Archive of Our Own ^beta

“real isn’t how you’re made. it’s a thing that happens to you.”

- the velveteen rabbit, margrey williams

Katsuragi Takumi, 26, was killed in his home, by Banjou Ryuga, age 22.

Misora sits up straight, stops her puzzle, and blinks at the news on her tablet. She doesn’t recognize the name at first, but she instantly knows the face.

She’d seen it many times in the dim lights of the Faust laboratory. It’s his government portrait, before he became the mad man she knew, but the young man in the mugshot next to him, Misora doesn’t recognize. His cheek sports an angry red cut and his lip is marred with blood.

It appears the apartment wasn’t broken into, though there are clear signs of a violent altercation. Police have Banjou Ryuga in custody now .

There’s a cut to shaky film of the man yelling, while two officers hold his arms behind his back. There’s a pale, frail-looking women, looking on anxiously.  

“I didn’t do it! Why won’t anyone believe me!? I’m innocent, dammit —“

“Ryuga, no!”

He wrestles free from the grasp of the police, and punches an officer in the face. Another moves to tase him, but the footage cuts short before that.

Katsuragi was no stranger with crime, and was known amongst his peers as “The Devil’s Scientist”. Further criminal Involvement is suspected. Prime Minister’s son, Himuro Gentoku, had this to say —

Misora changes the channel after that. It’s seven-fifty eight, only two minutes before her show starts, and she doesn’t want to miss a minute. She wraps her fingers around her warm mug, and eases in her chair. Drops of rain are tapping against the window, the perfect accompaniment to the relaxing night she has planned.

It’s a dark thought, but the news fills her with an odd satisfaction. She’s here, safe and warm in her home, while the man who experimented on her is dead, locked inside a cold morgue.  

Misora hopes her dad brought an umbrella, because it sounds like the rain is going to pick up.

.

Not an hour later, the bells above the door chime, signaling her father’s return. Misora doesn’t look away from her tablet, too engrossed in her drama, as he closes his umbrella. She hears the drops of water follow him in, plopping against the floor, and not one, but two sets of slippery wet shoes.

“I’m back.”

She turns around, and there’s a man with her father. Misora can see his pale skin peeking through his white shirt, and the ankles of his pants are dripping. The clothes stick to his tall, thin frame, and his long, wet bangs are starting to curl above his eyes. Big, bewildered eyes blink around the cafe.

“Dad,” Misora says, careful and stern, almost like a warning. She narrows her eyes, cautiously inspecting the stranger, “Who is this?”  

“Isn’t he precious, Misora?” Her father asks. He slides his hands around the shoulders of the man, who stiffens a bit in surprise. Her father’s eyes are wide and pleading, like a child who wants their mother to buy them a puppy. What the hell is going on?

“Is he … staying overnight?” Misora asks in a measured voice. Distantly, she remembers her father bringing home friends for ‘sleepovers,’ but she expected her father to have more subtly, now that she’s older.

“No!” He protests. He pouts at her, wounded, then continues. “He just needs a place to stay. I was on the way back from my part-time job, and … I found him, in the alley outside… He didn’t know where he was. I think something bad happened to him, Misora.”

“Shouldn’t you take him to the hospital? Or the police?”

“Tomorrow,” Dad assures her, but she doesn’t believe it. “I’ll take him, but right now, he’s overwhelmed, cold and confused. And he could get sick, having been outside so long…”

Misora looks at him then. It’s rude to speak about him like he’s not here. Heis eyes are big and dark, like a lost animal.  They’re wide, searching, but for what, she doesn’t know. The look appeals to something protective inside her, but her brain knows better.

“My name is Misora,” she tells him. “What’s yours?”

When she speaks to him, his eyes get bigger, looking at her like he’s been zapped. “Oh, I-“ Then, the surprise leaves him. Deflated, he curls his fingers in his hair and stares at the floor between them. “I don’t know.”

She locks eyes with her father, whose his face is still imploring. “See?”

 .

This isn’t really out-of-character for her father. It makes sense for a man who has always been as warm and kind-hearted as he is quirky and strange, but then again …

She hardly knew her father before all this. When she was younger, the fresh death of her mother hung between them: heavy but unspoken, and easy to ignore with the demand of his work. So, there’s parts of her she keeps to herself, scared to give all she has only to not be met halfway.

I wanted to hide you from my grief , he confessed, while they were reconnecting since he saved her from Faust. He was absent with good intentions, she supposes, but she can’t help but feel slighted. She was suffering and lonely, and he should have been there.

Even now, he hides things from her. She can’t come out when the cafe’s open, but she knows it hardly gets customers. Why else would he try to get a part-time job? Streaming to her fans brings in money, but only so much. They’re definitely not in the spot to be taking on charity cases.

“How can we trust him?” Her voice is almost to a yell, but not quite. It’s been days and the stranger hasn’t left, and her father treats him with the tender care a threat to her safety doesn’t deserve. “H-he could be a criminal. Or part of Faust! Both! ”

They’ve been so careful. She’s sacrificed so much. Her freedom, most of all, to not be trapped again.

She takes a deep breath, to fend off the sudden feeling like she might get overwhelmed, and continues, “This can all be an act.”

“Have a little faith,” Soichi says, mocking hurt. His back is against the counter, and there’s a pot of coffee brewing behind him. He pouts at her. The expression is better-suited to Mii-tan, not a middle-aged man. “What kind of daughter did I raise to not to see the best in people?”

You didn’t, Misora thinks, but quells the bubble of bitterness. Even if she feels slighted by his absence, she has always loved her father, and he has always loved her. He’s here now, after all, doing everything he can to protect her against Faust.

Maybe that’s why she’s bitter. She wants it to be just the two of them. She doesn’t want another thing dividing his attention, like the cafe and his mysterious part time job.

“How can I?” Misora asks, with more of edge than she means to. But she’s just stating a fact, after all. She’s seen what men could do to other men, powerless and trapped. Those memories are more real to her than any of those she shares with him.

There’s a heavy beat of silence, while this reality settles between them, until the espresso machine cuts through it with a sharp ding!

“Maybe he does have a dark past,” He starts, back turned towards her. “But he’s here now, with us... We can show him the right path, can’t we? He can be our hope,” He sets the cup on the counter in front of her with a light clink. A rabbit stares back on her on its milky surface. Her favorite. Misora looks back him — her eyes betray her, the corners sting all of a sudden — and his smile fills her with another wave of warm, home-like nostalgic. “The past is the past, and the future is what we make it, ne?”

Misora avoids his gaze, feeling the guilt creep towards her chest. Regardless, he continues: “It will be an adjustment, having him around… but he’ll grow on you, yes? I think this will be good for all of us.”

“I guess,”  Misora concedes. Her mind is away, lingering on his words about the past and the future. “What do you mean ‘We need him?’”

He looks at her, as if he’s considering, and crosses his arms. There’s a strange glint in his eye as he taps thoughtfully taps his chin.

“Sento,” He hums, ignoring her question completely. “Kiryuu Sento. How does that sound?”

“Ha? As in ‘rabbit’ ‘tank?’ Like, the full bottles?”

.

Kamen Rider Build.

Misora tries to picture it: Kiryuu Sento, with as much energy for battle as he has for science, not this thin, skittish man before her who doesn’t speak unless spoken to.

She watches Sento, doing nothing with himself on the edge of the old bed with the black metal frame… Is he scared of his own strength? She would be. She remembers feeling scared of her own body, horrified by how much of her life she slept away, and what Faust was using it for. Why didn’t Sento turn into a smash or die, Misora wonders, like all the other people she’d seen get experimented on...? But the science of it all is realms beyond her

She thinks about Katsuragi Takumi again. The Devil’s Scientist. Dead now, but she remembers his voice, muffled through glass, evenly giving notes to the other lab techs. She remembers the dark eyes, and cold in the way he regarded her. Like a resource, not a person. 

The amnesiac. Sento. He was experimented on too, like her, but he’s a scientist, too. He’s quiet like that. Always taking in, studying, waiting, like the many eyes that observed her … Though Sento seems unfocused, most of time. Except when the math flows from his chalk.

Katsuragi seemed so inhuman. A demon, like they say. Misora didn’t have much but her own thoughts, trapped in Faust, but she often wondered if Katsuragi had someone he loved. Something that made him human. A family, that waited for him to come home like she waited for her father.

Does Sento have that, too? A family that’s waiting for him?

Misora contemplates this, slowly swaying back and forth in her rocking chair, while staring at U-tan’s sad, ugly-cute face.

“Sento,” She says. Is it even to okay to call him by his first name? But saying the name of her Dad’s barber sounds stupid. It takes a moment for him to realize she’s speaking to him, not used to the sound of the name.

Talk to him, Dad had said, Maybe you’ll see what I see, but now that she’s called his attention, she has nothing to say, and the silence is obvious. As if their interactions hadn’t already been silted and awkward.

“So … You’re a scientist?” Misora asks. Stupid, Misora thinks, Obviously he is.

“A physicist,” he clarifies, before frowning to himself and adding: “Probably,” with a nod.

“Ah,” She got enough education to least be able to know the difference. “What are you working on?”  

She glances at the unused menu boards full of his notes. It’s not like she’ll understand, but at least it will fill the silence.

Sento turns and stares past her at the papers he’s taped to the wall. They’re in English, so Misora can’t read them.

“Master has their research data,” He informs her. “I’ve read of all of it. He has some parts, too, he took when he saved you … I’ve been working on something from that...”

Misora remembers. Once he saw the research, Sento couldn’t stop: writing on the boards, scratching the back of his head, and muttering to himself. Misora had seen it briefly, and was shocked at how animated he was, in contrast to doll-like stillness she knew. Literally, he’d come alive.  

Still, it sets her on edge.

“Wow. You must be a genius then.”  Her father called him so, with a dreamy-look in his eyes. Misora asked how he could tell — to her, the chalky scribbles might as well be alien — and he insisted, ‘ Being an astronaut requires a certain knowledge of these things .’

Sento stares into his lap, curling his fingers over his knees  — his jeans are light and tattered but in a trendy way, not like anything her father would own  — and huffs a short laugh. It sounds self-deprecating almost, but she catches a glimpse of a smile. If her eyelids were any heavier at the moment, blurring her vision just slightly, she would have missed it.

“Yes, I suppose so.”

That doesn’t sit well with her, for some reason. Misora holds U-tan closer to her chest.

“… Is this safe?” She asks carefully. “This stuff. It’s meant to hurt people.”

“I would never do the things they did to you,” he says immediately, and Misora finds herself stunned by the amount of conviction the statement holds. “Science shouldn’t be used like that. I believe — it sounds stupid, maybe — but I believe it should used to benefit humanity.”

Misora gives him a flat look and states, “That sounds fake.”

Sento blinks at her, bewildered and wounded, but she doesn’t back down, leveling him with a sure look. She doesn’t know much of herself, but she knows she doesn’t keep her opinions to herself, and she’s not sure how much she believes Sento’s facade of fragility.

“Sorry, it’s the truth. I mean, how can you really know you believe that? You say you have amnesia, right? You could be one of them and not even know…”

Sento seems to think about it, lips pressed together in a thoughtful line, before he sits up a little straighter and … His mouth curls into a soft smile and his big eyes shine.

“As a scientist, I don’t want to say this. But as hero,” How bold, Misora thinks, for him to call himself that after so little time. “It’s something I feel, rather than know… That I like helping people. Coming home from battle. Seeing people’s smiles… I like that feeling, ” He sounds wistful, like he’s not in the room with her anymore, deep in memories he should not have. “… So I like to think that’s I would have been in the past too.”

Misora remembers him fresh from battle, The new clothes her father had given him torn and burnt, the skin beneath red and bruised. Even so, when her father welcomed him home, beaten and dirty, he shined through his perpetual haze.

“Also,” he adds, after a few moments of quiet. “Master said to me, ‘If you don’t know who you are, focus on the who you want to be.’”

He can be our hope, Misora remembers. That was the thing about her father. It doesn’t seem like he’s entirely there, except for those small moments of clarity and perception, when he delivers characteristically father-like wisdom. She curls her fingers into U-tan’s sides and smiles into the back of its head. Misora nods.

“Yeah. That sounds like him.”

“Being a hero,” He says, with a smile and a nod. His face is set with determination, with an impossible conviction that threatens her rightful wariness. “That’s what I want.”

. 

“Why a rabbit?” Misora asks her father, who’s smiling into the camera while she fiddles with the fluffy white ears pinned beneath her pink checkered collar.

Being an idol was new, even though her following was growing faster and becoming larger than she ever imagined it could. Her father helped a lot coming up with her image, took a few extra shifts at his part-time job to pay for a nice camera, and already, they’ve made half that. Still, she fears looking stupid, and that definitely entails not going on camera with anything crooked.

She bends down towards the mirror to make sure her high ponytail is perfectly centered and adjusts her microphone, so it’s neither too close nor too far from her mouth.

“Ah, well,” Her father begins, looking at her over the top of the lense, glasses on the bottom of his nose. There’s a twinkle in his eye, something fond and familiar. “It was your favorite animal... Remember that storybook you used to like?”

Misora nods. Clear through the void between her and the memories of her childhood are the nights she willed herself to stay up, waiting to him for come home. She kept her eyes closed, pretending to sleep, but when her father came into her room after work, she opened her eyes and begged him to read her the story about the toy rabbit who was loved until he was worn.

The bittersweet memories create a tender swell in her chest, and Misora smiles. Of course she remembers her favorite, but, “I’m surprised you remembered.”

He places his hand over his heart, and when he smiles, his eyes crinkle at the sides. “What can I say? I’m a sentimental old fool.”

Misora tries to level him with a skeptical look, but it doesn’t come through at all, her lips twisting into a smile unbidden. “You’re not that old.”

Her father chuckles until it dissipates into a heavy, wistful sigh.

“Well, I have the two of you to keep me young now, don’t I?”

.

Sento has no memories, but he’s still haunted.

Misora keeps an odd schedule. Often times, she’ll be up at 5am two days in a row because she slept for five days beforehand, and it’s then Misora hears it, him moaning and thrashing in his sleep.

She has nightmares, too, those times few and far between times she sleeps of her own volition. She dreams of dark black holes, sharp cries, and red earth being ripped into the sky. Of being held against her will, muffled screaming, and men in gas masks. When she was child, she dreamed of her mother, but now, she doesn’t find herself aching beyond the perpetual exhaustion in her limbs.

Maybe at another time, her and Sento were in the same place. She was by herself for a long time, unaware of what Faust was doing with her power, but after... Maybe she saw him once out of the corner of her eye, tossing and shaking and crying out for help (Maybe he was one of the scientists, a place in her keeps wondering, who didn’t see her worth beyond the powers she never asked for, but that place becomes quieter, the more she sees how he suffers).

With each passing week, he’s becoming sharper. More and more, his genius wit shines, and he stays in tune to world around him for longer. Sometimes though, it still feels like he’s not entirely there. He sits in front of her, his hands curled around a cup of coffee that’s already gone cold, and it’s like he’s looking the rest of world right through.

He’s probably thinking about science, her father assured her, with a placating hand on her shoulder and an easy smile. There’s a lot going in that amazing brain of his.

But there’s more to him than that, isn’t there?

Misora sits, perched at the edge of his desk, watches him work with a green circuit board. Routine calibration, Sento called it, as if Misora was supposed to know what that meant (but he’ll take the time to explain it to her, if she asks). He prods it with a tweezer, and a stray spark of orange fizzles against the surface of his goggles. He doesn’t so much as wince.

“You have steady hands, right?”

He acknowledges her with a “Yes,” but otherwise, doesn’t stop working.

“Can you paint my nails for me?”-

“Depends,” He pushes the googles into his hair and folds his hands together on the desk. He leans back in his chair and tilts his chin up at her, a gesture of challenge. “Will you pay me?”

Misora fights the urge to stick her tongue out at him. The last bottle she purified made her sleep for ten days, so her compensation is well-earned. She returns his jab with a glare and by shoving his shoulder.

“You’re staying here rent-free,” she reminds him. “And you owe me.”

“... For?”

“Purifying the bottles in the first place! And writing on my forehead the last time I slept!”

Three days ago, she’d woken up with the words ‘Thank you’ written on her in black, and clogged inbox with a thousand speculations on where she’d been. She also missed two episodes of her favorite drama, too.

“I thought it was being nice. You’re always on my case about being more polite,” Then, Sento hums to himself, considering the idea, before he concedes and says, “But, as a genius, I can’t deny your logic,” She opens her mouth to speak, but he holds up a finger. “There is one condition, though.” She frowns against his finger. “I get to pick the color.”

. 

Misora turns over her hand, idly considering the smooth, glossy tips of her fingers. Sento did a good job, besides his obnoxiously obvious color choice. The left hand is royal blue, and the other is bright red, just like his stupid mismatched shoes.

‘It’s a best match,’ he said when she called him out on it, triumphantly tapping his forehead with three fingers. She’d seen videos of Build making the same pose on the news, and Misora called him a boring and predictable dork, which he easily retorted to. Then, Misora found herself wondering when her bluntness had become more affectionate teasing than a genuine effort to disarm him.

“I’m about to go to the store”, Her father announces, pulling Misora from her thoughts. He has a thoughtful expression on his face, and his pen hovers over the bottom of a grocery list. “How do you feel about fish for dinner?”

Misora’s face scrunches up at the thought of dried horse mackerel for a second time that week. “Again ?”

“It’s his favorite.”

Misora resists the urge to roll her eyes. She only has so much energy. “You spoil him.”

“He deserves it, doesn’t he? For all he does for the both of us.” And Misora lets it go, because she knows he’s doing everything he can, in his own strange way. His eyes fall to her nails and he smirks. “You two seem to be getting along better, nowadays.”

“I still don’t trust him.” 

“Don’t you?” He asks, with a knowing twinkle in his eye. “You wouldn’t be able to purify the bottles if you didn’t believe in his intentions.”

Misora can’t deny the logic in that and openly scowls. She opens her mouth to reply with a defense (she’s not sure what it is yet, hopes it will take shape in the moment), but suddenly, Soichi jolts and his palm hits his forehead with a loud smack. “Ah, I forgot! We need a new microwave...”

Misora levels him with a stern stare. Her father’s heart, it seems, is always in the right place, but his brain... She chalks it to absent-mindedness, mostly, but sometimes it’s so severe — a forgotten bill, some other basic things he asks Sento to do for him —  it’s almost like he doesn’t know how to be a real adult.

“What happened to the old one?”

He smiles at her placatingly and mimics zipping his lips and throwing away the key.

.

“Why do you do this?” Sento asks her one day, hovering next to the rack of brightly-colored costumes and eyeing the recording equipment. Her father is out for the night, but she’s gotten into the swing of being an idol enough that she can manage a stream by herself. Sento adjusts his scarf around his neck, bright yellow, today, with a loose shirt that’s deep teal reminds her of the ocean (or what she’s seen in photos, at least). It looks new, and briefly, Misora wonders how much of his style is him and how much is what her father picked out for him. He must have the slightest say, when they go out together, and that in itself, Misora envies.

“Before finding Smash, that is,” Sento adds, when her reply isn’t immediate. Misora wonders about that too sometimes, how Mii-tan’s rabbit theme her father had chosen with such care easily matches Build’s, and how in handy her followers come in terms of Smash. He must have planned it, which makes Misora thinks he must enjoy acting dumber than he actually is. “You don’t—” He continues, then stops. He presses his lips in thought while looking for the word, pulling a stray thread from one of the outfits, then wrapping it over his fingers, before picking at it thoughtfully. What was he going to say? You don’t seem that so happy ? But he settles on,  “Have so o  much energy, usually.”

Misora turns towards the camera, and the glossy surface of the lense, she can see the reflection of her smile.

“It’s cliche, but,” Misora feels her chest start congest, expressing something this true and sincere. “The cheer and pep. It’s not me, just a performance, but …”

She contemplates her next words, as they start to take shape, and they startle her in their familiarity. Is Sento like her? Most certainly. She can’t compare fighting to being Mii-tan, but ... He has no memories to inform what kind of person she should be, how she should react to things. Misora chalks how she feels up to tiredness, but Sento’s tongue as sharp as his mind, quick with some sort of deflection always.

A hero and an idol, focusing on the person they want to be.

Misora continues, “People’s smile? How I make them feel? That’s real. I want to give them hope, you know? Be a symbol of something of happy and good, even if … I don’t feel that way at all.”

“It’s not cliche. Idealistic, maybe,” Sento replies. It’s quiet, subdued, lacking any of his caustic arrogance. “But I understand.”

She sees her own smile grow every so slightly in the camera.

She likes having Sento around, she’s decided. Even he acts obnoxious at times, and there’s a part of her that’s still wary of his past… How much does that matter, really? She believes in the person she knows, and there was always something missing when it was just her and her father. This vacuous gap of space between them, that Sento somehow filled just right.

“Helping you, too,” Misora adds. “That’s a big part of it.”

.

The basement, once dirty, dim, is now full and bright. The exposed material of the walls is covered with glossy white and mint-colored paint, and her father has nailed chalkboards to the wall, where Sento can put his thoughts to numbers. Slowly, it becomes full of everything that makes their life together: Sento’s inventions, her growing collection of stuffed animals, binders of research, and her father’s various, space-related knick-knacks.

Misora used to not care about anything that couldn’t be seen behind the pink backdrop of her webcast, but now it brims from wall to wall with memories and all things that are them.

She and Sento are both on the floor now, in matching bean bag chairs (the colors match two bottles that made her sleep for three weeks, collectively). Misora is catching Sento up on her favorite drama, using the projector her father got, along with the used bean bag chairs, from the local library when it was selling old things for cheap. Another small thing in his effort to make this a home for them.

Sento’s legs and arms are crossed, and Misora is watching intently, with U-tan at her side one hand in a bag of popcorn.

They watch the scene play out on the wall. Two girls stand in uniform on opposite ends of their schools’ roof, the glare of the sun cutting the space between them.

“You’re not in school?” Sento asks suddenly, and Misora frowns as she reaches for the remote and pauses the show.

“Don’t interrupt.” It was just getting good, too. Misora has been waiting for him to see this part with the Almost Kiss for days. She throws some popcorn at him for good measure. “You know that I can’t.”

“I’m a genius.”   

“So you’ve said.” Many times, she thinks, holding back an eye roll. Sometimes, Misora wonders why he latches onto that so strongly, but then quickly remembers it’s one of the only things he has. Her father hasn’t helped much with that, and Misora hasn’t missed how he keened to the praise.

“You’ve missed most of school,” She struggles not to flush at the reminder. Sento had caught her squinting at the instructions of a puzzle the other day, unable to the read the kanji there. She tried to blame it on needing glasses, but apparently Sento saw right through her. “What’s the point of being a genius if I can’t use it to help others? If you’re interested, I could teach you.”

Something in Misora’s chest ceases (shock? Excitement? Fear, even?). She finds herself overwhelmed with this emotion. She takes in a breath, and releases it with a, “Really?”

“Of course. Just the basics, up until high school. When you’re not asleep, that is.”  

“Yeah,” Misora replies, voice soft. It’s this she admires most. Not his genius, but his willingness to help others. “I’d like that.” 

. 

A week later, before her lessons start, Misora yanks on the door of the fridge. Once, twice. It doesn’t budge. She pulls at it more insistently.

“Read the sign,” her father calls from where he’s wiping down some coffee cups. As if anyone had actually used them today.

She hadn’t seen the white piece of paper stuck to door with black and yellow tape. It has one line of kanji, and a more helpful line of hiragana.

Misora, Keep Out.

.

He’s become a much more sure-footed fighter, her father has told her, and the weather has become colder. Sento told her so. She appreciates that. Sleep often makes her lose her place in time and to her, the weather is always room temperature. This time, it doesn’t catch her off guard when Christmas comes and goes (Her father got her a debit card, with a name that didn’t belong to her and all the money her streams brought in on it. ‘This is your home, too’ he said, ‘and you should have a hand in a bit of the decorating.’)

“Now, despite your lack of a formal education,” Sento is saying. “For a teenager, you seem to have average intelligence,” She’s hardly listening, gaze fixated on the leather watch on his wrist. A gift from her father. While her gift didn’t cost anything but ‘calling in some old favors,’ Sento’s seemed expensive. Misora’s starting to get scared he’s taken out a loan or something. Sento gives her a considering look over the papers in his hand. “That’s a compliment, by the way.”

“Who are they?” Misora asks, warily eyeing the dolls around their workspace.

They’re small wooden mannequins, posed amongst the books and papers, dressed up with paper and whatever else they had around. Sento must have brought them up from the basement (his lab, now) and drawn them himself (He’s a good artist, unsurprisingly. Misora envies the natural ease to which he approaches things. It takes such effort for her to overcome the exhaustion in her bones sometimes and focus on anything).

“Duh, these are your friends,” Sento says, as if it’s obvious. He looks at the dolls, then pointedly at her. “Keep up.”

The word catches her off guard. Friends. Even as a child, when she could curl her toes in the grass and feel the sun on her face, she didn’t have that many. Maybe (surely) that was another part of why she liked being Mii-tan, to fill her life with connections she couldn’t make sincerely.

Sento starts snapping in front of her face. “Pay attention before I take back my compliment.”

“Sorry,” Misora mumbles. A question comes to mind then, something that makes her shift in her seat and more aware of how she fits in it. “Sento... Can I ask you something without you making fun of me?”  

“Sure. Lesson 1: there’s no such thing as a stupid question.”

Misora shakes her head. A thickness takes root in chest, and suddenly, she feels like things have been flipped on her unfairly. A betrayal to herself, almost. She spent weeks withholding her approval of Sento, but in this moment, she wants his. “Are we friends?”

“Obviously,” he scoffs. Of course, obviously. “There is no such thing as a stupid questions, but there are stupid people. I wouldn’t be doing this if we weren’t friends.” Wouldn’t he, though? The hero-genius. That’s who Kiryuu Sento is. He folds his arms and tilts his head at her. “Perhaps you’re more like an annoying little sister.”

“You’re the annoying one,” Misora insists. “And I was here first, so you’re the little brother.”

“Nonsense, I’m —” He loses the sentences mid-way. “I’m sure how old I am, exactly, but it’s older than you.”

Misora gives him an unimpressed look. She feigns boredom, stretches her arms and yawns.

“I’m writing you a detention, if you fall asleep in class.”

.

'Your Christmas present isn’t finished,’ Sento tells her, every time she asks the following month. Misora assumes there never was one to begin with and doesn’t think bothering him will get her anywhere anymore. Misora was miffed at first. After all, they were friends now, and if she spent her precious energy making him a present (even if it was using an online tutorial and whatever was around), he can take a long enough break from being a hero to make one for her too.  

In February, while she’s binging a slice of life show that aired in years she was asleep, her father holds out his palm to her. In it is a white swath of cloth.

She looks at him warily. She reaches out, then stops, then reaches out again. She puts it on, and he gingerly leads her down the stairs, step-by-step.

When they’re on flat ground, her father places his hands on both of her shoulders.  “Okay, you can take it off.”

When she takes it off, she sees Sento standing on a small metal platform, leaning against a large white thing, the size of four refrigerators. Misora isn’t able to get a detailed look at it before Sento rushes towards her, with the back of his hair sticking up, wearing a grin so huge it’s silly-looking. What is going on?

“Isn’t it genius?” He asks her, gesturing insistently behind him. “Isn’t it amazing? Isn’t fantastic?”

“Wha?—?” She means for it to be an articulate question, but it just comes out this dumb-founded sound. “What is this?”

“I call it, ‘The Bottle Purifier.’ It’s for you.”

Misora blinks back at the delighted look in his eye. “I — What?”

“You don’t understand. That’s ok,” Sento gives her a tap on the head, then stands back to admire his invention. “Open it! When you step inside, it will help you extend less energy when purify bottles!”

“So, you’re sticking me in a glorified bottle microwave?”

Sento crosses his arms and frowns at her. “It doesn’t sound as cool when you put it that way.”

“Just — is this … Is that really going to work?” 

“Your lack of faith wounds me,” He pouts and holds a hand to his chest, then gestures to the strange machine. “Why don’t you try it for yourself?”

.

When Misora finally comes to, eight hours later instead of eight days. it’s the morning — or a morning, rather. She knows, because she catches the scent of freshly brewed coffee and pastries coming from upstairs. Her eyelids still feel heavy and the tired ache in her limbs persists but … It’s better than usual, and she feels the force of gravity less when getting up.  

Misora blinks the room into focus. “What time is it?” She asks the shape of Sento, her voice still groggy from sleep. Sento folds his arms together as she stretches her limbs.

“The morning.”

“The morning when?”

“Wednesday,” Sento replies with what Misora recognizes as his ‘science grin,’ even though she’s tired. “Perhaps it’s stupid to ask a question I obviously already know the answer to, but... Am I genius or what?”

Wednesday. The word gives her pause. She can see a clock over Sento’s shoulder that reads 7:00am , which means she slept for a good and true eight hours. Her chest feels tight, hot emotion wells up her throat, and she reaches across the space between them to wrap Sento in a tight hug.

“You are so full of yourself.” It holds none of the scathe she wants it to, and the tears have made her vision a bright blur. He’s stiff under her hold, but eventually, he relaxes, wrapping his arms underneath her shoulders, palms flat on her back. “Thank you Sento.”

.

Misora remembers the first — and only — time she passed through the doors of Nascita, shaken and dirty from Faust. Back then, it had overwhelmed her. Another thing that changed in the years she spent in a empty, dreamless void. It never felt like hers, even though her father said it was. It aggravated this deep-set feeling that she stepped into someone else’s life. She felt so thin, then, like she could slip through the cracks the floor of the basement and vanish.

Almost a year later, the walls don’t feel like they’re weighing in on her. They’d grown out, with each memory they made here together, and now everything is hers because it carries a memory with the three of them.

Sento’s sitting on the other side of the counter, picking at a plastic bowl of instant noodles. Misora’s in the seat next to him. Her head is against the counter, resting between her crossed arms. All the bottles he’s collected and she’s purified sit between them. She thoughtfully considers each one while he plays with the head of Rabbit.

He said it as a joke, she thought. Another thing to deflect how he really felt, but Misora does consider Sento her brother. Who grew up, here with her, who, like her, hasn’t known anything but the world within these walls.

The home her father had built for them.

“I have something for you,” Sento says suddenly.

She lifts her head, and he leans towards her. He smiles and pulls a manila envelope from his coat. He places it on the counter, and slides it towards her.

She looks at him curiously, and looks between him and the full bottles.

“What is this? Build stuff?”

Sento gives her an expectant look, eyebrows raised, and gestures for her to open it.

Misora unlatches the envelope and pulls out a crisp piece of paper with red and blue ink.

Sento explains, “It’s a diploma. We can keep going if you like, but I’ve taught you everything I sought out to teach you.”

Her chest feels tight staring at it, caught up in the emotion. Her eyes are starting to glass over. Embarrassing, she thinks, but she’s grateful crying now comes with emotional highs, instead of lows. She can’t get out the words with all the thickness in her throat.

“I’m curious,” Sento says, eyes on the fuzzy white ears beneath her chin. It feels like a mercy, now she doesn’t have to express her gratitude in words and probably cry with the weight of them.  “About the whole rabbit thing. Master seems to be fond of them.”

“They were my favorite animal,” She says, setting down her diploma (thinking of the word alone makes her heart swell with pride).  Misora thinks about the story again, about the toy rabbit who love made real. She picks up the bottle Sento set down and considers it. Her thumb brushes over the label: R/T. “Kamen Rider Build ,”  She says, considering the red and blue label. It comes in a soft singsong, and her voice wells with so much sincerity it almost sounds like a joke.

Sento smiles. Not a goofy display of self-satisfaction, but something warm and sincere.

“We created it,” Sento reminds her. “All of us.”

She nails him with a suspicious look, but she chuckles despite herself. “Giving me credit? Really?”

“Don’t make me regret it. You did contribute to it,” He flicks the golden band on her wrist, and his nails make a clink against the metal. “With the help of my genius, of course, but  … You contributed to me, too. I was a blank slate, before all this.”

Her eyes linger on the bangle, this mysterious thing whose power used to terrify her. That, if she could, she would rip it off and throw it into the bottom of the ocean, somewhere where no man would find it, like any great power should be. But now, she's accepted as a part of herself. A part of them, and everything they were trying to do.

“Did Dad ever tell you how the bottle purifying process works?” Misora wonders.

“Vaguely. Why do you ask?”

“Before, when I was captured, I stopped being able to purify bottles, because I was scared. I didn’t trust them, and I. I didn’t believe in what they were doing. But, now, I can, because I believe in you.”

When Misora at looks at him, it doesn’t seem like he heard what Misora said, staring blankly for a moment, eyes glazed over. Misora braces herself, expecting a snappy, arrogant genius retort, but the hero shines through instead. The corners of his lips pull into a soft, precious smile.

“Perhaps the past doesn’t matter when we have tomorrow,” he replies.

“Hm?”

“Just something Master said to me once.”

END.