100 prompts: 38, 41, 75
3 super short drabbles centering around Oshima Yuko…
38 (Abandoned), 41 (Teamwork), 75 (Mirror)
38. Abandoned
Yuko knows it’s not really goodbye - she’ll see Sae soon enough, talk to her on the phone even sooner than that - but Yuko can’t help but feel a piece of her heart break off and crumble as she watches Sae walk away on a plane across the sea.
It sinks in deeper, wider than the sea when Yuko watches Sae introduce herself with a different team attached to her name.
41. Teamwork
For Yuko, home is where falling asleep during rehearsals warrants being drawn on with lipstick and permanent pen and neon eyeshadow - then woken up and told to buy snacks for the entire team. Blearily pushed out the door, pictures snapped without her knowing, it takes days for the curly mustache to come off of her face. (Yuko swears the conbini manager still laughs whenever he sees her, even after all these years.)
75. Mirror
Atsuko hadn’t told Yuko anything before Saitama but there had been something about her distant looks and longing that had pulled out both a thread of understanding from Yuko’s heart and a creeping feeling that something was about to happen. So when it did, to say that Yuko was surprised wouldn’t exactly be correct - to say that something inside her had shattered would be closer to the truth.
It wasn’t that she didn’t want Atsuko to go. Yuko wasn’t going to lie - neither of them had any reason to lie when it came to each other - this was she wanted, herself and Atsuko, what they both had always dreamed. Who was she to hold Atsuko back? Who was she to chain Atsuko to one side of the looking glass when Yuko herself also wanted to step through? After all, they were the two who knew better than anyone what it was like to be hung up on a wall.
So when Atsuko finally announced her graduation, the glass that had shattered inside of Yuko hadn’t been her heart - it was the crash of Atsuko breaking through the barrier that had stood between reality and their dreams.
