Chapter Text
A ferry makes its way across the sound towards Washington's outermost island, the water is calm and dark, reflecting the rain-heavy clouds above. The islands that the ferry had pasted were made into shadowy outlines in the heavy fog. The rails in front of the boy slightly swayed and the sea sprayed the faded orange lifeguard that lived on the guard. The boat’s engine drowned out any noise from the ocean as the journey progressed.
The white-haired boy, tired of watching the gothic nature that the day presented, turned to the notebook and flowers in his lap. Lifting the Sakura bouquet off the notebook, the boy’s green eyes look at the cover. The name Shigaraki Izuku looked back at him, and he turned the cover to the first page. Half of the page was crossed out with first impressions started anew. “There is no easy way to say this and a lot of it will not make sense.” This is what ends up being the beginning of this journal followed by an apology.
“And I’m sorry for that, but I will start at the beginning with the house.”
Izuku could finally see the pointed top of the pagoda tower section of the house, he had walked the majority of the driveway of his childhood home and now can finally see the house past all the evergreen trees of the northwest state. Izuku's footsteps echoed a crunch from the gravel driveway, his legs wapping against ferns growing on the deserted road. Izuku’s curly black hair wavered in the wind that swept through the trees. Emerald eyes darted over the landscape finding patterns of trees that he once ran through when he had a smaller body.
“I lived there for eleven years and I wasn’t allowed in half the rooms.”
Izuku continued on toward the house and pasted a mailbox that mirrored the house he was approaching. Stuffed to the brim with mushy newspaper and urgent bills destroyed by the humid, rainy climate. Opening the wood logging gate and past a dozen no trespassing signs, Izuku walks on. A wooden bridge breaks up the gravel and the sound of rushing water resonates from his side, frog’s croaking competing with the waterfall’s splashing on the wet stones. Izuku follows the road to a split in the trail but goes into the trees instead of being on the road designated for the cars.
“Mom left me a key in her will but didn’t tell me what it unlocked, I didn’t want to go back but I wanted my questions answered after all these years.”
The small path from the road was carved by years of little feet but was now maintained by animals. A bear’s claws marked a tree near this path, claiming the abandoned land as its own.
“Great-grandpa Itsuki would religiously mention how much Shinomori and Mitsuo loved the forest and all the creatures in it, multiple times during my childhood. When I asked him why he kept mentioning it he remained silent, as if silence would buy my curiosity. Much to my vexation, it ended up working when I couldn’t out stubborn him.”
Izuku hurries a little faster down the trail rightfully against the idea of chancing an encounter with a black bear. Evergreen trees, ferns, stumps, logs, and small leafy matter hug the trail tightly only to open up to a clearing that holds a hokora(shrine) in its grasp. The hokora doubled as a play area and tokonoma instead of being there for anything religious. The three wooden walls were starting to rot and moss covered the rest of it. A plane of glass guarded the entrance from nature's touch.
“I spent many hours around the hokora, trying to imagine how great uncles Shinomori and Mitsuo would play with it. Stories becoming playmates for my young isolated self, it took me a long time to convince Itsuki that I could be trusted inside it. He took a week off from work to teach me how to care for it. I was all too happy to spend that time with Itsuki. After gaining access to the inside I left them offerings based on what I knew of them. I even spent an afternoon trying to replicate the two hollyhock flower dolls that were in a small case in the shrine, with little success.”
Izuku’s trail meets back up with the driveway at the front of the house unobstructed by the forest. The house remained the same after seven years of abandonment, Izuku couldn’t help but stop to admire the structure that he still labels as his home. The house could be described as a semi-traditional Japanese home but it also could equally be described as half log cabin, half traditional Japanese, and half dingy wannabe treehouse. Wooden logs made up the outside walls but with a porch that went around the whole house. The main part had two stories and a pagoda-like tower that connected to one side of it. On the top of the tower surrounding the pointed roof were unappealing-looking structures, with small beams of wood digging into the tiled roof. Before Izuku walked up the incline to the front door he stopped and went around the mossy rocks and raised plant beds that made up the front yard to the murky pond that lived right of the house. The pond was trashed, and nature was still present in and around the pond but a broken dragon’s head was the obvious indicator of tainting.
“I once asked Itsuki about the dragon in the pond, he said it had killed his brother-in-law. The tone he used suggested it was supposed to be amusing yet grief painted his voice like he was still trying to hold on to some grudge that died with the dragon.”
Izuku plucked a rocky mountain iris from the plant bed and let it drift on the pond's gentle surface. After a long minute at the pool, he stopped procrastinating and then made his way to the front door of the house walking in between rocks, moss, ferns, and flowers. The porch had creaked under his feet as weight was put on the rotting wood. Sinking in between the wood planks were old missing person posters, the face of his cousin Tenko water-damaged and broken.
“As a kid, the house gave off a feeling that was no different from the graveyard in the backyard, filled with memories and empty all the same.”
Leaning down to look through the mail slot, the house was just how they left it but seemingly waiting for its users-Izuku to come back. Izuku also used it as a chance to catch his breath. The walk to the house seemed infinitely longer now. Izuku pulls out the key he had left and tries it on the front door, unsurprisingly it doesn't work. Turning left from the door Izuku walks the length of the porch and turns to the right to reach the side door. Bags of fertilizer, pots filled, and unfilled littered his path. From the porch he could see over the fence into the backyard, an old swing hung crookedly from the limb of a large tree. It was overlooking a cliff that was closer to the house than before, erosion taking its toll on the land.
“Everything from the property seemed like it’s always been there, even the swingset was older than my mother.”
Izuku turns back the side door and looks down at the heinous-looking doggy door that disrupts the beautiful grain of the wood door. Izuku kneeled down and squeezed himself through the opening, as he did a nail caught his pants and he unstuck it and made his way onto the kitchen floor dragging the last bit of himself out of the door. The kitchen floor was thankfully still mostly clean with just a bit of leaf litter.
“Crawling through the doggy door used to be easier when I was smaller, I still remember helping Itsuki construct it. To say he failed miserably would be an understatement, and I learned many new words from my 97-year-old great-grandpa that day.”
Picking himself off the kitchen floor to look around and see an uncluttered kitchen, the kitchen was Inko’s place in the house beside her room and she disliked any unnecessary items. Which clashed with Itsuki’s usual preference of organized hoarding and the rest of the house being in his ‘style’. The kitchen was in a Western style, with tile floors and bulky modern appliances.
“Everything stayed the same, I couldn’t help but feel for just a second that I was finally home again. But there was no getting rid of the emptiness, of having no family to return to.”
Walking out of the kitchen threw a seven-foot tall door frame into the dining room. The table was still a wreck from when Izuku last left it. Takeout Chinese boxes, three plates, and placemats only covered one-third of the large table. While the chairs and the wheelchair in front of the plates were in disarray, the chairs that were once occupied many years ago were straight and clean.
“I found the large table uncomfortable at the best of times, even when I was young before Tenko and En were gone. It was like knowing something was missing yet not being around long enough to know what.”
“We had Chinese a lot, with it being the one restaurant willing to deliver to the house. Much to Great-grandpa Itsuki’s annoyance which he would make known by a lengthy rant about his hatred of Chinese food but he never did learn to cook, my mother ordered it as an unusual punishment after big fights.”
Walking around the table, Izuku stops behind Itsuki’s giant wheelchair. He touches the back of the seat that reaches his midsection and fidgets with the multiple different nursing home pamphlets that were stuck mysteriously. Their existence in Itsuki’s space brought him many migraines, and he went through further strife trying to scrape them off the leather material of his wheelchair. Inko was the only one who thought Itsuki could be convinced to go into a nursing home.
To leave the dining room, there once was a step so shoes could be left on the tile. But a ramp had to be installed for Itsuki's mobility needs. The tatami mats made up the rest of the first-story floor. Between the ramp and the wall was a plethora of shoes of all sizes, piled up on top of each other and forgotten. Izuku stays before the ramp for a minute and then ultimately decides to take off his shoes, but as he does so he is brought back to a memory he once forgot.
- -
Izuku chases Tenko up the stairs of the front yard to the main door and its gigantic frame. Tenko’s black silky-looking hair that was actually greasy drifts on the breeze of his sprint. Tenko has a superhero toy clutched in his palm, taunting Izuku with the hero’s one-liners. Tenko is able to open the door before Izuku can catch up and makes it into the house. Izuku is right at his heels though, he reaches out to catch a piece of Tenko’s clothing but has to slam to a stop when he reaches the step up to the tatami. Izuku trips on it and almost smashes his face into the rice straw material, instead of doing the same Tenko simply steps up and walks on the tatami with his shoes on! Izuku looks up in disbelief at Tenko’s shit-eating grin that was made harsher because of the small scar on his lip.
‘You know you can’t do that’ Izuku complains as Tenko doesn’t take the chance to get away, instead using it to taunt his rule-abiding cousin.
‘Well I just did,’ Tenko taunts, ‘will you throw away Gramps' ridiculous rules and come get your little friend?’
Tenko is waving Izuku’s favorite toy in front of his face and pretends to rip the arms off, Izuku is now frantically tugging at the laces of his muddy tennis shoes. As Tenko laughs at Izuku’s dismay he overlooks his older cousin En sneaking up behind him.
En snags the action figure from Tenko’s grasp and jabs his ribs with his other hand. Tenko yelps in surprise and whips around to try and get back the toy he stole. Tenko gets both hands on the toy and tries to tear it out of his much larger cousin's hands but slams into the wooden stairs when En immediately lets go.
‘HEY, WHAT IS GOING ON OUT THERE.’
The three boys freeze and watch as their great-grandfather/great-granduncle respectfully, wheels into the entranceway from the tea room. The aged, lifelong white-haired man was quick to shut down any fight started between the boys. This was nothing new to Itsuki, the boys being his third litter of Shigarakis that he helped raise. He knew when to step in, to make sure scuffles between children didn’t go too far.
Tenko, knowing there was no way to talk himself out of his earlier misgivings, booked it to the stairs. Itsuki’s eyes snapped to his retreating form and saw his soggy, dirty shoes marking tracks on the expensive tatami.
‘Tenko, get back here if you know what’s good for you’, Itsuki’s voice begins to raise as Tenko continues his retreat. “NO” yells the tween.
‘If you don’t get back down here young man you're going to be in a world of trouble.’
Itsuki shakily stands from his wheelchair and follows Tenko’s path with a small limp in his gait, his sock-covered feet completely covering Tenko’s tracks as he walks to the stairs. Itsuki gives him one final warning at the base of the stairs, then turns to Izuku with a frustrated complaisance shown on his face.
‘Go get your cousin, Izuku.’ said Itsuki in a disgruntled tone. His amber eyes flashed with anger.
Izuku jumps onto the tatami having taken off his shoes in the chaos between En and Tenko and runs up the stairs back to chase Tenko who still had his favorite hero toy.
- -
Izuku’s smile waned from his face as he came back to the present, his feet freezing as the cold seeped into his socks from the tile. Izuku ties his shoes to his bag and walks up the ramp onto the warmer tatami.
“I could always understand Itsuki back in those days, and I was often labeled the most helpful great-grandchild.”
Izuku slides open the shoji door between the dining room and the tea/living room. He is greeted by the familiar site of bookshelves plump with books on three of the walls, a glass window taking up the fourth wall. The archway that led to the front door had a balcony from the second story with a broken rail. Most traditional houses were organized and minimal, the Shigaraki house was anything but that. It was messy and overstuffed, with four generations having lived in it and not many belongings being removed.
“Nothing in the house looked abnormal, there was just too much of it. Like a smile with too many teeth.”
The middle of the ‘tea room’ was an Irori, with zaisu chairs and zabutons that surrounded the pit. A chain that held up the jizaikagi was attached to the ceiling. A pot of water was connected to the hook of the jizaikagi, the full pot of water had been left hanging and was forgotten by the house's last occupant, and ashen logs were still in the Irori.
“Itsuki had said that even the Irori had a story. ‘Once the tide was out far enough, your great-granduncle was crazy enough to get the jizaikagi from the old house.’’’
Walking to the beginning of the stairs, Izuku passes the basement door. The stairwell was made of wood, it was like a chimney beside the white shoji. The door was out of place with everything else in the house, it was built to last against a heavy force. Hinges were strong cast iron and the wood lines were interrupted by heavy metal supporting them. The lock was slightly rusted and missing a key. Izuku tries to open the door with the key his mother left him but to no avail. Next to the door was a humble music box on an equally tiny shelf. The name ‘Mitsuo’ is printed on the front. Izuku winds it up and the top pops open to reveal two hugging figures, one was slightly taller with shoulder-length white hair and the slightly smaller one had bushy brown hair in a low ponytail. They spun around together in a hand-painted meadow. Soft somber music floated in the air
“Great-granduncle Keiji built a music box for his son Mitsuo, after a particularly tough year without great-granduncle Yoichi. Keiji and Mitsuo were never the same after Yoichi’s death, they mourned him for many years. Itsuki mourned more than them, only because he lived longer.”
Izuku closed the top of the music box gently and continued his walk to the stairs. Blocking his path were multiple packed and nearly packed packages, left behind in the whirlwind that was Izuku’s last night. An unsealed wooden door was in between the stairs and the front door, it led to the pagoda. On a shakey stand to the right of the front doorway was a stack of missing person papers.
“Mom had a hard time letting family go, she never stopped believing that my cousin Tenko was alive.”
Creaks from the old stairs followed Izuku's footsteps, his hand skimmed the newer handrails and his eyes reunited with familiar pictures of his family.
“After Tenko disappeared, Mom sealed up all the bedrooms, and Itsuki resisted by putting peepholes in the shoji. Itsuki and Mom's relationship went down the drain after Tenko left and their constant fights happened daily.”
When Izuku reached the top of the stairs he turned down one of the hallways, and went to Itsuki’s unsealed but locked bedroom. Pressed against the wall right near the door of Itsuki’s room was a tarp-covered object, which would usually be normal for anybody else but for Izuku it was one of the answers he was looking for. The tarp was nailed to the floor and was covered in a layer of dust. Izuku goes to Itsuki’s door and looks through the tear in the gray door.
“The last time I was in Itsuki’s room, I was ten, and Itsuki painted my portrait. His room fit his seven-foot frame, but being semi-bound to his wheelchair left a lot of the room untouched most days.”
“Great granduncle Keniji’s memento was outside Itsuki’s room, my mom Inko covered it with a tarp and nailed it to the floor. Itsuki was levied when she did that but didn’t think of undoing it.”
Izuku turned toward the next peephole which was his grandpa Toshinori and great uncle Banjo’s childhood bedroom.
“My normal was a very strange world, outside of the house. I never knew that the rest of the US architects would be different and that it wasn’t common to have peepholes for sealed rooms.”
Toshinori and Banjo’s door was split down the middle with, Toshinori's side sunshine yellow with little painted soldiers on orange hills and Banjo’s a dark blue and black color with little astronauts floating around shimmering stars. When Izuku looked through the peephole the door cover matched the room inside. The room was evenly divided with each side having the same theme as the door outside.
“Grandpa Toshinori shared a room for 7 years with his dead brother, Banjo.”
Walking out of Itsuki’s side of the family's hallway, Izuku passes the stairs and the balcony overlooking the tearoom. To the remaining set of rooms of the main house, Yoichi’s and Keniji's family side. The first door in Izuku’s path was Kotaro’s, Yoichi and Keniji’s youngest son. The shoji door was dark red with yokai and other monsters, when a young Izuku squirted his eyes it almost looked like they were drowning in blood. Like Toshinori and Banjo’s room, the door reflects the inside.
“Kotaro was the type of boy that I imagined I would not see eye to eye with. His room screamed insecurity and cruelty, but growing up with a haunted father and brother could never be good for one's development.”
Moving on Izuku went to the next door which was plain white but with children’s drawings on the shoji, looking inside it had few belongings in it besides the many books on shelves. Izuku already knew this was his great uncle Mitsuo’s room but as a child, he was always interested in its minimalistic style, but he didn’t know the word for it back then. It was alien in this overfilled home.
“Mitsuo was a child star back in Japan before they moved. He was famous for his intellect and strategy, a true chess prodigy.”
Across from Mitsuo was Shinomori’s room, its door unlike the other wasn’t sealed but the abode was stripped of its belongings. Skid marks were left in the tatami and the shoji had a forest theme that gave a clue to show it was once occupied. Izuku turns to the wood square in the wall with shoji around it. A padlock was holding the trap door closed, the final gateway before the unrevealed and irreversible truth. Izuku unlocks the door with no hesitation.
“Turns out Itsuki was good at keeping secrets, and it was time to see what my mom was so afraid of.”
Izuku slides the trap door up, and Izuku is greeted by the sight of charcoal drawings in the crawl space. Izuku starts to realize he was late to the party, at the sight of the dark artistry covered with dust.
“From the drawing on the wall, it was clear my cousin Tenko was here before me.”
The crawl space looked like a mini play fort, with a tea set in the corner. Probably stolen sheets hung from the ceiling and made a small canopy. A deflated bean bag was surrounded by drawings and art supplies of all kinds cushioned in the middle of it. Izuku remembers that Tenko used to draw on the walls growing up, he wasn’t persuaded to stop by the countless punishments he received as a consequence. Only to stop one day out of the blue, but now it made sense.
Izuku continues on and slides the other trapdoor up and it locks into place, he is treated to the view from the back of the closest. Clothes and hangers blocked his eyes from taking in the room.
“Reading this it might sound like I had a plan but I didn’t know what to expect past that door.”
The shoji was black, the ceiling had sheer curtains hanging from it. His bed was a traditional Japanese futon on the floor. The bed was perfectly cleaned but a little dusty and was the only thing not touched last by Kotaro. Everything else was messy and dirty. Kotaro’s mouse had lived in a tiny cage with no hiding spaces, just it and the great span of the room. The cage bars were rusted with age and misuse.
“I grew up looking at Kotaro’s room through the peephole, being inside was like being in an angsty cage. With contempt written on the walls and drawings of monsters hidden behind curtains.”
The monsters were everywhere in the room, but they were not out in the open. If you weren’t looking for them they would have remained unnoticed, lurking.
“Mitsuo was intrigued by yokai, oni, and other spirits from Japanese mythology. And shared those stories with Kotaro, even if they were not for the light-hearted"
By the neat futon was a thick book laid out on its spine, the page that it was on was about Otoroshi(). It is a bluish yokai with hair that framed their stubby body. A slip of paper lay on the page, Izuku bends down to read the note from Mitsuo to Kotaro. “ Happy tenth birthday Kotaro, I hope you have a wonderful day today :D. These were my favorite stories growing up, I know that you enjoy rock and roll music. I think that they’ll appeal to your darker tastes - Mitsuo.” Underneath the message, the receiver responded with childish drawings of yokai. A little Mitsuo and Kotaro stick figures were surrounded by equally tiny monsters, they were made with an unpracticed hand.
Izuku leaves the futon corner and treads to the writing desk by the window. The desk was meant for a zaisu but a rocking chair rests in front of it. The tatami had scars left by the chair, but Izuku knew that the owner of the chair did not care about something so trivial in the face of their grief. Upon the desk was a memorial, Kotaro’s hand-painted picture took the main stage, it showed a baby-faced ten-year-old which made him look a lot younger. He had dark brown hair and amber eyes that were the same shade as his uncle's. The painting was encompassed by gifts of small and large sizes. An incense tray was decorated with dried leaf litter that was once flowers as well as large pinecones and smooth river stones. Toy soldiers and tiny planes were to the left with a vase of unidentifiable, wilted flowers taking up the right side. A folded paper lay by the vase with handwriting matching the birthday note. The most notable part of the set was the diary of Shigaraki Kotaro.
- -
December 31, 1946
Dear Diary,
I’m going to die soon,
And there is nothing I can do to wake up Dad or Uncle,
So I’m going to write down what will happen to me for anybody who cares enough,
Before dinner, I had an argument with Dad,
And I said bad things about Dead Dad,
Dad got very mad and he said many mean things to me,
Mitsuo and Shino weren’t there to stop the fights like they usually do,
Dad put me in my room for timeout and Uncle locked my door,
I am very hungry and since I was in timeout I had to eat stuff from my room,
I first ate the little food from my mouse's cage,
I don’t feed it a lot so it had little food for me to eat,
It's too bony for me to eat,
I ate all my Halloween candy and my toothpaste,
The only thing left was the red flowers in the pot and I ate them too,
I felt super tired after the flowers and slept for a little bit,
I then had the worst dream of my life,
At first, I didn’t realize that it was a dream,
I was in my room and from the corner of my eye I saw a tall white figure,
They had a girls dress with long black hair,
Their back was to me and then they disappeared after I blinked,
I blinked again and I was suddenly in water and it was a murky place,
When I floated to the surface I saw that humans were attempting to cross my river,
Before they did they threw cucumbers into the water and I felt things move around me,
Then the cucumbers started disappearing,
I soon realized that I and the other things in the river with me were Kappa,
I then grabbed a slice and ate it,
It didn’t fill me,
I ate more as I watched the people wade through the river,
I was still starving,
I didn’t waste a second and went to the smallest and weakest of the humans,
I pulled her under and before I took a bite,
I was on a bloody and rotting battlefield,
My hunger tripled and my body was scattered across the field,
I stayed still for a long time,
Waiting,
I didn’t know for what,
Then finally I felt a human step into my territory,
I felt their armor ringing through the ground,
My body then started to pull together,
I watched the human’s terrified face as I grew in size,
When I was in one piece I looked down at my body to see a skeleton,
I was a deadly Gashadokuro,
The human then took their chance to attack me,
Their blade got stuck in my bone,
Before they could take off I used my giant hand to grab them,
They struggled in my grasp,
I felt happy when they did and even happier when I tightened my grip,
And pulled them to my jaws,
Just like before I didn’t get to eat them,
This time I was by tall, familiar snowcap trees,
I looked down at my body and I was wearing the girl dress like the figure at the start of my dream,
My skin was white and had a blue tint to it,
My scalp felt heavy from the long hair I now had,
Before I could take in my tall height,
I smelt something delicious,
I sped passed the trees and stepped over rivers,
And I ended up back home in front of my open window,
I was back in my bed,
And my window is open,
I looked out the window for a long time,
Then when I blinked the figure appeared at my bedside,
After seeing the women face to face I realized that she was a Yuki Onna,
When I turned to face them their long black hair turned white and it shortened,
I was facing my dead Dad,
Then I woke up,
I’ve been holding my breath for a long time but I can’t hear anything,
I’m too scared to move,
I’ve been softly calling for Dad and Uncle but they won’t answer me,
I think the Yuki Onna is waiting for me to fall asleep,
It’s not going to wait much longer,
I don’t want to die,
I don’t want to di-,
- -
Izuku finishes the entry on a tear and ink-stained page, and quickly closes the book so as not to stain it more with his tears. He gently places the diary back where he found it and grabs one of the leftover incense sticks. He lights it and a plume of smoke drifts upward and places it on the holder. Izuku then kneels in front of the desk and gives a small prayer.
“I wasn’t sure if I believed all that but I know he died terrified.”
Izuku stands and goes back the way he came.
“ Looking back to whenever I brought up Kotaro in conversations with Itsuki, he always had the same haunted and guilty look on his features. He would hide it by smashing my face into his chest for a long cuddle session.”
“And when Tenko found and took in a kitten hiding under our garage, Itsuki was the one to name it Kotaro.”