"Underground hero Eraserhead, a basement of the League of Villains has been located, your presence is required immediately!"
.....
"Sensei! You are going now? Who will take care of 1-A when you're away? How long are you going to be absent?"
"I told...
A whine escaped the woman on the bed, and all people in the room held their breath in anticipation when her eyes fluttered open.
For better or for worse, her gaze had landed right on Katsuki first, making every fibre in her body tense visibly.
Katsuki's breath got stuck in his lungs as a layer of shiny tears covered his narrowing eyes.
So nothing has changed. He shouldn't have raised his hopes too much. He shouldn't have been so naive. He took a step back, followed by another. Yet before he could dash out in his teacher's steps, Rei had stepped in, walking closer to his mother whose gaze was still entirely fixated on him, and only him.
"Mitsuki, dear, do you recognize yo-"
"Katsuki."
An unexplainable feeling invaded every sense and every cell. He had never imagined that hearing his own name would be this joyful.
"M-mom?"
"Oh my God! Katsuki! What happened to you?! You are so...tall!"
Unbelievable. Unbelievable! It was her. It was his mother. The mother that he knew from ten years ago. The mother that knew him and accepted him.
Mitsuki, with an entirely different shine in her eyes and foreign enthusiasm to all nurses, looked around in confusion.
"Where the hell are we? What happened?" She examined her weak body in puzzlement, releasing how straining it was to move around.
"Well, you had been in an... accident, ten years ago," the nurse was very careful with her description, unsure of what could be sensitive and trigger her deterioration.
"Holy f*ck, are you saying that I have been in a coma for ten years?!"
Worse. Katsuki wanted to say, but stopped himself, knowing better than to ruin the moment.
"It doesn't matter now," he stepped in, closer and closer, till he was standing right beside her bed, still unsure of how to approach the woman.
Mitsuki didn't hesitate a second in draping her arms around her boy and dragging him down to her bed, tackling him in a weak hug followed by a smack on the head.
"How dare you grow up to be such a fine man! It was only yesterday you were the size of a shrimp, ya little shit!"
Yeah, it doesn't matter now.... cause you are finally back.
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
*****
They went on and on. Katsuki had within an hour talked more than what he had in all ten years combined. He didn't leave out any details about his life so far, he wanted his mother to be able to just fit back in directly. He knew it was impossible to make up for the lost ten years. He knew his mother still needed alot of physical rehabilitation. Yet at that moment, nothing mattered. It was only him and his mother in the world, no one else mattered.
He can't deny that he was irritated when his father was informed. He felt that his time with his mother was being violated. But when his father left work and showed up in 15 minutes, despite working at a company an half hour away, Katsuki suddenly didn't mind the family reunion as a whole.
His father had cried rivers like the crybaby he was, but if a stray tear or two managed to slip from Katsuki himself, well, no one needed to know that.
All staff members had left, to give them some privacy. And although Rei seemed like she was dying to get to know the new unfamiliar woman that his mother had turned to, she had decided that it could wait.
His mother had been in the middle of a conversation when she had stopped abruptly, earning puzzled looks from the two males.
"Where is Inko though?"
It was as if the temperature in the room dropped drastically, sending a shiver down their spines.
Through the conversation, the family had understood that Mitsuki had no memories of the past ten years. Time seemed to have stopped for her right before the incident. It was only logical to assume she had forgotten about Inko's death as well, yet it was such a rude awakening to have the question asked out loud.
What should they say? What if they somehow made her remember again? Would she just go back to how she was?!
No, Katsuki couldn't allow that. He didn't go through all that struggle to only lose her yet again.
He knew his useless father would not be able to answer. And if that was the mother he knew, then she would be able to read her husband like an open book anyway.
Katsuki decided to take the matter into his own hands before his father could even open his mouth.
"She got married and moved to America." He tried to make his lie as short and simple as possible. Because as much as he would deny it, his mother could read him just as well as she could read his father.
Mitsuki stared darkly at him, making every silent moment so nerve-wrecking and unbearable.
Just as he had suspected, she saw right through him.
*****
Mitsuki knew how she wasn't eating. She realised the marks it left on her hollowed, colourless cheeks. She knew Inko wasn't sleeping. The dark, ever-growing circles under her eyes self-evident and clear.
Although Inko had never cried in her presence, the now permanent tear tracks suggested that it was not caused by lack of tears.
Although Inko's house was the same, the quietness and the lack of small feet plopping around and the lack of the masculine touches had always managed to squeeze her heart in agony and fill her mind with despair.
The happy family pictures that had been taken out of albums and are now scattered across the house became a permanent decoration.
She couldn't bear to see her friend, or rather her sister in all but blood, shatter and slowly break infront of her like that.
She swore to herself that she will do everything to protect her sister.
Because while Inko had been mourning the loss of two family members, Mitsuki had been mourning the loss of three.
