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Yui doesn’t speak.
The doctors described it as a block in her brain, preventing speech from filtering through to her mouth. She can understand spoken words just fine, but she can’t quite parrot them herself. She finds more comfort in silence, but even when crushed under the pressure to say anything at all, she can’t break through whatever barrier exists between her mind and voice box.
So she doesn’t speak. She was enrolled in special education classes throughout elementary school, with kids who rely on sign language to communicate—most of them Deaf. She picked up sign language quickly, and found it a far easier way to express her thoughts and feelings than trying fruitlessly to verbalize them. But her father lost interest in her entirely when it was determined her lack of speech was not something that should be forcibly fixed, and her mother is too busy to learn an entire new language, so at home, she’s limited to the most common signs.
Food, water, thank you, please, mom, sorry, school, friend, want, hello, good morning, good night.
It’s enough, at least, to allow communication between Yui and her mother. It’s better than trying to speak.
It’s easier for her to place her open palm atop a closed fist and move it in a small circle to express the sentiment of I love you without having to extract the words from her throat in order to be seen as a good daughter.
In middle school, Yui signs to her mother:
I WANT TO BE A HERO.
And her mother replies that she loves her dearly, but she just doesn’t know if that’s possible.
Yui steps into the 1-B classroom on her first day at UA to be immediately greeted by a girl with orange hair tied up in a high ponytail. “I’m Kendou Itsuka!” she introduces. “What’s your name?”
Yui hesitates. Her teachers were informed that she communicates via sign language or written word only, but she supposes that same notice wasn’t given to her classmates for confidentiality reasons. She gives Kendou her name sign anyway, hoping that will clue her in on the situation.
Kendou blinks. “Sorry,” she says. “Can you— Well, I guess if you can’t hear me, you won’t be able to respond…”
Yui nods. I can hear you, she signs. The sign for hear is pretty straight forward, and she’s careful to move her hands slowly, clearly enunciating each gesture. I just can’t talk.
“You can hear?” Kendou asks.
Yui nods.
“But no speaking?”
Yui nods again.
“Alright! I have a notebook in my bag, if you want to write your name down for me? I’m going to try my best to memorize everyone’s names tonight. Hopefully we won’t have any real homework, since it’s only the first day, but I guess this is UA, so…”
Yui follows Kendou to her desk, where she procures the aforementioned notebook as well as a pen. Yui notes down her name, and her quirk as well because she figures that will be important at some point.
“Oooh, Size? That’s cool! Mine is Big Fist, which— Well,” she laughs nervously. “You can probably guess what it does. The name is pretty self-explanatory.”
Yui figures she’ll get to see Kendou’s quirk in action later, so she simply smiles and nods for the time being. Kendou goes on to introduce her to the other students who are in the room so far, which Yui is grateful for. If Kendou does the talking, Yui doesn’t have to fumble around with one-way conversations.
Maybe her mother was wrong and she’ll be just fine at UA.
During the summer camp attack, Yui catches sight of a blonde girl with a sharp smile carved into her face. She stops in her tracks, meeting Yui’s eyes, and something like curiosity flickers through her expression. She takes half a step closer, then pauses.
“You’re cute~” she coos. “I’m Himiko! What’s your name?”
Yui should reach for something to defend both herself and her unconscious friends, but she finds herself frozen in place. Heart pounding in her chest. You’re cute, the girl had said, with such ease. The confession spilling off her tongue like it was no more difficult than expressing disdain over the weather. She must be a villain, because Yui doesn’t recognize her from either of the hero classes, but she can’t be much older than they are.
For some reason she can’t grasp in any language, Yui signs her name for Himiko.
Himiko tilts her head. She repeats the motion, Yui’s name formed clumsily with her hands. Himiko is a villain, but she offers a kindness in Yui’s preferred tongue that she never received from even her own father. How can that be possible?
“I’m going to see you again!” Himiko declares. Her voice washes over Yui like cool water, like the gas that knocked out her classmates. She shouldn’t hope for those words to hold true. She should inform someone about the threat.
But Himiko turns and runs, and Yui doesn’t chase after her.
And when Aizawa comes to their rescue, she remains silent as she always does.
Toga Himiko dies in the Final War.
At least, that’s the official statement given by Uravity.
In the aftermath, Yui finds herself face-to-face with the only League of Villains member who is not either in captivity or dead. Himiko grins, teeth glinting in the glow of the streetlight she stands beneath. “Didn’t I say I’d see you again?” And then, she signs Yui’s name. Her hands are more sure this time. It’s like she’s been practicing.
Maybe she has?
Yui nods slowly. She has no specific sign for Himiko’s name, so she spells it out instead. It’s the best she can offer in return.
Himiko skips closer, stepping out of the light. She catches Yui’s hands in hers, skin warm to the touch. Her fingernails dig into Yui’s skin, enough to sting but not break the skin. “You have to teach me!” She exclaims. “I want to know what you’re saying.”
Yui steps back. She starts to shake her head, but stops when she sees the way Himiko’s face falls. It doesn’t make sense, why Himiko would want to learn to communicate with her. Yui’s family and classmates only know as much as they do out of necessity. There is no reason for a villain to be interested in speaking with a hero. There is no reason for Himiko to take any interest in Yui at all.
And yet—
Here she is, clinging to Yui’s hands as if her life depends on it, pleading to understand everything she might want to say. She doesn’t treat it like a burden; she treats it like an adventure.
Yui slips her hands from Himiko’s grip. She nods once. Okay, I’ll teach you.
They meet in secret, because Himiko can’t show her own face in public and Yui refuses to encourage stealing blood from innocent civilians. She might be willing to give up some of hers, if that would make a difference, but an exact duplicate of her own body would raise more suspicion than Himiko showing up as herself in normal street clothes and her hair down.
Yui brings her old textbooks, and she lets Himiko keep them because she doesn’t have much use for them any more. Her mother has learned all she’s willing, and she and her classmates have easy access to online resources through UA. The books will get much more use in Himiko’s possession.
They’re tucked away in the corner of a dark and dingy bar they’re both too young to be at. Himiko flips through the pages of one book, illuminated by a flickering yellow light, with a growing smile on her face. “This is so cool,” she mumbles. “I’ve never thought about how many ways there are to say something.”
What do you mean? Yui writes down, then slides the paper over to Himiko so she can read it.
“Well, like, you know there are lots of different ways to show you love someone, right?”
Yui nods, hesitant.
“To me, love is shown through becoming someone else. I like using my quirk soooo much, because drinking someone’s blood and getting to be them is the closest you can ever be to another person! But Ochako-chan says not everyone can understand that language of love. I never really understood why everyone hated me and my quirk until then. It’s still stupid, ‘cause I’d never hate someone if they started speaking English to me and I didn’t know what they were saying, but…it makes a little more sense, I guess. So there are lots of language when it comes to love, and most of them don’t include saying it out loud. But I never really realized you could say anything without speaking!”
Yui blinks. That’s an interesting way to put Himiko’s beliefs into perspective. She wonders if, perhaps, it could be true for other villains as well—if they’re simply acting in a language that heroes do not and cannot understand.
But there is no official translation guide for communication between hero and villain. They speak the same tongue; the difference is in thoughts and actions.
Perhaps it isn’t so different between spoken Japanese and signed Japanese after all. The root language is the same—when the characters are written down, there is no differentiation between the two—but conversation is impossible between one person signing and one person speaking, unless they are both fluent in both languages.
And Yui knows what it’s like to be misunderstood for the way you communicate, too. She’s seen the wariness in others’ eyes when they don’t know what she’s signing; heard the whispers about gang signs and how she must be dumb just because she doesn’t speak aloud. She knows people jump to the worst conclusions just because they cannot translate, assuming she’s insulting them and taking advantage of their perceived obliviousness to talk bad to their face.
She lifts her hand to sign—something, she’s not even sure what—but stops when she remembers Himiko won’t know what she’s saying either. Her hands hang in the air, unmoving and heavy.
Himiko grabs hold of one, her grip loose enough so Yui could slip away if she wanted.
Instead, she links their fingers together, squeezing Himiko’s hand softly. It doesn’t mean anything in any language, but Himiko’s smile softens and Yui feels her own lips twitch upwards at the sight, so… Maybe there’s no real translation for it, but Yui knows it represents something good. And as long as she and Himiko understand, no one else needs to know the meaning behind it at all.
They continue meeting up in the dark, in places where they won’t be recognized, and Yui teaches Himiko sign language. She studies on her own, too, showing up to each lesson knowing more than she did the last time Yui saw her.
“I don’t have much else to do,” she explains, feet swinging back and forth. They’re seated on a park bench tonight, away from the streetlights and keeping their heads down so as to avoid drawing attention. “I really do like learning this, though! It helps me feel less lonely. Whenever I look through your books, it’s kind of like you’re there with me.”
Yui furrows her eyebrows. Really?
“I like to picture your hands doing the signs instead of the drawings,” Himiko continues. “Yours are much prettier.”
The words fall from her lips like syrup, sticky and heavy and messy. Yui looks down at her hands, cheeks warming, trying and failing to see what Himiko does. Her hands just look normal to her.
But maybe it’s like Himiko’s voice in her ears. She’s sure Himiko thinks nothing of the way she speaks, but to Yui, it’s one of the most beautiful sounds in the world.
“Thank you,” she signs. “I think?”
Himiko nods excitedly. “It’s a good thing! The way you sign is kind of like your voice, you know? I think Ochako-chan has a lovely voice. I like to hear it from my own throat, whenever I transform into her. But you don’t speak, so even if I turned into you and used your voice, it wouldn’t feel like it was really yours. No, I’d have to sign in order to talk like you do.”
Before Yui can think twice, her hands are forming the question, “If you used your quirk to turn into me, do you really think you could talk?”
Himiko frowns. “I guess I don’t really know. I’ve never tried something like that before…”
Yui almost offers her blood right then and there. She’s curious, to know if the issue is with her or with her body. If it truly is a mental block, Himiko might have no trouble speaking while in her body at all. But if it’s something that runs deeper, that could be proven by Himiko’s failure to talk aloud. If Himiko weren’t a villain, could she have helped others in the medical field like this? Transforming into patients with disorders that can’t be properly diagnosed in order to determine where the root of the problem is?
“I’d like to try your blood someday,” Himiko admits. “But I’ll wait until you’re ready. That’s what Ochako-chan says I should do, anyway, even if it’s suuuuper hard sometimes.”
Her voice doesn’t say it, but Yui hears the declaration of love all the same.
Unsure how else to go about it and wanting to avoid questions that will arise if she tries the campus infirmary or any doctor’s office, Yui seeks out Uraraka from Class A.
She finds her eating lunch outside with her friends and asks, “Can we talk?”
“Um,” Uraraka says. She points at herself. “Me?”
Yui nods.
“Sure…?” She looks to Midoriya, who shrugs. Since none of her friends apparently have any objections, she sets her food aside and stands. “Um I’m not, like, very fluent in—”
“It’s fine,” Yui assures her. “I’ll write.”
“Oh, okay!” Uraraka nods.
She follows Yui away to somewhere more private, and Yui pulls a pad of sticky notes and a pencil from her pocket. Anyone else might talk around the issue, to ease their conversation partner into it, but Yui doesn’t have the privilege of extra words. So she writes: “Have you been giving Toga Himiko your blood?” and passes the note to Uraraka.
Uraraka pales.
On the next sticky note, Yui writes, “I want to borrow your supplies.”
Uraraka reads the second note, and her expression shifts to one of understanding. “Oh. You’re…” She signs Yui’s name.
“How do you know that?”
“It’s the only thing Himiko-chan ever calls you.”
Uraraka helps Yui safely extract a vial of blood, which she brings along the next time she meets up with Himiko. She presses it into her palm and tells her, “This is for you.”
Himiko’s eyes grow wide. “Is this—?”
“My blood. To use however you like.”
Himiko throws herself at Yui, dragging her into a hug. “You’re so, so, wonderful!” she exclaims. “Can I try a little now?” She pulls back, though her hands remain on Yui’s shoulders. “So you can see too?”
Yui nods.
“Yes!” Himiko cheers. She grabs Yui by the wrist, dragging her into a nearby alley. And maybe Yui should be scared, entirely at a villain’s mercy like this, but she can’t find it in herself to feel anything other than curiosity and excitement, and a little bit of love, too. Himiko’s eyes gleam with anticipation, and her touch is warm against Yui’s skin, and—
Himiko was the first person who wanted to become fluent in Yui’s language. It’s only fair Yui would do the same for her in return.
Himiko strips out of her clothes, then opens the vial and swallows only a drop of blood. Yui watches, transfixed, as her body contorts, shifting to match Yui’s. Her own clothes form over Himiko as well, and a moment later, Yui is standing across from someone even she could mistake for herself. The only thing that gives away Himiko’s true identity is the smile stretched just a bit too wide across her face.
“You look…” Yui’s hands still, unsure how to complete the sentence. It’s uncanny, in a way, but also impossibly intimate.
Himiko’s grin widens as her eyes fall shut and she tilts her head. She opens her mouth—
—and nothing comes out.
Her eyes blink open, and she brushes a hand against her throat. She appears caught off guard, but not especially upset.
“Talking isn’t easy when I’m you,” she signs. “It feels like…it would hurt.”
“It does,” Yui agrees, hands forming the words instinctively more than anything. “No one has really understood before. It’s hard to explain to someone who has never experienced it, and even harder when your communication is limited.”
Himiko nods. “It’s not…too bad, though. Since I’m with you.”
She doesn’t elaborate further, but Yui knows what she means. When she’s with Himiko, she finds herself forgetting that her lack of speech is something others look down on her for. It becomes a simple fact of life, no more exciting than the color of her hair or eyes.
When she’s with Himiko, she never doubts that she has a voice regardless of whether or not she’s speaking aloud.
“Himiko,” she says, fingers deftly spelling out the characters. She follows it by forming a fist with her left hand, and circling her open left hand on top of it, palm down: “I love you.”
Himiko beams. Yui’s face melts off of her, leaving her in her own body and with her own voice intact. But she doesn’t open her mouth.
She signs, “I love you,” back in Yui’s language.