notes: edit to change present into past tense. you might find new and changed details in here.

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I CARRY YOUR HEART

THE GOOD DIE LAUGHING

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What happened, said the grey man.

(now there's a stupidly loaded question if she's ever heard one)

What. Happened.

That's a lot to ask of Kizuna, considering the city she lived in was on the verge of blowing up thrice every goddamn day. It's all havoc, all the time. Not great, but the rest of the world have it just as bad (droughts in Beirut, fires in São Paulo, villains creatively calling themselves the Anti-Avengers in Lagos, et fucking cetera). Tokyo was no different.

Well.

It'd be a pain to start at the beginning, so let's begin where it mattered: a key unlocking the door of the apartment she lived in with her sister, her backpack loaded with homework she'd probably get to after playing video games, thumbing through the bills stuffed in the mail slot.

Back then, she was in her first year of junior high, her long black hair clipped back in cute barrettes, three months shy of thirteen. Slamming the door shut with her foot, her uniform jacket thrown in the direction of the kotatsu—back then it was September, and getting colder. Yuuka won't be back till much later, if she's back at all these days—but that's a hero for ya. It's just her, a large McDonald's fries, and afterschool anime.

Then things started getting bonkers.

Like, blood-on-the-floor bonkers. Puddles and puddles of it.

She started to scream. She remembered that. She remembered hands clamping over her mouth. Fries spilling out of her bag. (Was she focusing too much on the fries? Whatever, they were good fries.)

Darkness.

Darkness.

Darkness.

Repeat ad infinitum.

Then light.

White sheets. White walls. Tubes and needles. Turpentine and bleach. A heart monitor. Beep beep beep and all that jazz. Yeah, jazz. Louis Armstrong crackled from a shitty, distorted radio in the corner, trumpets blaring and It's a Wonderful World reverberating in her spaced-out brain.

…What?

When the police arrived, she was so drugged up all she saw were the moving shadows, flashlights, an orange blob, two yellow spiked… things floating over a blue and red hero outfit. Somebody's cosplaying as All Might. She felt herself laughing deliriously, or maybe not because her mouth and her head and her body were numb as rocks. She was definitely drooling.

Muffled shouts, and the smell, of course the smell—she was covered in something sickeningly metallic, a vague impression of a body on the table next to her. She glimpsed it as she's lifted up, hands pulling tubes out of her arms. The next table was dripping globs of blood, a vapid face staring up at nothing.

When her eyes manage to unstick and peel open again, she saw indistinct people with their mouths covered by surgical masks, neon flashing by through what might've been windows. The ground rumbled beneath her, like she was in a car. There's something over her nose—something plastic, pumping in oxygen.

What time was it? She needed to get to class. Was this karmic punishment because she wanted to play Animal Crossing instead of studying for her math test? Sorry, ancient gods of Ezo. If she apologized enough, will she wake up in a jolt in the kotatsu, Yuuka making fried rice in the kitchen and singing badly to some American rock song while a teeth-whitening commercial chattered on the tv in the background? Sorry sorry sorry sorry extra sorry sauce on a sorry sundae!

Another bump hit her, and fluorescent lights blurred overhead. She was being rolled somewhere. Masked faces above her were shouting gibberish at each other. Oh. Something was wrong. Like, actually wrong. She tried asking the nearest person if they have her phone and to please call her sister. She's not supposed to be out so late.

But her mouth was cottony and dry, refusing to move. Her throat made a guttural, frantic noise. Where is she? What's going on?

It's okay now," said a vaguely orange blur. "It's okay."

This is not okay at all, Kizuna wanted to respond, but she was already lurching back into a blissful nothing.

"What happened?" the police investigator asked, sitting next to her hospital bed.

What happened.

Kizuna didn't know. She left her house that morning with hair and woke up in the hospital with a shaved head and throbbing pain in her chest. What about that is comprehensible, ma'am. She was also shaking. It's fucking freezing in here. Or was it? Maybe she's too hot. She wiped her runny nose with a bird-thin wrist. Every inch of her body was in some kind of pain.

"Can you tell me what day it is?"

She wracked her brain. Her memory was so foggy. "…September… something?"

"Yes, September something." The investigator gave her a long, searching look. "We found you eleven months and twenty-seven days after you disappeared from your apartment. Last year, you were coming home after school and…"

The investigator's voice warped into echoing nonsense as Kizuna stared at her. Her nose dripped.

…Again, what?

She was being pranked. This was some elaborate horseshit, with a startling level of detail and specificity. Her arms were covered in blue and purple bruises, swollen from being stabbed by… no, it's highly realistic makeup, that's all.

"Okay," Kizuna said, scratching the back of her head. Being bald was so weird. Yet, strangely, a little freeing. Did she ask Yuuka to help her shave her head for fun? It didn't sound like her, but… it's probably what happened. Hair grows back, Yuuka always said, tying strands of her thick white hair onto an injury and watching the wound glow. "Right, sure. I mean, I had a math test, so I guess I'll have to make that up, right?"

"Yokoyama-san, this isn't a joke."

The young teen laughed, a forced spasm over her gaunt face. "If it is, it's a dumb one. No offense. Is Yuuka here yet? I mean, Tutari?"

Her leg jittered, rocking back and forth. Her dark pink eyes sat inside huge, hollow sockets. The police investigator swallowed hard. Law enforcement had been shown photographs of the lost Yokoyama girl before her capture. She had a round, healthy face, long black hair, and a goofy grin as she posed with her sister over crepes. The girl before her was a skeleton.

Kizuna dug her sharp canines into her lip. It hurt. It hurt, and she was not waking up, so this couldn't be a dream. She abruptly sat up and clambered over the hospital bed, taking the IV stand with her, ignoring the investigator shouting for a nurse to bring her back.

Outside was a bloodstained young man, dressed in a torn, bright orange jacket and a black mask. He looked up when she nudged open the door.

"Hi, excuse me," she croaked, trying and failing to wave her hand because, like the rest of her body, her arm had about as much muscle in it as a rubbery noodle. "Has Tutari arrived yet? I'm her little sister. I need her to heal me because, um, I think I hit my head."

He looked at her for a long moment.

He said, "Nobody told ya."

She didn't understand.

They told her again.

She still didn't understand.

They told her for the third, fourth, sixth, tenth, twentieth, three hundred thousandth time.

I don't get it.

They looked at each other, then back at the girl with the blank, dazed stare. They called All Might in.

He described in excruciatingly kind detail how it happened. How her sister, the Medic Hero Tutari, died. Why Kizuna woke up with agonizing pain in her chest.

She thought about the fries on the floor of her sister's apartment, sadly uneaten. What happened to them? Have they molded? Turned into white-green fungi? He said Yuuka had been lying next to her on the operating table for hours. She must've also started to mold. While Kizuna slept, the corpse had laid prone beside her like glistening, oily, slowly rotting fries.

She thought about it so hard she threw up in front of All Might.

They held the wake at the Yokoyama family house in Tokyo.

Almost everyone in attendance was a pro hero, out of their recognizable costumes and in their mourning civvies. Fatgum, Ingenium, Ryukyu, among others. Yuuka's mentor, Recovery Girl. Endeavor, with his family in tow. (She tried to avoid the boy with the red-white hair, but that didn't quite work out.) All the ones she supported as a healer. A few more that Kizuna's not sure if Yuuka ever properly met, but it could just be that her aunts and uncles wanted to take the opportunity of her sister's death to rub elbows, if you catch her in-extremely-poor-taste drift.

The Yokoyama cousins came, all the extended relatives, and Seki. Somehow between handing out tissue paper and accepting flowers, her father's parents found the time to mention to Ekashi that his daughter, Yuuka's own mother, couldn't even make it. Did anyone let her know she only has one child left?

"Fight, fight, fight," Kizuna chanted under her breath. Ekashi kicked her foot.

They buried Yuuka's ashes at the Yokoyama family cemetery, next to their father.

The rest of her father's family was dressed in bespoke black suits and dresses, shiny black loafers and black heels. Ekashi wore the regalia of his people; a deep blue and orange robe pattered with white geometric prints. A splash of bright color amongst dark mourners, red autumn leaves swirling overhead.

The Tokyo Police were kind enough to give her and her ekashi an escort back to Hokkaido. They flew to Sapporo and took a bus inland to another city; there, her grandpa's friend picked them up (a broad lady with a truck filled with potatoes and her wife in the passenger seat, greeting her with a big, hearty eani shukupashnu ne ruwe ne, Kizuna! And I love your new hair) and drove them out to their village.

When they finally pulled up on the dirt road of small, rickety house, she got out of the car with a long stretch.

A dog leaped up from his guard at the porch and ran at her. The girl was all skin and bones, and she toppled over on the dirt. Wakka shoved his big, furry self into her arms and licked Kizuna until she giggled and dug her face into his fur as a hello. Her grandpa followed after, holding a stone urn.

"Your pa's folks get a nice n' fancy funeral, and I get a bit of dust," Ekashi muttered. He shook his head, wiping his brow. "Welcome home, Yuuka."

Together, they scattered the ashes below the sakura tree on the hill overlooking their house, the apple and pear trees, the large garden of potatoes, sugarbeet, and tomatoes in their backyard, and further beyond the rolling golden plains of countryside.

Her soul would come back in forms unknown to them, her grandpa said. They would see Yuuka again. This tree would guide her back home. Ah, do you see that sparrow among the branches? Perhaps that's her now.

He sat down in the grass, took off his hat, took a quiet breath—and broke down completely, his hat soaking up his tears.

Kizuna sat next to him, Wakka in her lap. Her heart beat unnaturally loud between her ears. Was that normal?

What's normal, anyway. The last thing she remembered feeling real, harrowing concern over was finding a discontinued bottle of nail polish online.

Today, Ekashi was shooing away local heroes who wanted to pay their respects. Even the mayor asked the reporters and news stations to give the house privacy (their dingy little house with the splintery tatami floors and rot on the bathroom ceiling, talked about by the mayor—ha!). At the police trying to investigate their house Ekashi yelled, "There ain't nothin' of Yuuka's here! Now get off my damn property 'cause we're tryin' to mourn in peace!"

He grabbed Yuuka's antidepressants, all the old pills she stored away, and flushed them down the toilet. It's fine, he assured. Yuuka-chan's got no use for them anymore.

So then.

Kizuna was… free to—be. Or something.

She didn't quite know.

It was the same dazed listlessness as when her dad died (age thirty-eight, earthquake rescue, a crumbling house). She wanted Yuuka here to say gentle, comforting words that she'd call dumb and mushy and then secretly cry about in the shower. She wanted Yuuka to make her breakfast as they roasted people's funeral outfits. She wanted Yuuka to tell her everything was going to be okay, and if it wasn't okay they'd play more Mario Kart together.

She sat on the bed, in the tiny bedroom they shared as kids visiting Hokkaido for the summer, with the blocky, staticky tv that only played six channels and the dusty origami animals they made sitting on the windowsill—her ugly, clumsy frogs next to her big sister's beautiful cranes.

Mostly, Kizuna just wanted Yuuka.

But.

…Well.

One night, when she got tired of rolling around in bed and staring at the shadows on her ceiling, Kizuna padded downstairs. The old, musty floorboards creaked under her slippers. A light from the kitchen was still on. Inside, her ekashi was sitting with his head in his hands, a cup of untouched tea on the table.

Laying by his feet, Wakka raised his head and whined quietly. When he saw her, Ekashi quickly wiped his face on his sleeve.

"Can't sleep, cironnup-po?" he asked lightly as they both pretended they didn't hear the quiver in his voice.

She shrugged, taking his cup of tea over to the sink. She refilled the kettle and turned on the stove to make them a fresh pot.

"She did it to save you. She was a hero. Your big sister."

Their counter was filled with dishes the neighbors brought, enough to last them a month, at least. She put them away in the fridge.

"It's okay if you hate her. It's okay, but remember she loved you."

It's what everyone said, like it's a comfort: so sad about your sister, but hey, she loved you. How easy it would be to respond: I'd rather her hate me forever if that means she can be alive. But if Kizuna thought about it too much, she imagined hands splitting open her chest and Yuuka, wet and gory, emerging from her broken ribcage. So she bit down on her lip very hard and didn't think about it.

The kettle whistled.

Her mouth tasted like blood and fries.

Here's the thing: when the grey man said what happened, she condensed almost everything.

There was so much she didn't talk about. For example, the bruising on her arms the doctors said were from needles.

"Diamorphine, or heroin, can also be used to treat pain post-surgical operations," the doctor said. "The withdrawal symptoms will fade in about a week. It hasn't been long-term use, so you'll recover fine."

"Yay," Kizuna said, itching her arm. "That's great. Mystery solved, let's wrap it up and go home."

"That's why Yuuka-chan performed the operation," her grandmother sobbed into her handkerchief. "She found Kizuna-chan half-dead and knew there was only one option…"

"I dunno, Gran, open-heart surgery is a pretty extreme reaction to a drug overdose."

Her grandfather stormed outside and started lambasting the police officers while her grandmother dissolved into her handkerchief.

Kizuna stared down at the blue veins sticking out from her bony hands. "I don't even get to remember how I became a drug addict? That's messed up. I bet it was a really funny story—hey, Gran, can you sneak in some pocky for me? I'm tired of eating jell-o—Gran, come on, this is important, stop crying."

What happened? her grandfather continued yelling outside. Was it a villain? Did they force Yuuka to do it? Who took her? They probably touched her god-knows-where! …Oh, you're doing your best!? Your best isn't good enough! That's my granddaughter! I won't hear any excuses! Get your goddamn asses in line or I will see to it you never work again!

But she was saved from having to listen further, because a tall, burly man in his late sixties came hurtling through the door. He was still dressed in his work jeans and flannels, as though he dropped everything and took a plane down from Hokkaido right when they called. Ekashi. Her mother's father.

Before she can say a word, he's hugging her so tight and whispering, "Cironnup-po. You've come home."

Little fox. Kizuna-fox. Kizuna of the mountain wilds and the haskapberry forests and the salmon leaping over the river of their village. Her face was warm with his tears, his wrinkled, sun-beaten and snow-chilled cheeks, his rugged, wiry beard. She wanted to tell him she just saw him a month ago for summer holiday.

But that wasn't quite right.

Her hands came up to hold his shaking shoulders, the motion tugging on the tubes on her arms. She patted the back of his head. There, there.

The doctors summarized everything to her three grandparents, going over her x-rays and the heart scans and all the medication she'll have to take while she heals from the surgery. They talked about her sister being her identical HLA match, about antigens and immunology and other things that Kizuna didn't understand, but anyway, the chance of rejection was very slim.

"So," they concluded, "do you have any questions?"

"I do," Kizuna said.

They all looked at her.

"Can someone please Google the video games released since I was kidnapped?"

Her grandparents let Kizuna choose the photo for the wake, which was their first mistake.

She went through a collection of Yuuka in her hero outfit, wearing her signature blue bandana woven with elm-bark fiber, bold white swirls patterned across it. Her long white hair was looped in a ponytail that formed an O behind her back. Her eyes were a gentle pink. A long, diagonal scar cut from her forehead, across her nose, to her cheek. There were serious photos, somber photos, photos with a hint of a professional smile…

She chose the one where Yuuka's grinning like she's some suave debonair, finger-gunning the camera.

Her father's father was the first to speak; a Yokoyama from the main branch, pure hero pedigree. While he somberly intoned about how selfless, and altruistic, and full of grace Yuuka was, her huge, cheeky grin sat above him, finger-gunning the audience. More than a few heroes pressed hands to mouths, choking back laughter. Kizuna had to pretend she's covering her face with her kimono to hold back tears, not giggles.

Her grandparents' second mistake: letting strangers come up to Kizuna with a sympathetic, "You're an inspiration to other survivors…"

She got so fed up she started replying, "Thanks, but I prefer Playstations over words and flowers," and then had to be ushered away by one of the Yokoyama cousins.

Apparently, such things weren't polite to say at funerals. Hm.

Kizuna wound up hiding in the hallway, her back pressing against the wall, equally bored and sad. Which was just a terrible combination. At least it was easy to avoid the heroes; her grandmother made them help out with serving food. Some actually look relieved at having something to do. She wondered how many funerals they attend a year.

She noticed a man walking up to her. A man with neatly parted green-and-yellow hair and a tailor-fitted black suit.

"Excuse me," Sir Nighteye said. "I was about to take my leave when I saw you."

Great, she thought, already scowling, another goddamn—

"Though your sister and I were merely passing acquaintances, I admired her," he continued, unblinking. "On many occasions, Tutari's good humor was as indispensable as her Quirk." He touched a hand to his chest. "The world is worse without her."

Her head lifted, regrading the stern face and the impassive yellow eyes behind his glasses.

Kizuna hated condolences, but it's different with this one. She appreciated the unflinching manner of his speech.

And somehow, she could tell he really meant it.

With a short bow of his head, he left.

More voices grew louder down the hall, so she uprooted herself from the hallway and moved into the quieter area of the house, wandering into her grandfather's study. It was lined with books, a desk, plaques hung up on the walls, and a glass cabinet filled with awards. His awards, his children's, a few grandchildren's. All the heroes of the Yokoyama clan. She knew by heart the twenty-four Sidekick of the Year medals in there.

He'd left the tv on, and a news reporter crackled at a quiet volume, "After a year of searching, a kidnapped child has been found. The daughter of a well-known family of heroes was located in the mountains of Gifu."

Images of the forested mountain appeared, the glow from the screen lighting her blank stare. Her grandfather always turned off the news when these reports came on, calling them 'a ratings bloodbath for sharks'. She hadn't seen photos before. Wasn't that strange? They found her there, supposedly, but she hadn't even known what it looked like.

"Reports say that after being hospitalized, she is in good spirits. However, her sister, the Medic Hero known as Tutari, has passed away after sustaining fatal injuries—"

The floor behind her creaked.

She slammed the power off button on the remote and spun around, almost hitting Todoroki Shouto.

Oh, jeez—

"Hey," he said.

Kizuna thought about offering a weak smile, but that was asking for pity. She shrugged, arms self-consciously held over her obi. He hadn't changed much. Same scar, same hair. Made sense, she'd only been gone for a year. He was taller; that was the only noticeable difference.

"You look…" He hesitated. The plate of noodles her grandmother forced on him looked hilariously awkward gripped in his hand. "…cool."

Blinking, she ran a head around her head. "I woke up like this." A beat. "…Huh, I can say that honestly."

They examined each other. She looked like a boy; gangly, her shaved head and tawny-brown skin in stark contrast to the formal kimono she was wearing. Meanwhile, he cleaned up nice for a funeral. A black suit, that awful burn scarring his left eye, a bruise on his wrist that his jacket barely covered. She didn't want to ask where it was from.

"I'm… sorry," he said. "About everything."

"Yeah," Kizuna replied automatically. She bit the inside of her cheek. Still not a dream. "Thanks, I guess."

She peeked at his scar. The garish, burned thing and patches of flaky skin around an eye glancing around, unsure of what to say. She felt a weird kinship with him after the scar she's seen on her own body.

A procession of mourners passed behind them in the corridor, her grandmother weeping softly as she clutched a photo of Yuuka. Among them, a mourner with a looped white ponytail called cheerfully, "Cheer up, kids! I never wanted a sad funeral!" and Kizuna swallowed. Todoroki was still standing there uncomfortably, one hand in his pocket.

"Wanna touch my head?"

"…What?"

"Come on, konru-boy."

He shot her a faintly exasperated look. "What are you saying?"

She took the plate of noodles off him and plopped Todoroki's hand right over her grey fuzz. "Feels weird, right? Like grass."

"Or a dog."

She made a face at him and he grimaced at her in a way that might've been an attempt at a halfhearted grin, except he just looked constipated. His hand stopped moving and rested over her head. She had got a couple inches on him.

His mismatched eyes looked up, searching hers. "What happened to you, Yokoyama?"

This was somehow worse than those terrible fancy parties they'd been forced to go to, the cringe-inducing talks about a potential betrothal behind paper-screen doors.

"I have to poo," Kizuna said, then floundered away to the bathroom to hide. And eat his noodles. Which she took. (Oops.)

When the coast was clear and there was no frigid Todoroki in sight, she slipped out. Her grandmother made her promise she wouldn't hide because they had so many guests to entertain. Sure, Yuuka was dead, but it was never too early to learn how to be a good hostess.

Well, it's never too early for her grandmother to learn she was a liar. Her feet took her to the outside corridor that surrounded the garden, and the voices inside faded away. The brisk air rustled her kimono as she walked over the glistening, clean floorboards.

It was too easy to recall the years she'd spent here with her sister, their peals of laughter echoing over the traditional-styled house. She just had to let her eyes drift to hear the footsteps running behind her, a flash of white in the corner, Yuuka watching her from behind a half-shut door.

At the end of the engawa sat a squat old lady.

"The little sister," Recovery Girl observed, and patted the wooden flooring next to her. "Sit, sit. Have you eaten, dear? Here, take this." She rummaged through her coat pockets and gave the girl a handful of candy.

Kizuna twisted off the wrapper and popped one in her mouth.

"It's been a long while since I talked to her," Recovery Girl mused, her gentle voice laced with regret. "Tell me what was Yuuka like before it all happened."

She sucked on the candy for a considering moment. "Happy." Had she been happy? "Full of life." Hadn't she been stressed out from work? "She was always so kind." Hadn't she thrown a book at Kizuna and collapsed into her bruised arms, stumbling through apologies as she healed her?

"That sounds like Yuuka."

The overcast autumn sky hung low over the traditional garden, peonies and chrysanthemums all colorless in the sparse, cold light.

"When we were growing up, she spent so much time healing all the injured birds and trampled flowers she came across."

"What a good girl."

She snorted. "It was actually pretty annoying. We missed the train so many times."

Recovery Girl patted her hand. "Even heroes make mistakes."

Kizuna peeled the chipped, glittery blue nail polish off her fingernails. She dropped them in the dirt, spreading them around with her foot like tiny sparrow bones.

"I know," she said.

The first time she saw herself bare, it was after she insisted to the nurses she could shower by herself. It'd been two weeks since she woke up and the charm of sponge baths had quickly worn out its welcome.

The doctors told her about it, so she knew there was a scar there. But it couldn't be that bad. It's just a scar. Yuuka had that terrible slash across her face, and it always looked so cool on her. But Kizuna would be lying if she didn't admit a part of her is hoping it isn't actually real.

She limped into the communal shower of her ward and inhaled sharply as she looked in the mirror. Oh, hell. No wonder people flinch when they see her.

A hollow girl gazed back. A light grey fuzz over her shaved head, her lips pale and chapped. A ghost, maybe.

Her hands gingerly unfastened the hospital gown. It fell open.

She saw it.

A long, purple scar stretched down her chest, from below her clavicles, between her breasts, until it hit the top of her stomach. The surrounding skin was red where it was swollen and greenish-purple where it was festering. The view was relentless beneath sickly fluorescent lights.

It was real. It was hideous.

Yuuka cracked her open like a walnut. Kizuna-go-snap.

She braced herself against the sink, gulping in air. Her eyes flickered; she felt faint.

What happened?

"What happened," she breathed to the mirror, to the hairless, trembling, naked girl pressing her hands up against the fragile scar, where her sister's heart is beating remorselessly inside her. "What happened?" Her fingers dug into her eyes, she was kneeling on the cold tiled floor, oh god, she couldn't breathe, "What happened? Yuuka! Yuuka, why—"

"SHAKKOI!"

Kizuna leaned back, gloved hands cupped around her mouth, listening to her howl echo over the frozen land.

Ekashi tramped through the snow with a gruff chuckle, Wakka barking and leaping beside her. Standing ankle-deep in white, she inhaled the sharp, bittercold Hokkaido air with gusto. Here, her backyard was an icy river and a forest. Smoke rose from the chimneys around their small village, the muffled sound of soccer games on tvs coming through the windows. The nearest town/fast food joint was just a fifteen-minute drive away.

It's good to be back.

When her buzzcut started growing out, it wasn't in the silky black color she took from her father, but white. Chalk-white like her sister and her mother, intensely vivid against the sandy-brown of her skin. She pointed this out to Ekashi when he came back from a hunt with Wakka. (Matagi, a man of winter. The last of his kind.)

"It looks… nice?" Ekashi scratched his head. "Hey, you almost match with this old man." He pointed at his thick grey beard flicked with ice, a wide grin lifting up his wrinkles and crow's feet.

Bless his heart, her grandpa always knew what to say to a teenage girl.

She turned from the mirror, watching him troop into the kitchen with a bag of kill over one shoulder. "Are you going to Starbucks later? Pick me up a hot chai, please."

"Sure, sure," he called back, "after I skin the rabbits."

She was still fiddling with the white strands later, warming a Starbucks cup between her knees and sitting in the tire swing under the barren sakura tree.

"You know," Ekashi threw his broad arm around the tire, and she swayed with the motion, "every winter, the snow fox changes its color from black to white."

The outer edges of his deep gold eyes were ringed with jet-black. The hair underneath his baseball cap was dark red and lined with grey. A true Ezo fox.

"Cironnup-po," he said, and the warmth of it, the connection behind it made a tiny smile tug at her mouth. Kizuna was half-Tokyo, half-city in the south, but she was also this: snow and haskapberries and the tiny yip of foxes that prowled the woods behind their house.

"Hatcho?" she asked. Pretty?

"Shiretok," her grandpa replied gruffly and mussed her hair. Beautiful.

He was only saying that because he was her gramps, but she liked it all the same.

It was the stress, Kizuna told herself. She was just greying earlier than normal. A lot earlier than normal.

She should've known.

Her grandparents had the sense to back up old family photos and videos. She downloaded them all on her phone (a new one that her Yokoyama grandparents bought for her before she left for Hokkaido) and spent every day scrolling through them, over and over. Yuuka, on the subway. Yuuka, eating. Yuuka, Yuuka, Yuuka.

(Most days, aside from attending the local junior high where she played games on her phone instead of paying attention, she didn't do much except try to return to the past.)

One early morning, as Kizuna continued her routine of playing the memories over and over in her head, a soft thud hit her window.

Outside, Wakka barked up a storm. She groggily stumbled down the stairs and out the door.

A tiny russet sparrow with an injured wing fluttered on the snow, chirping feebly.

"Oh, hello," she said quietly, her breath chilling wetly in the air. "Can I take a look?" She scooped it up between her palms—

And her hands glowed white.

Kizuna was so startled she dropped the bird.

Instead of falling, the sparrow took off in a flash of red, wings beating up into the air.

Shocked, she stumbled against a tree, hand braced against it. Something nudged under her palm. A thin sprig unfurled in the cold air, green leaves and flowers blooming in the snow.

Oh.

Yuuka's heart thumped.

Before anyone could see, she grabbed the new sprig and violently wrenched it out of the tree, stomped on it and kicked snow on top.

She didn't breathe a word about it.

Neogenesis, Yuuka called it. Hyper-speed cellular recovery.

She practiced on little things, just enough to understand how to activate and deactivate it. Like Yuuka, she could make dormant plants reemerge and heal wounds on animals. And like Yuuka, she couldn't revive the dead. Kizuna poked the limp salmon on the chopping block that Ekashi was cooking for lunch. Nope.

And Neogensis didn't work on its user. But Kizuna had always known that.

Still, she stuck safety pins through her ears. A box of Yuuka's old earrings sat on the bathroom sink; she found it in their bedroom, the one they used to share as kids. Two quick shoves and metal pierced through skin. Blood traced a path down her neck.

Kizuna stared at the mirror, at her face that was one bad slash away from belonging to someone else, safety pins stabbed through her ears, before the pain kicked in and the shock and what the hell did I just do?

She spent the rest of the afternoon holed up in the bathroom, biting on a towel to muffle her tears of pain, and hollering in a strained voice at her grandpa that she ate something bad.

(Every time she missed her sister to the point of unbearable pain, she would stab her ears. And every time she did, the less it hurt.

She ended up with four piercings on her right and five on her left. Lobes, upper lobe, helixes, orbitals.)

On a walk with Wakka, she touched a patch of icy grass. The dormant grass lifted up and flourished beneath her fingertip. She examined her work with a furrowed brow. In an hour, it would be covered by snow again. It would relearn pain all over again.

"Is healing still a gift if it'll die anyway?" Kizuna mumbled to Wakka, who licked her cheek and excitedly wagged his tail.

Hm. Good point, Wakka.

Months passed.

She stopped going to school and flunked out of junior high. Her grandpa looked at her sadly when she came back from a long walk with Wakka, a letter from the school on the table, and she didn't know how to apologize so she ran to her room. She yelled at her mom when she finally appeared. She went to therapy and tried to make the therapist cry. She succeeded. She occasionally shoplifted from the convenience store.

It's all whatever. Her days were flavored with who-the-fuck-cares and I'm-tired-of-trying.

But then Ekashi slipped on ice during a blizzard and, well, what else could she do?

She yanked off a strand of white hair and tied it around his sprained ankle, then rested her warm palm over his concussed forehead. With Wakka's help, she dragged him inside and tried calling for a doctor, but the phone towers must've downed in the blizzard because there was no service.

"Please work," she prayed through gritted teeth, "Please. Yuuka, help me."

Ekashi woke up, blinking groggily at his granddaughter by his side. The numbness in her chest was washed out by the warmth of relief.

"Yuuka?" he murmured, cutting like a dagger into her heart. His eyes refocused. "Kizuna. How…"

Kizuna threw her arms around him and sniffled, "I was just afraid you'd miss dinner. I really want to eat yuk ohaw."

It turned out her hair didn't work on wounds more severe than shallow cuts and bruises. After another two hours of holding her palms over his ankle, the swelling went down. Ekashi was back on his feet the next day. Meanwhile, Kizuna was so tired she knocked out on the couch and slept for twenty-two hours, not even waking up for deer-and-onion stew.

A year flew by.

She turned fifteen. She missed her last opportunity to take a high school entrance exam. Fuck it. She never studied, anyway.

She was supposed to be looking towards the future (it was a miracle she even had a future, and she's supposed to be grateful for it, right?), but all she could think about was what happened in that missing year of her life. Having Yuuka's Quirk. Having her heart. She thought about it all the time. Her memory was a blank gap, holes burned like cigarettes through paper. Like gazing out into the ocean at midnight; an infinite, endless void.

She spent her days in bed, Wakka sleeping next to her, either playing video games or staring out the window and scratching her arms even though they didn't itch.

In the dead of March, there was an avalanche. Right at the next village.

Ekashi threw rope and supplies in the back of his truck and slammed the gas. Kizuna was next to him in the front, zipping up her jacket and buckling her seatbelt. He didn't try to tell her to stay behind. They couldn't afford it.

Her gramps joined the search party, and they dragged out villagers buried in the snow. Lit by flashlights and candles, she rubbed her hands until they glowed and went around healing. One by one, throughout a long, snowy night that dipped far below zero, her hands placed over broken legs and bloody arms. An old lady clasped her son as he woke up; they both thanked Kizuna profusely.

Something shivered down her spine.

(a ghost walking over a grave—)

She shook her head, no, no, no, this wasn't hers. This was Yuuka. Yuuka was the one who saves you.

When heroes finally arrived at the village, she was slumping over in exhaustion and fell on top of someone's horse she's in the middle of healing. The last thing she felt was someone dragging her out of the prickly hay.

Kizuna slept for almost five days.

She woke up in a hospital, Ekashi and Wakka on her right, a doctor and a policewoman sitting on her left. She looked down at the needles in her arm and tasted grease in her mouth, like fries.

"…Was I kidnapped again?" Kizuna mumbled sleepily.

"Good lord," said the doctor in alarm.

"I'm sorry," her grandpa sighed, "this is just how she is."

"Rude, Ekashi." If Yuuka was here, she'd laugh.

They brought in Quirk doctors and a hero. The hero. All Might, from Tokyo. He could barely fit through the front door of Ekashi's house. All Might was comically massive as he adjusted, trying to avoid bumping into furniture. She wasn't even sure why he was here, but anyway, they're all crammed around the kitchen table: All Might, her, her ekashi, and the doctors.

"Accelerated cellular healing through skin contact. You're displaying your sister's abilities. Is that correct?"

"Yes," she answered, watching All Might politely sip his tea, his huge frame tucked on a chair that looked ludicrously tiny under him.

The doctors nodded at each other. "Obviously, the likeliest explanation is the heart transplant. Tutari's Quirk is manifesting in her."

"Is that… normal?" Ekashi asked, his hairy brown arms crossed over his flannel.

No, judging by their silence. It wasn't normal.

"Our records have it that Yokoyama Kizuna-san has a similar support-related Quirk," said a doctor. "Do you still have it?"

"I…" Her eyes darted at the window, the snowy freedom outside, "yes, I think so. I don't use it."

"Could you perhaps demonstrate—"

"I don't use it," she repeated.

"To be frank, the combination of those two rare Quirks is of interest to us." The doctor reached into his briefcase and pulled out a piece of paper. "We'd like to take a sample of your blood to analyze it. We want to know exactly we're dealing with here."

They placed a consent form in front of Ekashi. Bile rose up in the back of her throat.

"Ekashi, no," Kizuna said.

"This might help your granddaughter understand what she's going through—"

"Her answer," Ekashi cut in, "is my answer."

"But, sir—"

"No." Her palms slammed the table, rattling. "No!"

Grabbing her jacket, she slammed outside the kitchen door and ran up the hill to the sakura tree, panting and shivering, her old fur boots sinking deep into the powder snow with every step.

The sky was shrouded by a sea of grey clouds. The tree branches were covered in hoar frost, beards of ice feathering down the bark and freezing the ropes holding up the tire swing. After a while, she saw two indistinct figures leave the house, briefly shaking hands with Ekashi before heading to their car. That's right, she thought. Fuck off. Go back to your stupid stable lives with your sisters who aren't fucking dead.

But even with the doctors gone, she still sat in the tire, headphones on and gripping her phone in her hands, listening to Yuuka's songs. Her knobby knees poked out below her bundled layers, boots kicking somberly at the snow.

She wiped her pink, runny nose, and looks up.

He was standing before her in that eye-blinding hero outfit, smile dazzling.

Kizuna lowered the headphones onto her neck, Yuuka's rock music muffled in the background. "…Aren't you cold, All Might?"

"What a kind girl, to be worried about me!" He posed, hands on his hips, that can-do-anything smile gleaming bright.

"Okay," she said blandly. "What do you want?"

"Actually, my dear, that's what I'd like to ask you. Your grandpa says you've stopped attending school." He gave her a friendly smile as she glared at the house at the bottom of the hill, trying to mentally convey to her ekashi that he was a traitor to her, forevermore. "What happens now?"

"…Now? I'll get a part-time job somewhere. Play video games to pass the time. Live off my sister's life insurance until I get old." She shrugged uncaringly, a motion that she seemed to do all the time lately. "Then I'll drag my body into the forest and let the kamuy take me."

All Might lowered himself, kneeling in front of her so they're eye level. She averted her gaze.

"I meant to attend your sister's wake, and I'm… truly sorry I had to miss it. You must be tired of hearing this by now, but let me say it once more. Tutari was a brilliant hero. I know she loved you very much."

Kizuna looked up from her knees. "Are you sure?"

His smile shifted a fraction.

"How do you know that, All Might? And don't give me a bullshit answer."

He took a quiet breath, and told her gently, "When we found the both of you, she was smiling. I'd like to believe Tutari died laughing. Because she was happy she saved you."

Her mouth trembled.

She hopped off the tire swing, reared back her fist, and punched him in the face. Bad idea.

"Ow!" Tears pricked at her eyes. Shaking out her hand, she scooped up a snowball and lobbed it at his face. "She shouldn't have died at all, All Suck! Ugly Might!"

He didn't move. The cold mush splattered over his face and shadowed eyes.

"What good are you, huh? What good are you if you can't even save one person? How can you call yourself a hero!?" She threw another snowball at his face. The slush dripped down his hair, his jaw.

All Might didn't so much as twitch.

Her scream was blistering hot in the winter chill, "You're not a hero, All Might! You're a failure!"

Even as the last words slipped out of her mouth, Kizuna wanted to cry. She was utterly mortified at herself. Her hands dug in the snow, bits of dead grass peeking between her fingers. When she took another breath, tears were burning down her ice-cold cheeks.

"I wanna save her," she blubbered, "I know she's dead, but it's not—f-fair I can't save her! It's not fair we can't save people who die, it's not fair!"

With every drop of saltwater, grass began to unfold from the barren earth.

"She spent her whole life healing everything she could, but nobody, nobody helped her when she needed it the most! She needed you, All Might! She needed you! I needed you!"

Kizuna's palms hit the dry, wilted foliage. Glowing white, bright flowers hot through the snow and opened their petals. She hated them so much she spat and cursed, crushing the flowers in her hands, but they just kept healing.

"What happened to me!? Who took me!? Why did it take you so long to find me!?" What else had she lost, besides her heart and her hair and a year of her life? Who took it from her? Yuuka? A villain? An angry god? Was this all a dream? Was she even alive? "Fuck apologies! Fuck this sorry for your loss shit! I want to know WHY!"

She wanted to shoot down the stars. She wanted to make the world hurt as much as she does.

Spring came to the top of the hill in sweeping greens. The winter tree melted all of its icicles and blossomed with sakura petals that scattered over her and All Might. It's so lovely Kizuna wanted to scream.

This is not her Quirk.

"Why do heroes kill themselves," she sobbed, her cheeks red and wet, snot dribbling between her lips, "and leave us behind and everyone calls that brave? It's not brave! Heroes don't do this to their little sisters!"

Oh, this grief. It wouldn't leave her alone.

She was spinning out. Endless waves of unbecoming. Floating away, untethered, into the sky—

But massive arms embraced her and held her down. All Might rested her face over his shoulder. He was built like a fortress. Her arms couldn't even reach around his sides as her small fists beat against this huge, warm tree. He's trembling, she realized dimly through the shudders wracking her body.

"Forgive us." His deep, pained whisper shook her to her soul. "Forgive us for our humanity."

Her hands balled up tight. Her sobs echoed like a broken lute over the hills, on and on and on as a flock of red-crowned cranes took off over the distant mountains of the Ainu Mosir.

He keeps hugging her until finally, finally the tears stop, and she felt nothing but emptiness and exhaustion. The green beneath her feet was already being made half-white again. Sakura petals drifted down, amidst falling snow. I see them bloom for me and you, came a song that only she can hear, and I think to myself, what a wonderful world…

Kizuna thought of her father. She thought about the newspaper headlines that called her a saintlike miracle when she was found after a year missing. But she wasn't some teenage saint; she was just fifteen, and she didn't know anything.

"What should I do now, All Might?"

The Yokoyamas picked her up at the airport. As she texted Ekashi she made it safely to Tokyo, she could already feel the overbearing judgment before she spotted her grandparents in crowd.

"Excellent that you've decided on UA," her grandfather said crisply. "Just like the rest of your family."

As the driver loads up her suitcases in the trunk, her grandmother hugged her, which is kind of nice. "We're so happy you've come to live with us again, Kizuna-chan. Much better than that little hovel in the snow your other grandfather calls a house."

Ah. Never mind.

"Oh, and I heard the Yaoyorozus are sending their daughter to UA! Remember her? And the Todoroki boy! They'll both be in your year! Now you won't feel like you don't know anyone."

Fuck. Fuck. Really? Well, it made sense. Fuck.

Her grandmother said they have a box of Seki's old clothes for her to wear, if she'd like, and per her request, they prepared Yuuka's old room. The police let them keep some of her belongings from the apartment, her grandmother explained.

Yuuka's old room faced the city. The golden afternoon light spilled across the desk, the old medical textbooks on the shelves, and her medals of valor.

"It's perfect," Kizuna managed, looking around, hands pressed to her mouth. "Thank y—"

"Your grandfather wants you on a strict schedule," her grandmother interrupted. "That means dinner with us every day, a curfew, and coming with us to the occasional gathering."

Her arms fell back to her side. "…Right."

"And we want to talk about potential marriages. You know, we just married your cousin Akari to an Ayamezuki, her sunlight Quirk goes splendidly with his photosynthesis Quirk, oh, the strong babies they'll make—"

"Gran," she said abruptly, "what if I become, like… a real hero? I won't have time for… marriage talk."

"I know that's your goal, dear." Her grandmother gripped her arms, smiling intensely. "But it's always better to have a backup plan."

A backup plan.

Right.

It's good to be practical. Bad to live with your head in the clouds. Even if she graduated from UA, there was no guarantee she could be a Hero hero. In fact, if she was to be especially cynical about it, UA would just be another gold star on her resume of Qualified Young Woman With Good Quirk In Search of a Husband.

Her grandmother patted her cheek. "I'll let you get settled."

The next day, Kizuna woke up before either of her grandparents and slipped on a sweater and running shorts. She was going to see the hero All Might suggested she meet up with, because she needed to whip her weak body in shape for the UA entrance exam. She was aiming for the General track, not Hero, but still: she wanted to show that she was capable of, like, the occasional sprint.

In a cardboard box in the closet were Yuuka's old Nike Air Force 1's, soft and scuffed-up from wear. Yuuka used to get so angry at her when she wasted money buying trendy clothes, even though she had her big sister's hand-me-downs. I don't want to look like an old hag, she'd respond, and Yuuka would snort and reply, You fool, don't you know retro always comes back into fashion? You'll beg to look like an old hag one day.

Kizuna sat on her bed and laced up a shoe, inspecting with a grin. Perfect fit.

She never had a sense of purpose like this before.

Kizuna could name a million billion things better than running. Like not running. Not running was high up on the list of Things Better Than Running. Her chest burned as her feet slapped the concrete. Was everything about heroics directly correlated to masochism? A subconscious BDSM fetish in the hero community explained the tight, skimpy outfits. How much pain can you tolerate? Oh, that amount of a pain? Okay, let's multiply it by a hundred for fun! Because, in the end, all the running and lifting weights and constantly dousing their bodies in pain was what heroes did. For fun.

There could not be a more stupid occupation in the world.

Kizuna sucked in desperate gulps of air as she jogged through the streets of a quiet neighborhood, streaks of dawn coloring the sky blue and gold. A large, bright orange hero ran next to her while munching on a baguette. She must've been running for an eternity. At least twenty, thirty minutes.

"How… long… has it… been?" Kizuna panted, sweating like a pig, her skinny knees knocking together.

Fatgum glanced at his watch. "Two minutes n' forty-six seconds."

The noise she makes was not unlike a weeping banshee.

"C'mon, kid! No guts, no glory!"

"Don't… say those words to me… Fatgum!" Kizuna passed by a boy her age jogging in bright red sneakers, and shouted desperately, "Please end my life!"

He shot her a look of startled alarm as he ran past. Fatgum chomped down on the baguette, not even breaking a sweat.

They finally took a break in the park. Kizuna collapsed flat on the grass, sucking in air like a vacuum cleaner. There's no way she can do this. She considered quitting and heading back to Hokkaido. (She considered that no less than five hundred and twenty-two times in the past hour.)

"You said you're aimin' for the General Department, yeah?"

With effort, she gasped, "Uh-huh."

"How're your studies comin'? You should definitely work on acin' the written exam, in case, uh, the practical doesn't go so well."

"Huughhhh…"

"Is that a 'shut up, punk, I can't deal with this right now' noise?"

"Haaaaaaarghhhh…"

Fatgum jogged lightly in place, his huge body bouncing up and down. He's fucking adorable, but he was also making her run, which meant she wanted to break his nose.

When her breathing finally evened out, Kizuna muttered, "Yokoyamas always graduate from General or Support. It's 'cause our Quirks aren't usually hero-like."

"Hey, now," his huge, round eyes blinked at her, "the Quirk doesn't make the hero."

Except when it does, she thought.

"After this, we got food, weightlifting, then healing practice."

"How long is this training supposed to last?"

Fatgum grinned widely. "Until you give up, or get into UA."

"Yay," she said dully, and slicked back her sweaty hair. It was a short pixie now, almost covering her ears. "You're helping me 'cause of Yuuka, right?"

"Tutari's saved my ass countless times. I owe her." He gave her a friendly smack on the back with his gloved hand. "An' any sister of hers is a friend of mine!"

He was cheerful now, but she remembered him in the hospital, his muscled form so different; how he'd held her shoulders in his large, callused hands and looked her in the eye and said very quietly, "Your sister is dead. I'm so sorry."

Slowly Kizuna stood, her legs trembling. He had lost a friend, he's a busy pro hero, and now he was taking time to help her do something insanely stupid.

She had to stop being so pathetic.

Fatgum's schedule was irregular; being based in Kansai, they could only meet up when he was in Tokyo for hero work. But he introduced her to the local urgent care center and told them she'd be volunteering there to work on her Quirk. They started her off small: healing scrapes, bruises, and broken fingers. He made a list of foods for her to eat on a regular basis, so she could carb up and bring her body back to a healthy weight. And of course, physical exercise. Neogenesis depended on stamina; the more in shape Kizuna was, the more she could heal before passing out.

She'd probably be able to get into UA's General Department on her name alone, but she missed two years of school and she still needed to pass the written exam. So her grandparents did what every rich grandparent did: they hired professional tutors that she saw every day, weekends included, so she could catch up. Honestly, though? She didn't miss much. Math, science: still boring. History: definitely boring. Great literature: especially dull.

When she wasn't studying logarithms or memorizing pointless historical dates, she was listening to the nurses explain how ligaments tear and bones break, and falling asleep while reading Yuuka's medical textbooks.

Life became a circular hell: Waking up at dawn. Running until she throws up. Passing by the jogging boy in the bright red sneakers. Volunteering at the urgent care. Lifting weights. Studying. Eating food that she hoped to god would stay inside during tomorrow's run.

(It did not.)

Sometimes when she couldn't sleep (she missed Wakka at the foot of her bed, the big growling mess of fur guarding the door and her), she climbed up to the roof of the house and listened to Yuuka's favorite songs on her headphones, scrolling through photos of her sister.

Kizuna paused on one that makes her smile. A close-up of Yuuka's face with a protruding double chin, the epitome of exhausted let me eat my junk food in peace. She remembered this.

She remembered being ten and playing a video game on the engawa outside. The tv on in the background, a news report of All Might fighting a villain. Kizuna half-watched from the corner of her eye. God, she'd love to have a Quirk like that. Ripping bullies apart, kicking down buildings, snapping the spines off of villains or anyone who bothered her, really.

Yuuka fell next to her with a tired sigh, clutching a greasy bag of fast food.

"Fries and a burger again? Aren't heroes supposed to be healthy?" she snarked, and the way her sister's face squishes was so funny she took a photo of it.

"Gotta carbo-load. Mataki, you're lucky you weren't born with my Quirk."

"Stop being so emo, sis. I'll trade any day." At least Yuuka's had use.

On the tv, All Might landed a wicked punch and slammed the villain in concrete.

Kizuna caught her sister wincing and clutching her head. "Migraine again?" she asked without any real interest, more focused on her game.

"Low blood sugar." Yuuka stuffed her mouth with fries. The villain brushed off his wounds and launched a counterattack, jumping into the sky. Her hand lightly rubbed the long scar across her face. "Don't be a hero, yeah? It's not like a video game."

"Yeah. Real-life heroism sounds exhausting. Also, the life expectancy sucks."

"Thanks," Yuuka said wryly.

"Well, it's a good reminder," Kizuna remembered saying, and remembered thinking, She can tell it's a joke. I'm not a bad sister. "Anyway, I'm gonna be, like, a famous singer or actress. Maybe a model." She kicked Yuuka when she shrieked in laughter. "Sh-shut up, I could so do it! And maybe I'll dye my hair like yours so it's white n' pretty."

The scar jumped when she smiled, her dogteeth unnaturally sharp.

"I hate it," Yuuka confided like a secret. "It's like paper. Only beautiful when someone else draws on it. I'd rather be ink."

White.

White like thick envelopes of money.

White like the button-up shirt of the life insurance guy as he bowed his head and said, "We're deeply sorry for your loss."

The sunrise over Tokyo was not white. It was filled with color, smog, and light pollution, gleaming across glass windows and flocks of birds and an insignificant figure on a roof crying her eyes out.

As the summer dragged on, she volunteered at the urgent care every day. She kept up training with Fatgum. When she flexed in the mirror, there was even a tiny bulge on her bicep.

Her grandparents called up a family friend as an additional tutor that met with her twice a week, though she was pretty sure that's just because her grandmother's worried about her lacking proper social interaction with someone her age. Or she was trying to set them up. Actually, the latter seemed more likely.

"Studying is no joke!" her tutor exclaimed, his glasses flashing. "Let's do this right, Yokoyama! Well begun is half done!"

The last time she saw Iida Tenya was at Yuuka's wake. He was younger than her, but so much smarter. Kizuna leaned on her palm, evaluating this square in the shape of a boy. "How's that brother of yours, Tenya-kun? Still hot?"

"Please do not make suggestive comments about my much older brother! That puts me in a state of deep discomfort!"

She grinned. Iida cleared his throat.

"Now, let's go over the concept of the Lewis structure again!"

"Ughhh, but I'm meeeelting… let's get popsicles first."

"That is not conducive to studying," he told her, and sighed, taking off his glasses. "Look, Yokoyama, everyone says UA's practical exam is more important than the written, but they still won't accept you if you fail. I genuinely do want to help, but… I can't do that unless you help me help you."

She chewed on her bottom lip, then patted Yuuka's medals on her desk. "My sister would always get popsicles with me when I asked her to…"

Iida's eyebrow twitched.

Fifteen minutes later, they were sitting in her room again, eating popsicles. Orange for him, lemon-lavender for her.

"Shall we continue?" he offered, opening the textbook.

"…My sister would always let me play a video game before—"

"NO."

September rolled around. Leaves redden, the city air turning cool and grey.

White Nikes stepped over wet leaves on the way up the cemetery hill. They walked down a path of tall gravestones and paused in front of the one with Yokoyama Yuuka carved down the polished stone. Incense was lit, wilted flowers were replaced with fresh daisies, hands pressed together and prayed.

"It's been two years," Kizuna said quietly, sticking her hands back in her hoodie pocket. "Sorry it's taken me so long to visit. I just… feel like an idiot, talking to a rock. I have a piece of you inside me all the time, so what's the point?"

There was so much she wants to say, and yet… nothing came out. It was just her and her own reflection on Yuuka's smooth, glossy memorial.

But it was hard to be vulnerable, even to the dead.

So Kizuna pulled out her phone and tapped in her sister's old number.

Someone once said to me the world is worse without you. But I don't care about the world.
I only care that you're gone, and I'm still here.

She bit the inside of her cheek.

Then she added, Everything is lonelier now.

She stared at the text message, forcing back a well of emotions. She presseed send and stuffed her phone back into her pocket, swiping at her eyes.

It helped a little bit, to write it. Better than a shout to the sky, because that was too grandiose for someone like Yuuka, who once shoved an entire box of chicken nuggets into her mouth and gloated, Beat you! At least here it was almost normal, almost another message she sent to her big sister, almost another day.

"Catch ya later, sapo." Kizuna patted the memorial and headed out of the cemetery.

When she reached the street, she put on her headphones and started running.

A month and a half left until the entrance exam.

Newly sixteen, Kizuna slowed down from her daily run and stepped into a convenience store. She needed chapstick. The winter air was dry and her bad habit of biting her lips (to check if she was still alive, which was, you know, a perfectly reasonable concern) had resulted in a constantly red, chapped mouth.

Working out had given her a real appetite again; her body was no longer a fragile twig. She filled out her running shorts and had to throw out all her jeans because they'd all gotten too tight. Quick, furtive glances flicked her way as she walked between the shelves, at the snow-haired girl with the sharp pink don't talk to me glare and legs for days.

A group of boys barged in, practically kicking over a shelf right on top of Kizuna.

"Excuse me," she said pointedly.

She was ignored, though a boy with stretchy fingers waved and clicked his tongue at her. Yuck. Judging by their uniforms, they were from the local junior high. And judging by how they were all following the loud blond one with something akin to religious reverence, they had a hard-on for alpha types.

Double yuck.

Between rows of bread, her eyes narrowed at the boys passing by on the other aisle. They picked up some drinks and tossed them between each other, talking loudly. The cashier was watching them with a vague, I'm-not-paid-enough-for-this-shit alarm. Thanks to the commotion, she clipped a chocolate pocky and a chapstick in her pocket.

"Nah, fuck this, they're all outta the All Might Pocari," the blond boy said loudly, and footsteps came up behind Kizuna as she was about to leave the store.

They exited at the same time. His shoulder knocked against hers, his harsh voice cutting the air. Viciously red eyes shifted in her direction.

He shoved past her with his friends, almost knocking her flat into the wall as if she were a bug.

What the hell!

God, it had been a while since she suffered such human right's abuses (excluding the whole kidnapping thing). If she hadn't already been so screwed up, this would've transported her right back into sixth grade with a bucket of dirty water splashed on her head.

She rubbed her arm, muttering asshole below her breath. (Ignore the fact that Kizuna just quietly robbed a convenience store. This was not about her.)

She changed the direction of her run, not wanting to go down the same street that asshole took. Instead, Kizuna took off toward the Dagobah Beach Park.

On her way, she came across a boy hopping along the sidewalk, wincing and clutching his ankle. Uh-oh. Probably slipped on an icy sidewalk. It was pretty rare to see other joggers out in this weather.

Those red kicks looked familiar.

She slowed down. "Need some help with that?"

"Uh—s-sorry?"

Kizuna squatted and clasped her hands over his ankle—ah, just a light sprain. He yelped in panic, then his eyes widened as the ligaments repaired themselves and the pain dispersed. He shook out his leg, marveling, and descended into rapid mumbling of which she could only make out 'healing' and 'incredible'. Then he snapped himself out of it and thanked her frantically, bowing his head of messy green over and over again.

"You're pretty fucked up," she observed, looking at the collection of bandages and bruises on his arms. "Training for something?"

He coughed a couple times and says nervously, with an abashed grin, "UA."

"Oh," she said, and his shoulders flinched like he's expecting a— "Cool, hope you get in."

A cursory comment, tossed to the side without much thought. But he seemed to stand up a little bit straighter.

They did the awkward 'just met you and now I'm trying to leave this conversation' dance, then realized they had the same plan: running to the beach.

"Midoriya Izuku," he introduced himself through exerted breath, his freckled cheeks flushed pink. "N-nice to meet you!"

He seemed like a nice guy. Kinda scrawny, but earnest. Their paces matched, feet against concrete, running in tandem.

They slowed into a walk as they arrived on the white sands, and she offered some of her shoplifted pocky for a post-run snack.

She asked about his painful-looking training and her eyes bugged when he pointed to the garbage dump about half a kilometer down the beach, the one that'd been steadily decreasing the past year, while rubbing the back of his head with a self-conscious grin. Yet, irritatingly, he was damn evasive when she asks what his Quirk is.

It had been a long, long time since she introduced herself to a stranger her own age. Everyone in Ekashi's village knew her as his granddaughter, or just Kizuna. Time to peel off the bandage. She'd have to get used to it.

When she said her family name, his eyes went wide.

"Yokoyama? Like the sidekick family? …Oh, crap, I mean—" His arms were clumsily askew over his sweaty face, as though to protect himself from a punch or his own internal embarrassment.

Honestly, he reminded her of a twitchy squirrel.

"No, you're right; most of our careers peak as sidekicks," she said wryly. He kept glancing at her, crunching on pocky. "…Trying to figure out how old I am? If my age matches?"

"No!" he said immediately, flustered again. "But… sorry, y-you are her, right? The, sorry again, the one All Might found in the mountains two years ago?"

Kizuna flashed a peace sign, two pockies sticking out of her mouth like walrus tusks.

"Whoa," Midoriya uttered, and with great amusement she watched the transition of emotions across his face. "…Oh, oh, god. I'm sorry. T-Tutari was, um—"

"Yeah, that's okay." She flung the empty pocky box behind her.

He caught it before it hits the sand and jogged back over again. "So, um, kind of cool to not litter, but that's alright—hey, sorry, could I—could I try that again?"

"Don't force yourself. She's dead, y'know? No one's listening."

"Yeah," he said, after a beat. "Yeah, you're right." He crunched the pocky box between his fingers. "Are—are you listening though? I mean, is it alright if I talk to you about how awesome your sister was?"

She gave him an odd look. "What?"

He kept rambling as though he hadn't heard, "There was that one time when she slid underneath a truck flipping over to heal a motorcyclist—"

"—while the highway underneath them was falling," Kizuna muttered, her lips twitching. "Yeah, that was badass."

"And—and when Tutari teamed up with Ryukyu to rescue those hikers trapped in an avalanche—"

"Yeah, yeah! It was right after they graduated high school, too. They were both just rookies when that happened, you know."

"That's awesome! Oh, and she used to say this cool thing whenever she was interviewed. Remember, when they'd all ask her h-how she could jump into the line of fire, even without a combat Quirk?"

"Of course! She always said, 'no guts, no glory!' I must've watched those interviews at least a thousand times!"

"Whoa! As expected of Tutari's number one fan!"

"Hey," Kizuna snapped, her smile vanishing.

Midoriya turned pink again, glancing to the side. "Um, too much?"

She studied him through narrowed eyes. When was the last time she'd breathlessly fangirled over her sister like this?

"No," she mumbled, kicking up sand with her shoe and feeling oddly shy. "No, just right."

They grinned at each other.

"Midoriya, my boy! You're early!"

They both looked up to see a skinny blond man, who paused on the sand. His shadowed eyes seemed to widen at the sight of her. Or maybe that was just the sun.

Midoriya glanced at her, for some reason nervous again. "This is, um…"

"Yokoyama Kizuna," she said.

Her nod was returned with a friendly smile. "A pleasure seeing you here," the man said cheerily. "Nothing like a brisk jog around the beach to get the blood pumping!"

"You're training to get into UA with him?" she muttered to Midoriya under her breath, and peeked over her shoulder again at the sickly-looking man, who was a sack of bones in baggy clothes. Oof. Fatgum could break him like a toothpick. "Good luck, shorty."

"And you," Midoriya called after her, "y-you're also aiming to be a hero, right?"

"General Department! Maybe I'll support you as a sidekick one day, Mr. Future Hero!"

Waving goodbye at the funny green boy, Kizuna jogged on home.

She reached it faster than expected. Hopping on her toes, she checked her phone. She still had a half-hour to kill before she needed to get ready for the tutor.

Taking a deep breath, she began another run around the neighborhood. In nine months, her mile time went from eighteen minutes to just under seven. She could bench fifty pounds. She could heal a sprained wrist in under a minute.

Her heart pumped encouragingly, one-two, one-two.

The day of the UA entrance exam, Kizuna woke up with an upset stomach.

In the grand scheme of things, this test isn't important, she thought, forcing herself to swallow a few mouthfuls of breakfast lest she pass out during the exam. Like, is it more important than lowering the poverty rate? Than civil rights? No, not really.

It's fine if I fail, she thought on the subway ride over, staring glassily out the window.

Nothing matters anyway, my life is a meaningless speck in the history of the universe, she thought, looking at the text Fatgum sent her. It was a sticker of the BMI Hero himself, giving her a cartoony thumbs-up with a wide, Totoro-esque smile.

He added, I'm in Tokyo today! After the test, let's celebrate!

…She did a quick barf in the bathroom and headed onward to the executi—no, no, the auditorium of UA.

Other prospective students were milling around, talking excitedly or otherwise looking just as nervous as her. She spied Iida Tenya and waved at him, but he was staring at the paper in front of him with such a look of concentration he probably wouldn't see a nuclear bomb if it hit him in the face.

A boy with purple hair and an evil-looking face sat down next to her without much more than a sideways glance. Kizuna fidgeted in her seat. Students around her were wishing each other luck. Hm. Couldn't hurt. Good mojo, right?

She leaned over to her seat partner and says, "Um, goo—"

"WELCOME TO TODAY'S LIVE PERFORMANCE! EVERYBODY SAY HEY!"

The scary-looking guy turned to look at her, ostensibly in bewilderment. Kizuna sunk lower in her seat, covering her burning face. Fuck this.

They were ushered into a pretend city block, the empty office buildings and fake car garages built with disturbing realism. Alas, she wasn't placed in the same block as Iida. She didn't spot messy green hair around, either. Well, that was okay. All she needed to do was heal a couple people, to show off Yuuka's Quirk to the examiners. That should be enough to get her into the General Department.

Kizuna bounced lightly on her toes, buckling on a highlighter-yellow bicycle helmet. She had on kneepads and elbow pads over her jacket and leggings. Several students, who at first may have snuck an appreciative look at her legs, were now snickering at her dorky appearance.

When Present Mic shouted begin! the students around her rushed forward in a tidal wave, knocking her to the ground.

She spat out dirt, a vein throbbing on her forehead. This was why she always hated participating. In anything.

Barely thirty seconds into the exam, she wanted to give up. Everyone said it was better to have tried and failed, but how about not trying and not failing and not having your humiliation witnessed by a hundred people?

The ground trembled. As another wave of villain bots swarmed the street, Kizuna crawled behind a building, paralyzed, eyes squeezed shut in panic. Oh, god! This was too real! Bots tore through buildings, flinging debris everywhere. Other students were shouting, trying their best to hold their own. Of course it was real, it should be real. She'd grown up around heroes risking their lives all the damn time and making shitty jokes about their occupational hazards. Yuuka, she clutched her heart, hiding her face in her knees, help me.

Grey boots were barely visible between her knees, pacing in front of her.

"It's harder than it looks, huh? Get up, crybaby. What's the worst that can happen? You'll die?" Hands on hips, head tilted, a fanged smile. "Are you still afraid of dying? Don't you know I'm right here, waiting for you?"

Her eyes watered. Of all the places to suddenly be overwhelmed by the absence of her sister, she would've never guessed it'd be in the middle of a high school entrance exam with buildings blowing up around her.

"You have my Quirk, you have my heart. What more do you need to be brave?"

Right. Her heart thumped. She gulped in one last, deep breath of air.

"No guts—"

"No glory," Kizuna finished, slapping her helmet.

She bulleted across the street, dragging hurt students behind still-standing buildings and healing their wounds, then took off searching for more injured. She slid between a row of mowed-down bots, debris pinging against her neon helmet, to help a kid with his wings trapped. There was a blond boy who seems to have electrocuted ten bots as well as himself; she pulled him out of the wreckage.

Eight minutes in, it seemed like every kid who wanted to give up had done so; everywhere she looked, there's a fellow examinee blasting away bots with ease. Just a little more! She could keep going!

"Can someone get hurt in my close proximity, please!?"

Hollering and waving her hands like she was trying to flag down a wayward taxi, Kizuna rounded the corner and came face-to-face with a two-point Venator. It jerked mechanically around, a laser beam locking onto her head.

Her mind blanked.

The laser charged, whirring.

In a flash, a spiky-haired blur smashed into it with a swing of his fist and a blazing roar. She stumbled back, hair flying across her face. The bot exploded into little bits and pieces that nicked his arms when they flew past him. The boy landed on his feet, sweat running down his arms and black tank.

"Are you alright!?" She reached out. "Let me heal you!"

He spun around. It was the boy with the cutting red eyes, from the convenience store.

Faster than a snake, he grabbed her wrist in a vice grip. "Fuck off! Don't slow me down!"

…What.

What?

WHAT?

"You want to be a hero?" she gasped, utterly appalled, as a large shadow falls over them.

His eyes snapped to hers, furious. A massive, zero-point Executor loomed over the cityscape, crushing the building right next to them as it stomps closer, but Kizuna barely noticed, she is pure rage, rage, rage—

"I said out of my fucking way!" he thundered up at the bot, his grip tightening on her wrist.

—heat that wasn't hers boiled through her, bursting through her lungs like fireworks, a deafening, audacious declaration of victory making her dizzy in the head—

With his other hand, he launched his Quirk.

An explosion detonated, crashing into Kizuna's ears, ripping asshole's hand off her wrist, and blowing her off her feet. Her bike helmet smashed against the concrete and flew off. The BOOM was so loud that for a moment, all the fighting in the vicinity stopped and everyone looked up at the dust clears.

A pair of steaming metal legs fell from the sky. The Executor had been blown clear through the entire street of fake buildings. All that was left of the ex-bot was charred metal. All that was left of the street was rubble.

He looked down at his smoking hand, then back at the white-haired girl wincing on the ground.

"Bakugou Katsuki," the examiners murmured. "Such power!"

The screens were lit up with his snarling face, the powerful force of his explosions blasting away the bots.

Principal Nezu rubbed his chin, looking closer. "Is it really just his?"

All Might's gaze was pulled from watching his protégé to the Yokoyama attached at Bakugou's hand, her pink eyes blazing in fury, right before he unleashed an explosion that decimated half the city block.

So, that was a total failure.

Kizuna was so agitated that she started mixing up her Quirks. When she tried to heal a red-haired boy, the left side of his body erupted into hard, craggy formations that made him topple over with a startled yell. Shit, she never tried training herself to use both at the same time. She hadn't even used her original Quirk in years.

But it didn't matter.

She still ended up with zero points.

Other students were slumping away; fellow zeroes like her. Kizuna twisted her dirty hands around the bottom of her sweat-stained shirt, biting her lip. Would it be enough to get her into General?

…There was no sense dwelling on it. She still had work to do.

Recovery Girl was making her way through the other city blocks. But Kizuna could do a little to help the injured students here. While she went around healing, several students thanked her, recognizing the girl in the highlighter-helmet ardently screaming 'Free healing! Get your free healing right here!' as she sprinted around the streets. A girl with a cool haircut and cooler earphones even patted her on the back and said, "Nice going."

Kizuna hoped somehow Yuuka knew how much her Quirk was beloved. This was all thanks to her. She nodded back at the friendly looks, lightheaded from healing and post-test despair-adrenaline.

She found her bike helmet half-buried underneath a dead bot and dusted it off. Luckily, it only had a few scratches. Still wearable.

"Hey, you."

The blond ass rude-mouthed bastard-faced little fuckity fuck.

"You're not injured," she sourly pointed out. She would've liked to see him hobble to her on his knees, begging to be healed. "What do you want?"

A nasty scowl appeared, eyes narrowing into slits beneath yellow bangs. "What the fuck did you do to me?"

Kizuna ground her teeth, right hand twisting around her left wrist that she was pretty sure will start to bruise tomorrow. She could still hear thunderous fireworks of zealous ambition. It was dizzying. How could one boy have all that—

"Spit it out," he hoeld a palm up, knuckles sharp, fingers popping with mini explosions, "or I'll make you cry."

Her breath caught. The dark contempt was terrifying.

She averted her gaze. "I…"

A shadow with a looped white ponytail walked behind the rubble and called, "Big words for a shorty."

…Nah, fuck this.

"—actually, sorry!" Kizuna said with false cheer, looking at the blond boy. They were roughly the same height. "I can't hear short guys speak."

Red eyes twitched. "…I'll fucking DESTROY—"

Several brave students, spotting potential catastrophe, jumped on top of him in a dogpile. He went down with a stifled roar.

She stumbled through the written exam as best she could; it was less 'smooth sailing' and more 'spectacle of motorboats crashing into each other, with an oil tanker running over them and setting the ocean on fire'… but at least she answered all the questions. Maybe the practical saved her—maybe. She did heal a lot of people.

…And everyone was so strong. Way, way stronger than her. Was she really up to attend UA? There were plenty of smaller hero schools… there were plenty of normal schools… she could always go back to Hokkaido…

She moodily ruminated over this while heading to the izakaya Fatgum said to meet up at.

"Starvin'," the lanky hero greeted with a pained look on his face, his muscled arms bandaged up like he just got back from taking down a villain.

"Yeah," Kizuna grunted, her lower fangs jutting out in a manner not unlike a troll. "Can we save conversation until after food?"

"Sounds like a plan."

Fifteen minutes and several exhausted grumbles later, Fatgum upended an entire bowl of ramen into his mouth, slurping up the noodles, then dug into the plates of chicken and beef skewers. Kizuna was so hungry she inhaled a salmon roll without pausing to blink, then grabbed the last chicken skewer before it can disappear into Fatgum's infinite stomach.

After ordering a second round, she reached with her chopsticks. "Can I have your ginger?"

Fatgum paused, his eyes flickering.

Yuuka grinned back, eyes glittering, waggling his ginger from the end of her chopsticks. "Too slow, Taishirou," she chuckled, and he blinked, and Kizuna wore her sister's grin as she said victoriously, "Too slow, Fatgum."

He shook his head, clearing the water out.

"I never used to like ginger before." Kizuna considered the tartness as she chews. "Weird."

"So, kid," he wiped his mouth, "how'd it go?"

"Eh. If I pass, I pass. If I don't pass, that's fine, too."

"Well, it's good you ain't worried."

She ripped through a vegetable skewer, watching him go through plate after plate like an automated food machine. Kizuna rested her chin on her hand and sighed. After a few more of those lengthy exhalations, Fatgum hit the table.

"Alright, what's eatin' ya?"

She gloomily munched. "I'm… not the sort of person who attends hero school."

"I thought your whole family came from—"

"That's not what I mean. I mean, like…" Dirtbag, she was a dirtbag. "I never wanted to be involved in heroics. I just wanted a life where I could play video games and do meaningless shit with friends on the weekends." Her fists clenched over the table. "I'm not talented enough to be a hero, and I'm not smart enough to be a real doctor. But what else am I supposed to do with this Quirk?"

"You're only, what, sixteen?" Fatgum said reasonably. "Don't worry about figurin' out stuff. You'll get into UA, you'll find out what ya wanna do. All that matters is that ya wanna go there, right?"

"I'm doing this 'cause All Might said I should," she snapped, on the defensive. "That's all. I don't actually, like, care."

His eyebrows shot up. He ran a hand through his wild hair, chewing, too polite to say the first thing that came to his mind.

Her long canines dug into her lip. Blunt nails, black polish chipping, sawed into the table.

Kizuna knew she couldn't keep acting like this. It was just so hard to admit she cared, because to care would mean admitting things have an effect on her, and admitting that would mean admitting she might possibly never, ever recover from What Happened.

"Sorry, I lied," she said in a small voice, and took a deep breath. "You… you know when an ice floe breaks off from the land, it floats away into the ocean?"

Fatgum nodded. She picked at the corner of the table.

"I've… felt like that since the day I woke up. Like… like I'm on an ice floe that's drifting farther and farther. And I can't see the land anymore."

The ice cubes in her cup melted with a clatter, dispersing bubbles to the top.

"But when All Might said I should go to UA to learn how to be a medic hero like Yuuka, I thought… this is it, this is what I have to do to reel myself back to shore. I don't know if I can do it—not even hero stuff, I mean, like school and my family and being, like, normal again—I don't know if I'm capable of any of it, but it's what her Quirk deserves." It was where this heart belonged. "And I… I want to try. Because I… care." She rubbed her arm. "A lot."

Fatgum set down his bowl and rested his enormous hands out on the table. "If this feels right to ya, then take it easy. Ain't no need to rush. If ya get in, if ya don't… hell, it's just a school." The roll of his eyes felt at once casual and earnest. "I didn't go to UA."

She grinned slightly at that, at his careless dismissal of the famous school, the relaxed shrug of his shoulders.

"How about: if ya don't get in, fly off n' see where your heart takes ya. If ya still wanna be a hero, come back in a few years and keep trainin'. I don't say this often, but you'll drown in internship offers just with your Quirk. Heroes would be outta their minds not to accept a healer in their offices. Sure, it's unorthodox, but you can build up experience that way for a couple years, then take the Hero License Exam. It's a longer route, but the destination's the same, ain't it?" Fatgum nodded, biting into a piece of fried chicken. "One step at a time, kid. You'll be just fine."

It was somehow exactly what she needed to hear.

Kizuna nibbled on the end of a skewer, her smile tiny and relieved. "Thanks, Fatgum." She tried to stuff down the thick, teary feeling in her chest, and when the waitress came around to ask if they'd like anything else, said, "Matcha ice cream, please!"

"Ya sure are different from Tutari," he said quietly.

She'd heard it all before. Smarter, kinder, prettier, adored, loved, nothing like her ill-mannered and bratty younger sister… "How so?" Kizuna replied, expecting one or all of the above.

After a moment's consideration, he grinned. "She always ordered red bean instead of matcha."

That caught her off-guard, and she snorted into her wrist. "Now we know who's the dumber sister."

There was a shadow sitting at the table beside them, a shadow with a looped ponytail who smirked, "Hey, I resent that," but when Kizuna looked over, it was just a man eating with his family. She rubbed away the steam in her eyes and turned back to dinner and the orange hero hitting the table as he laughed.

Her post-entrance exam gift to herself was being a slug and playing video games all week. When her grandmother called her name downstairs, her bed was covered with cookies, chips, and crumbs. Empty pocky boxes and greasy packets of fries fell to the ground as a blanket-covered head stuck up and peeked out the window. Iida Tenya was outside, handing over a basket of fresh fruit to her grandfather that was no doubt sent by his mother.

Kizuna crammed on socks, ran a comb through her unwashed hair, and hustled downstairs to say hi. She didn't have the heart to tell him she bombed the exam, though maybe he could tell from the shifty look on her face.

"Whatever happens, Yokoyama," Iida told her seriously, "it was an honor fighting this battle by your metaphorical side."

"Our families will still see each other during holidays." Kizuna clasped his shoulder. She heard he did great. She was pretty proud. "It's not like I'll die or anything if I don't get in."

His face paled. "Forgive me!"

"F-for what?"

"For—for—forgive my unsightly behavior! I shall be off!" He dashed down the street, leaving her blinking in confusion after him.

Her grandmother was watching with a suspicious grin through the window. Actually, a run sounded nice. All the better to avoid weird questions.

She laced up her Nikes and went out for a jog to the beach. She went slow, wincing from all the junk food and soda now swishing around in her stomach. Maybe gorging on sweets and fries wasn't such a good idea.

When she finally got to the Dagobah Beach Park, the beautiful vista of the sea was uncrowded by broken refrigerators and couches with stuffing and springs popping out. Couples were out walking on the pier and standing on the gazebo over the ocean. That crazy kid really did it.

"Midoriya!" she called, waving, slightly out of breath.

The boy jogging on the sidewalk paused, his eyes brightening. "Yokoyama! H-how'd you do?"

"Zero points!" she sang cheerfully. "Still waiting for my rejection letter. And you?"

His face turned red. Oh? Oh ho ho?

"Come on, say it," she encouraged. He looked down, bashful. "Say it already!" she ordered, scowling.

A smile burst across Midoriya's face. "I—I m-made it into the Hero Department!"

"Nice going, you!" She thwaped him across the arm in glee and then paused. Was she actually unironically happy? …Gross.

"And you—you'll definitely get into the General Department with your Quirk!" he said with a heartening beam. "Everyone wants a healer to succeed! And you must've gotten points for resc—"

"It's not really mine."

He looked at her blankly. "…Sorry?"

"I mean—sorry, it's nothing." She stretched her arms over her head, the waves lapping up the shore and seagulls flying low. "You know, I'd rather have All Might's power. I'd love to feel strong for once."

"I… I think you're plenty strong," Midoriya said, then waved his hands around. "B-but I don't mean your Quirk! Just… the way you talk. I'm not saying you talk weird or anything! Just how you, kind of, um, carry yourself." He ducked his head again, nervous but still smiling. "It's… cool."

Kizuna stared.

She burst out laughing.

Clutching her stomach, she hollered, "Heeeeey!" at the couples walking along the beach. She pointed at Midoriya and yelled, "This kid's gonna be a hero! He's gonna save us all someday!" She kept shouting and giggling, as the boy tried desperately to lower her arm. "And one day I'm gonna support him as a sidekick! Everyone—oh, it's your trainer! Oops, do you think he heard me?"

Judging by how the skinny blond man was wheezing, he did.

When her last volunteer shift at the urgent care center was over (the nurses were oddly teary-eyed at her leaving, even though she did nothing but inconvenience them and pretend she was a wizard to all the little kids that came in), Kizuna took a long, meandering walk back through a snowy avenue, white slush on the sidewalk already crushed by countless footsteps. She sent photos to Ekashi and wished she had Wakka with her. Snow from anywhere else but Hokkaido just wasn't the same.

When she got back to the house, she hung up her thick winter jacket and was about to head to the kitchen for food when she heard voices in the dining room. Loud voices. Happy… voices…? That couldn't be right.

"The star arrives," her grandfather chuckled when she poked her head into the dining room, and she was pretty sure she'd fallen into another dimension. "Well done!"

"Kizuna-chan!" her grandmother practically sobbed. "You've been accepted!"

She blinked, taken aback. "Oh—cool! So…" Kizuna looked between Principal Nezu and Recovery Girl sitting at their dining table, "…wait, what's happening?"

"Nice to meet you, Yokoyama Kizuna," the mouse… dog… bear principal said with a polite, cheerful smile. "Your sister was an excellent student during her time at UA, and it pleases us all that you're following in her path. Now, to get right into it, you're being considered as a special case."

Kizuna furrowed her brow, confused.

"To be blunt, your written exam left quite a bit to be desired, and you achieved zero villain points in the practical."

"I'm… aware." Of my shame.

"However," he said, holding a paw up, "you pulled through the exam by sticking to your guns. During the practical, there was a hidden tally of rescue points! You spent the entire ten minutes dragging students out of harm's way and healing them. Afterwards, you continued to heal everyone who needed it. Despite being unable to fight any villains, you scored the highest rescue points out of all the examinees and displayed the spirit of a true medic hero!"

Holy motherfucking fuckballs.

"Normally, this would qualify you to join the Hero track," Nezu continued, as her grandfather huffed in pride, "but heroism is focused on combat and your current skills are lacking. Therefore, we'd like you to join General Studies with the understanding that with enough improvement, you could be transferred to the Department of Heroes."

Her grandmother clapped in glee, but Kizuna couldn't hear anything other than Department of Heroes.

"Meanwhile, you'll have classes with General Studies, but you'll also be working as a healer at UA. You'll start your work-study program immediately, under the tutelage of Recovery Girl."

She picked her jaw up off the floor and said tentatively, "Isn't that what Yuuka did?"

Recovery Girl smiled as she dropped candy in her grandfather's stoic lap and patted his head. "Indeed, she started out with a mentorship with me. Because of her… mental health, your sister never made it into the Hero track… but she always wanted to."

Yuuka's heart was beating a drum inside her.

"I'd like that." A smile grew across Kizuna's face, ecstatic. "I'd really like that."

Principal Nezu smiled back. "Welcome to UA!"

Ekashi made a big show of cheering and blowing a pretend party horn as she videochatted him with her new high school uniform on. A year late and a couple failures along the way, but she made it back to school. Wakka happily woofed at her, rubbing his nose at the phone screen. Wiping his eyes (fuck, he's gonna make her cry now), Ekashi reminded her that if it ever gets too much, she could come back home anytime.

First day at UA, she texted Yuuka. I don't know what I'm doing. Anyway, I like ginger now and I think it's your fault. Isn't life just a ball? There, now that she established she knows how self-aware and funny she was, Kizuna concluded the message with Miss you, and sent it off into the void.

The scar on her chest was pale now, lighter than the sandy-brown skin surrounding it. She buttoned her shirt over the long, vertical gash between her breasts and knotted the tie around her neck. Her white hair was short and wavy around her chin, black tights covering her legs, and her uniform was freshly steamed. She looked… decent. Like a normal teenage girl.

Kizuna sighed and rested her forehead on the mirror. "What am I doing…?"

What was this?

Could she really do it? Play pretend? Trick heroes like Fatgum and a school like UA into thinking that she could be a hero? That she could be as good, as worthy as Yuuka? This wasn't some goddamn elementary school theater production. This act would continue for the rest of her life.

She would live as her sister's shadow for the rest of her life.

But then.

Maybe that was okay.

…Good, even.

She closed her eyes, inhaling quietly.

When she opened them, Yuuka's there.

Through the mirror, she brushed off Kizuna's shoulders and adjusted her tie. She was dressed in the same outfit Kizuna saw her in the morning of that day; a black sweater with the sleeves rolled up, black jeans, bandages on her arm. Her long white hair was looped through her hair tie, forming a floppy O over her shoulder.

"You look just like I did when I was your age," Yuuka said, beaming.

A sad smile grew on her lips. "Thanks."

Yuuka's scar and their age difference were the main reasons why most said the sisters didn't look alike, but those who paid attention would notice their eyes were the exact same shade of pink.

"Sorry for dragging you back here. You were almost free from all this."

Her fingers touched the glass and she whispered, "What happened?"

With infinite tenderness, Yuuka rested her cheek over her little sister's head.

Then she said, still smiling, "You could go to my old school, have my heart, my hair, and my Quirk, but nothing can make up for how miserable you made me. I spent my entire life hating you. Hating that I had an irresponsible, selfish, worthless sister to look after. You could be whatever you wanted, while I was bound to my Quirk, saving everyone's life except for my own. This is my gift to you, mataki. All Might said it best. I died laughing."

Downstairs, her grandmother called, "Kizuna! Breakfast!"

She jolted and harshly rubbed her burning eyes.

In the mirror, it was just her.

The soaring glass towers of UA flashed in the sunlight, growing bigger as they near the school.

The car rolled to a stop next to the sidewalk. Kizuna took off her headphones and said to the austere old man sitting to her left, "Grandfather, if UA doesn't work out, what do you think about me… um, studying abroad for a little while?"

"A splendid idea. Then, in exchange for financially supporting a failure and an embarrassment to the family, I'll see to it you're wedded to a promising suitor. Despite your recent troubles, many families are still interested."

"…Cool. Thanks." Backpack in hand, she opened the door with her elbow. Yuuka's white Nikes hit the pavement.

"Don't disappoint us, Kizuna," her grandfather said.

The car was already moving before she completely shut the door.

She shouldered her backpack, following the crowd of excited students eager to start the school year. Then Kizuna spotted something that improved her mood immensely. She caught up to red kicks and messy hair, a hand landing on his shoulder.

The boy turned, and Midoriya Izuku grinned at her.

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"That's what happened. That's how I ended up with her Quirk at UA."

The grey man tilted his head, hands crossed neatly in front of him. "Bored now. Let's get to the good part."

Her white hair glistened like a knife blade in the dark. She remembered spring on a snowy hill, All Might embracing her with a quiet plea for her forgiveness. She remembered how she once foolishly proclaimed she'd be the sidekick to the strongest student in her year—the kid well on his way to being a hero.

Gone were those days of peace. Those days when she didn't know anything.

Kizuna stepped forward. "Yuuka was secretly working for you before she died. I want to finish what she started."

A haunted smile formed beneath the grey hand.

"Then, little healer," Shigaraki rasped, "are you ready to follow in your sister's footsteps and be a villain?"

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i carry your heart with me (i carry it in my heart)

e.e. cummings

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glossary

ainu
(thanks to a john batchelor dictionary (not great but it's something), and kirsten refsing's the ainu language (much more comprehensive, but about thirty million tiers above my brain cell count))

ezo: hokkaido
tutari: yuuka's hero name; a mix of tusare (to heal) and utari (friend/comrade)
ekashi: grandfather
eani shukupashnu ne ruwe ne: "you've grown, haven't you!"
cironnup-po: little (po) fox (cironnup); ekashi's nickname for kizuna
wakka: water; ekashi's dog
haskap: fly honeysuckle
konru: ice
matagi: a hunter
kamuy: gods
yuk ohaw: venison stew
ainu mosir: lit. human and land; the homeland of the humans
sapo: addressing an older sister
mataki: addressing a younger sister

japanese

shakkoi: hokkaido dialect, means cold (versus the standard japanese tsumetai)
kizuna: 絆; connection, tether, also to shackle and bind
yuuka: 癒宇花; heal, universe, and flower
yokoyama: 横山; lit. beside the mountain; a well-known clan that produces heroes with support quirks (often derided as 'sidekick fodder'), notable for their quirk marriages into houses that seek compatible powers to produce stronger offspring

misc

neogenesis: yuuka's quirk; hastens cellular recovery at hyper-speed, usually through skin contact or hair (in both cases, the user must consciously activate her quirk); can't self-heal and can't regenerate lost limbs/organs or cure terminal illnesses; effects are better with medical knowledge and dependent on user's stamina
exalt: kizuna's quirk; strengthens other people's quirks through skin contact at the cost of her stamina; lack of training makes this quirk emotion-based, activating automatically under stress