ice, cold love, 𝐬. 𝐭𝐨𝐝𝐨𝐫𝐨𝐤𝐢 ✓

rika sayuri: origin

CHAPTER ONE

© 𝘮𝘪𝘭𝘧𝘴𝘨𝘢𝘳𝘥𝘦𝘯

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Fate is such a silly thing. You do all you can to tame it, pull it in by the reigns, yet once it gets a bit out of hand–bit unpredictable–you avoid it like the plague.

But really... who does control fate? Who gets to pick who thrives and who gets reduced to a sad story whispered behind cupped hands? No one controls it, we only succumb to it. That's the answer. We're all just bloodbags on a rollercoaster we didn't agree to ride. And me? I'm the poor sap who forgot her seatbelt.

This is a story about a girl who, try as she might, could not escape her own fate.

My name? Rika Sayuri. And I've been chewed up and spit out by fate more times than I can count.

People talk about me like I'm some tragic urban legend. You know, "That poor girl—her parents died, she lives with an aunt now, and her Quirk? Ugh, it's terrifying."

They whisper like I can't hear them. Like I'm not in the room, breathing the same air, standing two feet away. And when they finally get the courage to speak to me—usually with that tight, pitiful smile—I know they're not reaching out for my sake. They're doing it for themselves. To feel better. To feel like they're kind.

They ask how I'm doing, and I give them the truth. But they never really hear it. They want easy answers. Polished ones. Something like "I'm doing better now," or "Thanks for asking." Not the actual, messy truth. Not the stuff that makes people uncomfortable.

But I've never been very good at being comfortable.

My father shot himself when I was five. I was the one who found him. One moment, he was just a man buried under grief. The next, a memory soaked into the carpet. My mother died the year before that—some illness I was too young to pronounce, let alone understand. I don't remember her face. Just flashes of warmth and the smell of jasmine when someone walks past too fast.

Apparently, my brain repressed everything. Locked it in some dark, rusted box labeled "Do Not Open." I think that's what grief does to kids—it erases the pieces that might have saved them.

So yeah. I got dealt the discount deck of cards in life. Tragedy. Trauma. The works. But whatever. I survived.

I grew up with my aunt, Maki. She's tough. Like, "burn your fingers and keep chopping onions" tough. Her Quirk gives her some uncanny cooking instinct—she always knows what someone needs to eat. Healing through food, she says. She never talks about the past, just fills the space with warmth and noise and garlic frying in butter.

She taught me how to fight. How to smile when it hurts. How to weaponize softness like a blade.

She's the only reason I'm still standing. The only reason I didn't go full-villain by age ten. She raised me like I was worth something. Like I wasn't just my blood and brokenness.

The rest? Well. I picked up the pieces where I could. Some of them didn't fit. Some cut me open. But eventually, I started building something out of the wreckage.

I want to be a hero. Not because I have some shining ideal in my chest. Not because I think I'll ever be like All Might. I know I won't. He's a monument to hope. I'm... more of a caution sign with a knife taped to it.

But the world needs more than sunshine and speeches. It needs people who understand what happens when the light goes out. People who can walk into the places that heroes are afraid of, and come out breathing—even if they're bleeding.

Because All Might won't last forever. And when the cracks start to show, I want to be there to hold the line. To be someone who can take the hit so no one else has to.

So yeah. That's me.

Dead parents? Check. Emotional damage? Triple check.
Sarcasm as a defense mechanism? Absolutely.
Oh—and a blood-based quirk that turns me into a walking horror movie?

Double check.

Officially, it's called blood manipulation, and it's exactly what it sounds like—a little DIY miracle where I slice myself open and weaponize my own blood like some kind of gothic superhero. 

It's not pretty. It's not graceful. It's not heroic in the way they write about in textbooks.

But it's mine. And I've turned it into art.

Still, there's a cost to everything. Every drop of blood I give takes me closer to empty. My vision blurs. My lungs scream. Sometimes I pass out in a puddle of my own crimson handiwork and wake up wondering if I went too far. But there's a strange kind of beauty in it, too. In giving everything. In knowing that the only thing keeping me alive is the line I refuse to cross. 

That's the thing about blood—it's the one truth no one can fake. It spills, it stains, and it always tells the truth. You can hide a lot behind a smile, but you can't fake the sound of your heart slowing down.

I'm not here to be adored. I'm not here to win fans or pose for photos. I'm here because I know what it's like to bleed alone. And I won't let anyone else feel that way—not if I can help it.

Anyway, I'm not here to be your inspiration porn. I'm not some sad girl standing in the rain waiting to be saved. I'm the one walking into the storm, slicing through lightning bolts with a blood-sword, and yelling, "Try me, fate."

Because fate may be a mess. But me? I'm the girl fate tried to drown.

And I learned how to swim in my own blood.