Chapter Text
Momo’s world is perfect.
She knows this because it’s what her mother tells her.
The first time, she is six and her mother’s teeth are pearly white while she sips red wine from a crystal glass at the dinner table, and she tells Momo how she made it perfect.
Sacrifice and effort and her father working diligently so he doesn’t have time to have dinner with them for the thousandth time, Momo.
She is six when she stops seeing him regularly. Sequestered away to his office at work, out drinking with colleagues, on opposite ends of the estate, anywhere she is not.
She is eight when she sees him out the window, kissing another woman goodbye from the backseat of one of his cars. Her mother is next to her with a grip on her shoulder and doesn’t say a word, turning her eyes away.
Momo’s life is perfect.
She knows this because of the mirrors hung in her bedroom. Framed in real gold, with real glass, with her face plastered in the center while she gets ready for school.
(The last one is her least favorite of the scene, but she plays her part anyway.)
She has been bred, born, and raised to be the perfect daughter.
She holds the right amount of eye contact, she speaks when and only when she is spoken to. She is polite. She is pretty. She is the perfect dress up doll when she models. Sexy, cute, hot, beautiful, the masks switch out one by one to a camera flash.
She is the perfect face to use as a base model. She is not made of plastic, she is perfect and genuine. Her smile is real because it’s been stitched into her since her birth, sewn tight into her lips.
Momo Yaoyorozu is perfect.
Momo’s life is perfect.
Her world is perfect.
And it doesn’t matter if that’s what she thinks or not because that doesn’t matter. She’s not supposed to have opinions, they’re not profitable and they’re not engaging for sponsorships and don’t do well with her family’s reputations. She was born with a real smile, but it’s one that hides her teeth.
Defanged by proxy of a mouth sewn shut.
(She still finds a way to bite her tongue until she tastes blood.)
The truth of the matter is this: everything about Momo is perfect. It is an irrefutable fact. It is law paved by her father’s disinterested eye, her mother’s strict hand, the public’s cruel way of twisting half-truths into scandals.
She is a public figure. She is a perfect daughter and a hero-to-be. She is something to sell and a doll to be dressed up and dressed down and played with however anyone but her sees fit.
She is a product. An advertisement. A goddamn inspiration. Whatever the media wants to call her next.
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She is exactly what her parents want her to be. The way they molded her at arms length since she was small enough to dream of magical things like flying away into the clouds or having personal autonomy.
Momo does not own herself.
That’s not a privilege she gets to have.
She needs to be perfect.
She laughs politely, small-talks eloquently without any hint of awkwardness. She smiles for the camera, gets the grade, spends every waking hour working to maintain it all and that should make her enough, right?
Momo is the daughter to wealthy parents. She is pretty. She is smart. She is well-off. She has the perfect image to compliment her. She is grateful and smiles with her mouth closed.
Momo is perfect.