"One, two, three, four..." I murmur to myself as I wash the dishes. We should really get the dishwasher fixed.
"Seven, eight, nine..." I really miss the dishwasher. Then neither of us would have to clean these wretched dishes. Gray and I have our designated days to clean the dishes. Why don't we just use paper plates and plastic utensils?
Oh yeah, I think, we have no money. We haven't gotten a decent job in at least a month and we're running dangerously low on the green paper of life.
"Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen! There! Only two more sets!" The dishes have to be sparkling. Gray doesn't clean them well enough.
"One, two, three..." Gray also doesn't like me doing the dishes. He's afraid that if I break one, I'll break fifteen more to make sixteen. But that was only one time! He doesn't clean them well enough.
"Six, seven, eight..." A piece of my raven-colored hair gets in my face. I finish the set and quickly brush it out of my line of vision. I start the last set for the last dish.
"One, two, three..." Shouldn't said older brother be getting home soon? It's his turn to cook tonight.
"Fourteen, fifteen-"
"OI ROSIE I'M HOME!"
"SIXTEEN!" I shout, putting the dish down with enough force to make a clatter, but not enough for it to break.
I run my still-sudsy hand through my mussed hair. "Did you find any decent jobs? We can't afford to keep living like this, Gray. We have no more money to pay bills with."
"There are only cheap-ass jobs that take more money to travel to than the reward is worth. Unless one of us becomes S-Class now, there are no jobs we can take. Everyone's suffering because of it, trust me," he replies tiredly. I sigh.
"Well, we don't have that much in the fridge anymore, and it's your turn to make dinner. Hop to it, Fullbuster."
"So much for a 'welcome home'," Gray mumbles. I throw my sponge at him.
"I'm taking a nap," I tell him, walking away.
"I'll wake you for dinner," he says absently.
I close the door gently to my room, and fluff my pillow sixteen times. I lie down and think about the days when I was taller than my older brother. The days when I could call him short were good. Mostly because we were financially supported by the guild. Now we have to fend for ourselves in a middle-class house with our own bills to pay, feeding off of the rewards we get from jobs that they don't always pay us for. Gray refuses to go on missions with Natsu, our resident Salamander, but I go with him on occasion if we're running low on cash and he's got the last decent mission (you'd be surprised as to how many times that's happened).
I walk down the center of my room to where my bed lies. Everything is symmetrical and even, just as it should be. I check through several times to be sure, and then lie down and close my eyes.
A couple minutes later I get back up. The right-side lamp was definitely off by a centimeter. I get down my my hands and knees to see if I could see the black marks made to tell me if the furniture was moved.
No, it's definitely in the right place. I sigh and get back into bed.
I was diagnosed with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder after I had...woken up. Obsession with the number 16 and perfection, and compulsion to check my hands. The whole hands thing, however, is mostly to check for dark purple intricate patterns. They tell me when my Shadow Soul is dominant and when it is not. It's become habit, though they put it under the compulsion category because I check so much.
But here's the thing; I only have OCD when my Mind Soul in dominant, which is only about half the time, which puzzled the psychologists and psychiatrists working with me. Had I had Multi-Personality Disorder as well? I told them flat out no, as I am me and Rose will always be Rose and not someone else. Rose is Rose. Rose was Angel once, but the name brings back bad memories of Ms. Tachibana and Caleb, whom I guess you could say is the root of it all, plus the trauma from the whole city-being-destroyed factor, which I imagine played a huge role in it all.
My mother and I had a very tough relationship, but I would never say I hate her. She neglected me some, and she never really treated me as a person (more like a dog; she certainly called me a bitch), but she did care for me, and she wanted me to do my best. She never turned to alcohol, despite being divorced of her husband, the man I would call "Dad" if he had stayed. Instead, he took my twin and threw accusations at my mother about me. He thought she'd had an affair with another man because no one in either of our families had my gray eyes, which had, at the time, seemed like a combination of green and blue. Both families had only dark brown eyes, so my father thought the worst and left. You can't really get over that kind of thing overnight, so I forgave her quickly every time she did something out of anger.
She never really smacked me or Caleb around for a while until one of the last years with her. She just wanted perfection, and would punish if something we did wasn't perfect. I guess that's where my perfection complex comes in.
I try not to think about Caleb too much. It's been ten years.
I think I fall asleep.
"Oi." Light is let into my darkened room. I rub my eyes, not yet accustomed to the brightness in the blanketing, comforting darkness. "I made dinner. Hurry up before it gets cold."
I groan. "I'll be up in a second," I tell him, voice thick with sleep.
I'm happy about the life I have now.
A.N. I was getting so antsy to write this, you have no idea. It took a while, though, because I had to research OCD before I could write about it (if anyone has any corrections to make to how I am writing it, feel free to tell me as this is my first time writing it), and for some reason my teachers have been really heavy on the homework lately? I had to write an essay in one night, and I had 11 1/2 hours of chemistry homework in one day? I'm only a sophomore and it's going to end up killing me. The only reason I could write this is because I don't have school tomorrow (whoop!)
I'M TRYING MY BEST
This chapter is kind of like an interlude between early life and "current" life where the manga/anime starts, so fear not, there will be much better chapters coming.
Regards,
~Angelheat
