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67. These Things They Hide

Rule 78: Don't believe everything you hear.

Put simply, she was right. The list of ways her life was fucked up had grown by one. At least one.

Although, she supposed technically, it had also shrunk by one. So the list had changed, but it wasn't necessarily longer.

She really was not a normal person at all.

Here's some context. Yamada had dropped a bombshell. A frustratingly parent-shaped bombshell. Apparently, Otsuka's birth parents— worried for their dear child— had appeared on the apartment's doorstep while she was kidnapped. As in, they'd completed the journey from Tokyo, somehow found the address of her current guardians, and told them who they were without a thought to Otsuka's opinion on the matter.

"I'm, um-" She didn't have any words. Not even one. An apology was tempting but she didn't even know what she was apologising for. For them coming? For her hiding it? The former was what she felt was true, the latter was what she knew should be true.

"Before you say anything, we just want to make it clear we're not upset or angry about it or anything like that," Yamada spoke plainly and she had to say it was a relief because anger was definitely what she expected. "We are a little bit confused though. But you don't have to answer any of our questions if you don't want to, we can delay this if you want or just scrap it altogether."

Scrapping it was pretty damn tempting. Letting things continue as they were, knowing she didn't need to completely avoid talking about the fact that her parents were actually alive and living their best lives a train journey away, it sounded nice. It also felt cowardly, and risked some serious awkwardness she didn't have the strength to navigate with everything else she had to keep in mind at the moment.

She was so glad they'd let her finish her takeout, have a shower, and change into her favourite pyjamas before sitting her down to talk about this— leaving Oboro in her room with HeroTube and earphones both to keep him entertained and let him catch up on a decade of music.

"We do want to know if we should be keeping them away from you."

Otsuka blinked, a rather insistent voice in the back of her head leaping at this chance while what remained wilted in guilt for it.

"You don't have to give us a reason, we trust you, but we are currently the ones taking care of you and we need to know if that means helping you stay away from them."

She shook her head, ignoring the screams of the voice as the guilt clawing at the rest of her mind abated— if only by a little. "They're not- They haven't done anything to deserve quite that strong a reaction," she said.

"Then, again you don't have to answer, why don't you talk about them more? I mean, we sort of assumed they were dead."

Dead to her maybe. She wished she could slap her thoughts sometimes. In theory, it seemed like a pleasant idea. "I don't really like-" thinking about them- "talking about them."

Yamada nodded, the obvious question visibly heavy on his tongue. It was almost painful watching his attempts not to ask it.

"Why don't they have custody of you?" So it was almost a relief to hear Aizawa speak before Yamada could, even if the question was unpleasant.