He watches through the empty windowpane as the seagull swoops from its drift to snatch a French fry from the fingertips of a child.
Salt air rises up, wafts in through the cracks and the crevices in the walls of the old shack, the lifeguard house, and the building sighs with the sea breeze.
He's got a summer job here, as a lifeguard for "near-shore incident response" (a fancy way of saying "leave anything past fifteen meters to the guys with the fish Quirks"), and he doesn't know if he loves it or hates it. There's been exactly one near-shore incident for the entire month he's been there, and while he supposes it's good that people aren't getting hurt, it sure is boring. Maybe a shark will show up and I'll get to fry it.
So that's why, when he hears the first shout of "Kyouka!", he sprints from the shack out across the hot bright sands and sees two distinctly familiar shapes standing side-by-side at the water's edge, the parents of a classmate.
Not just any classmate – one he's been trying hard to keep off his mind for a while now, to no avail.
Without a second thought (as a lifeguard should!) he takes off, practically diving into the shallows, not really sure where to look but following the general direction of her parents' terrified stares, ducking his head beneath the surface every meter or so. It's ten meters out when he spots her, just a couple more away, a solid two meters down.
Eyes closed, serene. Tranquil.
Terror shoots through his heart, his body, but he pushes through it. Now's not the time! Diving, he puts all his strength into hauling the girl back up to the surface, the conditioning he's done at Yuuei paying off tenfold as he's (barely) able to drag her with him, kicking as hard as he can to pull her the twelve meters back to shore.
A man with a Quirk better suited to swimming shows up to help, and as much as he wants to be the hero, the savior, the one to pull her back by himself, he accepts the assistance, and together they're splashing, forcing their way through the tide's ebb and tide's flow to the sands where they can find their feet and carry her onto dry terrain.
Droplets glisten off porcelain skin, in stark contrast to the black two-piece she wears. Her chest rises and falls with breaths shallower than the waters where children play, oblivious to the way she teeters on her own shore between death and life.
He's not sure if she's actually dying, but when he catches sight of a portable speaker lying on someone's beach towel a couple of feet off, he snags it, shouting an apology to the owner before rushing back to the girl's side and plugging one of the audio jacks dangling from her earlobes into the auxiliary port, the volume at its lowest.
Thump-thump. Thump-thump.
It's faint. Fading. She's alive, but won't be for long if he doesn't act…!
Palm pressed to the back of his hand, fingers locked together, the heel of the bottom hand up against her sternum. "One. Two. Three. Four." He delivers each compression with sharp, precise force, to the beat of a song they'd listened to together on a hot late-summer day in her dormitory room –
All the way to thirty. No response.
He gulps, but there's no time to hesitate. He's doing this. He's saving her. He's going to be her hero no matter what.
One hand tilts her head back, the other tilts it towards him. Her mouth drops open. He knows he's blushing like fire, but it doesn't mean a damn thing anymore, and he pinches her nostrils closed before ducking in, pressing his lips to her pale, bloodless ones and forcing a hard breath into her lungs, seeing her chest rise with it out of the corner of his eye.
Retreat. Another breath. Do it again. Back to compressions.
But no matter what he does, that thump-thump isn't getting any stronger, and it takes him a moment to notice when it stops entirely.
Shit. Shit shit shit shit shit!
"A-ah…Jirou-san…?"
No response. Of course there isn't. What was he expecting?
I'm not letting you go. Not like this.
His brain, unbidden, goes over a dozen different times when he could have been a hero, could have been someone worth looking up to, and wasn't. The Unforeseen Simulation Joint, where she'd had to push him into facing his fear. The summer sports festival, where he'd been spectacularly defeated in an instant by Shiozaki. Their final exams, where he'd been unable to do anything at all…the training camp, where she'd been hurt, and he'd been stuck inside because of his failure on the exams…
No.
It's a stupid idea, and he's not sure where it comes from, but he does it.
Electricity surges down his arms, through his palms, shocking her with enough force to jolt her entire body, her torso bucking with the power of it; tears trickle down cheeks, lost in the salt spray, and he waits ten seconds, performing more compressions, up to thirty before he shocks her again, and again.
Onlookers are becoming concerned.
He's sobbing.
The ambulance arrives. They load her in.
He wants to go with them, but he cedes to her father, who he's never seen lose his cool before.
She's still plugged into the speaker.
Just as the doors close, he hears it, one last time.
Thump-thump.
Kaminari Denki drops to his knees and is no longer sure why he's crying.
The sun's drowned below the waterline by the time he's allowed in to see her.
"Hey, Jamming-whey."
Her voice is faint, her smile fainter, but it's there, and she's pale, and the mask he's been wearing all day, the false grin, it cracks and falls off his face and you can almost hear it shatter into a million pieces.
"…Hey, what're you crying for? Go outside and shock yourself stupid so I can see that smile."
"Don't you ever do that again."
His voice is muffled, his face buried in her pillow next to her head. Weakly, slowly, she reaches up and brushes one hand through his hair.
"I'll try not to."
There's silence, aside from the way he sobs into her pillow, holding her as tightly as he dares, trying not to hurt her, but she squeezes right back, as hard as she can, and for a long while they sit, wrapped together, the only sounds the steady beep of the Holter monitor that's replaced the speaker that told him she'd lived and the periodic bustle of a nurse outside on their way to another room.
"Hey, Denki."
He looks up. She only ever uses that name when they're alone.
"Thank you."
"I'd do it a million times over if I had to," and his voice is a rasp. She smiles again, the color back in her lips, and he can't take his eyes off of them as she speaks next:
"You forgot one thing."
"Yeah?"
"You're supposed to keep giving someone CPR even after they regain consciousness until you're sure they're okay. That's what I heard, anyway."
"…Are you okay?"
"I don't know," she whispers, and their lips meet, crash together like the waves he'd fought through to find her, to save her, and the kiss is wet like the sea, salty with tears, filled with pain and joy and relief all wrapped up in one.
When they finally break apart, he asks again.
"You okay now?"
"…We'll see."
And she pulls him down again.
Eventually they've had their fill – for now, at least – and she tells him she's okay now, and the smile on his face isn't a mask anymore.
"Shocking me like that was a pretty risky move."
"I know. I got one hell of a lecture for it. Told me I had no idea what I was doing."
"Didn't you?"
"No," he chuckles, and they both laugh. "But I'm glad I did it."
At some point, she falls asleep, head on his chest, and he dozes off next to her; her parents come and go, more than happy for a dozen and one reasons to see both of them; a doctor wakes them the next morning, and after a checkup, they sit together in silence, hands clasped together, the color back in her skin and his life and the world outside aglow with orange dawn.
A seagull lands on the windowsill and chokes down a stolen fry.
A child's laughter drifts in from the beach.
The faint scent of rain filters into the room.
They are alive, and for as long as he can help it, that isn't going to change.
Thanks for reading.