Chapter Text
The day Hanako’s childhood ended left her with the smell of rot, and the knowledge that nothing would ever be okay, ever again. It began unassumingly enough, with her mom knocking on her bedroom door, like always, reminding her that the bus was fast on its way and that if she missed it again she’d be washing dishes for the next week. Later, Hanako wondered how that day would have gone differently had she ignored her mother’s warning and taken the punishment that would never come anyway, instead of slogging herself out of bed and dressing in record speed, racing her moody older brother down the stairs, and claiming the head seat at the table while he sulked and flopped down on the couch in the adjoining living room. Those few minutes of extra time—what would they have been worth?
Mom handed her toast and backpack with the same stern look, shaking her head all the while before calling over to Keitsune, still languishing on the couch, to go wake up Dad. Honestly, this family, she’d muttered while rushing over to the eggs sizzling on the stove top. How on earth any one of them would survive in the real world, without me acting as their damn maid, I’d like to know. Expletive hushed, of course. Hanako still heard it, of course.
But Hanako didn’t even see her dad that morning. Heck, she was in first grade—heaven forbid she miss the first few minutes of class, or Miss Okimura would get on her tail for the rest of the year about tardiness, and probably Saini’s less-figurative tail too, since the feline girl would doubtless be waiting up for her best friend. No, Hanako had responsibilities, and as the only child still in her class left quirkless, she couldn’t be caught slacking, or those responsibilities would only pile higher.
She ended up getting to the bus on time, if that means anything now. Hanako couldn’t remember how she said goodbye to her mom, and knew for a fact that she didn’t say anything to her brother. They were, all of them, completely wrapped up in their own issues: Mom still throwing warnings at Keitsune, who groaned and was heaving himself out of the chair to reluctantly do her bidding when Hanako slammed the door shut behind her and pranced away to the bus stop on the corner.
She saw nothing amiss, and nothing amiss saw her.
Otherwise, she would be dead.
Instead, she climbed onto Bus 3 with the couple of other kids of varying ages and importance and found a seat next to Saini, who gave her a hug as though they had been apart for eons, as it was autumn and nights were long and little girls are and always will be dramatic, until something terrible happens and they are not anymore. Hanako and Saini chattered about something vague and incredibly important and intensely forgettable on the way to school, and the day passed, somehow. Happily. Like an exclamation mark on the short sentence of childhood.
A different bus dropped her off at home that afternoon, and Hanako sat with a couple of second-grade girls who she didn’t know as well as Saini but still regarded with ominous importance and deferred to suitably, as they were older and wiser and of course knew far more about life than she did. Hanako spent nights awake, later, trying to remember what they had talked about, as though that trivial detail would somehow knit everything together, but she never fully could. Finally, she made something up about the TV show that was most popular that season, and that bled into the sequence of events easily enough to make up for her forgetfulness.
Something happened as she disembarked from Bus 8 at the corner, along with those familiar neighborhood faces who, if she met again today, would be as foreign as newspaper clippings thirty years outdated. It was nothing more than a feeling, a vague tickle beneath her skin like the thrill that accompanies big bursts of excitement, worth very little without the emotion accompanying it. She grew used to it so quickly that she barely noticed it at all. It was another of those ‘later’ things, snippets she glanced back on when she flipped to this use-worn page in her memories as she raked through this day again, and again, and again.
She plodded down the street, at first with company, then alone for the last few paces as the other children branched off to their respective houses, some together, some alone like her. She strutted self-importantly up to her door, backpack heavy and proud on her shoulders as she went up the steps and tested the knob, which she always did before knocking, even though most of the time she was the first to arrive and had to linger on the steps for a few minutes until the car swerved all harried into the driveway and Dad came rushing out to unlock it for the both of them, muttering apologies for being late.
Today, it turned easily. Hanako thought that Mom might be in a good mood tonight.
She pushed the door in and crossed the threshold, dropping her backpack unceremoniously next to the shoe rack and punted off her own tennies, yelling a hello as she did so that went unanswered. Unbothered, Hanako shuffled into her slippers and rounded the corner into the kitchen, where she stopped dead.
“Mom?”
Her mother got up almost immediately from where she lay, collapsed, on the kitchen tile.
Hanako looked around the kitchen in confusion as she crossed quickly to her mother, meaning to grab her arm. The windows were open, the room filled with cool air, but there was a distinct tinge of smoke lingering in Hanako’s nostrils. On the stove, the pan from that morning still sat, cold eggs blackened and congealed to the bottom of it, while toast stood stiff and crisp in the toaster.
That struck her as odd, but not alarming. Hanako helped Mom to her feet, wondering at the chill beneath her sleeve, at the apron still tied around her waist. She frowned up at her mother, but at Mom’s benign smile, any concern traipsed away from her immediate thoughts.
She was young, after all. Six years old, and completely self-absorbed. Had this happened now—though it couldn’t have, Hanako would remind herself—she would have been beside herself with worry at the first sign of smoke. But six-year-old Hanako barely noticed the thin white lines on her mother’s face, on every piece of exposed skin, on the fabric of her clothing like tiny spiderweb stitches.
Hanako dismissed all of this, and hoisted herself up onto her stool at the counter as Mom took the apples out of their bowl and fixed around the kitchen, ignoring the dishes on the stove and sink in favor of fixing Hanako a snack and listening to her chatter on and on and on about whatever had happened that day, all with that small, unassuming smile. She was so quiet. Did she say a word through any of it? Now, Hanako knew she hadn’t. Of course, six-year-old Hanako was too wrapped up in her latest Saini adventure to notice the oddness of it.
She wasn’t completely self-absorbed, however. A glance at the clock beside the refrigerator got her to take a second glance, and frown. She opened her mouth to ask why Dad was so late coming home, but no sooner had she done so than footsteps sounded upstairs, big footsteps that matched the man who lumbered down the stairs a second later. Her father was a large man, as opposed to her small, large-tempered mother, and perhaps their opposite natures were what made them such a good fit for each other. Hanako spun on her stool to chirp a hello as he appeared in the stairwell, but the greeting died on her lips and turned the corners of them into a frown.
Why was he still in his pajamas? Hanako slid off her seat, tilting her head up at that familiar face to ask if he was sick. Had he never gone into work at all? That might explain her mother’s silence, she always got tight-lipped when that sort of thing happened. Something, as she told Hanako time and time again whenever she broached the hesitating question, that little girls shouldn’t worry themselves over, that Mom and Dad just had things to figure out. Hanako knew it had to do with money. She’d realized it when she started going to school, and other kids came to school with talk of birthdays and gifts and holidays that all reeked of fun and expense. She thought she understood everything, and knew not to ask too many questions about it, but she was stupid, and uninformed, and everything was always worse than parents let on.
Dad gave her a grin that was eerily similar to Mom’s. Hanako shrank subconsciously away from his hug.
Yes, he must be sick. That was why Mom was stressed out. That was why he was still wearing pajamas. And that was why, as there could be no other explanation, the air had taken on a hint of something foul when he walked into the room. Come to think of it, that hint had already been there before, it only became more pungent when he came down. It mingled with the smoke and fled out the window, and Hanako got used to it quickly.
She ate her apples and watched Mom and Dad drift around the house, doing vaguely-normal things that they never did at this hour, and hoped that Kei would be back soon.
Then Mom turned on the TV, and Hanako remembered that she had homework, and everything was suddenly very exciting and thrilling as she sat down to watch the latest episode of her program while trying not to make any sudden movements so that her mother didn’t remember to ask if she had anything else to do. Watching TV while there were chores to be done in the kitchen and unfinished worksheets in her folder that was stuffed in her backpack? Hanako felt that thrill again, and grinned quietly to herself as she broke all of Mom’s carefully-implemented rules.
It was autumn, and night came early, and Hanako decided that Kei must be staying over at one of his friends’ houses. That was probably part of the reason Mom still hadn’t said anything, and Dad had retired into his office hours before instead of staying to help Hanako with her homework. Finally chained to the table, Hanako thought disgruntled thoughts about her brother as she poured over the loathed fractions that had been assigned her for that evening. Mom sat on the other side of the table, staring at something above the TV as the latest drama played on the screen. Hanako ignored that and pretended that she was deeply invested.
Time passed, and Hanako began to experiment, scribbling half-done problems on the paper and marking them as done before stuffing them back in her backpack. Mom didn’t protest, so she did the same for every one afterwards, and got done too quickly.
It was dark outside, and the kitchen windows were still open, and that foul smell pervaded the air with more force than before. Mom got up jerkily in that moment and lit a candle, that was either peppermint or cinnamon, and probably cinnamon. Sometimes, Hanako could still smell it, and steered well clear of anything of the sort nowadays.
Hanako announced that she was going to bed. Mom smiled and nodded vaguely. Hanako practically ran up the stairs.
Her room smelled normal, but she opened a window anyway before diving under her covers and nearly smothering herself as her stomach twisted in nausea. Just how sick was Dad? Mom must have caught it, too, that’s why it smelled so bad. That’s why she was quiet, and didn’t… act like she normally did. She was sick, too.
Her door creaked open, and Hanako hurriedly wiped away the wetness in her eyes, dampening patches of the covers. She scrambled up to a seated position and looked up at her father, who smiled that damned smile at her and pulled up a chair next to her bed, pulling a picture book down from the shelf.
No. No, no, no. This was all wrong. Dad had stopped reading to her last year, after he got that new job, and she started school. She’d pretended that it was because she was getting too old for picture books, and not because he had no more time. Why was he starting again now?
“Dad,” she said, trying to keep her voice unwavering. “I don’t want a story. I’m tired. I have school tomorrow, and I want to go to bed.”
Dad didn’t respond. He flipped the book open—a cardboard one with lots of pastels mixed around on the cover—and opened his mouth to read.
His voice was like a hiss. Unnatural and guttural, it skated over his tongue with wrestling effort, nothing at all like that deep, familiar voice that Hanako knew so well. Hanako stared, trembling, as he tried to pronounce the words as though he had something large and chewy in his mouth and had to speak around it, but couldn’t speak without it.
Something gassy bubbled up from his chest and clouded into the room, a rancid, stinking odor, and Hanako whimpered and pulled her covers over her nose. She looked up at him with wide eyes, at the white lines like cracks illuminated by her star-shaped night light next to her bed. At his eyes, oddly-clouded, distanced, hovering somewhere beside the cardboard page.
Something wriggled in his eyeball, making it twitch and then roll perversely around in his head.
Hanako screamed.
She shot off the bed, legs tangling in the covers as she stumbled and raced over them, scraping skin on the footboard and stubbing her toe hard on the door as she wrenched it back open and fled her room. Behind her, Dad—or whatever that was—didn’t move to go after her, and she was glad for it, her movements feeling unnaturally slow and weighted down even as she got down the stairs in record speed.
Mom was collapsed over the table, head on the surface, arms crooked unnaturally beneath her hair, but she sat up as Hanako raced by, turning to her foggily with that smile and moving as though to stand up. Hanako shuddered and ran past her, feet making all sorts of loud sounds, skidding on the carpet and pounding on the hard wood until she made it to the door.
It was unlocked. Hanako didn’t think she was crying, but her eyes were probably bright, the exact opposite of the cloudiness of Mom’s and Dad’s. She slammed the door behind her and jumped off the triple stair, landing hard in a crouch on the concrete sidewalk.
There was a cornerstore two streets down. One street, and her panic had given way to something calmer, and by the time the bright lights of convenience were in sight, everything had gone a little numb.
She hazily noted that she was walking by the time she came up to the front of the store, her knees a little weak, yet resolutely steady. It was almost empty, aside from a single occupied bench, and Hanako walked by the man without a glance, accidentally getting a face-full of cigarette smoke.
The man diverted to blow somewhere above her head, but Hanako barely noticed, instead walking right up to the glass door and pulling at the handle. It was a heavy door, but she got it open with some effort, and slipped inside. The bell rang above her.
There was no one at the counter. The place was fully lit up, fluorescent ceiling lights casting a glow of normalcy over the chocolate bars lined up near the register, the glass-doored fridges at the back of the store. Hanako hadn’t known what she meant to do, coming in here, but Not-Mom hadn’t made any supper, and she decided exactly what she wanted short of human help in the time it took for the door to thump softly closed behind her. She crossed the store, bypassing the candy and chips and things that Mom never let her get, and pulled open the fridge next to all the beer and soju to where the milk was placed in inviting rows in the chill. The strawberry milk was too high, so with only a little disappointment, she pulled down a carton of banana milk instead.
There was no one to pay at the register, and she didn’t have any money, anyway. Hanako knew she should care, remembered how Mom always used to stress over their debts and bills and always resolved to go without certain things rather than let them stack up too high, always refused to so much as make a tab at the grocer’s, but maybe the numbness had taken that away, too. Anyway, she left with the unpaid-for banana milk and a straw from the counter and pushed open the door again, the bell signaling to anyone hiding there that a bad person had just come in and robbed them blind. It drifted shut behind her.
The man was still there. He had on a black hoodie, pulled up around his face the way Kei always wore his own sweaters, the way Mom always hated. Hanako bypassed the empty benches and hefted herself up into the empty space next to him. She turned her gaze to the dumpster bins across the street and popped open the carton.
She dropped the straw in and held it in her lap, criss-cross applesauce, since it felt annoying to have her legs dangle a hair above the concrete below. The man took another pull of his cigarette.
They sat in silence for the space of a minute. Hanako found the mental space to silently judge him for every drag he took as she played with the straw in her milk. Mom hated cigarettes. She always called them ‘coffin-nails,’ though Hanako barely knew what such a metaphor stood for until she was older, and that time had passed. Well, coffin or no, they smelled better than other things she’d smelled that night, the scent sweet and vaguely comforting.
She didn’t look at the man, but sighed, leaning back into the bench. “I think my family is rotten.”
He didn’t speak for a minute, but shrugged, taking another drag of the cigarette. “Yeah, welcome to the club, kid.”
Hanako frowned and studied the dumpsters across the street. Behind them, the convenience store was eerily quiet. If this guy spoke in riddles, at least it was better than whatever Not-Dad had been hissing back in her room. She shuddered, and took a gulp of her banana milk, as another wave of calm passed over her, pushing the flashes of those eyes violently out. She looked down at her drink, frowning a little, and changed the subject.
“Nobody’s at the register.”
“Well, I did just rob the place. They’re probably calling the police in the back.” The man’s voice was gravelly, like his lungs were filled with age-old smoke. He sounded uncaring, and indifferent to her conversation.
Hanako nodded solemnly. She was a thief too, now, maybe worse. She sipped her banana milk soberly, eyeing the man beside her with more understanding eyes.
If it was any other night, his appearance might have startled her. Beneath his hood, his face looked as though it had been wrenched apart and sewn roughly back together, silver links lining the places where pieces of inverted purplish skin were pieced together with other scraps of a more natural color. He looked as though he had been scorched over a spit, and the cook decided halfway through that they didn’t actually want him all the way done, so they took him out and brushed him off and sewed him up into a ragdoll of a man with brilliant blue eyes that looked tired of their indecision.
Hanako took another drag of her banana milk while the man took another drag of his coffin-nail, and she looked at him while he stared boredly across the street at those insanely interesting dumpsters.
“What’re you doing here?” Hanako asked. Her milk carton was getting rather light, and she slowed down, not liking the idea of having to steal another one.
“Robbing,” the man answered, sounding rather annoyed in the most bored way possible. “I already told you that.”
“I mean what did you steal?”
“None of your business, brat.”
Hanako was silent for a minute. She looked down at her carton, at how the light from the windows behind them conflicted with the light of the street lamps above to make weird shadows that bounced off the artsy patches on her jeans. She’d forgotten to change into her pajamas before getting into bed. She guessed that was a good thing now——it was cold enough with just her t-shirt.
Her sigh fogged in the crisp night air like a cleaner version of the man’s smoke. “My family’s dead, I mean.”
The man didn’t respond. Maybe he was used to hearing this sort of thing. He looked like the kind of person who would hang around bad people, so maybe this was as normal to him as Hanako’s fractions. Inevitable, though surely kind of unpleasant and the kind of thing you’d probably want to avoid if you can. She began speaking quicker, in case he did get up and decide to leave.
“Their bodies are rotting. But they keep acting normal, except not normal. And my house stinks, and I think they’re rotting. I really do think they’re dead.” She paused. He didn’t interrupt, neither to leave nor urge her on. She swallowed, and shaped her confession, slouching deeper into the bench until the hard wood bruised the middle of her spine. “I think I killed them.”
Silence.
She looked up at him, but quickly down again. He still wasn’t looking at her. “My name’s Hanako Takahashi. Who’re you?”
The man sighed out a trail of smoke that dissipated into the night, before glancing down at his scarred hands, the white stick between two fingers. He stood up, and looked down at her for the first time. He was tall, maybe just a little shorter than Dad was. Used to be? A little shorter than Not-Dad, then.
She expected a cold-hearted ‘scram.’ Hanako didn’t think he’d be the kind of person to be afraid of what she said. But behind the boredom, the brief annoyance, and the smoke between them, Hanako was sure she saw a flicker of something else in those fire-blue eyes, like… interest.
He took another long drag before flicking his cigarette onto the concrete and stepping onto it, crushing it with the heel of his boot. “Name’s Dabi. Come on, creepy brat. Let’s see what kind of menace the world gets to deal with from now on.”
Hanako didn’t understand that, but she got the gist. She pushed off of the bench too, downing the rest of her banana milk and flattening the container between her hands. Dabi’s cigarette was a tiny stub of litter in the middle of the sidewalk.
They crossed the street first, and Hanako threw her carton in a swinging arc that Kei would be proud of into the wrong dumpster. The man waited in the way that people did when they really didn’t want to but didn’t really have a choice, and Hanako hurried up, walking past him and up the road.
By the second street, the numbness had worn off, and by the time the two of them had gotten to Hanako’s house, her stomach was swirling with banana milk and nausea.
Mom would have been shocked at the sight of Dabi ambling up to the front door, slouchy posture, hands stuck in his pockets like Kei did when Mom wasn’t looking or didn’t have access to a wooden spoon. Hanako just watched as he walked up the sidewalk, up the steps, and then his hand was on the knob and he was turning it, and she forced herself to follow even though she felt as though she shouldn’t be able to move. Her head was filled with cigarette smoke. Was that why Mom called then coffin-nails? Because of what they did to your brain? Or was that even the cigarette at all?
She hurried up behind Dabi and stuck her hands in her own pockets as he pushed the door in and walked into the house as though he had a personal invitation. And she guessed he did, though Hanako didn’t really know what her invitations were worth.
Not-Mom had fallen halfway out of the chair at the dining table, but when Hanako and Dabi walked into the room, she perked up, pushing herself up to stand with that benign smile fixed on her face. Hanako thought she heard Dabi’s breath catch, though she couldn’t be sure, and still, looking back, she couldn’t be sure. It never happened again.
He muttered something under his breath. It sounded like someone’s name, shaped like a curse. “Overhaul.”
Not-Mom started across the room, and opened her mouth. Hanako flinched, throwing her hands over her ears.
Fire.
Fire, fire, fire, and it was blue, like that man’s eyes, and Hanako’s eyes snapped open because maybe she’d closed them without meaning too, and Mom—no, Not-Mom—was submerged in flame, a pillar of blue raising to lick the ceiling and blast heat against Hanako’s face. Maybe she screamed, but it was lost in the hissing. At some point, Hanako fell down onto the floor, the kitchen tile, staring up between Dabi and the fire as Not-Mom became a silhouette in flame, and then a crumbled skeleton of a shadow, and Hanako had to close her eyes again because they were beginning to feel scorched.
Her throat was raw before she realized that yeah, she was screaming, and smoke made quick work of shutting that up.
It ended, but it didn’t, really. Footsteps lumbered down the stairs, and Hanako’s stomach lurched as her legs buckled like a colt and she tried to stand, get them to support her so she could run to warn Dad. Not-Dad. Whoever that was.
A hand against her chest stopped her, and she looked up at the man. His hoodie was off, his hair illuminated in a sapphire sheen. Firelight flickered against every contour of his face, shadowing around his eyes, but something lit them from the inside. Something wild. He didn’t look down at her—Hanako thought she’d die if he did—but the back of his hand wasn’t cruel, or warning her that she was next, or anything. And suddenly, it was as though Not-Mom and Not-Dad really were the bad guys, and Dabi was the good guy, protecting her from the monsters. Hanako’s hands came down from her ears to clutch Dabi’s hand, and watch as fire burst against Not-Dad, as he came into view, and was engulfed in flame. Something burst, and glass sprayed across the kitchen, cutting her cheek, and lodging in the sleeve of Dabi’s hoodie.
She closed her eyes and squeezed them tight, and waited for it all to be over.
And, eventually, it was.
Dabi turned around abruptly towards the door, pulling his hand out of Hanako’s grip and giving her a cursory knock on the shoulder, which she took to mean to follow him, or else get all burned up and match him. Hanako did, blindly, eyes still closed tight so that she almost missed the triple step leading down from the door.
She crushed her eyeballs with the heels of her palms and opened them, stumbling after Dabi as he walked too-quickly down the sidewalk, in the opposite direction from the convenience store.
It took a moment to catch up to him, and another to make sure she could keep up. Several houses down and away from hers. Doors were opening up and down the street, neighbors exclaiming to each other and rubbing bleary eyes to see what the commotion was all about. It wasn’t until later that it struck Hanako as odd how nobody noticed the little girl trailing beside a man who regularly robbed convenience stores and cremated peoples’ parents. Or, Not-Parents. It was difficult to think, and Hanako blamed the coffin-nail.
They walked away from the house as police sirens began to wail somewhere in the distance. Hanako’s eyes were wet and stung something terrible, because of the smoke. The tightness in her chest was because of the smoke, too. Her skin had never felt colder.
She looked up at Dabi, as he took out a pack from the front pocket of his hoodie, and pulled out another of those white coffin-nails. No match, blue fire from his middle finger. Did that mean something crass, the way it did when the older kids at school would gesture at each other and yell across the cafeteria and school-yard? Hanako decided that maybe it was just habit. He caught her looking, and she swore he grinned, but it was gone too quick to know.
Fire extinguished on the tip of his finger, he extended the hand to her. The movement felt a bit confused, and definitely unnatural, like maybe someone had done it once for him as a kid and he knew vaguely that you were supposed to offer it when walking with one.
Hanako took his hand without hesitation, and stopped crying.
And nothing was okay, and her world burned behind as they walked away from it. Hanako didn’t know what she was meant to do about that. So she held on tight, and tried to match Dabi’s stride, and ended up jogging, instead.