Mob was not the best at painting nails.

"Will you stay in the lines?" said Minegishi

"Sorry." Said Mob

She had trouble staying in the lines. Maybe the angel was weird. She was sitting on the couch with Minegishi, they were laying down with their feet on Mob's lap, and Mob was painting their nails. Well she was trying to. This wasn't as easy as it looked. The brush was tiny and the nail polish was super runny. Kind of like the paints that she used to have when she was little. Her painting surface was small, too, Minegishi had very narrow nails, and also they moved around sometimes too.

So this was not easy.

But Mob was not going to give up. She could do this. She would do this. She would do this because this was what friends did with one another. They hung out and painted each other's nails. Well this was what Minegishi said that friends did and Mob was going to take their word for it. Friends did this but not brothers and sisters. No, she she'd asked Sho if she could paint his nails he just ran away.

She wished she had a sister sometimes.

Not that this was for boys or girls. This was just fun, Minegishi said so, and they also said that dividing the world up between boy things and girl things was stupid. It took too much effort, they said, and it put people into boxes. They didn't much like being bossed around, they had said, and Mob wondered why they had come to work for dad, then, since they did not like being bossed around. Mob didn't ask that though, she didn't ask anything, she just painted.

As best as she could.

"You know that you're just supposed to paint my nails, right?" asked Minegishi as they felt Mob go outside the lines once again. They hadn't been expecting professional quality work but they had at least expected the kid to be able to paint a straight line. Not that they were terribly upset. It was Claw's couch that she was ruining, not theirs. That was their good nail polish that she was wasting, though, and that color was hard to find. A true lavender, not the light purple that everyone tried to pass off as lavender.

"I'm trying but you have really small nails." Said Mob. She was getting a lot of nail polish on the couch. She hoped that they wouldn't be mad. They were living here for the foreseeable future after all. Mob had no idea how long that would be, though, since Dad always said for the foreseeable future. It could have been a day, a week, or a month. Not a year, though, they never stayed in one place for that long. There was a lot of important work that they had to do and it took them all over the world.

And also there was downtime but that also took them all over the world.

"No smaller than yours I'd imagine." Said Minegishi with a shrug. They went back to their book. They'd fix what Mob messed up later. Besides, it wasn't like anyone but themselves would be seeing it anyway. This was the part of the year when they had very little to do. Normally, in the days before they joined Suzuki's personal entourage, they would have been passed between bases and divisions as needed. Even in the slower parts of the year they'd always had SOMETHING to do. Now they just had a whole lot of nothing. At least they had time to catch up on their reading…though they could have done that back when they worked at the florist's shop. Boredom did not suit them at all. Of course they knew that they had probably just jinxed what little peace that they had and now something catastrophic was going to happen.

Any second now.

Aside from Mob's inability to paint inside the lines nothing terrible was happening. That was…fine. This was a good book after all and they were happy to be reading it. Even if it was kind of predictable. Predictable schlocky romance…they didn't know if they were bored or not. One the one hand this was just like every other romance novel that they had read but on the other hand there were the little differences that made them interesting…

Maybe they could reread Infinite Jest again just to feel smart.

"Is that a funny book?" asked Mob. She could see Minegishi smiling…which was a rare sight in and of its self. Them reading a fun book would have been even rarer. Mob had tried to read some of the thick books that they had, the thicker the better when it came to books, and she hadn't understood a single word of anything inside of them. Even the ones in Japanese. She wondered if it was a good book that they were reading. She wondered if they would let her borrow it.

She eyed the glass on the table.

She always asked before she borrowed now. Since the time when she had gone to sleep and almost never woke up, Minegishi's words, she had been more careful. She knew not to take things that didn't belong to her. Being offered something once was not an open invitation to borrow whenever she felt like it. That was not how things worked, you had to ask, and she had asked. She had asked and had been shared with and she had gotten all that she had been allowed to have.

Which did not feel like enough but she was not going to say anything.

"This? I guess in some ways. More clichéd than anything." Said Minegishi

"Oh. What kind of book is it?" asked Mob. She knew what clichéd meant, it meant that it recycled plots from other things, and Mob did not mind clichéd stuff. Minegishi said that all the things that she read were clichéd. That was just because she was a kid, Minegishi said, which was something that made Mob want to learn how to read and understand the thick and complicated books that adults read.

"A very clichéd love story in which the main protagonist, a woman in her mid-twenties without a clue about what to do in her life, doesn't realize that she's had the love of her life standing right in front of her for years. Bickering equals love and all of that." Said Minegishi. They looked up and expected a certain annoyance to pop right there into their field of vision. Nope, nothing. It was still the middle of the day. Unless he was particularly annoying Suzuki would keep him around for a few more hours yet.

"Does it really?" asked Mob as she started on Minegishi's other foot. She made a mistake while they shrugged. She wished that they would sit still but she wasn't going to say anything. She was the one who had started the conversation anyway.

"Maybe, it depends on the person I guess." Said Minegishi as they felt Mob make yet another mistake. It wasn't like they expected a lot from a nine year old anyway. Maybe they had been too hard on her. She had stopped working. That could have meant that her feelings had been hurt…or that something was on her mind. Neither of those options were good. They stifled a groan. They did not want to have another one of their conversations about love and life and all of those things that her parents should have been teaching her. Not that either of her parents would have done that great of a job of it. Her mother had run for the hills the first chance she got and her father was, at the very least, unbalanced. Unless he'd been kidding about wanting to take over the world this whole time.

Please, for the love of God, let her feelings just be hurt.

"But you can show love by being mean to someone?" asked Mob. They had probably meant the kissing sort of love, not the family sort of love, though that did sound like the family sort of love. Like how even though Sho and dad could be mean to her they still loved her. She wondered if that was what it would be like when she got a boyfriend, too, when she got older. If she got a boyfriend. The only boy who had ever liked her was gone from her life forever…and now she felt kind of sad…but she always felt like that when she thought about…stuff that she should not have been thinking about.

"That….is a conversation to be had when you are older." Said Minegishi. They were not getting into THAT with a nine year old. Hell no. They were not paid enough for that.

"When I'm ten?" asked Mob. That was something else to add to her list of questions to ask when her birthday finally came. It was still a while away, not until May, but she could wait. Dad said that her patience was one of her best qualities.

"Yeah, sure, let's go with that." Said Minegishi. She wasn't keeping some sort of list…was she? And she wasn't planning on waking Minegishi up at 12:01 a.m. on May 25th with a multi-page list of questions? And a pen and paper so she could take notes? No, that was not how it was going to be…and if it was, if Mob did plan on waking them up at midnight with a list of questions, then Minegishi was turning over and putting it off for another year at least.

"Ok…" said Mob. She wanted an answer now, though, not when she was ten. She wanted to know why people felt the way they felt about other people. She wanted to know why she felt the way she felt about…him. She knew his name, it was Hanazawa Teruki, but she didn't even want to think of it. Why had she promised that she would never forget him? If she hadn't made that promise then…she didn't want to forget him but she had to…because she knew that she would never see him again….and it was hard.

She wondered if she would still have these problems when she was ten.

"Hey. Back to it. If you're going to stay then you're going to work." Said Minegishi nudging her with their foot. They knew Mob, at least they thought that they knew her, and they knew when the wheels in her head were turning. They knew what she was thinking about. Minegishi wondered if they were the same when they were nine years old…

Probably not considering the fact that back then they had been executing their dolls by hanging them from garden vines and also pouring salt on garden snails just for the hell of it.

"Right, sorry. I was just thinking…" said Mob as she got back to it.

"As people tend to do." Said Minegishi

"They do think a lot, I think, or maybe I just think a lot. Or maybe I even think too much. I don't know. I just don't know how to stop thinking." Said Mob. That was the whole of it. She just did not know how to stop thinking about him, that boy, the one she would never see again. That had been all the way back around Sho's birthday. Now it was March. Would she be thinking of him for the rest of her life? Did she want to be thinking of him for the rest of her life? She didn't even know…

She was in love…maybe….and she didn't like it one bit.

Because it hurt. The memory of it felt good, the best thing that she had ever felt in her life, but the fact that it had been the best thing that she had ever felt in her entire life left her feeling bad…and she didn't understand it one bit. She wished that there had been a book or something that she could have read that would have explained the way she felt and then how to stop feeling it. She wished that she could have understood the way that she felt. If she understood the way that she felt then she could have made herself stop feeling it, or she could have maybe even felt that way about someone else…though she had no idea who she would ever feel that way about…

And who would ever want to feel that way about her.

"Focus on what you're doing, maybe?" asked Minegishi

"Oh. You mean distract myself. I've been trying to do that and sometimes it works but sometimes…sometimes it doesn't. I don't know. I just wish that I could turn off my brain or something…because I just can't stop thinking about…stuff." Said Mob

"If this is about that guy again I swear to God-" said Minegishi. Nope. Not this kid again. Minegishi was going to find that kid, the one who Mob had kissed, and drag him back to her kicking and screaming if they had to. What was she so worked up about? First kisses weren't anything special….of course she was thinking like an adult. Kid, Mob was a kid, and kids were different. It was hard to think of her as a kid, sometimes, like now.

Poor kid.

"It-it's not just about…I mean I can't stop thinking about him but it's more about…about how I want to figure out why I…I mean I know why I feel the way I feel but…it's really complicated and…I just want to stop…I don't know." Said Mob. She was not good at talking. This was one of those times when she was more than not good at it, when she was bad at it. Terrible. She wanted to stop feeling like this but she also didn't. She wanted…she wanted a lot of things. She wanted to be happy…but she couldn't be because she could never see that boy again.

He didn't want to join Claw.

Even though she had no idea why he wouldn't have wanted to join Claw. They brought espers together and worked hard at making the world a better place. Since he was an esper already he might not have even needed to go through the awakening process. He could have even been so powerful, when he got older, that he could have made it to the upper echelon. Then he could have been in a division or one of those people who moved from division to division…or one of the people who followed dad around…and then they could have been together and been boyfriend and girlfriend and then gotten married and had a boy named Shigeo and a girl named Shoko and then if they had even more kids, her family had two but she didn't know what the limit on kids was, they could have a Masami too after her mom and then a Touichirou after her dad…or maybe a Souichirou because having the exact same name as dad would be confusing because dad was still around…and also Sho might have wanted dad's name…but then again he said that he was never going to fall in love with anyone…which would have been sad…

Or maybe it was more sad to fall in love with someone and then never be able to see them again.

"You're nine going on nineteen, you know that?" asked Minegishi with a sigh. This was not a good harbinger of things to come. For the foreseeable future they would be friends with Mob…which meant that they would be stuck hanging out with a moody teenager. Dealing with a moody, confused, love struck nine year old was hard enough. Kids…or were they called tweens at her age? Minegishi didn't know. When they had been young kids had just been kids.

"No I'm not. I'm nine going on ten." Said Mob. Well that was…she got the feeling that there was something that she wasn't getting. She wasn't about to turn nineteen, no, she was about to turn ten. Ten was a big enough change, double digits, nineteen would be way too much. She'd be all grown up then…and she had no idea what she would do when she was all grown up. Who she would be.

Who she wanted to be.

She still wanted to grow up to work at the animal shelter like mom used to when she and Sho were really little but she knew that dad would never let her do that. No, he had told her that she was never going to leave him. So that meant that when she grew up she would have to be an upper echelon member of Claw. She would also have a family and stuff, like dad had said, and then they would keep her busy.

It didn't matter who she wanted to be. Dad had already told her who she had to be.

"I mean that you're acting just like a teenager. You are way too young to get hung up on some guy, especially one that you're never going to see again. Never get feelings…well in these just for fun sorts of things, not that I'm telling you how to live your life or anything….it's none of my goddamned business who you catch feelings for….but if you do then don't end up getting yourself all twisted up like this. It's exhausting." Said Minegishi

"Oh…I didn't mean to be exhausting…really." Said Mob. She wondered if that meant the same as being tiresome. Dad called her that sometimes, tiresome, mostly when Sho was fighting with her. She didn't want to be tiresome or exhausting.

"You're fine." Said Minegishi

"I don't try to be exhausting or tiresome…I just sort of am I guess." Said Mob. Minegishi sat up and patted her on the head.

"There, there Mob. There, there." said Minegishi. They had smudged their nails. They could fix it later, Mob had done a pretty crappy job anyway. How in the hell was this Suzuki's kid? Driving herself up the wall over some boy….getting all down and gloomy because Minegishi had pointed out how exhausting she was…if Minegishi had been in Suzuki's place they would have asked for a blood test. God knew that if Minegishi had been Missus Suzuki, the thought is as disturbing as it is absurd, they wouldn't have been anything close to faithful and not just because they were not a monogamous person. Being with only Suzuki for the rest of their life….that would have been hell on Earth. Not just because they would have had to listen to Suzuki wax poetic day in day out about his grand plan to take over the world. He looked like he was pretty damn selfish in all areas of life. Including bed areas.

Hopefully Mob wouldn't end up being a thing like her father, otherwise she really would end up dying alone like it seemed she was terrified of.

"I can go away if you want me to. Dad always tell me to go away when I'm being tiresome…so I can leave you alone if you want me to. I'm used to being alone since dad started taking Sho with him all the time. I mean I don't want to go but if you want me to-" said Mob. She would have said more but she got flicked on the back of the head. Not hard. Just hard enough that she noticed.

"Shut up. We have fun together. Now give me your hand." Said Minegishi. They didn't wait, they just took Mob's hand and got to painting. At some point they had developed a soft spot for the kid…or maybe their whole head was a soft spot. They would have believed that. After all they were painting a nine year old's nails in an effort to console her.

So, this was their life. Eh, it could have been worse.

"I really am sorry that I'm so exhausting." Said Mob. Minegishi was much better at this than she had been. She felt bad. She was so tiresome. That was why, one of the reasons why, dad hadn't taken her with. She wished that she could have been better, been less tiresome and less…herself…but she didn't know how to be anything other than herself. Anyone other than herself. Not even the person who dad had told her to be.

"Shut up about that, you're fine. Could be worse. Now hold still or you'll make me mess up." Said Minegishi

"Ok. Sorry." Said Mob

"And stop apologizing all the time. You're Suzuki Shigeko. You're the last person in the world who needs to be apologizing for anything." Said Minegishi. This kid was a walking contradiction. How could the daughter of the most powerful man on Earth have been…this? This way too sweet for this world kid?

The universe could be really weird sometimes.

"But sometimes I do things that are wrong and when you do something wrong you're supposed to say that you're sorry." Said Mob. That was what you were supposed to do, mom had said so, and mom would not have lied to her…or maybe she would have. Mob didn't know. Mom had been gone for so long…but there was no point in thinking about it. Thinking about her wouldn't bring her back. Mob just wished that she could stop thinking.

About everything.

But in trying not to think she was just thinking even more. She had no clue what she was supposed to do. She was clueless, totally clueless, but that was normal for her. People had been calling her clueless for as long as she could remember. Even her own little brother called her clueless…but that was normal for him. He said mean stuff to her a lot of the time but that didn't mean that he didn't love her…just like it didn't mean that dad didn't love her when he said mean stuff to her. She wished that people could have been nicer. Not just to her but to each other, too. She wished that people could just get along and be happy and all of that stuff…but wishing never helped. Wishing never helped and neither did thinking.

"You're not just polite, though, you just apologize for everything. Don't. Also…you're not that exhausting. Not like some people who we will not discuss." Said Minegishi

"Who?" asked Mob. She couldn't think of anyone who was exhausting…well Sho could be kind of exhausting….and also dad when he was being all mean…yes, dad could be exhausting sometimes…maybe that was just what Suzuki's were. Exhausting. Maybe the whole family was just exhausting and tiresome and that was why mom had left them. Maybe when she grew up and found someone who wanted to be with her then he would leave just like mom had.

She didn't want to fall in love with someone if it just meant that they would leave.

She wished that she wasn't in love, or at least like, because he had left…well he'd had no choice but to leave…but he'd had a choice. He could have joined Claw. There was nothing wrong with joining Claw. It was a good place to be and you got to make money too. Also you didn't have any parents to tell you what to do. Well he wouldn't have had any parents to tell him what to do.

But he'd left her.

What was the point of kissing her, then, if he was going to leave? What was the point of saying that he would never forget her if he was going to leave? It felt…bad. She wondered if this was how dad felt. Mom had left him, too, and they had been together for much longer. She knew that they must have kissed at some point, she had never seen it but Sho said that he had, and also they had kids together so they had done something awful to get those kids…and then mom had just left dad like it was nothing…just like what happened when…

She didn't want to think about it anymore.

"I'm not going to say his name because if I do he might just show up and ruin what's left of my day….and it's only one in the afternoon. So, really, I'd rather not. I'd much rather sit here and show you how to paint nails the right way. You know, so the nail polish actually gets on the nails?" asked Minegishi as they worked on Mob's other hand. Something else was bothering her. They could tell by her aura.

Poor kid.

"Oh…ok. Um…you've very good at that and…and I like watching you work. I'm learning a lot. I'm sorry I went outside the lines…I mean that I'm bad at it." Said Mob. She just needed to distract herself. When she thought too much she got all sad and she didn't want to be sad…so she had to just…stop thinking. She looked over to the glass on the table. That was good for forgetting.

But she was not going to borrow without asking again. She liked being friends with Minegishi.

And not just because they were very good at painting nails.