Chapter Text
If one could use a single word to describe the torrid affair between the policeman Tohru Adachi and the reporter Mayumi Yamano, the most accurate would most likely be “mutualistic.”
They both hated the town they were stuck in (the little town of Yasoinaba), hated the way everything seemed to go so slow.
It only made sense that they would naturally gravitate towards each other and commiserate with each other.
For Mayumi, what Tohru offered was freedom. He had no expectations of her, no restrictions.
“Stick with me,” he had offered to her with a grin, “and boredom will be a thing of the past for you.”
And how. Behind his seemingly dopey appearance hid a cynical, dry jokester with a wild side.
Not only was he good in the sack, but the conversations they had would go on for hours. He had a variety of opinions.
Having been passed over almost all his life with his seemingly meek appearance, he’d seen (and heard) quite a few things that he normally never would have. Whispered quips from him about how this shopkeeper beat his wife or that woman had been widowed kept Mayumi from losing her patience.
She never felt freer than when she was with him.
For Tohru, what Mayumi offered was someone to be with after work. Someone genuine, who accepted him for who he truly was.
When he had revealed to her that he wasn’t just some forgetful idiot, all she'd done was smile at him and say one thing: “How about you and I get a drink, Tohru?”
He was addicted to the way she interacted with him. Every time she said his name, it was with a playful lilt. Every time she talked with him, it was with a fearlessness he rarely saw in anybody. And every time they fooled around, he'd never had a better girl to mess around with.
They would debate a variety of things together - how talent affected one’s stature in life, the pros and cons of being a civil servant, and even down to things as small as which M&M tasted the best.
It also helped that she was just plain cute. That short hair, that twinkle in her eye, her fashion sense... He ate it up, practically.
He never felt more free to be himself than when he was around her.
Of course, their idyllic romp of cynicism through Inaba came to a screeching halt a few months later.
She had visited the doctor for a check-up. Her period was late that month.
“You, you have to be kidding me,” Mayumi stuttered to the doctor.
“I can’t be,” she added, as if to clear the situation up.
The doctor sighed, shaking her head.
“I’m not joking, sadly. I’m sorry, Mayumi. I truly am.”
Mayumi put her hands over her mouth, trying to swallow the lump in her throat.
Abortion was out of the picture, of course. It would destroy her reputation. The tabloids could find out - and probably would, considering how much attention they always placed on her shoulders.
And yet if word got out that a policeman in some backwater town had knocked her up, it would damage her reputation almost as much, if not more.
She wracked her brain for thoughts of which tryst with Tohru had done it.
Was it the night he had “hunted” her through Inaba's streets? The night they'd both spent on the couch, where he’d gently kissed her and whispered how much he'd cared?
Tears sprang to her eyes. She couldn’t do this.
After the appointment, she went to the only other person in this damned town she could trust.
Taro Namatame, that was his name. A meek, but kind person.
She and him were childhood friends. He was the only one who would understand.
She had knocked on his door, trying to keep her restraint. Yet the minute he had opened the door, giving her that gentle stare and “Is something the matter?”, she had burst into tears and thrown herself into his arms.
“I, I’ve, I’m such an idiot, a stupid little slut who got pregnant and the father is Tohru, Tohru Adachi..”
“Slow down, Mayumi. Breathe. Breathe. What happened?”
His eyes were wide, breathing becoming nearly as feverish as Mayumi’s.
“Namatame, I had an affair with Tohru Adachi.”
Her voice was strained with a sob as Namatame reeled back. His fists clenched, his eyes going down to her belly and back up.
“And you’re..” he breathed.
Mayumi nodded.
Namatame’s eyes also began to grow watery, dangerously close to crying.
“Oh, Mayumi..”
The tone of his voice - sickly soft, with that little strain of pity - was too much for her. She began crying again in earnest, thin streaks of tears pouring down her face.
“You know I can’t get an abortion.”
“Does Tohru know?”
Mayumi shook her head.
“He wouldn’t understand - you know how he is, you know how he can get. I need to raise the child.. somewhere else.”
“Where?”
“Shibuya. Please, please come with me to care for this child.” She gripped his sleeve, her expression desperate. “You’re the only one I trust, Namatame,” she continued.
Namatame was shaking. He, too, was crying now. His shoulders were shaking, his eyes filled with shared grief.
“I’m such a fucking mess..” Mayumi rasped.
Namatame walked closer towards her.
He grabbed her shoulders gently and hugged her close. His grip was a tad bit tighter than normal, but comforting regardless.
“You are not a mistake or a mess. I don’t think of you any differently, Mayumi.”
As he rubbed her back, his thoughts went back to Tohru - that sexual little cynic, Namatame thought to himself privately, could never care for Mayumi the way I could.
Mayumi had skipped town with Namatame a week later.
She didn’t say goodbye to Tohru. She was too afraid to. He was tolerant of a lot of things, but she didn't know how he would handle knowing he was now a father. And considering how he'd been so freewheeling in all other affairs, how averse to commitment or responsibility he'd been... Mayumi figured this was the best choice for them both.
And the few months that ensued, living in a Shibuya flat with Namatame.. they were the most peaceful of her life.
Namatame put his utmost into caring for Mayumi.
Whenever she needed food, he would get it. Whenever she puked, he would hold her hair and rub her back. Whenever the mood swings got too bad, he would talk her through it.
He was patient. He was reliable. He was there.
With every kind word, Mayumi would find she grew more and more in love with him.
With every reassurance, they felt more and more like a family.
When Namatame looked back on it, he thought that Mayumi was almost a minute away from saying that she loved him back.
While Mayumi and Namatame grew closer, Tohru Adachi was stewing in resentment.
He wasn’t an idiot. He knew Mayumi had skipped out on him with Namatame.
How dare she? He thought she valued him more than that, loved him more than that.
And yet she fucking waltzed out of town without a single goodbye.
Not even a “goodbye, Adachi, fuck off.”
He poured his anger into his drinking, into his work, into every single little thing in his life.
Yet, life in Inaba moved on.
His boss kept working him like a dog. Thankless grunt work, paperwork, all sorts of work that could only be dumped on rookies.
There were new rumors of a Midnight Channel among the high schoolers - looking into the TV at midnight on a rainy day and seeing your soulmate. They'd talk about it at the local supermarket, Junes, over their little lunches with friends. And although Tohru would always have a seemingly innocent look on his face, his thoughts would be in about the same place: something along the lines of what a crock of shit.
But then one rainy midnight, when he was drinking his night away in his apartment, he looked into his TV screen and saw her.
Literally - her face was on the television he'd sworn he turned off.
And the more he thought about it.. yeah. Yeah, he figured maybe Mayumi was his soulmate.
She’d connected with him more than any other bitch in the town. He'd respected her more than any other woman he'd hooked up with, admired her, fed her fire and cynicism and sexuality until it was practically boiling over.
She’d loved him. He'd loved her - as much as he thought he could love someone.
At that moment, he realized that, no matter what, she was his. His.
And he loved that thought.
He would get her back.
He’d get her back even if he had to drag her back to this shitty little town by her ankles, kicking and screaming.
The birth of her child was a makeshift endeavor. The water had broken quickly, too quickly for either Mayumi or Namatame to prepare. They had called in a local doctor, one who could be trusted to keep quiet - and with a few bribes, Mayumi had made sure of it.
Namatame held her hand as the contractions grew. She whined with pain, squeezing his hand.
The pain kept doubling, the room kept getting more and more constricting and tight.
“Breathe,” Namatame chanted, and with his gentle squeeze of her hand, it became a litany in Mayumi’s head. His words cleared away the tightness of the room, dulling the pain.
Breathe.
The doctor’s voice seemed to melt away.
Breathe.
The pain crescendoed and she could feel the baby pushing through.
Breathe.
It was done.
A baby boy. It was a baby boy.
Namatame smiled, his stress lifted off his shoulders. Mayumi found herself smiling too, looking up at Namatame with an expression he never quite forgot.
The baby was cut, wrapped, placed in her arms.
“What will you name him?” Namatame whispered, leaning in.
Mayumi smiled, and chuckled. She thought on both men - the birth father who had made the babe, and the adoptive father who had helped in bringing him into the world.
“Yukitaro Adachi. Print it as Yuuki Mishima on the birth certificate. Nobody must know I was his mother - not even the babe himself.”
"Are you sure?" Namatame asked.
Mayumi nodded. "It'll save him all sorts of pain later on."
She came back to Inaba with her belly swollen, a wreck and a half. Namatame did not follow her, busy raising the young Yukitaro in Shibuya.
Of course the people in Inaba talked. Of course word of her return reached Tohru’s ear.
He visited her hotel room in the local inn that night, shaking with rage. He ground his teeth, grabbing her wrist and squeezing it tightly.
“You cheated on me,” he hissed, “with Taro fucking Namatame.”
Mayumi shook her head, tears welling up in her eyes. “It wasn’t like that! I was pregnant-“
The desperation in her tone only made him angrier, his teeth gritting harder against each other as the devil practically shone in his eyes. “Oh, so he got you pregnant? Knocked you up and you decided you couldn’t even look at me, you were so ashamed? You little whore.”
“That’s not how it happened! Tohru, I—“
Tohru was shaking even harder, his voice laced with all sorts of livid fire. “You’re mine. I won’t let him have you, anymore. I won’t let him taint you anymore, you’re not some stupid slut. It was my name you said when I fucked you, not his.”
“Tohru, please, think this through!”
Tohru approached her, going eerily quiet, The next words he whispered were venomous and ice-cold. “Maybe a little fear will calm you down... put you in your place. A reminder to who you belong to.. who your soulmate is.”
He chuckled at the tears in her eyes, cornering her.
“Tohru Adachi..” she whispered. Her lips were parting open, about to say something more.
If he'd taken the time to calm down, the words she would have said would have been the baby was yours.
But Tohru Adachi was never a listening man when he was in moods like this.
“I’m just showing you how much I love you.” he crooned, his expression lovesick and his grip tight as sin.
Against the TV he threw her, breathless —
She fell in.
She fell into the TV.
Tohru took a step back, eyes wide. What the hell?
The day her corpse was found by the schoolgirl Saki Konishi, hanging from a TV antenna upside down, both Tohru Adachi and Taro Namatame grieved for the loss.
Funny enough, they both blamed each other.
Adachi's thoughts were venomous: Namatame was the cause - if he didn't knock her up, I wouldn't have had to throw the stupid bitch in.
And Namatame, well... he didn't vocally speak up on the matter, but his thoughts were just as callous: Adachi got to her, didn't he, if he was even capable of committing a crime like this. Maybe he even did it through that strange program - he saw Mayumi on the TV at midnight, just like I did. If only Mayumi had realized she was better with me, had stayed with me, had let me be her soulmate... this never would have happened.
Tohru figured out very quickly that throwing people into the "TV world," as he called it, killed them. That only he had the power to do it, as far as he knew.
Tohru began to use this new power, but only to fill the hole Mayumi left behind. She was his, his to the afterlife, and nothing could ever tear the memory of her from his mind. He tried to satisfy himself with Saki, but it wasn’t enough. Saki was a bitch, a slut not even close to Mayumi.
He tried to close his eyes and visualize Mayumi whenever he touched Saki, but Saki was coarse and bony where Mayumi was full and soft. Saki went into the TV, just like Mayumi, and this time he felt no remorse.
He tried to pin his murders on Namatame, but it was hard to pin him without him physically being in Inaba. The group of plucky young kids that had been trying to find the killer saw through his attempt.
Tohru eventually fled into the television world himself, once the group realized he was the killer.
He was caught by that same damn group of plucky kids, and placed in jail, for the murders of Mayumi Yamano and Saki Konishi.
And Namatame was left with young Yukitaro.
Those months where he helped her were the best of his life.
When the child was born, he could almost pretend the child was his. He could almost pretend that Mayumi had loved him back. He could pretend a great deal of things when she was alive, like that the "sexual little cynic" was out of his life and that Mayumi cared about her.
He hoped she would see his loyalty in carrying out her last wishes, from up in Heaven, and smile at him.
He raised the boy as best he could for a few months before (as Mayumi had wanted, in case anything ever happened), he called Mayumi’s sister, Akari Mishima. It was a tough choice - he'd wanted to adopt the child himself, but Mayumi's final wishes were sacrosanct.
The situation was explained. The boy was taken away.
When the child was out of his house, the first thing Namatame did was visit a local shrine and pray to all the gods above that Mayumi's child would be protected from all ills of the world. Please, he prayed, please let this child go on to be happy, and let him grow to face this world better than his father ever could.
A few years passed.
Yuuki grew up unaware of his true parentage. The secret of his parents had been erased so totally from the world that even he didn’t know of it.
He grew up happy, at first. Akari raised him as her own son, and she wanted to make the boy as happy as possible. The circumstances surrounding his birth were too miserable for her not to.
Teachers and friends alike would all comment on how similar young Mishima looked to his mother. And he did look like his mother - his eyes and hair were so very much like Mayumi Yamano's that it hurt.
Akari would always smile sadly, and remark that he looked more like his father.
It was all in the face, the eye shape. It seemed so similar to Adachi’s.
The boy, however, was showing lots of good signs that he wouldn't end up like his father. He often shared with his classmates, was soft and considerate - the exact opposite of the bold, driven man Mayumi had mentioned in passing once or twice.
At least, Akari thought, it would all go well for young Yuuki.
And then high school rolled around.
He was placed upon the volleyball team at his school, and at first, Akari was so happy for the child she called her son.
Yuuki seemed happy too. He talked about how the program was led by a famous Olympian medalist - Suguru Kamoshida - and how excited he was to learn from him.
That excitement quickly evaporated into thin air when Mishima started staying later for volleyball events and coming home with a terrible amount of bruises.
She would ask who was responsible - after all, she knew purposely inflicted bruises when she saw them. He would always shrug it off, say it was from practices, and say nothing more.
Bit by bit, the once talkative boy began to draw further into his shell - and Akari didn’t know what to do.
She could hear him crying in his room at night. The things she heard him whisper to himself broke her heart - things such as “I’m a good person” and “I can be useful.”
Sometimes Kamoshida would visit their home, asking permission for him to do this or that with Yuuki. Something about Yuuki’s behavior around the older man always troubled her. Yuuki always seemed more twitchy and frightened than usual. At one point, where he had spilt tea made for Kamoshida, he had even pleaded to clean it up himself.
She began to pray to Mayumi. “Mayumi, please,” she would whisper, “guide this boy to a better place in his life. Let the truth be revealed.”
And indeed it was, once a series of strange incidents began to unfold at Mishima’s high school.
A schoolgirl’s attempted suicide because of what this.. Kamoshida man put her through. Yuuki’s tearful return home and declaration that he was being considered for expulsion due to an incident at volleyball. The cards spread around his school by a group calling themselves “the Phantom Thieves of Heart” who claimed they would make Kamoshida confess his sins.
It all culminated in the event that made the news - Kamoshida’s public announcement that he had abused his students and those who worked in the Volleyball Club.
That night, when Yuuki came home, he told Akari everything.
Kamoshida had used him in order to call other students in for punishment. He was physically, mentally and sexually abused by the man on a level that could only be described as sadistic.
The school had done its utmost to cover this up, and when Yuuki had tried to stand up for himself with the help of a few friends, Kamoshida had tried to have him expelled.
There was something almost ironic in that - the son of a rapist and serial killer suffering the abuse his father had once given others - but Akari didn’t find it funny in the least. She was beside herself with rage, and among the first people to file a lawsuit against the man.
With Kamoshida out of the way, Yuuki finally began to flourish again. He made a website for the Phantom Thieves that had freed him from his abuse, and all was well. He made friends - a group of lovely young people from his high school he began to hang out with. He was the happiest he’d been in a long while.
And yet, he deserved to learn the truth. He was of age to learn the secret of his parentage.
She planned how to tell him.
She just hoped she would be able to break it to him in a way that wouldn’t break him.