When Kyoka Jirou was six years old, she broke her arm.

She knew that she shouldn't have wandered off so far, but the trees around her grandmother's house had seemed like giants to her at the time. The trunks seemed like the thick legs of the mythical creature, the branches stretching so high they seemed like arms reaching up to scrape the sky. After three and half hours driving from Shizuoka Prefecture to Saitama Prefecture, the young girl had felt the need to stretch her legs.

Her mother had specifically instructed her not to climb them, but for some reason that only made her want to climb them even more. In all the storybooks ever read to her, the heroine never had an adventure by listening to the rules. She was already imagining herself as a great giant slayer as she climbed the first branch.

She was already too high up, feeling the wind whip against her face when she felt the branch snap.


When Denki Kaminari was six years old, he helped a girl who broke her arm.

She hadn't been far from his house; maybe a few blocks. Even though his mother always worried about him wandering too far into the woods, she would be on a business trip to Tottori Prefecture for the next few days. His father had free rein of him for the next few days, and his father didn't mind if he wandered too far into the woods.

It was probably for the best that he did. If he didn't, then he wouldn't have found the young girl crying on the ground. Tears streaked her tiny face, her body covered in scrapes and bruises. Her dark purple hair was tangled with twigs and burs, and at her side, her arm lay like a limp doll.

He was scared, simply put. He had no idea what to do, seeing a girl laying like that in the woods. Yet still, he helped her anyway. He only asked her two things.

"Hey! What happened?" He exclaimed, rushing forward.

Sniffling, she looked up at him, tears still streaming down her face. "I—I fell," she managed to gasp out.

He didn't say much after that. Grabbing her hand, he helped her back to her house, trecking through the woodland.

He didn't know why he helped her. It had just seemed like the right thing to do. He could have run back to his house. He could have just told his dad about what he saw, and let him deal with the problem. But for some reason, he didn't.

Just as they were about to reach the house, he looked back at her and asked her name. It was a simple question; something that most people ask each other.

For a few moments, the girl only looked at him, blinking her large violet eyes. Then, with a small whimper, just as the door opened and her mother flew out, she managed to get out a few words.

"K—Kyoka. My name is Kyoka."

As her mother let out a surprised shriek at seeing the girl known as Kyoka like that, he managed to get a few last words in before she rushed her inside.

"Cool. My name is Denki!"

Those were the last words he said to her before the door slammed.

But it wouldn't be the last time he saw her.


Jirou sat at her desk, her pencil clasped tightly in her hand. Hunched over her desk, the young girl's eyes narrowed as she scribbled notes into her workbook, murmuring to herself as she wrote. Occasionally, she would absent-mindedly pull on her green skirt, as she had slept in late this morning and had no time to iron it. Sometimes, she wished that middle schools, or rather schools in general, let the students wear whatever they wanted. If that was the case, that would make her day-to-day morning routine so much easier.

The clock ticked insistently on the wall, the constant ticking noise making Jirou want to shoot one of her earphones through the center of it. She had no idea how any of the other girls in her class managed to stay so put together, with their well-ironed skirts and quirks that allowed them to ignore the constant ticking of annoying clocks.

"Okay, class, pencils down. Pause your morning work for a minute," Ms. Kuramoto announced from the front of the class, the homeroom teacher gazing over the rows of desks with the same stern look as ever plastered onto her face.

Sighing with relief, Jirou allowed her pencil to clatter onto her desk as she leaned back in her chair. She could never properly concentrate on the problems given at the beginning of class, and would gladly take any excuse to escape them, even for a moment.

Adjusting her glasses, Ms. Kuramoto looked over the class one more time to make sure they were paying attention, but rather than making an announcement of some sort, she instead turned to the door.

"Alright, you can come in now," she called out, and instantly twenty heads turned with curiosity to gaze at the door. As soon as the words escaped Ms. Kuramoto's lips, the door to the classroom swung open, revealing only a single boy standing in the doorway.

At first glance, there was nothing extremely eye-catching about him. In a society of quirks filled with people who could have insect heads, purple skin, or antlers, he was fairly average looking. He was of average height with no particularly muscular build, the black pants, yellow shirt and green blazer uniform of Miyagawa Middle School draped over him.

However, as far as average people went, his appearance went a little above that. He had electric blonde hair sticking out in every direction; the only order being brought to it a single bang that hung over the left side of his face with a black bolt pattern running through it.

His golden eyes practically glowed as he greeted the class with a large beam planted on his face, which seemed a little too excited for Jirou's taste. However, as she watched the boy, whom she had presumably never seen before in her life, enter the room, something panged at the back of her mind. A click was the only way to describe it. Or rather, not really a click. As she looked at the boy, looked at his face, the electric bolt in his hair, it felt like someone was begrudging up a memory that had been long buried. It was more like when you're trying to get a plugin into an outlet, and you're so close, but no matter how hard you try, you just can't get it to reach.

And then someone added an extension cord.

"Sir, would you like to introduce yourself?"

"Oh, sure! So, um, my name is Kaminari Denki, I've lived in Saitama Prefecture my whole life, but I just moved out here cause my mom got this new job, and um...yeah!"

Denki.

And just then, the thing she was waiting for clicked in her brain. There, back in that forest in Saitama, she remembered. The boy with the electric hair who had helped her. She was pretty sure he had called himself Denki.

Ms. Kuramoto went on to explain a little more about Denki, whom she supposed she should call Kaminari, but in all honesty, she wasn't really listening. She barely remembered the encounter now; the pain from the broken arm had blocked out most of her senses. Even so, she still vaguely remembered the boy called Denki who had helped her get back to her house. At the time, she hadn't thought much of it, but now she could hardly wrap her mind around it.

"There's an open seat in the back; why don't you go sit there?" Ms. Kuramoto suggested, and with a final nod, Denki—or Kaminari, she should say, as it was the more formal term—bounded to the back of the classroom, taking a seat right beside Jirou.

"Hey," he whispered, leaning over as Ms. Kuramoto returned to her desk. Jirou glanced at the clock; there were only a few minutes before the first period. She had barely started on the work; she should at least try to work a little bit. Still, a distraction would be welcome right about now.

"Hey yourself," she whispered back, leaning back over her paper as she pretended to work.

Kaminari looked back at Jirou, flashing a small grin. "I'm Kaminari!"

"Yeah, I saw."

"Oh, yeah. Duh," he whispered, partly to himself.

Silence.

"Well...what's your name?"

For a few moments, Jirou sat in silence. Should she tell him? Then again, it's obvious he doesn't remember you, she thought, glancing over at the dopey grin plastered onto his face. For a moment, she felt a little embarrassed with herself. Did the event really matter if she was the only one who remembered? Besides, that had been a long time ago. When they met, it had only been a few weeks before she started school, and now she was halfway through seventh grade. They were completely different people now. Maybe it was time to leave all that stuff behind now.

Frowning slightly, she glanced back one more time at his dopey grin, still waiting expectantly for an answer.

"...Jirou. My name is Jirou."