You go back and forth in your mind for several minutes. It feels like you're at war with yourself, like a choir of voices all out of harmony. Some say Himiko needs you. Others scream their love and admiration for Himiko. And others want to keep their options open, fearing commitment. But in the end, you realize the consensus… and you blush.
"I… want Himiko to be mine," you admit to Yu. "I love her. And… I think I'm ready for this. A committed relationship. Because Himiko doesn't deserve anything less."
Yu peers at you from the corner of her eye. She shrugs, a small smile on her face. "Well, I personally think you're insane, but I hope you'll be, like, happy together."
"Thank you," you smirk back. "And hey, if it's any consolation, I'm pretty sure my relationship with Himiko is already more stable than anything you've ever had."
"Ouch," Yu jests. "That hurts. Excuse me for not being able to hold down a man."
"Or a woman."
"That was one time!"
"Sure it was. Unless you count the various three ..."
"Bitch, please. Do you want me to kick you out?" Yu questions.
"You're the one open and honest about your sex life," you retort.
"Touché," Yu comments. "Maybe… I'm a bad influence?"
"You never realized that?"
…
"Wow. That's actually sad."
Yu scoffs. "Fuck you. And you think I'm giving you my quirk someday? Please."
You roll your eyes. "You literally said the only way I'm getting your quirk is if I figure out the secret to eternal youth."
"Yeah, and I haven't seen you make any progress on that."
"Well, you better hope I do, 'cause have you seen your wrinkles?"
Yu looks horrified. "I have wrinkles?"
"Why don't you check in a mirror and find out?"
Yu wrinkles her eyebrows in frustration, causing you to laugh. "See? You're doing it now."
"Not funny!"
You continue to laugh despite her protests before quieting down a minute later.
"I'm not gonna stop you from doing this relationship thing," Yu prefaces. "But you're absolutely sure you want this? You're not… mistaken?"
"Yes. I love Himiko. I'll say it again and again."
"Even to her face?" Yu teases.
"Uh… yeah," you gulp. "Totally."
"You're cute when you're flustered."
"Sorry, I'm taken. Unlike you."
Yu groans, unable to keep up with your wordplay; you now know how to press her buttons too well.
I hope to find the right words and press the right buttons with Himiko tomorrow.
"Well, what are we waiting for?" Yu says, jumping off the couch. "Why don't we spend your Daddy's money and get you a nice outfit?"
"I don't think that's necessary," you insist.
"Are you kidding? This is a special occasion."
Yu tugs at your arm, excited like a kid in a candy store.
"Come on! Let's get matching shoes!"
Turning this from about me to about us? Ah, Yu. Always the cheap skate.
…
Never change.
The next day, you return to your secret spot at the abandoned garden shed, dressed to the nines in the most expensive dress that Yu could find and would fit you.
This may be a little much.
You pace back and forth, the nerves really starting to get to you. You've been here for a while, since sunrise, to be exact. You're not sure how you could have expected Himiko to meet you here that early when you haven't even texted her since yesterday, but you were here anyway.
Himiko is about to be the most important thing in your life. Your heart is beating out of your chest. It's not like when you got adopted or turned into a half-dragon or anything you've experienced. And as your thoughts continue to linger on Himiko's blonde locks and beautiful smile, you become increasingly smitten. Your scales might as well be pink with how flushed your face is.
I can't take it anymore! Where the hell is she?!
Luckily, you don't have to wait too much longer.
Himiko skips along, and you realize Himiko has the same idea as you. While she's still wearing the school sweater vest, poorly hidden underneath is an outfit nearly as fancy as yours. And Himiko, a girl who rarely wears make-up, has on blood-red lipstick, highlighting the fangs poking ever so slightly out of her mouth. There's an heir of confidence to her that you've rarely seen.
Is she… mimicking me?
As far as you can tell, in a desperate attempt to maintain her composure, Himiko is putting her natural affinity for acting to good use, particularly the few times she has pretended to be you using her quirk. You know Himiko well enough to sense the nervousness radiating off of her. Both you and Himiko have come dressed to impress, intending to make the other yours. And you are not going to be outdone in that department.
You couldn't help but lick your lips, starting to see the benefits of dating your childhood best friend. The only person to know you better than Himiko is yourself… and maybe Horie.
…
It's probably Horie.
Seeing Himiko's approach, you allowed your body language to relax; you couldn't let Himiko beat you at your own game. And yet the anticipation… you have to hide how giddy you are and how much your heart wants to melt at the effort Himiko put in.
How did I never notice how lovesick I was?
"H-hi, Kazuha," Himiko greets. "Yo-you look nice."
"Thank you, Himiko," you blush. "You do too."
"Really?"
You nod. "Beautiful."
Himiko's smile brightens, pink arising on her cheeks to match yours. "I'm glad."
The blonde begins playing with her bangs, which you notice she styled.
She's so shy. So… self-conscious. Is it for my sake? Is she that afraid I'll say no?
"Kazuha. About what I said yesterday? The whole…."
"I couldn't exactly forget it," you state.
Himiko tenses up.
"I still feel that way. I…."
Himiko hesitates for only a moment before bowing her head.
"I love you! Please be my girlfriend."
Hearing that validation, you can't help but giggle. "You don't need to be so formal, Himiko. We have to work on some things, but I love you for who you are."
Himiko lifts her head, hope sparkling in her eyes. "Love?"
You grab Himiko's wrists before tenderly pulling her close with your tail.
"You're my greatest treasure," you tell Himiko. "Girlfriend."
"Does that mean…."
You choose that moment to strike, kissing Himiko on the lips, inserting your tongue into her mouth to explore the edges of her fangs for yourself. You caress them with it, pulling Himiko in even closer as the girl goes limp in the knees, losing all her strength as if you were a succubus.
You catch her, never planning on letting her go. Himiko's just that important to you; you know that now. You brush her hair with your hands as Himiko remains starstruck, her brain short-circuiting from happiness. Why? As Himiko's girlfriend, you know better than anyone.
It's because love tastes so much sweeter than blood.
In the blink of an eye, you're an adult. Eighteen years of age, and filling out college applications. Or, in your case, just one application. Your admittance into Yuuei University is a near guarantee, considering your connections to the school. There's nowhere else you'd want to go.
And yet, due to your father's insistence on protocol, he hands you a stack of papers and tells you he wants it back on his desk by morning, before the application deadline.
Most of it is pure busy work, asking for things like age, gender, quirk registration forms, and transcripts. That is the easy part. But the thing that has had you stumped for hours is the resume and essay. The topic of your essay is simple: describe something you love. For you, only one thing comes to mind: Himiko, your girlfriend for the last two years, and still going just as strong as ever. And the resume, in concept, is self-explanatory but obnoxious in execution. And for both, you want to get the wording right and satisfy your father.
As you write your resume and essay, you start thinking about all the opportunities you were presented in high school and fantasize about 'what-ifs.'
The first daydream that comes to mind is the various sports teams who offered you to join them in high school. While sports and hero work don't necessarily go hand in hand, plenty of heroes in training started off as athletes on their school teams. You imagine a world where you did the same, spending much of your time pumping up in the gym or running out on the track, improving your strength, speed, and stamina without the need for Action Surge, considering the ban on using most quirks in regulated sports. You even see a world where you were the captain, leading your team to victory, scouted not just as a hero but as an athlete.
But you don't just see yourself on the field, but on the sidelines. You see yourself dressed in a skimpy cheerleading uniform, shaking your ass and tail for the entire school, dancing during the rallies as you claim center stage. You imagine getting off on the lustful eyes of your peers, knowing you're saving yourself for an extraordinary girl. You consider how joining the team would have certainly improved your acrobatics and charisma, cementing your archetypical status of prom queen, especially by taking the position of captain.
And yet part of you had inklings of instead going into the theater, performing every few months on stage in front of interested peers and parents an art that, while had fallen out of favor in recent decades, is still an important centerpiece of your culture, and allowed you to descend into roles you never thought possible, slipping one mask on for another. You envision a world where you're center stage, the lead role in the school's biggest production to date.
As a daddy's girl, you always wanted to impress your father, who prides himself on his intelligence and position. Part of you considers a version of yourself, desperately trying to impress him, who follows in his footsteps by becoming valedictorian and/or student council president. For the latter, it doesn't just require the brainpower to run the ship efficiently or the grades to earn your peers' respect, but the charisma to garner their vote and to maintain your position as you climb for such esteem. This is especially true in such a competitive college culture as the hero schools have created compared to past generations. That competition is even fiercer for the position of valedictorian, you not being the only person in the school with a quirk enhancing their academic prowess. Getting either job and doing it well would've required a lot of hard work, and the perfectionist side of you wouldn't have let you take a half step, especially as one of the main faces of the school.
During your time in high school, you were offered various electives. Some were more fun, and others more practical. And yet one that caught your attention was the support course, an introduction to support gear, and the closest thing you had to a workshop class. While you weren't often exposed to the students in the support course, your apartment is in the first-year hero student dorms; part of you is interested to see how support gear creation works and how it could affect your combat style and strategy. You see a world where you explored that little interest, tinkering occasionally, stuck between becoming a hero and a support gear designer.
But you didn't just receive opportunities from your high school. In the years after Ryukyu graduated, while it certainly became less frequent, Ryukyu continued attempting to reach out to you, desperate to reconnect with her little sister. In particular was a once in a lifetime opportunity to intern at Dragoir, Ryukuyu's hero agency, named after the clothing line. You can picture a world where you forgave and forgot with Ryukyu, becoming her sidekick until you could get your hero license. You see yourself flying, Ryukyu making good on her promises that you didn't let her fill those years ago. You figure in that world, things would've become more casual with Yu, your training sessions turning more into shopping sprees and drinking games… not that she usually did much else with you, to begin with, in recent years.
You snicker, daydreaming of you, convincing Yu to pick up the slack in your training and her own. Your older sister has become content with the model business, focused more on maintaining her image than saving lives, and becoming the centerfold in not so well respected magazines. Treating heroism as a part-time job, you can't deny how happy Yu is, even if her rank on the billboards is a literal tenth of what it could be with more effort. You image those training sessions, where you'd likely served as a punching bag for Yu to build up her strength and, in turn, increase the efficiency of your shields… assuming that getting stepped on wouldn't destroy them. The amount of Horie or Chiyoko's healing capabilities you'd need certainly doesn't go unnoticed in your visions.
That brings you to another possibility: joining Horie's intensive training with your mother. While you certainly care about Chiyoko, it is no secret that you're Nezu's daughter in the same way that Horie is Chiyoko's… and that doesn't necessarily extend both ways. Without a similar quirk and passion as your mother, it made it more difficult for you two to connect in your youth. But you consider a world where you take a more active role, wanting to learn how to be a field medic for heroes and developing that connection with Recovery Girl. And imagining getting their quirks isn't all that bad a prize, either.
But the opportunity that forces you to daydream the most arrived at your doorstep in junior year. Your father, the principal of a prestigious hero university, had learned about a foreign exchange program in the United States for high school students. At first, you weren't interested in going because you had no place to stay and were content with your life in Japan. But then your friend Melissa, who you'd still been able to keep in touch with through your parents, coincidentally attended the same hero-and-support prep school. She offered you and Himiko to stay with her in the States, attend the prep school under the student exchange program, and spend the summer at one of the world's most recognized hero camps. Six months out of the country, but your daydreaming tells you it would've been a fun six months with a bunch of new people.
As you finish up with your resume, you move on to the essay, focusing on your time with Himiko. You're proud to say you've done plenty of things to help her integrate better into society. But… there are plenty of things you didn't yet find time for or outright decided against. You take the time to reminisce on your thoughts right after you first got with Himiko.
Many options available to you were open to Himiko: sports, cheer, and theater. Convincing Himiko to join any of the ones you entered would've been easy than pie. Just as easy as convincing her to give you her quirk if you were honest. And while you certainly see benefits in Himiko joining such activities, you recognize that her doing it with you would've further increased her dependence on you, regardless of the other benefits they would provide her physically, mentally, and emotionally (not to discredit those benefits as a fair trade-off).
Another option presented to you was training Himiko's quirk in secret. While you knew Himiko could transform into other people (she had turned into a copy of you more times than you can count), and how long she can change depends on how much of a person's blood she consumes, there was much else you didn't know. For example, Himiko had never used animal blood to turn into an animal; you didn't know if it was possible. Nor were you clear on how mutation quirks affected her biology since other quirk types didn't seem to manifest while Himiko was transformed. Part of you wondered if by helping Himiko learn how to use her quirk, not only could she become a better hero someday, but she could start learning how to deal with the impulses her quirk brought her.
But the little things could add up. Himiko has always been very reserved. Even as you rose to popularity in high school, Himiko's only went up by association. She had never put much effort into talking with others, content to call you and Horie her only friends. But you knew socializing with others, and finding friends outside of you, could've done her some good. And yet you also had the power to do the opposite. If Himiko wanted to be anti-social, you could've encouraged her clinginess, valuing her happiness over her independence. The fact you have such power over Himiko is something you never take for granted.
You couldn't think about helping Himiko without considering how to deal with her family. While being a lesbian is widely accepted in the era of quirks, particularly in the year 2178, it merely gives Himiko's parents more reasons to demonize her. Part of you wanted so badly to tell Himiko to disown the family that causes her so much pain and come live at the U.A. dorms. You know that Nezu would've allowed it; he's a hero. And yet another part of you wondered at the time if there was anything you could do to repair the relationship or at least stabilize it.
And yet the ways you considered to help Himiko didn't end there. You recall one day you and Himiko were out on a date, and Himiko impulsively entered a dog rescue, something catching her eye in the window. The next thing you knew, a yellow lab, maybe only a few weeks old, was playfully licking Himiko's face, giving her a big smile. She was a beautiful dog that easily could've been adopted in the last century. But owning pets had become less and less popular, particularly in Japan, becoming largely niche, especially for animals like this one, who, while adorable, wasn't from a breeder. The responsibility for caring for such a pet, you realized, would've brought Himiko great happiness and forced her to learn how to care for it. And yet maybe you were scared off by the fact that this puppy would equally have been yours, considering how close you are to Himiko.
The talk of animals reminds you of the times you nearly considered asking Nezu for advice on how to help Himiko's problems. You know he knew about some of your more…. unsavory actions with Himiko, but he never seemed to stop you or even confront you about it. You were always confused by Nezu's choice, but eventually, you figured he just wanted you to come to him first rather than insert himself into his daughter's love life without her permission. And yet part of you also had considered trying to see what you could do for Himiko yourself, at least in figuring out if there was a substitute for Himiko's addiction. In retrospect, you recognize that one is only fully effective when combined with one another, but that doesn't mean they couldn't have helped in smaller ways should you have found that Himiko's addiction was her biggest problem.
Back then, the final options you considered were finding things outside of school for Himiko to sink her time into, such as a job, internship, or hobby. You figured that if Himiko could see her own interests when she'd naturally be spending less time with you, it could help her grow independence and grow as a person. You'd read somewhere that hobbies could help with recovering addicts, and you figure a part-time job or internship is much the same. You even considered having Himiko join you if you took up Ryukyu on her offer, even if that would lower her independence, just from the uses it could provide.
All these are inroads, both for Himiko and yourself. Considering all these opportunities you were presented with is almost crazy, but you only had so much time. You couldn't do most of them, let alone all of them. While some of these opportunities you'd get to experience again throughout college, some of these you could've only helped Himiko or yourself within the moment.
And that was without considering if you had asked Himiko for her quirk or your future. Your heart beats faster just thinking about it and how in love you were. Part of you wonders if, by marrying Himiko, she'd open up even more and be willing to let you steer things even more in her development as a person. These last two years have been the happiest in your life. Maybe it's too soon, but that's for you to decide.
The question is… what have the last two years looked like for you?
DECISION POINT #1: What Does Kazuha's Resume Look Like? (Spend 6 Points)
A - Join A Sports Team (1 Point)
AU (Upgrade) - Become Captain of the Sports Team (1 Point) (Total = 2 Points)
B - Join The Cheer Squad (1 Point)
BU (Upgrade) - Become Captain of the Cheer Squad (1 Point) (Total = 2 Points)
C - Join The Theatre Club (1 Point)
CU (Upgrade) - Land The Starring Role (1 Point) (Total = 2 Points)
D - Spend More Time Helping Himiko (1 Resume Point = 2 Himiko Points)
DU (Upgrade) - Take As Many Times As You Want (Assuming You Have The Points)
E - Become Student Council President (2 Points)
F - Become Valedictorian (2 Points)
G - Take An Elective On Support Gear (2 Points)
H - Intern (Reconnect) with Ryukyu (3 Points)
I - Work With Yu On Maintaining Shield Longer (3 Points)
J - Join Horie's Intensive Training With Recovery Girl (3 Points)
K - Spend A Semester In The Student Exchange Program (3 Points)
DECISION POINT: What Will Kazuha Do To Help Himiko (Spend 4 Points By Default)
A - Ask Himiko For Her Quirk (0 Points)
B - Propose To Himiko Upon Graduation (0 Points)
C - Encourage Himiko To Join A Sports Team (1 Point)
Bonus - If Kazuha Joins A Sports Team, Cost Decreases To Free (0 Points)
D - Encourage Himiko To Join Cheer Squad (1 Point)
Bonus - If Kazuha Joins Cheer Squad, Cost Decreases To Free (0 Points)
E - Encourage Himiko To Join The Theatre Club (1 Point)
Bonus - If Kazuha Joins The Theatre Club, Cost Decreases To Free (0 Points)
F - Train Himiko In Using Her Quirk (1 Point)
FU (Upgrade) - Intensive Training With Himiko (2 Points)
Bonus - If Kazuha Copies Himiko's Quirk, She Will Join Himiko's Training For Free
G - Help Himiko Socialize (1 Point)
H - Encourage Himiko's Clinginess (1 Point)
I - Convince Himiko To Move Out of Her Parents' House And Out On Her Own (1 Point)
J - Help Himiko Mend Things Between Her And Her Family (2 Points)
K - Get Himiko A Puppy (2 Points)
L - Talk With Nezu For A Solution For Himiko's Addiction (2 Points)
M - Try and Find An Alternative To Blood For Himiko (2 Points)
N - Encourage Himiko To Take An Internship (2 Points)
Bonus - Invite Himiko to Ryukyu's Internship With You (0 Points)
O - Encourage Himiko To Find A Hobby On Her Own (2 Points)
