As the autumn months bleed into early winter, I can't help but think of how slowly time passes nowadays. I've only been inhabiting this body for five months, but it feels like years have passed.
In a previous life, at the age of twenty three, these months would've passed like mere weeks.
I don't know what it is. Maybe it's because I am in the body of a child that my perception of time is slower, or maybe I can attribute it to the harsh training that still happens every day.
Regardless, the time does pass.
The first snowfall comes around the time the shop is complete. Old man Hyoshi and his crew have been diligent in setting it up properly. Of course, money isn't an issue, so it's on the whole a lot more curated to a specific retro vibe than you'd expect from something in this neighborhood of residential buildings and sprawling concrete.
It's shelves on shelves of vinyls, racks displaying guitars and amps and various other instruments. It's crowded, the space small to begin with, but it's cozy, especially with the warm lights and rustic decor.
There's even a little brewing station besides the checkout desk for making coffee, as well as a few small tables nestled between the tall shelves where customers can sit and listen to any recordthey want.
I never thought of myself as an interior designer, but I do think the whole thing turned out pretty well. Still, the primary focus here is to wash blood money, so I'll have to spend less time choosing what records to play in the store on any specific day and more time on creative accounting.
And so, I spend the weeks following the opening lounging behind the checkout desk, making sure everything is in order. This isn't some official chain convenience store, so labour laws really don't apply. Besides, I have old man Hyoshi and his crew around to man the shop while I'm busy.
There is no grand opening, I don't need the shop to get too busy, and I especially don't need it to attract too much attention, so customers are sparse but consistent. I'm not running the shop to make money anyway, that can all be solved with made up balance sheets.
Aside from manning the store, I continue my hand to hand training with Reiko, as well as my own quirk training. She's mellowed out, spending less and less time using her quirk on me until one day in early December, the whole thing just finally stops.
"What's this? Early Christmas present?" I say, noticing that, after our sparring, she's pointedly not using the time to cut me apart. "Getting into a festive mood?"
She flexes her fingers. "I've hit a wall," she says quietly. "My quirk isn't improving at the same pace anymore. I think I squeezed out every bit of improvement I could from you, little man."
I freeze.
Her words should make me happy. I should be relieved. Not being torn apart by her hellish slashing quirk? I must be dreaming. Yet, my body reacts to her revelation like it's a nightmare.
Isn't this my whole point? It's why she keeps me alive, isn't it? Because I am useful to her.
I take a small step back. Is this it? I've outgrown my usefulness? I didn't think it would come so soon.
In this moment there is nothing I want more than for the earth to split open and swallow me whole until nothing remains, until I am far, far away from her reach. No. I'm gonna have to fight, aren't I?
But now? I thought I'd have more time to grow, to get stronger. Why now?
I wait for her to make the next move, to tell me that I'm useless, that I'm nothing to her anymore, for her to throw me out and cut me apart and dump the pieces at the bottom of a river where I'll suffocate for the rest of eternity, unable to fully regenerate.
I'm wordless as I wait for the slash that cuts off my head, or the words that confirm I have turned into a burden.
I've heard those words many times before. I am used to being a burden. They will not hurt me now. I fear only the pain.
And yet, no matter how long I wait, frozen in place, none of it comes. Reiko only stretches like a languid cat, trying to keep her body warm against the cold seeping into the abandoned warehouse.
She yawns. "Anyway, I have some bad news."
Here it comes. My hand flies to my neck. Do or die.
She points at me with a shit eating grin. "You're gonna have to go to school."
"What?"
"Well, you don't have to, necessarily," she says, walking over to her lonely desk that sits in the middle of the warehouse floor. She grabs a stack of documents. "But if you wanna be a legit citizen, school is kinda mandatory."
I struggle to breathe, my mouth watering. Relief floods my system. She won't throw me away. She won't.
That means I can still kill her. Hah. Her mistake. She won't kill me now, and so she gives me time to kill her in the future.
I breathe out. "I thought we were getting fake identities."
"Well, I thought about it." She sighs, scratching at the back of her head. "We are, but my guy at the ward office wants to make sure they're as believable as possible. For tax purposes, that kind of thing. So we came up with an arrangement to make both of us legit. It's uhh… clean."
I notice her apprehension. There's something she's not saying. She seems almost… embarrassed?
Ah.
Her, a woman nearing her thirties and me, a kid that lives with her. A smirk tugs at my lips when I piece it together. "Oh? Oh. Nooooo. You can't be serious."
She hides her face in her hands. "So… you see… the easiest way we came up with to explain both our absences from the system is… well…"
"Oh wooow… Really, Reiko?" I tease. "Talk about being irresponsible."
"Shut up."
I can't stop myself. I know I shouldn't but I can't stop myself. I laugh. "So… who's the father? I mean, if you're my mother, there must be a father, right? Or was it an immaculate conception sort of situation?"
She glares at me but it does nothing to suppress my giggling and laughter
"No one likes a smart ass!"
I point at her. "And you should learn how to properly protect yourself!"
After beating the snot out of me, Reiko explains that because I am not a citizen of Japan, and thus have no records, there is really only one way to make me a citizen.
"You technically already exist in Russia, though you're assumed dead," she says. "So, no one will come looking for you."
She glares at me. "For this next part, I will need you to not say a word."
I can barely control my giggles. "Oh captain my captain."
"My guy is good at forging documents," she says. "But forgeries can only take you so far."
I know this, naturally. I'm a passable forger. Not good enough to fake proper identification records, but still.
"So… you'll assume the identity of someone assumed missing," I say, cutting her off. "I'm guessing your guy keeps those sorts of records around in case of situations like these. Maybe a middle aged woman that died without any close relatives or acquaintances who noticed. Oh and let me guess, you'll pass me off as your kid from a fling you had while abroad in Russia. All fake, of course."
Her eyes widen.
"How much of that did I get?"
She pouts. "All of it. Whatever."
I grin. Naturally. "Why not stick to the aunt story?"
"It's harder to fake entire family trees, even harder to fake adoption papers," she says. "I'd have to invent a sister, a mother, a father, or an entire orphanage. Compared to that, faking a birth certificate from a Russian hospital is easy."
I pinch my brow. "And since schooling is mandatory in Japan…"
"You get the idea." Her lips quirk up. "Do you?"
I notice her staring at my hair. It's really long now, longer than I've ever had it. "...No?"
"Oh come on, I thought you were quick on the uptake," she grins. "Figure it out, or don't. Better as a surprise."
I don't figure it out until Christmas day, whenever Reiko bursts in through the door of our apartment, plastic shopping bags in hand.
"I thought you said you'd be busy over the holidays," I say, looking up from my brewing coffee. "Assassinations and such."
"Well, I was supposed to kill a corrupt hero," she says, placing the bags on the kitchen counter. "But then a villain showed up and they kind of just wore each other out before I could even perform my initial surveillance. So I just killed them both while they were on their last legs. Lucky, right?"
I shrug. Stories like these mean nothing to me anymore. It's conceptually morally reprehensible but I can't bring myself to care. I guess living with her for half a year desensitized me. "So? What's this?"
I look inside the bag. Clippers, styling scissors, and… ah. Hair dye. White. "You're sick."
She smirks. "Uh, yea, it's gonna be sick. Obviously."
I try to run away but she grabs me by my collar and drags me to the bathroom where she has me sit on a stool in front of a mirror. She clicks the scissors. Once, twice. I can feel my soul leaving my body with each click. Thrice.
She grabs my hair, the movement surprisingly slow and gentle, her long fingers raking through it. "You look like a girl," she says.
I blow my bangs out of my face. "I'm seven years old. I'm sorry my masculine features haven't set in yet."
She slowly grabs my fringe and pulls it back, revealing my face. Ever since I reincarnated, I try to avoid mirrors for the most part. It's a strange sense of vertigo to look into a mirror and not see the face you expect to see. I had my last face for twenty three years, I won't get used to a new one so fast.
Wind rushes by the window, blasting flakes of snow against it. I look at myself. I'm still a child, but that scruffy, worn out look I had when Reiko first took me in is gone for the most part. My eyes are sharp like those of a cat, sort of like Reiko's, actually.
Well, only the shape is similar. My eyes are a mossy, dark green, hers are like azure waves or clear blue skies depending on how the light hits them.
"Just don't fuck up," I say. "People that give me bad haircuts go on the kill list."
It's true. In my past life, I had very little money and so very little patience for bad barbers. I couldn't blow them up back then, though.
"So scary!" She yelps. "Little man is threatening to kill me?"
She doesn't know I'll kill her anyway. But, well, that's for later. If she fucks this up maybe I'll kill her even faster.
Reiko smirks and snips at my hair, a large clump falling to the ground. She fucked it up, naturally. "I can fix this."
I close my eyes and try not to laugh. "Mhm."
"Don't laugh! I'm trying, alright?" She cuts off more hair. For some reason, she gives me bangs. Asymmetrical bangs.
I nod my head, eyes closed, lips pressed into a perfect line. It's a perfect picture of serenity and enlightenment. "I'm not laughing."
"Sure you're not. Oh. Wait, I have an idea."
By the time she runs out of ideas, I'm left with very little hair, just barely enough for it to qualify as not quite a buzzcut. "Thanks." I say, trying to keep my mouth from quivering.
The process of arriving at this haircut was so shit I've achieved enlightenment trying to suppress my emotions. I've suppressed them so hard I can see beyond the mortal veil, clouded by impermanence.
She looks defeated. Despite her slashing quirk, it seems she's bad at this form of cutting. I've also never seen her cook. It would be beyond hilarious if she's bad at that too.
"Ugh," she says, ruffling my short purple hair. "Let's just do the dye. This is sad. No! No. This is good! I'm great at this, aren't I?"
I chuckle. "The greatest! You took an hour to just cut my hair short and not style it in any way!"
She grabs my head and keeps it still. "That's right! I'm glad you appreciate my greatness!"
Reiko grabs the bleach and my heart sinks. I'm gonna die, probably.
She reads the instruction label with a frown.
Oh I'm so gonna die.
Surprisingly, she's not complete dogshit at bleaching hair. She's not half bad at applying dye either. By the end of it, my short hair is snow white, just like hers.
"We look related," I say, looking into the mirror as she stands behind me, her arms crossed.
She looks proud of herself. "That's right."
"No, that's a bad thi-"
I'm interrupted by a knock at the door. "Guests?"
"My sister!" Reiko says, bouncing over to the door. "We always do Christmas together."
As she rushes to unlock the door, I tilt my head. "You have a sister?"
"Not really. She's not my blood sister, anyway. But she is the reason I'm alive right now."
In other words, if this sister person didn't exist, Reiko would be dead or in prison. I suppose I should hate her, then.
But, as the door unlocks, as Reiko smiles and throws herself into the woman's arms, I can't help but want to run away.
I know her. Even if she isn't fictional anymore, I know her. Purple hair, striped with pink. Purple eyes.
We lock eyes, and I want to shrink until I am nothing.
Lady Nagant, pro hero and hero public safety commission assassin, standing right outside my door.
She points a finger at me and smiles darkly. "Reiko? Explain this."
I fear I will die.
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A/N: I think we're at top 100 is PS ranking. If we reach top 50 or like 300 powerstones I'll do another bonus chapter
Anyway, long-ish chapter for the Christmas special. More of a hang-out chapter to balance out the action from the last few chapters. Enjoy. Yes I know Christmas was while ago. Whatever.
Also, a few people commented saying they want to see Lady Nagant, well, lucky for you, I've had Reiko's relation to her planned out for a while. She won't be a romantic interest sadly though.
Hope yall don't mind the slow pace, it'll pick up soon.