Hopefully next week we'll get back to our normal chapter length. In the meantime, please enjoy these children trying to kill eachother.
Chiasa pokes her head into the back yard.
The spring light is steadily dying, orange and gold over the forest in the backyard. Her four children and her daughter's friends sit together, surrounding a box that Seiji is steadily filling with knives.
The knives are old, bulky, plastic things collected from halloween stores overseas by one of Takahiro's childhood friends. Shu had ended up being Rio's first boyfriend, and it was through him that Taka had ever met the young heiress. Shu, Rio, Taka, and all of the other Yakuza children that they knew used to play 'Murder' in lazy summer nights.
Without these knives and the little game that had been born of them, Takahiro may have never met his darling wife amongst all the other children of the Shie Hessaikai. She may never have had little Eri running around, causing trouble and being sweet and beautiful and an absolute darling.
(The same could be said if Shu had never been murdered by a hero, his life cut short before Chiasa had even born her fifth son. So young, he'd been just a boy, damn it all.)
Some of the blades still glow a dim yellow-green in the dark, and each one is home to a length of painters tape that lists the name of one of the people circled around the box. The writing is Seiji's faintly looping script.
Suzume.
Seiji.
Satomi.
Kaname.
Shoji.
Toru.
Eijirou.
Katsuki.
Denki.
Hitoshi.
How long has it been since there have been this many children in their house?
Too long, she thinks.
Never, if she really thinks about it. The last time there were these many children running around they still lived in their small house in Kusagawa City. Those had always been the boys' friends, not her daughters'. As far as Chiasa can recall her only companions were older than her, and most of them were family. Not the same thing at all.
Her poor girl has lived such a solitary life, despite their best efforts. Brothers and parents could never replace friendships, and the support they offered was only so good in the face of a world intent on pushing down in her place.
But here Suzume is, with a gaggle of young people all around her, listening intently as Seiji explained how the game was going to work, his red eyes bright in the dying sunshine. He always loved sharing the joy of playing with other people, no matter what form it took.
They hadn't had a lot of video games or board games growing up. Chiasa will always wish that she was able to give her children more than what they had, even though the cost of comfort when it had come was so, so high. But it certainly has shaped their lives in interesting ways.
Satomi, as smart as he was temperamental, had always been able to tell when food budgets were tight. He had a deep rooted hatred for food scarcity, and it had driven into agriculture. A way to fight hunger at its source.
(She never has had the heart to tell him that food shortage isn't the problem, it's always been distribution and corporate control)
Seiji had always done his best to entertain everyone around him, and part of that entailed finding new games to play with old toys, or even sticks and rocks in the backyard. She remembers well the day she had let the twins babysit and come back to find that they had set part of the lawn on fire and were pretending to be wizards and knights while Suzume sprayed all of them and the fire with the neighbors garden hose.
He was so creative, her little artist.
Kaname, her protector, and Suzume, her fighter.
She didn't know how but she must have done okay if these were the kids she had raised.
Seiji had each person come up, take a knife with a name on it, and then run into the darkening woods.
Anyone else would have been worried about letting a bunch of teenagers and young adults run into the woods alone at night.
Chiasa knew that her children, and the little heroes that they had brought with them, would be just fine. The woods were safe for the most part, except for a few stray cats and reptiles. The most dangerous thing was the stream that ran through it, and even that was barely three feet deep and slow moving.
So while the kids each take their knife and wander into the darkening forest, intent on 'murdering' eachother in their strange game of macabre tag, Chiasa wanders back inside to get her house coat on and to find a cup of tea and her letter kit.
She never knew if Sanjiro got her letters in prison, the ones about what they were doing (the life that his sacrifice had bought them), but she wrote them all the same.
Sanjiro,
Suzume brought her friends over today for dinner…
Suzume's heart was racing in her chest.
It pounded hard, roaring in her ears over the sound of crickets chirping and the far off buzz of cars racing along the street outside their neighborhood. The branche beneath her took her weight with protest, but it didn't give. Her leg muscles were starting to grow stiff and cramp from holding herself in one place too long.
The knife in her hand was steady.
Even as the shadows stretched out she kept her eyes wide open and her ears pricked for even the faintest sounds of her friends.
Kirishima was already out. He was followed by Kaminari, and then Satomi was taken out.
The rules to Murder were simple.
Each person got a knife with someone else's name on it. That person was their target. They had to hit that person with their knife, and then that person was out. Once you took a person out you collected their knife and took on their target as your own. Whoever got their own name first, won.
You weren't allowed to kill someone who was naked, in the bathroom, or in their own bedroom, but those were rules for inside. They were all out in the woods.
It became immediately clear that Toru was a goddamn terror.
She had slipped off her shirt, leaving herself in just a bra, and ran through the woods taking out three people straight. No one knew who her next target was.
All Suzume knew was that it wasn't Shoji, because she had his name taped to the knife in her hand.
She just had to be very, very, very quiet.
Shoji definitely had extra ears out, and eyes, and anything else he thought might be useful.
He was a tracker by his very nature, and he didn't have a single blind spot to take advantage of.
So instead she was lying in wait.
Patience was a virtue that Suzume is intimately familiar with.
Her steps on the branch are silent when she moves from one to the other, letting the winds blowing disguise the rustle of the budding leaves as she moves.
This is not the kind of game someone can win playing only defensively, and Shoji will have to approach his own target eventually.
Whoever that is.
In the dim light she can't see who's on his knife.
Suzume doesn't know if she wants it to be her own name or someone elses. Would she rather win or continue the hunt that sings in her very bones?
She stalks closer, catlike in the growing shadows. If nothing else its easy for her to blend in without the fanciful colors that decorate her peers.
Shoji stops.
Suzume stops too, poised to launch herself down at him when she realizes that they've stopped at the edge of the bridge.
The bridge where Kaname is standing, whistling casually as he twists his own knife around his fingers.
Everything about her brother looks confident and laid back.
His red eyes drink in the river and the trees, and several yards away is Seiji, trying to cross without causing too much noise and getting himself caught anyways.
Shoji slowly eases closer. His extra eyes drift towards Kaname.
His target, no doubt.
Suzume grips her knife in hand, braces herself, and flings it down hard.
The flash of glowing yellow-green and black isn't enough warning for Shoji. He yelps in surprise and drops as the knife hits his shoulder, leaving a good sized welt that will heal in a day or so. That was the price of losing at Murder, after all. A little bit of pain to remind you to do better next time.
You could really tell it was a game invented by Yakuza kids who were bored one day.
Suzume drops and scoops his fallen plastic knife off the ground with a cheerful smile.
"Better luck next time," she teases brightly.
Shoji looks up at her, his cheeks red above his mask. Probably embarrassed.
Suzume offers him a hand and he reluctantly rises. She pulls him easily to his feet, despite him being both taller and heavier than she is. She's spent her entire life training to fight, she can definitely pull one boy up off the forest floor.
Shoji, now defeated, leaves the forest to go wait at the back porch where her mother had put out goldfish.
Suzume looks down at the knife to see Kaname's name on it.
She knew it.
Shoji made enough noise that she's lost the element of surprise, so she gives it up and darts out onto the bridge to swing at him.
Kaname, taken by surprise by his normally defensive sister attacking head on, barely dodged in time. Her next swing he brings his own plastic knife down to try to block it.
Suzume dropes the knife but doesn't stop her hand moving. She grabs Kaname's wrist and catches the knife in the opposite hand. In a fluid move she cut up and jabs the point of the blade into his belly.
If this had been a real fight, she could have gutted him.
Kaname swears and steps back, rubbing his stomach where she'd stabbed him. Lightly.
He hands her his own blade.
"Good luck," he says dryly.
She looks down and finds Toru's name scribbled on the knife resting in her hands.
Joy.
Figures. It explains what Kaname was doing. If Toru worked her way through people she would eventually come to find him. And now, her.
So Suzume lifts herself up on the edge of the bridge, plants her butt on the handrail, and settles in to wait just like her brother had.
The night slowly creeps closer.
Suzume watches the shadows crawl their way across the earth. She listens to the popping explosion of Bakugou's quirk circling around, looking for his own quarry. She breaths in the scent of burnt marshmallows on the breeze.
She mentally tacks people off her list. Kaminari, Kirishima, Kaname, Satomi, and Shoji.
That left Bakugou, Shinsou, Seiji Toru, and herself.
One of them has a knife with her name on it.
The scent of rain comes in on the wind. There's going to be a storm soon.
Finally, she sees branches stir and a floating bra appears.
Suzume pushes away from the bridge and starts towards it, cat footed.
Toru is oblivious to her. She can see the clasp of her bra from back here, all of Toru's attention is fixed on looking out into the trees. Where Bakugou is shouting at Seiji, who is completely unconcerned.
Suzume hefts the blade and smacks it against the back of Toru's head, much lighter than she hit her brother earlier.
Toru jumps in surprise.
"Holy shit!"
She shrieks and spins around. When she sees Suzume, she wilts visibly.
"Oh no!"
Suzume smiles and holds out her hand for her new target.
The name on the knife placed in her hand is her own.
Toru has been hunting her this entire time, trying to find a good angle to come at without being seen approaching the bridge before she was distracted.
She might have won.
But Kaname had a solid strategy.
Sometimes Suzume forgot that despite being a hope filled dreamed Kaname is very, very clever.
"I win!" she shouts into the woods.
Bakugou screams a curse.
Out of the woods troop the rest of the boys, looking smokey and exhausted.
Seiji wrinkles his nose at her.
"You didn't tell me you were bringing psychopaths over to play. I would have gotten real knives if I knew."
"Seiji," she rolled her eyes at her brother.
Shinsou comes out of the trees looking irritated.
"I'm going to have a find a way to disguise my voice in the future. Apparently its too recognizable."
"It's hard to trick people into talking to you when they know that that's what youre after?" Suzume isn't the least bit sympathetic. He'll work it out, she knows he will, but he shouldn't be relying on his quirk so much in the first place.
"Bakugou was so easy to trick during the sports festival," Shinsou drawled, side eying the explosive young man.
"Shut up! You weren't such a weird fucking monkey during the festival either."
"Monkey?" Suzume repeats.
"This mother fucker was bouncing around the trees like he had a fucking tail or some shit."
"You better watch your mouth when we get back to the house," Seiji warns. "Mama will paralyze you if you swear too much."
Suzume eyes Shinsou. His shoulders are a bit broader, his stance is different too.
He's started his training with Aizawa already?
Good.
He's definitely going to need it.
Suzume hooks her arm with Seiji's before he can get in a fight with Bakugou and drags him towards the house.
"Come on already. I'm hungry again."
"We just had dinner and you're hungry?
"We had dinner like three hours ago, you dip."
"You're such a little bitch."
"Bite me."
Seiji bared his fangs at her in a flash of pale white teeth.
They lead the others back to the house, listening to Bakugou and Shinsou continue to bicker. It wasn't as full of animosity as he would have been at the beginning of the year.
Bakugou had come a long way from being such a little twat when school started. Now he was almost tolerable.
Chiasa handed each of them a waterbottle as they entered the house. The others were gathered around the table, playing a game of oicho-kabu.
Satomi was teaching them Yakuza games too.
This was a weird night.
But not a bad one.
Suzume slowly sat between Toru and Bakugou, looking out over the crowded table.
It's been loud ever since everyone got here. There's not a moment of peace to be found.
She misses her reading time. She misses the quiet that she can always find in her room, which is normally not home to weird conversations like the one they had had before.
Apparently there's a good chance that I've been right next to a dude with a boner without ever knowing. How weird.
But its not.
Bad.
It's a little overwhelming in some ways. The brief peace she found waiting for Toru on the bridge had helped with that. But it still wasn't bad.
It was actually.
Almost nice.
Suzume takes the cards that Satomi hands to her. She needs a shower and she's tired, but her heart is light and oddly full.
"...You know what?" she says, suddenly.
Eyes turn towards her. Several of them belong to Shoji alone.
"What?" Bakugou demands, irritable as ever.
"You guys should come over again."
This had been fun.
Toru throws her arms around Suzume, nearly sending her sideways.
"Heck yeah! I'll totally kill you next time!"
Suzume looks dead at Seiji across the table.
"We've corrupted the hero candidates."
Seiji smiles sweetly right back at her.
"That was always the plan, sister dear."
Yeah. It's not bad at all.