Adopted - Excerpt

A eleven-year-old Shintaro groaned as he turned around. In front of the doorway was Mary. The petite girl looked at him shyly, holding up a DVD. He rubbed his eyes, bleary from the computer, and motioned for her to come over. She beamed, almost skipping over to where he was and dragging a seat to sit near the computer. Shintaro sighed at her excitement and pressed a button and place the disk in.

As he leaned back, he saw a cold cola pressed against his cheek. He blinked before looking over to his white-haired companion. She was looking away as she held out the cola can and he laughed. He took it from her hands and pressed the spacebar to initiate the video.

“You sure do know how to bribe me.” He laughed and Mary punched him in the arm.

Now that Shintaro was thinking about it, it’s been a couple of years since Mary came to their house. It was around the time when his mother had to get her appendix removed when his dad came into the hospital with the girl on his shoulder. Of course, his mom was currently in surgery and didn’t know of Mary at the time, but Shintaro was sitting in the waiting room. He was astonished that his dad would just save a girl around fourteen years on impulse. However, he didn’t have time to argue as his dad rushed to his mother’s hospital room to give her support.

Momo had been four at the time and was at a sleepover or something while Shintaro was there in place of his father. When he was given Mary he didn’t know what the fuck to do, but just had the girl sleeping on him for most of the time. He figured he would ask questions later.

However, it seemed that even his dad didn’t have any answers. He had replied to Shintaro that she collapsed in the park and the man thought otherwise to leave her in such a state. Shintaro then turned to the girl, Mary, who also had no answers for him. It had irritated him that his family adopted Mary into his family, but now he was her companion and vice versa. She wasn’t like Momo who whined and complained and disliked the time he spent with her. Rather, Mary was a goddess from the heavens that was sent to him in return for giving Momo to him.

Well, not really. Shintaro loves Momo as he loves Mary, but it was just how she was quiet like him. She didn’t press when he didn’t talk, and he didn’t press when she remembered something from her past. They knew each other’s lines and knew very well not to cross it. That was their thing.