Just deserts: Revised edition

Beach, Musutafu.

The day I unlocked my quirk, I fell apart, and that isn't a metaphor.

"When is Nanami getting here?" I asked, voice quiet.

"They won't be here for another half-hour," Aunt Hayami said, "You might as well go for a swim now if you don't want to wait—I'm sure they won't mind."

I eyed the expensive paper fan she used to cool herself with, wondering why I never saw anyone else use them. Thinking carefully about my response, I tried to figure out what I should do. If I went for a swim now, Nanami might be upset with me for not waiting for her and the last time she was upset, she had cried for almost ten minutes straight. I couldn't tell if that was a lot of crying compared to most people because Nanami was really the only person I had seen doing it with any regularity.

Like the time I heard about an evil monster that hid inside closets and came out at night to steal little children away. I'd thought it was an interesting story—mostly because if something like that happened enough for rumours to start spreading, then why wasn't there ever anything in my closet when I checked—but when I asked Nanami if she had ever found one of them in her closet, she'd burst into tears. There was also the incident in which I told her I would wait to watch the latest episode of 'Warrior Woman: Moon Ninja' with her the next time she came over, but then I ended up watching it on Hayami's computer later that night. Nanami had been even more upset that time, even after I promised to watch it again with her, and I still wasn't sure why.

Once, I asked Uncle Sajin why Nanami cried so much more than everyone else, and he told me that I was looking at the entire situation in the wrong way. Apparently, everybody cried and for all sorts of strange reasons. I'd asked him why I didn't cry like everyone else, and he'd told me that I used to cry when I was still a baby. Uncle Sajin didn't like lying, so I was pretty certain that he was telling the truth about that. Still, I couldn't actually remember crying about anything, not even once, and when I'd asked about that, his response was that some people felt things far more strongly than I did, so they were more likely to feel overwhelmed or sad.

Uncle Sajin didn't like crying either, so at his request, I promised him I'd try not to make Nanami cry anymore, and since he would be watching to make sure I didn't break my promise, I had to take it seriously. That meant that in order to keep my promise to Uncle Sajin, I had to avoid going for a swim nowbecause it had a high likelihood of making Nanami cry after she arrived.

"I'll wait until Nanami gets here," I decided, "That way, she won't cry—"

—my fingers crumbled without warning, falling into a million grains of sand that settled amongst the rest of the beach. My arms came next, my shoulders, my neck, and then the rest of me. My eyesight shifted as the effect reached my face, fracturing into an overlapping mess of perspectives. Aunt Hayami's raised eyebrow turned into an expression filled with terror as I disintegrated before her eyes—and then I was on the ground, or perhaps I was the ground.

Everything looked strange, as if I was looking in a million directions at once, each dot of sand a new point of view from which to observe the world. It was far too confusing to understand what I was seeing, and soon, I found a way to reduce it several times over until every small clump of sand was a new perspective. With this new and more cohesive net of vision, I got to watch from a thousand different perspectives as Aunt Hayami went mad—she crawled across the sand without any of the decorum she usually carried herself with, clawing at and flinging around what I was starting to realise were parts of me as she tried to uncover where I could have gone.

"Hisoka—Hisoka?" Hayami cried, "Don't panic—it's going to be alright—just—just—don'tmove."

I couldn't really understand where my bodyhad gone—that was, my real body, with my arms, my legs, and everything else that made it a body—there was just a wide net of pressure spread out amongst the beach that grew, shrunk, twisted, and shifted with my attention. My attempt to respond to her panic with something didn't really accomplish anything more than a splash of sand rising up off the beach before dispersing again—how strange this all was.

"Hisoka—you're just like Uncle Sajin, okay? A little bit worse, maybe—it's going to be alright," Hayami managed, "You just need to pull yourself back together; you can do that, can't you?"

Could I? I felt around with that pressure, finding it oddly similar to the feeling that usually let me know where my hands or feet were. It was in a lot more places than it usually was, but I could still feel myself, even if all of the parts I was used to had changed shape. Starting with what I could get a mental grip on, I started collecting more of the pressure, a task that sent more formidable puffs of sand in Aunt Hayami's direction.

"That's it." Hayami spluttered amidst the minor assault. "Keep doing that."

The wealth of feedback I got from those attempts at movement helped a lot in distinguishing what I had to actually do in order to access myself, and within a minute, I was moving as much of myself into a lump, condensing that pressure down directly next to Aunt Hayami.

"Very good—now, you need to—to—to shape the pile?" Hayami tried, still not quite herself. "Remember what you look like, Hisoka—you've got two arms, two legs, and a torso—"

The process was growing easier as I grew more familiar with the control mechanism for shifting the sand, and soon, I was a vaguely human-shaped lump of sand standing beside her, featureless and barely more than that of a blank mannequin.

"Perfect—that's perfect. Now, you need to put a proper head on your shoulders." Aunt Hayami breathed, "That's it—that's it—eyes, nose, mouth—the details are already coming in."

It was getting more comfortable by the second, and the closer I came to a shape that was like that of my previous self, the simpler the task actually became. There was some kind of automation to that returning process because I didn't have any of the real control needed to make such fine edits to the detailing—and then, at some point, it took nothing more than a twitch to shift from a statue made of sand into the short, black-haired boy, Hisoka Higawara. Aunt Hayami and I were both silent for a long moment as I blinked several times. My body felt almostnormal, except for the fact that I could now see in every direction at once, including from the beach itself.

"Oh my god, Hisoka," Hayami cried, dragging me into her grasp, "You scared me half to death."

That didn't feel particularly fair when I hadn't meant to do anything at all, and the entire situation had been just as much of a surprise to me as it had been to her. There had been several discussions about quirks since they had first taken me in, so it wasn't entirely bizarre, though, or completely unexpected. Both my father and Uncle Sajin could transform their upper bodies into sand, and Aunt Hayami could do the same with stone. It was never their complete bodies, though, which made me wonder if that was a choice they had made to avoid having to put themselves back together like I just had or if this was just another facet of my life in which I would be different. Even though I was facing Hayami, I could see—from the back of my head—that a small, familiar silver car was in the process of parking somewhere behind me.

"Sorry, Aunt Hayami," I said before pausing. "Nanami is here."

Within moments of the car coming to a complete stop, the back door was open, and Nanami was rushing down towards the beach to meet them. Hayami seemed unable to really process what I had said; instead, she simply held me at arm's length for a long time, staring at me as if to make sure I really had returned, and once she had finally managed to trick herself into believing it, she rose to her feet.

"I'm going to go speak with Hiroshi and Kana," Hayami managed, taking a shaky breath. "Don't go anywhere, okay? Just—stay righthere."

"Okay, Aunt Hayami." I agreed. "I'll stay here."

Nanami sped straight past my Aunt, barely taking the time to say hello before she hopped to a halt in front of me with her arms held out to each side as if she sought to secure the entire beach and all of the ocean beyond it within her grasp.

"Hisoka." Nanami said, voice bright, "You waited for me."

"Yes," I said, nodding. "Nanami, I learned something new—do you want to see it?"

"Duh—of course I do," Nanami said, planting her hands on her hips. "Show me."

I fell apart into a million grains of sand, and then Nanami immediately burst into tears—sorry, Uncle Sajin, It looks like I broke my promise already.