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I think when I was five the world was very large and very beige, the colours of it rubbed soft by afternoon light and the steady repetition of days that felt enormous while I was inside them and impossibly small now that I am not, and most of what I remember is sitting cross-legged on the living room rug with the scratch of wool against my shins and watching my parents move through the quiet and the heat.
I love the summer.
I don't know if I've always loved the summer though because when I look back at the pictures in Papa's photo album I am always crying.
Maybe I am crying because I am four. Maybe I was borrowing grief from the future.
My parents are smiling. Their teeth is showing and their lips are wide like I always remembered them to be. I don't think I remember a time in my childhood where they weren't smiling.
There was a stillness to those afternoons, a languid stretch of hours where nothing dramatic occurred, and I remember feeling almost bored by it, almost dulled by the predictability of happiness, because at five one expects spectacle and fireworks and grand declarations, not the steady repetition of love expressed through packed lunches and shared glances over the top of a newspaper.
And yet, when I close my eyes now, it is that very dullness that returns most vividly.
I did not know then that memory would one day turn those afternoons sepia and fragile, that I would revisit them with a tenderness edged in melancholy, because even in their perfection there was something unbearably fleeting about the way dad’s smile crinkled at the corners or the way papa’s voice softened when he said our names, as though time had already begun its quiet theft and I, too young to protest, could only sit and observe.
At five I believed love was simply the air in our apartment, invisible and constant and unremarkable.
I turn the thick, slightly sticky pages of Papa’s old photo album.
There we are again, captured in that washed-out golden light that film from those years always seemed to carry—like honey left too long in the sun—me in my too-big sunhat slipping sideways, cheeks streaked with tears that gleam like tiny rivers under the relentless July sky, mouth open in what must have been a wail so loud the cicadas paused to listen.
And there they are behind me or beside me or lifting me high, Dada and Papa, their smiles so wide the corners of their eyes crinkle into delicate fans, teeth flashing bright against tanned skin, as though the camera had caught them in the exact heartbeat when joy felt infinite and weightless.
Perhaps I was crying because the ice cream melted too fast down my wrist and made everything sticky and wrong. Perhaps because the ocean roared louder than I expected and swallowed the sound of my own voice.
The sun in those photographs is always merciless and bright, flattening the sky into a sheet of pale blue and bleaching the grass to a colour that looks almost unreal, and there I am in the centre of it all with my cheeks wet and my mouth open in protest, as though the light itself has offended me, as though summer has done something unforgivable that only I can see.
In a way it had.
I try to remember what it felt like to be that small and that furious, but the memories arrive softened at the edges, wrapped in gauze, and all I can truly recall is the sensation of being carried despite my objections, of being lifted onto papa’s hip while I kicked my sandals against his thigh, of dad crouching in front of me with that patient, open expression that suggested he believed every storm could be reasoned with if only one spoke gently enough.
I love the summer, I insist to myself now, because summer is the colour of their shirts in those pictures, the heat of their skin when they pressed their faces to my cheeks, the long evenings when we would return home flushed and exhausted and collapse together on the couch in a tangle of limbs and sunscreen and shared stories.
I flip past a few more pictures.
I barely remember my sixth birthday.
Six is a blur of primary colours and sugar, of a cake iced in a shade of blue so bright it looks defiant, and I am standing between them with frosting on my chin while they hold the knife together, their hands overlapping, guiding mine.
I don't remember how the cake tasted. Dada had made it so it can't have been good.
He was always terrible at cooking.
I recognise my seventh birthday although there is no number shaped candle on the cake.
It is the missing front tooth that gives me away, the small dark gap in my grin like a secret door left ajar, the unmistakable evidence of that brief, unglamorous season when my mouth felt perpetually unfinished and my tongue could not resist prodding the tender hollow where something had once been rooted so stubbornly.
The tooth had not surrendered easily; I remember standing in the bathroom with papa crouched behind me, both of us staring into the mirror as though preparing for a duel, his fingers hovering near my mouth while I insisted I was brave enough to twist it myself.
Papa always said I was so much like him. Like Dada.
Dada always disagreed.
"Like you are so agreeable Kacchan," he snorted.
They both let me do it myself. I will forever remember how painful it had been. I know now that it could've waited a few more days, and the pain would've been far less.
I learnt that lesson repeatedly.
I had cried and cried because it hurt, because something that had belonged to me so completely was suddenly foreign in my palm, slick and impossibly small, and I felt betrayed by my own body for discarding it so casually.
But Dada had clapped his hands in delight while Papa pretended to inspect the tiny tooth like a jeweler appraising a rare gem, declaring it “the finest specimen yet” before tucking it carefully into the palm of my hand as though it were something precious we might one day auction off for fortunes.
In the morning the tooth from under my pillow was gone and in its place lay a single shiny quarter and three wrapped candies—striped peppermint drops that melted slow on my tongue and left my mouth tasting clean and sweet. I ran to show them, bouncing on bare feet, the gap in my smile wide and proud now instead of shy; Dada scooped me up and kissed the empty space where the tooth had been, declaring the fairy must have been especially pleased this time because the coin was so bright.
Looking at the photograph now, I see the cake, the lopsided frosting, the way I am grinning without inhibition despite the conspicuous absence in my mouth, and behind me they are beaming as always, their hands resting lightly on my shoulders.
I remember being afraid of the next one.
It had begun to tremble in its socket with a faint, treacherous wobble, not enough to fall, not enough to ignore, and I would test it with my tongue in secret, as though I were checking the stability of a bridge I was expected to cross alone.
Papa noticed before I said anything.
I had refused to pluck this one myself. Papa had fretted like anything, and it's funny now when I think about it because outside of home Papa had been loud and mean but he was a transformed man with us.
The fear was larger than the tooth itself, larger than the slight metallic taste that sometimes seeped into my mouth when I prodded it too hard, and I buried my face in papa’s shirt while he sighed dramatically and stroked my hair, promising me it won't hurt.
Papa had always been a liar.
It was Dada who plucked it in the end—Dada with his calm, steady presence, the one who never raised his voice or fretted aloud, who simply sat me on the edge of the kitchen table one evening and asked me if he could inspect it.
I had always believed Dada more anyway.
There was the faintest sting and a blooming warmth. I did not even have time to gather my fear into something meaningful; it dissolved before I could fully inhabit it.
Papa’s reaction was immediate and indignant on my behalf, scolding Dada for not warning me, though relief flooded his face so openly that I understood the performance for what it was. He gathered me into his arms and inspected the tiny gap with exaggerated horror, declaring that I had been grievously wronged and that restitution was in order.
Restitution, in our household, came in the form of food.
It was probably a good thing, that suddenness—no drawn-out dread, no chance for more tears to build; the tooth fairy visited faithfully that night with her usual quarter and peppermint drops, but the real balm came from Papa afterward, placating me with katsudon the way only he could.
I remember sitting at the table with a napkin tucked beneath my chin, my gums still tender, watching papa move through the kitchen.
It was probably better that I had not expected it.
But oh if I had...
There is mercy in surprise, in having the dreaded moment pass before dread can root itself too deeply, and I think that was the lesson tucked between mouthfuls of katsudon and parental fussing.
The shaking thing will leave whether I cling to it or not, and that afterwards there will be warm food and gentle hands.
But they did not teach me that it wouldn't always be the same warm food and the same gentle hands.
My eight birthday is at the beach.
Did I mention that my birthday is during the summer?
It's a disaster that birthday. I got gum stuck in my hair so horribly that Papa had to cut it off.
They had tried everything.
Ice cubes wrapped in cloth, oil worked carefully into the strands, patient fingers attempting to pry sweetness from silk, and I sat on a kitchen stool like a condemned queen, watching fragments of my own reflection in the microwave door, my chest heaving with indignation at the injustice of it all. My hair had been my pride—green and long and heavy down my back, the thing people commented on first, the thing I flipped over my shoulder with ceremony.
We mourned my beautiful hair for weeks.
Now, when I look at that picture, I do not see ruin.
Dada braided what remained into tiny, lopsided plaits to hide the worst of the damage, whispering how brave I was, how hair grows back stronger, how beauty lives in the heart anyway; Papa brought home ribbons and barrettes in every color he could find, tying them into the surviving strands with clumsy tenderness.
He never once complained about the time or the mess or how silly all of it was; instead he told stories of his own childhood mishaps—how he once shaved half his eyebrow on a dare and had to draw it back with his friend's eyebrow pencil for a month—until my hiccuping laughter began to mix with the tears.
Nine is the year of the cast.
I do not remember the exact mechanics of the fall—only the blur of pavement rushing up too quickly, the stunned silence before pain arrived properly, the way the sky looked indifferent and enormous above me as I tried very hard not to cry.
Papa arrived furious.
Not at me—never at me—but at gravity, at bicycles, at the audacity of scraped asphalt daring to bruise his child. He argued with the nurse in the emergency room as though volume might accelerate healing, while dada crouched beside me in a plastic chair, his hand warm around my uninjured one, explaining fractures in gentle metaphors about branches bending too far in storms and needing time to knit themselves back together.
It will not itch Papa had promised me.
The cast had been itchy from the first hour.
Papa had always been a liar.
Nine becomes the year I learned patience.
I remember my tenth birthday cake. It had tasted horrible.
Papa had thrown his head back and laughed and laughed.
"You've got your father's cooking skills," he roared.
"She is just ten Kacchan!"
I was upset I had messed up the cake but Dada had consoled me.
Nothing we ruined ever stayed ruined for long.
Everything changed when I turned eleven.
I had run home as fast as I could after school. Dada was not home, he was away at work and Papa had been cooking. His eyebrows had furrowed when I'd taken off my pants in the kitchen and furrrowed further when he saw the dark red spot on my underwear.
I hadn’t known it would happen; no whisper of warning had reached me in books or playground talk or the quiet corners of school where girls sometimes traded secrets. There had been no prior pain, none that I remember and my parents had never warned me.
I understand now why they hadn't. They'd simply tried to protect my innocence for as long as they could.
I never felt strange, the way other girls described it. There had been no pain, just the uncomfortable feeling of wetness.
And never once—not in that moment, not in any moment before or after—had I felt the absence of a womanly figure in my life. Yes, they had not lived this exact experience. Yes, their bodies had not staged this particular rebellion, but nobody ever understood me the way they did. Neither of them had ever been awkward and the topic was discussed so casually at home that the real world had taken me by surprise.
I blame them. I blame them for not teaching me how cruel life could be.
The next picture is me holding up my first bra like a trophy.
When my boobs started to grow they had taken me to every store in Musutafu.
Department stores with fluorescent lighting that bleached everything pale, smaller boutiques where lace hung in careful rows, aisles lined with pastel boxes that made my face burn simply by proximity. I walked between them like a reluctant dignitary, acutely aware of my own body in a way I had never been before, the air against my skin suddenly too noticeable, too intimate.
Papa led the charge with his transformed indoor gentleness wrapped in a volume that carried through the aisles like a benevolent thunderclap.
He would hold up a bra by its straps as though inspecting a rare artifact, then declare in his booming-yet-tender voice to anyone within earshot, including the wide-eyed salesgirls, that wired lining was uncomfortable for me, absolutely unbearable, no daughter of his would suffer pokey metal digging into soft skin just because some fashion magazine said so, and the strangers around us stared a little, some with amusement, some with faint disapproval, but neither Papa nor Dada eever noticed or cared; their only concern was that I should feel held and comfy in whatever we chose.
Papa had no concept of embarrassment in public.
Dada, meanwhile, smiled that disarming smile and asked, please, did they have anything more? Something softer? Something without lace that scratched? Something that would not feel like armor strapped to a body that had not asked for battle?
The sweet old cashier lady had finally picked out a few good ones and they tried them on me in the fitting room.
Does it pinch here? Does it ride up? Is the band too tight? They kept asking as I examined myself in the mirror.
And when we finally settled on a few simple sports bras and soft bralettes in muted colors, Papa slipped an extra one into the bag “just in case,” Dada murmuring thanks to the cashier as though she had performed a small miracle.
Back home they sat me down on the edge of my bed, the shopping bags rustling like paper leaves, and showed me how to stick the thin, adhesive pads onto the inside of my underwear.
"Don't worry okay? We'll always prepare them for you now, but if it happens in school you need to know how to."
Looking back now, I realize how extraordinary it was that I never once felt alone in those changes, never once felt that my body’s evolution was something to conceal from them. What I remember is not the fluorescent lights or the mortification or the rustle of hangers. I remember Papa’s unwavering declaration that discomfort was unacceptable.
I proudly showed my bra to Himari the next day. She was the daughter of my parents' friends who's names I did not know. I only knew what Papa called them, and Dada had always asked me to never ever refer to anyone the way Papa does.
Himari was Shitty-hair and Pinky's daughter.
I liked Pinky, although she was almost always away in America and rarely visited.
At twelve I developed a temper, sudden and bright as a struck match, flaring without warning.
The principal called home.
Papa arrived first.
He did not storm in the way I half-expected him to. He did not raise his voice at the staff or defend me blindly. He stood very still while the situation was explained, his jaw tight, his brows drawn together not in fury but in something heavier.
It was the first I saw Papa so subdued. First time I saw him apologise to a stranger.
“You cannot hit your classmate, Itsumi.”
When we reached home, Dada asked why.
Why had I hit her?
I opened my mouth and found nothing coherent waiting there. I did not have a noble reason. I did not have a story of provocation or cruelty. I had annoyance. I had irritation that had swelled until it demanded release. I had the humiliating truth that I simply did not want to listen to her incessant chatter anymore.
Papa had grown even more upset at that.
It was the first time I remember seeing disappointment settle across his face in a way that did not dissipate immediately.
“You do not hit your classmates, Itsumi.”
His voice was lower than usual.
I think that frightened me more than volume ever could.
I could not sleep that night. I heard them talking to each other at night.
"What if she turns out like me 'Zuku?"
"But you turned out beautifully Kacchan."
"Do you not remember how I was taught those lessons?" Papa had snapped.
Dada had only sighed.
I promised I would never do it again.
I had broken my promise immediately.
This time it was worse.
Not because the punch landed harder, though it might have. Not because the insult—if there even was one—cut deeper. It was worse because I knew better. Because I saw the moment unfurl before me like a banner and stepped into it anyway.
Dada came to the principal’s office.
Papa must have been working. Or perhaps they decided, wordlessly, that this required a different approach.
I remember the way Dada sat beside me in the stiff plastic chair, his posture straight, hands folded in his lap, his head bowed in embarassment.
And then he apologized.
To the principal.
To the boy’s parents when they arrived, their faces tight with indignation.
He made me stand and look at them.
He made me apologize too.
Shame burned in me.
“Papa would’ve never made me do that,” I shouted when we were finally outside, wrenching my hand away from his. “He would’ve defended me.”
Dada didn’t say anything.
When we got home I cried and cried to Papa about what I had been made to do in that office—in front of everyone, the words dragged out of me like teeth—and to my horror he disagreed entirely, his frown returning but softer now, threaded with something resolute. “It was a good thing you did,” he said, voice low and certain, “or else I had half a mind to drive you to the kid’s house myself so you could apologize there, face to face, until you understood what your hands can do.”
His words landed like stones in still water, rippling outward until the shame twisted deeper, because even Papa—my loud, protective Papa who loved my explosions—would not bend the rules for me this time.
I slammed the door to every room in our house the rest of the day.
“I’m sorry,” Dada said, voice barely above a whisper, the words carrying no defense, only the quiet ache of having caused me pain even when he believed it necessary; I turned toward him then, tears fresh and hot, and forgave him in the same breath I had pushed him away earlier.
“Why are you so angry, Itsumi?” Papa asked after a long silence, his hand finding mine beneath the covers, warm and steady as always.
I had tried to explain the noise, the way it crawled under my skin, the sudden urgency to make it stop.
That was when I first had a glimpse of them as something other than my parents—as people living in the world, as human beings with their own quiet histories of rage and regret, their own scars from choices made and promises broken long before I existed to witness them. Papa talked and talked then, of his childhood, of his mistakes.
And I had realized—for the hundredth time in my short, turbulent life—that nobody understood me like they did.
I turned to another picture.
It’s a hiking photograph. Papa loved hiking.
He would wake before dawn with militant enthusiasm, clattering around the kitchen to pack water bottles and fruit, announcing the day’s route like a general unveiling battle plans.
I used to think Dada only loved hiking because Papa did.
In this photograph I am somewhere between them on a narrow path edged with wild grass. My face is flushed, my mouth open mid-complaint. I remember this hike.
It was steeper than I’d expected.
Halfway up, my legs had begun to ache in that dull, persistent way that makes each step feel like a negotiation. I lagged behind on purpose, hoping the distance would excuse my eventual surrender. Papa noticed immediately, of course. He doubled back with exaggerated exasperation, declaring that the summit was practically visible.
Papa had always been a liar.
I collapsed onto a rock, panting, annoyed at my own weakness, ready to complain that hiking was stupid and Papa was too loud about it. But Dada sat beside me without a word, and simply watched him.
Papa had his head thrown back, grinning with his eyes closed and arms spread.
My complaints died in my throat.
"Sometimes doing things you don't like are worth it," he had said.
I stare at the unfinished eulogy before me. I wonder if Dada was also talking about this when he said that.
I study the picture a little longer.
Mud on my socks. Wind in Papa’s hair.
I flip another page.
Here is one from fourteen, taken on a rare rainy afternoon when we stayed inside instead of venturing out, the living room dim with storm-gray light filtering through half-drawn curtains: me curled on the floor with a book I pretended to read while my temper simmered low from the morning's argument at school, Papa sprawled on the couch with his head in Dada's lap, both of them laughing softly at some old joke whispered between them, their smiles wide and teeth flashing even in the dullness, as though the rain outside could not touch the warmth they carried inside.
I turn the page once more, the album sighing open to a photograph I have not looked at in years, one that feels almost foreign now in its stillness: a quiet autumn evening in the small garden behind our house, leaves turning the color of old copper under the porch light, me at fourteen sitting on the lowest step with knees drawn up, chin resting on folded arms, staring at nothing in particular while the first chill of the season settled over everything like a thin, invisible blanket.
In the picture Papa is kneeling in the flower bed a few paces away, sleeves rolled to his elbows, hands buried wrist-deep in dark soil as he plants the last of the chrysanthemums Auntie Ochaco had wanted before she left for her week-long work trip to Kyoto. His face is serious in concentration, mouth set in that familiar line of focus he wore when something mattered more than words, yet even here the corners lift slightly, as though the act of tending earth brought its own small joy.
Dada stands behind him, leaning against the porch railing with arms crossed loose, watching with that calm, steady gaze that missed nothing; he holds a mug of tea in one hand, steam curling lazy into the cooling air, and every so often he reaches down to pass Papa a trowel or brush dirt from his cheek with the pad of his thumb.
I remember that evening clearly now, the way the light faded slow and amber, the way crickets began their hesitant song in the grass, the way I sat there feeling the first real weight of something I could not name.
I had spent the afternoon alone in my room, scrolling through photos on my phone of friends laughing at places I had never been invited, feeling the familiar simmer of exclusion rise and fall without ever quite boiling over into anger. When I finally came outside, drawn by the sound of their low voices, I did not speak; I simply sat on the step and watched them work in companionable silence.
Papa finished planting the last chrysanthemum, patted the soil firm around its roots, then stood and stretched with a groan that was half theatrical, half genuine. He turned, saw me there, and his face softened the way it always did—wide smile breaking through the dirt smudges, teeth flashing bright even in the dimming light.
“Come help your old man clean up,” he said, voice warm and teasing, holding out a muddy hand. I shook my head at first, stubborn for no reason other than the heaviness sitting in my chest, but Dada walked over, sat beside me on the step without a word, and passed me his mug.
The tea was still hot, sweetened just the way I liked it, and when I took a sip the warmth spread slow through my ribs like sunlight finding its way into a shaded room.
Papa joined us eventually, dropping onto the step on my other side with an exaggerated sigh, shoulder bumping mine gently.
We sat like that until the sky turned indigo and the porch light buzzed on overhead, moths fluttering soft against the bulb, until the melancholy that had followed me all day began to thin.
Papa spoke first, voice low and thoughtful. “Your auntie Ochaco called earlier. Said the conference is boring without us there to make faces at her during the boring parts.” Dada chuckled softly, the sound rumbling gentle against my side. “She misses the chaos,” he added.
I flipped another page.
The Year of the Entrance Exam.
I remember the way my stomach felt like it had swallowed a live wire.
Everyone at school had been talking about rankings and recommendations and who was “naturally gifted” as if talent were a birthmark you could point at and admire. I had laughed along. I had said I didn’t care.
I cared so much it made me mean.
Papa and Dada were at the top of the world. I had always known that. It had made me feel proud at first. I used to turn around grin smugly at other kids in my class thinking, bet you wish you had parents half as cool as mine.
But soon it became a burden. I needed to excel. I was the daughter of the top two pro heroes in the world and I needed to excel.
But Papa had screamed sense into me and I had relaxed.
I turn the page to a cluster of photographs tucked into a separate sleeve at the back of the album, edges slightly curled from travel wear, colors brighter than the faded summers at home because these were taken under a different sky altogether—the wide, endless blue of America, where the light hits sharper.
There’s a picture of us in a backyard sprinkler war. The sun is violent and golden. Himari is mid-laugh, charging at me with a hose. I am shielding my face and still advancing.
Papa and Uncle Kirishima are in the background pretending not to escalate things.
They escalate things. The next photograph is of a hiking trail — because of course it is. Papa cannot exist in a country without locating its inclines.
Himari and I are racing up the path like we have something to prove.
I tripped on a loose stone halfway up and scraped my palm open. There’s a close-up shot of it somewhere — dramatic and unnecessary.
I didn’t cry and Himari didn’t laugh.
She tore a strip from her own bandana and tied it around my hand. “Don’t slow down,” she said.
We hadn't.
Another page.
Theme park. Bright rides. Cotton candy bigger than my head. Papa pretending he does not get motion sickness. Dada absolutely getting motion sickness and refusing to admit it.
There’s one photo — blurry — of us upside down on a rollercoaster, mouths open in identical screams.
We look like sisters.
I flip more and more pages until I reach the one that stops my breath in my throat—a stark white hospital room bathed in fluorescent pallor, Dada sitting up in the narrow bed wearing a thin blue gown that hangs loose on his frame, IV line snaking from the back of his hand.
He is still smiling.
The Year of the Diagnosis.
No one told me what it was. No one told me there was even a name for it. Just appointments. Just “check-ups.” Just Papa saying he’d handle it. Just Dada waving me off and asking about my homework like nothing in the world had shifted.
I hadn’t even realised he was sick.
He still packed my lunch.
They had shielded me with the same fierce gentleness they always used, as though ignorance could keep the shadow from lengthening across our lives.
I hadn’t even realized Dada was sick—not truly. He had continued to smile through his pain, that small, knowing curve of lips never quite faltering when I walked into a room, his voice steady when he asked about school or if I wanted extra honey in my tea, his hands still careful when they brushed hair from my forehead or passed me a mug. The smiles held, even as his cheeks hollowed and his steps grew slower.
Those days are a nightmare to relive.
Papa had almost never smiled.
The man whose grins had once lit every photograph, whose laughter had boomed through the house like summer thunder, had gone quiet, sharp-edged, his temper flaring in sudden, unexpected bursts—not at me, never at me, but at the world that dared to hurt the one he loved most.
He snapped at nurses who moved too slowly, yelled at doctors who spoke in vague platitudes, paced the hospital corridors like a caged storm until the walls seemed to tremble. It was as if I saw a different side to him entirely—the raw, unguarded man who was unraveling thread by thread as Dada got sicker and sicker.
Kirishima used to drive me everywhere those days.
He had flown back from America the moment he heard, broad shoulders filling doorways as he arrived for every appointment.
So had Ashido and Himari, pink skin bright against sterile whites, her wild hair bouncing as she tried to fill the quiet with chatter and small gifts—stuffed sharks, silly keychains, anything to make the room feel less like a room where things ended. But Himari had a boyfriend by then, some boy from her college who kept her tethered to California with texts and calls, and she was never here for long; she would stay a week, hug me too tight, promise to video-call, then vanish back across the ocean, leaving the hospital feeling emptier each time.
Papa refused to talk much in those weeks. He only ever really talked to me, and only about whether I had eaten, how my day had been, if the teachers were still idiots or if I needed him to yell at someone on my behalf. He paid attention to those small things just like before, never compromising on me, never letting my world shrink even as his own narrowed to hospital trays and beeping monitors.
He didn’t care about himself or others in those moments; the nurses learned quickly to approach him carefully, Kirishima shook his head sometimes when Papa’s voice rose too sharp, murmuring low apologies on his friend’s behalf.
Kirishima caught me once, standing in the hallway listening.
He shook his head.
“Sorry, kid,” he said quietly. “This is the Katsuki we grew up with.”
I felt something twist in my chest.
Had they never known my wonderful Papa? The one who let me smear flour on his face. The one who carried me down mountains when I pretended to be asleep. The one who swallowed his lectures when I told him to stop talking.
Papa looked at me fondly that same evening as he petter my hair—slow strokes, careful as though I might break under the weight of his hand—while I sat on the edge of the bed beside Dada’s sleeping form. “Oh, it’ll be alright, don’t worry, Itsumi,” he murmured.
But Papa had always been a liar.
Dada died during the summer.
The crowd at the funeral was ridiculous.
That’s the first thing I remember thinking.
Dada, apparently, had been loved by every single person on the entire planet.
No wonder. I remembered his kind, crinkling eyes and gentle voice as I thought, who wouldn't?
His heart was huge and vast for all everything, for Papa’s loudness and my tempers and the neighbors’ small troubles and the strangers who showed up at the funeral with stories I had never heard, each one claiming a piece of him as though he had handed it out freely, without keeping score.
His light spilled everywhere, quiet and steady like dawn creeping under a door, never blinding but impossible to ignore once noticed.
I wonder if he’ll illuminate the maggots too.
Dada’s light, that vast, gentle spilling thing, seeping downward through layers of earth and wood and silk lining, finding even the small, blind creatures that do their patient work in the dark.
I wonder if the plants will grow better where he’s buried.
It only makes sense.
For him to leave happiness even in his death. For the grass above him to come in greener. For flowers to lean toward that patch of earth instinctively. For something to recognise what’s underneath and respond.
The grass above his plot will be thicker come spring, the wildflowers that push through cracks in the headstone brighter, more stubborn in their blooming, because even in death he couldn’t help but give.
I scream and scream as they close the casket.
The sound rips out of me raw and animal, louder than the murmured prayers, louder than the rain tapping polite against the chapel roof, (the sky too was weeping in the middle of the summer) louder than anything that should come from a girl who has spent her life being held through every smaller disaster. The lid lowers slow, inexorable, wood meeting wood with a finality that echoes in my ribs, and I thrash against the arms that try to hold me still, because if they close it all the way then he’s really gone, really gone, and the light stops spilling here on the surface where I can still reach it. My throat burns, my nails dig into palms until they sting, tears blur the faces around me into watercolor smears of black suits and pink skin and red hair.
I have no more teeth to be plucked and no one left to pluck it.
I wonder if Dada was lying when he he plucked my tooth. I wonder if this would've been easier if I'd expected it.
I wonder if this too, like my first plucked tooth, would've hurt less if Dada had waited a bit more. Waited on this earth for me to achieve everything I wanted.
Perhaps I was right to cry during the summer when I was four. Perhaps I had known what it would take from me.
Beneath me, the man who loved the world so thoroughly that I cannot imagine it not loving him back lays dead.
Papa is holding me, strong arms locked around my waist from behind, chin pressed hard to the top of my head as though he could anchor me to the earth by sheer will. “Hey,” he says, voice cracked open and rough, barely above a whisper against my ear, “I’m here. You have me.”
But Papa had always been a liar.
Papa died in the spring.
Kirishima said it was the grief.
“He loved Izuku more than his life,” he said.
They were buried side by side. The grass above Dada's plot was thicker indeed.
I nodded.
Of course he did.
Everyone knew that.
But standing there, hands numb at my sides, something ugly rose up in me.
What about me?
The question lodged in my throat and refused to come out.
What about me?
What about me?
What about me?
What about me?
What about me?
What about me?
They said stress.
They said heartbreak.
They said sometimes the body cannot survive that level of loss.
I wanted to scream that I had survived it.
That I was still here.
That I had loved Dada too.
Did that not count?
Was I not enough reason to stay?
The guilt came immediately after.
Sharp and punishing.
Because how dare I reduce their love to a competition.
Because I had seen it. I had grown up inside it. I knew what they were to each other.
Papa without Dada had been a structure missing its foundation.
He had tried.
God, he had tried.
He packed my lunches again.
Burned them sometimes.
I had to have known something was wrong then.
Papa never burned food.
Papa was the better cook.
But his eyes had been souless.
Kirishima cried when he told me.
Ugly tears tracking down his face as he said, “He held on as long as he could.”
As long as he could.
For who?
For me?
Or simply because breathing hadn’t stopped yet?
People talked about devotion. About epic love. About a man who burned too brightly and could not dim himself to survive.
I stood there and thought:
You were my father.
You were supposed to choose me too.
The thought makes me sick even now.
Because he did choose me.
Every lunch packed.
Every night he checked if I had eaten.
He had chosen me every day he stayed.
But in the end—
Grief chose him.
I crush the sakura petal between my fingers. I hated seeing all this life growing around me.
"Itsumi?" Himari yelled as she threw open the door. "There you are! Come on, it's almost time for the eulogy."
I closed the photo-album.