Dad never got them Christmas presents.

Sho didn't care. He had known for a while that Dad didn't care about him. When he had been little it had been different. When Sho had been Mukai's age it hadn't been Santa he believed in, it had been Dad. Mom used to tell him that maybe if he hoped hard enough Dad would come home for Christmas. He didn't know why he had cared so much. He had been kind of an idiot when he'd been a kid. He had thought that Dad cared about him, about being home for Christmas, about doing other Christmas things. Cookies, movies, presents…the only time that Dad had ever been around had been for the presents.

Presents that Mom had gotten them.

She had been the one to do the presents. Now it was Big Sis. Dad had never been involved in any part of Christmas. Mom had said that Dad got them things. Things for Christmas, things from when he was out of the country, things for their birthdays…it had all been Mom the whole time. Sho wondered why he had been sad, why little him had been sad. Dad had been just as much of a dickhole back then as he was now. Sho had still cried, back then, even knowing that…like a little kid figuring out that Santa was a lie and presents came from the store.

Sho was through crying now.

He was way too old to cry. He was thirteen, he'd been too old to cry for a while, and anyway he didn't even want to. He knew who Dad was. He had known who Dad was for most of his life. Dad had never hidden who he really was, like those fish that pretended to be rocks until you stepped on them…what were those fish called? Shiori would have known. He didn't get her sometimes, what she saw in Dad, but she did know a lot about fish and someone who liked animals…even the most boring and lonely animals in the world, couldn't have been a bad person. She was just in love, gross, with Dad…for reasons Sho would never know. Dad was a jerk and probably the worst person to ever live. He didn't care about anyone but himself…and somehow he managed to get people to care about him.

Sho didn't get it.

He was never going to get it. Big Sis was at least starting to come around but she had been on Dad's side for years even though she had known him for longer than Sho had, even. Now she was starting to get why Sho hated Dad…he didn't get why it had taken this long. He didn't get a lot of things…but he never would. It wasn't like he could ask Big Sis why she had been on Dad's side for so long, she would have probably just something like 'he's our Dad' and then that was supposed to have been it or….or something. He could have asked Shiori why she was in love with Dad…but that would have involved thinking about the fact that she was in love with Dad and…and that was just wrong. Besides, she wouldn't have even answered him honestly.

She didn't like to answer questions that weren't about fish.

Sometimes Sho tried to text her like they were friends, telling him things about his day and stuff, mostly to make sure that she was ok. Dad could have tricked her or been holding her prisoner or something and she just hadn't wanted to say anything because, of course, if someone was tricking you then you wouldn't have known and if someone was holding you prisoner then you couldn't have said anything. Sho needed to make sure that she was ok…and it was kind of nice talking to her…sort of like making a friend…but not a real friend….

But it wasn't like having a mom, that was the point.

Shiori wasn't as nice as mom, Shiori didn't want to be his mom, and Shiori was also kind of a bitch bastard sometimes and Mom hadn't been like that. Mom also wouldn't have made him come all the way from Tokyo to Osaka just to get his Christmas present…and not even that! His birthday had been on the first and now it was the twenty third. He was missing the Christmas Eve-Eve chair jousting tournament and spoons concert. He and Shimazaki had been planning on greasing the floor. Fukuda had, of course, thought that it was a bad idea but Fukuda thought that everything was a bad idea. That was why he couldn't have known that Sho had been on a train for three hours just to get his birthday present, and his sisters' Christmas presents.

Fukuda would have freaked out if he had known, so of course Sho hadn't said anything…and he wasn't planning to.

There really wasn't any reason for people to know where he had gone or what he was doing…and anyway it wasn't like he was going to do anything bad. He was just going to see Shiori, he could see whoever he wanted to see, and he could go wherever he wanted to go. If he wanted to be on a train for three hours then…well he hadn't wanted to take the train but there hadn't been any planes that he could have taken so the train it was…anyway it didn't matter. He wanted to be here, at this train station, and nobody could have stopped him if they had known he was here.

He was fine.

He felt auras. Some of them felt like the Awakened, like Dad, and some felt like people he had never seen before. He walked a little faster, as fast as he could with this crowd. Whenever a train pulled in it was like someone had stabbed it and it was bleeding people. All the people flooded into the train station it was kind of like drowning…being crushed in on all sides…but not the part where your lungs burnt. He had to keep on moving with the flow, and he had to move fast. Unfamiliar auras meant unfamiliar people and that meant maybe getting kidnapped or killed…

He wasn't going to get hurt.

He slowed down. Someone bumped into him. He didn't speed up, he didn't have to run. He wasn't drowning either, you couldn't drown in people. You could get trampled but you couldn't drown. He wasn't going to get trampled. He kept moving, but more normally. He didn't need to walk far. He knew the aura he was looking for, he knew the person that he was looking for…he sped up, but only because she looked kind of pissed off.

He didn't run.

He just walked fast. He had to. There was another aura close to her, some guy hiding behind a sign. Sho glared as he walked past. Guys could be so weird when it came to girls, even adult girls like Shiori. He didn't get it, why they thought that following girls around and being weird would make the girls like them. Sho didn't even like girls and he knew better than that. He made his aura show. If it came down to it he could take the guy. He didn't care if the normal people noticed him picking people up and throwing them. You weren't supposed to treat people like that, especially not his…whatever Shiori was. Girl that he had to protect or whatever.

It wasn't like Dad had been around for Mom, and she'd had him and Big Sis, so of course he wouldn't; have been around for Shiori either.

"Shiori!" said Sho as he walked over to her. She looked up from her phone. Her aura got brighter, kind of like she was about to put up a barrier or something. He probably wasn't familiar to her yet, that was all, like how sometimes he got so used to Big Sis's aura that he didn't even realize when she was right next to him.

"Don't run, I don't need the death of a child on my hands." Said Shiori, clicking her phone shut and putting it away. She looked over her shoulder. The guy behind the sign ducked down.

"I'm not a child, I'm thirteen." Said Sho, hitting the guy behind the train sign…thing. He fell down and ran away. Good. If Shiori noticed then she hadn't said anything, not like Big Sis. She would have told him to be nice and stuff, like she always did. She got it from mom, too. Mom had been really nice to them all the way up to the end.

She had never once been a bitch.

"Ok, I don't need the death of a teenager on my hands. At least not one I know." said Shiori. She was still acting like he was a little kid. He was big enough to take the train on his own there and back, too. Now he could kind of see what Dad saw in her. She was just as mean…she was kind of mean, like about a quarter as mean as him.

Which wasn't that much at all, maybe.

"I wasn't going to die." Said Sho. Shiori reached over and tapped him on the top of the head. He nearly put up a barrier, and that was after stopping himself from throwing her. She had hit…no, she hadn't. She wasn't his mom, she wasn't allowed, and even if she had been his mom they didn't do that. Only Dads.

"Not on my watch you aren't, now take this. Merry Christmas." Said Shiori, tapping him on the top of the head like he was a dog or something. He kind of missed getting treated like a little kid…though he was glad that she hadn't hit him…

And mad, to, that he ever would have thought that she could have done something like that.

"How about a nice 'Merry Christmas, Shiori-san'?" asked Shiori

"Merry Christmas, Shiori-san." Said Sho. He took a deep breath. He wasn't going to lose it. If she really pissed him off then he was just going to take his present and leave. That was all. He assumed that the big red bag with the Santa cat on the front was for him. Him and Big Sis and Mukai…or maybe just Big Sis and Mukai. She had only gotten him a birthday present, and she hadn't even seen him on his birthday and stuff…but she hadn't had to. She wasn't his mom or even that good of a friend.

His feelings didn't always listen to her brain.

"That's better. Happy birthday, too, by the way." Said Shiori, getting up. She picked up the bag and passed it to him. Inside were two boxes and another bag. She reached out and shut the bag around his fingers.

"Thank you, Shiori-san." Said Sho. She was probably pissed off about that. Adults were obsessed with the way that he talked. He hoped that he didn't end up like that when he got to be an adult.

"You're welcome, now wait until Christmas. Or at least don't open your present in front of me." said Shiori

"I don't peak at presents. I'm not my little sister….she's been trying to peak at the presents since we put them under the tree. She tries to pull the paper off and stuff." Said Sho

"What's her end goal there? I mean she knows that you and your sister are going to notice that the presents have been tampered with…right?" asked Shiori

"I don't know if she does or she doesn't. It's kind of hard to tell with little kids sometimes. Sometimes she does stuff that she knows is wrong, like when she colors in my sketchbooks or tries to pour her own milk, and sometimes she does stuff just because she feels like it. Like when she tries to leave the house on her own because she feels like going to the park, or when she tries to climb inside of the dryer just because she fits. Little kids are weird like that, and I'm not a little kid." Said Sho

"Alright, alright, you're not a small child. You're a grownup teenager now. Now be a good grownup teenager and take your gift home to your sisters." Said Shiori

"Yeah, because they're the only ones who get Christmas gifts." Muttered Sho. Shiori rolled her eyes at him…and she hadn't had to. He wasn't being a baby. Just because his birthday was right before Christmas it didn't mean that it didn't matter. Dad had said so, once, when he had been really little that it didn't make sense to have a birthday party for Sho and a Christmas for the family. Dad just hadn't wanted to have to spend time with his family…with Sho…but that made sense.

Dad was an asshole's dickhole.

"Oh stop that, I would have given you this on your birthday if your Dad had come back to Japan, but he hadn't, so here you go. Anyway your birthday is right next to Christmas so what do you expect? You aren't getting double presents." Said Shiori

"It's not double presents, it's half as many, since everyone else gets their birthday and Christmas." Said Sho. He braced himself. He knew what she was going to say. She was going to tell him that he was being ridiculous and that he didn't need presents, too, since he already had everything that he would ever need and that he was just being tiresome. The kind of stuff that Dad would have said. He knew that she wasn't Dad but…but he was in love with her and stuff…other gross stuff like that. Of course he would have been in love with someone who was like him…who thought like him.

"Good point. Remind me next Christmas that I owe you a present." Said Shiori. Sho blinked. His aura was bright red now. Hers was barely showing. She wasn't even focused on him, it was like she was looking around. If she had bene a normal person she would have been shifting her eyes from side to side. She was worried but not about him…and she wasn't mad at him either…

He didn't know why he'd expected her to be.

"Thanks…for agreeing with me." Said Sho

"Of course I agree with you, your argument was sound. I'm not entirely happy about being corrected, mind you, but you're not my employee. You're my fiancé's son, I'm going to cut you some slack." Said Shiori. It took everything in Sho not to throw up right there on the spot. He didn't need her just coming out and saying it, that she was with him and stuff. That they were going out and they loved each other…he didn't even like thinking about his own parents being in love. Actually that might have been even worse since they were his parents. He'd seen them kissing once. It had been awful…maybe equally as awful as Dad and Shiori.

Maybe thinking about any member of his family's love life was going to be terrible.

"Gross." Said Sho, sticking out his tongue.

"Oh stop that, I thought that you were a grownup teenager." Said Shiori

"I am, that's exactly why it's gross." Said Sho

"Talk to me again when you're ready to grow up…or around New Year, if your Dad doesn't show up." said Shiori

"Why?" asked Sho

"Because I can't imagine that it's anything other than depressing for you to have to spend the holidays alone." Said Shiori. Sho got the feeling that she might have been talking about herself or something. As far as he knew she didn't have an friends or siblings. Just Dad and work, though she wouldn't have told him if she did. She liked to keep their conversations on fish and stuff.

"I'm fine, I have my sisters and my friends…and Fukuda, I guess. If you're lonely or something I can hang out with you. I'd invite you over but I don't think that my sister likes you that much…which is weird because she likes everyone, even our Dad. She even waited this long to put the tree up because she thought he was coming home. I don't know why she thought that he even would have cared. Dad doesn't care about holidays." Said Sho

"You've got a point, Touichirou doesn't see the point. Of course to get him to see the point you have to break it down into its component parts and I don't have time for that. I barely have time for this. If you get lonely you can message me if you want, that's all." Said Shiori

"Um…ok. I'll probably come back later to give you a thank you note. You can give it to Dad when you're done reading it or whatever." Said Sho. Big Sis had gotten a big box of thank you notes, mostly because people kept on sending her presents. Some of them send her stickers and dolls, which were boring, and some of them send her stuff to drink, which was fun even though it made you really sick. She had to send notes back to everyone even though it didn't make any sense. If you were going to say thank you to someone in person then why did you need to send the notes later? Maybe it was some kind of girl thing, like coasters.

"Why?" asked Shiori

"Because Big Sis says that thank you notes are polite. I don't get it but she likes them so I figured it was some kind of girl thing." Said Sho

"No, I mean why write one for your Dad? Touichirou had nothing to do with this." Said Shiori. Sho winced at the use of Dads given name. That was just…weird. Nobody called Dad by his given name, aside from Fukuda sometimes, but Fukuda and Dad weren't in love…not like…he couldn't even think about it. He knew that he was supposed to be older and wiser and more mature but Dad and Shiori being in love was never going to be ok. It was weirder, even, than Big Sis and Shimazaki.

"I'm not dumb, I know that Dad isn't the one who picks out our presents. He's like the Grinch…no, the Grinch had a good reason to steal Christmas. Those whos should have invited him…fucking dickhole's-" said Sho

"Eh-hem?" asked Shiori, crossing her arms. Sho rolled his eyes.

"Fine, those normal dickholes." Said Sho. Shiori rolled her eyes at him…she actually rolled her eyes! What was she being like that for? Dickhole wasn't a bad word…right?

"While I agree about the whos, they were incredibly inconsiderate neighbors, can you please tone down the cursing?" asked Shiori

"Dickhole's not a curse word. Look it up if you don't believe me." said Sho

"I'd rather not have that in my search history, thank you." said Shiori

"Yeah, Hatori's kind of a jerk sometimes, I guess…I mean at least he got us Christmas stuff. That doesn't make him my brother, though, just a guy who gets me birthday and Christmas presents. He put Dad's name on, though, which was kind of dumb. I mean I know that he doesn't get us presents and I'm tired of pretending? It's like pretending about Santa being real but also if he was a dickhole…if he was a really big jerk that made your life worse just by being alive." Said Sho

"Touichirou can be pretty overly dramatic…like someone I know." said Shiori. She had agreed with him again…she had done it before, too. It didn't make any sense. She loved him but she agreed with Sho…she meant it. He was pretty sure that she meant it. Dad was really dramatic…that was kind of true…if dramatic meant 'the worst person who had ever lived'.

"You really believe me?" asked Sho

"Of course I do, I know your Dad. Anyway, when's your train coming?" asked Shiori. Sho pulled his phone out of his pocket and checked the time.

"The next one's in an hour and a half." Said Sho

"Planning on hanging out until then?" asked Shiori

"I brought my sketchbook, I'm fine." Said Sho, patting the backpack on his back.

"Want to go and get something to eat? There's a Chinese place near here." Said Shiori. Sho turned his head to the side and watched her. He really watched her. She seemed normal, her face and her aura and stuff….maybe she just wanted to go to Panda with him…why? Maybe she was worried about all the other espers that were here. That would have made sense.

"Ok, I like Panda I guess…but don't get orange chicken or I could die. I'm not kidding about that. I'm allergic to citrus." Said Sho. He didn't know why he was allergic to oranges, just that he was, and if she didn't believe him then she could go and eat on her own. Dad had never believed him when he'd been little, about how orange juice made his mouth itch. Mom hadn't believed him either. Big Sis had…but she hadn't been able to do anything since they had both been kids back then.

"Well lucky for you and your citrus allergy we're going to an actual Chinese restaurant." Said Shiori. Sho frowned.

"Are there going to be fortune cookies?" asked Sho, suspiciously. If he was going to have to sit through lunch with her and not get a fortune cookie at the end then she was going to have to protect herself.

"Of course, what do you take me for?" asked Shiori. Sho didn't take her for anything, so he let her take him with her to lunch. It was cold out, colder than in Tokyo somehow, but they didn't have to far to walk. He carried the bag with him the whole way. It wasn't that heavy…well of course it wasn't, it had one fewer present then it should have…but that was ok. She was going to get him something later and, anyway, it didn't matter.

He had plenty of stuff already, and he could always get more stuff too, but someone to hang out with…well he could always use another friend…or not stepmom.