Mob woke up tired.

That was normal for her these days. She always woke up tired and she went to sleep tired and she was just…tired. No wonder dad was never happy. It was so tiring running Claw. Everyone needed something from her and she just…she was not dad. She couldn't be mean to people. Especially not people who depended on her. When people depended on you then you were supposed to be nice to them. You were supposed to be good to them and take care of them and all of that stuff. That was what Claw was, just a bunch of people that she had to take care of.

Except they were adults.

Mob wasn't an adult even though she felt like it. She sometimes felt like her whole life had gone by already and she was dad's age even though she knew that she was only ten. She had only been alive for ten years but it felt like one hundred sometimes. Like now. She felt like an old person trying to get out of bed. Her bones were tired and her muscles were tired and she was just…tired.

But she had to get up. The baby was crying again.

"Go back to sleep, big sis, I can take care of her. I do it all day already" said Sho. Mob didn't know why he always said that. She was the one who was supposed to take care of baby Mukai while she was home. Besides, she probably needed to be changed again and Sho wouldn't change her. Mob pulled her phone off the charger with her powers and checked the time. She had been fed less than an hour ago. She either needed to be changed or she was feeling lonely.

"Sho, no, you go back to sleep. It's too early and you're going to be sleepy all day if you get up now. I don't want that. I have to get up around now anyway for work so I'll take care of Mukai. You're little, you need your sleep. I'll make some breakfast and leave it in the microwave for you and I'll change her and put her back down for more sleep. Ok?" said Mob. That was how her day usually went. She made breakfast for Sho, the Awakened were still being annoying so she didn't want them in the house, and then she put Mukai down for more sleep or she left her in front of the TV with one of her movies on, and then she went to work. Sho would get up and take over babysitting during the day. Well Shibata and Minegishi would help him but he insisted on being the head babysitter. Mob would work all day and then come home and make dinner and spend time with her family and go over Sho's homework before giving him and Mukai a bath and then putting them to bed.

Sho didn't much want to take baths with Mukai but it was the best way to make sure that she didn't drown as babies tended to do.

That was how her days went. At night she got up with the baby. She wasn't about to let Sho do that. He was just a kid and he needed his sleep. He was only nine after all. She was ten now, practically an adult, and this was what adults did. They took care of their families without complaining. She had no reason to complain anyway. She had this. This was something that she could handle. She had been left in charge by dad and she could handle this.

Otherwise they were royally…um….they were…um….a word which she knew she was not supposed to say.

She was the one in charge. Sho could not be in charge and Sho should not have to be the one in charge. He could be the one in charge when he was a grown up. Now she had to be the grown up. She had always been the grown up between them because she had been the one who was older. She had always been the one to take care of him. Even back when mom had been around she had been the one to keep dad away from him and to keep him happy so that dad didn't get mad at him…and also there had been those times when mom had been too sick and tired to get out of bed. She had been the grown up then and she had to be the grown up now.

She had no idea why he seemed to be in such a hurry to be the grown up.

"I am not little. I'm only a year younger than you, you know." Said Sho. She had no idea why he wanted to be grown up. Didn't he realize how good he had it? Didn't he realize how lucky he was that he only had to do his homeschool work and play with Mukai. Mob was the one who changed her and stayed up with her at night and, also, she would even come home and feed her and stuff if Sho didn't feel like doing it.

He was so lucky. He had always been the lucky one.

"Sho, you're tired. Go back to sleep. I have this." said Mob. Sho glared at her. She could see him through the early morning light. She could see his aura, too. She didn't want to get into it with him that early in the day…or even at all. She had enough to deal with in her day.

Which was starting very soon.

"Fine. Whatever." Said Sho. So he was going to be grumpy that day. Fine. She would…she didn't know. She would play with him when she got home. Some game only he liked. Target practice or something like that…or maybe she would come home early…if she could.

She never could come home early.

There was always so much to do. Taking care of Mukai was so much easier than taking care of Claw. Like now. The minute that she picked Mukai up she stopped crying. Lonely then. She never slept all the way through the night. That would happen when she got older. Mob couldn't wait for her to get older. Old enough to not wake the whole house up in the middle of the night, anyway. Old enough to play with for real. Old enough to not throw up everywhere. Old enough to not need changing.

She needed to be changed.

That was, obviously, the least fun part of taking care of a baby. It was gross, very gross, and Mob was amazed that her mom had managed to do this for two babies. She couldn't wait until Mukai got to be too big for diapers. She would be a kid then and then things would be easier. Mob might have even been able to take her to work with her. She would sit on the floor and play with Sho while Mob worked just like how it had been with her and dad when she had been little.

Dad was coming back.

But if he didn't she had this. She could run Claw. She was running Claw. It wasn't that hard. She just mostly gave people whatever they wanted. She gave them casual Fridays and weekly parties and two Wiis for the breakroom so they could stop fighting with each other. She gave them extra cookies at lunch and extra syrup at breakfast. She was making them happy and that…it felt good. She could run Claw maybe even better than dad since people were not afraid of her…they weren't. They were always trying to be near her and talk to her and be in her aura…and they had never been like that with dad…and if dad never came back then she could run Claw…and she could take care of Mukai and Sho…and she would make sure that they grew up loved and happy…and then when Sho grew up she would give Claw to him…and they would all be a happy family…

Dad was coming back.

She shouldn't have been thinking like that. She had been thinking like dad was never going to come back. He would. He would come back…even though he hadn't said when he was coming back. Or where he was going. Or even leaving her a list of instructions for how she was supposed to run Claw and take care of a baby and a little brother. She wished that dad would have at least given her some directions…but she didn't get to tell dad what to do. She just went along for the ride.

Kind of like taking care of a baby.

She didn't tell Mukai what to do. Well she could but Mukai wouldn't listen. She couldn't even understand…well she could sort of understand. She recognized her own name now, mostly, at least it seemed like it. Her name had been Mi-Cha, which was what she had been called back in Korea, but now she was Mukai. She sort of recognized the name Mukai….

"Ok Mukai, I'm going to change you now. So if you have to pee anymore do it now and not all over my hands. That's always gross and I know that you're little and you don't mean it but…please just don't pee on me. I don't want that right now. I took a bath when I came home last night and I don't have time to take one now, ok?" asked Mob as she laid Mukai down on a towel on the bathroom floor. This was the best place to change her because tile was very easy to clean. She liked to pee on whoever was changing her…

Like now.

"I asked you not to do that….but that's ok. I'm not mad at you, I can't be mad at you, you didn't mean anything at all by that. You're a baby and you can't help it." Said Mob. She called the hand sanitizer down from the sink with her powers and was about to put some on before she remembered what happened last time she did that mid diaper change. Right. She had to finish this. She cleaned up Mukai and put a new diaper on her. She made sure to use the sticky tabs on the sides and not tape.

Sho always used tape.

She didn't know why. Mukai didn't go anywhere. Her diapers stayed on even when they were a little too big. They sort of had to guess at her size when buying diapers. She didn't come with a list of her measurements. Maybe she should have had Mukai's measurements taken. Dad had her and Sho measured regularly so that clothes could be ordered for them. Maybe Mukai needed new clothes. She was mostly out of clothes. She had been wearing some of Mob's doll clothes. She wished she had more baby dolls, she didn't like baby dolls that much because they only had closed ended storylines, but if she had more baby dolls then she would have had more baby clothes.

She maybe should have just gone out and gotten baby clothes herself.

That was what moms did, they bought clothes for their kids. Not that Mob was anyone's mom. She was too little and she didn't even have a boyfriend. To have a baby you needed a husband and to have a husband you needed a boyfriend and to have a boyfriend you needed to have a boy who you liked and who liked you back and to like a boy she had to spend time with someone until she got to know them and the only boy she spent time with, lately anyway, was Shimazaki and she did not like Shimazaki that much. He could be nice sometimes but he was also always in her space and touching her and stuff. Also he kept on stealing her drinks even though he could pour himself a drink. He knew where they were and he was the one who poured the drink for her so it shouldn't have been any more effort to pour his own drink.

She didn't understand him at all.

"Sorry about almost snapping at you. I guess that I'm just tired. Not that it's your fault or anything like that! I just…these are my problems and I shouldn't tell you about them. You're just a baby and you have to worry about growing up and stuff. You have to learn how to walk and talk and stuff. You're the baby and I'm the grown up." Said Mob as she did up the snaps on Mukai's baby pajamas. She smiled. Mob smiled back.

She loved Mukai's little smiles.

She wished that she could have been around to see more of them. She had work to do and Claw was not the place for a baby. It was barely the place for her. Dad's chair was too big and everyone was too weird and Shimazaki was too annoying and everything was just too….too much. She wished that she had never turned ten. Things were a lot easier when she had been nine. She'd only had to help dad out a little and she spent more of her day playing with Sho or Minegishi and not having to worry all the time…but those times were gone, now.

She was ten and that was just the way it was.

"Come on baby Mukai, let's get you winding down now. I'll put that movie you like on. Maybe you'll fall back asleep…actually I kind of want you to fall back asleep. I need to make Sho his breakfast and I have to make your next bottle and I have to see if I can find some clean clothes for Sho and…and I have a lot of things to do. So please, please, please fall asleep in front of the TV so I don't have to rock you…not that I don't like it! I do, I really do, I just…I'm very tired." Said Mob. She thought that Baby Mukai understood at least some of that. She held eye contact and her aura was even a little bit visible. She was so little…but she was getting bigger.

One day she would be big enough to do some things for herself.

Mob carried Mukai over to her TV watching space in the living room. It was just a blanket that they laid her on and some dolls for her to play with. The shoes were gone so she couldn't choke on them, Mob had remembered that, and she had also remembered that Mukai liked pink things. The blanket was pink and all of the dolls had pink dresses and stuff. It was Mukai's happy place.

Someone in the house ought to have been happy.

She put Mukai down in her happy place and then went to the kitchen to make breakfast for Sho with all the food groups even though he mostly just wanted to eat bacon. Well she was not going to just make him a plate of bacon. Humans were omnivores, not carnivores, and that meant that he needed bacon, eggs, toast, and fruit on the bottom yogurt. They still had some of those and she had made sure to get only the berry kind because those would not kill him. She had to be extra worried about citrus, now, because Fukuda was still gone…

She had to be extra worried about everything now that Fukuda was gone.

One time when she had been very little mom had gotten a bacon grease burn. Some grease had splashed up onto her hand and even though she ran it under water a big blister grew. It was so big that Sho thought that mom was growing another finger. It had hurt a lot but then Fukuda came right over and he healed her right up super fast. It must have been dangerous, though, because he had to stay by mom's side the whole day even after he healed her.

There was nobody to stay by her side or to heal her.

Which was why she used her powers for this. For all of this. Dad might have even been impressed by how she could make bacon and eggs and toast and wash a plate and pour a glass of milk all at once with her powers. She stood in the middle of the room and focused on her control. She had to focus when she did this many fine movements. Bread out of the toaster, then the butter and jam, and then keeping the eggs moving like mom had taught her, and then flipping the bacon over before it got too crispy since Sho hated crispy bacon…and then frying a piece of bread in the bacon fat because Sho liked it even though it was bad for him….and then putting it all on a plate…and then putting the plate in the microwave…and then putting the eggs away….

And then the baby started to cry.

Mob dropped the eggs, almost, but managed to catch them at the last second. One fell out, though, and now they had an uneven number of eggs and also there was egg on the floor. The egg would have salmonella in it, which Mob knew to be true because dad had warned her about that when she had been about to crack an egg into her rice when they had been in America, and then since baby Mukai spent most of her life on the floor she would get salmonella and die…

Since they had no healer.

Mob cleaned up the gross broken egg with her powers while she rushed over to Mukai. The minute she got there Mukai stopped crying….which meant that she had just been lonely. Mob didn't blame her. She got lonely sometimes too…even when she was surrounded by people at Claw she sometimes felt lonely….and she was a grown up. An adult…and a kid. A kidult. She was a kidult and she felt lonely so it must have been even worse for a little baby who didn't even have the ability to get up and be around people when she was all alone.

Mob felt bad.

But Mukai was too little to be in the kitchen when Mob was cooking. Mob was could have lost control and hurt her and she would never have been able to live with herself if she ever hurt Mukai…or anyone for that matter. They didn't even have a healer….but that was not the point. She was not the sort of person who hurt people with her powers or otherwise. Actually it hurt knowing that other people were hurt. Like now. Mukai had been sad and now she was happy and she needed to get back to sleep because Sho was not supposed to get up that early and he was just a kid and needed his sleep and she had to be a good big sister and let him sleep but she had a meeting that morning with people on the other side of the world so she had to get there early and….

And she needed a cigarette.

Drinking made her sleepy. Cigarettes made her more awake. Well the ones in the store did, anyway, the ones that Minegishi grew made her tired after a while. She needed a cigarette because she was way too tired and way too stressed and she could even see her aura. She knew that her aura should not have been showing like that. Mukai was making her aura show now, too, and that was a terrible thing to teach a baby. Dad said that having a very bright aura with a lot of flares and stuff was a sign of bad control and she was not allowed to have bad control because she was his Daughter and she was supposed to be better than that and if dad saw baby Mukai doing that then he might not like her and then he would make her go away…not that Mob was certain that she was even going to stay…and she wasn't even sure if dad was going to come back and-and-and-

And she carried baby Mukai outside with her.

She sat down on the grass with baby Mukai at her side. Dad said that this was a filthy habit, a terrible habit, a habit that was beneath him and therefore her by extension, but he said that about everything. Besides, he was always on her about controlling her emotions and her powers and stuff and this helped. She lost control when she was stressed and tired and this would help her be less stressed and tired.

Also she made sure that baby Mukai was sitting in a way where she wouldn't get any second hand smoke because that stuff was bad for you and they didn't have a healer anymore.

"You really shouldn't smoke. This is for adults and you're just a baby. I'm ten, I know that if you could talk you would have said something like that, but I'm also the one in charge. When you're ten then you can decide if you want to smoke but right now don't do what I do. Ok? And don't tell Sho about this, either, because I don't want him to smoke…also I know that you can't talk now but I know that you're going to start talking when you're about one and I don't want you to talk about this, ok?" asked Mob. Mukai was pulling up some grass. Mob had no idea if she was paying attention of if she even understood that much Japanese yet but she still had to try and make Mukai know that Sho could not know about this.

Sho could not do the things that she did.

She felt bad about needing other things to control her powers. She knew that she should have just been able to control her powers on her own like dad could. She was not dad. She needed help and she knew that dad would have been upset with her if he caught her smoking or drinking or doing all of the other things that Shimazaki had told her about but hadn't given her any to try yet he would have been mad at her…but he would not have been as mad as he would have been if he had caught her losing control of her powers.

That is if he ever came back.

She wanted dad back. She wanted him right back there in front of her even if he would have been shouting at her or hitting her or pulling her hair. She just wanted dad back. Even though she could do it all on her own, take care of Claw and also her family, she wanted her dad to come back….because she needed at least on parent. She needed one parent at least because…because….because she was not an orphan. Orphans were kids without parents but she had parents, two of them. She had two parents but they had both….both left her…

Mukai touched her leg.

Mob exhaled. She coughed a little. She had been thinking about herself too much. Mukai was a real orphan. She had no mom or dad and that was why she was her pretend little sister. Maybe that was what dad's secret mission was. Maybe he was going around the world looking for the most perfect parents ever for Mukai. People who were nice and smart and would take good care of her. People who knew that she liked having her back rubbed which she was rocked and that she hated socks but loved footy pajamas and also that her favorite movie was the Black Cauldron in Korean and Frozen in Japanese and also the Great British Baking thing in English…or maybe that was just because Shibata helped Sho watch her during the day and that was all that he watched….and also Mukai liked to lay on her stomach to play but not for too long or she'd throw up and also she liked to chew on crayons and…

Mob hoped that dad found some great parents, the most perfect parents in the world, for baby Mukai. Yes, that would have been a good reason for him to have left her and Sho all alone…

Not exactly alone.

"So we're smoking and talking to ourselves this morning. God Suzuki, you're never dull, are you?" asked Shimazaki. He was sitting cross legged in front of her now. He smelled like toothpaste and hair gel and also that weird smell that clung to him, Minegishi said that he took cologne baths, and Mob wanted him to get out of her space already because he was always crowding her and-

And she was not going to be mean.

"I'm smoking and talking to Mukai. We can go to work soon, I just have to finish this and then put her back to sleep." Said Mob. She inhaled again. She had come out here to avoid stress but there, in front of her, was the most stressful person that she knew.

She had asked herself this before and she would ask herself this again. What did Minegishi SEE in him?

"I'm in no hurry. Mind if I smoke with you?" asked Shimazaki. He didn't wait for her answer. He just got the cigarette pack out of his jacket pocket and held one between his teeth. The polite thing would have been to wait for her to say something.

"Well you have a cigarette between your teeth so I guess yes." said Mob. She inhaled again. Mukai was ripping grass up off the ground. Mob made the grass taller for her to reach better. She exhaled slowly. Shimazaki was watching her. He was staring at her with his aura. His eyes, thankfully, were closed now. He mostly just kept them closed but he did open them sometimes. He said that even without eyes he still had the same expressions as everyone else. He said that his brain hadn't totally gotten the memo that he was born without eyes.

Mob didn't know how that worked and she wanted to ask him about it but that would have involved talking to him more than she absolutely had to.

"You sure know how to make a guy feel wanted." Said Shimazaki with his cigarette still between his teeth. Mob frowned.

"I wasn't trying to." Said Mob. She wondered if that had come out mean. She wondered if maybe she should have told him that she liked having him around and wanted him to stay…but that would have been a lie and it was worse to lie than it was to say something that may have come off as being mean.

"Well someone got up on the wrong side of the bed." Said Shimazaki. Mob inhaled and exhaled…and maybe didn't take as much care as she could have to blow smoke away from him…and now she felt bad for being rude even though he was rude al the time.

"I'm fine, just a little tired. How are you?" Said Mob. She didn't know if he was being annoying or if she just thought that he was annoying. He was just asking after her…and that was what friends did, they asked after you…and she didn't know if they were friend or if she even wanted them to be friends…

That was mean. If someone wanted to be her friend then she should have been friends with them.

"Perfectly fine aside from the fact that I can't find my lighter. Help me out?" asked Shimazaki. Mob reached into her pocket and pulled out her lighter. Shimazaki had gotten this one for her. It was even pink and she figured that he had either gotten lucky and ended up with a girl's color or he had someone help him. It had been nice, the way he had been nice enough to get her this lighter, and she didn't know what to make of it. How he could be nice sometimes and obnoxious the next. He was so weird sometimes.

Like now.

She knew that he could see her reaching into her pocket to get her lighter out but instead he leaned in close and pressed his unlit cigarette against the end of hers. He was close, way too close, and she suddenly thought of how he was always saying that he could kiss her. Whenever she said or did something that he thought was smart he said 'Suzuki, I could kiss you' and also sometimes he kissed his hand and pressed it to her cheek…but he wouldn't kiss her for real. He was just being a gross boy. Like when Sho would lick his hand and chase her around with it.

She would never understand boys for as long as she lived.

She didn't know why he had to do things like that, things to annoy her, when he didn't have to. Why did boys have to be like that? They were just…she didn't know. She had no idea how new people came into the world when boys acted like that even into adulthood. Maybe that was why all the movies and books and magazines said that it was hard to find a good guy. She would gladly spend her whole life looking for a boyfriend, even if it meant dying single with cats….actually she liked cats a lot, if it meant that she didn't have to be married to a grown up version of her little brother.

She had no idea what Minegishi saw in him.

She could ask them, though, because they felt Minegishi's aura getting closer. It radiated from them and then down to the roots of the grass she was sitting on. She wondered why their aura as so weird. She wondered a lot of things about them. They had promised to answer her questions when she turned ten but now they were saying that there were some answers that she couldn't know until she was eleven, which was not fair at all. At least Shimazaki answered all of her questions.

Like now. He would have known what it was that was making Minegishi so mad if she'd had the chance to ask him.

"Good morning, Minegishi. Why do you seem so-" said Mob

"What the fuck do you think you're doing?" asked Minegishi. Mob held her cigarette between her teeth and covered baby Mukai's ears. She did not want the F word to be her very first word. That would have been awful.

"Good morning to you too, Toshi. Sleep well? Any dreams you want to discuss? Still having the nightmare where you're stuck in the airplane?" asked Shimazaki

"Really, Ryou? Really? She's ten. She is ten goddamned years old. You know that she's ten years old." Said Minegishi. Mob knew what they were so mad about now…and she didn't get it. So what if she was ten? She could smoke if she wanted to. They had even smoked together once. Adults were so confusing sometimes.

"I can smoke if I want to. You smoked when you were my age. Shimazaki said so. Why are you so mad at me for? We even smoked together once. Not these kinds, though, the ones that you make. I like the ones that you make." Said Mob. She was not a child. She was ten but she was not a child. She was in charge of a baby, a little brother, and all of Claw. She was in charge of a bunch of adults and therefore if she wanted to smoke then she could smoke.

"I'm not mad at you, Mob, I'm mad at him. She is ten years old. Don't ruin her life." Said Minegishi. They were glaring at Shimazaki. He raised his hands up in the air like he was surrendering. To what Mob did not know.

"Hey, she's old enough to make her own choices in life." Said Shimazaki

"She's not old enough for the choices that you're trying to get her to make…and you know what I mean. You know EXACTLY…exactly what I mean." Said Minegishi. Mob hoped that he understood what they meant because she didn't. She got the idea that there was something there that she should have been understanding, another layer to what she was hearing, but she wasn't sure. She could be very clueless when it came to talking, sometimes.

"Like you said, she's only ten. Even I'm not that fucked up, Toshi, you know me." Said Shimazaki. He scooted away from her. Mob wondered why, now of all times, he decided to give her space. She didn't understand anything of what was happening in front of her. She wished that she had some kind of kid to adult translator…or maybe just a big book of expressions so she could puzzle out what was passing between them.

Shimazaki was better at this and he was blind.

"As much as anyone can know you, Shimazaki, as much as anyone can know you." Said Minegishi

"You know him very well, he said so. That's why he calls you Toshi but he won't call me Mob that often. He said that he'd know me that well, too, in three or four years though." said Mob. She knew that she had said something wrong but she didn't know what. She could tell by their auras. Mukai noticed too, that was why she stared crying. Too many negative feelings were passing between Shimazaki and Minegishi…

And Mob hated being the cause of them.

"Mob, come on. That baby should not be awake this early, she needs to be put back to sleep right now before what little schedule she's on goes to shit. Let's go inside. Shimazaki….sit there and think about what kind of human being you are." Said Minegishi. Mob didn't say anything. She just picked up Mukai and followed Minegishi inside.

She didn't know what they were fighting about, well she knew that she had done something wrong but she didn't know what, but she did know one this.

Minegishi had been right, Mukai must still have been pretty tired.