Mob had nothing against tattoos.
A lot of people didn't like tattoos because yakuza people got them. She didn't see why people thought like that, the yakuza might have done bad things but it wasn't the tattoos that made them do it. It wasn't like in the one movie Sho liked where the ghost tattooed people to mind control them and bring him wolves to make into wolfmen and also everyone knew karate….Sho watched a lot of weird movies. She was glad that real life wasn't like that, real life was complicated enough without ghosts and stuff like that. Plenty of mind control, though, or at least this guy said that he could do it…she went to a different email.
Dad could deal with that.
The next person said that he could read people's minds…she went to another person. She didn't know if she was allowed to pick new assets or anything like that. Dad had never said so…but anyway she didn't want to hang out with anyone who could read minds or control them. She got nervous when she thought about how Hatori could go through people's search histories when he felt like it. She didn't know how she could be friends with someone who could hear her thoughts…not that the new asset, person, was definitely going to want to make friends with her.
She didn't know if she wanted any more friends.
She went to her messenger. Sho was still working…she wasn't going to look up. She'd gotten a text from Mukai, a picture of the inside of a box of cookies, and a cursing face emoji. She didn't know what that meant. Was Mukai mad that she had eaten her cookies or…she didn't even know what else. Little sisters could be complicated. Little brothers too. She didn't even want to get started on her friends. Sometimes her friends fell in love with her, sometimes her friends fell into her family and became her brothers, sometimes friends stayed mad at you for a really long time, and sometimes friends just left your office one day and stopped talking to you all together.
Friends were complicated. Mukai and Sho…and Hatori now, she supposed, were simple.
But tattooing looked even more complicated. Sho was still at it…and maybe something had gone wrong. That was a lot of blood. He was tattooing right over the worst of his scars, the thing that wrapped along his leg. She had nothing against tattoos but maybe if something hurt and made you bleed then it just…wasn't the best thing to be doing.
Sho wasn't always the best judge of what was best for him.
"Sho, do you really have to do that to yourself?" asked Mob, putting her phone down. She wasn't going to get texted back by staring at her phone. Besides, Sho needed her right now. He was bleeding…a lot…or maybe some of that was red ink.
"No, I'm doing it for fun." Said Sho. Mob nodded. That made…some kind of sense. She knew that Sho loved art, he had loved to draw and stuff since they'd been little, and of course he would have loved to draw on himself…but it looked so painful. The last thing that she wanted was for her little brother to be in pain. She just had to figure out something to distract him with…and to figure out what he even meant.
Nothing about that looked fun.
"I don't get it." Said Mob. Sho shook his head…she felt kind of dumb…but that was normal for her. She had always been kind of clueless, it had been this way for as long as she could remember. She got it from Dad and he probably got it from his parents and her kids would get it from her. Sho's kids would probably be normal, not clueless she meant.
"What's there to get? Tattoos are cool." Said Sho
"I understand that part, I just don't understand how any of that can be fun. You're bleeding, there's nothing fun about being hurt." Said Mob. Sho reached out with his powers and patted the blood off of his leg. She took the box of tissues off of his nightstand, it was kind of light she'd have to buy him some more, with her powers and passed it over to him.
He put it down on the floor and sighed.
"I can do this myself, I'm not a baby you know." Said Sho
"I never said that you were, I was just worried about you. I just wanted to help…I'm sorry." Said Mob
"Don't be sorry, I love you and stuff…I guess. just quit trying to tell me what to do. I like doing tattoos, it's fun for me, and yeah this hurts really bad but it'll be worth it when it's done." Said Sho
"What are you drawing?" asked Mob. She stared at the lines that he'd drawn on himself. It was something with a lot of red in it, or maybe it was blood, or maybe she was just looking at it from the wrong angle. Sho had been tattooing around the entire scar that covered his leg.
"I was trying to do a dragon, like the one Shimazaki has on his back. It's just weird because of the scar, it'll look better once I at least get the outline done." Said Sho. Oh, now she could see it. It was just going around and around. She had been looking at it wrong. She had been looking for the picture inside of the scar when, really, the picture went around the outside of his scar. She could see the scale pattern he was drawing over his entire scar…and that was why he was using so much red. It wasn't all blood.
"I think it looks good, I mean now that I know what I'm looking at." Said Mob
"Don't lie, it looks like crap. I didn't think that it would be so hard to tattoo over scars. I'm going to tell Fukuda to let himself get some scars so I can practice on him." Said Sho. Mob didn't know what he was talking about. It looked good, a lot better than what she could have done. Sure a lot of the lines didn't connect yet and it looked like the scale pattern would never connect but it was still pretty good. Not as good…neat, neat was a better word for it. It wasn't a neat as the ones that Shimazaki had. His lines were all even, the colors were all even, and…and that made sense because Shimazaki hadn't done those himself and now she was going to stop thinking about him before he teleported into her room and tried to talk to her about…about what she had been avoiding talking about.
She didn't know if she could break up with someone.
She had heard, from Minori back when they had been friends, that if you didn't want to go out with a guy then you could just never talk to him ever again. It was so mean and at the time Mob had thought that she wasn't capable of something like that, but now…now it looked like the better option. It was better than breaking up with him….better than breaking his heart. She'd had her heart broken, she knew what it was like. She was never, ever, going to make someone feel like that.
Ever.
She wished that she had never started the whole thing…but she had. She had done something to make him love her, she was the one who had wanted to keep on doing stuff with him, and she was the one who hadn't told Minegishi even though she knew that it was the right thing to do. She had thought that they had known…but she should have confirmed. Like setting a meeting time. This whole thing was her fault and she just wanted it to end already. Sure she missed a lot of things about him, about hanging out with him and even the other stuff, but it could never happen again. Not unless she wanted to make everything so much worse.
So she did what she had to do…which was sit on her bed and watch her little brother give himself tattoos.
"I don't think that it looks bad at all. I think that you're doing a good job and I'm glad you're having fun but…but aren't there other fun things that you can do? That we can do together?" asked Mob
"Yeah, probably." Said Sho
"There are lots of things that we can do. We can…um…we can try and play something? Like a game or….or a board game…or, um, what else is there? I know! We can play a videogame, something Serizawa likes too, or we could go and see if Mukai's asleep yet, or we could watch one of your scary movies-" said Mob
"I feel like doing this, that's why I'm doing it. Anyway, I don't know why you're complaining. I don't complain about the stuff that you do." Said Sho
"What do I do that makes you want to complain?" asked Mob. She couldn't think of anything. She had stopped telling him when to take a bath, she had stopped moving his art supplies when he left them out, she stopped trying to tell him what to eat, and she had stopped complaining about how he locked himself in their room sometimes. What else did he ask for?
"You leave your hair in the sink and you put cheese in the curry and you're always drinking all of the milk and…and stuff like that." Said Sho, counting off on his fingers like Mukai did sometimes. Mob pulled out her notes app and made a note about the sink thing. That was the only thing that he had been right about…not that she was going to think mean thoughts or anything.
She liked the curry with cheese in it.
She had gotten the recipe from the internet years ago and now that was just how she made it. The cheese went with the meat and anything went with the sauce. If she had been meaner she would have told Sho that he drank ranch…she wasn't going to be mean to him. Her feelings were just being weird right now. There was too much going on with her and her friends and work and….and her friends avoiding her…or her having to avoid her friends…
But Sho had nothing to do with any of that and even if he had things to do with it then…well then she would have forgiven him as quickly as she could.
"You're right, I should clean the sink better…but the curry is better with cheese in it and if you want your own jug of milk then I can get you one and put your name on it." Said Mob. Sho looked down at his fingers. It looked like he was trying to count…or trying to figure out what he even needed to count. She didn't know what was with him…maybe he'd lost too much blood. She went into her messenger and got ready to send Fukuda a message if she had to. She didn't want to see him but she also liked it that Sho was alive.
"Are you-" asked Mob
"Well, uh…you're always smoking in our room! it's like I wake up and there's smoke or I go to bed and there's smoke and it's like…way too much smoke!" said Sho
"I didn't know that it bothered you so much. From now I'll only smoke outside or in the kitchen or the bathroom or Serizawa's room. Not in the living room though because your hamsters live there…or maybe I should just smoke less. I've been smoking a lot lately." Said Mob. She knew that she had been smoking too much, of everything. She needed to smoke both her cigarettes and her joints away from Sho…or just less in general. Minegishi had always tried to teach her about moderation and, probably, if she thought she was smoking too much…and if Sho agreed.
It seemed like he agreed.
"No, you can smoke! Don't quit or anything like that. Just…open the window or something." Said Sho
"It's winter outside." Said Mob
"In the summer then, I don't know. You can smoke if you want to, smoking is awesome…I don't know." said Sho. He was looking around, now, and fidgeting….that wasn't good.
"Do you want some?" asked Mob as she reached over with her powers and got her cigarette case from in her Elsa bag. It was getting kind of torn…maybe Shibata could teach her how to sew…not that she knew when she'd have the time to learn.
"Yeah, of fucking course I do." Said Sho. Mib decided to let the cursing go for now. She got out a joint and put her cigarette case back into her bag, careful not to tear at it even more, and lit the joint with her powers. She passed it to Sho first, he was younger and she loved him a lot.
"You can have as much of that as you want, Sho, and I really am sorry about the smoke. I really didn't mean to bother you, Sho, I can smoke somewhere else from now on if you want, or I can just use the pen. Shimazaki just sent me a lot of this kind, that's all." Said Mob
"You can smoke in here if you share with me and quit complaining about my tattoos. You sound like Fukuda, you know, and it's weird. You guys should be separate people." Said Sho. He tried to pass her the joint. She held up her hand. He needed it more than she did.
"I didn't mean to sound like Fukuda, and you can keep doing that if you want to. I just wanted to know if you….if you had to do it in here, I guess." asked Mob
"Our room has the biggest mirror. If you don't like it then go sleep with Serizawa." Said Sho
"It's not that I don't like it, I think that tattoos look really nice, but I just…I'm kind of worried. I mean that's kind of a lot of…blood…." Said Mob. She felt the energy around her shift. She didn't have time to run away, or hide, or even pretend like she didn't notice. Less than a second after she felt the energy in the room shift Shimazaki was there. In her room. Sitting in the middle of a hula hoop on her floor.
Sitting there in the middle of a hula hoop on her floor in the space between her and the door.
"Were you planning on inviting me?" asked Shimazaki. Mob tried to find her voice. She had to say something. No. That was the answer to his question, the whole truth of it. No. She hadn't been planning on inviting him into her room or anywhere near her. She was red…she couldn't believe that she had…Minegishi was going to be so mad at her. They were going to think that she was still Shimazaki's girlfriend and-and she didn't want to be! And she…she didn't want to talk to him, either, not about what had happened or what was going to happen or what they were or what they used to be. She didn't want to say anything to him.
She didn't have to.
"No, but you can go next. Then Big Sis." Said Sho. Shimazaki's aura touched hers for a moment before pulling back to his body. He didn't say anything to her, he just took the joint…he kept his back to her, too. He hadn't said anything to her but…but the more she sat there the more time he had to come up with something to say to her and then…and then she would have to come up with an answer…but there were some things that she didn't even want to discuss!
"I have to go to…to…Serizawa! He needs me!" said Mob. She practically jumped out of her bed and ran out the door. Her leg brushed up against Shimazaki's back as she ran away. She didn't mean to…she hoped that he didn't think that had meant anything. That she wanted to do…she did…but she didn't. She knew better and…and that wasn't even what she should have been thinking about!
Serizawa probably did need her.
He was probably lonely, he didn't have as many friends as she did. That was what she had to do right now, focus on her friendships, and nothing else…well work, and her siblings, but she tried to friends with everyone at work and she was, of course, also friends with her siblings. She just couldn't focus on her relationship with Shimazaki right now…and she couldn't end it…
She didn't have it in her.
So she went to Serizawa's room. Sho didn't need her there anyway. He knew what he was doing and he probably wanted to be alone, too. He was fine and she was fine. She was…she was fine. She let herself into Serizawa's room and sat down beside him…she was fine. Shimazaki wasn't going to try and talk to her about things, not now, he didn't like Serizawa that much…she didn't know why. He was a very nice person, one of her best friends ever. He was always up to hang out with her and he needed her, too. He was a good friend.
He was there.
Which was more than some other friends…but too much from others. Friendship was complicated, or maybe she was just clueless. Or maybe it was a little bit of both. She would have believed either…she wanted to believe neither. She wanted things to go back to normal but…but it didn't look like that was going to happen…so she had to just make the best of this with the friends that she had…the friends that things were still normal with.
She had nothing against her life now but…but getting back to normal would've been….nice.