Chapter 11: Satsuki is bored.

Since Satsuki missed the entertainment of her failed homeschooling project, she gradually started to be more distant. Unfortunately, she also became nastier. Less exposure, yet more conflict.

She would sometimes find an occupation, something to amuse herself. At that moment, it seemed that we weren't in financial need. I'm not sure what was the deal with Ted's disappearence and Satsuki's jobs being diverse and sparse, but our basic needs were covered and were never a worry.

Whenever she had an occupation, I found some respite. She would be less intense in her inquiries and scrutiny. Despite that, she would keep the rules she had established long before. The most clear had become “don't bring friends home” and “don't enter my room”. I had to do house chores that I wished she would help me with. And —of course— I had a curfew.

One of those occupations she found was very apt for her understanding of social relationships: she ‘worked for’ a Multi-level marketing business. Her many reunions to sell whatever pyramidal scam of the year catapulted her reputation in Rustown towards fame, then infamy.

She didn't care about the kind of victims she harvested as they weren't dangerous, and they realized their victimhood quite late in the game. What she failed to see —or just didn't care— was that, as the closest persons came to be aware of the fraudulent nature of her whole ‘business’, that she would need to reach further away to fish for new members.

Ironically, she was a victim too. That —much like the fraudulent nature of the MLMs she dealt with— was something she wouldn't ever acknowledge, and something that would drive her from one MLM to another.

Leaving a pile of victims doesn't work well in a town the size of Rustown. Her growth wasn't sustainable. Stories about her started to spread faster —regardless of what pyramidal scam was she victim and executioner of. She had some control over the rumors and she would typically retaliate by spreading vindictive rumors against her enemies.

Increasingly, people started stacking against her. She didn't have that much power to bully them into submission, so she de-escalated the situation by becoming temporarily less aggressive and engaging in more of her fake social antics.

Showing her fangs once in a while and generally being a horrible person didn't seem to work too bad for her. She survived. And therein lay her justification: it was all about survival, survival beyond those morals rarely whispered by her conscience, squatting in others' survival.

Throughout all those events, the house was always crowded with people. That house shone under a new light.

Even if the people gathered weren't as exciting as, for example, the prototypical artsy folks' reunions I'd gladly partake in as an adult, it became always interesting for me to be able to interact with strangers, with adults.