anonymous

“You can’t. You have to stay here and get better.” You want to scream, and Rika’s still on the phone. “I’ll come back. I’m not leaving you. I just have to go get her.”

Tomura’s grip doesn’t loosen. “You’ll bring her back here?”

“If the press is at your house, you definitely can’t bring her back there,” Spinner says.

“I can help,” Rika says. “I’ll bring her home with Kaori when the Nodas show up.”

“Thank you, Rika.” You feel the knot of dread in your chest loosen slightly, even as Tomura’s grip remains brittle and painfully tight. “I owe you one.”

“No, you don’t. I’d never leave Chihiro to those vultures.” You can hear the disgust in Rika’s voice. “You do owe me a story, though.”

“What kind of story?”

“What this is. How this happened,” Rika says. You grimace. “Is the guy talking in the background who I think he is?”

“If you think it’s Shigaraki Tomura — yeah.” You’re going to need to get used to saying that. You’ve kept the truth inside yourself for so long that speaking it feels strange. “You get why I didn’t say anything.”

“No kidding. I’d have glued my mouth shut if it were me,” Rika says. It’s hard to imagine Rika not talking about something, but maybe it’s different where her daughter’s concerned. “I’ll text when I’ve got her.”

“I’ll call her and explain,” you say. “Thank you.”

Rika scolds you not to thank her for something you’d do for her before she hangs up, and as soon as she’s off the phone, you get off of Tomura’s bed. You have to pull yourself free. “I’m coming back,” you say to Tomura. “I’m going to get her and we’ll be back.”

“When?”

His voice breaks on the question. “However long it takes me to get up to Hokkaido and back,” you say. “I’ll be here again soon. I promise.”

You gather up your things quickly, stopping to unfold the quilt you made for Tomura around his shoulders. He immediately wraps it tighter, his injured hand holding it together so hard that his knuckles go pale. Spinner is on the phone with someone, talking fast, and when you go for the door, he blocks your way. “Hang on,” he says, although you’re not sure if he’s talking to you or the person on the phone. He hangs up the call and faces you. “Hang on. One’s Justice is going to send someone up with you.”

“I don’t need help,” you say. “Last time I did this myself.”

“Last time you fucked off for nineteen years,” Spinner says. “You don’t have to do it by yourself. Let people help you.”

Your phone starts ringing, and you yank it out of your pocket, but it’s only Midoriya. “I’m going to come with you to get Chihiro. So is our main PR guy,” he says, talking over you when you argue. “I can update you on our legal strategies and someone else can drive. I know you probably haven’t slept in a while.”

He’s right. You haven’t. Not well enough to treat the drive back to Hokkaido like the marathon and sprint combined that it’s going to have to be. “How fast can you get here?”

“We’ll meet you there in — fifteen minutes,” Midoriya says. “We were already getting ready to go up there. It wasn’t until I called Spinner to warn him that I realized you were down here.”

“Okay. See you soon.” You hang up, then face Spinner. “Midoriya and their PR guy are going with me. Can you stay with Tomura?”

“I texted Kurogiri, too,” Spinner says. “We’ve got things under control here.”

He glances over your shoulder at something and his eyes widen. “Hey! Shigaraki! Don’t do that —”

You turn and find him trying to take out his own IVs. You almost trip over your own feet in your haste to get to his side. His hands are shaking when you seize them, and he lets you pull them away. “I need you to trust me,” you say. “I waited for you for nineteen years. I’d have waited the rest of my life if I had to. There’s no way I’m not coming back to you.”

“I want to come with you.” Tomura’s voice is rough. “Being stuck here —”

“The sooner you get better, the sooner you can leave,” you remind him. His mouth is trembling when you kiss him goodbye. “I love you. I’ll text when I can.”

“Call me when you’re with her,” Tomura says. You nod, blinking back tears. “I love you too. Tell her.”

“I will.” You kiss Tomura one more time, then straighten up. This time, when you head for the door, Spinner doesn’t stop you.

Midoriya’s waiting for you in the parking garage, alongside a skinny blond man who introduces himself as Yamada Hizashi, shakes your hand enthusiastically, and relieves you of your car keys. “I’m in charge of keeping the media off your back,” he tells you. “And of getting you back to Hokkaido in record time!”

“Don’t get pulled over,” Midoriya says as he buckles himself into your backseat. “We have to stay clean. We can’t give them anything they can use to discredit us.”

“You got it. This will be the smoothest ride you’ve ever been on!”

You glance at Midoriya in the mirror and see the skeptical look on his face. Based on the way Yamada floors it out of the parking garage, you kind of doubt it, too.

You call Chihiro, but she doesn’t pick up, and when you check her Snapchat, you see that she and Kaori and Satomi were on the ski lift an hour ago. Maybe you should just be grateful that she’s not skiing and texting at the same time. You’re in stop-and-go traffic out of Tokyo, just like you were on the way in, and Midoriya passes you some anti-nausea meds before popping a handful himself and leaning back in his seat. It’s not until you’re on the highway, approaching highway speed, that he speaks up again. “I can start with the criminal or civil cases. Which are you —”

You only heard one word in that sentence. “They’re charging Tomura again?”

“No! No, absolutely not,” Midoriya says hastily. “This is the case against his adoptive father — Shigaraki Zen. We’ve just been calling him Zen so we don’t mix him up with our Shigaraki. Do you want to hear about that one first?”

“Yes,” you decide. “What’s going on?”

“In addition to the murders, he’s being charged with child abuse, since he drugged Shigaraki to force participation in the murders,” Midoriya says. “That’s not the only instance, unfortunately. More will probably come out in the trial, but I’ll let Shigaraki tell you about that. In addition to the murder and abuse charges, he’s also being charged with a slew of white-collar crimes, mainly related to theft.”

“Theft,” you repeat. “He was stealing from Tomura?”

“At first,” Midoriya says. “For the last nineteen years, he’s been stealing from you.”

“What?”

“Shortly before his arrest, Shigaraki changed the beneficiaries on his accounts,” Midoriya says. “Previously the beneficiary was his adoptive father, but after the change, you were the only person listed. When he was convicted, that money should have gone to you. Zen managed to keep control of the accounts instead. In fact, um —”

Midoriya breaks off, looking fifty kinds of uncomfortable. “What?” you ask. “Just tell me.”

“We think the motive might have been financial. All of it,” Midoriya says. “The Shimura murders. Shigaraki getting framed for them. All of it meant that the money stayed within Zen’s hands.”

Tomura’s adoptive father murdered six people. He stole nineteen years of Tomura’s life — and stole Tomura from you and Chihiro and all his friends, too. Shirakumo’s told you some things, but you know you’ve barely scratched the surface of what happened to Tomura in prison. Tomura’s adoptive father did so many horrible things. “For money,” you repeat. “That’s all?”

You feel like an idiot the instant you say it. “To be fair, we’re talking about a ridiculous amount of money,” Yamada says. “Shigaraki’s real dad was a real whiz kid when it came to business, and his fake dad is creepy good at investment banking. It was a lot of money when Shigaraki inherited it, and it was a fuckton of money by the time he was convicted. And now —”

“It’s the kind of money people do awful things for,” Midoriya says miserably. “He killed the Shimuras to ensure that Shigaraki inherited the money. He planned in advance to frame Shigaraki for the murders if Shigaraki ever tried to take control of the accounts. And, um — it’s probably a good thing that you decided to lay low after the trial. As Shigaraki’s direct descendant, Chihiro would have been in line to inherit the money, and with what Zen was already willing to do —”

You almost wish he’d come knocking. You’d have killed him on sight. “He might have come after us. Now what?”

“You’re likely to be called as a witness,” Midoriya says. “Shigaraki’s friends will be called as well. You’ll be asked about anything Shigaraki ever said to you about money, as well as about any interactions you had with Zen.”

“His defense attorney’s good, but we’re better,” Yamada says. “It’ll all be fine. Tell her about the civil suits.”

“Right. The civil suits.” The car lurches slightly, and Midoriya grimaces. “The government’s being sued for violating the human rights of death-row prisoners. We’re suing them separately on Shigaraki’s behalf for wrongful imprisonment, and for the damages component, we’re going to need you. It’ll help if you’re able to articulate how you were affected by Shigaraki’s imprisonment. Did you keep a journal? Or see a therapist?”

You didn’t keep a journal, because Chihiro might find it and read it. You saw a therapist while you were pregnant with her, but stopped going when you realized that all the therapist was going to say was to do something you were never going to do. She never told you to forget Tomura or to move on with your life — she just kept talking about growth. Change. Closure. You were watching yourself grow, your belly getting bigger by the week. You were about to change your whole life with your child’s birth. And closure? No way. You’d get that when you died and maybe saw Tomura again.

“I saw a therapist for a little while. Years ago,” you say. “The other stuff — I never talked about it. To anyone. Not even Chihiro.”

“Because you were embarrassed?”

“Embarrassed?” You laugh hollowly. “No. I could barely stand to think about him. I missed him that much. And I didn’t want her to walk around with the same hole in her heart that I had to live with.”

That was part of it. The other part — “And I remember what the press did to me. What people did, too. I wasn’t going to let them do the same thing to her over something she couldn’t control.”

“So you were protecting her,” Yamada says. “Makes sense. Sounds like something a good mom would do.”

“Don’t say that around her. I lied to her for eighteen years, and she’s right to be angry.” Your head hurts. You resist the urge to bury your face in your hands. “I had my reasons. I’ll get on the witness stand and explain them. And I’ll see if that therapist still has my records. She might not. It’s been a while.”

Midoriya nods. His phone starts ringing, and he whips it out of his pocket. A moment later, yours rings, too. Chihiro’s calling. “Sorry,” she says as soon as you answer. “I told Kaori what — Dad — said, and then she wanted to go back out to the ski lifts, so we did —”

“It’s okay,” you say. “How was it? Did you guys have fun?”

“It was awesome. Can we switch to FaceTime now? Is he still awake?”

“Did you listen to my message?” you ask. It sounds like she didn’t, and you decide not to drag it out. “I’m not at the hospital right now. I’m driving up to come get you, because the press knows who you are and where our house is. When you get back to town, you’re going to go home with Kaori and her mom. I already talked to her mom and set it up. When I get there, we’re coming back down to Tokyo.”

Chihiro’s silent for a few seconds. “How did they find out?”

“I don’t know.” You have a theory, though: The nurse who was trying to convince Tomura to let her help him shower. You’re pretty sure either you or Tomura mentioned having a kid in front of her. “I don’t know, but whoever it was, they’re not on our side. There’s more security at the hospital in Tokyo. And we’ll be with your dad. You can meet his friends, too.”

“We can’t go home?” Chihiro’s voice pitches up slightly. “Why not?”

“They’ll be all over it. They might not even let us in. I had to change jobs and apartments during the last trial just to stay away from them,” you say. You can feel your heart starting to race, your stomach dropping the way it used to when you caught someone looking a little too long. “It’s not going to be forever. I promise. Just until we figure out a way to keep them off us.”

“It won’t be hard,” Yamada says loudly from next to you. “We’ve got a plethora of legal options to keep them as far away from you as possible! But we need a second or two to implement them, so for now, it’s best that they don’t see you.”

“What if I want them to see me?” Chihiro asks. There’s a harsh note in her voice. “What if I want them to stick a camera in my face so I can tell them to go to hell?”

“We really need you to not do that,” Midoriya says, leaning in over your shoulder. “We’re all part of Shigaraki’s — your dad’s — case against the state. All of us have to stay clean, or they’ll use it against him.”

“See,” Yamada says, leaning in, “your dad might be totally innocent, but a lot of the people we work with aren’t. They did the shit they went to prison for, but that doesn’t mean they deserve to be treated inhumanely. As you might imagine, that’s not a popular opinion.”

“No shit,” Chihiro says. You’re too drained to tell her not to swear. “The people who don’t want things to change are looking for reasons to stop caring. And me going off on a reporter —”

“It’s not illegal, but it looks bad,” Midoriya says. “Your dad’s safe. He’s not going back to prison. But this case against the state is how we pay them back for what they’ve done to him. You and your mom are going to get your chance to talk about what’s happened to you, but it’ll be on your terms. Not because some reporter stuck a camera in your face while you were trying to get into your house.”

Chihiro’s quiet. You can tell she’s thinking about it. “I want to know what the government did to my dad,” she says. Your heart sinks. “I saw him on FaceTime. He looks really sick. What happened to him?”

“I’ll explain,” you say. “Not over the phone. On the drive back down.”

“You think we’re driving? No way. We’ve got flights,” Yamada says. “Still plenty of time to explain.”

“Okay,” Chihiro says. “Mom —”

“Yes?”

“You’re coming up here right now?” Chihiro asks. “Drive fast.”

“As fast as we can without getting pulled over,” you say. “I love you.”

“Love you too.”

Tomura calls you when you’re a few hours out from home, or at least you think it’s Tomura — the call’s coming from his number, but it’s not his voice on the phone. It’s Spinner’s. “Don’t freak out,” he starts, “but —”

“Did something happen to Tomura?” you demand. “Tell me what happened. Now!”

“I’m trying! Stop freaking out. It’s not that bad — just a little heart thing —”

There’s no such thing as a little heart thing. You’ve worked in a doctor’s office for a decade and a half. A heart thing is an emergency. “Tell me what happened right now or I’m going to come back there and —”

“I told you to let me do it,” Shirakumo says in the background. There’s some rustling, and when he speaks up, you can tell he’s got the phone. “Due to malnutrition, Tomura has experienced some irregular heart rhythms. This one needed to be shocked in order to revert, which it did. He’s resting now.”

“Can I talk to him?”

“I will have him call you when he wakes up,” Shirakumo says. “He wanted to call you before they sedated him for the procedure, but the doctors insisted.”

Spinner was downplaying. You trust Shirakumo a little more, but he’s underplaying it, too. “How many times have they shocked him?”

“This is the third time. All three arrhythmias required only a single shock,” Shirakumo says. His voice softens. “The doctors have full faith that Tomura will recover. But when you return it’s important that you help him stick to his routine. Too much excitement or exertion will be detrimental.”

“Are you saying I made him sick?”

“He skipped a meal and ate less at the two he did consume. It’s very important that he eats,” Shirakumo says. “We’re exploring additional strategies to make eating more appealing to him. You can help with that.”

“We both will. Me and Chihiro,” you say. “Please have Tomura call me when he wakes up.”

“He will,” Shirakumo says. More rustling. “Spinner wants to talk to you.”

You’re not sure you want to talk to Spinner, but you stay on the line when Shirakumo hands it back. “Look,” Spinner says, “he’s okay. Really. This one was only borderline shockable, but they decided better safe than sorry. The other ones were worse. And he looked more alive seeing you than me or Shirakumo or anybody else has seen him since he got out.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying grab your kid and get back here,” Spinner says. “Shigaraki needs his family. His whole family.”

“I’m trying,” you say. Once you’re off the phone, it’s an effort not to burst into tears.

Tomura’s adoptive dad ruined his life for money. Tomura spent nineteen years in prison being neglected and abused and tortured, separated from his friends and from you, never meeting his daughter or even knowing she was there. Now he’s in the hospital, missing two fingers and so sick from malnutrition that he can’t maintain a regular heartbeat. And you can’t even be there with him, because you have to rescue your daughter from the fucking press corps. You fight back tears as kilometer after kilometer grinds past, and the longer you spend fighting, the more your feelings begin to shift. By the time you see the first signpost for your town, you’re angry.

You hold onto it for a few minutes, making sure it’s real. “I want to say something to them. The press.”

“Uh —” Yamada and Midoriya trade a glance in the rearview mirror. “Why?”

“Someone needs to distract them while Chihiro packs a few more things. She can sneak around back of the house if they’re focused on me,” you say. “And I’m sick of just running away from them. I’ll tell you what I want to say and you can workshop it. But I’m going to say something. Okay?”

Midoriya and Yamada trade another glance. “Okay,” Yamada says. “What are you thinking?”

By the time you get to Rika’s house, you’ve got a rough idea of the points you want to hit, but when you see Chihiro coming down the front steps, every other thought exits your head. You barely manage to unbuckle before you’re out the door, and she drops her bags in the snow and reaches for you. It reminds you of when she was a little kid, always wanting to be carried. How you never wanted to put her down. You catch her and pull her into your arms, and she hangs on tight. “I’ve got you,” you say, rocking her slightly. “I’ve got you. Everything’s going to be okay.”

“It won’t. They’re ruining everything!” Chihiro’s tears are soaking into your shirt already. “I’ve watched the shows. I know what they do to the families. Why can’t they just leave us alone?”

“Because they suck,” Yamada says from the car. “No other reason.”

“They’re greedy and selfish, and idiots who like seeing other people suffer will buy their magazines,” Rika says from the doorway. Kaori’s come out, and she’s patting Chihiro’s back while Chihiro cries. “They’ll find another target soon. You just gotta lay low.”

“I’ll send you all the school stuff. And we’ll FaceTime every day until you get back,” Kaori promises Chihiro. “I can’t wait to meet your dad.”

“Me either,” Chihiro mumbles. She detaches from you enough to reach for Kaori, and you find yourself hugging Kaori, too. “Don’t tell anybody where I went. Just say I’m sick or something.”

“I won’t,” Kaori promises. You meet Rika’s eyes over your daughters’ heads and see her shaking hers. If the press are at the school, everyone already knows.

You thank Rika and Kaori at least five times while you’re loading Chihiro’s one bag into the car, and then you’re off, headed for the edge of town and your house. You swap seats with Midoriya so you and Chihiro can strategize. “What do you need from the house? I’m not sure how long we’re staying, so —”

“More clothes. My laptop and my school backpack,” Chihiro says. She wipes her eyes. “If the press are at the house —”

“You’ll go in through the back. I’m going to stay up front and talk to them,” you say. Chihiro’s eyes widen. “I know I said you couldn’t, but — you will. I promise. Just not today.”

“Your mom has experience with it,” Midoriya says. “That helps when it comes to them.”

“Do you want to see what I’m going to say?” You hold out your phone, complete with the note you’ve been editing in response to Yamada’s feedback. Chihiro wipes her eyes and scans it. “What do you think?”

“It’s — good,” Chihiro says. “I think you should be meaner.”

“I wanted to. Yamada made me cut it.”

“Just remember. Every time we do something, we gotta think about how it’ll affect Shigaraki’s case,” Yamada says. He makes the last turn onto your street. “I see press vans. Ready for this?”

He glances at you in the rearview mirror. You nod.

Chihiro sneaks through the woods to the back of the house, along with Midoriya in case any of the press have thought to cover the back door, too. Her job is to pack her stuff and grab a few things for you; then she’ll signal you when she’s done and Yamada will separate you from the press and all of you will leave. As you drive closer to the house, none of the reporters or cameraman turn towards the sound of your car. They’re all focused on the house. You reach into the front seat, over Yamada’s shoulder, and tap the horn.

That gets their attention. They turn as a group, and you get out of the car. “Hi,” you say, and you force a slight smile. “It’s been a while, huh?”

It’s been twenty years, but you recognize some of the reporters. Those are the ones who pause, guilt etched into their faces. The younger ones, who were probably still in middle school when it happened, launch at you with no hesitation. “Is it true that Shigaraki Tomura is your daughter’s father?”

“Yes,” you say.

“Why did you choose to hide her parentage? Don’t you think your neighbors should know their children are attending school with the daughter of a mass murderer?”

Yamada said they’d try to make you lose your temper. He wasn’t wrong, but you’re ready. You know better than to accept the premise of such a stupid question. “Tomura was exonerated,” you say. “You wouldn’t be here if he was still in prison.”

“Your neighbors have a right to —”

“My family has a right to privacy, which you’re currently violating,” you say. “One of you has a source who broke confidentiality, or you wouldn’t have even known my daughter existed. As far as investigative work, this generation of reporters is slipping. Your seniors harassed me out of one city, two apartments, and three jobs without doing anything more than following me around.”

Yamada knocks on the inside of the window, warning you to knock it off. Or maybe to stick to the script. “I have something to say,” you say. The cameras rotate, turning on you, and you feel a distant surge of despair. Twenty years ago, this entourage of strangers was a reminder of everything you’d lost. Not anymore. “You guys used to scare me. When I looked at you, I didn’t see journalists pursuing the truth at any price — I saw sharks in a feeding frenzy, ripping apart mine and Tomura’s lives until there was nothing left that mattered.”

You see Kizuki Chitose in the crowd, see her eyes cast down. “But you were wrong,” you say. “There was something left. Tomura was never who you said he was, and everyone knows it. He has a second chance, and because of that, you’ve got a second chance, too. You can do the right thing this time. Be the pursuers of truth you always said you were, instead of scavengers picking apart other people’s pain. You can choose to do better.”

Lights flicker on and off inside the house — Chihiro, signaling that she’s ready to go. “But whatever you choose,” you say to the reporters, “I’m not scared of you anymore. And if you come for my family again, you’ll wish you’d never heard my name.”

Yamada rolls down the window and projects his voice. “Hey, let’s move it! We’ve got places to be!”

“One question,” Kizuki shouts as you get back in the car. You keep the window rolled down. “If Shigaraki Tomura was watching this, what would you want to say to him? Are the two of you planning to resume your relationship?”

“Resume it?” you repeat. It almost makes you laugh, and you answer a split second the window shuts up, projecting your own voice to make sure you’re heard. “We never broke up.”

“Not bad,” Yamada says, as the two of you turn back the other way to pick up Chihiro and Midoriya. “I was worried you were going to cuss them out. Not that I’d blame you, but —”

“I’d never do anything to hurt Tomura’s case,” you say. “I meant it when I said they don’t scare me anymore.”

“I hope the government’s lawyers saw that. They’ll be pissing themselves in fear about having to cross-examine you.”

Yamada likes that idea, but you don’t. You want the civil trial to be completely uneventful. And even with all the reporters, who really cares this much about you and Tomura and Chihiro? Your statement was decent, but nobody’s going to see it. When Chihiro asks how it went, as she slides into the backseat and you swap places with Midoriya to sit next to her, you tell her that it could have been worse.

It must be a slow news day, because by the time you’ve reached the airport, every single person you know has texted you linking the video, asking if it’s true. Your old friends have texted, Dabi giving you a 3/10 — not enough profanity — while Twice tells you both that you did great and that you should have been a lot meaner. But the review of your performance that matters the most comes in while you’re waiting at the gate to board, Yamada and Midoriya making scary eye contact with anyone who stares too long. Your phone pings with a message from Tomura: you look good on tv.

You smile, and you’re still smiling when the next message comes in. better in person. when are you coming back?

we’re about to board. You realize Chihiro’s reading over your shoulder and beckon her closer. “Help me take a picture to send to your dad.”

“If you want a good picture, I have to hold the camera,” Chihiro says. “You always drop it when you try to get a good angle.”

Guilty as charged. You hand her the camera, smile while she snaps a selfie with the two of you, and send it off to Tomura. i’ll text when we land. i love you

Chihiro takes your phone without asking and makes an edit. ****we love you

“You don’t have to say that,” you remind her. “This is all really new. You don’t need to rush things.”

“It’s not. He’s my dad, so I love him.” Chihiro sends the message, then hands you back your phone. A moment later, she flops sideways, head on your shoulder. “Do you think he’s going to like me?”

Tomura response to your message with a heart. Or five of them. If you had to guess, you’d say he’s trying to figure out message reactions. Still, you get the point. “He already does.”

<- Chapter 5

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