Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The first time he sees her, it’s during his debut as a professional Shogi player. Journalists are stationed around him and his father in a gaggle, when suddenly, out of nowhere, she appears. Her hair is a fluffy, pink cloud around her face and neck, her eyes big and green. She’s rather short and looks very, very lost between the men in their suits. Her cutesy dress doesn’t help much, even if her sharp eyes do. There is a world of difference, and while the press scrambles away from her, she doesn’t even seem to notice.

She takes one look at him, eyes his middle school uniform and goes: ‘’Oh, I travelled too far back.’’

Travelled too far back? What a strange thing to say. Not to mention- wouldn’t she have seen the signs at the entrance? This is the shogi hall, it’s kind of hard to miss. Didn’t the reporters throw her off?

She laughs at his dumbfounded look, blows him a kiss and sashays out of the building. ‘’See you in a bit, Rei-chan! Maybe I’ll be actually born then!’’

With a broad smile, she pushes on a button on the side of her bulky watch. With a poof, she’s gone.

He wonders about her for quite a while, but in the end, she fades away together with the rest of the drama surrounding his debut.

The second time she appears, it’s in the middle of his living room. Otou-san has a match and is out for the moment, Kyouko is god knows where and Ayumu went out to the game store with Oka-san. As such, Rei is the only witness privy to her appearing in their living room.

‘’What- What are you doing here?’’

She’s wearing the same dress as the last time, and without the reporters around her, she fills the room with her presence. She looks around and blinks. ‘’This isn’t your apartment. And it isn’t your house either.’’

Rei doesn’t know what to say to that. It’s true that this isn’t his house, and that hurts, but it’s a strange thing to say. Is she crazy? What is she doing here? A stalker, perhaps? But the aura she gives off is so unthreatening, so utterly at ease that he has a hard time imagining her being such a thing.

She shrugs. ‘’Oh well. Are you married to Touji yet?’’

Rei baulks. ‘’Touji who? No, nevermind- married?! I’m sixteen. I’m not even lawfully allowed to get married! Miss, I’m pretty sure you have the wrong house.’’

She taps her lips. ‘’The wrong house, maybe, but not the wrong person. That thing keeps throwing me off by a bit- I should fiddle with it some more before my next attempt. At least this time I’m alive! I think I’m two at this point!’’ She says it with a beaming smile.

This woman is not two. She’s very clearly somewhere in her thirties, possibly approaching the forties. Her pride in being alive is also… something else.

Rei has no idea what to do with it, but before he can even think of a way to react, she once again pushes a button on her watch and disappears.

Rei just wants to know what trick she uses to vanish like that.

The third time happens in the middle of the Kawamoto household. They’re eating and all of a sudden, the pink haired woman falls out of the air and on top of the table. Various dishes fall onto the floor, and the woman groans, clutching her head, before standing up.

Her eyes track the food on the floor, the faces around her, and slow devastation crosses her features. ‘’Nee-san,’’ she says, ‘’Your food! This is a tragedy! An outrage! How can I ever forgive myself!’’

Momo, situated on Rei’s lap, agrees loudly. ‘’It was so yummy!’’

The pink haired woman begins to cry, huge crocodile tears streaming down her face. ‘’Akari-neesan! Your food!’’

Hesitantly, Akari stands up and embraces the woman softly, not quite sure what else to do. Rei just watches. The woman clenches her hands around Akari’s apron in a way that is very familiar, the fabric bunching up in her hands and Akari- Akari asks. ‘’Momo?!’’

And the pink-haired woman, somewhere in her thirties, looks up and wipes away her tears with her sleeve. ‘’Yes, Nee-san.’’

Akari splutters. ‘’Momo… What, how?!’’

Adult-Momo, for that is who she has to be, smiles through her tears like the sun. ‘’Have I told you about my aspirations to become a mad scientist yet?’’

Hina and Momo are watching with huge eyes. Then Momo starts to squeal. ‘’Momo wants to be a mad scientist too!’’

Adult-Momo giggles, scooping her younger self onto her hip, bouncing her up and down. ‘’Let’s become one so you’ll get to terrorize people in past, okay? It’s loads of fun! Even if I do keep getting distracted from the question I want to ask!’’

‘’…What question?’’ Hina asks.

‘’Whether Rei-chan is married to Souya yet, of course! I asked him last time too, but he was too young and I called Souya Touji, and I doubt he refers to him as such in this point of time yet! I can’t go wrong with Souya, though. He’s bound to know that name!’’

‘’Married?’’ Rei squeaks. ‘’To Souya Touji?!’’

Adult-Momo beams. ‘’Yes!’’

Akari gets a considering look on her face. ‘’Hmmm… He does watch the meijn’s matches with a lot of attention… But I think he might be too young still.’’

‘’Shimata! Still off,’’ She puts Momo down and boops her nose, ‘’You go on to become a superwoman, hear me? I’ll be waiting for you! Or well, waiting for you to become me. But don’t feel pressured! Just be yourself.’’

‘’Un!’’

Adult-Momo turns to Rei. ‘’See you!’’

And with that, she’s gone again.

The fourth time Rei sees her, he’s stumbling out of a hotel the morning after the newcomer’s tournament. The typhoon got too close to the coast, and he’d gone to a hotel together with Souya. Souya, who paid his hotel fare. Souya, who playing against felt like the most relaxing, beautiful thing in the world. Souya, who could not hear. Souya, whose soundless world calmed Rei down like nothing else.

During the time he spent with him, it had felt like the typhoon could not come closer. Like for the first time, Rei had not been emerged in the rowdy ocean, tossed about wherever, but in the bottom of a river, gently drifting along. It had felt safe. Protected. Warm.

And all that, from a person who seemed to personify winter.

Was that what the bottom of a lake felt like to fish when the surface was frozen? That rest? It was amazing.

He’s so wrapped up in his thoughts that he almost misses her as the wind blows against him like a wall while passing through the automatic doors. She’s leaning against the wall, hair tossed about by the wind. Adult-Momo. She’s grinning. ‘’Are you married yet?’’

‘’No.’’

But for the first time, Rei gets why she would ask him that question. Because of this warmth, this beginning of something inside his chest. Well. That’s not nothing, isn’t it?

It’s a start. And he has no idea how it will pack out, but for the first time, he understands why. Because this feels like the seed of the stairs to heaven.

Through the years, Adult-Momo gets increasingly persistent. Every time Rei answers with a ‘’No,’’ she just shows up a few months later again. Years glide by, and mostly, Rei can keep it from turning into a disaster.

This time, though, he’s not getting out of this. Rei had convinced Souya to meet up at the shogi hall before going out for his 24^th birthday. It’s not a particularly busy day- Souya had only just arrived, and the only people in the room were Smith, Nikaidou and Rei himself. That is, until she came.

‘’Reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeei-chan!’’ She flew into the room, a whirlwind of skirts and pink hair, a big grin on her face, ‘’Are you married to Souya yet?’’

A silence fell. Smith’s mouth fell open, Rei turned beet red and Nikaidou began to shake Rei’s hand furiously. ‘’My great rival! What a joyful thing to hear of your engagement!’’

Rei weaselled his hands out of Nikaidou’s grip and buried his head in his hands. ‘’There is no engagement! We’re not even dating!’’

Adult-Momo finally noticed Souya and began signing. ‘’Oji-san! Are you married yet?’’

Souya blinked, cocking his head, before signing back. ‘’Married?’’

‘’To Rei-chan!’’

‘’Not yet,’’ Souya signed back.

Rei, the only other person in the room who was actually well-versed in sign language, sputtered. ‘’Not yet?! Souya, what-‘’

‘’See you later, Alligaytor!’’ Adult-Momo grinned, waved and poofed away.

After that, she left him alone for quite some time. Slowly settling into this new- thing? Relationship? He was dating Souya, okay, it was kind of unbelievable.

So long, in fact, that he thought she’d left the time travelling for good.

But no. She appeared again after a battle for the Meijin title. Just like the very first time he’d seen her, Adult-Momo turned up in the middle of a gaggle reporters surrounding them. From the middle of the crowd, she called out to him, her voice ringing loudly above the crowd. ‘’Rei-chan, are you married to Souya yet?’’

Knowing the sheer media circus she’d surely cause with that single sentence, Rei stood up, and yelled back: ‘’NO, I’M NOT, DAMN IT.’’

With a cackle, Adult-Momo disappeared again. Leaving them to deal with the aftermath.

The following morning, Rei groaned as he saw the headline on the paper. Scanning the article, one sentence in particular stood out:

‘’It’s been an open secret for a while,’’ Nikaidou Harunobu, Kirayama Rei’s famed rival, confirms. ‘’It’s been circulating in the professional shogi ranks for a few years now.’’

Nikaidou. That traitor. He sticks his chopsticks into his rice aggressively.

Across him, Souya laughs.  ‘’It’s not that bad,’’ he signed, ‘’The press could’ve reacted much worse.’’

‘’Honestly,’’ Rei sighs, ‘’The thing that bothers me the most is that she keeps asking and I’m pretty sure she did it there on purpose. The worst thing is that I know she’s not going to stop asking until she gets the answer she wants to hear.’’

Souya put his chopsticks down. ‘’What if the next time you answer you say yes?’’

‘’What? That’d be- Touji, what are you asking me?’’

Turns out, ‘’Marry me,’’ is one of the most beautiful signs Rei has ever seen.

The next time Adult-Momo appears, Rei is visiting the Kawamoto’s. This time, she luckily does not land on the table, and as such, gladly joins dinner. She takes a good look at her younger counterpart and goes: ‘’Ah. Fifteen. My braces were beautiful.’’

Momo gives a big fat smile for the good measure, showing off the many colourful elastics gracing her braces, before taking them out so she can eat.

With a grin, Adult-Momo turns to Rei, opening her mouth to ask the infamous question. ‘’Rei-chan, are you married to Souya yet?’’

And Rei… Rei says: ‘’Yes.’’ And shows off the plain gold band on his ring finger, Souya smiling gently next to him.

Warmth blooms in his chest at the sight, and Adult-Momo claps in her hands, admiring it. ‘’I told future Hina that I could get you together earlier! And by four whole years, nonetheless!’’ She turns to Hina, ‘’Four years, Hina! In yo face!’’

Hina crosses her arms. ‘’I didn’t make that bet.’’

‘’Yet,’’ Younger Momo pipes up like the gremlin she is.

‘’And besides,’’ Hina goes on, ignoring her sister, ‘’You should admit it really was hit and miss. You showed up for the first time when Rei was fifteen. You really should’ve just researched the date gay marriage was possible in Japan, Momo.’’

‘’Shoot!’’ Adult-Momo slams her fist into her palm, ‘’I knew there was something I was forgetting! That didn’t happen until I was fourteen!’’

Their grandfather sighs. ‘’I’d believe that if you didn’t just confess to time travelling purely to matchmake your uncle.’’

 Adult-Momo shrugs. ‘’I gotta do what I gotta do, gramps!’’

And Rei... Rei just laughs and leans into Souya. 

A time travelling, mad-scientist Momo… If that is the future, it must be bright.

Chapter Text

He finds her on a Sunday afternoon, sitting in his favourite café, at his usual table. Smith takes one look at her and flees. Rei refuses to be cowed by her and sits down across from her.

‘’Momo.’’

‘’Rei-chan.’’ Her serious expression makes him falter.

‘’What’s going on?’’

Momo sighs, stirring her coffee. Next to it is a glass of juice. ‘’You know, I didn’t want to do this. But I visited Souya before, and he told me you weren’t married yet. Rei, I’m pulling out the big guns.’’

The entire speech is utterly dramatic, but when nothing happens except more stirring, it falls flat. ‘’Big guns? What big guns?’’

Momo takes a sip. ‘’The big guns are currently in the bathroom and are actually kinda small. That was the point.’’

And Rei, because Momo owns his soul, knows he should fear.

‘’Ojisan!’’ A high voice pipes up next to them.

Rei looks up, as a laughing Adult-Momo scoops up the little girl in front of them. She’s… Somewhere around six years old, has wispy brown hair tucked into small buns and huge brown eyes. She pushes Momo away from her, shuffling into the bench herself. ‘’I’m too old to be picked up, Obasan!’’

Momo tuts. ‘’I don’t know… It might’ve been a double knock out in cute!’’

The girl petulantly sips her juice.

Rei can’t keep up. ‘’What’s going on here?’’

Momo cackles. ‘’Well, I thought if my plans weren’t succeeding, something must be wrong since you always end up following my plans. Little sister privileges and all that. So then I decided it must be that I’m not physically small anymore to remind you of that. So see here, my greatest weapon: OUR NIECE!’’

‘’Niece?’’ Rei felt faint, clutching the edge of the table, ‘’Did Kyouko have a child?!’’

Momo choked. ‘’No, Rei, who would let her procreate?! I said our niece. This is Shimada Kaname, Akari and Kai’s cutest creation.’’

‘’You bet I am,’’ Kaname said, pushing her empty glass away from her, ‘’But am I cute enough to get you to buy me a cookie?’’

The puppy dog eyes went on.

Rei blacked out from cuteness overload. The last thing he heard was Momo’s voice, somewhere far away. ‘’You went for the kill too early! We didn’t even convince him to marry your uncle earlier!’’