You look like you're niisan, nowadays.

Even when your hair is tangly and short and black when his is long and puffy and white, both of you have red eyes. Both of you are scarred, even if his is on the lip, on the eye, the front of is neck when all of yours are on your arms and—well, there's the one trailing from your jaw to under your right eye. It looks like someone punched glass, like your skin is porcelain. Broken concrete on your face.

You hate it more than you have any right too.

(You don't know if you can do this. You tried building a reputation, to help with your, well, story. Intelligence quirk. It's wasn't like you didn't get good grades, though. You were top of your class, you had to be.

It was new kind of experience, people shoving you around instead of the other way around. There was a hazy period, where everything fell around you. Nothing worked. There was this disconnect. You can't put a name on it.)

The way you grin looks like something out of a horror movie. Your teeth are white and your smile is charming, your eyes are tilted as you got your uniform on. Some small part of you wonders if the red in your eyes is blood, but you just keep staring at your reflection.

"Hey, Gari Eien here, wha's your name?" You smile into the mirror, wider. "Hey, wha'ssup. Names Gari, nice to meet'cha.. no. Sounds too poor. Fix it up, c'mon, c'mon, who's Gari Eien?" You drop the grin, close in on yourself. Then you curl back out. You've been trained out of this shit. "Hello, my name's Gari. S'a pleasure." You mull it over in you brain. Fucking this mission up will end in something you can't quite name with how awful it leaves your mouth tasting. Sure, you want to die.

You don't want to die like that, though.

"Heyo, name's Gari." Mull it over, twist it around. You're supposed to be likable, but isolated enough that nobody catches on. "Name's Gari," you look in the mirror and smile. It's a sweet thing. "pleasure to meet'cha." You drawl.

There's something sugary enough to kill on your tongue.

_

You want to dream. You want everything to turn to sprite bottle caps and rosey frowns and stupid glasses and― you always thought if you looked like a girl you'd be like your sister. You can't imagine, really, what she looked like.

You think she might've had a chipped tooth. And hair she wore in pigtails, and eyes so green they hurt to look at, because she looked like the thing you were diseased from.

Not anymore, though. You think it might be awful, that kind of achy change.

Tipping the scale is harder than anyone might think. You're made up of fear so bad it makes your stomach turn inside out; made up of air thick enough to suffocate anyone who tries to walk in it. You feel too much, too little.

_

You're early. You always are.

There's something screaming in your head when you're late, which is weird because that wasn't a problem when you were you and not her. She's Eien, you're dead, waiting to die in a body made wrong for the thing stuffed inside. You're someone who's name you forgot. It was english. You wonder if you'll be back in that body when you die this time around.

You're always waiting to die. You're never living. Puppet-girl, the underground whispers into your ear. You'd be fine with that, it's true. (You aren't a girl though, you're a boy you're a boy you're a b―)

Time phases away from you.

When you blink the exams are over and your fingernails are covered in your own blood. The ring of your own breath echoes in your ears. Your eyes are wide and dry and there's something metal in your mouth, you swallow it before it hits the ground and everyone is able to see the way your insides spill out. You're a monster, after all.

(Puppet-girl.)

You hope there aren't any mirrors around; you've got this awful habit of shattering them.

_

Puppet-girl puppet-girl puppet-girl puppet-girl puppet-girl puppet-girl puppet-girl puppet -

You want to set your skin on fire so your strings burn off.

(You hate the way you're shaped, at the way you curve, and the way your jaw is shaped or your eyes or―)

_

Your not-father (Tomura - niisan niisan don't say his name; you rub the cracks on your forearm) doesn't diegn to spend his money on you. Not since your middle school fuck up. You've been stealing Niisan's shit since then when you run out of your clean clothes before Misty does laundry.

(You have three shirts ― including pajamas ― and two pairs of pants. You stole a binder from someone guy who still had his tits, like you do. You can blame him for trying to shank you. The fucker missed, of course, and you kicked him in his crotch.)

Niisan's hoodie is big on you. You look in the mirror and you look at your red eyes and you grin the way he does. You look a lot like your niisan nowadays.

It's cold out, you keep the hoodie on over your uniform. It's black, because your niisan never grew up out of his edgy phase. The train runs, runs, runs.

Your school has an online program. Watch the classes, did the work, graduate. You got top marks, mainly because it was almost impossible to cheat and you studied to material so well you could probably recite it all right now. You won't. You're trying to forget. You have to go in though. Today is graduation and you're supposed to get your diploma in person.

Tucking your shoulders in, you meander into the office. The secretary looks at you with this awful kind of distain and you fight the urge to grimace. You know where you aren't wanted.

(Though, the only one who wants you is your brother, and he wants you in the way you want a pet. It's a cute thing you can control, maybe. A goldfish in a bowl, a puppet. Huh. Puppet-girl.)

"I'm here for my, uh. Graduation papers."

The secretary smiles, it's so ugly, painted with an awful lilt. "Of course, Gari-san. I'll get that for you."

You grin awkwardly. It's something you're rather known for. Awkward, antisocial. Maybe you should keep it that way until an extrovert adopts you. It might work.

The secretary gives you your paper.

(When you walk out you hear her mutter something.

Creepy fucking girl.)

​​​​​_

"Imouto-chan." Your niisan greets you. He grins wide, worried. It's unsettling.

"Niisan. How are you?" You smile, you hope it looks warm enough.

"Your acceptance letter came in," it better be an acceptance, you think he might kill you if you've outlived your uses. "let's look at your greatest take down yet! You probably beat all those NPC's."

"I tried the defensive." You lie. "Tried to think like the enemy and I, uh, I."

(He's not listening at this point, you know.)

"C'mon Imouto-chan!" He's grinning wider wider wider. "We're entering the next gamestage. Level three of three. The long con."

"What's the best way to act?" You ask, because he's still lead operation. "I don't, kami. Uh. I'm still trying to figure it out."

"Just be yourself. It'll be harder to break character if yours is really solid. Switch a few things, though."

"My name is Gari Eien, I have an older brother who loves video games, though I can never get why." Niisan makes an offended sound and you hope it doesn't become something awful. "I have an intelligence quirk, though I was a late bloomer. I'm adopted. My guardian owns a bar where we live in Kamino. I'm going to be the hero I never got." You look at the ceiling. "I had a mental break in second year of middle school, my brother insisted I take time off."

"You needed a break, player one. Revamp, you can't just finish the whole game without stamina uptakes."

You human noncommittally. "Guess so. Letter, Niisan."

"Right." He decays the knife he was going to rip it over with, so you snatch it and tear it before he can dust the letter. He isn't wearing his gloves. You glare at him.

"Gloves."

He grumbles. You open the letter and a.. disk spills out. Eraserhead gives you your introduction while Niisan has a fanboy moment. You wait for him to finish. Eraserhead is the only hero that Niisan actually likes, so you suppose it's good he works there. You feel bad though, you'll have to kill him, after all.

"Yeah yeah, I'll leave you now, Imouto-chan."

"Thanks, Nii-chan."

Niisan grins at you, at for once it's not one of those ugly ones you fake in the mirror. It's off. Though you can't imagine why.

"Yeah yeah."

He leaves you alone to design your hero uniform.

_

The train ride Yuuei is quiet. You got up early. It alleviates the nausea when you plan five steps in advance.

(There was this one time Niisan threatened to dust you once over something you didn't do. He thought that you took his controller, you didn't. You spent the night throwing up as quietly as you could and ended up falling asleep on the toilet lid, blood on your lips from biting them, nails red from peeling them back. Controlled pain loosens you up. And this does too. Getting up early.)

The train wirrs. You almost trip on your way on but you don't; you catch yourself. Stiffle your nausea with something else. Your uniform skirt is too short and you hate the way it itches. Maybe you'll always itch.

Your skin isn't right. That's why. You wonder if Niisan's skin isn't right either. If he's crazy like you. Or crazy like, like (Hana? Hannah? Hanah―) your mother before. When you were born right in the wrong place instead of wrong in the right place in the wrong time.

"Hey," a voice murmurs behind you. You almost jump out of your skin. "uh, you're at Yuuei too?"

"Yeah?" You turn a boy. "Uhm. Gari Eien."

"Shinsou Hitoshi."

"Nice. Uh, yeah. I'm uh. In Yuuei."

The train stops and fizzles, hissing as it picks back up. "Uh, cool."

You blink. "Can we do this whole thing over again?"

He smiles, awkward. You wonder if that's what he's known for, too. "Sure. I'm Shinsou Hitoshi."

"Gari Eien. S'a pleasure."

Something aches in your chest. A knowledge that everything you're doing is for show. That nobody can ever understand the shit that's happening except for your niisan. You hate that fact.

The train stops, you start.

This shit is all Amublton's fault.

"Nice to meet you, Gari-kun."

_

Sometimes, when you can still remember those bits and pieces from when your body was right and everything else was wrong. You wonder, sometimes, what your eulogy sounds like, if you got one at all.

Maybe your younger (older? you had an older sister named Hanah and a you get sister named Hanah and you don't know―) sister wrote you one. She was a smart one.

You're still a fucking dumbass, even after all these years.

It's the price for your life, and maybe that's too high a fucking cost for something you never wanted to begin with.

"So, Shinsou-kun."

The sun's going up high. You wonder where.

"Yeah?"

"Yuuei's the best, right?"

"Well," he starts, voice low a steady. You wish you had that fucking voice. "that is how it's rated, correct." He shuffles with his backpack, grating the sides away-away-away. Until they're coming undone. "We'll just have to see, right Gari-kun?"

You shrug.

(There's something awful living in your mouth.)

"Guess so."

You won't regret it, something godawful tells you. C'mon Sammy, you won't regret it.

_

You split from Shinsou-kun and wander through the halls until they're twisty and turny. Your head hurts. So does your stomach, but you're used to worse; you shove your bile down the hatch and hope it doesn't come back later.

It makes your head dizzy when you try to plan. Makes you choke up knowing that you might fuck everything over. You try to think of everything that can go wrong.

It's easy enough when you aren't even trying.

You made your way to 1-A fifteen minutes before the first bell rings. There are only three kids in. Some kid you're sure is made up of squares if you tried to draw him (though your shit at art), a blond who looks like he's halfway to a depersonalization episode, and some guy who's full on disassociation in the back.

"Hello!" Says square-boy. "I am Iida Tenya from Somei Academy!"

You smile in a way you know looks nothing like your niisan. It's sweet, almost. Girly. "Gari Eien, s'a pleasure."

forever takes a while to pass, doesn't it?