In Japan they had entire stores just for manga.
Which, in Mob's opinion, was great. She liked manga even though Minegishi said that it was a low form of literature. That was a difference in opinion between her and them and it was ok for friends to have differences in opinion. Minegishi had said so and they were very smart so Mob believed them. She had no reason to doubt her best friend who wasn't her little brother.
Though she did wish that Minegishi could like manga as much as she did.
"How has he not found the one piece yet?" muttered Minegishi as they flipped through a weekly shonen magazine.
"How long have they been looking for it?" asked Mob. She didn't read shonen, she wasn't a boy, but Sho did. She wondered if Minegishi was a boy since they had walked past all of the shoujo to get to the shonen even though the shoujo was much more interesting…but then again boys could like girl things and girls could like boy things…and also it didn't matter what Minegishi was, anyway, just so long as they stayed friends.
"Since I was your age…or even younger. I don't know, really, I never liked One Piece that much." Said Minegishi. They closed their manga and put it back with the others. Mob tried to picture them as a kid…but it was hard and not just because she had no idea if they were a boy or a girl. Minegishi gave off the feeling that they had been born an adult even though she knew that never happened. That had just been a movie, a very confusing movie, and not real life.
"What did you like? When you were my age I mean?" asked Mob. She played with the plastic handle on her basket as she spoke. She wondered if this was ok to ask them. She wondered if this was one of those things that she was not allowed to know about until she was eleven. She hoped that it wasn't one of those things.
Waiting for her next birthday was hard.
She had just turned ten back in May and now it was July, almost August, and she didn't think that it was super fair that she had to wait until her next birthday to get her questions answered. Like how about how Minegishi's parents died…which may have been none of her business but she was curious…or why sometimes Minegishi kicked her out and told her not to come back until the next day when they were hanging out with Shimazaki…not that Mob was itching to hang out with him or anything like that. Sometimes it just felt like Shimazaki and Minegishi were a two for one special even though he was so annoying and Minegishi was always calling him mean names like 'idiot' and 'stupid' and also some other words that Mob was not allowed to think let alone say out loud where people could hear and then tell dad.
She knew that she was far from dad and Claw but she was still not going to say bad words.
"In terms of manga? Or life?" asked Minegishi. Mob wanted to ask in terms of what their life was like, what they were like, but they probably wouldn't tell her. They said that their life was hard, in some ways harder than hers and in some ways easier, and there were a lot of things in their life that Mob would not have wanted to know about. Things that were scary, things that were disturbing, and things that Mob was way too young to understand…even though Mob was pretty sure that she was the judge of what she could and could not understand. She was ten, now, and next year she would be eleven. She had run Claw, taken care of a baby, and dad had even promoted her to the next rank in the family. She was young but she was not a child.
But she didn't feel like getting into all of that so she figured she would just ask about manga.
"What kind of manga did you read?" asked Mob. Minegishi shrugged. Mob wondered if they'd even read manga at all. They said, once, that they had spent a lot of time in the library when they were a kid because they wanted to get away from their home. Mob could understand that. Things could be very hard at home sometimes. Dad was being nice now…but he could be mean at any time….and Sho was back to being mean but also he was nice sometimes…and it was hard and confusing and-
She was grateful that dad was trying to teach Sho how to run Claw today.
She knew that she should have been there for him to make sure he had lunch and didn't make a mess or annoy dad but…but she also wanted to not be with her family for a little bit…and the whole thing made her so terribly selfish…but it would be ok because she was bringing back some manga for Sho. The boy kind with robots and fighting and stuff. Not her manga with people falling in love and hanging out and being friends and stuff.
She wondered what kind Minegishi had liked when they were a kid…not that she was looking for clues or anything….because it didn't matter what Minegishi was so long as they were friends…but it would have been nice to know just so that she wouldn't be so curious anymore…
"I didn't read a lot of manga. I mostly just read horror, true crime, grisly war stories, stuff about brutal dictatorships. Stuff like that." Said Minegishi. Well that was no help. Those sounded like boy things but girls could also like boy things…well to a degree. Shoujo and shonen were clearly labeled as for boys and for girls. She knew that there weren't book police out there telling you what you were and were not allowed to read….but they were clearly labeled…
Not that this was all that important. Minegishi was their friend no matter what.
"You didn't read any manga at all when you were a kid?" asked Mob. Minegishi closed their eyes and shook their head. Mob thought, for a moment, that they were made at her…but she knew that they weren't. Not when she thought about it. The only time that they had ever been truly mad at her was when she had stolen some of their medicine and also accidentally made the death combination. That was when you mixed drinking and Xanax. You could accidentally never wake up, Shimazaki had said so, and Mob was very glad that she hadn't.
She wondered why Minegishi hadn't warned her not to mix them together.
Well they had probably never expected her to steal from them…and it had been stealing. Mob had called it borrowing and she had told herself that it was ok because Minegishi had already shared some with her but being shared with once wasn't an open sharing invitation to help herself for the rest of time and also you couldn't borrow food and drink because there was no way to return it. So that must have been why Minegishi hadn't warned them…but it sure was nice of Shimazaki to warn her…even if he had been in her personal space when he had been doing the warning….
She wondered if they made manga for the blind. Books and TV and stuff was great for learning social skills…and he was missing a few of them…not to be mean or anything like that.
"Ok, fine, you pried it out of me. Sailor Moon. Ok? I used to read a lot of Sailor Moon when I could get my hands on it….and you'd better take that to your grave." Said Minegishi. Mob wondered what they were so upset about…unless they were a boy and they were afraid of Shimazaki and all of the other boys at Claw making fun of them…
Well if someone tried to make fun of Minegishi then Mob would make sure that they stopped. People were not allowed to make fun of her friend.
"Ok, I'll keep it a secret….but why? I like Sailor Moon too. I like how they're all friends and they fight together and also she has a boyfriend and they love each other." Said Mob
"Because I would prefer not to give the morons we hang out with anything more to laugh about. You know how they are." Said Minegishi
"I don't think that they're morons…but I do know how they can be. Well mostly Shimazaki. I know how he can be…and I don't know why you like him." Said Mob
"Mob…I've been trying to figure that out since the day he and I met and I've come up with nothing. Anyway, are we done here? Can we go to a real bookstore now?" Said Minegishi. Mob couldn't help it. Her mind went right to…well places that she knew that it shouldn't have. Maybe it was her fault for saying 'like' when her mind was on people liking people….or maybe it was just the basket full of love stories and also Galaxy Express and other outer space stuff because dad liked that stuff and she had to like what dad liked…even though she also liked what she liked. People could like whatever they wanted and whoever they wanted.
Even people as weird and annoying as Shimazaki.
"This is a real bookstore." Said Mob. She knew what they meant. They meant a store with a bunch of books for adults that were long and complicated and didn't have any pictures…not that all books needed pictures but the pictures really helped. That way she could picture the characters better and also it made the story a lot easier to understand. They disagreed on that, her and them, but that was ok because they were still friends.
"I meant one with books for adults." Said Minegishi
"There's an adults only section back there." said Mob. She pointed to the part of the store with the signs that said 'adults only, no minors beyond this point' and also there was a beaded curtain. Mob wondered what was back there. Probably just more long and boring stuff that had a lot of complicated kanji and was hard to understand.
"Not the kind of stuff that I'm looking for….but then again…." said Minegishi. Mob smiled. Yes! They were going to stay for a little bit longer! That was good. There were still whole aisles that she hadn't walked down. She hadn't even looked at the tiny little statues. Not that she would be buying any, they didn't look like they would make good dolls since you couldn't pose them or brush their hair or change clothes, but she did like to look at them….though she wondered why so many of them were in such tiny clothes. Not tiny like size but tiny like how Mob's underwear covered more than what some of those girls were wearing.
Those must have been for boys.
Boys liked naked girls and stuff like that. Well they did when they got older. That was why so much nighttime anime had girls with big breasts and tiny skirts and they jumped around a lot. Boys were so weird sometimes. At least the stuff for girls had love and stuff. Not just almost naked people. Why people would ever want to look at almost naked people she would never understand.
She would never understand adults for as long as she lived.
"Don't follow me and don't look through my bag later. Got it?" asked Minegishi. Mob nodded. She didn't know what the big secret was, what could have been so amazing about the adults only section that she wasn't supposed to know about, but she wasn't going to go looking around if Minegishi explicitly told her not to.
"I won't." said Mob. She was so happy. Now she could look around some more. She didn't want to go back to the base. She didn't want to have to be in a room with Sho being mean or dad being nice or dad being mean and Sho being nice or both of them being mean at the same time…and she had no idea why they couldn't both be nice at the same time…and she knew that she was being selfish but she just didn't want to go back.
So she stayed a little longer.
She walked through the aisles and aisles and aisles of manga. She stayed in the shoujo side, mostly, because she liked these. There wasn't any fighting in these, not physical fighting, and she liked that a lot. She had enough fighting in her real life. She didn't need any fighting in her books, too. She wanted the things that she didn't have, that was why she read manga. Even though there weren't really a lot of things that she couldn't have.
She had a lot of things.
She had a bunch of money in her bag and she had food where she was living and she had a dad and a brother who loved her very much and she had some friends, and a best friend who was not her brother, and she also could ask for almost anything and she would get it….and she was grateful. There were just some things that she…she couldn't have…
She walked past an aisle of little kid mangas.
Baby Mukai would have liked those. Those would have been good for teaching her how to read. She knew that Mukai was only three…four months old…but she would need to learn to read for when she got older. She would need to learn how to read before she even got to school because that way she would be ahead of all of the other kids. That was why mom had made her and Sho learn how to read and write before they even started school. That was what moms were supposed to do and Mob had to be like mom and…
And she walked past the kids' mangas.
Mukai was better off with her new family. She didn't have to worry about people being mean to her and stuff in her new family. Her new family accepted her, too, for what she was and not who they wanted her to be. They must have been good people. They had chosen to adopt her. When you grew a baby on your own in your stomach you never knew what you were going to get. When you adopted a baby you knew exactly what you were getting. That way you would accept the kid that you got because you had picked the kid out yourself. Mukai didn't have to worry about having a dad that was nice one day and then mean the next. She didn't have to worry about being in charge of her little brother. Well Mob had no idea if Mukai even had a dad or a little brother but she did know that Baby Mukai didn't have the same life that Mob had.
Even though she had a lot to be grateful for she still didn't want Baby Mukai to have a better one than she did.
Mob shouldn't have been thinking about that. There was no point in it. She wasn't going to make her come back by thinking about it. She just…she looked at other manga. There. One with a boy and a girl on the cover…she read the back. This looked nice. They were in a club together and they were childhood friends. Mob picked up the next volume in the series. Oh. There were a bunch of other boys in the club who wanted to be the girl's boyfriend…and it went on and on and on? Perfect! Mob liked the ones that went on forever. She liked how the story just kept on going and going and going. That meant that when they did kiss it would be even better than if she had picked the boy she wanted to kiss from the very beginning.
There. She had something else to think about.
She picked up one of each volume and put them in her basket. She had to use her powers to keep them all balanced. She needed another basket. She wished that they had shopping carts here. Big ones like the ones the Awakened borrowed from the store for playing bumper carts with. This basket was way too tiny but as long as she focused she could keep everything balanced and-
Oh! There was a boy and a girl kissing on the cover of that one!
And it was a whole light novel! Not just a few volumes of manga put together but a whole light novel! Those were better because they were longer…but not as long as big compilation books…but still pretty long! Oh! Ok, she needed to do this delicately. She needed to be delicate because this tower was precarious and she was excited which meant that her powers were excited and she had to be careful-
"Ae you actually going to read any of those?" asked Minegishi. Mob should not have been startled, she had been able to sense them, but she had also been too into played jenga with manga and light novels…and she was not good at jenga…and also they weren't supposed to play jenga anymore because Shimazaki had glued the pieces together and then he and Shibata had a great big fight…but maybe some glue would have been useful…
Because her books went everywhere.
"You know something, Mob, this might be a sign that you have maybe just a bit too much manga." Said Minegishi as they got down on the floor and helped her pick up her stuff. They had already paid…wow she had lost track of time…and now she felt bad about making them wait even though she hadn't even seen the second floor or the basement yet…but they had already paid and that meant that it was time to go…
Mob wondered what they had bought.
It wouldn't be sneaky to look into their bag if their bag was already opened a little…and she maybe tried to look…and she didn't see anything. There was brown paper over the front of what they had bought. Like the book covers that she'd had to use back when she was in school to keep her textbooks nice…and she would not have been surprised if they had textbooks over in the adults only section.
Minegishi closed their bag.
"What did I tell you?" asked Minegishi. Mob ducked her head low even though she knew that Minegishi could still clearly see her. It was just a reflex like how her aura pulled itself in tight around her. She could see Minegishi's aura. They weren't mad…which was good…but Mob had still done the opposite of what she had been told to do…
"I'm sorry. I was just curious and…stuff. I'm sorry if I made you mad." Said Mob. Minegishi sighed.
"I'm not mad at you, just annoyed that you didn't listen…but it's whatever. Just listen to me next time when I tell you to stay out of my stuff, ok? Adults only means adult only. You're ten. You stick with all of this. This is really more your speed." Said Minegishi. They picked up one of Mob's books, one of the ones with people kissing on the front, and Mob quickly put it back in her basket.
"Minegishi! Don't! People might see!" said Mob. She had stacked them face down in her basket for a reason! These were the kinds of books you read under the covers at midnight with your phone in flashlight mode. People could not know that she read that stuff. Too embarrassing. Much too embarrassing.
Nobody in the whole wide world could know that she read that stuff or she thought about it…besides Minegishi because they were very good at keeping secrets…Mob's secrets, anyway.
"That you really want a boyfriend? Yes, whatever will you do if people find out your terrible secret?" said Minegishi. Mob knew where she would be! Well actually she didn't know if she would be in a different place or what place she'd even go to…but she didn't want people to know how much she wanted a boyfriend!
Not even strangers in a manga store.
Nobody was looking at her….well nobody that she could see…and she didn't want to risk anyone seeing. She put all of her stuff in facedown. She had to. She didn't know why it was so embarrassing, people paired up all the time, but the thought of anyone in the world besides Minegishi knowing that she wanted someone to love her and hold her hand and kiss her…she had been thinking a lot about kissing lately…more so than normal….
She didn't understand herself sometimes.
"Minegishi….don't tell my secrets to the world." Said Mob. She wished that she could be invisible. There were so many people around and…and even though she knew that nobody was looking at her…but it still felt like it….
"You're so lucky Shibata isn't here or he'd have taken at least ten pictures of you being adorable like this." said Minegishi
"….not trying to be." Said Mob once she got the last of her books into her basket. She slipped a little as she got up. Part of her dress, the cape part, got caught under her shoes. Minegishi caught her. She didn't know why everyone always said that she was adorable. Well a lot of her clothes were costumes…and also people thought that she was tiny even though she was normal sized for a ten year old…and stuff…but she didn't think that she was adorable. She was too old to be adorable, for one thing, and also she had never been adorable even when she had been a little kid.
"Well, you are, so accept it. And stop being so embarrassed, too." Said Minegishi
"I can't help it. It feels like people are looking at me and…stuff." Said Mob
"Mob, let me impart some wisdom on you that I wish someone had imparted onto me if I was your age." Said Minegishi
"If it's about sugar being poison you've told me already." Said Mob. She knew that sugar was poison and she knew that it was bad for her but she knew a healer and also she needed the energy that sugar gave her to grow and…stuff. She needed all the food groups and sugar was a food group…and therefore she needed sugar to live…even if it was poison.
"No, it's not that…but, yeah, don't eat sugar. It's poison." Said Minegishi
"But I like it." Said Mob
"Do you also like having teeth and a working pancreas?" asked Minegishi
"Um…yes? I mean I've never really thought about it before." Said Mob
"Well just remember that sugar is poison…and also remember that nobody cares about what you're doing. Nobody's looking at you, nobody cares what you're doing, everyone is too busy worried about their own shit to give a shit about yours. Ok?" asked Minegishi. That made sense…sort of…but she still couldn't shake that feeling. It had been getting worse lately. Maybe because everyone had been looking at her when she had been the boss….and maybe she was still used to that.
But she nodded anyway.
"You get it? Good. Now come on, I'm bored as all else." Said Minegishi. Mob got up off the ground. There. Well she was sort of done…and they had been there for a while…even though there were whole floors that she hadn't seen yet…
But part of being a good friend was knowing when it was time to leave for the sake of your friend.
Like how Minegishi always left the coffee place when Mob got jittery and her heart started beating funny even though that was their favorite place to read because nobody bothered them. They were a good friend like that and Mob could be a good friend like that.
"Ok, I'm done. We can always come back next time we're in Tokyo…if dad doesn't need me to watch Sho…I'm ready to go. I'm ready." Said Mob. Her basket was heavy…and also she had to keep the stack steady with her powers…and maybe it was time to go. She could always head back next time she was in Tokyo. They came here sort of often.
She liked Tokyo a lot. Not just because of the manga stores but also because they put brown paper over your manga if you asked.