"Yumi, hurry up! It's almost time to go!"
Yumi heard her sister calling for her. The sound most certainly registered in her brain, but Yumi couldn't bring herself to move from her place at the armoire, her eyes locked on the reflection staring back at her. She'd been an emotion akin to excited an hour ago, or at least successful enough at maintaining the facade that Yumi may have even fooled herself. She'd been laughing and giggling with her mother and sister hours ago, fixing her hair, trying on shoes - whatever else was the usual routine for a Friday night party. Mami had exited her room, and, just in those few seconds of solace, Yumi found herself isolated with her thoughts.
The mirror. It had to have been the mirror.
Perhaps it was the realization that Yumi had not looked into the reflective glass once since she and Mami decided to get ready, or maybe it was the secondary yet related enlightenment that she couldn't remember the last time she looked in a mirror which then led to the internal discussion of what on earth was so bad about looking in the mirror in the first place. She had to know if her hair was out of place after all, she reasoned; but the minute Yumi lifted her head towards the glass and saw her lonely reflection staring back at her, Yumi was reminded why she'd been avoiding looking at herself.
Mirrors were the reminder of just how human she still was.
The scar on her shoulder was hard to miss. Yumi barely made any attempt to cover it up, yet her family never spoke of its presence. Conversations that veered even remotely in the direction of that topic were immediately shut down. Oh, sure, the night Yumi returned home from UA had been filled with intense interrogations and endless questionings of "How could you let this happen" which were always followed by "What were you thinking?" However, after that night, the elephant in the room decreased into a flea, and everyone went on with their lives.
Yumi didn't know if she liked that. She never found it fair that everyone had the ability - the privilege - to return to life as normal while she still dealt with the emotional scarring UA had brought upon her - that she had brought upon herself.
No. Him. He had done this to her.
Yumi's world had been governed by one simple rule, a rule of equal importance to eating and drinking: monsters were dangerous creatures who were not to be messed with. Yumi had been raised in this, schooled in this even, yet somehow, she'd still managed to bungle up such a simple, necessary part of life. Worst of all, she'd not only disobeyed the very commands of nature, but she'd violated it over and over again and somehow still craved the very sacrilege that landed her in her current mess.
What had he done to her?
Yumi had never taken much of an interest in boys. For the majority of her life, she'd occupied herself with cryptozoology in the hours between the time she spent with her sister and her sister's friends. When she went to university to study preternatural creatures, Yumi proceeded through five years of university completely content in her studies, despite the numerous pleadings from her mother to go out with a boy. Having gone through undergraduate studies unattached, Yumi assumed that her time in graduate school would proceed no differently.
All it had taken was an evergreen twill suit and ebony hair to completely shatter that illusion for her.
Fall semester came and went without a single romantic hiccup, and Yumi had been relieved to find that her colleagues were more concerned with dissecting monsters rather than attending parties. Unlike undergrad, Yumi was barely approached outside of school for reasons other than homework or tutoring. Much like undergrad though, Yumi had been on a fast track to graduating with honors, having finished the fall semester as the top student in her cryptozoology courses. Spring semester, though, had been another beast entirely.
When Professor Torino died, no one had been overly shocked. After all, the man had been in his late eighties and was so feeble a strong breeze could have knocked him off his feet. It was even less of a surprise when the school announced they were replacing him with someone much younger. Someone had to teach his classes ultimately, even if most of the student body was in mourning. Yumi had anticipated a professoral change when she returned from the winter break. However, no one had anticipated that their new professor would be so young, even fewer students expected him to be so damnably handsome, and Yumi would have never predicted in a million years that she would fall in love with her professor the moment she laid eyes on him.
But fall in love with him she did, and it had been her most fatal mistake.
Professor Aizawa stood at an impressive height above everyone, drawing jealousy from
the other men in the class for his stature the moment he prowled into the classroom. Not once during that first lecture did he ever smile or give any indication that he was happy to be there, and, when Yumi stayed after class to welcome him to the university, he'd brushed her off with slight condescension, and Yumi had presumed he'd automatically branded her a kiss-up. For the longest time, Yumi didn't understand her reasoning for staying behind that day, nor why his rebuff bothered her so greatly. Yumi attempted to convince herself she merely wanted to ensure her high marks stayed above the average GPA, but, within only a few weeks, she had realized that her fascination with Shouta Aizawa was more than just scholarly admiration. She, like every other woman on campus, had been rendered helpless by his charm.
When she first started at school, Yumi's fascination lay in lycanthropy, falling into one of the two major camps of favored studies: lycanthropy and vampirism. All of her classes in lycanthropy had been filled with intrigue, and, out of no disrespect to her late instructor, Yumi never found Professor Torino's lectures all that captivating. Vampires were more disturbing to her than anything, perhaps even overrated in terms of academia. Everyone loved to study humanoid monsters, and Yumi could never understand the appeal of studying monsters that were so close to humans.
That is, until she was enrolled in Professor Aizawa's course.
Yumi could never remember having a course that was as informative as his. From the moment he set foot in St. Augustine's lecture hall, his dry wit and forbidding demeanor made him an instant favorite and worthy successor to Professor Torino in the eyes of the student body; but the intrigue with Professor Aizawa continued well outside of his lectures. Unlike most of the other professors in St. Augustine's small campus, Professor Aizawa had absolutely no interest in getting to know anyone within the walls of the school. For the first several weeks, many assumed that his cold demeanor only extended to the students and would melt away come midterms as it did with the university's other strict professors, but rumors spread from the staff that the new vampirism teacher had absolutely no interest in making friends of any kind.
Yumi didn't care. In fact, that fueled her intentions of befriending this disgruntled man even further. Yet, no matter how high of marks she made on his exams, no matter how engaged she was during lectures, he seemed to despise her the most – which made it all the more shocking when he was the first to visit her infirmary room after the attack.
Every student at UA was expected to participate in the night guard once per academic term as part of their grade, and extra shifts counted towards a reduction of their tuition. While most students feared their time in the darkness, Yumi always reveled in it. From the time she had been a young girl, Yumi wanted nothing more than to study monsters, and, although she wasn't much of a combatant, Yumi was often recruited for night shift due to her extensive knowledge in the field.
The night had started out like any other. Yumi hung around the university's entrance gate with a few other students for the nightly patrol until the clock would chime one in the morning, and their replacements would awaken. All of them collected by the fire someone had started in a trashcan before a loud shriek in the distance alerted them to an attack on the southern end of the school, and Yumi was the first to take off in that direction. About half way there, a creature that appeared entirely humanoid with the exception of the batlike features of its face intercepted her, and, despite all her lessons with Professor Aizawa, Yumi was still ill-equipped to deal with a vampire. The monster pounced on her, digging its teeth into the juncture of her neck and throat with enough force to draw blood but not to invoke the transformation. Yumi lay on the ground beneath the creature until it finally ripped away from her flesh and darted into the woods, leaving her bleeding on the ground until her friends collected her.
After a much needed blood transfusion, Yumi woke in the hospital two days later to find a multitude of cards and campus store teddy bears lying on the nightstand beside her bed, but the thing that shocked Yumi the most was the presence of her vampirism instructor sitting by her bed with intense, focused eyes as though he'd been waiting for her to regain consciousness. He'd spoken to her for the longest amount of time and the most gentle he ever had before disappearing from the nurse's station, leaving Yumi lying in bed with butterflies raging in her rib cage.
She'd gone to his office after hours, a firm policy he had advised against on day one, and that meeting ended with Yumi being cornered against the doorframe of his office, his nose embedded into the gland between her neck and her shoulders for several seconds in a way that Yumi could only describe as vulturine before he seemed to come out of whatever maddened state he'd entered, escaping down the hall with incoherent apologies. That encounter should have been enough to tell UA's top student that her professor was something other than human, but Yumi's rationality was drowned out by the choking force of love, and she'd been more concerned about offending her professor than her own personal safety. She'd gone to class the next day, and he said nothing of the matter, leading Yumi to wonder if she had dreamed the whole episode.
What a stupid, attention seeking little girl she'd been.
"Yumi, come on," her sister's voice called from the doorway, her tone a bit deeper than Yumi's own voice, but still uncannily recognizable, "Hiro is wasting gas waiting on you. Let's go." Yumi nodded, standing as she followed her sister out the door.
The car ride was spent in silence, and, if Yumi were being entirely honest, she had no idea where they were going. Mami had merely offered the suggestion about a month after Yumi had come home after the incident. Yumi didn't really know why she had accepted to go to the party; she'd never socialized much in university. She sighed, crawling into the back of Hiro's convertible. No school would dare take her anymore, much less a school with a preternatural studies department. She might as well start learning to get along with her peers now.
Yumi didn't know exactly how long the car ride was or what direction they had taken. All she knew was that she'd closed her eyes for a brief second only to wake to find Mami shaking her body and telling her she was going to smudge her mascara. She followed Mami and Hiro at a distance, though Mami pulled her into her pool of friends to converse. Yumi struggled, not for lack of conversational topics, for everyone seemed deeply – genuinely – invested in her, but because Yumi couldn't seem to keep up with the barrage of questions thrown her way.
"Weren't you scared of being in a vampire's presence the whole time?"
"No, not really," Yumi admitted, prompting a poke in the ankle by Mami, who shot her a stern look. "I mean. I didn't know he was one for a very long time." That was the story she had agreed upon with her parents. She had no clue that Sho—he—had been a vampire until the very end. She'd only been in an affair with her professor. She was only a slut. Sluts could be forgiven, sluts could be fun, sluts could be reintegrated into society after all.
Being a monster sympathizer was unforgivable.
"What made you go for the old guy anyway?" another one of her friends asked. Yumi sighed, her eyes dropping.
"He wasn't that old," Yumi replied, although she knew that 436 years wasn't young either. "He was only in his early thirties." A low hum of understanding fell over the table, sounds of judgment intermingling with understanding and perhaps even sympathy as the conversation drifted to some other topic. Yumi hated that more than anything. Everyone wanted to tiptoe around her feelings and ignore the problem while she wanted to scream it from the rooftops and regurgitate it over and over until she finally experienced some semblance of peace. She wanted him out of her brain. She wanted him to be her every waking thought. She wanted him back, wanted him here again.
Something black flashed by the window, and Yumi was out of her seat, crossing the country club's flooring to peer out as her sister cried her name. Mami's voice fell on Yumi's deaf ears as she stood by the window, squinting into the darkness. Whatever it had been, it had moved quickly, and Yumi couldn't help but wonder if maybe, possibly it was —
"It's not him, Yumi," Mami muttered into her ear, coming to place a gentle, but not so gentle hand on her back, "there's people outside. They're probably just playing a game or chasing a bat."
Yumi hated that she knew exactly what she'd been thinking.
"Need some air?" one of Mami's friends teased when Yumi took her place beside her sister once again.
"She thought she saw something," Mami replied in her stead as Yumi's eyes dropped to the floor.
"Oh, that's probably Keigo screwing around drunk again," one girl with dark skin and white hair replied dismissively, "asshole. This party's for him, and he's taking his sweet time." Yumi turned to her. So that's what the party was about. Yumi leaned over to her sister.
"Who's Keigo?"
"Damn, you really have been out of town for a while," one of the table residents replied, evidently having heard her. Yumi flushed, turning her attention to him.
"Yeah," she murmured, "I guess I have."
"Keigo Takami was the most annoying son of a bitch to ever walk this earth," Mami muttered, drawing a few snickers from the people at the table. "He started getting into trouble about the time you left for college. He and his mother live in a slummy little house on the other end of town." She took a drink, her eyes rolling. "He goes to war and comes back, and everyone suddenly loves him." Yumi nodded, showing no further interest as the conversation drifted once more. Her eyes drifted back to the dark window, the inky blackness on the other side almost seeming to beckon her toward it. She knew that Mami was right and that Shouta wouldn't be waiting for her outside.
But Yumi knew she wouldn't be able to rest until she made sure.
Yumi stole away from the table, promising that she would be back momentarily, but she knew from the intense look on her sister's face that Mami knew exactly where she was going and why. Nonetheless, her twin made no attempt to stop her, and Yumi scurried outside, the warm June air greeting her in the darkness. Yumi looked around, doing her best to stay close to the illuminated path of the country club while she wandered around, trying to navigate where exactly the window had been from the outside. She found it, cutting a corner as her body faded deeper and deeper into the darkness.
Stupid. This was stupid. Here she was putting herself in danger again for this monster who'd left her without a second thought. She shouldn't be out here wandering out when nearly anything or anyone could be outside. A drunk soldier was evidently wandering around out here with God only to know what else. She hadn't been much of a partier, but even Yumi knew from her college days how much could happen to a young woman when alcohol was brought to a party. She surveyed the darkness until the compulsions in her brain were finally appeased, walking out of the darkness only for something hard to land at her feet and nearly bounce into her face. Not long after a boy, much smaller and younger than the rest of the guests, came flying at her feet, followed by a boy with wild blonde hair.
Yumi's eyes widened, taking a small step back allowing the two teenagers to fight for the football at the base of her feet. Yumi watched them in amusement as the more muscular boy drove his palm into the other boy's back, his other arm stretching over his opponent's green hair for the white and black ball rolling aimlessly in front of them. The boy he pinned suddenly tossed him off his back, making a dive for the ball and yelling triumphantly when he seized it from him. He was the first to notice Yumi, his wide green eyes turning to him as the blonde took his moment of disarmament to tackle him. "Hey, stop! There's a girl here!" he yelled, his voice not quite immature but still fresh from puberty, as he managed to hold the ball away from the other boy. "Kacchan, stop that's not fair!" Yumi smiled.
"Oh, don't mind me," she murmured, going to sidestep them before she noticed two other figures running up. The first figure Yumi could make out was a boy with two toned hair and a wild patch of skin that was either a birthmark or a scar, and, for the boy's sake, Yumi hoped it was the former. He was followed by a much taller figure with hair long enough that it bounced around his head as he ran, and, as he approached the light, Yumi saw that he was a few years older than the other three boys.
"Katsuki, Izuku, cut that out," he muttered, his voice only slightly irritated as he ripped the ball from Izuku's hands, "Shoto's old man is going to kick your asses if you show back up to his house dirty, and then he'll have my ass tomorrow for letting you roughhouse." It was only when he ripped the ball away that he seemed to notice Yumi, his face dropping into shock when he noticed her. "Watanabe, when did you cut your hair?" Yumi snorted.
"Wrong Watanabe."
Wrong Watanabe…Keigo took the woman in front of him in, his eyes trailing from the top of her head down to the bodice of her dress until they fell to the nasty patch of exposed skin on her right shoulder. He knew Watanabe had a sister that was coming home from college. He was very well acquainted with the notion that there was a disgraced girl coming home that had apparently had an affair with a vampiric professor. Never once had it occurred to him that they might have been the same person. He figured that would have come up at least once in the gossip sessions.
But Mami Watanabe was nothing if not a bitch, and no one probably dared to cross her about her sister.
Keigo straightened, the two boys on the ground continuing to fight with each other despite his scolding and despite the fact there was nothing to argue over anymore. Keigo only stepped over the two boys as Katsuki was just beginning to shove his palm into Izuku's face while Shoto looked on in amusement at them. She took a step back to grant him space either from politeness or discomfort as he placed himself in front of her, smiling widely at her. "So you're the girl no one shuts up about." She frowned at his words, prompting a bolt of confusion through Keigo. He thought girls liked when they were the center of attention.
"I suppose I am," she replied, her arms folding over her chest. She didn't falter from looking him dead in the eye though, and Keigo noticed he wasn't all that much taller than her.
Izuku and Katsuki continued to snarl at each other in the background, snapping Keigo from his daze. "Would you two knock it off?" he demanded. His words finally seemed to penetrate through whatever testosterone induced haze they had entered as Katsuki crawled off Izuku before dusting himself off and walking in the other direction.
"Come on," the boy muttered, "it's Shoto's bedtime anyway." Shoto cringed while Katsuki smirked at his little taunt, the two of them taking off into the darkness. Izuku lingered a moment to tell him bye before he too escaped into the darkness, leaving Keigo alone with the town pariah.
"I guess if you're here, you know who I am," he stated, bowing slightly. Yumi stared at him, finding the lack of a proper introduction a slight offense.
"I've heard you're a son of a bitch," she replied with a little smirk and a laugh as his head snapped up towards her slightly. He stared at her shocked for a moment, and Yumi's face fell slightly as she wondered if maybe she shouldn't have said that. Her shoulders fell as she stretched an arm behind her head to palm at her uppinned hair. "No, I — I'm new here. Sorry. I shouldn't have said that." Way to go about making friends, Yumi. Amazingly, he started smiling.
"Nah," he replied, "I am. It's just been a while since anybody's said it to my face." Yumi laughed, but it was an uncertain sort of noise. She probably shouldn't be laughing at something like that. "I'm Keigo," he added with some brevity, "and you are?"
"I thought I was the girl no one shuts up about."
"I'm trying to show you how to be polite." Yumi scoffed, any guilt she felt evaporating almost instantly.
"Yumi," she stated, almost with an offended tone, but the amusement in her voice was undeniable. "So why aren't you inside?" Keigo shrugged.
"Well, I'm going to tell everybody that my Major begged me to watch his kid and his friends," he replied, tossing the ball up a few centimeters into the air and catching it between his outstretched fingers, "but what really happened is that I begged him to give me an excuse." Yumi quirked an eyebrow at him.
"And why is that?" He smiled, nearing her face as though it was the greatest secret in the world.
"Because I really, really, really don't want to be here right now." Yumi stared at him with a raised eyebrow before Keigo threw the ball into the air higher, "Yes, I know! The son of a bitch doesn't want to be at his own party. Tragic! Disrespectful!" Yumi gave him a judgmental laugh, but her smile was genuine. Keigo found it put him at ease. The ball collapsed into his fingers as he stared at the black and white checkered pattern thoughtfully. "Nah, I just…it's nice and all. I just know everybody in there wants a good time and really doesn't give a shit about me." Yumi chewed on the inside of her cheek, his sober declaration admittedly making her feel a little bad for him.
"I think they'd have more fun if you were in there." He snorted.
"Is that why you're out here?" Yumi hesitated, her eyes drifting to the concrete beneath her heels.
"No," she admitted, "I just…I thought I saw something." Keigo began lightly punching the ball into the air.
"Katsuki hit this pretty hard. That's probably what you saw." Yumi nodded, her expression sobering to a point that Keigo noticed. Of course, it was just a ball. How could she be so stupid to think it was anything else?
"So you're in the military?" she questioned, "you said that one boy was your major's son." He smiled embarrassed, stilling the ball in his hands.
"Yeah, Shoto is. The two that were arguing are his friends. His dad's Enji Todoroki, if you know who that is. I was in his unit, but I'm on reintegration." Yumi nodded. Enji Todoroki was a friend of her father's. He had another son about their age who'd apparently run away.
He wasn't very nice from what Yumi remembered, very suited to an army commander.
"How long were you gone?"
"Four years," Keigo replied, "drank too much beer at the drive in and got rowdy. Punched an usher." The words exited his mouth slowly – calculatedly – as his thick eyebrows furrowed at the patterns in the football, the scene playing in his eyes almost palpable. "Got a boot up my ass by the police before they took me home. My old lady'd had it with me. Told me I was either going into the military to straighten out, or I'd end up on the street." His head jerked up to Yumi quickly, almost startling her. "You can tell which one I went with." Yumi snorted.
"You don't seem like the type to go down so quietly," she observed. Keigo laughed, but he made a sound that Yumi recognized having exited her own lips before. It was the sound she made whenever Mami or Megami cracked jokes about her having to go into the workforce and how she no longer needed her degree. Forced laughter. Fake.
"And where were you four years ago?" he recovered, his tongue darting out to wet his lips as his Adam's apple bobbed in his throat, "I don't remember you being around."
"I was probably in school," Yumi admitted, the last word proving unnecessarily disagreeable. She had no reason to be embarrassed — he most likely knew the story her parents had told the town already, so there was no pretending she'd been dismissed under other charges. Yumi couldn't foresee him being capable of judging her either, but she hadn't mentioned UA since the night her parents came to collect her. While she'd never let the institution drift too far from her thoughts, Yumi realized this was the first time she was really talking about the incident as something other than tabletop gossip.
"Smart girl, huh?" he questioned, catching Yumi's attention. She saw that he had thoroughly recovered, his eyebrows lifted in a vague taunt. Faint hints of spearmint coated his words as he moved closer to her. "What'd you study?" Yumi swallowed, the proximity too familiar in an unnerving sort of way.
"Cryptozoology." He stared at her for a moment before he shook his head.
"Oh, you're one of those monster hunters," he replied a little derisively. Yumi frowned.
"Yes. I am. What's wrong with that?"
"Nothing, nothing," he replied, "it creates jobs, fuels the economy." He tossed the ball again. "I just think it's a bunch of bullshit." Yumi stared at him.
"You're pulling my dick," she accused, the words exiting her lips before she could stop them. She brought a hand to cover her lips in horror, "Sorry. I — university. You say a lot of things when hunting—" Keigo burst out laughing.
"You're talking to a military pilot. You know that, right?" he reminded her, "I've heard someone use 'fuck' in three different ways in the same sentence." Yumi snickered.
"Does your mommy know you use that kind of language in front of ladies?"
"Who do you think I learned from?" Keigo returned, before pressing his teeth into his lower lip. Puffs of air escaped his open smile. "But, no, sweetheart, I'm not pulling your dick. I don't believe in monsters."
"How can you not believe in monsters?" Yumi demanded, "they're everywhere. I've hunted them."
"Yeah, but you probably kill little animals. I'm talking about vampires and werewolves and the ones that look completely like humans." Yumi huffed.
"Those exist too, you know."
"All right," he countered, "prove it. Let's hunt one right now." Yumi rolled her eyes.
"The process of monster hunting is not that simple," she muttered, "and you have a party you need to attend." Keigo shrugged, moving side to side.
"I think someone knows she's wrong."
Before Yumi could register her own actions, she seized the ball from Keigo's hands, dropping it against her foot and sending it several kilometers into the air before it disappeared into the treeline. Keigo gazed at his empty hands with mild offense as Yumi whirled around toward him. "Have fun in the woods with the Phantomsnares," she muttered, "your ball's probably knocked a few loose." Keigo stared into the dark hedge of trees with worry before shaking his head and turning to Yumi.
"No way." Yumi smirked.
"What's wrong? Scared of monsters?" He frowned, his eyes shifted downwards into a small glare.
"No," he replied, "because they're not real. I'm not too keen about wandering around in the dark for a few hours." He seized her arm. "So, you're coming with me." Yumi offered a cry of protest as he began dragging her into the trees.
"I have to go back inside! My sister's going to be looking for me."
"Probably should have thought about that before you kicked my football then," he replied unaffected. He turned to her, and his smirk was the last thing Yumi could see before the darkness covered them both, "Besides, I'll need someone to give my last will and testament if the Phantomsnares get me."
Yumi didn't tell him Phantomsnares weren't real.