Sounds Like a Hero

Ch 13 - Sounds like an Incentive

Neon's earliest memories of her birth mother, her real mother, was of her playing the piano. Her mother was a former concert pianist, who chose to raise a family over her career. Neon loved watching her mother play. With each note and chord, a bubble would float out from the piano until there was a gentle whirlpool of bubbles that circled over the piano. It was magical and Neon loved it.

Even her mother's laugh sounded like a beautiful arpeggio and she would laugh the most when she was in the presence of her children.

"Be useful human beings," Nishiyama Aine would often sang out to Neon and Koushi. Even her sentences had a musical lilt to it, "Do and learn as much as you can because you never know when you are needed."

Neon would remember how much the hired help and even her father would protest when Aine would roll up her sleeves and try to do all the household chores herself. Usually it ended in disaster, since Aine was a naturally clumsy person, whose grace and elegance only really came out when playing the piano.

Neon remembered the sounds of glass breaking, water spilling, and the smoke detector going off, which were all caused by her mother...and how much her mother would laugh when it happened and apologized profusely to the staff, who somehow laughed along with her while trying to fix whatever disaster she inadvertently caused.

She only stopped trying to help when she got sick...and Neon remembered that the most.

Later Neon discovered that it was stomach cancer but at the age of 4, all Neon knew was that her mother's laugh was getting quieter and the bubbles over the piano were lessening. Soon, there were no laughter and no private piano concerts for Neon and the staff. All there was, was her mother on her bed with a bunch of medical contraptions attached to her and Neon snuggling up to her side.

She would read to her mother. As many books as she could. Neon didn't care how big or heavy the books were or how much she didn't understand the actual words she voiced. Her mother would help her and to this day, Neon could hear her mother say in a breathless whisper, "Try again, Neon. There's another way to pronounce that 'o'."

In fact, Neon could still hear her mother say many things but the one that stuck closest to her heart was to be useful.

When her father remarried, Neon felt like her mother had died all over again. Everything about Aine had been stripped away by then, including her piano but having a new mistress of the house was the last step of removing her entirely from the Nishiyama household.

Something inside Neon shut down that day and she stopped interacting with what was left of her family. She went through the motions of everyday life but she didn't talk to anyone. Not even the household staff.

That was until the day Akia came home from the hospital. The baby was screaming at the top of her lungs. It was the most noise the house had heard in years and it pierced through Neon's shell. She couldn't not go see who was making that kind of racket. She had come to the nursery and with some prompting from the nanny, she held Akia in her arms. As soon as she did, the baby stopped crying and went to sleep with a small smile on her lips.

That was when Neon realized something. Her mother was right. You never know when you would be needed.

-------

"W-What's going on?!" Ochaco screamed when she opened the classroom door to head out for the day.

Class had ended and Neon was dead tired. From her early morning to the whole mess in the principal's office, she was surprised she even got through hero training class, which thankfully was in the classroom where they learned about the different protocols for a city-wide evacuation.