"He's so fluffy!" Toga chimes, her small hands brushing through Marble's fur. "Good boy, Marble!" Toga cooed, leaving Rimi to use her hands to fend off Pearl, who was trying to lick her face as a show of affection.
"No! Pearl!" Rimi yells, but the dog doesn't stop. Her tail wags frantically, and Rimi can no longer keep the dog off of her. "Agh!" The girl shouts, being thrown to the ground by the large dog. Toga doesn't seem to mind and continues petting Marble, who looks more than happy now that he was free from Pearl's watchful eyes.
Happy barks escape Marble's mouth as he runs circles around the small Toga, looking to play with the girl.
Toga decides to abandon Rimi to her fate against Pearl and stands to chase after Marble, who quickly runs away from the child to initiate their game. It must've been a natural instinct in people to chase after running dogs, or, it'd usually be the other way around. Thankfully, Marble had grown used to fleeing in his time spent with Pearl.
While Toga played, Rimi was desperately trying to get the dog off of her, but Pearl's size was no joke. "Ugh!" Rimi groans, deciding that she'll have to use her quirk to get the dog away from her. Careful not to completely launch the dog, Rimi uses her quirk to slide the dog away, stopping it from moving. "You're way too loving for a dog your size, Pearl." Rimi sighs, taking some steps away before she releases the dog from her grip.
When Rimi sees Toga running around back and forth with Marble, she realizes that she's received the short end of the stick in this adventure. 'I get pounced on and she steals my dog away from me. How nice.' She thought, sarcastically of course.
"Marble! Here boy!" She calls for her pet, though Marble appeared deadset on entertaining the new child. After being chased around by Pearl for so long, Marble has found solace in Toga's presence. Rimi didn't see it this way. 'Traitor,' she thought. Her own dog betrayed her and left her for dead against the monarch of affection: Pearl the German Shepherd!
"Look, Pearl! Marble's running away!" Rimi's voice comes from behind Toga. When the child looks in the direction of the voice, she's surprised to find Pearl, the large dog, already in front of her. With a heavy bark, Pearl sped past Toga and chased after Marble, who bursts into a desperate sprint.
"Serves you right!" Rimi shouts at Marble, who looks in her direction with pleading eyes. They wished for mercy, but Marble would not be lucky enough to find mercy from his betrayed owner. He should've chosen his sides more carefully.
Rimi walks over to Toga and takes her by the hand, turning her away from Marble's impending fate. "Come on, they're getting romantic!" Her words seem to urge Toga to look in the direction of the dogs, but quickly, the girl turns around with a scowl. "Gross!" Toga remarks, letting herself get pulled away by Rimi, who's giggling at her reaction.
Marble swears for vengeance, someday, but today he must accept Pearl's obsessive assault. He howls in dismay, doomed to his fate.
* * * *
"So, you're a little older than me?" Rimi questions, a bit surprised that Toga was older than her. She'd never noticed it, but she's a bit taller than children her age. It probably had something to do with the genetics passed on to her by her mother. Madoka was also taller than most of the girls her age. If she cut her hair, she'd easily be mistaken for a tomboy.
"You're just too tall." Toga, catching on to the implication of Rimi's words, counters. "Isn't that your mom?" She points to one of the benches across the park, where Kimiko looks to be chatting with another woman.
"Yeah, how could you tell?" As far as Rimi knew, there wasn't anything indicating that she and the woman had a connection, especially with how far away she was from her.
"Well, she's super tall, and she stares at you every once in a while." Rimi failed to notice that her mother was taking glances at her every once in a while. She was so absorbed in interacting with Toga that she'd neglected her surroundings.
Before, Rimi might've been aware of every single person that so much as took a glance in her direction. These relatively peaceful years have softened her. Truthfully, she couldn't say that she hated it. Spending her days in peace was a dream that she'd never had.
"I never noticed." Rimi shrugs, choosing not to think too deeply about her vulnerability. She could at least defend herself pretty well using her quirk. Of course, she's come to find one fatal weakness that she hasn't been able to work around. "I don't know why she's so tall, honestly." Rimi sighs, curious about her mother's lineage. She's never met her grandmother on her mom's side of the family, so she assumed that the elderly woman had passed away. If she were alive. how tall would she be? Rimi believed that the elderly woman would likely be even taller than Kimiko.
Looking up, the two watch as a flock of birds fly through the air together, the sun shining behind them. Rimi often admired birds, they were free to go wherever they wished. There weren't many restrictions on where they could end up. Alert of dangers, they'd fly away together, long before the storm would even arrive.
Evidently, Rimi was looking much longer than Toga. "Do you like birds a lot?" Pulled from her stupor, Rimi tries not to look surprised, tripping over her words to answer the girl. "Y-Yeah, I love them. They seem happy, happier than any normal person can hope to be."
Toga stares at Rimi for a while, the smile on her face shifting, but only briefly, once again Rimi doesn't notice it. Toga ponders about something while she stares at the girl beside her.
When Rimi looks in Toga's direction, the girl is simpering her way, a bright blush visible on her face. "I guess you like them a lot too, huh?" Rimi decided to ignore the implications of that grin. Toga might not understand it, but her admiration for blood is something that Rimi was aware of without even needing outside knowledge. Toga was very vocal about what she thought of blood at this age, presumably before being forced to change in middle school.
Then, the words that Rimi knew she feared deep down came out. "We're friends, right?" Rimi's heart nearly leaps through her chest when she heard Toga's question. Toga's "friendship" later on, with those who were not her allies, became nothing short of violent. It might not have involved murdering the Class 1-A students, but if Toga hoped to know you better, she'd certainly go the extra mile. She'd know you both inside and out, whether you'd like it or not.
Nonetheless, Rimi could not muster up the courage of declining the girl of friendship. Perhaps, due to her own subconscious desire to make friends, or out of sympathy for her. "Yeah, I guess we're friends." There was some reluctance, but nonetheless, Rimi decided that after a short while of talking with the girl, they could be friends.
She wasn't sure how "normal" friendships worked. She'd never experienced one, even in this life. She almost asked Toga "how do friendships work", but quickly stopped herself when she thought about her response. Toga would likely say something along the lines of "by bleeding" or maybe something even worse. This is only an unproven assumption at this period in time, thankfully.
Rimi lifts a hand over her head, but she doesn't say anything. She's curious about what Toga will do. Depending on Toga's response, Rimi will decide whether to actually distance herself from the girl or not.
When Toga raises her own hand and high-fives Rimi, the girl decides to give her a chance. Since she didn't try and puncture the hand with her nails, Rimi figured that she isn't very violent, yet. The two smile at each other, sharing a high-five. As if they shared a mindset, they said the same thing at the same time: "Friends!"
* * * *
Someone unaccounted for had been watching the two in the distance without them noticing. A girl around their age with white hair and emerald eyes peeked from around a tree, admiring one of them from afar.
Her eyes were more specifically trained on the girl with red streaks, feeling a strange fascination when she watched her.
"Madam, would you like to speak with those two?" An elderly man in a suit behind her asks, looking to be her butler or servant. The girl's face lights up into a blush as she quickly spins to the man, shaking her head. "No!" She was too nervous to approach them, especially that girl with the red streaks in her hair. Butterflies filled her stomach whenever the girl happened to turn in her direction.
The butler appears to be a foreigner. His flaxen hair had long since lost its color, becoming gray as it lost its fight against the passage of time. Withered freckles were barely visible past his wrinkled flesh, making it hard to imagine how perfectly they fit his appearance in his more youthful days. That was nearly a century ago, but older women still swoon in his presence.
The child clears her throat, fixing her posture before speaking, "We'll be leaving for today, Pinnley." The girl tried to sound mature, even though she walked away in a hurry.
Pinnley, the tall butler, takes another glance at the two girls talking in the distance. He frowns a bit but does not say anything, moving to follow after the white-haired child.
They might not have spoken today, but this marked the beginning of their strange relationship.
After some time, Rimi and Kimiko left the park. Driving home, Kimiko had a lot to say about what happened. "I can't believe it was so hard getting her off of him!" The woman driving rants angrily, slamming her hand down on the steering wheel. "If I weren't any sooner, Marble might not even be sane enough to walk on his own!"
The woman gasps, looking through her rearview mirror to see her child still sitting in the backseat. "Ah! Sorry, dear! Did you have fun with your new friend?" She asks, focusing back on the road once she saw the looking of disgust on her daughter's face. It'd be better if she shifted the focus onto her child's park adventure.
"I guess it was fun. We didn't really do much other than talk and run around for a little bit. It was nice when some of the other kids played with us, but they were really scared of her." It was hard for Rimi to convince the other children not to run away whenever they saw Toga's smile. She had an innocent grin, but that didn't help just how creepy it looked to other kids her age and even some adults.
"Yeah, that kid is pretty creepy," Kimiko says bluntly, nodding in agreement. "Mom!" Rimi shouts at her mother, almost offended just by how blunt she was in insulting her new friend.
"What? You were thinking it too, dear." Kimiko didn't need to read her daughter's mind to know that the attentive girl would notice something odd about her new friend.
Rimi sighs in defeat, knowing that her mother had hit the nail on the head. "She's obsessed with blood. She thinks it's romantic, or something like that." Rimi says, limply waving her hand while disregarding a deeper explanation. Although she was comfortable enough with her mother to talk about things like this, there were still some secrets she'd keep to herself.
Kimiko would probably throw a fit if she found out that someone her daughter her interacting with was showing early signs of becoming a serial killer. The dead birds needed to stay clear of their conversations.
"You know, your sister's internship has been going well!" Her mother says, shifting the topic to something that Rimi would be more enthusiastic about.
Her eyes shine in excitement, and she looks like she's almost ready to bounce out of her seat. "Really!? How did she do this time!?" This will likely be the last time her sister partakes in an internship, now 18 years old. She'll be graduating from Seiai Academy soon.
Thanks to her quirk, Madoka's taken on the hero name "Guard-Doka", which sounds terrible, but being the supportive sister that she is, Rimi—after laughing profusely in her older sister's face—supported her fully.
"She's helped capture ten criminals so far. She's definitely going to get some more recognition this year!" Kimiko grins at the joy in her daughter's eyes. No matter how long her sister was away, Rimi still cared for her. That kind of love could never be replicated, not easily.
"She'll probably get a good job at a Hero Agency once she graduates. Then, I'll be able to toss you over her shoulder and have her babysit you." Madoka being so far away meant that the girl barely ever got the chance to come home. Rimi couldn't help but think of how tall her sister must be now. She was always a giant to her when she was smaller, but this time, Madoka may appear as a mountain.
"She should just make her own Agency, I'd bet she's well-known enough! She's practically famous over there, isn't she!?" From what Rimi's heard, Madoka's become pretty notorious around Fukuoka. She's proud of her sister, so her expectations of her have been broadly inflated.
Kimiko chuckles, nodding to the child. "Yeah, I'd bet she'll reach that point in the future. For now, she's got to keep playing human radar!" Madoka's skills have improved to such an amazing extent. Now, she can cover an entire city's range. If she wanted to, she could track down individual villains based on their names in their criminal records.
"Do you think she'll let me work for her? Maybe I'll become a hero too!" Rimi, despite her previous ambitions, didn't know if she wanted to become a hero or not. Whenever she thought about hero work, many terrible thoughts come to her mind. It became easier to suppress them over time, but each time she used her quirk, they slowly surfaced once more.
She feared that by using her quirk, other people would become harmed in the crossfire again. She was always a thought away from accidentally tearing the roof off of whatever building she was in, and that didn't help boost her confidence.
Kimiko didn't show any disdain this time. Instead, she gave a comforting smile to her daughter. "If you think you should be a hero, then I won't stop you, dear." Kimiko knew her daughter would never forget what happened a few years ago. The feeling of guilt that'd carved itself into her conscience may be there forever. To Kimiko, her daughter might've felt an obligation to save lives after killing many innocents.
"I told you before, I'll stick with you no matter what." With her mother's confirmation, Rimi finally chooses to address the elephant in the room.
Although she hasn't mentioned it, her mother has been gaining weight recently. Her stomach has been bulging for a while, and Rimi has found it concerning but hasn't spoken up about it because she didn't want to offend her mother. She's learned that improper to talk about a woman's weight.
"Why have you gotten chubbier?" She may have been a bit too direct...
If Kimiko weren't used to driving, she might've swerved off the road from the harshness of the question. "Chubby!?" The woman exclaims, in disbelief that her daughter could ever imply that she'd been getting out of shape. "I'm not getting out of shape, dear!"
"I never said that!" Rimi retorts. She'd only said her mother was getting chubbier, not that she was getting out of shape! 'Two completely different things!' The child thought.
Rimi and her mother stare at each other through the mirror, but eventually, it's Kimiko who gives in and explains. "Dear, I'm not getting bigger because of some unhealthy eating habits or anything," she pauses, thinking of a way to explain to the child.
'I didn't say that in the first place.' Rimi rolls her eyes.
"You see, it's a bit more complicated..." Kimiko can't hide the corner of her lips curling up into a smile. Rimi notices it, and she feels herself unconsciously sweat.
"You'll be having another sibling soon, Rimi. I'm going to be having a baby!" Kimiko's face lights up with joy, but Rimi has a completely different reaction. She looks horrified, disgusted even. The two sisters had given up on trying to stop their mother ages ago, but she didn't expect her to have another child this soon! Not when Madoka is so close to coming back from school!
Rimi's mouth was open, but she could not say anything. 'I'm going to be a big sister...?' The thought was frightening, and a chill ran up the girl's spine. All of the things she made Madoka go through, she'll have to experience those things herself now!? "No way!" The girl screams, and her mother's eyes nearly pop out of her head.
Kimiko doesn't even look through the mirror, but Rimi feels the woman staring at her. She was a bit too audible with her thoughts.
Tftc