Whatever I want, of course.

My mother, Asami Vale — and boy did that name cause some stumbles back in Japan — had never been picky. If anything she was overly self-sacrificing, she made sure I had everything I needed and tried hard to make sure I had whatever I wanted too. Not that that was possible. The first time I remember pretending I didn't want something was when I was 9, trying poorly to pretend I wasn't into video games after I'd spent a week waxing on about the amazing multi-monitor, VR-ready, computer AND console setup one of my friends' dads had.

I still had the console she'd got for me back then. My only device except our home computer and the ubiquitously necessary cellphone. Honestly we could only afford it, from a practical perspective, because it was a handheld/console hybrid. It didn't matter that we didn't have a television. Not that my mom and I didn't watch shows together or anything, just we used the same monitor for our home computer, streaming was more than good enough for everything we could want.

So I wasn't surprised that when we got to the market she was up for anything for lunch. In fact she was happy to eat what I'd packed for school, and she told me to focus on myself. Of course I didn't.

So we enjoyed some egg salad sandwiches together, with sliced apple and cucumber sticks, in silence. I worked hard to make sure my mom had a healthy diet. What I made just for myself was a bit lazier.

After my mother finished she just sat at the table in silence, half-smiling, but avoiding my eyes whenever I looked up at her from my plate and its extra sandwich — I was still growing after all, in fact I towered over my mom, and she was tall for a Japanese woman.

But then I finished my sandwich.

"Let me take that," said Asami, scooping up her own plate and standing, reaching a hand out towards mine.

I grabbed her hand. "Not yet. Sit down mom, please?"

She pulled her hand away halfheartedly and sighed. "Okay hun." She sat down. "What do you need to talk about?"

There was that word. Need. Had all my needs brought us here? Mom had wanted to go to university at one point, she'd thought about being an accountant. Instead she was a hired drinking companion, part booze-pusher, part entertainer. I had benefited from her making me her priority, but now she was sitting at the table with me, a turtleneck sweater hiding the consequences of those decisions. I hadn't needed her to get into this kind of trouble.

"Take your sweater off."

"Hun-nie!" mom said, wriggling in her chair as she grabbed her shoulders, "mommy's not wearing anything decent under here."

"I wake you up most days and you're usually wearing less than a bra," I said.

By less than a bra I mean she usually wore one of two things to sleep, one of her precious handful of translucent lace chemises — for nights she wanted to feel sexy, usually non-work nights for what it's worth — or girlish panties and a spaghetti strap tank top much too large, and loose, because it was the only thing that felt comfortable for her tits. That was my guess at why she wore something she was constantly slipping out of at least.

"Huh. Good point honey." Mom blinked in realization at what I'd said, and immediately stripped off her sweater.

Her sweater got caught on her arm for a moment, and she tugged harder. Her mouth-watering watermelon-sized breasts — what, I'm a red-blooded male aren't I? — bounced up and down as she struggled with the sweater, encased in a custom-ordered black frilly bra I'd certainly washed plenty of times. But I'd never seen the thing on my mom's body, and while it didn't provide much support for her slightly sagging maternal breast-flesh, what it did do was teasingly reveal the edges of her light brown aureola in swirling gaps in the material. It was a fancy design, and I found myself getting hard. If it wasn't clear by now, my mom can be a bit of an airhead at times.

I looked away, blushing. Why did she have to be so sexy? My mom was so young and fit, and she had plenty of attractive outfits for work, I couldn't help but notice her as a woman. But I respected her too much to ogle her, or do anything about it. I wouldn't do anything to hurt her.

Finally mom cleared the sweater and put it on her lap. I looked back at her cautiously, only sucked into staring at the freckles dotting her cleavage for a second before I managed to look only into her black-brown eyes.

She smiled. "You really do remind me of your father you know. That hair, those eyes — even though his were yellowish and yours are nice and dark brown — you stare at me with the same intensity sometimes. It's. . . painful, but beautiful too."

I rolled my eyes. "Yeah yeah, I remind you of dad. I wish you'd stop that, dad's gone, and I'm not exactly happy being reminded of someone who got you into trouble like he did."

"If he didn't, you wouldn't be here hun, and I wouldn't know how to live if I didn't have you."

"Why did you do it mom? I didn't need this kind of education so badly that you should have done this. I could have gone to public school." I balanced my head on the back of my wrist, watching mom for her reaction.

"Oh, maybe it's not so bad," said Asami, blushing pink up and over her petite nose, "I mean I expected to be paying off the loans for most of the rest of my life. Now they're all forgiven, and all I have to do is take care of my son. I mean, I'd really like to keep taking care of you. Of course LaRose is now paying you quite a bit, so if you want me to stop working I can. I'll take up any slack! Cooking, cleaning, you name it! You've done so well for so long I have the perfect role model. I-I'll even wash — ew dishes — I'll even wash dishes if you want me to."

That brought up an interesting point. What did I want my mom to do now? I didn't know. I didn't know how busy I was going to be, or how much work controlling class 3-F was going to be — I didn't even know how many of the class I'd make my property, or try to just help without the Life Plan crutch. Obviously I was going to be doing more work and different work than I ever had before, if only by scale.

"You know what mom, if I need your help I'll let you know. For now our life can stay the same though. If you see something that needs to be handled around the house and have the energy go ahead, but for now at least I want to keep doing everything I can to make your life easier. Hell," I laughed, "maybe I'll end up claiming someone to do our house chores. Dropout maids are pretty popular."

I paused. Maybe how we had gotten here wasn't so important. What mattered was what I'd do going forward.

"Okay hun-nie, I'm sure my boss will be happy to hear that. He won't be happy that I've got this tattoo though. I might not make as much for a while, until I get good at convincing the clients I'm not there just because I'm a dropout." Asami pursed her lips thoughtfully, "maybe the regular crowd won't judge me for it, they know I've been working there for years." She blinked and looked down. "Oh right, you asked about how this happened. What do you want to know?"

I shook my head. "No it's okay mom, I love you. I know you ended up like this because you love me even more though, and you just worried about getting me the best life you could. I don't need to know details. We'll live with it from now on. I already decided that back at school."

Mom popped her head up and beamed at me. "Thanks honey. You're right! I did it all for you. And I'll keep an eye out around the house for whatever needs doing!" She pumped her fist in the air. "You'll see, I can pull a surprising amount of weight."

I reached over and grabbed her plate, got up and headed to the kitchen. Despite her offer, I wasn't going to **** my mother to do the dishes. At least unless I had to. I can't properly describe how much she hates it, but when she does them it's accompanied by a constant whine.

The rest of my day was quite relaxing and eventually my mind even stopped lingering on the image of my mother's beautifully freckled pale cleavage.