One By Millions

chapter 40

The sun hitting her face effectively woke Momo from her slumber. She rolled over expecting to find comforting warmth, but found an empty space. She groggily opened her eyes to stare at the open spot in front of her. Shino was gone.

She had spent the entire Saturday at the Yaoyorozu estate and had fallen asleep on Momo's bed again. She had her own room, but almost never used it. Momo can count the amount of time Shino slept in there.

Momo glanced at the clock nearby and noted the early hour. Eight in the morning. Shino doesn't like waking up early on the weekend, or at all actually. Her being up early meant that she was either in her room, which she had turned into a lab or in the library.

Momo climbed out of bed, not bothering to fix her hair. Shino's room was the closest location so she went there.

"I hope she hasn't blown something up again "

The probability of Momo walking into a smoke filled room was very high. Shino's experiments had the tendency to blow. More than once.

"Trial and error"

That's what Shino says every time.

Luckily Momo was not met with error. It seems nothing had been blown up. The room was messy, as always. Random objects were strewn about the entire room. Momo could only identify a hand full. Other than that, the room was ok.

Shino herself was hunched over her desk, mumbling incoherent words to herself. Momo heard the scribbling of pencil on paper and knew Shino was deep in her thoughts. Which meant that she was probably unaware of anything around her. She gets that way often. She probably hadn't eaten anything yet. Momo was sure of it. Shino forgets to take care of herself. A very worrying trait.

Momo didn't say anything and quietly left the room. She would need to make sure Shino ate and got the sugar she needed.

Heading down the stairs she was greeted by her parents. Her father was getting ready for work and her mother was baking cookies apparently.

"Good morning Momo"

"Good morning "

"Where's Shino? "

"In her mind" Momo wandered into the kitchen, kissing her mother on the cheek. "Which means she forgot to eat" she opened the refrigerator and gathered a handful of ingredients. Strawberries. Chocolate. Milk. Pancake mix.

"I see" Her mother watched as Momo set her ingredients on an island and went off to gather kitchen necessities. A smile grew on her face when she saw the determination and worry in Momo's eyes. "You have my full support "

"Full support for what? " Momo was genuinely confused.

She only received a knowing smile from her mother, who then left without another word.

That was odd.

A growl left Shino's lips when her latest creation blew up in her face. That sucked. With another growl Shino wiped her face clean and glared at the burnt machinery in front of her. What went wrong this time? Maybe she gave it too much electricity again. She sighed as she observed the spent machine. She was so close.

What was she even making?

"You've got to be kidding me"

She put the burnt experiment to the side and rapidly flipped through her notebook in search of any information as to what she was in the process of creating. She always gets lost in her head and ends up doing things automatically. Her brain wouldn't really process what she was doing at one moment because it was too occupied by other thoughts. It sometimes turned out very troublesome for her.