-Text document -
Date: 9/7/2101
Title: Things are Finally Looking Up
Today sucks so much. 40% of my skin is fucking inflamed, and the fucking #3 hero Todoroki said he would come down and catch the escaped convicts in Yokoyama. Considering I'm pretty sure I'm the only one that got warped here, then what Todoroki really meant was Mineta, I'm salty you beat Momo's fine ass during your escape so now I'm gonna take five minutes of my sweet time to beat your ass and turn you into grape yogurt. Considering I couldn't fight him with both arms and 40 pounds of muscle mass, combat is a fuck no. Now let me give you a simple explanation of my plan.
Survive – my skin is infected, and it's itchy as hell and turning yellow. Soon, it's gonna start leaking pus. My mental and physical health directly affects my quirk. If I get any worse, my quirk will be useless….also, I'll probably die. Now normally I would just rob a drug store, but the problem with a large-scale skin infection is that….you don't want to move much. Also, heroes have been on alert since my "attack." Every couple of minutes, I see them run past my dumpster, so yeah, robbing a store is not gonna work. So I thought of something a little more subtle.
It was around 9:30 PM when I found my targets—a man and a woman coming from the movies, chatting and laughing about whatever show they were watching. Ugh, that now has me thinking about what movies and shows I missed while in jail.. Ugh, so many shows to catch up on. Anyways, I watched the couple walk into the movies earlier in the day and decided to wait under their car till they came out. Off topic a bit, but one of those two has to be making money, cause their car is nice—one of those models you would see in Tokyo Drift. Anyway, when the man opens the door for his lady like a gentleman, I decide it's time to make myself known.
"Don't move," I growl at the man, pointing my pistol at him. The confusion on his face from seeing a man crawl out from under his car is overcome by surprise at the sight of my gun. The one thing I love about guns is no matter how fucking stupid you look crawling out from under a car, no one gonna say shit becuase you have a gun….unless their quirk is better than a gun, but that's still a strech. "Sorry to ruin your night, but I'm gonna need you to Uber me. Don't do anything stupid, and we can split ways peacefully."
Thankfully, he doesn't try anything and unlocks the door. He grunts when I motion for him to open the back door for me. "Hi." I wave my pistol at the girl in the car as a way of greeting. Unsurprisingly, this didn't put her at ease.
"Where to?" the man asks, eyes locked on me from the rear view mirror.
"First, let me see your license. You too, miss." At her glare, I raise an eyebrow and motion with my gun. Once they hand them over, I tell the man to go to the closest supermarket. As the car starts to move, I look over their licenses. Something Jackson taught me was that most countries have some type of quirk marking system on their license so if cops or heros have to arrest someone, they know what they're getting into.
"Clear mind," I muse, looking at Akira Kaito. "This is probably one of the best non-combat quirks I've heard of."
"Yep. I'm a deep sea engineer, so you can imagine the power to never freak out can come in handy."
"Really? Me too! Well, I'm an engineer of all trades. And you have heat sensing?" I look to the woman, whose name was Sakura. Violet eyes glaring back at me are her only response. "Not much of a talker, is she?"
"Might be because you've taken us hostage," Akira offers.
"True, true. So does your quirk just make you calm, or are you panicking in your head but your body remains calm?"
"I can still get an adrenaline rush and have the fight and flight response. I guess you could say it helps me process stuff faster, like when you first showed up. I was shocked but once you gave orders, I came to realize you weren't gonna kill us."
"Oh? Why is that?"
"Simple. If you wanted to kill us, you would have done it already, or wanted to take us somewhere where there are less people. A mall doesn't fit that."
"Smart." I nod. "You're probably the best hostages I've ever taken."
"Do you take a lot of hostages?"
"No, you're the first, but when I was training to be a hero, we did practice and there was always at least one screaming hostage."
"Oh, you mean the one that's always crying and screaming in the movies?"
"Yep."
"You ever meet one in rea…wait, you were a hero?"
"Yes, though I became an international hero before coming back to Japan to get my hero license in Japan."
"How do you get an international hero license?"
"Akira!" Sakura hisses, apparently annoyed that her husband was casually talking to a criminal. "Can you perhaps not fraternize with a monster?"
"It's probably better for both our health if I make sure he likes us, Sakura," is his response. I am loving this guy. "And we are here," he states as he parks far away from the store.
"Alright, pull out your phone cause I'm gonna need to give you a list of stuff to buy."
"Wait, I thought you said you just needed a ride?" Sakura hisses.
"I said I need an Uber. Uber people go to the store to buy people stuff as well." I grin at her growl before turning back to the man. "Alright, basically, grab the biggest bags you can get, camp gear, antibiotics, medkit, two good survival knives, camp foods, and an electric bike if they have one."
The two stare at me for a moment. "Anything else?" Akira asks dryly.
"Ah yes, um, the most alcoholic drink you can buy." I nod my head.
Sakura glares at her husband, probably mad that he gave me the idea. "Let's just get this over with."
"No, no, you stay in the car." I nod to Sakura. "I need one of you as a hostage, and you seem like the kind of person to do something stupid."
"Excuse me?"
"Akira, please explain why you won't be telling the heroes that there is a criminal in your car while you're in the store?"
"Because I won't be putting my wife's life at risk," he states. Man, I love this dude. "Bringing a hero into this will most likely get Sakura shot, unless I get lucky and find a high ranking one. Safer to just lose the money and get out of this alive."
I nod, smiling at my hostage. Figures after so much shit going wrong, I finally get a break. Sakura glares at me before returning to her seat while Akira leaves to go into the store.
I'm perfectly willing to stay quiet while we wait. Honestly, the seat of this car is feeling heavenly on my cracking skin. But sadly it seems like Sakura decides she has something to say.
"They should have killed you."
"If you mean the government, then they tried. I was hanging from the noose when the earthquake hit. By the way, what was that? That couldn't have been natural."
"It was some type of Nomu giant sand worm. It took seven heroes and Deku to take it down."
I whistle at that. Must have been something if Deku couldn' it. You'd think after Kyudai Garaki's arrest, Nomu would stop showing up, but once in a while one of his old labs gets discovered or some new villain figures out how to make one. Other countries got mad at Japan for not handling this problem sooner, since there have been reports of other nations' villains figuring out how to make Nomu. At this point, it wouldn't surprise me if the recipe has been leaked on the dark web, mostly because Jackson once brought in a high end Nomu to fight the higher rank agents.
"Where'd it happen, and how bad was it?"
"Don't remember what town, but it was bad enough," she says, turning on the car radio to signal the conversation is done. I lean back, enjoying the cool seat while glancing out the window to make sure everything is normal. Honestly, I would have pulled out my phone, but I bet Sakura would make a grab for my gun, and she seems like the type to take the law into her own hands.
"What has the news been saying about the prison break?" I ask after a couple minutes.
"Same yadda yadda. Not a huge number of prisoners actually escaped; a lot fell down that giant crack the Nomu made or got crushed by rocks. It was pretty much a half rescue, half recapture mission."
Hmmmm. Was the Nomu sent to actually break people out, or was it just a coincidence? I'm betting the former, since almost no one got out. Either that, or they trusted that the person they wanted to get out would be skilled enough to make it work. "So who did get away?"
"Don't know them all, but a couple of big names. Only one I can really remember is Spinner of the League of Villains." I laugh at that - Spinner had been…not a friend in prison, but he made sure no one tried to stab me in the shower when he showed up.
"Of course you would be happy he got away. You're birds of a feather… Well, I guess you're worse."
"How are me and Spinner the same? Wait, how am I worse than Spinner? He killed heros and joined the League of Villains!"
"You're a hero killer as well. At least he only killed his victims." That got my undivided attention. The only reason I know some of what crimes I was framed for was because of the TV in the mess halls of the prison. I barely got to watch the thing because every prisoner there wanted a piece of me, and I wasn't willing to get shived for answers.
"What'd you say?"
"You heard me."
"What did they say I did to my victims?"
"What, do you get off on people saying your sins out loud?"
I take a deep breath and remind myself that she had no reason to trust me. "No, I never got to hear my crimes. I was arrested and never given a trial. Now explain." I tap my gun against the window. She stares at me, deciding whether or not I'm screwing with her before pulling out her phone and typing on it, tilting it so I could see what she's typing. "Good fucking lord," I say as I see the news reports. "Leaks? Wait, these are all leaks?"
"Apparently they were leaked to the new station a couple weeks after your arrest and are now being brought back up because of your escape. Before that, the only official news was that you killed a hero."
Well shit, this isn't good. It would be hard enough to prove my innocence if it was a normal murder. Rape, desecration of a corpse, torture, premeditated assault… that's not even the whole list, but those are just the big crimes. God, even if I prove my innocence, even being accused of some of these crimes is going to make it hard to ever be a hero again. And annoyingly enough, the government keeps its nose clean by saying that they're just rumors that are leaked by an unknown source then thrown to the news.
"Sweet Christ." I want to rub my forehead, but I currently have a gun in my hand. "They're not even saying what hero I killed! If they're going to frame me, least they could do is show the victim." A glob of spit hits my cheek, surprising the hell out of me. I didn't even notice that Sakura turned so she could glare at me.
"Are you too much of a coward to even admit your own crimes?" she hisses at me. "Are you gonna claim insanity next?"
"Well, you've decided that I'm already guilty,'' I say, wiping the spit off my face with my shoulder. "Tell me, why do you believe I did it?"
"Anyone that knows your history would know you did it. Other heroes had interviews talking about you after your arrest," she says, looking like she wants to spit on me again.
The look I gave her made her think better.
"They all talked about what you did when you went to UA, and what you did to get kicked out."
So? Fucking being a perv in my first years of highschool doesn't instantly mean I'm capable of the Ted Bundy crime checklist. I take a moment to calm myself. She has no idea who I am. She only knows half the story; it's not her fault. "Alright, first I didn't get kicked out. I left myself." Her scoff says what she thought of that. "Second, that was more than a decade ago. A decade of hero work around the world and right here in Japan, doesn't that amount to anything? Don't people change?"
"Yes, people change, but you're not a person, Mineta, you're an insect. A bug, a worthless stain on this earth that shouldn't have been bor-"
I level the gun to her forehead, stopping her before she could start ranting. I'm not gonna shoot her, but better to stop her before she says something that does piss me off. "You're talking mad shit for someone in bullet eating range." She glares at me in defiance. "You don't know me, Sakura. We've never met, you've never walked even a tenth of a mile in my shoes. All you know are stories told by people who barely knew me better than you do. People are talking about a kid they knew in high school. The only person that actually knew me in this damn country is dead, and I will avenge him."
I launch myself forward; she doesn't even get a chance to scream before I'm in front of her, crouching on the car's center console and looming over her. My healing skin protests, but I could care less. I lean in so close that our noses are almost touching. "If I was a tenth of the things people like you called me in this world, you wouldn't be leaving this car alive, and if you did, you would be traumatized. How do you think Dabi or Shigaraki would take your disrespect?"
She shutters at the image, and I nod along. "You want to know an inkling of who or what I am? Look up Rin Hotaru, she probably knows me the best in this country now that Deki is gone." I lean backward, falling back into the back seat with a hiss of pain. Damn, I should have asked Akari to get some cigars. "I am a person," I state slowly, "I laugh when I'm happy, I cry when I'm sad, I feel the same way you do."
Sakura stared at me, violet eyes staring into black pits. After a moment, she averts her gaze and turns back around to face the front of the car. It's another 20 minutes before Akira comes back with a shopping cart full of supplies and an expensive looking bike.
"Added a giant basket to the bike so you could hold this stuff," he says as he sets it up outside.
"Akira, you are the best hostage ever. I could kiss you right now," I say as I look at the supplies "Alright, put that all in the bike and I'll let you go." As Akira works, I look at Sakura through the mirror. "I don't know how I can prove to you I'm innocent, but I can at least prove that I keep my word." She doesn't look at me as I exit the car.
"And that should do it." He steps away from the bike, allowing me to get closer to it. I give a once over to the electric engine, flashlight, GPS, even some kind of attachment so it's easy for people with disabilities to ride. It has it all. "God, if I ever have to take a hostage again, I hope it's you, Akira."
"I don't."
"In fact, dude give me your phone."
"You better not be giving me your number, I will not be your getaway driver or anything." That earns a laugh from me.
"No, no, nothing like that. Just start recording." Akira raises an eyebrow but does so and gives me a thumbs up when he is ready. "Hello. I'm Mineta Minoru, and I've taken this couple hostage." I motion to the camera and then to the car where Sakura is staring wide-eyed. "I had them at gunpoint and forced them to buy me stuff. If you're wondering why I'm having them make a video of this crime, it is simple. Momo, Todoroki, and Iida are all wealthy as hell, and I know that one of them will pay this couple back." I point my gun at Sakura. "They will also pay for her phone, since I don't trust her to not call the cops the second I'm gone."
"This isn't convincing me that you're a good person," she mutters as she gets out of the car and throws me her phone, taking it out of the case before she does so. I let it bounce off my chest, briefly wondering if she was expecting me to drop the gun to catch it. I kick the phone until it's against a curb and then proceed to stomp it.
"Akira, keep recording, but throw your phone as far as you can. Don't break it, but I want a head start before you go calling the cops." Akira looks around before spotting a set of bushes a distance away. He throws it and actually makes it. "Good throw. And now before I go…" Hoping neither of them rush me, I bow to the couple and stifle a hiss as my back skin stretches. "Thank you for your help. I promise that when I prove my innocence, I will pay you back for your deeds." Straightening up with a hiss, I get on the bike and ride off, waving without turning back.
-doc end-
"Bye guys, see you tomorrow." I waved goodbye to my …friends? Classmates? Associates? The guys. Let's stick with the guys for now. I waved goodbye to the guys. They waved back from the train as it started to pull away. Thinking back on it, I didn't realize how far the students from 1-A lived from each other. Some were 2 to 4 prefectures away. It never seemed odd to me until I went to the states where the dorm system we adopted was the norm, since they couldn't really have students crossing state lines every time they wanted to go to school or home.
Speaking of traveling vast distances, the idea of going to my father's house was becoming less and less appealing, mostly because if anything went wrong, I'd be trapped in that prefecture until the train opened the next day. Dad had apparently blocked my number, so that was already putting a damper on my good mood. "This SOB really blocked me? for the love of- Hey! Excuse me miss, can I use your phone?"
The lady that was walking past me stopped and regarded me before nodding and handing it over. I typed my father's phone number and called him.
"Hello?"
"Sumire Mineta," I stated calmly, daring him to hang up on me again. "Or should I call her Sumire Sato? I'm not sure if you're still using your family name or not. How is my sister doing, by the way? I never get to see her."
"How do you know that name?" The coldness of my father's voice annoyed me to no end. I guessed I should congratulate him for caring for his daughter, but where was any of that care when it came to me?
"Same way I know she goes to Hiroshima middle school, which is only 3 miles west of your house. I can pick up my step mom if you still don't believe I know where you live."
"Don't you dare touch her!" my father boomed from the phone, causing me to flinch away. "How do you know about her?"
I applauded him for having thought of such a big question. He left when I was around 5 or 6, so I shouldn't even remember his face at this point, let alone know enough to find him half the country away.
"We can answer that later. For now, all you need to know is that your father doesn't know, but that can change. If you hang up on me ever again or make me jump through hoops to freaking talk to you, Grandpa will be on your doorstep in 5 minutes…" I could hear my dad grinding his teeth through the phone.
"What do you want?"
"Oh, I want a lot, dad, more than you can imagine, and much more than you can ever hope to give. What I want from you for now are your medical records and a 200 dollar allowance. Send them to the email I'll be sending you in a couple minutes…also unblock my number, obviously. I'm about to hang up now, but before you do, I'll leave you a warning and a question you can think of."
"Go on." The venom in my father's voice makes the humiliation at the nurse's office worth it. Call me petty, but I love getting back at people. Hell, I literally died doing it in my first life.
"First, the warning obviously. Don't try to run; it's useless. I have your home under watch, and you can guess what will happen if you try to run." I waited to hear a grunt of acknowledgement "Next, do you want your father to pay?"
"What did you say?" My father tried to mask it, but the surprise in his voice couldn't be masked. I bet he had assumed that I probably worked for Grandpa. Honestly, this was a shot in the dark, but if he was anything like me, then I knew he was thirsty for revenge.
"Do. You. Want. Your. Father. To. Pay?" I repeated to hammer the notion into his head. "I leave you to think on that." I hung up the phone and passed it back to the lady who was giving me a confused look. "Thank you" I nodded to her and walked off, leaving her to try and piece together that conversation. It was a short walk home. It honestly took me longer because of the 3 bags I was carrying. Struggling under the weight, I let out a sigh of relief when I reached my home. It was okay for lower middle class - one story tall and medium sized. Decent place to raise a family. Shaking away bitter thoughts, I let out a sigh and pushed open the door.
"Kitchen, now." My mom's voice was just as I remembered it - soft as silk but dripping with venom.
A cord of fear wrapped itself around my throat before I remembered who the hell I was and strangled it. "A fine hello to you as well," I said dryly as I walked into the kitchen and grabbed a pencil from my backpack as a weapon just in case. Murasakino Jushi was sitting at the dinner table and eating unagi with chopsticks with one hand while reading a book with the other.
I took the time to look her over. One of the most annoying things about my mom was that she was absurdly hot, and I mean that in a 'why didn't I get any of those genes' way, not in an incest way. Pink eyes, heart shaped face, and to top it off, a perfect hourglass figure. Honestly, the only thing I got from her was her hair color, though her hair was a type of thick liquid glue that wobbled slightly as if it was alive. She didn't acknowledge me when I took a seat on the other side of the table; she simply popped another piece of unagi into her mouth.
Not in the mood for her games, I opened my bag and started to sort out what goodies I had gotten. "Are these phones up to date?" I asked myself as I started taking them out of the boxes. I was sort of disappointed that I could figure them out so quickly, considering I was using versions of them 30 years older than what I was used to. The stagnation of technology after the arrival of quirks really made itself known at this point, as well as technology focused on heros' tech. Though this is a way to make some money, I thought to myself, comparing a phone to its 30 year counterpart in my head. Pulled apart enough of the newer models to possibly reverse engineer something. Pulling up my current phone, I went online to check its specks when I guess Mom got tired of waiting for me to piss myself in fear.
"I'm upset, boy." She said it as if she expected the words themselves to come from her mouth and kill me. "Do you know why?"
I raised an eyebrow, deciding to rock the boat a little "No idea."
"Think harder," she stated, pouring herself a glass of wine.
"I had a big breakfast?"
"No, you wasted food."
That got a raised an eyebrow. "I cleared my plate."
"You wasted food on yourself," she explained, taking a leisurely sip on her wine. "That breakfast was worth six of your normal meals." God damn it, forgot how little I eat. I could only stare at my mom. This is the kind of talk you expected from Ochako's family. My mom owned a salon chain. Only reason we were in this house is because of nostalgia. We're no Momo's, but we had money.
"We can afford it," I said slowly, because it was obvious. "Also, it was the first day of school." I went back to fiddle with my new phones. "Boy needs energy to do his tests."
"It's not about affording it," she said, turning back to her food. "It's about you wasting it on yourself."
"Eating food to prepare for school is a waste?"
"When it's you? Yes. When it's you going to UA? Doubly so."
"What do you mean by that?" I asked, standing up and taking a wine glass.
"You can't be a hero. You have too much of your grandfathers in you." She looked me up and down, pink eyes looking me over and finding me wanting. "I expect you to be out of that school in a week, maybe two."
"Because I'll get expelled?" I asked.
"Because you'll quit," she corrected. "I trust the school system a little bit more than I trust the government. I could see you making it thought the year at UA, maybe two if you had the will to and didn't do anything stupid."
She's not wrong, I thought to myself, thinking back. For all my perversion, UA hadn't even gotten close to throwing me out till the false accusation. Whether that was a mix of me mostly hiding my bigger crimes or the girls not telling the teacher, the fact remains that I was the one that left UA.
"Fair enough," I conceded the point, nodding my head to her while filling my glass.
"Maybe even less time than that, since you seem to be getting dumber."
"Why do you believe that?"
"Because you are now wasting my wine on your worthless self." Her hair seemed to rise up, shaping itself into a gooey snake that soundlessly hissed at me from the top of her head.
"What if I was able to prove my worth?" I asked lightly, sipping the wine and sighing at the taste. If she noticed the fact her 14 year old boy was able to drink her wine, she didn't show it.
"And how would you do that?" My mom took her eyes from her book and lazily aimed them at me. She was giving me the same attention you give a piece of trash blowing amusing in the wind. "You've lacked any worth since your birth. What could you have earned within a day?"
"I know where dad is." I honestly thought she hadn't heard me at first, then I guessed it clicked because she moved. I leaned back a second too late, stabbing out with my pencil hand, but it didn't make a difference. Both the pencil and my arm sank into my mom's hair, not stopping its advance at all while it oozed over me. In moments, I was held a foot off the ground, hanging upside-down, staring into those pink eyes that were now fully interested in me.
"Where is he?" Mom's voice had gone as cold as Todoroki's ice. I on the other hand was trying to keep her goo hair out of my face. I knew for a fact that her hair would hurt like hell if it got in my eyes. "Minoru, where is your father?"
"Can't tell ya." Her hair seemed to constrict around me with a surprising amount of force, slightly covering my nose. "Hurting me won't help you find the answer. Let's bargain." The hair loosened a bit before sloshing off me, leaving me to fall onto the ground as it oozed back to my mom's head.
"Go on," my mom said, taking another bite of her lunch like she hadn't just assaulted her son.
"You hate me." I didn't know if it was good or bad that I wasn't surprised when she nodded her head in agreement. "Can't say I'm a fan of you either, but I know we both hate dad and grandpa more."
"You met them when you were a child, what do you remember of them?"
"Dad I hate because he left me with you." That earned a laugh from her. "As for grandpa, I remember a lot of when I was a kid." The lie came easily enough. "You guys didn't say a lot of it, but you weren't actually keeping your voice down when you talked around me."
"So what do you know then?" she asked, reaching for a different wine bottle, this one with a rose design. It seemed I had her attention. If she was taking out that stock, it also meant I needed to hurry up - she gets hitsy when she gets tipsy.
"He's the reason you and dad got together, and he is "caring" for your mother at a hospital you don't know the location of." I do air quotes at the word caring. "He paid off the lawsuits your father left the family with and handled your college payments, but now you're in his pocket. Oh, I also remember that both you and my dad hate him."
My mom's eyes widened in surprise. "You remember a lot….a bit too much, if I'm being honest."
"Oh yeah." I clapped my hands as if I just remembered something. "Pretty sure Grandpa works or leads a criminal gang." Mom's hand fumbling to catch the bottle she just dropped told me she wasn't expecting that.
"Bullshit. I refuse to believe you remember all of this and haven't brought it up before." Her hair began to grow, more of it oozing from her skull till she had a rapidly growing puddle around her.
"You're half right," I said, thinking of something more believable than time travel. "A teacher at my school can reawaken memories. I was an example for the class." That caused her to pause, bubbles of hair floating around her like some type of lava lamp.
"Say I believe that," she said slowly. "Why suddenly decide to go after your grandfather? He's sort of the only reason you're alive."
"True," I agreed, taking a sip of wine. "He gave me life. He gave me a life of pain with no father and a misandrist mom who he is also taking money from…I think I have more than enough reason to hate the man as much as both you and dad do, but it's not just hate either. It's hunger."
"Oh?"
"Today I saw a bunch of children with looks, status, power, potential, and happiness. I realized that it's partly because of grandpa that I will never have those things, or at least I'll have to work for them harder than most. So I want my pound of flesh." Not even sure if that statement can be called a lie when it was based on a revelation I had years ago. Mom blinked at me for a moment before leaning over and refiling both of our glasses.
"This is by far the most interested I've been in you since…well, ever. All right, you got my attention, boy. Just two questions."
"Only two?"
"Oh, I have more, but I can't afford to be here all night, and you live here." I nodded to her point. "And why tell me you know I hate you and you hate me as well, why make me aware of this?"
I raised an eyebrow. "I don't hate you, mom … at least I don't think I do. I don't necessarily like you, but it's more apathy than hate, but as for why I'm telling you, it's simple. I want your help." I didn't know what I was expecting for a reaction, but started laughing. Real laughing, holding her stomach and everything.
"And here I thought you were making sense." My mom chuckled, wiping tears from her eyes. "What makes you think you can even find your grandpa, let alone do anything to hurt him?"
"Oh, grandpa will come to me," I said casually, finishing my wine.
"And how will you manage that?" she tried to play it off, but she was interested.
"Simple. I know what hospital your mom is at. If I bring you to her, he's going to come running." Mom nearly choked on her wine at that statement. "So mom, tell me I'm still worthless?"
She leaned back on her seat, her hair sinking back into her scalp until it returned to a shoulder length. "I'm not sure yet. You might just be fool's gold but," she smiled, and that might have been the first time my mother has ever smiled at me, "but you made yourself interesting to pay attention to, so there might be some worth in you yet, son."
I'm annoyed how good it felt to hear that.
After that, the conversation between me and mom came to a close, but we did come to an arrangement. Every week, we would have a 30-1:30 hour talk about anything. During this talk, I basically had to "show my worth." Meaning that every week, I would have to show some progress in UA or progress in bringing down Grandpa. If she saw the "worth" as adequate, then during that week, I'd be treated like a son and allowed as much food as I wanted, the whole nine yards. If not, mother will be hostile to me, which you'd think wouldn't be much different than my first life, but honestly, unless she was drunk or feeling shity, mom would just ignore me.
Honestly, it was more than I was expecting from her. I thought I would have to leave the house and live at a manga café. I'm interested in this weekly talk. She wanted them to be monthly, but I want to talk to my mom more. I never truly knew her in my first life, and from the bits and pieces Jackson helped me put together, I'm interested in her side of the story. Not expecting a healthy mother-son relationship, but I'm interested in what we can get. Of course, I kept my call with dad a secret. Need to keep some cards close to my chest. Speaking of my father, I was happy to see an email containing his medical records as well as an invite to a money sending app. Five minutes later and I was the proud owner of 400 dollars. I guessed he wanted to get on my good side. That, plus the 300 dollars mom gave me as a start to our deal, and I'd say day one of back in the past was going well. It could easily go to shit if dad said f*ck it and ran away. Then I'm basically boned, but it wasn't the first time I'd made a dangerous bet.
At that point, knowledge was my only advantage, and I was milking it for as much as it was worth. It was those thoughts that went through my head as I laid on my bed smiling like a crazy man.
"Thank you," I whispered to whatever god had brought me back before closing my eyes. Only for them to burst open as a thought came to my mind. Couldn't I have just asked Recovery Girl to check the problem herself? I knew the problem so she would know what to look for. It took me a moment to digest that thought before I slowly grabbed my pillow and placed it over my face. "For fuck's sake!"
AN: yeah my editor pointed out that since mineta knew what the medical problem was he could've just had a recovery girl check herself. I couldn't figure out a way to put it in the last chapter so...slight F up for me…wait have I mentioned my editor yet? Gonna take an L with that F up . Alright so CherryBerry12 is my editor and the reason you're getting these chapters at any reasonable time and without 400 grammar mistakes each so shout out to them.
