So yeah you refrain from squawking for obvious reasons, but your tiredness has gotten to you. After 3 you just become a giant weirdo. You jump up and down on the couch with gleeful lack of purpose.
Oh, it’s this magazine. Oh fucking hell. This isn’t any idol on the cover. This is your mom.
Your mom used to be an idol back in the late 80’s. Before she turned 18 and became old and busted. The idol racket is a cruel and unusual mistress, her group ousted her for the new hotness on the eve of her birthday of all things. She was looking for work and trying to sell demo tapes when your father, who had been a fan of hers, found her. He was a businessman at the time. Totally not weird at all. You don’t like to think about it too much. He was only eight years her senior at the time. At least those are the facts that you get through the bullshit of a sob/Cinderella story a mile long that mostly talks about what bitches Yumi and Miu were.
Anyway they settled down, he hit it big, and she lived off his money, got knocked upped and raised you while he went away a lot to rake in cash. Because of the combination of becoming an idol young and then graduating straight into the arms of a soon to be very rich man she doesn’t know how to really function in actual life. Your childhood was happy enough but you grew up quickly to compensate for what amounted to some shoddy parenting when you get right down to it.
Every so often she breaks out the old magazines and relives the ‘glory days’. You’re pretty sure it’s not good for her mental state but she gets snappish if you move them.
Her baggage, not yours.
You suppose you can pick up the magazines that were left scattered about. Nothing is worse than tripping over one of them anyway. It’d be your luck to do exactly that when you need to make a great escape for some reason later.
Venturing quietly down the hallway you find the living room. Nothing out of the ordinary, your mom might be close, though. That pile of messed up magazines is recent. Extreme caution should be used.
Your urge to find a weapon cannot be sated. If you try to approach your mother by accident in a darkened hallway you could find yet another one of your replica smashed or a vase upside the head at best. She could have even bought that riot baton she was talking about, being a “rich, successful, woman on the go” she needs to “protect herself” apparently. You do not want to be beaten with riot gear.
And find…
Yeah it’s just the fish tank. Ridiculously expensive and unneeded, filled with a bunch of fish you don’t even care to name. Poor things are going to die sooner rather than later. It’s really fun to wake up in the morning across from fish genocide a few times a month.
Your room is at the end of the hall, the whole house could be infested with agents.
Or more likely you’ve just going to sneak past your mother as best you can and find something to do -outside- extremely early in the morning. Not much to do at 4am besides bullshit around.
You gotta investigate or you’re not even going to get to doze a little tonight. You’re going to put this to bed right now. You decide against taking a weapon because last time you went on one of your night prowls your mother thought you were trying to burgle her jewels or some rubbish. Anyway the sword you brought with you to make yourself feel like a badass got broken in the ensuing scuffle. It was limited edition and you got yelled at for being weird again…
You go out the door to inspect the blue thing….
How the hell can you feasibly do that? The ceiling is really high, you have nothing to climb up on. Why do you even want the gum anyway? It’s old gum. Gross.
That’s not the issue here. Your door is making you nervous. You’ve gotta admit that to yourself now. You absolutely remember closing it, no doubt about it. You had snuck out to the kitchen around 11 to grab some sodas from your secret hiding place under the vegetables in the drawer. That was the last time you were out of this room. You haven’t been listening to music, the room has been quiet. If your mom was awake (fat chance) and had come to check on you (yeah right) for some reason you would have noticed. The door is pretty loud when you open it. Something is afoot here.
….
Holy fuck you’re actually spooked right now.
You check the ceiling, nothing out of the ordinary up there. You’re just feeling a little of that ol’ 3 a.m. paranoia is all. Well, nothing besides a cobweb and a bit of gum you threw up there anyway. You never let the cleaning service in here, it feels weird having someone else clean all your junk up. Besides, after the way your mother yells at them half the time you don’t trust them not to exact their revenge or just plainly not do a very good job. Your mom really isn’t that bad, she’s just a snappish thing. Without your dad here she has no one to bitch to. He can listen to her endless wheedling for hours.
