Ch.26 - Monachopsis
The nine year old girl wandered down the street towards the school she had once attended, her elementary school that is. The day had been pleasant, not just weather-wise, Senshi's first day of middle school had gone rather well in her opinion; though the introduction of a strict uniform wasn't very much appreciated.
From where Senshi was, she could only see the highstreets that had a smaller street leading off of it; on that smaller street was her elementary school. One thing rather controversial was how unprotected and dodgy the school was, and with young children no less. Though it wasn't what she saw that caught her attention, blaring alarms and crisp smell of smoke was the most disturbing part.
Picking up her pace, the girl with once shoulder length hair turned a corner, being greeted by a sight that would forever change her life. That elementary school, the same one her seven year old brother was enrolled in, was bathing in flames.
Senshi began to call out for her brother as she ran forward "HENJIRU!" though letting a nine year old go into a burning building was heavily frowned upon, therefore police and fire-men held the girl back.
It was a villain attack.
A group of villains who had been on the run for quite a while actually. The reason this group of villains had the attention it did was because All Might hadn't made an end to it, as he had with most other organised crime. Though Senshi couldn't have cared less about that, she wanted to make sure her brother was okay.
The school burnt of hours, and even with the assistance of heroes and fire-men, the school was no where near salvageable. Every part of the building seemed black with soot, some walls still being hot to the touch, while others had only collapsed in on themselves. The building was a wreck, that fire obviously not natural, rendering everything burn, broken and busted.
The boy that had the same black hair as her, the boy who had the same sapphire eyes as her, the boy she could confidently call her closest friend, her baby brother, was no where to be found. And that was the same for everyone else in the building.
The death toll was dreadfully high, hundreds of people being killed and not one having a chance to live. As the moon pulled the night sky over the bright daylight, changing it, Senshi was frozen in regret. Crying her little eyes out before a hero was forced to take her home along with police officers.
One thing that she missed though, was the sapphire blue eyes looking at her, the same sapphire blue eyes she had.
********
Senshi sat up in her deflated state, her eyes red and puffy from the abundance of tears that were created. The marble floor digging into her joints uncomfortably, though what was more uncomfortable, was having to clean up the mess she had made. Couldn't her parents accept that it was an honest mistake?
They were the trigger of such event after all.
Senshi, if possible, looked worse than when she was in the bar; and she certainly felt it. Sitting on the floor in an awkward position, picking out the porcelain amongst the ashes, had proven to be a great task to do with no thoughts. But Senshi didn't have 'no thoughts', it just appeared that way because her mind was so full, so overwhelmed that it felt like nothingness. Though one thought stuck out to her, and it was crazy that such a thing was salvageable from a brain an broken as hers.
"No matter how much blood I spill. No matter how many people I've kill... Everyone still thinks I'm the hero. Why? All I've done is cause more pain."
It was a wild thought, a line from a book actually. A book she and Henjiru had read 'together', the younger boy really just looking over his older sister's shoulder. He had quickly become to fascinated by the line, and for what reason Senshi didn't know. Though he said something, it was sickening, but the worst part was that it was true.
"Sen, is that like our parents? Like how they pretend to be nice but then they're not."
That was the only memory she had of his voice.
And to be frank, Senshi understood what he meant, the fact that a seven year old could figure it out was embarrassing, the oldest child being too caught up in the conflict itself to look at the situation from another point of view.
Yet Henjiru was never like Senshi in any which way. And when push came to shove, they acted completely different, but for some odd reason, together, they were like two perfectly assigned puzzle pieces.
The blaring sound of her phone ringing took Senshi from her sea of thoughts, and in some magical way, the ashes were separated, and at some point, Senshi had put them in a Tupperware box; not actually aware she had moved at any point.
Walking over to her phone shouldn't have been that hard, but her eye lids were falling, much like Senshi when she jumped off of the building. And all the ringing had become was nuisance as the sound bounced off of the surfaces in the room, maybe it was worth checking the caller ID?
Another wave of gut-wrenching dread washed over her, it was Katsuki calling. How could she be so stupid to let her emotions out! Now the boy had to be suspicious of something, and there was barely anything Senshi could do about it.
Taking her phone off of the dark-wood coffee table, and taking out the charger, Senshi pressed accept; her breath still wavering from the commotion earlier.
"H-hello." If it wasn't the stuttering that slightly gave it away, it was the quietness of her voice, the way it sounded deflated and defeated. It was obvious to Katsuki that something had happened, and from the rage he was feeling earlier, a sort of rage that even he hadn't experienced yet, he knew it was a provocation of sorts.
Though now that he was actually calling her, what was he supposed to say? 'Are you okay?' when obviously she's not.
"Hey, what was that all about?" Katsuki asked with an interrogative tone that clearly showed that he wasn't going to give in.
"Uh-" Senshi took an unwanted sharp breath in, her body still in a state of hysteria."- I d-don't know."
Katsuki sat up in his bed, knowing that clearly this was going to take more time than he anticipated. The feeling of dread that was Senshi's had begun the moment he left the police office roughly an hour ago, so was it her parents?
"How do you not fucking know?" Senshi could hear Katsuki's frown through the phone. Does she tell him? Senshi clearly remembers her mother telling her to never tell anyone because 'It's normal' and 'Other families go through rough patches like these.'. But what if there weren't rough patches anymore, and all her family dynamic was was just sandpaper against a rocky cliff face.
"Do -" Senshi took in a breath, in a way trying to keep herself from letting her voice waver-"do you and your family argue?"
Ah, checkmate. Katsuki knew he was getting onto something, and he could already tell that Senshi was trying to tell him that she argued with her parents. But he didn'y say 'Yes, obviously.', because if that's what has been causing all of these emotions she's been placing upon him for his whole life, there was no way he could agree.
"Only sometimes, not a lot really. People get on my nerves all the fucking time, but that's different to actually arguing with them."
"O-oh-" She sounded almost deflated, like she was realising something. "-okay, thanks Bakugo."
"Mhm, I wanna know Skater, what did your family actually argue about, and why was it so fucking bad this time?" Was he pushing his luck? Maybe. But Katsuki wasn't the type of person to understand boundaries as much as others, and especially on people like Senshi; people like her were an enigma to him.
"Things happened."
"What things."
"I-I....... I knocked over my brother's ashes and the vase smashed." Her voice was rushed, almost as if she was waiting for a punishment of some sorts. But Katsuki didn't care about that, he cared about this 'brother'.
He thought he knew her, apparently not.
"Oh, that's shitty." Well, obviously, but give the man a break, he hadn't done this type of thing before.
"Yeah-" There was a sharp gasp, making Katsuki interested. Though Senshi hung up, and something about that didn't sit right with Katsuki. He stayed sitting up in his bed for a moment, he had gotten the answer he needed, but not the one he wanted.
But it wasn't just an answer, it was a whole different code to crack.
********
Senshi heard a door opening, she was on the phone to her soulmate, and she didn't want anything happening, so hanging up was the best bet for her. Senshi knew that the door that opened was down stairs, the same floor she was on coincidentally, the volume of said door giving it away.
But who was it?
Senshi didn't know nor did she want to, so, she decided to do something much needed, and sleep. Senshi got a soft while blanket from over the top of the sofa and cuddled into it while laying down on said sofa. It was now that her favourite grey cat made made an appearance.
Tsuki laid next to Senshi's head, purring as Senshi quickly fell asleep in the mid-morning hours; the Sun not hindering in any which way.
The sleep that Senshi did obtain was long, twelve hours at that, but it wasn't resting whatsoever. Her nightmares being the reason for that. Senshi awoke with a start, swearing that she could feel the patch-work man's hand on the back of her neck, slightly restricting her breathing as she was pulled away from the safe side of society.
Then later on, the feeling of the black sludge filling her lungs to the point of suffocation. It was that dream that woke her up, Senshi not breathing when she woke up, and actually having the think about it.
By the time that Senshi decided to move from the couch, it was dark outside, her house cold and desolate. There wasn't the usual vibe to it, the one that she felt only slightly comfortable in, now it felt like she was intruding in a stranger's house.
She didn't know the people who she had talked to hours earlier, they weren't her parents. And Senshi was sure of that, but there was a small voice nagging at her, telling her that they were her parents, and there was nothing she could do about that; especially seeing as the way the acted, could've been how they were feeling all the time.
The thought made Senshi's heart go cold with loneliness and dread, as if it were in a chamber of ice.
And even with a warm meal and shower, the coldness and walls of concrete she build never left, in fact, they got stronger; her isolation only adding onto it. Senshi slipped her way into her room, the white sheets with a blue fluffy blanket on of her bed never seeming so comforting; and she was only looking at it.
It was definitely more comfortable than seeing the way her parents looked at her as she walked into her room. One gaze holding disappointment mixed with betrayal and pity, the other holding absolute hatred, and a gaze that told more than her words.
Both were slightly similar in a way, and that didn't help the feeling of complete isolation. The way they looked at her as if she wasn't even their child, Senshi couldn't help but think about the people who say 'What happened to my happy little girl?'.
Nothing happened, it's just that you had an unrealistic expectation of the perfect person, the girl in question had never changed, but you had.
********
Senshi had gotten word that the school was implementing dorms, and she had only one concern. "Can I bring a pet?" She asked her homeroom teacher who was sat in the very same living room that the incident happened in.
"Depends, what are we talking about?" Aizawa-sensei responded, looking curiously into Senshi's cold eyes. The man could see that they weren't holding the usual warm and compassion that they usually did. And that confused him.
"A cat."
"Definitely."
Her parents looked at their daughter in betrayal, almost as if she were stealing something from them. Aizawa-sensei had noticed something was up the moment he stepped inside of the house; All Might too. The house was cold and empty feeling, even if there was furniture. This place, it was like walking onto a crime scene, but the crime was so undetectable that well pulled off that no one really had an idea of what happened.
Aizawa-sensei could only describe it as a house that didn't feel like a home.
And his suspicion only continued to grow as the parents seemed to get into a debate of sorts while choosing whether their daughter should go, one fully on board, the other slightly hesitant. Aizawa-sensei didn't miss the way that Senshi curled defensively in on herself, the way her eyes began to dart anxiously around the room, as if she was hoping that something didn't happen.
He had only seen her like this when...... around villains.
"You know Tantei, I honestly just don't understand why you never agree with me. It would be better for Senshi if she were sent to the dorms." The way Senshi's mother said her daughter's name was strained, almost as if the woman didn't want to acknowledge the girl. Aizawa-sensei knew that just by the tone that the woman had, that she could be two-faced, and based on the frown that grew on Senshi's face, he couldn't only guess that he was right.
"I understand, but how can we be sure that it's safe..."
"I can assure you both that sending Senshi back to school and into our dorms would be the safest option, it's easier for teachers like us to keep a watch on the students too." Aizawa-sensei butted in, and Senshi looked almost amazed. This girl had never failed to confuse him, it was almost like she was amazed at him for being able to interrupt them.
"See."
"Okay, only if you can assure that she'll be safe."
Would it be sad to say that those were the last things Senshi heard her parents say before having to move into school, because it's the truth. They were most definitely not on speaking terms.