Word Count: 7,380
— 7:18 p.m. —
"Let's play Twenty Questions," said the masked girl in his arms as they began their waltz.
"Sure," said Shoto. He was good enough at dancing that he could sort of hold a conversation as he did it. "I'm not really that good at coming up with questions though."
"That's all right; I'll start then," she assured him, then hummed for a moment. "I suppose the best place to start is where have you been all this time?"
"Shizuoka prefecture," he answered. Fuyumi told him to try and stay as anonymous as he could for the night, so that was a good answer, right?
"That's not too far," commented his dance partner.
"About an hour from here," he said, then realized it was his turn to ask something. "Umm…" Everything he'd ever thought he'd want to ask her seemed to fly out of his brain right at that exact moment, as he guided her into a spin and watched her hair seemingly float off her shoulders as she did so. "What's your favorite color?"
"I know it might not seem like it, but it's actually red," she replied. "I almost went with a red gown tonight, but for some reason, I changed to this one."
So it was true. There was something out there pulling at their strings.
"Mom…" he said under his breath.
His dance partner shot him a quizzical look. "What was that?"
"Nevermind," Shoto quickly said. "Your turn."
She hummed, careful to have it harmonize with the background strings. "I'm assuming you go to high school, right?"
"Of course," he said, wondering if she'd seen him on TV during the Sports Festival this year. "Did that count as a question?"
"Sure, but that means I'm counting that question just now too." She flashed him a cheeky grin. "But just so we're even, I'm in high school too."
"I wouldn't have expected anything less from the girl who walks my dreams," he murmured, but again, her hearing was sharper than he realized.
"Your dreams?"
Oh whoops; that probably freaked her out. It didn't feel like she was repulsed, though, so Shoto simply shifted his eyes off to the side, bit the bullet, and told her the truth. "Yeah. There's this one recurring dream I've had as long as I can remember where I'm here."
"And you're really young again?" she asked, to which he nodded.
"Most of the time this girl comes up to me and takes me around, and then at the end of it, if I haven't woken up by that point, she'll give me something."
"But then sometimes, you're just the same age you are right now, and we meet at a party quite like this. Sometimes by a pillar, sometimes under the stars. But always, it's me finding you, isn't it?" she continued.
Every word she said was right on the dot. If he hadn't been the one to start this conversation, Shoto probably would have been a little freaked out. "I didn't get to ask my question yet," he said even though he had no idea what he wanted to ask.
"Wait a bit," she said. "This dance is going to end really soon."
As if on cue, the last few notes of the piece wrapped up, and the song was over. Shoto and the girl let go of one another and bowed in acknowledgement.
— 7:29 p.m. —
Just as soon as the formalities were over, Momo took her wallflower's hand in her own, leading him off the dance floor and onto one of the balconies to feel the cool, night air. There, she let go and leant against the railing so that the wind could maybe blow her blush away.
Her friend soon joined her, and she could smell what was probably his shampoo from how close he was. (It was nice.)
"What should I call you?" he asked.
Momo thought about it for several minutes. Had he asked her before they'd danced, she would have told him in a heartbeat, she was so tired of not knowing who he was. But now, she'd begun having too much fun with their game, and irrational as it sounded, she felt as if revealing their true names would end it far too soon.
She stared at him staring at the rising moon, his expression hidden behind his mask
"I'm not going to tell you my real name, just to maintain the air of a masquerade's mystery," she slowly began, "but until you find me again and know who I am, you can call me… Yoru." (After a character in a fun manga she started reading recently, but he didn't need to know that.) She tilted her head at him. "And what about you?"
There was a pause, noticeably longer than her own, as he came up with a masked identity.
"Toki," he finally said.
They let each other's names settle in for a little while.
"Yoru."
"Yes, Toki-san?"
"I've forgotten how many questions we've gone through," Toki confessed.
Momo smiled. "We were probably playing it wrong anyway," she said.
There was another silence. (There seemed to be an awful lot of those, but luckily, that didn't make their time bad.)
"So in your dreams," Momo began, and she felt Toki look away from the sky and at her. "I've had dreams like those, too. I'm at a party much like this one right now, and I'm always looking for someone. I can never fully remember what he looks like, but that doesn't stop me from trying to find him anyway. Mostly, I don't, but sometimes, I do." She paused to really feel the air in her lungs as she breathed in the night and fixed her gaze on the horizon. (She was afraid to continue, but if he had been able to start this conversation, she would be able to continue it too.) "And last night, he looked like you."
"Huh." (The way he said it was frustratingly nondescript; just what did he mean by "huh"?) "That's…" He paused, seeming to struggle with words until he finally settled on one. "Weird."
Momo was now uncertain as to whether she had said the right thing, and all the confidence of the night was leaving her like sand from a broken sandbag. But she clung to what she had left and kept her cool just the way all her hero training had taught her to. "I suppose it is," she sighed. "After all, it's a well-established scientific fact that our brains cannot make up faces, so it should be impossible for me to have seen you as you are right now in my dreams unless we've met again without realizing it."
"No, that's not what I meant. I wasn't calling you weird," Toki explained. "You were right earlier, when we were dancing. About my dreams."
"That it's always me, looking for you," Momo repeated, mostly to herself, but still speaking aloud for more reason than mere surprise. Her gaze, the one she'd trained to the horizon, suddenly broke.
— 7:37 p.m. —
Yoru faced him, first turning her head to meet his gaze all at once, then slowly opening her whole body to him. There was a fantastic degree of emotion in her eyes, none of which Shoto knew how to put to words. But then again, he also had no clue to the names of his own current feelings; just feeling them was enough at the moment.
Dream girls were important, especially when real. Especially when you were the boy in her dreams too. Shoto wasn't sure what this meant. He'd have to ask his mother, and she'd call it what she wanted. Fate. Destiny. (Idiocy.)
Shoto realized he had no idea what to say next that would forward the conversation.
The night wind then blew as if on cue, irritating Shoto's eyes.
"Ah, fuck," he said, taking a step back and turning away so he could try to get a handle on the pain.
"Are you okay? What happened?" Yoru immediately asked, rushing to his side.
"I'm fine. It's nothing, just my contacts," answered Shoto, blinking rapidly as a couple tears fell into his hand, taking the pain with them. "I'm wearing a set I'm not used to."
"Oh," Yoru said.
(A warmth he hadn't previously noticed vanished, and once he could think clearly again, Shoto realized she had put her hand on his arm while they waited for him to recover.)
"So, what kind of high school do you go to?" she asked him suddenly, leaving him without an opportunity to acknowledge her touch. "If you attend a specialty school, that is."
(Shoto let it go, deciding she had simply been concerned.) "I go to a heroics high school," he said, shaking the tiny puddle of tears off his hand and readjusting his mask.
Yoru hummed in the way people do when they're very pleased but don't want it to show too much, a very specific action that Shoto was only familiar with because Fuyumi was in the habit of doing it whenever he talked about his classmates. "What a coincidence," said Yoru as she averted her eyes, "So do I."
"Mask and all?"
Yoru snorted, but quickly masked it with proper laughter. "Maybe if I ever needed to go into vigilantism," she said.
The wind suddenly picked up again, and her Yoru's mask, likely already loosened from the dance, had its feathers catch a sudden wind, tugging at the rest of the mask, which started to slip. Yoru yelped, her hand flying to her face to keep her costume in place, and Shoto averted his gaze as quickly as he would had it been anything else.
"The ribbons probably make it unfit for outside use," she sighed. "It's such a shame, because it looks and feels nicer than an elastic."
She paused, and Shoto continued to stare back into the party.
"Could you help me retie it?" she asked. "I'm facing the other direction, so you don't have to worry about anything."
"Of course," said Shoto lowly.
Neither of them said a word as he began fumbling with the ribbons, tying and retying them over and over again. (They were just too slippery to stay put! The knot never seemed to stay symmetrical! Her hair kept slipping in!)
After a few minutes that felt more like forever, he finally decided it was good enough. He let go of the ribbons and left them alone this time.
Yoru put a hand up to feel the knot, then turned around to face him again, her cheeks oddly flushed. "Thank you, Toki-san," she said.
Shoto found himself staring at her without a reply for much longer than he would care to admit afterward. She didn't seem to mind anyway.
He felt a sudden jolt in his chest as he remembered the ring. "Oh, by the way, I promised my mother I'd give you something if I saw you here tonight," he said, digging around in his pocket.
"Your mother?" Yoru asked.
Shoto made a noise of confirmation. "I told her all about you, and how I've seen you in my dreams…" He stopped himself for a moment, then pulled his hand out of his pocket, ring kept out of sight in his fist. "Sorry. That must have been strange to hear."
"Oh, no! No, it's fine. It would be weirder to have never mentioned these things to anyone," Yoru assured him. "I… may have told one of my friends about you too."
— 7:48 p.m. —
"Hold out your hand," Toki said.
Momo obeyed, and Toki dropped something small and light into her hand.
"Oh!" she exclaimed, seeing it gleam in the mix of warm party light and silvery moonlight. She brought it closer to her face. It was hard to judge the quality of the stone or ring in the light they had, but in the end, it was his intentions that mattered, was it not?
"Thank you," said Momo, looking back up at Toki so that she could smile at him. She began to slip the ring onto her middle finger, but it got stuck on her second knuckle.
"Oh, it doesn't fit there," she said to herself, and she tugged it back off.
"That's weird. My mom told me she bought it with her first paycheck when she was our age. She probably would have worn it on that finger too, so I don't know how it wouldn't fit," Toki said.
Momo kept the ring in her palm for the time being. She gave Toki a look, trying not to smile at his naïveté. "People have differently sized hands, you know," she said, picking up one of his before he could protest and putting it palm to palm with her free one. "Your mother must have had very delicate hands if her fingers were thinner than my own piano hands."
The two peeked at one another through the gaps in their fingers, and Momo couldn't help but be struck by the way the moonlight made Toki's white hair appear to glow. She wanted to say he looked a bit odd, but in the society they lived and at the party they attended, she had no solid basis to justify that claim. Perhaps he was actually familiar, and there had been some alterations done for the night that made her subconscious brain declare him odd.
Toki was the one who first withdrew his hand.
"You should be a bit more wary of your hands around me," he said. "I have a, uh, history."
Momo raised an eyebrow at him as she brought her own hand back to her side. "A history?"
"Long story," he hastily said, diverting his gaze to somewhere just beyond her shoulder for that particular moment. "You play the piano, you said?"
"Yes, I play a little bit. Not as much as I used to, but—" she stole a glance into the ballroom to check the clock that hung over the main entrance— "I could still show you, if you want."
His eyes returned to her, and he had but one word as his response: "How?"
Now at this, Momo did not hesitate to take his hand into her free one and start leading him away.
— 8:01 p.m. —
Shoto wasn't sure how they managed to slip by the ever-present staff by the door, where they stood in perpetual wait for some poor soul to ask for guidance to the restroom, but he wasn't going to question Yoru's magic. Besides, they were running through the dark halls of… well, he supposed it was someone's house (He never had bothered to figure out who was hosting tonights masquerade, had he?")- at the moment, and the time to question that particular stunt had probably passed at this point.
Yoru slowed down, and they stopped in a bright pool of moonlight in the middle of a long, dark hallway. (She let go of his hand.) Unsurprisingly, neither of them was particularly winded, but man, did running in dress shoes suck. Which, now that he thought about it, begged the question…
"Are you okay?" he asked, remembering that beneath Yoru's gathered skirts, she wore high heels.
"I'm fine; don't worry about it." She waved him off with a smile, doing ankle rotations all the while. "My hero costume has heels too. Much sturdier than these, of course, but it's just application of concept in this case."
Shoto prodded his hamstring, wincing at what felt like a blister forming. He really should have taken Fuyumi's advice and put a band-aid on the back of his foot earlier. "So then why did we stop?"
Yoru put both feet back on the ground and pointed straight down the hall. Shoto squinted, but the particularly bright moon made it hard to see into the dark. "We've just about arrived at a room with a piano," she said. She started walking again, paused, turned back, and made a "Come on!" motion at him.
Shoto ran to catch up, then fell in step with her. "How do you know this?"
"I, um, was very early, so I did a bit of exploring before dinner started!" she replied. They had just left the patch of moonlight, so he couldn't see her face. However, since his temporary blindness meant he also could no longer see where he was headed, he decided to just be grateful she grabbed his hand again to guide him through the dark.
They stopped in front of what Shoto supposed was a door, unless he had made a grave mistake throughout the night and was about to meet his demise in this dark dead end deep in the recesses of an unfamiliar home.
Yoru opened the door.
(Shoto wasn't afraid of the dark. He just usually had his flames to keep him company.)
Her hand slipped out of his as she entered the room, and he slipped in after her, taking great care to close the door behind them. He listened closely for its quiet click amidst the steady clacking of high heels on tile reverberating through the room, and only turned around when he knew it had shut.
There was probably more to the room than what Shoto could see, but the only thing that felt like it existed, if just barely, was the black grand piano, shining like the stars themselves as it stood alone in the middle of a pool of moonlight.
Yoru stepped into the moonlight, and the last echoes of her gait faded away. She turned around, the scrape of her shoes on the tile feeling much louder in the empty silence than it actually was. There was a pause as they let that, too, fade away, and the stillness of the scene returned.
Then, Yoru smiled, tilting her head as if to tease him for being so shy. "Come on," she called. "It would feel weird if you just stayed there in the shadows, Toki."
Shoto shook himself out after staring for so long, then made his way over to the grand piano, the sound of his footsteps the only thing to be heard. Yoru smiled at him again, gathered her skirts, and sat down at the piano bench.
"You sit down too," she insisted. "It would feel weird if you didn't."
And so Shoto just barely fit himself onto the piano bench next to her. Would this really be the best way to play? Well, it was up to her.
As he continued to say nothing, Yoru sat up straight, took a deep breath, and began to play.
— 8:08 p.m. —
Momo unfortunately had no pockets, so she dropped the ring onto her lap from the moment she sat down. Yet, she couldn't help but to worry about it as she played. Would it fall off? Would she forget it was there, then lose it once she stood up again? She needed a better method of safekeeping.
She picked the ring up off her lap once she was finished and held it up to the light to see it sparkle. A sapphire ring bought through the thin pocketbook of a sixteen-year-old girl some decades ago, huh? It was surprising how well it matched her outfit for the night, as if it were meant to be.
She slipped it onto her ring finger, where this time, it was a perfect fit.
"Oh. Are you sure you want to keep it there?" asked Toki.
"If that's what you want me to be," she coyly replied, emboldened by the disguise (but flushing all the same).
"Huh?"
"Toki, can you play anything?"
"Uhhh…" His brain appeared to be buffering, his train of thought still stuck at the previous station. "The Blue Danube," he said.
"On the piano?" She would have thought that he would have mentioned being able to play the piano himself when he asked her.
"Yes. But it was a duet."
Momo held onto the edge of the piano bench and looked up at him with her head half upside-down. "Do you still remember how to play?" she asked.
Toki thought about it for a minute. "More or less."
She sat up straight and proper again. "Primo or secondo?" She readied her hands on the ivory keys.
"Huh?"
She gestured to the piano. "I want to play with you. I've played that song before, too. Did you do primo or secondo?"
"Oh," said Toki, but he put his hands on the keyboard anyway. "Secondo."
"All right. I'll lead this time, then."
Three, two, one. They breathed in as one, and let their bodies guide them through the rest.
Even when the piano fell dark, they continued on from memory until there was nothing left to be played.
— ? ? ? —
The moon had already removed their spotlight after they finished. They fumbled a few times (perhaps from lack of practice, perhaps from lack of experience; who was to tell?), but they were still left mysteriously breathless at the end.
Shoto's hands left the keys, and one landed on Yoru's, resting on the piano bench. It felt cool to the touch, but warm just beneath the surface; he couldn't tell if that was simply how hands felt when you held them or if it were a side effect of his quirk.
He turned to face her, and despite the lack of good light, he still found himself staring into the stars reflected in her eyes. The silver thread embroidered into her mask still gleamed in the pitch black, and the white feathers that extended out one side seemed to glow.
The darkness enveloped them completely, making Shoto feel as though this was the entire world as he knew it. Himself. Yoru. Sitting on a piano bench, the only things visible the faint, pale reflections from their masks and eyes.
The air was not as still as it first appeared. Shoto felt a soft caress sweep beneath his mask and against his cheek as gently as a dawn's first light, growing stronger as the moment drew on.
He leaned into it.
Something soft and warm pressed against his lips. At first, he wasn't sure what to do past this point, but he leaned into it.
Fumbling, tumbling, they made more mistakes here than in the duet, but he leaned into it. A strange gnawing opened up in Shoto's stomach and chest. His hand pressed down on Yoru's as he put more weight onto the bench, encouraged further by the surprising strength with which she put into her half.
He leaned into her.
She tasted like cherry chapstick, and the moment he realized this, he simply stopped thinking at all. He became nothing but a collection of feelings. Butterflies, tickling at his everything. Breath, mixing with another's. Hair, working its way into his mouth. Heat, burning just beneath the surface. An endless eternity before him, a time without end and a rhyme without stead.
Yet somehow, it came to an end. The air was colder than it had been before, stinging his throat as it entered his lungs. His heart beat harder than it had been before, thundering through his ears with its every skip, bump, and thump. The moon, now gone, left the room darker than it had been before (but he now had an illumination that could not go away).
"We should… go back," said Yoru, still capturing her breath again.
Something scraped gently across his cheek and over his forehead. The thin elastic thread that cut into his head ceased to be a pain. The mask was in Yoru's hands.
Shoto gulped, the static in his mind hardly enough to power even a lightbulb of thought. "Yeah, we… we should," he said. His free hand began to wander as well. Much later, when he looked back on this time, he would say it happened without him fully realizing it. However, in the moment, he was aware. It was with careful deliberation that he lifted Yoru's mask off her face (and she allowed to come undone the very thing he had earlier fixed).
They had nothing but the night's deep shadow to shroud them now.
"It really is impossible to see in here," Yoru said softly, and she leaned into him.
— ? ? ? —
There was a chill in the shape of his hand on her cheek as he left it to halfheartedly tug his mask out of her hand. Against her better judgement, Momo sighed against him, not wanting it to end.
But end it did anyway.
Momo took back her own mask and tied it on again, the residual heat from Toki's hands hardly a substitute for the real thing.
Every effort in the world seemed lesser than what it took for Momo to lift her leaden lap off the piano bench, helped, of course, by Toki, who had taken the first initiative to leave. Every step her jellied legs took past that required a herculean effort to make; the door that walled them off from the outside world was just barely moveable by her featherlight-feeling self.
She stared down at the tips of her shoes peeking out from beneath her dress as they made their way down the hall, step by careful step. Despite their snail's pace, she still clutched his hand for dear life, for never before had she felt so unsteady in her heels.
"So," she said, though in reality there was no voice behind her words; she merely pushed them out of her mouth with breath and air alone. "Tell me about the people you know."
"The people I know?" Toki's voice, though hardly more than a whisper, felt like it boomed through the empty hall in comparison to Momo's voiceless request.
"Yes, like your friends at school or your senpais at an internship."
Toki's hand shifted in hers, and not for the first time, she was afraid.
"Friends at school," he repeated, toning himself down. (There was a pause.) "There's one I'm not too close with I have in mind, but I could pick another."
"Pick whomever you want," she assured him, doing her best to smile despite staring downward.
Toki was quiet for a moment, then let out a quick breath. "There's this one person in my class I'm not too close with," he repeated, more quietly this time. "They're really good at everything they do, and it's hard not to notice their ability. They always know what to do in any given situation, but…" He trailed off, apparently ruminating. "It's really easy to break their confidence, and they lack initiative at times because of it."
"They sound quite sensitive," said Momo, understanding all too well what that kind of insecurity felt like.
"Maybe. But that doesn't make them any lesser a person to admire. I think that as long as they know others trust and believe in them, they can be among the best out there after graduation."
Even though she knew he wasn't referring to her, Momo still felt something fluttering in her belly as her face grew warm. "Just knowing that someone else out there thinks so highly of you can really do wonders for self-esteem," she said.
"What about you?"
"Huh?" Momo finally pulled her eyes away from the ground and looked at Toki. Her heart skipped a beat and her brain short-circuited when she saw his face, but somehow her autopilot was good enough to keep her from tripping at that moment.
"Tell me about someone you know," he evenly said.
"Oh, yes," said Momo, turning away, this time to stare at the walls, out the windows, and into the gardens all done up in moonlight. (Why was her classmate Todoroki the first to come to mind?) "Well, I don't know this person particularly well either," she began, voice shifting up in both pitch and volume from embarrassment.
"That's fine," murmured Toki. (How could he be so relaxed about this?)
Momo squeezed his hand tighter and hoped that her freezing free hand on her face would cool her cheeks a bit. "Anyway, they started off school very aloof—" her throat held in her words for a surprised second when Toki squeezed her hand back— "but they were always easily one of our best, too. They still tend to keep to themself, but once people started realizing they were simply awkward and started actively inviting them into everyone's worlds, they really… they really opened up!"
"Sounds like the brooding, emo type," Toki commented.
Momo giggled, and her butterflies dissipated and left with her laughter. "No, actually. I think that's how a lot of the world likes to see them, but inside, they're really just a dorky sweetheart who just wants to help people."
"Isn't everyone?" Toki asked.
Momo couldn't tell if he was being rhetorical or genuine based off his tone alone. Regardless, she faced him again (and let go of her skirts to readjust her grip for a moment). "Yeah, I think s— WOAH!"
Quick as a blink, Toki caught her as she fell, but even though they both ended up on the floor, once Momo regained her bearings, she felt as if she had missed the ground.
"Are you all right?" he asked, staring intently at her.
Momo clutched his arms, shaking a bit from her shock. Her thoughts were reeling, but still she opened her mouth to say, "I'm okay," but the words simply refused to be said. She shut her jaw and furrowed her brow, trying again only to meet the same end; she felt like a fish, but she had to try again, and—
"You don't have to answer that," Toki said.
A little fragment of her temporary mutism flew away and fetched a bit of her mind to stay in its stead. With Toki's reassurances freeing her thoughts, Momo allowed herself only to feel, just for the moment.
There was the worn roughness of the old carpet pressed up against her feet. The smooth caress of her dress skirt resting upon her legs. The light tickling of her hair brushing against her sensitive neck. The simple softness of Toki's blazer clutched in her hands. The comforting warmth and pressure of his hands still on her sides. The way her heart stopped pounding so much the longer he held her.
Bit by bit, the parts of Momo's mind unlocked themselves and returned her words.
"I'm fine," she said, and there was silence. She began to let him go, and soon, their hands were on their laps. She looked up from her lap.
His face was pale, his mask was white; it was all aglow in the moonlight. Yet, as her eyes wandered away from his and down to the lips, off to the side, she noticed a smudge— no, two, three, four? She leaned in and squinted, for it was always strangely hard to see in even the brightest moonlight.
Toki put a hand to her forehead to keep her from progressing even farther forward.
Momo blinked once, twice, then felt suddenly as if she were burning up. (Apparently she wasn't entirely back yet.) "I think…" she began, the mortification of their actions finally sinking in. "I think that some of my lipstick… it…" She gave up on saying it and just wiped some away, showing him the incriminating makeup that rubbed off on her hand.
"Oh," he said, and he took a swipe at his mouth with the palm of his hand. They stared at the resulting smudge.
Toki's phone abruptly vibrated, and both teens practically jumped apart, startled out of their wits. Momo breathed in time with her heartbeat to calm herself down as Toki unlocked his phone and checked what was up.
"My brother's drunk," he said plainly. "My sister says to meet them at the foyer in a few minutes."
The words hung in the air for Momo to process. "Oh." It was her turn to say the word now, so she did it again, more quietly, more heavily this time. "Oh."
He shut off the phone and pocketed it. Both sets of eyes went back to the dark smear on the back of his hand.
"I don't know what to do about that now," he said. "I didn't think to bring a handkerchief."
Momo desperately wished she could make something at that moment. Instead, she asked, "How long is a few minutes?" The first strands of a plan were already coming together in her head.
"Dunno," said Toki. "With Mimi, it could mean anywhere between three and twenty minutes."
"It can take a while to wash off makeup with just water, and if we rush it, it might end up messier than before," said Momo slowly. "So we better not take the risk of finding a bathroom to just try that." She paused for a moment. Her hands were becoming restless at her thoughts. "I don't have to go for a while yet, since my parents like to stay a party's full duration. If you want, I could…"
Again, she couldn't bring herself to finish her sentence, but Toki at least understood where she was going.
"Go for it," he said.
In an instant, Momo had gotten in close again and began wiping their sin off his face with her hands.
— ? ? ? —
That.
That had been.
That was.
…
That had been something.
Shoto tried not to think about how he felt like he had been making out with her hand just now. He was alone now, walking through the last hall to the foyer as Yoru had instructed him, but he could feel her still in every part of him she had touched.
He stopped upon reaching the empty foyer, and he stood there.
Just.
Stood there.
The hall opposite from him had a warm, faint light coming from it. The ballroom. How long had the masquerade gone on for now? He almost didn't want to know what time it was.
He stood there.
He didn't know how everything that happened came to happen. He didn't know what he had expected coming here. He didn't know how he had felt about Yoru, about that childhood friend from so long ago, before tonight. The only feeling he could put name to was uncertainty.
He stood there.
Fuyumi came in, guided by a maid in a mask and dragging a lackadaisical Natsuo along behind her. Yup, he was definitely inebriated.
Fuyumi said something, but he didn't really hear it. Shoto said something in response, but he didn't really know it. It ended in Fuyumi grabbing his hand.
The three of them thanked the maid, apologized for leaving so soon, and walked out the door.
The fresh air woke Shoto from his dreamlike haze, and another identifiable feeling rose up inside him.
Yearning.
— ? ? ? —
Momo inspected her face by the yellowish light of the bathroom. She'd cleaned off her hands, as evidenced by the heap of makeup removal pads smudged dark red and lying in her trash can, but despite the similar problem on her face, she found herself reluctant to erase it. There was just something hypnotizing about it. Combined with the weighty knowledge that this was her first, she just found herself staring at the marks on her face.
Her phone vibrated, the sound startling her from how loudly it rattled on the counter. (It was Kyouka again.) Needing to distract herself, Momo finally opened up the conversation and read through her best friend's barrage of texts.
[16:51]
[Kyoukanut]: awww, c'mon yaomomo you know you love meeee
[Kyoukanut]: well i think i've let denki suffer long enough so see you laterrrr
[18:03]
[Kyoukanut]: this is denki
[Kyoukanut]: wow i cant believe i got that kyoulas phone keyboard is so small
[Kyoukanut]: lmao nevermind
[Kyoukanut]: anywya kyouka says to mail her some of the food youre having for dinner
[Kyoukanut]: so i iust wanna say that i wanna be mailed some od that food too bc shes right this place sucks
[Kyoukanut]: anyway shes coming back from the batheopm so byeeeee
[18:18]
[Kyoukanut]: you can just ignore that
[19:31]
[Kyoukanut]: okay but like don't ignore ME
[Kyoukanut]: (っ °Д °;)っ
[20:08]
[Kyoukanut]: if you text me back later and say that you WEREN'T chillin with either
[Kyoukanut]: a) mystery boy
[Kyoukanut]: b) todoroki shoto
[Kyoukanut]: c) the love of your god damn life or
[Kyoukanut]: d) all of the above, who miraculously all turned out to just be todoroki all along
[Kyoukanut]: then i swear i'm gonna like
[Kyoukanut]: idk be really sad
[Kyoukanut]: also i need help on the math homework ο(=•ω=)ρ⌒
The texts went on, each expressing some progressing stage of concern vaguely masked by Kyouka's normal brash nature. By the time Momo reached the bottom again, the three dots had already appeared again.
[Kyoukanut]: yo dude you've been offline for hours
Momo tried not to think too much about all the things that had happened in those few hours, lest she accidentally combust with mortification.
I left my phone on my bed
[Kyoukanut]: bruhhhhhhh
I didn't pick a dress with pockets （；´д｀）
[Kyoukanut]: okay fine valid
[Kyoukanut]: but like what happened?
This time, Momo was forced to think about it, and while her whole body felt hotter than the fire of ten thousand blue giants, she did not actually explode, so she sat down and told Kyouka everything. The dance, the banter, the kiss, e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g.
[Kyoukanut]: AIUHSAFHUIDGJDAHIUADJNFS
[Kyoukanut]: DUDE WHAT?
Kyouka, I love you and all, but please just scroll up
I'm too embarrassed to say it again
(*/ω＼*)
[Kyoukanut]: okay okay okay
[Kyoukanut]: let me get this straight
[Kyoukanut]: you meet mystery boy again against all odds tonight
[Kyoukanut]: he asks you to dance you agree blah blah blah
[Kyoukanut]: blah blah blah words i never thought i'd ever say but boring balcony stuff
[Kyoukanut]: and then you make out on a piano bench in a dark room
(At this point, Momo put down her phone and tried desperately to process all the events of the last few hours herself by staring at the ring still on her finger.)
[Kyoukanut]: all right left on read i can see i'm doing something right then
[Kyoukanut]: so what's his name?
Toki
[Kyoukanut]: TOKI?
Not his real name
I told him to call me Yoru
[Kyoukanut]: his code name's gonna be tokidoki now
[Kyoukanut]: bc being with him gave you the doki-dokis (๑•̀ㅂ•́)و✧
We've never even used code names, Kyouka
[Kyoukanut]: well we do now
Momo sighed and shut off her phone. She stared again at Toki's ring, knowing it would have to come off eventually, just like the makeup. The question beyond that was, where would she keep it? Staff couldn't find out, and who knew what would happen if her mother found out. (She hoped the latter never would.)
She pulled it off her finger, then admired the tiny sapphire chip in the bathroom light. Corundums were pretty gemstones. It was funny how for them, blue and red were just two sides of the same coin. Ruby or sapphire, they were both just crystalline aluminum oxide. She could easily make one herself.
Momo blinked, suddenly lucid. She'd gotten so used to hiding her identity for the last few hours that she'd completely forgotten she could use her quirk again.
She stood up, threaded the ring through a silver chain, and fastened the clasp around her neck.
And now, at last, for the makeup.
With a sigh, she committed every detail to memory— from the hue of her lipstick to the cold, porcelain sink stinging her hands— and got to work.
— ? ? ? —
Fuyumi gave him a funny look as they reentered the house, but she didn't actually say anything. Had he been too quiet on the car ride back? He was pretty sure he was always like that. Maybe it was because he hadn't sassed Natsu for rambling about whatever the whole ride back.
Shoto yawned, suddenly exhausted. He stumbled back to his room, took off his wig and mask, and was about to remove his contacts when he noticed the dark red spots on the underside of the mask. Oh no?
He made his way into the bathroom, flicked on the mirror and inspected the left half of his face.
Oh no.
(They had been so blind in both moments that they had missed some.)
Fuyumi would know how to fix it, but… well, it wasn't as though he knew of any other options.
"Fuyumiii," he called, dead tired but plodding down the hall nonetheless.
"What is it?" Fuyumi called from the other side of the door.
"I need to borrow your makeup remover."
"You need to borrow my what?" she asked, completely incredulous until she opened the door.
The siblings exchanged nary a word, instead staring at one another for several minutes.
Eventually, Fuyumi handed him a fresh stick of lip balm. "If that doesn't work, I'll lend you my makeup remover when I'm done with it."
"Thank you."
"So wh—"
"No."
"Okay."
— 7:47 a.m. —
Hosting a tutoring session the day after the masquerade definitely hadn't been Momo's best idea, but at least this was just Kyouka. She already knew basically everything about last night, and she was too protective of her grades to go overboard with any new interrogation she might dream up.
Still, after Momo fastened her necklace around her neck, she then slipped its pendant underneath her clothes.
(Kyouka didn't need to know everything just yet. Some things she just wanted to keep for herself as long as possible.)
— 9:26 a.m. —
Doing homework felt too mundane a task for the morning after the most dramatic day of his life (which was really saying something, considering his friends), but what else was he supposed to do on the train ride to the hospital? Stare dramatically out the window? No! Because Iida was always telling him that zoning out on the train like that was a bad habit!
Speaking of his friends, he still hadn't told them anything. He wasn't sure how. So instead, he stared at his homework.
Prove that 2csc²(x) — 1 = csc⁴(x) — cot⁴(x)
Hmm, yeah, no thanks. He'd just ask Yaoyorozu later or something.
He sighed and stared out the window. Luckily for him, Natsuo's hangover meant that he and Fuyumi wouldn't be visiting Mom until much later, so Shoto could have all the time he wanted to recount the previous night's, for lack of a better word, insanity.
Shoto shoved his math notebook into his backpack and hopped off the train, working very hard to keep his mind free of thoughts as he walked the few blocks to his mother's hospital.
"I'm back," he said as he entered her ward.
His mother smiled at him just as she always did. "It was lonely without you kids yesterday," she said. "How was the party? Did you find who you were looking for?"
Shoto took in a solid breath and let it go as he sat down. With that out of the way, he finally told his first person about the masquerade and Yoru.
Author's Note iii. ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ
i procrastinated on this chapter a lot bc i was too embarrassed to write the bits in the piano room lol ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ
anyway thank you so much for reading! ! ! you guys should leave me a review where you tell me what your favorite line was or to let me know if that was just Weird (and not in a good way) or maybe tell me if i wrote the kissing thing right c; and as always, have a greaaaaat daaaayyyy~~~