You slam the door behind you and stand wide eyed, panties a tight ball in your fist.
“I slept with Sanji last night,” you announce. You feel sick.
Nami sighs, not sparing you a glance from her focused nail painting. “Happens to the best of us.”
Your jaw drops. “Us?”
sanji x reader
6.3k words | oneshot, complete
minor spoilers for whole cake island, mutual pining, smut (p in v, fingering, overstimulation), porn with feelings, friends with benefits, friends -> fwb -> lovers, mentions of mutually drunk sex, reader uses she/her
read on ao3
note: this is me coming to terms with the fact that post-Whole Cake Island, I may in fact be in love with this stupid wet cat of a man. i tried my best to keep him in character but who knows!!
The sun is warm, its rays streaming through the windows. You hum while turning in the sheets, eyes fluttering open. It takes a few seconds for your vision to clear—soft edges sharpening as your body adjusts.
It’s a pleasant morning. You feel good: warm, a little sore, heart fuzzy with an inexplicable glee. Your forehead throbs from last night’s wine, but it’s dull against your giddiness.
You blink once, eyes flitting across the room, and your stomach drops.
The sheets fly as you throw yourself out of bed. Your legs wobble as you race to collect your clothes from the floor, tossing on your dress and clutching your undergarments in a vice grip before yanking the door open and speeding down the hall. Your stomach is a ball of knots while you sprint to Nami’s room. You burst in without knocking.
The ginger sits cross-legged on her bed, a bottle of nail polish at her side as she brushes liquid cerulean along her fingertips. Her only reaction is the quirk of her brow and a cursory glance.
You slam the door behind you and stand wide eyed, panties a tight ball in your fist.
“I slept with Sanji last night,” you announce. You feel sick.
Nami sighs, not sparing you a glance from her focused nail painting. “Happens to the best of us.”
Your jaw drops. “Us?”
She doesn’t reply.
“You—” you point at her. “You don’t even like men!”
She blinks, unphased. “You’d really call him a man?”
You have no response.
(The man—or not man, according to Nami—in question stands at the entrance of his cabin. In his hands is a tray with breakfast dishes: affectionately sliced fruit, neatly arranged bread, a serving of rice. It’s paired with freshly squeezed juice and an additional cup of tea, of course.
He stares into his room, now emptied of you. The covers are half strewn off the bed and a pillow is on the floor. Your hair tie sits on the nightstand. There’s a smear of lipgloss on the sheets.
His smile dies, morphing to a tug of disappointment. He sighs, shoulders and heart drooping.)
Nami stands by the door unamused. “You can’t hide here all day,” she says flatly.
You’re curled on the floor, leaning against her bed. “I’m emotionally processing.”
“You’ve been processing for an hour.”
“I need to process for longer.”
“You need to eat,” she retorts. “You didn’t have breakfast. Come to lunch.”
Your face twists. She’s not wrong; your headache has grown significantly, at least partially due to your empty stomach. But where there’s food, there’s Sanji—the other source of your distress. You are not ready to see him.
“You can’t ignore him forever,” she adds.
Meekly, you reply, “But I can ignore him today.”
She sighs, face softening with a poorly contained grin. She steps away from the door and crouches beside you.
“I’ll bring you lunch,” she says. “But you owe me a thousand berry.”
You huff, smiling.
“Fine.”
You crawl under the bed, hiding behind the bedskirt in case someone comes looking for you. It’s dark and quiet, the rocking of the Sunny a lullaby coaxing you to sleep.
But you can’t. Instead your mind continues to race, heart thrumming against the wooden floor as you run in metaphorical circles. Fragments of the night reel through you: ghosts of touches, whispers of filth, the most intense euphoria rushing through your body. Just the thought of Sanji’s hands on you makes your legs squeeze together.
Because as hard as it is to admit… you like Sanji. He’s handsome and charming. He’s a strong fighter, self-sacrificing, and always ready to serve others. If you listed all of his qualities on paper and held it at arm's length, you’d think he’s a suitable match, even. Because he’s Sanji, the chef for the Straw Hat pirates.
But he’s Sanji. Sanji the pervert and the man with eyes for any creature that looks remotely like a woman. He’s Sanji, the man who calls you his darling love, but uses the name for every woman he meets. He’s Sanji, a man who makes passes at you so frequently you assume they mean nothing.
And you know why he’s like this, all the answers turned crystal clear when he returned to the crew—when he returned home, here at the Sunny instead of Germa Kingdom. What can you expect from a man who… who wasn’t man enough, according to the standards of his family? Whose natural gentleness and desire to serve was rejected and punished. Whose only experience of love came from the women in his life.
You know the story of not-Vinsmoke Sanji. But knowing why he acts this way doesn’t mean you can handle anything beyond your usual dynamic—your amused dismissal of every pass he makes, no matter what kind of warmth he manages to strike in your heart.
You sigh. The boat rocks.
The door opens. Your stomach clenches before relaxing when you spot Nami’s shoes.
“What the hell?” she grumbles when she sees the empty room.
You slide yourself from beneath bed and she yelps. You feel like an idiot.
“Sorry,” you mumble, face burning. “I got worried someone would come looking for me.”
She smiles pitifully. “That bad, huh?”
You nod. She sets down the tray; a plate of fried rice with a small bowl of fruit and a slice of toast. You have both juice and tea.
“He insisted you eat it all,” she adds.
Your stomach clenches, stinging with hunger while your appetite simultaneously fades away.
(Sanji’s lunch is no easier, similarly distracted by thoughts of you.
But unlike you, his mind flashes with visions of the night before. You were a mess in the sheets, head thrown back as he bullied his cock against your clit, teasing your entrance with filthy condescension until you begged and wailed. Tears streamed down your cheeks, clumping in the length of your lashes. Your eyes sparkle beautifully.
He sunk into you with a promise— to give you everything you wanted. You had all of him; there was no reason to beg. He would give himself to you as long as you were with him.
And then you left his room in the morning.
You didn’t come to lunch.
The visions fade as reality settles in. He wonders if you’re okay. Will you eat all the food he sent with Nami? Did he upset you? Did he hurt you? Was it too much last night, when he… when he didn’t let it end with just one cry of release, one broken whimper of his name. What about when he turned you on your stomach, pushing his hand along the curve of your back and—
He exhales in his seat, gritting his teeth while recalling the way you clawed at the sheets, the tightness and… and the wetness and warmth you engulfed him in as he fucked you.
“You okay Sanji?” Usopp interrupts his thoughts. “Your nose is bleeding and you’re not even being a horndog for anyone.”
The cook coughs in surprise, rice catching in his throat.
Zoro makes a face of disgust across the table.)
Nami doesn’t let you escape dinner.
“I’ll give you five thousand berry!” you wail, trying to twist out of her grip. How is she so strong?
“You don’t even have that much,” she mutters. “And this is my room. Go rot somewhere else at least.”
Your stomach tightens. Nobody else would guard dog you effectively against Sanji—except for Zoro, but even in your panicked state you have the tact not to go that far.
So you sit yourself, begrudgingly, between Nami and Usopp at the table. Contrary to your worries, the cook doesn’t burden you with special attention beyond the usual, humming, “For you, dear,” as he tables your plate. You nod curtly, eyes averting to your food while ignoring the heat crawling up your neck.
He sits across from you. Despite the knots in your stomach you somehow sustain your appetite. Sanji offers you another portion and you manage to decline without choking on your last bite. You meet his eyes, those crystal clear waters, and are immediately hit with a full wave of guilt.
This is Sanji, you remind yourself. Safe, sensitive, sacrificial Sanji.
An embarrassed smile crosses your face, one just for him, and the grin he returns is blinding.
Relief settles in your chest. The knots in your stomach begin to unravel. With him smiling so sweetly across from you, eyes so earnest in their care, you trust that you can work this out. If that means a terribly embarrassing conversation followed by sweeping your feelings under the rug indefinitely, then by god that’s what you’ll do.
As an attempt to make reparations you offer to help with the dishes, but you leave when he begins a monologue about the disgrace of making a woman do his work for him.
“Oh, but share a bottle of wine with me when I’m finished here, yes?” He calls.
You nod meekly. He’s asking to talk, the minimum you can do for him after your earlier avoidance.
He flashes another sunny smile, and you duck out of the room before the flush can take over your face.
Once again, you wake up in Sanji’s bed.
This time there are no signs of an explicit night you don’t remember. You’re fully clothed—although, in different clothes than what you were wearing the evening prior—and your body has its strength, no soreness lingering in your hips and back. You lay tense, staring at the ceiling as you wonder why you’re incapable of learning from your mistakes.
You frown as your head throbs, digging through your memory for what happened. There’s a hazy vision of Sanji’s attempt to have a conversation, you downing glasses of wine like water to cope with your embarrassment. His somber smile is the last you remember.
(Sanji did his best, all things considered.
The first time truly was mutual inebriation. In his drunken state, he was weak to your advances. Or maybe the advances were his own, his usual dance of flirtation that you were all too willing to give into. But regardless you reciprocated, and he had no choice but to follow your lead.
But last night… you chugging glass after glass to find the courage to speak, to sit there with him… of course he wouldn’t touch you or take advantage of you when he had a power over you that he shouldn’t be privy to in the first place.
He can admit that he took you to his room for the night, partly out of his own selfishness to hold you close—no matter how troublesome his poor restraint might be—and partly to look after you, to be there in case something were to happen to you.
Oh—he would never forgive himself.)
“Good morning, my sweet,” his voice calls beside you. The mattress shifts and you reluctantly turn to the source.
The cook leans above you, seated on the bed. A tray of breakfast foods sit on the bedside table, his hands pausing their diligent spreading of jam on toast to carefully sweep at your hair instead. His touch is warm, loving. You feel nauseous.
“I’m so glad I didn’t miss you this time. You need to eat breakfast,” he continues.
You think you should die. You keep that to yourself, for Sanji’s sake.
The cook helps you sit up, offering foods that are easy on your stomach. You thank him diligently and shovel them into your mouth. He holds up a slice of apple after you’ve swallowed your bite of bread. You ignore his reddening face, his eyes trained on your lips.
He doesn’t speak, doesn’t press for answers. Instead he watches you, moving gently, smiling warmly.
After your second piece of toast and three slices of apples, determination blooms in your chest. When you speak your voice wavers, but you push through.
“Sanji,” you start. He tenses at the call of his name. “I’m sorry… I didn’t mean to—” you pause, catching your own lies. “I mean, I did mean to run away yesterday, but I don’t want to act that way around you.”
You receive another smile, one so understanding that your heart squeezes. “It’s okay, my love. If you truly want to leave, I don’t mind. You must know that I would never do something you don’t want.”
Something shatters in your chest.
“No—” you immediately protest. This is Sanji: safe, sensitive, sacrificial Sanji. “It’s not that I don’t want this, it’s just—I don’t—”
Your face pinches in frustration, half pleading for help. But Sanji flushes again and you try to smother the expression.
“I don’t want things to change between us, I guess,” you manage flatly.
He hums, reaching to swipe at the corner of your lip. His touch brings your skin to life, buzzing. You swallow.
“I understand,” he answers.
Your heart crumples at his agreement. Then it hardens, annoyed at your own lack of consistency. Aren’t you the one afraid of taking anything further, of sharing your feelings with him out of fear for his character, fear for his loyalty?
He likes you, you know this. Or at least, you know he’s attracted to you, enough to have his eyes morphing into those obnoxious hearts, to be visibly affected by your presence. But his attraction to women, his fawning and his pledges of love, don’t necessarily mean he’s committed to one woman in particular.
Maybe he thinks you’re hot, and that’s that.
You watch the cook as blankly as you can, smothering any expressions while arguments bounce along the perimeter of your mind. You go back and forth, thinking up new perspectives just to immediately refute them. Sanji watches you, blue eyes trained as if he can read the dialogue.
Would it not be better to ask him?
No, that’s too easy. Too easy to set yourself up for rejection, to hear confirmation of every concern you have about his perception of you.
Instead a new idea blooms in your mind. A voice of reason sits on your shoulder, shouting at you that it’s a recipe for regret. But when you sit in front of Sanji’s warm gaze, his gentle eyes, his beautiful face, you find that you have no strength. You would rather deprive yourself of what you want from him if it means getting to be closer to him at all.
“I liked sleeping with you,” you clarify before you can stop yourself. Your face flames. Sanji freezes as he listens carefully. “… I’d be interested in doing that again—if everything else can stay the same.”
You avert your eyes, not ready to see his reaction. Even so, you can hear the sharp intake of his breath. One of his hands takes yours resting on his blanket.
“Angel,” he pleads.
You keep your eyes averted. His free hand raises to your chin, finger guiding it upward. When you meet his gaze, you can’t look away, even after his hand falls.
“You must know that I would do anything you wished.”
The confession makes your heart race, then sting. You frown.
“Sanji, I’m not asking you to do whatever I want. I want you to want it too—”
He huffs, face twisting in amusement, twisted with something else, something more complicated. Something almost melancholy.
In an instant his mouth is on you, hungry as it parts your lips. His hand runs up your arm, then slides down your back to clutch your side. You gasp in surprise, feeling him grin as he swallows the sound. You’re forced on your back, a hard chest pressing against your own. His hips meet yours, firm bulge already present and growing.
As soon as he’s on you, he pulls his mouth away, leaving you panting. His lips attach to your neck, peppering kisses on his way to the base of your jugular before he sinks his teeth into the skin. You gasp and feel him smile against you for a second time.
“Are you still hungry, dear?” he asks.
You’re dizzy, mind swirling as he continues south, sucking at your collarbones. Any hunger for food has evaporated, incinerated in your stomach from the fire that sparks. It’s replaced with a hunger for him.
“Sanji—” you breathe, brokenly.
He groans against your skin, hips rutting against your thighs. He’s fully hard, and you’re aching.
“My love,” he gasps. The name strikes your heart both in pain and glee. “If you say my name like that—”
“Sanji,” you cry again when his hand lowers to pinch your nipple beneath your shirt. He’s relentless, sliding his hand to cup your cunt. You nearly choke, “Sanji.”
When he has you like this, spread open and tearing off your clothes, lowering himself to get a taste of you everywhere, you’re powerless. All the heartache in the world couldn’t keep you from giving in, from letting him drag a finger up your wetness—wetness made for him—and sink into your folds.
(And it’s true, what you think: that it’s enough for him to have you this way. It’s enough to touch you and kiss you and memorize every curve of your body, to burn the memory of your taste on his tongue. If that’s what you want.
Or, that’s what he’ll tell himself, if it means having you at all.)
Things don’t change on the surface. You and Sanji are still friends, still normal around the others aboard the Sunny. Normal entailing that he makes you a drink when the sun blares harshly, offers to take your shirt if you want to remove a layer. These gestures and suggestions make your heart flutter and your gut tighten, but that’s how it is—how it’s always been.
Part of you leans into it, wants to play pretend for a moment longer as if he’s yours. Until, of course, you catch a glimpse of him with Nami and Robin, offering the same drinks, leaning in the same way he does with you.
Something twists inside your stomach. You look away.
This is how you want it—or maybe not how you want it, but how it needs to be for your own sanity. For your protection. It’s a reality check: no matter how much sugar Sanji feeds you, it will never be something special. You are just another woman.
“Darling, I—”
You grimace on instinct, butterflies turned to an ache in your chest as Sanji approaches with a plate. It looks delicious, layers of frosting and cake and fruit. Your expression must be easy to read, because Sanji backs off easily when you reject the offer of the dessert.
(You miss that there was only one plate. Only one dessert, made just for you.)
Somehow that same day you end up tangled in your sheets, face down and whining as he runs a hand along your spine to press you further into the mattress. You’re aching, slick bared to cool air as he teases you, bullies his tip around your overstimulated entrance, singing praise when he sinks in for another round.
The position is a savior, your face buried in the mattress where you can keep your feelings secret, where you can’t be read so easily. It feels good, so good. Sanji treats you well, knows all the ways to have you unravel for him, to have you lost and open and honest, so vulnerable in his grasp. How many women has he laid with to obtain this skill? You wonder if he knows how hard it is to let him taste your skin and come inside you, to give you moments that feel as if it’s only ever been the two of you, that his arms were made to hold you and only you.
When you come again, spasming around him while his lips mutter filth into your ear, there’s a hollowness in your chest.
He must be oblivious to how you feel, if he’s able to dance this dance with you—if he can see your tears as you finish and kiss them away in the aftercare. You smile lazily, playing it off as your subspace, and thank him. Isn’t this how you want it to be?
(But Sanji is one of the smartest of the Straw Hat Pirates. He is far from oblivious. However, he is weak-willed when it comes to you.
Something is warring in your heart, something large beneath the surface, with the power to shake the earth. He is aware, always on the precipice of asking. You are far too precious to feel pain, to be distraught. The end of your closeness with him, your tenderness and your touch, would wound him, but that sort of loss is nothing new for Sanji. He will manage.
He would ask, always wants to stop and hear you speak. But then you climb atop him, spreading your legs, and he throbs, aching for you. Your hand takes his length, hardening once more, to guide it through your folds, and all he can do is exhale as he watches in amazement as you sink down, beautiful face pinched as you fill yourself—fill yourself with him—
You take him to the hilt. He makes a sound, almost a whimper, before you lean back to grab his thighs and ride him. He gasps at the view: taut muscles, bouncing breasts, your cunt swallowing him with every drop of your beautiful body, and he has to bite down the string of I love you’s that threaten to leap from his lips.
He is powerless against you, too.)
“So can we call you two official?” Nami asks candidly. She sits cross legged on her bed, filing Robin’s nails.
“Huh?” you frown, painting clear polish across Usopp’s fingertips. The sniper is the honorary member of girl’s nights.
“You and Sanji.”
“What?” you and Usopp gawk in unison. His hands flail, smearing the brush over his skin. You frown at the mess.
“You and Sanji are dating?”
You huff, rolling your eyes while you reach for a paper towel. “No, we’re just seeing each other.”
“You and Sanji are fucking?”
Nami laughs while you scowl. Robin’s lips tug against her cheek. Usopp stares at you in disbelief.
“Usopp, I think even Luffy knows by now. They’ve been banging for weeks.”
The man’s jaw drops, a strangled noise coming up his throat. “No… No way. What do you mean you’re not dating? He’s been in love with you since—”
He yelps when you pinch him, flinching in your grasp.
“He is not in love with me,” you sneer.
Everyone stares at you blankly.
“He’s not!”
“Woah, I thought you were one of the smart ones,” the sniper says flatly. You pinch him again.
“He doesn’t love me,” you repeat. “He’d say those words back to anyone.”
Brown eyes blink at you. “Don’t tell me… You’re in love with him?!”
“It… I don’t know,” you trail off with a grimace. “It doesn’t matter, anyways. I don’t want us to be anything more.”
He groans, free hand covering his eyes. “This is the worst. You’re both idiots! Oh we’re doomed…”
You roll your eyes and resume your work on his nails in silence. Robin is the first to break it.
“You should know by now that you can trust your crew. Maybe—”
“Stop,” you command, cutting her off. Her eyebrows raise, both in surprise and challenge, but she obeys.
“Sanji,” you huff, shoulders rolling his arm away. “Enough with the couple stuff.”
His face flickers with something painful, eyes shining with a moment of hurt before he schools into an easy smile. “Sorry dear,” he answers, sliding away.
Your heart aches at the gesture, but you don’t take back your words. Instead you watch as he pulls a pack of cigarettes from his pants and heads for the door of the tavern.
“Good riddance,” Zoro chimes beside you, nursing his third sake.
You huff.
A quiet falls over your corner of the room, the two of you taking in the space: Usopp and Franky dancing, Nami chatting up a rich-looking man, Robin standing quietly to the side. You frown when you notice Brook’s missing presence, head craning to finally spot him on the other end with the music. Zoro’s eyes repeatedly dart to Luffy, where he sits surrounded by empty plates and boisterous company.
Your heartache grows when you spot Zoro’s fingers tapping the handles of his swords. Ready, in case something were to stir. Ready to defend, time and time again without question.
A pang of jealousy strikes your chest. You wonder what it’d be like to receive that sort of devotion, too.
“You and Luffy—” you stop, not sure where you were going.
“Huh?”
You swallow, eyes dropping as you swirl your drink. “You’d follow him anywhere, I guess.”
The swordsman frowns. “He’s my captain. … Yours too.”
Something heavy crawls up your throat. “You would even if he wasn’t.”
He grunts. “... Yeah.”
You glance to the side, away from him. Your eyes meet the door again, just in time for Sanji’s second entrance. You think he’ll look for you first, make his way over even after you shrug him off. A woman walks by, faltering when someone bumps into her. Sanji reaches on instinct, arm securing her at the waist. You watch despite the turning in your stomach as he grins, eyes solely focused on her form when he helps her stand upright, fingers trailing down her arm to grab her hand.
Good riddance, Zoro’s words repeat in your mind. Even if you did manage to rid yourself of Sanji, you know you’d be the only one suffering, watching him fall to his knees for the next woman who loves him.
You turn away with a grimace.
Zoro is still watching you, brow furrowed in a way you can’t decipher. If you had to guess, it’s a mix of concern and displeasure.
“I know,” you mutter. “I’m an idiot.”
He grunts—you don’t know if in affirmation or denial. Your stomach flips again.
“It’s better this way,” you conclude.
Green brows furrow further, now in pure disbelief. You don’t know what the expression is for, but the thought of trying to explain anything makes you want to cry. Your nose stings, a glimmer pooling beneath your irises, and the swordsman’s eyes widen with pure concern.
His lips part to speak, but the words never come.
“Hey marimo, quit it. You’re upsetting her.”
Zoro’s face pinches in irritation at Sanji’s scolding. Grey eyes dart to your side, the source of the voice, to argue. “Don’t blame me for your idiocy—”
You stand abruptly. The chair screeches on the floor, not loud in the ambiance of the room, but enough to silence the men. “I’m leaving,” you announce.
“Darling, is something wrong—”
“I want to go to the Sunny,” you interrupt.
“Oh, of course—”
“Alone,” you add, stepping away.
Sanji moves to follow, huffing out a confused, “Wait,” but Zoro intercepts him. You don’t bother attempting to listen to their argument, instead bolting for the exit.
(“Marimo, move,” Sanji growls.
The swordsman refuses. “You’re just gonna make it worse.”
The cook fumes, rage flooding through his arms. He has the urge to throw a punch. How would he know what upset you? Something ugly burrows in his chest. Does he know? Would you tell Zoro something that you couldn’t tell him?
He swallows, feeling sick.)
You’re most honest when you’re under him. Even when you’ve only had one drink, body fully sober, you can’t lie—and you can’t hold anything back.
So he asks then.
Your legs are open for him, splaying you on your back while he stands above you. His large palms press your thighs as he connects your hips with harsh thrusts. A mewl escapes your lips, chest panting as a hand travels up your belly and your breast, stopping to smooth over your clavicle.
“What’s happening here, angel?”
The words hardly register. You’re too consumed by his brutal pace, so he slows and asks again.
You blink rapidly, confused. “Huh?”
He leans forward, hips suddenly stalling as they pull back, dragging his length out of you painfully slow. You whine, head dizzy from the change.
“Sanji?”
He groans but doesn’t relent, stopping with his tip just barely inside of you. He rubs the skin between your breasts again.
“Your heart, love. Tell me what’s troubling it.”
He punctuates the command with an unexpected thrust, filling you all the way to the hilt. You choke, winded, and then scowl as he starts slowly pulling out again. Groaning, you try rutting your hips, but his hand holds them in place.
Anger bubbles in your chest. “Nothing.”
He hums, the thumb on your thigh stroking carefully. “Please.”
You huff, frowning. “Sanji, I’m fine. The only thing making me upset is this pace.”
He thrusts again and you cry, tightening around him. This time he doesn’t budge, remaining buried inside you. When you meet his eyes, they’re firm, searching.
“Sanji—”
He twitches inside you at the sound but refuses to move. “Tell me. You can tell me.”
You scoff. “I don’t want to tell you.”
A noise catches in his throat. His hand returns to your thigh before he pulls out and slams into you without warning, continuing his torturous thrusts.
“You can tell me anything. We were friends before anything else—”
“We aren’t anything else,” you sneer beneath him, face twisted. It’s a truth that strikes your gut, rips through your skin and flays you beneath him—raw, open. The pain tangles with the pleasure, swallowing you. “So please stop acting like it.”
Sanji’s face twists, crumpling from the request. “I can’t,” he confesses, hips rolling into you again. “I can’t have you like this and pretend that it’s enough. Not… not when I’m in love with you.”
Your chest empties of air, his words a punch to the gut.
“You don’t mean that,” you manage to whisper.
His eyes widen at the accusation. “What?” he asks, in disbelief.
(How could you challenge him and his love, assume that he would lie to a woman—to you? It’s one thing to have you reject his feelings; it’s another for you to think he does not mean them.)
You whine at his next thrust, how it touches you somewhere deep. Tears well in your eyes. Sanji jerks in surprise, hands immediately coming to cup your cheeks as you release a sob. It’s too much, so much that everything flows out of you without warning.
“You don’t love me,” you cry. “You’d love any woman—you just like that I let you touch me.”
“I love you,” he repeats desperately. “Why does it matter where the feelings come from?”
“Of course it matters. I… I want to be special to you—I want you to love me for myself.”
“You want me to love you?” his voice shakes.
“For me. Not just because I fell in love with you first.”
“You love me?”
(His heart thrums, racing in his chest. The buzz travels through his body, throbs in his cock. He thrusts harder without realizing, trying to satiate the ache.)
You sob harder. “It doesn’t matter—”
“Of course it matters,” he echoes your earlier words. Both hands grip your thighs until his knuckles pale. Sanji is always gentle with you—sometimes condescending, but never rough enough to leave marks beyond a love bite. Now he holds you in a bruising grip, thrusts fueled by anger. “I could be treating you like my wife—treating you like you deserve. Taking you out, buying you gifts—”
“Stop,” you wail.
He doesn’t, instead huffing as he stares down at your body beneath him. Sweat-slick and glistening, spread and curved.
“Never, beautiful. Never ever—”
“You’ll leave,” you snap. That gets Sanji to stop, stuttering his hips when his arms nearly give out.
“I would never—”
“You don’t love me, so you’ll leave me for the next woman.”
“What next woman?” he demands.
“The next one who falls for you.”
His fingers clench harder, nails scraping your skin. “You—you think I’d let you go? Darling, after all this?”
One hand releases to slide along your thigh and rub your clit. You sob again, a broken noise, body shaking against your will. “Wait—” you plead, feeling the coil within you tighten, but Sanji refuses, fingers dipping to swipe your dripping slick and rub you with it. In the next second you cry, vision flooding with static as the rush of your release consumes you.
Sanji’s hips give two more deep thrusts before they stutter, slapping with urgency before he presses to the hilt with a groan. Heat floods your insides as the aftershocks finally start to fade.
Anger floods your system as he collapses over you, his body a weight you can’t shake.
“Sanji,” you growl as you wriggle beneath him, pushing at his shoulders.
He slides his hands to capture yours. Pressing them into the mattress as he lifts his head and chest to look at your face.
“Oh my love, my darling angel—”
“Sanji,” you bark, heart racing with panic. “Stop.”
“You love me,” he announces.
Heat crawls up your neck and face. Your eyes sting from frustration. He blinks at your expression, one hand coming to cup your face.
“I love you, too.”
Your face pinches, “You don’t—”
“Please.”
You swallow, mouth clamping at the anguish on his face.
“Please believe me when I say I love you. Especially if you love me too.”
You grimace. “Sanji…”
“What can I do to make you believe me?” He pleads, heart open on his face. Desperate.
“I—I don’t know… Sanji, you fawn for every woman we meet, so much that you lose your reasoning. All it would take is a weak moment for you to get whisked away by someone else. Women are just women to you.”
Hot tears hit your cheek. “You—you think that about me? That I would… that I could be unfaithful to you?”
Your stomach sinks at his broken voice, his crushed expression peering down at you. But you nod, knowing he needs you to be honest.
He sighs in defeat, pulling out of you while he sits back, a hand lifting for him to smother his face. You watch with confusion.
(This is the uncertainty you were suffering through? Uncertainty about him, his affection for you, uncertainty about whether or not he would stay with you, stay loyal to you.
Is this how you see him?
Is this who he is?)
“I’m sorry,” he whispers.
You don’t know what to say. Instead you keep your eyes trained on him, still lying on your back because your body is too weak to lift itself.
“Sanji,” you call.
He doesn’t look your way. (His head is not strong enough to meet you.)
“Sanji,” you repeat.
He sighs, eyes closing before opening again with resolve. He turns to look at you, filled with determination.
“Give me a chance,” he says firmly. “Please, let me show you who I can be for you.”
Your heart clenches, eyes wide with disbelief. He holds your gaze, ocean blue irises pleading.
“I don’t know…”
“Just one chance,” he wagers.
Your face twists with uncertainty. One chance usually comes with many smaller chances; you don’t know if you can handle the back and forth, the constant heavy conversations.
“I only need one,” he pushes. “Now that I know how you feel about me.”
You exhale, feeling your heart crawling towards him. What difference does it make at this point? You’ve been kicking yourself acting like a jealous girlfriend even while asserting to him that you aren’t together.
He doesn’t press any further, waiting for your response. You roam your eyes over his face, tracing the swirl of his brow, the slope of his nose. His eyes are focused but patient, lips smoothed neutrally. Sun colored hair frames his face in waves, stubble emphasizing his jaw. He’s beautiful.
He’s here, waiting for you to let him give himself to you.
You fold. “Okay.”
The grin that takes over his face is blinding, so overwhelming you want to bury yourself in the blankets. Who are you to elicit this kind reaction—such genuine crinkles around his eyes? His hands reach for you, gripping your side as he leans forward to lay against your body. Your breath falters.
“Thank you,” he mumbles as he kisses your temple. His lips travel across your face, claiming every speck of skin. “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” he says between each peck.
“Okay, okay,” you mutter, trying to pry him off you. But his grip is too strong.
“I love you,” he says, stealing your breath before capturing your lips. “My angel, I’ll prove to you how well you can be treated.”
Your chest stings at that, crawling up your face. You blink before tears can surface again. “Okay.”
Sanji laughs, a huffed and throaty sound, before burying his head into your neck. His hair tickles your skin, the touch of a feather, of lightness and freedom. You still feel uneasy, the future looming over you with all its unknown possibilities. But with Sanji in your arms, his warmth against your body, his declarations of love in the air—you feel there’s a future of joy waiting for you.
(On the horizon there’s a future where you still don’t understand. Maybe you will never understand; this is the reality of being two different people. However, there is a future with trust, where Sanji’s devotion has been proven, is proven daily, and you learn to lean into his love. A love he has never before received, and a love that he will only ever hold for you.)
sorry if the end is kind of bad and cringe and typical for me. i was going to try and make it sexier but i can only handle so much porn.
“Ace! Don’t say that. You know I don’t want anyone who isn’t you.”
“He’d treat you so well,” he continues easily, lifting your fingers to his lips. “Baby, if something happens to me—”
“Ace,” you growl.
ace x reader, sanji x reader
3k words | oneshot, complete
gn reader, implied acesan, major spoilers for marineford, partner death, angst, hurt/comfort, guilt
note: this is an extension of a drabble i wrote last month
read on ao3
“Crossed paths with Luffy.”
You grin against Ace’s chest, his skin hot beneath your lips. Hotter than the sand that surrounds you, the dust of shore on this quiet island.
“Yeah?”
“Mhmm,” he hums. “He’s got the beginnings of a proper crew. They’re good people, the kind who’ll look out for him.”
He doesn’t continue, but you can tell he has more to say. You’re on edge to hear about this fated interaction, a day Ace dreamt of aloud often on the Moby Dick. But there’s a haze in his eyes, a distance that clues you into what he’s thinking. Your smile falters.
“If—” he halts.
You wait.
“They’re good people,” he tries again. “Real good people. They know how to take care of each other. Luffy… he’s gonna be okay in their hands.”
You nod.
“The cook, Sanji…” his eyes dart to yours, mouth twisting. “He… If I weren’t so selfish, I’d tell you to find a guy like him instead.”
“Ace!” You frown, pulling your head from his chest. The sad, resigned smile he sports is heartbreaking. “Don’t say that. You know I don’t want anyone who isn’t you.”
“He’d treat you so well,” he continues easily, lifting your fingers to his lips. “Baby, if something happens to me—”
“Ace,” you growl. You yank your hand from his so you can cup his cheek, holding his head firmly so he can’t escape your glare. He has the courtesy to look embarrassed. You sigh. “I love you.”
He inhales. You watch the inflation of his chest, the surprise in his eyes that you wish you could steal and bury somewhere far, far away.
“I love you,” he echoes easily, fingers tracing up your sides.
Your chest buzzes, but you shake your head. “I love you.”
He pauses, eyes uncertain. You nod with encouragement.
“You love me,” he breathes, voice trembling.
You smile before leaning to capture his lips. They’re hot against yours, the same burning heat that lives in his heart. When you break, still close enough to ghost his skin, you whisper, “I do.”
“You love me,” he says again, voice sturdier but chest aching.
“Only you,” you promise. “Always you.”
Only, you said. Always. They’re promises buried in your throat, sitting in your airways, sliding down to sink in the guilt of your stomach.
Lies, you’d call them now.
You wake surrounded in warmth, swaddled between the softness of the bedsheets and a firm chest. Your eyes flutter against bare skin, and your partner moves, shifting careful arms around your waist. He’s awake too, but neither of you speak, sitting in the stillness of deniability.
Instead you breathe slowly, gripping onto a semblance of calm—blinking before your eyes can sting, swallowing the tightness over your heart. The steady rise and fall of the lungs you’re pressed against helps, guiding you through the motions.
Finally you stir and tilt your head. “G’morning.”
“Morning, sweet,” Sanji answers, voice thick from sleep. His arms shift, hand coming to your neck as he leans to kiss your forehead. “You’re up earlier than usual.”
You hum, leaning into his touch as your lashes flutter. The words are lost; you don’t know what you want to say.
“Dream?” he asks—that intuitive sense for you.
You exhale, nodding on instinct. There’s no point in lying. “Yeah,” you breathe shakily.
Sanji’s arms constrict, bringing you closer. Warmer. You nuzzle into him and let yourself grimace against his skin. A sting flares behind your eyes, matching your chest.
“Intense?” he asks carefully, a murmur in your hair.
“Not graphic. Just sad.”
“Sad to dream about? Or sad to wake up from.”
Your vision blurs, water swelling over your irises. You don’t know. “I’m not sure. Both, maybe.”
Sanji hums, body still. “Want some time alone?”
“I don’t know.”
Experimentally, he loosens his arms, heat slipping away. The absence sends a chill through you; it leaves you breathless with panic. You shake your head with fervor, burying your face further into his chest. His arms return in an instant, tighter.
You choke out an exhale, muffled by his skin. A tender hand combs through your hair, promising understanding. Reassurance.
“‘M sorry,” you whisper brokenly.
“Please don’t apologize to me, angel. Never for this.”
The tears flow freely, wetting the hairs along his chest. They trace through the divots of his muscle, taking long journeys to blot against the bedsheet.
You think you won’t ever stop apologizing, that there will always be reason to plead your guilt. For the love that lingers in you for the dead. For dreaming of him, even when you now sleep in Sanji’s arms. For sometimes needing Ace’s arms around you instead.
Later, when your voice finds its steadiness, you’ll share snippets of your dream—memories of your time with him, the insecurities you fear you are now validating when you lean into Sanji’s touch and voice and love. Another apology will fall through your lips, you don’t know for which man, and the cook will once again tell you that you have nothing to be sorry for.
You’ll purse your lips and swallow every following confession that rises to the surface. Guilt will spread through your blood knowing you did not tell him everything. But Sanji will smile sadly, understanding that some things are better left unsaid.
Like his own dream last night, where Ace visited him too. They were placed in a familiar scene, aboard the Merry and draped in protective robes. Sanji sliced vegetables while Ace sat at the table with a grin. Blue eyes flickered between the food and the company, lingering on the front of his cloth, imagining the hollowness hidden beneath it.
The same scene that you heard Ace recount in your own dream, his brief time with the Straw Hat pirates. Except in this version, he leads Sanji through a different conversation.
One where he says his gratitude for taking care of you.
Your relationship with Ace was like the man himself: passionate, fiery, burning. Tender, sweet. Gentle, giving. All-consuming. Life-affirming. Worth everything you had. Worth more. Worth chasing him. Worth putting your life on the line to save him—you and the entire crew of the Whitebeard Pirates.
You didn’t know your last time in Ace’s arms was going to be on the shore of that little island, the short space of safety nestled between his trip to Alabasta and Banaro. You wish you had clutched onto him firmer, longer. You wish you had tried to discourage him at all.
(But you know this isn’t true—you could never have attempted to dissuade him from what he wanted, what he needed to do. You fell for Ace; you fell for everything he was. Is.)
Marco had called for you in the midst of chaos, a voice thick with hurt. Garbled, marred, breathless. A gasp of your name.
Your blood ran cold at the sight, a river frozen through your body. The commander held your lover in his arms, both of them splattered in his remains, the red richness of his life. His flame.
“He’s—he’s so light—” Marco sobbed.
He was. When he was placed in your grasp he felt weightless, the touch of a feather. His skin was wet, slick with blood, red oozing down your wrists. The coppery scent overpowered the spray of salt, the stench of fish and sea. Black curls nestled against your elbow, an opened curtain. He looked peaceful, not a wrinkle on his face. The dust of a smile lingered across his lips.
The last time Ace laid in your arms, you learned that his heart was the heaviest thing in his body.
These dreams are the hardest, the worst days. The first thing to escape you is your hunger, the second is your ability to feel. Sanji faces the worst of the consequences, your avoidance of his food and his touch. But he knows these patterns well, and he knows how to break them. The first step is patience, the second is strategy.
Eventually you’ll appear, wanting to sit adjacent to the space of others. Soaking in the comfort of presence. It’s when he starts dinner, assuming his attention is too focused to notice you.
But this is Sanji.
“A snack, my love,” he coos unprompted, setting a plate of sliced fruit beside you. They were prepared earlier, waiting in the fridge.
Your heart squeezes, face pinching. “Sanji—”
A gentle hand brushes your shoulder. “Whatever you can manage.”
Tears surface. “Sanji,” you say again, this time the hiccup of a sob.
He breaks you, crumbles the stone of you into shards, into clumps of dust that dirties his hands. It hurts to watch you fall apart, but you need it. The release will free you, let you sift through yourself with a sense of clarity, allow you to pick out the gems and the treasures and hold them closer.
You only manage to eat a few slices of orange.
“‘M sorry,” you cry into his chest.
Sanji sighs, a protest for the apology, but he buries it quickly. Instead he redirects its origins. “Luffy will finish it.”
The confusion disarms you, distracts you as you realize he means the fruit. You feel heavier in his hold, more relaxed.
“Come sit with me in the kitchen, love.”
You obey, let him tug you by the hand and sit you behind the counter. He leaves the plate at your side before resuming his position at the cutting board. The knife thumps against the wood with each slice, soft taps. A reminder that Sanji’s here.
He glances at you after chopping an onion. As soon as he meets your eyes he grins, and you are struck by the warmth of it.
“Thanks for keeping me company, dear.”
Another crack slides through your resolve. Before you know it you’re crying, furiously scrubbing tears away. His smile saddens.
“I’m—” you cut off your own apology, exhaling. “I wish it could be easier… for you.”
“The only part that hurts is knowing I can’t take away the pain.” He would, if there was a way to take your hurt as his own, to physically carry it for you.
You shake your head. The pain is part of loving Ace, of remembering.
A part of you wishes you didn’t cling so hard to him. That you could move forwards. Maybe even move on. The thought strikes you in the heart, and you immediately regret it.
“You deserve someone better.” Your voice is a whisper, a whimper.
“Oh.”
The knife is discarded and in an instant he’s transported across the kitchen to hold you. You cry into his chest, the warmth of his arms. He knows how to hold you, to cradle his arm over your head and tuck it into his neck, nestle you where you can breathe him in. His touch is careful, knowing. Well practiced and sliding across your skin to soothe you.
“I take it back, my dear. The only other part that hurts is this guilt you feel for me.”
You sob into his skin.
Sanji pleads for you to know that he could never fault you for loving another man. You’ve chosen him now, and that’s enough.
You think you can understand what Ace meant, what he tried to say before you cut him off, If something happens to me—Sanji is understanding, with no expectations for you, but ones of the highest standard for himself. He is the only man you know who could watch you love another, and then still love you without limits, without fear slowing him down. Ace’s words—I’d tell you to find a guy like him instead—ring through your mind. If anything, this is the love he deserved. Were you able to show him a love this genuine and authentic when he was living?
But what Sanji doesn’t tell you is why he’s so understanding: because he met Ace, years ago when the two of you were together. He met the gentleman of fire in the throes of the desert and learned first hand how easy he is to love.
Some days are good, fulfilling even. You feel alive. You can carry the weight of everything with ease. Reminders of Ace are welcomed; they make him feel close, impossibly so. You see him in your captain’s smile and know that you chose the right place to be.
You can lean further into Sanji’s touch, let his whispers of love settle into your heart. You grin even, and say it back.
“I love you,” you promise, tangled in his limbs and sheets. “I love you so much.”
His smile is blinding as he preens under your words. The yellow of his hair splays across the pillow, a rumple of a man before you. It’s a rare moment where you can see both his eyebrows, the unmirrored swirls. You press your thumb to the one near his temple.
A thought crosses through your mind—what Ace would think of this, if he’s watching you now. Did he mean it when he said, If something happens to me— Did he picture it looking like this, years after your commitment to the Straw Hat Pirates. Is that long enough to be with someone else? Is it too long to still be thinking about him?
Sanji kisses the corner of your eye, brushing stray hairs behind your ear. The knot that began in your chest starts to loosen again.
Sometimes, in these moments, you can feel Ace sitting in the space with you two. Today you have courage; you tell Sanji.
He agrees.
You press yourself closer to him, try to burrow into his skin. He huffs a laugh and then exhales, an ocean wave emptying from his lungs. A conch shell, his clavicle the opening against your ear.
Ace rests with you, his essence heavy at your backside. It’s so warm like this. So full of love.
In these moments a string of hope runs through you, a thread of gold in your veins. You wonder if your previous lover is watching with a smile on his face. If there’s a sort of joy in watching you love again, love another. Is it fun even, to watch you dance with a man he thought was good for you, to watch you sweep Sanji off his feet and fall for you—the same fate Ace was subjected to.
Maybe he’s watching with bated breath, following the journey of you and his little brother—all while waiting, knowing there is a future where you will be with him again.
Tonight, when you fall asleep in Sanji’s arms, you have a different dream. Not a memory, but a new conversation.
You stand on an island you’ve never seen before, Ace’s hands clutching yours. Water laps at your feet, coating sand the color of his skin. Black grass blows inland, bending under the wind. The man grins before you and you are struck at the realization that he’s slightly aged—this is the Ace you would know today. His face splattered with freckles and sunlight and smiles.
Your tears spring immediately. He’s here, living and breathing. Grinning.
“Ace,” you call—a whisper.
He’s all sweetness when he answers, murmuring your name while he wraps his arms around your torso. His warmth is stronger than the sun, his touch searing against your skin. He holds you with an ease you aren’t accustomed to.
“I love you.” It’s all you’ve wanted to tell him.
His mouth stretches into a smile against your hair. “I love you too, baby.”
You tilt your head to catch his expression. His grin pulls wider when he sees your face.
“I love you,” you repeat.
Pink dusts his cheeks, but his smile doesn’t waver. He kisses your forehead. “I know you do. You and everyone else.”
Tears prick your eyes again, and you nod into his neck. This is what you fought for—so you could stand here with Ace in his afterlife and hear his confidence in the love he was shown. Even if you couldn’t save him, he knows he was loved until the very end of his life, and after.
Your smile flickers before it dies, a candle’s flame. Does he still believe in your love for him now, when you wake up in the arms of another man? A sob escapes you.
His grip tightens. “Baby?”
“I’m sorry,” you cry, gripping his skin.
“Oh, baby…” he whispers, a broken sound. “None of that, please. I know you love me.”
The crying continues, a waterfall as you babble. “I don’t deserve your forgiveness—”
“Baby,” he pleads. Fingers clutch your arm, burning with a heat that should only belong to the living. “There’s nothing to forgive.”
Your face twists, mind racing with confessions. Leaving the Whitebeard Pirates—leaving Marco—to join Luffy instead. Letting yourself fall for the cook, letting yourself fall into his arms and build a relationship with him, all while remembering how Ace felt about him.
Baby, if something happens to me—
You sob again. “I love you—”
“I know, baby. I know,” he assures, running fingers down your arm, flickers of flame. “But you’re alive. You deserve to move and love and be loved back. ‘M never gonna fault you for that.”
Ace will hold you through the night, through the entirety of your dream as you find a sense of peace. When you wake, his fingerprints will leave the sting of a burn, and Sanji’s cool touch will smooth over them like a balm. Your heart will have a heaviness, the weight of grief, but the pain will feel more life-affirming than anything. You’ll have the urge to apologize when you meet Sanji’s blue eyes, but stop yourself; you know how he will respond.
(The same as Ace, saying there is nothing to forgive—there is nothing to be sorry for. That you aren’t at fault for living and feeling, and that ultimately, you deserve to feel loved, too.)
i had two songs in mind while writing this, the first being the one that inspired the fic: move by the lone bellow (i imagined this one being ace's pov about reader) and ghostin' by ariana grande (reader's pov)
Early in their journey, the Strawhats come across an unusual island, where a beast has been stranded—with you.
Set right before Enies Lobby.
strawhats & GN reader, slight nami x reader
7.7k words | oneshot, complete
Life of Pi and Haruki Murakami-inspired, reader lives in a floating tree, loss of home/habitat destruction, reader is a friend to animals, queerplatonic relationship-building with everyone basically
ao3 option
notes: this was my first fic when i started writing again recently so it has a special place in my heart even though it's pretty rough imo <3 definitely niche so i'm mostly posting it here for archive purposes.
+ the timeline for this is so nonexistent, i promise it's better for everyone if you don't think about it
+ there's some background/implied frobin
Distance. Space. Atmosphere.
Life at sea means many days of drifting into nothingness, waiting for a figure to appear in the distance to follow. Drifting usually starts as a peaceful pause between events, crew members taking time to find their strength for the next piece of their journey. But as the days drag on, quiet stillness turns to impatient irritation. There’s an itch for chaos, a fight, change. Not seeing land for days, weeks even, unsettles them.
But no matter their skepticism, they always trust Nami. Nami who has never failed them in knowing how to bring them to where they have to be, oftentimes a destination they were not aware of.
In the blue of the vast beyond is a speck, also blue from the space that sits between said speck and the Going Merry. Nami frowns when she sees it. Normally specks have a spread to them if they’re a landform, a long but narrow shape that appears all at once. The alternative is a ship, which usually has a particular proportion between its length and width. However, this speck is tall . So tall it disappears into the clouds. And it’s narrow. It isn’t perfectly straight, a little wobbly-looking from this distance. Glancing around her workspace, Nami locates her telescope, grabs it by the base, and gently kicks the door open to make her way out to the lower deck.
“Usopp,” she calls as she walks to the stairs. Usopp looks up from his seat near Luffy and Chopper curiously. Nami cocks her head to the upper deck where she plans to set her telescope, turning and walking along. The sniper pouts at the lack of explanation, but rises with a sigh to meet her.
Still too far away to be discernible, two figures lounge together dozens of stories in the air. One nestles itself into the soft warmth of the other’s fur. The other swishes its tail in contentment. It huffs, yawns with its tongue out, then blinks and lowers its head to sleep.
“It’s a tree.”
“It can’t be a tree.”
“Well what else could it be!? Through your telescope it even looks like there’s a branch.”
“Trees can’t grow in salt water. Besides, there’s no land for it to attach to. You think it just floats around? It would topple over!”
“This is the Grand Line, Nami. In Skypiea you could swim in a cloud in the sky. What’s a floating saltwater tree compared to that?”
“Then this is a tree growing higher than the clouds, Usopp. From sea level.”
That does sound ridiculous, he can admit.
“It’s a tree,” Nami groans the next day. Overnight the ship traveled significantly closer to the speck, now a more complicated looking blob that becomes much clearer with the telescope. Through the lens she can see the edge between the tree and sky clearly. Moss and vines are apparent now, too. Odd lumps reveal themselves to be knots and welts where limbs once were. There aren’t many branches in view, the canopy likely condensed in the clouds.
Usopp snickers next to her, “and you dared question the great sniper Usopp!”
Luffy interjects while she punches Usopp in the back of the head. “What’s a big tree doin’ in the middle of the ocean? It get lost like Zoro?”
“I don’t know,” she responds softly, questioning. She thinks Robin may have ideas, but after asking for her thoughts they still don’t have adequate guesses.
“Trees have quite massive root systems. It’s possible that this one’s go deep in the water and have anchored to something below. Or maybe the distribution of weight keeps it upright. Either way I couldn’t guess how it got here.” All Nami can do is sigh in response.
Without verbalizing it, the Strawhats are in agreement that the tree is their next stop. It falls in line with the route they were already traveling, and the crew never turns down a sidequest. Especially not after nearly a week without touching land. Nami figures they could make contact in less than two days with the winds coming in.
Intense winds make the branches rustle. Smaller twigs break off and fall into the marsh below. The bird chatter dies as they nestle themselves into crevices of bark. Rodents scurry the length of the tree to find refuge in clumps of leaf and sticks. There’s a stillness hanging in the air, one thick with moisture. The sign of a storm. The two figures make their way down, finding their dwelling in the base of the tree. This is how it goes. Creatures live in one tree, but live like nomads as the microclimates change with weather and time. They read the signs. They are ready.
A storm delays their arrival by another day. Nami isn’t sure how she misread the sky patterns, but it isn’t unusual for the Grand Line. She’s frustrated but she knows her reading will improve with time.
The sunlight begins to touch the water and the clouds begin to part when the Merry gently rocks while approaching the tree. The root systems span a wide diameter, serving as the base for marsh and wetland conditions. Lush grasses and shrubs emerge on the roots above the water, while the ones below are fuzzy with algae. Minnows weave through their habitats between the root structures. Bunches of lily pads and mosses part as the Merry charges forward, scraping the woven foundation of the tree.
The vibrations are noticed by the creature sleeping at the base. It wakes, rises with a careful shift of bones, and slowly makes its way outside to scout. The other remains asleep.
Nami and Sanji are the only ones awake on board. The navigator feels a deep relief at having made it, tired from surprises from the past few days. The cook rose earlier to begin the preparation of breakfast. He meets her on the deck to confirm their arrival. He’s already fawning too much and insisting he can moor the boat for her. It irritates her but she lets him do it if it means a break from his attention for a few minutes.
She does, however, step out onto the…shore with him. She’s curious about this land—this organism that became its own land. She wonders what lives here, what kind of life blooms in such isolation. If anyone else has set foot here.
Sanji becomes a distant sound as her eyes take in the landscape, the seascape. Nami feels a sense of security at the base of such a massive presence. As she looks up, the tree extends endlessly into the sky, asserting its height and wisdom. It withstood a storm with ease, now standing calmly in the water. Still.
A rustling sound brings her gaze back in front of her and she feels her stomach drop. All security she felt is now gone.
A lion.
A golden, massive cat is before her. It’s beautiful, with a mane that sticks up like streaks of grass. Its color is saturated, a deep gold unlike the pale yellow she associates with these beasts. It’s crouched within the overgrown vegetation. She realizes it’s stalking her. She’s alone. Sanji is less than a hundred paces away, but she can’t get herself to call out to him. Afraid it’ll trigger the lion’s instincts.
But Sanji, ever the sense for a woman in distress, turns to her after the mooring is complete. His voice dies out as he registers her panic and immediately moves on instinct. In the moment he takes a few steps her way, the lion creeps forward one. He easily closes the distance between himself and his crewmate, reaching to move towards the animal when a voice calls out.
“Hin,” it says. Firm. Meaningful.
The lion blinks, ears twitch. It rises to its full height and waves its tail, but it doesn’t break its gaze with Nami and Sanji.
They hear more footsteps. Nami takes her chances by moving her gaze from the beast and to the origin of the sound. She sees you.
You are what she least expected to see in this environment. A person, firstly. Specifically a person with a grounded presence, purposeful. Dirtier than herself, as to be expected. But stable. Sure of yourself. And unwelcoming, eyes on alert as you scan Nami and Sanji’s faces, take in the exchange occurring before you decided to intervene.
She’s not sure how to proceed, especially alone with Sanji while everyone else is sleeping on the Merry. Her instincts are alert, but less with run hide fight and more with determination to prevent Sanji from escalating things. She can sense the new tension in him after having a glance at you, gearing up her fist to punch him swiftly as soon as he begins: “Oh wow! What pleasure do I have to—”
She feels that these first moments are crucial. She hasn’t felt an intensity like this since journeying with Vivi in the deserts of Alabasta. Something about an unknown landscape holding people who are lost, looking for something. Adding to the map of their own lives. She feels that from you. Wants to participate.
She smiles nervously. “Sorry, we don’t mean any trouble. We’ve been sailing for days and saw this tree along the way. We figured it’d be a good place to reset before getting back on the water.” There’s no reaction after she pauses. She adds, “We’re just hoping to spend a night or two here, maybe find some food, explore if you’ll let us. We really don’t mean any harm.”
There’s a moment where she panics, wondering if there’s a language barrier she wasn’t prepared for. But you look like you understand her words. Still on guard, but opening to curiosity. You look towards the lion again.
“Hin,” you say, just as firm. The beast turns to you as you cock your head to the side, away from Nami. The animal turns slowly, looks back at the pair of pirates, and walks its way back to you. The exchange is not unlike the way Nami called for Usopp the other day.
After an excruciating silence you finally respond to her: “Who are you and how did you find us?”
Nami explains briefly that they’re pirates, but not the bad kind. You don’t seem to care either way, or at least until she repeats that they simply stumbled upon this tree while sailing to their next destination. It wasn’t intentional, or even on the map. She adds that they were just at Long Ring Long Land, but it makes you frown further in confusion.
It only takes a moment for you to remember the original implied request by Nami. You nod briefly, “It’s fine. You can stay for a few days.”
Nami sighs in relief, thankful to not experience your rejection or have one of their crew resort to violence to persuade you.
“But on my terms,” you add.
Nami grimaces, already imagining the way Luffy would violate every possible term you could propose. But she nods again, hopeful.
It’s not so bad, it turns out. You help them choose a better spot to moor the Merry and secure it in place with Nami while Sanji returns aboard to prepare breakfast. You’re gentle and helpful, but Nami still feels a slight intimidation. She assumes it’s at least partly from the massive predator watching her every move. While she’s curious, she avoids asking too many questions since Robin will ask them again later.
Luffy is still sleepy when he wakes and is quickly fed, which helps to keep him subdued. He does immediately fall into the water upon leaving the ship, leaning too far forward while looking at the roots in the water, and has to be surfaced by an annoyed Zoro. You show the crew around the marshy base of the tree and the small room you’ve made out of a particularly twisty bundle of roots. You then demonstrate to them how you make your way around: a system of vines and pulleys and weights that makes Zoro wince at its overcomplicated nature. Luffy bypasses this by shooting his arm towards the next branch and sweeps everyone into his other arm as he pulls himself in the air.
You then show them your gardening space by the second branch. A particularly odd twist in the tree’s trunk creates a series of small hills that drain into a pond. Lush rows of planted crops are growing, some bearing fruit or vegetables. You explain that they can have some of the fresh fruit and vegetables, but that they’ll mostly have to take preserves. But you're also willing to help them forage for other foods—the varying climates of the different branches offering a sizable variety.
Before Sanji can blurt out a nonsensical compliment and Luffy can grab a handful of whatever’s closest, you state firmly, “In exchange for my food and docking here for a few days, you will abide by these rules: you must keep your disruption to the other animals to a minimum, including killing and eating them. You also can’t damage the tree or the environments on it.”
Luffy immediately begins to pout while Sanji blabbers that he will make you the finest vegetarian cuisine in exchange for your hospitality. The others just nod in affirmation. Except for Zoro.
“You some tree guardian or somethin’?” he asks.
You huff, amused. “It’s complicated.”
It doesn’t turn out to be that complicated, just a long story that Luffy nods off to. You try to be brief, explain that you were on a research trip to study an island near your home in the South Blue. A storm came, swept you away to wake up cradled in the salty roots of the massive tree. You thought you were dead, especially after turning and making eye contact with Hin, one of the lions from the island that had been tagged for research. At the very least if you weren’t dead, you assumed you would be shortly. It was a delicate dance of asserting authority that became a sort of skeptic symbiosis. Lions are hard to read. Some days he looks at you with an intensity that registers as keep your distance , others you’ll comfort each other through a cold night. You think the mutual loss of prior kinship contributes to the unconventional relationship, but you’re still aware he could end your life at any moment he wanted. Even though he hasn’t in the past five years of opportunity.
Usopp shudders and mumbles to himself while attempting to spot said creature below, “I just don’t get why you’d keep a giant predator around. Push him in the water or something.”
Robin intervenes. “The South Blue? That must mean the tree is floating through the ocean. You’ve never touched land since arriving? I’d imagine the currents and winds would bring you to shore at some point.”
You just shake your head, having the same assumptions.
“That means you passed through the calm belt,” Nami realizes. “How would something like this get through there?”
Again you don’t know. You don't even know what the Calm Belt means. You’ve long since resigned the impossibility of things to the great mystery of the world. Plants and animals you can study, get familiar with and build knowledge (though they’re impossible in their own smaller ways). Matters of nonsensical geology and weather patterns were beyond the understanding of a single person.
You notice Zoro and Luffy are like that too. They don’t seem to mind that there are things they’ll never know. They just want to nap or swing through the branches. You notice that others in their crew see mysteries as the reason to keep going. Robin’s fascination and Nami’s confusion motivate them to take action and find answers. You notice that the rest are preoccupied with something else entirely. A sense of duty to a purpose. You notice it’s more of an alignment chart than it is a system of categories.
While you feel surrounded by great mysteries, you do know that you miss home. You resigned to never having the opportunity to return, so it was a safe longing that didn’t inspire you to take action, to take risk. You realize that while these pirates all have different means of navigating their mysteries, they’re taking a risk together. Some don’t see it as a risk as much as a necessity. You wonder how hard that decision was for them to make. You realize that you now have to make a decision of your own. There’s no rush, you have a few days to mull it over. A few days isn’t nearly enough time, but it’s a small comfort.
You help them explore the length of the tree and at night help Sanji prepare a meal at the top of the crown. He’s unfamiliar with some of the ingredients and you explain what you know of their flavors and best methods of preparation. You’re a mediocre cook, but the information is helpful regardless. Chopper asks you about your knowledge of their medicinal properties. You tell him that you can share your notes and show him how to care for them if he wants to take any with him when they leave.
Nami makes a complicated face. “You… you’re staying here?”
You think about your mom and your sister. Your dad. Close friends, other researchers. The rest of the world that exists out there. You think about Hin and all the life you’ve made intricate relationships with.
“I don’t know,” you say.
The sun falls through the clouds while everyone eats their meal. Sanji has to prevent Luffy from grabbing stray birds that linger in the canopy after he finishes his plate. The clouds turn pink, orange, red, a twinge of purple. As the sky fades into its deep sleepy blue, you remember your third rule.
“Don’t go in the water after sunset.”
Usopp makes a “huh?” sound while Robin excitedly asks why.
“It’ll eat you alive.”
Despite Usopp’s worries, the Merry is fine the next day. He was torn between being too afraid to sleep in the boat out of fear he would also dissolve in his sleep, and wanting to be with her in case anything happened. He felt sick to his stomach watching you demonstrate a few clippings of your hair turn into nothingness. Luffy thought it was awesome and Nami thought Robin looked the happiest she’s been in over a week.
When the sun rises you share your herbal notes with Chopper and your accounts on the island with Robin. You’re embarrassed at the personal nature of some of your entries, but figure the details would be forgotten eventually after she leaves. You notice your internal monologue is assuming you’re staying again. Luffy’s new favorite activity is to swing through the tree branches in a one-sided race with the monkeys, but Zoro spends his day strength training at the bottom out of fear that Luffy will fall and drown himself. Nami explores with Sanji, attempting to create a map while the cook forages. Usopp is forced to tag along to be Nami’s buffer.
The whole day Hin is clingy, more affectionate than usual. It makes Chopper nervous that the lion is hanging around you all day, but Hin barely acknowledges him. You aren’t sure whether it’s because of the visitors or if it’s triggered by something else.
The Strawhats decide they’ll want to stay a couple more nights. Usopp thinks he can gather material to do some decent maintenance on the Merry and get her in a confident position with some time. You’re glad you get a little longer to be in their presence. You can’t help but notice that the decision is already made: that you can’t leave. But maybe a few more days will convince you otherwise. Hin still won’t leave your side.
On what the Strawhats decide is their last full day with you, an unexpected storm rages through. You show them how you wait them out at the base of the tree, a secure place with less wind and more distance from lightning. The storm is pretty average until there’s one particular strike of lightning that radiates through the entire length of the tree. Your heart drops as you feel a splintering sound resonating through your entire body. It’s paired with a short period of deafness that ends just before there’s a massive splashing sound. The base of the tree rocks, lurches upwards with your stomach and then slams back into the water. There’s the chattering of birds, howls of monkeys, buzzing of insects all moving away. In the distance.
In all your time on this floating ecosystem, you have witnessed animal migration. Some birds leave for a season, others never return. New insects appear out of the blue along with grasses and fruits and fish. The nature of a groundless entity puts it in constant range of new variables, new lives that come and go for varying lengths of time.
Never has there been a mass evacuation of life.
When you run outside the sky is still pouring. A mist simultaneously rises from the ocean and you’re immediately drenched. There is no canopy to shelter the rain. The tree has fallen. Your livelihood, all your relationships and meaning, plummeted in the ocean. It’s still afloat, a mile onwards into the mist of the sea. But it’s gone. It will never be upright again. You can tell by the way the bottom is shredded, splintered into a million pieces. You’ve never seen growth below the second branch, no watershoots to suggest the tree could embrace a new trunk.
Even if there was a chance for survival, it wasn’t in your lifetime. It would take hundreds if not thousands of years for there to be even a fraction of the biodiversity that occupied this space seconds ago. You know the world is a cruel place. After days of resigning yourself to staying, with no temptation towards a life-long journey of returning home, you are forced to realize it is the only way forward. You immediately entertain dying here. It hurts to imagine Hin dying with you.
Your brain moves a mile a minute, contemplating sending Hin with the pirates to their next island. Let him try to rebuild his life while you die with yours.
You feel his presence beside you. It’s cold. He steps forward.
The memory of his affections is distant as you watch him. His steps hold intent, they do not waver. You call for him in your mind. Turn back. At least look back at me. You can’t stop him, can’t even call out to him, knowing that nothing will change his mind. He marches onwards. You know that you cannot follow.
The Strawhats stay another day.
You have to go with them. It’s the clear decision, has been since their arrival. You deny it, have been denying it despite it waving obviously in your face. You hate the clarity that this was inevitable. Hin’s affections replay through your mind. He knew too. He was prepared before the storm came, the moment the pirates stepped foot on your land, before they spotted your tree on their ship. Even the Strawhats knew, Nami’s confusion the first night resurfacing in your memory.
It’s unfair, so unfair. You spent five years building something, finding your niche and your way to coexist in such a rich and unique environment. Again you remember your mom, your sister. You remember the injustice you felt when you first washed up in the basket of roots in the ocean face to face with the king of the jungle.
Chopper is helping you salvage the remaining flora you can find to propagate on the ship. You have a library of seeds still mostly intact that Sanji moves to a room in the Merry for you. Robin collects your journals and works with Nami to dry out the ones that were damaged in the storm. Luffy is excited to have you aboard. Usopp comforts you poorly and Zoro doesn’t even try. You appreciate all of it, but simultaneously seethe with anger.
Nami checks in with you after doing what she can with the books.
“I can’t fight,” you admit out of nowhere. A thought that had been sitting in your throat in a way that made it hard to swallow. Until Nami appeared and it leaped without warning.
She smiles softly. “It’s okay. I wasn’t much of a fighter either. Still not compared to the others.”
“I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to fight.” You did when you were little, with your peers and your family. You fight yourself these days.
“It doesn’t matter. You’ll be plenty of help no matter what.”
You look at her suspiciously and shake your head. Your eyes naturally travel down and towards the ship, the bundles of leaves from the tangerine trees and the early stages of their fruit. You speak without thinking again.
“You know if you pruned your tangerines better you could yield at least double your fruit.”
Nami smiles brightly.
You have fantasies of the tree growing back. In a few thousand years time there will be a new ecosystem flourishing. A new mixture of life will grow and fauna will migrate and emigrate in stages, cycles. It’s a beautiful, hopeful vision that keeps your heart lukewarm as you feel the coldness of abandonment.
You’re the last one on board the Merry. Before you go you take a long look at the remnants of what was once your home. The trunk split just before the curve that you made your garden, preserving the collections of your life artifacts. Over the past few days the length of the tree up to its canopy has drifted significantly into the distance. You can vaguely see it in the water, just an inch or so below the surface with small branches breaking through the surface. Of course it’s drifting in the opposite direction of where the Strawhats are going next.
When you raise your foot off the island and onto the first step of the Merry, you hear a bubbling and rippling behind you. When you turn you see the collection of roots and stump begin to sink into the ocean's depth.
A pain flares in your chest. You march towards your room, slam the door, lock it. Sob into your pillow.
Grief is funny. It’s also gut wrenching. You think it might be the only constant in your life. In the next few days on the Merry you’re too blinded by yours to see that it’s a constant in everyone else’s. The Strawhats all have their own special dance with loss, ones that make them annoying about yours. It takes a while to realize they’re offering you what they need. You try to offer it back, communicate your own preferences. Some get it better than others.
Chopper is the one you find yourself around the most. Your trades coincide and you learn from one another. You teach Chopper about what you were able to salvage and start growing on the Merry. It begins your healing process in a painful way, one that constantly reminds you of what you lost. But it helps you preserve it, transform it, share its beauty with others and make it immortal—something you never imagined. Chopper shows you his own collection of herbs and medicinals, and then the ones he’s attempting to grow on the ship. He explains his process and concerns. You suggest some maintenance strategies and offer to work with his plants to see what works best for them. He looks so happy.
It’s comforting to have an animal presence. You haven’t communicated with people in so long that you’ve forgotten how to read them. Your speech is awkward too, having written to yourself for the past few years and rarely communicated orally with words. You realize your response time is often delayed and that conversation doesn’t run smoothly. But you can understand Chopper’s behaviors, his little mannerisms and particular looks. You get the sense that it’s unsettling to him, but he appreciates it once he’s used to it. Some days when you’re working together not a single word makes its way between you two. But it’s healing. Familiar.
You find yourself on edge around Sanji. He’s an overbearing presence in your grief, one that drives him to constantly check on you and offer you comforts. It’s irritating. You sometimes think that he’s trying to catch you off guard and see you at your weakest. You aren’t sure what makes you think that, maybe because you struggle to differentiate when he’s offering you comfort or making a pass at you.
One day in the far future it’ll make sense. You’ll learn things about him that will make you want to ensure you’re there for him every moment of the day. But for now you try to recognize this as his way of showing love and care. You wonder why it has to look like this. You embrace it as best you can, offer some constructive comments so the benefits go both ways.
“If you make me my comfort foods all the time they won’t have the same effect every time I eat them.”
An unreadable expression passes through his face before he begins to apologize. You don’t let him.
“It’s okay, I appreciate your efforts. I want to eat your food though, too.”
His face immediately flushes and he vows to serve you his finest cuisines. It’s too much, you can’t look at him when he thinks so highly of you. You look down at your meal and finish it quietly.
You’re not ready to say goodbye to the Going Merry.
When the time comes and Luffy’s decision is made, you can’t stomach the argument, the fight that occurs outside. Robin’s gone too and you’re trying to sort out how you’ll relocate the plants, preserve the seeds and your library. Fixating on plans is how you distract yourself, trick your brain into moving forward instead of spiraling in on itself.
You want to reach out to Usopp, tell him you understand and that it’s unfair. But you don’t understand, will never feel for the Merry what Usopp does. The Merry was your last resort, and not even what you put above dying. For Usopp the Merry was a gift. A treasure offered by a childhood partner and a reflection of himself, his potential. A potential rejected by his closest friends.
As you predicted, you’re useless throughout Water 7 and Enies Lobby. You’re quick on your feet, can work out a plan pretty quickly. You’re able to diffuse some tense moments, even if your mediation feels surface level. But you can’t fight—or rather, can’t get yourself to fight. It’s okay in the end. You—your crew—win(s).
Even so, you can’t find a moment of peace. There’s another crew member—one that’s loud and a little tactless but you don’t want to judge prematurely, especially after seeing the way Robin looks at him. You can’t stomach this feeling that you overstepped, saw too much too soon in both Usopp and Robin’s lives that you were never meant to know. You have the gall to apologize, Usopp first because he’s less intimidating.
He looks at you sheepishly but brushes it off easily. “It’s bound to happen, ya know? How do you think I felt watching your whole home-tree thing and friend disappear a few days after meeting you?”
He makes a fair point, even as he rambles on about how he’s fine and that he’s too great to be held back by things like that. It takes him a second to realize his potentially offensive implications of the way you’ve dealt with your loss, but you know enough about the sniper by now to understand what he’s trying to communicate.
You tell him that you would be sad too. You briefly relate it to your own feelings as of late. You tell him that if he ever wants company that you’re there for him.
His eyes well with tears as he sputters and scoffs. He turns away from you to wipe his eyes as he tries to flip the script and offer you a shoulder to cry on. The next day he’s in your greenhouse-office and you make him a blend of herbal tea as he shares with you his favorite moments on the Merry. You believe him. You have no other choice. It offers the opportunity to learn about the people you’re cohabitating with, how they came together and what brought them here now.
You’ll cross check the validity later with Nami, but for now you believe every word Usopp says. It’s what he needs from you for his healing.
You find yourself frustrated with Robin. Every attempt you’ve made at conversation with the goal of delivering your apology gets hijacked by a slew of questions for you. You think it may be like your own tendency to organize and plan to distract yourself: Robin takes in information to preoccupy her mind. For you to apologize would be to recognize what happened to her and admit that you were a witness. At some point that exchange will assist her healing, but for now you entertain her curiosities and hope that Franky is able to reach her.
You and Nami have the opposite relationship. Something about her makes you too quick to admit your feelings, even when her questions have nothing to do with them. It’s what let your guard down when she first set foot on your island and what had you sharing your insecurities before you came aboard. You don’t feel ready to share what she always pulls out of you. You never will be. You can tell she’s trying to confront you while also giving you proper space and you can’t help but hope she somehow understands the tension within you. That you want her comfort and her ease, but acknowledging these things about yourself will force you to move forward, take a step out of the darkness that connects you with your home.
You think she may know a thing or two about that, which is even more a reason to keep your distance.
“The tangerines have been growing really well,” she tells you one day. You think she’s caught on and is trying to give you space.
“Thanks,” you mumble, burying your face in the branches as you pick a few more and place them in your basket. You feel that Nami wants to say more, but you’re too flustered to leave the foliage. She walks off after a moment and Luffy pouts from afar. Why is it okay when you pick the tangerines?
The captain walks into your greenhouse-office one morning and witnesses your vulnerability. You had a hard time sleeping, mind racing with what if’s and hypotheticals and the same narratives you’ve been running through your mind for years. Luffy catches you in the middle of a crying session, tenderly checking the leaves of the saplings you’re nursing with blurry vision.
Upon being caught you try to reign yourself back into normalcy. You wipe your eyes with embarrassment and cough to level your voice. “Hey Luffy, sorry I didn’t—”
But he smiles, wraps his arms around you seven-fold and holds you close. He’s warm, like a heated blanket, like another body in the rain to keep you safe. You choke out another sob, one you didn’t know you had in you. You realize you haven’t been held like this since before Hin walked forwards and never looked back. You wonder where he is, where that tree took him. Who was waiting for him.
Luffy just snickers, in a wholesome way. One that finds your insecurities amusing because he thinks they’re silly (not that you voiced them; he just knows). Of course the Strawhats will be your family, hold onto you until you achieve your dream and then a little longer. Even when you push and push and keep everyone at a distance unless they’re trying to keep a distance from you.
You learn that Luffy is a great void for your most absurd or intrusive thoughts. He doesn’t remember them and his reactions make them feel like they might not be worth the world to entertain.
“What if I die before I see my sister again?” You blurt one day while the two of you are sitting on the head of the Sunny. It’s a spot you like to lay to soak up the warmth of the sun, but only by yourself. Sometimes being with Luffy is like being alone.
“Huh? That’d suck,” he says nonchalantly. “But you won’t, you’re strong.”
You can’t begin to fathom why he thinks that. But he’s so confident it breaks your line of thinking. This repeats a few times throughout the day.
“Sometimes I think that Hin left so easily because I didn’t mean anything to him.”
“That’s dumb, sometimes you just have to be somewhere,” he says easily. Pauses. “Why’s he called that anyways?”
You look up from where you're sitting to glance at Luffy’s face. He’s standing next to you, staring in the distance like he has better things to worry about, such as what Sanji’s making for dinner and the like. You can see the glow of golden hour sitting on his skin and his hat.
“It means the..” you trail off. From this angle, Luffy’s hat makes a perfect halo around his head. His unruly hair sticks out like a mane. Like light diffusing from one central bright light.
“The sun.”
(You think about how the crew agreed to name this ship the Sunny. You think about how Franky put a lion on the front before he heard anything about how you joined the Strawhats.)
You lay in that same spot the next day, soaking in the sun and letting your mind wander. You try to remind yourself of the reality you’re existing within.
Footsteps come from behind you. They’re heavy, Zoro’s. You aren’t sure why he’s coming this way. He usually naps at the bottom of the staircase and trains in the lookout tower. You sit up, ready to leave if he has plans to use the space. Of everyone, Zoro is the one you’re simultaneously the most comfortable with and reserved around. He keeps to himself in a way that makes you feel like you should too.
To your surprise, he mumbles a “sorry” when he sees you and makes to turn around and go back down the stairs.
You call out to stop him. “I can leave if you want to be here.”
“Don’t. I won’t bother you, I can nap somewhere else.”
“You should nap here if you want,” you encourage him.
He’s quiet for a moment. “Don’t wanna make you nervous.”
He thinks he scares you, you realize. He has a shimmer of reluctance in his gaze that looks out of place. Usually you’re awkward around him because his stare reminds you of the intensity of a predator. An animal with a roar that rules as king in the hierarchy of life. At first it was too much, but now it makes you realize that the beings you love are everywhere. Hin might be gone, but you have Zoro. These archetypes will repeat in your life for as long as you live. They’re different, of course, but there’s a reason you keep finding one another.
“You won’t,” you tell him confidently. “You don’t.”
Sleeping in the same space as Hin was how you grew to be confident in your trust of him and his in you.
You ask, “Can I lay here while you nap?”
He frowns at the fact that you would ask. “Of course.”
You find a middle ground with Nami. You like looking at her maps, seeing the expanse of space that exists that you’ve never set foot on. Places you may have been minutes from and never known. You like the way the paper wrinkles ever so slightly with the touch of ink on its surface. When it dries it sits mostly flat again, but there’s a slight warpage you can feel by running your fingers over the lines. You’re watching her draw one evening when she starts talking about her mom and sister. You don’t interject, just nod to yourself and give the occasional hum of affirmation that you’re listening.
You smile to yourself. “I hope I get to fight with my sister again one day.”
A knock on the door interrupts whatever Nami’s reply would have been. It’s Chopper, excited about an observation he made in the greenhouse that he wants your opinion on. You look at Nami apologetically and tell her you’ll talk more later. You want to hear more about her life in the village. She smiles sheepishly, realizing how much she rambled. Your heart pounds excitedly as Chopper grabs your hand and guides you to your office despite knowing you know how to get there. You fight the urge to scoop him in your arms.
One day while you’re napping on the Sunny’s lion, Zoro in his own slumber against one of the pieces of the mane, a slight drizzle starts to fall. It wakes you gently and just as the weather picks up into a heavier rain. You’re disoriented, but stand and close the gap of a few strides to where Zoro is still sleeping. You shake him gently, urge him to wake up.
He has the nerve to look annoyed and ask why you woke him.
“C’mon Zoro, we should nap inside. We’re gonna get sick in the rain.”
He raises an eyebrow, unbudging. You give his arm a push but he’s motionless. You give up, try to step over him and to the deck, slip a little but catch yourself on the railing.
Zoro sighs and stands. He somehow scoops you around your front and grabs the back of your knees in a one-handed bridal carry. You would protest but he’s warm and you’re still sleepy despite being somewhat damp. Zoro gets onto the deck with ease and walks down to the closest sheltered area. There he sits and places you next to him so that you lean against his shoulder for support. He falls back asleep immediately. You’re too tired to think about the familiarity and the warmth of waiting out the rain. You fall asleep quickly.
It gets easier with time despite the continuing uncertainty. It’s a constant question of what to do, how to get back home, if your family would even be there still. The crew knows you’re struggling, that you don’t know what path to follow. They’re here for you, welcoming you with open arms even as you think about leaving them. But you were never good at making decisions, always moving through life by the only option left.
The default here is to stay and follow everyone else’s journey. Luffy asks if you have a dream. You don’t. That’s never been what moves you forward.
It’s another night in a bar with the Strawhats. Not much of a drinker, you learn to assume the role of designated navigator to the Sunny while Zoro helps carry the ones who can’t walk. As you’re trying to rally everyone to head back, Luffy lets out a loud laugh and points to something on the wall.
“Hey! Looks like you finally got a bounty, hahaha!”
You look to where he’s pointing and freeze. The poster definitely has a resemblance but the person in the portrait has lighter eyes and a different haircut than you. Your noses are slightly different. You yank the paper off the wall and read your sister’s name at the bottom. Your heart is thrumming in your ears, body on fire as you stare.
Sanji takes your silence as fear that you have a bounty and drunkenly pats your back. Then he slings an arm over your shoulder and leans his weight on you for support. “It’s okay, we’ll protect you. Your portrait looks good even if it’s a little inaccurate.”
You fold the poster and shove it in your pocket, urging everyone to get moving. Before you leave the bar you do a quick scan of the room to see everyone’s face. She’s not here. You leave.
The next morning you stand by the kitchen counter as you watch Sanji prepare and serve breakfast for everyone nursing their hangovers. You watch them grumble, some of them argue despite it being so early in the day. You think fondly about how they’ve become your family when you needed it most. You recount hugs, late night conversations, tears, naps, lingering together in silence. You think about the poster in your pocket.
You didn’t sleep much last night, preoccupied with what-ifs and hypotheticals. Questions of who your sister has joined on the water, how she got there, how she’s doing. You think that you should get a bounty of your own, to show her that you’re still out there too. You imagine an unexpected run in on the open water. One where you show each other the people you’ve met and tell stories of all that’s happened while you’ve been apart. You imagine your crews working together, maybe they become one giant crew. More realistically you’ll eventually part your separate ways. But it’s the kind of parting that comes with the chance for return, a reassurance that you’re allies and there will be an again. You can say “see you later.”
You’re standing there too long. Sanji looks at you with confusion as to why you aren’t coming to eat. Luffy just shoots an arm over and pulls you between himself and Nami.
“Let’s eat!” he cheers. “Or I can eat your food if you aren’t hungry.”
You can’t hold back your smile. Luffy’s arm is still partially wrapped around your waist from where he grabbed you and you put yours around his waist to hug him back. You put your other arm around Nami and hug her too.
She yelps and her face flushes. “Wh-what’s up with you this morning?”
Luffy just giggles and hugs you harder. You love them. You beam and put your head against Luffy’s. “Nothin’. Just excited for breakfast.”
You feel like you have all the time in the world.
ok i'm finally done with my crossposting & can breathe again
You always thought the circus was where you yearned to be. At least, until it finally let you in—and introduced you to Hanta Sero.
[circus AU where seamstress!reader and acrobat!sero realize that their lives have been running parallel for a long time, and it’s up to you to weave them together]
sero hanta x gn reader
6 parts | 89k words | complete
AU: circus, rated M, time skip characters (implied mid to late twenties), eventual (emotional) smut, Ecuadorian & Japanese Sero, Costa Rican Reader, but the fic is mostly set in Italy (Milan), Strangers to Lovers (<- debatable), Slow Burn, Pining, Grief/Mourning, messy family drama
massive thanks to: my beta @vonabel and my beloved @staraxiaa for being the 2 people interested in this story when i originally pitched the idea. additional thanks to @babyboybokuto for double checking my spanish. you all have been my biggest cheerleaders <3 and gracefully dealt with my cryptic behavior throughout this mess.
also on ao3!
Parts:
(specific tags and warnings are listed at the beginning of each part)
1: one brighter than the rest. [12.1k]
2: veiled by the daytime sky. [11.4k]
3: that we'll string together. [14.7k]
4: made of the same dust. [13k]
5: but yours is my guide. [22.3k]
6: & yet i'll always choose you. [15.8k]
afterword
additional notes:
reader is referred to with they/them pronouns and does not have descriptions of their physical features. they are sometimes described wearing dresses or skirts and makeup, but i still consider this gender neutral—especially since they are often in costumes.
this is fairly reader-centric and involves a lot of elements outside the main pairing.
Your friends care about you, much more than you think. Unfortunately it takes the worst possible first time trying weed for you to realize it.
kirishima eijirou & sero hanta x GN reader
10.9k words | oneshot, complete, can be standalone
implied first/second years, drug use (edibles), reader is anxious and an overthinker, descriptions of dissociation, slight suicidal ideation, touch-starved reader, implied smaller reader, lots of hurt and lots of comfort
part 3 of a sort-of-series: "healing my inner teenager" (this fic's reader is NOT compatible with reader in the universe of [part 1] and [part 2])
ao3 option
notes: I feel like a lot of fics with substances never touch on these kinds of experiences (& if they do it's for humor instead of processing) so this one's for ME & anyone else with arguably traumatic first times smoking/taking edibles 👍
Kaminari’s room is boisterous as your friends settle on his bed to cozy up for the evening. You sit quietly on his carpet, back pressed against the mattress behind you. Your fingers brush through the soft fibers, tracing its dark pattern as you listen in to the various conversations around you—Mina and Kirishima curiously taking guesses at how it’ll feel to get high, Bakugou grumbling about being the babysitter, Sero and Jirou arguing over what movie they want to watch. You don’t make an effort to engage, even when you feel an opening, instead flitting your eyes between the different spots where people have congregated. You notice that nobody tries to pull you in.
It’s a delicate dance for you, being in this group. They welcome you easily, always happy to have you around, but you aren’t sure why. You don’t talk much, not unless asked, and even then you instantly regret answering—assuming you said too much or the wrong thing. Sometimes Kaminari finds an opening for a joke in your response, and the laughs that course through the others make you feel very, very small.
You confided in Kirishima once, during internship patrols—likely the reason you started getting invites in the first place. His bright attitude brings you ease, knowing he only thinks well of others, and his encouraging personality is a relief to the delicate glass of your self-esteem. You hadn’t meant for it, but the conversation somehow found you unfurling your insecurities. He looked at you sadly when you explained how the larger friend group puts you on edge, makes you hyper aware of yourself and your shortcomings. You’ve spent the past few weeks carefully skirting around him and the topic, incapable of handling more pitiful gazes.
You ignore him now, too, as you feel his eyes from where he’s seated with Mina on the bed. You focus your attention on Kaminari's shelves, observing the collections of hats and shoes. It’s a tacky space, you think, but the array of jarring colors and patterns make sense somehow.
You are jolted from your thoughts when said tacky host appears in front of you. He’s crouched with half a brownie in his hand, outstretched to you.
“Want first bite?” he asks. You nod and thank him quietly as you pinch the sides of the dessert, avoiding the brush of fingers. He continues. “It’s only half, since it’s your first time. You can have some more later if you don’t feel anything.”
He stands to offer brownies to those on the bed. You sniff yours carefully and notice that it’s unassuming, even when you take a bite and slowly chew.
“How’s it taste?” Mina asks from above you. You crane your neck to see where she sits beside Kirishima, who’s tearing a brownie in half for them to share.
You cover your mouth as you speak, feeling the gooeyness cling to your teeth. The chocolate is dark and there are chunks of fudge, a favorite of yours. “Normal. Good.”
Mina grins excitedly in response and eats her half in one go, straight from Kirishima’s hand. She hums in agreement. “Ooooh, they’re delicious!”
Kaminari nods proudly. “I only source the best, y’know!”
You finish your half shortly and glance towards the others. You hear Sero ask about the dosage and strain, and watch as he and Jirou both eat a whole brownie, then split an additional one. Kaminari downs one happily and removes another before closing the bag. You wonder if this is routine for them, and suddenly you are too aware of your inexperience. A course of shame rolls from your stomach to your shoulders, a choppy ocean wave. Once again you feel small—a speck of dust on the carpet. You think it’s silly, to be ashamed for not indulging in substances, but these are your cool friends that you don’t want to be lame around, at least not more than you already are.
You want to curl into yourself, a ball of arms around legs, but a tap on your head shakes you from your spiral. It’s Mina, pouting from above.
“Whatcha still doing down there?” She asks. You see the others piled on Kaminari’s bed—all but the blond himself, grabbing a deck of cards from the shelf.
“Sitting,” you say blankly.
She rolls her eyes and gives your shirt a tug, then pats the space next to her. “Sit here!” she instructs. Kirishima nods in your peripheral.
So you stand, just enough to get your hands and knees on the bed, and crawl next to her by the headboard. You avoid touching the pillows, and pull your knees tightly into your chest. Kaminari follows, plopping next to you. He’s cross-legged, knee bumping into your calf, and you tense at the contact. He doesn’t notice, busy shuffling the cards. Some of the others move, adjusting to make an evenly spaced circle of people. Mina shifts away from you and you scoot in the same direction, giving Kaminari additional room.
The game passes energetically, with loud reactions as some of your friends target one another. You’re not very competitive, but strategizing helps you focus on something other than your discomfort.
After a few rounds, Sero checks in. “How are you all feeling? It’s been about a half hour.”
Mina grins lazily beside you. “M’definitely feeling something.”
She turns to you and you shake your head. You feel normal. Or, your normal.
Kaminari hmph’s and looks to Kirishima. “What about you man?”
The redhead scratches his head and purses his lips. “Maybe?”
Kaminari hops off the bed and reaches for the bag on his desk. He pulls out another brownie and tears it in half. You take the one he hands you, slightly smaller than the other. You glance at Sero and Jirou while you chew, trying to decipher if either of them are affected. Jirou notices your stare and shakes her head.
“Takes me a while to feel it,” she explains. “But I’ll be faded in a couple hours. Sero’s the opposite.” You note his already red-tinted eyes.
“Skill issue,” he says. Kaminari nods solemnly.
Jirou rolls her eyes. “That doesn't even make sense.”
You look away, chest heavy as their banter draws on. You wish you were close like that, with any of them. They’re familiar and comfortable in each other’s space. You may have catalyzed a potential closeness with Kirishima, when you unpromptedly spilled out your insecurities regarding his friends. But all that resulted in was a weird tension that hangs between you two—one entirely due to your own embarrassment. What is wrong with you?
You accidentally look his way and see the slightest crease of his brow, his eyes trained on you. You glance past him and to Mina, then the cards sprawled in the middle of the bed.
“Let’s just watch the movie,” you hear Sero say. “It’ll definitely kick in after a couple hours.”
A wave of hums passes through the air as everyone agrees. Kaminari stands to turn on his desktop while Sero moves to switch off the lights. The room darkens save for the glow of the computer, Kaminari searching for the movie in question. The others shift, getting comfortable for the hours to come. You turn so your back rests against the wall, and Mina presses into your side as the others scoot up to see the monitor better. You try to relax into the touch, but it’s foreign, her arm warm against yours.
Suddenly Sero is crawling up from the foot of the bed and grabbing one of the pillows by your side. He then sets it in front of you and lays on his side. Mina brings her knees over his torso while Bakugou grunts and nudges his legs aside for space. You pull yours close against you, body tense to avoid brushing against his hair. Kaminari huffs when he turns and sees the arrangement. He starts the movie and grabs a few snacks before nestling in the space between you and the headboard, legs outstretched by the top of Sero’s head. He opens one bag and tosses the others blindly to the others. He is squished up against you and gently taps your forearm, gesturing to his bag of chocolate-covered pretzels. You mumble, “thanks,” and take a small handful.
The movie is good. It’s not the kind you would volunteer to watch, but it gives you something to focus on and keep the attention of the others away from you. At the halfway mark you notice a cloudiness settling into your mind and body. Your legs strain from the prolonged effort to hold them close, joints and muscles prickling beneath your skin. With a nervous heart you shuffle your feet forward, just before Sero’s head, and feel the slightest relief. You try to wiggle backwards, for additional room, but you’re already pressed against the wall.
Mina notices and frowns in confusion. You don’t realize you’re sporting a pained expression, and hers morphs into concern. She whispers, “You okay?”
“Just cramped,” you whisper back. Your eyes widen when she pulls her legs up and gives Sero’s back a shove. He turns to her curiously.
“Stop hogging their space,” she says, and your stomach clenches at the word choice.
You start shaking your head, to protest, when Sero’s eyes move to you. He just says, “oh,” and squirms towards the edge of the bed. “Sorry. This better?”
Your feet slide forwards, letting your thighs and calves relax, and you nod with a quiet, “thanks.” Sero hums and turns back to the screen, unbothered. Your shoulders drop in relief.
The movie draws on, but by the end you feel like it just started. It isn’t until Mina stirs next to you that you realize you’re leaning against her, and it isn’t until you right yourself that you realize your inebriation. Your body feels like it’s moving through deep, sticky honey as you sit up straight, and your head is unbelievably heavy. It tilts to the side as if in danger of falling. You pull it back, overcompensating, and it thuds loudly against the wall. A thrum of pain reverberates behind you and your vision floods with white static.
Your cheeks flush as you try to blink your sight back to normal. Kaminari giggles beside you, deepening your blush.
“You good?” he asks, voice filled with mirth.
You nod slowly, head unsteady on your neck. Your eyes rest halfway open and you swallow before grimacing. You smack your lips at the dryness of your mouth.
Kaminari giggles again and moves towards the desk. “Cottonmouth?”
You’ve never heard the phrase, but you nod. He hands you your water bottle from the desk and then grabs his computer mouse, clicking rapidly. The screen flashes white and you watch as you slowly unscrew the lid of your water. The fluorescence fills your vision sharply, similar to when you smacked your head moments ago, and it makes your perception of the room feel warped—flattened. You blink rapidly as you try to recover a sense of normalcy, but it causes your peripheral to spin.
You tear your eyes from the screen and look at the bottle in your lap. Your grip on the lid is weak, and when you try to squeeze harder your hand tingles—almost tickles. Almost painful. You work gently, using the friction of your palm instead. It comes off eventually, but then you are struck by the new set of obstacles that come with bringing it to your lips and drinking.
Luckily the others are preoccupied with their conversations, drifting softly behind you as if in another room. You wonder if time is passing as slowly for them as it is for you, if they’re similarly encased in molasses. You can’t hear what they’re saying, but you assume it’s movie commentary. You can hardly remember what you just watched, the contents years away in your memory. What happened in the meantime? Where have all those minutes run off to?
Once you manage a few sips—with thankfully minimal spillage on your shirt—you set the bottle down and take deep breaths as you put the cap back on. It brings attention to your racing heart, thumping wildly. You think it might explode, which only quickens it further. Your solution is to curl into where Kaminari sat moments ago. You close your eyes and try to convince your body to relax. Unsurprisingly, it doesn’t work.
You don’t know how long you lay there, attempting to control your heart and breath. You conjure images of the ocean, of the wind—sturdy beings that breathe slowly, regularly. You try to imagine the galloping horse of your heart to soften to a trot, then eventually a delicate walk through a meadow.
A gentle hand lands on your arm, causing you to stir with panic. Your body is tense as you spot Kirishima, large and red, standing by your end of the bed. His arm is outstretched but pulling back, and his face is full of concern—eyebrows creased upwards and lip jutting in a pout.
“Hey, you okay?” he asks softly.
You clutch the water bottle against your chest tighter, noticing that you’ve been cradling it in your fetal position. You aren’t okay, you realize. But this is Kirishima, the one you accidentally shared your embarrassingly low self-esteem with. He looked at you so pitifully for it, you can’t handle whatever reaction he’ll have if you say you think you’re dying.
So you nod, slowly, eyes still wide.
His eyes pinch and his lips press into a tight line. He looks pained. But he nods slowly in return before glancing at the others. You watch, the seconds passing dreadfully. You think you can see the way his movements smear across your vision, his afterimages in the bluelight.
In an attempt to give credibility to your act, you decide to sit up, to at least pretend you’re part of the conversation. You press up weakly and a wave of nausea rolls up from your belly. You panic at the sensation and take a shaky breath, as quietly as you can. Kiri’s eyes follow you, coating your skin uncomfortably.
You try to conjure your most unbothered expression as you mumble, “Just tired.” You catch the gaze of the others, but no one is scrutinizing you the way your red haired friend is. You summon all your willpower to appear attentive and normal.
You take note of them as best you can. Kaminari and Sero appear unfazed, as if they never got high in the first place. Mina’s words come out slowly and drawn out, with small bursts of giggles in between, and her cheeks are nearly red. Jirou sleeps deeply at the end of the bed. Bakugou looks annoyed—you internalize as perhaps specifically annoyed with you—and he’s the next one to speak.
“If everyone’s fine I’m fuckin’ goin’ to bed.” You don’t catch the next part, but it has more colorful language and the mention of babysitting teenagers.
Kaminari giggles while he watches the blond roughly shove his things in his pockets. Just before he slams the door, Kaminari teases, “I know you had fun with us!”
Mina laughs, soft chuckles from Sero and Kirishima follow. The five of you are huddled in a misshapen circle, not unlike the arrangement before the movie. After the giggles die down, Kaminari’s eyes sweep over you and your friends, assessing their conditions.
“I’m glad it’s kicked in. Does anyone have anything they wanna do next?” He asks.
You scan the faces around you, all holding the same indifferent expressions—shrugging or pursing their lips in thought. Kaminari appears shy, and you give him a curious look.
He smiles sheepishly and pulls his shoulders to his ears. “Shinsou messaged me,” he says. “I was thinking of heading over to his, but I don’t wanna ditch.”
Mina laughs and then hums in amusement. A light blush blooms over the blond’s face. “I am fully supportive of you ditching to be with your lover boy, personally,” she says with a dramatic sigh. The other two nod enthusiastically, and you give him a little shrug.
His face lights up at the response and he giddily stands from the bed. “Shit, okay yeah.” He rummages for his things. “Thanks guys, you can still hang here or whatever—”
The rest is a smear in your memory, the strength of your focus exhausted after a few minutes. You let your eyes cloud and your body accept its heaviness as you drone out the rest of Kaminari’s words. When he leaves you mumble a ‘bye’—or maybe it was ‘good luck’—but let your mind remain hazy.
You don’t know how much time passes, how to gauge it. Your three conscious friends continue to chat softly about benign topics, and you can only muster an occasional hum or slight tweak of your face in reaction. You don’t notice when their eyes watch you closely, instead convinced of your own invisibility, from your inability to push yourself to say something. You’re certainly high right now, and it would be fatal to say something stupid, something for them to laugh at while you forget it in the morning. It’s safer here, curled over yourself, knees and shins protecting your delicate heart.
At some point you notice you are no longer inside your body. When you glance down to your knees, you find you’re instead looking at the top of your head. You see yourself, your smallness, surrounded by your friends happily enjoying themselves. You panic, mind and body frozen at the sight. A coldness seeps into your skin, but the chill is distant. You can see how your friends are thoroughly engaged without you.
A heavy weight settles in your stomach—though your stomach is an abstract idea at this point—at the realization that your presence makes no difference. You are invisible, more so than Hagakure, with your timid personality. You swallow, feeling a heavy lump in the base of your throat—another abstract idea. You watch closely, take note of everyone’s eyes as they jump back and forth between one another and chat exuberantly. They giggle, stick their tongues out, roll their eyes. At each other, not you.
What are you doing here?
Maybe you should leave, leave and never come back. How did you get invited in the first place? Do these people actually like you, or do they feel bad watching you isolate yourself from the class? Your abstract stomach churns with a swirling mix of rage and shame.
You sit and watch, continue to scrutinize. You don’t say a word. You let yourself drift away.
After what could be minutes or hours—either a reasonable estimate to your brain—you feel the urge to use the bathroom. The task is mountainous, an entire excursion requiring careful planning and meticulous execution, but one that has to be done. It also offers a reprieve from your social dilemma. That serves as motivation enough to shift yourself to the edge of the bed and stand.
A wave of dizziness rushes through you. You watch, still as an outsider, as your body nearly topples over. Your hand reaches the desk in time to steady yourself, hyper aware of the eyes in the room. You play off your stumble casually, and lift your hand from the crutch prematurely.
“Bathroom,” you mumble and quickly exit the room.
The dorm hall is another beast. As soon as you turn from the door to the open space, you are confronted by your inability to process dimension. The hall is stretched into what appears to be an entire day’s journey. It makes your heart race again, anxious at the prospect of finding your way alone. You squint, attempting to count the number of doors you’ll pass, but they’re too small in your hazy vision.
You take a careful step forward, imagining yourself a blind elder fumbling through the forest, and drag your hand along the wall as you trek to the bathroom. The door at the end of the hall gets ever so closer, a small victory. You struggle to regulate your breathing throughout the process.
Using the bathroom is another challenge, one that also happens at a snail’s pace. You sit yourself in the stall for an eternity, leaning with your head against the wall. You close your eyes and take deep breaths. It helps center you, guide your essence back into the void of your body. Your mind is racing, running through muck, but it feels back in your own head.
You try your best to reflect on your dissociation in Kaminari’s room. Maybe it’d be best to distance yourself for a while, give yourself some space. Bakugou said he didn’t like babysitting, and that’s probably how the others feel about you always tagging along quietly. You remember Kirishima’s worried glances, how he always looks like he wants to fuss over you. Your cheeks flare in embarrassment, at being perceived as some helpless child. You recall how Sero and Jirou wordlessly split their edible, a practiced routine. There’s already a flow there, a vibe that you don’t fit into.
You should leave them alone.
Standing up brings another dizzy spell, but the small perimeter of the stall offers support. You fumble with your pants and flush the toilet before exhaling and exiting. You wash your hands slowly, let the sensation of the water remind you that you’re back in your own body, and then cup some to your lips. The contact tingles, and you’re numb to the way it drips down your chin and shirt. You scoop another handful and splash it over your cheeks.
When you look up, you’re confronted by a face only inches from yours. It takes you a moment to register that you’re looking at yourself. You see your red eyes and ruffled hair, your skin angrily painted red. You realize you’ve been crying the whole time, an unexpected but familiar sight.
Seeing yourself like this, head on but flipped in the view of the mirror, you stare. You watch your own eyebrows furrow as you search deep in your eyes, the way your lips part and exhale. You wonder who you are, if this is really you. Once again you wonder what you’re doing here. Not just in the dorm bathroom, high out of your mind. Not just in this friend group, one that would be better without you. Not even in UA, on the hero course, treading towards a future you aren’t prepared for.
What are you doing here, on earth. Existing.
You watch yourself cry, face pinching tight. Your eyebrows scrunch down and your nose tugs up with your lips. You watch your own eyelids squeeze shut before you sit in blackness, feeling only the distant sensation of salty water rolling down your cheeks.
Your legs give out. Before you know it you are a puddle of fabric and skin, melting to eventually lay on your side. You don’t hear yourself sob, choked noises sputtering on the cool tile. You don’t know how long it takes for your cries to die, but eventually you calm and turn to lay on your back. You soak in the cold ground below you, once again floating above and looking down on yourself.
This is how Sero finds you. He gently knocks on the door before letting himself in, immediately spotting you on your back, taking slow breaths—face flushed and tear-stained, with bloodshot eyes. He blanches at the sight and rushes over. He scans the ground for hints, but it’s clean.
“Hey, you okay?” he asks gently. You look at him blankly. “Did you throw up?” you shake your head. “Did you fall?” you shrug.
He sighs. “Are you hurt?”
You shake your head again.
“Let’s get you up then,” he says, and you avert your eyes.
You miss the way his face falls. “Hey, really. Are you okay?” he asks again, still gentle despite his firmness. “You can tell me if you’re having a hard time.”
You don’t feel how your face twists in a grimace. You close your eyes and shake your head gently, slowly. Even when you blink them open again, you won’t look his way.
There’s a moment of quiet before he speaks. “I’m guessing you’re overwhelmed, we probably gave you too much. It’ll pass, okay? You won’t be stuck like this. Why don’t you come back and wait it out with the others? I think you’ll be more comfortable there.”
You look at him this time, sporting that pained expression, and shake your head.
It’s quiet while you watch him think. Eventually he asks, “Do you want to be alone?”
You immediately nod.
Another moment passes, his lips pressed in a thin line. “I don’t really feel comfortable leaving you alone,” he tells you. “But we can just hang out the two of us, okay? And we can do our own thing, not bother each other if you want. But I’m gonna make sure you have company.”
Your eyes glaze with tears and you curl away, facing him with your back.
“Hey,” he tries again. “I know we aren’t that close, but you can trust me, okay? Or I can get Kiri for you instead.”
He hears you exhale loudly and make a grunt of disagreement. He waits, crouched on the floor for you to elaborate. You eventually shift so he can see your face, shooting him a nervous look.
“Alone, please.”
“It’ll just be an hour with us,” Sero presses. “To make sure the peak passes.”
You stare ahead, pensively. “Just you,” you say. A flash of surprise crosses his features. “Just an hour.”
He nods in satisfaction. “Yep, exactly. Now let's get up, yeah?”
The process is far from easy or short, but Sero handles it gracefully. He doesn’t rush you when you say you need another moment, and he’s patient as you adjust to sitting and then standing. His hand hovers over your backside, not making contact, but prepared in case you stumble. You walk slowly down the hall and eventually to the door of Kaminari’s room.
“I’ll grab our stuff and then we’ll go to yours.”
You nod and stay in the hall as Sero steps inside. You hear him huff a laugh and say, “Did she really fall asleep too?”
“They okay?” Kirishima immediately asks, ignoring the question.
“Yeah,” Sero responds calmly. You hear sounds of shuffling. “A little out of it, I think we didn’t wait long enough before the first check in. I’m gonna chill in their room while they come down. Sorry to end things early.”
There’s a muffled grunt. “Are they in their room now? Can I come with?”
Your breath catches from behind the door, heart stirring.
The shuffling pauses. “Uhh…I’m not sure. I don’t wanna make it overwhelming.”
Rustling starts again, a weight lifting from the bed, and your heart thrums when you hear Sero’s voice get closer. “Man, I really wouldn’t push—”
Kirishima is in the doorframe, turning his head and then his body when he sees you. You try to stomp out your nerves at the sight of him and bring your hand up to wave awkwardly.
He visibly deflates, you wonder if in disappointment. “Oh, hey!” he says loudly, then widens his eyes at the volume. “Sorry,” he whispers, “Was hoping to catch you. Sero said you aren’t feeling well? I—”
You don’t hear the rest, eyes locked on his while he speaks. The usual white around his irises has a red tint, but it’s the only noticeable sign that he’s high. He sounds normal, chatting easily. You pout, remembering that you ate the same amount as him earlier. Why are you the only one dying?
Suddenly Kirishima is looking concerned, eyes wide and furrowed like that pitied gaze. As you tune back in you hear: “Shit, I’m sorry. Did I say something wrong? I didn’t mean to make you cry—”
You’re crying? You bring a hand to your cheek and pull away shining fingertips. You hear a sob, and then moments later realize it was you. Your vision blurs and you feel the faintest sliding of tears down your face. You bring your hands back up to wipe them away, but they pour faster in response. You see the blur of Kirishima’s panicked face, layered with confliction.
Why are you crying? you berate. Kirishima doesn’t deserve this: your messy, unpredictable spilling of emotions. Your skin heats in embarrassment, reddening with shame. Your hands shake as they continue to brush the tears away. You barely manage to stutter out an apology.
There’s a gentle touch on your arm. It’s warm, comforting, somewhat hesitant. Not meant for you, you think. Your crying continues, unchanged.
Suddenly you are tugged into an embrace of warmth. Your face presses against a soft cotton shirt, balmy and firm from the chest beneath it. Additional heat crawls around your waist and back from strong arms holding you close. You are so shocked from the gesture that your crying pauses, though only for a moment.
Then you cry harder, sobs wracking through the length of your body as you bury your head into the safety of Kirishima’s chest. You can feel him tense, his grip starting to loosen around you. Panic bubbles through you, and before you register your actions you are gripping his shirt—shoving your face further into him. His arms return their hold, tighter this time, and you respond by releasing his shirt to sneak your hands around his waist. When he doesn’t let go, you squeeze harder.
(Sero’s eyes widen from the doorway at the sight. Kirishima shoots him a look that could almost be considered a glare, but Sero shakes his head quickly.)
Suddenly you are hoisted upwards, your arms forcibly pulled from Kirishima’s torso to be replaced with your legs. Your head comes to rest in the crook of his neck and you bury it there, the wetness of your eyes and cheeks sticky against his skin. You’re embarrassed and eager for comfort, enough to disregard your remaining pride. You inhale shakily, lulled by the smell of a typical men’s soap mixed with a tang and the warmth of dust. Your body sways gently as he walks towards the elevator, the rock of a boat on calm water. It pours some stillness into your body. Your teary eyes raise over a large shoulder to see Sero trailing behind, watching with a guilty expression. You shove your head back down at the accidental eye contact.
The journey to your room is long, and you only realize it was the destination when you feel Kirishima sit and lower you onto his thighs—one large hand splayed against your back for stability. When your head is freed from the crease of his neck, you see your decorated wall behind him and the duvet of your bed. You lean back to offer him space, and let your eyes trail over the room. It’s yours, exactly how you left it. Except for Kirishima on your bed and Sero standing by the door, dumping everyone’s belongings on your desk.
When you look back at Kirishima he’s smiling softly, somewhat sheepishly. He speaks in a quiet and low voice. “Do you want me to move?”
It takes a few seconds to understand what he means, that he’s not sure if you’re comfortable in his lap like this. You look down at the tops of his thighs, noticing how he seated you by his knees—far from his hips. When you look back up his face is pink, and you flush at the implications of your staring.
Your answer is no. You want to tell him, but admitting it is impossible. You can’t get yourself to tell him yes, either.
He watches you closely before asking cautiously, “Is it okay if I stay like this?”
You nod easily at the reframing of the question, and he smiles gently. A tap on your shoulder draws your attention behind you, to Sero offering you some water. You take it and chug, only now noticing your thirst.
“Can I sit here too?” Sero asks, pointing to the bed. You nod while drinking.
You toss the bottle to the side when you finish, and meet Kirishima’s eyes tensely. The awkwardness starts to sweep over you, remembering that you’re sitting in his lap in the quiet room, both him and Sero watching you closely. Your mind is still cloudy, your body slow in sticky air. But you’re not alone in the bathroom. You aren’t sure if this is better or worse.
“Pretty hazy, huh?” Sero’s voice pulls you from your thoughts. You nod and he hums. “We’ll just hang with you while it passes, okay?”
“‘Kay,” you mumble. You look back to Kirishima and are given more smiles. While guilt still rests heavily in your stomach, you can’t help the feathery tickle of happiness in your chest. It’s selfish, you think, to have them like this—especially after your declaration to yourself in the bathroom—but you can’t get yourself to care. Your face curls into a slight smile, and it makes Kirishima beam.
It’s too much. His joy grabs your stomach in a tight fist and you have to look away. You feel eyes on you, and pull your head down to ignore them.
The hand on your back treads up and down carefully, soothingly. In a moment you are pressed gently into Kirishima’s chest, and you graciously take cover, hiding your face. His other hand glides around your waist and pulls you close. Warmth washes over you, the comfort of morning coals still hot from a night fire. It would relax you completely, if you weren’t on edge from your newfound closeness with your friend.
“Let us know if you need anything,” Kirishima’s voice rumbles through his chest. It reminds you of the distant rolling of a storm. “Anything, okay?”
You can only nod into his shirt, not willing to make eye contact. Your cheek presses against his heart, its beat thumping through your mind. It’s loud, like uncontained joy filling a room. But it’s slow, steady. You lean into it, let it set your rhythm for breathing. You inhale as four pulses pass, then exhale for five.
Time still treads slowly, wading through fog, but you notice you don’t resume your bathroom spiraling. You wonder if the heat of your friendly company is keeping you afloat. You wonder if it’s just postponing the eventual continuation of your drowning. You hear shuffling on your bed, Sero getting comfortable as he takes out his phone. Kirishima diligently rubs your back as he takes even breaths, the deep humming of his lungs pairing calmly with his heart.
Your mind wanders to gentler places, wondering why you deserve such care. Your heart deflates at the thought that it’s from pity—Kirishima’s sad eyes still haunting your memory. You don’t realize that your shoulders have tensed until a large hand trails up to softly coax them to relax. You exhale and let them fall.
It continues like this, Kirishima noticing your every movement, bringing attention to when you become rigid or unstable. He doesn’t say anything, only moves his hands to be a reminder, to your body and how it reacts to your emotions, your overthinking. Only when you feel settled in your skin, cradling the familiar weight of your own bones and flesh, do you realize how detached you were. You hadn’t actually re-entered yourself since you first looked at the top of your own head, only adjusted enough for it to feel normal. You wonder if that’s your default, if you ever feel embodied the way you are now. A long time passes, but it gets more comfortable the longer you sit in your friends hold.
You shift suddenly, from Kirishima adjusting himself. You bring your head up to look at him and he offers you an awkward smile.
“Need to use the bathroom,” he says quietly. A slight pang of disappointment runs through you, but you nod and lean to the side, catching yourself on the bed so he can get up. He stands slowly and gives each leg a moment to stretch. You make a face when his knees pop.
He smiles at you before turning to the door. “I’ll be right back, okay?” You hope he means the hugging, not just being in your room.
You nod as he exits. Your eyes linger on the door, body in a trance, until a dip of the mattress brings your attention to your side. It’s Sero, sitting up. He drops his phone on the bed, eyes focused on you.
“How’re you holding up?”
Your eyes fall to the duvet underneath you, fingers picking at invisible lint. “Better,” you answer.
“Good.” There’s an awkward pause before he continues. “Sorry I didn’t try harder to stop him earlier.”
You frown, brow furrowed in confusion.
He returns the look. “You said just me, in the bathroom,” he reminds you. “I didn’t know you weren’t so comfortable with him. Though I’m kind of glad he came anyway.”
Your frown deepens. “He doesn’t make me uncomfortable.”
“Oh,” he says. He looks like he wants to probe further.
“He…” you start, then pause. You look down as you continue, “I just don’t want him to be nice because he feels bad.”
“Wha—” Sero cuts himself off in disbelief. You miss his shocked face as you continue to pick at the blanket cover. “Hey, Kiri might have a strong moral compass, but he’s not your friend out of pity—none of us are.”
Your nose stings as you listen, eyes blinking carefully to prevent tears from spilling over. Your fist clenches the duvet tight enough to send prickles up your arm. A slender hand reaches to cover yours, urging it to relax.
“Hey,” he says gently. “I mean it. And I’m sorry if it hasn’t felt that way.”
Despite all the tears you’ve shed today, you still cry easily—an endless, open stream. You bring your free hand to wipe your eyes, and then attempt to cover your face from the embarrassment. Your chest hurts, heavy as it struggles to take air. You feel the mattress shift and a gentle touch at your back. It runs softly along your spine and you cry harder, releasing a small yelp. You pull the front of your shirt over your head to soak up your sounds and tears, reddening from the noises you don’t mean to release.
Sero keeps his distance, rubbing your back but not guiding you closer. It’s a different sort of comfort than Kirishima’s, a different consideration.
He speaks again once you’ve calmed. “I’m serious, though. I’m sorry if we ever made you feel unwelcome, because that’s definitely not the case.”
You inhale deeply and shrug. “It’s okay.” You sniffle and wince at your voice, its hoarseness. “It’s not your fault.”
“Still, I wish we could’ve made you comfortable enough to bring it up.”
You shake your head, thinking of your accidental confessional with Kirishima, your surprise at your own words and the way you told him to keep it secret, to forget about it, even. “It’s…it’s not just you all,” you try to explain. “I’m like this with everyone.”
He sighs and leans back against the wall. “We should be better about it than everyone else, then,” he says easily.
You huff, trying to brush away the lump in your throat. It comes with more stinging behind your eyes and you will it away, annoyed with your crying. You rub your shirt down your face one final time before dropping it and pouting. When you look at Sero you think he’s holding back a smile.
He looks nervous as he asks, “Can I give you a hug?”
You blink before nodding, moving closer to him by the wall. He leans towards you carefully, slowly, but his lean arms come over your shoulders to hold you close. His skin is cool and nice against your clamminess. He smells crisp and refreshing, unlike Kirishima’s dense warmth.
“Sorry I’m probably not as comfy as Kiri,” he says. You huff a laugh into his chest.
“Still nice,” you mumble into his collarbone. “Comfy in a different way.”
He laughs breathily, giving your back a couple pats before a final squeeze around your shoulders. When you pull away, shuffling to sit beside him, his arm lingers over your shoulders. It keeps you close, to lean into his side.
“This okay?” he asks. You mumble, “yeah,” in response.
The next few minutes pass quietly. You find the silence comforting, not the awkward tension you have with others. Something about him is easy and relaxed, nonchalant where you might normally panic. Even now in your close embrace, he handles it effortlessly.
He breaks the silence abruptly. “I’m also sorry we didn’t catch on sooner,” he says. “At the very least I should’ve known to not let you take so much.”
You pout. “Kirishima had the same as me and he’s okay.”
Sero sighs beside you. “He’s also probably double your weight. You seem similar to Jirou, where it takes a while to feel but it hits pretty hard, huh?”
“I guess,” you mumble. “I don’t have anything to compare it to.”
He hums and lifts his hand from your shoulder to pat your hair. “Well, regardless I’m sorry your first time wasn’t good. If you ever wanna try again we can plan the dosage better. And the environment.”
You roll your eyes and tell him that it’s unnecessary.
“No it’s not,” he says, frowning. “Seriously. I want you to have a good time.” He turns his head to look at you closely. “And…if you wanna talk about what tonight was like, I’d like to hear. Kiri would too, if you’re willing to include him.”
As if on cue, the redhead stumbles through the door. You look up to see his arms full of snacks and a mug in each hand.
“Sorry I took so long,” he says. “I got hungry. And I went to check on the girls but they’re still sleeping.”
“I just assumed you were taking a shit,” Sero says, watching as Kirishima approaches the bed and lifts his arms to let the snacks fall. “And don’t worry about them, Jirou always falls asleep. If Kaminari comes back he'll take care of them.”
You blink in surprise when one mug is offered to you. You take it slowly, inhaling steam and tanginess. “Thanks,” you say. You think you’d cry again if you weren’t so tired of it.
Kirishima beams in response, settling himself in front of you. He crosses his legs, a knee brushing over yours. You’re suddenly embarrassed by Sero’s arm around you, and you wonder if your red haired friend is upset. Then you realize he’s probably happy to be relieved from holding you.
“You didn’t get me one?” Sero pouts.
“Don’t worry, I put mine in a bigger mug so you can have some too,” Kirishima responds, extending his arm for Sero to have a sip.
You bring your cup to your lips, a mix of citrus and floral and sweet coating your tongue. “It’s good.”
“Chamomile and lemon,” Kirishima explains. “With some honey.”
You take a couple more sips, letting warmth soothe your throat and flood your chest. You look up from your mug to meet twinkling red eyes. You wonder why he looks so happy.
“Any updates?” he asks. “It seemed like I interrupted some chatting.”
You shrug. “Just that I’m feeling better.”
The redhead smiles excitedly. “That’s great to hear! Are you feeling normal?”
You purse your lips as you ponder. “My body feels a lot more normal,” you say vaguely. “But my heart is still racing. And my head’s hazy.” You also still feel anxious—more than usual—but you don’t mention it in case they probe further.
“That’s good.” Sero hums, and you see Kirishima’s eyebrows raise, like he wants to ask more. He glances towards Sero, unfolding a silent conversation, and you look away when you recognize it.
Before you can curl in on your own insecurity, Sero says, “It’s common to get anxious the first time you use. Did you feel like you were dying?”
You begin to shake your head, but pause. Your face scrunches in thought as you say, “After the movie. But then it was more that I was outside of my body and I couldn’t get back into it.”
Kirishima frowns and you think you can see the gears turning, metal churning in his mind. Sero speaks before it amounts to anything: “Maybe we can debrief more in the morning, when you’ve had some distance. Especially if you’re still foggy.”
You nod immediately, a wave of relief rolling through you. Kirishima’s shoulders drop, but he nods in understanding.
The night carries on with ease. Despite the bulk of the high having passed, the boys hang around and you don’t ask them to leave. The three of you end up squeezed under the covers, quietly munching on snacks while watching a show. You fall asleep after a few episodes, and your friends speak softly as they watch your steady breathing.
“Did I miss something?” Kirishima asks, tucked between you and the wall.
Sero shakes his head, laying on your other side by the edge of the bed. “Not much. I mostly just apologized for not noticing sooner. And for not being smarter about the dosage.”
The redhead frowns. “They cried again, though,” he says, remembering fresh smears of red around your eyes.
Sero blinks in realization. “Oh, right. Yeah.” Kirishima deadpans, unamused. Sero recalls what he can, when you said you didn’t want them to be nice because they felt bad. The redhead’s frown tugs further as he listens.
“Shit,” he mumbles. “Maybe I’ve been too pushy. They told me recently that they can have trouble with friend groups…I was trying to be more observant and include them when we’re all together but—maybe that’s not what they want.” His chest pangs at the thought that he could be making it harder for you.
Sero reads his friend easily, deciding to keep the bathroom conversation to himself. Instead he says, “I think they’re comfortable around you, just embarrassed. About sharing that kind of stuff.”
Kirishima looks at you, your sleeping form breathing beside him. You look uncertain even in your dreams, a slight crease burrowed between your brows. He sighs and lays back, eyes drifting to the ceiling. His heart clenches the way it normally does in your presence, this time with an additional pang of guilt.
“It’s not your fault,” Sero says. “We’ll talk in the morning, okay?”
The redhead closes his eyes and nods slowly. He lets out a breath before smiling and saying, “Yeah. Thanks, man.”
They shuffle themselves out of the bed carefully, Kirishima awkwardly crawling over you to avoid shifting the mattress. He releases a breath when he stands and you lay unbothered, still deep in dreamspace. He turns to Sero and they nod in unison, leaving quietly to ready for bed.
Waking is painful, your eyelids sticky against you. At first you try to fall back asleep, the effort of opening your eyes too grand. But the bathroom calls, and soon you are peeling them open—right first, then the left. You blink rapidly to grease them, taking in the lightness of the room. While your mind is still somewhat hazy, you recall everything in an instant. The anxiety lingers, carved distantly in your chest, but you feel grounded in your body.
You turn your head, remembering falling asleep between your friends, but they’re nowhere in sight. Disappointment makes that hollowness feel deeper, and you mentally chide yourself for being delusional. You huff and will yourself to sit, swinging your legs over the bed to head to the bathroom. You almost yelp when you look at the floor.
Kirishima and Sero are occupying the ground, the redhead’s limbs sprawled around him like a seastar, and the other laying as straight as a corpse. You watch the latter’s chest for several seconds to confirm he’s breathing. Then you tiptoe carefully, swiping your toiletries from your desk and delicately leaping to the other side of the room. You exit quietly, leaving a sliver of space between the door and the frame. Once in the hall you sprint to the bathroom and lock yourself in a stall.
You scowl. Minutes ago you were disappointed that your friends didn’t spend the night in your room, and then the moment you realized they did, you ran away.
Your time in the bathroom is primarily spent scrutinizing the events that unfolded the night before. You cringe as you count how many times you cried, your continuous blubbering to Sero. Postponing the “debrief” felt good at the time, but having this conversation sober feels immensely mortifying compared to admitting to these things while high. You could be playing off your words as a bad experience right now, and then returning to your grand plan of isolation.
It makes your heart feel funny to think that’s why Sero suggested it.
After you brush your teeth and wash your face, you stand idly by the sink. You take your sweet time returning to your room, and even then you can’t bring yourself to the door. You stop a few paces away when you hear murmuring inside. You contemplate booking it downstairs and saying you needed fresh air.
The squeak of the hinges seizes your options, and suddenly you are staring at a freshly-woken Kirishima. He rubs his eye with his knuckle and you watch as he brightens when he sees you.
“Hey!” he says. “We were wondering where you went.”
You freeze in place, feet cemented to the ground. Your fist clenches around your bag as you force a pained smile. “Bathroom.”
Kirishima’s face softens, eyes widening slightly. “You okay?”
You nod by default.
His eyes trace over your features, drifting along your brow and lips. When he speaks again, it’s much softer. “It’s just us.”
You blink, inhaling sharply. He extends a hand out to you, eyes wide and light. You stare at it, hand immediately lifting towards it before you stop yourself. He takes the pause in stride, still waiting, for when you eventually step forward and touch your fingertips against his palm.
He smiles at the contact and curls his hand around yours, layered petals of a rose. He’s warm and soft, and lets himself hold it carefully for a moment.
“Thanks,” he says before gently tugging you back inside the room. Your heart skips.
You almost laugh at the sight of Sero, on his knees and sleepily folding the blankets on the floor. His hair is matted in some spots while frizzy in others, and he looks incredibly tired.
“Mornin’,” he mumbles sleepily.
You return the greeting while Kirishima guides you through your room. When he reaches your bed, he asks to sit.
“You seem excited,” you blurt as you lower yourself next to him.
“I’m always excited to talk to you.”
You flush at the admission and dart your eyes to Sero. You feel betrayed by his lack of reaction, still folding the blankets.
“Okay…” you trail off, unsure how to respond.
Kirishima takes it easily. “How are you feeling?”
You want to say nervous. Instead you say, “Normal.”
“Good normal?” Sero chimes in.
You’re taken aback by the clarification. “Normal normal,” you say.
The pause that follows is enough time to bring unease into your body. It seeps from your shoulders to your chest, and then collects in your stomach. You frown.
“I’m sorry,” you say when there’s still no response. You ignore their looks of confusion and let yourself blabber. “For making you babysit me. But thanks…I appreciate it, and I think it’s what I needed.”
“Anytime,” Kirishima says immediately. “Don’t apologize, we wanted to. We like hanging out with you.”
Instead of reassuring you, it pulls your face further into a frown. While you know Kirishima to be earnest, he doesn’t usually say these things to you outright. You wonder if he’s trying to be nice, to soften the prickles of your embarrassment.
Your skepticism must show. His face twists in a grimace and he loosens his hold on your hand—an unfurling petal. “Sorry, was that too much?”
You feel like a withered flower yourself, still stomaching your fears but beyond your capacity. It only takes a few shakes for your dried leaves to scatter. You brace yourself as you release them. “It’s just…you don’t have to say stuff like that.”
The air stills at your words. Sero’s folding stops, and you feel Kirishima’s rigidness through his hand. You stare down at it, avoiding the way his eyes track you closely. He says carefully, “But I mean it.”
The words sift right through you, a ghost passing by. You’re so numb to all the bad scenarios in your head, you don’t know how you feel when the opposite occurs. Your response comes out equally unfeeling.
“It’s hard to believe,” you say, the words empty on your tongue. You want to slam your head in the wall for sounding so dramatic.
The hand over yours tightens. A dip on your other side indicates Sero has joined. You remain still, but your heart races beneath your stoicism. A soft pressure grazes your back, Sero’s gentle fingers. It’s distant, a contrast to the vice grip on your hand. But both touches are caring: one offering patience while the other expresses need.
“Can you tell us about last night?” Sero asks quietly.
You try.
The words flow slowly. You pick them carefully, focusing on explaining sensations rather than your emotional journey. You describe how you felt at the end of the movie, the full force of your altered state, how time passed and you drifted further and further from yourself. You vaguely mention your overthinking, overanalyzing every interaction you noticed. You recount staring in the mirror until your legs gave out. You tell Kirishima that he helped guide you back into your own body.
Sero grimaces when you finish and says, “That sounds rough. I really am sorry—for not paying better attention.”
Kirishima nods in agreement while you shrug and say, “It’s okay.”
The three of you chat softly, mostly you answering when they ask for details. Sero looks intrigued, admitting that he hasn’t heard much about dissociation while using, but that it makes sense. His questions are easy—clinical, even. Kirishima asks the harder ones, trying to reign in answers that you’re too embarrassed to give.
“Do you have any guesses for what triggered it?”
You chew on the inside of your cheek, attempting to craft a response that doesn’t sound incredibly depressing.
Before you can speak, he asks, “Do you think it has to do with what you told me before? About being with bigger groups of people?”
The aversion of your eyes is enough of an answer. You stare at the rumpled blanket beneath you, busy your free hand by attempting to smooth out a patch of wrinkles. Eventually you nod.
You feel a squeeze around your other hand—the one still in Kirishima’s. You bring your eyes to his cautiously. “Can you tell us?” he asks. “We’re interested in hearing why.”
You swallow as you grimace. You think of words that can soften the edges of your thoughts. You settle on: “I think seeing myself from the outside made me realize that I don’t really contribute to the friend group.”
Their surprised looks make you flush, but you continue carefully when they encourage you. “I just…I don’t know why I get invited to hang out when I hardly ever speak. Hagakure is actually invisible and she’s more noticeable than me.”
Sero looks at you thoughtfully. “Do you like hanging out with us?” he asks.
You nod.
“Do you want to talk and be a bigger part of the conversation?”
You still, not expecting to be asked so directly. The answer sits at the tip of your tongue, but your eyes and nose sting. You swallow and take a few breaths before responding as evenly as you can. “I just…don’t want you all to think I’m lame, or stupid.”
They both shift at that, turning closer towards you. It makes you falter on your spot of the bed, your free hand pressing down for balance. You hear both of your friends start a response, then cut themselves off at the sound of the other’s voice. There’s a moment of silence, an exchange of glances you don’t see, and then finally Kirishima speaks first.
“We would never think that,” he says. “We invite you because we want to get to know you better. We want you to talk openly.”
Sero nods and adds, “I think you’re also forgetting that half of us are idiots. We’re always goofing around and saying stupid shit anyways. Besides, we know you’re smart.”
The huff of laughter that escapes you is genuine, but easily stomped as more insecurities rise within you, the beginning of a boil. You can’t stop now that you’ve started. “It’s hard, when everyone already seems so close,” you say. It reminds you of last night, when Sero said Kaminari was used to dealing with Jirou falling asleep in his room.
Sero hums. “I can understand that being difficult, since we’re closer to each other than you. But Kiri’s right, we wanna get to know you too. If it’s hard as a group, we can always hang out separately. Like now.”
Kirishima adds, “And the others would too.”
Your stomach squeezes at the thought of asking any of them to spend time with you, but you nod regardless and say, “Okay.” They don’t seem convinced.
“Is there anything we can do in the meantime?” Kirishima presses. “To make you feel more included? When we’re all together, I mean.”
You bite your tongue, an obvious answer ready. But it’s hard to say these things openly. Sero notices and says, “Really, anything.”
Your heart is still uneasy, but you shovel through your embarrassment. “I like when people ask me questions. It’s hard to jump into a conversation by myself.”
Kirishima brightens, as if you’ve offered him a gift. “Oh! That makes sense. Aw man, I wish I’d noticed sooner. I always have so many questions about you, but I don’t wanna overwhelm you.”
You blink in surprise at his words, a weight lifting from your chest. You feel excited by the admission, and embarrassed. You think the shift of energy in the room is palpable, much lighter than when you first came back from the bathroom. You smile sheepishly.
“Then can I ask…” he continues, “Last night—Were you okay with the touches? I’m big on hugging, but I probably should’ve been better about asking. That’s my bad. You can always tell me to stop.”
You shake your head easily. “No, it was nice. Like I said earlier, I think it helped.”
The redhead beams, hand tightening over yours. “That’s awesome to hear. I’m always open to it, y’know? I love hugging my friends and cuddling.”
Your cheeks darken at the honesty. You know you won’t ever feel brave enough to ask, but you nod in understanding.
Sero huffs beside you. “We all do,” he says. “Even Bakugou. He’ll complain but he never moves.”
You smile at the comment, though not even a possibility to entertain. You prefer avoiding the blond at all costs.
Kirishima is still smiling at you, with a joy you can’t understand. “Thanks for telling us,” he says softly, rubbing his thumb against your palm. You only find it in yourself to nod, heart quivering at his gentleness.
“Thanks for asking,” you say. You have to tear your eyes away from Kirishima, his smile widening in such earnestness that you can’t let yourself entertain what it might mean. Instead you catch Sero’s easy grin, a calmer space.
Maybe he notices your antsiness, because he looks to Kirishima and says, “Maybe we can chat more at breakfast? I’m getting hungry.”
It’s easy bait for the redhead, immediately biting. “Oh, of course, man. You want me to cook you something? I’ve been wanting to try making an omelet, I heard you can get a ton of protein in the morning that way.”
You have to bite your lip to suppress the giant grin that crawls up your face. Sero catches it as he wears his openly. “Sounds awesome,” he says to Kirishima before looking back at you. “We’ll go take our stuff back to our rooms and then meet you downstairs?”
You nod, sliding off the bed while they gather their blankets and pillows. You open the door as they enter the hall. Sero nudges Kirishima onwards before turning to shoot you a smile. You take the stairs to avoid sharing the elevator.
The common room is surprisingly empty when you enter, despite approaching noon. While you pull eggs from the fridge and whatever other things you think belong in an omelet, Kaminari stumbles through the door. You wave when he spots you.
“Hey!” he says brightly, bouncing over. “How was the rest of your night?”
“Good,” you say simply, tired of talking about it.
His eyes shine when he spots the food on the counter. “Woah, you’re making breakfast?”
You watch his face morph into a pout, a plea. “Kirishima is,” you say. “I’ll tell him to make extra for you.”
He grins. “You’re the best.”
You blink in surprise, watching him pull out his phone and lean against the counter. Not knowing what to say, you ask about his time with Shinsou.
“Hmm? It was good,” he replies, thumb scrolling mindlessly. He brightens and then starts typing before saying, “Oh! He wants to try this cafe tomorrow, apparently they have tons of different chocolate options. You should totally come if you’re free.”
He turns his phone to you, showing an array of desserts. They look good, ones you would seek out on your own. But your brow furrows, wondering why he’d want you to third-wheel his date. “It looks really good,” you say.
“I know!” he exclaims. “You always eat those chocolate covered snack things, this seems like your style.”
You freeze at his words. Your heart lifts in your chest, but you carefully maintain a blank face.
“Anyways, let me know,” he says. He pushes away from the counter and heads toward the elevator. “I’ll be back down in a second!”
You are left alone and stunned in the kitchen. You frown, wondering if Kirishima or Sero set him up after the conversation minutes ago. Why else would he ask you to come along? Especially with him and Shinsou. Was he really that observant? Why would he even notice?
Your mind trails back to your conversation with the boys this morning. We wanna get to know you.
You inhale deeply, puffing your cheeks as you hold your breath. After a few seconds you let it expel slowly. Maybe Kaminari and Shinsou just want to hang out—with you. Maybe they don’t mind that you’re quiet. Your body tingles.
Ten minutes later you are wedged between Sero and Kaminari, the three of you on chopping duty while Kirishima whips eggs on the other side of the counter.
“So, you think you’ll come along?” Kaminari asks while the other two argue over how many peppers to use. You nod, and he brightens. “Awesome! I’ll tell Toshi.”
Your eyebrows raise at the nickname, then at the way the blond licks the remnants of tomato off his fingers to type on his phone.
When the others cast curious glances, you quietly explain. “We’re going to a cafe tomorrow.”
Kirishima immediately blinks, saying, “Wait—” while Sero gasps dramatically. You furrow your eyes in confusion until the latter asks, “Where’s our invite?”
Kaminari snickers. “Toshi says the rest of you are too loud. He wants a peaceful day out.”
Kirishima’s face falls into a pout and you feel bad at your growing smile. For the second time today, you bite down on your lip to suppress it, but Sero notices. He makes a show of his own exaggerated petulance, but then it morphs into another easy grin. You think he looks happy for you.
“Let’s study together today,” you tell Kirishima. At his immediate switch to a joyful smile, you let yours return. You feel yourself beaming like an idiot.
“Oh, let me join!” Kaminari says. “You’re so good at English, and I need so much help.”
“No!” Kirishima immediately protests. “You can ask Bakugou. You’re already stealing them tomorrow.”
The noise that leaves the blond is akin to a squawk. “I said I want to be tutored, not bullied—”
You giggle as they bicker, turning back to your onion as you feel your cheeks heat. You continue chopping, embarrassed by the attention. A nudge from your left makes you look up, eyes connecting with Sero’s. He gives you a wink and then sticks out his tongue. You return the gesture.
Your heart still beats quickly and you feel the familiar tingle of nerves thrum through your hands. Your mind has a slight haze, a tough stain left by the previous night. Your cheeks are warm from embarrassment. You cringe at the mere thought of the conversation in your room earlier.
But you’re moving forward, you think. To the cafe with Kaminari and Shinsou, to study with Kirishima. To let your friends in just a little bit, and to begin this careful exploration of yourself in the process.
You always thought the circus was where you yearned to be. At least, until it finally let you in—and introduced you to Hanta Sero.
[circus AU where seamstress!reader and acrobat!sero realize that their lives have been running parallel for a long time, and it’s up to you to weave them together]
part 1: one brighter than the rest.
sero hanta x reader
ch 1/6 | 12.1k words | masterlist | ao3
cw: mentions of past death of a family member
notes: chapter song is gloria by kendrick & sza
the circus arrives in Milan, and you arrive at the circus. someone special welcomes you personally.
✰.
"Inside every adult there's still a child that lingers. We're happiness merchants—giving people the opportunity to dream like children."
-Guy Laliberte, co-founder of Cirque du Soleil
The circus is coming. For you.
✰.
The knock on your door is five minutes late. It raps with firm rapidness, demanding a sense of urgency. You scramble to stand from your seat, dishes clattering against the table when you bump it with your knee, and scurry to greet your guest. He looks unamused when you tug the door open, eyes barely darting over unkempt hair and wrinkled clothing—maybe because he looks the same. You don’t bother with greetings, instead informing him that you’ll open the garage.
You kick the door closed as you start down the hall. The floorboards squeak under quick steps, feet threatening to slip from the softness of your socks. They’re struck with a chill on the soles when they land on bare concrete, carrying you along the wall to press the button on its surface.
Light slowly floods your workspace, trickling in from the bottom as the shutter lifts from the ground. Green grass and grey pavement fill the frame, soon joined by the red brick of neighboring buildings. The chilly air of February rushes in, prickling your uncovered arms with goosebumps. Grating sounds soak the air, rusted joints running along the frame of the large garage door.
The man is still by your front door, typing rapidly on his phone, when you step out onto the driveway.
“Qui!” You wave him over.
It successfully grabs his attention, pulling his head up and starting towards you. He looks annoyed.
“I don’t know Italian.”
You blink in realization. “Oh,” you say, preparing your brain to switch to English. “Sorry, I was telling you to wait by the garage.”
He nods curtly, eyes moving from you to the mannequin near the center of the room. He slips his hand into his pocket, digging out a key. “I’ll back up the van.”
You use the time to wheel your work to the edge of your studio. Tender fingers carefully grasp the waist of the wool figure—now draped in layers of delicate fabric and feathers—as you press your foot against the latch of the wheels, unlocking them. The mannequin gently rolls forward with your guidance until you step on the lock again. You look fondly at the gown, recounting the many transformations it went through to get here. Sleepless nights, panicked phone calls, trial and error. Despite the vexation this dress throttled you with for the past few months, a tremor waves through your heart knowing that you’ll part with it soon.
You turn to retrieve three other items. The first is a massive headpiece, delicate and jarring as you walk the display head to sit next to its counterpart. The other two are boxes, one filled with extra fabric and feathers, folds and wispy tufts spilling from the rough cardboard, smaller containers of beads and faux jewels shaking within. Another is a carefully organized plastic bin: your essential tools, the only orderly part of your process.
The man stops the van just before the garage door, right as you set the box behind your mannequin. He moves to open the metal doors, the click of the latch and squeaking hinges welcoming you into the dark space. There’s an assortment of cardboard boxes coating the floor—makeshift cushions, so the mannequin won’t slide en route. You unlock the wheels of the figure once again as the driver pulls out the ramp. Once it rests steadily on the ground, you push forward carefully.
You pause at the sound of rustling behind you. Turning to see the man lifting the box of fabric, you relax at the sight and continue your journey onwards. You nudge boxes with your foot, still bare of shoes, and slip the support of the mannequin between them. When it’s far enough inside to put you at ease, you hurry back down the ramp to retrieve the headpiece.
Once your supplies and costume pieces are secured in place, the driver looks at you expectantly from outside the van. You shake your head as you walk down the ramp.
“I’ll sit back there with it,” you tell him, unwilling to take the smallest chances. He nods unbothered. “I’ll just be a minute.”
You head back through the garage and into the hall, pulling your socks off and strewing them across the ground. You quickly gather your essentials and slip on a new change of clothes—wrinkled and sloppy, but warm enough to withstand the chilly air. You step haphazardly into your shoes and inhale the remainder of your breakfast before returning to the garage. You smack the button on the wall, dash to the closing door, and then step over the sensor while crouching under the door in time to leave. The driver is still waiting, eyes passing over you when you scurry into the back.
He pauses before closing the door, metal slamming against itself with a clang. You are shrouded in darkness, eyes fuzzy as they slowly adjust. You catch the silhouette of bundled feathers, the curve of fabric wrinkled around the waist of your model. A sliver of light peeks through the corners of the van, enough to vaguely illuminate the royal red of your gown. You carefully slip your legs under the cage of the skirt, holding the support stand between your calves while your feet press against the top of the pedal. The dress is still warm from your garage, warmer than the cold bench you’re seated on. You grasp the neck of the display head at your side, holding it sturdy as the engine thrums to life. The first lurch of the car has your heart pausing in anticipation, body clenched to keep everything steady, but you relax when the vehicle presses forward smoothly.
Once you confirm the steadiness of your hold and the driving, you fumble for your phone. The time reads just a quarter past noon—you’re moving faster than expected. You open your messages and send a one-handed text that you just left your apartment. The response is immediate: ‘See you soon!!’
You cradle your projects for nearly half an hour. Despite the darkness, you can follow the journey of the van from the sensations of the drive alone—the turns from one road to another, the oscillation between smooth pavement and bumpy cobblestone paths. You know this route from the western outskirts of Milan into the Cerchia dei Navigli, a bustling center of ornate gothic structures, rich opera history, and lines of designer boutiques. The essence of fresh pasta dishes and red wine wafts through the openings of the van. The storefront of your favorite osteria runs through your mind, spilling clusters of tables and chairs into the street, along with clinking glasses and the ting of silverware.
You relax, imagining the comforts of your regular places. Their distant visuals soften the thumping in your chest.
It’ll be fine. You know your client will like your work, you know the gown functions as it needs to, and you know your craftsmanship. Your work is good. You know this. The only variable left is transportation, which has nearly come to an end. You feel the van stop, the engine quieting with it.
Your legs relax and loosen their hold on the mannequin. Clanging erupts from the back of the aluminum cage, the driver pulling the doors open. You’re momentarily blinded by a burst of sunlight, reflecting off the white and red fabric you are parked before—stretched canvas taught against the framed structure beneath. You waste no time standing and shoving boxes out of the way, unlocking the mannequin wheels to walk it down the ramp. The driver watches closely, but waits silently as you reenter to get the headpiece.
You hear a shout as you walk down the ramp. It comes from a soft voice, sounding almost nervous. “Aizawa-san!” It calls, a stream of Japanese following. The driver turns his head at the sound. You realize it must be his name, recognizing the honorific.
When you step down onto the plaza, you catch sight of the owner of the voice: a man with striking green curls, some sticking against his forehead and cheeks. He wears a tight-fitted top that reads “practice shirt” and a pair of athletic shorts. He converses with who you assume is Aizawa, and you realize he must be one of the acrobats.
His eyes dart to you, then the mannequin head. His eyes brighten, almost shine, and suddenly you are bombarded with a slew of questions, spoken in heavily accented English.
“Wow! You must be the artist Kendou commissioned! Is that Momo’s costume? It’s incredible! It reminds me of Carnival in Asakusa—”
The rest of the words pass through you, a jumble you can hardly understand—both from the speed of his rambling and his accent. But you smile brightly at the compliment. The mention of Asakusa Samba with its feathers and accessories, patterns blending traditions from across the globe, was exactly the vision. Yours takes a much more modest approach, but the influence is clear—at least for someone who knows their Carnival. You appreciate someone who can trace those lines of inspiration, pick apart your brain and your thought process. It strikes you with a special sort of pride.
Before you can respond, the man you’ve decided is Aizawa interjects. “Midoriya.”
The mumbling halts and now the curly man is blushing, waving his arms around. “Gah! Sorry... I—”
Aizawa cuts him off, saying something in Japanese and gesturing to the van. To get your boxes, you think. He turns to you. “Which one should I carry?”
Your stomach clenches. You don’t like the idea of either being out of your control, but the answer is obvious. You hand him the mannequin head, watching as he grasps it by the neck and then immediately turns to walk away. You hold the waist of your mannequin and follow him slowly. The eagerness in your heart, the prospect of being so close to finished, calls you to sprint forward, to see this through. But you force yourself to walk slower than normal, to let this final moment stretch on a little longer. You know when you return home later, to a studio empty of its recent fixation, you’ll feel hollow inside.
As you wheel the dress along the giant tent, your eyes drift up its shaped canvas cover, stark against the blue sky. Yesterday this piazza was empty, holding its usual clusters of tourists and performers and lingerers. Overnight, a structure large enough to hold a stage and an audience was erected. People knew the circus was coming—Hoshi no Sākasu, Circus of the Stars—and yet as per usual, it appeared in an instant. Impossibly.
You feel giddy, brimming with curiosities about the magic these people can conjure. How does an auditorium simply appear? And in the middle of one of Milan’s most notorious attractions, now fenced along the edges. But Hoshi no Sākasu is notorious for these sorts of stunts. You’re familiar with the circus, having been a fan of costumes and impossibilities since a child, but you’ve never known magic like this.
Your eye catches a gap in the fabric, a flap gently brushed open. You can see the stage setup at the front, the congregation of various athletes on their props. You yank your head forward, away from the tempting preview of the show to come. You don’t like to spoil these events for yourself, too invested in viewing the delivery of a performance as an unsuspecting spectator—a blank slate for a story to unfold.
You hear a huff beside you: Midoriya, having caught up somehow carrying both boxes—your plastic bin awkwardly small under the larger cardboard box. You feel some unease at his determination to make one trip, but your watchful eyes don’t catch any real problems with his method.
“It’s okay to have a look,” he says somewhat breathless. “Knowing what happens behind the scenes can make the performance more enriching!”
“And ruin the surprise?” you ask. “I’ve never seen a Hoshi no Sakasu performance. I want my first time to leave me blown away.”
He gapes. “You’ve never seen one? I thought circus costuming was one of your biggest inspirations. You said you’ve seen nearly a dozen of Cirque du Soleil’s shows, and you’re familiar with most other major circus productions.”
A wave of embarrassment rolls over you. The feeling festers in your shoulders, making you want to hide behind your mannequin. It’s one thing for people to know your work, mostly opera gowns and period dresses. It’s another to meet someone who’s read you, articles and interviews you couldn’t force yourself to relive. Not that you made any particular fumbles, but you never do well under spotlight. You prefer the shadows of the costume rooms, creating opulent or kitschy regalia for others to flaunt.
“It is. I have,” you respond. “But your circus has only toured in Asia. And I can’t watch online performances before the real thing.”
Midoriya makes a thoughtful noise beside you. You worry that he’s going to launch into another tirade of mumbling when you see Aizawa enter the next flap of the tent. You decide to speed your walking to a normal pace.
“Is this the wardrobe?” you ask.
Midoriya brightens, switching gears with ease. “Yes! Kendou and Momo are there now. These tents are such interesting spaces—”
You see it for yourself when you enter, carefully pulling the loose canvas aside to roll the mannequin along. The room is large with awkward corners, the chord of a circle. You catch the section of the wall with the stage entrance where the performers are currently congregated behind, separated only by a curtain. Chattering and clattering waft through the opening, the ambiance of their practice. There are props strewn about backstage, scatterings of belongings laying on tables with giant mirrors, and an array of costumes hanging on moveable coat racks. Your hands grip the waist of your lay figure, itching to sift through the final designs for the show.
You stop yourself when you catch fiery orange hair. “Kendou,” you say excitedly.
She leaps to you, away from Aizawa and the headpiece, and gasps, eyes twinkling with excitement as she calls your name in return.
“Wow,” she says, running a hand slowly over the dress. She gently lifts the base of the first layered skirt ruffles, threading her fingers along the wrinkles, the transition of red to white beneath. “You dyed it perfectly. And the details... just wow. I knew you were perfect for the job.”
That sensation of pride creeps back up your body, pulling you to stand straight with a grin. This piece was one from your roots—reaching back to your early works of parade dresses and costumes based on the birds of your home. You consider yourself an expert on the matter, emulating silhouettes and movements of macaws, toucans, hummingbirds. Even the mythical creature you were challenged to emulate for this dress, the mighty phoenix, you knew was well within your wheelhouse.
The process, admittedly, was the most challenging part. Rather than starting with fabrics and textures, design for this production began with a clear goal: the phoenix, and the mechanics of the gown in the illusion that would unfold. You started with white fabric and a silhouette, working with the proportions of Momo’s body and the creature in your objective. Then you iterated through textures, round after round of cutting fabric edges, stitching, adjusting, deciphering the best method of wrapping the fabric on Momo’s body. Afterwards came sizing, which involved a plane ride from Musutafu to Milan, for Momo to try on the prototype, finalize the details of the fit, and test how the fabric and headpiece would move during the choreography. Once you knew her patterns, it was time to dye and cut and stitch, a grind to complete the final work in just two weeks. You finished the base of the dress in two days, the headpiece in two, and spent five grueling over details—sewing in stones and feathers, and making additional fabric details to fix in place. You gave yourself a few days to stop thinking about it as best you could, before spending the past days fine-tuning the details.
Momo approaches, eyes glassy with awe. “It’s incredibly beautiful. We were right to trust you. I can’t believe this is the result.”
You appreciate them, their trust. The gown was just a swath of white fabric when they visited, still rough around the edges. Enough to understand how it would move and appear in silhouette, but requiring an active imagination to see it as a finished piece.
But enough praise. You want to see it on.
“Shall we?” you ask.
The energy shifts immediately. Kendou is behind you, taking in your instructions for the best process to get the gown from the mannequin to Momo. You first unlatch the crinoline from the waist of your figure, gently pulling it down. Kendou has to help you remove the figure from the support so you can free the hoop skirt and hand it to Momo. While she steps out of her outer clothes and brings the frame in place, you notice neither of the men have left. Aizawa watches blankly while Midoriya averts his eyes, choosing instead to stare at the headpiece on the table.
Once the support is secured, you remove the dress from the mannequin. You make a show of where the zipper starts and how far it runs for Kendou to reference. You lift the sleeves upwards, Kendo’s sturdy hands assisting you, and Midoriya steps in to help, carefully grabbing the bunched fabric of the skirt. It lifts easily over Momo, lowering in time for her to slip her arms through the sleeves. Once her hands appear from cinched wrists, you immediately begin to adjust, picking at the fabric around her waist to smooth out any twisting. Kendou traces along the neckline to straighten it. You look at Midoriya, the way he awkwardly tries to fluff the fabric over the hoop skirt. You swoop in to help, fingers confident as they unpin the bundle of chiffon at the back, letting it spill vibrant orange—hot magma, you think—onto the ground, protected by a sheet.
You hear Midoriya squeak as your hands skirt past his, essentially smacking them aside.
“Sorry!” he squeaks. “The other costume crew are out right now. I don’t normally get to help.”
You huff with a smile. “It’s fine. You like being on wardrobe duty?”
“Yes!” he says immediately. “It’s interesting to think about what types of fabric or shapes suit the acrobats and their acts. It really brings the characters alive, and yet not something I’ve had many chances to explore!”
You hum in agreement as you turn to the table with the headpiece. You gently work the elastic off, gripping at the hard plastic further up. Once secure in your grasp, you turn to hold it over Momo’s head, her hands meeting yours to catch the edges. It sits snug and straight despite the asymmetrical display of feathers. They fan to your right and sway gently with her movement. You let Kendou fuss with the details, ensuring it sits comfortably while you take a step back to admire the costume in full.
Even in the backroom, the costume has a magnifying presence. It commands attention. You let your eyes scan down Momo’s figure, the details of the feathered top that transitions into the mask, swirls of wire and mesh covering the top of Momo’s face, pointed dramatically at the ends in a sharp beak. Delicate pieces of wire frame her like a halo, tipped with feathers and sparkling gold jewels. They bounce softly with the slightest turn of her head, twinkling under the lights.
Her collarbones are framed by a heart-shaped neckline coated in sheer ruffles. They match the fabric of the shoulders and arms, cinched and falling in a classic bishop sleeve, sporting additional ruffling at the wrists. The chiffon is a bright red, tipped with the pop of orange. The bust of the dress is a contrasting dark maroon, coated with your signature detailing—intricately sewed jewels, beads, and buttons in abstract swirling patterns. The detailing trails down the waist, and fades into the front of the skirt. The fabric below the hips is generously layered, appearing dark and red as it sits upon itself and runs an inch on the floor. The transparent ribbons of orange lay elegantly on the ground, wrinkled carefully to retain volume. One of the bottommost layers of fabric is embroidered with the cursive swoops of your artist’s name: Verde, meaning green in both Italian and Spanish.
When the outfit is secure, Momo takes a few steps as a test. The fabric flutters over her arms and swishes around her waist. She experimentally spins, only about a quarter turn, and your breath hitches. The layered skirt lifts perfectly, exposing the bright white fabric below. You can imagine the act with full clarity, what will unfold on the stage.
“Ugh,” Kendou groans with delight. “It really... It's perfect. I couldn’t have dreamed of anything better. It’ll be the center of the show, like we wanted.”
Your heart swells further at the compliment. This is what those sleepless nights and raw fingertips were for, what they amount to. Not the praise, but the fulfillment of a vision—a dream finally coming to life.
Midoriya breaks you from your trance. “This is incredible! The costume crew and Momo have kept the rest of us in the dark the whole time. The others are going to be blown away when they see it.” He traces a gentle hand along one of the layers of the skirt. “Is it silk and chiffon? I’m trying to learn more about fabrics.”
You nod. “Chiffon for the sheer fabric, but a silk alternative for the skirt and bust. I’ve been experimenting with different alternative fabrics, and your team agreed to let me use plant lyocell after looking at my other pieces and how they’ve aged. It’ll be fine since Momo’s act isn’t demanding on the costume.”
Midoriya’s eyes shimmer, but Momo chimes in before he can respond. “I hope my performance can live up to the extravagance of this dress. I’m sure you have a critical eye for opera with your line of work.”
You roll your eyes. “You and your voice are stunning. It’ll be the best performance I’ve ever seen,” you reply honestly. “I’ve never been to an opera with an entire circus backing it up. Besides, I’m tired of standard gowns.” It pays well, with old money and prestige, but you inch closer to losing your sanity everytime you make another sleek, dark gown. You want flare and drama and the room to be eccentric. This commission was heaven sent, for giving you something you’ve been craving.
“Ever think about circus costume?” Kendou asks. “Full time, full commitment?”
You freeze. Your eyes blink rapidly, your heart following its pace. You tread carefully, unsure if this is a job offer or a thought experiment. “In my dreams. Never thought it was possible, though.”
You see Momo’s eyes widen at the admission. Kendou continues, “It is, for you. You should consider it.”
Your fingers tingle, body thrumming with anticipation. You think you might be sick. You look at her pleadingly. “Kendou, I have orders through June—”
She shakes her head. “Afterwards. Our traveling season ends in September. October is when we start preparations in Japan.”
There’s a lump in your throat you can’t swallow. You try to calm your expression, knowing you look like a deer in headlights, but your mind races with possibility. Then it fills with logistical questions—your home, your studio, the language barrier. You try to blink them away as you look into Kendou’s teal eyes. They’re strong, intense. One eyebrow is quirked, challenging you. For a moment you see the bright blue of the sea in her irises, waving against the black sand of her pupils.
She speaks before you do. “Just think about it, yeah? You have time. We can talk it over.”
All you manage is a nod, afraid of the noise you might make if you speak. Your eyes move to the others in the room, Momo’s curious gaze and Midoriya’s shining expression. Aizawa still looks bored, unbothered, and you find comfort in his nonchalance.
You clear your throat, ready to change the topic. “Okay. Is there anything else we need to run through? Adjustments? Final touches?”
Kendou waves her hand, turning back to Momo. “You should go, take the day off. You know I won’t botch your work. It’s perfect anyways.”
Despite your hammering heart wanting to run yourself out of the tent, your mind whirs at the potential work to do. “Are you sure?” you ask. You trust Kendou and her skillful touch, but this was your baby for months. Your stomach clenches knowing it’s no longer in your hands.
“Go,” she says, then turns to Midoriya. “You too, you should get lunch together. We need to get the dress on the stage, and we don’t need you pulling a muscle last minute again.”
His freckled face flushes, eyes widening comically. You see the start of a protest form on his lips before you interject. “You get to have real Italian pizza yet?”
He shakes his head slowly, eyes trailing to you.
“C’mon, I’ll treat you,” you say. You would rather run out of here alone, to call your friend Chiara and hyperventilate over Kendo’s offer. But you’re drawn to circus people, those who get paid to make a spectacle of themselves. You can postpone your breakdown to indulge in time with a professional clown.
He flushes a shade darker, before stuttering through an, “O-okay!”
Kendo’s mouth smirks in your periphery while she examines the details of the dress, fussing over the ruffles on the shoulder. “Change into something warm,” she instructs.
The tumble of syllables that fall from his mouth are incoherent—you can’t tell if they’re Japanese or gibberish, maybe both. He scurries to the tables where bags and clothes are gathered, pulling out a square yellow pack. He grabs for a pile of fabric and then rushes into one of the changing stalls.
You pull out your phone, glancing at the time before opening your messages. You send a slew to your friend, getting the main point across that you need to talk later. Desperately. You notice a recent message from your sister and quickly swipe it away without reading it.
Aizawa’s voice pulls your attention back. “Do you need a ride?”
You turn to him, shaking your head. “No, we’ll be in the area. I can take the mannequin back with me on the metro later.” You pause before adding, “Thanks for driving. I can’t stand packing costumes. And sorry for the awkward first meeting... Aizawa?”
He nods, affirming the name. “It’s fine, it wasn’t any issue. It’ll have to be packed when we’re on the road, but Kendou will manage fine.”
“Aizawa’s one of the producers,” Momo says.
Your eyes widen, heart stumbling to your stomach. A producer? You recount the way you hurried him along just an hour earlier. Maybe he was nonchalant about Kendo’s job proposal because he was planning to make her rescind it. He laughs dryly at your expression.
“Don’t worry,” he says with a dark mirth. “I know how you costume people get, especially close to showing.”
You are saved by the return of Midoriya, dressed in a silhouette you think is quite stylish, but you have to suppress a grin at the clash between the garments. Bright dotted yellow lays against patterned maroon, flush against saturated cobalt painted with white details. Primary colors. You like this guy.
You tell Kendou that you’ll be back after lunch, at the very least to retrieve your lay figure. She and Momo wave you off with smiles. Midoriya leads you out of the tent and into the brightness of the day. Cool air nips your face and hands, but it calms you, brings ease into your body.
You look around the piazza. The paved square is fenced, littered with guards outside the perimeter. Over the top of the large tent is the pointed roof of the Duomo di Milano.
“How do you do it?”
“Huh?”
“The tent,” you clarify, turning to meet his eyes. “How does it just… appear? Without warning—without anyone seeing.”
A cheeky grin crawls along the side of his face. “Can't say,” he answers vaguely with a hum, before diverting his eyes.
You huff, turning back to the blue of the sky. Is that the sort of thing you would get to learn about, to understand intricately, if you joined them? You want to whine in annoyance, but the tufts of clouds leisurely drifting above catch your attention. You think you can make out a rabbit, hopping to an apple twice its size. You’re about to point it out when Midoriya speaks.
“I don’t know where we’re going... ” he trails off, his smile now embarrassed.
“I do. Can we exit from the north?”
He nods. You start walking left of the duomo’s face, towards one of the restaurants you frequent when you’re in town. Midoriya trails behind you, easily falling into conversation with his questions.
“Will you be coming to the opening night?” he asks.
You grin sharply, side-eyeing him. “Of course, and with impossible expectations.”
You expect him to flush like earlier, but a determined smile crosses his face, the acceptance of a challenge. “It’ll ruin any other performance for you.”
Your face lifts in surprise at the declaration, teeth sinking into the smile you try to fight. You believe him, having heard nothing but genuine and limitless praise from anyone who’s seen a Hoshi no Sākasu production. They’re known for intricate plotlines that unfold through deliberate acts, ones that overlap seamlessly. This show in particular, Gōyoku, has garnered immense hype leading up to its first performance, only a couple nights from now. It seeks to blend their usual rich use of Japanese culture and aesthetics with Italian influence, specifically through the addition of an opera performance. The eve of the first show will mark the start of a festival in the piazza. They’ll perform for five nights, ending the day before the Ambrosia Carnival begins, bringing four more days of festivities.
You’re somehow lucky enough to exist at the perfect intersection of opera gowns, bird costuming, and Italian residency—the exact background the costuming team sought. You nearly leaped out of your skin when you saw the email, ready to shelve any and all projects out of the way for this opportunity.
“I don’t doubt it,” you tell Midoriya honestly. You’re not hard to entertain when it comes to the circus, awed at performers in general—especially when they’re pushing the boundaries of their bodies. You had naive dreams for yourself at one point, visions of swinging through the air or twisting yourself in knots, but it didn’t take long for you to realize your heart was in the creation of the gowns instead.
You converse with Midoriya easily. He likes to talk about designers, asking your opinion on gowns or looks that have been circulating lately. By the time you reach the trattoria, sunken between the walls of the adjacent establishments and coated with ivy, you’ve managed to switch the conversation onto him: what pulled him to be a circus freak.
He’s as talkative when he’s the one answering questions, mumbling as he recounts an old figure in a notorious Japanese circus who inspired him.
“Toshinori Yagi was big in Japan for a long time. His range was incredible—he would perform up to seven acts during a show.” You let your eyes linger on Midoriya’s turtleneck while he talks, the bright yellow stark against the creamy beige of the wall behind him. Primary colors, you think again, like the notorious Yagi—or All Might, his stage name.
“Yeah. And then got Houdini-ed out of showbiz,” you add with an amused grin. You remember the news, when another performer asked if it was true he could withstand punches to the gut, landing one on him before he could prepare. He only lasted two more shows before his body gave out on stage from the abdominal trauma. Luckily unlike Houdini, Yagi survived the incident, but could no longer perform like he used to. “Only to turn around and become a legend in costuming.”
Midoriya beams. “Of course you’d be familiar! He’s one of my mentors. I met him as a kid, and he encouraged me to train and audition despite having a late start.”
You hum, curious. You look out the window to your side, people strolling down the cobblestone in long coats and scarves. You wonder how late a start can be, to still have time to make it in the industry. You were lucky as a kid, to have been exposed to your line of work so early—to be given these tools and connections before you even entered high school. You wonder what your life would have looked like if you tried to barrel down a different path, one that wasn’t reaching for you so tightly.
“So what’s your stage name, Midoriya?” You say his name with uncertainty, unsure if you heard it right.
He grimaces bashfully. “Sorry, I never introduced myself. On stage I’m Deku, but Midoriya is fine.”
You hum, and return the introduction. “Though it seems like you knew all that,” you say.
He nods across from you. A waiter interrupts his would-be response, asking what you’d like to order. You ask Midoriya if he has any food restrictions, receiving a shake of the head, before naming a few different dishes to the service. They nod and gather the menus before hurrying off.
“I got classics, don’t worry,” you say with amusement. “This place is a good baseline for the rest of your time here. You like Italian food?”
“As much as the typical person,” he says. “But we don’t eat it much in Musutafu.”
You hum. “The Japanese food here is pretty hit or miss, but I can recommend a ramen place if you get desperate.”
He looks at you curiously. You return the expression.
“Would... you really consider it?” he asks. “Coming to Japan for us?”
You blink, not expecting him to ask, then sigh. “I’d love to,” you say honestly. “But it’s a big change, And I have a network here. I could ride my career until the end.”
It’s true, you’d be comfortable in Milan. There’s always work, always opportunity for you. You have friends here, communities you’ve become a part of.
Your gut churns. But it’s the circus.
“But it’s the circus,” Midoriya says. You widen your eyes. “Your interviews always talk about how much you love the circus.”
Your eyebrows furrow. “Hey, I’m not famous enough to have people memorizing articles written about me.”
Midoriya’s jaw clenches, eyes widening. “Sorry!” He waves his hands energetically—very Japanese.
He averts his eyes. You think he looks guilty.
You laugh.
When the food is served, you insist that Midoriya eats as much as wants, whatever he wants. He reaches first for the pasta, eyes brightening as he shovels arrabiata into his mouth.
You nod at the reaction. “You have to admit that good Italian food makes a difference.”
His hum and eager eating is approval enough. You make a show of cutting the pizza and nudge a few slices his way. In return, he pushes the pasta forwards for you to have a bite.
By the time you finish—using your language advantage to ensure Midoriya doesn’t foot the bill, before strolling out into the cool air—nearly an hour has passed. Midoriya starts a series of rambling as you return to the tent, happily bragging about his friends.
“I’m so excited for you to see Momo’s performance, she has such an incredible voice. And the act that she put together with Hagakure and Mirio is spectacular. Based on your interests, I think you’ll really like Sero and Tokoyami’s act. And Keigo too! Kacchan has one of the most intense, so he’s a typical audience favorite. We have an incredible build team that has been working on our special effects, and they really went all out for him. Kaminari and Tetsu have maybe the coolest—”
It continues all the way back to the dressing room, and even when you open the flap to step inside. You blink in surprise at the new faces sharing the room with Momo and Kendou. The singer is out of costume, dress hung at the front of a coat rack, and she calls your name. You wave as you walk over.
Momo introduces you swiftly—to a princely man and two smaller women—before clutching your hands. “No issues! We went through the choreo and it was perfect.”
You smile, an unexpected relief wafting through you. “I’m so glad. I can’t wait to see you in action.”
You take a long look in her eyes, pools of darkness with a shimmer. You realize—for the first time with full force—that this production has its own intricate meaning to Momo, likely more than whatever it could mean to you as an outsider. You grasp her hand in return, memory flooding with countless conversations to brainstorm ideas, random calls despite the seven hour time difference to ask for an opinion or show your progress. You think about the first call you had with her, just to get to know her.
You think the costume is an ode to how you’ve learned to understand Momo: the way she moves, the curves of her body. But it’s just as much an ode to how much she’s letting you in, giving you full reign to share everything you’ve ever known and loved about creating costumes.
There are words resting on the tip of your tongue, one’s that feel like a closure you aren’t ready for. It’s too soon and you’re not willing to do this with an audience, to taint your farewell with the prying eyes of those who don’t understand.
You think Momo feels the same. She says gently in effortless Italian, “I’ll see you in two days minimum, right?” The night the festival opens, the night before the first showing.
“Of course.”
She leans in for a hug. It’s a short and gentle embrace, but its essence is layered. Complicated.
“We’re all about to head out for a break.” She nods to the others gathering their things at the tables. “I wish we had time for you to meet them properly. You’ll stay after the show, right?”
“You could not pay me to stay away.”
She laughs quietly, then slips you a gentle smile. “Perfect. See you soon.”
You nod and watch as she turns away to join the others. Your eyes linger for a moment before you begin towards your mannequin. You take a few steps, ready to rush home and frantically call Chiara. As you scurry over, your eye catches a book resting on one of the dressing tables. It’s small, but looks familiar. You stop in your tracks when you catch the title: Si Estiramos Estrellas Como Seda.
If We Stretch Stars Like Silk
Your breath catches at the sight. It’s your childhood favorite, one you keep at your bedside after all these years—one with yellowed paper and a peeling cover, worn and faded with love. Nearly every page has a faint crease in the corner, where you’ve folded it over to mark your spot or make a note to come back to. The copy in front of you is old, with vintage font on the front and a blotch of water damage seeping through the top half. You catch the edge of a receipt peeking through, just a quarter into the volume: a bookmark, for someone who started recently.
You can’t help the twitch of your lips as you step closer, the lull of your childhood dreamspace drawing you in. You brush a finger along the dark edge, slipping where the receipt is wedged and taking a glimpse at the pages. You blink in surprise at the neat script in the margins, hiragana and the occasional kanji. Your eyes run over the markings, wondering what they say, until they drop lower and land on a line of Spanish written with a similar diligence.
You pull your hand away, letting the book close.
“¿Hablas Español?”
Do you speak Spanish?
You snap your head to the voice, deep and a little rough. You catch two different eye colors—Todoroki, you recall from Momo’s quick introduction.
“A little,” you say in English, betraying your mother tongue. You don’t know why the lie slips from you, especially when your eyes land on Midoriya lingering with the others. Your early life is easily accessible information—one quick search would surface the real answer.
“I love this book,” you add, as if offering truths will balance your dishonesty.
Todoroki hums in agreement. “It is quite beautiful.” His English flows easily, and with a nearly flawless American accent. “Another performer is reading it with me right now. He and I have similar taste, and I’ve been working on my Spanish.”
It makes sense, the book being targeted towards children with simple vocabulary and a whimsical plot. You longed to be part of the story when you first read it—a tale of two boys in different worlds. They came to know each other when they stumbled across a pond, seeing each other instead of their own reflection, the water a portal to bridge opposing universes. They could only ever cross through at night, by grasping at the stars twinkling in the reflection. They thinned out like ribbons of thread, and could be woven into a rope to climb through. On cloudy nights they could only look at each other with longing.
In your adolescence, you imagined living in a third world, one where you could reach through the water and grasp them both, to be together forever. With you.
It planted dreams of weaving your own fabrics from scratch, like your grandmother did. But eventually you learned to sew.
Based on the bookmark, you think Todoroki has only just learned of the pond, the one Santi nearly falls into when he lands eyes on Marco for the first time. There’s a tug at your heart, calling to reach for your copy. You miss your boys, your adventures together.
“Your thoughts so far?” you ask.
You watch as Todoroki’s eyes narrow lightly with thought. You are struck by how beautiful he is, the soft skin of his face against sharp features. Your eyes trace his scar, curious towards the story behind it. You think he’d look striking wrapped in deep blue fabric—loose linens breezing against his body. With a high collar, maybe.
“It is a book that allows people to dream,” he eventually says.
Your smile is uncontainable. “Wait ‘til the actual magic happens.”
Midoriya’s voice breaks the conversation, calling for Todoroki. The taller man responds in Japanese, before translating for you.
“Sorry, but we are leaving now,” he says. “We can walk out together.”
You nod and abandon the table for your lay figure. You reattach the mannequin head before unlocking the wheels of the body. You crouch to grab the handle of your tool bin. Todoroki moves to help, but you shake your head. You’ll have to take it on the metro yourself anyways.
The others wait as you cross the room to the entrance, wheeling your figure along. They similarly try to help, but you smack away their hands. Kendou rolls her eyes, but then offers you three tickets and a plastic card. You let go of your mannequin to take it, reading your name across the top of the ID and the words “Costume Crew”.
“In case you run into issues with security,” she explains. “But you shouldn’t.”
You nod, shoveling the card away before continuing to roll the dummy along. The cast members walk with you to the station, at the northern edge of the piazza, before saying their goodbyes.
“Are you sure you’ll be okay taking your stuff back alone?” Midoriya asks.
You nod with amusement. “This isn’t my first rodeo, Deku.”
He flushes.
You say your farewells, and receive particularly meaningful waves from Momo and Kendou, before walking towards the elevator. Taking the metro home is annoying, as it normally is when you have to transport your mannequin. But it’s routine, and you manage well enough. The afternoon is unhurried, offering abundant space in the train car, escaping glares that would have pointed your way if it were the end of the workday. While you wait for your stop, you check for a response from Chiara. She messaged you an hour ago, a simple, When and where?
You respond, My place in 30?
The transfer is easy enough, rolling from one train to the next. When you finally rise back to ground level and walk through your neighborhood, you’re nearly skipping. You have to reign your energy in to not look like an idiot. When you finally reach your building, you wrestle with your keys and fling the door open at lightning speed. Once your mannequin is locked in place and your tools are safely on the ground, you inelegantly crumple onto the floor.
You bury your head in your hands as you recount the day and all that passed: your mortifying introduction to the producer, the final passing of your precious gown to its new owner, the tension of potentially being offered a job, how you forced one of the performers (with the help of Kendou, admittedly) to get lunch with you, running into your childhood friend—that precious book you want to spend the night cradling with a flashlight under your covers.
Chiara storms in minutes later, the clack of her heels sharp on your floor. You hear her yelp at the sight of you before grabbing ahold of your arm and yanking you up. You look at her defeated.
“I’m tired of your cryptic bullshit,” she grumbles in sharp Italian, dragging you to the couch. Your legs weakly oblige. “Spill. What the hell happened? Did the gown get ruined? Do I need to call Davide?”
You look at her helplessly, shaking your head. You inhale. “I think they offered me a job.”
Her flawless face holds irritation for one more moment before her jaw drops. “What!?” she shrieks, grabbing your bicep tightly. Manicured nails dig into your skin.
You nod silently, slowly.
She gives you a few hard shakes. “What did you say? Holy fuck, are you accepting? You have to accept this, right? Oh my god. … Tucano—this is incredible.” Her voice softens by the end, the usual effect of the nickname.
“Chia,” you plead. She frowns at the tone. “I don’t—I don’t know? I’ve been in Milan for a while, it’s home to me. I can’t just leave my friends and my clients, and—” you pause, thinking of your late grandmother, your abuela, the reason you came here in the first place. When she fell ill and you needed money to take care of her, later taking her with you to a country with a higher success rate for her surgery, where you hoped to extend her life just a little longer, selfishly. You already uprooted yourself and your family, only for it to be abuela’s end. What would it mean to leave again, to keep running?
Part of you knows you’re kidding yourself. You may have left home to support your family, but now you stay gone to avoid seeing them, to avoid confrontation.
“I just… I can’t just leave.”
You watch her face, the way it falls sadly. “Tucano… you can do whatever you want. I thought… I thought this was your dream, the costumes. And for a circus. Not an opera or a show, but those freaky acrobats you fawn over.”
You glare as the last words leave her lips. Your eyes bore into her brown ones, her thick lashes. They match the darkness of her hair: perfect swooping waves that end above her shoulders.
“I know, I know,” she says with a sigh. “What? Do you need help processing? Brainstorming? Pro and cons list?”
You huff, not sure yourself. Her sharp eyes watch you closely.
“Well…” she tries. “If you got a job offer, then the dress was a success, yeah? Wanna debrief me on that?”
You groan as your mind reminds you of your faux pas with Aizawa this morning. “I totally offended one of their producers. I thought they were sending some random stage guy to give me a ride and…”
A dark brow lifts in curious delight. Her mouth quirks as you relay your demise. You’re about to scowl when she laughs. “Okay, but the dress. The dress made it?”
Your shoulders drop. “It’s perfect. They loved it.”
A sharp grin splits her face. Your heart squeezes when you recognize pride, for you. “As we knew they would! And that calls for celebration.”
You smile at the sentiment, your nervous heart relaxing slightly. Chiara reads you easily by now, like fluency in a language just by watching from the outside. Despite the scoffing and bullying, all her comments and faces are expressions of love. She reminds you of your sister: observant because she cares, but also to maximize her fuel for making fun of you. All the while knowing when to soften the edges, when to remind you that you’ve done a good job.
Momo in your finished gown flashes in your mind, and you agree that you deserve to have a moment of celebration. But you can’t escape the hollowness that follows, the emptiness of an undressed form. The lack of something to fixate on, to obsess over, to give your life purpose.
“Hey, you’re gonna see your costume again in a couple days. You can’t get your post-commission depression now. You can mope when they leave, okay?”
(Reading you like a poem—seeing meaning between the lines, meaning in mere fragments.)
You huff and nod, sulking. Chiara laughs at your grumpiness.
Her presence soothes your nerves from the day, ones you pushed aside in favor of parading the streets with Midoriya. Your conversation continues, stretching through the afternoon as you cover the rest of your day. You ignore her suggestive looks as you talk about your time with Midoriya and the embarrassing feeling of knowing someone researched you so thoroughly.
You don’t mention seeing the book. You think she’d talk about fate and signs if you let it slip, and then you’d be back to terrifying career talk.
Eventually you flip the conversation to her and her day, the clients she saw. She spent her morning at the studio, her usual dolling up of models for their shoots. It’s how you met, in your early days after arriving in Milan—you dressing up performers while she touched up their faces. She stayed with the company while you left for freelancing, preferring to have more say over your projects. Part of you envies Chia’s regular schedule, what you had to give up to keep yourself afloat. But part of you knows this is the dance you have to do with your craft: the hectic oscillation between losing yourself in a project and the following period of nothingness to recover.
You talk until the sky darkens, the creeping beginnings of evening during the winter. The clock has hardly reached six, but you want to whip up a lazy dinner and retire for the evening. The call of Si Estiramos Estrellas Como Seda is still prevalent. You have a yearning for nostalgia.
So you boot Chiara out of your place—with a promise to see her for the first night of the festival—and claw through your freezer for some pre-prepared meal to heat. You find a crinkly package of stew that brings another round of longing through your heart, reminding you of abuela’s cooking. You know your decision, succumbing easily to a night of swaddling yourself in childhood comforts.
And you do. Half an hour later you are curled on your couch, your fluffiest blanket strewn over your shoulders. You sink into its plushness, the tickles of its fibers brushing your arms and neck. Hot stew rests in your lap while the book rests atop the arm of the sofa, spine worn enough that it rests flat without the assistance of your hand. You soak in the story of Santi's life, his home in Colombia. The simple but beautiful prose paints pictures of beaches and mountains, of boisterous streets striped in vibrant warm hues. You lovingly run your hand against the paper, smoothed and worn, some of the words fading. You take your time, smiling when you imagine the way Santi trips and nearly falls into the massive pond, how it flawlessly reflects the night sky onto the ground.
You set the book down after he and Marco finish their chat through the mirror of the water, the portal crossing worlds—universes. You find your eyes heavy, falling like Santi’s when he rolls along the grass, laying on his back to soak in the stars above.
In the morning you find that your dreams are hazy, not an uncommon occurrence. You frown as you close your eyes again, struggling to recall the scenes you danced through. You were laying in the grass, on the edge of the lake. There were beautiful stars, the kind you only see when you’ve taken trips north to the Alps.
But there was someone with you. A boy, a similar age as your dream self, as Santi and Marco—ten at the oldest. He watched you closely, purposefully. All you can remember were his hair and his eyes: dark. So dark they felt like a void, or a portal. Darker than the night sky.
The earth spins twice and you are preparing for the opening of the festival. It’s a collaboration with the local scene, vendors and entertainers from the city popping up their own tents. Hoshi no Sākasu has a few of their own near the large auditorium top, decorated with streamers and lanterns, selling traditional Japanese desserts and street food. The circus will wander north and then west on its journey through Europe and the Americas. With each stop they’ll invite the festival cultures of each country to meet their own.
You prepare at Chiara’s, her apartment deeper in the city and therefore closer to the Duomo. You begrudgingly pull your costume from the rack in the garage and sleeve it into the garment bag. You roll the length gently before placing it into a box, the soft protective cover scraping against the cardboard. You pull the matching mask and headpiece from their shelves and rest them on top.
The air is chilly when you make your way outside, biting at your exposed forearms. Perfect weather for your costume, and a night of dancing.
You let yourself into Chiara’s, calling out into the warm space. The only response is the ambiance—the thrumming of the heater. You set your box by the door and pull out your costume to hang on the rack, then invite yourself into the hall. Faint rustling sounds from the bathroom, the click of a plastic case, the tap of brushes rolling against each other. You grin and tug on the door.
The sight is not unusual: your friend with a handful of palettes—awkwardly shoved between each finger—and shoveling through her drawer of liners, lipsticks, and brushes. Her organization is as absent as yours, a nightmare to anyone who’s had to work with you both. But it means the two of you understand the chaos of each other’s systems, their inexplicable order.
She grins sharply at you. “Ready to transform?”
“Always.”
You’re dressing as your classic tonight, the guacamaya verde, or the green macaw. Birds are your specialty to begin with, a fixation passed from abuela to you. While she spent most of her time dyeing their silhouettes and features onto hand-woven fabrics, you ode to them in the shapes and details of your costumes. Feathers and beaks and fluttering fabrics like wings always make an appearance on your body during a festival or parade—but the vibrant green is your signature, the reason you chose Verde.
Chiara sits you in the kitchen to get to work. The makeup is simple, familiar: sparkling green across your eyelids and glitter along your temples.
She watches you closely as she presses powder against your eyes, the soft edge of the brush drawing the green to reach your temple. Her eyes are wide and her mouth parts, like she has something to say, to ask. You think it’s about the job offer, any new developments on what you think you’ll do with your life moving forward. You don’t implore, and neither does she.
She finishes quickly and leaves to do her own makeup in the bathroom. In her living room you pull the costume from its bag and step out of your clothes. The pants slide on first—long and loose with a cinch above the ankle. The fabric is soft where it brushes your skin, and the brightness of green brings a smile to your face. You slip the top on next, careful to avoid smudging Chiara’s work. Your arms come through the long sleeves slowly, careful not to grab the wrong piece, and shrug your shoulders to settle the garment in place. It’s your favorite part of the outfit, more than the headpiece. Layered fabric runs down your shoulders and arms to your back, expanding like wings when you lift your elbows from your waist. Their pieces flutter against you, like a cape. Tufts of feathers spring from your shoulders to match the headpiece.
You wait until Chiara emerges in her own red version of your costume to put the mask and headpiece on, fixing the wire frame over your face before sliding on the band, unrolling layers of fabric and feathers down the back of your head.
The two of you stroll confidently down the street, the swaying of your feathers and fabric catching the eyes of passersby. You walk along cobblestone paths, warming your body in the cold. The feeling of the soft fabric sliding across your skin, the sway of material cascading through your hair, is almost euphoric. You could skip, swing your arms and twirl, even. But Chiara is stern beside you, raising eyebrows at the giddiness on your face.
You start in defense, “I just—”
“I know,” she cuts you off. “But let's make a fool out of ourselves once we’re around other fools, yeah?”
You want to say that everyone in Milan is a fool. But you walk faster, and you ask about her upcoming clients to distract yourself.
The conversation halts when you reach the entrance of the piazza, eyes gleaming under the lights. Hoshi no Sākasu’s giant tent stands tall on the northern edge, with rows of square stalls spread along the southern half. The sun set a couple hours prior, the blackness of the sky now cradling the illuminated lanterns and string lights. You breathe in the ambiance of the fair, the sounds of vendors talking with customers and squeals of children running along the market rows. You can hear faint live music, the strumming of a guitar and the long notes of the standup bass.
You squeeze your fists tightly in excitement, calming yourself to keep from sprinting your way to the entrance.
There is no admission fee, just a few guards to glance at Chiara's bag. You can’t help yourself once you’re inside, and pace through the first line of tents. You stop once you’re fully swept into the sounds, blinking happily as you take in the venue. You don’t know where to start, eyes trailing along the options to make a decision. Most of the vendors are local, but you spot the stall closest to the stage tent, carp lanterns catching your attention. Before you can take a step closer, a hand clutches your wrist.
It’s Chiara, panting. “Shit, you’re like an unleashed dog.”
You grin and let your wrist slip in her grasp to clutch her hand. Then you march along, tugging her behind you. She doesn’t complain, happily following your lead.
Your heart sings as you gravitate towards the carps blowing through the air. You compliment other costumes and you notice, and flourish under the praise you receive for your own. This is what you love, you think. This is why you’re still here in Milan even after abuela passed. The ambiance and the community, the noisiness of vendors and live music streaming through the night.
And admittedly, sometimes you like to indulge in the fantasy of being a performer, for others to look at you and assume you’d be on the stage.
You spot Kendou—your first sighting of any crew members—just before you make it to their tents. Her hair is what catches your attention, the fiery orange, but your eyes dart to her outfit next. She wears a deep teal dress that resembles a cheongsam, only with longer sleeves that fan out towards the ends. It’s layered with a black laced corset that bursts black feathers from the back, trailing down her dress like a tail. Her face sports a simple mask, the texture twinning her corset, with additional feathers sprouting from the edges and bunching behind her head.
She smiles when she sees you, running to gather you in a hug. You let go of Chiara to return it, and then swiftly introduce them.
“I love your costume,” you tell her. The blend of the Italian corset with the traditional Eastern dress is striking, and a thoughtful bridge between the origins of the circus and their first stop in Milan.
Her eyes shine as she compliments you in return. Chiara watches in amusement as you two ramble about the intent behind your designs, the methodical details. Kendou asks about your strategy for layering the fabric of your wings, while you ask about her process for the feather detailing.
A shout from the tent pulls her attention away, a slew of rough Japanese. She looks at you apologetically. “Sorry, Satou needs me to play messenger. I’ll see you in a bit, yeah?”
You nod. “Any recommendations?” You ask, tilting your head to the stall.
She walks over with you. “Get some noodles, yakisoba or okonomiyaki. Then come back for some taiyaki. Satou’s desserts are the best.”
You take her advice, getting one of each and awkwardly shovel the noodles in your mouths as you stroll along the vendors. You spot other performers and crew, realizing their costumes are all an interesting mix of traditional Japanese styles with European circus garb. You recognize the two smaller women you met after your lunch with Midoriya and wave to them across the crowd. They’re dressed in conventional clown outfits, but softened in pinks and green. The smaller one has a frog mask tied to the side of her head, while the other sports a conical farm hat to contrast pink frills.
After circling back to the stall for taiyaki, your heart starts to pull towards the music. You look at Chiara knowingly.
“Itching to dance?” she asks.
You nod.
“I’ll be fine,” she tells you. “But I’ll probably leave soon—there’s a bar nearby I haven’t been to yet. Text me if you need anything? And stay at mine if the train isn’t running.”
You squeeze her hand before the two of you part, and then rush towards the music.
The musicians are gathered by the end of the market line, filling the piazza with melodies near the entrance point. People are gathered by the adjacent seating, individuals and couples and families. The windy notes of the accordion settle into your shoulders, moving experimentally to feel out the rhythm. You take another glance around the area and notice nobody is dancing.
Except for a young girl, maybe four or five. She wears a frilly green dress and a plastic Hyottoko mask, the ones sold at the circus’ stall. she jumps excitedly with the sound of the tambourine and flails her arms. You smile at the sight and skip over to her, giving your body a twirl when you’re just a few steps away. She shrieks with giggles, pointing at the faux wings settling down your back. You laugh at her reaction and reach for her hand to guide her through a spin. Your eyes scan the area, looking for her parents, and you wave when you see them.
The camaraderie of your small dance partner is what gives you the confidence to dance freely. Even after living in Milan for years, you still don’t have a grasp on their dance styles. The large, swooping movements are foreign to you, your hips instead naturally searching for the faster patterns of latin rhythms. The girl erupts into another fit of giggles at your movements. She tucks her hands behind her back and kicks her feet forwards in traditional Italian style. You smile and mirror her, the wide fabric of your pants billowing with each drive of your foot.
Eventually the song comes to an end and you stop to take deep breaths. Your body thrums with heat and energy, the beauty of movement. You squat in front of your new friend and raise a hand for her to clap. She does with a grin, and you tell her, “Grazie.”
She runs to her family, squealing as she grabs her father by his leg. He waves before standing, moving to leave. You sigh and twirl yourself again as another song starts, reaching within you to sustain the confidence for a round of dancing alone. You look up as your body slows, taking in the dark, starless sky. Your arm bumps someone and you jolt, “Scusa” already on your tongue.
It dies at the sight before you: another Hoshi no Sākasu member. Aizawa, you think for an instant when you catch dark hair and eyes, scruff along the jaw and lip. But his eyes are wider, sucking you into them with a gravity you’ve never felt before. He’s a little taller and leaner, with a crooked grin you can’t tear your eyes from. He’s charming, in a rough way—an charm of honesty, authenticity.
Your first thought is that he would look breathtaking draped in silken black fabric, the perfect coupling to the air of mystery that sits about him. Instead he wears a long jesters hat, black and splattered with yellow stars and crescent moons—shapes you just felt yourself missing from the clouded night. He has a Hyottoko mask of his own tied against the side of his head, cheeks puffed and winking. His top reminds you of a kimono, but tucked into harem pants. You smile at the clash of shapes. You love this circus.
“Sorry,” you say instead. The sound is breathless.
His eyebrows raise while his grin widens. You can’t look away. When he speaks you think you can hear the edges of an accent—a familiar one that blurs your vowels together, one that blankets your own English. “Would you like a partner?”
A smile pulls at your cheeks, one you can’t suppress. “Absolutely.”
You receive an equally large grin in return. It’s cheeky, with a glint of impish whimsy. Your heart races at the touch against your hand, a searing heat that catches you off guard. He steps back, offering a space between you.
“Sorry in advance,” he says. “I’m not so familiar with Italian dances.”
With the accent on his tongue and how he holds your hand in front of him, your mind immediately thinks: salsa. He gives you a mischievous look before pulling you close, slotting his leg between yours. A hand comes to your waist, fiery heat gently pushing along as he takes two quick steps to the side. Your eyebrows jump in amusement, and you can’t stop the laugh from bubbling out of you. Bachata, of course, you think as you raise your free arm to his shoulder.
The current song is faster than the previous, but still not suitable for the rhythm of your dance. You don’t care, relishing in the feeling of your quick steps and the sway of your hips. He must have noticed your roots when you danced with your small friend. You wonder how the two of you must look, a vibrant exotic bird paired with a clown of three origins. His body moves fluidly with yours, hips and torso and arms gliding like the smooth curve of a wave. You fall into the feeling of him, his hands as they carefully trace under the fabric of your wings to rest by your shoulder blades. They’re so warm, solid fire tracing your skin. You take the signal, throwing your head back in a swoop that he supports. You thank your lifelong experience of costuming when you lift your head and both the headpiece and mask are still attached.
He grins sharply before his eyes narrow in a playful challenge. You feel his hand drag yours upwards, preparing to spin, and you follow his lead, twirling in three full circles. The flowing fabric of your costume billows around you, trailing your movements like an afterimage. As his hand lowers, it cradles your neck before returning to your waist, holding you close against him as you continue to step in tandem, bodies nearly molded into one another.
The song lets your body flow freely, following his guidance. You think you’re somewhere you’ve never been before, high in the clouds, between stars. It isn’t until the song ends and his dancing halts that you realize the world has momentarily faded away—only to remember that you are still on earth. Your chest heaves gently, catching your breath as you stare intently at your dance partner. His face is flushed, and a meaningful smile is plastered across it. His eyes are shining, longing for something. He almost looks nervous, the opposite of his confidence when he asked you to dance.
He’s about to speak when a shout breaks his eyes from yours, looking past you. You turn to the sound, letting your body part from him, to see another crewmember: a blonde waving your way. With disappointment in your heart you step back, giving him his opening to leave. The hand on yours clutches tighter when you start to slip away. Your stomach tightens.
He turns to you, eyes sharp as they stare into yours. A wave of conflict rushes over his face. Confusion sweeps through you. You’re sad to part too, but he looks almost desperate. You don’t know why.
His hold loosens, moving to press his palm against the back of your hand, tracing the front with his thumb. He slips the one on your waist to meet your palm, now holding your hand over his chest as if in prayer. His touch is soft, a little clammy. His eyes linger on your fingertips thoughtfully before coming to your face. They stare deeply, curiously. You start to feel embarrassed under his gaze, at how he seems to know something you don’t. Your body buzzes with a feeling you can’t describe.
“Thank you,” he finally says. A sad smile spreads across his lips.
You blink in confusion at his words, but ultimately nod. “Of course. Thank you, too.”
He drops your hand and starts to turn away. He pauses and looks back with his mouth ajar, like he’s going to add something. But he stops, then furrows his eyebrows as he looks down to the pavement. You aren’t sure what’s going on, or if you should ask. You decide to say something, in hopes to ease him.
“I’ll see you around,” you add.
He blinks in surprise, eyes jumping back to you. A small smile spreads across his face, releasing tension in your chest you didn’t know was resting there.
“Yeah,” he says. “I’ll see you.”
Your eyes trail the long points of his hat, watching curiously as the blond meets him halfway. You sigh and turn to the musicians, their cluster near the market tent. You resist the urge to look back, to see the man who held you so passionately. You listen for a few moments as the song floats by, the steady rhythm of the tambourine.
But now that you’re alone, you have no motivation to dance.
thank you for reading! any feedback or love is appreciated <3
i've done quite a bit of research into the cirque process/behind the scenes and i can't find much on costuming, so a lot of this is based on my own experience (not in costumes but very adjacent). every production/company has their own way of doing things though so it would probably vary.
the word "sākasu" is pronounced "sah-kah-soo" or more commonly: "sah-kah-s" since the "u" in "su" is often dropped. this also can be read as the word "circus" with a japanese accent, which is literally just how katakana works. it's not essential to the story, but i just felt like it might be important to mention.
You always thought the circus was where you yearned to be. At least, until it finally let you in—and introduced you to Hanta Sero.
[circus AU where seamstress!reader and acrobat!sero realize that their lives have been running parallel for a long time, and it’s up to you to weave them together]
part 6: & yet i’ll always choose you.
sero hanta x reader
ch 6/6 | 15.8k words | masterlist | ao3
cw: violence between family members (a singular slap)
notes: ready to run by one direction, shelter by porter robinson & madeon, all the stars by kendrick & sza
(this is not a songfic; i forgot that song existed when i chose the title and then when i properly listened to the lyrics i realized it fit LOL)
you make a decision.
✰.
"How do you help a family miracle? You hug your sister."
- Bruno, in Encanto
Looking back, your life has primarily moved forward through a mixture of obligation and chance. There was never any sort of choosing or clinging, just an acceptance of what needed to be done. Things worked out on their own, oftentimes with you as the stagnant one and the events happening around you—through you. You lived as if life was predetermined, as if a wide length of silk has been wrapped around your chest and tugging you through life.
So it’s hard, when something—someone appears, and you want to choose him.
Silk is slippery. It’s woven water that slides against every surface including itself. With unpracticed hands, every knot will come undone, unraveling before you until it’s a puddle on the floor. You only ever learned how to sew and stitch, to bind fabric with a needle and thread. You’re the opposite of Hanta, who knows the raw silk itself—hanging for him to play an endless game of tangling and escaping. He knows the knots intricately, how to bind or set himself free in an instant.
Hanta is sad when he has to leave. You see it in his watery eyes and hear it in the crack of his voice. But he has some sort of unfathomable trust that things will work out in the end. You should too, given how your life has led so far, but you can’t.
You want him. You want him and Momo and Kendou. You want the circus and the costumes and to see the world together. You want to make beautiful things, impossible things, things that can only be forged in a place where everyone believes in magic with their full being. You want it all.
You don’t know how to chase it.
Maybe it was purposeful—choosing a dream you always thought was out of reach, one you never considered a real possibility. It’s safe here, where the choices are made for you, or never presented in the first place. But now that you finally want something… how do you start?
When the week passes and the circus is gone, in some ways it feels like it was never there. How could something that’s everything to you, everything you want, fizzle into nothing but faded memories in an instant? You cry and you hurt and you long for something that’s gone.
It feels like grieving.
Grieving, you realize, is another thing you haven’t done before.
Abuela is steeped into every detail of your life—her wrinkled hands the ones you always reached for first. She’s the one who taught you to sew, the one who called you her tucán. Abuela is the reason you and Hanta crossed paths for the first time in Quito, the reason you found yourself in Milan and by Midoriya, and ultimately Hoshi no Sākasu.
When you think about it, abuela is the thread that has been pulling you forwards.
But she’s gone—a fact you haven’t come to terms with.
The grief rolls through like a tsunami, a high wall of powerful water that roars forward with the intent to destroy and submerge. Maybe it should have been predictable, the week with the circus your earthquake, the shifting of plates radiating seismic energy through your foundation. But the water comes by surprise and at full force, knocking you off your feet and the breath from your lungs.
You packed your schedule ahead of time with work, the following weeks filled with costumes and gowns and dresses. It distracts you, like you knew it would, your hands and your head focused on nothing but the bounce of a needle stitching fabrics. It keeps you from thinking about the circus in Switzerland, three hours away by train. Life has shifted with the absence of the circus, and you’ve found yourself back into the stagnant routine that existed before.
Except, now you cry while you work.
It happens unknowingly at first, only noticing when dark blotches appear on the fabric between your hands. You pause, lifting the pad of your finger to trace the tears collecting on your waterline, the wetness taking you by surprise. But when it rains it pours, and you have to take a break to let the clouds of your irises clear before forcing yourself to resume sewing.
Normally there's a ghosted feeling of abuela’s hands hovering over yours. They're familiar and faint, kept at a distance and bringing just the twitch of a somber smile to your lips. But now they're firm and dense, like real skin and flesh and blood. The sensation makes you cry harder. Your crying makes them feel more real. Your hurt and your grief brings her closer, brings her to life.
You don't do anything but work and cry the first few days following Hoshi no Sakasu’s departure. You complete one dress through hours of tears.
Your friends find you this way, sobbing with bunches of chiffon in your hands, wiping your eyes and nose with the sleeve of your shirt.
“Oh,” Chiara coos, immediately running a hand through your hair before holding your cheeks.
Davide grimaces behind her as his eyes sweep over you and your desk. “Nuh uh, we are not letting this continue.”
You clutch the fabric tightly when he tries to pry it from you. “I have orders to finish.”
Chiara scoffs. “They can wait.”
But they can't. You busied yourself strategically, so you wouldn't have time to do things like cry.
“You always manage somehow. You can take an hour break.”
It's a struggle, but you end up on your couch cocooned by a blanket and flanked by your friends. You grip the tea they made for you spitefully, the heat of the mug burning your palms. You bite your tongue, too annoyed to respond to their gentle questions, but they're Chia and Davide—eventually you cave.
You speak quietly and nonsensically, unsure how to explain everything that happened in the past couple weeks. Maybe they'll think you're crazy and chalk it up to delusions.
But they're Chia and Davide, so they don't.
“Dammit,” the latter answers. “This guy is stealing you away!”
“Davide,” the other scolds. “Be fair. From what Tucano says, he is not just a guy.”
“Neither of you are helpful,” you grumble.
“We're processing,” Chiara quips.
Davide nods. “Poorly.”
They sigh in unison, but with different tones. Davide's is whiny and tired. Chiara’s is thoughtful.
“Why didn't you say anything?” Davide eventually asks. “It's been days since they left.”
You groan, turning your head to bury into the blanket over your shoulders. Chiara watches you pitifully.
“She's been dead for months,” you eventually spit. You have to separate the words from their meanings to keep a sob at bay. Your eyes water. “I figured it was some weird delayed grief that would go away after a few days.”
Davide looks at you pitifully too now, though on his face it's more akin to disgust. “Babe…”
You avert your eyes.
“You know that's not how this works.”
All you manage is a grunt. You don't care if you're being stupid. You know you are, deep down, but it's easier to play into the ignorance.
Chiara sighs again and leans back against the couch, and then onto you. Her shoulder bumps yours, head tilting to rest in the crook of your padded neck. She speaks softly, “Haven't seen you cry since she first died.”
They're simple words, nothing incredibly deep or metaphorical, but they make your chest hurt. You purse your lips as fresh saltwater pools in your lashes, cascading down your cheeks. Your sob is a broken sound, jolting your body so harshly that Davide takes the mug from your hands at the near spill. Chiara scoots closer to you, body turning to face yours as her arm comes around your waist.
Davide keeps his distance, never the most physically affectionate, but he slides a hand up and down your arm, a soothing assurance that he's here too.
“I miss her,” you choke suddenly. The words spill out. “I think about her every day.”
Chiara hums affirmingly. “We know.”
“I—” you hiccup. “I loved her more than anyone else.”
And it's true. Abuela was your everything, the one you looked up to the most, the one you always wanted to be. You loved her more than you loved anyone. You loved her more than you loved yourself. You loved her… more than anyone else loved her.
The thought sits bitterly in your stomach, like a weight that keeps sinking and sinking and sinking.
“What's that face for?” Davide interjects.
You blink, neutralizing your expression when you realize you were scowling. You groan again. It's an ugly thought, no matter how true it is to you. Ugly thoughts are meant to be kept inside, not spread where they could hurt others or… be disproven.
He pats your leg quickly, a sign he won't let you escape answering. You wince at the thought of vocalizing that part of you: raw and possessive and self entitled. The part of you that justifies never going home, to keep abuela's remains to yourself. Here, in Italy—where she died in your care.
“Nobody else cared about her like I did,” you nearly whisper.
“Oh.”
“Tucano…” Chiara trails off hesitantly. “You don’t know that.”
But you do. You’ve known it for years, eyes always taking in the room and the dynamics between your family members. You think of mamá when she raised her voice, speaking in an uncharacteristic irritation at abuela’s deteriorating mental state. Your sister was the avoidant type, feigning ignorance when she noticed something wrong or conveniently busy when help was needed. Tíos and primeros would chip in, but also hurried to pass abuela to the next person.
They cared when she was in Italy, when she was finally gone and they didn’t have to be the ones looking after her.
They didn’t deserve her, you concluded.
You don’t answer, and your friends don’t press. Chiara stays leaning against your side while Davide rubs your arm. You know the skepticism sitting in their throats. You know Davide wants to ask why you’re only looking through a small lens, through your limited perspective. You know that Chiara wants to ask why they don’t even deserve to see her. You know that you want to ask yourself why you have the right to keep abuela from going home.
Nobody says a word. Instead you all sit there quietly, together.
“You’re going on holiday,” Chiara demands when you try to return to the studio an hour later.
“What? I was just on holiday for a week.”
Davide’s eyebrows nearly fly off his forehead. “You were literally working for the circus and you were in the studio while they were here.”
You try another angle. “I have deadlines! I can’t take time off—it’s unfair to my clients.”
“You always give them longer estimates than it actually takes. Just say you had a death in the family.”
“That happened months ago!”
“Then say you had some suppressed trauma come up in your grief counseling and you need to work through it!”
You stare blankly at Davide. He widens his eyes and flips his palms as if he’s waiting for you to accept the obvious answers he’s offering.
“I can’t do that Davide, they already paid.”
“Then it’s PTO?”
You rub your eyes in annoyance. You’re tempted to claw them out entirely.
Chiara pats your back. “We’ll figure something out. But you need a break, and you can’t deny that.”
Your stomach aches like you might be sick. Maybe you do need a break, for your mind and your heart and to finally get to the grief you’ve been ignoring for months. But you can feel your lips tightening at the thought, your stomach twisting in fear. The sewing helps take you from the real world, to give you something else to focus on.
You’re worried that if you take a break, you won’t be able to start again.
The next weekend you’re hugging Davide and Chiara at the train station. Their arms awkwardly come around the giant backpack latched around your hips.
“Let us know when you get to your hostel,” Chiara demands.
“And when you’re back in range,” Davide adds.
You nod.
The pink line takes you an hour closer to your destination, whizzing north along the industrial and suburban outskirts of the city. Fields and farmlands start to populate along your route, parallel roads of green. Eventually you’re humming along the beginnings of mountains, the forests close enough that you can make out the edges of individual trees. They’re brown trunks and naked branches, fans of grey poking from the earth. But between them are clusters of green—evergreen bunches. The further you go, the taller the peaks rise, dusted with white.
You exit the train in a city situated by a lake, a large pool of blue that lays calm—still. You only see flashes of the water before you’re parked in the station, scanning your ticket and walking out onto black tile streets. The buildings are smaller here than Milan, with more space between their exteriors. A looming mountain pokes through the alleyways, a slab of white limestone erupting from the ground, topped with sparse green and heavy snow. Your heart races at the sight while you speed walk towards the bus stop.
Soon.
It takes the bus an hour to drop you off at your destination, despite covering less than a fourth of the train's mileage. You don’t mind. Instead you sit comfortably with your bag on your lap, staring out the window as the clunky vehicle winds through the mountains. You grin the entire time, already imagining the hot cocoa you’ll make yourself tonight, huddled by the window of your hostel with a scarf around your neck.
It’s exactly what you do, peering up the edge of the mountain the building resides on. You send a message to your friends to let them know you’re fine, a selfie with your drink. Just as your thumb hits send, your phone flashes with a call.
It’s from your sister.
For the first time since abuela died, you hesitate, before eventually turning off your ringer and setting it down to go to voicemail.
You spend one night in the hostel and five in the mountains. You hike up and down summits during the day and tend to fires in the warmth of small cabins at night. The peaks are jagged rocks, granite teeth wedged in the gums of the earth, at first overlooking the northern cities and lakes before you lose the buildings behind shrouds of rocks and trees and snow.
You don’t speak to anyone for three days—in the thick of your hiking. Your only companions are the swifts that fly ahead and the occasional owl in the trees. You curse when one takes flight, spreading glorious spotted wings. You wish you knew more of the birds here. The only other animal you catch is an ibex standing precariously on a cliffside—suspended only by mere chips in the wall. It looks unfazed by the height and the minimal footing, instead at peace, giant horns proud atop its head and sure steps carrying it upwards. You wish you could call out and ask for advice: to ask how you can do the same.
In contrast, you spend your day treading through white crystals up to your knees. It’s exhausting, your body moving slowly and through the entire day to reach your next bed. But it’s good for you; it’s what you need.
Crying comes as natural as walking, tears clumping as ice in your lashes. You huddle your body further under layers of wool and down, face burying into the cloth of your scarf. Every few kilometers you pause, catching your breath and blinking through the sun to see where you stand: high above the rest of the world. The brown of wintery grass rolls beneath you with those spiky leafless trees and clumps of evergreen. The balds are tinted yellow with harsh edges of silver from scattered boulders. You breathe in crisp, cold air—the kind that burns your lungs.
When you turn to continue walking ahead, the snow around you glistens. Sunlight strikes the frozen dust, light refracting in a pile of white sparkles. Millions of sparkles, like every star in the sky was plucked and tossed atop this mountain range—for you to shuffle your boots through and sob while you wander through thoughts and memories of abuela. You’re walking north, in the direction of Switzerland. But by now it’s been over two weeks since Hoshi no Sākasu left. They must be in Austria now. East.
The nights are cold, infinitely colder than the city. The air bites at any exposed skin, rubbing it raw to bloom splotches of red. Even so, you leave the warmth of cabin fires for extended periods of time to stare above you, into that other world in the sky. Stars twinkle in response, shining and winking and falling. They’re abundant, like every grain of sand and every snowflake on earth was scattered into the night.
Your eyes trace the constellations you know: simple ones like Ursa Major and Orion. When you run out, your mind starts to connect the stars on its own, searching for patterns from your life. You see Santi and you see Marco. You see your sister and your mother. You see abuela.
You see Hanta.
In this moment, in all the moments from these days in the mountains, you realize again that you are a speck. You are nothingness and everything, something painfully unknown while entirely familiar. The mountains and lakes and vastness of blue atmosphere remind you that everything you don’t know is waiting for you, patiently, sitting outside of your blood and flesh for you to start heading towards it. The tiny snowflakes and speckled sky and clumps of morning ashes remind you that everything you ever need to know has been within you all along.
By the time you’re back in a hostel, showering and running laundry and packing your bag to take a bus and then the train home, there’s a resolve in your chest. You don’t know what it is quite yet or what it’s pointed towards, but you are determined to do something.
Your phone charges overnight, but you don’t turn it on until you board the bus. Rows of notifications populate your screen when it flickers to life. You clear them all and open your messages.
The most recent one is from Hanta.
You haven’t spoken since he left, not sure what to say or if you want your relationship to unfurl over text. He must feel the same uncertainty, if it’s taken this long to reach out. His message is straightforward—a quick pleasantry followed by a check in, since apparently Momo tried to reach you just after you started your hike. You can sense his apprehension through the little grey bubbles.
You respond with a photo from your third day on the mountain, the endless layers of ridges settled beneath the sky, bluer and bluer as they get further away. There’s a moment of hesitation before you send another, this one a silly selfie you took the day before—sporting icy eyelashes and red cheeks. You quickly add a third message, a brief explanation that you were on holiday without service.
After replying to the other crucial messages you turn your phone off and stare out the window, watching as forests become farmland and farmlands become cities.
Settling back into your work routine comes naturally. Your hands glide through thread and fabric, not without hiccups, but with confidence and security. There’s an ease to your movements, an embodiment of patience and distance from your craft. Navigating the shift of deadlines and compromising with your clients was awkward, but it happened.
Hanta responds to you, a little message that says your trip looks fun—and cold. You give him a short reply, a simple It was. The phone is heavy in your hand as you stare at the screen. Eventually you cave and ask him how Switzerland was, and what he thinks about Austria.
Something opens between you two after the initial hurdle is cleared. You don’t message every day, but you talk often. Hanta sends photos of him at different restaurants and landmarks—mostly with Shouto—and you respond with pictures of your sewing projects. Seeing his face brings an urgency to your chest, one that makes you want to run to the station and board the first train North.
You send a picture of your most recent gown, sheer black fabric that twinkles, sewn with pearls and metal discs. This time you take the photo in your mirror, awkwardly giving the headless mannequin bunny ears with your free hand. You stare at the picture with a furrowed brow, retaking it a couple times before you get one that you look less stupid in. After sending it you grimace.
Your phone pings nearly immediately, several times with messages from Hanta. He says ‘SO PRETTY’ followed by a string of heart emojis. You bite your lip, trying to suppress the idiotic grin you know you’re wearing.
The phone blares your ringtone, nearly making you drop it from surprise. Your heart races, thinking it’s Hanta, so you almost answer it before you check the contact. You freeze when it’s your sister’s name on the screen.
You don’t turn off your ringer and ignore it this time. Instead you stare at it, thumb hovering over the answer button until it eventually goes to voicemail.
You call her three days later.
It doesn’t go through, since you do it in the morning. Back home it must be the middle of the night. That choice may have been purposeful—easier, if you know she won’t pick up.
In the afternoon you get an assault of messages from her: all caps, swearing, littered with typos. She calls you again and again, but you don’t pick up.
You pick up for Hanta.
He calls when you’re settling into bed for the evening. You answer while yawning, drawing out the words of your greeting.
“Sorry,” his voice murmurs through your speaker. “Is this not a good time?”
He sounds tired, the softness of his tone filling you with warmth. You could fall asleep like this, easily.
“It’s perfect,” you reply. A twinge of guilt runs through your stomach. You don’t pick up for your sister like this.
You talk until you fall asleep, mostly hushed conversation about what you two have been up to in the past weeks. He tells you stories about Switzerland and Austria and preparation for Germany. You talk about your current projects and your time in the mountains.
The turmoil you’ve faced regarding abuela and your sister remains unspoken.
You don’t remember falling asleep, but in the morning you find that the call has ended, a morning greeting from Hanta in its place.
You call your sister again. This time it’s at a reasonable hour, but still during her workday. After three rings you think she won’t answer. But she picks up.
“Dio, quiero estrangularte,” she immediately bites through the speaker. The sound of her voice makes your breath catch, her threat completely going over your head.
“Te extraño,” you answer. I miss you.
She yells at you through the phone while you sit and listen. Or, partially listen, mostly basking in the fact that she’s speaking to you at all. The words don’t fully process, but you assume they’re threats and complaints and demands that you come back with abuela and an explanation. The berating lasts several minutes, you biting the inside of your cheeks to keep from smiling the entire time. Her voice cracks towards the end, choked noises separating her words. She’s nearly panting when she finally finishes.
“Lo siento,” you manage to whisper.
“Just—” her breath hitches. “Just shut up.”
You nod, waiting for her to continue.
She doesn’t. It’s silent for minutes. You can imagine her face, her lips parting as if to speak before they close in apprehension, the mix of a pout and glare she wears when she doesn’t know what to say. Normally you would ask her questions to get her started, intuiting what she wants to talk about. You don’t know if that’s something you can still do anymore.
You know she wants answers from you: to ask why you did what you did, how you could stomach making such a decision. But you also know that she knows why you did it. She knows you, knows how you feel towards abuela and towards the rest of your family. She knows how you are, running away when things get hard—running away, but always caving and coming back. There’s no point in asking; you both know this.
“Tía abuela is so mad at you.”
Tía abuela—abuela’s sister and your great aunt. You nod, lips pursed. “I can imagine.”
The huff of your sister’s amusement crackles through the speaker and you feel a confidence that everything will be okay.
You call frequently, every few days at the minimum. It’s awkward for the first few minutes of every call, until someone breaks the ice and eventually you’re laughing and gossiping like you used to. One of your tías is getting a divorce, your primero is newly engaged but his mamá doesn’t like the girl, and a family friend just lost an absurd amount of money in recent investments. You listen intently, eagerly taking in everything you’ve missed these past months.
“You kidnapping abuela is the hottest drama though,” your sister states blankly. “Mamá can’t escape it. People still bring it up every chance they get.”
Your stomach twists with guilt. Mamá’s always been soft to you, a stark contrast to abuela’s quips. “How is she faring?”
“Fine.” You can visualize the roll of her eyes on the other end. “She was sweet on you, but you know she’s ruthless to the others. Tía abuela is giving her a lot of shit, but she’s still the new head of the family.”
There’s a pause. You know what she’s going to say.
“I told her we’ve been calling. You should talk to her.”
You exhale. You should, to at least apologize for stealing her mother and her child all at once.
“Maybe,” you hum, and that’s the end of it.
“I’m moving to Japan,” you blurt the next time you call. It takes you by surprise, not the words you meant to say. You almost drop your phone. Why did you say that? You never came to a decision about whether or not to work for Hoshi no Sākasu.
“What!?” your sister screeches on the other end.
“What?”
She whines, “Ay, Dios mío.” You nod. After a few minutes of silence she asks why.
“I got a job offer,” you explain quietly.
“For…?”
“… A circus.”
You hold your breath during the silence that follows. She laughs. The sound brings a wave of relief through you. You aren’t sure why you were anxious to tell her—why you assumed she wouldn’t understand what it means to you.
She understands; she always does. “How’d you land that?”
You smile. “A miracle.”
The miracles being Hanta and Midoriya. Kendou and Momo. Abuela.
“You taking her with you?”
It’s a jab and you know it—feel it. It’s your sister pleading, Come home.
Later when you hang up, you sit quietly with yourself, phone tucked in your palms. The little rectangle is heavy with the weight of your conversations. It should be heavier, also holding your messages with Hanta and Chiara and Davide, stored with photos of abuela and mamá.
It takes several calls with Kendou before you give her the official acceptance of the position. Despite your confident claims to your sister, a piece of you was anxious the opportunity was no longer available, even with Kendou’s assurance that they could wait. When you finally breathe the words out over the phone, they don’t feel real. You ask her to keep it a secret for a little while, at least until the news settles in your own heart. Right now it’s a riptide, a violent storm within you as you sift through the emails of contracts and information.
You let her tell Momo, so long as she keeps it to herself, and you’re greeted by a warm message welcoming you to the team. Your eyes water while you respond. Your time with Momo isn’t up—there’s no longer a maybe lingering around the thoughts of being able to work together again.
It takes two weeks to tell Hanta.
He’s brushing his teeth while you mumble about your day, his phone propped up against the sink. The circus just landed in France, this being his first night in Paris. You’re on the couch, swaddled in blankets while your eyes linger around the interior on his end—marble walls, white towels, a random photo in a black frame.
“Are you rooming alone?” you ask when you finish your debrief.
He shakes his head, leaning to rinse his mouth before he wipes the residue on the back of his hand. He reaches for you and your heart races, thinking he’ll touch your face—only to jostle the screen while he leads you out of the bathroom. It’s a funny angle, the underside of his chin. It reminds you of looking up towards his face while laying on his chest.
“Nah I’m with ‘Roki. That’s how it usually is,” he answers. The next second the camera falls as if he dropped it, shaking violently with smears of creamy white and black splotches before he bounces into frame, beaming as he lays on his stomach on one of the hotel beds. His grin blooms an ache in your chest. You wish you were there with him.
You hum, saying, “That’s too bad,” before you can stop yourself.
“Huh?”
You pause, realizing where your mind was going. Heat creeps up your cheeks while Hanta stares at you through the camera. “Just—” you stop yourself, not wanting to tell him this way.
But he’s looking at you so curiously.
“I… I was hoping we could room together.”
It’s silent.
Hanta blinks at you, face and body frozen otherwise. You try to read what he’s thinking, if he’s putting it together, but he looks scarily neutral.
Then his head shifts abruptly to look at you dead on. His hand comes to his mouth, fingertips lightly pressing his lips. His expression doesn’t change except the slight widening of his eyes. He speaks quietly. “Are you… Does that mean what I think it does?”
You nod, face carefully neutral to assess his reaction.
He yelps. The camera shakes before falling and going black, but you can hear him scrambling and the bumping of the phone as he tries to pick it back up. You can’t help your smile—the fondness stretching across your face when he finally comes back into view looking like a puppy.
“Is this real?” he asks meekly. It’s almost a whisper. You wish you could hold his face and kiss him.
“Yeah,” you whisper back. “It’s real.”
It’s a precious gift to watch Hanta take in the information, face shifting between emotions rapidly before finally landing on something like a pout. He’s tearing up, eyes like giant marbles as they shine with joy.
“You… you chose—” he pauses. Me, you think he wants to say. “You chose us? The circus?”
Your own eyes are glassy, you can see them glistening in the tiny square in the top corner of the screen. Your lips twitch as you nod. Yes, you’re about to say—that you chose Hoshi no Sākasu. That you chose everyone. But you pause. You’ve been scared to make decisions and declarations, scared to admit to yourself why you make the choices you do, why you pretend they aren’t choices so much as obligations you just fell into. That you had to.
You feel that way with Hanta right now. But choosing to follow what feels like a duty or obligation is still a choice. You smile.“I chose you, Hanta.”
For the next two months, you work and you pack and you say goodbye, your own life rapidly shifting as the weather warms. You decide your time in Italy will come to an end at the start of June, after all your orders are finished. You’ll spend the break period in Costa Rica, tending to the wounds long left behind. Momo offers to hire a moving service that can move your things to her house (or estate, she calls it), to give you peace of mind until it’s time to settle in Japan.
Your stomach twists in knots every time you think about it—about going home.
The moving process starts early with you purging yourself of furniture and decor and clothes you don’t want anymore. Every time you say goodbye to something, your heart feels a little lighter. You sell those costumes you know you’ll never wear again and you argue hotly with the landlady to wiggle out of the lease you signed for the next year. She caves with a scowl when you pull the dead nonna card.
Chiara and Davide assist you, preventing you from taking the decluttering too far.
(“Babe, you still have another month,” Davide protests when you take pictures of your dining table to post online for sale. “Are you planning to eat off the floor?”)
(“Tucano—” Chiara groans when she steps into your studio, feet disappearing under bundles of fabric. “How do you work in this mess?”)
You spend as much time as you can with them, soaking in the final days with your throuple—as Davide puts it. The three of you have weekly gatherings at your place, filled with pastries and fruit and wine. Some days your conversations are a time of laughter. Others, tears.
“I can’t believe I was right after all,” Davide sighs, nursing his third glass of a purplish cabernet.
You make a face. “When you said I would fall in love with one of the performers but then break up and have awkward tension?”
Chiara gasps loudly, nearly a cackle. “What?”
Davide scoffs. “When I said you would leave me for a man.”
You roll your eyes, but Chiara comes to your defense first. “They’re leaving us, first of all. And Italy, and opera dresses. Second, they’re leaving for the circus.”
Teeth scrape against the inside of your cheek as you consider her words. You recall what you told Hanta over the phone, when he asked if you chose Hoshi no Sākasu. Maybe the wine is loosening your tongue, but you find it easier to admit tonight.
“I’m leaving for the circus, but Hanta was a big part of that.”
Davide screeches an, “I knew it!” while Chiara’s face morphs into a frown.
“Hanta,” she repeats back in a mimicking voice. You slap her arm. Her head comes to rest on your shoulder. “You can’t forget about us, okay?”
“Of course I won’t.”
“We should visit! I’ve always wanted to go to Japan.”
Chiara nods quickly, hair brushing your neck. “We should go in the spring. I wanna see the sakura bloom.”
They escalate into making plans to visit, now entirely independent of whether or not you’re in Japan in the spring. You smile to yourself. Chiara was your first friend, who later introduced you to Davide as a client. A couple years passed and now they’re the people in Milan you hold closest. They were friends without you, but became more intertwined when you arrived. You hope they’ll be good friends even after you leave.
Watching and listening to them now tells you that you have nothing to worry about.
They help you load boxes in the van at the end of June. Your last order is finished and the lease comes to its end. The remainder of your things go into a large suitcase and backpack for you to live out of at Chiara’s. You stay with her for one week, idling in your favorite places around Milan in her clothes. It’s a stretched out goodbye, one that has been happening in fragments since you first declared your departure. These days don’t feel real. You can’t fathom that you’ll soon be across the world, walking through familiar streets—ones that have certainly changed in your absence.
You and Hanta talk less as your move gets closer, primarily because the circus has landed in the Americas, the time change an increasing obstacle. Knowing that you’re following their footsteps, soon to be on the same land again, feels special. It feels like a confirmation that you’re making the right choice.
You start listening to basic Japanese lessons and download an app to memorize hiragana. Your finger hesitantly draws the characters, lip jutting in a pout when you get one wrong. When you and Hanta do find pockets of time to talk, he gently corrects your pronunciation of basic phrases.
Chiara has to work the day that you leave, so you have a tearful goodbye at her front door before Davide drives you to the airport later in the afternoon. You wonder if this is the last time you’ll sit in his car, legs against dark leather. The thought triggers other sentimental musings, questions of the next time you’ll sleep over at Chiara’s, or the next time you’ll have a real Italian pasta.
Davide holds you at the terminal, one of the few hugs he’s ever offered. He cries easily—still reading you down, just with red-rimmed eyes and a runny nose. You’re forced to promise that you won’t forget him. When you finally leave him to roll your bag to the check in line and then to security, you turn back once and catch him scowling.
You land in Spain before boarding the eleven hour flight to San José. Floating above the ocean—separated from your friends and soaring to your family—strikes something deep in your heart. It’s a mix of aches and pains and fears swirling together, making your body feel so heavy you think you might start plummeting into the Atlantic. Your feet shuffle to cradle your bag between them, tucked under the seat in front of you. You itch to pull it out and open it, to check that abuela is still resting in her wooden box.
San José is just as you remember. Stepping outside hits you full force with an assault of hot, humid air. Your skin begins to glisten, clothes already clinging to you in the few minutes it takes to walk to the buses. The next one comes in half an hour, so you park yourself on a bench and lean against the backrest. Palm trees tower over you, their grassy leaves fanning between the ground and the sky. A cluster of sparrows floats under their canopies, entering your vision only to leave moments later.
By the time you pull your bag along the sidewalk of your childhood street, the sun has sunk beneath the horizon. You slow your steps as you reach the driveway of your home. The house isn’t in view quiet yet, shrouded behind the trees that gate you from the neighbor. You pause at the corner of the fence, fighting the knots in your stomach and the thrumming in your hands. It should just be your sister and mamá inside. You can handle them.
Despite your incessant self-assurances, several minutes pass before you step down the sidewalk. They’re slow and hesitant. Your head tilts upwards, taking in the canopies of cecropia above. The street lamp illuminates the leaves from below, displaying faded green against the black of the sky. Their shapes are round but segmented, the webbed fingers of a frog. You catch scarring on the thin branches, knots and welts in the wood that take the shape of spiraled eyes, watching you. You can hear the rustling of palm trees, the scrape of leafy hairs as they blow above you—
In front of you.
You bring your chin down, looking ahead to the lemon tree in the yard. You nearly yelp in surprise at the sight of your sister. She blinks while you flinch, hand holding one of the branches so she can clip the fruit with her other.
No greeting passes between you. You demand, “Since when do you take care of the garden?” She’s the type to complain about dirtying her shoes while walking to the car. The dresses feel like a weight in your suitcase. Would she even like them?
She scowls at the accusation in your voice. “Ever since you kidnapped the person who used to.”
You don’t have an answer, still too stunned. Her eyes similarly trace over your form, mouth twisting when she takes in your clothes.
“And you still dress like that?”
You can’t hold back your laugh. You missed her.
You missed home.
Seeing mamá is harder. She’s quiet and soft, always a subdued presence, but now with a new touch of somberness. She looks sad—and easily shattered.
You meet her at the door unexpectedly. She’s waiting when you enter, immediately standing from the sofa to reach for you. Her touch is firm over your arm, hands turning white from the intensity of her grip, like she thinks you might disappear at any moment. Tears spring without warning. You try to blink them away, to keep your face from twisting in a sob, but you cry easily.
“I’m sorry,” is all you can think to say. You don’t add more, not sure how to eloquently apologize for stealing her own mother, for leaving, for making life at home and with the family excruciating.
Her dark eyes shine back at you, slightly curved from the twitch of her smile. She looks happy, though a quiet sort of happiness. Not one for words, her reassurance comes from how she reaches for you, pulling you into a hug. Your wet eyes land against her shoulder, steeping into the fabric of her shirt. One of her hands comes to your head, smoothing over your hair as she hums—a content sound, one she makes when things are finally coming together.
You take the box of ashes out shortly and offer them to mamá. Her face tightens when the realization strikes her, and you feel more guilt and regret swirling in your stomach. Should you have waited?
Delicate hands take the box, thumb tracing a band of dark brown towards the bottom of the lid. Her eyes soften before she stretches it back to you.
“Keep her with you,” she nearly whispers. “Until we have the ceremony.”
You swallow. Do you deserve that? To keep holding onto her after all this time? After all that you’ve deprived your family of? Mamá’s eyes don’t waver, holding a command you have never been able to disobey. You take the box.
Your mother fusses over you, helping you carry your bags to your room. She starts fluffing your pillows before offering to bring you some water, and you have to grab her by the arm to get her to stop and listen while you tell her I’m fine and Thank you. She leaves with an anxious expression, you think out of fear that you’ll vanish in the middle of the night. A quiet, “Buenas noches,” filters through just before the door shuts.
You flop onto the bed with a sigh. One of your newly fluffed pillows bounces off and lands on the ground. You sigh again.
Despite the exhaustion deep in your body, you can’t fall asleep. You lay in your childhood bed and stare at the ceiling, your vision no different than if you closed your eyes instead. Even though you’re blind to your surroundings, you can feel the relics of an earlier person littered on bookshelves and tucked into drawers—someone who had their grandmother.
You’re certain that hours pass, but you can’t bring yourself to check the time. An idea comes to mind and you act before thinking it through. You turn so you’re sitting upright on the bed, hand gently waving towards your bedside table until it lands on the wooden box you placed earlier. Once it’s safe in your hold, you rise and leave the room.
You know this journey through the hall to abuela’s room. As a toddler you walked this route nearly every night. You were frequented by nightmares, ones that disappeared as soon as you took refuge with your grandmother.
The floorboards creak under your weight, reminding you to keep to the left to minimize the noise. You take your time, hugging abuela to your chest while your other arm extends to feel for the doorknob. It makes contact immediately. You twist slowly so the latch opens quietly, then push through with your shoulder quickly so the squeak of the hinges aren’t drawn out.
Your feet shuffle forwards, soon pressing your shins against the mattress. There’s the faintest smell of lemons—a scent that tightens your chest. You crawl forwards, bringing the box to rest between the two pillows at the headboard. A wave of exhaustion rolls through you immediately. You don’t bother settling under the covers; as soon as your head touches the pillow, you’re asleep.
Closing your eyes transports you to another world, an older world that you are young within. You’re speaking a language you don’t recognize, but one you understand every word of, conversing back and forth with a boy you’ve never met. He has kind eyes and a soft voice that you want to always say yes to. He has rough hands, but they cradle yours gently. In the next moment you are both older, adults, and he is watching you sadly. You don’t have words to explain his expression, what it invokes in you, but you can tell that he is leaving—not by his own choice.
You are alone and angry and in constant fear, conjuring images in your head of what has happened to him. If you’ll ever see him again. You don’t know this man, but he is everything to you. He has left everything to you, too: a daughter. You look at her face until it becomes your own, staring at a man who is your father by name but not by blood.
The story repeats, this time with a man who gives you meaningful glances. His eyes aren’t as kind but they are entirely on you. He says he’ll give you everything. He takes it back when you learn you’re pregnant, with twins. He leaves without a word.
You’re woken by an assault of light flashing your vision. You squeeze your eyelids shut, trying to block out the blooms of painful red and white static. Turning your head offers some relief, angling yourself from the sun and instead pushing your face into a pillow.
“Get up,” a voice barks. Your sister, you realize, pulling back the curtains.
You groan, drawing it out as if asking a question.
“I’m not letting you sleep past noon,” she continues. “Come help me with the garden.”
You roll over to face her, eyes sticky while you work to hold them open. Your head has the heaviness of a stone. The warmth of the bed lulls your body back under, to whatever lives you were living in your subconscious.
“Kay,” you eventually mumble.
She looks at you skeptically before nodding and leaving, with a promise to return in a few minutes if you don’t appear downstairs.
In the fresh silence of the morning, you turn to lay on your back. Your head brushes something hard. You frown, tilting it back and forth. It scrapes against something with sharp edges. When you turn, you see abuela, her box of ashes still tucked between the pillows. You blink in surprise before going still. The dreams from last night run through your mind. You’ve never had one like that before. You stare at the box, attempting to recall the faces that passed by.
The garden work doesn’t last longer than a couple hours. You pull weeds and harvest the ripened crops—mostly peppers and bananas. The midday sun burns hot and bright and you immediately begin to sweat through the sleeves of your shirt. Your sister doesn’t let you complain, quipping back that it’s your fault for sleeping in.
When you bring the harvest inside, your mother graciously receives it in the kitchen. For the first time today you get a proper look at her face: it’s the older, wrinkled, and saddened features of that first baby in your dream. She looks like a young version of abuela. You halt while several fragmented thoughts abruptly click into place.
Your dream, your abuela and mamá, your sister…
You.
Tears well in your eyes without warning, immediately sliding down your cheeks. Mamá doesn’t question it. She embraces you, rubbing your back carefully.
When you calm she switches topics, not probing what brought on your outburst. Instead she sifts through the vegetables carefully, picking ones to set on the counter for lunch.
“Hopefully we get a lot tomorrow, or else I’ll have to run to the store.”
You hum in question.
She stops rummaging, eyes lifting to you carefully. “Did your sister not tell you?”
You blink. “Tell me what?”
“We're having a big dinner tomorrow.”
You inhale sharply, heart racing. Big dinner is a synonym for family dinner. Tíos and primeros and amigos de la familia. Tía abuela. It was going to happen eventually, an event you can’t avoid. You knew this, you know this. But you didn’t expect it’d be this soon.
You aren’t ready, aren’t sure you’ll ever be ready. You could throw up.
“Who—” your voice cracks as you manage through the words. “Who’s coming?”
Mamá doesn’t answer.
“So everyone,” you respond to her silence. She doesn’t offer any confirmation or denial. You leave the room.
When you enter your bedroom you curl up beside the bed, shielding you from the door. Shaky hands reach for your phone, calling Hanta by instinct. You don’t know what he’s doing today, if he’ll pick up.
It only takes two rings before you hear him greeting you with a dramatic, “Konnichiwa!” before switching to Spanish. “How’s life back home?”
“Hanta,” you say flatly, urgently. He hums, the sound much lower and with a twinge of surprise. “My family’s coming over tomorrow and I only learned five minutes ago.”
There’s a drawn out sigh on the other end while he conjures a response. “How’s that feeling?”
You nearly laugh. “Like I’m going to throw up and then run away.”
He giggles on the other end. The sound makes your heart pang, but your stomach lightens with a sort of relief. “No way,” he insists. “You’ve come too far to run. And there’s no way I’m letting you put this off if it was your main hesitation for joining us.”
You smile, lips pulling tight against your teeth. “I can make my own choices,” you retort.
“Too bad, I know you already signed the contract.”
You sigh, nodding your head solemnly. You did.
He doesn’t say anything more, letting you take your time.
“I’m just…” you start, trying to find the words. You aren’t ready. You’re still processing being back home, in your old bedroom, with mamá and your sister. You’re—
“Scared,” Hanta fills in for you.
You fight the urge to scowl. You fail.
“Yeah,” you huff.
He giggles again, and you know it’s from the tone of your voice. “I’m afraid for you,” he admits. “But you have to do it, yeah? And you’ve already done the hard part of coming home, seeing your mom and sister. And you’re still alive and well after that, right?”
You nod at his words and hum in agreement.
“Was everything okay with them?” he asks.
You explain what happened when you came home: finding your sister by the lemons and your mom waiting by the door, how neither of them properly yelled or expressed being upset with you.
“Woah… That’s incredible,” he says. “Maybe the rest of your family will move on once they see you too.”
“There’s no way. That was mamá and hermana. Tía abuela is an entirely different character, and I’ve already heard that she’s pissed.”
He huffs. “Sounds like my abuelo. Those people love the strongest though.”
Your call continues, you two catching up on the past few days. He speaks excitedly, but his voice lulls you to a calmer state. By the time you hang up, a piece of you thinks everything will be okay. The two of you exchange goodbyes, and then you’re left in the quiet solitude of your room. It only lasts for a minute, before the door slams open.
It’s your sister, standing with a giant grin across her face as she excitedly demands, “Who was that?”
Tía abuela slaps you the moment she enters the room.
Your cheek stings from the contact, a sharp pain that tingles across your skin. It dulls quickly, but you wonder if there will be a bruise. The coppery taste of blood blooms against the side of your tongue. You must have cut the inside of your mouth against your teeth.
These thoughts distract you from the accompanying verbal assault: a string of insults and accusations that you’ve heard before, from yourself. You take it quietly and with a stoic expression. Your eyes trail to the floor, not wanting to meet hers as she berates you in front of your relatives. Nobody speaks when she finishes. The only remaining sound is her ragged breath.
A long pause follows. You don’t raise your eyes, too embarrassed to meet anyone’s gaze.
The silence is eventually broken by your nephew. He cries, yanking his hand from his mother in attempt to run out the door. The room unpauses, relatives rushing after him while loud commotion fills the space. A gentle touch on your cheek brings your attention to your mother. There’s a shine in her eyes, a quirk to her lips. Maybe she finds this funny. You think you would too.
Nobody speaks to you, not willing to take on any part of tía abuela’s wrath. You don’t mind, standing awkwardly to yourself in the corner, and shunning yourself in the kitchen when the others take their plates to the dining and living rooms to eat. Nobody invites you over.
Later there’s another commotion, in the living room with your nephew again. Tía abuela tries to feed him a spoonful of rice, but he refuses. She insists, and he slaps the fork from her hand. Gasps release throughout the room, your cousins immediately going to scold him, but he screams and runs. You can hear his footsteps approach the kitchen. You freeze, not sure what you should do.
He barrels straight for you, short arms coming around your hips while his face buries into your stomach. You grunt at the impact, but stand frozen and wide-eyed. His parents enter—your older cousin and her husband—with tía abuela trailing behind them. Your hands fly to your nephew’s to pull him from you and hand him over. He’s too young to understand, too young to get in trouble. But he fists your shirt tightly and yells, “No!”
You tug him again.
“She hurt you!” he wails. The sentence is partially muffled by your shirt, wetting with his tears and snot, but everyone hears it. Your heart drops. All the adults in the doorway freeze.
You cast one careful glance to them before you make up your mind and grip your nephew by his underarms, hoisting him to your hip. His face is red, with teary eyes and black curls clinging to his temples. You watch him glance at you and then the door, laying his chest against yours as if to offer himself as a shield. Your eyes well with tears.
“I hurt her too,” you say quietly, running a hand over his hair. Your voice is firm, and loud enough that you know the others will hear.
He hiccups, head turning to look at you in shock. “You hit tía abuela?”
“No,” you say with a huff of laughter. “But something worse.”
His eyes widen impossibly, full moons against a dark night. Brown irises drift to your cheek. There must be a mark, still flared and angry. A small hand comes to touch it gently, a tingling sting radiating from the contact. You’re certain there will be a bruise tomorrow.
Tía abuela doesn’t speak to you, but others finally do. Your nephew’s outburst broke the invisible boundary, opening a gap for others to greet you. They don’t say much, eyes still cautiously flitting to tía abuela, but it’s a start. Nobody chides you, but nobody looks excited either.
Everyone but the kids. You watch your nephew whisper with his cousins, giggling as they look towards you and then dart their eyes away when you meet them. One of them approaches you during the goodbyes, gently tugging at your shirt to get your attention. He’s another nephew, this one from a family friend.
“Did you really punch tía abuela?” he asks, eyes wide with wonder.
Yours nearly pop out of your head. A stifled laugh sounds from behind you—your sister’s voice.
“Not…” you don’t know how to respond, what the appropriate explanation is for a seven year old. “Not exactly.”
His eyes stay glued to your face. You feel cornered here, wondering if you said the wrong thing. A voice calls his name. He grins wide before running off. You exhale in relief.
You get small waves and head nods from everyone else. Only when tía abuela is out the door does someone finally pull you for a clumsy, messy hug—your tía, the second eldest of abuela’s children after mamá. She holds you tightly, with the quiet promise that you’ll talk more soon. You feel her sincerity in the hand clutching your wrist.
When the door finally closes, your sister releases the longest breath you’ve ever heard. Mamá appears with an ice pack covered in cloth, motioning to hold it against your cheek. It’s long overdue, but you accept it graciously.
“That went better than I expected,” she says quietly. You agree.
“You totally could have dodged it,” your sister adds.
You agree. You could have, if you wanted to.
The bruise fades after a week, in time for the ceremony to scatter abuela’s ashes. Family members have come and gone by the house, warmed to catching up with you. You see tía abuela again, this time without the slapping and screaming. She ignores you, except for a fair amount of side eyes while conversing with mamá. When she says goodbye, her eyes meet yours for a moment right before slamming the door.
The ceremony takes place on the beach. The sight makes you think of Hanta and that beautiful tent—black sand glitters like the dust of diamonds under moonlight. No words are spoken; the only sounds being the lapping waves trying to reach your family on the shore. Tía abuela lights the candles of the vigil while mamá opens the ashes and pours them into the hands of your relatives. Tía abuela’s sharp eyes watch closely, lingering on you when mamá finally makes her way around.
Abuela’s remains are soft and light—grey ash spotted with clumps of black residue. Her body is the feathery weight of dry sand, and yet you feel like you are cupping the entire world and universe. This is not the dust that sweeps through the air after a fire; you are holding the dust of stars and planets and moons. You are holding the weight of your lineage, the connecting point between the bloodline that lives, and the blood that has passed. If you squint, you can make out shapes and images in abuela’s remains. They’re vague. Dreamlike.
One of your younger tíos begins the music with his Quijongo, the stick thumping steadily against the bowstring. You close your eyes at the sound, akin to the whistling of wind through trees. The airy notes of your cousin on the Ocarina join shortly, and then the gentle shake of Maracas. Their performance draws on for a few moments before tía abuela starts to hum. It fills your body with warmth, a feeling so intense you almost shiver in the summer heat. Her notes are clear and bodied, like her entire soul is unraveling into the air—settling above you like the salty humidity.
She falls into a repeated chorus, the sign for everyone to join. You open your eyes when you begin to hum with her—with everyone. The sound sweeps through the circle around you, tía abuela illuminated in the center by candlelight, orange haze gently fanning to reveal the faces surrounding her in a warm glow. The humming changes when your mother shifts her intonation. Others follow her lead, adding their own twists and slides and delays to the song, pulling a deeper and richer sound through layers of complexity. You try to channel abuela’s energy with your own voice, sharpening the ends of each note and adding a roughness to your tone.
You close your eyes again, letting a warm buzz sweep over you entirely. A charged energy has bloomed within, taken you completely, as if your body has more spirit than it can contain. Your arms burn.
When abuela has been scattered over the sands of your home, everyone falls silent. Your eyes again drift around the circle, taking in the many praying faces of your family, slowly dimming as the flaming wicks reach their end. You lift your gaze to the sky, soaking in the faint moon and sprinkled stars.
A figure flies above, the shape of a large bird. Your heart skips a beat before it races, catching the familiar outline of a macaw. They’re daytime birds, ones that sleep when the sun does.
You wonder what brought this one here, now.
The following month brings new grief. The grief of old relationships as they change and fizzle, the grief of your previous self, the grief of your pride when you say your apologies over and over—understanding the multitudes of ways you hurt your family. You grieve your anger and your spite, coming to terms with the detriments of your self righteous attitude.
There’s a special grief in the pain of being forgiven, too.
There’s a beauty in this sadness and this ache: the beauty of memory. Abuela begins to appear everywhere, and in all of those people you once thought weren’t deserving of her. It hits you the hardest with mamá, a face you see daily and with each moment growing more and more similarities between her and the deceased.
You’re envious that abuela lives in her features, in the slope of her nose and lips. Some were passed down to you and your sister, in matching smiles but otherwise your relationship isn’t apparent. Even you and your sister look nothing alike, only sharing the eyes of a man you don’t know. A man you saw in a dream now weeks ago, one who promised you everything for one brief moment.
He appears one day.
You’re freshly showered from a morning in the garden, heading toward the stairs to meet mamá in the kitchen, passing the square window on the second floor. She stands in the opening, a frame capturing a moment in time: her in the driveway with someone. He’s tall with tanned skin and curly hair—an aged version of the second man from your dream. You watch him smirk at mamá, a sharp sliver of teeth. You can’t hear her, but she waves her arms and her lips move rapidly. Her chest heaves and you think for the first time in your life you’re watching her yell at someone.
The man takes one step closer. Your mom shoves him at the shoulder. He stares at her openly before finally turning away.
His head tilts towards the window, gaze immediately locking onto you. Despite the distance, the shape of his eyes is clear: they’re sharp, intense. For a brief moment you think you’re looking at your sister. You break the stare, turning your head sharply before moving away from the glass.
You stand still for a minute, back against the wall. Your heart pounds in your chest and ears, crawling uncomfortably up your throat.
“I think I saw my dad,” you say abruptly the following day.
You watch Hanta’s face go still. “Huh?”
“He was in the driveway with mamá. I’ve never met him, or seen pictures. But I have his eyes.”
“He must be hot.” You deadpan at his response and he laughs. “Sorry. Did you get to talk to him? Or ask your mamá about it?”
You shake your head. She didn’t say anything when you came downstairs; she’s never said anything before. You’ve never felt a reason to ask, always happy enough with the family you have. If that dream from last month had any indication of the kind of man he is, you’d rather keep things the way they are.
You don’t see him again.
Your second month at home is busier now that you’ve reintegrated with your relatives. You go from spending most days at mamá’s to getting pulled along excursions to other houses and local spots. You’re put on impromptu babysitting duty for your nieces and nephews, shaken awake early in the morning to hike with your cousin, abruptly shoved into a car during the afternoon for a trip to the beach. You find yourself in markets and on the sand and in the jungle. It’s exhausting, but you love it. You missed it.
You still maintain the garden with your sister and call your friends regularly. They ground you into the soil of your home, even across the ocean. Your joint chat with Chiara and Davide populates with pictures, frequently including ones of them smiling together at your usual places. Swiping through them fills you with warmth, and a distant ache.
Hanta is equally diligent with his communication. His responses to your own photos always result in grins that pique the interest of your family members. You learn to wait until you’re alone to read his messages.
(He sends a video one evening, of a recent training session. The phone is still, likely propped on a table or chair, while he moves through an unpracticed routine—a freestyle. It could be mistaken for casual stretching. Even so, every motion is smooth, every transition is seamless. At one point he anchors his legs before leaning back in a bundle of fabric. The camera is close enough to pick up the steady rise and fall of his chest.
You save the video with warm cheeks, watching it again several times throughout the day. He’s so captivating.)
One rare morning when you rise before your sister, you tend to the garden alone. The work is minimal: watering some sections and picking ripened tomatoes. Less than an hour later you step inside with a heavy basket of sweet red, heaving it on the counter. The consecutive thump of footsteps sound down the stairs—your sister must have woken.
You turn to greet her and freeze.
In her arms are dresses, the dresses you made her. Dresses you haven’t shown her. Her eyebrows are arched high into her forehead as she asks, “So tell me why these are exactly my size and style?”
Heat flares up your neck. Instead of explaining, you demand, “Why were you in my room?”
“Why is this my size?”
Several moments of silent glaring pass. You still refuse to answer. She laughs.
“You sap! You are so fake.” The grin on her face stretches wide. Her arm bends to press the garments to her chest while her other one points at you. “This is embarrassing for you.”
You nod, absolutely humiliated. Your plan was to hang the dresses in the back of her closet the day you leave for Japan. At the very least you could avoid her reaction over the phone. But now that she’s found them, more than anything, you’re just relieved that her eyes are shining with glee.
She likes them.
Towards the end of August you’re in regular conversation with Kendou and Momo about moving to Japan. Kendou assists your preparation for work while Momo helps with housing. The latter recommends you visit in person before committing to a lease, and insists you stay with her until you get situated. You attempt to refuse, but she doesn’t relent. When you try suggesting you at least pay her something, she laughs.
“I’ll quit,” you threaten.
She grins, nearly singing, “Too late. Besides, I have your things hostage at my estate.”
You sigh, defeated.
The next day you get a call from Hanta in the evening. His pouting face is the first thing you see when you accept it.
“What?” you ask in amusement.
“Why’d you ask to stay with Momo? Why not me?”
Your jaw nearly drops. Can’t they let you share your own news? And why is he acting like you begged her to host you?
“Hanta, I tried to refuse but she has my stuff already.”
“You should move it to my place.”
You laugh. “You’re crazy.”
He pouts harder, puppy eyes sparkling. “Why not?”
“Hanta—” you sigh. “I thought you wanted to take your time?”
He groans, flopping his head onto a pillow. You grin.
“Yeah,” he exhales. “I just miss you a lot right now.”
The confession strikes your heart, claws an ache through your chest. He’s straightforward with his feelings and his words, sending shivers of giddiness through you.
“I miss you too,” you admit. The busy days with your family have been effective distractions, but that longing always reappears—in the quiet of the nights and mornings, or during these calls when you can hear his voice so clearly. So close. “We have less than two months left.”
He groans again. “That’s so long.”
You agree, and ask him what he plans to do when the tour finishes mid-September. The circus cast has a month break before training in Tokyo resumes.
“Last time I went to Ecuador to see mamá’s family.”
You hum. Maybe you could meet him there and catch the same plane to Japan. Neither of you say anything, but you can tell he’s thinking something similar.
By the time September sweeps in you live everyday with a buzz thrumming beneath your skin. It’s a constant energy, restless anxiety knowing that you’ll be moving soon. You and Hanta have started working out the details of meeting in Ecuador. He tells you that he’ll know his plans in a few days.
You keep yourself busy to ease your agitation, more beaches and mountains and markets. The full days have you exhausted at night, enough to sleep instead of letting your mind race in excitement.
Today you wake early, finishing the garden tasks before the sun arches overhead. You have plans to spend the day in the city with your sister. You already know where you want to eat lunch, and you can guess which bakery she’ll demand you visit afterwards. While you make your way downstairs quickly, she takes her time. The water from her shower stops running just as you reach the living room. You sigh.
After several minutes of listening to pattering footsteps above you, the chime of the doorbell rings. You frown. It deepens when your sister calls, “Can you get that? I invited someone to join.”
You were looking forward to a day of just the two of you, not prepared to have a third presence. Knowing your sister, the guest is your older cousin—who you love, but is usually overwhelming to be around for longer than an hour.
You open the door with a huff, ready to greet her with the most enthusiasm you can muster—
But Hanta is standing at the doorstep.
Your eyes fly open at the sight. Immediately they trace his face—his dark hair and eyes. He’s disheveled, sporting stubble along his lip and jawline. His hair is longer than it was half a year ago, bunched in a knot at the base of his neck. Long wisps fall at the sides of his face, framing him. He’s in warm weather clothes—an unbuttoned tropical shirt with loose shorts and sandals, and a big backpack.
You swallow. He looks good.
He grins immediately, reaching for your hand as he says your name. You’re too stunned to hear it, focused trying to process the fact that he’s here.
“Hanta…?” you eventually ask. Your eyes burn and your nose stings. Tears surface.
His face softens, smile turning gentle. He tugs your arm, encouraging you to step closer. Your heart thumps quickly and loudly in your ears. You think your chest is going to explode.
“Yeah,” he nearly whispers. “Can I hug you now?”
You nod fervently and let him pull you by the waist. His bag prevents you from wrapping your arms around his torso, so instead you loop them over his shoulders. He buries his face into your neck with a sigh, his breath sending shivers down your spine. Your cheek presses into his hair while you inhale the scent of him: sweet oranges. There’s a thrumming against your chest, but you can’t differentiate your heartbeat from his.
“Missed you,” you mumble quietly.
“Yeah.”
Your mind races with questions. How did your sister manage to contact him? Everyone told you the circus still had a few more days before the tour officially ended—did they finish early? Did Hanta leave early?
You don’t ask any, instead squeezing your arms to clutch him harder. His grip tightens in response and a rush of euphoria runs through you—to be held like this, by him.
The shutter of a camera breaks your moment of bliss, immediately prompting you to jerk away. Hanta’s grip doesn’t let you go far, keeping your chests pressed together while you lean your head back to turn to the sound. Mamá fumbles with her phone, grumbling that the ringer was supposed to be off. Your sister stands beside her with a giant smirk. You want to cower away in embarrassment. Hanta doesn’t let you escape him, so you resort to burying your head into his shoulder.
He laughs, a symphony of glee. You peek at his face and see no traces of fluster. He looks happy.
His grip loosens enough to let him step aside and introduce himself, but his hand holds yours tightly. The greeting he offers feels dutifully Japanese—bowing as he states his full name, thanking mamá for the care—but the words come out in Spanish. You blink at his formality and its out of place nature in your family, on him.
Mamá ushers the two of you inside, insisting it’s her pleasure and for him to make himself at home. It occurs to you that she also knew he was coming, already expecting to let him stay. You look at your sister with wide eyes, hoping for an answer, but she continues to grin smugly, widening as she deliberately looks at your intertwined hands.
She interjects before mamá and Hanta can get invested in their conversation. “You should go soon.”
You frown. “Huh?”
“I did invite someone over—for me to hang out with.” The look she gives you says all you need to know: it is your older cousin. “Unless you want everyone to know about your boyfriend today, you should leave before she comes.”
You can feel the headache forming at the thought of your extended family finding out. So you nod, hurrying him to your room to drop off his bag.
“Maybe we should go to the beach,” you tell him quickly. “This city is small and I would really like to wait a couple days before anyone finds out you’re here. The beach will be fine, and we can visit the next city over—”
Hanta leans to press his lips against your own, effectively halting your speech and thoughts. The words die in your throat as you immediately kiss him back, mind melting as his hand cradles your neck. He takes a slow step forward, backing you up to the door. He’s radiant with warmth, his front entirely flush to you, removing any distance.
The kiss is passionate—that searing heat you’ve missed for too long. He smiles against you, softly scraping his stubble against your cheek. An embarrassing noise slips from your throat, originating from somewhere deep inside you.
He hums before pulling away, only long enough to breathe before he’s on you again.
“I missed you,” he whispers after a proper pause.
You swallow. “Yeah.”
He glues himself to you for the entire day. His arms are firm over your waist while he sits on the back of your moped, you speeding along the road to the beach. He pulls you by the hand when you park, grinning wide as his feet sift through the sand. The air and ground are warm, Hanta a thousand times warmer as he holds you on the shore. You lay on your back, him on his side so he can throw an arm over your stomach and stare right into your eyes.
You speak in quiet voices about everything you can. He kisses you often, stealing them between every pause of your words. When you jokingly chide him for it, insisting you need to speak, he settles for grazing his lips over your neck and collarbone, shifting to your knuckle when he wants to see your face.
Sometimes the conversation lulls, and all you do is watch each other with soft smiles and glistening eyes.
In the water, his gaze becomes stronger, too strong for you to handle. When you surface from a wave, he’s the first thing you see, crooked grin and wet hair. You immediately dip back under. There’s a certain weight in his eyes that you can’t handle.
The next time you break for air, he’s out of sight. Before you can turn to look for him, a hand tugs you from behind. It’s Hanta, pulling your back to slot against his chest. His head dips to your shoulder, lips running over the skin, arms snaking around your waist so you can’t disappear again.
You close your eyes at the feeling—his heat and his honest affection. You’re embarrassed by the tender displays in public, susceptible to the gazes and opinions of others. But maybe you deserve to have this moment, to be the annoying couple at the beach.
Couple? you wonder. You shake the thought away. Whatever this… thing you have with Hanta is, you don’t know how to name it. Neither of you have spoken about labels or exclusivity, but… couple feels almost derogatory.
The two of you stay out until the evening, not sure when your home is safe to return to. When hunger settles in you drive with Hanta into the city.
This is his first time in Costa Rica, but he's in a different element in Latin America. Speaking Español brings out facets of his personality that are less noticeable in English or Japanese—a more playful but direct version of him. You wonder what you might learn about him as you continue to study Japanese.
He hugs you tightly on the ride home, arms back around your waist. He tries to tuck his head in the crook of your neck and shoulder, but the clunky helmets enforce a distance. You ride slowly through the night, careful of the winding roads, slow enough to catch the rustle of monkeys darting along the powerline. Every time you come to a stop, your ears flood with the ringing of insects and the soft, steady tone of night birds.
The house is quiet at night. Mamá is the only one present, greeting you with a quiet smile. She offers you dinner, and then some fruit when you decline. Hanta’s lip pouts at the mention of fried plantains, puppy eyes forcing you to agree.
“You can stay in my room,” you tell him afterwards while climbing the stairs. “I just need to grab a couple things.”
He trails curiously when you skip your door to go further down the hall.
“I’ve been sleeping in abuela’s room,” you explain.
He doesn’t follow you into the space, instead waiting by the doorway. You swipe your charger and book from the bedside table before smoothing out the covers and leaving.
Hanta doesn’t ask any questions, and you don’t offer any details. You wonder what he’s thinking, what he wants to know. His eyes linger over you, watching you closely. You wish you knew him better, wish you could take one look at his face and know immediately what’s turning through his heart and mind. Maybe he feels this way towards you, too.
This time when he enters your room, his eyes drift through your shelves and desk. They brighten when he catches a picture frame, nestled with a younger version of you and your sister standing in front of mamá and your grandparents. You don’t remember your abuelo well, only having fragments of memories. The only pieces of him you recall are the ones captured in photos; maybe they aren’t even real memories, just scenes you conjured from your imagination to pretend.
“You look like your abuelo in this one,” Hanta says.
Is this too much? For him to be here, looking through your artifacts of life and smiling fondly over old pictures? Part of you still feels like you’ve only known each other for a week, still chasing him through tents and trying to discover their makers. The other part thinks you’ve been in each other’s arms through your months of separation.
A seed inside you says, He’s been with you before the circus, too.
Hanta’s still smiling when he looks at you again. You swallow, catching that joyful glint in his eyes. For him, this is long overdue.
(This being the intimacy and the affection and the opportunity to learn everything he can—to find his way into every opening of your being and make a home for himself. For both of you.)
In this stillness and quiet of the night, you search your heart for how you really feel—untampered by fears of what’s right or what others may think, what the standard for relationships is supposed to be.
You want him—like this. Forever.
Under soft covers and cocooned in Hanta’s warmth, you manage to fall asleep in your own bed. You enter a dreamless sleep and rise naturally with the sun. Your sister doesn’t barge into your room to wake you, but you still dress for the garden and get to work. She’s there already, clipping the last round of tomatoes.
She gives you a pointed look that you return with your own. Neither of you speak, instead trading glances through the morning as you join her tending. She’s nosy and wants to know the details of how you met, what your relationship is like. You communicate that it’s not her business. You know you’ll fold and tell her eventually.
When you re-enter the house, you’re ambushed by the sight of Hanta in the kitchen helping mamá with breakfast. He wears her floral apron, diligently cutting onions while answering her questions—about his work and how it led you two to meet. His voice stops when he sees you, immediately grinning. He asks if you’re hungry.
After breakfast he insists on washing dishes. Your sister volunteers to dry, so you and mamá clean the table together. You can hear your sister grilling him from the kitchen, Hanta answering every question with ease.
“He’s a good man,” mamá says softly.
You nod.
When you two wiggle into your bed a second time, he asks you to wake him if you rise first. You frown. “Don’t you need your sleep?”
He yawns, punctuating your point. “Maybe,” he slurs. “But I didn’t like waking up alone.”
Your heart pauses while you nod slowly. He hums with satisfaction and promptly falls asleep. You kiss his forehead. His hand tightens over yours.
On the third day, one of your tía’s and multiple cousins show up unexpectedly. You’re showing Hanta the garden, explaining how to hold the clippers, when a car pulls in and you sigh, knowing this will be the end of your peace. Hanta takes the chaos happily. He says he’s excited to meet everyone, albeit nervous.
Your extended family loves him. Everyone does, you start to realize—with his calm but lively energy, his honesty, his charm. Seeing him meet your relatives strikes you with awe, and a new wave of gratitude.
Even tía abuela can’t dislike him. You’re anxious for their introductions, but then you watch Hanta softly bow his head—that Japanese filial piety overtaking him—while he politely says, “Mucho gusto, tía abuela.”
You catch the purse of her lips, the glint in her eye as she takes him in, and you know that he’s won her over already. Her eyes flit to you with the undertones of approval and you want to hug everyone in the room from your relief.
Things don’t fully mend by the time you leave with him for Ecuador. Tía abuela still won’t hold an extended conversation with you, some cousins mention abuela offhandedly to stir tension, and occasionally one of your tíos stare at you with anything but forgiveness. But you came home; you brought abuela home with you. This time when you leave, you’re leaving her behind—scattered along dark sand and blue water.
Mamá weeps when she says goodbye, holding you long in her arms. She says that she’ll miss you, that she loves you, and that she’s happy for you. She just hopes you’ll come back. You promise that you will.
Your sister is sharper with her words, insulting you through tears as she jabs, “You better not die.”
You nod vigorously.
Quito is different than you remember; too many years have passed since your first and last visit. It’s still beautiful and lively, with long markets and silver buses stretched down the roads. You board one, eventually winding your way along jungles and mountains, passing squares of shrimp farms by the coast. Hanta lets you take the window seat, happily holding your hand while you stare outside.
Ecuador is another sort of beast, with more chaotic roads and a harsher sun than Costa Rica. As you approach Hanta’s city along the sea, crumbling concrete buildings make a repeated appearance. The work of earthquakes, he tells you, an unwinnable battle for the poorly constructed towers—salt water and sea sand hiding in their walls, ready to surrender in an instant.
The edge of the shore appears. The sand is white, almost grey like ash. Like your abuela, now scattered along the Pacific. Did she make it down here after the past few months? Will she spread to the shores of Japan—to Musutafu?
When you arrive at the front of his house, you are struck by the familiarity. It takes a moment to remember that you’ve been here before, when Hanta ran with you across the ocean and led you through his home from the back porch. But that was a home from over a decade ago. Now parts are faded and parts are changed, but you still recognize it as if it were your own.
Hanta’s family is lively. His parents aren’t home—still working in Japan—but he opens the door to greet grandparents and avunculi and cousins. You watch his abuela’s face shine as she pulls him into a hug. His slender frame towers over her, awkwardly hunching to average their heights. The sight blooms a pang of something in your chest, the sting of an injury, and you swallow to avoid bursting into tears.
After surviving the introductions he leads you to his room. As soon as the door shuts and you have a moment of quiet, the tears resurface.
“Woah, hey,” Hanta says gently when he notices. His attention immediately fixes on you, hands abandoning his bag half unpacked to cradle your face. “Are you okay? Was that too much? Was someone out of line?”
You nod and then shake your head, trying to answer yes and then no respectively. It must be unconvincing, your face still twisted from holding back sobs.
“I’m okay,” you croak. You’re just overwhelmed, and maybe envious, from watching Hanta with his grandmother. From seeing loving touches and crinkled eyes. Curly white hair and wrinkled hands.
Hanta makes a complicated face. You gauge that he’s unconvinced and worried.
“We can go somewhere else,” he bargains. “Or you can rest here until you’re ready. Or a third option I don’t know right now.”
You nod, trying to agree with the second one. You’re fully crying by now, sniffling and blinking through tears. “I promise I’m okay,” you try to convince him. “I just need to cry, I think.”
He doesn’t question you, instead nodding and gesturing for you to sit on his bed. He lowers with you, carefully hugging you into his side. It’s a mourning cry, a weeping to express a hollowness in your heart, a loss that still hasn’t filled itself. Hanta remains a silent support, rubbing your back soothingly even after your sounds shift to sniffles. You press your face into his chest, tears smearing against his shirt.
He’s warm. He’s always so warm.
You wonder how long you’ll live like this, still crying at random as if abuela’s death was a recent one—not a year in the past. Something tells you it’ll be often.
Maybe you should apologize to Hanta in advance.
But his hold on you—firm while gentle—reminds you of his patience. He would tell you not to be sorry.
The week you have in Ecuador together is a busy one, spent meeting more family and getting yanked to Hanta’s favorite places. This time you’re the one on the back of the moped, leaning into his warmth as he winds up and down the roads. He lives on a small peninsula in the northern coast, where you can watch the sunrise from one beach, and then cross the city to catch the sunset on a different shore.
The water turns red in the evening as the sun dips down, the ocean reflecting the brilliant rosiness of the sky. You and Hanta bob on surfboards in the water—yours long and wide and foam, his narrow and made of resin-coated wood. You soak in the remaining light, that fiery ball of light tucking under the horizon. There’s a tug at your heart when you remember the tent of floating oranges. When you glance at Hanta, he’s already staring at you. He grins.
You only get to see the coast of Ecuador during your stay, not touching mountains or jungle.
“Next time,” Hanta promises.
Next time.
Life doesn’t feel quite real when you board the plane together. Your goodbye to Hanta’s family felt more dramatic than your own, mostly because everyone was weeping and offering hugs all around. Tears pricked your eyes when his abuela pulled you for a hug, asking that you take good care of him. You promised you will.
You slide into the window seat, immediately pulling up the shade to look outside. You’re at the front of the wing, still parked on a giant slab of foundation and surrounded by the tunnels of the airport. Hanta plops down next, immediately snaking his arm around your waist and leaning into your side.
“Excited?” he asks.
Terrified is a more accurate description. “Yeah.”
He hums like he wants to ask more, but he keeps his questions to himself. You turn to look at him, his gentle eyes. They’re dark, dark like the night sky and shimmering with the sparkle of a thousand stars, ready to be plucked and pulled and woven into a timeless tale of love.
He has his abuela’s eyes.
(Is this how it’s going to be—you always searching for meaning and connection to the dead, never able to let them rest entirely, finding ways to make them alive time and time again? Is this who you are—someone who rereads the same book since childhood, clutching it close like a holy scripture that guides you forward?
But they are all you know, all you’ve ever chased, a child watching a display of magic and wanting nothing more than to be part of it.)
The voice of the flight attendant sounds through the speakers. Her voice crackles through the intercom as she reads from the safety brief.
Your eyes drift to Hanta’s skin. It’s darkened considerably since returning to Latin America. His cheeks and nose are splattered with an array of freckles. They’re constellations against his skin, a map of everything you’ve wanted. He leans to press his face against yours, like he can transfer those markings if you touch for long enough.
You turn to the window when the plane starts to roll forwards. Hanta’s chest presses against your shoulder while he leans to watch with you. His hand comes over yours, holding your fingers gently before raising them for a tender kiss.
There’s a jumble of knots in your stomach, like one thread tossed and turned until it became impossible to unravel. You’ve never been to Japan. You’ve never been contracted for a circus company. You don’t know Japanese and you don’t even have your own housing. All you have is a visa and the promise of a job awaiting your arrival. This is different from moving to Italy, fueled by nothing but the hunger for money. This time it’s a hunger for life, a hunger to find something—or, to follow what you’ve already found.
This time when you leave this part of the world, the part with your home, there is no obligation to do anything but what you want. A total freedom, the freedom to chase whimsical childhood dreams. Dreams of stars—The Circus of the Stars—and outrageous costumes and people you love.
The plane starts to dart down the runway, picking up speed to eventually lift and soar into the sky—a white aluminum bird against cerulean blue. Hanta’s lips press into your temple, hand squeezing yours. You grin while staring at the city of Quito below, clusters of buildings fading away with each passing second. The vessel of the plane chugs onwards and upwards, brushing through a mist of clouds—through the clouds, until they’re an ocean below you.
You squeeze Hanta’s hand back, interlocking your fingers like threads on a loom. Despite your fears, you feel ready.
Ready to stretch out your lives like the billions of stars in the sky, and to weave them together in a continuous, unbreakable fabric.
✰.
The circus is coming. And this time, you’re coming with it.
just a note about aerial silks: aerial silks for performance are not made of real silk, they're typically made of like some sort of synthetic fiber like nylon or lycra for safety purposes but i'm pretending like that isn't the case for the ~metaphors~
Ochako’s earliest memory is a warning: to stay away from the ocean, and what lurks inside it.
[mermaid AU where Ochako is from an island surrounded by sea creatures, and the only one willing to see them as anything but monsters]
part 1: your siren song (my lullaby)
uraraka ochako x toga himiko
ch 1/2 | 16.3k words | masterlist | ao3
cw (includes spoilers for fic): human/monster relationship, blood, blood drinking, descriptions of corpses, illness, major character death, violence, law enforcement, cultural tensions, child neglect (ish), implied kidnapping
notes: shoutout to gigi perez for sailor song and vonabel for the partial beta <3
Oh, won't you kiss me on the mouth and love me like a sailor?
And when you get a taste, can you tell me what's my flavor?
I don't believe in God, but I believe that you're my savior
My mom says that she's worried, but I'm covered in this favor
- Sailor Song, by Gigi Perez
The ocean has a lethal sort of beauty.
Murk darkens the shore, brown sediment clouding beneath the surface. It blooms with each wave against the docks—the disturbance of a spoon dragging through a bowl of miso soup. The grains expand and disperse, swirling with clumps of seaweed and driftwood and garbage. This water is cold and unforgiving, the result of a recent storm scraping at eroded mountains. Clouds linger above, a shield against the sun.
It’s not unusual for the water to take this form, especially in the summer when typhoon season sweeps in. The clusters of islands to the south of Japan usually take the damage—monsters of weather blazing through the Philippines or Taiwan, leaving pleasant stormclouds blowing towards Musutafu. Kaone, the most recent typhoon, was the largest the town experienced in years, managing to dodge Taiwan’s coast in a line straight for Japan, an angry and swirling tirade of rain.
Today, three days after the storm passed, everything is in order when the Urarakas take their Saturday trip to the harbor. Everything but the brown of the ocean, the angry waves that jostle the docks forcefully, the looming darkness of the sky.
The stench of the sea is strongest here, carried in through lines of boats, their wireframes and decks littered with buckets and bins of fish, some still writhing in captivity. The vessels are loud—painted bright colors with blaring horns to announce their arrival, crew members jumping out with ropes for mooring. A yellow ship docks close to where Ochako stands, hand in her father’s. Wide, brown eyes watch as a man leaps from the deck to secure the ship, then drift to the engine. Liquid spills from one of the tubes, coating the water beneath it in a pearlescent shimmer—the shine of an abalone.
Her father’s hand tightens, tugging her firmly. Ochako didn’t notice in her staring that she had walked forward, entranced. He doesn’t elaborate. She takes three steps back to his side.
She knows what he’s thinking—an incident from elementary school at the forefront of his mind. Ochako’s memory is hazy, a series of flashing feelings and images: stomach plummeting as her body tipped over the dock, the blunt force of the water when she broke through its surface. She remembers a warm and sunny day, but the ocean was cold, terrifying. Consuming. It stole her breath, only let her take shallow and stuttered inhales as she writhed in its grasp.
(There was a glimmer of something beneath her, a faded gold smeared across her vision in the chaos of her flailing. Something alien, terrifying. Something pulling her deeper.)
She remembers the onlookers above her. They laid safe on the deck, anchored on their stomachs while reaching for her. But nobody would dare join her in the water.
Standing here years later, Ochako still doesn’t know what happened. The memory hasn’t faded with time, but it was never more than a fuzzy collection of images to begin with.
Her father worries that she’ll trip again, or stand too close to the edge. Ochako understands enough to know that falling was no fault of her own. She was pulled by something beneath the surface—something calling to her. She knows that if it were to happen again—if whatever song that lured her in the first time is sung again—her father’s hand won’t be enough to stop her.
Disappearances aren’t common in Musutafu, but they happen enough for locals and visitors to be aware of, to speculate. No one lost has been found, posters with names and contact information stapled over one another, faded on bulletin boards. Oftentimes they display the faces of children, kids the adults assume are lost to the ocean—to the monsters some believe lurk beneath the surface.
Ochako has heard the stories time and time again, words inscribed in the depths of her memory. Tales of writhing beasts in the water, ones that claw through the exterior of fishing boats, tear through nets, and wrench open metal traps. To steal the prey for themselves. To steal people.
But they only exist in stories. Ochako has never even seen a photo of the supposed monsters. There is no evidence of their reality. She has only the mental images of half human, half sea creature amalgamations. Her father says they’re ugly things, deformed and mangled and lesser than—akin to old depictions of ningyo in traditional paintings: twisted faces, bodies almost entirely fish, with bony arms and claws for hands.
They’re horrifying, enough to make adults shudder. But Ochako’s fear leans more towards curiosity. Fascination. When she opens her books and traces her fingers over scale patterns and wispy fins… She dares to think these creatures are beautiful.
She’s wondered before—what it would take to see one.
“Higa-san,” her father greets as the boat unloads.
The man stands at the edge of the dock, wide shoulders on sturdy legs. One of his crew passes wire boxes of fresh catch. He grips the handles tightly, slamming them against the wood with a thump. The fish inside are slender and grey with darker coloration at the top. They jostle from the movement. One wriggles above the others, still alive.
“Uraraka.”
Ochako’s hold on her father tightens, eyes trained on the fish. Its body inflates slightly, gills flaring desperately. Is it suffocating? She wonders. Is it in pain?
“The water treating you well?”
Higa grunts, heaving a large crate. Ochako recognizes the fish inside this one, the patterned edges of mackerel. None of them move. “Still not normal. ‘S murky out there, choppy. Full moon ain’t helpin’.” His slanted eyes move to Ochako, her own glued to the corpses before her.
What would happen if she set them free, if she tipped over that box and put them back into the water? Would they come back to life, righten like zombies, and swim home? Or would they float like buoys on a line, surrendered to their death.
“—grabbed our net today ‘n tore it. Had such a creepy grin, all teeth. A nasty thing. Was the first time one came s’close to the boat, figured we shoot ‘n haul it. But as soon as the spear hit, bloody thing turned to seafoam.”
Ochako blinks as she tunes back into the conversation.
Her dad makes a sound of surprise. “Seafoam?”
“Awful foam. Red as blood with a nasty stench. Miya was yackin’ for ten minutes at least.”
“You should report it to the Coast Guard,” Uraraka insists, knuckles white from gripping Ochako.
“You ‘Matonchu wouldn’t know what to do with the information,” Higa scoffs. “Would just give ya a reason to interfere with our fishin’. Like hell we’re tellin’em. ‘S a matter for the Musu.”
The Musu people were the dominant group of the Musutafu township for centuries, even long after the Yamato, or Yamatonchu—the people of mainland Japan—expanded to the east. They're recognizable by a difference in features: thick hair as straight as a blade, freckled skin, striking eyelashes. Higa is a descendant of the Musu, a member of one of the few remaining families on the island.
His eyes narrow, irises darkening as they train on Uraraka’s face. A warning. “So ya better keep yer damn mouths shut.”
Ochako doesn't know much about the Musu, her knowledge limited to brief mentions in school. She knows they don't fear the sea the way Yamato do; instead honing understanding from years of navigating canoes on the open water, so skilled they could reach smaller islands off the coast. They had a relationship with animals that was lost over time: one built from reciprocity, responsibility. But it changed when the Yamato came.
When she stares at Higa-san’s angry face, his stern voice ringing as a warning to stay out of his business, she wonders if the Musu ever dream of going back.
The rest of the outing is a blur. Strung along by her father’s hand, Ochako wades through rows of markets, eye level with piles of catch. She passes the glistening scales of mahi mahi, the slippery skin of eel, smooth shells of mussels that clack like stones rolling through a current. Her parents stop several times—at the most affordable stands—to purchase carefully weighed portions of seafood.
Their last stop is at a table filled with shellfish. The woman at the stall shovels handfuls of shrimp in a bag with dark fingers, each addition making a wet plop. She ties the crinkly bag before murmuring a warm thank you, passing it to Ochako’s mother while taking the bills and coins.
A boy sits on a stool behind the table. His eyes are wide and carefully watching the exchange, curtained by thick and dark bangs. When his mother turns to wave at the Urarakas, he swipes a raw shrimp off the table, the head held between his fingers while he bites the meat and legs and tail. Ochako watches with fascination—and disgust—as he chews quickly and swallows, shell and all.
“Hanta!” the woman chides while Ochako’s father makes to exit.
The boy laughs, mouth stretching into a grin plastered crookedly across his face. His eyes meet Ochako’s and his delight somehow grows further.
“That’s that boy I was telling you about yesterday,” Ochako’s father mutters, pulling her attention back to the faces of her parents.
“The Musu boy?” her mother asks. “Who’s always in the water at the southern beach?”
He grunts in affirmation. “They’re crazy—all of them. Who lets a kid in that water? By himself?”
Ochako’s eyes return to the market table. The boy is still grinning on the stool, bare feet swinging while the woman—his mother, Ochako assumes—softly sweeps at his bangs with her fingers. She smiles fondly at her son.
Ochako thinks he looks loved.
Ochako is loved too, in a different sort of way. Her parents have a love that inspires protectiveness. They worry about her, for her.
“You’re precious to us,” her mother says, fingers caressing the plush of her cheek.
Ochako knows this. And she knows the message buried beneath those words: that she’s important but small, and too young to understand what her parents know. The adults make decisions for her that she’ll come to appreciate when she’s older.
But Ochako sees other types of love around her—love like that: a boy and his mom who gives him freedom and choice, and she wonders what sort of love is the best. Maybe certain types of love work for some people and not others. Maybe some people only know one way to love.
Maybe people only ever know the love they were given.
Ochako considers this one the longest. She worries too—about her parents. The image of their faces twisted in a grimace, murmuring about the bills, is a reminder burned in her memory. They don’t discuss these things when Ochako is present, but the kitchen is halfway down the hall; she catches glimpses through the door and slivers of conversation on the way to the bathroom.
Her worry sits uncomfortably in her chest. During particularly restless nights it rises above the skin, a crushing weight.
It’s the kind of worry that makes her feel small, that makes her say I don’t want any, or I don’t need it. It’s the kind of worry that she can’t say aloud, because she’s not supposed to be aware of it in the first place. It’s the kind of worry that makes her parents worry back, because their sweet girl never wants anything. Never makes a fuss.
So Ochako listens to her parents. She heeds their warnings, even when curiosity stirs within her body, pulling her where she desperately wants to be but can’t go.
The only water she’s allowed to play in is the stream behind their home. It’s a conservative size, just deep enough to reach the bottom of her calves, and with a width barely greater than her wingspan. There’s hardly a bank, just clusters of grass that flatten into sparse river sand. The current is gentle and the forest is quiet, deemed safe enough for Ochako to explore alone—so long as she stays within the confines of the Uraraka property.
(Borders are an imaginary thing, a mental image of a gate or line drawn across the yard. Ochako doesn’t understand why people are the only beings restricted by them—the water and fish and birds don’t have any sense of these territories, instead guided by the divots in the ground, the wall of the shallow bank.
But Ochako listens. She confines herself to the section of stream and forest her parents allow her, and she enjoys her time here, playing away from watchful eyes.)
Even in the darkness of the settling dusk, she kicks through the water on her own. Red rays of light skim the surface of the stream, kissing the skin of her legs. Her feet stomp quickly, chasing a frog on the bank. She inhales when her hands gently trap it, fingers cupped against the wet dirt. She lifts it carefully towards her face, wide brown blinking with delight.
Her pointer finger lifts to press against the back of the amphibian, tracing slimy ridges of skin. A loud croak sounds from its throat, underbelly jerking with the vibrations, and Ochako makes a sound of surprise. Her hand jerks and the frog leaps directly for the water.
It lands with a splash, ripples radiating in a disfigured circle. Another blooms when the frog hops downstream, concentric shapes overlapping. Ochako follows carefully, her footsteps another disturbance on the surface.
The frog pauses at the imaginary border: the edge of the stream before it crosses the neighbor's land. Ochako halts. The amphibian croaks again, an overtone song that smothers the buzz of insects. The girl giggles softly at the sound, eyes narrowing as she prepares to catch it once more. Her hands open carefully before they dart forwards. She huffs in disappointment when they cut through water, missing the frog as its legs stretch to launch through the gap between her palms.
Her eyes lift to watch its escape, bounding and croaking down the stream. Her breath catches in her throat.
A trail of lights flicker on the surface.
Ochako cranes her neck to peer at the trees. Littered along the lower branches is a line of fireflies. Their dancing light trails through the woods, bobbing gently upstream. It’s too weak to illuminate the forest, but the blinks of gold marble along the water.
Ochako steps forward without thinking.
Her steps sparkle when she crosses the border—that arbitrary boundary. The rapid shuffling of her feet comes to life, illuminated swirls of ripples. She breaks into a run, frog forgotten as she now chases the light.
Her foot catches on something sharp. She falls with a yelp, arms stretched to catch herself as she lands against a pile of rough stones. The result is painful: scraped skin and a litter of future bruises. Standing is a challenge, arms shakily hoisting her body, knees wobbling as she shifts her weight to her feet.
She stands in darkness.
Ochako sighs, staring along the water as if conjuring the light to return. It doesn’t, the only glow is now the house at her backside. Her arms pebble from the cold, drenched clothes clinging to her skin. The aches of her fall start to register. She trudges back home.
Her mother tucks her into bed, leaning over her small frame to press a kiss on her forehead.
“I love you.” Her voice is quiet, face half illuminated by the bedside lamp.
Ochako’s response is a ritual, a whisper of, “I love you too.”
(What does it mean to love someone because you’re supposed to, Ochako wonders. How do you distinguish love from attachment, from comfort and familiarity and habit?
Are those things even considered love?)
Ochako thinks her mother would be sad if she said these thoughts aloud. A crease would form along her forehead, familiar wrinkles of confusion and worry. Maybe even hurt.
Instead, in Ochako’s silence, her mother wears the slope of a smile. She reaches to tuck loose hair behind the girl’s ear, and then to turn off the lamp. Darkness envelops the room, her mother now nothing more than a dark figure.
When she exits and Ochako is left by herself, she hurries to toss off the covers that were so neatly arranged over her body. She sits on her knees and turns towards the window.
The stream is visible, a small dip in the ground that sits in the transition from yard to forest. Dim moonlight flickers atop the water, but that’s all.
The following weekend, she sees the Musu boy again. This time while his mother efficiently manages the market stand, he sits on a low stool, a bag of peanuts open on his lap as he talks excitedly with another kid. They both have a thin braided band around their ankle, one yellow and the other red. Even in earshot, Ochako has no idea what they’re saying—or at least, what the black haired one is saying. The other sits quietly, nodding along.
The former beams when his eyes catch Ochako. His grin engulfs his entire face and he stands, grabbing the bag of peanuts and stretching his arm out. He says something loudly, but Ochako doesn’t understand.
The woman behind the table interjects with more unfamiliar sounds. It’s a musical speech, one that dips low at times, rolling like the tide. The boy's eyes flicker with clarity, turning back with the same grin.
“Have some!” he says this time.
She nods and grabs a fistful in her small fingers. They’re good—gently roasted with a touch of salt, the sweetness of the sea. She smiles.
“I’m Hanta!” he continues, wide eyes watching her eat. He points to his friend. “And that’s Koji.”
Hanta. Koji. Their names ring with song. She tries to repeat them but they fall flat in her voice. She doesn’t know how to make their sounds.
“I’m Uraraka,” she replies.
They eat their peanuts together quietly, scooping handfuls into chubby cheeks. It’s mostly quiet, with Hanta swinging his legs and grinning, asking questions like, “Do you like shrimp?”
Ochako nods to most of them.
The other boy—Koji—sits quietly, never saying a word. But he watches, eyes trailing between Ochako and Hanta as they talk. His gaze falls when she looks his way. She notices his long and dark eyelashes.
Ochako wants to ask her own questions. About the Musu people—who they are, what that even means. She wants to ask about Higa-san, if they know anything about the sea monsters. She wants to know how this boy has gone into the water by himself and come out alive.
She wonders if he knows anything about the fireflies.
A tug leads her away before she’s ready. She whips her head towards her mother, free hand still cupping a sprinkling of peanuts, face twisted in an uncontrollable plea. Ochako doesn’t want to leave.
Her mother pauses, eyes softening with a guilty smile. “We need to go,” she says gently.
Ochako’s eyes fall in disappointment, then lift to Hanta and Koji. The former smiles brightly and waves. He looks like he doesn’t have a care in the world.
“See you!” He cheers. Koji timidly waves beside him.
She pouts the entire walk home, but neither of her parents notice. Instead they talk in soft voices, murmurs of words like budgeting and expenses. Normally Ochako would listen carefully, matching their worried expressions, but now an ugly part of her thinks it’s fair, that they’re all unhappy together.
The disappointment doesn’t leave with time. Instead it grows, festers like a mold that sits heavy in her chest. There’s a heat in her cheeks, a tightness in her stomach. Does she have to wait until next week to see them again? Will it be for the same amount of time?
She heads straight to her room, sparing no parting words. Her parents don’t mention it, voices drifting to the kitchen where they continue to talk in increasing volume. Ochako huffs, kneeling on her futon, hands grasping the duvet in tight fists. Her teeth are clenched as she swallows back tears. Part of her wants to stomp back to the kitchen while sobbing, loud noises that can’t be ignored. The other knows that her parents wouldn’t like it, that she’d regret it later.
Abruptly she stands, turning to reenter the hall. The voices carry through the house, louder without the door as a guard. Ochako takes softs steps to the kitchen, listening as she approaches.
“—think moving is going to give us the most opportunities,” her mother murmurs. “It’s becoming more expensive than the mainland.”
Her father grunts. “It would take months to get out of our contracts. Besides, there’s no guarantee we’ll find similar positions.”
“We could stay in Mie. My parents would happily host us until one of us secures a job.”
“And give Ochako that kind of instability? She’s still so young.”
“You think it’s worse than living here?”
The air is still as several moments pass. Ochako tries to imagine the faces they’re making, her mother’s pinched brow, her father’s pursed lips. She wants to crane her neck to look through the doorway. She wants to know why they said her name.
Footsteps sound, her parents shuffling. Ochako panics, starting swiftly and quietly to her room. Her heart gallops as she closes the door and stands behind it, taking ragged inhales. When her breathing calms, her chest is still tight with something unsettling. Her parents' voices start again, muted sounds behind the wall.
She exits into the hall again, this time jostling the handle and deliberately thumping her feet across the floor. Her parents’ conversation halts. They watch expectantly when she enters the dining room. She doesn’t say anything.
“Ocha-chan?” her mother probes.
The girl’s heart is uneasy. Her body is still swirling with disappointment, with now additional curiosity.
“Can I play outside?” Her voice is small.
Her mother smiles, shoulders relaxing. She glances at Ochako’s father with an expression the girl doesn’t understand. He nods curtly and she answers, “Okay honey. Just remember to stay inside the yard.”
Ochako bobs her head, eyes averting to the floor. Something else gnaws at her chest, not a tightness this time but a sting. She scurries to the genkan, hastily strapping on her shoes before heading out the door. When she reaches the creek and turns around, her mom waves from the window. The sting eases.
The water is cold against her skin, rushing along her sandals as she steps into the stream. It runs to her calves, washing away the itchiness from stalking through the grass.
There are no fireflies.
She pouts, standing and craning her head to the sky. It’s a royal blue, deep while bright, the quilt of late afternoon. Streams of fluff slice through the fabric, clouds stitching the atmosphere together.
When she brings her head back down, turning to the window, her parents are gone. Her pout pulls into a scowl.
She runs.
It starts with jagged steps, tripping through the water before she returns to the bank, and bolts along the stream. Her heart pounds in her chest when she crosses the boundary into her neighbor’s yard, and then the next neighbor, then the third one. She doesn’t look back, eyes trained forwards as the water curves into the forest, turning perpendicular to the neat line of houses.
The ground is forgiving despite her sandals. She runs with ease, next to the rushing water. It stops shortly, disappearing just before an incline. The trees thin out as she climbs the hill and stands at the crest, overlooking a sunny break of canopy. The light streams along a wide river, a plane of green and brown. Its body snakes in a lazy curve, a weak pulse pumping the current.
Ochako’s side of the river has a gentler slope, transitioning from water to land via a sea of pebbles. They’re bright white, bleached under the sun. As she inches down the hill and towards the bank, she notices that they’re smooth ovals, sprinkled with occasional sharp stones—like fragments of coral or bone. A few large stones sit in the water, ripples wrinkling around them.
She has never been here, hardly knew there was a river so close to home. It’s a quaint stretch of land… a secret. Warm with bright light but also shrouds of trees, the sun dappling through. The hum of water strolling downstream. The call of birds she has never heard.
Her heart slows, steadying as she takes in the serenity. Ochako wishes she could play here, where it’s calm and wide and with more to explore. Her parents might let her, since it’s a river: a pretty river with stones and soft grass. A river that—
That smells rancid.
The scent is an ambush, flooding her nose with a horrible kind of sweetness. A fishy sourness that springs tears in her eyes. Her stomach turns, face twisting further with each shallow breath.
A morbid curiosity takes over. Ochako turns her head towards the source, reluctantly breathing in. She takes a hesitant step downstream, stones rolling as she walks. The pungency strengthens.
She freezes after passing a clump of driftwood, wide eyes locking on a figure behind it.
It’s long and motionless and clearly the source of the smell. Despite the dread pooling in Ochako’s stomach, a heaviness and nausea, she walks closer. She wants to see.
An animal, a sea creature with slippery skin. It has a bulbous head and a long mouth—a dolphin. A beady eye stares straight into the sky. Ochako can see her own reflection in its blackness.
Two small holes puncture the animal’s body, smeared faintly in red. Crusted blood lines the openings. Along its stomach are gashes. Not long, but deep, like claws were stabbed violently through the flesh. Similarly, there are no blood stains, only faint dried clots and light smears.
Ochako gawks openly, completely frozen. Her heart continues to drum, to thump, thump, thump between her ribs. She struggles to inhale, throat and chest tightening.
It’s… it’s terrifying, naturally. A large creature, longer than Ochako’s own body, splayed out along the bank, sucked dry by some other animal she can’t imagine. But as dreadful as the sight is, she’s filled with an inexplicable wonder, that persistent curiosity. Pure awe at encountering something this rare, this impossible. The still-fresh skin is grey, a storm stretched taught along muscle and flesh. It fades to yellow at the edges of the fins and mouth, aged like paper. Ochako feels the urge to reach for it, to run a finger along the slippery surface.
The body suddenly twitches. Ochako’s heart drops, body leaping to take two steps back.
Its mouth parts, revealing the pink of its tongue. “Hnngh,” it moans.
Ochako yelps, body moving on instinct as she turns to sprint away. Panic floods her veins, icy, as her mind flashes with images of the creature somehow chasing after her. She doesn’t look back, head jerking to find the spring and follow it home, fueled by fear.
The journey is longer than she remembers. Low branches swipe across her shoulders, twigs grasping her clothes like hands. Her father’s worries race through her head, pictures of something ugly and unfathomable sinking teeth in her neck and leaving her drained on the shore. His warnings thump through her head, spinning on repeat.
Stay away from the water Ochako.
Relief floods her system as she catches sight of the neighbor’s home. She’s close, so close. Only a minute later and she’ll be safe. Safe in the stream, safe in her backyard. Safe with her parents. She wants to cry in their arms and hear their soothing voices, their gentle hands cradling her hair and cheeks.
When she crosses the final imaginary border, relief swells so heavily in her stomach that she halts. She heaves, lungs burning as she sucks in air. Mud and scratches splatter her legs, stinging. Her eyes burn as they fill with tears.
Her parents are right: she should listen to them, to keep herself safe. This worry they have, these limitations and rules, are to protect her, because they love her. Ochako’s heart hurts. Guilt claws at her stomach.
When her breath settles she anxiously turns to the house, ready to run inside.
Her parents are still out of sight.
The guilt in her gut hardens into something she’s never felt before. Something heavy, and dreadful.
The week is hard for Ochako.
Confusing feelings swirl inside her—a typhoon of feelings that scare her, make her want to do things she knows are wrong. She doesn’t understand what she saw, what her parents are whispering about, why she’s too young to know.
(Will she ever get to know?)
Nobody is safe enough for her to share these questions. Instead she sits quietly with this storm inside her chest, raging winds and murky water pounding against the cage of her flesh. If it’s lucky it will find its way to the surface of her skin, emptying itself through her lashes. She doesn’t notice when this happens.
Her parents do. They catch the faraway look in her eyes, her subdued attitude, a lack of focus. They worry, brows furrowed when they ask if she’s okay. Their expressions make her stomach turn—do they know she disobeyed them?
“Ochako, do you want to go to the mochi stand tonight?” her father probes. His voice is soft.
She recalls hushed voices in the kitchen, discussing work and money. She frowns and says, “No,” in a quiet voice.
Her mother’s face falls. Ochako feels worse.
When the weekend returns and her dad asks if they’re ready to go to the market, her mother offers to stay home with Ochako.
The girl shakes her head, mumbling, “I want to go.”
The adults trade glances, confused by her attitude. Her mother watches her daughter’s face carefully.
“Are you sure?” she asks.
Ochako nods quickly, and that’s enough to convince them.
She walks through the markets with a hand in her mother’s. Her eyes skim along the lines eagerly, brightening when they land on Hanta and Koji. They sit on the same stools as the previous weekend. She waves when they notice her.
Her mom tugs her arm. She started towards them without realizing it.
“C’mon Ocha-chan.”
Her round face lifts, eyes widening in a plea to stay. Her mother’s breath hitches, chest freezing in apprehension. She looks nervously to the table, the boys sitting on their stools as the older woman bags orders of fish.
Another second passes. Ochako lowers her gaze, turning to follow where her father walks ahead.
Her mother folds. “We can go say hi,” she offers.
Ochako beams, eyes sparkling. She misses her mother’s flicker of guilt as she turns and barrels ahead.
“Hi,” she says, breathless, when she stands before Hanta’s grin and Koji’s reserved interest.
“Hi!” the former replies. He stretches his arm to offer a bag of sunflower seeds.
Ochako’s mother releases her, letting the girl take a handful and work them open with her teeth. The shells splinter easily, falling into her palm to be discarded in a bag by Koji’s feet. Ochako relishes the nutty flavor, audibly humming. Her mother smiles.
She likes this table, the company of Hanta and Koji. They’re kind and carefree. Hanta does all the talking, but Koji nods along, occasionally making hand gestures that Hanta translates with words. She giggles at one of his jokes and turns to her mother to see if she caught it too, then pauses when she sees her talking to the woman behind the table.
“That’s my mom,” Hanta says plainly. “Your mom is nice.”
Ochako nods immediately. “I love my mom.”
Her eyes avert to the ground as soon as she says it, brain pausing. Not in apprehension or uncertainty, but in question. Why do they love each other?
“Me too,” Hanta responds. He chews the seed shells and swallows them. “I love lots of things.”
Ochako straightens. “You do?”
He nods, humming in affirmation.
“How do you know?”
“I just do,” he asserts. His eyes lift in thought. “Ma says we have love for everything inside us.”
Ochako stares at him with bewilderment. “Really?”
“Mhm. Everything comes from love, so we love everything. She says when we do things for love, that’s when the best things happen. Like the fireflies.”
Ochako’s breath halts. “The fireflies?”
Hanta grins. “You haven’t heard?”
Ochako shakes her head. She wants to say she has only seen them, but the words catch in her throat.
“A very long time ago one of our oldest grammas was in love. But granpa had to go away, and they were both very sad. He left on a boat by the river next to their home, so gramma waited every night for him with a torch to help him find his way home. The people and animals called her the ‘Lady of Fire’.
“She stood there every night with her torch, finding ways to keep it burning even in heavy rain—until there was a typhoon. But even when the wind and rain blew it out, gramma stood there waiting. She cried and cried, only wishing for granpa to come home safe. Her love was so inspiring that the moon herself came down to light the way. She turned into a million twinkling bugs that could fly in the rain. Granpa came home that very night.”
Ochako’s mouth hangs ajar as she listens, eyes full moons. She’s never heard such a beautiful story.
“That’s where fireflies come from,” he reminds her.
“Wow,” she breathes.
Hanta nods, grinning. “Yup. And Koji can talk to them!”
The smaller boy jolts at the mention of his name, but he doesn’t make any gesture of disagreement.
“Really?” Ochako asks in amazement.
“Mhmm! People from old gramma’s family can do things like that when they love.”
Something in Ochako’s chest expands at his words, like it’s grown. Then it clenches in envy. Urgency.
“Is that something I can do too?” she asks.
“Ma says anyone can do it,” he answers. He parts his lips to speak, but no words escape. They pull into a frown and Ochako thinks the expression is out of place. “… You can lose it too, like Higa-san.”
The brunette blinks in surprise. “Higa-san? He lost it?”
Hanta’s wide eyes dart to his mother, then to Ochako. She is captivated, clinging onto every word.
“His love.”
“Oh.” Ochako frowns. She thought he would say more.
“Yeah,” he answers with a shrug, swinging his feet.
Ochako wants to probe but she doesn’t know how to navigate thoughts like these. Where does she start? What sort of question makes sense for this?
“What did he love?” she tries.
Hanta frowns again.
“The ocean,” he says flatly, as if it’s the only thing worth loving.
Ochako doesn’t understand. She knows love as a feeling for people: for family members and marriage and maybe a cat. Even so, love isn’t openly shared, instead kept for private conversations and the gaps in speech. How can you love something so big, so vast, so… inanimate?
So terrifying.
“Ocha-chan.”
She blinks, turning to her mother’s voice.
“We should go now.” It’s a command disguised as a suggestion. “But we can come back next time, okay?”
Ochako turns to Hanta, questions brimming at the base of her throat. She wants to know what it means to love the ocean, how Hanta knows that Higa-san lost his love, how he knows that the man had it in the first place.
She wants to ask Hanta and Koji what their love feels like.
Her mother’s hand slips into her own. It’s warm, and Ochako grasps it on instinct.
“Next time,” she repeats.
Ochako nods, mindlessly shoving the remaining seeds in the pocket of her jacket as they turn away. When they walk along the dock and her dad raises a hand to Higa unloading his boat, something stirs beneath the surface of Ochako’s subconscious.
Her parents watch her wander through the stream under the falling sun. They sit by the window absorbed in conversation, but focused enough to occasionally glance her way. Ochako finds it burdensome. Part of her wishes they would leave again.
She busies herself with her bucket and net, grinning triumphantly when she catches a minnow. It circles the bottom of the net, darting within its cage. Ochako giggles as she lifts the mesh, minnow flopping in the air. Her chubby hand traps it and she laughs again at its slippery skin. It writhes in her grasp, along the tunnel of her palm.
Brown eyes peer through the opening. Its small head comes closer, inching towards her thumb. Without warning it slips through her hold and leaps into the air. The girl shrieks and lifts her opposite arm to catch it in the bucket.
The fish lands with a plop, splatting against the empty bottom. Plop, plop, plop follows as it thrashes against the plastic. Until it stops.
Ochako’s smile falters as she stares at the creature. Its tiny body is motionless. Stripes of silver and green shimmer in the light. Its eye is a black bead, small but swallowing her whole.
The dolphin flashes through her mind, and she moves quickly, dipping the rim of the bucket under the water for a second before raising it. She stares into the shallowness, holding her breath.
The minnow twitches, jolting to life, and Ochako exhales.
She pours the water back into the stream, watching closely as the fish darts upstream to the bank. A mix of guilt and relief sits inside her chest.
“Ochako,” her father calls behind her.
She turns to see him standing half outside the door. He waves.
“Dinner’s ready.”
The girl nods, understanding the order. She gives the bucket a final shake and walks up the bank. Red seeps into the sky from the horizon, dusk creeping in. When she finally reaches the door she steals one final look at the water. A white heron swoops in, standing in the shallows. It steps slowly, then jerks forward to thrash its beak into the stream.
A faint flicker of yellow bobs above it.
They have tuna for dinner, sashimi on rice with pickled plums and stringy cucumber. Ochako eats slowly, letting the softness of the meat melt over her tongue. She wonders what the fish looked like when it died, if it thrashed in a bucket.
“Ocha-chan,” her mother interrupts her thoughts. She speaks gently. “What do you think about going to Mie soon, to see baachan and jiisan?”
The girl looks up to her parents’ faces. They’re uncertain, almost nervous.
“Okay,” she answers easily. Her mother relaxes until she adds, “For how long?”
The adults trade glances. Ochako is not given an answer.
When night falls and Ochako is tucked into the covers, she is restless.
The water calls for her, floods her ears with the ghost of its song. Her mind is powerless to her body, watching as she rises from her futon and makes for the bedroom door. The house is silent, her parents in slumber. She shuffles to the genkan without a sound.
The night is alive, loud as despite its darkness. Humidity thickens the air and buzzes with the call of insects. A dense cluster of yellow twinkle above the stream, and Ochako’s breath catches.
Fireflies.
They breathe along the water, one entity dancing through the branches. Their trails smear behind them, illuminated strokes of a pen. They are the only light littering through the woods, miniature lanterns tracing the stream back to its source.
Ochako follows obediently, walking the trail of water through the neighbors’ territories, through the thick wooded land and up the hill to the river. Her heart is steady, mind too concentrated to let unease seep through her skin. In an instant she is at the top of the hill, stepping down towards the bank. The fireflies thin as she nears the water. They flicker for a moment more, then fade away just as the moon breaks over the trees. The river stones bathe in its gaze, bands of brilliant white creeping along their surfaces.
The night is quiet here. Ochako’s never stood in such darkness alone, never even considered it. She thinks she should be scared, filled with jitters to run, to get away and get safe as fast as she can. Instead she’s calm, at peace. The night has a special sort of serenity.
Or it would, if it weren’t for the stench of death.
It’s the same smell from last time, sourness that pulls her attention to the carcass on the shore. There the same dolphin rests, tipped on its side and properly rotting. The flesh is a patchwork of black and grey, body half decayed to reveal the skeleton beneath. A spine rests in the center, attached to an unbroken cage of ribs. The skull is partially visible, skin peeled from its mouth. Even in the darkness, the bones shine like pearls, like the stones along this shore, bleached from time in the sun.
It almost looks human, Ochako muses, with shorter arms and a misshapen head.
Human, with a tail.
She thinks of Koji, his ability to speak to animals. Would he have understood that last dying breath she witnessed? Would he be able to talk with it now, with its body half gone and more bone than flesh.
Ochako wishes she had such a gift, something to connect her to the world she inhabits, to make life clearer. To make it her’s.
A splash erupts from the river.
She turns, heart racing. The water ripples, waves echoing from the cluster of jagged rocks. The wrinkles gather moonlight in a woven pattern, scaly slithering skin. Something is lurking, dragging its body through the shallows.
A limb appears, breaking through the surface. It’s scrawny and withered with a misfigured hand attached to the end, sharp claws hooking into the divots of the rock. It tenses, weary muscles twitching to heave itself upwards. Another gurgled sound passes as it fails to lift itself. Ochako steps away from the bank carefully, wide eyes trained on the creature’s arm.
Her heart leaps when it rises above the rock, a face coming into view before it slumps over, grunts and wheezes shuddering through the air. Strangled sounds.
The rest of its body is as withered as its arm, flesh tight to the bone—
Human bones, Ochako thinks. Human mixed with the remains of the dolphin beside her.
It has a human face, at least, but its body is akin to a ningyo. Sharp fins creep out the side of its head, darkness pooling at the edges. It has something like hair, something matted and mangled with tufts of feathers slicing through the scalp, jutting out as if placed by force. The torso is gaunt, skin tight against a hollow stomach and quilted with the skin of other creatures: more feathers, slippery dolphin skin, the hard shell of shrimp. They’re scattered along the body, dipping down the length of a withered tail.
Despite the fear shooting through Ochako’s veins, pure ice frosting her blood, she can’t move or look away. She is enchanted by this creature, drawn to its angles and curves, the slices of fins that sprout from its arms and tail, matching the webbing between its fingers. It’s mangy; it’s starved.
It’s something she never knew existed.
“It’s hideous,” her father would shudder.
In one hand—one claw—is the squelching body of an octopus. It splats against the rock, tentacles lolling into the water as the body slides between hasty fingers. Under the moonlight, the faintest tint of red is visible.
The ningyo lowers to its prey, lips parting to bare pointed teeth. They lurch forward, sink into rubbery flesh, hands clenched so tight that fingernails pierce through the cephalopod. Dark liquid dribbles down: blood, a blue hue, splattering on the rock. The skin immediately loses color.
This is a hunger Ochako does not know. Every movement strikes a tremor through the ningyo’s body, hands shaking as they struggle to hold their meal. Its face, almost human (almost girlish), is smeared with fluids, a long tongue lapping the excess. A twisted face, sharp and angled and boney.
An honest face, a lively face that Ochako can read. When claws sink into the octopus for a second time, tearing open its body to drain every drop of fluid, the creature’s eyes soften. Jerking movements smooth, now reduced to lazy mawing. Its mouth curves into a crescent moon—a grin—and Ochako is captivated, paralyzed by fascination and fear. It looks happy, almost euphoric. Ochako has never seen such a pure expression of joy.
When the ningyo finishes it drops the scraps of its meal in the water. A slithering tongue laps over its hands and arms, boney things splattered with scales. In the unreliable light of the moon it almost looks like its forearms are darkening, the underside spotted with growing suckers.
Ochako has no choice. Her feet carry her forwards without permission or warning. In an instant she is ankle deep in the water, wide eyed under the spotlight of the moon.
Her steps splash loudly. The ningyo snarls, twisting its face into a glare before jerking its body off the rock and into the water. A tail breaks through the surface, glinting before thrashing downwards, splattering Ochako with a quick pelt of rain. In the next moment, the water calms and the girl is once again alone on the shore. Alone except for the skeleton laying behind her.
Standing in the water, in occupied water, Ochako is no longer cold with fear. There is no warning repeatedly blaring stay away, stay away, stay away. She is still and quiet, frozen except for the one thing she can process:Whatever this creature is, it’s beautiful.
No fireflies blink along the stream the following day.
Ochako stands in the water, chest vibrating with an urgency she’s never felt before. Despite the lack of light, she trudges forwards to the river. When she arrives she is left only in the company of the rotting dolphin.
She yearns for another glimpse. Somewhere in these strange sights and terrifying encounters lay answers. Answers about living, about love. They’re at the edges of her fingertips but still too far away, an insect flying just out of reach.
The fireflies don’t glow for two more days. The following night they return, but fade moments later. Still, the girl slips from her bedroom to the genkan, and then up the stream. Five days pass like this, with each visit the dolphin fading further to bones.
The next night she leaps the instant her parents quiet, pacing down the hall and past the kitchen. She stands at the entrance of the genkan, peering out the window of the door to the stream. It’s dark, her eyes needing time to adjust before the forms of the trees become visible.
“Ocha-chan?”
The girl jumps, body tense with caught, caught, caught as she faces her mother.
“What are you doing here?”
She doesn’t know what to say. Even though this is her mother, something in her stomach yells that she can’t be trusted. If she speaks honestly she will be scolded, or worse banned from playing outside altogether. If she is dishonest, she will have to carry the weight of her guilt, of deceiving someone she loves—of someone who loves her.
Silence, she quickly learns, is another poor choice. Silence makes room for suspicion. It grows in her mother’s eyes with each passing second.
“I was looking outside.” It’s the best answer she can conjure.
“Oh,” her mother says plainly. Ochako can’t read the tone of her voice. “Do you want to play in the stream? It’s late.”
Ochako shakes her head honestly. She doesn’t want to play.
“Did you see something?” her mother tries again.
The girl nods. It is also honest, but delayed. Does it hurt her mother to keep secrets like this? Her parents do the same, having hushed conversations that Ochako never hears about, discussions with her name spoken softly, secretly.
“What did you see?”
Ochako’s chest flares with something prickly and tight. She doesn’t want to answer.
“I don’t know,” she answers, and that’s the end of it. She returns to her room.
The next day when night settles in, she can hear her parents murmuring in the kitchen when they would normally be in their room. Ochako, for the second night in a row, is forced to stay inside. She sits under her covers, staring out the window towards the stream.
The fireflies dance again.
Excitement vibrates through her veins when the family leaves for the docks, Ochako teeming with questions she wants to ask Hanta. But her dad’s grip on her is tight while her mother exchanges bills and coins for today’s purchase—a bag of crab legs, long and orange with spikes stretching the plastic.
“Ocha-chan, we don’t have time to stop today.”
Disappointment floods the girl and her instinct is to pout. Why didn’t they say anything ahead of time? Why tell her now, when they know her sparse conversations are the best part of these trips?
Her dad furrows his brow. “Do you need to tell them something?”
She turns to the boys perched on their stools. Hanta is watching curiously, eyes wide as ever, searching her face and what lies beyond it. Those questions she wants to ask, but questions that can only be shared in confidence: Do you know what I saw? Is it the same thing Higa sees, what everyone else is so afraid of?
Hanta follows her example, silent as he holds her gaze. Something in his expression shifts, something subtle, like the glint in his eyes.
Will she come back?
Koji clutches his friend, a hand to the wrist. Hanta’s head twitches, offering the tiniest nod. Ochako inhales, brightening.
The stream is calm, capturing Ochako’s gaze through dinner as the yellow blinking of fireflies settle along the bank. Her parents tuck away in their bedroom when it’s time for bed, and finally she can run along the water, through the forest, up the hill to the steady river.
The moon isn’t present except for the bugs holding the remnants of its light. Ochako’s eyes adapt, allowing her to trace the silhouettes of the river bank, the skeleton, the large stones in the water.
The creature strewn atop them. Feasting.
Ochako’s heart pounds as she watches sharp teeth sink into a fish, the wet smacks of its tail sounding against the stone. The predator growls, almost a high pitched hiss. Ochako steps forward unconsciously.
This time when their eyes lock, neither are shocked. The ningyo halts, eyes darkening. Fins flicker, glinting under nonexistent light. Ochako holds her breath. She can feel her blood pulsing through her skin, pounding against her ears.
The creature lowers its head to resume its meal, but its gaze never falls. When it finishes and drops the corpse into the water, it cleans itself, tongue tracing every smeared remnant of blood. Ochako takes one step forward, fascinated.
The ningyo hisses before disappearing into the water once again.
Days pass. Ochako slips away every night dutifully, wanting to catch another glimpse. She wonders if she visits often enough, just to watch it feed, will these moments eventually add to an entire conversation? Could fragments of standing at a distance in careful observation lead to flickers of understanding—could she learn to distinguish its sounds and motions, grow to know what each one means?
But she wants more than distance. She wants to take one step and then another until her skin is pressed against the ningyo. She wants to run her hands over scales and fins and the slivers of other beasts nestled into the skin. She wants to hold the creature’s face close and stare into its eyes. She wants to whisper questions between them: to ask what inspires it to make such complicated faces, faces that look like love while draining a life of everything it had.
If Ochako steps forward she will instead witness the twist of a horrible glare, a growl, and loneliness for the remainder of her night.
“Hanta,” she says firmly, though breathless. She rushed through the markets to reach him, her parents bobbing through the other tables as they make their way over. “How—how do I get closer to the water?”
He blinks and looks at Koji. The latter averts his eyes.
“I want it to trust me. How…”
Hanta hums, turning his gaze to her again. “You have to give.”
“Give?”
“Mhm. Every time you take from the water, you ask for permission and offer something in return.”
Ochako frowns. “What do I give?”
“Depends,” the boy answers plainly. “I sing before each dive and I leave flowers where I catch mussels. Stuff like that. Koji braids the grass.”
Ochako wonders what she has to give. Her eyes fall to the bins of shrimp and oyster, the piles of sleek fish shimmering on the table. But the ningyo only takes blood, and Ochako is not sure if it will eat prey from the Uraraka refrigerator. Maybe she can catch a frog—though the thought makes her stomach queasy. A flower is easier to start with.
Koji nudges his friend with an elbow, glossy eyes dancing as if to communicate on their own. Hanta gasps, a grin spreading across his face as he digs into his pocket.
“Oh yeah! Here.” He stretches out his arm, his fist clenched.
Ochako raises her palm to receive the gift. It’s a soft and small bundle of thread. When Hanta’s arm retreats, she sees a band of braids. The width is the same as the anklets the boys wear, only the string is a deep pink.
“You’ll be safer with that in the water, especially with a Kono. We can make a different color if you don’t like pink.”
“Kono?” The girl holds the bracelet carefully. “I like pink.”
Hanta’s grin grows. “Perfect. Put it on your right leg, ‘kay?”
Ochako nods dutifully. A promise.
The fireflies do not shine for several days.
When they finally light again, sparks flickering in the trees, Ochako leaps with excitement. A feeling deep within her says that this time will be different, somehow. The touch of her anklet is barely noticeable as she hurries along the creek, whispering thanks to the miniature lanterns for lighting her way.
When she arrives, the ningyo is not present.
The girl frowns, turning to the woods where the fireflies still bob. She inches towards the water to get a look, stones shifting with each step. Maybe they just missed one another. She sighs.
The river is cold against her skin when she dips her feet into the shallows. A shudder rattles up her body, raising the hair along her arms. Only the thrum of bugs carry through the night. Ochako’s stomach sinks in disappointment. Maybe the creature could sense she did not find anything to give.
Something lurches from the water.
It’s just in front of Ochako, a roaring splash against one of the larger stones. A tail whips through the river while spindly arms grip and heave. Droplets scatter through the air, pelting Ochako in a moment of rain. Her chest blossoms with hope.
The feeling tightens when she is met with hissing and growling, voice holding the coarseness of a thunderstorm. A voice of thirst and a voice of fear.
Back away, Ochako can hear it scream. Your kind are not meant to come this close.
She swallows the onslaught of tears that threaten to spill, stinging her nose with something close to shame. Why is she always forbidden from the places she wants to be? Would she be welcomed if she had something to give? But what does she have to offer? Her eyes dart along the creature—the marred face of a bird protruding from its shoulder, amphibious legs twisted within its skin. She thinks of Hanta and his eagerness to share, whether he is offering snacks or jewelry or knowledge. He gives what he has, whatever Ochako might want.
She moves without thinking. With empty hands, she stretches out her arm.
The beast reacts with a flinch and a hiss, backing away as if threatened. Then it pauses, fins flickering while its eyes dart skeptically.
Ochako nods. She takes one step forward and rolls the sleeve of her nightshirt. Her chest and stomach ache with nerves but she does not move.
A growl erupts from the belly of the creature while it bares its teeth. Ochako’s breath hitches as it lurches forward, moving erratically to latch a claw onto her arm. It stings, but brown eyes don’t waver from the ningyo’s glare. The air stills, as if the insects are holding their breath in anticipation.
This is all I have. The words are buried at the base of Ochako’s throat.
Gentleness is not what she would have expected, but when the creature leans forward, the first thing Ochako feels is the featherlight touch of lips against her skin. They’re soft, ghostly, careful. Until they curl back to unleash sharp fangs. The pinch against her forearm is painful when they puncture the skin. Blood begins to trickle—only for a moment before soft lips return. The slippery wetness of a tongue laps along the trail, saliva like a balm that turns the pain to a buzz.
A thrill runs through Ochako as the ningyo drinks from her. Part of it comes from the novelty and the risk—this adrenaline of disobeying, doing that she wants. But the other part is something much deeper, something inexplicable. Watching the creature’s face soften as it eats, sucking at the life running through Ochako’s arms, blooms a warmth through her body.
Being relied on and having capacity to give—Ochako has never experienced this before. This is intimate beyond her imagination.
Maybe this is how love begins.
When the two finally part, the ningyo slipping away unceremoniously, Ochako is left lightheaded under the first glow of the moon.
The trek home is both endless and instantaneous. The forest stands still and dark when Ochako turns to take one final glance back. She enters her home with trembling legs.
When she lays to sleep, she presses two fingertips against her arm, imagining them as pointed teeth. Her vision suddenly bursts with flames of static and her body goes limp, trapped beneath the weight of the blankets.
When the sun rises and morning arrives, she is too weak to wake.
Two days pass. While fevers wrack her body, Ochako is plagued by visions of the water—of dark fins and a bright tail, of a smile like the crescent moon. Her parents fuss diligently, clouds of worry spilling from their bodies and gathering by the bed, ready to suffocate and swallow Ochako whole. But as she slips in and out of consciousness, eyes heavy with exhaustion, she fixates on the bedroom window.
“Ocha-chan?” her mother asks after the girl mumbles something incoherent. Lines run through the skin of her forehead—an unending tide. “Is something wrong?”
The girl groans. “Hngh…f—flies.”
“Ocha-chan?” Her voice rings with the pitch of panic.
“Fireflies,” the girl manages, gasping. Her vision is too unreliable—smearing every color and shape together—to see if the bugs are dancing through the trees.
“What about them sweetie?”
Heat courses through her body, swallowing her brain. She whines, breath quickening as tears of futility pool in her eyes. Everything feels so urgent, and she is imprisoned in her bed.
“Ocha-chan… Ochako!?”
The girl sighs in defeat, losing to the force of her eyelids. Like a wave against the shore, sleep washes over her with ease. She has no choice but to surrender.
But she can’t stand the thought of the ningyo waiting for her, alone.
When Ochako is finally strong enough to stand, she spends her day feeling restless, anxiously waiting for the sun to fall and darkness to seep through the sky. She routinely lifts the sleeve of her shirt to stare at the markings on her arms, a finger running over two small, dark scabs. During dinner, her eyes focus on the window, waiting eagerly for a spark of yellow.
“—chan? Ochako!”
She jolts from her trance, turning to face her mother.
“Are you still not feeling well?”
She shakes her head. “I’m okay.”
“Really? You still seem out of it…”
“Try to eat more,” her father encourages. “Meat will help you regain your strength.”
Ochako nods as her eyes descend to her bowl, watching shrimp wontons bob through a thick soup. The meat is sweet on her tongue, chewy and coated in salty broth. Her stomach tightens when she imagines the animals in front of her, long and spindly bodies skittering out of the bowl and across the table. They track soup along the floor as they make their escape, leaping when they reach the stream. Skinny legs shuffle through the water, leading all the way to the river she yearns to return to.
“Ocha-chan—” her mother’s voice tears her from the window once again. “Are you sure you’re okay?Her spine straightens as she nods, spooning another dumpling into her mouth. This time as the flavor floods her tongue, she has the morbid curiosity of what she tastes like.
She is not the first to arrive at the river.
When she crests the hill she immediately looks for the water, searching for the stones standing in its darkness. A figure rests on the one closest to the bank. Ochako’s heart stirs as she descends to the shallows, itching to run but restraining herself. Heated excitement boils along her skin when she finally stands before a slippery tail and sharp fins. Her eyes shine as they trace claws and teeth and scales.
“Hi,” she whispers, a reverent breath.
The ningyo inhales, eyes rapidly scanning the girl’s skin. It leaps into the depth of the water.
Ochako blinks, swallowing the disappointment rising in her chest. It floods her lungs while a weight sinks in her stomach, plummeting somewhere deeper than she knew existed. Her eyes water, brown lakes of hurt and confusion. Should she have tried to return sooner? Was that enough to lose her merit, her trust?
The water stirs.
A head slices through the surface, ripples circling pale hair. Ochako’s breath catches. It’s too easy for her to hope, her heart switching between guilt and glee with commitment she is not prepared for, rocking her like a ship through a storm. The ningyo inches closer, carving through the water until it begins crawling along the bank. Its stare is enough to beckon Ochako forwards.
Yes, she feels the answer nestled in her chest. Always yes.
The two meet in ankle deep water, where a stone is wedged into the sand. The ningyo heaves itself on the flat surface, dragging with it the writhing body of an eel. It’s long, longer than Ochako’s legs, and wide enough that the beast's fingers don’t touch in their grip—instead digging sharp nails into the flesh. The animal wriggles desperately, tail slapping against the rock and water in protest.
The ningyo extends its arm. An offering, Ochako realizes—for her.
She immediately shakes her head, hands raising in gesture for the creature to take it back. Her eyes scan spindly arms and visible ribs, the hollowness of the creature’s cheeks. “I don’t need it.”
Pale eyes twitch, furrowing in a glare. The ningyo’s lips part, exposing teeth as they lower to piercing the slippery skin. The head of the eel squirms violently, beady eye twitching as fins flare, making futile attempts to breathe—or maybe scream. Blood pours from the puncture wounds, a line of crimson. The ningyo extends its arm a second time.
Panic bubbles in Ochako’s chest as the liquid rolls down the side of the eel, threatening to drip from the bottom of its belly. Without thinking, she reaches for it, cupping the animal where it’s bleeding before it can be wasted, and pushing her hand towards the ningyo’s mouth.
“Take it,” she insists. “I’m okay.”
Hesitantly, the creature obeys, finally lowering its head. It refuses to break her gaze as it drinks, lips touching the slippery flesh before sucking. It laps hungrily, hurriedly, claws digging to keep the animal still. Eventually the eel goes stiff, unmoving as the last of its life is drained. Ochako watches in fascination, stomach twisting the way it did at dinner.
This feels different than the shrimp, somehow.
When the eel is discarded, thwacking against the stone before sliding into the water, Ochako’s hands are all that remain between the pair. They are still smeared with scarlet, precious blood.
The ningyo reaches for them, clutching her softness between careful claws. Its tongue laps through her fingers and the lines of her palm, tracing every bump and curve and wrinkle. Ochako is frozen, watching with bated breath as if this moment will end if she makes the wrong move. Her eyes dart with greed, roaming with the intention to memorize every detail of this creature—the sharpness of its eyes, the softness of its lips. Wet hair clinging to its face. The occasional flicker of fins.
The creature’s touch is warm despite the chill of the night. Heat radiates from her hands until it nestles into her chest. This feeling blooming inside her, this buzz, is like the warmth of the sun. Something divine. Something like love.
“Himiko.” Ochako breathes the word like a prayer, a promise. She doesn't know why she says it; what depths it bubbled from. But it rises with urgency, like a secret impatiently waiting to escape its confines and make itself known.
The ningyo pauses, Ochako fears from displeasure, until a moment passes and those lips (so, so, so soft) curl against her skin.
Something akin to a purr rumbles through the chest of the ningyo—of Himiko. It—she—grins while nuzzling her face into Ochako’s palms. A hum sounds, high and clear, the trill of a bird's sweetest song. Ochako’s skin is alive, hands searing as she dares to press them firmer against Himiko’s cheeks.
“Himiko,” Ochako repeats, this time louder. Confident.
Himiko’s head shakes, burying itself further in Ochako’s hold. Another sound releases from the ningyo’s lungs: a high pitched babble. Ochako’s grin grows uncontrollably, cheeks tight with glee. Her heart is warm, so warm.
A sudden pressure captures two fingers, a firm but dull row of edges and points. A bite—soft and playful. Ochako watches with awe as Himiko scrapes her teeth over skin, the vibration of giggles accompanying the rough sensation. The girl is reminded of a cat: their flickering ears and affectionate gnawing. Himiko’s eyes flutter closed and open again, holding Ochako’s gaze. Her irises flood with the blackness of the sky, and her mouth pulls sharply into the curve of the moon.
Ochako’s chest tickles, and all she can think is—
Cute.
The remainder of Ochako’s summer break flies by, passing like a riptide—all at once, exhilarating. The night becomes her ally, the fireflies her friends. Her parents’ sleep and lack of attention a source of peace.
Himiko waits for Ochako as dutifully as Ochako waits for the evening. The ningyo perches along the stones, fins flickering with anticipation. The human finds a special warmth in knowing someone is waiting for her—someone who counts on her making an appearance, who will sit with the anticipation and the urgency for her.
One night, Himiko offers a return gift: a handful of pearls. They’re perfectly smooth, shining like tiny moons in her palm. Ochako inspects them under the lamp in her room, marveling at the variety in color. Cream, pink, gold. A single black one. They make soft clicking sounds as they roll through the divots in her hand, and Ochako is taken by their perfection. Afraid of what her parents will do if they find them, she keeps them in a bag under her pillow.
On nights when the insects take longer to light, she rolls her hands through the pearls while glancing out the window, urging the clock to hurry.
Ochako wants to know if Himiko’s heart also hurts when the time moves too slow. Does she pray the sun will fall faster, plummeting the sky into darkness just so they can meet a few minutes sooner?
The cynical part of Ochako’s heart—the one weathered by her parents’ view on the world—says yes, but only because of what the girl can offer. It says Himiko’s grin is only a display of sharp teeth eager to sink into her flesh, to taste and to drain her.
(The desperate part of her heart says she doesn't care. That this is an exchange where she can feel needed. Why should she care why Himiko waits and grins under moonlight, eyes shining like the moon itself?)
But Himiko takes from Ochako sparingly, spaced out by days and in small quantities. The hopeful part of Ochako’s heart assumes this is a form of consideration, for her small body that fell ill days ago. During the nights in between, Himiko eats from Ochako’s tender hands, letting the human watch as the ningyo steals life from other creatures, breathing them into herself before discarding them to the water.
How many corpses live in this river, Ochako wonders. How many skeletons line the murky floor? All these stones that cover the bank, sun bleached and brilliant white—are these pebbles the smoothed fragments of bone? Is Ochako sifting her feet through a cemetery every night, walking along a graveyard where the deceased are never buried? The skeleton of the dolphin is still in sight, greeting her every time she visits.
Now, she finds its presence comforting.
After each meal, Himiko will clean Ochako’s hands and steal any evidence of their encounters. Ochako places those hands on Himiko’s cheeks, runs fingers along the fins that sprout beneath her temples. Himiko’s eyes flutter, mouth stretching into a smile that Ochako can only describe as sweet before the creature’s head shakes to latch her teeth onto fingers, gnawing down chubby knuckles and grasping the plush skin of Ochako’s palm.
Ochako feels a rush every time she gives herself to Himiko. The sting of fangs pierce through her skin and tear through the scabs attempting to heal, but the pain brings a rush of heat through her body, settling in her stomach and chest. She loves the feeling of being relied on, not coddled and fussed over. This is a love of need. Ochako is used to a love outlined by borders—limits on what she can do, what she can give, what she can take. But Himiko takes and takes and takes. And Ochako wants her to.
Ochako lets herself be greedy in return. She pulls Himiko closer, runs her eyes over her body, touches her skin and nails and teeth. Fingers thread through the creature’s hair, prodding at the clumps of other animals that are forced into her flesh. Himiko lets her, happily preening under the attention and the touch. It makes Ochako greedier, hungrier to know this unusual being.
Ochako learns that there is a part of her heart she did not see before, one that clings and aches and yearns. One that wants to spear inside of Himiko the way the ningyo sinks teeth into Ochako’s arms.
It scares her.
“Ocha-chan, are you picking at your arms? Those cuts aren’t getting any better.”
The girl’s heart quickens, instinctively running her opposite hand along the scabs—scabs that have not faded in a week. Luckily they’re small and easy to keep out of sight, but with her mother holding her hand as they walk along the dock, she scrutinizes them closely.
Ochako doesn’t answer.
“What’d you do to hurt yourself, anyways?” her father interjects. “They’re weird marks.”
She shrugs on instinct, frowning at her arm in a manner that convinces the adults of her ignorance. Ochako has learned that this is her failsafe, the best way to avoid outright lying or telling truths that will take important things away from her.
“Try not to make them worse,” her mother adds softly. “You’ve never had this problem before.”
The girl nods, only half listening as the trio enters the market. Brown eyes spot her friends before glancing towards her mother, pleading.
“Can I talk to Hanta?”
The response is as usual: an apprehensive nod. “Don’t leave their table, okay?”
Ochako bounds over, openly grinning when she stands before the table. She turns to wave at her parents before shining eyes meet wide, black ones.
Black eyes that drop to her arm.
Her heart stutters, hesitating at the shock on Hanta’s face. He’s never looked so surprised.
“Woah,” is all he says.
Koji doesn’t share his disbelief. Ochako watches them both, brow furrowing.
“You… the yellow one? At the southern shore?”
Her frown deepens as she shakes her head. “The river in the woods. I don’t know what color she is.”
“The river…” he trails off, turning to Koji.
The shorter boy responds with a nod and series of hand gestures. One includes him opening a balled fist, like sunrays flaring, or a blooming flower.
“That’s Musu land,” Hanta says, watching Koji’s hands as they continue dancing. “And freshwater. The Kono live in the ocean. Maybe she swims upshore for food, to avoid the boats.”
Kono, that word again. Ochako repeats it. “Where… where do they come from?”
Hanta shakes his head. “They’re people. Lost people.”
“People?”
“Usually kids. Younger than us.”
Ochako frowns. “But they become—” monsters, her brain continues. Beasts that incite fear and inflict pain. Though, only if you see them that way, if you choose to be afraid. “They become Kono?”
Hanta nods.
“Why do they change?”
He shrugs. “Sometimes the water is the only place you can go.”
Her frown deepens. What circumstances would force someone to the water, for it to be their only solace? What happened to Himiko for this to be her life—darting between river and sea, no choice but to drink from animals, to be reduced to skin and bones.
“Do they…” her eyes widen. “Can they turn back into people?”
Hanta blinks, processing the question. He doesn’t know.
Ochako wishes she could sit here forever, sharing questions with Hanta and Koji. They answer her freely, honestly. They admit when they don’t know. She wants to share more, to share the beauty she was shown, to ask if they have seen it too. Admiration waits on the tip of her tongue, descriptions of Himiko’s smile, the unexpected gentleness hiding in her claws and teeth.
She thinks they already know.
“Thank you,” she says instead, voice low and soft. “For teaching me.”
Hanta shakes his head. “You already knew.”
Ochako has hardly a moment to consider what that means when a commotion stirs at the entrance of the markets. A deep shout, followed by a thrum of voices chattering at once—panicking. Ochako frowns as the crowd shifts, people rushing by the table and forcing her closer to the boys. A hand finds her arm, her father materializing to lift her on his hip.
“Sorry kid. It’s getting busy, so we’ll have to leave sooner than usual.” His voice is level, but he looks troubled.
“What happened?” she asks quietly, shifting in his arms. The crowd is thick around them. Her eyes don’t travel far.
“Just Higa-san causing some excitement. He got something strange today.”
Ochako’s heart jolts, eyes scanning furiously. Her stomach sinks with the heaviness of an omen. Her father’s hand cups her hair—an attempt to redirect her attention. Her unease grows.
“I wanna see.”
“No you don’t.” His reply is rushed, unconvincing. Irritating. “We need to go.”
Ochako cranes her neck, wriggling in her father’s arms. He grunts, voice hardening. “Ochako—”
She sees it. Past the tables lining the square, towards the exit on the docks, stands a swarm of people. With her hand pressing on her father’s shoulder, she has the leverage to skim her eyes overhead and catch the center of their attention—Higa-san, face twisted in a victorious grin. It’s sinister, sending chills through her veins.
In his hand thrusting triumphantly in the air is an arm: mangy, green, coated in scales. Purple fins protrude along the side and claws hang from the end. It’s been severed at the bicep, a loose tangle of flesh and skin, stringy muscle with the sharp splinter of bone.
Ochako panics, breaths turning to the staccato of panting. The air doesn’t fill her lungs, leaving her chasing for more, hurried.
“Ochako—”
She screams, a blood curdling sound. Harsh and high, raspy, one that floods any adult with fear. Heads turn towards the sound, eyes catching her twisted face, reddening furiously and flooding with tears.
Her parents move, attempting to calm her with soothing words that she can’t hear. Her father runs a hand along her back as he continues for the closest exit, people freely parting to let them through. But it only pushes Ochako further, pulling another round of wails from the depths of her throat, spilling from the sickness in her stomach. The cries are broken and unrelenting. Hands touch her face. Her mother’s mouth moves to catch her attention, but Ochako misses every word, deafened by her own screams.
“---be okay. There’s—safe, only—in the water. … protect—”
Ochako’s face crumples further, eyes squeezing with pain. She knows what her mother is trying to say: that she’s safe, the danger is only in the water, that people are here to protect her from whatever that was.
Ochako wails, but not from fear.
Or at least, not the fear her mother thinks she feels.
She cries herself to sleep and wakes in her room, staring out the window as soon as her eyes flutter open. The sun hangs low, casting orange through the clouds. The smell of cooked fish rises from the crack beneath her door.
Ochako hardly eats before returning to bed. She waits as the moon’s fullness lifts above the trees and dots of yellow blink above the stream. As soon as her parents close their bedroom door, she runs into the night.
There is no flirtatious dance with the shore. Ochako stomps through the water, charging straight to the stones where Himiko usually waits. The ningyo is present, pressed against her usual rock. She freezes at Ochako’s erratic movements, alarmed. Before the creature can react, small hands and arms engulf her shoulders and torso.
Only now is the unease in Ochako’s stomach settled. Himiko is here, alive and in front of her.
Himiko’s head jerks, nuzzling itself into the nook of Ochako’s neck. The girl sobs.
Red fins flicker against the brunette’s skin. The ningyo shifts and Ochako panics, arms tightening on instinct. Himiko stills. Ochako continues to sob, one hand shakily moving to Himiko’s forearm, tracing the skin, squeezing the flesh. She’s intact, whole. Both arms. Skin and bone and fins.
Confused, Himiko mirrors her actions. She runs sharp nails over Ochako’s skin, scraping as they squeeze in return. The pain is stabbing, sharp, but Ochako welcomes it, leans further into the touch.
Himiko is here.
The girl’s cries don’t wane for a long time, but the ningyo never protests or makes for an escape. Instead she lays pliant, easily held as if she welcomes the worry.
A sharpness grazes Ochako’s collarbone, the base of her throat. The girl doesn’t flinch, one hand raising to nestle into pale strands of hair. Encouraging. When the teeth finally pierce her, the sting comes with a wave of relief, body falling limp with relaxation. With Himiko wrapped in her arms and buried in her flesh, Ochako is reminded that she has something to give.
When Himiko finishes she runs her tongue along the skin, lapping until the runs of scarlet are fully cleaned. It tickles, pulling giggles from the girl. Himiko makes a throaty sound in response, the vibrations running along Ochako’s throat.
Bodies still wound in a tangle of arms and legs and tail, Ochako finds the strength to pull her head from Himiko’s. Under the full strength of the moon, she sees details that were previously secrets: the touch of gold that seeps through Himiko’s skin and scales, shimmering in her irises and every strand of hair. The fins lining her body are deep crimson along the edge, like blood seeping from her veins. Himiko—true to name—is the embodiment of light. Ochako is lost in the way Himiko’s body shimmers under the moon, illuminating the growing plush of her cheek, the point of her teeth.
Then Himiko blinks, and something sparkles.
Pink sprouts from the center of Himiko’s irises, blooming to settle in the rims. Rosiness dusts her hair, runs along the veins that trail from flesh to fin. When Ochako finds the will to look away from Himiko’s face, she finds the sparkles trail down to her claws, clustered in her nails. They run along her tail, fluttering through scales and pooling in her largest fin.
The sight is beautiful, impossible. Here by the water with the Ochako’s blood running through her body, Himiko glows. Her light holds its own against the strength of the moon, her own lantern to navigate wherever she yearns to be.
Ochako thinks she is witnessing magic.
Is this what everyone fears—so much they won’t even skim their fingers over the water? Himiko grins, the glint of a knife, before yanking Ochako’s arm to drag her deep into the darkness. Ochako does not resist, does not know how to resist. She only hopes that Himiko will not let her go.
Ochako bursts awake, sitting upright with a gasp. Dreams and reality dance through her mind, still hazy with sleep. A hand reaches for the base of her neck, right beneath the collar of her shirt. The raw skin stings beneath her fingers. It’s sticky, the residual ooze glistening when she pulls away.
She flops backwards with a sigh. Memories of Himiko bloom behind her eyes: her pretty grin, her tight embrace, the pink bioluminescence that scattered along her body. Her teeth, piercing through the skin of her throat.
Ochako exhales, hands fisting the blanket.
Eventually she stands, stealing a glance out the window while she tugs up her collar and makes for the kitchen.
Her mother prepares an omelet, laid neatly across fried rice at the base of the bowl. The egg unrolls perfectly when cut.
“Did you sleep okay Ocha-chan?”
She nods.
“You’ve been waking up later than usual,” her father notes. “Try not to stay up so late. You start school again this week.”
Ochako nods again.
“I’ll be working again,” her mother adds. “So we’ll both be gone when you come home. Are you interested in any clubs? Maybe it’d be good to have something to keep you at school.”
Ochako pauses, considering. Nothing comes to mind. She isn’t particularly interested in sports, and the other clubs usually have fees or requirements to buy supplies. She shakes her head. She would rather spend that time elsewhere—with Himiko.
“That’s fine,” her father answers. “The neighbors will be around if you need anything. Just stick to the usual rules, okay?”
Stay in the backyard, Ochako thinks. A promise routinely broken. She nods.
Her mother frowns. “Are you sure you don’t want to try anything? I don’t want you to get lonely if we get back late.”
Ochako watches her parents trade glances, uncertain what they mean. Her father is uncharacteristically relaxed. Her mother is unusually stressed, pushing.
“Let her do what she wants,” her father’s voice is firm. His brow furrows before his eyes widen. Ochako doesn’t know what that means, but her mother sighs and nods.
The air has a tension Ochako is not used to. She prods, curious. “Why are you working late?”
Her mother smiles tightly. “Just changes in the company. Don’t worry about it.”
The tension thickens.
After her first day back at school, Ochako returns to an empty house. The neighbor waves as she walks home, letting the girl know she can call if anything happens. Ochako hurries after nodding, running inside to drop her bag and change clothes. There is no hesitation as she treads outside, beyond the boundary of her home. No fireflies light her path—this time wandering under the heat of the sun.
Inexplicably, Ochako intuits that Himiko knows she is coming. She crests the hill, panting and flustered. Brown irises scan the rocks, the water—water incredibly blue.
A head bursts from the plane, scattering ripples across its surface. Himiko, hair like starlight and eyes molten gold, bobbing towards the shore. Ochako grins, racing forwards.
They no longer rely on the moon to meet, neither the darkness she rests in or the bugs that carry her light. Himiko is a ritual to Ochako, now under the sun.
Ochako thinks this is how it was meant to be, that Himiko was made to be seen in her fullness, in the confidence of day. She’s easier to understand, to watch, to know. The depth of her colors are apparent, the flashes of gold and flushes of pink. She internalizes that light, shines it along her scales and fins when she leads Ochako through murk and shadow.
Maybe Himiko is a star, a sun. A source of light and warmth.
(Of love.)
Ochako knows she should return home when red blooms along the horizon; her parents will be home in less than an hour. She turns to Himiko’s delicate frame, her soft face.
“Thank you.”
She struggles to elaborate. This is a thanks that holds weight in its ambiguity. She wants to add, For depending on me. For trusting me. For sharing with me things that are special to you.
“Thank you,” Himiko parrots, words coated in the scratch of thirst.
Ochako swallows. She can’t tell whether Himiko understands the words or not, if this language means anything to a creature of salt and claws and blood. But Ochako thinks she understands what Himiko has buried in her speech.
For seeing me. For taking me under your care. For coming back, time and time again.
Himiko’s body fills out with time, flesh over bone thickening with sturdiness and strength. Smaller animals still find their way into her skin—the sharp curved shell of a horseshoe crab, the spots of flounder. But her face remains soft, kind.
One afternoon, when the sun hangs hot at an angle, Ochako only has a moment to appreciate the sight of Himiko before the ningyo pulls her from the bank of the river. They fall into the crystal of water, clear aquamarine. Himiko holds Ochako tightly, the girl squeezing with equal strength as she kicks her legs.
Ochako’s gaze follows the now familiar floor of the river: large stones smoothed by time, white and banded and broken. Like bones of an unfathomable giant that used to roam the earth. Tufts of grass peek through the cracks. Fish dart through the hairs, small and silver, glittering when a ray of sun catches their scales.
They pass banks Ochako knows, stones that she holds fondness for, pockets along the shore that she recognizes as homes. Her eyes light with familiarity, catching sight of other creatures she has come to love.
The river is a second home.
Himiko leads Ochako further than they’ve been before. When the river widens as it winds around a hill, the stones grow into boulders. They line an opening beneath the bank, a set of ancient teeth framing a mouth of darkness. Himiko carries forward without pause. Ochako does not resist.
A minute stretches slowly, rolling like a stone against the current. Light shortly fades to blackness as the pair is swallowed by the cave. The water squeezes Ochako’s temples, ears popping when she adjusts her jaw. Stone wraps around them, faults and fragments jutting just out of reach. Ochako’s heart races, lungs tightening.
Darkness claims her vision for an instant before it blooms with pink. Himiko’s body glows, dust sparkling along her form. It illuminates the walls, the shadows of figures dancing as they carry forwards.
Himiko is the light—she is Ochako’s compass and way.
The water shifts, heavier against their bodies. A chill rushes over Ochako as Himiko twists through the channels. Her lungs start to burn.
Before air comes, Ochako has her first taste of sea. Salty, sweet. A light streams ahead and brown eyes widen, catching a rush of colors blooming beneath her.
They slip through an opening, one that overwhelms Ochako with blue. Blue when she takes her first glimpse of the open water, blue when Himiko drags her through the surface to breathe. Ochako gasps, heaving deeply as she clutches to the ningyo—her lifeline. Her heart races, fueled by her desperate breaths, and rooted in the warnings she remembers before anything else: Stay away from the water.
Danger, danger, danger, blares through her mind, punctuated by each erratic heartbeat.
Himiko adjusts her grip, wrapping an arm around Ochako’s waist. The calamity quiets.
Ochako’s breaths slow and her body relaxes, eyes roaming with wonder. The pair float next to a cliff: a slab of dark rock jutting between sky and ocean. Though she’s never seen it from this angle, Ochako knows cliffs like these only exist in the south of the island. The face of the rock curves around them, hugging Himiko who holds Ochako. Along its surface are blooms of coral, lengths of kelp, seagrasses woven together. The rocks are a second shore beneath the surface, a forest for fish to bury themselves in, before dropping straight down.
Ochako’s stomach sinks, falling through the abyss below her. Heights have never been an issue, but floating here, above a depth she cannot fathom, her body buzzes with a fear she did not know she could feel. She latches onto Himiko for life.
The ningyo holds her steady. Her tail sways to propel them around the face of the rocks—slowly, to let Ochako take in the force of blue, the lives that drift within it, depend on it. Wonder swallows her and steals every sense in her body, coating her eyes and squeezing her ears. Something aches in her chest, hollowing out her heart in a yearning to understand, to learn. Himiko’s touch helps to soothe the sting, but the pain lingers.
When they round the corner, they glide over reefs—rooted in an ocean floor. Ochako’s stomach eases at the sight of sand and stone beneath her.
Her stomach drops again when she looks up. A figure bobs in the water ahead of them, a notable distance from the proper shore.
In a panic she clutches Himiko and kicks her legs. It’s a futile attempt to escape, to protect the ningyo from being spotted. The creature doesn’t budge, her tail much stronger in the water than Ochako’s legs. The human struggles, eyes wide in fear and confusion.
“Himiko—” she wails, breathy. Doesn’t she understand that she’s in danger?
Himiko looks at Ochako with equal confusion, head cocked. The girl frowns, sparing another glance at the figure in the water. Her breath catches.
The figure is Hanta, floating on a surfboard. His dark hair sticks against his head, lean frame covered by a sleeved shirt she does not recognize. His head twitches before turning towards the pair, large eyes meeting Ochako. He freezes, then grins. The contact only lasts another second before he paddles through a wave, board sliding against clear blue and towards the shore—where Koji sits in the sand, Ochako realizes.
A heaviness tugs at her heart. Her lips twist in a pout as she rests her head in the crook of Himiko’s neck. Her stomach hurts with something. Something like envy.
When the ningyo returns her to the bank of the river, Ochako soaked in her day clothes, words bubble up her throat without warning, spilling with urgency.
“I love you.”
Himiko’s fins flicker against her head. Her lashes flutter twice before a grin spans her face. All sharp, bright teeth.
“Love you,” she echoes, voice the smoothness of a pearl.
Ochako’s eyes pool with tears. Her chest and stomach hurt. She wants to hear Himiko say it again and again. Himiko’s voice makes the words mean something she’s never known before.
“Wish I could stay,” she whispers, searching for an answer. A lump forms in her throat.
“Stay,” Himiko whispers back.
But she can’t. So Ochako walks home, that lump in her throat never settling.
“Ocha-chan,” her mother starts at dinner—this one rare, before sunset. Alarm bells had blared through the girl’s body during the afternoon, alerting her to come home just in time for their arrival. “Your dad and I are planning a trip to Mie for winter break.”
She nods, scraping the rice at the bottom of her bowl. It's a tradition for their family to visit the Ise shrine. “For New Years?”
Her mother hums in affirmation.
Ochako frowns, pausing mid-bite. Will Himiko be okay alone for that long?
“Ochako?”
Round eyes turn to her father’s wrinkled face.
“Is there something wrong?”
“No, just—will we be there the whole break?”
“Mhmm. Your mother and I need to take a couple trips to a couple cities we haven’t been before: Kameyama and Suzuka.”
Her brow furrows further. Her grandparents are in Matsusaka; they only ever visit the south of Mie or east, where her other extended family live. “What’s in Kameyama and Suzuka?”
“Some businesses we need to visit for work,” her mother answers. “But we can also visit some of the historical sites. I’d like to see the neighborhoods, too.”
“Okay.” It sounds boring to Ochako, and she doesn’t get why a neighborhood would be worthwhile to see. “Why do you need to visit for work?”
They make a few comments, but none of them feel like an answer.
The last time Ochako runs along the stream, she doesn’t bother changing from her uniform. After dumping her backpack by the door she makes a run for the woods. Urgency pulls her, a fish reeled along Himiko’s line.
She bursts from the thick of trees, shoes sliding against the pebbles as she slows. Her eyes dart anxiously across the shore, feet stuttering when they catch pale gold glimmering above a stone. She steadies herself, marching forwards while Himiko clutches the rock in tense arms. Ochako grins as the ningyo pulls itself to shore—
Ochako nearly slips down the bank. Her feet freeze while her eyes grow to full moons.
Himiko walks.
They’re shaky steps on unpracticed legs, but she rises. The ningyo—or now human—stands. Her figure is bare except for the water rolling down her skin. It glistens in the sun, daytime stars raining against her body. A human body. A body like Ochako’s, with sturdy legs and a round face.
Ochako’s heart stutters, lips parted as Himiko inches closer, soft feet pressing sharp rock. She carries herself with uncertainty, alien in a body that she once knew well. The brunette takes one step forward, encouraging.
“Himiko.” The sound is hardly a breath, lungs emptied in awe.
Is this what love can do: transform creatures, let them take the parts of one another that bring them closer together? Ochako’s every step, her diligence to return—is this the result of her careful questions, her patience? It must be her blood running through Himiko’s body, her flesh covering her bones. Every taste of Ochako’s blood was a pact, the whisper of a swear.
A promise that brought them here.
Himiko continues with the shake of a fawn. Ochako watches carefully, stepping slowly. Patiently, always patiently waiting for her. But her heart thrums, buzzing all the way to her fingertips as she imagines meeting Himiko’s hands. Their fingers can interlace into a basket of tenderly woven flesh, letting Ochako pull Himiko along her own world—through grass and trees and sky.
Ochako can bring her home. She can bring her two homes together.
She holds her breath for Himiko’s final steps, speeding her own so they can meet in the middle. Her hands raise, palms facing the sun—facing Himiko’s reaching for her.
A sharp snap sounds from another part of the woods. A spear releasing, shooting across the bank to pierce Himiko’s back. Ochako flinches and Himiko screams, teeth bared and eyes shrunken in pain. The sound is cut a second later when her flesh dissolves midair, cells bubbling into red liquid that bursts, coating Ochako’s front and splattering the ground before her. She stumbles, arms still stretched as she collapses, knees bruising against Himiko’s stain.
Sounds erupt from the side, chaotic but muffled while Ochako’s lungs tighten. She heaves, half gags and half desperate gulps of air, as she frantically shoves her hands against the stones. The world is split, torn into two as she wails. Saltwater floods her vision, splattering against the spill of Himiko.
Commotion follows. A hand grasps Ochako’s arm and she screams, thrashing in the hold of someone wearing two shades of blue—a police officer. She catches similar figures scattered throughout the shore, surrounding her.
Her cries are deafening. Under the scorching light of the sun, her body is hot, too hot. The sizzling crack of lightning. She doesn't want to be touched. She wants Himiko. Himiko’s flesh, her own flesh, a body she had yet to understand and love in its entirety.
She blinks through her storm, vision clearing enough to spot Higa-san by an officer. He holds his speargun in hand, face twisted in that sinister grin of victory.
For all her questions about love, all her curiosities and her doubts, Ochako is certain when she sits atop Himiko’s melted remains. Staring at Higa-san through her pinched face, all Ochako knows is that this feeling in her chest and stomach—this tightness and sickening void—is her first experience of hatred.
