A/N: Apologies for the late update! Summer school has been pure stress. Enjoy! Cat scene was inspired by the Japanese film If Cats Disappeared From The World, one of my favorites.
Disclaimer: I own nothing but Mui. Japanese is in bold!
Warning: Mukuro (lol)
Edit: 10/22/17
"My philosophy is that worrying means you suffer twice."
—Newt Scamander
Chapter 3: On Evaluating Hope, Part One
Namimori has an interesting relationship with cats, the point being that either everyone knows a street cat or has adopted one. There are civilians who feed them leftover seafood, others who put out milk, and some go as far as to give them designated nicknames and handmade houses, if they haven't already fostered one. Pet stores have seen a rise in toy and catnip sales in the past few years, local shelters both enthused and nervous by the sheer amount of donors coming in and out weekly.
To this town, cats are a way of life, which is why an eight year-old Nagi finds it amusing that her twin attempted to keep the one behind their house a secret. It is a black kitten with gold-green eyes and the smallest meow in the world; she giggles when Mui scrambles to cover it up in a makeshift basket.
"Hm hm, so this is where you go after school!"
"I-I was trying to surprise you," she relents. "You wanted to draw animals, right? I think tracking his growth everyday would be good practice."
The younger sister is beside herself with happiness, feeling her eyes water as she crouches next to the woven container. "You… how did you know?"
Mui blinks in surprise, and then leans in with a secret. "I can actually read minds, but that's between you and me." She gets a light push for that one. "Silly, we're twins! Of course I know."
"And how do you know it's a 'he?'"
"Gut feeling."
"Maybe we could even get him to be the classroom pet. Susume-sensei took our bunny away."
"That's a great idea! We should tell her next time."
"Y'know, he reminds me of you," Nagi observes, lifting the kitten into her lap. "For obvious reasons, yes, but I can tell he's a small fighter too." Imperceptibly, Mui stills at the comment, wracking her brain for a reason why owning a cat is so second nature to her, and why the idea of a fighter cat sounds like it once happened, until her sister asks, "what should we name him?"
"Oh that's too easy: Retasu!"
"... Mui-nee, why are you like this?"
"I found him in a box of lettuce, what's the problem?"
It appears that no matter where one is, excelling in school proves to be unwanted attention all the same, and if you look nothing like other people, it is a downward spiral from there.
By the middle of third grade, Mui has forgotten what it is like to sit in a room and feel like a part of something larger, something warm and accepting and purposeful: community. In the diffused light of rainy June, she is an umber anomaly in a sea of pale hands and rosy cheeks, stranded on a wooden island with only the familiar squeeze of a hand.
As Susume-sensei calls out the term grades and she walks back to her seat by the window, Mui casts a strained smile to her twin. The other girl looks ready to take her home and bundle her up in blankets, away from the ever-staring world that is Namimori Elementary. The eyes don't have to be in her direct line of sight; they are everywhere else, from the track coach to the kids on the playground to the parents after school.
The final dotoku lecture cements Mui further into the role of a non-believer tuning in on a sermon. She notes that this particular subject breaks her full-mark streak with a glaring score of 41, followed by a satisfactory mark in computer usage, and sighs deeply into her hands as essays are passed down the rows. I guess Nagi can handle the computer stuff.
And so what if she fails to associate moral dilemma with losing a pencil or being a slow runner, or whatever small things her classmates cry over? Can she help feeling that there is something greater at stake?
Indeed, it is difficult to feel that communal sympathy when even the girl in front of her skips her paper, deliberately getting out of her chair to give the stack to the next student. Two brown hands fall back to their sides in defeat. It is a universal, unspoken law to avoid those who are different, even if that different girl herself cannot comprehend why she remembers logarithms without ever having opened an advanced math book, or how a black great-grandfather can pass down complete pigmentation within three generations.
At least no one tries to call her gaijin anymore.
"You!" Nagi hisses, moving from her desk to rip the rude classmate a new one, but her elder sister puts out an arm and shakes her head. She doesn't want that essay back anyway.
As the bell sounds and the twins make to exit, across the room Tsuna shuffles around to find his water bottle and instead comes across the discarded paper, crumpled under his chair. While reading it, he gets tripped on his way out, maybe pushed into a wall, but for a while, he can't hear any mean remarks over his shoulder as he loses himself in someone else's story, titled "I want to be better than yesterday."
In the future, he will frame it next to his own essay about becoming a giant robot.
The next morning, he musters up his courage and asks the author if he can eat lunch with her.
Since the day she gave him her backpack, it's taken him a year and a half to rekindle their connection, but there's no better time than the present. The girl opens and closes her mouth, as if no one has ever asked to be in her company before, so her imouto answers in her stead.
"Take a seat, Sawada-kun!" Nagi eagerly motions at the chair in front of Mui; between the sisters is a single tray consisting of an egg sandwich and vegetables, a brownie, and a cup of apple juice. Something tells Tsuna that this isn't the usual sharing, but rather another unfortunate, mysterious circumstance of the Sato twins.
Maybe that same acute intuition is the reason why he passes his brownie to Nagi and an untouched juice over to Mui with a hesitant smile. The latter stares at him from beneath hooded lashes, gauging an ulterior motive. "Ah, I-I already had a snack earlier," goes his white lie.
"Thank you," is the soft response. The wordless suspicion from a moment ago disappears, replaced by tangible gratitude in her amethyst eyes. I did good, the boy decides as he digs into his lunch.
"Me and Mui-nee were just talking about our grades. Did you know that she almost got full marks?"
Tsuna momentarily chokes on the sandwich. "Whoa!" Cough. "I've n-never gotten a 100 before..." Cough cough. "...On an-anything. You're amazing, Mui-chan."
"Here, let me see your grades." Mui holds a tawny hand out. "You have them, don't you? In your back pocket."
"Eh?" She knows, he internally screams. "Hiiee! Why d-do you want them?"
"Why did you crumple them?"
Nagi is looking back and forth between the children, nudging her sister and writing with an index finger on her forearm. You might make him cry.
I just want to help.
"I…" Tsuna trails off and brings his hands together. "B-because…" Upon closer inspection, his prayer-like gesture is an apprehensive plea, trembling shoulders alerting the twins that they are walking on eggshells with someone who desperately wants to escape; afraid of judgment, like he can hear an invisible chorus of useless and weak in his head, clinging to the ruins of his self-esteem.
"You don't have to," Nagi placates. "Sometimes Mui-nee is just too forward."
When the boy finally peers up, meeting Mui's apologetic gaze, she startles, and for a second, Tsuna has the distinct feeling of being walked out on, as though she fails to see him in the present moment. The strange reaction is forgotten though as she pulls out a half-sheet and scribbles something down, sliding it to his side.
"I want to try something. Can you read this aloud for me, and then pass it to Nagi?"
He leans over to read the characters, furrowing his eyebrows in intense concentration, like he can't make out enough characters to coherently speak. A bead of sweat rolls down his jaw. "I think it says, 'You came to school fast.'"
Nagi receives the paper. "'You came to school early.'"
A look of recognition dawns on her face as she faces her older sister, who intently stares at the paper, wheels turning in her head. The thoughtful expression soon disappears with a smile, and Tsuna can feel his quivering heartbeat in the shifting ambience.
"Sawada-kun, do you know what a homophone is?" Mui asks. He shakes his head slowly, a blush running its way along his cheeks; feeling that he should know, lest he lose respect. "It is a word that sounds like another word, but means something different. Sometimes, it can be spelled differently too."
She tugs one of his peachy hands into hers, and he can't find it in himself to protest, even as the heat in his face intensifies.
"Pay attention here. You too, Nagi. This set of characters is hayai, but as time. This other one," she presses more strokes into his skin, "is hayai, but for speed. See how they sound the same, almost look the same, but mean two different things?"
"So I saw another meaning?" The confusion seems to instantaneously lift, replaced by a nervous hope.
"Yeah, and though Nagi's reading of the sentence was correct, you tried your best."
Again, a fixation occurs between the two children; the one with a nervous disposition stares into the eyes of the calm guidance with an intensity of a lost person who has finally found an answer.
"You really think so?" he asks quietly, as if something will break if he raises his voice. "I-I'm not just stupid?"
"I know so," Mui affirms. "I had my theories, but I am now sure that you are probably dyslexic, which means you need more help when you read and write. Sometimes you can't keep up in literature, right? Like the words just disappear or blur out? And maybe in math too, when we have new equations?"
"Yeah! How did you know?"
"Hehe, Mui-nee is such a worrywart," Nagi chimes in, drawing little sketches of Retasu on the discarded half-sheet. "She read a whole book about learning problems to help you, and she also found our classroom kitten just because I like to draw!"
"Ahhh I'm so embarrassed, don't just tell him that! What is Sawada-kun going to think of me at this rate?"
"Well a mother hen..."
"Nooo—"
"You are kind," Tsuna says, without missing a beat. "Please call m-me Tsuna. Sawada is very formal, and I want to be your friend."
"Silly, you already are," she laughs before writing another character into his skin. "You know, you are luckier than you believe. The 'na' in your name means seven, but it is also one of the characters in kōun'na. So, you are a lucky boy."
"Lucky boy," he repeats happily.
"Cheesy children," Nagi chimes in. "You're gonna do great, Tsuna-kun."
At their encouragement, Tsuna feels a surge of confidence and pulls out his crumbled grade sheet then and hands it to Mui, determination set in his soft features. "Kaa-san said it's not enough to be just lucky, so could you both help me be better tomorrow?"
She looks to her little sister, who gives her a thumbs-up, and nods her head.
"Let's be better together, Tsuna."
The twins find that breaks are best spent dawdling around in Kawahira Goods than at home.
How either of them come to this conclusion? The final straw happens in July of the same year, when the summer grows increasingly unforgiving and the rainy season sets in like a bad bruise. Nagi is hit upside the face for talking back to Yusuke, and Mui gets locked in the basement again for almost setting fire to the man's blue blazer in her sister's defense.
Like always, the last thing she hears before tumbling down the small flight of stairs is her twin promising to get her out.
"Let me out! P-please, I'm so scared… it's so dark and c-cold…"
But this time, the hollowed hole beneath the mansion is different. In this frequent, inescapable darkness, after crying her little heart out and screaming her throat open, the mixed girl remembers someone also seeking revenge. She can't quite make out a face, or a voice for that matter, but their skin is as dark as hers, if not more so, and their green hair pulls up with the aid of an intricate scarf, like a streak of green lightning in the midst of a blotchy, purple storm. The person is a force to be reckoned with, leaving a goliath of fire unscathed, body sizzling with electricity.
One step closer to the truth, something sings in her mind, but the fog is thick and perpetual.
With her trembling back pressed to the door, she pulls out the cracked lighter Kawahira gave her when they first (really?) met, flicking it on to end the nameless memory. The flame weakly pulses in the void, its heat stealing oxygen and drawing her face closer like an ill-fated moth's dance.
And like that doomed creature and its death tango, she wonders if she can set herself on fire, and if the house would go down with her. Nagi is a smart girl, she would be able to get out in time. As for Mui? She would finally be free; anything but the darkness.
And without a second thought, she closes a hand over the blaze.
What happens next is that of one arc ending and another beginning, the curtain lifting from its dusty stage; it is the stuff of myths, of the triumphs of gods, of the action-packed bedtime stories in Nagi's book collection; the discovery that perhaps the current world is merely a shadow of a higher reality, of a greater truth, of a better purpose.
The brown girl lifts her sacrificed appendage, expecting to have fried some nerve ends, but the pain never comes. Instead, a green glow passes over her palm, sparks running spirals down her wrist, just like the person's from her memory. Her skin is taut and pinched, hardened by the surge of energy.
My skin feels like stone, Mui thinks. How is that possible?
In disbelief, and something akin to fright, Mui drops the lighter and scrambles on the steps, her breathing a gasp away from hyperventilation. When the radiance does not cease, and instead snakes its way under her skin and illuminates her veins, she passes out.
In her dreamscape, the land is gone, no subconscious visions of people or animals plodding along. She is alone and cannot speak, a vessel of desolation floating in an abyss of languid waves and pressure.
And then, there is a long hallway forged by black iron and white brick. Mui is certain that she has been here before, her feet carrying the body forward like they've always known the way. An acidic, putrid smell digs a migraine into her skull, muffled voices pounding against her ears; her clammy hands are no comfort.
At the final destination, a boy with a blue crown of hair comes into view. He can't be much older than her, his small white shirt and tan pants clashing horribly in the dank setting. He stands motionless in the middle of the muted medical room, broken machinery and corpses lined at his feet, the head of a glistening trident in his pallid grasp and face tilted away from the light. The pipes and fixtures whine and buzz overhead, wires swinging upon the soiled walls, next to the bloody handprints between the cracks.
Despite wanting to make herself as small as possible, Mui walks through the doorway, holding the frame to steady her knocking knees. The boy turns upon hearing her footfalls, angular nose scrunched up and an apprehensive pull to his chapped lips. She jumps at his mismatched eyes.
"Dora?" he calls, wiping a red cheek. Once he spots her at the dim entrance, a smile splits his sunken cheeks. "It really is you, kufufu. Where have you been all this time?"
"Who's Dora?" Her fingers curl around a crowbar by her calf, ready to fight or flee at any given notice. "W-what happened here? What have you done to these people?"
He levels her with a strange look, but the smile remains. "Dora, you know what they have done to me better than anyone else. Did you perhaps hit your head somewhere? Let me see—"
"Stay back!" Mui holds up her weapon, wide amethyst eyes watching his every move. It's like he sees something she can't quite grasp. "Look, I don't know who you are or what you're doing in my head, but this must be a terrible dream. A minute ago, I w-was trapped in the basement and I couldn't breathe, a-and then I saw this person walk out of a fire and this green light was coming out of my hand…"
"You…" The boy is in front of her now, cradling her jaw between two cold hands; her breath hitches as she stills in his hold, tasting the iron wafting from his trident. "You're not Dora... yet. What is the meaning of this?"
"H-how did you—I don't know, please, I just fainted and found myself here. I-I need to go back to my sister, Nagi must be worried—"
"Nagi?" he whispers, and something seems to click hard. "Not Seppie then… and you don't remember me or that."
"What am I missing?" The girl wants to get away from him and his riddles, but the tangible grief and alarm radiating off his being keeps her in place; he's convinced that he knows her better than she knows herself, and she's morbidly curious.
Who is Seppie?
"Your death."
Confused, Mui feels a weight drop in her chest, rippling apart her arteries and organs. This is not the answer she expected.
"No… that doesn't make sense, I'm alive and well." But then, and it drives her to believe that she must have really hit her head, has she actually been reborn? Reincarnation would explain those times she loses grip on reality, falling into a trance of misplaced images, sensations, and people. No, this is ridiculous; surely no one can come back from the dead. How did she die in the first place?
The ground beneath their feet begins to quake, the backdrop fizzling out like television static; bodies melt into the gravel, the computers and syringes and beds crumbling apart.
He shakes his head, taking her by the shoulders and guiding her back to the doorway in a hurry. "I don't have enough time to explain, but somehow, you came back Dora… no, what is your name now?"
"M-Mui."
"Mui," the boy repeats. "Mui, you just need to know they can't—mustn't—hurt you again."
"They?"
"Mafia."
"Mafia? I live in Japan, what would Mafia want with me?"
His cruel smile sends a chill down her spine. "Everything. Do not let them find this skin." He gestures to the green glow on her forearm, the painless burn having returned full-force. "You have never been good at hiding, but survival is different. You know survival like you know how to burn a house."
"None of this makes sense, I've never burned anything," she cries. "Who are you?!"
"Mukuro. See you again, Mui."
Without warning, he pushes her back into the void. She free-falls, having half a mind to throttle this Mukuro and the other to scream, but then she hears a door open and her head hits tile. Momentarily, even the gentle moonlight blinds her, muscles straining against the nausea; her eyes eventually adjust to the sad face of her twin.
"I've got you, I've got you," Nagi soothes like a mantra, slim fingers kneading comfort into her skull. She relaxes into the warmth. "Kaa-sama threw the key over the fence this time, so I had to go through the hole."
"Oh no," Mui whispers. "Did you get hurt?"
"I just have a bruise on my knee. Besides, it hurts less when I'm with you."
The older sister smiles at her reused words. "I must've been in there for a long time."
"Too long." Nagi pulls her up into an embrace; the floor is a cold glaze beneath their legs. "It was hard, wasn't it? You don't have to pretend Mui-nee. Let's go to Kawahira-san tomorrow, I'll make onigiri."
On cue, Mui begins to cry, clutching at the fabric of her twin's shirt. She fails to say anything about her "dream", or the green light, or the fact that she thinks she might be someone else. "I dropped m-my lighter and b-broke it."
"Shh, he'll have more. You need some ice cream too."
Fourth grade comes in like a wrecking ball, and there are new students in town.
It is a clear April day in Namimori, fully refreshing considering the three consecutive months of snowfall beforehand. With strawberry blonde hair, heart-shaped face, golden eyes, and milky complexion, one Sasagawa Kyoko introduces herself as a transfer from Kyoto and wins every heart in the room upon smiling. From next door, everyone can hear her older brother Ryohei yell "I am extremely happy to be here!" in the fifth grade classroom.
At the back of her mind, Mui stores away her disappointment and the hope that just once, the new students would look like her. To comfort herself, she thinks that perhaps Kyoko's brother, with his tanner physique, would be worth befriending, the closest she has ever been to someone dark-skinned.
After a couple of days, as the rest of Namimori Elementary has become, Nagi and Tsuna are infatuated. The younger twin has her chin between her hands, slouching against the desk with a dreamy look on her face, while the boy is staring pointedly in awe as Kyoko laughs at someone's joke. Mui can't help but throw in some words of encouragement while reading.
"If I didn't know any better, I'd say you two have a crush."
So many things happen after this observation, all of which include: 1. Two pairs of eyes blinking rapidly, 2. Tsuna falling out of his chair, 3. Nagi turning multiple shades of red, and 4. Simultaneous denial and accusation.
"I-I don't—"
"I-it's not like that—"
"Mui-chan, you can be really nosey—"
"Yeah, mother hen—"
"Sasagawa-chan is just…"
"... so pretty."
Cue romantic and exasperated sighs. "Maybe we're actually triplets," Mui shuts her history book. "Finishing each other's sentences, liking the same people, go figure."
"You like her too?!" The friends ask at the same time, before shooting each other surprised but competitive looks. At this point, all Mui can hope is that this year won't do them all in.
Vocabulary: Retasu (lettuce), dotoku (ethics/morals; learned in 1st to 2nd grade), hayai (early/fast), kōun'na (lucky)
Question: What do you think of Tsuna, or another character, having a learning disability like dyslexia?
