1

Aira notices it when she comes over to pick up her jacket, forgotten at Momo’s grandmas’ place from the last time she was here. 

Momo’s digging through her room to find it, Takakura is arguing with Turbo about something or the other, and then Turbo Granny climbs up Seiko’s stomach then shoulders then head to get to eye-level with him. Granny Seiko places a hand on cat’s cheek to steady her before she falls off, mouth quirking up the slightest. Then Turbo Granny sighs and climbs down again, cushioning herself on Seiko’s chest and ignoring Takakura in favor of the T.V.

They’re so adorable it would be disgusting if it wasn’t sort of sad. Poor Seiko, having to deal with her wife being stuck in a tiny figurine for the foreseeable future. Aira assumes that if they knew how to break whatever curse she’s under, they would have done so already. It must be especially powerful if even Granny Seiko can’t get a handle on it. 

“What is it, kid?” Turbo Granny asks, narrowing her eyes up at Aira suspiciously. 

“Er— nothing.” Aira turns around almost violently, face flushing, meeting Takakura eye to glorious caramel eye. Oh no, he’s too cute like this. Aira turns another 180 degrees only to slam straight into Momo where she’s bounding down the hallway, jacket in hand.

“Ow, what the fuck you skank!” Momo hisses, rubbing her forehead. 

“You’re the one who can’t see straight, bitch,” Aira accuses back, snatching her jacket back and valiantly ignoring the throbbing in her own forehead. Fuck. That’s totally gonna swell into something nasty tomorrow. 

She thinks she might hear Turbo Granny snicker something mocking about young love, but Aira ignores her just this once, because it’s a little mean to shove her heterosexuality into such tragic, old, gay ladies' faces. Let them dream that their granddaughter might actually get pussy. 

“Thanks for having me,” she calls to them, and Seiko nods up at her from where she’s still lounging in front of the T.V., her wife resting on the shelf of her chest. “C’mon, Takakura-kun, let’s walk to school together!”

Aira drags him out the door before Momo can pounce on her, cussing her out and giving chase.

2

Momo is… not suspicious of Jiji, but it is a little weird that he’s sticking so close to her still, even now that his evil eye situation’s been mostly figured out. It’s not the worst hanging out with him, but it still feels weird to be spending time as just the two of them at lunch, without Okarun, who’s become a constant in her school life lately. 

“You ever been to the arcade near here?” he asks, pulling a stupid face as he tries to screw open his water bottle the wrong way. 

“Yeah, with my girls. It’s like, whatever. Why, ‘djya wanna go?”

“Ehhhh, maybeeee,” Jiji says, smiling down at her. “Wanna come with?”

Momo sighs. She picks at the plastic wrapper on her yakisoba-pan. Maybe if she waits long enough Okarun will turn up and join them, and they can eat lunch together. “Nah, Granny and other Granny are gonna kill me if I don’t clean by the time they get home today. I sorta’ messed the whole place up last time Aira came over.”

“Where’d they go? More exorcism stuff?”

“Like, regular work. Granny Seiko’s on a psychic show, right? Turbo Granny wanted to check it out today.”

“It’s cute that they still do stuff together,” Jiji says, which is kind of weird.

“Uh, sure.”

“So, have you guys made any on progress on breaking your grandma’s curse?”

Momo looks up at him, finally opening the wrapper around her yakisoba-pan. She takes a big contemplative bite before she responds. “Yeah, still don’t know what you’re talking about. Granny Seiko’s not cursed?”

Jiji laughs, a soft little chuckle that reminds her he can be considered handsome on some days, when he isn’t being annoying. “No, the one stuck in the lucky cat. Turbo Granny. Must be super hard for the two of them, being apart like that, huh? What a tragic romance—”

“HUH?” 

3

Vamola likes Seiko and Turbo Granny. They remind her of some of the Sumerians who raised her, other than her mother. A little rough around the edges but still caring. Seiko is a bit like Caniri, who always told Vamola stories about how much she loved cooking before they were pushed into the forests. Back in the city before the invasion, she used to make all sorts of fancy meals, and her favorite part was watching her kids eat. Her wife Zypo was just as grumpy as Turbo Granny is on the daily, but always carried Vamola on her shoulders when she got too tired to walk as a little kid. 

Vamola misses them a lot. They died during a skirmish a few years ago, and she’d wailed into her mother’s shoulder for days uselessly. Watching Seiko and Turbo Granny feels a little like seeing them all over again.

“Happy,” Vamola says, in their strange human tongue, pointing to Turbo Granny. Her painted-on cat eyes go wide. “Happy,” she repeats, pointing to Seiko. 

“You’re happy here? That’s good,” Granny Seiko says, patting Vamola on the head.

Vamola shakes the hand off, determined, pointing to both of them at once and repeating herself. “Happy? Happy!”

“Ah.” Seiko glances at Turbo Granny from the corner of her eye. “Yes, thank you. We’re happy too.”

Vamola smiles. Good. That’s good. Maybe one day, when she figures out the intricacies of their lexicon and grammar better, she’ll be able to share the story of Caniri and Zypo with them. Until then, this will have to do.

4

Rin has always been a sucker for a good old tragic monster love story, and that’s exactly what Ayase Momo’s grandmothers are stuck in. Oh, the horrors! Rin doesn’t know what she’d do if her beloved wife of many years got cursed into a lucky cat figure in her old age, unable to hold her or kiss her or f—

Honestly, as far as monster romances go, this might be one of the most inconvenient. This is why Rin is partial to vampires. They have the benefit of being monstrous while still retaining enough humanity to be sexy, and the metaphor of blood-drinking as a stand-in for doing the deed, is super cool. Like, there’s no way Ayase’s grandmas can boink like this. Even kissing must be incredibly awkward. Rin hopes for their sake that they get this curse thing sorted out soon, so they can go back to boinking and kissing as much as they want. 

Actually wait, that’s sort of a weird thing to say, isn’t it? Like, why the hell is Rin thinking about Ayase’s grandmothers boinking and kissing anyway, that’s a total invasion of privacy, and honestly gross because they’re old-ass ladies, even though Granny Seiko looks crazy young for her age and kind of has a smokin’ bod—

Relax, Rin. Calm down. Think of normal things you like, like the derivatives in her math homework, or the ghost romance that just starting getting published in her favorite shoujo magazine, or her latest vampire otome game, or that one time Takakura turned into a super hot vampire-curse-thing with gray skin and white-red hair and a super gravelly voice—

Goddamnit. 

She’s normal, she swears, she swears! Just… stop thinking about the people she knows in real life in weird ways. Takakura and Ayase’s grandmothers and… yeah. 

Ugh. 

5

Toriuma’s not sure he believes the super hot lady with glasses is Ayase’s grandma and not her mom, until the little cat figure called ‘Turbo Granny’ starts yelling at her.

Damnit, Toriuma thinks, shoveling barbecue into his mouth before Aoi beside him can hog it all, elbowing each other out of the way. He was so sure he could try and finesse Ayase’s single mom with his totally incredible flirting skills, but now that he knows she’s a married grandma, that might be a whole lot more difficult. 

They are kinda cute though, with the whole ‘old married couple’ bickering. Toriuma thinks he’ll be happy in life if that’s where he ends up in another fifty years, bickering back and forth with a beautiful wife. That sounds really nice, for a kid with no parents nor siblings nor role models of any kind, right now. 

Maybe he should still ask Ayase’s grandma for her number. Not to pick her up, but just to ask her for her wisdom every once in a while. 

“Hey, Ayase-san,” he says, later that evening as he and his boys are about to leave. The restaurant is mostly empty, both grandmas back in the kitchen setting the bill, and a very tiny Ayase Momo is sitting in the palm of a pretty girl with pink hair. “Tell yer grandma thank you for me, we really appreciate her goin’ out of her way to treat us all.”

“Yeah, yeah, no problem,” comes her teeny tiny voice. “She complains a whole bunch, but she woulda’ done it anyway.”

“Still. It’s bad manners ta’ take advantage of a lady without even thankin’ her.”

“Sure, I gotchu.” Ayase waves him off, and Aoi clears his throat behind him when Toriuma doesn’t leave. But he still has something to say.

“If it’s not too much trouble, I’d like ta’ stay in touch! Maybe I can repay this debt by helpin’ your other grandma get outta’ that cursed cat-thing she’s stuck in. They must really miss each—”

“FOR THE LAST TIME, MY GRANDMA ISN’T DATING TURBO GRANNY!” 

+1

Seiko lights her cigarette, taking a deep drag and blowing out a thin stream of smoke, lost in melancholy. The night sky is particularly lovely tonight, all thin stars and a perfect sliver of white moon. In her lap, Turbo Granny slumps down and rests her ceramic head against Seiko’s stomach. 

“I don’t know how I’ll ever thank you for helping Momo out in that diorama,” she says softly.

“Bah, it was nothing,” Turbo Granny says. “That brat needed someone with her and, well, there I was.”

“You’ve grown attached.”

Seiko can feel where Turbo’s little shoulders shrug, against her stomach.

“You raised a good kid, Seiko.”

“Made all the more easier with your help,” Seiko points out. “I’ll be the last person to make a fuss about single-parenting or non-nuclear families but… it’s nice to have someone else.”

Turbo tenses, little cat paws and body going ceramic-stiff. “Seiko, I can’t stay.”

“You could for a little longer.”

“Your kid and her boy are nice, but I’m not meant for these things. I’m a ghost, not a house-wife.”

“House-grandma,” Seiko corrects. 

“You know what I mean. This is all beyond me. The way I died, well… I’m lucky enough to have even a taste of it now. That’s enough for me.”

Seiko doesn’t push. She takes another drag of her cigarette, feeling the smoke carry nicotine into her lungs, and watches it curl upwards like incense. Turbo falls asleep in her lap, before long. Potentially for the last time. 

Against her better judgment, Seiko wishes, for a moment, that this was a different world. One where Turbo didn’t die so long ago, and Seiko wasn’t an exorcist, and they could be as all of Momo’s friends think— she’s heard Aira and Jiji, seen Vamola and Rin, knows Takakura Ken looks at them sidelong some days even though he should know better than the others, about who Turbo really is.

In another life, Seiko would have really loved being married to Turbo.