Haircut day came about once a month.

Mob didn't get proper haircuts though. Only the front of her hair ever got cut. It had been that way for her entire life. In every single picture she had ever seen of herself when she had been little, too little too remember, she'd always worn her hair the same way. Two long braids and then short bangs. Mom said that she'd kept Mob's hair like that because of her powers. It had to be tied back or else it would float around and the bangs were to keep it out of her eyes. She had to have long hair because she was a girl. She'd asked mom once when she had been cutting Sho's hair if she could have short hair too but mom said that Mob's hair was long and beautiful and she could never ever cut it because she was a girl and stuff. Also mom had said that for her whole life she wished that she'd had thick, long, black hair just like Mob's.

So Mob had never gotten it cut.

Not for real. Not like Minegishi cut their hair. Minegishi'd had short hair when she met them and then they had been growing it out, which in Mob's opinion was a good thing because once it got long enough she could braid it for them, but they were chopping off all of their hair today. They said that it had gotten too long and it was getting too hard to take care of. Even though it wasn't even long enough to braid.

"Hold still before I end up flaying you alive." Said Minegishi as they attempted to cut Mob's bangs evenly. She was used to doing it herself with a bowl, she had said, and the results weren't always the most even. Minegishi could not stand looking at uneven bangs so they decided that if they wanted something done right then they had to do it themselves.

Plus it was good practice.

Their hair had gotten too long. They hadn't wanted to go through the work of keeping up with it but instead they had just created more work for themselves down the line. They had spent most of summer with hair down below their jawline. Too long. They hadn't had long hair since they had been a child. They were not a child now and they could chop their hair down to nothing if they wanted to. Not that they would be chopping their hair, now, they would be cutting it down to their preferred length with proper salon scissors.

But first they were going to practice on Mob.

"I am holding still…or at least I think that I am. It works better if you use a bowl. That's what my mom always did." Said Mob. Mom used to make her and Sho sit up on chairs in the kitchen and then she would cut their hair. She did Mob's first because it went faster. Sho's hair was more complicated. Mom had to wash it and then cut it while it was wet and then again after it had dried and spiked up. She was glad that she didn't have hair that spiked up. Haircut day took all day for Sho. Dad went a lot faster because he wore his hair a lot shorter. Short hair looked like it was so much easier to deal with…not that Mob would ever be cutting her hair short or anything like that.

"You really want to have blunt bowl cut bangs for your entire life?" asked Minegishi. They hated what they had done to their bangs last time they'd trimmed them. Slightly uneven and way too short. That was why they were playing mad stylist with Mob. Well not truly playing mad stylist, they weren't going to give her a pixie cut or anything, but they were going to try for something other than the truly unfortunate bowl cut she'd been wearing since the day Minegishi first met her.

"Um….yes?" asked Mob. Honestly she had never really thought about how she wore her hair. She'd had it the same way for her entire life. She left it down to sleep and also when she wanted to look older but aside from that her hair was the way it was and she had no plans to change it any time soon.

She had no idea what she would even do with it.

She wanted to color it red when she grew up. That way she could match dad and Sho. Lavender was a nice color, too. That was the color that Minegishi had. They had dyed their hair earlier that week and had let Mob watch. It was long and complicated, and also the chemicals did not smell good at all, but it was worth it to make their hair all pretty like that. Mob wondered why they were bothering to chop it all off. It was so much prettier long. She wished that she had hair like theirs. Lavender hair. Short hair.

Short hair would have been less work…but mom wouldn't have wanted her to have short hair.

"Whatever, it's your hair." Said Minegishi. They picked Mob's bowl off of the bathroom counter, it smelled vaguely of popcorn, and plopped it down on her head. They cut as quickly and as evenly as they could. They only cut her bangs and left the rest of her hair long even though they could not begin to understand how she withstood the summer heat with such long, black, hair.

Or even how she got such long black hair in the first place.

Maybe she was adopted. It would have made all the sense and also none of the sense. Suzuki didn't like kids, that was obvious, so he had no reason to adopt one. Also the odds of someone as powerful as Suzuki not being his kid were slim to none. As far as Minegishi knew, anyway. They didn't know how esper genetics worked. They were born to two normal parents. So had Shibata and Shimazaki. Mob and her brother had one esper parent. Most people just came from normal people. Minegishi had no idea how power were inherited so maybe they should just not have been speculating on this even to themselves.

Still though, it was odd, how little resemblance Mob bore to the rest of her family.

"Thank you. You did a better job than I usually do. My mom used to cut my hair…but then she left before she could show me how. My dad cut it for me a few times but I don't like asking him for help with stuff that I can do myself." Said Mob. She looked at herself in the mirror. That was a lot more even than she did it too. A little longer, too, she couldn't see her eyebrows at all. She smiled.

"What's so funny?" asked Minegishi. Mob was smiling and her aura had hiccupped a bit. They hadn't done that bad of a job. Besides, they were out of practice. They had gotten lazy lately and let their hair grow up too long. It was so long that Ryou was starting to play with it when he got bored.

So really they had no choice but to cut it short again.

He didn't feel complete unless he was bothering someone. Well he could go and play with someone else's hair if he had to play with someone's hair so badly. They were glad, now, that they could go about their day without someone teleporting next to them and just touching their hair like they were a house pet or something. Also they could survive the rest of summer better now….but then they would have to grow it out again in the wintertime…or just invest in a hat. Or stay inside until it got warm out again…

They really did not like winter for a myriad of reasons.

"I can't see my eyebrows anymore. We're twins…not in real life but…but because we match." Said Mob. She wondered if that was mean, pointing out that Minegishi didn't have any eyebrows. She hadn't meant it in a mean way but then again she was not the best at the whole talking thing.

"Yeah, we kind of do. I can pull it off better, though." said Minegishi as they stood side by side with Mob in front of the bathroom mirror. Mob did look a bit like a young them. Back when they'd had black hair. Of course they had been a much more sullen and morose child than Mob ever could be…which made no sense considering Mob's upbringing up to this point.

How she had not made herself an orphan at this point was beyond Minegishi's understanding.

Suzuki was an asshole. He was a sexist asshole who treated his kids like a cross between a couple of employees and a couple of pets. Minegishi did not know how Mob could put up with it…though the sway in the way she stood gave it away. She'd been at it again? Really? But…well the why went without saying.

It was that very same 'why' that had started Minegishi down that very same river of sin.

It had started when they had been a few years younger than Mob was now. For their entire life they knew that they could talk to plants and that they could talk back. Dear old mom and dad had thought that they were crazy and since this had been the nineties and people didn't, you know, look into these things the best thing to do was to beat the crazy out of them, starve the crazy out of them, try to spook the crazy out of them by going on multi-hour screaming monologues…it had not been a good time. It had been around the age of six that they realized that they could make plants grow.

That they could make their apple tree grow out of season fruit.

By about the age of seven they had mastered the art of making plants grow whatever fruits or vegetables they wanted them too. There were hiccups, even now there were, but they made it past them. So what if the apples were tomatoes on the inside and the bananas had avocado pits? They weren't hungry anymore. They could make anything grow, change anything into whatever they felt like it, so long as they had just one seed.

Poppy seeds worked just fine.

They had discovered opium in a book, and really they needed to be more careful in what they put in children's books, when they were eight. The rest was history. As soon as they realized that they could make themselves feel better, that they could make themselves feel everything and nothing and even both at the same time, they had never looked back. That was what had made the years between eight and twelve bearable. The group home years too. Also their post emancipation years.

And the rest of their adult life.

So, really, there was something to be said about the river of sin. They never would have been able to cope without it. Of course they hadn't stuck to plants for long. Salvation came at the bottom of a bottle or in tablet form. They had been walking the fine line between chemical dependence and just taking the edge off ever since. It could have been worse. They could have been Ryou. They at least could stand to feel nothing, on occasion, but he always had to be feeling something.

So, yeah, at least they had been the one to start Mob down this river of sin and not Shimazaki Ryou.

"I'm sorry if I hurt your feelings." Said Mob. She was bad at reading faces and bodies and stuff but she could read auras. Minegishi seemed sort of sad there…well sort of. Their aura pulled in close though since their aura was always stuck to plants it could be a little hard to tell. The spider plant hanging from the ceiling got a little bit droopy though so maybe that meant that Minegishi as feeling all droopy on the inside.

"What? No, you didn't. I am well aware of the fact that I don't have any eyebrows." Said Minegishi as they cut their hair down to something more manageable. Mob decided to be helpful and catch their hair and put it in the overflowing bathroom garbage. Whatever. They weren't going to take it out. They weren't the one who had a surprisingly intricate and also wasteful nightly skincare ritual.

"I know but I just thought that I had hurt your feelings because of how your aura was being. I don't like it when I accidentally hurt people's feelings…and also I would never do that on purpose." Said Mob

"Mob, you are too good for this sinful earth." Said Minegishi with a laugh. Yeah, she may have vaguely looked like them when they had been ten but she was nothing like that. Well the substance abuse and abusive/neglectful father but aside from that Mob was their polar opposite. It had probably never crossed her mind that she could use her powers to kill her father and take his place as the head of Claw.

Which Minegishi totally would have done had they been in Mob's sparkly blue light up Frozen sandals.

"Um…thank you?" asked Mob. She didn't think that she was too good for anything and she also didn't think that the Earth was sinful. The Earth was a nice place filled with all sorts of people. Some of them were good and some were bad and some were very good and some were very bad but nobody in the whole world was too good for the Earth.

Also Mob was not a very god person.

She had stolen one of the bottles from dad's office. Not one of the big pretty bottles, he would have noticed that, but she had stolen one of the little bottles that were behind the pretty bottles. She knew that dad wouldn't miss it…and at the time she had told herself that it belonged to Claw and she was Claw and stuff…but now she knew that she had just been stealing and that stealing was wrong…and also she should not have been drinking…

But she sort of needed it.

It helped to keep her powers in check and it made the world a more fun place. Just a little bit. Not enough that she got sick and threw up or went to sleep and didn't wake up for a long time. She wasn't going to overdo it. Minegishi had told her a bunch of times to be careful never to overdo it. She just…it was ok so long as she drank only a capful or two. Like Minegishi had said. She just…she needed it. She got sort of sad around this time of year.

Late summer.

"You're welcome…and you didn't hurt my feelings. I was just thinking." Said Minegishi

"What were you thinking about?" asked Mob

"Just…things. The past. Things that I don't like to think about." Said Minegishi

"But if you don't like to think about them then why were you thinking about them just now?" asked Mob

"Just some stray thoughts." Said Minegishi as they got to work getting their hair down to an acceptable length.

"About what?" asked Mob. She always wondered what Minegishi was thinking about. They were so smart and they knew so much about things and stuff….and also they were her very best friend in the history of ever. Well next to Sho but Sho was her little brother and little brothers were their own thing.

"Do you have to ask so many questions?" asked Minegishi. They'd made a mistake, there, and now they were going to have to go shorter than they had intended…but that was ok. Just less work for them in the future and less for Shimazaki to play with when he wanted to be annoying.

"Yes." said Mob. She wondered if Minegishi had meant to cut their hair that short. It was as short as a boy's now…but they might have been a boy…and also sometimes girls had short hair. She didn't know how that worked, though, because mom had said that girls had to have long hair and dad agreed.

"Even if you're being nosy?" asked Minegishi

"I'm being nosy again?" asked Mob. She wished that she could have taken it back. She knew that Minegishi didn't like nosiness but Mob never knew when she was being nosy and when she was just asking a question.

"Yeah, kind of." Said Minegishi. They flinched when they saw Mob's aura turn inwards. Right. Mob was a kid and she needed kid gloves…even if she was being sort of nosy. But that was just how kids were. Curious. Minegishi knew that they had been as a kid. They had practically lived in the library back when they had been Mob's age.

"Oh….I didn't mean to. I was just worried about you and stuff. That's all. I'm sorry." said Mob. She said sorry too much and she knew that she said sorry that much but also she meant it every time she said it. She always felt guilty every moment of her life, it felt like sometimes, but saying sorry made her feel better.

"Mob…it's fine. I was just thinking about…about how you reminded me of a younger version of myself. A younger and happier version of myself." Said Minegishi

"I do? Me? But why?" asked Mob

"The black hair and the budding substance abuse issues, mostly." Said Minegishi with a shrug and a flippancy that they did not feel.

"What are substance abuse issues?" asked Mob

"The reason that you're tipsy right now. I'm sorry that I started you down this road, ok? I never should have started you down this road." Said Minegishi with a sigh. They had been trying to help but, instead, they had just ended up making more problems for themselves down the road. They hadn't known Mob that well back then, she hadn't grown so thouroughly on them back then, and if they could do it again they would have stopped themselves….

But did that make them a hypocrite?

They didn't know. They knew that they had messed Mob's life up…but they may have just been seeing themselves in her. They could see her in the mirror but they may have just been seeing themselves in the past. Mob was not them and they….they could not speak for her future. But they still felt like they had ruined that future…even if they were making her present better…

They didn't know. They weren't a parent.

"I don't mind. I'm a lot happier when I drink and stuff. I mean I've been happy lately since me and Sho made up but also I'm kind of sad because…because this time of year makes me sad." Said Mob. She didn't know how much of this was ok to talk about. She knew that dad was back at their house and that his hearing was good but not so good that he could hear all the way next door to Minegishi's bathroom, and also over the very loud music that was coming from Shimazaki's room, or the very loud TV that was competing with the very loud music, but she still felt like she was about to get into big trouble for even mentioning mom and what happened and how she was gone and stuff.

"Your mom?" asked Minegishi. They did some mental math in their head. Yeah, Mob always got kind of melancholic around this time. Her little brother went from Dr. Jekyll to….well actually he went from Mr. Hyde to Mr. Hyde on a three day coke bender. Suzuki just acted like more of an asshole than usual. You would think that such a rich and powerful man would have been able to afford a therapist or something but, hey, what did Minegishi know?

"My mom. She ran away three years ago around this time…and I've been thinking about her and stuff…even though I know that I shouldn't." said Mob. If dad knew how she had been feeling, how she had been thinking of mom and stuff, then she would have been in for it…and she did not like it when she was in for it.

"She's your mother, you can think about her whenever you want to. How's your dad going to find out? What, is he a secret telepath or something?" asked Minegishi. Suzuki had better not have been a telepath or he was getting a piece of their mind.

"No. He says that telepathy is the one power that he never wants. I just feel like he's always watching, you know? Like how if I say something wrong I'll be in for it even if he's not…there." said Mob

"So not only is he the avatar of a God, the most powerful man in the world, and the future ruler of the Earth he's also Santa Claus?" asked Minegishi

"What?" asked Mob. None of that made sense…well those were things that people said about dad sometimes…but putting them all together made it sound sort of…like crazy talk.

"He knows when you are sleeping, he knows when you're awake. He's knows if you've been bad or good so be good for goodness sakes." Said Minegishi

"Santa isn't real and if he was he wouldn't be my dad. Santa is jolly. Dad isn't. He doesn't even like Christmas that much. We only celebrate it because he says that our cultural traditions are important." Said Mob

"Well then why do you think he's listening? I mean…there had better not be cameras or something around here." Said Minegishi. They glanced around. That had never not been a possibility…but they had been getting Suzuki's daughter drunk and high for years now. If he had known he would have had a violent word with Minegishi at some point.

"There aren't. Dad says that a surveillance state breeds distrust." Said Mob. That had come up while she and dad had been listening to an audio book about the year 1984. Not a good year at all in Mob's opinion. She had been happy when it ended and she got to choose the next audio book…though dad hadn't really cared about the novelization of Frozen.

"Good. He hasn't gone totally around the bend yet." Said Minegishi

"What do you mean?" asked Mob. Dad wasn't ever going to go around the bend. He got sort of angrier than normal when it got to be this time of year but he wasn't going to go crazy.

"Nothing. I didn't mean anything. There's nothing at all insane in what your father is doing. Anyway you can feel however you want about your mom. Nobody has the right to tell you how to feel. Ok? And if you need to reach for a bottle or whatever to make yourself feel better…try not to. Ok? First try not to and then see if…if you can feel better on your own. Ok?" said Minegishi feeling like the biggest hypocrite in the world. They didn't know where the line was between hypocrite and keeping someone from making your mistakes. They thought that it would just be enough to teach Mob moderation and make sure that she was safe but now she was getting things on her own. Minegishi was no longer in control of the situation and they knew that they couldn't put the toothpaste back in the tube but they also had no clue what to do with the toothpaste now that it was out of the tube.

She was not their daughter.

This was not their child. They were friends, this was the best friendship that Minegishi had ever formed in their life, but they were not parent and child. Her mother should have been the one doing this. Her mother should have been the one cutting her hair and her mother should have been the one teaching her how to drink and smoke and all of that other stuff. But she didn't have a mother. Her mother had run off to parts unknown and her father could not be trusted with a houseplant let alone a human being.

Minegishi had no idea what they were doing here.

They had no idea what they were supposed to do about the mess they'd made. They'd started Mob down this path because they had wanted to make things better in the moment. They hadn't accounted for how out of control things would get…and they were starting down the out of control path. She was doing all of this at ten. What would she be doing at eleven or twelve or…oh God, the teen years were coming…and at that point there would be no stopping Mob from doing whatever it was that she was going to get it in her head to do.

Minegishi had no idea what they were supposed to do without being a hypocrite…so they just decided to say their piece and hope that it didn't fall on deaf ears or end up making them look like a hypocrite in Mob's eyes.

"I do try to feel better on my own…but I can try harder, I guess. I'm not drinking so much that I get sick or that I fall asleep. Things are just sort of hard when it's this time of year. I remember what you told me about only one capful and using moderation and stuff. I listen to you when you tell me things." Said Mob. She didn't think that she could stop now. Once fall came. Things would be better in the fall. Once the leaves turned color and the weather got cold. Then they could all think a little less about mom and how she had gone away and how they hadn't seen her in so long and stuff like that. The bottle she took would last her that long….

She was not going to make Minegishi unhappy with her.

They were best friends and she did not want to go back to not having a best friend. She wasn't going to just forget about all of the stuff that Minegishi had taught her. They were smart and they cared about her. They cared about her enough to teach her things. Sort of like how mom had taught her somethings. It was nice to have someone who taught her the important things in life. Like how to drink but not get sick and how to vape when she craved a cigarette so she could trick her brain into thinking that she was smoking.

Minegishi was really smart and cared a lot about her. Mob was so happy to have them for a friend.

"That's good. Just don't turn into Shimazaki, that's all I ask. Anyway how's my hair looking?" asked Minegishi. They did not want to talk about this anymore so they wouldn't talk about this anymore. They would finish up in there and then play dolls or something with Mob while contemplating what it meant to be an adult and what their responsibility, if anything, was to the ten year they called their best friend.

Good times.

"You have a boy's haircut now…but I like it. It looks very nice." Said Mob. She liked Minegishi's old haircut better but they liked their hair short and it did look nice short too. Still too short to braid, it would never be long enough to braid, but that was ok too. Minegishi was her friend, not her doll, and she had plenty of dolls that they could braid the hair of, too. That would be nice, playing dolls, it would take her mind off of…stuff.

Like mom.

Like how mom had just left three years ago and how if she hadn't come back in three years it looked like she was never coming back. That was ok, though, because Mob was ten now. She wasn't seven anymore and she could do things for herself now…and what she couldn't do she had someone to help with.

She had Minegishi.