The woman is very tall, very blonde, and very strange. She fed you when she came, but you're not sure if you like her - she's so quiet, compared to your mama at least, and she smiles at you sometimes. But the smile never quite seems to reach her odd, purple eyes, and it's always with a closed mouth and tight lips, never the same kind of big happy grin that Mommy made.

You see the strange woman open her mouth exactly once, in fact, and it is full of sharp, pointy teeth.

You don't want her to grin at you very much at all, after you see.

But the strangest thing of all about the woman, you feel, is that you're not entirely sure if she's actually there. She'll be sitting at the kotatsu one minute, peeling an orange, taking a courteous glance at your crayon drawing every once in awhile, and then you'll look up to say something and there won't be anyone there at all. Like you'd just imagined the whole thing, somebody to live in your big empty house with you until Mommy got back. You've certainly imagined up friends to play with, before. The revelation would not, as a whole, be very surprising to you.

But just before you could firmly convince yourself that the strange blonde woman was just something you'd dreamed up out of loneliness - there she was, her appearance as sudden and silent as her leaving, doing something like making rice or stitching one of your shirts; something that you knew an imaginary thing simply couldn't do.

So she was real.

Maybe.

It's late one night when one of your definitely imaginary friends - a little girl your age, with purple hair and pretty red eyes and very non-threatening teeth - suggests that maybe the whole reappearing and disappearing thing is just something that people do.

You say that sounds stupid.

She says maybe kids can't do it until they're older.

You say, firmer this time, that it's a patently stupid idea, and besides, none of your storybooks ever mention people just vanishing when nobody's looking.

She says that maybe it happens so often that nobody needs to mention it. Like breathing, or blinking.

You tell her, in a very shaky voice, to shut up.

When the strange woman comes that night to tuck the blankets in, you feel horribly compelled to grab onto her arm and not let go, to cling and cry and look so utterly miserable that she won't have any choice but to lift you out of bed and hold you close and walk you to sleep. You don't quite have the guts for that, though, so you hope that your intensely distressed expression will do the trick instead.

"Hn? What's wrong?"

Her tone is mild, utterly unaffected, and your heart sinks into the pit of your stomach.

You shake your head very slowly, and she shrugs, smooths back the hair on your forehead as if to give you a goodnight kiss - and then apparently thinks better of it, walking away and snuffing the candle on her way out.

You clutch your soft turtle close to your chest, and a wave of something hot and sick washes over you.

You don't think she'll be here in the morning.