The alarm buzzed. A hand shot out from under the covers. The alarm fell silent. From under the covers a face emerged to stare at the ceiling above. With a barely audible groan the body levered itself upwards to wake up. A glance at her phone told Sara that she didn’t have school today. She could just lay back down and sleep the day away. That sounded ideal. She could just sleep and sleep and sleep and never wake up. In fact, she did lay back down on the futon, considering that course of action. And then she sat straight up as she heard a crash in the kitchen.

That would be her stepmother. The woman worried about her. Sara was even willing to bet that she worried more than her father did. It was … nice, she supposed, if not a little awkward. Sara wasn’t used to people worrying about her. Sara supposed that she could go to the gymnastic gym. There was little opportunity to go during that week and her stepmother had taken the time to find the gym for Sara, before Sara had arrived. That still sounded like too much work and too much effort. She still levered herself out of bed and moved to pack up the futon. The sooner she delt with her stepmother’s worry, the sooner she could be done with it for the day.

*_*

That afternoon saw Sara wandering the streets of Sagamiyama. She was carefully avoiding both a certain flower shop and a certain mechanic’s shop as she looked for a place to ‘buy a treat’ as her stepmother had insisted, she did after gymnastics and pushed a few bills into her hand. That had happened this morning as Sara didn’t eat breakfast. Sara rarely ate breakfast, avoided dinner with her father, stepmother, and two younger half-brothers, and lunch was hit or missed. So, that was another thing that her stepmother worried about. Sara really did want to find a treat to eat, because her stepmother was nice and a good woman, and Sara really didn’t like worrying her, but nothing seemed appealing. 

Not for the first time Sara thought about letting the mod soul that she had gotten from that one Shinigami from the candy shop had given her about two months ago just have her body. The few times it had interacted with her family it had interacted with them better than she ever could. She was worried that Tatsuha and Hayasegawa would have problems with that. They had to be watching her. They had known about her drawings after all, and she wasn’t she that she would be able to tell when or how they were watching. Sara giving the mod soul her body seemed like something that would upset them. Not for the first time she wondered why she had said yes to their proposition two months ago. Being a substitute Shinigami hadn’t solved any of her problems and she was still no closer to seeing the places that she saw in her dreams and nightmares. Tatsuha and Hayasegawa kept saying ‘someday’ and that was starting to get frustrating.

Finally, she decided on just getting takoyaki from a stall that didn’t have a long line. There wasn’t much of it so it was easy enough to force down. It didn’t taste bad either and for a moment Sara debated weather or not she should get some more, but no, it was probably time to get home. She had just a little bit of homework to do before she went back to school, and it wouldn’t hurt to work on her Japanese a little bit either. Maybe she could get to bed early. Gymnastics had been strangely exhausting even though Sara hadn’t done much. She could just sleep and sleep and sleep and never wake up. That sounded ideal.