Chapter 3, family?
She found the address after a brief search at a library terminal—another act of improvisation that made her feel like an imposter.
The Yaoyorozu estate was in an upscale district, a quiet neighborhood of walled properties and pristine streets.
Each gate held intercom systems, security cameras, and a distinct aura of exclusivity. She approached the one bearing a small, elegant plaque: "Yaoyorozu."
Her finger hovered over the intercom button. A cold sweat trickled down her spine. This was it. The point of no return. If they saw through her, she was finished.
She pressed the button, her heart thudding against her ribs.
"Yes?"
The voice that answered was cool, clipped, with an undertone of impatience. It wasn't unkind, but it held the unmistakable authority of someone accustomed to being obeyed without question.
"Momo... is that you?"
The woman asked. There was no warmth, only a faint, analytical curiosity.
"You're late."
"I... I had an accident," she stammered, the words feeling foreign and clumsy on Momo's tongue.
"I fell. I think I hit my head."
There was a pause, a silence so long it stretched into an eternity. Then, the woman's voice returned, unchanged in its temperature.
"A fall? Where are you now? Are you injured?"
"Just a few scrapes. I'm at the gate," she replied, her grip on the intercom's casing tightening until her knuckles were white.
Another pause, filled with the rustling of papers on the other end.
"Very well. Come in. Your father and I will discuss this with you."
The gate hummed and slid open, revealing a meticulously manicured garden path leading to a vast, modernist house. It was all sharp angles and glass, a stark monument to wealth and taste.
She walked the path, each step a hopeful imitation of a grace she didn't feel, the gravel crunching under her shoes with an unnerving loudness.
The front door opened before she could reach it.
A woman stood there, her features a more mature, weathered version of the face she now wore. This was Momo's mother. She wore an expensive-looking silk dress, her posture impeccable, her eyes scanning her from head to toe.
"Inside," she said, stepping aside.
The entryway was a cavern of marble and minimalism. It was cold, sterile, and smelled faintly of lemon polish and something else—a metallic, antiseptic scent that tickled the back of her throat.
A man rose from a low-slung leather sofa in the living area. He was tall, with sharp, intelligent eyes and the same aloof bearing as his wife. This was Momo's father. He didn't smile. He simply looked at her, his gaze as probing as a surgeon's scalpel.
"You had an accident," he stated, not asked.
"Yes," she managed, the word catching in her throat. She tried to stand straighter, to emulate the effortless poise she remembered from the anime, but her body felt like a puppet with tangled strings.
"In an alley. I... I don't remember how I got there."
Momo's mother glided closer, her movements precise and economical.
She tilted her head, her gaze falling upon the scrape on her daughter's cheek. It was an unnervingly clinical appraisal, like a jeweler inspecting a flawed stone.
"A fall," she repeated, her voice flat. "And this caused memory loss?"
"Some... things are blurry," she hedged, shrinking slightly under the combined weight of their stares. It wasn't anger she felt from them, not exactly. It was something colder. Dissection.
"I know who I am. I know... I'm Momo Yaoyorozu. But the last few hours are... gone."
The father, whose name she still didn't know, gestured toward the sofa.
"Sit."
It was a command, not an invitation.
She sank onto the cool leather, perching on the very edge as if ready to flee. The silence that followed was a physical presence, pressing in on her from all sides.
It was the silence of a laboratory before an experiment, not of a family room. The faint lemon scent from the entryway was stronger here, mixing with the metallic tang she couldn't place.
"The UA entrance exam is in two days," the father said, finally breaking the quiet. His eyes never left her face.
"Have you prepared?"
The question was so sudden, so disconnected from the fall, from her supposed injury, that it threw her for a moment. But she clung to it like a lifeline. It was a script she knew.
"Yes. I've been studying."
"Mm."
The sound was noncommittal. He exchanged a glance with his wife. It was a flicker of communication, swift and unreadable. They were a unit, a pair of strategists, and she was the variable in their equation.
"A head injury can be detrimental to performance," the mother stated, her fingers smoothing a non-existent crease in her dress. "We will have the family doctor examine you. Discreetly, of course."