#!writes

--

“Papa?” Lyra asks from the kitchen table.

“Mm?” You’re trying to juggle helping her with her homework and washing the dishes from her after-school snack.

“How many years old are you?”

Well, if that ain’t a loaded question. You know she’s too young to understand that you’re too young, even with the way your mama harps on you about it right in front of her.

Placing Lyra’s plate on the rack to dry, you ask, “How come you wanna know?”

“In my homework, it says: ‘Add your age to the age your parents were when you were born.’” She reads a little slow and a little loud, but her voice is steady, and she never trips up once. You’re so damn proud of her, even if you know she sure as shit didn’t get her brains from you.

It’s not often that you allow yourself to indulge in what-ifs about still being with Naoki. You try not to think about him at all, if you can help it (you usually can’t). It’s times like these that remind you she’s his baby, too, and you can imagine the three of you in your old apartment in Goldenrod, or back with his family in Ecruteak. You know he’d be over the moon that Lyra loves to read as much as he does—he’d probably read with her every night. Not that you don’t do that yourself (you do it all yourself), but the fantasy is so easy to picture.

You shake your head a little to clear it, glad that Lyra’s back is turned towards you.

“Let’s take a look, mkay?”

Lyra obligingly scoots her chair over so you can drag another one next to it. The sheet has a couple other questions, stuff like “How old are you?” and “When is your birthday?”. Beneath that, there’s a grid with spaces labeled “Mommy” and “Daddy”. The fact that those are the only two options makes you wonder what century this worksheet was written in.

“Can I see your pencil, sweet pea?”

“Yes, please,” she says as she hands it over. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but she’s got the spirit of being polite.

Gingerly, you put an X over the box labeled “Mommy”.

“Congrats, baby, you only gotta do half the homework the other kids do.”

“I told my teacher I don’t have a mama,” Lyra agrees. Considering her teacher is the same one you had in first grade, you cringe at what the woman must’ve been thinking about you, about Lyra herself.

“Yup, just you ‘n me.”

“And Meemaw!”

Yeah, you aren’t gonna touch that one.

“Alright,” you say, glad that Lyra’s still little enough to get distracted easily. “D’you know how old Papa was when you were born?”

“Twenty-seven?” Lyra guesses immediately. You try not to laugh—you were twenty-seven just last year.

“Nope. I was just shy of twenty-two, since our birthdays’re only ten days apart. Let’s just put the number 22 up on top.”

Taking the pencil back from you, Lyra writes a slightly squashed “22” in the “Daddy” box.

“Now we gotta add six to twenty-two,” she announces. Her little face scrunches in concentration, but you notice she’s not counting on her fingers. She just jots down “+ 6” on her paper, then draws a line below it for the answer.

“Six plus two is eight, plus twenty is twenty-eight!” Lyra looks up at you for confirmation, even though you can tell from her mischievous smile that she knows she’s right.

“You got it, sweet pea,” you tell her, wrapping her in a hug and planting a loud kiss on her cheek. She squeals in mock-indignation, even as she hugs you back. “Papa’s an old man, huh?” For a kid her age, you assume that’s what she’d think. Someday, she’s gonna look back at this moment and realize how young you really were when you had her, how completely clueless you were. Your only parenting philosophy was “Whatever Mama would do, do the opposite”. Which, granted, is an idea that’s served you well so far.

To your surprise, Lyra protests, “No, Papa, you ain’t old! Twenty-eight isn’t that old.”

“Oh, yeah? Am I gonna be old when I’m thirty?”

--

You can’t even guess what time it is at this point. It feels like a whole ocean of sweat’s been dumped directly onto your body, making your t-shirt stick to you in unflattering places. The blanket’s been kicked just far enough away that you can’t grab a corner with your toes to drag it over your freezing feet. An ache’s started up in your hips and jaw.

You lay there, on your stomach in his futon, and find yourself missing him something fierce.

It’s unbearable, all of a sudden, enough to make you flop yourself over on your side. You need to see him, make sure this isn’t the world’s worst-slash-best wet dream. Naoki’s taken his glasses off. Those stupid pretty eyelashes frame a look in his eyes that says he’s not all in there.

“Shit, man,” you sigh. Naoki blinks rapidly, trying to drag himself back out of his own head. He makes a little “mmh?” noise.

“Us. We made it, what, two weeks?” The ridiculousness of it all makes you snort lightly.

“I’m surprised you let me.” His voice is small, murmured out the side of his mouth and into the pillow. You remember what he’d said, when you’d asked him if he’d moved on to someone new: You really think I’d inflict myself on someone else?

“Get your head outta your ass,” you say, and oh, it comes out so tender. You reach over to unstick a sweat-straightened curl plastered over his temple. Naoki flinches away like he’s expecting you to just sock him in the face, like he’d rather you do that instead. He reminds you, absurdly, of how Lyra used to fuss when you wiped her face off with a washcloth in the mornings.

“It takes two to tango, baby,” and wow, you haven’t called him that in a hot minute. You decide you like the way it rolls off your tongue nice and easy. Not quite how it used to be, no, but still good.

Naoki starts at the word, too, like he was expecting something different a couple minutes after reducing your vocabulary down to his name.

“You’re being too nice to me,” he protests weakly. “It’d—I don’t know. I always imagined you being pissed at me, not—” gesturing at the two of you laying side by side, just left of the way it used to be, “—whatever the fuck I’ve dragged you into this time.”

“Don’t you go actin’ like I can’t think for myself—” you cut yourself off the second you register the snap in your voice. No, no, that’s not how you want it to go.

More careful this time, “I ain’t even mad at you, y’know? Shit, I sure was for the first coupla months, but…” you shrug with one shoulder, shifting the blanket even further towards Naoki’s side.

“It can’t be that simple,” Naoki rasps out.

---

Before the bells have even finished ringing the hour, you’re walking back to the church where you died. One foot in front of the other, you idly consider what would happen if you resisted. Probably nothing. Equally probably, your body that is no longer entirely your body would just keep marching.

It’s a pointless thought exercise. You cross the threshold that still smells of smoke. If you made more effort than was strictly necessary to keep tabs on her before your death, after it, you don’t even have to try. It’s as if one of the strange metal coils of her craft connects the two of you. You’ve never tested how far the tie goes, whether you’d drop dead again if you got too far from her. It’s not something you’d want to do, anyways. You want her where you can see her, feel her.

The light from one of her glowing tomes casts her face in sickly, bloodless-corpse blue. Her fingers go still on the keys.

“Right on time,” she remarks. She sounds satisfied, in a warm way that you’re entirely unequipped to handle. In lieu of a response, you begin to strip off your tunic, followed by the gambeson beneath, then the band over your breasts. There’s a thin, pale scar over the left one, the only visible evidence that you died and were resurrected. She’s turned her head away from you to give some facsimile of modesty, as if she won’t have to look in a moment anyways.

You lower yourself onto her workstation like it’s your second grave—or maybe your first? You have no idea if they’d even buried you before she brought the entire church gasping back to life. She’s put a thin cheesecloth over the metal slab, which does nothing to stop your skin from immediately pebbling.

“Limbs doing alright?” You obligingly wiggle each one, then your fingers and toes. She smiles at you the way a hunter might when their hound performs a particularly well-done point. From one of her countless pockets, she produces a jar of something or other. You at least can tell it’s not blood—the stuff is bright green, and glows softly as she traces runes over your bare torso. Next comes the cord, linked from her tome to your heart. In the privacy of your own mind, this is your least favorite part. Her ritual knife parts your flesh so smoothly that it may as well be water. You feel no pain.

---

You narrow your eyes at your opponent.  Tilt your chin back a little, trying to give off the vibe that this shit’s all beneath you.

The makeup case is unimpressed with you.  You’re unimpressed with you.

“Oh, put that thing away already,” Dazai drawls from over your shoulder.  You don’t flinch away (much), but there’s an undercurrent in her voice that gives you pause.  Now, there are always enough undercurrents in Dazai to put the nastiest riptide to shame, but this–she almost sounds angry, and not in her pouty, put-upon, fake-ass way.  When she grabs the box, it’s with a vicious disdain.

“Fucking–chill!  Give it back!” You snap, reaching up over your head.  You don’t even want the thing, honestly.  If Dazai’s going to get up all pissy about it for no reason, though, you’re going to bite back.  “Ane-san gave that to me!”

“Oh?” Dazai says, like she somehow couldn’t figure that out on her own.  You’ve turned around on your chair so that you’re facing her, and you swear you can see the temperature in her one visible eye plummet.  “Of course she did.  She must be desperate if she thinks she can turn my Chuuya into a proper little lady.”

“Okay, first of all–” swiping for the makeup case and just barely missing when Dazai holds it up higher, one long, grubby finger pressed against your forehead, “--I’m not your anything, so let’s get that straight.”

“Yes, you are!  You’re my dog, not Ane-san’s.  Only I’m allowed to train Chuuya, and I don’t remember signing her up for obedience school.”  Dazai pauses, making a show of reconsidering her statement.  You grab the box and drop back into the chair with a huff, tucking it between your legs.  Knowing that she definitely let you get away with it rankles you to no end.  “Actually, maybe I should send Chuuya to–”

“Can it,” you snap.  “If you’re not gonna help me with this, then scram.”

Dazai flops into the chair opposite yours.  She’s still looking at the makeup case like it’s done…something that would really piss her off.  Like it’s stopped her mid-suicide attempt, or told her she has to get off her bony ass and do her own work for once.

“Look, I’m not thrilled about it, either, but Ane-san told me–”

“So get rid of it.”

“Did your smart-ass brain finally fall out your ears?  I said, Ane-san wants me to, you know.  Try using it and stuff.  She’s my actual superior, so I’m gonna listen to her, thanks.”

“No, Ane-san wants you to be her perfect little dress-up doll.  I think she’s still salty that her last attempt went…  Well,”  Dazai gestures broadly at herself, a gaggle of long, spindly limbs stuffed into ill-fitting men’s clothes, all shrouded in that huge coat she’s probably never washed in her life.  

And the thing is–you get it.  You’ve always (at least, as far back as you can remember) worn pants and t-shirts.  If people back in Suribachi thought the infamous King of the Sheep was a dude, you weren’t about to go correcting them.  Not on the “dude” part, nor on the “King” part.  The thought of suddenly pivoting to a face full of makeup and a closet full of dresses sets an uncomfortable buzz off beneath your skin.  You still feel compelled to defend Kouyou for meeting the low, low bar of “at least she’s not Dazai”.

“No wonder she gave up on your ass.  You’re a frigging pile of toothpicks in a trenchcoat.  You look like you cut your hair with a weed whacker.”

“Hey, now, don’t take your insecurities about your femininity out on me, Chuuya-kun!”  Dazai sniffs in mock-offense, placing a hand over her heart.

“Dude, you have a guy’s name, too?”

“Yeah, that would be on purpose.”  

You’re picking up what she’s putting down, you think.  Plenty of other girls in Suribachi, especially younger ones, had guys’ names, or at least ones that sounded kind of ambiguous.  It was flimsy armor, doomed to fall apart once a girl’s body betrayed her, but you wouldn’t judge anyone for choosing to wear it.  Your own name is more a security blanket than a shield, your first gift from the Sheep.  You wonder what Dazai’s is to her.  She seems to have reforged that armor into something tougher, longer-lasting.  Not that you’ve ever heard anyone call her “Osamu”--not even the Boss.  

Dazai’s still smiling.  It’s a smug, self-satisfied little thing, sitting pretty on her face like she’s in on a joke that you don’t get.  You hate that look.

“Don’t act like you know me, weirdo.”

Her smile slips.  It’s not as satisfying as it should be.

“I think I do, though?  At least, I think you’re more like me than you are like her.”  Again with the unexplained venom directed towards Kouyou.  Or maybe it’s more than that, and Kouyou is just the face Dazai’s assigned to something larger that haunts her.   

“What the hell are we even arguing about, anyways?”

“Chuuya wants to be a little frou-frou princess.  I object on moral and aesthetic grounds.”  

“What, so you’re admitting you actually like how I look now?”  You’re pretty sure that’s what “aesthetic” means.  The way Dazai talks like she’s trying to catch you out for not knowing obscure words is another thing you hate about her–add it to the list.

She takes your taunt like water off a duck’s back.

“I mean, yeah, in the way where a pile of doggy doo-doo looks just a teensy bit better than intestines splattered all over the floor.”  You decide that you really don’t want to know why Dazai knows what loose intestines look like.  Coming from her, it’s probably not just a figure of speech.

“Fine.  If you don’t care that much, you won’t mind if I use all this junk,” you declare, wrenching the box in your lap open with much more bravado than you feel.

“Chuuuuuuuuuuyaaaaaaa,” Dazai whines.  “Bad dog, bad!  Down, girl!  Makeup is poisonous for dumb puppies like you!”

You flip her the bird.

Some of the things in the box, you recognize.  For every girl like you, there was a girl like Yuan, playing her femininity to the cheap seats.  It was another way to survive–just not your way.  

You prod through mascara, lipstick, and what you think might be that powder stuff that keeps the other makeup on.  Maybe Ane-san left you an instruction manual or something?  Or did she expect you to look up tutorials on the sleek, standard-issue laptop sitting uncharged on your desk?  The deeper into the little box you go, the more you wish you’d paid attention to the stuff the other Sheep girls asked you to grab for them.  Some of it doesn’t look like it should go anywhere near anyone’s face.

For example, the metal device you pull out looks more like it should be used for cooking than makeup.  There’s no powder or liquid attached to it, so you have no clue what it’s supposed to do.  You hold it up to Dazai and give a little “what the hell, am I right” shrug.

To your surprise, she stops sulking and sits up.

“Oooh, that’s devious.  Leave it to Ane-san to throw in something like that.”

“What is it?”  

A wicked grin breaks out on Dazai’s face.

“It’s a torture device.”

“Why the hell would there be a torture device in a makeup case, huh?”  Surely, she’s just bullshitting you, or winding up to another gripe about seeing you in makeup.  

“Because that’s Ane-san’s whole thing?”  She says it like you’re the single stupidest moron on the planet.  “Looking pretty and being dangerous?  Here, gimme, gimme.”  Dazai makes a little grabbing gesture with her hands.

“You think I’m gonna give you a torture device?  Get real, Dazai.”

“C’mon, Chuuya!  I’m an old hand in the interrogation room.  You can trust me!”

You really don’t have time to process everything that statement implies.

“Not if you were the last person left on Earth.  Just tell me what it does.”

“Fiiiine,” Dazai says, like she wasn’t the one who brought the topic up in the first place.  “So, you put the clamp part right over the joint of someone’s finger, and then–”  She mimics pressing down hard, cracking something.  

“Damn,” you hiss, wincing.

“Yep!  You go down each joint, finger by finger.  That’s the soft way to use it, though.”  Dazai leans in towards you, waggling her eyebrows conspiratorially.

“Oh yeah?”  If you’re mirroring her movement, it’s just out of bile fascination.  One of your knees bumps against hers.  She doesn’t move away.

“Yeah.  If you wanna go yakuza-style, you grab their fingernail, and then–yoink!”  As she speaks, she plucks the torture device out from between your fingers and brandishes it at you.  You jolt back, stuffing your hands under your thighs ASAP.  “Aww, Chuuya doesn’t wanna try it?”  Dazai coos.  “C’mon, I’ll be gentle.”

“Piss off!  You seriously think I’m gonna let you anywhere near me with that thing?”

“How else am I supposed to trim my naughty doggy’s nails?”

Dazai’s all up in your personal space now, snipping the torture device at random places–your shirt, your nose, your cheeks.  Irritation and inspiration hit you in twin waves of heat.  She wants to fuck around?  She’s about to find out.  While Dazai’s still running her big, stupid mouth, you headbutt her right in the face.

If you never end up getting around to trying the makeup, well…  You have a good excuse.

---

“I hadn’t expected you to use it, child.  I merely wanted you to have it at the ready.”

So, all of that hullabaloo with Dazai was for nothing.  Now you just have to tell Kouyou to her face that you’d rather willingly spend time with said waste of bandages than put on the makeup she chose for you.  Right.  Easy.

One of the things she’s trying to teach you about business dealings is how to make people feel like you’re complimenting them, even when you’re really telling them no or insulting them.  You scramble for something even remotely positive to say.

“I thought I’d check it out, you know?  The torture device was cool, at least.”  Nailed it.

“The…torture device?”  Kouyou repeats.  One perfect brow lifts up in an arch.  You’ve never noticed before that they’re drawn onto her face.  Does that mean she doesn’t have eyebrows when she’s not wearing makeup?

“Yeah, the–the clamp thing.  The one you can break a guy’s fingers with.”

“The eyelash curler?”

The realization hits you like a piece of rotten fruit, sliding down your face and leaving a slimy trail of embarrassment and anger in its wake.  

“That piece of shit Dazai–”

Kouyou’s eyebrow lifts even higher.  The other one remains perfectly still.

“I mean.  I am realizing that I have been, uh, led astray and given misinformation by my colleague, Dazai-san, and I will have to reprimand her at a later date?”

---

You’re sitting in your windowsill with the lights off, and every rustling noise is getting your hopes up. Naoki said he’d show up late at night, but never which night. Waiting up for him has gotten easier. The first night, you were so scared Mama would catch you that you near about puked. Your hair sits heavy under the most boyish hat you own, and your heart sits heavy in your chest. You have to cling to the knowledge that Mama doesn’t treat you right, or else, you’ll start doubting yourself all over again.

It’s best to just disappear and make it a clean cut. It’ll even be good for her, you bet. She needs a life outside of smothering yours.

A bush shakes—just a Ratatta, scurrying across the yard. You’re surprised it’s brave enough to come here. Mama can and will take a broom to anyone and anything that might take a teeny piece of your love.

“Please tell me you’re not your mom,” a voice stage-whispers from that same bush. You near about fall out the window in shock, and you have to bite back a yelp of pain when you hit your head on the top of the sill.

Sure enough, a flashlight beam reveals a slice of Naoki and Suzu, looking stupid as can be, all hunched to the ground. He doesn’t even need the light, not with the full moon shining clear through the trees. City boy, you think fondly to yourself.

“You look ridiculous down there. Now c’mon, before I start losin’ my nerve again.” The second floor of you and Mama’s house is more like a glorified loft, easy to jump from. Naoki comes to stand beneath your window, his long curls pulled back into a ponytail dotted with forest junk. Just the sight of him in the flesh, for the first time in almost a year, is enough to convince you you’re doing the right thing.

Suzu lets out a quiet trill as you toss your cruddy old backpack down, catching the whole thing with her ribbons. You figured it’d be best to travel real light, and your old clothes won’t matter for your plan.

You don’t think about a thing when you follow your bag out the window. You don’t think about Mama one bit.

There the three of you are in the early fall night. You and Naoki size each other up for the barest second before you’re hugging, his face pressed into your ugly white hat.

“What are you wearing?” Naoki whispers against you. His scrawny frame feels like a wall between you and Mama, a door to something better.

“It’s my plan,” you whisper back. “Mama’s gonna be looking for one girl all by herself, yeah? So what if I dressed up as a boy, like you dressed up as your sister when we met? She won’t suspect a thing!”

---

You don’t know if you got lost on purpose or not this time.  Which one would be worse?  You weigh your options as you squeeze through the crowds, mumbling “‘Scuse me” as you go.  No one says it back to you.

Option one is that you really did get lost.  Violet’s the biggest place you’ve ever been, the furthest from home you’ve ever gone.  You know Mama wouldn’t’ve even considered coming if someone hadn’t made some snide remark about how she couldn’t afford the trip to the festival.  For all she griped about it, she never said who’d told her that.  You wish she had, ‘cause you’d like to shake that person’s hand, maybe ask them if they’d insult her more often.  Not for real–just to get her hackles up enough that she’d take you somewhere new every once in a while.  You tell yourself you can live with the way Mama always reacts if it means you can get lost in places you’ve never been.

Option two is that you did it on purpose.  It turns your stomach to think about it too clearly.  You’ve gotta come at it from the side, out of the corner of your mind’s eye.  You weren’t trying to be disrespectful, ungrateful, any of the other words that find their way into Mama’s mouth faster than they used to.  She’d finally let go of you after the Kimono Girls’ performance, and, well…  Neither of you are all that big.  It’s easy to get separated when an audience is breaking up.  She’ll find you.  She always does.

The feeling of each of her fingertips, pressed bruise-hard into the meat of your upper arm, lingers.  There’s a sign for a police box, just far off enough that you can’t read the rest of what it says.  A lump forms in your throat.  The chatter and the music twist and stretch into Mama’s voice, so vivid that you almost think she’s actually there.  I am so sorry about my fool daughter, Officer, she’d say once she found you at the police box.  She’s just…  She’s always been like this.  Can’t take my eyes off her for a minute.  Like she’s inviting the imaginary cop in on a joke.  Like everyone (especially you) has to know that there’s something not quite right with you, and that’s why she has to keep you so close that it’s hard to tell where she stops and you start.  

You decide then and there that you did get lost on purpose.

From where you’re facing, you can see Sprout Tower, impossibly big even from such a distance.  Your gut instinct tells you to go in the opposite direction, as far away from any landmarks as you can get.  This time, you let the crowd move you along until you’re at a wall of stalls.  They go down a switch-back road, a glowing zig-zag cut through the night.  To your right, there’s a gap between the first stall in the line and the shoulder of the road.  You squeeze through, offering a silent apology to the stall owner for what probably counts as trespassing.  

Past the piles of supplies and a couple of small trucks, a girl is sitting against the guardrail, feet dangling past the edge.  It takes you a sec to place why she looks familiar.  She’s one of the Kimono Girls that was performing–she just took her hair out of its pins.  It curls all the way down her back in loose waves.  With the all the colors of the lights from the festival shining on it, you can’t tell if it’s black, or just a real, real dark brown.

You should probably leave.  She got this spot first, after all.  

“Y’all were–Uh, I really liked your performance,” is what you blurt out instead.  She looks back over her shoulder towards the sound of your voice.  Her makeup’s been scrubbed off.  She missed a spot, right near her temple.

“Oh?  Thanks,” the girl replies.  “Full disclosure, everything I did was a load of Tauros.”

It takes you an embarrassingly long beat to realize she means it was shitty.  

“I was just filling in for my sister.”  A wicked grin turns up the corner of her mouth.  “She got food poisoning, so.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” you say.  You mean it, because you mind your manners more honestly than Mama taught you to.  The girl huffs a little laugh out of her nose, so quiet you barely hear it.

“I’m not.  She deserved it–I told her that konbini sandwich looked like it was growing a new species of fungus.”

“You sure that wasn’t the lettuce or somethin’?” 

She laughs again, louder this time.  A weird mix of shame and pride stirs itself in your chest.  You shouldn’t be poking fun at this girl’s poor sister, but you must be doing something right, if your stupid wise-cracks are getting a positive reaction.  

“I’ll be sure to tell her that when we get back to the inn.  It’ll go over great.”  The girl shuffles around to face you fully.  She rests her shoulders against the guardrail, stretching her long legs out in front of her.  Patting the asphalt next to her–is she seriously asking you to come and sit there?--she continues.  “She hasn’t even started formal training yet, and I knew the routine she was gonna do, but,” and here, a “you-know-how-it-is” kind of shrug.  You nod along even though you don’t know squat about how it is.  “I’m not exactly Kimono Girl material.”

She’s still waiting for you to sit.  You inch towards her, afraid she’s gonna tell you she was just kidding any moment now.  When she doesn’t say anything, you drop down to the ground, just barely remembering to tuck your ugly blue dress under you as you go.  Even this late at night, the gritty heat of the road burns into the backs of your thighs.

“I dunno, you look like the real deal to me.”  You wave your hand in her general direction.  Everything about her is crazy elegant, even when she’s parked on her butt on the side of a street.  Usually, you feel grubby and small and not-quite-right around other girls, like an undersized sweater from a charity shop that you’d throw away if you could afford a better replacement.  The way this girl talks, you wonder if she feels the same.  Maybe her sister’s way better than her at dancing or something?

She must pick up on your train of thought, shaking her head.

“Oh, no, I don’t mean–I’m not getting down on myself or anything.  I meant that I’m not Kimono Girl material because I’m a guy.”  She says it cool and casual as you please, like he didn’t just turn your whole word on its head.

“You can do that?” you ask.  Your voice cracks on the way out.  He raises his perfect eyebrows at you like a challenge, and oh, shit, does he think you’re judging him?  You’re not judging him, you just–you don’t know–you want–  “That’s allowed?”

It must be the right thing to say.  Kimono Boy’s expression relaxes.

“For fun, sure.  My sister who got food poisoning is my twin.  We did the whole ‘twin-switch’ prank a lot when we were little kids.”  He rolls his eyes.  “Not so much, these days–this is all too much of a pain in the ass to put on.”

“That’s–” you’re nodding along like one of those tacky bobble-head Miltank souvenirs you absolutely woud’ve bought earlier today if you had a lick of money to your name.  “That’s cool.  That, uh, folks don’t give you guff.  For wearin’ somethin’ different.”   

“It’s not that deep,” he demurs.  “I’m stuck tagging along whenever we travel, so at least I got to do something besides sit around at the inn tonight.  Mother’s allowed to work me to the bone as an errand boy, but I’m not allowed to go out and die in the wilderness for some reason.  Can’t imagine why.”  His tone is all woe-is-me, too over the top to be sincere.  Under that is a tiny hint of something real, something hungry.  You understand the shape of it, if not the name.

“You wanna be a trainer?  You’ve gotta be old enough already.  It’s, what–ten?”

“Ten,” Kimono Boy agrees.  “I mean, I have my license, and I’ve been working with Pokémon forever.  Someone just got it in my beloved mother’s head that every other kid who goes out at ten drops dead within twenty-four hours.”  The way he says it–”beloved mother”--sounds like he means it.  Like there’s real love beneath the sarcasm and frustration.  “So, here I am, doing chores and being Ecruteak’s best drag queen until we’re fourteen.”

“Wait, how old’re you now?”

“We’re turning thirteen in…”  He counts under his breath, long fingers coming up one by one.  “A week and a half?”

“No shot you’re younger than me!  What the hell’re they feeding you?”  The swear just slips out of the privacy of your head before you can even think to hold it back.  You don’t linger on it when Kimono Boy doesn’t, too busy nursing a liquid-hot flare of envy.  Even sitting down, he’s gotta be at least a full head taller than you.

“Did you see my mother and older sister up there?  We’re all just built like that.”  He’s not talking polite to you at all, now he knows you’re older.  You can’t bring yourself to mind.

“Lucky bastard,” you grumble, all bark and no bite.  He ruffles the top of your head, casual as you please.  

“You’ve got time, little buddy,” he assures you, all fake-sympathetic.  

“Piss off!”  You give him a little shove with your shoulder, like you know each other, like you’re friends.  You suddenly want to be his friend so damn bad.  You kinda hope you already are.

The sounds of the festival fill in the lull before it can get too awkward.  The two of you watch flickers of movement at the stalls, mostly hidden by crates and trucks.  Food is burning somewhere, the smoke-thick smell draped over the humid night air.  You bounce your foot idly to the distant beat of drums.

“What’s your deal?” Kimono Boy eventually asks.  “Are you still in school, or working already, or…?” 

“‘M not that old, sheesh.  Turnin’ fourteen next month.  I’m just kinda posted right now, I guess.  Same as you.”  It’s not the same at all.  He has a future, and you have Mama.  “Not a lotta stuff out where I’m from.”

“You’re not from Violet?”

“Nah, some podunk town no one knows.  It’s kinda near the border?  With Kanto?”  Kimono Boy actually perks up with interest, a reaction nobody in the history of everything has ever had to New Bark.  

“No shit?  Near the Indigo Plateau?”  His dark eyes gleam, and you notice for the first time the faint ring of contact lenses around them.  You make an “ehhh” kind of gesture with your hand to hide the fact that you couldn’t find the Indigo Plateau on a map if your life depended on it.  “Do you guys get a lot of trainers coming through on the Johto side?”

Do you?  Probably, but you see them as little as you see the neighbors Mama also hoards you away from.  She’s real equal-opportunity like that.

“It’s kinda hard to tell,” is what you say instead.  “They’re not runnin’ around with their Pokémon all over the place or anythin’.”

“Do you have one?”  When you stare at him blankly, Kimono Boy clarifies, “Your own Pokémon, I mean.”  You promptly decide not to open that can of Weedle.  

“D’you?”  It feels a little bad, leading him by the nose like this, but he puffs right up with pride at your question.  

“I’ve got two, though the other one’s back at the inn where we’re staying.  You know, for the family brand integrity?”  You have absolutely no clue what half the words he just said are supposed to mean.  “Technically, I’m not supposed to have Suzu out, since I’m playing Tamao tonight, but…”  A ball rolls out of his long sleeve and into his waiting palm.  It’s the kind of party trick he’s for sure had to practice to do it so smooth.  That doesn’t stop it from impressing you, though.

The ball isn’t like the ones you see on posters or stacked up behind the register at the grocery store.  Instead of red on one half, white on the other, the whole capsule is an orangey-red.  The metal ring and clasp around the middle might just be honest-to-goodness gold, flecked with streaks of bright green.  It stares at you, unblinking, daring you to fess up to everything you don’t know enough about to even begin wanting.

Kimono Boy tosses the ball gently into the air.  It lands right back in the center of his palm.  You’d call him a show-off, but you’ve just locked eyes with whatever Pokémon came out in a stream of pale light.  

It’s four-legged, covered in cream-and-pink fur, with big old ears that tilt backwards as it drops into a deep stretch.  Each of its paw-toes splay out, which would be real cute if it weren’t for the well-maintained claws poking out of the tips.  A yawn reveals wicked-sharp little fangs, and its eyes have no whites–just big, blue pupils laser-focused on you.  It makes a series of whistles that slide all over the place in pitch, before petering out into another yawn.  Nothing about it is threatening, but every muscle in your body is suddenly locked up tight.

“It’s okay,” comes Kimono Boy’s voice from your left.  You don’t know which of you he’s talking to.  “She’s not gonna attack or anything.  We must’ve woken her up, that’s all.”  The Pokémon whistles again, softer this time.  She has long ribbons tied around her neck and one of her ears, and one of them suddenly moves, slithering up to brush against your calf.  Your eyeballs near about pop out of their sockets.

“What in the–”

Your reaction cracks Kimono Boy up, and you swear the Pokémon pouts.

“Sorry, I’m–I’m not laughing at you.  Promise.  I just love it when people freak out about her ribbons.  They’re like extra tails, see?”  He reaches out to the Pokémon, and she obligingly wraps one of the neck-tail-ribbon-things around his hand, like she’s shaking it for a business deal.  It’s such a weirdly human thing to do that a strangled chuckle startles its way out of you as well.  Kimono Boy’s tone shifts towards something gentler, more serious.  “Seriously, are you good?  I can return her–she just hates to be balled, and she might actually eat me if I do it to her again tonight.”

“‘S’fine.”  Your voice doesn’t come out as shaky as you thought it would.  “Just never been this close to one before.  My mama, uh.  Doesn’t like ‘em much.”  So much for avoiding that subject.  The can of Weedle is fully open, poured on the ground, and now they’re everywhere.

“Fairy-types?  Or just…all Pokémon?”  Kimono Boy sounds baffled, like he’s never had to put “don’t like” and “Pokémon” together in a sentence before.  

The thing is: you know this is weird.  You’re acutely aware of how damn weird it is, the way Mama won’t let so much as a stray Sentret sit on your doorstep.  You don’t even think she’s afraid of them.  She keeps you away from Pokémon the same way she does your neighbors, or boys, or fast cars, or TV shows, or anything that isn’t the airtight circle of her arms.  You should be grateful to have a mama who loves you.  You really should be.

“The second one?”

Kimono Boy mutters something under his breath that sounds like “How do you not–?”.  The Pokémon bops him with one of her front paws, chirping like she’s scolding him for being rude.

“Ow, you little beast,” he scolds right back, not sounding particularly mad.  Then, to you, “Do you want to let her smell you?  She’s just miffed that you’re not already obsessed with her.  Isn’t that right, Miss Suzu?”  

“Miss Suzu” sticks her nose up in the air, haughty as can be.  Her tail (the actual one, on her butt) starts up a wag that gives her interest away.  You suck in a deep lungful of summer-thick air.

“Yeah, okay.  I can do that.  Sorry for bein’ such a freak about it or whatever.”

“It’s fine–I won’t tell your crazy mother you were petting Pokémon.”  Oh, you should really call him on saying that.  You don’t much want to.  “Just stick your hand out to her like this.”  He holds his hand out to you to demonstrate, palm-down and wrist relaxed.  You copy the movement first, then slowly reach towards Suzu.  Those eerie, all-blue eyes stay fixed on you the whole time.  Just as slowly, like you’re the spooked Pokémon and she’s the human, Suzu stretches out her neck until she can sniff at your fingertips.

The quick, one-two puff of her breath fans over your skin.  There’s a brief touch of something warm and twitching.  It’s her nose-leather, you realize.  When you don’t scream and/or explode, Suzu nuzzles her chops and cheek against you.  The pressure drags her skin taut over her wet gums, and it sounds for all the world like someone blowing a Razz Berry.   Both of you emboldened, Suzu comes closer, until she’s propping her front paws up on your lap.  She purrs at about the same pitch and volume as a tire inflator.  Kimono Boy obligingly pats one of her flanks, then starts up a scratch right over the base of her tail.

“Seriously, I’m real sorry for freakin’ out like that.”  Saying it once didn’t clear up the leaden weight in your stomach.  This guy’s been so nice to you, and you wanna impress him so bad.  More than that–you wanna feel like you don’t have to impress him.  You sneak a look up at him through the flyaway mess of your hair.  He looks deep in thought, scratching that same spot on Suzu’s butt like it’s got the winning lotto numbers on it.

“It’s fine, seriously.  You didn’t scream or call me a no-no word when I told you I was a guy running around in family-sanctioned drag.”  There’s an edge in his voice that speaks to worse experiences.  It scrambles your understanding of this boy all over again.  He seems more world-wise than any twelve year-old oughta be, even one the size of a Girafarig who talks like he eats books for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.  You’re seized by the urge to land a mean right hook on anyone talking trash to him.  (You’ve never landed a right hook on anything in your whole entire life.)

“‘Course I wouldn’t do that,” you insist, though you get that he couldn’t have known for sure.

Suzu crawls all the way into your lap, like she really will wither away if she’s not the center of attention.  Her trust in a weird human who nearly flipped a lid at the sight of her has you feeling like the damn Pokémon Master.  You’d scoop Suzu up and shove her in Mama’s face if that didn’t mean having to go back to Mama in the first place.  You want to shove Kimono Boy in her face, too.  You’d show her that you can go out and meet folks, that you’re not gonna end up like her, trying to squeeze herself into her baby’s life like it’s clothes she won’t admit don’t fit anymore–

On second thought, you don’t want to share Kimono Boy with Mama.

“Do you have a landline?” Kimono Boy asks out of nowhere.  “We could trade numbers.  I mean, you don’t have to–you can call me collect, I don’t care, it’s just if you want to keep in touch.  Just an offer.  We could be, like, phone pals.  If that’s okay?”  His voice squeaks a little at the end.  “Not in a flirting way, or a straight way or anything.  Just as friends.”  It’s the most awkward you’ve seen him all night.  

“You serious?”

“Only if you want,” he repeats.  He’s fidgeting with one of his long curls, twisting it around itself over and over again.

“I do want!  It’s just that my mama’s…  She wouldn’t take kindly to me talkin’ to a boy.  I don’t wanna get you in trouble.”  Not that you know what Mama could even do to Kimono Boy, just that you’d protect him from it, if you could. 

“Well, what if…” he trails off.  His other hand leaves Suzu to join the first in his hair, despite her squeak of protest.  You give her an apologetic pat on the rump, and one of her haunches starts to jiggle in sheer delight.  Kimono Boy, meanwhile, seems to be trying to tie his own hair into the world’s tightest knot.  You elbow him in the side.  It’s a bit of an affair, trying to do that while still petting Suzu with both hands.  

“Will you stop that?  You’re ruinin’ your hair.” 

“I am thinking,” he insists in a plummy, pompous voice.  “I’m scheming.”

“Gonna have to scheme up a trip to the barber’s if you’re not careful.”

“Let me live!  I have an idea.  Hear me out on this, okay?”

You fix him with the most skeptical face you can muster, for all of five seconds before you start giggling.

“Shut up!”

“I didn’t say anythin’ yet!”

“Neither did I, so just–just listen.  Okay.  Your crazy mother doesn’t want you talking to boys because she thinks you’re gonna get teen pregnant or something, right?”

“Or something,” you agree.  He’s pretty much right on the mark.  The way Mama tells it, breathing the same air as a man will see you pregnant, kidnapped, dead, broke, and socially disgraced, all at the same time.         

“What if you told her I’m my sister?  Nothing like having another nice, respectable young lady from a good family as your bosom buddy, right?”  He bats his long, long eyelashes, all pretend-innocent.  

It’s such a bad idea.  There are so many ways Mama could catch you out, so many reasons she’d say no to you having a girl friend who isn’t her.  You still want to go along with it more than you’ve wanted anything for yourself before.  

“You got a pen or somethin’?  I could write our number on your hand.”  You do at least know your own phone number–Mama made sure you could recite it out if (when) you got lost, so she could come get you right away.  A giddy, awful part of you hopes she never does.  Maybe Kimono Boy’s family came in a car, and they could just chuck you in the back and drive off.  Mama would get over it.  Right?

You’re only half-surprised that Kimono Boy does, in fact, have a pen hidden somewhere in the layers of his outfit.  He passes it over to you with a murmured apology when his arm brushes against one of Suzu’s ears.  You have to let go of her to take it.  His hand is warm and a bit sweaty in between your own, equally warm and sweaty hands.  The ink of the pen traces such bumpy trails over his protruding bones that you’re not even sure the numbers are readable.  He returns the favor, writing noticeably more steady.

“I will never wash this hand again,” he declares, placing it over his heart.  You shove him again.  He shoves back.  Suzu lets out a piercing, grumpy whistle.  Her seat moving and the pets stopping are a bridge too far, apparently.  

“I guess if your mom’s listening when we talk, call me Tamao.  We sound pretty much the same on the phone.  I can even introduce myself to your mom as her, since,” he waves a hand over his clothes.

“Awful convenient,” you say.  I don’t want her anywhere near you, near us, you don’t say.  This is probably a little obsessive for someone you’ve only known a few minutes, a few hours, your whole life–however long it’s been.  Hell, you don’t even know his name.

“I’m always thinking ahead,” he replies sagely.  

“What about if it’s just us?”  Kimono Boy makes a questioning noise in the back of his throat.  “If Mama’s not listening.  Do I just keep callin’ you Tamao or…?”