Work Text:
Fushiguro Tsumiki did not know what to expect of death; she had, however, imagined the subject at great length, so she developed an expectation, nonetheless.
It wasn’t out of desire, or even fear, that led to Tsumiki gaining opinions on such a morbid subject matter. It would be more accurate to call it dread, or perhaps a worried and anxious curiosity. First, it was a tiny Tsumiki wondering where her father had gone, and what had happened, and trying to fathom it. Next, it was every day that Tsumiki wondered if she would come home to her mother dead or dying from those pills that made her spaced out and unresponsive, bottles loose in her hands or broken on the floor. (Sometimes, it crossed her mind when she spotted the bloodstains on her stepfather’s clothes, and she wondered if violence and death were the same thing.) When there came a time when Tsumiki no longer cared whether any of her parental figures were alive or simply gone, it was with trepidation that Tsumiki applied the concept to herself and to Megumi, knowing that it was possible to starve or freeze to death but woefully unsure when that would happen; there were times when she was painfully certain it was close, but she would fight and struggle to keep their heads above water, and for a child, Tsumiki would say she did an excellent job. Then, when life was no longer an active battlefield (for her), Tsumiki still was faced with death’s looming reality, because she knew that Satoru handled a dangerous job, and Megumi was born into that life as well.
She knew it was an inevitable thing. She knew that intimately. Yet, to her, death was ultimately something of a switch: you were alive or you were dead. You could be miserable, you could be suffering, but that was still alive. Fighting. Trying. To die was simply to not be anymore, surely. That was just what she hoped for, however. To believe anything else was too unbearable for her.
Perhaps that was why Tsumiki died slowly.
It was a sudden thing at first, without the preamble Tsumiki expected. One moment she was in class, and the next moment… her body was not her own, and Tsumiki was cast to the depths, smothered inside her own body. She knew, intrinsically, that she had been cursed. How pathetic was that? Her guardian and her brother were both sorcerers, and yet, she managed to mess up anyway, just to make more work for them.
Then it got worse. An indeterminate amount of time passed in catatonic agony, aware enough of the world for her to suffer and nothing more, and then… An oppressive force pushed her down even farther, casting her aside entirely to slip into her skin and take her voice.
She wasn’t dead though. Just trapped. Trapped…in her own body. With someone else in control. Something else. No… Someone, but Tsumiki wasn’t charitable enough to make the distinction. Not when she could just barely sense Megumi with the stranger. When she could fight and scratch and push her way to awareness just to get flashes of ruin. Of pain.
Tsumiki was shoved aside by the imposter as if she was nothing. As if her body had never been Tsumiki’s to begin with. She had promised herself and promised her brother that she would live no matter what, that she would take care of them… but none of that fight mattered when her very soul was pushed underwater and left to drown.
She was being killed. Stuck in the process. Endlessly. Without reprieve. Without a chance. Being cursed was a terrible thing, she decided. She would cry if she could; she would rage if it would help. Instead, Tsumiki was smothered in gray: a soundless scream, a gasp without air.
The first time Fushiguro Tsumiki died, it was a lonely, suffocating thing.
The switch finally, finally flipped, sliding into place, and there was nothing.
Then the switch flipped back.
She died and she did not die. Twelve and starving, she passed without ambition, without a will. Seventeen and fighting, she clawed herself back to the land of the living.
Fushiguro Tsumiki was not a sorcerer, or a warrior, or a brawler, but perhaps she was a fighter in other ways that mattered. She thought about death—and now she was intimately familiar with death—but she did not want to die. It was this spark of dogged determination to live, mixed with the adrenaline of being hurled across time and space, that sent the now too-young girl jolting upwards and away from death’s door.
After struggling through the suppression of her own soul and the loss of her body, all the while coming to terms with the passing of time that had surely happened when she was unaware, waking up alone in a strange environment was not going to be the thing that put her over the edge. It wasn’t. This could be one of those freaky domains that Satoru would talk about, or some hallucination, or… or some other manner of hell or test, but so long as Tsumiki survived, then she would figure something out. Already, being in control of her actions was a huge leg up, so for the first time in who knows how long, she could even do something as deceptively simple and desperate as asking for help.
She was in an apartment, one too reminiscent of her first apartment where she had been born, where her mother and stepfather abandoned her, and where she struggled to care for Megumi in a way that no eight-year-old could be capable of. So, that is to say, it was dark, it reeked terribly, and it was threadbare but full of garbage, mold, and rot. Actually, this might be worse… The stench was thick enough to gag on, and it made her lightheaded.
On that note, Tsumiki felt positively awful. She stumbled over her own feet, and she was terribly dizzy, in the way that did not pass after a few seconds of stillness. Her throat was carved raw, and she knew she was dehydrated. Whether this was because of her stint with death or some other aspect of the curse, she didn’t know. She peeled herself off of the ratty couch with desperation and stumbled to the kitchen, rotting and bare. The tap worked, however unfiltered it looked, but Tsumiki knew from experience that even the shittiest of apartment complexes had decent water, if only because of the city’s regulations. It tasted like calcium and rust, but she drank because it was better than the desert in her throat and the spots in her vision. Had the crazy ghost of a sorcerer in her body not needed sustenance? Maybe not. She hadn’t been aware enough to gauge that, but she was left with the consequences now.
Or, maybe she was left with a completely new nightmare. Tsumiki thought the counters were simply high, but that wasn’t the case. She was smaller. Thinner. She stared at her feet and her hands, skeletal as they were, and she was sure that they were wrong. With trembling figures, she felt her cheeks, her shoulders, her chest, and the smallness persisted. As if she was several years too young, still in the thralls of puberty. And starving once more, to boot.
Tsumiki knew hunger. She knew pain. She didn’t think she had ever experienced it this bad, even at its worst.
She and Megumi were fortunate enough to receive help before it got that bad. Another few months and she would have failed, certainly. Sometimes, Tsumiki would stare at her star-sticker riddled ceiling and wonder why she never tried to seek help when she was hilariously, desperately underqualified to keep herself and her little brother alive, and she wondered if she would have before they starved or became homeless for real. Rarer still, on those nights, she would leave her room to find Satoru awake, as he usually was, and she would let him distract her, sometimes with real stargazing, and she would wonder what would have happened if he hadn’t saved Megumi when she couldn’t; if she was particularly brave, she would ask him, and without fail, he would brush it off as if it was the easiest thing in the world. “But that didn’t happen. And if you did it again, you would do it differently, yeah?”
Tsumiki never thought she would have to be in that situation again. Yet, she thought about it anyway. Tossed it around in her head until it was simultaneously abstracted and all-too-real.
Death. Destitution. Maybe with thoughts as dour as hers, she has inadvertently cursed herself.
Tsumiki tore herself from the kitchen, suddenly fearful of a new thing and desperate for some sort of answer. In her haste she nearly tripped and her bare foot landed on a shard of glass, brushed against a wall but not cleaned. When her mother was around and at her worst, Tsumiki did her best to always clean any broken glass. It had been one of the few things that Toji had emphasized to her and shown her how to safely do (or rarer still, he did it himself, whenever he was there), on one of those rare occasions towards the beginning when he had been there and was not constantly forgetting they existed. He hadn’t been wrong, though: glass was dangerous, and it hurt.
She swore now, her throat raspy with the sound, as she froze and lifted her heel into the air. She was bleeding, but it wasn’t deep; she didn’t think any shards were stuck in it, but it stung regardless and it was hard to tell. Tsumiki bit her lip, in part for distraction and in part due to deliberation. It was dangerous to wrap it if there were tiny bits in there, but… She didn’t want to bleed either. Well, she was going to try to find the bathroom anyway. At the very least she needed to clean this before she could move on with… With whatever it is that she needed to do. Find a phone, most likely. But first… Tsumiki needed a mirror.
A mirror wasn’t the only thing she found. Tsumiki correctly guessed the bathroom door on her first try and instantly regretted it. Horror filled her lungs in the form of a tangible stench. Not that she could breathe anyway.
There, on the floor and gazing up backwards towards Tsumiki and towards nothing at all was a corpse. Bloated, disgusting, and far too reminiscent of her mother.
She stamped down on a reflexive scream, nearly choking on it. Or maybe she was choking on the vomit instead. Tsumiki barely jerked towards the sink in time to hurl up the thin bile; she gripped the counter as she heaved, terrified and confused.
Her mother died years ago. That was a fact. She had disappeared and been nothing but a bitter question for years, until Tsumiki was twelve and morbidly curious enough (and no longer quite mad enough to not care at all) to ask Satoru if he knew the same way that he had known that Toji was dead, in a way he never elaborated on. He did know, because he knew many things he would never speak of, and admitted that he looked into it when they were only a few months into his care; she had been reported as dead to the authorities three months after she left, found overdosed in a hotel bathroom.
It was a sick and cruel joke to see it now. She shouldn’t be seeing this now. Her mother had been dead long enough to be bones. This shouldn’t be real.
Except… Except Tsumiki lived in a world where there were plenty of unreal things—of nightmares made into realities. Even if it was a twisted apparition or a curse, she was living it now, so it was real enough to be a problem. Whether it was an illusion or some corruption of space-time, it was a problem. Her throat stung. Very much a problem.
Shaking, she tore her gaze away from her mo— the corpse, desperate to look at anything but. The mirror was not much kinder, however.
It was Tsumiki’s face. She looked into her own eyes and found herself, not a stranger as she had feared. Everything else was wrong, though. She was too ashen, with flaking skin and cracked lips. She was too thin, with harsh eye bags and sunken cheeks. She was too young, too short and too small with eyes that were too large, like she was thrust back to the start of junior high, except still starving like she had been in elementary school before Satoru had plucked them out of their trashy apartment and gave them access to more money than she had known what to do with. She was herself yet not, a visage of herself that she once only saw in her nightmares. Except this time, she could not run into the living room and get Satoru to laugh and tell her it wasn’t real, because it was.
She was so distracted by her plight, and too startled by the corpse, that she utterly forgot to tend to her bleeding foot. That was unimportant in the face of everything else. Everything that was too overwhelming to name, but she tried to anyway as she fled the bathroom and searched the rest of the house as if it were a prison with a hidden key. In a way, it was.
One, Tsumiki was in a strange world.
It wasn’t a curse-ridden nightmare (that she could tell) but it was a nightmare all the same. She threw open the remaining doors to find a room that might have been hers, with her favorite colors and an old teddy bear that reminded her of own she had picked out in her youth but not Mr. Grumps, despite the similar silly overly dour demeanor that reminded her of her brother enough to hurt. A room that was hers but not hers, and the name on her assignments was hers but not hers. Izumo Tsumiki, it read, in handwriting that looked like hers but only when she was in a hurry and careless with her strokes. The date was always some variation of the year XXXX, a number that belonged to a future she should not exist in, and there was a history paper about people she didn’t know and their ‘quirks’, as if the paper was instead one of the reports about ancient sorcerers that Satoru would make his students write and then let Tsumiki and Megumi read if the essays were particularly rough and laugh-worthy. Yet it was her own rushed handwriting and halfhearted words, this time, that wrote about sorcerers using every term but the ones she knew to be true. At least, true to her.
Tsumiki yanked aside the curtain—drawn tightly with gathered dust—and saw that the outside existed. It existed and it wasn’t a nightmare, it was full of people… but not regular humans like her. People with colorful hair and glowing qualities, to match the billboards she glimpsed through the cracks of the alley she overlooked, and people with tails and horns like mythical creatures, and people who were too tall or too small or simply not all that people-shaped. Curses? Was she seeing curses? But why would they be milling about the street, down a sidewalk and dressed like city-folk? Maybe they were sorcerers. She heard about how sorcerers looked different, sometimes outrageously so. Sometimes she could see it if she strained and knew how to look, but admittedly she didn’t have much personal knowledge, and it wasn’t a subject that came up often. She knew about Panda, though, back when Yaga-san from the school convinced Satoru (and by extension, Tsumiki and Megumi) to babysit. (He was so soft. She secretly missed it when he grew up quickly and no longer needed adult supervision. Not that that had been Satoru’s forte to begin with.) But Panda had been a special case…
She was going nowhere with this. The blue sky taunted her with normalcy when this was anything but. She pulled herself away from the window, nearly stumbling on account of how lightheaded and dizzy she was, but she persisted nonetheless. Tsumiki stumbled into her not-mother’s bedroom, choking on the stench once more, and she found more proof of life. Unpaid bills, crinkled receipts, snubbed out cigarettes… It was all so real, yet, it shouldn’t have been. Tsumiki was in a world, in a life, in a society that functioned… but it wasn’t hers.
Observation two: she was alone.
There were no signs of Megumi anywhere. No signs that he existed in the little apartment with her. In a way, it made sense. Izumo had been her birth father’s name, but Tsumiki had never known him and her mother had never been charitable with the details, nor with her maiden name that she kept. When her mother had married Fushiguro in some sudden decision, Tsumiki had spared little thought in wanting to take on the new name. It would be one she actually shared with people she knew, after all. Fortunately, Toji accepted her request without fanfare, even though he once commented that it wasn’t his name at all. Not that she had ever been brave enough to ask.
So, there was no Megumi. No brother that she had known for all the important parts of her life, the only family that ever stayed forever. There was nobody else, either. No Toji, even, as little as she wanted to see him. Just the corpse that looked like her mother. There was no Satoru, and no Shoko or Yaga-san or Nanami-san, or anybody else Tsumiki knew. Or had known, when she was even younger than her body was now.
She found a cellphone in her not-mother’s room. Old, and no brand she recognized, but Tsumiki was never an expert on phones anyway; it still worked the way she expected it to when she fumbled around with it, grateful it wasn’t locked. She punched in Megumi’s number but stopped just short of hitting ‘call.’ Something had been happening when she had been trapped in her body, something she was dimly conscious of, involved Megumi and probably Satoru. Something terrible. (Blood, blood, black lines and red eyes and blood, her mind shrieked.) Tsumiki backspaced and deleted the number before attempting it, because if something terrible happened (it did) then she was too fragile to know right now. Tsumiki called Shoko instead, grateful she insisted on memorizing the number.
The call connected, but it was a plain sounding man who picked up the phone. No one Tsumiki knew, and certainly not Shoko.
“Hello?” the mystery person asked, normal and confused and nothing like a nightmare inducing curse.
Tsumiki swallowed. Her throat hurt. “Is Ieiri Shoko there?” she asked without breathing.
“Sorry,” he said, not unkindly. “You have the wrong number.”
The call disconnected and she still couldn’t breathe. This was bigger than a nightmare. Bigger than her own curse. This affected the whole world, didn’t it? Assuming this wasn’t a massive illusion. (Assuming this wasn’t her personal hell, because she was supposed to be dead.)
Her heart hammered in her chest, disrupting her lungs.
She had to get out of here.
She had no plan at all. Maybe, if she ran far enough, the illusion would disperse, or the nightmare would end. Or none of that would happen at all, because Tsumiki was too shaken from tragedy to be able to wish for a miracle, but ultimately, anything would be better than being in that apartment.
She flung herself into the hallway and past all of the other nondescript apartments, and then she bypassed the elevator in favor of the stairs. She nearly stumbled down them, her feet bare and in pain, but adrenaline carried her forward until she made it to the exit.
The outside world existed, just as it did in the window. The noise of the street was real. The pavement under her feet was real. The warm sun on her skin, in a way that Tsumiki could feel, was real. She looked around, then upward, at a blue sky and drifting clouds. That, if nothing else, was the same as Tsumiki has always known. It was enough to blur her eyes with tears, and not just because she stared at the sun like she could finally, finally touch it.
Or maybe it was more accurate to say, that the second she stopped moving, a year and a half, plus more, of suffering and death and isolation, cracked through the dam she had built in her chest.
She tried to move, wary of stopping, but the reprieve took all of the energy that Tsumiki had left. She turned only to trip into passersby rounding the corner.
“Oh!” someone gasped. Tsumiki herself might have made a sound of pain, even though she was the one falling on top of someone else—someone her size. They went down in a tangle of limbs, but the other girl recovered first. She sat up around Tsumiki, who still could not control her failing limbs. Neither could she control the tears that began to pour.
“Momo! Are you alright?”
“I-I’m fine, Mother! But look! She’s bleeding! We need to help!”
Tsumiki tried again to get up and still failed. The other girl—Momo, she heard—helped her into a better position, although they were still on the ground. Momo was just a kid, much younger than Tsumiki and likely fresh out of elementary—or… she was the same as Tsumiki, in this wrong, stolen body of hers. Regardless of that, her dark eyes were wide and kind. “Are you okay?” she asked, full of innocence.
Tsumiki’s voice got stuck in her throat, as if she forgot how to speak. Maybe she had—it’s been too long. Instead, her blurred gaze drifted up to the mother. “Oh, you poor thing…” the woman muttered. Only then did Tsumiki see similarities.
The silky dark hair, the almost black eyes, the delicately sharp features… Tsumiki only saw the apparition inside her mind once, before she was locked away, but she never forgot it. Yorozu had been beautiful, in the way that all dangerous things were. “You poor thing,” Yorozu cooed falsely. “Thank you for the body, but I have no use for you.”
Fear gripped her heart. She had been searching for the catch, and there it was, wasn’t it? Tsumiki wasn’t gone. She was just being haunted by that woman in a different way, still unable to escape, still unable to do anything. Useless, useless… That was all she ever was.
“H-hey, don’t cry!” Momo urged. The younger girl had the same features as her mother, both too alike to the one that tormented Tsumiki. (Who hurt her brother, when she wasn’t there to stop it.) Except… the kindness warped the features into something else. Something more human. “Is it because you’re bleeding?” When Tsumiki still couldn’t answer, the girl turned back her mother imploringly. “Mother!”
The older woman bent down, hesitant. “Where are your parents, child?”
Neither of them were Yorozu, she was mostly sure. It felt… different. (Everything felt different.) Still, Tsumiki could lie and make her escape. She probably needed to, didn’t she? Tsumiki spent so long under the curse’s thumb, under Yorozu’s soul… She couldn’t let herself be trapped again. But what else was she supposed to do? In a world that felt real but wasn’t her own?
She opened her mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. Her voice sat on the edge of her throat.
Tsumiki could run, but she had nowhere to go. Maybe the sky was the same, but the people… the world… It was different. A different time, a different structure. She saw a billboard up above, with a smiling blond man branded with the enthusiastic title of “No. 1 HERO” above his head.
“And if you did it again, you would do it differently, yeah?”
She didn’t want to. She wanted to go home. She wanted her brother (who might be equally possessed) or her guardian (who might be equally dead). She wanted… her life back. She wanted to live.
But Tsumiki could only, maybe, guarantee one of those things. And not by herself.
“My mother is dead,” she said, gasping around the dry unuse in her throat. It was still a lie, but a true one. The woman in that apartment was not Tsumiki’s mother, but her mother was still dead. Her family… could also be dead. Or just too far away. She would look for them, if she had the means to do that.
“I… I need help.”
The girl’s eyes shone with sympathetic tears and unsaid horror, but she held onto Tsumiki’s hand tighter. The mother covered her gasp with a hand. “I’ll call somebody in,” she decided, pulling out her phone. “Hello? I need medical assistance…”
Momo leaned closer as her mother rattled off the address. “I’m not a hero yet,” she whispered, as if the statement was a failing on her part, and not because she was only a child. “But I will stay with you, okay?”
Tsumiki squeezed her hand back, with the little strength she had. Even if this stranger looked a bit too much like a ghost, her presence was a lifeline. One that Tsumiki might not deserve, when she was the one in a stolen body now. Stolen, but vacated… That girl died at the same time Tsumiki did, and only one of them persisted.
Whatever happened, Tsumiki had to keep on living.
“Okay.”
—o0o—
Momo always dreamed of being a hero. With a quirk like hers, and a family legacy like hers, what else could she be? It was a dream she was proud to chase.
She did not feel that prepared to be a hero, however. Her quirk was complicated, and she still was not confident in using it for useful things, but she still had time before she needed to apply to a hero school. Momo would continue to work hard for that stage of her journey, and then work hard beyond that.
Yet, one innocuous Tuesday afternoon, Momo had her first opportunity to be a hero at age eleven. She did not need her quirk at all. Really, it was probably wrong to say she was a hero at all, despite the girl her age who clearly needed rescuing. All Momo did was hold her hand as she silently heaved and cried. It didn’t seem like much, but Momo also couldn’t imagine anybody not holding her hand—not when the girl squeezed her hand back, so tightly that Momo could feel her bony knuckles and weirdly fragile wrist.
She said that her name was Tsumiki. Just Tsumiki, which felt a little rude to call someone she just met, but she also said that her mother was… dead and her father was missing. She couldn’t remember anything else, and that seemed to upset her. Momo understood how scary that would be. Her and Mother questioned her from everything from the current date to easy things, like All Might or which school she went to, and Tsumiki didn’t know anything. It was scary, to say the least. What kind of injury caused that? Or… was it an injury at all? Momo didn’t know much about this stuff, but her quirk made her pay attention to important fat reserves and all sorts of health standards, and Tsumiki… didn’t look good. From being too thin, kinda dirty, and weirdly pale. Mother seemed to have a guess, based on the tight, pained look she had, but she didn’t say it out loud.
“Momo, let the paramedics do their job,” Mother cautioned when they arrived. They had brought a gurney and a bunch of equipment, checking her blood pressure and bandaging her foot. The brunette girl still looked uncomfortable, though, watching the paramedics with a tight-lipped, wary look, so Momo didn’t want to leave. After all, if she had no parents… who was supposed to comfort her?
“It’s okay,” a kindly paramedic interjected. “The little miss can stay, if that is what they both want.”
Momo looked to Tsumiki, first, who hesitated… and then nodded. That was all Momo needed. Mother might be upset that their afternoon out was interrupted… but how could Momo go shopping, when she knew that this girl was going to a hospital, all alone?
So Momo stayed, and Mother eventually let her. They rode in the ambulance alongside Tsumiki, although once they arrived, they had to wait outside the room for the first part. However, Mother talked to the nurse quietly and signed something, so Momo hoped that meant they would be able to see Tsumiki again soon.
“They’re going to see if they can find her father, or any other family member,” Mother explained. “We will wait until then. Tsumiki-chan might be amnesiac, and she’s a minor.” Mother frowned. “It would be troublesome for everyone involved if she was all alone.”
And she was. The nurse came back and said that they found her records, but she really didn’t have any family alive. Momo could hardly imagine how terrible that must be…
(The nurse said some other things too, except quietly to her mother. Momo strained to hear, catching words like ‘abuse’ and ‘overdose’ and other horrible terms. Momo’s urge to help rose, although she was painfully aware that she had no idea what to do.)
“Yaoyorozu-san,” another nurse said, emerging from the room. “Currently, you are marked as a bystander emergency contact. Young Izumo-chan is likely going to be marked as a ward of the state… but until then, you may stay in there with her. She said you could.”
Momo wished she knew what to do. All she knew was that she wanted to help… but she wasn’t a hero yet, so she didn’t know how. Except to be there to hold her hand.
“Mother? We can stay, right?”
Her mother sighed, subtly turning her head to wipe her cheek once. “We’ll stay.”
—o0o—
Pretending to be amnesiac was easier than it should be, when Tsumiki knew nothing about this world.
It had to be another world. Tsumiki had too much time to think about it, and while it was supposed to be fiction, all those transmigration tropes came to mind. She had always wondered if other worlds existed—the universe was big enough, right? Wasn’t it supposed to be infinite? But she never thought she would ever prove it. (Megumi owed her five hundred yen, now, and the bet would never ever be settled.)
Whatever the world was, it was nearly the opposite of the one she knew. Sorcerers—quirks? Heroes?—were everywhere, for one thing. The doctors even said she might have one, but she was too malnourished to know what it was. Something light based, maybe. With a hurting heart, she knew in her bones that if such an ability was under her skin, it would be like her brother’s. Maybe the previous Tsumiki was like Megumi too, in all the ways she dreaded. Sad, unambitious, surly. Whoever she was, that Tsumiki died instead of finding help. (So it really wasn’t a surprise that the two were still the same person, a universe apart.)
And, in the world of opposites, the shape of Yorozu existed too, except in the form of Yaoyorozu-san and her daughter Momo. They were gentle and kind and helpful, even when they didn’t have to be. Momo, especially, refused to leave her side. The longer she lingered, the longer her round face and dark, spiky ponytail made her think of Megumi more than her namesake. Nothing regarding her disposition, though. They couldn’t be farther apart in character, but Tsumiki was homesick enough to see her brother in anything.
Momo let her borrow her phone, as they sat in the hospital room and the doctors filled her IV with nutrients and fluids. Momo, kind sweet Momo, didn’t ask why.
She mustered enough bravery to look for what she already suspected in her heart, scouring facsimiles of social media sites and other less innocuous corners she knew to look. There was no evidence of Gojo Satoru in this world. No evidence of Fushiguro Megumi. No Ieiri Shoko, no Nanami Kento, no Yaga Masamichi. No Tokyo Technical College, by any name it went by. Nobody she knew was here, and if they were, then they wouldn’t be her versions of them. She was alone. She died and her soul left her world behind.
As she deleted her search history off of Momo’s phone, Tsumiki couldn’t stop from crying again. Momo didn’t question that either.
She dreaded what came next. Tsumiki was supposed to be old enough to be on her own, but this body was only twelve years old. She was at the mercy of a system she always feared, back in her world, and while she didn’t have to worry about being separated from her brother, it was just as terrifying because Tsumiki did not know how this world worked at all. Every time the social worker visited, Tsumiki’s dread grew. Soon, she would be released from the hospital and straight into a stranger’s custody. Her malnutrition stalled the process, which was probably the only thing malnutrition was good for. At the same time, the impending doom hung over her. She may not be stuck inside her own body, but she was still stuck.
And then Yaoyorozu-san approached her.
Momo and her mother had visited frequently—Momo’s insistence, Tsumiki guessed. The younger girl was kind like that. Tsumiki was grateful for it in the midst of… well, everything. Yet Tsumiki had not expected that kindness to extend farther.
“If you would like, Tsumiki-chan,” Momo’s mother offered, “we can be your foster home, for however long is necessary.”
Tsumiki spent far too long, sitting in a hospital bed in a foreign world, thinking about what she wanted. She didn’t like to be anything but content, because the world was hard and harsh and Tsumiki knew how to be grateful for the things other people called small, like living, and having living family (in the way that mattered). Now that she lost those ‘small’ things, they became monumental to her. But all she could do now was hope that Megumi and Satoru were okay, wherever they were… if it wasn’t already too late. She, herself, would never see them again.
Guilt wormed its way into her stomach for feeling sorry for herself, and already lonely in their absence… but if Tsumiki didn’t go on living, the guilt would be worse. She refused to die numerous times already, and so many people had helped her carry through that wish. How could she fail them? How could she fail herself? Any version of herself.
So in the absence of having the things she wanted, Tsumiki would strive to avoid what she didn’t want: she didn’t want to die, and she didn’t want… to be alone.
“I would like that,” Tsumiki agreed.
—o0o—
She had a suspicion that the Yaoyorozus were rich. It factored into her agreement with them a little bit, only because Tsumiki could be assured that her unexpected arrival would not be a financial burden. A burden in other ways, maybe… but fortunately for them, Tsumiki was not a clueless child. She knew how to hold her own, despite knowing so little about the world. She would repay their kindness somehow—Megumi would not steal that job from her again.
Still, it was… odd, to say the least, to be at their estate. And it was an estate, in every sense of the word—less traditional than the Gojo Estate, but still the kind that spoke of old money. She had realized at some point, after transferring schools in her youth and meeting traditionally wealthy kids, that Satoru was not a normal example of ‘old money’ despite being it. Their apartment had been nice but modern and not excessively lavish, and he purposely did not carry himself with any sophistication unless he was weaponizing it against someone else. Conversely, the Yaoyorozus… were very traditionally rich.
Akito-san worked in banking, enough that he was rarely home but more so in the business trip sense than the ‘busy’ sense, she suspected. Yuzuki-san had some sort of government administrator connection, but Tsumiki did not think it was a job. She was the type of woman that existed permanently in the social sphere, well-supported in life enough to be occupied in a variety of other matters. The politics of this world full of sorcerers was just as complicated as the stuff back home, but this time, on full display—inasmuch as anything of that nature would be largely public. Tsumiki only ever knew as much as she did because of Satoru’s position and the precarious tug-of-war that happened over her brother, made simple to their ears but stressful enough to put bags under Satoru’s eyes, for a time.
Yuzuki-san did not carry that same stress, but she flitted in and out of the house with the same constant motion that Satoru did, just with less overall vivacity. With kind smiles and interest, yes, but in a professional and polite way—smiles and headpats and dramatic retellings of benign but annoying events.
Tsumiki, of course, knew that being fostered by them did not make them family. That was only something earned slowly, over time, and frankly… Tsumiki had little interest in replacing the one she had privately chosen for herself, gone as though they were. That was fine. She did, however, suspect that Momo was lonely from this, because despite being their blood-daughter, she got more or less the same treatment, with the exception of more attention from Akito-san and more interest in her studies.
Momo, meanwhile, attached herself to Tsumiki even more fiercely than she did at the hospital.
It was… nice. Distracting in a good way, mostly. Momo told her all about heroes and quirks and her quirk, which was like Yorozu’s technique but Tsumiki kept any discomfort compartmentalized, and also about her favorite teas and the math she was learning and anything else that came to mind. She talked so much it was overwhelming, because Megumi was the stark opposite and even Satoru only talked in bursts. Tsumiki still listened, though, because she needed to learn about the world she was now faced with living in, and learning more about Momo certainly wasn’t bad either. Especially when Tsumiki determined that she would make it her goal to support Momo’s goal, however she could—both in return for Momo saving her (second) life, and because Tsumiki… didn’t know how to not be an older sister, she realized. Momo wasn’t Megumi, and she never would be. Tsumiki did not know if she could bear to go that far… but caring for others was something that came intrinsically. If Tsumiki didn’t have that, what did she have?
Maybe one day, it will hurt less. Or it wouldn’t, and Tsumiki would still keep on living.
—o0o—
She forgot about the possibility of having a quirk, to be honest. Tsumiki was so used to being the normal, plain one amongst sorcerers, that she was so ready to be the same amongst this version of Japan, even if ‘quirkless’ people were considered abnormal instead.
But this wasn’t her body… and she had the growing suspicion that Tsumiki… hadn’t exactly come alone. Not Yorozu, no. Her voice only startled her when it came from Yuzuki-san’s mouth, only for select phrases. No, it was… the squirming. The feeling that something was underneath her skin.
“I can help you re-learn your quirk,” Momo offered one day, pausing in the middle of one of her biology books. “I know lots about them!”
She really did. Momo spent so much time working on hers, after all, because it was useful and complicated and considered a powerful kind of quirk—enough so that Momo, and everyone else too, believed it had to be put to some use. Tsumiki, sandwiched between the Ten Shadows and Limitless, knew that all too well, and her heart ached for Momo in ways that she could never express. Heroes, at least, did not have to battle the curses born of mankind. Just… mankind itself, which was either better or worse.
Tsumiki had never been able to dissuade Megumi though. She doubted she could dissuade Momo, either, especially when things were different.
“Oh, um, that’s okay. It hasn’t done anything,” Tsumiki tried to protest. “The doctors said it might be a ‘photosynthesis’ effect anyway. Just… energy from sunlight. No big deal.”
It would be fine if that was all it was. It would mean that Tsumiki was largely the same, despite the age regression, and all the other little unfamiliar marks. While… Tsumiki would admit she was curious about how her own quirk might work, she was wary of the change even more. However, it was hard to say no to Momo’s sparkling eyes.
“It might still be able to be activated!” Momo insisted. “And you got a clean bill of health now! It’s safe to try, right?”
Tsumiki caved. “Alright.”
They found an answer sooner than Tsumiki thought.
“Mine activates with… a thought, I guess, but more of a feeling on my skin,” Momo explained. They sat on the rug in Momo’s room, comfortably sequestered away from the estate’s staff for some privacy. The large window stopped it from being too cramped, though, and… if Tsumiki did need light, then it would provide it. “Like a tingling sensation, if I pick a spot and think about it really hard while imagining the makeup of an object, and it coming out of me. I don’t think you need to think about chemistry though…”
Tsumiki chuckled. “Probably not.” Oh, Satoru would have a field day if he had Momo as a student…
However, for the sake of it, Tsumiki tried to do more or less what Momo suggested. And something… stirred. That same something that had been sitting in her gut, unexplained. It was a little like the uneasy feeling she got whenever her human cursed energy got agitated, enough that it would call forth Satoru’s concern; while she could never see it, she began to link the feeling to the result. Now, it was stronger, almost palpable. Familiar in ways that she could not remember.
She focused on her palm—too small, still not quite hers—and saw the flicker of a larger hand.
Momo gasped beside her. “You shaped the light! Did you see it?”
Shapes… Maybe there was something to be said about all the times she overheard Satoru telling Megumi that sorcery was intrinsic first and scientific second. There was no logical reason for Tsumiki to know, she just… did. She imagined a little star, shaped like a paper construct, and it… appeared. Made of light and translucent, the shape hovered above her palm, and Tsumiki forgot to feel dread in the face of wonder.
“Whoa,” Momo breathed. “May I…?”
Her finger hovered politely out of range, and Tsumiki nodded, too scared to breathe and blow the star away. Momo poked it gently. “It’s solid,” she marveled, eyes shining with fascination. “Like mine!”
Tsumiki moved her palm and it went away, back to the air. She suspected that Izumo Tsumiki’s quirk could not, in fact, make solid objects… But Yorozu’s technique could.
Yorozu died at the same time Tsumiki did, but Tsumiki was the only one who… persisted. Had some of that horrible woman’s technique rubbed off on her? Or was this a coincidence? It was hard to feel unsettled, though, in the face of Momo’s bright faced enthusiasm. Because here, it was only reminiscent of Momo’s quirk, not Yorozu’s.
Tsumiki could live with that.
They spent who knows how long experimenting. Even Tsumiki got giddy with the ability to test out ideas and actually be the one to implement them. She could make any shape, without having to know what the object literally was, because unlike Momo’s constructs, they weren’t real, just solid. She couldn’t really make multiple at once. Maybe if she was better or stronger, like Momo suggested, but now, they poofed away if she tried to concentrate on more than two at a time.
Size was a bit of an issue, but less so, because Tsumiki never tried to hold the large objects for long. She was wary of placing strain on her body, although perhaps Momo was more worried than she was. Tsumiki could feel the cursed energy writhing in her gut, just like Megumi said it, nearly alive with the excitement to get out. Whatever circumstances forged Tsumiki as she was at this moment, it had likely left her with more power than she knew what to do with. Exploring possibilities and entertaining Momo seemed like a good use.
“Could you mimic animals, I wonder?” Momo mused. “I imagine the movement will be harder, but since it’s all a light construct, then it wouldn’t really be alive.”
“I bet I could,” Tsumiki agreed. She had made that mini windmill spin, after all. The animal would be crude, but Tsumiki could envision their basic structures well enough. Plus… Tsumiki already found some irony in having a light based ‘quirk’ while her brother had always been characterized by shadows, even if Tsumiki never thought the finished products looked all that shadowy, even when promised that the glasses mimicked true sight nearly perfectly. Making animals would not be as impressive as the shikigamis that Megumi wielded, but it would remind her of him in a tangible way.
She made a small bird. Not particularly detailed, but it flapped around Momo’s head in a mimicry of flight. Momo giggled, and Tsumiki found herself laughing along.
Then the squirming got stronger.
It didn’t hurt. It was… impatient, somehow. Eager. At that point, Tsumiki realized that she had it all a bit wrong. The squirming was not necessarily a trait of a sorcerer’s cursed energy; it was a trait of Megumi’s.
Tsumiki did not act consciously. It was as if the instinct rushed ahead of her at the slightest allowance, and suddenly, the bird dissolved into light and a much larger object coalesced from the sunlight.
“Tsumiki-chan?” Momo questioned. “Should you really be making something that… large?”
Her question faltered as the object took the form of a large dog, and then the translucent white solidified into fur and yellow eyes and a forehead marked with a red triangle.
Tsumiki and Momo stared, utterly speechless for completely different reasons.
No way. No way. It couldn’t be… “Mochi?” she croaked out, hopeful against her will.
The Divine Dog lifted its head, wagged its tail, and bounded over to her, just like it always used to, whether she could see it clearly or not. She didn’t need glasses to see the dog now, but it still blurred through tears, as Tsumiki hugged its neck and tried not to cry.
Somehow, this was her brother’s dog. She knew it, deep in her gut. This was one half of Megumi’s closest shikigamis, dwindled down to a consciousness and now resting in her gut, across borders of time and space and life and death.
It licked her cheek, and she received a shaky image-like memory: the white dog, speared to a wall; Orachi the snake, exploding to pieces. They died before she did, because the Ten Shadows wasn’t just a power, but living extensions of Megumi. Had their minds (souls? If it could be called that) flown to her when she was still in a coma? Or… no. After death, maybe, and she collected them both without realizing it at all.
She doubted Megumi did it on purpose, but it was proof of whatever bloodless bond they shared all the same. It made the grief compound in her chest until it overflowed. What had she done to deserve any of this? Nothing, perhaps. The good and the bad fortune were forever blended together, sometimes nearly indistinguishable. Should she be grateful to have a part of Megumi by her side? Or devastated on his behalf that he lost two of his shadows? Or hopeful that only having two of them meant he had the rest, and in whatever hell she left him in, he was still alive. They would be apart forever, maybe even in the afterlife, but she would accept it if he was alive and well.
She wept into the dog’s fur, nearly forgetting about Momo until the girl hesitantly reached out, just short of Tsumiki’s shoulder. “Tsumiki-chan? Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” she replied, pulling herself together. What could she say? That she missed her brother, who didn’t exist in this world? She couldn’t. She couldn’t bear to not speak of him either. “I just… realized I missed someone I lost.”
“Oh,” Momo squeaked, and Tsumiki reached out the rest of the way to let Momo squeeze her hand. It would do both of them some good.
“Is that really part of your quirk?” Momo asked. “It’s so different. Maybe we should ask a quirk doctor…”
Tsumiki inwardly cringed at that. How would she explain? She barely knew what had happened, but she surely could not explain the curses she carried with her. At least she could continue to plead ignorance. To Momo, though… she could offer a naive glimmer of the truth. “I think it came from someone else. He’s mine now, though.”
Fortunately, when the inevitable trip to the Doctor was made, and they puzzled over the quirk, she escaped unscathed. The Divine Dog knew to act dumber in front of the doctor, and Orachi still hid, too big for her to summon anyway. It was a mutation, they decided, perhaps awakened by her mental trauma. Apparently, shikigami-like quirks did exist in the world, so it wasn’t all that strange. Tsumiki managed to maintain a thin veil of normalcy, save for the interest both Momo and the adults showed in her quirk. Akito-san even offered her tutoring, like Momo had.
She weathered it. It was only fair. If she carried a part of Megumi with her, protecting her from beyond worlds, then she could handle the same attention he had to receive for his technique. It still was not nearly as bad as what he and Satoru went through.
So Tsumiki learned to cherish it as a gift instead of a curse, for all of their sakes—even if Tsumiki was the only beneficiary now.
—o0o—
Momo never knew she wanted a sister before.
Okay, maybe that was a lie. Momo had thought about it. She thought about it when she thought about how other kids went to normal schools, instead of the advanced homeschooling she had, or had brothers and sisters of all ages. Momo had cousins, yes, but she so rarely saw them. Sometimes… it was like Momo was the only one in the world who was so small, so young, and she just had to catch up one day.
Then suddenly, Tsumiki was her sister! Or, well, foster-sister? Momo thought it was close enough. Either way, she hoped that Tsumiki would become her friend.
According to the hospital, Tsumiki was only older than her by six months. However, because of the amnesia, Tsumiki didn’t know a lot of things, so Momo secretly felt like she got to be the elder sister, teaching Tsumiki everything that she knew! Except, Tsumiki did know a bunch. It probably had to do with the different types of memory and sections of the brain: she could hardly remember her childhood, but she knew more math than Momo did and the names of plants and how to flawlessly brew tea. Tsumiki could follow her diet plan, to get back onto real foods, far better than Momo could, to the point where she would talk to the cook directly about it, and sometimes, even cook things herself. For some reason, it made Tsumiki more comfortable—maybe because there was still so much she couldn’t do.
Tsumiki was… sad, too. Mostly when she thought Momo wasn’t looking, when she would stare out the window or at her hands, off in some corner of the estate—usually outside, if the weather was good. Of course, Momo would be sad too in her position, but she still wanted to help, somehow. Holding her hand didn’t cover everything, not anymore; it likely had to do with the parts of being a hero that Momo still didn’t know.
Tsumiki, she suspected, was better at that. She always seemed to know when Momo was tired and needed a break, and when Momo failed at making her next goal, messing up the chemical properties or the materials, then Tsumiki would be the one to swoop in and point out the things that Momo did right, instead. While Momo had started by teaching Tsumiki, it seemed to switch, sometime in the last few months. Momo… really didn’t mind. It was more fun to figure things out with Tsumiki than with her tutors.
But Momo was supposed to be helping Tsumiki! She had promised! She just needed to figure out how… and how to make Tsumiki stop looking so lonely when nobody was there.
(Momo… understood loneliness too. She understood it more now that she wasn’t alone nearly as often.)
One night, Momo got her chance. It was close to bedtime, but Tsumiki was nowhere to be found. Momo had a hunch where she might be, of course, and this time… Momo went outside after her, quietly enough that nobody else would notice.
She still didn’t know what to do, or what to say, but Momo made the first move anyway, until she found Tsumiki perched in the courtyard garden and staring up at the sky.
“Are you cold?” Momo asked. It was getting warmer, but March was still cold, and it was nighttime to boot. Yet Tsumiki did not seem bothered, loosely wrapped in a soft cardigan and not shivering at all. Briefly, Momo wondered if Tsumiki was just as empowered by the stars and moon as she was the sun. It was all the same light, wasn’t it? Just reflected off of a surface or much, much farther away.
“No, not really,” Tsumiki answered, and then, without warning she added, “Weather like this makes it easier to see the stars.”
“Oh, because of the lower moisture levels, right?”
Tsumiki nodded, not looking away. Momo suddenly wished she knew more about stars, just to offer something to the conversation. She had neglected them in her pursuit of chemistry and engineering.
But she didn’t need to. “You can see Leo out tonight. It’s high enough above the horizon now.”
“Where?”
Tsumiki gestured her closer, and Momo gladly complied, finding warmth in the brush of Tsumiki’s shoulder. She pointed up in the sky with upmost confidence. “There. Look for the sickle first, and then you can see the rest of it behind it.”
“I see it now,” Momo marveled.
“And there’s Canis Major, over there.”
Tsumiki pointed out a few more, including a few facts about their stars and placements, and Momo listened with rapt attention until she forgot the cold altogether. “You really know a lot about stars,” Momo remarked. She meant it as a compliment, but the faraway look in Tsumiki’s eyes increased. She looked wistful, and sad, and Momo still couldn’t help.
“They’re the same,” Tsumiki whispered.
“Hm?”
Tsumiki closed her eyes with a sigh. “I mean, I still remember them. From… before.”
“Oh.” Momo found herself frowning; the amnesia was just another thing Tsumiki had to suffer from, that Momo could not solve. What kind of hero was she? What kind of sister?
“Does it… help?” she had to ask. “Remembering the stars?”
Tsumiki still looked far away and wistful, but she smiled. “Yes. I think it does.”
“Then… do you want to tell me more about them? Only if it helps, of course.”
The smile turned softer. “No, it’s okay. I would like that.”
So Tsumiki took Momo outside every clear night, teaching her about the stars billions of lightyears away and making them feel close enough to touch.
Tsumiki seemed happier, in these moments. Momo was glad for her.
—o0o—
Months passed. Then nearly a year. Her birthday was, by some cosmic miracle, the same day as hers, even if the age was now wrong.
She worried about the attention, but the naturally standoffish demeanor of the Yaoyoruzus helped, the same way it made her homesick for Satoru’s infectious energy. They did surprise her, however, with something more than just expensive clothes and watercolors. They offered to make her foster situation permanent.
“You’re a bright girl, Tsumiki-chan,” Yuzuki-san said with a smile. “It’s been a joy to have you here. Momo, especially, has really brightened up. I can’t thank you enough.”
It wasn’t quite an invitation into the family, just their home. Tsumiki was fine with that. Momo had already slipped into thinking of her as “nee-chan” and that was already more than she deserved. Maybe Tsumiki still needed a sibling to dote on, but she did not particularly think she was all that good at it anymore. Or maybe she never was, and Megumi just… never minded. Still, the warmth and nostalgia filled her heart at the acceptance.
“If there’s anything you want,” Akito-san offered, “just let us know. I already have a lawyer on call to get all the paperwork settled.”
And Tsumiki was brave enough to ask for one thing. “If it’s not too much trouble… Could I change my surname? I’m not really… attached to it. I don’t remember enough.”
Akito-san nodded, though he looked surprised. “We can have that arranged, provided it doesn’t create a conflict in the registry. That should not be hard to settle, though. Did you have something in mind?”
She did. She thought about it for a while now.
Tsumiki was not particularly attached to Fushiguro either. Not to its history or to its meaning—it was only special because it linked her to Megumi. And Tsumiki was not quite Fushiguro Tsumiki anymore, but she certainly wasn’t Izumo Tsumiki.
She changed the characters because she could. For once, the meaning was for her and her alone to decide. Perhaps some would find her choice jarring, but that was fine: they would never know the depths of the story, and what it meant to Tsumiki… and Tsumiki alone.
She wrote down the new name with care:
Fushigo ( 不死語 )
Tsumiki would go on living, and she would carry her memories on with her.