a little annihilation - shigaraki x reader

a little annihilation

┏━━━━━━━━━━━━°⌜ 赤い糸 ⌟°━━━━━━━━━━━━┓

time is luck, and i wish ours overlapped more or for longer
the first time i took the mask off, just had another one on underneath

┗━━━━━━━━━━━━°⌜ 赤い糸 ⌟°━━━━━━━━━━━━┛

At five past midnight, your feet begin to hurt. The shitty little convenience store that you call a workplace doesn't provide its workers with a seat for long shifts—your manager hasn't even gotten around to fixing the AC despite it being broken all summer, so you won't hold your breath for a folding chair. Overhead, fluorescent lights flicker and buzz. You roll the sleeves of your undershirt back up to your elbow before reaching for your drink of choice—some overly-sugary energy drink that only makes your migraine worse. It makes you sick every time, but you can't bring yourself to buy a different brand. Your eyes zero in on the dark little mark on your arm just as your fingertips brush against the warm can.

Normally, you're not forced to see it. You prefer long sleeves and hoodies, even in the middle of July. You don't spend enough time outside to really worry about overheating, anyways. You work the night shift, you spend the rest of your time in your apartment. But—tragically—there's a heatwave sweeping over Japan, lingering in Yokohama, and your boss keeps swearing his guy will get around to fixing the air conditioning—just as he swore his guy would fix the lights, and the ICEE machine, and that freezer at the farthest corner of the store.

So, you conclude, it's probably your fault for continuing to wear long sleeves in this heat.

You'd also like to think that it's not out of shame for your soulmate mark that you wear winter clothes in summer, that it's simply your preference out of sensory comfort. It's not entirely true, though, and you know it; the junior high bullying has seeped into your soul, taken control of your subconscious habits no matter how hard you try to rewire it.

It's not even that weird a mark, honestly. It's not boring like most people's (encompassing their palm, a simple handshake) or in a weird spot (there were rumors of a girl at another school whose mark was on her ass, though you're sure every school has its own story like that). And it's not so small that you'll probably never even notice that you've brushed past your soulmate at all—something that becomes increasingly common as populations and cities grow. But one factor has always made it just slightly off: the missing finger.

The mark wraps around your forearm in a way that tells you that your soulmate is going to grab you. It's not terribly uncommon; you'd known a woman on your block whose soulmate had pulled her out of the way of a cyclist she hadn't seen. Romantic. There's that missing pinkie, though. Weird. You wonder if it's rare to lose a pinkie, or even to be born without one in the first place.

You'd hated the mark for a while, in the way that middle school makes you hate anything about yourself. Now it's more like begrudging acceptance; it's hard to hate something that's part of you when you can just hide it under a hoodie anyways. You throw your head back and tilt the Hello Kitty can until it's perpendicular with the cheap rug beneath your sneakers. Empty, and for the best; sweet stuff like that'll kill you.

With a huff, you lean down and drop it into the bin under the register. Simultaneously, the bell rings to signal a customer's entrance. If it were daytime or a nicer neighborhood, they might have been greeted with a warm smile. Instead, you and the stranger greet one another with silence, bags under eyes, and down-turned lips.

Your fingers tap at the counter in an attempt to drown out the corporate blah playing through the speakers. As subtly as possible, you eye the customer. People-watching conflicts with your general "don't judge a book by its cover" attitude, but that's never stopped you before.