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Here’s a common fact: all stories have a beginning. Although they might start in different ways, the fact of the matter is that the story starts. It starts somewhere.
But not this one. Or well. It does. But it doesn’t have a beginning as clear-cut as one first meeting or a once upon a time. There is no proper beginning to this story. Entering it from any given point in time is like walking in on an already half-finished puzzle - there’s just no telling which piece was the first one. They walk hand in hand. You grab one and there’s another one clinging to its coattails.
Yes, there is nothing clear-cut about the story you are about to hear. So you better pay attention.
We’ll jump into the story from a completely random point in time - our journey starts with a completely arbitrary piece of the half-finished puzzle: 1986. Bakugou Katsuki is sixteen, despite the fact that - and remember this, because it is important - he was born in 2000.
He has just escaped death by a narrow margin.
Katsuki’s only encounter with death up until his sixteenth year has been a dead bird which he and his neighbor Midoriya Izuku - Deku, as Katsuki unkindly has dubbed him - had found on the sidewalk and then buried in the Bakugou’s backyard.
Naturally there is no comparing the two, the lifeless bird and the accident he had almost been involved in.
What happens is this: in 1986 Katsuki is arguing with a cyclist. It’s late at night, the road is nearly empty, and the cyclist has narrowly avoided colliding with him. A few insults and exclaims of whose fault it was are thrown back and forth, and then the cyclist is on their merry way. Katsuki’s looking over his shoulder as he crosses the road, holding up a middle finger. He doesn’t see the car until it’s driving away; with Katsuki shoved onto the other side of the road, propping himself up by his scraped elbows and blinking disorientedly at the car’s tail lights, in disbelief at the fact that he’d nearly gotten run over twice within the span of five minutes.
“Hey, what the fuck! You almost killed me, you son of a--!” he yells, an edge of outraged hysteria creeping into his voice before he cuts himself off, choking the words before they can escape from his mouth.
Right there, a few feet away from him. A wrecked body instead of his own.
A conversation, in the middle of an empty street in Tokyo:
“I wanna go home,”
It’s coughed out, forced through a bloody mouth. “Take me home? Later?”
Katsuki is crouched down next to him, nodding even though he has no goddamn idea how he is going to manage to do that. He vaguely notes that there is no later for this person who looks too young to die with his boyish face and doe-like eyes, glassy and unfocused. He looks to be only be a few years older than Katsuki. Too young to die for someone like him.
“Promise? You have to promise, Katsuki,”
“I promise. I promise. I’m sorry.”
Later, when the tension has died down, it will occur to him that he’d never told this person his name.
Katsuki is ten years old, when he ends up in a year that he doesn’t belong in for the first time. The destination is 1912, at the dawn of the Taisho era.
Some background: the ability to time travel runs in Katsuki’s family. He has inherited it from his dad’s side, and although it skipped his father and his father’s mother, Katsuki did once see a woman who shared an uncanny resemblance to Katsuki’s great grandmother when he and his parents visited his grandparents’ graves.
Now, Katsuki has always been adventurous and daring. He’d always dared to be adventurous, keen to test the waters and push his limits. He was the one who climbed to the top of the highest trees when the others only got halfway, he was the one who jumped down ten steps of stairs when the others jumped five, he was the one to jump from the highest platform in the local swimming pool when the others were too hesitant to go first. When the neighborhood children stole fruits from Aizawa Shouta’s pear tree, he was the one who dared to reach over the high, rusty iron fence to get his grubby hands on the highest fruits, feet balancing on the seat of an old bicycle held upright by the other kids who never had the guts to risk putting their own heads on the chopping block - especially not when the chopping block belonged to Aizawa Shouta.
Maybe that was why his family’s unexplained ability had manifested in him instead of his father, somewhere in the summer of his tenth year.
He discovers this ability the same way most children discover things about themselves: by way of accidental experimentation.
Here’s what happens: by the time he goes to bed his father is watching some boring historical documentary about emperor Taisho’s rule. He lingers by the staircase where he can see the television while his father gets him a glass of water to place by his bedside table (a plastic cup he’d gotten at the local museum, green with a 3d T-Rex, it’s tail extending out of the cup to create the handle).
“Who’s that?” he asks when his father emerges from the kitchen with Katsuki’s T-Rex cup, pointing at the TV. Masaru glances over, the blue light from the television reflected in his glasses.
“Ah. That’s emperor Taisho. He lived a very long time ago.” he says with the patient tone of a parent indulging their child’s endless questions. They pad up the stairs, Katsuki's hand running over all the vertical bars of the railing.
“How long?” he asks. Masaru hums thoughtfully.
“I can’t remember.” and then, before Katsuki can comment on the fact that he should remember because he’d just been watching the documentary, he adds. “Have you said goodnight to okaasan?”
Katsuki stops walking. “Goodnight okaasan!” he shouts down the stairs. There’s a short beat.
“For God’s sake, be quiet, Katsuki!” comes the reply. Masaru sighs. They continue up the stairs, Katsuki taking the last two steps with one large stride. The question Masaru had expected but had tried to avoid nonetheless tumbles out of Katsuki’s mouth as they’re walking into his room:
“Why don’t you know, weren’t you watching that movie just now?”
Masaru steps on a rubber stegosaurus as Katsuki jumps into his bed like a predator pouncing on its prey. The stegosaurus lets out a sort of squeaky noise.
Masaru puts down the cup and has to look up the answer while tucking Katsuki in, because Katsuki, as most other kids, refuses to let it go.
“He was emperor from 1912 to 1921.” he says, after a quick search on his phone. “Do you want your water?”
Katsuki nods, making grabby hands at the cup.
“That’s not that many years. It’s only,” he pauses to take a gulp of water. “Nine!”
“Yes. He decided he didn’t want to be emperor anymore so his son became the emperor instead,” Masaru says, even though he doesn’t know if that was what really happened. He doubts Katsuki is going to care the following day anyways. “And now it’s time for you to sleep.”
“But-”
“Goodnight Katsuki,”
Katsuki’s reply is petulant as Masaru turns on Katsuki’s nightlight and turns off the big light.
“Night... Otousan, you can turn off the nightlight. It’s okay.”
And so he does, his heart squeezing a little in his chest. He leaves the door ajar, and Katsuki drinks the rest of his water before tucking himself under his covers. He falls asleep and dreams of the glimpses he’d seen on the television. The next time he wakes up - gently shaken away by someone - he is no longer in his bed, but lying on some strange street, with a small group of strange looking people peering down at him.
At 20 years old, Katsuki is living in Tokyo with his cat, Shithead (or alternatively: Haruki. Spring. What he’s called depends largely on the day and on how well he’s behaving). He’s two years into a history degree at Tokyo University, a choice he hadn’t known he was going to make until he knew and then he hadn’t been able to picture himself doing anything else.
He doesn’t time travel often; nearly a decade of fuck ups has taught him that maybe fooling around in the past or the future whenever he felt like it wasn’t the best idea. He hasn’t quit doing it either; the past is quite beneficial for his studies after all.
Besides, there’s someone he needs to see, their meetings scattered through time like fine grains of sand. He has remained unnamed so far, but you’ve already met him, and you are about to meet him again. Soon.
There are a number of things Katsuki is absolutely certain of, one of them being this: Katsuki would like to go wherever he goes, even though time travelling is a hassle. In fact, he is pretty sure he is in love with him, not that he’d ever say that out loud to anyone.
There’s a body of a boy lying on an empty street in Tokyo. There’s another boy crouched over it. The boy, the one who is living and breathing, is of course Katsuki, who’s trying to stop the bleeding from a wound in his side with his hands.
“Hey,” he croaks, weak and not like him at all, lightly slapping the boy on the cheek with a red palm. Intently, a plea as much as it is a demand, “Wake up.”
His hand leaves a smudge of blood across the boy’s cheek. He wipes it away with a thumb but only manages to smear more of it onto his face. He tries again and then again. There is nothing to do but keep trying. He can’t call an ambulance. There are no one around to call for him. He is out of options.
“Don’t die on me you goddamn bastard, you hear me?” he mutters, finding he can’t quite make it sound as threatening as he’d envisioned in his head.
Pressing two fingers to his neck, Katsuki searches for a pulse even though he’s done it twice already. He waits. Then he waits some more.
“Don’t make me break my promise, you-” he manages to croak out, voice cracking at “promise” and then again at “just”, and he stops himself right then and there and this was not how today was supposed to go, he was not supposed to sit bent over some dying stranger who was dying because of him. Because Katsuki had been reckless. Again.
Katsuki checks his pulse again for lack of anything more useful to do; a broken record eternally stuck on the same motions, waiting for someone to reset it so it can move forwards.
And, impossibly so, everything is reset with a tiny, almost imperceptible beat under Katsuki’s fingers, as if Katsuki had somehow convinced him to come back to life.
“Huh,” he mumbles, not fully comprehending. He holds his breath, pressing his fingers further into the boy’s neck hard enough for his fingernails to leave imprints in the shape of tiny half moons. He waits. For an unbearably long time.
There. Another beat.
And another and another, the interval between them getting gradually shorter until it’s a steady throb but then it keeps speeding up, and Katsuki just manages to utter another baffled curse at the now hammering pulse before the boy surges to life with a loud gasp like someone breaking through the surface of the ocean to take in large gulps of air.
Ten year old Katsuki reappears on his bed after a brief detour to 1912, with no one noticing his absence. The first thing he does is to check whether all his limbs are still firmly attached to his body. Then he climbs down from his bed, turns on the lights and writes out a note on a page in his Japanese notebook. He rips out the page, folds it in quarters and stuffs it into his wallet.
Katsuki learns Todoroki Shouto’s name in 1986, after he watched him surge back to life like the thought-to-be-dead love interest in a bad drama. That day is quite a lot of firsts for Katsuki: his first near collision with a bicycle followed by his first near collision with a car, his first encounter with death and the list goes on. It is also the first time he is visiting another person’s home on his time travelling adventures - usually he just loiters around and observes people for fear of messing too much with the past.
Todoroki’s apartment lies in an apartment complex close to where Kaminari Denki’s family lives. In the future, that is. It’s a one-room, and Katsuki stands awkwardly and completely out of place by the entrance as Todoroki pulls his bloodied shirt over his head in the bathroom and throws it into a round plastic tub. There is newspaper scattered evenly across the bathroom floor - Todoroki doesn’t explain and Katsuki doesn’t ask.
Katsuki leans his upper body against the doorframe to the bathroom so he can look into the room. He squints, trying to get a glimpse at Todoroki’s wounds but there’s too much blood, all dried and cakey, and he looks away feeling slightly nauseous. Almost in impulse, he glances down at his hands, at the dark red in between his fingers and caked under his fingernails and edged into his cuticles and the lines of his palms.
Get it off.
Get it off get if off get if off get it-
“Oi, can I use the sink?” he asks Todoroki, before clarifying, holding up a dirtied hand. “For washing my hands,”
Todoroki, who has moved the small tub into the shower to fill it with water from the showerhead, shrugs.
“Sure. I don’t mind the blood.” he tells him, raising his voice a little so he can be heard over the sound of the water hitting the plastic tub. “You can borrow some of my clothes too,”
Katsuki looks down at himself, at the dark red and brownish streaks on his clothes and decides he only has the current mental capacity right now to think about one thing, that being to get the grime off of his hands. The blood.
“Thanks,” he mumbles, moving into the cramped space. The newspaper moves and makes noise when he walks on it. He turns on the tap and simply stands there, staring at the running water hitting his unmoving hands.
“You’re supposed to rub your hands together,” Todoroki says after a good while, and he sounds so earnest Katsuki would’ve made fun of him if he hadn’t been feeling like his lungs were contracting.
“I know how to wash my hands,” he snaps instead, and so he does, and the water turns a fluorescent pink because that’s Todoroki’s blood on his hands (and Todoroki isn’t even supposed to be alive, there’s still blood on him, he was dead, Katsuki had seen him die, he was dead-).
“You’re out of soap.” he grits out past the growing lump in his throat and Todoroki hands him some discount shampoo instead. He manages to finish washing and drying his hands completely before he promptly empties the contents of his stomach into the toilet.
Katsuki grows up in a suburban neighborhood, right outside of Tokyo. He grows up alongside Midoriya Izuku, his neighbor. Deku. Katsuki doesn’t particularly like him. Deku worships him.
When Katsuki is nine and Deku eight they find a small bird on the sidewalk right in front of Katsuki’s house. It’s been torn up by a cat and left for dead, at least that is their theory.
They pick it up and bury it in the Bakugous’ backyard, small hands and fingers digging into the dirt by the foot of the cherry tree that is as tall as Katsuki, but in due time will grow many times taller.
They bury it on its good side. Katsuki thought it was sleeping at first because when they found it lying on the sidewalk it was lying on that side, the one that looked normal. Then he’d prodded it with his foot, Deku had picked it up and they’d seen the bad side with the missing wing.
It was dead. There had been no saving it.
After the burial, Katsuki’s hands are dry and stiff with dirt and the ghost of lifeless feathers and his mother gives him an earful that can be heard on the other side of the neighborhood. She watches him as he washes his hands to make sure he does it properly, her arms crossed, mouth pulled into a grim line as he scrubs the soil from his hands until his fingers are pruney.
In 1986 Katsuki watches Todoroki Shouto die. It’s something he never quite gets over.
And so he sits, awkwardly, on Todoroki Shouto’s folded out futon while Todoroki washes all the blood off in the shower. Todoroki has given him some water in a tacky dinosaur plastic cup that looks a suspicious amount like one Katsuki has in his cupboard, shoved in the back with all the other cups no one ever reaches for.
The home is empty, eerily so. There’s barely any furniture at all and there only seems to be one of each thing. Really, the only thing Katsuki has seen so far of any personality is the cup which seems strange.
Katsuki downs all the water in one go, and lifts it above eye level so he can peer up at the bottom. There’s a faded print on the bottom. Tokyo National Museum of Nature and Science.
A faint memory knocks insistently on his door.
You have to promise, Katsuki.
Hey, wake up. Are you okay?
Who are you?
Katsuki launches a verbal assault on Todoroki as soon as he emerges from the bathroom, wielding the dinosaur cup as if it were a weapon.
“Oi. Where did you get this cup?” he demands to know.
Todoroki fixes his gaze at the cup, and Katsuki, belatedly, notices that he looks to be split evenly in half. His hair is red and white, split right through the middle, his eyes mismatched with one noticeably darker than the other. As if he’d been like one of those twins that consume the other in the womb, except instead of consuming his twin they’d simply attached without merging entirely. One person who clearly still was two distinct people.
The memory knocks and knocks and knocks.
Who are you?
“Oh, that. A friend gave it to me.” Todoroki says. Katsuki frowns, looks from the cup to Todoroki, and back to the cup. He drops it. There are bigger things to worry about, bigger questions that need to be answered.
“I watched you die.”
“Yes. I was going to explain that, actually. Sorry if I scared you.”
“Yeah whatever.” Katsuki scoffs, dismissive, but feels blood rush to his cheeks nonetheless. He hopes it isn’t too visible. “Sorry for earlier. When I threw up. I guess blood makes me queasy or whatever.”
He scooches sideways on the futon to make space for Todoroki who sits down next to him. “It’s okay. There was quite a lot of blood. I think anyone would’ve felt queasy.”
“Right.”
There’s quite an awkward pause, or at least Katsuki thinks it’s awkward. He has a growing suspicion that Todoroki is totally oblivious. He seems like the type of person who doesn't find anything awkward. Ever.
“How exactly are you here?” he finally asks, breaking the silence.
“I can’t die. Whenever I do, I come back.”
He says it the exact same way he says everything else, as Katsuki has learned: blandly, as if he is reciting a grocery list. It is utterly frustrating.
Katsuki takes a deep breath. Use your words, he reminds himself. He manages to bite out a “why.” which isn’t quite as eloquent as he’d hoped, but well. He’d never been that good at using his words.
“I don’t know. My oldest brother’s like this too. It runs in the family, I guess.”
Todoroki shoots him a pointed stare just then, as if Katsuki should know all about that. Which Katsuki guesses he is right about.
"I see." he says dumbly, and the irritation seeps out of him like a sort of sad balloon. Like an equation he’s finally found the answer for, things click in place.
“How long have you been alive?”
“Not sure. A long time.”
Sometimes Katsuki dreams about the bird burial, but instead of the bird it is Todoroki after he got hit by the car instead of Katsuki, and for some reason won’t come back like he usually does. Usually Katsuki and Deku will be in the midst of digging the hole under the cherry tree when they start fighting because Deku wants to bury Todoroki while Katsuki wants to bury the bird because he knows Todoroki is going to come back anyways. Deku refuses to budge, and Todoroki remains dead and Katsuki wakes up.
It is after blinking awake from one of such nightmares, cheeks wet and sticky, that Katsuki has a realization, followed by an intense feeling of mortified dread.
Of all people, why did it have to be him, the one person he had to trek across space and time to see?
It is cruel, really.
I said earlier that 1986 was a completely arbitrary jigsaw piece. I lied. Really, some pieces are more significant than others, one being 1986. But consider that one mostly over and done. (Mostly.)
Pieces that also are more significant than the rest look like this: two letters, a note, and a person Katsuki will meet when he is twenty-one.
But before that, a brief detour. Allow me to set the scene.
Katsuki is fifteen and about to learn why exploring his own future generally is a bad idea. Kaminari Denki and Kirishima Eijiro are just about ready to take their places in the center stage.
For Katsuki, chronological order is more or less an abstract concept. So really, he isn’t quite sure where to start as he’s sitting sort of dumbfounded in Kirishima and Kaminari’s living room, watching slightly older versions of his friends ready the dinner table to their shared apartment.
They’re roommates now, in an area in Tokyo near the cinema the three of them frequent in Katsuki’s present. They are adults. They’re both significantly larger - broader shoulders, bigger arms, taller, just larger, adult looking and intimidating. Kirishima’s hair has started growing out, a harsh line separating his dark roots from the red (traffic light red, as Katsuki had always called it), something he would’ve never let happen two years ago for fear of being exposed as an unnatural redhead - not that anyone had ever believed that his hair color was natural. Kaminari has an undercut shaped like a lightning bolt and it looks ridiculous. Katsuki hopes he did it himself - personally, he would’ve rather died than pay for a barber to fuck his hair up that bad.
It occurs to him then, belatedly, that he should offer to help, but Kirishima is already sliding the last plate of fried fish onto the table, and then, instead of being a perfectly polite guest who thanks their host for the meal, Katsuki blurts out, in utter disbelief:
“Wait, you can cook?”
He grimaces as soon as the words have left his mouth. Not that he’s ever claimed his brain to mouth filter has been good by any means, Kirishima and Kaminari would be the first ones to acknowledge this, but it has been seven years and well. They were older than him by years now. The sudden acute awareness he has of how much they’ve changed, how much everything has changed doesn’t feel like being doused in cold water as much as it feels like wading into it. He’d chosen to bend to his own morbid curiosity, and now he is paying the price.
“This is all I know how to make,” Kaminari says, sounding like he’s patting himself on the shoulder. Had Katsuki not been gripped with dread and mild panic he would’ve rolled his eyes. He should’ve known it was too good to be true.
“Apparently you pick up skills like cooking when you live by yourself,” says Kirishima, voice wavering a little. Katsuki does not fail to notice the fleeting glance he and Kaminari share across the table. Katsuki curls a little into himself, hoping he can pass it off as his terrible posture.
They’re all silent for a moment, and Katsuki imagines himself escaping through various, exceedingly dramatic means.
“So, Katsuki,” says Kirishima, sounding like a dad and Katsuki gets the sudden urge to hurl Kirishima and Kaminari’s bowls against the wall. They are hideous, he vacantly notes. Briefly he wonders how they acquired them - if he’d been shopping with them he would’ve never let them get such horrid bowls. He makes a mental note for himself: go with Kirishima and Kaminari when they’ll go interior shopping in three-ish years. If they refuse, simply force them.
Technically, that would be him altering the future, but at the cost of making sure his friends won’t embarrass themselves whenever they have guests over, he figures it’ll be worth it.
“How’s… school?” Kirishima continues, before abruptly clearing his throat, seemingly realizing how he’d put on an atrocious dad-voice. Katsuki didn’t even know he had one. There’s another glance across the dinner table. Katsuki feels like a petulant child having dinner with his parents.
It’s ridiculous.
The age difference between them isn’t even that big (okay, maybe it is), it’s just that Katsuki is fifteen and they are in their twenties and have actual jobs and live in their own apartment with their own furniture and they can cook. And have no sense of interior design, apparently.
He drags his hands down his face with a loud, exasperated groan, squeezing his eyes shut so he won’t have to look at these older versions of his old friends.
For what must be the fiftieth time, he questions why he'd wanted to see what the future looked like so badly. (The truth: he’d been anxious. About what he’d be doing, about where he’d be living, about who still would be in his life.)
The thing was this: he hadn’t meant to talk to either of them. He’d just wanted to take a quick look. He’d swiftly realized how bad of an idea it had been when Kirishima had spotted him loitering around outside a new apartment complex, mourning the convenience store that had used to be there - the store they buy snacks from to sneak into the cinema.
“I need to take a piss.” he says, getting up. The chair lets out an awful squeaky sound as he stands.
(He does not take a piss in the bathroom. Instead he spends approximately three minutes taking in his boyish features in the mirror. He then splashes some water on his face, flushes the toilet, and washes his hands, gaze fixed on a dying plant in the mirror.
"Get a fucking hold of yourself, Katsuki.")
In Katsuki’s final year of high school, about three years after his first and last meeting with the older versions of his friends, his class exchanges secret presents. Katsuki’s present from his Santa is conveniently left for him outside his front door, Katsuki nearly stumbling over it when he leaves for class that morning. It’s quite big, bigger than the cheap box of chocolate Katsuki had used as his present which makes him feel a little sheepish. The feeling dissipates as soon as he’s unwrapped all three layers of wrapping paper (birthday themed rather than Christmas themed).
dunceface
me What the fuck When will you let the dinosaur cup go Sent at 7:32 AM
dunceface i take it you got my secret santa gift do u like it Sent at 7:33 AM
me You got me dinosaur cups from the museum Sent at 7:33 AM
dunceface yeah so now you have five dinosaur cups including the one you already have!!! do u like my present Sent at 7:34 AM
me WHY DID YOU GIVE ME FIVE VERSIONS OF THE EXACT SAME CUP Sent at 7:36 AM
dunceface bc u r a nerd Sent at 7:36 AM
me What the fuck is wrong with you Sent at 7:37 AM
dunceface and they’re not all the same one is a shark. they were out of the dino ones Sent at 7:38 AM
me Because you bought all of them you dickhead Hope you get a fucking shit present from your secret santa I hope you get actual shit Sent at 7:39 AM
dunceface LMAOOO Sent at 7:39 AM
me I’m giving the cups away Sent at 7:40 AM
dunceface
D: Sent at 7:40 AM
me I’ll keep the shark one You can have one of the dino cups
Thanks for the present Sent at 7:58 AM
dunceface :DD i knew you were going to say that you’re so predictable kacchan Sent at 7:58 AM
me Fuck off Really. Fuck off Sent at 7:59 AM
Katsuki arrives ten minutes late to class that morning. He sits next to Kirishima who has saved him a seat.
In the hallway between the living room and the toilet there's a giant poster of a horror movie that hasn't come out in Katsuki's time yet. Next to it is a photo of what he assumes must be Kirishima and Kaminari's high school graduation. For some reason Deku and Uraraka Ochako are there. And he's there too.
"Hey bro, I don't think you're supposed to look at the poster," yells Kirishima from his seat. "Isn't there like, time travel confidentiality or whatever?"
Katsuki shrugs, walking back to his seat. "Not like it matters anyways. It's just a movie."
"Right. So anyway, we're like. We're sorry about being weird and all that, I guess we're, or I am unsure about how to," Kirishima begins to say. Katsuki misses the rest of the sentence because Kaminari is still talking about the movie.
"Dude, it's the best movie ever, I can't wait for you to see it, you're gonna be mind-blown," he says, gesturing wildly. Katsuki nods dubiously before redirecting his attention to Kirishima.
“It’s fine. It's my own fault for coming here.”
"Dude no, you're always welcome here, we don't want to make you feel unwelcome or anything. You're our best friend,"
"Jesus Christ, I said it's fine," grumbles Katsuki, squirming. "This shit's embarrassing,"
There's a snickered, "You think everything is embarrassing," from Kaminari, which Katsuki ignores in favor of glancing out the window from where he can see the new building that definitely isn’t there in his own present, the one that has replaced the convenience store. He points, abruptly changing the subject.
“What’s that?”
They both turn to look, Kaminari twisting dumbly in his seat.
“A building?” says Kaminari. Katsuki rolls his eyes.
“They built it two or three years ago I think?” explains Kirishima. “They’re popping up everywhere. Lots of people move to Tokyo like, all the time so it’s kinda necessary.” he says, wrinkling his nose as if he doesn’t particularly like the thought of it.
“You and Izuku live there, actually,” he adds, as an afterthought. “Izuku’s studying engineering. He thought moving into a brand new building was sooo cool.”
Katsuki tears his gaze away from the window where he’d been, perhaps creepily so, staring into the apartment directly across from Kaminari and Kirishima’s, to gape wordlessly at him.
There’s a long pause where no one says anything.
What, Katsuki wants to say but finds he is only able to mouth it.
The silence stretches on for a bit longer before Kaminari, seemingly unable to hold back his laughter, bursts. The laughter bubbles out of him, and he wheezes violently while pointing at Katsuki as if he is the funniest thing he’s ever seen. Katsuki scowls viciously at him, which only serves to make him wheeze harder.
“You’re neighbours.” Kirishima says.
Katsuki makes another mental note. He needs to seriously reconsider where he’s going to move when he starts university. There was no way he would voluntarily agree to be neighbors with Deku again.
“I’m not sure if I’m allowed to say that actually. Let me call our Katsuki and ask.”
“No need to do that. I don’t want to know.”
“Scared of older Kacchan, are you?” teases Kaminari, laughter still evident in his voice. “S’not like he’d pick up anyways. He’s with...” he pauses, somewhat dramatically. His gaze flits briefly over to Katsuki, smug and mischievous. “You know who.”
“Who. Voldemort?” deadpans Katsuki, unimpressed. Kaminari looks at him like he’s bursting with the urge to yell the world's worst kept secret. Kirishima however, is visibly chewing on the inside of one cheek, a habit he’d picked up from early childhood. Old habits die hard, that Katsuki can at least trust.
“I think it’s best not to reveal too much.” he finally says. Katsuki huffs.
“I said, I didn't want to know anyways. He was the one who wanted to tell.”
Katsuki kicks Kaminari’s shin beneath the table. "And he was the one who spoiled me about that stupid movie too. Maybe I'm not the problem here." he adds, and just like that, they slip into some semblance of their old roles, bickering across the table about things that don't matter. Katsuki guesses that is the one thing that will never change.
After fifteen year-old Katsuki leaves for his present, Kaminari calls his own Katsuki. Here's a transcript of their conversation, in which I took the liberty of omitting some of the squabbling. I imagine you can determine the general nature of the phone call regardless:
Call begun at 8:30 PM.
RECIPIENT: What do you want.
CALLER: Oi, Kacchan, guess who came to visit today?
RECIPIENT: No.
CALLER: Wrong answer. Try again. A person, maybe?
RECIPIENT: Shut the hell up, dunceface. Was it your mom? Oh no wait, it couldn’t have been because-
CALLER: Can you at least try not to be a jerk for like three seconds?
RECIPIENT: No.
CALLER: Whatever. You visited!
RECIPIENT: What the fuck are you talking about.
CALLER: Your sixteen year old self came over! Man, he was so cute. His little cheeks-
RECIPIENT: Shut it! That was today?
CALLER: -and his hair. And the skull t-shirt! I forgot how much of a loser you used to be.
RECIPIENT: One more word from you-
RECIPIENT: Who came over?
CALLER: -and he was so grumpy, like a tiny angry kitten. Is that Todoroki? Yo Todoroki, yo!
RECIPIENT: -can’t believe you didn’t call me, I wanted to kick that little shit’s ass to the curb.
RECIPIENT: Hello Kaminari. Who came over?
RECIPIENT: I’m hanging up.
CALLER: Kacch-Call ended at 8:31 PM. The conversation lasted fifty six seconds.
Let’s get back on track.
The timeline so far is as follows: when he is ten, Katsuki discovers he has inherited his family’s ability to leap through time by quite literally leaping through time. He’s back home after a short visit to 1912, although the details of that are still unclear. You will find out in due time.
When he is fifteen, Katsuki decides to pay the near future a visit. He then decides to never do it again. His life is saved by Todoroki a year later.
Now what?
Now: Amsterdam, 2062. Katsuki is seventeen. It is his third time seeing Todoroki.
Here’s something you may have been wondering - and if not, I can guarantee you that Katsuki has: what’s it like, being immortal?
The thing, Katsuki has noticed, is that Todoroki never seems to change at all.
It’s almost unfathomable to him how long he has been alive. He’s seen the rise and fall of whole civilizations. Sometimes Katsuki wonders if he were to travel to the end of time, he’d still find Todoroki there, somehow.
Katsuki’s curiosity finally gets the better of him when he meets Todoroki in Amsterdam; for that was always how things were with Katsuki. Not if he’d ever inquire, but when.
They’re in a small souvenir shop tucked in between two cafés so Katsuki can buy little nick nacks for his parents. He purposefully searches for souvenirs that look as generic as possible, like something they might as well have gotten in 2019. Just because he can.
“Do you ever feel lonely?” he asks, crouched on the floor in front of a shelf of snow globes that look suitably old fashioned (a tiny miniature world were time is forever still, gifted to you by the boy who has all of time cradled in his palms, now wouldn't that be something?). The shelf is tucked into the back of the store, shielded by a curtain of similarly old fashioned t-shirts and bags with I HEART AMSTERDAM printed on them.
It’s quiet for a beat, long enough for Katsuki to wonder if Todoroki heard, and then worry if he’s crossed a line. Then Todoroki’s sitting down next to him on the floor.
“Sometimes. Everyone feels lonely.”
Turning to him, Katsuki shakes his head. “But it’s a different kind of loneliness,”
“I talk to Touya sometimes.”
Todoroki wrinkles his nose as if the thought displeases him. Katsuki has never met Todoroki Touya, but from what little the youngest Todoroki sibling has told him he sounds like he’s taking full advantage of the whole being immortal thing.
“And you’re here. So it’s okay.” Todoroki adds, and now it’s Katsuki’s turn to wrinkle his nose. They go quiet again, telltale heat spreading from Katsuki’s neck to his cheeks, and he turns away, pretending to examine a snow globe to his far right.
“We don’t see each other that often,” he says, still not looking at Todoroki. He shakes the globe.
Todoroki hums thoughtfully. “No, not in chronological order at least. I think I’ve met you more times than you think I have.”
“Oh. That makes a surprising amount of sense for you.”
Todoroki leans over to flick him on the forehead, ignoring Katsuki’s cursed protests.
“You should get your parents that snow globe.” he tells him then, nodding down at the one in Katsuki’s rough palm. “Wouldn’t it be kind of funny?”
There’s a beat.
“Didn’t think you were capable of being funny, Todoroki.”
“Maybe it was just you who never understood any of my jokes.”
“Are you calling me dumb?”
Todoroki shrugs, getting to his feet. Tonelessly: “I would never say such a thing.”
Privately, Katsuki reconsiders what he’d initially thought was true of Todoroki, that he never seemed to change.
He seems a little different, he supposes. They probably have met many more times than Katsuki thinks they have.
And indeed. A month before Todoroki saves Katsuki’s life, they meet in Todoroki’s Tokyo apartment. This time Katsuki is a bit older, 22, to be exact. Here’s what they talk about:
“You’ll die the first time I meet you again after 1912. That’s how we meet.”
“I die in front of you?”
“Yup.”
“By what?”
“Dunno. There’ll be a lot of blood though. Maybe don’t wear your best clothes.”
“Thanks.”
“Dick.”
“Anything else I need to know?”
“Just answer all my questions.”
“Okay.”
“I’ll throw up in your toilet.”
“I’ll put newspaper on the floor in case you miss the hole.”
“I’m not gonna miss,”
“You might.”
There's a scoff that sounds more playful than irritated.
As for most people, a lot of things happen in Katsuki’s eighteenth year.
1) Katsuki moves to Tokyo.
2) He starts his first semester in university.
3) He meets Todoroki once, in February. It’s in 3170’s Tokyo because Todoroki had wanted to visit the apartment he’d brought Katsuki to. It’s jarring.
“That’s where I died saving your life,” he says, dryly, whilst pointing at the road, and Katsuki rolls his eyes. He can laugh at it now, but he still dreams about it sometimes too.
“And you should be fucking elated about it. Your life would be shitty if it wasn’t for me. It’d be sleep inducing.”
He means it as a joke, only realizing it doesn’t actually sound like it when it has left his mouth. It sounds potentially mean-spirited, actually. But Todoroki’s reply is as flat as it is genuine. Paradoxical.
“Yeah. Yeah, it would.”
4) He meets Todoroki once more, a week following his birthday in April. This time they are in 1920s Italy, and Katsuki brings him a present.
“But it’s your birthday,” says Todoroki, tacky dinosaur museum cup cradled between his palms. He brings it up on eye-level, watching the T-Rex in a sort of childlike wonder Katsuki would’ve usually assumed would be practically non-existent for an immortal person, but well. It is Todoroki.
“I was going to get rid of it, anyways.” Katsuki says, shrugging. “I already have one.”
In fact he has way more than one.
Todoroki tucks it into his bag with a small smile. “I’ll treat you to ice cream as thanks.”
It starts raining while they’re eating their ice cream - it is autumn when Katsuki arrives in Italy, undoubtedly Katsuki’s least favourite season. He doesn’t like the rain nor the cold, especially not in combination. They have to wait for the rain to clear under a pent roof, and it takes nearly an hour. Todoroki lets him taste his ice cream and they place bets on how long it’ll take for the rain to fill the tacky museum cup to the brim. It isn’t as sucky as Katsuki had expected it to be.
5) And then, the letter. The big one.
A conversation in 1923, Rome:
“Does it hurt when you die?”
“It feels real every time. I’d like to avoid it as much as possible.”
“I wish I’d been more careful. That one time.”
“It’s okay. I don’t regret it.”
Katsuki wouldn’t say he is in the habit of writing letters. In fact, no one would say that. By the time he is eighteen, he has only written two, both of which are addressed to the same person. You can probably guess who.
The first one is quite insignificant. He is twelve and it is only written because it’s a writing exercise his teacher gives the class. It takes him fifteen minutes. It will never be delivered to the recipient.
The second one is the big one. Katsuki writes it in Tokyo, a few days after his trip to 1920’s Italy. It takes him hours of gathering his thoughts, putting them into words, writing and rewriting and then rewriting again. This will eventually reach the intended recipient, but not before it has been stored in between the pages of a journal Katsuki rarely ever uses, neatly folded in quarters and stuffed into an envelope for nearly an entire year.
And even after it has been delivered from one set of hands to another, it will be another long year before it will land in the hands of the intended recipient.
Time is a strange thing.
What happens between the year Katsuki writes the big letter and the year the intended recipient receives it is this: the note.
Katsuki is 19. He’s in early 1900s Japan to write a historical report for his first university assignment and he’d always been a visual learner, but he is also there because that’s where Todoroki had told him they’d meet next the last time they’d seen each other. This is the ninth time Katsuki sees Todoroki, but it is the first time he’s seeing such an early version of him.
So far, Katsuki has found that he and Todoroki’s meetings tend to be quite uneventful and plain, which is strange - when he was younger Katsuki had envisioned time travelling to be much more thrilling. He’d thought maybe he’d fight in wars or meet famous, long-dead artists, or use his immense knowledge from the future to cheat in the lottery. So far he has only done the second one: he’d briefly talked to Shakespeare, once, when he’d been in high school because he’d needed help with an English essay. He’d been about as strange as 15 year old Katsuki, who had been convinced that normal people did not write plays, had expected. He also hadn’t gotten much material for his essay.
Kaminari in particular is often disappointed about the utter lack of adventures Katsuki’s detours contain. Or doesn't contain.
“If I had been a time traveller...” he’d say, trailing off.
“Well good thing you aren’t. You’d probably bring back the dinosaurs or something.” Katsuki would reply. Then,
“Why are you saying that like it’s a bad thing?” and so on and so forth.
His exchanges with Todoroki are rarely like that, familiar and easy, not when he’s this far back in the past. It does make him wonder how far back he’d have to go in order for Todoroki to not recognize him anymore. All things have a beginning, even if they sometimes are difficult to find.
Really, figuring out where they’re standing is part of their strange relationship. Too far into the future and Todoroki seems like he knows things about Katsuki that Katsuki doesn’t know himself. Too far back in the past and Todoroki is apprehensive towards him. He imagines it isn’t much different for Todoroki.
In 1904, Katsuki tries to determine how close to the beginning he is, who he is to Todoroki: an almost stranger, an acquaintance or a friend. He is also trying to gather information for a relatively low effort assignment that he sure as hell isn’t going to half-ass despite that.
For that purpose, they’re sitting at a dock where Katsuki can observe the fishermen and their giant fish and the market and the sellers and buyers at the market, and the things they are selling and buying (often fish. Sometimes other things).
“How did you start the whole time travelling thing anyways?” asks Todoroki. Katsuki shrugs, silently filing away a new piece of information in his mind. They’re not close enough for Todoroki to know this, but close enough for him to feel comfortable asking.
“It’s genetic.”
Todoroki hums thoughtfully, and Katsuki takes it as his cue to continue.
“The first time it happened I was ten? There was this documentary on TV,” he pauses, finding himself at a loss at how to explain regular every-day innovations to someone who was so far removed from them. “I mean, I was um… reading? About the past, and then suddenly I was there. In the past. Like, really close to this year actually.”
Todoroki looks a bit like he wants to laugh but isn’t sure he should. Another clue. An older Todoroki would’ve made fun of him. “Were you scared?”
“No, of course not,” Katsuki bristles, even though he distinctly remembers his eyes and throat being sore the rest of the day from hysterical crying and screaming. To be fair, it wasn’t every day you accidentally found yourself smack dab in the middle of the setting you’d just watched unfold on television. “Part of me thought I was dreaming. I was only stuck there for like half an hour anyway. Got back home at the exact same time and location I’d left and everything.” he says smugly. Then a thoughtful expression crosses over his angular features, and he’s quiet for a few beats, considering.
Hey, wake up. Are you okay?
Who are you?
Katsuki would have to tell him.
“Someone,” he starts, uncharacteristically hesitant. He rolls the syllables around, feels the shape of them in his mouth. “Someone, uhh. Helped me get back,”
He fixes his gaze at the horizon. There’s a cloud - Todoroki had called it a giant koi fish, but it looked more like a hotdog to Katsuki. Of course, Todoroki had no idea what that was so he hadn’t been able to say it.
“That’s a lucky coincidence,” says Todoroki after a brief silence. “How did he know? Was he also a time traveller?”
Katsuki grimaces, figuring the best way to approach it is to be direct. “No. It was you, dumbass. You helped me get back home.”
Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Todoroki stare at Katsuki in bewilderment.
“Me? But I don’t…”
“Hasn’t happened for you yet.” Katsuki fills in. Todoroki looks extremely confused, which is to say his brows are furrowed a little bit more than usual. “It’s in your future. So it’s going to happen. At some point.”
Katsuki digs through his little backpack for the little scrap of paper he’d shoved into one of the pockets.
“Here,” he says, handing it to Todoroki who smoothes it out with his fingers. “The exact date and place you found me. You told me to write this down as soon as I got back home and carry it with me.”
Todoroki marvels at the little scrap of paper. Then,
“Your handwriting is hideous.”
Katsuki bristles indignantly. “I was ten, bastard! And I was traumatized!”
Todoroki ignores his outburst, pointer finger tracing the messy scrawl of ten year old Katsuki. “Some time in the afternoon is a little vague,” he says.
“Yeah. I didn’t know the exact time I arrived. It’s fine, just be there in the afternoon, I won’t exactly be hard to spot, even for you.”
At Todoroki’s lingering apprehension, Katsuki sighs. “Look, you can’t fuck it up because you’ve already done the thing, otherwise I’d be lying dead in some ditch as a ten year old instead of being here, see? Don’t worry about it, the only way you can possibly fuck it up is if you forget, and I know you won’t.”
“But this is years from now, what if I do forget?” Todoroki says, sounding so distraught Katsuki gets the sudden urge to run his hand over his odd, two-toned hair until he stops resembling a kicked puppy. He cringes a little inwardly.
“That's not even a decade, halfie, you're an immortal. And if you do forget, I’d be stranded until I figure out how to get back myself which could take for fucking ever, so you better not. I’ll kill you if you do, and then I’ll kill you again after you wake up.”
Todoroki pouts. “Stop joking around Bakugou, I’m serious.”
Katsuki thinks about blood covered hands and a promise that at the time had seemed futile.
“Oi.” he punches Todoroki on the shoulder, perhaps a bit harder than necessary. “It’s a promise, right? So I know you won’t break it, end of story.”
Todoroki finally nods, although a little reluctantly. A huff of air escapes heavily from his mouth, disturbing his bangs. He lifts the scrap of paper so it's at eye level with his face, eyebrows scrunched in concentration.
“I’m gonna memorize it so I know it in case I lose the paper.”
Katsuki’s expression sours. “Don’t you dare lose that fucking paper."
We make one last visit to 1986. This is the scene you are familiar with already, with sixteen year old Katsuki and Todoroki sitting on Todoroki’s futon in his Tokyo apartment:
“Back then… That was you wasn’t it?”
One corner of Todoroki’s lip quirk up, not in a smirk - it is too soft to be a smirk. He also vaguely looks like Katsuki has figured out the answer to a very easy riddle. Folding up his legs so they’re crossed at the ankles, he fiddles with a thread at the edge of his sleeve.
“You’ve gotten a lot taller since then, Katsuki. How long has it been for you?”
“I don’t know. Six years, I think.”
“I’m surprised you didn’t recognize me at once. You’ve always been very observant.”
Katsuki bristles. “You were bleeding out on the street dumbass, obviously my first thought about someone dying in front of me isn’t gonna be ‘this guy seems familiar, wonder where I’ve seen him before?’”
He crosses his arms sullenly, and presses his back against the wall, slumping.
“I can’t believe you haven’t changed at all since you were ten. Don’t people usually get a little more mature at least?”
“You shouldn’t be talking, halfie!” snaps Katsuki. “You still have the same shitty hair! How long’s it been, huh, eighty years? And you’re still as annoying now as you were back then.”
“You should try to come up with a new insult. No matter which version of you I'm with you keep going back to the hair stuff, it's not very creative of you.” Todoroki points out, and Katsuki nearly squawks in indignation.
“Shut up! Just be quiet."
End scene. Now 1986 is over and done.
Katsuki is 12, and the thought of time travelling still makes him queasy.
He is at school, staring with stiff determination down at the notebook he uses for his Japanese classes. He’s supposed to be writing a letter, so there he sits, pondering who to write for. At first he’d written a short, low-effort letter for Deku about his recently acquired shoes:
Hey loser. Those new shoes you got look dumb. What’s the point of getting new shoes when it’s just the exact same ones you wore before? At least change the color, nerd. From Bakugou Ka
That was as far as he’d gotten, before he’d felt a looming presence behind him and twisted around in his seat to find his teacher watching him with an unimpressed stare.
Needless to say he was asked to write a new one. Briefly, he considers writing to Kirishima instead, or maybe his parents. But then it hits him. The perfect letter recipient, and without a doubt the most interesting in the entire class.
He never sends the letter, it is impossible after all. Instead he keeps it in a desk drawer where it will lie forgotten until many years later.
Half’n’half,
(I can’t remember your name, sorry.)
Anyway, it’s been two years since you helped me out that one time. I turned 12 last month (I’m the oldest in my class). I got a lot of presents. My favorite present is the one my parents got me. They gave me a mountain bike with five gears. I ride it to school every day and I’m the fastest in the entire class. I can do a few stunts on it too.
I started on the track team this year. I’m also the fastest at running in my year and I’m even faster than the second and third graders too. One of the sixth graders said I’d never be faster than him. Just you wait! I’ll outrun that bastard and leave him in the dust soon enough. I bet I can outrun you, even. You don’t look that fast from what I remember. No offense.
I’ve gotten much better at leaping through time. That first time only turned out bad because it was my first time and because I did it while I was asleep. Now I can control it much better.
I hope you are doing well. Maybe I can show you my new bike or another one of my presents if we ever meet again.
Regards,
Bakugou Katsuki.
P.S. Do yourself and everyone else a favor and change your haircolor. You look like a candy cane. Why would you dye your hair like that anyways?
A new person knocks on Katsuki’s door in 2020. This is all a metaphor, of course. It’s more like a thunderous, obnoxious banging. In fact, this person is not polite enough to knock when entering someone’s house at all.
“He’ll come soon. You should be ready. And maybe lock away all your most valuable things.” says Todoroki after they exit the souvenir shop in Amsterdam, while clad in a I HEART AMSTERDAM dad cap.
Katsuki stares incredulously. “Could you not be so fucking ominous? You sound like you’re prophesying the apocalypse, Jesus Christ,”
Todoroki, as usual, ignores him. “And buy cat food.”
The person is of course Todoroki Touya.
And within a year after Katsuki’s detour to Amsterdam, he tracks Katsuki down and decides it’s about time he pays him a visit. Just to see who exactly this kid his youngest brother is so fond of is.
Here’s how it happens: it is Tuesday, may; late spring. In the morning Katsuki goes to a ten a.m. class. He goes with Deku who also has a ten a.m. class, albeit at the other end of the university. Half an hour past two p.m. he drags himself back home, too tired to recognize anything out of the ordinary before he steps through the entrance to the sight of some lanky, white haired guy rummaging around in his fridge. His heart skips a beat, and then it simply starts palpitating.
“What.” he forces out through gritted teeth, “the fuck.”
The stranger jolts, then turns to him, gaze scrutinizing as if he isn’t the person who has broken into Katsuki’s home. Then he grins, lazy and slow, as if sharing an inside joke with himself.
“Bakugou Katsuki. The name suits you.”
Something knocks down a potted plant on Katsuki’s window sill. Something black and furry that looks unmistakably like the feral stray cat Katsuki sometimes sees wandering around outside the apartment. The dread in Katsuki grows exponentially, which he hadn’t thought was possible, considering the frankly astounding amount of dread he was already feeling at the sight of some strange guy standing in his home.
“His name is Shithead. Or her. I don’t know, I haven’t checked.”
Touya does not steal any of Katsuki’s belongings.
In fact, they trade: Katsuki gives Touya a letter. Touya gives Katsuki the feral stray and a promise to deliver the letter to his little brother the next time he sees him. Katsuki doesn’t think it is a fair trade by any means.
Google search: stray cat won't leave me alone
Google search: vet in minato tokyo
Google search: how to take care of cat
Google search: cat equipment
In spring of 2021, Todoroki shows up on Katsuki’s doorstep, a year after Katsuki has taken Shithead - or Haruki - in, against his will.
“I got your letter. ” he says, as Katsuki stares, dumbfounded. “Sorry I’m late. Touya was being a dick. I’m here now though.”
A grin begins to tug up at the corner of Katsuki’s lips, and it’s mirrored on Todoroki’s face. Katsuki hasn’t slept properly in four days because he’s spent days and nights writing the same goddamn paper, he’s fairly certain he’s developed carpal tunnel and he’s been wearing the same sweats and ratty Doreamon t-shirt for too long and right now he doesn’t care about any of it. Maybe apart from the carpal tunnel, which he intends to call his doctor for. Later. For now,
“Took you long enough, halfie.”
Todoroki never stays at a place for too long. Those who are doomed to outlive everyone else rarely allow themselves to grow roots. But maybe this time, Katsuki hopes, he will linger for a bit.
Todoroki Touya wasn’t really being a dick, Katsuki thinks after he’s lent Todoroki - Shouto, Katsuki corrects himself - a spare toothbrush, and Katsuki stands by the sink, silently brushing his teeth, while Shouto paces back and forth, Shithead following him around like a lost puppy. Apparently Shouto is the type to do that, walking around while brushing his teeth.
Touya could’ve waited another year. He could’ve waited five more. Ten. But he’d given Shouto the letter a year after he’d gotten it from Katsuki. It was pretty decent of him.
Katsuki suspects that maybe he cares about Shouto a bit more than he lets on. He could almost forgive him for snooping at the contents of the letter - which he had, Katsuki is sure about that.
Although it has only been two years since Touya Todoroki had sought out Katsuki, he hopes he’ll visit again sooner rather than later. He knows where to find him. Them. Now that they are three.
Todoroki,
I’ve spent the beginning of this year sorting through the things in my bedroom because I was moving to Tokyo to study history. I moved into my apartment back in February. It’s a one-room, tiny like the one you used to live in back when I found you bleeding out on the street like some loser. It’s not far from home, but it’s just far enough for me I think. Far enough for it to feel like distance, close enough so it won’t be a hassle when the old hag inevitably pesters me to come visit them. Otousan wanted me to call them every day but I managed to convince them three times a week was enough. Thank fuck. I don’t know what I’d talk to them about every single day.
I’m living close to Deku again, can you believe that? After eighteen long years, I still can’t get away from him. It wasn’t by choice, I can tell you that.
I’m kidding. I guess we’ve gotten a bit closer over the years. Or maybe we’ve just grown up.
But I’m getting sidetracked. When I was cleaning my room I found a letter in my desk drawer. I’d just turned 12 when I wrote it. I think it was some writing exercise or some shit like that. We had to write a letter to someone, it was stupid. I wrote mine to you.
Before you ask, which I know you’re going to: no, you can't read it. There’s nothing special in it anyways. I was 12. I’m mentioning it because it gave me the idea of writing a new letter for you. I don’t know. Some things are easier said in writing than face to face. And I want to say these things to you. Even though I think writing is dumb. Whatever. Sorry if this letter is shitty.
Last time we met was in Rome, and we went to that ice cream place you really like. It was October. Spring is my favourite season (because it’s my birthday, and because the temperature is nice back home), but Rome is nicer in October. The leaves are red. I like it, which I didn’t know I did before you brought me there. I didn’t even mind that it started pissing down.
There’s a lot of things I’d have no idea I’d like if I hadn’t met you. Thank you for that.
Now that we’re at thanking, in my first letter I described you finding me back in 1912 as you “helping me out that one time”, which I guess is true, but doesn’t really cover it. You saved my life back then. I don’t think I ever thanked you for it. So I’m doing it now: thank you for finding me. I know it was planned, but thank you still. Thank you for holding on to my note and for not forgetting about it. I think you get the gist.
Do you ever think about how we’re alive at the same time? I do. Sometimes I think about what you’re doing, and where you are. What if we’re staying in the same city right now? Tokyo is a big city after all. We could both live on opposite sides of the city and never bump into each other.
I think I’d be okay with that. I understand why you like to keep everyone at a distance. I do too, for different reasons, though I’ve grown to appreciate others to some degree. I might just tolerate living close to Deku for 18 more years.
I’m kidding again. Obviously.
I associate Tokyo with you, did you know that? You and your stupid one-room apartment. I might be spoiling you slightly about something in your future here, but we will come back to Tokyo again. You’ll want to revisit the neighborhood for whatever reason. So I always think of you when I think of Tokyo, which makes the ridiculous amount of traffic slightly more bearable. You always make everything more bearable for me. You make everything easier. Sorry that I never told you. I’m telling you now though.
I know you never stay in one place for too long, and I understand why. But I still have nightmares about the time with the car. I know you’ll wake up every time you die, but what if one day you don’t? The thought of that scares me, I think. What I’m getting at here is that I’d gladly go wherever and whenever you are, but the things is I rarely know where and when exactly that is. So if you’re ever in Tokyo in this window of time where both of us are alive, I’ll always be right here.
Katsuki.
P.S. I was debating the best way to deliver this letter to you. Then I remembered how back in Amsterdam you told me I’d meet your brother soon. I have no idea what your definition of soon is - it’s been a year and I have yet to meet him, but I’m assuming you told me that for a reason. If this somehow arrives 12 years later than planned, it’s your fault.
In 1912 Katsuki blinks awake on a strange street he doesn’t recognize, surrounded by a group of people whose expressions range from concerned to bewildered. He is half convinced that he is still dreaming. A man with some of the weirdest hair he has ever seen crouches down in front of him, asking him if he is okay. The answer is naturally no.
And well? You have all the jigsaw pieces. You know how the rest of the story goes.