Dad was a bath bomb thief.
That was the only explanation. Sho hated baths, Mukai had her own bath bombs, and nobody else used this bathroom so it must have been dad. Either that or Mob forgot that she used them, sometimes she forgot things like when she drank the last of her strawberry milk, but…well she didn't think that she'd forgotten them. She'd put them in a specific order. First it went rose and then lavender and then whatever the green was…and just…well it had been a very complicated order that Minori had texted her about. She didn't want to get out of the bath to check her phone…and anyway with the purple one gone the order was off anyway.
Just because dad couldn't go out and get his own bath bombs.
Well it didn't matter. There were worse things that she could have had stolen from her. At least dad hadn't touched the stuff she kept between her mattress and her box spring. Dad…was not at all fun when he was stoned. She had never seen him drunk but she had seen him stoned, she'd been smoking with him, and…it was not fun. He was all touchy and he told her over and over again how much he loved her.
She loved dad too but when he was normal…well the dad version of normal…which was a version of normal that she was going to have to get used to.
Dad was back. She could feel him all the way from the bathtub. He was either having a work party, a math party, or a videogames party with Serizawa and Hatori. Not Fukuda, thankfully, she didn't know if she could have relaxed with Fukuda. Even if she was smoking in the most perfect bath in the world. Fukuda was just…someone who she did not want to think about right now…or ever.
Right now she just wanted to take her bath.
She had time, a lot of it. Mukai was with her mom, it was after her bed time, and Sho was in their room. She didn't know if he was drawing or playing videogames or just kicking the wall cursing about dad again. The door was closed, and locked, and she didn't feel like unlocking it. Sho locked himself in sometimes, he had been having a lot of really bad feelings about everything, and she didn't blame him. Fukuda had told his secrets and lied to him and a bunch of other stuff…and also dad was home and dad was always a jerk to Sho…plus Shimazaki had broken his heart too. A lot of stuff had been going wrong for him and she would have helped him, she didn't know how she would have helped him but she would have gone along with whatever he asked of her, but…well he didn't even want her in the room with him right now…
So maybe it was alright for Mob to be a little selfish.
She held her joint between two fingers like Shimazaki had told her. The one hand she held it with, the hand that was out of the water, was cold. She could have held it with her powers…but her powers weren't listening that well right now. She had been doing this for a while now…and maybe she should have come out before the water got cold….but then if she came out…well she had so many things to do. She had to put the clothes in the dryer and then fold them when they were dry and put them away…and she had to put Serizawa to bed at some point…and she had to check in on Minegishi too…and then maybe Shimazaki would have wanted to hang out with her and if that happened then they would be out all night…and she had work to do at HQ tomorrow…and also maybe they would be moving and…and she had….well she had a lot to do….so maybe she could just stay in the bath for a little while longer…
At least until the water got cold.
When the water got cold she would come out and do all the things that she had to do. Maybe by then Sho would have unlocked the door. She maybe had enough time to put her bedding in the wash…she hadn't washed her bedding in a while…she hadn't done a lot of things in a while. It was time to get back to normal and that meant keeping up with the house stuff. Dad cared about all of that. Sho and Mukai hadn't cared at all. Sho was a boy and Mukai was too. She didn't care if she got dirty or if she had clean clothes…she even kept jello in her pockets. Two year olds were weird like that…but hopefully she stopped getting weird as she got older. Dad was her dad too…and he was really weird….
Dad was the weirdest person that she knew.
He was weird but not in the fun way like how Shimazaki was weird. He was more weird in the tiring way. The way that made your shoulders feel heavy and your back ache like he was always saying that his did. The kind of weird that made you want to avoid him forever…even though you knew that it was mean. Sure dad had been a jerk to Mukai…and also he had slapped her…plus he also divorced mom without even warning her…and there was also all the stuff he had done to Sho over the years…it was hard. Being his daughter was hard but…but she had to be a good daughter…and that meant forgiving her dad and going back to normal…
No matter how hard it was.
Mob closed her eyes and dipped her head under the water. She stayed under there for a few seconds. She used to do this when she was little, she'd pretend that she was swimming, but now…well now she was too big for that. The tub was a lot smaller, much too small to pretend to swim, and anyway it had always been more fun doing that with Sho. Not that she wanted to share a bath with her little brother…that would have been weird. No, she only sank under the water to be warm. She held her one hand above the water though…and that felt weird…
She came back up.
She brushed her bangs out of her eyes. That had been nice, warm, and now…well that had been nice. Sinking under the water was the best part of taking a bath. Minegishi even did the same thing, Mob had seen it with her own two eyes. They had held their breath and ducked under the water…Mob took another drag from her joint. Well it was kind of a roach by now…but her fingers weren't burned and it wasn't out so she was alright. She didn't want to think about that day, the one where Minegishi and her took a bath together, because it was just…not a good day. Not because of the bath, of course, that had been the most normal part of the day. She and Minegishi…they'd had a fight…and then Minegishi had said…all the mean things that they'd said…and then they'd thrown their bracelet…
Mob took another drag.
This time she did hold it up with her powers. They weren't listening right now. They wanted to play with the water. It was so soft around her, that was all the stuff from the bath bomb, the bath was all soft…but not lie water was soft…sort of like…like if she had been taking a bath in fabric softener….oh no! The laundry! Had she put the fabric softener in? Dad liked the purple kind…the kind mom used…even though he'd divorced her…if he'd divorced her then why did he still want Mob to use that fabric softener!? And why did he even care if she had remembered to put the fabric softener in?! She had forgotten…no…she had forgotten to set her alarm…right? It hadn't gone off-
Oh!
That was…not her alarm. That was a phone ringing…but her ringtone was the instrumental version of let it go…and that was just ringing….Mob dropped her joint, the roach, in the bath and reached over to her phone with her powers. Well now she had to get out of the tub and deal with…of course that had not been her phone…and the sound hadn't even been coming from the same direction as her phone. No, the ringing was coming from behind the hamper…Mob made sure to put her phone back down on the counter before she reached behind the hamper with her powers and….oh. That was dad's phone….
Mob sat up.
She took dad's phone in her hand, her dry-ish hand, and…huh? That was…a given name. Dad didn't have any given names at all in his phone. She and Sho were even still 'son' and 'daughter' in his phone. This phone…there was a name on this phone…a given name…a girl's given name. Shiori. Just Shiori…which was so weird….why was a girl calling dad?
Oh. Right. It must have been a Claw thing.
Well that made more sense. Mob may have felt like she was the only girl esper in the world but she wasn't. Dad said that for every one girl esper there were ten boy espers. It wasn't good odds that not only would dad have known a girl esper but she would have been important enough to call his phone directly….and to have her given name in his phone but…wait! That might have been a boy! Minegishi's given name was Toshi, well it was Toshiki, but both were boy's names! So this might have been a boy…wow. That had been…wow. She had almost been worried there. She wiped her hand on the towel on the ground and answered dad's phone for him.
There was a girl's voice on the other side.
"Touichirou? Are you there?" asked the girl…the lady….that was a lady's voice. Mob was a girl and she had a girl's voice…this was a lady…and….and why was a lady calling dad's phone? And why…why the h-word had she called dad TOUICHIROU!? Why the f-word-
Calm. Down.
"Hello. This is President Suzuki's phone. Vice President Suzuki speaking. Who may I say is calling?" asked Mob. That was polite…and she had to be polite. She was high, yes, but not stoned…she could still think just fine….and…and ok. She was starting to think crazy thoughts but she could still think of thoughts that made sense like…like…like this lady was one of the people who tried to kill dad! Wait…no….that didn't make any sense. If she wanted dad dead then she wouldn't have been calling him on the phone…or calling him Touichirou….or why dad was apparently calling this woman Shiori…which may not have even been her name…some people had aliases…and maybe…maybe she was a member of the upper echelon! No, wait, Mob knew everyone in all the echelons and…well it was impossible to know everyone in the world and….and….and she needed to say something….
Wait, no, it wasn't her turn yet. The lady on the other end of the phone still hadn't said anything.
"…you're…his daughter, right? Shigeko?" asked the lady. Mob frowned. That was weird. If this was about work then she would have known who Mob was…maybe the government had sent another spy! They did that sometimes. People were afraid of things that they didn't understand and nobody understood how dad was supposed to rule the world…how him ruling the world would have been the best thing for everyone in the world…but…but if she was a spy then why was she calling…
Hey! She hadn't said WHY the h-word she was calling in the first place!
"Yes. This is Vice President Suzuki Shigeko speaking. Please state your business." Said Mob. Maybe if she said her family name enough times this lady would start calling dad 'Suzuki-sama' like everyone else did. Maybe this lady was just confused…like she was really drunk or high or she'd had a lot of coke and now it felt like her heart was beating out of her body…or something. Mob didn't know. She didn't know anything…because she hadn't been told anything…
Why hadn't dad told her about this lady?
Dad told her about all the people in Claw she needed to know about. The upper echelons and the important squads and…and affiliates…but she didn't know about any lady named Shiori. Dad had been keeping this from her…well it wasn't like she had been spending time with him. She had skipped Sundays with him…and they hadn't stayed up late together in a while…but that had been his fault for being weird and…and she needed to calm down. The sooner she calmed down the sooner she could get done with this phone call…then the sooner she got done with this the sooner she could get back to her bath.
The water was going to get cold before this lady figured out what business she wanted to state.
"Hello? Are you still there? Did your call get dropped? Wait, no, that was a dumb question. Sorry, I can be kind of clueless sometimes. If the call got dropped then you wouldn't be able to answer that…but I don't know if you're still there and-" said Mob
"I-I'm still here, Shigeko, I'm still here." Said the lady….Shiori…she was Shiori now since she hadn't given Mob her family name…and also she had used Mob's first name without even being given permission….not that she minded that much when her friends…well this lady wasn't a friend. She was just…someone who was very familiar…..someone who got very familiar very fast. That was it. That was why she had called dad by his given name…
And dad must have done the same back because he was really weird and somehow even more clueless than she was.
"What do you need, then…Shiori-san?" asked Mob
"Just…you answered your dad's phone…" said Shiori
"Yes. That's why I'm talking to you right now." Said Mob. Was this lady high or something? Or maybe she was stoned. When Mob got really stoned she didn't always do things that made sense. This lady might have just gotten high and started calling people…or was that called 'drunk dialing' instead? Mob didn't want to know. She was glad that this lady was high, everyone in the whole world should have been high all the time, but she also kind of wanted this lady to be high somewhere else.
"Right…." Said Shiori
"Right. Um….ok. Listen, if you're high or drunk and you called my dad on accident then-" said Mob
"Excuse me?" asked Shiori
"You're excused. Anyway, like I was saying, it's ok if you're drunk or stoned or something but maybe you shouldn't call my dad when you're like this. He doesn't like to be bothered and-" said Mob
"What are you even…no! I'm not drunk or….do you even know what 'high' means?" asked Shiori
"High is when you smoke a whole joint by yourself and then you drink a whole liter of strawberry milk." Said Mob. There was some quiet on the other side of the call. Mob heard a cat meow and looked around…nope…that wasn't the cat that nobody could decide the name of. That was on the other side of the call.
"Oh! You have a cat!" said Mob
"Yeah, she's a…you know what? Just…alright. You didn't check your dad's texts, did you?" asked Shiori
"No, but if it's about work I can check now and-" said Mob
"No!" shouted Shiori. Mob had to pull the phone away from her ear. That was…way too loud. What was this lady's PROBLEM?! Was this just a normal night for her? Did she just call random people up, call them by their given names, and then shout at them? And she didn't even have a good excuse….
"You don't have to yell." Said Mob as she put the phone back to her ear. She was lucky, well dad was lucky, that she hadn't dropped this phone in the water. Dad probably didn't like this lady at all…not that she was worried about that since dad didn't like anyone…but he most certainly didn't like this lady. She was loud and rude, two things that dad hated the most in the world. Mob could have even hung up on this lady and dad wouldn't have even cared…
That was mean and selfish….she was not stoned enough to be all mean and selfish like that….
"And you don't have to answer your dad's phone for him. Actually you shouldn't. It's rude to be nosy like this, you know, it's rude to-" said Shiori
"I'm the Vice President, I'm supposed to answer dad's phone for him…and anyway you're the one being rude. You called my dad by his given name…he hates that…especially from people he doesn't even know." Said Mob. What a b-word. This was the biggest b-word that Mob had ever met. She didn't know what this lady's f-wording problem was but it was…ok. She was the one with the problem, not Mob, and Mob needed to be the nicer person. She always had to be nicer person….she was Mob.
"Your dad….your dad and I are friends. We're good friends. Anyway I need you to-" said Shiori
"My dad only has three friends and two of them are sitting at the kitchen table with him right now. They're having a math party…or maybe they're having a work party…or it might be a videogame party. Dad likes videogames a lot, well he doesn't like it when people say that he likes videogames, but he does and-" said Mob
"Well your dad has four friends now and I'm one of them…now will you please give him the phone? And whatever you do don't look at his messages." Said Shiori. Who was she? Why did she think that she was the boss of Mob?
"Why not? Is there top secret stuff in there? Like for a mission?" asked Mob
"I-you know what? Yeah, let's go with that. Can you please just give this phone to Suzuki Touichirou now? Please?" asked Shiori
"I'm in the bathtub right now." Said Mob. She didn't want to get up and get dressed…actually she couldn't even get dressed. All of her clothes, her summer clothes, were in their room…and Sho had locked the door. She had her robe but…well she didn't want to get up, get dried off, walk through the cold house, give dad his phone, and then get back in to the tub.
"Please. Can you just do this for me? I would feel a lot better if I knew, personally, that this phone was in your dad's hands." Said Shiori. Mob sighed. She didn't want to get out of the tub….but that was what she ended up doing. She had to be nice. She had to be sweet and nice and…and she loved her dad and…and if this really was top secret mission stuff AND dad was getting phone calls about it then it was more important than her bath….
It had been a really nice bath, though.
Mob got out of the tub, dried off, and got into her bathrobe. She didn't want to leave the warm bath, she didn't want to walk through the cold house, and she definitely didn't want to bother dad in the middle of whatever kind of party he was having. He didn't seem to want to be bothered either. The minute she walked into the kitchen he stared at her and his whole aura flared out. He opened all the cabinets and even knocked Serizawa's umbrella out of his hands.
Well at least he wasn't going to be asking her to hang out with him.
"Th-thank you, Miss Suzuki!" said Serizawa as she handed him his umbrella back with her powers. Dad was still staring at her…at least nobody else was. Hatori was back to playing Minecraft. At least he wasn't staring at her…maybe she should have been wearing clothes…she wasn't in love with Hatori but he was still a boy and he was still cute…
Mob pulled her robe extra tight around herself.
"Shigeko…what are you…clothes. Where are your clothes? What happened to your clothes? Go…go and put some clothes on this instant." Said dad. Mob looked down. She wasn't naked.
"I'm wearing a robe…and anyway Sho locked the door. He says that he needs to be alone right now." Said Mob
"Then break down the door." Said dad
"But…that would be mean…" said Mob
"Just do it!" said dad. Serizawa gasped and hid his face in his robe. Mob would have gone over to hug him….but maybe dad had a point. She wasn't dressed and…and sure this wasn't as tight as actual clothes…but she was totally naked under this robe….and there were boys in the room….
"What….um…here. This lady called. She says that she's your friend and that her name is Shiori-" said Mob. She didn't have a chance to say the part about the mission. Dad just used his powers to rip the phone away from her. This must have been a very important mission. Even Hatori had looked up. Now he was leaning forward trying to see dad's phone.
"Hello? Shiori? Yes, that was my….my messages? Why would she…hold on….oh!" said dad. Yes. Mob had been right. Dad practically jumped up from his seat. Serizawa actually jumped…well it was time for him to get to bed. She would put him to bed after her bath…which had probably gotten cold by now…well she would just be getting dressed…yeah. She would get dressed and get Serizawa to bed and then she would do all the other stuff that she needed to do.
She could take a bath again tomorrow…but it probably wouldn't have been as good as this one since all of her best bath bombs had been stolen….
"Shigeko….you didn't look at my messages, did you?" asked dad. Mob shook her head. Of course she hadn't. What? Did everyone just think that she went around looking at people's messages all the time? Like she didn't have anything else to do? Like she was Hatori…who was leaning over now to see dad's phone. As nice as he was, and as cute as he was, he was also very nosy.
"Oh my fucking-" said Hatori before dad knocked the glasses off of his face. Hatori was red…and so was dad. She kind of wanted to know what was happening…but she wasn't nosy. She wasn't like Hatori…she was more like Serizawa. He wasn't eve trying to look. He was keeping his face covered and he was shaking….well she didn't want to be scared either….
She mostly just wanted to be back in the bathtub.
"Shigeko! Why are-why are you still here! Just...don't you have anything else to do tonight?" asked dad
"I need to get dressed and then put Serizawa to bed-" said Mob
"Good! Go and do that…now! And take Hatori with you." Said dad
"Hey! It's only-" said Hatori
"No, now. All of you, leave me! And don't bother me until tomorrow!" said dad. Mob sighed.
"Sure thing, dad, I'll do that…right now." Said Mob. She didn't want to do all of that right now…but dad had told her to do something and when dad told he to do something then she had to do it. No matter how mean he was, or how weird, he was still her dad and she was still his kid…and he had to do what he asked of her. So that was what she was going to do. She was going to beg Sho to unlock the door and then she was going to get into her pajamas…and then she was going to put Serizawa to bed…and check on Minegishi…and all of that other stuff. She could just have a bath tomorrow….and when she did she wasn't answering any phones.
Dad had stolen her best bath bombs after all…so many she could just let him miss his important calls from now on.