Chapter 23: Nine Years Ago

Nine years ago

   Directly after her father’s funeral, Emily found herself riding in a battered red jeep driven by a near-total stranger. The girl at the wheel was in her late teens, a very pretty hispanic girl introduced to her at the funeral wake only as her cousin—Samantha. She’d never met any of that side of her family before, because of some unspoken taboo rift, or feud, or something equally dumb, and everything about this situation was making her uncomfortable.

   This older girl seemed to abhor silence, as she kept both the windows down and the radio up, so every spoken word was a yell over the music and the roar of wind. The jeep smelled like cigarette smoke and beer, Samantha dressed in revealing clothing, and overall seemed to be situated on the opposite end of the teenage social stratum. Far enough apart from Emily to make her feel uneasy.

   Of all the people her family could have picked to have the talk with her about grief and loss and opening up about her feelings, Samantha may have been the worst choice. Emily didn’t particularly feel any bond with some distant cousin, no matter how close their ages were. She felt no compunction to be nice or polite. Not now.

   She saw no problem with shutting everyone out and being in no mood to chit-chat for the next few months. Maybe years. Isn’t that normal when your Dad dies? Can’t you all just fucking leave me be?

   For most of Emily’s life, her father had just been this roguish handsome guy who loved fast cars and shamelessly flirted with her mother. Her parents never officially divorced, but they’d been separated for longer than she could remember. Despite that, there was no apparent enmity between them; her mother always seemed to brush off his charming nonsense with good humor.

   And now he’s just… gone? Forever?

   It had been a fatal wreck—they surmised he’d been driving over the speed limit out on a particular winding rural road. He’d been forced to suddenly swerve, likely to avoid hitting an animal, and lost control. The state troopers had followed black streaks of rubber across the pavement to a crumpled gap in the guardrail to find her father’s ‘71 Pantera wrapped around a tree at the bottom of the embankment.

   Having picked up on her recent obsession with anime, her Dad had always gone out of his way to find amazing anime movies, ones she’d never even heard of, for her. She wasn’t able to visit him often, but whenever she spent time over at his apartment, new ones were waiting. They’d watch them together, and then he’d take her out for dinner somewhere to talk about it, valiantly weathering on through her relentless barrage of enthusiasm with a proud smile.

   And now he’s gone. Bitter sadness and helpless anger struggled inside her at a deadlock, but the sheer sense of loss finally won out. Despite only seeing him now and then, living in a world without her dad felt off, wrong somehow. This just isn’t how it’s supposed to be. It’s not fair. It’s not. It’s just not!

   “Heard you’re goin’ to Truliet in a few months here? You’re what, thirteen?” Samantha yelled, her dark ponytail whipping about in the wind. Truliet was purportedly the high school for snobby rich kids, and Emily would swear she heard disdain in the voice of everyone who’d mentioned its name.

   “Fourteen,” Emily grunted. “All my friends are going to San Michaels. I don’t want to go to Truliet, but my Mom’s enrolling me anyways, ‘cause she works there.”

   “I knew some kids from Truliet,” Samantha said loudly, glancing over at her attire. “You’re gonna have a rough time if you go in there wearin’, like… that Japanime cartoon crap on your shirts. Up there in Truliet, they’re gonna fuck with you for that. S’all status and hierarchy and shit, like, way more than a normal high school.”

   Emily looked down at her top, emblazoned with an action spread of characters from Shinobi Souls. She shrugged, making a bitter face. “Dad bought it for me.” Watching the show used to be our thing together, alright? He always called me his little ninja. This is my favorite shirt. So just stop. Please. Stop. You’re just making it worse.

   “Ahhh, shit,” Samantha cursed, nodding thoughtfully and smiling. “Well yeah, alright. You got a kid sister, yeah?”

   “Katie,” Emily called over the noise. “She’s eleven.”

   “Katie, huh. I’ll remember that. Katie,” Samantha said to herself, and pulled the wheel, making another turn. Emily was increasingly sure that they weren’t actually driving to somewhere, and that this cousin of hers was simply cruising around aimlessly so that they could have their talk. Emily wanted it to be over already.

   Finally, Samantha seemed to relent somewhat. She shut off the radio, and then rolled up the windows, creating a prolonged silence that somehow seemed even worse. Shopping centers and outlet malls rolled by without a sound.

   “Alright, here we go. I’m gonna talk at you for a while,” Samantha said with some difficulty, keeping her eyes on the road. “You don’t gotta say anything… and it’s gonna be a little weird, but like, I gotta tell you this, ‘cause I don’t think anyone else can, okay?”

   “…Okay,” Emily agreed with a sigh, already familiar with the I know what you’re going through rhetoric she was surely about to hear.

   “So… yeah, well a few years back I was snoopin’ around in my Mom’s closet—that’s Aunt Rachel to you—and I found a buncha porno. Not like, video tapes, or magazines, or that kinda shit. I mean, like… photos. Home-made photos, buncha polaroids, you get my drift?”

   Uh… what. Emily blanched, crossing her arms and giving the girl in the driver’s seat a mortified look.

   “Yeah, I know, right?” Samantha laughed. “So, worst of all, Mom was in them. I like, freaked out. She was like, makin’ out with this other girl in some of them, and they were both gettin—well, uh, there was a guy too, and you can, ahem, you can probably guess all of that, right? They were crazy. Turned my whole world-view like, upside-down. That’s when I really like, broke out on my own and got all independent.”

   “Okay…?” Emily mumbled.

   “Well, here’s the thing,” Samantha said slowly. “My Mom—again, Aunt Rachel to you—has this meltdown a few days ago, and drags me to this funeral today, for some part of the family I’ve never met. Lo and behold, I see some… familiar faces? Same ones from those polaroids.”

   “Uh…” It took Emily a long, confused moment to realize what Samantha was actually implying. “You… don’t mean…?”

   “Yeah, I do,” Samantha chuckled. “Your dad that passed away, my Mom, and her sister—your Mom, they were, uh… all a thing together. A sex thing? Apparently. And that isn’t even really the half of it.”

   “No way,” Emily said, staring blankly. She was stunned, more than stunned. It was like she understood what this girl was saying— knew what her words meant, but actual recognition just wasn’t hitting her yet. Mom, Dad, and… this Aunt Rachel?

   “Yes way,” Samantha insisted. “I guess back in the day, before whatever weird split or feud or whatever they had, your dad was—uh, well, known for being the lucky guy to land not just one of the Garcia sisters, but both of ‘em. Like, in a relationship. Both at the same time, like, he was goin’ everywhere with a girl on each arm and shit.”

   “Can I see the photos?” Emily asked.

   “I was gonna bring some of the less, uh, raunchy ones, so that you’d believe me, but Mom’s been holed up in her room all week,” Samantha explained. “Can’t exactly ask to pull her private shit outta her closet right now.”

   “Oh.”

   “‘Oh?’That’s all you’ve got? I mean, c’mon, whaddya really think about all of this?”

   “I think… it’s dumb,” Emily said in a detached voice.

   “Dumb? You don’t believe me?”

   “No… no, it’s not that. Would explain the weird stupid family situation… I guess. That’s what’s dumb. We’re all family,” Emily muttered, uncrossing her arms and looking out the window with an aggravated expression. This strange news was just making her even more aware of her father’s sudden absence from her life. “Right? We should have known about each other. All of us could’ve been together.”

   “Uhhh. Well, that’s like, polygamy?” Samantha said, choosing her words carefully. “From what I’ve figured, they were thinkin’ about us, so that us kids could have, y’know—somewhat normal lives. Modern society’s not real accepting of multiple wives, and well, weird stuff that’s kinda like incest?”

   “Since when has what society thinks ever been more important than family?” Emily asked in a flat voice. “That’s dumb.”

   “Hah! That’s good, I like that. Fuck what everyone else thinks, right? I’m the same way. And also—it’s like, I always wanted a little sister, you know? We’re only five years apart, I just thought it’d be cool. You seem like this cheeky brat, but like, you could be my bratty little sister. I like that.”

   “…I’m not a brat, though.”

   “Uh-huh. Well, listen. I never grabbed any photos at the time, ‘cause I was like, all weirded out, but I did snatch this.” Samantha leaned over across Emily to pop open the glove compartment of her jeep, pulling a strange wooden slat out from beneath what looked suspiciously like a glass pipe and a bag of weed. “Here, check it out.”

   “Uhh,” Emily began, innocently flicking her eyes away from the drug paraphernalia as the glove box was closed again, and finally took at look at the object Samantha was handing her. “…What is this?”

   “S’a little oriental charm, like for good luck, health and prosperity and all that,” Samantha explained. “This one, though, this was in my Mom’s little shoebox o’ treasures with those polaroids and everything.”

   “It’s neat,” Emily said, turning it over in her hands. “Why’d you grab this, of all things?”

   “Dunno,” Samantha answered honestly. “Just sorta spoke to me, I guess. I’m not superstitious or nothin’, but since it was with all that other weird stuff, it seems more… like it was, y’know, important, or significant or somethin’. Had it hanging there from my rear-view mirror, right up ‘till the funeral. Kiiinda don’t wanna risk Mom randomly recognizing it now and really flipping out on me. So, I want you to have it.”

   “Are you sure?” Emily asked. “You’re not gonna… put it back where you found it?”

   “Too late for that,” Samantha snorted. “She sure as hell went through all her little mementos soon as she heard the news. Fuck me, right? Had it just dangling out in the open there for forever. Damned lucky she never noticed it, that would not have been a fun conversation. I mean, she’s never in here, ‘cause she hates my driving, but still.”

   “Well… it’s really cool,” Emily said. “Thank you.”

   “No sweat, little sistah,” Samantha laughed.

   “Wait, what if my Mom recognizes it?”

   “Well don’t go wavin’ it around in her face,” Samantha said. “Anyone asks, then… I dunno, make up a story.”

   “…Okay. I’ll say you got it from a shrine in Japan,” Emily felt a smile tugging at the corner of her lips.

   “Japan? Yeah, like I’ve been overseas. You know I went to San Michaels, right?”

   “Alright, fine then. I’ll tell everyone you got it from a vending machine.”

   “Listen, do you gotta go into explainin’ details to people at all? Or bringing me into it?”

---

   How can I NOT be bitter about this? Emily thought as she first stepped inside her morning class at Truliet. Sure, she hadn’t expected big posters with bright colors and cartoon frogs and kittens to be plastered everywhere like in middle school—but glancing around her classroom now, the only papers decorating the walls were uninteresting notices. Reminders, rules. Everything just seemed so bleak, bland and austere.

   Her fellow students were arguably worse. Hardly anyone was making an effort to socialize, and it was all carefully styled appearances and posturing, putting on airs to make a ‘cool’ impression the first day of high school. All of the other girls in her grade level seemed to have sprouted up tall and blossomed into nubile young adults, graceful and mature, while Emily felt stunted in comparison, like puberty had given up before finishing the job.

   She was short, she had boyish hips, and wearing her stupid bra at all felt like open deceit. Emily was already the miserable little punk who thought figuring out what to do with her hair was too much of a chore, and never applied more makeup than just some quick eyeliner. She’d simply worn her favorite clothes—jeans with holes in the knees and that gray Shinobi Souls T-shirt. It was comfy, and featured an action spread of the main characters leaping forward from the backdrop of an exploding blood splatter. As it turned out, however, wearing it was a mistake.

   “Sooo, you must really be into that Japanime, huh? You’ve got your little ninjas on your shirt?” a tall blonde asked as they milled about inside the classroom, waiting for the first bell. Well, all the girls here were taller than her, so with an internal grumble Emily instead decided to simply classify this one as the stuck-uppest looking one.

  “They’re shinobi, actually… Ever heard of Shinobi Souls?” Emily countered, not deigning to explain further. Japanime, seriously? Why are you talking to me?

   “Nope,” Stuck-Uppest responded curtly. Her tone suggested that Emily had sealed her own fate for even admitting the name of an anime.

   “So, you think you’re some kind of shinny-obi, huh?” the tall blonde girl using the purposefully mocking mispronunciation was already exchanging glances with the others. She was loud enough for everyone to hear, and it was increasingly clear the only reason she’d stooped so low as to speak to Emily at all was to clarify the classroom pecking order. To open a topic of conversation with the others, or rather, a topic of derision—it was Emily, of course, and there was nothing she could do about it.

   Really? I think I’m a shinobi… because of a T-shirt I’m wearing? Because that’s so logical. Does that guy over there in the jersey think he’s a pro football player? Guess being the loner geek must just make me quite the ice-breaker around these parts. Easy pickings, at least.

   “…Yep,” Emily finally said in a dry tone, rolling her eyes. “Sure do.” The damage was already done. She was bound to hear the other classmates, eager to fit in, talking down to her throughout the semester already. Why wouldn’t they? Stuck-Uppest was sociable and attractive. She’d quickly moved on and found some other people to talk to, strategically giggling and chatting easily with a small group of guys—and Emily? She was just the awkward little runt.

   When the class began, their tired old man of a teacher outlined his expectations for them in the course in a bored, droning voice. His words were immediately evaporating out of Emily’s head, and she could only grimace at the thought of enduring a year of all of this. Not only was there assigned seating, but Emily was shunted to the very back corner of the class, next to the wall. It would have been that stereotypical anime protagonist seat—back of the class, next to the window—but this classroom was deep within the interior of the school complex, so there weren’t any windows. It was safer to say that Emily’s desk was hidden back in the corner by the cabinets.

   Worse yet, the girl sitting right in front of her was Stuck-uppest; apparently her real name was Lauren. Neither were happy with their arrangement, although, in Lauren’s case, she just wanted to be placed in a more social position than against a wall. The uppity blonde seemed to light up when a cute guy was assigned next to her, however, which made Emily glower. Everyone near her now was tall. So, not only was she relegated off into this corner, but she couldn’t even really see past these Truliet cretins.

   “Hi! I’m Lauren,” Stuck-Uppest introduced herself, presenting a winning smile to her cute new neighbor, a guy with short brown hair.

   “Brian,” the guy offered, before giving her an uneasy smile. “Hey, uh, you got a pencil and paper I could borrow?”

   “What, you didn’t bring anything with you on the first day?” Lauren laughed, opening the rings of her binder to offer him some sheets of notebook paper.

   Yeah, oh boy, what a rebel, Emily thought sarcastically, not looking up from her desk.

   “Well, um, I only have my one pencil, annnd, it’s for me,” the girl said coyly, before hitching a thumb back behind her to indicate Emily. “Maybe you can ask the little shinny-obi if she has one to spare.”

   Pissed off, Emily looked up to meet the guy’s eyes with a glare. Yeah, just try fucking asking, prick. First fucking hour of the first fucking day, and I’m already saddled with a retarded nickname.

   “…Nah,” The guy flicked his eyes down to the anime motif of her T-shirt for a split second, then held her stare for a long beat before looking back towards Lauren indifferently. “I ain’t askin’ her.”

   “Pfft, yeah, why not?” Lauren goaded.

   Emily glared back down at her desk, fingers tightening painfully on the edges of the worn laminate surface. Guess Sammie was right about everyone at Truliet after all. Of course she was. Fuck.

   “You see what she’s wearing?” the guy scoffed lightly, a slight, almost secretive smile surfacing. “Shirt with those Tamashii clan creeps on it. More like the Tamashii traitors, s’what I call ‘em. They’re a disgrace to all shinobi, especially after all that nonsense they pulled up at Heavenly Peak Palace. Am I right?”

   Emily felt her head snap up to catch Lauren giving the guy a nervous laugh, but that guy—Brian, was it?—had already turned away to ask the student on his other side for a pencil. Tamashii clan?! The cute guy watches Shinobi Souls. No wait, Heavenly Peak isn’t even IN the Shinobi Souls anime yet… he’s been reading the fan translations of the manga online, like I am!

   Lauren twisted back to give Emily a scowl as if Emily herself had snubbed her, and she replied with only an innocent smile. Brian, huh? Maybe this school year won’t be so shitty after all.

---

   “So, what clan are you with, then?” Emily found herself asking Brian, forcibly quelling the nervous churn of her stomach. It was the next day—after she’d discreetly scoped out where he sat during lunch, a secluded patio table outside in the quad area. He was sitting with an Asian guy again, having already made a friend—yesterday she’d been too on-edge to approach them.

   “Kokoro clan.”

   “Kokoro clan?” That wasn’t one of the ‘big three’ shinobi factions, but it did sound familiar.

   “You know, Kokoro clan,” the Chinese guy at the table wearing glasses emphasized with a leer, cupping his hands out in front of him.

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   “The one Akane’s from?” Emily asked in disbelief, turning towards Brian. “Akane Kurokawa… that stupid titty-ninja?”

   “Hey, don’t call her that. She’s my favorite, she’s one of the best shinobi there is,” Brian laughed. “Akane the Sweet Silencer.”

   “Your favorite?” Emily snorted. “She’s not even one of the clan elites. Big whoop. Akane’s lame as hell.”

   “Yeah, but all the rest of ‘em aren’t elite at suckin’ dick. Ohhh, burn!” the Chinese guy interjected again.

   “Here, sit with us,” Brian invited Emily, kicking his Asian friend’s backpack off the bench opposite him. “Mark here keeps scaring off all the girls with his Mana.”

   “Shaddup,” Mark said, scowling, but she saw the Chinese guy pause from shuffling his deck of Mana cards to make space for her at the table.

   “Sure, alright,” Emily said casually. On the inside, she was elated. I finally found some other geeks here! And this one’s super cute! “What, are you guys too cool to eat lunch?”

   “Too poor, more like,” Brian shrugged.

   “Yeah? You want my apple, then?” Emily blurted.

---

   “There’s nothing in the world dumber than multiplying fractions,” Emily groaned in frustration, holding the cordless phone between her cheek and her shoulder. “No one uses fractions in real life.” Several months of their freshman year had passed by in a flash, and she was alone on the floor of her messy room, picking away at her algebra homework.

   “What about, you know, in cooking? Measuring cups, tablespoons and stuff,” Brian pointed out, his voice tinny and distant through the phone’s speaker. “They always use fractions.”

   “Well, they’re retarded, too,” Emily complained, flipping her pencil and smudging out her scribbled answer again with the eraser. “They should all be in proper decimal points.”

   “With fractions, I’ve always had trouble telling the difference between the numerator and the denominator,” Brian paused. “I guess there’s a fine line between them.”

   “Yeah, hah, hah.” Emily rolled her eyes. “Nice try, but I heard that one back in middle school.”

   “Well, damn.”

   Brian was in both her first period Algebra and her fifth period World History class, and he’d turned out to be her salvation. Emily was a fish out of water suddenly attending this high school full of rich pricks, and the only solace she’d been able to find so far was hanging out with him.

   He’s cute, he’s into all the same things that I’m into, he introduced me to all his friends—I don’t even think of them as HIS friends anymore, they’re MY friends now, OUR friends. And, he’s cute… did I mention that he’s cute?

   “Hey, uh… so I’ve actually been keeping a secret,” Emily said nervously, sliding her textbook and half-finished worksheet out of the way and leaning back heavily against her bed.

   “A secret? What’s up?”

   “Uh, well… you know I still read Shinobi Souls online, but… I actually, like, stopped watching anime completely a little while back.”

   “Really?” He sounded surprised. “That’s weird. You seem all into it at school. Gettin’ sick of it already?”

   “No, no, I want to watch, just, it is weird,” she mumbled, her mouth going dry. “I used to only ever really watch anime with my dad. We’d watch it together. So, now, watching it alone, it makes it…it’s…”

   “Parents divorced?” He guessed.

   “Ah… no. Car accident. Right before the school year started.”

   “Shit. Sorry.”

   “Yeah,” Emily said dumbly, cursing at herself in her head. Why why whhhhy am I dropping all of this on him now out of nowhere?!

   “Well, hey,” Brian’s voice broke back in, “I’m not allowed to leave the house after school for like, the whole rest of this year, but if you want, I can hang with you on the phone while we each watch? Or would that be weird, watching and talking?”

   “No, no, that’s not weird,” Emily said quickly, wetting her lips. “That sounds… that’s cool. It still comes on at four o’clock? Are you watching tomorrow?”

   “O’course. We’re almost up to the tournament examination arc in the anime now. With Saburo and all that.”

   “Cool! Cool, awesome. Sounds like a—uh, sounds like a plan,” Emily smiled. Did I almost slip and say ‘date?’ “Call you tomorrow around… three-thirty, then? Three-forty-five?”

   “Sure.”

   “Hey, also, I’ve never really asked… why exactly do you like Akane, anyways?” Emily finally inquired. Isn’t she kinda just the obligatory scantily-clad character they throw in for sex-appeal? She’s totally lame.

   “I guess just from the impression she made. Like, everything I’d seen before that—Monster Battlers and everything, that was still cartoons, but then seeing her, it was like, this is anime,” Brian explained.

   “So, you’re into big tits, huh?” Emily snorted. “Typical.”

   “No… s’not that,” Brian chuckled. “Up ‘til that point, I’d never seen an animated character who was supposed to be sexy in an adult way. Just ones that were, you know, supposed to be sexy in that watered-down sorta kiddy way. Like, in cartoons you can tell when a character’s supposed to be sexy, but it always feels more like a spoof, a placeholder or something, since they never put in something actually sexual.

   “Sure, in Shinobi Souls they still don’t show explicit sex, but they don’t go out of their way to cover up anything, either. It just makes the situations seem so much more real to me, like, I can get invested in the characters and story and everything. Sorry… I’m rambling, aren’t I?”

   “No, no, I totally get it!” Emily exclaimed, sitting up suddenly in excitement. “You’re right, that’s—that’s anime. It’s like everything in the States has this sorta fake layer to it, ‘cause they have to make it PG, or they know parents will complain, or think kids couldn’t handle it or whatever. But then, in anime, they’re just givin’ you the best, most interestingest story they can make.”

   “Right?” Brian laughed.

   “Right!” Emily agreed. All this time I thought he was just kidding around. Or trying to come off like a perv or something. But Akane really IS his favorite… it makes sense. She’s what separated anime from cartoons, for him. She kinda represents something to Brian. That’s actually cool.

   “Ah, crap. I gotta go,” Brian said.

   “Alright, cool. See ya in class.”

   “Right. Later.”

   “Later.” After exchanging their goodbyes, Emily turned—to realize her little sister was sneering at her through the bedroom doorway.

   “Who was that?” Katie scoffed. “Making plans with your boyfriend?”

   “None of your damn business,” Emily cried indignantly. “Don’t listen in on me, you creepy little twerp. We’re just gonna talk about anime. And that’s it.”

   “Pffft! Nerd. I’m telling! I’m telling!” Katie disappeared from her doorway and Emily could hear her tiny feet running down the hall. “Mom! Mooom! Emily’s being a nerd! She can’t even get a boyfriend, ‘cause all she ever talks about is anime!”

   “Mooom!” Emily began to yell out herself. “Katie’s lying! Beat her little face in!”

   With an exaggerated sigh, Emily clambered up onto her bed and sprawled out across it.

   “Still,” Emily chuckled to herself, “Akane’s outfit is just… too much.” A little too BLATANT with how much they sexualized her. No one—and I mean no one—would ever ACTUALLY wear that.

---

Present day

   Emily quirked a lip at herself in the vertical mirror of her closet door, running fingers through her shaggy tangle of black hair. She was dressed in her Akane Kurokawa cosplay, the kunoichi from the massively popular Shinobi Souls anime. She’d ordered the cosplay as a complete set from an online retailer, simply making minor adjustments to it over time so that it better suited her each year.

   The costume was simple—a red summer kimono called a yukata, that tied at the waist in a wide-belted obi. Unlike more traditional yukata, however, this one sported short sleeves and a scandalously high hemline that fluttered and swayed a bare six inches from her obi—practically a micro-skirt. The front of her yukata hung open in a loose way, as was appropriate for the character, exposing the fishnet body stocking she wore beneath.

   She frowned, opening her yukata wider to expose her netting-covered breasts. They were way too small—tiny peach-sized bulges, her little pink nipples standing erect through the weave. She’d be wearing her flesh-toned pasties to cover her nips later on so that she didn’t stray from indecent to explicit, but… that wasn’t really the problem. Like most anime characters intended to lay on sex appeal, Akane Kurokawa had enormous double D-cup breasts. No matter how much Emily worked on improving the rest of the outfit… her meager A-cups were as good as it was going to get. On better-endowed cosplayers, the outfit formed a stunning, canyon-like crevasse of cleavage… but Emily was just nowhere near buxom enough for that, and never would be. In fact, her small breasts, that mere handful each, did little to help hold the garment in place. There’d even been occasional mishaps last year where the yukata opened up too far and slipped down her one shoulder.

   Nothing more I can do about that. With a sigh, she mentally reviewed this year’s changes. The cheap fishnet originally packaged with the Akane Kurokawa cosplay hadn’t fit right at all, so she’d already found a new purpose for it—the old body-stocking still roughly approximated human shape when she completely filled it with the various stuffed animals and anime plush dolls she’d collected over the years. The eerie person-shaped assemblage was sitting on its knees in proper Japanese seiza in the corner of her room like a macabre mannequin.

   The new body stocking for her Akane cosplay was ordered from a lingerie website, though it’d been designed for purposes… other than costuming and featured a hemmed slit open at the crotch. That was going to be covered by Akane’s trademark white fundoshi-style panties anyways, though, so no one would ever know. Probably. The fundoshi’s basically just a loincloth folded and tucked into itself, and the yukata really doesn’t go down very far… I’ll have to watch that it doesn’t slip so I’m not flashin’ gash at everyone in every direction.

   Red cloth bracers and leggings covered her forearms and shins, each with loops that held her fake throwing stars and tiny ninja daggers in place. Last year, they’d kept falling out every time she moved quickly or made an exaggerated gesture, so in the time since then, she’d hand-sewn the little props into place so they wouldn’t budge. A fluffy brown wig with an exaggerated ponytail and a pair of red split-toed ninja shoes finished out the ensemble.

   “Look at you,” Mrs. Rivera said dryly, leaning in through the doorway of her daughter’s bedroom. “Your nipples are showing, Emily, honestly… You aren’t planning on using that awful tape again, are you?”

   “It was band-aids back then, and no. I bought a pair of pasties this time,” Emily growled, tugging the loose yukata closed over her meager chest. “And I’m not gonna waste ‘em before I get to the convention.”

   “If they came as a single pair, they’re reusable ones,” her mom pointed out. “But really, Emily. If you’d just talk to me every once in a while… I have a whole bunch of disposable breast petals I could have given you, if you’d just asked.”

   “What. What. Why do you even have pasties? You’re old. Old!”

   “Honey… I’m not that old. Do you remember the dress I wore to that last big recital?” Her mother asked, unfazed.

   “Uh, the one I made you promise to never wear again? That slutty, inappropriate-for-school, tramp dress that your stupid udders were practically hanging out of? The one all the other teachers were gawking over?”

   “Mm, that’s the dress, you remembered,” her mother smiled teasingly. “Well, I definitely needed petals for that one.”

   “Well, I don’t ever need to hear about weird things you stick to your nipples, thanks,” Emily said, making a face.

   “Some twenty-three years ago, you were just this weird thing I stuck to my nipples, you know,” her mother retorted, gesturing with her mug of coffee.

   “Mom. Mom. If you really love me as your only daughter—”

   “You’re not my only daughter.”

   “—As your favorite daughter—”

   “Hmph. Well, fair enough.”

   “—You’ll stop tormenting me and just let me have the car, just this once. Puh-leeeease.”

   “Can’t help you, kiddo—I need to go. Mr. Daniels called, he’s coming in late today. So, now I need to head over, unlock all the doors for everyone, and corral all of the stagehands. Why don’t you try and call Rebecca?”

   “I did call Rebecca,” Emily muttered. “She’s still at work, though.”

   “Well, I can’t help you there,” her mother pointed out, shaking her head. “I’ll get you the adhesive out from my cabinet before I leave.”

   “I don’t need adhesive, Mom. I need the car! Can’t they just wait for Mr. Daniels? Just this once.”

   “Reusable breast petals aren’t always very self-adhering, love. Did you check them?”

   “…Please let me borrow your adhesive. And the car. And, um… maybe, like, fifty bucks?”

   “Sorry, kiddo. You still owe me money—and you’re not going anywhere without Rebecca,” her mother insisted firmly, sighing in exasperation and gesturing her daughter forward for a hug. “I need to go get ready. Do you want me to get you the glue, or do you just want to use my disposable ones?”

   “…The glue, please,” Emily answered meekly, stepping forward to embrace her mother. “And… Sorry for calling you old. You’re not really old, and you did look great in that dress.”

   “I know, hun,” her mother said, patting her head. “It was such a slutty dress, though, and I did just wear it to get a rise out of everyone.”

   Emily backed off, snatching up the nearest stuffed animal—a Solar Bear plushie from Monster Battlers—and threw it, but Mrs. Rivera blew her a kiss and ducked behind the door frame just in time.

   She wasn’t actually angry at her mother, even about the car. She knew she couldn’t take her mom’s only means of transportation for her busy weekend, although it was fun to make a fuss about it. For all of their verbal spats and play-fighting, she really did feel lucky, because she did have the best mom in the world.

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