The sidewalks were littered with people; children with parents and young adults out for the weekend, shoppers enticed by early summer sales, cyclists forgetting a section of the road was reserved just for them, breezily riding on the sidewalk's edge and flustering the elderly women at the cafe, who grumbled under their breaths about the youth culture of today. A nearby vendor cooked popcorn in a great, black kettle, filling the air with a buttery sweetness, grinning as curious children drew closer and begged for samples.
Life was surrounding me, laughing and chatting and playing, passing my immobile body stuck to the concrete, shaking hands clutching a scrap piece of paper with a scribbled address.
0-5-2-1245 Menimeiru - The Knook
I'd been standing here for five minutes now, replaying every word Toshinori had spoken, every test and document I viewed with my own eyes.
I'd never suffered from essential tremors.
As far as anyone could tell, I had never even been hospitalized before this weekend.
Denial was the first response, shaking my head and politely calling these "facts" falsehoods. His straw head nodded in agreement, belief not reaching his worried eyes.
Sitting in my car after, head against the steering wheel, I had allowed submersion to ebb away, leaving nothing but the muscles and blood and flesh to do as they pleased.
Aside from my thrashing heartbeat, everything went still.
Why would she lie?
I couldn't confront her; not yet.
Because Shota's words, no matter how I sank them, came floating back to the surface; Are you sure your mom doesn't have a quirk?
"Excuse me, are you lost?" A voice chirped before a small hand tugged at my skirt. I looked down; a friendly face looked up, revealing two missing teeth when she smiled.
"Yes. I mean, no, no, I know where I am, thank you."
"You sure?" She looked skeptical; a funny expression with her baby-face cheeks. "Cus you've been standing here for like fifteen minutes now. You're creeping out my mom," She hiked a thumb towards the cafe just twenty feet away, where a red-faced woman was gesturing madly at her daughter. Embarrassment shot a laugh out of my throat like a T-shirt gun.
"I'm sorry. Please apologize to your mother for me."
She shrugged before skipping away, yowling when her mother thumped a fist onto her head upon returning. A grin etched itself into my cheeks- such a typical mother-daughter moment. Everything I did as a kid either worried or embarrassed my own mom, leading to year-long lectures and two-second time outs- she'd never been very good at the discipline thing.
A flash of her warm smile filled my mind, followed by the test results admitting my perfect health.
The grin faded.
"Good morning! Welcome to The Knook!"
Shelves spanned the length of every wall, aisles bursting with old leather bounds and contemporary novels alike. I could practically taste the warm, papery scent of the thousand-plus books surrounding me. Secondhand books held their ground beside brand new-covers, all lovingly placed to feature their brilliance. Standing on tip-toe I glimpsed a corner of pastels around a large, soft-looking red chair. Strange palm trees with skinny, striped trunks and giant pom-poms the color of grapefruit hung canopied the area, strewn with twinkling lights.
And there, perched on the red throne and surrounded by small bodies frozen in their rapt attention, was the fox-faced girl.
"Why did you stop coming to play? You know me."
I did; I had.
The fox was Manami Seto.
The children applauded and two thin lips spread, curling her face into a sneaky grin; what better deceit than tricking children into enjoy reading and learning? She stood on pale legs, ushering towards a pile of ziploc bags that seemed to contain stickers and paperback books; their take-home reading. The kids cheered, rowdy as they took their belongings and raced towards the door. She tucked a long tendril of ground ginger behind her ear, a smile still lingering as she straightened the rug, brushed off the arms of the chair.
I drew closer, slow as a man on death row about to take the chair. My throat felt filled with sawdust. "Ma...Nami?"
Two eyes, as smooth and fluid as jade, found mine. She physically stuttered.
"...Chiyo?"
There was a rushing in my ears. As if I'd stepped into a geyser, burying every sense as I looked at the fox-faced girl from my dreams, bound by flesh and as real as the books surrounding us. All I could do was stare, like a deer caught in headlights.
She moved, each step careful, as if I would bolt at too sudden a movement; a fair observation. A hand verified my existence, brushing against my arm.
"Chiyo Tsutomi? It's...It's really you."
My body was thrown out of orbit when Manami Seto pulled me to her with the force of someone twice her size. My own arms remained rigid at my sides, mind still too blank to react. "Chiyo, oh my god. It's been, like, fifteen years. I didn't think I'd ever see you again."
"I-"
She pulled away, face even more fox-like with her smile, holding me by the arms like a beloved relative she hadn't seen in too long a time. I tried to speak but every word in the world had drifted into space, fleeing from my grasping mind.
Manami Seto, the villain of my memory, expression filled to the brim with warmth.
Manami Seto, who tricked me with ploys of friendship just to humiliate me, eyes now misty as she touched my face, held my hands.
Is this the same Manami? Differentiating the girl from childhood to the one of my recent dreams, comparing them to the matured version standing in front of me, was like standing in a tornado and trying to count the houses being swept apart.
I licked my lips, looked away from her grand eyes. "Manami, I'm sorry, but...I think something happened to me. To my memory. I don't…" The words trailed off and so did her smile, accruing embarrassment in the pit of my stomach. "I'm sorry-"
"No, don't be. It's not your fault." She tugged me to a nearby table, sitting so close our knees touched, hands bundled together above them. I stared down in wonder; the feel of her skin, the way her eyes bore so seriously into mine. This all feels too familiar.
"Listen, Chiyo. Your mom made me promise to never, ever try to speak to you again, but you found me, all on your own," Pebbles turned to boulders in my chest at the mention of Mom. Manami's hands grew tighter around mine, unrelenting even as doubt ebbed into my features. "Do you remember anything that happened between us before she transferred you to a different school?"
How much do I say? With every passing second the story I thought I knew- the bullying, the electrocution, the tremors- became more and more a possible fable. She seemed to witness my strife. Her eyes grew gentle, but also pained. "Chiyo, do you remember me at all?"
"What I remember and what happened- they might not be the same story," I admitted quietly. Manami's face turned to stone.
But didn't seem as surprised as I would've expected.
Because she knows.
It was my turn to hold tight, leaning in with sudden urgency. "Manami, please, tell me. What happened? What- who were we, to each other?"
She laughed; a soft, sad note. "You were my best friend, Chiyo. We did everything together. I thought...When she took you away, I didn't think she'd remove me from you altogether."
"Please," I couldn't acknowledge the accusation, not yet. "Please, tell me the truth."
She really was fox-like- the way she slid her eyes, the fluidity of her movements as she shifted in her chair, like an animal suddenly aware of a predator in the room. No wonder that's how she came to me at night.
"I don't know what she told you, Chiyo. But we were so close, teachers used to joke we were separated at birth. The dynamic duo-"
"Chiyami," The word fell out of my mouth on its own accord, pulled from a window in my memory I hadn't even known existed. The pane cracked, and through the fractures memories breathed out, whispering about a girl with fiery hair and a face full of freckles, grinning and naming my own to match hers.
"Yeah! That was our little nickname. Looking back it was kind of dumb, huh," Another laugh substituting something more, something nostalgic and melancholy. "We were both really shy. I think that's why we originally paired up, but then as we got to really know each other, we became inseparable. Same hobbies, same weird habits and nervousness, same interests," Manami gestured around the store, at all the books that swelled my heart and filled me with a sense of calm.
An image of two girls, eating popsicles with a giant book spread across their knobby knees, broke through that forgotten memory window.
I could feel my eyes growing dewy and quickly looked away, pinching the bridge of my nose to quell the imminent tears. "So then, what? What happened? Why-" I couldn't finish the question.
"Around the time All Might started gaining a lot of fame, you and I fell into a superhero phase," She chuckled at the memory- one that only appeared at the edges for me, a big, blank canvas in the middle. "All we wanted to do was become heroes so we could meet him. We took turns pretending to be his girlfriend."
A noise unknown to humans grunted out of my mouth. Manami jumped in surprise, curious as I covered my face with both hands in humiliation.
"Chiyo?"
"I'll explain later,"
Later, after burying myself six feet deep and sleeping off this unwavering humiliation for a decade or so.
If anyone at school ever found out, I'd actually have to quit my job and flee the country.
"Please, continue."
"...Anyway, we were playing in your backyard, pretending to beat up villains. I'd lined up cans on the back fence and was trying to shoot them off with my electricity-" One moonstone hand lifted, just as a thread of yellow electricity snaked around her fingers. Something awakened in my consciousness, jerking me away before I could stop myself. The flash immediately faded and Manami caught my hand again, looking sheepish. "I asked if your quirk had manifested yet. It was always the one subject you never really talked about. But then you showed me- the leftover soda in the cans suddenly floated into the air, like a hundred snowflakes suspended in time. It was beautiful.
"I asked if you could control them, move them in a pattern above the cans. You did, and I shot out electricity in their direction. They exploded- because what did we think was going to happen?- and we both were thrown to the ground, surprised but giggling up a storm. My hair was staticky for weeks,"
The geyser had returned, blocking out everything but the blood rushing to my head. This wasn't the story I remembered. This wasn't the story that kept me reserved in classes, denying every request for friendship throughout college. She never-
"You didn't...attack me?" I hated the way my voice wavered, the way her body suddenly went rigid. I couldn't even look at her, because now I knew.
I knew the answer, without her saying a word.
Manami pulled my face up by force, eyes stormed and jaw clenched. "I would have never, ever hurt you, Chiyo. You were my best friend."
I couldn't control the water streaming from my ducts, cutting silver streams down my face and onto her hands. "Then- Why-"
"Your mom had come out just as it happened. God, I'll never forget her scream. It didn't matter that we were fine- more than fine- or that we were just dumb kids in love with some hero on tv; she sent me home and told me to never come back. And then, come Monday, you were gone. The teacher said you had been transferred and didn't know any more outside that. Your home phone number had even been disconnected. I lost my best friend overnight."
This whole time, running.
Afraid of everything, believing people were inherently bad, avoiding others to stay safe, based on this singular event in my life.
Built on a foundation of sand and falsehoods.
"Manami, I'm sorry- I'm so, so sorry," Tears blurred my words. Her own green eyes swam. I pulled her towards me, crushing her neck and pulling us both out of our chairs, tumbling onto the floor in a heap.
"I thought- I blamed myself, for so long-"
"You didn't do anything wrong," I said- to her as well as myself, arms still tight around her. The slow pull of her returned embrace, catching in my hair, tears on my shoulder, just enticed the deluge further.
"Wow. I wasn't expecting this today," She tried to joke, pulling the glasses off her face and wiping at the raccoon marks marring her eyeliner. I reached out with a hiccupy laugh, using the water from her tears to roll the make-up off her cheeks and onto the floor. She rewarded me with feigned applause, to which I took a small, cheesy bow. "How did you even find me?"
"I, um. I work at UA High School. Their database is very...extensive." Downright terrifying, I didn't add. "I'd seen your name in the newspaper a few years back, and used the school's resources to locate you."
Manami slapped my arm, hard. My eyes bugged out in surprise, watching fury encase her expression.
"Are you telling me," Her voice was deadly quiet, like the vice grip she'd caught my arm in. "-you now work at the school that the great, beautiful, perfect-assed All Might currently teaches at?"
"Yep," The humiliation of before increased tenfold. I was impressed my skin hadn't burst into flames yet. Manami went to hit me again but I caught the hand with a grin. "And I have to admit, he's just as perfect-assed in person. Like two well-rounded peaches-"
"Shut up!" She slapped her own legs instead, face as flushed as my own. "Chiyo, what the hell? You abandon me and become a UA instructor, teaching the next gen of heroes and rubbing elbows with professional ones- is that all you've rubbed with All Might, by the way?"
Snickering filled my ears as I buried my face into the rainbow-colored rug that smelled too strongly of Cheerios to be of any comfort. "Manami, this has been a long enough day already. Please don't turn me into a girl-shaped puddle of embarrassment; I can't afford the dry cleaning bill."
A hand patted my back in sympathy. I refused to sit up.
"What about you? Are you seeing someone?"
Manami rolled onto her back beside me. I peeked over, marveling at the silhouette of a woman growing more and more familiar in my mind. The girl who shared her lunch with me when my mom went through a health-food kick. The girl who came up with our Hero names for the future.
"I inherited this bookstore from my grandma right after high school, and had to take a gap year to keep the place running. I'm still taking accounting and finance classes at a local college so I can maybe even grow this place into something bigger," Her fox gaze grew dreamy. "I collect second-hand children's books from nearby charities and started a reading program for the local kids around here. It's not much, but it's something. I'd like to expand to reach more kids, but everything costs money,"
I sat up, catching my hair under an elbow and falling back down before trying again. "Manami, that's awesome."
"Yeah?" She grinned a little shyly. "I think so, too."
"I'd like to help, if I can," My brain ran faster than my mouth could speak. "I can ask Principal Nezu if the students could perform community service hours by helping collect books, or maybe reading stories for the kids, something" Slyness turned my face as sneaky as hers, eyes narrowing down towards her curious face. "I could, possibly, even get a certain hero to make an appearance."
Even Tenya Iida wouldn't have been able to dodge the slap she rammed into my chest.
"Chiyo," I choked as Manami strangled all the air out of me, jumping around and jostling me like a bobble-head. "Bless you, bless every part of your perfect brain and body and soul-"
"I can't make any promises!" I laughed, trying to escape a grasp all-too-similar to Kayama's.
She beamed, undeterred.
Manami Seto, the girl of my nightmares, turned golden in the light of day.
A timer went off, startling us both. I pulled my phone out to stare absently at the forgotten notification: Courtesy reminder to start getting your shit together, countdown beginning now
"What the hell does that mean?" Manami asked over my shoulder. I grinned.
"I have a date!"
With everything that had happened, I'd nearly forgotten. Tonight was The Night; the first official date with a certain Erasermouth. My stomach did a new little swirl, combining nervousness and excitement into one wash. Ginger eyebrows rose suspiciously. She walked me to the front of the store.
"If I hurry home, I can try on eighteen different outfits and style my hair twenty-six times before he arrives,"
"Do I know this person?"
No amount of suavity could stop my teeth from breaking through my lips. "He's not who you're thinking of, but yeah, you might've heard of him."
The fox was on the prowl again, sussing out weak prey. I ducked into my hole for cover. Manami snatched my phone away but instead of prying she entered a new contact, smiling for the profile photo and tapping her name across it before sending herself a quick text. A phone screamed somewhere in the distance and her face turned sheepish.
"R2D2. It's a great wake-up call."
"I bet."
She handed my phone back. We watched each other for a while, lost in connected thoughts.
"I found you, once." Despite the suddenness, her voice was quiet. "Every time I went out, I looked for you. And then one day there you were, across the street sitting on the curb, eating a rocket pop and reading, just like we used to do."
The fox that crossed the street, asking me why I didn't come around anymore. I shook the dream away. "What happened, after I didn't recognize you?"
Manami's eyes were unwavering, solid. Believable. "Your mom came out from a store and dragged you away. I never once saw you again after that."
We said our good-byes, vision blurring and make-up running and buried in bone-crushing hugs, promising meet-ups and- fingers crossed- a meeting with the delectable All Might in the near future.
As Manami faded from sight, still waving, I was drawn back into my thoughts. Of my mother.
She lied. Lied, and kept lying. For years.
I thought I was sick, broken, because of others- quirk users.
And maybe I had been.
But not by the quirk user I expected.
Time was running out; if I didn't get started soon I'd be a gross, boogery mess when Shota arrived, but I couldn't wait. Fingers shaking, I wrote out everything Manami had told me- every detail, every dream and memory. A few pages over I wrote out the event my mom had given me, from the traumatic event to the recurring nightmares and tremors. How had she convinced me, even after I moved out?
I wrote out the incident at the USJ; my friendship with Toshinori Yagi, my feelings towards Aizawa before and after we came together. How it felt to use my quirk and why I wanted to continue using it to help others, to protect my students and those most important to me.
I shut the notebook with a heavy breath, staring at the cover. With a silver marker I titled the book before shoving it in a drawer and hurrying to hop in the shower.
Confluence.
Author's Note: Chapter Thirty is probably my favorite. It's quite long, so prepare yourself, but I hope you enjoy The Date as much as I did writing it.
Mana means love, or affection- her love towards Chiyo was always there, even if Chiyo herself was unaware.
I appreciate all follows, favorites, and reviews!
