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As she grew up, Momo heard stories of the true beauty of the world. She didn’t understand nearly any of them, because people around her kept paralleling the colors of the things to the colors of the other things—one of her cousins told about her pet parakeet who was the same, pretty blue as the sky on a clear day, but to Momo, both the sky and the bird looked something she had learned to be grey. Another cousin of her likened the fire to the color of sunsets, just hotter. Someone told her the leaves of the trees lining up the pathway to their mansion’s front doors were the color of emeralds, but again, her mother’s emerald earrings seemed just another shade of gray to her, just like the leaves of the trees.
Her mother was different. She always said that the green of her emerald earrings was the natural air of elegance and gentle authority she had around her whenever she wore them, and the green of the leaves in the trees was the calming, funny feeling of walking barefoot in the grass of their vast backyard. She described the fire as the warmth that radiated from it, as love, but also as anger if grown too big. Sunsets were more lonely as they faded into the darkness and chilliness of the night, but they still carried a hint of love and mystery. The blue sky of a clear, bright day was like a gentle breeze of wind in her hair and on her skin on a day like that, accompanied by the yellow warmness of the sun.
Overall, Momo grew up to love the colors she couldn’t yet see herself. Her mother’s stories made the world seem beautiful and breathtaking. Still, just as much as she loved the colors, Momo couldn’t help but fear.
“What if I meet my soulmate, fall in love, see all the beautiful colors with them for years… then, one day, it all just disappears? The colors, the beauty… my soulmate?”
Momo’s mother laid a gentle hand on the girl’s raven black locks and smiled sadly, saying nothing.
Years later, when she entered UA High School, the top hero academy in Japan, Momo finally met her soulmate.
When the school had started in April, Momo had entered the class 1-A and met 19 other teens just like her, aspiring to become Pro Heroes. She saw one familiar face amongst the strangers, sitting at the back of the class, right on her right side.
She had met the boy as children in one of the charity galas her parents used to attend and take her with them. She had immediately been intrigued by the boy’s half-white, half dark grey hair and eyes that were also different shades of grey. The boy had introduced himself as Todoroki Shōto and together the two learned from Momo’s mother that the grey of the boy’s hair was red—a color Momo liked the most, as her mother most often described it as the vibrant, warm color of love—and the lighter grey of his left eye was turquoise—the color of clear, warm seawater of the Okinawan beach Momo’s family had visited when the girl was six years old.
Now, in the classroom, she shot the quiet boy a polite smile and a small nod. The boy nodded back.
Over the first few weeks of school, Momo learned that next to no one in her class saw colors. Exception being the literal ray of sunshine in the form of an excited, bit on the shorter side boy with unruly mob of curly, dark hair, big, sparkly eyes, freckled cheeks and a powerful strength augmentation Quirk, who introduced himself as Midoriya Izuku, as well as his soulmate and a childhood friend, an aggressive, explosive—quite literally so, as his Quirk allowed him to set off explosions on his palms—boy with sharp eyes, permanent scowl, and a spiky, light-colored hair. Midoriya introduced his soulmate as Bakugou Katsuki—or “Kacchan”, as he called his angry soulmate.
Momo found her colors during one of the first few training sessions.
She had been sparring with Ojiro, a light-haired boy with a sturdy tail and impressive skills in martial arts, on a high platform in a Ground Gamma, a maze-like training area built from industrial pipes and buildings, when the boy’s strong tail accidentally whacked her too hard in the stomach. She lost her footing on the edge of the platform and stumbled over, Ojiro helplessly trying to reach her hand to stop her from falling.
Their hands missed each other and the ground rushed closer to her in alarming speed. Momo squeezed her eyes shut and readied herself for the worst—in her panic she couldn’t remember the molecular formula of anything soft to cushion her fall.
“I got ya!” a voice exclaimed near her, and Momo felt a pair of soft hands touch her back, followed by an electric surge running through her body. Her eyes snapped open.
And the world exploded in bright light. Momo gasped alongside her savior as the light faded, revealing a different world.
A colorful world.
She had found her soulmate.
“W-whoa…” her savior—her soulmate—muttered, gaping at their surroundings just like Momo—the difference was that unlike Momo, her soulmate wasn’t floating upside-down in air.
Momo looked at Uraraka Ochako’s round cheeks, her cute, O-shaped mouth and her large, warm, milk chocolate eyes. At her milk chocolate hair, and at the night sky uniform they were both wearing.
“Yaoyorozu-san, are you okay?” Ojiro called from above. Momo gave him a small, baffled nod. She locked eyes with Uraraka-san, whose cheeks flushed into a glow of warmth.
Blushing red is the warmness, the hotness on your cheeks you feel when you look at someone or something you love a lot or think is beautiful, Momo’s mother’s words rang in the girl’s mind.
Oh.
Oh.
Red was beautiful.
Her soulmate was beautiful.
The world was.
Needless to say, the girls quickly fell in love with the one to bring the beauty in their lives. They dated through high school, got engaged the day they graduated, and eventually married each other in a small ceremony with only their parents and closest friends—which ended up being most their class from UA—as their witnesses on a cool, clear autumn day.
The color scheme for their wedding had been the colors of the season, obviously—a lot of different shades of red, orange, yellow, and earthy brown.
They had worn red for their wedding—in the world where colors meant you had met your true love, wedding attires were rarely white and black as everyone, brides and grooms alike, chose to wear their favorite colors, instead.
Ochako had worn imperial red, floor-length dress with layered ruffle skirt, off-shoulder neckline and three quarter flowery lace sleeves. Momo’s simple, crimson red mermaid dress was made of soft, flowy silk and had full-length sleeves, Queen Anne neckline and long tail that rested behind her on the steps to the podium the ceremony was held on. She had a golden belt around her hips. Autumn leaves decorated their hair by the time the outdoor ceremony was finished.
God, how she loved red, Momo had decided on that blissful day as she bent down, hands on her newly-wed wife’s blushing red cheeks, and pressed a long, deep kiss onto her lightly red, glossy lips.
Red.
Red, red, red.
Everywhere.
Deep, dark red, staining Ochako’s black, white and pink Hero costume. All over her beautiful chocolate hair, on her always so adorable ,rosy pink cheeks now pale and ashen, drowning her limp and listless body, more gushing out of the two gaping holes in her abdomen.
Hot, dark blood staining Momo’s shaking hands as she tried to keep it where it was supposed to be. Hot tears on her cheeks as she cried Ochako’s name, pleading the young woman to stay awake and focus on her.
Momo blinked away her tears and turned around to shout at the medics to hurry up, only to notice the colors oozing away from her vision.
No.
No.
“NO!”
“H-hey, gorgeous,” Ochako, barely conscious, barely alive, choked out. She struggled to lift up one hand, as bloody as Momo’s, to the crying woman’s cheek to wipe away the flooding tears, smearing the red across her face. “H-hey…”
“Don’t—don’t speak, love, it’s going to be all right,” Momo choked right back through her tears. “You’re going to be all right.”
Ochako’s jerked her head to the side, as if to shake it. “N…nah… it’s… it’s okay, Momo… shh, h-hey, don’t cry…”
“Shut up! Don’t speak! The help is here soon, you’re going to be all right, it’s all going to be all right, they’re going to patch you up soon—”
“I… I would’ve loved to… spend more time with you,” Ochako mumbled. “But it’s… th—it’s the end… I-I—” her last words died out, alongside her last breath, but Momo knew what they had been.
I love you.
“You’ve done so beautifully. You can rest now,” Momo wept as she cradled her wife’s now lifeless body in her arms. “You can rest now, ‘Chako. I love you.”
She swallowed her tears, bend down into a final, chaste kiss of eternal good-bye, ghostling her lips against the ones of her beloved, smeared in that beautiful, warm color of their love, contrasting against the monochrome of the inescapable, eternal and everlasting reminder of her love lost forever, taken from her too soon.
And by God, did she hate red.