Work Text:
Mikey had a very faint memory of when he first met Mochi. A fading memory of when she was a second year in middle school with a soft round face, bright blonde hair that had been shredded into a short cut and styled into a mess he could only describe as a bird’s nest, and his exact same height.
But this Mochi…this Mochi looked nothing like that girl. She didn’t look like a schoolgirl at all, which he knew she was. A third year in high school, if his math was correct, and she had indeed been one year older than he.
She was taller than him by a few good inches which had her looking down at him. Her hair was long, passed her waist, and a light brown color that shone gold when the street light hit it. Her face had lost it’s child-like qualities that made her look so innocent, thinning down and sharpening into a more adult look that no thought had men confused on her age.
Mochi didn’t wear those thick, fake eyelashes from back then, her own short and light ones rimmed her almond shaped eyes, which were no longer a brilliant blue that rivaled the clear sky, instead they were a warm, dark brown that grounded him to the present.
He’d noticed her fake lashes, but he hadn’t noticed she was wearing colored lenses all those years ago.
“It’s been a while, mouse.” She smiled at the old moniker only she ever called him. A true smile and not the baring of fangs she used to call a smile. The soft pad of her thumb trailed up his cheek, to the edge of his eye. “Was I missed so much that I caused tears?”
He wasn’t crying. He could see he wasn’t in the reflection of him in her eyes; his lips were pulled down into a frown, his face dry of tears, his eyes…his eyes dead.
“Did you forget me?” Her smile faltered but didn’t fall, and neither did her hand that cradled his cheek. “I didn’t change that much for you not to recognize me.”
Mikey looked at her for a long minute, grabbing on to her hand before answering her. “Mochi.” Her smile grew. “You have a completely different color palette than the girl I met before.” She let out a small chuckle. “But I see that red is still your favorite color.”
He pulled on her hand, looking at the cut and bloodied knuckles that were probably the only thing that remained that same from that fourteen year-old girl. And her smile. That too happy smile that caused dimples to form on her cheeks and his heart to flutter alive, even if only for a brief second.
“What happened?”
He wasn’t asking about her bloodied knuckles, he knew someone somehow had asked to get pummeled by her, and he wasn’t asking about the different color scheme she now had, but what had happened ?
She had been there one day, rivaling Toman with those sassy, demented, and bloodthirsty Valkyries that didn’t care for rules, territory, or honorable fights, with her as their fearless head, and then she had disappeared without a trace.
Ceased to existence.
“I can ask that same thing,” was Mochi’s response, along with a small shrug of her shoulders and a sheepish smile. “I don’t think—”
“What,” he took a step forward, pulling her arm towards him and in turn her. “Happened?”
Mochi sighed, looking away from him, over her shoulder, before moving forward to push him back into the alleyway she had found him in. She then turned, walking further into the alley and pulling him behind her, because he refused to let go of her hand.
He’d regretted it the last time he did.
“I don’t live far from here,” she called back to him, her fingers intertwining with his until it could be said they were walking hand in hand. “You can talk there. Unless you have a curfew to keep.”
She was teasing him.
One night, what felt like forever ago, they had met at midnight, because she wanted him to take her on a ride when the moon was out. Alone. Just the two of them. She’d had a curfew then and had told him nothing about it until what he assumed was her guardian came running behind them when he’d sped off.
“What will your parents say…guardian?”
“Hm,” she shrugged. “I’ve lived alone for some time now. You’re welcome to stay the night. You look like you need a breather.”
“I don’t think I’ll get it with you.”
“How daring of you, mouse. All grown up, I see.”
He could almost feel his face flush. Almost. The most his body could muster was a quicker beat to his heart, his hand tightening around hers, and his focus narrowing solely to the side of her smiling face.
——
Mochi’s home was fairly close, closer than he’d initially thought, much closer than she had made it sound. They had exited the alleyway always instantly, taken a sharp left turn, and slammed into the back door of a small plant nursery she had sworn was open.
Her soft cursing and now red tinted nose made a smile pull at his lips as she shouldered her way into the nursery. A far emptier nursery than he thought a nursery should be, but he said nothing as she led him through the store to a set of hidden stairs to one side.
The room was small, tiny even, with an unrolled futon on the far corner, a small shelf that held a television, and a small closet Mochi had just kicked her under thing into before slamming it shut.
“It’s not much, but it’s home.” She said, rearranging the bedding on the futon before she dropped down on it and padded the seat beside her. “I swear it’s clean. Just washed it yesterday.”
He looked at her and then at the bedding, making his way slowly to her before dropping silently beside her.
“You bring a guy this late at night into your home…into your bedroom…”
“Technically this room is both my home and bedroom. I don’t really have a kitchen, but there’s a shower downstairs and a bathroom. It came with the shop. The shower might not have been an actual shower, though, it might’ve been something used on the plants.”
They stayed silent, Mochi making the floor creak as she leaned to turn on a small lamp at the side of the futon. The light made the room feel even smaller. Made them feel closer than they had in the darkness.
There was still a smile on her face, although now it was strained, her eyes unsure of something he couldn’t place. She probably didn’t know where to start, what to tell him, or wondering what he already knew and didn’t need to tell him.
“The Valkyries,” he started, studying her closely to see if he could read her actions, her eyes, but Mochi was never easy to read. “They were out of their minds for a while. Kept getting into the bad side of every gang they came across, including some of Toman’s divisions that tried to stop some of their riots. If we can call them that.”
Mochi dropped back onto the futon, Mikey following her example. They laid side by side, Mikey looking at her as he spoke, and Mochi locking her eyes at the ceiling. He continued:
“No one thought a group of four could cause so much trouble, and we tried to find you. We all did. No one could find you. The girls didn’t want to speak with us about you at all, not even Emma could get them to talk, but she saw that small one break down. The one that clung to your skirts like a child.”
Her arm had come up to cover her eyes.
“I looked for you,” he said, taking her hand in his, pulling her chin with the other for her to look at him. “I didn’t stop looking for you in every outburst of chaos those girls caused, in any possible high school you could have gone to, and even checked every alley I crossed.”
There was a muffled chuckle, “Then tonight was a lucky night?”
“I wanted to disappear,” he confessed. “Just like you did then.”
She turned her entire body towards him, grinning from ear to ear as she asked, “Did I just spirited you away, mouse?”
He reached for her, caressing her face, which only made her grin wider. “If I didn’t call you back to this side of the world, then being spirit away by you wouldn’t be so bad.”
“I was taken, ya’know,” she finally confessed. “Back then, when I was out with the girls. One of those older gangs that were trying to stay alive and relevant found us, those ‘fugly bitches’ who’d stolen and messed up their rides a few weeks prior.
There was too many of them and we couldn't get away. Not all of us. I had to make a decision and make it quick—you guys wouldn’t have made it on time, that’s why the girls didn’t try to get to you and chose to go to the cops for help, but maybe you would’ve been the safer bet.
They didn’t listen, didn’t care about whatever trouble we’d gotten ourselves in, and there were no parents reporting a missing child, so it was left at that. The girls went crazy with worry, didn’t know what else to do to get the attention they needed but to cause a scene, a big one, by any means necessary…”
“And it didn’t work.”
“Not like they wanted. They needed the cops to act but they didn’t and there was nothing they could do but look for me themselves or hope for the best. Koizumi, the one you say clung to my skirts, was the last to give up hope, and the first to come see me when I was found a year and a half later.
She said the girls hoped I was dead. It was the better option of whatever option would be forced on me…they want to leave that part of our lives behind them so they don’t want to meet. They’ll act like nothing ever happened, that we just grew apart after graduation.”
Mikey wanted to ask her many questions. So, so many, but he didn’t want her thinking back on those times, on what she had to go through. On what she had to do to survive and return to her ordinary life. But he would ask one question.
“How did you manage to escape?”
“A miracle? Coincidence? Luck,” she chuckled, closing her hand on his hand which had been playing with her fingers. “I met this guy by chance. Scary looking dude. Huge. We met outside one of the clubs, on one of those nights I felt I could try to run, and I mistook him for one of those hounds they kept to keep us in line. He wasn’t. Just someone passing by that heard about some girl.
Her name caught his attention, an uncommon name, and even stranger for it to be used in those clubs. He just liked my name, he said, and felt called by it, which took him to that back street at the exact moment I dropped from the window. He took care of those goons easily, dropping me off at some church for them to help me and then disappeared back to that club.
I think he enjoyed beating the crap out of those guys. He never stopped grinning.”
“Felt called by your name?” Mikey didn’t understand why anyone would be called by the name Mochi. Unless they were fans of the sweet, but it was still weird.
Mochi laughed at him. A full hearty laugh.
“My name isn’t Mochi,” she laughed into his shoulder, her entire body shaking when she tried to hold it in. “Really, mouse, all these years and not once did you ask Emma about my name.”
“She always called you Mochi,” he responded, hugging her around the shoulders as she laughed into his chest. “She would just call you by different types: Warabi Mochi, Kuzu Mochi, Bota Mochi and the like…it was always Mochi.”
“Did you think I was named after food?”
He didn’t say anything, looking away from her grinning face.
“Do you want to know my given name, mouse?”
“Do you even know what my name is?”
“Sano Manjiro,” she responded, her laughing ceasing, leaving behind a simple smile. “You go by Mikey. Not pronounced like Mickey Mouse.” Her grin was absolutely feral. “But you’ll always be my mouse.”
He scoffed.
“You won’t get my name acting like that.”
“Then,” he said, running his hands through her hair as she wrapped her arms around him, cuddling into his neck with a deep sight. “How do I ask for your name?”
“Nicely.”
He let out an exhausted sigh, causing Mochi to laugh at his inability to ask her name in any way let alone in a nice way, but she didn’t want him to do so. With a small quick peck to his cheek, she said:
“Maria. My name, it’s Maria.”