Chapter Text
Fuyumi hates her mom.
No, she doesn’t! Really, she doesn’t. She visits Rei every week with flowers, because Rei needs her. She pays the hospital bills and negotiates with the doctors and always speaks in a soft tone, because Rei needs her. It would be unfair to hate someone like Rei.
So it’s nice that Shouto visited her.
“How was it? No one-word answers,” says Fuyumi. Her fingers, dry and cracked, lay on the steering wheel. She hasn’t started the car yet.
“Fine,” says Shouto, and then realizes his mistake. “We talked a little, I guess. She apologized.”
“She… apologized to you,” says Fuyumi. The steering wheel squeaks.
“Yes,” says Shouto. “For... the kettle.” He can speak about it more openly than Enji – and Fuyumi.
“That’s all?” says Fuyumi.
“What else would she apologize for?” asks Shouto.
Fuyumi looks out of the window, at the care facility, shining white and pure. Only the best of care for her mom. “I meant, is that all you talked about.”
“Oh,” says Shouto. “No.”
“One word!”
“Two words.”
“I want a full sentence, at least,” says Fuyumi.
“She asked about Natsuo. She wanted to know if we were all getting along.”
Rei asks Fuyumi that question every time she sees her. But Fuyumi is Enji’s dog, willing to say whatever it takes to keep everyone docile, calm, stable. Rei, of all people, recognizes that. Shouto is a more honest source.
“What did you tell her?” Fuyumi asks—out of genuine curiosity, rather than the mixed sense of duty and habit that drives most small talk. Most of her talk, really.
“I said I didn’t really know. It’s not like I speak to Natsuo a lot.”
“Well, he’s busy with his studies,” says Fuyumi, gently.
“It’s more than that,” Shouto insists doggedly. Uneven eyes squint up at her, but do not waver. “I feel like I’m always an outsider.”
“Oh, little brother.” He doesn’t know how much of a blessing he has.
Fuyumi brushes Shouto’s bangs back with her hand, and kisses his forehead. It’s a promise, and a goodbye. She’ll stay here, strung between the shattered mother and inflamed father. She’ll stay in this place forever. But Shouto has a chance.
Fuyumi’s earliest memory of her mother is having a sip of her mom’s wine and gagging at the bitterness. That was before her mom always had a glass with her, when it was still a game: little Fuyumi’s mom loved wine, little Fuyumi hated wine, when little Fuyumi grew up she would love wine just like her mother.
She had never seen her father drink anything other than water. He said something about how alcohol poisons your body. It wasn’t the first time Fuyumi had heard that word, but somehow it felt more powerful in her father’s deep voice. Poison.
The little girl swallowed that word, kept it tucked under her breast. She couldn’t do it yet. Who would take care of her mom? That was the first concern that came to Fuyumi’s mind, at ten years old.
Shouto knows that Fuyumi loves him. She just lies to him a lot.
Lying is second nature to all the Todorokis, but Fuyumi, the peacemaker, practically grew another tongue. She softens things, makes them easier to swallow… but Shouto can’t let her soothe him, like she’s done for so many years. He cannot let her dull his longing.
Knock-knock, knock-knock. Four precise raps of his knuckles against the door, just like how Fuyumi does it.
“What is it, Fuyumi? I’m calling my friend!” Natsuo shouts from inside the room.
An image enters Shouto’s head, of two rambunctious brothers, and their naggy but loving older sister. Like he sees on TV.
Instead, Shouto enters. The room’s messy, filled with papers and old candy wrappers, as well as a pack of cigarettes half-hidden on the window-sill. Natsuo’s sitting back at his desk, legs splayed out and smiling, a little.
“Shouto?” Natsuo lights up, and then scoffs at his phone. “He hung up. Asshole.”
Natsuo has never been happy to see Shouto before, which leaves only one conclusion.
“Do you hate Fuyumi?” asks Shouto.
“What?”
“Do you hate Fuyumi?” repeats Shouto.
“All siblings hate each other, at least a little bit,” says Natsuo.
“They do?” This must be something else Shouto missed.
“Look, I don’t—” Natsuo cuts himself off, pressing a fist to his mouth. His knuckles are bone-white.
“What? Did I do something wrong again?”
“Not wrong, it’s just—look, I need to get back to this,” Natsuo sighs, runs a hand through his hair. White hair, just like Rei’s. “We can talk later, okay? Don’t be a stranger.”
“How could I be a stranger?”
The smile slips off Natsuo’s face, smooth as water. “Forget it.”
Shouto licks his lips, and looks away. He knows there are things he doesn’t understand—a lot of things. But here, confronted with Natsuo’s gray eyes, he feels painfully… abnormal.
Fuyumi first learned her father could die when she was eleven years old. It was the first time she’d cooked something without her mom, but by that point, without her mom just meant without timely breaks to comfort her mom. The quality of the food should, by all logic, have been exactly the same as the meal she served yesterday, before Shouto and her mom went to the hospital. Two different hospitals.
Still, call it nerves, bad luck, or an eleven-year-old’s undiscerning eye for lettuce, dinner found Enji retching in the en-suite bathroom.
“I hope he dies,” said Natsuo. Then, louder, “I hope you die.” His anger was comedic in its frankness and ignorance.
There was no response from the bathroom. Fuyumi, for lack of a mom to say it, told him, “Don’t talk like that, Natsuo. You’ll make him mad.”
“What’s he gonna do?” Touya’s chin was tilted up, bandaged arms crossed. The picture of childish contempt. “None of us are even worth hitting anymore.”
“Besides, he’s dying. He can’t do anything except throw up,” added Natsuo.
“You can’t die from bad lettuce,” said Fuyumi, authoritative tone masking a wobble in her voice. “And if he does, we won’t have any money anymore.”
“Why are you worrying about that?” demanded Touya. “I’ll just be a hero, and pay for everything!”
“Yeah!” said Natsuo, grinning like a little kid. He hadn’t learned to dread that certain tone of voice from Touya yet.
But Fuyumi had. That was Fuyumi’s job.
Shouto knows that people find him off-putting. He’d always chalked it down to his family screwing him up, but he couldn’t even get along with Natsuo. He wants to have a brother, a real one, so he needs to learn how to make Natsuo like him.
He would usually observe the other kids in 1-A to learn, but this is nothing so surface-level as telling whether or not a silence is awkward. Superficial imitation won’t cut it this time. Shouto must rise above his circumstances, but in order to do so, he has to observe someone who did the same.
Midoriya’s situation is closest to his, but he’s pretty sure Midoriya would be too weird for Natsuo. That leaves either Iida, or Yaoyorozu. But Iida’s brother is a sensitive subject, and Shouto isn’t great at sensitive subjects.
Yaoyorozu seems like she would be. Girls are usually good at that kind of stuff, and Yaoyorozu is especially accommodating. People trust her.
Shouto approaches her at the end of class. “Yaoyorozu,” he says. “I have a question for you.”
“Of course.” She smiles, black eyes warm and sharp.
“We have similar families, don’t we?”
Yaoyorozu’s eyes skip away, then back. “In some ways, I suppose.”
“How do you make people get along with you?” Shouto asks.
“I guess… I try to listen to them, and find what we agree on,” Yaoyorozu muses. “That way, it feels like you’re on the same side. So even if you disagree on other things, they won’t see you as an enemy. Or get angry at you.”
On the same side. Yes, they are all on the same side—against Endeavor. It’s easy to unite people against a common enemy. Even Rei would agree with that, he thinks.
“You must get along well with your siblings,” says Shouto, although it’s not much of an assumption. Yaoyorozu gets along well with everyone.
“I don’t have any siblings,” Yaoyorozu says, like it’s an apology. “I suppose the closest I ever had was your sister, Fuyumi.” Fuyumi’s name is always breathed out gently. Even businesslike Yaoyorozu softens.
“Fuyumi,” Shouto says, just to hear it in his own voice. “Why her?”
“You don’t remember? She used to baby-sit me,” Yaoyorozu’s hands twist into each other. “You must remember. She took care of me.”
“I don’t,” says Shouto, but then he remembers what Yaoyorozu said. About finding things to agree on. “Fuyumi is good at taking care of people.”
“You look a little like her, you know.” Yaoyorozu reaches out and touches along Shouto’s right cheek, slender and feather-light. She murmurs, “Your face is quite feminine.”
“Feminine,” Shouto repeats. His lips lay soft around the word.
“I’m not—I mean, it’s not a bad thing!” she stutters out. “I’m sorry, I overstepped my boundaries. I’m sorry.”
She ducks and dashes out of the classroom. Shouto tries to tell her to stay, to come back, to explain, but his mouth won’t work. He tries to go after her, but his muscles won’t move.
Better like this anyway. Shouto would just react the wrong way again.
He touches his cheek, splaying his fingers out where Yaoyorozu’s had been. Girls have such gentle touches. If he had been Fuyumi, he would have known what to do.
Maybe Natsuo was right. Shouto is a stranger.
When Fuyumi was fifteen, her father told her to baby-sit eight-year-old Yaoyorozu Momo. The girl was quiet, pretty, and well-behaved. Fuyumi hated her, but she didn’t show it, because she needed to be a quiet, pretty, and well-behaved girl.
Momo did her schoolwork, assigned by her personal tutor, on a silver Mac. It ran out of battery so quick that they had to stay in the living room where Momo could charge it. They’d sat there for an hour, but that didn’t mean it was safe. The living room was never safe.
Fuyumi had memorized her father’s footsteps. Dull booms that were absorbed into the flooring and vibrated up to rattle in her skull. He dragged his feet a little, the master’s laziness. Fuyumi walked on the balls of her feet.
Behind her father’s thumps were the soft paces of a stranger. Momo let out a small breath, which misted and hung in the air. Fuyumi passed a hand through the cloud.
Both girls met the floor with light feet when the grown-ups came in—Fuyumi’s father, and an unknown woman. Momo smiled, lady-like, not too big nor small. Fuyumi’s father ignored her, eyes remaining on the woman in the slinky black skirt rather than the sexless child. The woman looked at Fuyumi.
“How did it go?”
“Well, thank you ma’am.”
“Did she finish all her work?”
“She did, thank you ma’am.”
“How much did she eat?”
Fuyumi did not offer Momo snacks, for fear that she couldn’t resist the temptation to poison. “She didn’t, thank you ma’am.”
Momo’s furry eyebrows wrinkled.
“Don’t make such ugly faces, child,” the woman scolded. “You should be happy, since you have so many nice things. You’re a very lucky little girl.”
“I know,” said Momo.
The woman’s arm coiled, released—the slap rang out like a bell. Momo did not move, her flat moon face half-red.
“My apologies. Momo isn't always properly grateful for her gifts.” The woman addressed Fuyumi’s father. Fuyumi and Momo were meant to listen then, not speak. “Your daughter is quite mature for her age. Perhaps Momo could learn something from her.”
“Do you get gifts?” Momo asked Fuyumi. Fuyumi felt the urge to slap the other cheek red too, for a matching blush. Spoiled girl.
“I got the best gifts,” Fuyumi sounded out slowly. She took a moment to savor the dullness of confusion in Momo’s black button eyes, before saying, “My little brothers.”
Yaoyorozu Momo was an only child. Her face fell a little, and Fuyumi felt the sweet twist of satisfaction. A girl could be sweet and pretty and perfect, but it meant nothing without a little brother—to take care of, to be better than, to mother.
Living in the dorms invites a cramped kind of closeness. There are parent-teacher meetings today, and Shouto can camp out in the common room and watch each of his classmates interact with their guardians.
He likes watching the mothers best. Midoriya’s mom envelops him in a hug, crying and smiling at the same time, which Shouto hadn’t known was possible. Asui’s broad, flat hands clasp her mother’s identical ones. Yaoyorozu and hers stand side-by-side, speaking quietly.
Fuyumi only comes over to him briefly, ghosting a hand over his shoulder before she accosts Aizawa-sensei. Shouto doesn’t envy his teacher—Fuyumi has that look in her eyes that means business.
Yaoyorozu, detached from her mother, creeps up to Shouto. Her hands are folded in that polite, girlish way, and her hair is down. It’s smooth and shiny, nothing like Fuyumi’s mane, and Shouto finds himself wondering which of them he would resemble, if he ever grew out his hair. If he ever could.
“Um, Todoroki?” Each of her greetings is also a request. Shouto’s not sure how she does it. Something in the lightness of the tone, he thinks.
“What is it?” He tries to mimic the way she speaks.
“Do you remember the conversation we had? About getting along with people?”
He nods.
“Well, I don’t think I really articulated myself well.” Unlikely. Yaoyorozu always articulates herself well. “You don’t have to do what I do. I notice you usually just say what’s on your mind, instead of saying what’s most polite. I envy it, a little.”
“Is there something wrong with being polite?” Shouto asks.
“Of course not! Gosh, don’t let my mother hear that, she’d blow a fuse… ha-ha.” Yaoyorozu turns a little further away from her mother, who’s watching the two as they talk. They have the same eyes, Shouto notices. “I just mean that sometimes I wish I could just talk, without always thinking of how people will respond.”
“I like the way you talk,” Shouto says.
“I like the way you talk, too.” Yaoyorozu gives him one of her pretty pink smiles, the kind that melts like sugar on the tongue.
That’s when her mother decides to step in, hand gripping Yaoyorozu’s upper arm and tugging her away.
Shouto almost grabs that hand and throws it off. He stays stock-still, hardly daring to breathe as the pair excuse themselves. Scared that he’ll lash out like some kind of wild animal.
What is he thinking? Has his father’s violence penetrated him so deeply that he cannot see anything else, even while watching a mother and daughter?
Maybe that’s what Shouto’s missing: a mom. Shouto never had much time with Rei, unlike his siblings, which must be why he stands apart. If she came back, she could teach him how not to be a stranger.
Like when Fuyumi kissed his forehead—Shouto thinks a lot about that. It felt nice. Really, really nice. Is that what siblings do, when they’re close? Shouto wonders if they would’ve been closer, had it not been for Endeavor. But then again, if not for Endeavor, none of them would have existed, so maybe it’s a moot point.
He tries to think of an alternative history, for him, for his siblings, but the only image that springs to mind is four perfect strangers, standing in each corner of a box.
With Rei, though. She could change everything.
Fuyumi doesn’t remember the day she decided to do it. There was no day where vague desire blossomed into intention. There was no switch of love to hatred—rather, they mingled. Little Fuyumi would do everything her father told her to do, head filled with red.
Her father always said that everyone in the family should be useful. Fuyumi was a good girl, she cooked and cleaned and took care of the household. Her father, who yelled and ate and drove Touya, and then Shouto, into the ground, was useless. Except for the money.
The only way the Todoroki family earned money was through their father, and what the children received from their relatives on New Year’s. Fuyumi wasn’t stupid, she knew that getting the envelopes once a year wasn’t enough, and besides, it would stop once they got too old.
So when she was twelve, Fuyumi went to the bank and gave them a neat check encompassing all of her New Year’s money. They told her what a responsible young lady she was, which was obvious. Fuyumi could not be anything else. She came back with the same check the next year, and the year after that, and the year after that. When she got too old for New Year’s money, she learned her father’s signature from the papers he left lying around everywhere for her to clean up. The interest rate wasn’t enough on its own.
Fuyumi doesn’t think of that as planning, not really. Just preparation. She had never anticipated being able to start before Shouto came of age, but the UA dorm system was an unusual stroke of luck. She doesn’t want her baby brother turning out like Natsuo if she can help it.
Then there’s Aizawa. She’d heard Shouto’s stories from the USJ and the training camp, how fiercely protective the man is of his charges. For a man who has done so much, and has had so much done to him, he doesn’t seem angry. Just quiet.
People often say Fuyumi’s quiet. That it’s hard to even imagine her angry. It makes her laugh, over the ever-present heat of her blood beneath her skin. Fuyumi is always angry. She’s just more productive about it than most. She thinks Aizawa’s that type too, from the way he talks about the dorms, security measures, the League of Villains. He’s an efficient man, and any anger is channeled outwards, rather than left to fester.
He’ll take care of Shouto, in case Fuyumi’s caught. A thrill runs through her at the thought, but she tamps it down before it show too much on her face. She’s not quite fast enough to avoid the watchful eye of Eraserhead.
“Ms. Todoroki?” That’s another thing about Aizawa. Each movement is lazy, optimized to conserve energy. Yet his tongue never strays towards Miss instead of Ms. when talking to her, despite the fact that Miss is the easier sound.
“I’m fine, thank you, Mr. Aizawa.” Fuyumi smiles, genuinely. She likes him.
“If you have no further questions, then I’ll go speak with some of the other parents,” he says.
“I’m Shouto’s sister, not his parent,” Fuyumi corrects, her smile losing its sincerity. She’s had to make that correction over and over again, for years. It gets monotonous, but what else is there to do? Smile and nod, like a good little woman.
“Right. Excuse me,” Aizawa says, and slinks away. He’s light on his feet, like a cat.
Fuyumi returns to the UA dorms’ common room. Shouto’s sitting alone on the couch, hands folded together and frowning. He doesn’t look upset though, so Fuyumi lets herself relax a little. She comes up and ruffles his hair, just enough to disrupt the line between white and red.
“Hey, what’re you sulking about?”
Shouto shrugs. Oh, he might be more upset than she thought. Fuyumi sits down next to him, bumping shoulders.
“Tell me what’s wrong, and I’ll help you. No matter how hard it is.” It’s true, even. Fuyumi would do anything to help her baby brother. She just wishes he didn’t need so much of it.
He lays his head on her shoulder. Fuyumi takes Shouto’s weight easily, like she has for the past sixteen years.
“Do you think… do you think things would be better, with Mom?” he asks.
The air drops a few degrees. Shouto leans into her more. When did he get so heavy?
“What do you mean?”
“If we had had Mom, when I was growing up. I know it couldn’t have fixed everything, but…” Shouto looks up at her. Small. Vulnerable. “I feel like I would’ve been better at things. With people.”
He doesn’t think Fuyumi is good enough. She didn’t do it right, she couldn’t have. Fuyumi has done nothing but try to take care of her family. She knows she failed Touya, she knows Natsuo resents her. But Fuyumi thought that Shouto would have appreciated it—from ignorance, at the very least.
That ignorance has come back to bite her, it seems. Shouto doesn’t remember what Rei was like before.
Fuyumi does. She remembers the morning before it happened.
Rei had insisted on making the tea herself. Fuyumi usually did it for her, usually did most things for her, but not that day. Seeing Rei get out of bed on her own was to witness a child growing into a woman. She brushed her hair and it was so beautiful. She put on clothes and it was so beautiful. She kissed Fuyumi on her forehead. She was Fuyumi’s mother. Fuyumi had a mother.
Then she lost her mind, and they sent her away, and Fuyumi thought she’d never have a mother again. That none of them would ever have a mother again.
But Shouto wants Rei back now. Shouto, who she burned. Shouto, who’s only ever known Fuyumi as his primary caretaker. He wants to give her a second chance.
“I can get her out for a night,” Fuyumi says. “How does a family dinner sound?”
Her father refuses at first, despite his redemption kick, but Fuyumi is patient. She wears him down, makes calculated hits on weak points, until he buckles. Child’s play. She’s been doing it since she was that old, after all. The doctors are softened up by Fuyumi, but agree only when her father steps into the room. She’ll have to figure out how to replicate that after he’s dead.
The most stubborn one is Natsuo.
“Are you serious?” he snaps at Fuyumi over the phone. He’s staying over at his girlfriend’s apartment again. She’s a good influence on him, Fuyumi thinks. Cute too.
“Don’t take that tone with me,” Fuyumi shoots back. “Are you really going to skip out on the first night away from the hospital Rei has had in years?”
“It’s not like that!”
“Tell me how it isn’t.” Fuyumi knows, really. She’s known from the start. She only wants to hear it from somebody else’s lips.
“This whole charade is thanks to Endeavor, right? The guy who put her there in the first place.” Natsuo’s talking so fast he’s a little out of breath. “It’s no use, Fuyumi! No matter how hard you pretend, we’re not going to be a normal family. Not with him around.”
“I don’t want to pretend anything, Natsuo,” Fuyumi sighs. “I just… I just want to try.” She wants to see if her mother is salvageable.
“Try? Yeah, maybe we could try, if he were dead.”
Natsuo cuts himself off, as if realizing what he just said. As if waiting for Fuyumi’s scolding. She doesn’t say anything.
“Sometimes,” Natsuo whispers, emboldened, “sometimes I wish he was.”
A slow breath out. Yes. Fuyumi needs to do this. There is no other way.
“Tell you what,” she says, in the patient, light voice she reserves for little kids. “Just come to the dinner, for me, okay? And if it doesn’t go well, we can kill him.”
Then they both laugh. Natsuo because he thinks Fuyumi doesn’t have the will, and Fuyumi because she knows she’s the only one who does.
Rei walks out of the hospital on fawn’s legs. She sits, docile, in the car as Fuyumi drives them back to the house. She asks how Shouto is doing, about Natsuo’s classes, Fuyumi’s students. Fuyumi answers the same way she always does. She wouldn’t know what to do with herself, if she didn’t uphold the pattern of conversation they’ve had for ten years.
It’s midday, so there’s no one home. Fuyumi falls a step behind Rei, mimicking her as she tucks away her shoes and hangs up her jacket. Fuyumi’s voice is bubbled safe inside her throat. She doesn’t need to speak, just watch, just listen, like a good little girl.
“You keep the house in fine order,” Rei finally remarks.
Pop. “Thank you.”
Fuyumi waits for Rei to do something, pick up a magazine or poke around the kitchen or settle into the guest bedroom or something. But she just stands there, gaze flicking to Fuyumi and then away, back and away.
“Ah… Fuyumi?” Her eyes are wide, like a little dog’s. Like Shouto’s, when he asks her for advice. Rei wants Fuyumi to tell her what to do.
That’s okay. That’s fine. Rei is out of practice at being a mother, that’s all. Fuyumi just needs to push her in the right direction.
“I thought it would be a nice idea to make that fish sauce,” she says, “the recipe you got from your parents. Do you remember?”
“I do.” Rei smiles the little dog’s smile. “It’s been … many years since I cooked it.”
“I’ll handle it,” says Fuyumi. She will. She always does. She had just hoped somebody else would.
How selfish. Fuyumi pushes the thought aside.
She makes tea, settles Rei into the couch with a magazine, and gets to work preparing dinner. Natsuo arrives home at some point. He’s awkward, patting Rei on her arm like he’s not sure if he’s allowed to touch her. Fuyumi prods them into taking a walk around the grounds together, which is probably as, if not more, awkward. It’s worth it for the reprieve.
Without the ruckus of her relatives, Fuyumi can hear the house speak. In its old age, the Todoroki family home is always complaining—creaking floors, groaning walls, and staccato mumbling from the trees dragging branches across the roof. Fuyumi cooks, and the kitchen comes alive with spice and steam. Fuyumi cleans, and the house preens and shines for her.
She loves it. She does.
The clatter of the door. Fuyumi is no longer alone.
Her heartbeat slows down when she sees it’s only Shouto. He asks where Rei is, and on getting an answer, scampers away without so much as a goodbye. Perhaps if Rei had been his mother, he wouldn’t forget those kinds of social niceties.
Fuyumi returns to the kitchen. If Natsuo’s doing his usual tour of the grounds, he and Rei should be passing within eyeshot of the window around now. Fuyumi looks out—they’re a little farther away than she’d expect, miniature white-topped figures against the darkness of the sky. Rei must be a slow walker.
She sees Shouto come around the corner, almost-jogging over. He hesitates, and then wraps his arms around Rei in a careful hug.
It’s the picture of a perfect family. That was what Fuyumi wanted.
She turns away, lest dinner burn without her watchful eye. The onions are caramelizing nicely in the frying pan, so it’s about time for her to skin the fish. Fuyumi wonders how it died. She tries to buy from ethical sources, but it’s hard to tell what’s better—suffocation, bludgeoning, or a quick knife to the brain?
It’s not her area of expertise. Fuyumi deals with dead meat.
She’s just tossed the fish into the pan when Shouto comes to visit her again, this time entering from the backdoor. His chest is heaving, and he says, all in a rush, “There’s something wrong with Mom. I don’t—we don’t know what to do.”
Fuyumi takes a moment to lower the heat on the stove, then follows after. Shouto leads her to just a few meters away from the backdoor, where the scene is set.
Rei is having what Enji used to call an episode. She’s gasping on the ground, mouth open like a fish.
“I can’t do this,” Rei gasps. “I can’t—I can’t do this, I can’t do this.”
Natsuo’s crouched down, arms out like he’s spotting her. He’s not helping. Fuyumi reaches down, drags Rei up and takes her weight.
“I’ll handle it,” she says.
She brings Rei to the kitchen, where the familiar smells and lack of an audience will help ground her. Fuyumi sets her on a stool, a glass of water on the counter next to it. She takes out a hair tie from her pocket and puts Rei’s hair up, in case she vomits.
Then Fuyumi turns back to cooking. The fish is a little burnt on one side, but if she adds the sauce now, it won’t be too dry. She tries a spoonful. Maybe a little more garlic to mix in.
“I’m a bad mom,” says Rei, voice ringing out against the hiss and crackle of the frying food. Her eyes stay on Fuyumi, tearful. She wants forgiveness. She wants absolution.
Fuyumi is more Rei’s mother than Rei is hers, and part of being a mother is lying. Saying no, of course you’re a good mom. You try so hard. It’s a script they both know well.
“Of course you aren’t,” says Fuyumi, pouring the sauce and swirling it around in the pan. Mm, a few minutes more.
She leans over to grab a napkin, then goes to wipe away Rei’s tears with it. Rei just lets her do it, curled up on the stool. No movement.
Here’s the thing about Fuyumi’s desire to kill her father: it’s old, with a solidity of conviction that built up like sediment over the years. She would even venture to call it scientific. Fuyumi conducted a series of observations, from which she drew the logical conclusion that they would all be better off if Todoroki Enji was dead.
The urge to kill Rei is a surprise. It bubbles up suddenly, liquid tipping over the boiling point into hot air rising. Fuyumi is holding the face of a pale parasite, beautiful and dependent, between her two hands. Like any parasite, it must be purged. Preferably without damage to the host organism, which is to say: silently, bloodlessly, chemically.
“I’ll handle it,” Fuyumi whispers.
Fuyumi tells her brothers that the family dinner is canceled, and she’ll bring them their food separately. After witnessing Rei’s panic attack, they agree easily enough, and go to hide away in their private rooms.
The boys must be fed first, then Fuyumi herself. For Rei’s portion, she crushes the pills up into the sauce, grinds them into the meat, and adds them to the wine. She insists that Rei consume it all, and then hands her a glass of water with four more dissolved. To help her sleep, she says.
By the next morning, Todoroki Rei is dead. Fuyumi quietly scrapes away last night’s food and washes the dishes. The coroner rules it a suicide.
“How are you feeling?” Yaoyorozu asks Shouto.
Midoriya, Yaoyorozu, even Aizawa-sensei have asked him that question. Everyone has, over and over again. Everyone except for Fuyumi.
Shouto knows she was supposed to be the one in charge of the pills. It’s what Endeavor kept on screaming, right after they all found out. It was the first and only time Shouto ever saw him hit Fuyumi.
She smiled afterwards. Said it was okay. Shouto didn’t know how to help her. It’s always her helping him. It’s always her helping everybody. That’s what Rei was supposed to fix. Give them a real mom, a real family.
“Todoroki?” Yaoyorozu prods.
How could Yaoyorozu ever understand? She’s always been perfect. Beautiful mother, beautiful daughter. No scars, no wrinkles.
Even if she could understand, Shouto’s envy throttles his throat. In the end, they just sit together in the quiet.
Fuyumi’s been nothing but dreaming since Rei died. Dragged along a rut for so many years, the release of the burden has buoyed her into the clouds. Soft clouds, cold clouds, misting on her face and eyes and mouth.
No. That was just a dream. It gets harder and harder to tell, as Fuyumi spends more and more of her life behind her eyes. She’s not done yet, she can’t forget. Only Fuyumi needed Rei dead, but they all need Enji dead.
Fuyumi asks Aizawa to keep Shouto in the dorms for the weekend, despite his requested leave. She says something about being too devastated, unsure if she can take care of him, and Aizawa agrees readily.
Does he know? Can he tell? It doesn’t matter.
Fuyumi knows where her father keeps his gun. It’s American-made, antique but functional, kept more out of ego than any real need. The only robber that couldn’t be kept at bay by Enji’s quirk is All Might. The gun could kill All Might.
It’s a little poetic, really. Fuyumi pilfers the gun in the dead of night, creeps into her father’s room. She levels the barrel, point-blank.
Click. The safety’s on.
Her father’s eyes open, and there’s one beautiful moment of realization. A slide down the barrel, up to her face. For the first time, he sees his daughter.
Fuyumi is sweating, hands shiny as the gun she grips. The woman and the weapon are oiled by the same cloth, fodder for the same fire. Her feet are bare, her hair unbrushed, her glasses left on the nightstand by her bed. She does not need them to aim. She has taken this shot asleep, awake, a thousand times before. This is just the first one her father has seen.
Fuyumi takes the safety off. His head blooms red.
Afterwards, she wipes the gun down, good daughter she is. With the other hand, she dials the police, who pick up after four rings. Fuyumi’s favorite number.
Sliding an oilcloth down the gun’s shining black barrel, she says, “Please help, there was a gunshot in my house.”
“Does anyone else live with you?”
“My father, but I don’t know where he is.” Spread out and soaking into his bedsheets. What a pain he will be to clean.
Fuyumi slips the gun behind her mother’s shrine, and then goes to cower in her room for the police.
They come with sirens and flashing lights, slack jaws as they lap up each word Fuyumi says. A shock blanket is wrapped around her shoulders, despite the fact that she’s more composed than half the officers there. She makes sure to thank the person who gave it to her anyway. Fuyumi’s always hated the cold.
The interrogator calls her sweetheart and gives her a cup of crappy instant coffee. To warm her hands, if nothing else, he says.
They pause the interrogation when Fuyumi breaks down into tears. She can’t remember the last time she cried. She can’t remember the last time her father stopped because she was crying. If he ever did.
Here is what Shouto feels: it’s absurd. It’s absurd that Endeavor was killed sleeping in his bed. It’s absurd that Endeavor was killed by a gun. It’s absurd that his father is dead.
There’s a press conference, because the public deserves to know. Fuyumi didn’t let Shouto come with her, even though he’s going to be the face of the Todoroki family from now on. He thinks she got Aizawa-sensei in on it too, because he’s been unusually strict with off-campus requests.
In the dorms' common room, the TV is on and tuned to the press conference. It's on all the channels. The detective seems brutish next to Fuyumi, delicate in a black dress, fabric bunched up and falling gracefully over a shoulder.
“Two days ago, Todoroki Enji, pro-hero name Endeavor, was found in his bed by his eldest daughter. This occurred on a night where both of his sons, Todoroki Shouto and Todoroki Natsuo, were—”
Shouto wonders why it is the detective who is saying this, when he knows Fuyumi is the one who provided all the information. Fuyumi is the one who was there. Fuyumi would tell the story gently but honestly. Her voice would not crack on the word Endeavor.
“We’re still searching for the man responsible—”
“It wasn’t a man,” says Fuyumi.
Fuyumi, representative of the Todoroki family. The new head of the household. She has a script, in neat black print on neat white paper, that tells her what the Todoroki family should say.
Shouto watches his sister, gentle Fuyumi, smile.
“I was the one who killed him.”