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When Momo is young, she learns. She learns basic chemistry before other kids her age have even learned that “chemistry” is a word, and she learns how to control her quirk by creating malformed matryoshka dolls until she hardly needs to think about the construction of a doll before it pops perfectly out of her body.
She learns that her parents still love her even if they’re often gone on business trips, and she learns that the hired nanny is who she’d consider her best friend, though her personal tutor is a close second.
What Momo doesn’t learn, though, is that this isn’t necessarily normal. That is, not until one day at the park.
Her nanny had decided to take her—“Momo-chan, we should get out of this stuffy house for a little while on such a nice day!”—and she sits in a grassy clearing a small distance from the playground. Her dress is splayed out around her and her hair is styled back in a fishtail braid, with a few pieces in the front that had been too short to pull into the braid framing her face. She had created a few matryoshka dolls, which she now stacks and unstacks in the grass.
The laughter and shrieks of the other children on the playground are simultaneously a few meters and a whole world away, but Momo doesn’t mind.
Momo doesn’t mind, but a girl who looks to be the same age as her seemingly does. The purple-haired girl stomps up to Momo, extends and arm to point at her, and exclaims, “You’re weird!”
Momo blinks up at the girl, at how there’s a smudge of dirt on her left cheek and cuts and bruises trailing the length of her legs.
“Weird?” Momo questions innocently, lifting a hand to press her index finger curiously to the side of her chin.
“Weird!” she confirms, and a woman rushes up from behind her, setting her hands on the girl’s shoulders. They look strikingly alike… is this woman her mother? They both have what look to be chords hanging from their earlobes.
Momo’s nanny stands from where she’d been reading on the bench nearby, and Momo, mostly confused, looks back and forth between the adults with wide eyes. The woman that Momo presumes to be the girl’s mother is apologizing frantically to Momo’s nanny, but the girl crosses her arms over her chest and lets out a huff.
“What even are those things?” the girl asks, blowing a puff upwards to move her long bangs out of her eyes. She juts her chin down at the matryoshka dolls that lie in the grass.
Momo looks down at the dolls for a moment before she meets the girl’s eyes again and says, “They’re Russian dolls. I can… make them with my Quirk.”
Without thinking, Momo extends her arm and watches as a doll materializes from her skin. The doll tips over as it falls into the grass.
“Woah!” the girl exclaims, jaw dropping. She shakes her mother’s hands from her shoulders and squats next to Momo, picking up the doll and letting it sit in her palms.
Above them, the adults still talk.
“They open up,” Momo says, grabbing one of the other dolls and twisting it open. Another smaller doll sits inside.
The girl, apparently intrigued, twists open the doll in her hands and lets the larger pieces fall to the ground as she holds the smaller doll in her hands. She then opens that resulting doll, letting those pieces fall as she holds an even smaller doll.
Momo lets out a twinkling laugh and the girl looks up at her, blowing her bangs out of her face again. “I’m Kyouka,” the girl says, reaching up to tuck her seemingly bothersome bangs behind her ear. “Who’re you?”
“My name is Momo,” she answers, watching as Kyouka reconstructs the doll she had pulled apart.
“Momo,” Kyouka repeats. “My aunt has a cat named Momo.”
Momo’s about to comment that her name is pretty popular when Kyouka’s mother grabs her daughter by the hand and says, “We’d better be going now, Kyouka. We don’t want to bother them more than we already have.” She begins to drag Kyouka away.
“It’s no trouble,” Momo’s nanny replies with a soft smile, though Kyouka’s mother still bows her head in apology.
“She really needs to learn her manners,” Kyouka’s mother says, nodding down to Kyouka. “It’s your father’s influence, isn’t it?” she comments to her daughter, who simply shrugs.
Kyouka’s still holding one of Momo’s matryoshka dolls in her hands as she begrudgingly complies to being towed by her mother. She looks back to Momo and calls, “Can I keep it?”
Momo nods, and Kyouka’s face brightens with a smile. She rips her hand out of her mother’s hold and runs a few paces ahead of her, leaving Momo behind in the grass.
That day, Momo learns for the first time what it’s like to want to get to know someone.
—
It’s about a week before Momo sees her again.
Momo’s studying at her desk in her bedroom, and natural late afternoon light slants in through the window before her. She’s trying to create a miniature replica of one of the statues out in their yard, but the details never come out right.
She lets out a frustrated sigh as she looks at the pile of failed figurines on her desk. Then, she glances out of the window, meaning to look at the aforementioned statue, but her eyes are instead drawn to the person riding their bike past Momo’s house.
The purple hair is a telltale sign that it’s Kyouka, and Momo scrambles to open her window and shout, “Kyouka!” She blushes red when she’s realized what she’s done.
Immediately, Kyouka swings her feet down to the ground to brake. Her head whips back as she looks for the source of the shout, but Momo shies back from the window.
But she’s been thinking about Kyouka on and off for a week now, about the blue and green bandaids on her knees and about how she called Momo “weird” when she seems so eccentric herself, so Momo turns back to the window just as Kyouka is putting her feet back on the bike pedals.
“Kyouka!” she calls, and Kyouka looks up to see her in the window. She cocks her head, because Momo’s probably too far away for her to be able to discern who it is. “Wait, and I’ll be down in a minute!”
Momo pulls the window shut and then starts on her way through the house, running down the stairs and then whipping past her nanny, who looks after her with confusion obvious in her features. (Momo has never run in the house before. Somehow, it’s invigorating.)
As she flings her front door open, she lets out a sigh of relief to see Kyouka still standing idle by her bike, hands resting on the handlebars.
She squints at Momo for a moment and then exclaims, “Oh, it’s you, Momo! I didn’t know that you live in a mansion.”
Momo flushes. “It’s not…” she starts but trails off, looking back at her house, which towers behind them in all its regal beauty.
“It’s a mansion,” Kyouka states, absentmindedly rolling her bike back and forth as she speaks. “No wonder you’re so weird. You’re rich! This is, like, the biggest house in the neighborhood!”
Momo’s hands fumble together in front of her, and she itches to change the subject, so she inquires, “Where are you headed?”
“Just to the store!” Kyouka chirps, and she leans forward to pat the basket on the front of her bike. She tilts her head as she thinks for a moment, and then she says, “Do you want to come with?”
“Come with?” Momo blinks at her, confused.
“My dad needs a carton of milk for cooking dinner tonight, but he gave me enough money so that I could get ice cream, too. I think…” She pauses, digging in her pockets. The money jingles in her pockets; she pulls it out and looks at it in her palm before saying, “I think there’s enough for both of us.”
“I don’t…” Momo trails and averts her gaze to the ground.
“You don’t what?” Kyouka prods, crouching down into Momo’s field of sight and raising an eyebrow at her.
Momo’s voice is small as she says, “I don’t have a bike.”
“Oh,” Kyouka breathes. Then, she laughs. “You really are weird, Momo! Good thing my bike has pegs.” Kyouka kicks one of the pegs to demonstrate, and then she steps over her bike to get back on it. “C’mon, get on!”
“I haven’t...” Momo stutters, “I haven’t—”
“Are you scared to go on the pegs?” Kyouka inquires, but Momo doesn’t have the chance to answer before Kyouka offers, “Hey, what if you ride it and I’ll go on the pegs?”
Momo shrinks in on herself. “I don’t know how to ride a bike,” she admits, and Kyouka’s mouth falls open. Before she can say anything, Momo exclaims, “But I’ll—I’ll go on the pegs!”
“You sure?”
Momo nods curtly, taking another step closer to the bike and eyeing the pegs. Eager to prove herself to Kyouka, she steps onto the pegs and sets her hands on Kyouka’s shoulders.
It’s after Kyouka’s taken off, Momo’s grip tightening on her shoulders until Kyouka’s complaining about it, that Momo realizes she hadn’t asked permission to leave. She worries about this as she hangs onto Kyouka, her flowy pink shirt fluttering in the wind.
“I never asked to leave,” she says then, against the wind.
“You’ll be back soon,” Kyouka replies. “Don’t worry.”
Regardless, Momo worries her bottom lip between her teeth.
“Plus,” Kyouka comments, “that old lady with you at the park seemed nice, so she probably won’t get mad.”
Momo hesitates before she gives in, leaning slightly closer to Kyouka and saying, “I guess you’re right.”
—
Once they reach the store, Kyouka comes to a stop on her bike and lets Momo get off before she follows suit and puts out the kickstand. She steps into the store dutifully with Momo just behind her.
“I’m going to teach you how to ride a bike,” Kyouka proclaims as she picks out a carton of milk from the dairy section. She tucks it under her arms and they meander over to the ice cream products.
“You… You are?” Momo looks to Kyouka with wide eyes and she nods her confirmation.
“How old are you, Momo? I think you’re the same age as me, and I’m nine.”
“Me, too.”
“I think all nine-year-olds should be able to ride bikes, so I’ll teach you,” Kyouka states, matter-of-fact. “But in return,” she starts, opening one of the freezer doors and picking out an ice cream bar. “you have to show me around your mansion.”
“You’re sure that’s okay?” Momo inquires as Kyouka picks out a bar for Momo, too. “For you to—to teach me?”
Kyouka hums her approval, the freezer door before them slapping shut. Kyouka sets off towards the register, Momo following.
The cashier smiles down at the girls as Kyouka pushes the carton of milk and two ice cream bars over the counter, then as she drops her change beside them.
As soon as they’re all checked out, they meander out of the shop, Kyouka setting the carton of milk in her bike basket before they tear the wrappers off of their ice cream bars. Kyouka had parked her bike next to a bench, and they collapse down onto it.
“Thank you,” Momo says after she takes her first lick of the bar. “When we get back to my house, I could pay—”
“Momo,” Kyouka groans, throwing her head back. “It’s fine.”
Momo’s quiet, then, watching as Kyouka sinks her teeth easily into her ice cream. Kyouka shudders at the cold, and Momo winces.
“Hm,” Kyouka says around her bite of ice cream. “It’s really creamy.”
“It’s good,” Momo replies, “I like it.” She doesn’t mention that she’s never been in a convenience store before—that she’s never had ice cream from a convenience store before. She flashes back to the expensive ice cream her mother had brought home once after a business trip, but she can’t recall what was so special about it. Either way, Momo thinks she likes this from the convenience store better.
There’s chocolate ice cream on Kyouka’s teeth when she looks over to smile at Momo. Regardless, Momo musters a smile in return.
Kyouka finishes her ice cream in what Momo thinks is record time, and then she gets up and straddles her bike again. Momo stares at her from on the bench, with more than half of her bar still left.
“You can eat and ride at the same time,” Kyouka says, nudging one of the pegs with her foot. “I won’t go too fast.”
Somewhat reluctant, Momo steps onto the pegs again, holding one of Kyouka’s shoulders in one hand and her ice cream in the other. It’s a bit harder to balance this way, but Kyouka does ride slowly enough that it’s not too bad.
“So,” Kyouka starts as they’re riding leisurely down the road, “I can teach you tomorrow, ‘cause it’s Saturday and there’s no school.”
“Oh,” Momo says.
“What? Are you busy?”
“No,” Momo replies immediately. She withholds the fact that she’s home schooled, though Kyouka probably already knows, since they’d never met in school. Maybe that’s part of the reason Kyouka thinks she’s weird.
“Okay, it’s a plan, then,” Kyouka says, lifting a hand off the handlebars to give Momo a thumbs up. Momo just tightens her grip on Kyouka’s shoulder.
When Momo does return home, it turns out that Kyouka had been right; Momo’s nanny isn’t mad. In fact, a smile pulls at her face and she congratulates Momo on making a “friend.”
—
“Ky—Kyouka!” Momo screams as Kyouka’s hands pull away from where they’d been steadying Momo’s torso as she pedaled at the pace of a snail.
“Just keep going!” Kyouka yells back, and Momo doesn’t know the words to describe the feeling she feels as she pedals, the bike wobbling below her and continuously gaining speed. She’s scared—of course she is—but there’s something more to it, something exciting.
That is, until she’s still going fast and there’s a row of trash bins approaching.
“Steer, Momo!” Kyouka shouts from a ways back, and Momo attempts looking over her shoulder at her, which—bad idea.
She topples over into the trash bins, or, more accurately, the bike crashes into the bins and Momo is flung a little ways away, skidding her knees and palms on the road. As she pulls herself up to stand, she hears pounding footsteps approaching. Kyouka’s running to her.
“You almost got it!” Kyouka exclaims, and then winces as her eyes flicker to Momo’s knees. Blood trails in lines down her calves.
Momo, pulling her lip between her teeth in an attempt to divert her attention from her throbbing knees, casts a look to her house, which is just down the street, and Kyouka follows her gaze.
“Maybe it’s time for the mansion tour,” Kyouka comments, “after your grandma patches you up.”
“Grand—?” Momo cuts herself off, not particularly wanting to correct her. “Yes, we should go back.”
They walk together back to Momo’s house; Kyouka rolls her bike on one side and Momo limps on her other side.
Momo’s nanny greets them at the door with a wide grin, but upon noticing Momo’s injuries, her mouth pulls into a frown. She croons a bit as she leads Momo and Kyouka to the bathroom, where she cleans and dresses Momo’s knees, calves, and palms. After she’s done, she excuses the girls to look around the house.
Kyouka gawks at mostly every room, and Momo blushes in response. It’s hard to behave modestly when Kyouka is commenting on Momo’s richness every second, but still, Momo tries.
She’s holding her hands together behind her back when she shows Kyouka her bedroom, taking a few steps into the room before Kyouka follows behind her, eyes wide and mouth dropped open.
“Woah,” she says, “I can’t believe you hang out in here every day, Momo. It’s so… fancy.” Kyouka throws herself backwards onto Momo’s bed.
Momo flushes further, cheeks tinted red.
“We’ll pick up bike riding again tomorrow,” Kyouka states, and then she pats the bed next to her.
Momo approaches and carefully sits herself on the edge of the bed, but Kyouka grabs Momo’s shoulder and pulls her down so that they lie side by side.
“You know, Momo,” Kyouka starts, “I was kinda mean at the park when I first saw you, just calling you weird. I don’t know why I did that,” she lets out a laugh, and Momo turns her head to look at her. She’s looking straight upwards. “But I wasn’t wrong, ‘cause you are weird. But it’s—it’s a good weird. I like you, Momo.”
Momo gapes. “You—?”
“Don’t tell anyone I said that, either!”
Now Momo lets out soft laughter, and Kyouka turns to look at her. They meet eyes, and they smile.
—
While Momo is growing up, she learns. She learns things that are complicated, like molecular structures of countless materials, but she also learns things that are simple, like that Kyouka is a wonderful friend.
She learns that when Kyouka rings Momo’s doorbell a million times, it means that she has extra money and wants to go somewhere with Momo. She learns that Kyouka will never judge her harshly, not even when she admits that she’s never gone to a movie theater before— she’ll just bring Momo to the movies with her family the next time they go.
Momo learns that “weird” doesn’t equate to “bad” in any way, not in Kyouka’s book, and she learns that Kyouka’s weird, and Momo’s weird in a completely different way, but for some reason, this makes them inseparable.
—
“Momo,” Kyouka groans, lying on the common room couch at the UA dorms, “I’m glad it’s you. It’s so hot in here. Can you, like, make me one of those fan-necklace things?”
Momo laughs, coming to sit beside Kyouka on the couch. They’re alone, everyone else having retreated to their rooms for the night. Actually, Momo would’ve been off to bed, too, had she not seen Kyouka’s telltale purple hair sticking up from on the couch as she was heading back from the showers and to her room.
“If you’re hot, you should take off your jacket,” Momo comments.
Kyouka turns her head to playfully glare at Momo. “The jacket is the whole look, Momo. If I take it off, I won’t look…”
“Punk?” Momo suggests, smile tugging at her lips.
“Yeah. I won’t look punk anymore.” Kyouka peels off the jacket nonetheless, and then fans her face with her hands. Her face is flushed; she’s always been sensitive to hot.
Momo flashes back to when they were twelve and Kyouka cut her hair with blunt scissors, all asymmetrical and odd angles. “It was too hot on my neck,” she had said. Momo told her it looked good, and for some reason, she’s always continued to cut it herself, denying her parents’ offers to take her to a hairdresser.
“Could you not sleep?” Momo asks after pulling herself out of her reverie.
“Ah,” Kyouka pauses, breathing slowly. “Yeah, I guess not.”
Momo tilts her head curiously. “Did something happen?”
“No.” Kyouka’s answer is definitive. “I was just… thinking about… us.”
Momo blinks. “Us?”
“Yeah.”
“Not anything bad, I hope…?”
“No, don’t worry. It’s just—” Kyouka breaks off, swallows thickly. “Have you ever wondered…”
Momo waits patiently for Kyouka’s words, but more than a few silent moments pass and nothing comes. “Have I wondered what?” she questions gently, not wanting to press Kyouka too hard.
Kyouka speaks: “Do you think we would have been friends if I never went up to you at the park that time?”
The words sit heavily in the air, for a just moment.
“I think the universe would have found a way,” Momo replies, certain.
Kyouka’s smile has always been able to take Momo’s breath away, and she accepts this like a fact of nature. Now, Kyouka’s smile is soft, soft and warm, and Momo wants to be wrapped forever in the feeling it gives her.
“Hey, Momo,” Kyouka says after a few ticks. “Don’t freak out when I say this, okay?”
Momo’s eyebrows furrow; she can’t imagine anything for Kyouka to say that would make her freak out. “Why would I…?”
Kyouka hesitates, but then she says, “I think I’m in love with you.”
Suddenly, Momo’s frozen. Her fingers lock in her lap, and her gaze locks on Kyouka, who’s blushing a deep red.
“It doesn’t have to be—I’m sorry if… Just. I wanted you to know,” Kyouka fumbles, shy around Momo for the first time… ever? It might be ever.
There’s no time to stop her before she’s gone, socked feet pounding against the ground as she runs away to the elevator. So, Momo lifts a hand to her mouth, pressing her index and ring fingers against her lips.
Momo wanted to kiss her.
—
“Todoroki, I know I’m not dying, but I think this might be what dying feels like.”
Todoroki blinks at her, slow. “Get ahold of yourself,” he says.
She buries her face in her hands, having come back with Todoroki to his room following breakfast for consultation on the events of the night prior. Todoroki doesn’t have the best people skills, but sometimes his straightforward point of view is the best to go to for advice. (And Kyouka hadn’t come down to breakfast, but that’s normal. She gets sick if she eats in the mornings; Momo knows this.)
“She’s in love with me, Todoroki.”
Todoroki looks at Momo in that way he does where his gaze feels like it’s drilling through her, and he says, “I don’t know why you’re so surprised.”
“I—I—” she stammers, but stops herself and takes a breath, pressing her hand to her chest. “We’ve been best friends for seven years now. Why would I not be surprised?”
“You like her, don’t you?” The tilt of Todoroki’s head is miniscule, and his hair shifts just slightly. “Love her…? Considering how you talk of her to me, I assumed that you…”
Momo flushes. “I… Of course I love her. I’m…” her voice shrinks, “in love with her. It’s the—the in love part that I… didn’t expect from her.”
Todoroki is not judgemental of her, as is usual. He simply asks, “Why not?”
“I’ve always been with her… since we were nine. I was surely infatuated with her back then—too young for love, at least romantically, of course… but through puberty… This is too much information.” Momo cuts herself off with an embarrassed glance at Todoroki, and he shrugs. “The main thing is that I don’t understand why she would feel this way now, when we’ve been inseparable friends for so long.”
“It takes time to work up courage,” Todoroki comments. “That explains why you never told her… and perhaps it explains why she never told you, not until now.”
Momo swallows thickly. “Do you think so?”
Todoroki nods, and then clicks his tongue to the top of his mouth. “But anyway, she’s in love with you, and you with her… so you shouldn’t worry so much. Go talk to her before she thinks otherwise.”
Todoroki has a point, and Momo takes his advice. After all, Kyouka had swallowed her nerves and confessed to Momo, so Momo now can swallow her own to tell Kyouka they’re reciprocated.
—
Momo’s hand shakes as she lifts it to knock on Kyouka’s door. It swings open within a minute, Kyouka standing behind it with a toothbrush sticking out of her mouth. There’s foam at the corners of her mouth.
“Kaminari, I told you—” She cuts off as soon as she lifts her gaze and sees Momo, obviously not who she’d expected. She blushes, pulling the toothbrush from her mouth. “Oh, Momo. I—come in. I’m just gonna… finish this.” She waggles her toothbrush a bit, and then retreats into her bathroom.
Momo, a bit shellshocked, hesitates before stepping into Kyouka’s room. She’s been here countless times, knows exactly where the matryoshka that Momo had given her when they were nine sits on her shelf. She looks at it now, and it serves as some sort of reassurance.
Kyouka emerges from the bathroom and stands in her room before Momo, averting her eyes and nervously pressing her earphone jacks together in that endearing way that she does. “I don’t want you to think you have to say anything,” she says, and then pulls her mouth into a thin line.
“I want to say something,” Momo replies. Kyouka looks up at her, eyes wide. Momo takes in a deep breath, and then she says, “I’m in love with you, too.”
The thin line Kyouka had her mouth pulled into suddenly spreads into a wide smile, though the pink blush on her cheeks doesn’t fade.
Momo still wants to kiss her. So, she bites her bottom lip for a moment before she inquires, “Kyouka, may I… kiss you?”
At this, Kyouka grins harder. “You’re weird, Momo. You don’t have to ask me,” she replies, taking the few steps to close the gap between her and Momo and throwing her arms over Momo’s shoulders. “But, yeah,” she murmurs. “Yeah, you can.”
Kyouka’s lips are as soft and warm as her smiles, and Momo’s never been so happy to be “weird.”