note: i edited this! there are some additional information and changed info! this was supposed to be a plot for another fandom but i realized how much better it will be if i used it for boku no hero academia instead. i really, really want to make this a feel good story but i somehow cannot do that and i always end up with some more angst and tragedy. i'm trying my best to make this as light-hearted as possible! i ended up with this plot when i realized that there are other si-ocs out there who can actually avoid the plot because they were born in the wrong time period, and this is exactly my interpretation of it. and there won't be oc/canon pairings since the pairing is already decided and it will be oc/oc since i'm trying my best to emphasize how much the oc is avoiding the plot and avoiding to change it but until, yeah, this happens. i hope you enjoy reading this as much as i enjoy writing this! i know i should update my other stories but i can't help it.

i was writing the second paragraph and i realized that oh no, isn't this supposed to be a feel-good story? haha, on a second thought, it won't be one. i'm too . . . used to writing tragedies and drama. if i were to decide a faceclaim for tokiwa, it would be handa emi! i love her so much, she's just so adorable and everything i would want tokiwa to look like.

summary: because a family that deals with problems together, stays together. (or: tokiwa thinks running away from the problem is the best solution—her husband and son adapts her mindset and fails. she fails with them too.) [mother!si-oc] [self-insert] [fix-it]

tokiwa is not tokiwa but she thinks it's okay.

This time, she thinks when she realizes how the sky is still the same blue that the ocean mirrors and no longer the taunting cold of the blank—the void—lacuna—the dark-thing that surrounded her once upon a time, I can be remembered.

Imagawa Tokiwa dances along the songs of the cicadas with her bare feet touching the prickly grass. She is three years old (again) and she is wild and free, and there is nothing holding her back in this tragedy she calls a blessing from above. The miracle of souls, broken and aching but still whole souls, being born to a fresh new body, a body more free and more alive that it has ever been, without towering figures and sneering lips, without the weight of the world forcing itself on its shoulders, without the constant fear of the demeaning silhouette of a man and a woman, of glass-like beings with more strength than she will ever have—she is free. Alive and breathing the same oxygen, blood pumping her veins, keeping her alive, her blood is still in her body and there are no no no none there are no bruises littered all over her body, no marks of fingerprints digging against her supple skin, no scars no nothing for she is brand new, alive and free, and she is breathing and well. She knows there are too many stars to count with all the fingers in the world, too many unspoken secrets of the world, and too many stories being sung by the midnight sky and oh oh oh—she may no longer be it (the name that she fails to catch but she thinks she does not want to remember it too) but she is Imagawa Tokiwa now, alive and alive and no longer bleeding out.

Her name is written with two characters and her mother (the new one, the one with a soft smile and dazzling eyes) whispers to her the meaning of her new name, her new life, her new identity. She has a normal family now—Imagawa Sumire is the average height for a Japanese woman (she questions this later because because because this is not the Japan she knows) with soft outlines and youthful palms, not even the slightest bit of calloused despite doing all the household work for the family and her father, her father who does not act like a dictator of the home that it never loved. Instead, Imagawa Yuuichirou is ever-smiling with silvery white hair and he holds the suns in his palms.

The world smells like dirt after rain, the aftereffect of everything that has happened.

This time, she thinks again after days and days of wandering within the country she knows like the back of her hand (except she does not), I can be free.

Tokiwa realizes she has a brother, an older one who smiles so wide that it looks like it hurts but he loves her, he loves her in a way the sun loves the stars, loves the children of the same sky it grew up under, and woah, she has never had a brother, only older men and women eying her like a piece of meat—like a prize, like something to be used to climb higher and higher to the ladder they call hierarchy. She hates them. (It hates them.) But this brother is the brother who has loved her the moment their mother explains the reason of the rounded stomach that weighs heavily on her body, a sister, a sister, and now she has a brother. A guardian deity just for her.

Imagawa Toushirou is all smiles and sharp edges, raw knuckles and bandages littering his knees. Imagawa Toushirou is all power and protection, and he is her first knight in shining armor (her first in both lives because once upon a time, it taught itself to save itself so it will not need to be saved, it learned to stop pleading for help) and her first monster.

She calls it monster because monsters snap you back to reality, dragging you by your ankles, pulling you away from rainbows and butterflies, from the fantasy you keep on clinging to. Who will save her when her savior is a monster too? Toushirou's bones are noisy under his skin and before he knows it, before she knows it, before everybody knows it, bones burst from his skin, his pale pale pale arms push out the bones that are supposed to stay under his skin his muscles what is happening what what and his bones are silver in color, hard as steel, and his eyes widen and it is not because of fear, instead, he rejoices as he rushes out from her room she painted pale yellow. His shouts echo throughout their home.

"Okaasan!" She hears his shrieks. "I got my quirk!"

They prepare meals and throw a small celebration, as if bones bursting from the skin is something to celebrate about, as if the noise of creaking bones, joints hitting joints, bones scraping against one another as it pushes out and out and something silvery is peaking and hello—Tokiwa has been scared many times, thanks to it who gives her all the fears she has right now. Little Toushirou is heard groaning and moaning under the sheets in the middle of the night but no one makes a move to address this because it's normal. It really is. "Some children get fevers when they first get their quirks, Toki-chan," her mother explains as if superpowers and children whining because of a pain that is not supposed to be there is normal, "Mama got one when she was four, and your Papa became slightly anemic. But no pain, no gain, right?"

Tokiwa feels excitement bubbling from the pit of her stomach—quirks, she squeals but it screams and screams and screams so much that it almost hurts. Its words are unintelligible and sometimes, it cries for powerless boys begging for power that is never supposed to be needed to be a hero. Man doesn't need wings to fly, the age-old something in her head whispers, then why do they need superpowers to become heroes?

She finds herself scanning through magazines upon magazines, channels through channels but she does not find what she is looking for. She does not find a seven-footer blonde with shadowed features and brilliant smiles, not even flaming heroes clad in blue, but instead, finds glimpses of white suits and turbo boots, a woman with the smile, the strength, the speed but not quite that she is looking for. It names it all with an almost fanatic glee before crumbling into nothingness, whispering tales of ice and fire, explosions looking far from the beauty of fireworks, and green flashes of weakness yet so so so much power.

She dreams and dreams as it tells her more and more stories of wannabe heroes and teachers sacrificing their lives for children who still cannot take the business seriously. And before she knows it, the thing separating her from it dissolves into nothingness. She learns its name and adapts it instantly. The tales become too real (forcing it to be real). The tales become too authentic.

Imagawa Tokiwa is Imagawa Tokiwa. Once upon a time, she wasn't.

They call it clairvoyance—this quirk of hers.

She does not voice how far she sees, does not tell anyone of the children far from being born. Here, she does not see the Flaming Hero, Endeavor just yet or the World's something-something of Peace, All Might. Not yet. Maybe in a few years she will but not today. Not in a few years, but in a decade, she will. For now, she hints her mother and father of a number or two in the lottery, smiles warily to her brother, whispering to him about surprise quizzes and laughs when he rushes to his room to study—she has it all planned out, details kept closely to her chest and numbers and computations of dates and dates, more and more numbers like chicken scratch on a piece of notebook that almost looks like Hello Kitty, and Tokiwa ignores that of course Hello Kitty does not exist because this is not the Japan she knows.

It tell her that the mind is a very interesting thing—like that movie it loves; about a man with two dozens of personalities all compressed in a weak, pathetic, and scarily broken body—the power of belief is too powerful to be taken lightly. As her mind seeks for an individuality, the assurance that she will never stop seeing the future, the truth (the destruction of mankind as they submit more to the power that they worship), the reality of this false world, she receives the Quirk she believes she has. Her smiling mother and father are confused for a moment; where did clairvoyance come from a father with stronger bodily resistance and a mother who can bend small steels? They take her Quirk to a stride as her brother smiles at her with the same smile she sees on his face whenever he brags about the Quirk that disturbs her.

("Toki, Toki—we're not in Japan anymore," it coos with small laughter as if saying an inside joke she doubts she will ever understand.)

Whenever her brother notices her little notebook and teases to take a peek, Tokiwa easily lets her lower lip wobble. Deception is an art learned through time and there are few masters of it. Tokiwa learns to cry on cue and to laugh on the things she frowns at. She knows how to keep secrets, keep everything she knows to herself. Her over confidence over her abilities lasts twelve years, which is a lot longer than she expects but she cannot help but look at the boy with fear and no no no—this is not happening.

Ueda Masaomi from her class usually hangs out with his own circle of friends, another group of boys who talk about a bit of baseball and groan about new volumes of manga from the nearby store they pass by whenever they walk home. Tokiwa has seen his parents from time to time during parent-teacher conferences, noting their suffocating neckties and light smiles. Nice people, really. This Ueda-person in her class is smart—smarter than most boys in her class and odd, she realizes a year too late. He is too confined in his personal bubble and yet nobody seems to notice that. He skips swimming classes during Physical Education and Tokiwa realizes she has no idea why. He wears the winter uniform under the scorching heat and moves at the right moment whenever his friends rough one another up.

She remembers frowning at the distance between them as she uses the eraser to wipe the blackboard clean of algebraic notations. She remembers small things; calling him over to help her with the mops ("Isn't the mop in the boy's bathroom?"), hearing him joke about not getting it herself, and out of instinct when she notices the textbooks piled next to the teachers table—she has always been a blunt person; even it agrees, memories of speaking in front of a stage mingling with her thoughts—she grabs his arm, ignoring his rolled up sleeves, sees his eyes widening and—

"This isn't my first life," she suddenly says and she forces herself to stop stop stop stop speaking but she continues, "this is actually my second. I died one day and then I woke up here as a three-year-old Imagawa Tokiwa—like, maybe babies can't handle adult thoughts but toddlers can? Saying I was shocked when I realized I'm in Boku no Hero Academia would be an understatement. I'm also lying about how I can only see one day into the future. I know what will specifically happen after a decade, since that's where everything starts. My brother scares me sometimes. I once got excited about this world until I realized that this world is messed up in more way than one. The senpai in 3-B is really handsome but I think he likes boys. There's also Akechi-senpai but—"

Tokiwa's words finally die from her mouth when she feels Masaomi rip his arm away from her grasps.

Ueda Masaomi. Quirk, she realizes in horror, everyone who touches him spills their secret, whether they like it or not.

It just so happens that Ueda has the worst Quirk for somebody like Tokiwa.

"Hey, when did that happen?"

"What?"

"That."

"Is that—wait, are those two Imagawa and Ueda? When did that happen?"

"That's what I was asking, idiot."

"But I thought Imagawa likes that senpai from 3-B."

"Isn't Kurakawa-senpai gay?"

"Really?"

"Yeah, he's—stop changing the topic! That's Imagawa and Ueda!"

"It's kind of surprising but not that surprising, you know."

"I guess so. I mean, now that I think about it, I heard that they got assigned after class together and lots of shouting happened."

"So, what was I like?"

Tokiwa lifts her gaze from her coffee. (Starbucks does not exist. Instead, there is something that resembled it after thorough research about the years before the existence of Quirks. It turns out that Hello Kitty existed once upon a time but the brand disappeared gradually when real, talking animals appeared. Religion—Tokiwa bites the bottom of her lip—has scarily few followers nowadays, mostly coming from the Quirkless. She reads in an article of how this world of Quirk views religion and she almost topples over and throw up. It cried in the edges of her mind, wailing for the gods that it worshiped. Religion, the world says with clarity and assurance in its voice and it cries, was a form of coping mechanism. Man before Quirks had none to rely to and instead, created false gods to seek for a more dominant figure. Religion is a mere excuse for festivals, thinking of tales instead of real gods.) She frowns at Ueda.

"Are you seriously asking what I think you're saying?" Tokiwa huffs.

Ueda shrugs his shoulders, biting the corner of his lip. Tokiwa identifies this habit; Ueda bites the corner of his lip, using this as an attempt to gather himself and be serious. She wonder absentmindedly when she began picking up the smallest of his habits—like running a hand through his dark hair whenever he is exhausted, or how he straightens his back whenever he lies, or maybe how he switches from his more dominant right hand to his left hand just to brag about being ambidextrous. "I mean, you said that this world is some sort of manga, right?" Ueda asks and Tokiwa remembers being so relieved, almost sobbing her eyes out, when Ueda shows her a vintage Naruto and Detective Conan manga. And apparently, Pokemon is also treated as 'seriously vintage'. Even Boruto, which came out a year before it faded, is vintage. At least she still has Naruto—she has no idea what she will do without it. "So what was I?—err, what will I be?"

Tokiwa snorts. "You weren't even there," she points out and Ueda frowns, "I told you, didn't I? It focused on UA students, or UA, in general. The side characters were villains, police officers, heroes, and some random appearances."

Masking his disappointment and ignoring Tokiwa's amused expressions, he scrolls down his phone and shows an article. "So apparently, Endeavor's getting popular," he comments and shows her a video of a flaming hero—without the blazing face, only flaming hair—defeating villains one after another with a handful of fire attacks. Looking at him enjoying being a hero despite his stern and forever-serious expression scares Tokiwa. She can barely recognize him with the different costume and appearance. "They say he's going to be the next Number One hero." Ueda easily catches the frown on Tokiwa's face. "I'm guessing that's not going to happen anytime soon."

"Soon is an understatement," she sighs, "try two decades. All Might's probably going to be Number One in a few years."

"All Might?" Ueda's eyes widen in surprise. "The lookalike of one of the American comics you have in your room?"

"Which one?" Tokiwa deadpans, only emphasizing how All Might is the collaboration of every American hero stereotype. But in the eyes of Japan and the new Quirk world, he is exotic and unexpected.

She understands the surprising lingering in Ueda's voice. At the moment, All Might is just a fresh graduate from UA with an impressive Quirk and a strange obsession over yellow and everything bright and American. "Woah, I thought All Might was just," Ueda mumbles, "some super strength guy. I mean, it's a really common Quirk, you know? I don't really understand the hype. Endeavor's got Hellfire. Elemental Quirks are rare—I'd expect him to be Number One. Not some..."

"One big hero stereotype?" Tokiwa offers. "A little too trying-hard, don't you think?"

"Yeah," Ueda agrees, "but I see where they're coming from too. Endeavor and All Might just graduated but they're already a ranked hero."

"Really?"

Ueda sighs, tapping his phone for a moment and eventually showing her the current hero rankings. "Endeavor's already close to the Top Ten rankings, and All Might's close to Twenty."

Tokiwa frowns. "Endeavor's almost Number Two," she whispers, "it's getting closer."

If Ueda notices how she looks like she's about to cry, he does not make a move to address it, or even comment about how pathetic she is being. Instead, he smiles almost painfully at her. "Hey, we're partners here, aren't we?" He says like he has always known this and expects her to know it too. "Lots of things are going to happen from today and onward, and I know you're too vintage to be alone here."

"I managed twelve years, idiot."

"I'm going to pretend I didn't here that," Ueda replies almost immediately, "but the point is that you're not alone."

Tokiwa wonders and wonders. She snorts but reaches for Ueda's hand, grabbing it. "I know," she says—his Quirk coils around her, "don't worry. I know you're here, Ueda."

The boy looks from his hand to her. "If we're serious about this partnership, don't call me Ueda," he says.

Tokiwa is thirteen when Endeavor becomes the Number Two hero, All Might creeping closer and closer to the Number One position. Ueda—Masaomi, as he insisted her to call him after their sudden kind-of friendship that had begun because of a volatile quirk and hand going to the wrong place—had texted her about it with a screenshot lagging afterwards.

not even a canon character [3:22PM]endeavors no. 2 like wth hes just 20

not even a canon character [3:22 PM]when is all might gun be no. 1 ?

not even a canon character [3:24PM] whatre u gun do now ?

She does not reply for at least an hour, too busy with a headache pinning her whole body down her bed because it's real—Endeavor actually becomes the Number Two hero even when he is just a twenty-year-old man, just got out from high school. Flames burst from his palms (and Tokiwa sighs in an emotion she cannot name when she sees no signs of flaming eyes and chins, only burning burning burning costumes with pride gleaming in his eyes—this man is happy, so so so happy and there is no bitterness and clue word is yet—wait a few years and it will appear) and the crowd cheers his name, calling him by the title he holds pride of and it makes Tokiwa think of how pathetic Endeavor has gotten, wondering what he felt when he realized how he has nothing against All Might and all he can rely on is the son that does not call him father. She thinks of shattered pride and unshed tears.

Endeavor, at twenty, is not married, is not the man that his children and wife fear. Instead, Endeavor at twenty is relishing the Number Two hero title, relishing the fact that he is young and strong and holds the flames of the civilians' hope. Today, Endeavor is a hero, a real hero with a real need to protect and to help, not just to prove to everybody (you don't need to prove yourself, it's okay, everything is going to be fine so please) that he is not inferior to the seven-foot tall man who holds the power of seven other people in his body. Tokiwa wanders dangerously close to the Hero Killer, Stain who spits at the name of Endeavor, insisting that the only hero he acknowledges is All Might, thinks of the flames that the doctors call Hellfire.

She stares at Masaomi's last message, unsure of what to say. What am I going to do? She asks and asks and asks, for once it is not here to cry of the scarily close tale it usually complains about. Instead, it is only her. Only her and a question lingering at the back of her head, more important than any question that has been asked for years and years of studying that has never actually been needed because it died on the way home from its graduation day when the man the man the man glares at her and you're not number one why are you not number one and thinking about Endeavor this time, makes it scream.

Not Number One, and ohoh oh—she thinks of Endeavor and how lonely he must be, how devastated he has to be.

narutard [4:11PM]i think endeavors my current fave hero

not even a canon character [4:11PM]ure weird

not even a canon character [4:12PM]but he looks rlly happy rn

not even a canon character [4:12PM]i guess hes kind of cool but torino is still the best

narutard [4:12PM]idc about that old man

not even a canon character [4:13PM]dont blame me if i douse endeavor w water if i see him change my contact name dammit

narutard [4:14PM]not until you change mine

not even a canon character [4:13PM]in my defense u cried when i showed u naruto

"I'm not going to go to college."

Masaomi spits his drink, eyes widening at the form in Tokiwa's hands. He watches as her hands shake—she is far from sure about this but she wants it, he notes as his eyes meet her gleaming ones. To say that Tokiwa is one of the smartest people he has met, regardless of previous life or not, is an understatement. She can pass Tokyo University, if she wishes so, despite her whining that she did not pass the first time around and doubts she will pass it the second time. He bites the corner of his lip. "Why?" He asks simply.

Tokiwa clears her throat and slumps herself on the seat she dragged to sit in front of Masaomi. She points to her the application always given to the senior students of high school, the one deciding where they will end up in; college or work. "I'm going to be a writer," she announces, "I'm going to be the second coming of Murakami Haruki."

"Who's that?" Masaomi automatically asks.

With an eye roll, Tokiwa huffs. "He's the one who wrote Kafka on the Shore and Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman," she says but the blank look on Masaomi's face said so much about his lack of knowledge concerning one of her favorite authors, "okay, Akutagawa Ryuunosuke—the one who wrote Spider Thread."

"I'm not . . . religious," Masaomi cringes at the term used.

"You don't need to be religious to read Spider Thread, idiot," Tokiwa corrects, "how about Dazai Osamu? He wrote No Longer Human." Another blank look at Tokiwa immediately looks affronted. "We're going to a bookstore later."

"You do know that your choice of books can't be found in a normal bookstore right?" Masaomi asks. "It's too old. And besides, you were talking about being a writer, right? You do know that's hard. You need to go through lots of manuscripts, constantly edit it depending on the agency—and—and there's also how you're not sure if you're going to be famous or not—wait, it's not like I'm saying you don't write well; it's just that your opinions are . . . controversial."

Tokiwa grins from ear to ear. "That's exactly the beauty of it," she chirps and rises from her seat. Her smile stretches to less of a smug smile to a genuine one. She turns around to face the windows of the classroom. There is something poetic about sunset—how it disappears with a trail of colors following its farewell eagerly. "When you're controversial, people listen to you. They'll try to crack your words and contradict you every time. I never got to be who I wanted to be back then—I was too distracted being a good student that I forgot being free. I like being free, Masaomi. I like writing, and telling the world how I don't like it."

She returns to face him. "When there weren't Quirks, man improvised," she says, sporting the same look of longing that Masaomi has rarely seen on her face ever since All Might became the Number One hero two years ago—Masaomi remembers that look; her eyes glazed with unshed tears, looking as if she is about to break the moment the men and women cheered for the name of something false. "Man can't fly so he built a plane. He can't swim too deep so he built a submarine. He can't go outer space so he built a rocket. Man turned his weakness to strength. Everything was always evolving back then, always a new phone within the month, always new shoes around—everything was so beautiful despite everything else. Man wanted to be better and better, regardless of what happened to everything else. Man wanted strength until—"

"It was given to him," Masaomi interrupts. He can't imagine a world without Quirks. The world Tokiwa speaks fondly of. The world she loves more than she will ever love this one.

"Right." Tokiwa smiles. "Everything depended on hardwork. All men are born equal—that was what it was supposed to be until Quirks came."

Masaomi barely has any idea how the sudden stagnance of the world of Quirks affected her want (her need) to become a writer. He thinks he can grasp the idea though—Imagawa Tokiwa wants to remind the world of their forgotten past, the past where everything was moving, the past where everyone started from the bottom—the past where the blood powering your status affected nothing of your future. Thinking about it, Masaomi kind of likes that world too.

A world where your Quirk doesn't decide what you will be, he thinks and sighs. How odd it is to refer the past as another world entirely.

This thing they have—whatever this thing is, Tokiwa thinks that she likes it. (It does not say anything about the constant outbursts of truths from their mouth but it keeps silent when the boy who fears lies comes strolling in their little world; Tokiwa thinks that maybe, just maybe, it likes this thing too.) This thing—like that time when his eyes meet hers, how those eyes of his somehow always look like they are about to tell something that the world refuses to speak, the same blue against the morning light, the same blue that holds her amber ones with both hands, holding her gaze as if afraid to blink, afraid to fade away along the mist in dawn. Like that time when both of them had been rummaging through books and books about quirks ("I want to specialize in Quirk Analysis," he says with twinkling smiles.), sharing young tales of heroes and villains, wannabe vigilantes with more strength than they can ever imagine. Or like that time when Masaomi learns to control his quirk just so he can hold hold hold her cold hands.

Tokiwa likes whatever they have.

She likes how she forgets it and the future that she has always wanted to avoid whenever she succumbs to the scent of his warmth. There is something terrifying yet romantic about this thing of theirs; of the boy who only hears the truth upon the people he touches, of the soul who carries the secrets of the world—this is not the superficial adoration she holds to most men and woman she had once whispered the fragile words to. This something more, something that goes neck-deep and it reaches her bones to the last of her breath, choking her with a gentle hand that urges her to tell the truth and she does, when she grabs his hand without him noticing it. His eyes (blue blue so deep blue) widens at her actions, already making a move to pull it back because he knows what this quirk they call the greatest evolution of humanity can do, knows the locks gripping the young woman's words, knows it all, but he does not know.

The soul (she, it, maybe both) feels his quirk thrum through her and she grabs him with both of her naked palms. "I don't know what to do," what to change what is right what is wrong what to prioritize and what to protect what should I do, "I don't know—I'm scared, really scared but—you make me feel like I'm still me, you know? I don't even know what that's supposed to mean. You're so you that it makes me scared. You're not even a canon character—" Masaomi's muscles relax as he lets out a breathy chuckle. "—and you're the one I'm—I'm prioritizing. I won't ever tell my parents or even Toushirou-nii the numbers to the lottery, but I think I will if you ask me. Maybe even the questions for your exam. Quirk Analysis is hard you know. I can—I'm really scared, Masaomi. You make me feel vulnerable and weak—I don't feel like I have a lifetime over you, more like the other way around and that scares me so fucking much."

Tokiwa feels Masaomi moving towards her, letting her lean against his chest, his scent his warmth his existence carving its truth against her bones. "Are you asking me to marry you?" Masaomi asks and Tokiwa wonders if he's joking. They are twenty; Tokiwa refuses to go to college again and grabs a laptop and weaves her tales that it whispers to her as Masaomi announces that he wants to have a degree in Quirk Analysis, pointing out that not only does it make more money but it can also help (her, is the unspoken word).

"That's all you got from that?" Tokiwa mumbles.

Masaomi leans back and lets their bodies fall on the floor, Tokiwa's knees burning from the impact. "You feel that?" He asks but does not wait for her response, instead wrapping his arms tighter around her form. "After you told me everything, I wondered if I was real, you know? I was scared that if I wasn't then is my hardwork for nothing? Then is me begging for my parents' proud smiles for nothing? I ended up picking a fight in the dojo next door. I got like three broken bones. It hurt as shit. But I thought—oh, I guess I'm alive. This is real. And thinking of the future with you, thinking of what we'll do when those things finally happen makes me feel real. As if this—all of these—whatever this is—it's authentic. It's here. People can actually die, and we're doing our best to not die too. It makes me feel involved and I feel like I actually matter. I want to keep doing this."

"Are you asking me to spend the rest of my life with you?" Tokiwa retorts, her voice raspy.

"So what if I am?"

"I'll think about it."

Masaomi snorts. "My parents think we're secretly married, you know," he comments.

He feels Tokiwa move from above him, rolling to his side. "Toushirou-nii will be annoyed that I'm getting married before him," she adds.

"Toushirou-san can suck it up."

"So you're really asking me to marry you?"

"Were you asking me?"

Tokiwa lifts herself up with her elbows, "Yeah."

Masaomi feels his chest constrict, the sun is dancing in his chest, a pirouette from the solar flames it lets wander through its being. Masaomi feels—"Yeah to what question?"

"Both."

imouto [7:02AM]
im getting married

kaachan [9:33AM]
With masaomi-kun right

touchan [9:34AM]
What

niichan [9:34AM]
WHAT

imouto [9:35AM]
lol kaachan howd u know

kaachan [9:35AM]
Im a mother

niichan [9:36AM]
kaachan how are u taking this well

niichan [9:36AM]
touchan arent u gonna say anything

touchan [9:37AM]
Masaomis going to be a Quirk Doctor

niichan [9:37AM]
so?!

niichan [9:37AM]
hey

niichan [9:37AM]
hey hey hey

niichan [11:19AM]
are you seriously going to get married?

imouto [11:22AM]
yeah

niichan [11:25AM]
ueda better be rich

Her palms are two earthquakes—or maybe her palms are waterfalls, maybe volcanoes with how much it burns. Pregnancy makes her cry. A child. She created a child—she has a child in her womb, created from her flesh and blood. She is a god in form of a young woman with two decades (and more) under her belt. The little stick with odd colors tell her she is a god, she created something like the tales from a holy book a lifetime ago—she is a god and oh, she feels like she is going to cry. Is she crying? She thinks she is. A baby. She is holding a baby in her womb, created from a mere night with more tears and more mutters and stammers of truth than she can count. She remembers that night and remembers the palms and the sky in his eyes—this life is the stuntman of her first, this life is the life where she has done everything the first one (it it it it) feared to do. An infant. There is something beautiful in her womb, something beautiful in this life that she has never seen in her first

Pregnancy—it makes her feel like a god. She closes her eyes and lets herself take a peek to the future—what will you look like who are you going to be and are you—"A boy," she tells the man whose eyes are heavy with the weight of his studies, the weight of rushing through the pages of her manuscript everyone wants to see, "he's going to be a boy."

(She remembers the remnants of arguments, the fear of giving life to something in this kind of world, the almost pleading smile of the man who has always been hearing the truth coming out from the lips of those who grace him with their touches, the future-past that has always been there regardless of clairvoyance and truth seekers—and then, the miracle arrives.)

Masaomi does not know what to say, does not know what to do. He is choking with something something something and he just breathes. He thinks it is a good start but a child. "Masaru," he exclaims and he is twenty-five, three years away from finishing this degree he has chosen because it is the reason why he is here in the first place, it is his individuality. "Um—Ryuunosuke? Shuusuke? Daisuke? Hajime?"

"Chikara," Tokiwa adds, "Chisato? Satoru."

"Satsuki."

"That's a girl's name."

"It can be anything."

"Satoru sounds good."

"Sa—Saoto."

"Sakuya."

"Sa—Osamu."

Tokiwa tilts her head to look at him in the eyes and she feels like a god all over again, as if she has all the power in the world because now, she is naming something, naming someone, giving someone the evidence of her existence. "Osamu," she agrees, "justice. How—how ironic."

Her palms are two earthquakes, shaking shaking shaking and it becomes waterfalls with the sweat clinging to it, and then it morphs into a volcano—burning and burning and she tightens her grip around the palms where truth lies like a lover. She thinks of Osamu and Osamu and a little more Osamu because this pain, this pain is something that takes everything away from her but this this this—this is painful but beautiful, this is for Osamu. No pain, no gain, says her mother (and yes, again, she is still talking about the second one with soft smiles and dark constellations littered across her collarbones) when she watches her brother tear up because of the power that is supposed to make him proud of himself.

This is for Osamu.

Suddenly, she stops being a god. She stops being a god when the weight bringing her down to her knees disappears when the miracle cries, and she cries with the miracle.

Osamu Osamu Osamu Osamu—

Masaomi looks different, different in a way the skies always look so different.

—Osamu Osamu Osamu Osamu.

She stops feeling like a god.

Instead, she feels like a mother.

Masaomi is twelve when he meets her—the woman that makes him feel unreal yet so authentic at the same time. She comes in form of a silver-haired beauty and it takes him years to realize that the beauty does not look like her mother despite all the edges being the same and the curves of the smile mirroring one another. She wraps herself with too many locks and too many secrets until she grabs his arm (no no no don't touch him please) and her locks shatter under the blessing of the gods, and she sounds—sounds so sad. She sounds so alone, regardless of his brother made of sunshine and sunflowers, regardless of her mother who welcomes her with open arms, and regardless of her father whose eyes glow with pride. So, so alone.

Masaomi is thirteen when he decides to help her with everything he has. His father works in the media and his mother is a housewife but likes to dress herself in heavy blazers just to make herself look like a business woman she was supposed to be but she does not. The gray-haired beauty clings to him. He clings back. He clings tightly, afraid to let go to the little girl who gave him a real reason to wait for the future and not waste in the sidelines with a mere pathetic Quirk. No, he spits out, I don't want to be a police officer so shut up—the only one who stopped to ask him what he wanted to be in the future. "Quirk Analysis," he says when asked about college, "I want to study Quirks."

Masaomi is eighteen when he turns red at his mother's words; "I like Tokiwa-chan," she whispers and Masaomi wonders if his mother is envious of how Tokiwa can do whatever she wants, as they watch Tokiwa write and write of tales that are never supposed to be there (in another world, it is not here, instead there is emptiness lingering in Masaomi's heart and he knows, he just knows that he is supposed to be reading something not published but will be published, the written words of that classmate of his back in middle school, he is supposed to be loving someone—).

Masaomi is twenty when he marries the woman he loves after an odd conversation. Oh, oh, oh, he loves her.

Masaomi is twenty-two when he becomes a father. Little Osamu.

Somewhere between those years, he tries his best to study. It is hard—money is hard when you are barely out of teenage years and you force your feelings to be authentic in the eyes of law but their parents like one another—they like Osamu and are always there to hold their little (their their this is theirs, thank you) Osamu when he and Tokiwa cannot. Money is hard but he thinks help is easy.

Masaomi is twenty-five, grabbing the degree with one hand and a little boy he addresses his son on the other.

Masaomi is twenty-five when he meets Endeavor and wonders if he should really douse the man in water, like he once told Tokiwa (his wife, mother of his son and oh, that sounds beautiful).

He is not that high in the hierarchy yet, not yet but in a few years he will. And he knows he must be fidgeting uncomfortably beside the actual veteran beside him—his upperclassman who tells him that he will be guiding him through this Quirk-centric job and he remembers nodding but he does not know that their first patient will be Todoroki Enji's son, someone named Shouto with red and white hair—the same red and white that Tokiwa speaks about, questioning how genes can possibly separate two colors so equally. This is Shouto, Masaomi thinks, that Shouto.

"Ueda-kun," his senpai says, "this is Todoroki-san. You may know him as Endeavor—" Yes, I know him. "—and this is his son, Shouto-kun."

Masaomi's mind disappears somewhere between those lines.

Okay, he thinks, this is not okay.

(1) so boku no hero academia is set in the future of the real world, only without the boku no hero manga. the appearance of quirks caused many devastation—like how religion is treated like some sort of coping mechanism. with quirks and god-like powers, i would they rely to gods now, the same gods that never appeared and has no proof of actual existence, which is why the quirkless are often the one approaching to the old ways again. i also noticed how despite the supposedly future!setting of bnha as heavily implied in the series, nothing much changed in the technology of bnha which is why the whole 'slowing down' came up. anyway, the native hero will be making an appearance bc he's so interesting—and his relation to pre-quirk era.

(2) akutagawa ryuunosuke wrote spider thread which is about a sinner ending up in hell and masaomi replied that he is not religious because of spider thread's association with heaven and hell. he's basically an atheist like 80% of the current world.

(3) all might and endeavor were basically year-mates/classmates when they were in ua :D endeavor became number two hero first then all might number one a few years after endeavor became number two. this can be treated as the start of endeavor's a parenting. it's actually weird to see ao3 to have a tag like that. i thought only howard stark has that, haha.

(4) naoto is replaced by shouto because after further editing, it turns out that naoto is seven around the time masaomi becomes a somewhat quirk doctor, and shouto is around four around this time :D

(5) so i may or may not have edited this again, because i somehow keep doing that every time i update a new chapter but i can't help it? this is one big test fanfic which i really want to end up as great as i expect it to be, but isn't it kind of weird that i'm starting even before the canon timeline when the anime and manga are both already so far ahead, which will say so much about the whole 'clairvoyance' quirk that tokiwa has. (and lol, i'm starting to dislike tokiwa's name oof—but kk, i won't change it.)