Shinomotchi

Gas tank? Full.

Laptop? Check.

Chargers? Check.

Homework? Eh. I won’t do it even if I bring it, and it won’t bump my grades up even if I do it.

Cigarettes? No, let’s leverage the long weekend to cut back. Well – just one for the drive. Anything harder will have to wait. The thought of mom finding out alone makes nauseous.

Laundry? Check.

Everything looks ready to go. I’m confident I can beat the sun out if I skip breakfast to maximize my time at home. Nothing on campus tastes quite like mom’s cooking. Maybe if I drive with the windows down, I’ll be able to follow the smell home without assistance from the GPS – she is making my favorite. What a remarkably silly thought. Aside from the meals, I think sleeping in a newly converted home gym beats sharing a dorm room with noisy acquaintances. Everyone is so loud.

Mom has my old belongings set aside in boxes on my old bed, but she promised not to sell anything without checking in with me first. I’m hoping the drive home will be dull, so it lets my mind wander. I was fine with being an undeclared major for the first three semesters, but that novelty is running out, and I need something to tether to or I’ll end up blowing the scholarships. No – I said this would be a weekend to unwind and take a step back. I’ll decide those things once I’m back. Mom can’t know.

The drive back would always revert my brain to how I used to perceive things. It’s been months, so things back in my hometown don’t quite look or smell like I remember, but each increasingly familiar street awakens a layer of my dormant youth. I’d forget the worries of tuition, work schedules, rent, projects, scholarships, extra-credit, and all the other headaches that come with academia. It’s all so noisy. I hope I can find silence back home.

There’s the post office, the remodeled fast-food joint, a new subdivision I don’t recognize, and the driveway up to my childhood suburban oasis. My friends always say they dread going home for long holidays now, but I can’t help disagreeing. There’s a guilty pleasure in returning to my worry-free self. The future can wait as long as I remain here.

I held back tears hugging my mom. It’d been months fending for myself in the jungle, and the home smelled like cinnamon apple candles and dinosaur chicken nuggets (I never said my favorite meal was anything fancy). My room was a pile of boxes and unassembled workout equipment. My bed still smelled like the lingering remnants of high school. It was even more comfortable than I remember. I suppose that’s what sleeping on a sponge for months does to the soul. I could feel my body shutting down as I threw myself on to the plush comforter. My shoulders turned into spaghetti and everything I’d learned in school fled my body with every warm and prolonged exhale. I was safe again. In my little box, surrounded by towers of cardboard boxes. It was a throne that had remained dusty for too long. Away from the necessary machinations of the world. The bureaucracy. The exhausting social ploys we follow to make a living or ascend in this world. It was a snake eat snake world, and I was the brightest mouse.

I unpacked quickly and began rearranging the confines of the castle to my liking in peace and silence. I moved “Kitchenware for sale” off to the side table, “Clothes for sale” near the door leading to my bathroom, and “Old toys for sale?” on to the bed. Something inside was beeping. The box was taped shut for protection, but curiosity got the better of me and I clawed the lid off to inspect the types of curiosities that might be hiding in it. Another dormant layer of youth was abruptly jolted awake as the musty cardboard flaps exploded with dust and the smell of (somehow) damp plastic and felt. Old teddy bears and plushies, action figures with missing arms or accessories, my old 90’s translucent plastic fake phones and gaming consoles, a few game cartridges (that could probably sell for a good price if I found their original boxes), a binder of collectible trading cards, and the source of the faint beeping– a little toy electronic keychain pet, the kind that were all the rage in the late 90’s, but one I don’t recall ever owning. “Shinomotchi” was printed on its plastic hull. This must’ve been a knock-off that my mom picked up at the mall or something because that is NOT the brand name for these little guys and one I’d not heard of before. Regardless, the little guy was still going! There’s no shut off switch to these things, but I’d assumed the battery would have given up after almost 20 years. It has a sad face in its thought bubble, and the little amorphous critter was moving slowly back and forth across the screen, surprisingly still beeping for food and water. The interface only had three buttons and a small selection of items to choose from on the main screen. These included food, bath, and play. It took me less than a minute to acquaint myself with how they functioned. Little black, pixelated spots of excrement littered the screen. These were all cleared with the bath function. The little skulls over the hunger bar were cleared with the food function, and the sad face eventually went away with extended uses of the toy function.

Throughout the weekend, the critter would beep, and I’d have to stop to feed or clean up after its messes. For the most part, it would mind its own business, wandering around the screen without beeping or doing much of anything in its comfortable little walls. I discovered it had little mini games – simple mazes or collecting games that would cheer it up even more. My mom just smiled when she’d catch me fiddling with it. She doesn’t recall purchasing it either, but she said she hadn’t seen me that happy in a few years.

The beeps would come and go in a tune that decorated the weekend air. I’d catch myself running out of the shower to feed it or skipping meals to take it out on virtual walks. At night, the beeps would ring in my dreams to the point where I’d just stay awake because it would be easier to take care of the plastic child I’d neglected for so many years than to be interrupted halfway into the REM cycle. At the tail end of the weekend, I had as much of a tough time keeping my eyes open as I did keeping them closed. The beeps were intelligible now, and much more complex than I, or anyone else, could’ve thought. It would call out to me by name. “Come feed me” it would say, in a hoarse, 8-bit voice. “Come clean up after me” it would bellow out at random intervals throughout the day. “Come play with me” it would ring, purposefully guilting me into hour long bouts of sorting virtual berries or throwing pixel balls back and forth.

I convinced my mom that finals would all be virtual this year. She was excited of course, that her only child would be staying with her longer, but I could see the twinge of hesitation whenever I reached for the buttons of the Shinomotchi.

“Why don’t you set that down for a bit honey,” she’d say.

“Don’t listen to her – she’s the one that you conspired with to lock me away” it would say back in its retro pings of fear and anger.

“Can I have a smoke now?” I’d ask but would always be met with a fervent “No.”

After several more months my mom stopped asking questions about school or work. My school inbox had grown to a staggering all time high. I did not have it in me to look at texts or calls. My voicemail was a graveyard of concerned, pixelated voices, all asking for help, time, or money. Shinomotchi and I have decided to place all those thoughts and worries in a cardboard box, and tape them shut. I could no longer see the critter in its plastic hull. In fact, I no longer held it. I could not see or feel it. I could only hear it in the back of my mind. I’d see its face outside the window panes of my room and nothing else beyond it. No light shone in or out anymore.

“May I go outside?” I’d ask politely. No answer. Sometimes it would go weeks without answering. We’d revel in a crossword puzzle it would give me, and then take them away.

“May I have some food, please?” No answer. For days even. When my stomach couldn’t bare it any longer it’d toss me a simple sandwich. Tasteless, yet delicious.

My room door was locked from the outside. Its walls now a translucent plastic. No friends, no family. Just darkness and musty air as I pleaded for food, baths, and play time with the true king of the cardboard castle.

“Thank you, Shinomotchi, for allowing me to remain within the confines of your majestic fortress” I said, with reverence for my virtual master, and a growing disdain for my future and responsibilities. No answer.

The faint sound of wrapping tape echoed outside of the plastic walls, and a deep cowl of comforting darkness, and the silence I’d been longing for, finally shrouded my room.