#morihiro

Cuteness Girl Member - Morihiro by ~murumokirby360

Here's another #HTF #OC joined with her custom Tieren.😊 

#HTFonCutenessMecha

Some people look at the future and see nothing but gray, a bleak prairie stretching on endless, the landscape flat and empty for miles. It fills them with the sort of dread you get driving through the desert, where the road never seems to end, and you never get any closer to the horizon. You start to wonder what the point is in even driving anymore - you can’t see the miles behind you, all of the ground you’ve covered, only what’s ahead. Hiro isn’t like that. He didn’t see a miserable, dreary future. He never saw any future. He never looked.

He’d always been a person laser-focused on the past. It was his strong suit. Out of the two of them, he and Edgar, he was the researcher, the one who gathered information and studied what had come before them. It was Edgar who took that and saw what could come next. Hiro edited the words that Edgar had already said. It was always Edgar who actually kept speaking.

Having never looked, Hiro doesn’t know what his life would have looked like before coming here, what his ideal was. He might have just gone on like he was, forever, his head down and his world silent and lonely. He might have grown old in that hospital, never having left, even though Edgar had discharged himself and made a life a long time ago. Hiro, not Edgar, was the one who was lost that day all those years ago. Edgar was the one in the wheelchair, but Hiro was the one who truly became paralyzed.

But lately, something’s started to turn his head.

He’s started to think he doesn’t want to go home.

For years, he’s trapped himself on a farm in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by reminders of his worst mistakes. Even if people  had forgiven him, or never blamed him, for what had happened, they all knew. No part of his world was unmarred by his past; there was never any chance for a clean slate. Maybe Hiro’s ideal future isn’t to return, untouched, to his life before. Maybe it’s a fresh start. A new life, in a new-old country, with new-old friends. An apartment without a dozen other people in it, his own space to breathe, to unwind, but only a door away from someone whose opinion of him doesn’t start and end with the worst of him. Someone to whom his past is his past, not theirs. A city that doesn’t know him from Adam, full of strangers he doesn’t need to explain himself to. A morning waking up to a person with gold-green eyes, who’s already heard his explanations, who doesn’t need them either. A life separate from Edgar, but never separated, the two of them soulmates who just need to give each other space to breathe.

If Hiro had ever looked at his future before, maybe it would have been bleak. Maybe he would have lost all hope, or trudged on zombie-like to an uncertain later. The gift Edith and Takumi gave him was a future he could never have considered before, an ideal world where he and his mistakes coexist and everything is okay. Where other people’s hands take hold of the heavy burdens he carries until they’re weightless.

It’s a simple life. But he’s a simple man.

Hiro’s greatest wish, at the end of all of this, is for Edith and Takumi to have the simple, peaceful life they've shown him is possible now.

He can’t bring himself to be angry at her like others might be. All he can feel is sad. To be consumed by the things that hurt you, by the people that hurt you, to allow your whole life to revolve around how much it hurts…he knows what that feels like. So here’s what Hiro’s ideal reality looks like, as straightforward and grounded as he is:

There’s a ray of sunlight on the balcony of an apartment, mismatched plant stands and chairs basking in it. There’s a dog asleep just inside the door, right in the last snatched pocket of it before the shadows of a morning not yet fully begun start. There’s coffee brewing in an old 12-cup Mr. Coffee, nothing fancy, a Keurig too much of an investment. There’s fruit half-cut for breakfast as someone steps away for a moment, checking the fridge as their oversized Shadow the Hedgehog shirt skims their knees. There’s a shower running, fog on the bathroom mirror, as someone takes altogether too long on their hair routine. There’s a camera hanging where keys belong, keys themselves tossed on the counter, and not a speck of dirt on the floor.

There’s life inside of the apartment, and back on the balcony, in that ray of sunshine, there’s life outside, too. A beautiful woman tends to the garden, helping ailing flowers to bloom instead of trimming off roses that cut her fingers.

She is a guest. Simply passing by, on her way to wherever she wants to go. But she is welcome, always, and the flowers will bloom long after her touch has left them. Better for having known her, and thriving with their second chance.

Golden light breaks through the twilight, casting prisms where it refracts and breaks. It’s the sort of life you see every day on the street, and it’s beautiful.

Hiro has always been a man of few words, even fewer when he’s scared. And he does get scared; you wouldn’t think to know it, with him being all six foot and jacked and hissing mad at anybody who wrinkles their eye wrong at him, but the fact of the matter is, Hiro walks through his life terrified. He’s scared of someone hating him before ever knowing him, but probably he’s more scared of someone hating him after. When you spend all your time afraid of other people for one reason or another, afraid of kindness more than cruelty, you don’t have a lot of focus left to hold a conversation.

He has enough to follow one, though. So, quiet, thoughtful, he rouses himself from the shadows once more. 

“Everybody’s wish is fuckin’ selfish,”

He says, deadpan as ever.

“It’s all just shit we want. Don’t matter if it benefits somebody else, it’s still us that wants it. You all know which wish is mine, and I don’t gotta tell you that it’s conceited as hell. It’s not for Edgar. It’s for me. Even if the benefit is for him. There’s no fuckin’ moralizing to be done, here. ‘S all about what happens next. If you do a good thing for a selfish reason- it’s still fuckin’ good, isn’t it?”

He shrugs, head turning to study Edith, a dear friend. One he’d chased down, time and time again, even as he told himself he didn’t care.

“It’s better to move on than get stuck,”

He says,

“But a hell of a lot harder. I dunno. But, hey. Just so you know, ‘cause of you an’ everybody else, I don’t think I’m better off alone anymore. Which is a real pain in the ass. But you told me people can change from who they were in the past, if they want to. And you did, so I feel like you’re the expert there. So, is it selfish to want you on my side? ‘Cause I feel like you kinda always have been.”

He shrugs, looking around at everyone.

There are many things a person can regret in their life. A missed connection, a failure to perform as expected, an unkind word aimed at someone who didn’t really deserve it, at all. There are far larger things, too; murder, assault, robbery, and even simple accidents. It’s human nature to feel remorse. Hiro has to believe that. What he’d held onto for so long was the belief that his past had made him into a monster, red-eyed and violent, a ticking time bomb. What he failed to realize, until confronted with it here, was that the regret he felt was proof that he wasn’t.

It’s too bad we hadn’t met sooner.

There are a lot of things a person can regret in their life, yes.

...But meeting now's not so bad.

But there are things that you can be grateful for, through the darkness, anyway.

Regret doesn’t change anything, and it can keep you from a change, if you aren’t careful. Feeling bad is one thing. Doing something is another. Hiro thinks he’s been trapped in regretting for his whole life, and wasted twenty years doing very little at all. That has to change sometime. It might as well change today.

“I’m glad you asked not to get dicked over by a motive,”

he says suddenly, long after anyone’s attention had lingered on him. It isn’t related to anything, right now, but it seems to be what’s come to his mind.

“You saved yourself, Takumi. That’s one person more than you would’ve saved if you suffered with us.”

…Maybe that doesn’t have much to do with the current conversation at all, actually. From the way Hiro’s eyes are locked on Takumi, steady and unwavering and, surprisingly, for once, kind, this message seems intended solely for them. This happy-go-lucky sweetheart, who faced the same shit he did, and came out nice. Maybe Hiro was just meant to be a shithead, all along. Or maybe he just needed a friend like this to realize he didn’t have to be.

“You didn’t have the power to override anything before. You did this time, an’ you made damn sure you didn’t waste it. Thank you, dude. Seriously, I don’t give a fuck why or how, or if you lied or whatever. Damn straight you’re leaving, ‘cause I’m not about to pay rent for an apartment by my fucking self, dude.”

He rolls his neck, cracks his knuckles one by one, and stands at attention.

“Whoever put us in this fuckin’ situation in the first place, too…”

He hesitates, battling back his instinctive flare of anger.

Moments pass, evidence is argued, accusations fly. It’s been months of waiting, months of desperation, of keeping one’s head down and slogging along, boots sticking with loud thocks in the quicksand-mud of their situation, unable to get anywhere fast but sinking if you try to stay still. The world will always move on without you. It doesn’t care if you’re sad, or angry, or if the worst thing in your life came crashing down on your head one day. It keeps spinning, and eventually, you have to keep spinning with it. That’s what Hiro’s learned lately, anyways.

So maybe that’s why, on the conversational eve of a traitor being unmasked, he looks calmer than most. Really, he’s entirely unruffled. Agivor would keep their friend safe, it was believed, and maybe that’s true - but Hiro isn’t worried either way, because he knows he will. If someone else is willing to risk all of this, he’s not about to let them go down for it. It doesn’t matter if it was selfish or not. With how much good came from it, what do intentions matter?

(But he has a feeling that intentions matter quite a lot, actually.)

“I dunno why you’re all lookin’ at him,”

he says bluntly, arms crossed and posture relaxed. The him in question, next to him, gets a bump of their shoulders together of support.

“I think it’s Noda. Fuckin’ guy’s been sayin’ he’s gonna bring people back from the dead the whole time. Basically a confession. Eydis, get him.”

Far from being a real accusation, he sounds amused. Relaxed, despite their situation. What it doesn’t sound like is denial - a desperate ploy to throw attention on anyone else, to save one person.

“Takkun’s got that hero streak, too. Shit, it sounds like an Ashleigh thing to do, to get all annoyed and shit about Elisha an’ still put him back in the microwave to reheat his soul with the rest of ‘em. Why do you wanna know so bad, huh, Eydis? They already got shit done. I’m not gonna sit here wastin’ time bein’ your head detective. I wanna know who your friend is, if we’re askin’. ‘Cause I know you don’t have much goin’ on after this, but me? I’ve got a flight to catch. So get over it.”

Hiro is stubborn, unhelpful, and a detriment to this trial. But he’s loyal. An immutable trait, where so much about him has changed.

“Can we cut the shit, please?”

In his usual crass way, politeness tacked on the end like a postscript, Hiro decides he might as well play along with a game if he’s forced to take part in it. It’s a mess; isn’t that his specialty, his greatest weakness? Mess causes him anxiety. It crowds his brain, duplicating itself into every cerebral cell like a virus, until nothing remains of his clarity. It’s difficult for him to accept things being out of place, because he’s spent his entire life out of place -- it feels soothing to slot puzzle pieces in where they go, and panic gnaws at his throat whenever someone flips the table.

“Didn’t we just give you a profile? Somebody who wants to be a fuckin’ hero, real bad. Somebody who, like, kinda is one. Who gives a fuck if they were lying to you? Good for them. We could all learn a valuable lesson in kicking sand in your dumbass face.”

Taking a breath, he tries to curb his mounting stress, the exterior of it coming through as annoyance. It’s easy to get frustrated when you can’t think straight. For Hiro, frustration is an emotion he wears like the dermal layer.

“How did the people involved with these guys even have a wish like that before knowing what was goin’ on, anyway? Like, how do you have a wish to save somebody, without knowin’ what you’re saving ‘em from? Whatever. Dude, I don’t even know if we should be tellin’ you anything about this person, you fuckin’ lunatic. You’re probably just gonna put them in another Saw trap or something. Literally why should we sniff out your traitor for you? They’re on our side. Somebody who’s solid enough to stick to their guns when this kinda power and bullshit is swirlin’ around…yeah, they’re fine in my book.”

Hiro’s always been a man who lived in the past. Hated it, sure. But he wallowed in it, replaying the worst day of his life on loop. Punishing himself year after year, sacrificing the life he still had as penance for the one he permanently altered. It was a selfish life. Ever since getting here, meeting all of these people, and reluctantly letting them in, he’s found that he’s unable to do the thing he’s always been best at:

Hating himself.

He can’t live in the past, because there’s a future waiting for him. There’s a present staring him in the face, cooking him breakfast, texting him, calling him affectionately and walking alongside him. There’s a handful of people who dismiss every loathing thing he’s ever said, and he’s better off for it.

“You want a profile of your little thorn, loser?”

The future is bright. But the present is warm, and all around him.

"At least he didn't die alone?"

Hiro says under his breath in disbelief, staring at Takumi like they've grown a second head.

Yeah, dude. Because he was fucking. Murdered.

That, at least, doesn't make it past his lips.

Nothing else does, in fact. Hiiro's outburst silences him, permanently, and he only glances at the other man in a moment of brief shock and hurt before his stony gaze falls resolutely to the ground, not rising even when he stands up to go and stand as far away from this mess as he can get. Set apart from the group, it's easy to forget he's there -

So honestly, you might not even see it when he finally does look up again, briefly, intense anger flashing across his face as he looks over at Noda, at his smile, teeth gritting as he forces his eyes down once more. Even as he keeps quiet, his lip twitches, face hot with suppressed fury.

He hasn't felt like this in a while. Blood boiling, nausea rolling his stomach up like a carpet with a dead body in it. Staring out at a crowd and feeling like a different species than all of them. He doesn't really like what he sees; doesn't like what this island has morphed them into.

Silent and broad, Hiro may well be a brick wall in this room, erected right in the middle of things to be as obtrusive as possible. Even now, right when things are their most tense, he interrupts with a loud, rude, annoyed noise, scowling at Amane as they go on about explaining.

“What, are we s’posed to feel bad for you?”

The threat there is implicit. If even Lacy and Lisa were executed, mercy isn’t coming for Amane from this group, either. Don’t sit there hoping for it.

“Doesn’t make any goddamn sense to me, yknow. Other day, Lye could’ve gutted me like a fuckin’ fish, I was completely helpless. He got my ass good. Wouldn’t have needed any fucking curse or magic, neither, he has a knife. He just wanted to mess with me, dude. All of a sudden, he wants t’kill people because…he was a ferret, or whatever? Bro, be so fucking for real. Lye was a real weirdo, but it doesn’t make any sense that this was self defense or whatever. You don’t even know what his curse was, and you could fly - you think he coulda got you with a fucked up bow? You think he would have?”

He’s gritting his teeth, crossing his arms tightly. Set apart from Hiiro, now, he’s digging his heels in.

“I’m not about to sit here an’ just let everybody accept, without question, that Lye’s some fuckin’ lunatic who woulda just mowed down anybody for no reason. He just likes talkin’ about that stuff, like, he’s goth. He wanted to go to prom, for fuck’s sake. We- I told him I’d throw him a dumbass party because he didn’t go to dumbass prom. I’m not sayin’ he was harmless. But somebody might be bankin’ on us just nodding our heads and goin’ yeah, I bet that fucking loon would kill people outta nowhere, sure. And I’m not okay with that.”

And with that last question from Amane, his fists clench tighter, his face spasming in anger, and only the immediate snatching of his sleeve from the person next to him keeps him from taking too many steps forward into real trouble.

“What a fucking hero you are. Killing the monster under our beds. Thanks, Amane.”