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Fuyumi wrapped the black scarf tighter around herself, trying to keep out the worst of the bitterly cold winds. Grey clouds hiding any warmth the sun might have offered. The dark hues washed out the world’s colour and the entrance to the hospital all the more deary. Though Fuyumi had to admit to herself, it was fitting.
The weather perfectly matched the atmosphere of Touya’s funeral. Small and reserved for close family and friends, there was no shortage of empty seats at the wake. It had been a horrible service, agonizingly slow, and painting Touya in a light that she knew he would have hated.
Throughout, Fuyumi could have sworn that she could hear his hoarse laugh barking out at people who hardly knew her brother made it sound as if they had been tied at the hip. But not even that thought could soften the ache in her heart as she watched Natsuo shaking in silent anger and grief, sending glares of raw contempt that no ten-year-old should be capable of making at their father. Fuyumi had seen how her father had crumbled the first night after the accident, if only for a moment. Even the screaming matches that used to be a staple in the home didn’t match the frenzied storm of energy as her father ripped Touya’s presence out of their lives.
Not Touya’s room, though. That was, as Touya last left it, a haunting reminder for the rest of them of just what happened when you played with fire.
However, Shouto’s reaction hurt the worst. Tears wetting the large bandage that seemed to swallow the young boy, occasionally slipping out a quiet sniffle but never outright crying. He had been silent ever since Touya’s death. To her knowledge, Touya had never been particularly close with Shouto, but her youngest brother’s misery overshadowed the false sadness from the strangers around them.
Slowly, the service began to wrap up as the chairs emptied in respectful silence. People she never met, oozing sympathy as they shook their father’s hand. It wore at her like sand against broken glass, Fuyumi felt it chipping away at her, dragging her into the shadows that haunted her brother and mother and threatening to tear down the wall she built as Endeavour’s perfect daughter.
A small part of her, in the dark corners of her mind, wanted to lash out. To scream and cry with the strength of an enraged blizzard. In the days that passed, Fuyumi felt nothing but frigid numbness as she prepared for Touya’s funeral. Still, it scared her. First their mother and now her brother. How long until that horrible detachment snapped back and whipped away her own sanity?
But Fuyumi would smile and obey as long as her family needed her to.
Endeavour didn’t stay long after the service ended, fleeing to the office in a separate vehicle as Fuyumi bundled her brothers into the car of their private driver. Shutting the door, she gave the driver a weak excuse of needing to talk with the funeral home director about the arrangements and promised to call as soon as she needed a ride back to the Todoroki estate. Until, before long, Fuyumi was the last person standing at the entrance of the deserted building.
Slowly, taking a big breath of freezing air, she gathered her strength to turn the corner. Small mercies that the hospital was within walking distance.
The first steps were always the hardest. She tried to will one foot in front of the other when each shoe felt filled with lead as she walked through the dreary hospital after the funeral. In a matter of days, Fuyumi’s world melted away like ice in a firestorm. She could feel herself slipping into the darkness that stole away her mother and brother, especially as she remembered how Rei vanished in cold whispers before her in the days before she disappeared from their lives.
“ They are too much like your father do you understand, Fuyumi?” Rei murmured as she brushed a comb through her hair, the teeth snagging against the knots. “I see him in Shouto’s left side, and it scares me. Even my sweet Natsuo looks exactly like him. In a few years, no one will be able to tell the difference between them.”
Fuyumi stayed silent as Rei’s fingers lingered a moment longer on the red strands, drops of glacial tears raining down. “Even you.”
“And Touya.” Rei’s voice trailed off, in quiet confession, “He’s the worst parts of both of us.”
Rei’s hands trembled, shaking the hair loose from the braid, along with it came the cold. Cold spreading from her mother’s fingertips to her already freezing body. The anxious chill creeping like a slow-moving poison threatened to steal the last of Fuyumi’s stable warmth.
“He was so sweet, you know? Such a good baby, the sweetest of all you.”
There was no way to stop her mother when she started on this trail of thought, be it her guilt towards Shouto or her fear for Touya. And she was powerless to stop it. Even though Fuyumi felt her mother’s emotions rocking the foundations of her mind as her thoughts pounded and cracked like fragile sea ice, Fuyumi smiled into the mirror. She let Rei only see the reflection of a placid smile.
“I taught him shogi, you know, and calligraphy. He used to write so beautifully.” Rei’s hand shook, making Fuyumi’s hair come loose from the messy braid. Gingerly, Fuyumi pried the brush from her mother’s ice-cold fingers. “Now, all he wants is to be like his father. Why, Fuyumi? I taught him more he could be anything. Why a hero?”
Rei’s tears of ice blistered down her back like fire. “I cursed him, my poor boy.”
“One day Fuyumi, he will go to that mountain and be gone forever.”
Rei’s voice shook, but before Fuyumi could ask more the phone rang. The chimes cut through the silence as Fuyumi began the solitary motions of finishing the braid, she would ask her mother later about exactly what she had meant. What she had seen in Touya that led her to believe something horrible would happen.
But of course, as Fuyumi learnt by the raging sirens and Touya’s hoarse yelling awful curses at their father, there would be no next time. The doors of the ambulance shutting any opportunity of rational conversation with Rei for a very long time.
“We’ve told her what happened. But be gentle. She is in a state of shock and hasn’t accepted the news.” The nurse told her gently, voice soft against the sterile tiles of the elevator.
The doctor scanned their ID card over the ’at risk sign’ as Fuyumi’s fingers brushed against the cold handle, opening the door to the barren room.
“Hey, mom”
“Fuyumi, it’s so nice of you to come to visit.” A small, serene smile graced Rei’s face, yet Fuyumi could see the cracks in her mother’s porcelain armour. Even the flower by the window drooped in sympathy of the room’s single occupant. “How are your brothers?”
She had to swallow back the lump in her throat, and she felt the prickle of tears begin to well behind her eyes. “Natsuo is doing well, the top of his class as always. He decided recently that he is going to try to become a doctor.”
“Yes,” Rei’s voice trailed off airily before continuing. “He shows so much promise. I know he will do great things.”
Treading lightly, Fuyumi continued, “Shouto is doing great too. Still a big All Might fan. I snuck in a keychain for him. He’s getting so big.”
“That’s wonderful. And Touya, how’s he?” Rei paused, moving over to the small desk and reached into the drawer, pulling out a letter carefully tied with a blue ribbon that perfectly matched her brother’s eyes. “He must be heading off to high school now. Has he decided which one he wants to go to yet?”
“Mom”
“I wrote him a letter.” Rei continued to stare at the envelope, eyes empty. “Will you give it to him?”
“Mom, please stop.” For the first time since the accident, a single tear slipped down Fuyumi’s face. She couldn’t do it, not today. Not when the cold just kept spreading.
“I want him to know it’s not his fault.” From her spot next to the bed, Fuyumi could see her mother’s hands begin to shake. “Please, he needs to know that I am proud of him.”
“Fuyumi, I need to know that he forgives me. When can he come to visit?” The whites of Rei’s eye gleamed in the sterile room, and her movements started to become erratic. Pale strands of hair chaos around her mother’s face.
“Touya can’t come, mom.”
Rei began to pace, vibrating as if an invisible force was violently shaking her. The tension clung to the room like thick smoke, making it hard for Fuyumi to breathe as she too began drowning the emotions building in the days she lost her brother. “He’s dead.”
Rei stopped, standing eerily still. Fuyumi felt as if she had stepped into the eye of the storm, trapped, less the winds swept her away into the darkness. “Don’t you lie to me too, Fuyumi.”
“It happened just like you said it would. Touya went to Sekoto, and he didn’t come back. You were right.” And she hadn’t listened. She knew why. Fuyumi didn’t want the responsibility that drove her mother to madness. She honestly believed that Touya pulled himself together for them, but in reality, all he did was hide his hurt away. As irrational as the thought was, the overwhelming guilt threatened to crush her anyways. She looked the other way and missed it.
That’s when the screaming began.
The nurses quickly escorted her out with frenzied apologies but strict instructions to come back another day after the news had settled. With little else to do, Fuyumi walked in a daze, hollowed by the experience- she barely remembered calling the driver or the way to the estate. Mind numb as she rested her forehead against the window, watching the snow slush and become tainted by the cars that crushed it.
“Welcome home.” Natsuo greeted her at the doorway, eyes rimmed in red.
Silently, she reached to hug him. “You should be in bed.”
“I wanted to make sure you got back okay.” Natsuo’s eyes scanned her over, and Fuyumi could have kicked herself. The last time one of them left without explaining, he never returned.
“You don’t have to worry about me. That’s my job.” Now. “Go to bed, Natsu. Do you want me to tuck you in?”
Natsuo shook his head wordlessly. Eyes trained on the floor and shoulders crouched by grief, he shuffled off to his room. A moment later, Fuyumi bent to take off the black dress shoes, straightening the others before setting hers in their spot on the rack.
Exhausted, she dragged herself to her room and began the lonely process of taking the pins out of her hair. Fuyumi gently combed the wild strains of red that always stuck up no matter what she did.
Rei was lucky when she looked at her children. All she saw was Endeavour staring back at her. But as frost crept around the mirror, tainting the crystal glass with a cloudy chill, Fuyumi saw both her parents staring back at her.
And wondered if the cold would take her next.