fair warning 1: i decided that todoroki has bad vision in this fic, so you will see him wear glasses a couple times. do not be alarmed. it is plot relevant.
fair warning 2: there is side/background kamijirou, izuocha, and kiribaku, but except for kmjr they don't show up until the last chapter. compared to the rest of the fic, which is entirely todomomo, it's just drops in a bucket.
Word Count: 5,384
? ? ?, ? ? ? p.m.
t₁ = ? ? ?
This was booooring. What did grown-ups like about dressing up in tight, itchy clothes and then standing around in a big, tall room where running and shouting wasn't even allowed?
Shoto huffed as he crossed his little arms and stood in the corner. Why was he even here? It wasn't like he wanted to be toted around by his father all the time. No, thank you; he spent more than enough time with that man every other day of the week. So why were they all at one of Father's grown-up events? It wasn't like there was anyone his age around.
Mama wasn't even here for him to latch onto; she'd gone visiting Grandmama and wouldn't be back for another week.
This sucked.
"Hi!"
Shoto flinched, hurrying to cover his ear; whoever had just spoken had done so right into his ear. He turned to look at the stranger who had so loudly greeted him and found himself face-to-face with… a girl who was actually his age? He wasn't sure if he should be confused or grateful, so he was neither. He simply stared at her, utterly blank.
"My name is [underwater]," she said, voice garbling and distorting when she introduced herself. She sounded much the way she looked, throwing her tiny weight around in a dramatic sway, likely to burn off some of that extra energy that always seemed to pop up when adults said to behave. "What's yours? I've not seen you around here before."
"Shoto," he answered, just a little bit begrudgingly. He looked away, disliking the intensity of her stare, but all that served was to surprise him when she grabbed hold of his hand and unceremoniously began dragging him out of his corner and away from the party.
"Hey!" he cried, but he found himself not particularly willing to dig in his heels about any of it, so when she slowed down and gave him a look of concern, he just brushed it off as surprise.
Time suddenly became a blur, and the next thing he knew, she pulled something out and pressed it into his hands, proclaiming it to be the only thing she could make that was appropriate right now, but someday she'd find him again and give him something better.
"We're friends now," she said.
Shoto woke up.
Friday, 2:23 a.m.
t₁ = —15 days
The dream itself wasn't unusual. Shoto just hadn't had it in a long, long time; not since starting middle school, if he had to guess.
He stared at his hands (despite the moonless night leaving very little to be stared at), unblinking. Had that event been real, or had he simply dreamt it so many times since childhood that it merely felt real now, when the haze of the progressing years blurred the line between truth and dreams?
Suddenly, Shoto wondered if he still had that trinket the mystery girl had given him all that time ago (if it had ever existed at all). He didn't yet have a scar in those dreams, so it must have been forever since that night (if it had ever happened at all). Fuyumi would probably know more— it seemed too close to the time his mother burned him for him to want to bother her about it (if it had ever been real at all).
Still, it was half past two in the morning, and today was the last day of school before break began. It would be good of him to get some sleep, so Shoto lay back down and tried.
Friday, 7:45 a.m.
t₁ = —15 days
Momo couldn't really remember the face of the first friend she'd ever had anymore. It was the best she could muster to memory to see him standing off in the corner by himself, staring at the main party like a dead fish before she approached him.
But, Momo supposed more than ten years after the fact, maybe it was okay to forget. Maybe it was even normal. It probably was. After all, childhood amnesia was a perfectly common thing. Maybe it was time to let go of looking for him.
She sighed (for what, she didn't really know) and propped her chin upon her elbow, ready to let her mind begin to wander, but a certain someone happened to plunk themselves down onto her desk, wholly derailing her train of thought before it even left the station.
"Yao~mo~mo~" Kyouka sing-songed. "Are you free in, like, two weeks?"
"Two weeks?" Momo weakly echoed, trying to mentally run through her calendar for the summer break and failing to bring up anything but a blue screen.
"Yeah, so like after the summer camp and class outing, but before we have to start feeling guilty about procrastinating on the summer homework," Kyouka continued.
"Two weeks, two weeks," Momo said, tapping her finger against her chin. Surely there was something happening in her life two Saturdays from now? She was thinking about something similar just a momen— "Oh! Sorry, Kyo, I can't. My parents are throwing a ball that evening."
Kyouka sighed, resigned to this fate. She knew (of course she knew) Momo held filial piety in a pretty high regard, and there wasn't much point to fighting it.
Of course, now that Momo had her thoughts back on track, she found herself wandering forward in time and wondering what the summer might bring. "Do you think I might see him there?" The question popped out of her mouth like a dream popped out of one's subconscious, but she didn't much mind.
Kyouka looked at her with an eyebrow half-raised. It was rare for Momo to speak explicitly of her mystery boy from so long ago, but she had mentioned dreaming of him in the past. That combined with the topic at hand made it less surprising for her to think of him now.
Would she see him there? It was hard to say. After all, ten years (plus some) between meetings left a lot of room for uncertainty about the other party. Perhaps they moved to America, or fell out of favor with the Yaoyorozus, or almost anything, really. Young children (or even teenagers, for that matter) are rarely told anything of family affairs, nevermind family friends'.
But before Kyouka could point any of these things out, the classroom door rattled open, and Aizawa-sensei hopped in wearing his sleeping bag. "I know it's the last day before summer break, but if you would all please get back to your assigned seats for the day to begin, that would be great," he drawled.
Quickly, Kyouka hopped off of Momo's desk, and the latter was forced to draw herself out of her own little world and into the real one once more.
Sunday, 9:38 p.m.
t₁ = —13 days
"Mother, are you going to tell me the theme of this summer's party yet?" Momo asked, patience soaked into her voice. Of course, she had very low expectations for receiving an answer; her mother loved to keep Momo in the dark about the type of parties that approached until at minimum a week before.
"Hmm, well, I do suppose it would do a bit of good to let you in on the secret a bit early this time," Mrs. Yaoyorozu hummed, exceeding all of Momo's expectations. According to her observations, the number of days before the party she was told of the theme was directly proportional to the amount of pre-party prepping required, which meant that this round was about to be unfathomably fancy. Mrs. Yaoyorozu beckoned her daughter closer, an unreadable smile upon her face.
Momo obeyed, albeit rather worriedly.
"This summer's party is going to be a masquerade ball!" her mother declared, very visibly excited.
Momo gave her mother a bizarre expression as the latter rose to her full height, a dreamy expression taking over her face as she began to gush about how she and her husband had met at a masquerade ball thrown by her own parents one summer many years ago now. Of course, Momo knew this story— she had heard it many times since she was a child— but that didn't explain why she was being told this soon.
"Mother," Momo began yet again, still full of the infinite respect expected of a perfectly filial daughter, "Not that I'm complaining, but might I ask why you've chosen to tell me so soon?"
Mrs. Yaoyorozu smiled graciously down upon her daughter, her hands landing on her hips in a very maternal manner. "Your second summer camp is coming up soon, and I wanted to give you something to look forward to during all your hard training." Her smile flickered for a second, but not in the sense that it would give way to some horror. Instead, Momo's mother appeared to be holding back her mirth as she continued: "Plus, a family that hasn't attended one of our parties in a very long time is coming this time, and I'm pretty sure they have someone your age who goes to your school…"
"Mother, I've met people at school who have been to our parties before," Momo said.
"Oh, but this one was so long ago, I don't know if you really remember them," Mrs. Yaoyorozu slyly continued.
Momo immediately and without realizing it took the bait. Her eyes lit up, and her entire presence seemed to float just a few smidgens higher. "Who are they, Mother?" she asked, suddenly losing all of her ladylike poise. "What's their name?"
Mrs. Yaoyorozu laughed, and Momo suddenly became keenly aware of the way she had allowed her grace to slip. Blushing, she set her heels back down on earth and repeated her question, more demurely this time: "Who do you speak of, Mother?"
But Mama Yaoyorozu merely patted her daughter's cheek and said, "Now, if I told you that, it would ruin the spirit of the ball, now wouldn't it?"
Momo fought the temptation to puff her cheeks out and pout like she had when she was younger. "I suppose you're right," she sighed.
"Exactly," Mrs. Yaoyorozu said, still quite amused. "Now, run along, my dear; there's so much more I have to plan that you can't know about yet~ "
? ? ?, ? ? ? p.m.
t₁ = ? ? ?
Shoto wasn't particularly sure what to do at dance parties. He didn't even know how he'd ended up at this one, honestly. It honestly rather felt like the scenery around him had simply all melted away and dropped him into this new setting.
He crept slowly towards the ballroom wall and hid himself behind one of those fancy pillars all ballrooms always seem to have. He had no idea what he was going to do now that he was hidden, but anything felt better than just standing out in the open. He always felt out of place at expensive parties like these, an awkwardness which doubled if he felt his natural appearance was drawing attention.
With a sigh, Shoto settled down facing the wall and closed his eyes, resigned to simply ride out whatever this event was.
"Hey," said someone from the other side of the pillar. Their voice was soft and gentle, and it had a bit of a lilt to it that made it sound melodic, but not sing-song. They came around the pillar until they stood almost right beside him, their playful movements made apparent by the swishing of their dress.
Shoto hesitated for a moment but eventually shifted in the stranger's direction, although he made the decision to keep his eyes on their shoes, which barely peeked out from beneath the hem of their dress. "Hey," he returned, voice entirely deadpan.
The stranger laughed, and he decided it was probably a girl from the sound of it. "You're missing something," she said as she pulled an old, faded, false flower out from somewhere and pinned it to his breast pocket. "There we go. It looks nice on you,—"
Thursday, 1:17 p.m.
t₁ = —9 days
Knock-knock-knock. "Shoto?" Fuyumi called from outside his room door. "It's after one. I know you had some intense few days at camp, but you should be awake by now."
"What is it?" he called back, groggily reaching his hand out to find his spare glasses.
"I'm coming in, okay?"
"Sure." Shoto located the glasses, sat up, and squinted at his sister as she entered the room.
"We got an invitation to attend a ball next Saturday," Fuyumi explained, waving around what appeared to be an embossed letter. "I wanna go, since Dad never took us to any of these after putting Mom in the hospital, and I was wondering if you wanted to come too, since it's addressed to the whole family."
Shoto stared down at his hands, not feeling particularly compelled to attend. But then, he remembered the dream he had just woken up from, and said, "Oh. Maybe."
"The invitation got forwarded to us from Dad's house, so we kiiind of need to mail the reply today in order to meet the RSVP deadline," Fuyumi said nervously. "C'mon, it'll be fun! Just like old times, Sho."
Shoto looked at his sister, vaguely confused. "We went to those kinds of things before?"
Fuyumi rubbed the back of her neck and laughed a bit nervously. "Well, yeah, like ten years ago now. I guess you wouldn't remember since you were so little when we stopped going to private events like these."
"No, I… think I remember some parts," Shoto slowly said. "Do you remember if I ever came back from one with a false flower?"
Fuyumi's arms dropped down from her neck, and she crossed them over her chest as she thought about Shoto's question for a minute. "I don't actually remember. You should ask Mom when you visit her tomorrow. She's got a crazy good memory."
Shoto remembered that, of course, but he didn't say anything. "Fine, I will. You can go away now; I have some homework to start on."
"Have fun~" Fuyumi sang, and danced out the door.
Saturday, 10:00 a.m.
t₁ = —7 days
Shoto checked his phone a moment before entering his mother's ward and decided to mute the class group chat for the time being. He'd noticed that despite being high school second years, a lot of his classmates still liked to play large-scale kid games when they went on class outings. In fact, his notifications were already blowing up because they had misplaced Shinsou during hide-and-seek or something. Definitely not something he wanted to concern himself with.
He tucked his phone into his pocket and opened the door. "Good morning," he said, poking his head inside. "I'm here again."
His mother looked up from her book and smiled at him. "Good morning, Shoto," she said as he walked in. "How was your training camp?"
"Fine. Someone accidentally crushed one of my contacts on the last day, though, so I have to wear some old, colored ones the optometrist insisted on a few years ago," he said, folding his arms and leaning against the wall.
"Oh? Then what's with the glasses?" his mother asked, finally closing her book and putting it back on the nearby table.
Shoto looked away, feeling a little annoyed. "My eyes itch if I wear them for too long."
His mother sighed good-naturedly, shaking her head. "You'll never get used to the replacements if you let that bother you."
"…Anyway," Shoto said, shifting his weight around and deciding it was time to change the subject. "Fuyumi told me we got an invitation to a fancy party next Saturday."
"Oh yes, we went to those quite a lot; I remember. What's the theme this time, do you know?"
"She said it was a masquerade ball."
His mother hummed. "That sounds like fun. I'd love to go, but at the rate the paperwork has been going, it doesn't look like I'll be getting out until next month." She stared out the window, musing for a moment, then faced Shoto again. "You'll be going though, won't you?"
"Yeah. It's in the evening, so I'll still be able to visit you in the morning."
"Don't be silly! Just tell me about all the fun you'll have had when you visit the morning after," his mother insisted. "I'll be out sooner than you'll feel real. There will be plenty of time for you to see me when I'm living at home. You should be out enjoying your youth more!"
Shoto cocked his head but otherwise wasn't particularly bothered. He supposed she was right, and he'd do it if she insisted. In any case, he had a different fish to fry in his mind. "Oh, that kind of reminds me. Did I ever come back from one of those parties with a fake flower when I was younger?"
His mother paused and thought about it for all of a minute. "Yes, I think so. It was around the time you turned five, so I wasn't well enough to go myself, but there was one time when you came home with something like that, I'm pretty sure. Why do you ask?"
Shoto found himself looking away, his face feeling oddly flushed. "I've been having strange dreams lately."
"I'm listening."
He kind of wished she wasn't; he'd rather just leave it at that. But, he told his mother about his latest dreams, mysterious girl and all, with little reluctance.
"I see. So, are you hoping to see her again at the party?" she asked, a strange gleam of mischief in her eyes.
"I mean. I guess," he said, and really, what other reason would he have for asking about such a minor detail from over a decade ago?"I had dreams like these for a while in middle school, I think. It was a long phase in my first year."
His mother nodded somberly. "Dream girls are serious business, Shoto," she said. "Especially when they were, and presumably still are, real girls at some point."
Shoto grunted in response, and his mother smiled once more, letting a little laughter escape.
"You should find her again! It would be a good summer adventure."
"But it's a masked ball," Shoto pointed out. "Even if I find her again, how am I going to know it's her? How will I know who she is? How will I find her again?"
"Well, there are three things you can do to answer your three questions," his mother answered. "Firstly, you need to actively search around. You can't just expect her to come find you. Listen to your heart as you encounter new people; it remembers people better than your mind. If you think you've found her, believe in your heart."
Shoto sighed, sticking his hands into his pockets. "That sounds like something out of a fairy tale."
"Sometimes, there's no real or logical way of finding an answer to a question. It's at those times when we must forgo logic and simply do what feels right," his mother said, almost grave in her seriousness. (Almost, because her eyes were still alight with a youthful sort of excitement that was rare in women her age.)
She cracked a smile after a moment of silence. "Secondly," she continued, holding up two fingers now, "You probably won't know who she is, as is the point of masquerades. It's simply something you'll have to work around and work hard to figure out, if you cared enough to know."
Shoto said nothing, but it appeared that his silence only served to amuse his mother further.
"Thirdly, to find her, you simply have to give her something to remember you by, and then search the world around you for signs of her afterwards."
Shoto furrowed his brow. "What do I have to give that would let me find her?"
"There's a ring I bought with my first paycheck when I was your age. Bring that along with you, and if you find her there at the party, I want you to give it to her."
"It's not exactly a small world, Mom. I don't know how a ring will help me find her after the party's over."
"Maybe it won't at first," his mother agreed. "Maybe you'll simply have to wait until you're invited to another party, or the one after that if she's not there, or the one after that, or so on, when everyone is simply their own selves. But—" there was an unreadable expression that passed over her face for a moment— "I have a hunch it won't take that long."
Shoto decided he didn't want to ask any further and changed the subject.
Sunday, 3:02 p.m.
t₁ = —6 days
[15:02]
[Kyoukanut]: hey yaomomo can you help me translate this song later
[Kyoukanut]: it's called "long way home" by jukebox the ghost
[Kyoukanut]: i really like the way it sounds and i wanna know what it's about
[Yaomomo (✿◡‿◡)]: I'm free now, actually
[Yaomomo (✿◡‿◡)]: Just give me a few minutes to listen to it
[Kyoukanut]: tyyyyyy~~~
[Kyoukanut]: btw i forgot to ask abt this last night but
[Kyoukanut]: why'd you walk todoroki home yesterday
[16:54]
[Yaomomo (✿◡‿◡)]: I found him fallen asleep at the train station
[Yaomomo (✿◡‿◡)]: So I offered to see him home safely
[Kyoukanut]: 1. that was a very long pause
[Yaomomo (✿◡‿◡)]: Besides, how did you even know about that?
[Kyoukanut]: 2. wao yaomomo such a gentleman~
[Yaomomo (✿◡‿◡)]: I was looking through some of my dictionaries to help with the translation and got distracted
[Kyoukanut]: 2.5: I saw some of his head in the corner of one of your pictures out the window on the train ride home and took a wild guess
[Kyoukanut]: and 3. c:
[Kyoukanut]: oh yeah that
[Yaomomo (✿◡‿◡)]: …
[Yaomomo (✿◡‿◡)]: Should I be worried about that face you're making?
[Kyoukanut]: no not at all
[Kyoukanut]: ( •̀ ω •́ )y
[Yaomomo (✿◡‿◡)]: Oh
[Yaomomo (✿◡‿◡)]: Well, back to the translation
[Kyoukanut]: just know that i'm rooting for you
[Yaomomo (✿◡‿◡)]: My relationship with Todoroki isn't like that
[Kyoukanut]: ( •̀ ω •́ )y
[Kyoukanut]: ( •̀ ω •́ )y
[Yaomomo (✿◡‿◡)]: So the song is about meeting an old friend again and, despite the late hour, deciding to take the scenic route home in order to delay their parting
Tuesday, 7:44 p.m.
t₁ = —4 days
Momo studied the wine red gown laid out on her bed, something feeling strangely wrong about her choice. It fit her, and it looked nice on her (she knew these things for sure because she had just tried it on) and yet she couldn't shake the feeling that it wasn't appropriate for the upcoming ball.
With a sigh, Momo removed the pins from her hasty hair mockup and felt the swish of her hair brush against her shoulders as it all tumbled down. She gently placed the pins on her nightstand and immediately began combing her fingers through her hair.
What could be wrong? What could be wrong? She could only wonder as she turned to search through her closet once more.
Momo paused just a moment in, her delicate brow furrowing as she pursed her lips and realized, for the very first time, that she wore an awful lot of reds and pinks to parties. It seemed as if she'd always favored those colors, and not to say that she was tired of them (oh no, not at all), but maybe it was time to mix things up?
She hummed and cracked her knuckles. Her mother had told her earlier in the day that a few new outfits had arrived over the course of the semester, and there felt like no better time than the present to take a pretty gander at them.
Most of them were dresses, of course, but the majority of those weren't ball gowns, and as such, they were put aside immediately for later in the summer, when the dress code wasn't so lofty. However, there was at least one dress that was sufficiently suited for the upcoming event— at least, and not for sure, because the moment she saw it, Momo stopped searching.
She reached out and gently took the dress off its hanger. It was a pretty, blue thing, with a long, richly-embroidered skirt that faintly shimmered in the dim closet light. Trying it on, she found was soft and light and wonderfully easy to move around in, almost like wearing a cloud. It was perfect.
In short order, she had it replace the red gown on her bed, and Momo was once again smiling to herself as she bustled about, figuring out the rest of her outfit-to-be for that night.
Once the sun had set and twilight set in, Momo paused, staring out the window at the moon as she rose over the horizon. Then suddenly, she shuddered all over.
Something major was going to happen, it seemed.
(Was she ready for it?)
Thursday, 6:56 a.m.
t₁ = —2 days
Shoto wasn't sure how to feel about returning to the old house again. He stood outside the doorway, gripping its key as if doing so would help him keep hold of his own mind. Sure, it had hardly been two weeks since moving, but it had been even longer since he'd stepped foot inside, thanks to the dorms.
"Third row from the top, rightmost drawer, in the black box with the golden clasp," he said, verbalizing his thoughts to keep his memory from slipping away.
It really sucked that everyone had forgotten to move his mother's things from the attic and into the new home. But, it was just going to be something he had to deal with right now, so with a sigh, Shoto unlocked the front door and walked inside.
All the lights were out.
(Good; that meant no one was home.)
"I'm back," Shoto whispered under his breath as he took off his shoes. He didn't bother to turn the lights back on as he crept through the empty halls; he knew its layout like the back of his hand and could navigate the place blindfolded.
The old, wooden walls creaked and groaned as the wind blew outside, but they were the only sounds in the house. Not even Shoto could hear his own footsteps, as was his lifelong habit.
Eventually, he found it, the door designed such that it blended in almost perfectly with the walls, hiding the set of stairs he had always walked by but never up.
"Third row from the top, rightmost drawer, in the black box with the golden clasp," he repeated to himself, under his breath this time, to calm his restless nerves as he pulled the door open. Surprisingly, it was silent, and the staircase behind it, while leading into pitch black, seemed well-maintained.
He wasn't sure what else he had been expecting, so he decided not to think too hard about it and just walk up the stairs.
He was in uncharted territory now, so the darkness did unsettle him now. He tiptoed up the stairs, his heart skipping a beat when there were no more stairs to go up.
"Third row from the top, rightmost drawer, in the black box with the golden clasp." He mouthed it this time, too afraid of disturbing the stiff air in the attic to even take another step forward.
Several minutes passed, and his eyes adjusted to the dark enough to spot a sliver of light peeking through the wall. Finally, a window.
Shoto crept blindly toward the light, a little concerned at the lack of objects in his path. However, once he got to the window, opened the shutters, and let all the morning light stream in, he found that there was simply a path to the window that cut through all of the attic's clutter.
It was a lot of clutter.
He had not been expecting so many things to be squirrelled away in the attic.
"Jewelry box," he said out loud, reminding himself of his quest. "Third row from the top, rightmost drawer, in the black box with the golden clasp."
How does one organize an attic? Shoto had no idea, so he simply began his search by pushing away the nearest box and wade deeper into the mess. The next step was to push away the box behind the last, and then the box behind that, and then the box behind that…
There was too much dust for most of it to fly too far up. Instead, most of it clumped up into terrible wads of fake lint that stuck to everything with a static charge. Shoto found himself constantly shaking clumps of them out of his clothes as he scoured the attic until at one point, he found a particularly large one on the floor in a place that had been the crack between two boxes until a few seconds ago.
Repulsed, yet still overcome with morbid curiosity, Shoto picked it up to find that it was not actually an exceptionally large dust bunny, but instead, something else he couldn't yet identify.
He shook it out, displeased at the amount of dust it displaced. "Oh?" he said aloud, for underneath the shell of dead skin and microscopic dirt particles, was a fake flower. Its petals were faded, frayed, and ratty, but still clearly some sort of flower.
No way. There was no way it was the flower from eleven years ago. Unless…
There had only ever been real plants in the Todoroki home.
Shoto stared at the cloth and plastic creation in his hand. The girl he'd dreamt of for so long was real. Those dreams had been made of memories all along. Mostly. There were still the times when they seemed to be current-age, but those didn't matter. She was real and—
He sneezed, the dust having tickled his nose for too long now, and his entire train of thought was wiped out as a result. Shoto's eyes watered from the sudden dust cloud that had come out of the flower, so he pocketed the treasure and went back to searching for his mother's old ring.
It wasn't long before he stumbled upon the jewelry box nestled between a stack of leather-bound books and a half-open box of clothes. However, Shoto didn't have the time to be reverent with finding the ring box, for just outside the window, he heard someone lumbering through the courtyard towards the house.
As quickly as he could, Shoto yanked open the proper drawer, scooped up the only black box that sat inside, and stuffed said box into his pocket so that he could vault over all the crap in the attic and get the fuck out of this house.
He sprinted down the stairwell, rushed all the way through the halls, and barely managed to snatch up his shoes when the front door opened.
Shoto narrowed his eyes at the massive figure that walked in and tightened his grip on his shoes.
His father looked down at him and looked like he was about to speak.
"Bye," Shoto said, sprinting barefoot out the door.
Friday, 4:13 p.m.
t₁ = —1 day
He hadn't had the ring for much longer than a day, and yet Shoto was once again taking it out of its box to look at the sapphire as it glittered in the light. It was a nice ring; he hoped to see it again after tomorrow night.
Shoto lay his head on his arm, still staring at the ring. Just one more day.
He wondered what would happen.
Author's Note i. oh my god i'm publishing something longer than 1.2k words it's a post-2019 miracle! ! ! and what's that? ? ? ? i have the rest of the fic already written and have an update schedule in mind? ? ? ? ? well how about that
for real tho i wrote basically nothing in all of 2019. what a depressing year. everything i wrote that year was out of spite for someone who once told me no one would ever read what i write. (i'm not very productive on spite, as you can see) i actually was only able to start this bc someone decided to comment on every chapter of one of my other fics, orchid, and i was suddenly filled with a mighty desire to write more fic because oh my god, people read my stuff and have thoughts on it. so, you all have stardust_make_a_wish on ao3 to thank for this.
anyway is the writing in this fic any good? idk. you tell me. no, really, don't be afraid to tell me i suck and list all the details why. i haven't written this much for these characters in about a year, so i am definitely going to have characterization and pacing issues. ofc this being prewritten, there's not much i can do to fix those kinds of big problems, but i just want some good concrit for next time because i am shooting for a next time. *finger guns*
thank you so much for reading! please leave reviews, and as always, have a greaaaaaat daaaayyy~~~