Chapter 104: Date at the Fair with the Heiress Yaoyorozu!

4000+ words

Ren waited by the entrance to the fair with his hands stuffed in his pockets, watching as the first colored lights flickered on against a sky that was just starting to darken.

I showed up fifteen minutes early like a nervous idiot, he thought as he rocked back and forth on his heels. In my defense, a promise is a promise, and after everything this sweet girl did to win her match, the least I can do is not show up late. Even if my body's still running at half power thanks to a certain explosive MILF.

A black limousine pulled up across the street, long and gleaming, completely out of place among the ordinary cars of the neighborhood. The back door opened and Momo stepped out.

Ren went completely still for a second.

She was wearing a light blue dress that came just above the knees, simple and elegant at the same time, her black hair loose and falling over her shoulders instead of her usual ponytail. No uniform, no hero costume, just Momo dressed like any girl out for an evening.

"Ren-kun," she greeted, approaching with slow steps as she smoothed the skirt with one hand. "I hope I haven't kept you waiting too long. The traffic was heavier than my driver anticipated, so please forgive my tardiness."

"I just got here, don't worry about it," he lied calmly. "Though I gotta tell you something before we go in, because if I don't say it now I'm gonna regret it all night."

"Is something the matter?" Momo looked at him with a worried blink. "Is there an issue with my attire? I considered several options this afternoon and feared it might be too casual for an occasion such as this, or perhaps too..."

"You look beautiful," Ren interrupted bluntly. "Completely gorgeous, and I mean it, not as some polite compliment."

Momo's face went from its usual pale tone to a deep pink in a matter of seconds, and her hands clutched at the skirt of the dress as if she needed something to hold onto.

"I-I see," she murmured, looking away toward the lights of the fair. "I appreciate your assessment, Ren-kun, although I believe you may be exaggerating somewhat. It is merely a dress my mother chose for me some time ago that I rarely have the opportunity to wear."

"Well, your mother has good taste," Ren replied, offering his arm with a small theatrical bow. "Ready for me to show you how normal people have fun? Tonight you get the honor of being guided by the best fair guide in all of Musutafu."

"I'm not entirely certain that title actually exists," Momo said, although she took his arm with a smile, "but I accept the offer. I've read about these events, so I have considerable expectations."

She read up on fairs, Ren thought tenderly as he guided her in. Of course she researched it like it was an exam. Never change, Momo.

***

The inside of the fair was a cheerful chaos of music, voices, and the smell of fried food. Momo turned her head from side to side, fascinated by the game booths, the lights blinking in every corner, and the Ferris wheel rising up at the far end.

"It's far more stimulating than the pictures suggested," she commented, her gray eyes taking everything in with curiosity. "The density of sensory stimuli in such a compact space is remarkable. Where exactly are we supposed to begin?"

"We start by humiliating you at a fair game, obviously," Ren said, pointing at a shooting gallery booth with air rifles. "Look at that one over there. You hit the targets, you win a prize. Sounds easy, but it's completely rigged so you lose. The fun's in trying anyway."

"Rigged?" Momo frowned. "Do you mean the rifles have their sights deliberately miscalibrated to reduce the customer's probability of success?"

"Hm... Exactly that, my dear Momo. Welcome to the dark side of popular entertainment."

"That is outrageously dishonest," she declared with indignation, planting herself in front of the counter. "Excuse me, sir, I would like to participate. And I'll warn you that I intend to win."

The booth attendant, an older man with a stained apron, let out a laugh and handed her a rifle.

"Three pellets, miss. Knock down all five ducks in the back row and you take home the grand prize."

Momo raised the rifle, aimed with a concentration that seemed more suited to a tactical operation than a fair game, and fired. The pellet passed several centimeters past the first duck.

"The sight is off to the left," she murmured, adjusting her aim without losing her composure. "I'll compensate for the offset manually."

Here we go, Ren thought, amused. She's gonna treat a plastic duck game like an applied physics problem. Well, no way I'm letting her lose on her first date with me.

While Momo was getting ready for the second shot, Ren slid his hand just a couple of centimeters into his pocket and let his telekinesis do the work, nudging the pellet with an invisible, minimal force, just enough to correct its trajectory. One after another, all five ducks fell with a sharp clack that made the attendant's eyes widen.

"I did it!" Momo exclaimed, and for an instant all her heiress composure vanished, replaced by the wide open smile of a girl. "Ren-kun, I knocked down all five! Did you see that? I compensated for the sight offset perfectly!"

"I saw, I saw," Ren smiled, caught up in her excitement. "You're terrifying, Momo. Remind me never to bet against you."

The attendant, still surprised, took down an enormous white cat plushie and handed it to Momo, who hugged it against her chest with an expression of pride.

"This is the first thing I've won by my own merit in a recreational context," she said, looking at the plushie with unexpected affection. "My family always acquired things through purchases, never from... this. This feels different, Ren-kun."

"That's exactly the idea," he replied. "Now come on, I've still got like ten more ways to prove to you that the world of us commoners is awesome."

***

They went by the duck fishing booth, where Momo took the task of hooking the floating ducks so seriously she almost fell into the pond, and by a ring toss booth where Ren missed every single shot miserably while she watched him with one eyebrow raised.

"For someone with a telekinesis Quirk, your aim is rather disappointing," Momo commented, holding back a laugh.

"Using my Quirk would be cheating, so I'm competing with honor," Ren defended himself. "You keep making fun of me, but at least I didn't get my shoes wet chasing a rubber duck."

"That was an accident!" she protested, completely red, hugging the plushie even tighter.

Ren's stomach chose that moment to growl, and he put a hand to his belly with a grimace.

"Well, that settles the debate. Time for fair food, which is where you'll really get why normal people live happy. Come on, there's a takoyaki stand over here that looks decent."

They bought a tray of steaming takoyaki and a stick of pink cotton candy that Momo accepted with suspicion, examining it as if it were an experimental substance.

"This is entirely edible?" she asked, turning it over in her hand. "The texture suggests a sugar structure spun at high temperature, which implies a fairly elevated caloric concentration."

"It's basically sugar and air, Momo. Don't analyze it, just take a bite."

She obeyed cautiously, taking a small bite of the cotton candy, and her face immediately relaxed.

"Oh, it dissolves!" she exclaimed, looking at the stick. "It dissolved completely in my mouth the moment it made contact! This is a fascinating gastronomic experience, Ren-kun, I've never tried anything with such an immediate phase transition."

"Told you you'd like it," Ren laughed as he speared a takoyaki with a toothpick. "Now try one of these, but be careful because the inside is..."

Too late. Momo had already popped a whole ball into her mouth, and instantly her eyes filled with tears as she waved a hand in front of her face and made a comical grimace trying to bear the heat of the filling.

"Mmh! I-it's boiling inside!" she managed to say between puffs, fanning her mouth desperately. "Wh-why is it so hot?"

"That's exactly what I was about to warn you about," Ren said, cracking up. "Hold on, hold on, don't move, you've got sauce all over your cheek."

He grabbed a napkin from the tray and, without really thinking, wiped the corner of her lips with a soft motion. Momo went completely still, the cotton candy forgotten in one hand and the plushie in the other, while Ren wiped away the trace of sauce carefully.

Oh, wow, he thought when he realized how close their faces were. This just got intimate fast.

"Th-thank you," Momo whispered, her voice barely audible and her face flushed. "I was careless to eat without first verifying the temperature of the filling."

"You don't have to verify anything, Momo. The whole idea of fair food is to eat it without thinking too much." Ren lowered the napkin and gave her a calm smile. "Though I gotta admit, watching you make that face was worth every yen of the takoyaki."

"Ren-kun!" she protested, giving him an indignant little tap on the arm. "Why do you always have to say things like that?"

***

After a while they came across a secluded lookout, a small terrace next to an artificial pond where the lights of the fair arrived softened and the noise faded into the distance. They sat on a bench, the cat plushie between them, while Momo finished what was left of her cotton candy in silence.

"It's pretty here," she said finally, looking at the reflection of the lights on the water. "Quieter. I can think clearly."

"Think about what?" Ren asked, leaning back against the rest. "You've had that face like something's been running circles in your head for a while now."

Momo went quiet for a moment, her fingers playing with the empty cotton candy stick.

"May I confess something to you, Ren-kun? Something I haven't told anyone else."

"That's what I'm here for. Lay it on me."

"Sometimes I'm not sure I want to be a hero," she admitted in a low voice, without lifting her gaze from the water. "And not because I fear the danger or the effort. It's more complicated than that. I was raised my entire life as the heiress of the Yaoyorozu legacy, with the expectation that I would one day lead my family's company and uphold its name. Becoming a hero was my own decision, and yet, every time I lose a match or make a mistake, I feel as though I'm failing a legacy I never fully chose."

Ren listened without interrupting, watching how the light moved over Momo's face as she spoke.

"My parents support me, in their way," she continued. "But there's a part of me that wonders if I'm only here to prove something, to prove that the spoiled heiress can be strong on her own. And another part that fears if I abandon the hero's path, I would be wasting a Quirk many would kill to have. I'm trapped between two versions of myself, and neither feels completely real."

"You want my honest opinion or do you just want me to listen?" Ren asked gently. "Because both are on the menu."

"Your opinion, please," Momo said, turning to look at him. "I trust your judgment, Ren-kun. Probably more than I should."

"Then here it goes." Ren leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. "Today I watched you knock down five plastic ducks and celebrate it like you'd won a world championship. I watched you chase a rubber duck until you nearly fell into a pond. I watched you cry over a takoyaki that was too hot. And not once during any of that did you think about the Yaoyorozu legacy or what's expected of you. You just had fun, because you wanted to."

Momo looked at him in silence, holding her breath.

"The legacy isn't you, Momo. The legacy is something they gave you. You're the girl who takes a duck game like a physics exam and hugs a cheap plushie like it's the most valuable thing in the world." Ren shrugged. "Be a hero if you want to be a hero. Run the company if you want to run the company. Or do both, or neither. But do it because you decided, not because someone decided for you before you were born."

Momo pressed her lips together. Her eyes had grown slightly damp.

"No one had ever put it to me that way," she murmured. "I always assumed I had to choose one of the two lives and give up the other. The idea that both, or neither, are also valid options... it's liberating, Ren-kun. Thank you."

"That's what perverted bald friends are for," he said with a smile. "Emotional counseling service included at no extra charge."

Momo laughed, and for an instant all the weight she'd been carrying seemed to lift off her shoulders.

"You're a strange person, Ren-kun. But I think you're exactly the kind of strange person I needed to meet."

***

And just as the mood was turning warm and the conversation threatened to drift toward something tenderer, Ren spotted a long head of blue hair moving through the crowd, just a few booths away, in front of a candy apple cart.

Nejire.

Ren's body reacted before his brain did. In a survival instinct move, he grabbed Momo by the arm, yanked the plushie with the other hand, and dragged them both behind a closed booth, pressing himself against the wall in a shadowed corner.

"R-Ren-kun!" Momo exclaimed, startled, as she suddenly found herself pressed against his chest. "Wh-what are you...?"

The improvised embrace had left them much closer than either of them had planned. Momo's chest was pressed against Ren's, and the neckline of the blue dress, which until that moment had been perfectly decent, now seriously threatened to spill over from the pressure of the embrace.

"Shh, crouch down a little," Ren whispered, ducking his head. "Don't move."

"Why are we hiding?" she asked quietly, her face completely red and her breath rapid against Ren's neck. "Is there a villain? Did you detect a threat? If so, tell me and I'll create whatever you need immediately..."

"No, it's not a villain, it's..." Ren peeked out from the edge of the booth, confirmed the blue mane of hair, and hid again. "It's Nejire. My... uh... you know. The complicated situation thing."

And then, while he was crouched there with Momo practically on top of him and the fabric of the dress losing a battle against the edge of the neckline, a question crossed Ren's mind.

"Hold on a second." Ren went completely still. "Why the hell am I hiding?"

"Excuse me?" Momo looked at him without understanding.

"I'm not doing anything wrong. I'm at a fair, with a friend, eating takoyaki. I have absolutely no reason to hide behind a booth like a criminal." Ren ran a hand over his bald head, completely confused by his own reaction. "What kind of idiotic reflex was that?"

But while Ren was rethinking his life choices, Momo's mood had shifted completely. Her expression dimmed into one of contained discomfort.

I'm on a date with a boy who has a girlfriend. What am I doing? This is completely inappropriate. My mother would be horrified to know I'm here, alone, with someone committed to another person, she thought, slowly pulling back from the embrace with the plushie clutched against her chest.

Her upbringing and her morals pulled in one direction, and the problem was that her heart pulled hard in the other. Because the uncomfortable truth was that she didn't want the evening to end. She wanted to stay there, at the lookout by the pond, listening to Ren tell her that the legacy didn't define her.

"Ren-kun," she said finally, with her dignity and courtesy intact, though with a touch of sadness. "If you are worried about Hado-senpai seeing us together, then perhaps we should conclude the..."

"Don't you dare finish that sentence," Ren interrupted, pulling her back toward him with a firm gesture.

The movement pressed Momo against his chest again, and the neckline of the blue dress threatened even more to give way, which forced Ren to look away a couple of times, hopelessly distracted by how generous they looked from that angle.

Focus, man, he ordered himself with effort. You're having an important emotional moment and your eyes are doing exactly what they shouldn't. Keep it together, bald pervert.

"Listen to me carefully," he continued, recovering his seriousness. "The thing with Nejire is complicated and a long story to explain, and I promise I'll tell you the whole thing someday. But this date is important to me, Momo. I promised you, or whatever you wanna call it, and I'm not gonna ruin it by hiding from anyone. You've got nothing to worry about."

Momo looked into his eyes, searching for any trace of doubt, and finding none, felt the weight in her chest grow lighter.

"You mean it?"

"Completely. So there's no doubt left in your mind, watch this." Ren took Momo's hand in his, stepped out of the hiding spot with a sure stride, and guided her back to the main path. "There. In plain sight, hiding nothing. If Nejire sees us, I'll wave to her and introduce her again to my friend Momo. See? No prob..."

He stopped dead.

The candy apple cart was still there. The blue mane of hair was not.

"Huh?" Ren turned his head from side to side, scanning the crowd without finding any trace of Nejire. "Where did she go? She was right there a second ago."

He scratched his bald head, completely baffled.

Unbelievable, he thought. The minute I decide to face the situation like a real man, she vanishes.

"Was it important that she was there?" Momo asked, blinking.

"No, not at all, forget it," Ren sighed, still not letting go of her hand. "Just fate messing with me, the usual. Where were we? Oh, right. The night's still young and you still haven't tried a fair hot dog."

"I am not sure I want to risk my palate on another temperature surprise," Momo said. The smile had returned to her face, and she made no attempt whatsoever to let go of Ren's hand.

***

The sky was completely dark by the time they left the fair, with Momo carrying her cat plushie and a couple of smaller prizes Ren had finally managed to win after forbidding himself from using his Quirk. The black limousine was waiting for them at the same spot where it had dropped Momo off hours earlier.

"Well, my dear Momo, this is where the tour ends," Ren said as the driver opened the back door. "I hope I lived up to those considerable expectations you had."

"You exceeded them, Ren-kun," she replied sincerely, pausing by the door. "This was, without exaggeration, one of the best evenings I can remember in a long time. Thank you for keeping your promise."

"Thanks for winning that match and forcing me to keep it," he joked. "Get some rest, okay? And quit thinking so much for one night."

Momo nodded, climbed into the limousine with the plushie in her arms, and just before the door closed, leaned her head out one last time.

"Ren-kun... I'm really glad I met you."

The door shut before he could respond, and the limousine pulled away smoothly, leaving Ren standing on the sidewalk with a tired smile on his face.

Yeah, he thought as he stuck his hands in his pockets and started walking back home. Way too romantic for my own good.

***

Momo's bedroom was silent when she arrived, lit only by the desk lamp. She sat on the edge of her bed with the cat plushie beside her, still wearing the blue dress, going over every moment of the evening with a smile.

I had so much fun.

The admission made her blush slightly.

Perhaps even too much. I hope I didn't come across as overly enthusiastic...

And then, without quite knowing why, her mind went back to the bet. To the condition Ren had laid out, before the match against Kirishima, about a certain cheerleader outfit he had been imagining. She had won, so technically she had never been required to fulfill that part. And yet, the curiosity itched in some corner of her mind that refused to behave.

She took out her phone and, biting her lip, searched online for photos of cheerleaders from sports festivals. Images of colorful uniforms, pleated skirts, and pompoms filled the screen.

This is purely intellectual curiosity, she told herself, her cheeks already flushed. I want to understand the design of the garment. It's a textile analysis exercise, nothing more.

She stood up, left the phone on the desk, and activated her Quirk. Her skin glowed as the lipids transformed into fabric, and bit by bit she materialized a cheerleader outfit. Except at some point during the process, the design decisions stopped being conservative. The neckline ended up a little deeper than necessary, and the skirt came out considerably shorter than any reasonable sports uniform.

When she finished changing and looked at herself in the full length mirror, her face caught fire completely.

"This is..." she murmured, tugging down on the hem of the miniskirt with both hands. "This is scandalous. I can barely cover... oh no."

When she leaned over even a little, she could almost see her underwear under the hem of the skirt. Momo covered her face with her hands, completely mortified, while her heart pounded.

I can't believe I created this, she thought, peeking through her fingers. A lady of my position should never even consider wearing a garment so... so provocative.

But her hand was already reaching for the phone.

She raised the camera in front of the mirror, hesitated for a long time with her finger trembling over the button, and finally took the photo before common sense could stop her. She stared at the image on the screen, her own reflection in the daring cheerleader outfit, and after an eternity of vacillation, opened the chat with Ren and typed a message.

Ren-kun, you were curious about how I looked as a cheerleader... Don't misunderstand.

She attached the photo and pressed send before she could regret it.

With a stifled groan, she dropped onto the mattress and hid her face against the cat plushie.

"Why did I do this?!" she moaned into the plushie. "Why, why, why?!"

When she finally managed to calm her breathing, a different idea crept into her mind, one that had been circling since the sports festival. The conversation with Nejire in that hallway, the words her senpai had let slip... And an even stranger thought she herself had had afterward, about the possibility that friends, under certain circumstances, might come to share...

Momo shook her head violently, her cheeks burning again.

"No, no, no," she scolded herself out loud, swatting the thought away with both hands as if it were an insect. "Stop right there. That sort of thinking is improper, unvirtuous, and absolutely unbecoming of a Yaoyorozu."

She lay there on the bed, staring at the ceiling, with the phone face down beside her and her heart still racing.

And yet... I wonder what he'll say when he sees the photo.

********

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