around so they can kiss you." Said Sho

"I don't do that to boys…it's not nice…and I'm not lovesick." Said Mob. It was not a lie. To be lovesick she would have had to have been in love. She couldn't be in love with a boy she would never see again, that was just not how it worked, so she must have just…wanted to kiss him. Like how Minegishi said that sometimes people kissed for the sake of kissing…not that Mob would ever have done that. She didn't know. She'd only kissed one person in her entire life and she just could not get it out of her head…but that didn't make her lovesick. Maybe kiss-sick was a better word for it? Either way she was not telling Sho what happened.

"You don't do that but a lot of girls do and it sucks." Said Sho

"Is it really that bad? Also don't say that word. Dad might hear you." Said Mob. She felt around for dad with her aura. Still working and still not mad. That was good. He had been in a much better mood since they'd left Japan all those weeks ago. She was glad for that but she also knew how fast his feelings could change.

"It's the worst! It sucks, and I'll say whatever I want because this is a free country…I think, and anyway it does suck and there's not any other word in Japanese that can describe it! It sucks when you're just minding your own business and some girl comes up to you and kisses you! Like she either chases you and you think that you're just playing tag until she catches you and kisses you or you just think that she wants to be friends or something but then she just kisses you and laughs and runs away! The worst, the suckiest, is when she kisses you on the mouth. Like you're just minding your own business and then some girl who you barely even know, or don't know at all, is kissing you on the mouth! It sucks!" said Sho. He was mad by the end of it. He was breathing kind of hard and his aura was showing. Well he was mad and he had every right to be mad. Even mom said that the game of catching and kissing wasn't right because kisses had to be special. Sho didn't want to kiss any girls at all so that meant that none of them were special.

"Oh…but don't worry. One day you'll meet someone who you want to kiss and who wants to kiss you and it'll be the greatest moment of your entire life." Said Mob. Well of course he thought that the game of catching boys and kissing them wasn't fun. Those weren't real kisses, the girls in her class back when she had gone to school said so, and that was why it was ok to catch a boy and kiss him. That way nobody could accuse you of liking him. Mob had never understood that, any of it, so she hadn't gone along with it. She was glad that she hadn't. She wouldn't have wanted a boy to talk about her the way Sho talked about the girls who had kissed him. She wondered if…there was no point at all in wondered what that boy, the one she saved, thought of her. They would never see each other again. There was no point in wondering if he ever laid down in bed at night and looked up at the ceiling and thought about what it had been like to kiss him. There was no point in wondering if he ever just randomly thought of her and blushed or sighed or anything like that. No point at all.

"That's not going to happen." Said Sho. If he ever got all love sick and started spending all his time watching other people kiss on TV and in movies and stuff he wanted to be hit in the head. He wanted someone to hit him in the head with a brick to knock some sense into him…or to give him amnesia. Either one would do.

"It will when you're older, it happens to everyone, but I think that it might happen to girls first. Falling in love. I heard that girls mature faster than boys so-" said Mob

"If that happens, if I ever fall in love with someone, I want you to hit me in the head with a brick as hard as you can." Said Sho

"What? No way!? I am not hitting you in the head with a brick, little brother! That would be terrible!" said Mob

"Ok, a rock then." Said Sho

"No. I'm not hitting you in the head with a rock. Not even if someone threatened to hit me in the head with a rock." Said Mob

"Ok, then go get a baseball bat or a cricket bat or a kendo sword or a hockey stick or a tennis racket or a badminton racket or a croquet mallet or a-" said Sho

"Stop it, Sho, you know that I would never hit you in the head with anything. Not even my own hand. I would never do that to you. You could die!" said Mob

"No, I wouldn't die. I would just get some sense knocked into me or I would get some amnesia. Just enough to forget that I had ever fallen in love in the first place." Said Sho

"Why would you want to forget falling in love? You're probably just too little. When you get to be my age then you'll like someone and they'll like you back and then she'll want to kiss you and then you'll want to kiss her and-" said Mob. Dad had said, before, that she and Sho had to get married and have kids so that there would be more Suzuki's to run the world. They had to get married to other people, he later said, which made sense because she could not marry her own brother. That was against nature's laws. Also they would have fought all the time. Also Sho kicked in his sleep and she was not going to spend the rest of her life sleepy because she couldn't get a good night's rest sleeping next to Sho. She hoped that the girl Sho married, and dad said that it had to be a girl, was nice. She hoped that she and the girl Sho married got along and became friends and played together all the time. It would be like having a little sister, almost, maybe.

"Stop it before I throw up!" said Sho. He'd kiss a whole bag of lemons before he kissed a girl. He'd kissed girls before, well they'd kissed him, and it had been the worst. He never wanted to go through that again for as long as he lived.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to make you throw up. I just meant that one day you would find a girl you liked, dad says that if you don't find a girl he'll find one for you, and then you'll want to be her boyfriend and then you'll marry her-" said Mob

"That's gross, shut up already with that…and tell dad that he's going to have to find me a girlfriend because I have never once liked a girl in my whole life." Said Sho. He didn't get what the big deal was about them. They were ok, some of them, but they were weird too. The games they liked were boring, dolls and stuff, and when they did play with you it was never that fun. When he played with girls it was kind of boring. When he played with boys he felt like running around and climbing things and doing flips and handstands, even if he wasn't good at them, and also a lot of other stuff. It was like being full of soda and pop rocks when he played with boys…not that he had played with anyone other than his big sis in a while. Dad had so any stupid rules….

"Oh. Well that's ok, you might find someone you like. If you like a boy then that's ok too. I mean I think that it's ok but I don't think that dad will but that doesn't seem like the kind of thing that dad can be mad at you about. The heart wants what it wants, I read that on a fortune cookie once, so you can't tell someone who to fall in love with-" said Mob

"I said so shut up about it! Do you want me to watch this with you or not? Because if you keep on talking about me falling in love with someone I'm going to our room." Said Sho. He didn't want to think about love, it was gross, and it made you want to do gross things like kiss. He didn't want to kiss any girls and certainly not any boys. He was already different enough. Besides, who would want to kiss him anyway? He was a jerk…and also kissing was gross and not the good kind of gross like sucking on a jaw breaker and then spitting in colors. Kissing was the bad kind of gross and the thought of him kissing was gross and he just wasn't going to kiss anyone! And it wad nobody's business but his own who he did and did not kiss!

"Sorry Sho, I want you to stay, so I'll shut up now." Said Mob. Boys were so weird when it came to love and stuff. She wondered if Sho would end up being one of those boys who liked other boys. It seemed that way, sometimes, because he always got so weird when other boys would try to play with him and stuff. Even when they were kids. She knew that she got weird around boys because she liked them, or at least really wanted them to like her, and since Sho was her brother and they were family then maybe he was the same way. She couldn't imagine her parents being all weird and nervous around each other…though she couldn't even begin to imagine them together. They had fallen out of love and that was sad. She hoped that she never fell out of love…if she ever feel in love in the first place. She hoped that Sho never fell out of love, either, with whoever it was that he fell in love with when he got old enough to fall in love with in the first place.

It would be just like in the movies….though she did hope that he didn't end up falling in love with a boy just like him. She didn't know what she would do if she had two little brothers.