Night and day meant nothing to a baby.

Muaki was crying. She was always crying, it seemed, but she was also crying right now. Right now in the middle of the night. She had gotten up twice before this. The first time had been when Mob had tried to put her to sleep. She had fallen asleep in front of the TV and Mob had been happy to hold her…for a time. She had been happy to hold her until everyone went home to sleep and Sho got tired. Mob didn't want to sit up all night in the living room by herself.

So she tried to put Mukai to bed.

Walking while holding Mukai was hard. She didn't want to use her powers. If she were to lose control Mukai could have gotten hurt or even died. Especially since dad and Fukuda were still gone. They must have been doing something really important if they had been gone all day…and probably all night too. They had to be extra careful because Fukuda was gone. She and Sho were at least kids, they could take care of themselves, but Mukai was a baby. If Mob were to drop or hurt her then she would have been so scared and sad because she wouldn't have known why she was in pain and also…well she could have been dead too.

She had a soft spot on her head.

She was so delicate. Sometimes dad got her porcelain dolls. Mob hated those because you couldn't play with them because of how delicate they were. Mukai was even more delicate than a porcelain doll. Her head had a soft spot and her neck was so weak that she could only hold her head up for a little bit and her spine was too weak to keep her sitting up…she was so weak and small and…and Mob would never have forgiven herself if she hurt Mukai on accident. She had to take good care of her little sister, her pretend little sister, because dad was counting on her.

Dad trusted her.

Dad had left her in charge of Sho before. This wasn't that much different. Sho needed to be fed and washed and sometimes he wet himself too…so it wasn't that different. Except for the fact that Sho could put his own clothes on and could feed himself solid foods and could climb into his own bed and go to sleep on his own. Mob had to carry Mukai in her arms, slowly because she was asleep, and putting her in a drawer. They didn't have a crib and the internet said that babies weren't supposed to share beds with people because you could roll over onto the baby in your sleep and then it would be smothered to death.

Mob didn't want that to happen.

So she had used her powers to pull the bottom drawer out of the dresser, her and Sho's pajama drawer, and then she put Mukai to sleep. Well she had tried to. No matter how softly she had tried to put Mukai down she still woke up. First her eyes got all scrunchy and then her nose wrinkled and her face got red and then she started crying.

So she sat down on the floor and rocked Mukai back and forth so that she would just sleep.

Sho helped, too, he sang to her and told her stories. He spoke to her in Japanese and Mob had no idea how much Mukai understood in Korean let alone Japanese but she eventually went to sleep and was put in the drawer so Mob could sleep, too. If she stayed for longer they would have to get her a crib…or maybe even a bed. It depended on how long dad was planning on letting her stay for.

Mob hoped that Mukai would stay with them for forever.

Even with all of the crying. The first round of tears had been because Mob woke up her in trying to put her to bed. The second round of tears came because she had been hungry. At least Mob assumed that she had been crying because she had been hungry. She sure ate a lot for someone so little. Mob figured it was because she was growing so much. Babies grew so much…it was a wonder that she and Sho had ever been that small. She wondered what it had been like when they had been that small. She wondered if they had ever gotten up in the middle of the night for food.

Dad wouldn't have let them.

Mob could not see her dad doing the same things for her and Sho when they had been babies as she had done for baby Mukai. When she had been hungry Mob hadn't hesitated in making her a middle of the night bottle. She didn't get mad at Mukai even though her crying could be sort of annoying. She just did what she had to do. Maybe that was the difference between moms and dads. Dads went out and earned the money while moms did everything else. That was how mom had explained it, anyway, back when Mob had been little.

It hadn't sounded fair then and it didn't sound fair now.

"Big sis…little sis is crying again." said Sho from his bed. Mob opened her eyes and rolled over. The baby was closer to his bed than hers and she had gotten up the last time and she had been the one to put the baby to bed. Also she had been doing all of the diaper changings and most of the feedings.

"Can you help her? I'm tired." Said Mob. She wanted sleep. She didn't want to be selfish, she wanted Mukai to be happy, but she also wanted to get some sleep. She needed sleep because she had schoolwork to do tomorrow as well as helping Sho with his school work and taking care of Mukai all day. Just thinking about it made her tired.

"I don't know what to do." Said Sho

"See if she's hungry or she needs a change or if she's just lonely." Said Mob. She yawned as she spoke. She was so tired…but she needed to be the one to do this. Dad had left her in charge and she was the girl. This was what she was supposed to do…even though Minegishi had helped out a lot and they might have been a boy…and also Shibata had wanted to help but Minegishi said that if she let him help then she wouldn't have had a little sister, pretend or otherwise, anymore.

"Ok…I'll try." Said Sho. Mob heard his bed groan as he rolled off of it and hit the ground with a thud. She wished that he would have just gotten out of bed normally. Doing that had just made Mukai cry louder. She tried to open her eyes but her eyelids felt like they weight a million pounds. She heard Sho talking to her and then some silence…wonderful silence…

Mob almost managed to drift off…but then the crying started up again.

"Mukai…please. Go back to sleep…" said Mob. Mukai was crying again…or maybe this was still a part of the first cry. Mob didn't know. That sounded sort of like a hungry cry, though, or maybe her aura just felt like she was hungry. Mob wasn't that good with tones but she knew auras. Also baby Mukai was always hungry it seemed. The internet said that babies needed to eat every four hours but Mukai seemed to want to eat every four minutes. Mob had, assumed, that babies would know that eating was for the day and sleeping was for the night out of some kind of instinct. Like how when you saw the sun going down you knew that you needed to sleep Even if you were jetlagged you still got that feeling inside of yourself that because the sun was down it was bedtime. This was not dinnertime, it had come and gone, but babies didn't know how to tell time…or tell when they were supposed to be asleep, too, apparently.

She was starting to get it, why dad was always talking about how tiresome she and Sho were.

Not that she would ever say something so mean to Mukai. Even if she didn't fully speak Japanese yet and might not have even been able to understand words at all yet. Dad always said mean things to him but maybe that was just dads. Mom had always been so nice to them. Mob was going to be a good mom…or rather big sister. She wasn't ready to be Mukai's mom or anyone's mom despite Sho's constant accusations that she was trying to replace mom…

She had never asked to be in charge.

"She's not listening and I think…I think that I made it worse. I gave her back her pacifier but she just spat it out." Said Sho. Mob sat up and scooted to the end of her bed. She turned the lights on with her powers. Sho hissed and covered his eyes. Mukai just cried harder.

"Does she need a new diaper?" asked Mob. That could have been it. Either that or she was hungry again…but Mob did not feel like making another bottle. That took a long time because the directions weren't as simple as they looked and also Mukai was picky about brands. Shimazaki and Fukuda had come back with a bunch of different brands of formula and Mukai…she was kind of picky. Also she kept on trying to suck on the fronts of shirts even though the note had said that she was used to eating from a bottle.

If she was waiting for human milk then Mob had no idea what to tell her.

"I don't know. Maybe." Said Sho. He pushed the drawer closer to her. Mob wanted to tell him that, yes, she needed a new diaper. That was why her old diaper was so big, because it was full of pee and other stuff, but she said nothing. Why was she thinking such mean thoughts? She loved Sho and…and maybe it was because she was tired. Yes, that was it, she was just sleepy because she had gotten up in the middle of the night…this was the second time…and also she'd had to take care of a baby all day…and she had no idea where dad was….and worrying was making her tired…

She was fine. She had this. Dad trusted her.

Mob got down to Mukai's level and picked her up. Yup. Squishy diaper. This was the grossest part of having a baby. Well the second grossest. Mukai had thrown up down her back and ruined her second favorite Elsa dress and also made her hair all gross. That was ok though and Mob had no right to get mad because she was just a baby and had no idea what she was even doing. Also it wasn't like she had a strong enough neck where she could have aimed in another direction. Also if she had turned her head she would have hit Minegishi and then they would have gone home because they had been really upset yesterday.

Mob didn't know why. Dad hadn't just left them with a baby and left without so much as a list of instructions or a date and time when he would be back.

Mob had this.

"Come on, Mukai. Let's get you changed and then I'll make you a bottle and then we can go back to sleep." Said Mob. She stood up while holding Mukai and hardly lost her balance at all. She had just been standing on the bottom of her nightgown but it was ok because Sho had been there to catch her. She could have caught herself with her powers, though, but it had been nice of him to help.

He was such a good little brother.

He followed her over to the bathroom. She didn't know why. He could have just closed the door so that he wouldn't have been able to hear her crying. He was little, only nine years old, and he needed a lot of sleep. He needed to grow up big and strong…and also he got really grumpy when he was tired and he knew that, too, but he still followed her to the bathroom. He sat down on the toilet lid while she laid Mukai down on the bathmat and got out the diapers and aby wipes and cream and stuff.

This was both simple and complicated.

"You know, Mukai, you wouldn't be so small if you didn't go to the bathroom so much." Said Sho. He was swinging his legs back and forth. He was kicking her in the back, too, but she knew that he was doing it on accident. If he had been doing it on purpose then it wouldn't have been his toes that dug into her back, she would have to cut his nails tomorrow, it would have been his whole foot. He would have done it hard enough to send her flying into the wall, maybe, if she had done something to really upset him.

She couldn't think of a single thing that she had done to upset him lately.

If anything Mukai was the one who was upsetting…but Sho would not have hit her. She was just a baby and didn't know what she was doing…but Sho didn't always know what he was doing, either. Like the one time when her tablet died so she used his…and also it was her fault for not giving it back when he asked…he slammed it up into her face and her nose had gotten all bloody. He had said, when dad had told him to explain, that he hadn't even been able to remember doing it…

Suddenly the little kicks to her back made her worry.

She made their bath toys float in front of Mukai. They wavered a little, just a little, because the little kicks to her back were now…now they felt like big kicks even though she knew for a fact that they were little kicks. Sho was not kicking her for real. He hadn't lost control. She was like him, she lost control sometimes too, and it made sense because they were brother and sister. The only difference was that when he lost control it wasn't of his powers but of his feelings and then he did mean things like hurt her…

But he was in control now.

"She used up all of the diapers that she came here with already. I'm just saying that she's really tiny, she eats a lot, and she does go to the bathroom a lot." Said Sho. Mob nodded. She didn't think that someone that small could go to the bathroom so much, that it was possible, but it was. She should have watched more shows and stuff with babies in them so she could know what to expect. She wished that mom had told her something about babies, too. Well at least now Mob had stuff to tell her Daughters when she had them….when she was a grown up. Not now. She didn't even have a boyfriend, first of all, and second of all she already had a baby and a Sho to take care of. Also she was ten and she didn't even think that she could grow a person in her stomach yet. She had never seen anyone her age with a baby in their stomach, only adults, so it made sense that she would have to wait until she was an adult…

She would be even better at it as an adult because she had figured it all out as a kid already.

Maybe that was why dad had left baby Mukai with her. Maybe he wanted her to figure out how to take care of babies now so that when she grew up and got married and had one of her own she would know automatically what to do. She already knew how to take care of a kid, she took care of Sho, and now she knew how to take care of a baby. Yes, that was why dad had done this to her.

Dad trusted her.

"She can't help it. She's just a baby and all of her food is liquids. It's just pee this time, though, so I'm grateful. Do you want to help me, little brother? This is a good chance for you to learn. You know, for when you grow up and have your own kids. Also this way there'll be two of us that know how to change diapers and two is better than one." said Mob

"I already tried. She peed on me when I tried to put the cream stuff on her. I think that she did it on purpose." Said Sho. He said that he didn't want to help but then he came down to the ground beside her. Mukai was done crying now. She looked over at Sho and smiled at him. He smiled right back. She smiled, too, so that she was included in the Suzuki family smile time.

"No she didn't. She's just a baby." Said Mob. Mukai was looking at her now and still smiling. Mob smiled back at her. Sho handed her the diaper cream without being told. It was a little thing, a very little thing, but it made her smile even more. That he was helping her. He didn't have to be there, he didn't have to help her, but he did…

She should not have been letting him help.

What would dad have said if he had seen that? She was the one who was in charge. He had trusted her with this. Sho was little, he was just a kid, and he should not have had to handle this kind of responsibility. She was the older one. She was the one in charge. She was the one who had to do everything. That was why dad never helped her. She was supposed to have this. That was also why dad never did anything to help mom back when they'd had a mom. Mom had been the one to handle everything and now she was gone so it was up to Mob to handle everything.

She wasn't trying to replace mom. Dad was making her replace mom.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, she's just a baby. You know that's just what she wants you to think, right?" asked Sho as he reached over and held onto her feet. She always kicked when it was time for the diaper cream. Well she kicked through every portion of this but she especially kicked for the parts with the diaper cream. Mob wondered if she had kicked like this when she had been a baby. She knew that Sho must have kicked like that when he had been a baby. She didn't have clear memories of him as a baby. She remembered one time when he was in a bed with clear walls around it, a crib actually, and he had been asleep…and she had been really sad for some reason. She remembered that she had wanted to take him out of there and bring him with her…but where had she been going? She couldn't remember. She had been little then. That was not one of her clear memories. It might have even been a dream. She didn't know.

"Yes, of course she wants us to think that, because that's what she is. A baby. Like how you're a boy and you want everyone to think that you're a boy so you get mad at me when I try to make you wear dresses and stuff." Said Mob

"Well, yeah, she is a baby but she wants us to think that she didn't pee on me on purpose. I mean if it had been an accident then why did she laugh?" asked Sho. He poked her in the belly to make her laugh again. Mob didn't tell him to stop even though Mukai's moving around like that made it very hard to finish with the diaper cream. You had to get all over, the internet had said, and into all the folds of skin too. Babies had a lot of skin folds, they were so chubby, and Mob wondered if that was ok. She knew that eating too much could be bad for you…but she also knew that babies needed a lot of food to grow and live…

She would have to ask Google tomorrow.

"Because she thinks that it's funny when you shout and make faces. She likes it when people shout and make faces. Remember how Shibata made faces at her for almost half an hour?" asked Mob as she finally finished up with the diaper cream. She would have to send someone out for more tomorrow. She doubted that this country would have the kind that Mukai was used to. She was Korean and they were not in Korea. They were in America again where everything was in English and directions would have been very hard without pictures.

Maybe the baby was just jetlagged?

"Yeah. You know I've never seen the baby get tired of it before the adult…but then again we don't know a lot of babies." Said Sho

"That's true. Maybe we should meet some so that Mukai can have some friends." Said Mob. She got the diaper on her, finally, and was trying to do up the snaps of her baby outfit. The snaps at the bottom were good for diaper changes but they were also small and made of metal and very slippery in Mob's fingers. She wasn't going to use her powers, though, because she didn't want to risk losing control and hurting Mukai.

"They'd have to be esper babies and Mukai is that only esper baby that we've ever seen….and we've been all over the world." Said Sho

"We haven't seen all of it though, just the parts where dad has business in. We haven't even seen all of Japan and we're Japanese." Said Mob. She wondered if Mukai missed Korea. She wondered if Mukai was even old enough to miss anything. Maybe she missed her mom. Maybe she was just eating so much and crying so much because she missed her mom and dad and stuff. Sometimes people stress ate. Minegishi stress ate chocolate sometimes when things were bothering them or when they were sick. Mob stress drank milk when she was feeling sad or mad or lonely. Sho stress ate his fingernails when things were bothering him. Also dad liked to drown his worries in ketchup. You could tell the state of Claw by the state of dad's omelets, Shimazaki had said, and for once he spoke the true. The more ketchup he put on the more problems that Claw had…

She wished that she had checked how much ketchup he had used for his breakfast that morning. Maybe that could have been a clue or something…but then again she was really bad at getting a clue.

"I know that it's a big world and all but I don't think that we're going to meet any esper babies. Esper kids are super rare as it is." Said Sho

"That's true. I hope…I hope that she has some friends, though, so that she doesn't grow up lonely for people her own age. You and I are lucky because we're only a year apart, sometimes even less, but she doesn't have anyone her own age to play with." Said Mob. Even if Sho could be mean she was still grateful to have him.

"She doesn't have any real brothers and sisters?" asked Sho

"I really don't know, the note didn't say, but probably not. If her real mom and dad were going to give up one of their kids then they would have given up all of their kids. I mean why only keep one kid but not the other. It doesn't make any sense." Said Mob

"Maybe her parents wanted a boy but then she was a girl. I saw on TV that they do that in some places, get rid of the girl babies." Said Sho. Mob nodded. That was so sad that people did that to girl babies. Dad said that it was because boy babies carried on the family name and inherited things. Mob didn't see why she couldn't rule the world just because she was a girl. Also the world had a lot of people in it called Suzuki as it was.

"Maybe….I mean I know that in some places they don't want girl babies…even though you need both boys and girls to make more babies…but Mukai is a girl esper. Dad said that girl espers are the rarest kinds of espers." Said Mob

"Maybe…maybe they didn't want her because she had powers. I mean normal people have esper babies all the time. Maybe they gave her up to Claw because they knew that because of her powers they would never be able to take care of her. Maybe people without powers aren't meant to take care of people with powers." Said Sho. He didn't mean to do it but he got her thinking about mom again. Maybe mom had left because she didn't have any powers. Maybe she thought that because she was so different from her own kids that they would be better with their own kind. Like he movie about the kid who adopts the chimpanzee but then it gets too big and they have to let it go in the jungle with it's own kind so that it could be happy. Maybe mom had realized that if she was around then dad would always leave them with her. Maybe she thought that she and Sho would have been better off with their own kind, espers, and would have been happier being raised in Claw with dad….

That was better than thinking that mom had ran away because she didn't love them anymore.

"Yeah…but that doesn't matter to us. We both have powers and we're both going to take care of Mukai and we're going to make her forget about her rotten old family." Said Sho. Mob smiled. Even though she knew that she shouldn't have, Mukai's real parents could have been perfectly nice and normal people for all she knew, she did smile just a little bit.

"You don't have to help me…but if you wanted to heat up one of her bottles then that would be nice." Said Mob. There were two ideas in her head and they were fighting it out. The first one was the fact that dad had trusted her with Mukai and dad had wanted her to be the one in charge. The second one was the fact that people needed other people. Dad didn't agree with that even though Claw had hundreds of people working directly for it not to mention the worshippers, donators, and random business people. Dad needed other people even if he wouldn't admit it…but dad also left her in charge…

Sho wanted to help.

This was like teaching, she decided, and that was ok. These were the things that he would need to know for when he got married and had babies with his wife. He shouldn't be like dad and make her do all the work even if she was a girl. His future wife would probably divorce him if he tried to make her do all of the baby work and Mob did not want that. Yes….this was ok because she was teaching him. That was all.

It had nothing to do with the fact that she was exhausted and it was after two in the morning.

"Ok, I'll do that since there's no chance that she'll be able to pee on me…but you burp her. I don't want baby throw up on me." Said Sho

Mob agreed to that. After all, it was nice of him to help anyone, and Mukai didn't care either way who burped her. She was just a baby after all.