The Dam in the Barrens

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Irusu, Japan

June 14th, 2005

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—1—

"We could flood out the whole barrens if we wanted to."

Deku and Kirishima looked at Sero doubtfully, and then at the stuff Sero had brought along with him: boards (scrounged from a neighbors backyard), a sledgehammer, and a shovel.

"I dunno..." Kirishima started, glancing at Deku. "When we tried yesterday, the current just washed everything away."

"This'll work," Sero said. He also looked to Deku for the final decision.

"Well, let's g-give it at-t-try," Deku said. "I c-called Kah-Kah-Kah-Kacchan this m-morning. He's g-gonna be oh-over later... I-Iida might c-come too."

"Kacchan?" Sero asked, looking a little confused.

"Oh, that's Deku's nickname for Bakugo Katsuki." Kirishima said, for once not feeling a jittery-anxious-happy feeling at the thought of Bakugo. He was still looking cautiously at Deku, who seemed somehow different today-quieter, less enthusiastic about the idea of the dam. Deku looked pale today. Distant.

"Huh." Sero smiled, "cute."

"Don't let him hear you say that." Kirishima laughed a little, still shooting worried looks over at Deku, who was rummaging around in the pile of boards. "He'll lose it."

Sero and Kirishima laughed a little at that. Deku picked up a large, six-foot board. He stared at it for a moment, before tossing it aside and got up and brushed off the seat of his jeans. He walked to the edge of the stream and the other two boys joined him. Deku shoved his hands in his pockets and sighed deeply. Kirishima was certain that Deku was going to say something serious. He looked from Kirishima to Sero and then back to Kirishima again, not smiling now. Kirishima was suddenly very afraid.

But all Deku said then was, "You got your ah-ah-aspirator, Eh-Eh-Ejirou?"

Kirishima slapped his pocket, grinning. "Yep."

"Hey, how'd it work with the chocolate milk?" Sero asked.

Kirishima laughed. "Worked great!" he said. He and Sero broke into furious giggles while Deku looked at them, smiling but puzzled. Kirishima explained and Deku nodded, grinning again.

"E-E-Ejirou's muh-hum is w-w-worried that h-he's g-gonna break and sh-she wuh-hon't be able to g-get a re-re-refund."

Kirishima snorted and made as if to push him into the stream. Deku only smiled and side-stepped away from him and stuck out his tongue playfully, causing Sero to chuckle.

Kirishima laughed a little too, but he couldn't shake the feeling that something was off with Deku. Usually, if Kirishima were to shove him softly towards the stream, the two of them would end up in a manly (and friendly) wrestling match (which Deku almost always won- The kid was a lot stronger than he looked) but today- well- it just felt like they were going through the motions of having a good time. Something was on Deku's mind. Kirishima figured he would spill when he was ready, but the question was: Did he really want to hear it?

Deku was still smiling. Smiling, yeah, but it looked a little distant- and his eyes seemed to be a much duller shade of green than they usually were. His hands were shoved into the pockets of his jeans, and it appeared to Kirishima like they were balled into tight fists.

Kirishima frowned.

Deku noticed, and smiled wider. It still looked odd. He looked at Sero. "Y-You g-g-gonna sh-show us how to b-build a dam or wuh-what?"

Sero looked first at the stream, flowing past them at moderate speed. The Shibui was not terribly wide this far up in the Barrens, but it had defeated them yesterday just the same. Neither Kirishima nor Deku had been able to figure out how to get a foothold on the current. But Sero was smiling, the smile of one who contemplates doing something new... something that will be fun but not very hard. Kirishima thought: 'He knows how-I really think he does.'

"Okay," he said. "You guys want to take your shoes off because you're gonna get wet."

The mind-mother in Kirishima's head spoke up at once, her voice as stern and commanding as the voice of a traffic cop: "Don't you dare do it, Ejirou! Don't you dare! Wet feet, that's one way-one of the thousands of ways-that colds start, and colds lead to pneumonia, so don't you do it!"

Sero and Deku were sitting on the bank, pulling off their sneakers and socks. Sero was fussily rolling up the legs of his old, ratty, to-big jeans. Deku looked up at Kirishima. His eyes were forest-green and warm, sympathetic. Kirishima was suddenly sure Deku knew exactly what he had been thinking, and he was ashamed.

"Y-You c-c-comin?"

"Yeah, sure," Kirishima said. He sat down on the bank and undressed his feet while his mother ranted inside his head... but her voice was growing steadily more distant and echoey, he was relieved to note as if someone had stuck a heavy fishhook through the back of her blouse and was now reeling her away from him down a very long corridor.

—2—

It was one of those perfect summer days which, in a world where everything was on track and normal, you would never forget. A moderate breeze kept the worst of the mosquitoes and blackflies away. The sky was a bright, crisp blue. Temperatures were in the low seventies. Birds sang and went about their birdy-business in the bushes and second-growth trees. Kirishima had to use his aspirator once, and then his chest tightened and his throat seemed to widen magically to the size of a freeway. He spent the rest of the morning with it stuffed forgotten into his back pocket.

Sero Hanta, who had seemed so timid and unsure the day before, became a confident general once he was fully involved in the actual construction of the dam. Every now and then he would climb the bank and stand there with his hands on his hips, what looked to be athletic's tape wrapped clumsily around his inured arm, streaked with blood from reopened wounds and mud from the Shibui's bank, two now-unsticky strands flapping lazily in the breeze, looking at the work in progress and muttering to himself. Sometimes he would run a hand through his hair, and by eleven o'clock it was standing up in crazy, comical spikes.

Kirishima felt uncertainty at first, then a sense of glee, and finally, an entirely new feeling-one that was at the same time weird, terrifying, and exhilarating. It was a feeling so alien to his usual state of being that he was not able to put a name to it until that night, lying in bed and looking at the ceiling and replaying the day. Power. That was what that feeling had been. Power. It was going to work- and it was going to work better than he and Deku-maybe even Sero himself-had ever dreamed it could.

He could see Deku getting involved. Only a little at first, just as he had done, still mulling over whatever it was that was bothering him so badly. However, bit by bit, he began to commit himself fully- even clapping Sero on the back a couple of times (and almost knocking the poor guy down each time- seriously, the kid needed to get some meat on his bones) and told him he was unbelievable. Sero beamed at the compliment each time.

Sero and Kirishima set one of the boards across the stream and held it as Sero got Deku to use the sledgehammer to seat it in the streambed. "There-it's in, but we'll have to hold it or the current'll just pull it loose," he told Kirishima, so Kirishima stood in the middle of the stream holding the board while water sluiced over its top and made his hands into wavering starfish shapes.

Deku and Sero located a second board two feet downstream of the first. Deku used the sledge again to seat it and Sero held it while explaining to Deku how to fill up the space between the two boards with sand. At first, it only washed away around the ends of the boards in gritty clouds and Kirishima didn't think it was going to work at all, but when Sero told Deku to begin adding rocks and muddy gook from the streambed, the clouds of escaping silt began to diminish. In less than twenty minutes he had created a heaped brown canal of earth and stones between the two boards in the middle of the stream. To Kirishima, it looked like an optical illusion.

"If we had real cement... instead of just... mud and rocks, they'd have to move the whole city by the middle of next week," Sero said, letting go of his board at last and sitting on the bank. Deku and Kirishima laughed, and Sero grinned at them. When he grinned, there was a ghost of the handsome man he would become in the lines of his face. Water had begun to pile up behind the upstream board now.

Kirishima, pulling his long fringe out of his face, asked what they were going to do about the water escaping around the sides.

"Let it go. It doesn't matter."

"It doesn't?"

"Nope."

"Why not?"

"I can't explain exactly. You gotta let some out, though."

"How do you know?"

Sero shrugged. 'I just do, the shrug said,' and Kirishima was silenced.

When he was rested, Sero got a third board-the thickest of the four or five he had dragged behind him on a makeshift pallet down into the barrens- and placed it carefully against the downstream board, wedging one end firmly into the streambed and socking the other against the board Kirishima had been holding, creating the strut he had put in his little drawing the day before. "You should be able to let go now, Ejirou."

"Won't the water wash it away?" Kirishima asked.

"Nope. The water is just gonna push it in deeper."

"And if you're ruh-ruh-wrong, Kah-Kacchan g-gets to buh-beat yuh-you up." Deku joked.

"That's cool," Sero said amiably.

Kirishima stepped back. The two boards that formed the basis of the dam creaked a little, tilted a little... and that was all.

"No way!" Kirishima exclaimed, excited.

"It's g-g-great," Deku said, grinning.

"Oh- um- thank you." Sero smiled bashfully, but he seemed a lot more relaxed now than he had the day before. He played with one of the loose pieces of athletics tape on his arm absentmindedly.

"Let's eat." Kirishima finally said, breaking the brief silence that had fallen between the three of them. He elbowed Sero's ribs lightly, smiling, "God knows you need to, beanpole."

—3—

They sat on the bank and ate, not talking much, watching the water stack up behind the dam and sluice around the ends of the boards. They had already done something to the geography of the streambanks, Kirishima saw: the diverted current was cutting scalloped hollows into them. As he watched, the new course of the stream undercut the bank enough on the far side to cause a small avalanche.

Upstream at the dam, a circular pool was forming- a portion of it was already spilling over the Shibui's banks and flooding the ground with muddy water. Kirishima slowly began to realize what Sero had known from the beginning: the dam was already built. The gaps between the boards and the banks were sluiceways. Sero had not been able to tell Kirishima this because he did not know the word. Above the boards, the Shibui had taken on a swelled look. The chuckling sound of shallow water babbling its way over stones and gravel was now gone; all the stones upstream of the dam were underwater. Now and then more sod and dirt, undercut by the widening stream, would fall into the water with a splash.

Downstream of the dam, the watercourse was nearly empty; thin trickles ran restlessly down its center, but that was about all. Stones that had been underwater for God knew how long were drying in the sun. Kirishima looked at these drying stones with mild wonder... and that weird other feeling. They had done this. They. He saw a frog hopping along and thought maybe old Mr. Froggy was wondering just where the water had gone. Kirishima laughed out loud.

Beside him, Deku was unpacking his lunch: A simple fried rice bowl and pork cutlets, most likely leftover from the previous night's dinner. Kirishima himself had a heaping portion of Ginger Rice- according to his mother it was supposed to be "anti-inflammatory" and "help ease digestion"- though Kirishima didn't know why he would need any of that stuff, because as far as he could tell nothing in him was flaming and he was digesting things just fine.

Sero only had a two-pack of matcha Manju, that looked to Kirishima like they had been around for a while.

"What did your mom say when you got home last night covered in blood and dirt?" Kirishima asked around a mouthful of ginger rice. Over Sero's shoulder, he could see Deku shaking his head, signaling to Kirishima that he had said something wrong.

"Hmmmm?" Sero looked up from the spreading pool of water behind the dam and tore open the Manju pack. "Oh! Well- she was pretty upset about the uniform I guess."

"But what did she say about you?"

Sero's cheeks began to color a little, as he took a large bite out of the sticky bun- it was clear he didn't want to answer the question.

"Oh." Kirishima could feel his own cheeks beginning to flush as the whispers from fellow classmates about Sero Hanta's home life filled his mind.

An awkward silence fell between the three of them. Sero finished his snack and began to fidget with his athletics tape again. He was wearing one of those hoodie T-shirt things with short sleeves, and it hung loosely around his small frame. It was tattered, and had a few stains here and there- "Spirited Away" was printed neatly on both sleeves. Kirishima noticed Deku staring at it too.

"I-I'd buh-buh-burn up in a-a sh-shirt luh-like that." Deku finally spoke, breaking the silence.

"Oh- um... yeah. I get cold easily so... and it's better because I'm skinny."

"Huh-huh-How?"

"Uh- just- hides how skinny I am."

"Why do you care so much about being skinny?" Kirishima joined in.

Sero shrugged.

More silence. Deku and Kirishima finished their lunches, then Kirishima said, "Look how dark the water's getting when it goes around that side of the dam."

"Oh, shit!" Sero shot to his feet. "Current's pulling out the fill! Ugh, I really wish we had cement!"

The damage was quickly repaired, but even Kirishima could see what would happen without someone there to almost constantly shovel in fresh fill: erosion would eventually cause the upstream board to collapse against the downstream board, and then everything would fall over.

"We can shore up the sides," Sero said. That won't stop the erosion, but it'll slow it down."

"If we use sand and mud, won't it just keep washing away?" Kirishima asked.

"We'll use chunks of sod."

Deku nodded, smiled, and made an O with the thumb and forefinger of his right hand. "Let's g-g-go. I'll d-dig em and y-you sh-show me where to p-put em ih-in, Seh-Seh-Sero."

And then, from behind them, a voice called out: "What are you two losers doing down there?"

Kirishima turned, heart suddenly pounding much faster than before, noticing the way Sero tightened up at the sound of a strange voice, the way his lips thinned. Standing above them and aways upstream, on the path Sero had crossed the day before, was Bakugo Katsuki. A few yards behind him was Iida Tenya- and though they had arrived at almost the exact same time, Kirishima doubted they had walked here together. A notion that made Kirishima feel a strange sense of happiness- though he had no idea why.

Bakugo came bopping down to the stream, hands shoved deep into his athletic shorts, glanced at Sero with some interest, and then nudged Kirishima harshly with his shoulder.

"Don't do that! I hate it when you do that, Katsuki."

"Stop whining, Shark-teeth," Bakugo glowered. "Now, what are you three idiots doing down here?"

—4—

The five of them concluded their building around four o'clock. They sat much higher on the bank (the place where Deku, Sero, and Kirishima had eaten lunch was now underwater) and stared down at their handiwork. Even Sero found it a little difficult to believe. He felt a sense of tired accomplishment which was mixed with uneasy fright. He found himself thinking of Fantasia, and how Mickey Mouse had known enough to get the brooms started... but not enough to make them stop.

"Fucking incredible," Bakugo Katsuki said softly, loud enough that only Kirishima and Iida could hear.

Kirishima glanced over at him, but Bakugo was not doing one of his sarcastic takedowns now; his face was thoughtful, almost solemn.

On the far side of the stream, where the land first rose and then tilted shallowly downhill, they had created a new piece of bogland. Skunk Cabbage and willowleaf meadowsweet stood in a foot of water. Even as they sat here they could see the bog sending out fresh pseudopods, spreading steadily westward. Behind the dam the Shibui, shallow and harmless just this morning, had become a still, swollen band of water.

By two o'clock the widening pool behind the dam had taken so much embankment that the spillways had grown almost to the size of rivers themselves. Everyone but Sero had gone on an emergency expedition to the dump in search of more materials. Sero stuck around, methodically sodding up leaks. The scavengers had returned not only with boards but with four bald tires, the rusty door of a 1949 Hudson Hornet, and a big piece of corrugated-steel siding. Under Sero's leadership they had built two wings on the original dam, blocking off the water's escape around the sides again-and, with the wings raked back at an angle against the current, the dam worked even better than before.

"Stopped that bastard cold," Bakugo stated, nodding a little.

Sero smiled, pulling a pack of cigarettes, dirty and damp from yesterday's fall into the barrens, from the pocket of his hoodie. "I'm glad it worked out... does anyone want one of these? I've got like- thirteen."

From the corner of his eye, Kirishima watched Iida Tenya's eyes widen to the size of saucers, and could already feel his mouth beginning to quirk up into a smile.

"Ah- you- you shouldn't be smoking cigarettes, Sero! And you definitely shouldn't be offering them to others!"

Sero looked a little taken aback by Iida's fretting, but it didn't stop him from popping one in-between his lips and lighting it. "Shah-ree." He spoke around it.

"Why did you light it?!"

Sero only shrugged, though Kirishima noticed the anxious look in his eyes as Iida continued to panic about how "very illegal" minors smoking was. Deku sat on a fallen tree, watching the exchange, rolling his eyes good-naturedly while smiling.

"Quit freaking, Four-eyes." Bakugo jutted in, yanking the pack and lighter from Sero's hands and beginning to smoke as well.

"Katsuki, not you too!"

"No one said you had to smoke, glasses! Now but out of my life and choices!"

"Have you never heard of second-hand smoke?!"

"Of course I have, I just don't care."

"What do you mean you don't care?! Why would you want to harm your friends!?"

"You lame-asses aren't my friends!"

Sero shot Kirishima a confused glance, and Kirishima only laughed and shook his head. 'They do this all the time' he tried to say through his actions- and assumed it got through when Sero nodded and began to smile a bit too. Iida and Bakugo continued to go back and forth in the background. At some point, Deku got dragged into the middle and was now trying to stutter through a retort aimed at Bakugo.

"Jesus fucking christ will you quit that already?" Bakugo finally interrupted, causing Deku to let out a sigh (though Kirishima and Sero both noticed that he was still smiling) "I can't stand when you do that shit."

"Cuh-cuh-can't h-help I-it, K-K-Kah-Kacchan."

Bakugo made a disgusted face at that and shoved Deku roughly. "God- that nicknames even worst when you stutter it out."

Deku grinned and shoved Bakugo back. "Suh-Sorry K-Kacchan."

"Shut the hell up, Deku!"

And now, Kirishima and Sero watched as the two began to scuffle on the ground, Iida desperately trying to break it up.

"I'm assuming this happens a lot too?"

"Oh yeah."

Sero laughed a little, staring at Bakugo with a little bit of awe. "cool."

Kirishima could understand the awe. He had known Bakugo Katsuki for four years, and he still didn't really understand what Bakugo was about. He knew that Bakugo got all A's in his schoolwork, but he also knew that Bakugo regularly got C's and D's in deportment. His mother really racked him about it every time Bakugo brought home those poor conduct grades, and Bakugo would swear to do better, and maybe he even would... for a quarter or two. The trouble with Bakugo was that he couldn't keep his mouth shut even if you paid him. Down here in the Barrens that didn't get him in much trouble, but the Barrens weren't Never-Never Land. The trouble with the Barrens was that you always had to leave. Out there in the wider world, Bakugo's bullshit was always getting him in trouble-with adults, which was bad, and with guys like Shigaraki Tomura, which was even worse.

His entrance earlier today was a perfect example. Sero Hanta had no more than started to say "Hi" when Bakugo had looked him up and down before saying "are you anorexic or something?"

Poor Sero had only blinked in confusion, before processing what he had said, ducking his head a little and shaking wordlessly.

"You look anorexic."

"I'm not."

"What did you eat for lunch?"

"...Manju..."

"How many?"

"Two."

"Figures." And then he had walked off to (reluctantly) inform Deku that his parents had invited him, his mom, and his step-dad over for dinner.

Kirishima thought Bakugo would make a great radio host- the kind that took down uptight celebrities and crooked politicians- because he had such a strange, natural, ability to pinpoint a person's biggest insecurity within seconds of meeting them, but still managed to remain charming while doing so. It was a strange talent, but Kirishima found it weirdly intriguing.

""D-Don't wuh-worry," Deku had said to Sero after Bakugo's interrogation. "It's j-j-just K-Kacchan. He's c-c-crazy."

Bakugo had shoved his elbow into Deku's stomach then, only to receive and knee to the hip in return- building up to the fight they'd have in a few hours.

"...My name's Sero Hanta, in case you wanted to know..."

"I've seen you around school." He swept a hand at the spreading pool of water. "This must have been your idea. These dumb-fucks couldn't light a firecracker with a flamethrower."

"Speak for yourself, Katsuki," Kirishima said.

Bakugo's eyebrows raised, "oh? So this was your idea shitty hair?" He got closer, their faces so close Kirishima could feel Bakugo's warm breaths on his face. A strange... spark... of sorts shot through the ebony-haired boy's body, and he suddenly felt very hot and very sweaty. He wanted to be closer to Bakugo- to hold him against his chest, and run his fingers through his hair.

"Um... no... it wasn't... it was Sero's..." Kirishima broke their intense gaze, coughing a bit into his elbow.

"That's what I thought," Bakugo said matter-of-factly, and flicked Kirishima on the nose.

"Ow!-"

"This one-" Bakugo gestured over his shoulder at Iida, who had been getting ready to scold the platinum blonde demon, "-is Iida Tenya. He's like a fucking mother hen and likes to nag you about "morales" and "manners" 24/7."

"Which are very good things to be reminded of!" Iida exclaimed. Bakugo only rolled his eyes and mimed blowing his brains out with a finger-gun pistol.

After that, Iida had only sighed, and turned to Sero with a smile, officially introducing himself with a handshake so strong Kirishima was certain Sero's arm was going to pop off.

Soon after the dam began to demand attention, and without bothering to roll up his pants-or even to remove his sneakers-Bakugo jumped into the water and began to slam sods into place on the nearside wing of the dam, where the persistent current was pulling fill out in muddy streamers again. Deku caught Kirishima's eye, smiled a Little, and shrugged. It was just Bakugo. He could drive you bugshit... but it was still sort of nice to have him around.

They worked on the dam for the next hour or so. To everyone's surprise, Bakugo took Sero's commands-which had become rather tentative again, with two more kids to general-with perfect willingness, and fulfilled them at a manic pace. When each mission was completed he reported back to Sero for further orders, executing a backhand British salute.

The work did not just go forward; it sprinted forward. And now, shortly before five o'clock, as they sat resting on the bank, all fighting having been ceased, it seemed that what Bakugo had said was true: they had stopped the bastard cold. The car door, the piece of corrugated steel, and the old tires had become the second stage of the dam, and it was backstopped by a huge sloping hill of earth and stones. Sero and Bakugo smoked (though it looked to Kirishima that Bakugo was doing it more to "upstage" Sero and the others in some way instead of for actual enjoyment or genuine nicotine addiction); Iida was lying on his back. A stranger might have thought he was just looking at the sky, but Kirishima knew better. Iida was looking into the trees on the other side of the stream, keeping an eye out for a bird or two he could write up in his bird notebook that night. Deku sat on Iida's left, doodling a rough, manga-esq., page in a notebook he'd brought with him. Kirishima himself just sat cross-legged, feeling pleasantly tired and rather mellow. At that moment the others seemed to him like the greatest bunch of friends he could ever hope to have. They felt right together; they fitted neatly against each other's edges. He couldn't explain it to himself any better than that, and since it didn't really seem to need any explaining, he decided he ought to just let it be. (Though, despite how perfect the five of them felt, he couldn't shake the gnawing feeling that something was missing)

He looked at Sero, he was holding his cigarette between his fingers lazily, eyes closed, right arm behind his head. This was the calmest Kirishima had ever seen him.

He looked over at Deku and saw something in the freckled boy's face that he didn't like. Deku was looking across the water and into the trees and bushes on the far side, pencil now still, his eyes dull and thoughtful. That brooding expression was back on his face. Kirishima thought Deku looked almost haunted.

As if reading his thought, Deku looked around at him. Kirishima smiled, but Deku didn't smile back. He put the pencil and notebook down and looked around at the others. Even Bakugo had withdrawn into the silence of his own thoughts, an event which occurred about as seldom as a lunar eclipse.

Kirishima knew that Deku rarely said anything important unless it was perfectly quiet nowadays, because it was so hard for him to speak. And he suddenly wished he had something to say, or that Bakugo would start in with one of his teases. He was suddenly sure Deku was going to open his mouth and say something terrible, something which would change everything. Kirishima reached automatically for his aspirator, pulled it out of his back pocket, and held it in his hand. He did this without even thinking about it.

"C-Can I tell you g-g-guys suh-homething?" Deku asked.

They all looked at him. 'Call him a name, Katsuki!' Kirishima thought. 'Start another argument, say something really outrageous, embarrass him, I don't care, just shut him up. Whatever it is, I don't want to hear it, I don't want things to change, I don't want to be scared.'

In his mind, a tenebrous, croaking voice whispered: "I'll do it for a dime~"

Kirishima shuddered and tried to unthink that voice and the sudden image it called up in his mind: the house on Neibolt Street, its front yard overgrown with weeds, gigantic sunflowers nodding in the untended garden off to one side.

"Sure, Deku," Bakugo said in a rare case of tact and poise. (Why now of all times?) it seemed that he'd noticed the look too. "What's up?"

Deku opened his mouth (more anxiety on Kirishima's part), closed it (blessed relief for Kirishima), and then opened it again (renewed anxiety).

"I-I-If you guh-guh-guys l-l-laugh, I-I'll never h-hang around with you again," Deku said, his voice taking on a serious tone, quite similar to the one he'd use towards his wife fifteen years down the line after she suggested following him home. "It's cuh-cuh-crazy, but I swear I'm not muh-haking it up. It r-r-really happened."

"We won't laugh," Sero said. He looked around at the others. "Will we?"

Iida shook his head. Bakugo maintained eye contact for a moment before doing so as well.

Kirishima wanted to say, "Yes we will too, Deku! We'll laugh our heads off and say you're really stupid, so why don't you shut up right now?" But of course, he could not say any such thing. This was, after all, Deku. He shook his head miserably. No, he wouldn't laugh. He had never felt less like laughing in his life.

They sat there above the dam Sero had shown them how to make, looking from Deku's face to the expanding pool and the likewise expanding bog beyond it and then back to Deku's face again, listening silently as he told them about what had happened when he opened Eri's photograph album-how Eri's school photograph had turned its head and winked at him, how the book had bled when he threw it across the room. It was a long, painful recital, and by the time he finished Deku was red-faced and sweating. Kirishima had never heard him stutter so badly.

At last, though, the tale was told. Deku looked around at them, both defiant and afraid. Kirishima saw an identical expression on the faces of Sero, Bakugo, and Iida. It was solemn, awed fear. It was not in the slightest tinctured by disbelief. An urge came to him then, an urge to spring to his feet and shout: "What a crazy story! You don't believe that crazy story, do you, and even if you do, you don't believe we believe it, do you? School pictures can't wink! Books can't bleed! You're out of your mind, Deku!"

But he couldn't do that, because that expression of solemn fear was also on his face. He couldn't see it but he could feel it.

"Come back here, kid," the hoarse voice whispered in his memory. "I'll blow you for free. Come back here!"

'No...' Kirishima moaned at it. 'Please, go away, I don't want to think about that.'

"Come back here, kid."

And now Kirishima saw something else-not on Bakugo's face, at least he didn't think so- but on Iida's and Sero's for sure. He knew what that something else was; knew because that expression was on his own face, too.

Recognition.

"I'll blow you for free."

—5—

The house at 29 Neibolt Street was just outside the Irusu trainyards. It was old and boarded up, its porch gradually sinking back into the ground, its lawn an overgrown field. An old trike, rusting and overturned, hid in that long grass, one wheel sticking up at an angle.

But on the left side of the porch, there was a huge bald patch in the lawn and you could see dirty cellar windows set into the house's crumbling brick foundation. It was in one of those windows that Kirishima Ejirou first saw the face of the leper six weeks ago.

On Saturdays, if Kirishima could find no one to play with, he often went down to the trainyards. No real reason; he just liked to go out there.

He would ride his bike out Shinrinyoku Street and then cut to the northwest along Route 2 where it crossed Shinrinyoku. The Neibolt Street Anglican School (a rare, but interesting site in Japan) stood on the corner of Route 2 and Neibolt Street a mile or so farther on. It was a shabby-neat wood-frame building with a large cross on top and the words SUFFER THE LITTLE CHILDREN TO COME UNTO ME written over the front door in gilt letters two feet high. Sometimes, on Saturdays, Kirishima heard music and singing coming from inside. The singing didn't sound very religious to Kirishima, either, although there was lots of stuff in it about "beautiful Zion" and being "washed in the blood of the lamb" and "what a friend we have in Jesus." The people singing seemed to be having much too good a time for it to be sacred singing, in Kirishima's opinion. But he liked the sound of it all the same- Sometimes he would stop for a while across the street, leaning his bike against a tree and pretending to read on the grass, actually jiving along to the music.

Other Saturdays the Church School would be shut up and silent and he would ride out to the trainyard without stopping, out to where Neibolt Street ended in a parking lot with weeds growing up through the cracks in the asphalt. There he would lean his bike against the wooden fence and watch the trains go by. There were a lot of them on Saturdays. All of them freights- if you wanted to catch a passenger train, you'd have to take the bus to Kitami, Ashikawa, or any of the other larger cities on Hokkaido.

There were six tracks in all, swooping into the station like strands of cobweb tending toward the center: Wakkanai and JR railways from the north, the JR railways again, but this time heading west towards Ashikawa and Sapporo, Obihiro from the south, and Kitami and Kawayu to the East.

One day two years before, when Kirishima had been standing near the latter line and watching a train go through, a drunken trainman had thrown a crate out of a slow-moving boxcar at him. Kirishima ducked and flinched backward, although the crate landed in the cinders ten feet away. There were things inside it, live things that clicked and moved. "Last run, boy!" the drunken trainman had shouted. He pulled a flat brown bottle from one of the pockets of his denim jacket, tipped it up, drank, then flipped it into the cinders, where it smashed. The trainman pointed at the crate. "Take em home to yer mom! Compliments of Usagi-fucking-railways!" He had reeled forward to shout these last words as the train pulled away, gathering speed now, and for one alarming moment, Kirishima thought he was going to tumble right out.

When the train was gone, Kirishima went to the box and bent cautiously over it. He was afraid to get too close. The things inside were slithery and crawly. If the trainman had yelled that they were for him, Kirishima would have left them right there. But he had said "take 'em home to your Mom," and, like Sero, when someone said Mom, Kirishima jumped.

He scrounged a hank of rope from one of the empty Quonset warehouses and tied the crate onto the package carrier of his bike. His mother had peered inside the crate even more warily than Kirishima himself, pushing her thick-rimmed glasses up her nose for a better look, and then she screamed-but with delight rather than terror. There were four lobsters in the crate, big two-pounders with their claws pegged. She cooked them for supper and had been extremely grumpy with Kirishima when he wouldn't eat any.

"What do you think the Prime Minister and his wife are eating this evening?" she asked indignantly. "What do you think the swells are eating at Twenty-one and Sardi's in New York City? Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches? They're eating lobster, Ejirou, same as we are! Now come on-give it a try."

But Kirishima wouldn't-at least that was what his mother said. Maybe it was true, but inside it felt more to Kirishima like he couldn't than wouldn't. He kept thinking of the way they had slithered inside the crate, and the clicking sounds their claws had made. She kept telling him how delicious they were and what a treat he was missing until he started to gasp for breath and had to use his aspirator. Then she left him alone.

Kirishima retreated to his bedroom and booted up his game cube, choosing to finally finish "Paper Mario: The Thousand-year door." His mother called up her friend Furutani Natsumi. Furutani came over and the two of them read old copies of 'Friday' and giggled over the celebrity scandals detailed in each article and the candid paparazzi shots while stuffing themselves with cold lobster salad and red wine. When Kirishima got up for school the next morning, his mother was still in bed, snoring away. There was nothing left in the bowl where the lobster salad had been except a few tiny blots of mayonnaise.

That was the last Usagi Railways train Kirishima ever saw, and when he later saw Mr. Masahiko, the Irusu trainmaster, he asked him hesitantly what had happened. "Company went broke," Mr. Masahiko said. "That's all there was to it. Don't you read the papers? Now get out of here. This ain't no place for a kid."

After that Kirishima would sometimes walk along track 4, which had been the Usagi track, and listen as a mental conductor chanted names inside his head, reeling them off in a lovely Downcast monotone, he would walk down track 4 heading east until he got tired, and the weeds growing up between the crossties made him feel sad. Once he had looked up and seen seagulls (probably just fat old dump-gulls who didn't give a shit if they ever saw the ocean, but that had not occurred to him then) wheeling and crying overhead, and the sound of their voices had made him cry a little, too.

There had once been a gate at the entrance to the trainyards, but it had blown over in a windstorm and no one had bothered to replace it. Kirishima came and went pretty much as he liked, although Mr. Masahiko would kick him out if he saw him (or any other kid, for that matter). Some truck-drivers would chase you sometimes (but not very far) because they thought you were hanging around just so you could hawk something and sometimes kids did.

Mostly, though, the place was quiet. There was a guard-booth but it was empty, its glass windows broken by stones. There had been no full-time security service since 1950 or so. Mr. Masahiko shooed the kids away by day and a night-watchman drove through four or five times a night in an old Studebaker with a searchlight mounted outside the vent window and that was all.

There were tramps and hobos sometimes, though. If anything about the trainyards scared Kirishima, they did-men with unshaven cheeks and cracked skin and blisters on their hands and cold sores on their lips. They rode the rails for a while and then climbed down for a while and spent some time in Irusu and then got on another train and went somewhere else. Sometimes they had missing fingers. Usually, they were drunk and wanted to know if you had a cigarette.

One of these fellows had crawled out from under the porch of the house at 29 Neibolt Street one day and had offered to give Kirishima a blowjob for a quarter. Kirishima had backed away, his skin like ice, his mouth as dry as lint balls. One of the hobo's nostrils had been eaten away. You could look right into the red, scabby channel.

"I-I don't have a quarter," Kirishima said, backing towards his ruby red bike.

"I'll do it for a dime," the hobo croaked, coming toward him. He was wearing old green flannel pants. Yellow puke was stiffening across the lap. He unzipped his fly and reached inside. He was trying to grin. His nose was a red horror.

"I... I don't have a dime, either," Kirishima said, and suddenly thought: 'Oh my God he's got leprosy! If he touches me I'll catch it too!' His control snapped and he ran. He heard the hobo break into a shuffling run behind him, his old string-tied shoes slapping and flapping across the riotous lawn of the empty saltbox house.

"Come back here, kid! I'll blow you for free. Come back here!"

Kirishima had leaped on his bike, wheezing now, feeling his throat closing up to a pinhole. His chest had taken on weight. He hit the pedals and was just picking up speed when one of the hobo's hands struck the package carrier. The bike shimmied. Kirishima looked over his shoulder and saw the hobo running along behind the rear wheel (!GAINING!), his lips drawn back from the black stumps of his teeth in an expression which might have been either desperation or fury.

In spite of the stones lying on his chest, Kirishima had pedaled even faster, expecting that one of the hobo's scab-crusted hands would close over his arm at any moment, pulling him from his Raleigh and dumping him in the ditch, where God knew what would happen to him. He hadn't dared look around until he had flashed past the Church School and through the Route 2 intersection. The hobo was gone.

Kirishima held this terrible story inside him for almost a week and then confided it to Bakugo Katsuki and Deku one day when they were reading manga on top of the transformer that sat right in the property lines of the Bakugo's and the Toshinori-Midoriya's households.

"He didn't have leprosy, dumbass," Bakugo said. "He had syphilis."

Kirishima looked at Deku to see if Bakugo was ribbing him- he made up stuff to make others look stupid so much it was hard to tell when he was giving genuine answers.

"I-It's ruh-real." Deku nodded, "suh-saw i-I-it on wuh-wuh-one of th-th-those m-medical shows muh-my m-m-mom l-luh-likes so m-much."

"Well, what is it?" Kirishima asked.

"It's a disease you get from fucking." Bakugo said, Kirishima flushed.

"Now listen up, Shitty hair," Bakugo said, "because there may be questions later. Some people have got this disease. A guy can get it from a woman and vise versa-"

"O-or a-a guh-guy can g-get it fruh-from a-another g-guy if t-they're g-gay," Deku added.

Bakugo paused a funny look on his face for a moment, before speaking once more: "Right. The important thing is you get the Syph from screwing someone who's already got it."

"What does it do?" Kirishima asked.

"Makes you rot," Bakugo said simply.

Kirishima was horrified.

"Fucking disgusting, right? I know, but it's true," Bakugo said. "Your nose is the first thing to go. Some guys with the Syph, their noses fall right off. Then their cocks."

"Puh-Puh-Puh-leeze," Deku said. "I just a-a-ate."

"Hey, this is science," Bakugo said.

"So what's the difference between leprosy and the Syph?" Kirishima asked.

"You don't get leprosy from fucking," Bakugo said promptly, and then went off into a gale of laughter that left both Deku and Kirishima mystified.

—6—

Following that day, the house on Neibolt Street had taken on a kind of glow in Kirishima's imagination. Looking at its weedy yard and its slumped porch and the boards nailed across its windows, he would feel an unhealthy fascination take hold of him. And six weeks ago he had parked his bike on the gravelly verge of the street (the sidewalk ended four houses farther back) and walked across the lawn toward the porch of that house.

His heart had been beating hard in his chest, and his mouth had that dry taste again-listening to Deku's story of the dreadful picture, he knew that what he had felt when approaching that house was about the same as what Deku had felt going into Eri's room. He did not feel as if he was in control of himself. He felt pushed.

It did not seem as if his feet were moving; instead, the house itself, brooding and silent, seemed to draw closer to where he stood.

Faintly, he could hear a diesel engine in the trainyard-that and the liquid-metallic slam of couplings being made. They were shunting some cars onto sidings, picking up others. Making a train.

His hand gripped his aspirator, but, oddly, his asthma had not closed down as it had on the day he fled from the hobo with the rotted nose. There was only that sense of standing still and watching the house slide stealthily toward him, as if on a hidden track.

Kirishima looked under the porch. There was no one there. It was not surprising. This was spring, and hobos showed up most frequently in Irusu from late September to early November. During those six weeks or so a man could pick up day-work on one of the outlying farms if he looked even half-decent. There were potatoes and apples to pick, snow fence to string, barn, and shed roofs which needed to be patched before December came along, whistling up winter.

No hobos under the porch, but plenty of sign they had been there. Empty beer cans, empty beer bottles, empty liquor bottles. A dirt-crusted blanket lay against the brick foundation like a dead dog. There were drifts of crumpled newspapers and one old shoe and smell like garbage. There were thick layers of old leaves under there.

Not wanting to do it but unable to help himself, Kirishima had crawled under the porch. He could feel his heartbeat slamming in his head now, driving white spots of light across his field of vision.

The smell was worse underneath-booze and sweat and the dark brown perfume of decaying leaves. The old leaves didn't even crackle under his hands and knees. They and the old newspapers only sighed.

Kirishima pulled the stiffening blanket aside, tweezing at it with his thumb and forefinger, grimacing at its matted feel. One of those low cellar windows was directly behind it, one pane broken, the other opaque with dirt. He leaned forward, now feeling almost hypnotized. He leaned closer to the window, closer to the cellar-darkness, breathing in that smell of age and must and dry-rot, closer and closer to the black, and surely the leper would have caught him if his asthma hadn't picked that exact moment to kick up. It cramped his lungs with a weight that was painless yet frightening; his breath at once took on the familiar hateful whistling sound.

He drew back, and that was when the face appeared. Its coming was so sudden, so startling (and yet at the same time so expected), that Kirishima could not have screamed even if he hadn't been having an asthma attack. His eyes bulged. His mouth creaked open. It was not the hobo with the flayed nose, but there were resemblances. Terrible resemblances. And yet... this thing could not be human. Nothing could be so eaten up and remain alive.

The skin of its forehead was split open. White bone, coated with a membrane of yellow mucusy stuff, peered through like the lens of a bleary searchlight. The nose was a bridge of raw gristle above two red flaring channels. One eye was a gleeful blue. The other socket was filled with a mass of spongy brown-black tissue. The leper's lower lip sagged like liver. It had no upper lip at all; its teeth poked out in a sneering ring.

It shot one hand out through the broken pane. It shot the other through the dirty glass to the left, shattering it into fragments. Its questing, clutching hands crawled with sores. Beetles crawled and lumbered busily to and fro.

Mewling, gasping, Kirishima hunched his way backward. He could hardly breathe. His heart was a runaway engine in his chest. The leper appeared to be wearing the ragged remains of some strange silvery suit. Things were crawling in the straggles of its brown hair.

"How bout a blowjob, Ejirou?" the apparition croaked, grinning with its remains of a mouth. It lilted, "Bobby does it for a dime, he will do it anytime, fifteen cents for overtime." It winked. "That's me, Ejirou-Bob Gray. And now that we've been properly introduced... " One of its hands splatted against Kirishima's right shoulder. Kirishima screamed thinly.

"That's all right," the leper said, and Kirishima saw with dreamlike terror that it was crawling out of the window. The bony shield behind its peeling forehead snapped the thin wooden strip between the two panes. Its hands clawed through the leafy, mulchy earth. The silver shoulders of its suit... costume... whatever it was... began to push through the gap. That one glaring blue eye never left Kirishima's face.

"Here I come, Ejirou, that's all right," it croaked. "You'll like it down here with us. Some of your friends are down here."

Its hand reached out again, and in some corner of his panic-maddened, screaming mind, Kirishima was suddenly, coldly sure that if that thing touched his bare skin, he would begin to rot, too. The thought broke his paralysis. He skittered backward on his hands and knees, then turned and lunged for the far end of the porch. Sunlight, falling in narrow dusty beams through the cracks between the porch boards, striped his face from moment to moment. His head pushed through the dusty cobwebs that settled in his hair. He looked back over his shoulder and saw that the leper was halfway out.

"It won't do you any good to run, Ejirou!" it called.

Kirishima had reached the far end of the porch. There was a lattice-work skirt here. The sun shone through it, printing diamonds of light on his cheeks and forehead. He lowered his head and slammed into it with no hesitation at all, tearing the entire skirt free with a scream of rusted ha'penny nails. There was a tangle of rosebushes beyond and Kirishima tore through these, stumbling to his feet as he did so, not feeling the thorns that scrawled shallow cuts along his arms and cheeks and neck.

He turned and backed away on buckling legs, pulling his aspirator out of his pocket, triggering it. Surely it hadn't happened? He had been thinking about that hobo and his mind had... well, had just

(put on a show)

shown him a movie, a horror movie, like one of those Saturday-matinee pictures with Frankenstein and Wolfman that they had sometimes at the Bijou or the Gem or the Aladdin. Sure, that was all. He had scared himself! What an asshole! Seriously not manly!

There was even time to utter a shaky laugh at the unsuspected vividness of his imagination before the rotting hands shot out from under the porch, clawing at the rosebushes with mindless ferocity, pulling at them, stripping them, printing beads of blood on them.

Kirishima gaped.

The leper was crawling out. It was wearing a clown suit, he saw-a clown suit with big orange buttons down the front. It saw Kirishima and grinned. Its half-mouth dropped open and its tongue lolled out. Kirishima continued to gape. The leper's tongue had not just dropped from its mouth; it was at least three feet long and had unrolled like a party-favor. It came to an arrow-point which dragged in the dirt. Foam, thick-sticky and yellowish, coursed along with it. Bugs crawled over it.

The rose bushes, which had been showing the first touches of spring green when Kirishima broke through them, now turned a dead and lacy black.

"Blow Job" the leper whispered and tottered to its feet.

Kirishima raced for his bike. It was the same race as before, only it now had the quality of a nightmare, where you can only move with the most agonizing slowness no matter how hard you try to go fast... and in those dreams didn't you always hear or feel something, some It, gaining on you? Didn't you always smell Its stinking breath, as Kirishima was smelling it now?

For a moment he felt a wild hope: perhaps this was a nightmare. Perhaps he would awake in his own bed, bathed in sweat, shaking, maybe even crying... but alive. Safe. Then he pushed the thought away. Its charm was deadly, its comfort fatal.

He did not try to mount his bike immediately; he ran with it instead, head down, pushing the handlebars. He felt as if he was drowning, not in water but inside his own chest.

"Blowjob," the leper whispered again. "Come back anytime, Ejirou! Bring Katsuki with you next time!"

Its rotting fingers seemed to touch the back of his neck, but perhaps that was only a dangling strand of cobweb from under the porch, caught in his hair and brushing against his shrinking flesh. Kirishima leaped onto his bike and pedaled away, not caring that his throat had closed up tight as Tillie again, not giving two sucks for his asthma, not looking back. He didn't look back until he was almost home, and of course, there was nothing behind him when he finally did but two kids headed over to the park to play ball.

That night, lying straight as a poker in bed, one hand folded tightly around his aspirator, looking into the shadows, he heard the leper whisper: "It won't do you, any good to run, Ejirou."

—7—

"Wow," Bakugo said once Deku had finished the story about Eri's school photo. He had a peculiar look on his face that Kirishima couldn't quite place.

"H-Have you g-g-got a-another suh-suh-higgarette, Seh-Seh-Sero?"

Kirishima noticed Iida start a little, but he didn't say or do anything more than avert his gaze as Sero lit the fresh cigarette Deku was now holding in his mouth.

A few moments passed, and Iida did say something: but it wasn't about the cigarette. "And you're sure you didn't dream it, Izuku?"

Deku shook his head. "N-N-No duh-dream."

"real," Kirishima said in a low voice.

Deku looked at him sharply. "Wh-Wh-What?"

"I said 'real'" Kirishima looked at him almost resentfully. "It really happened. It was real." And before he could stop himself-before he even knew he was going to do it- Kirishima found himself telling the story of the leper that had come crawling out of the basement at 29 Neibolt Street. Halfway through the telling he began to gasp and had to use his aspirator. And in the end, he was very close to bursting into body-shaking sobs- only just managing to hold them in.

They all looked at him uncomfortably, and then Iida put a hand on his back. Deku gave him an awkward hug while the others glanced away, embarrassed.

That's a-all right, E-Ejirou. It's o-o-okay."

"I saw it too," Sero said suddenly. His voice was flat and harsh and scared.

Kirishima looked up, his face still naked with tears, his eyes red and raw-looking. "What?"

"I saw the clown," Sero said. "Only he wasn't like you said at least not when I saw him. He wasn't all gooshy. He was..." he paused, trying to think. "Uh... have any of you guys seen 'Elfen Lied'?"

Everyone but Iida nodded. Sero tried to explain what had happened that January to Iida and the others as best he could, leaving everyone looking a bit sick.

"Fuck that," Bakugo muttered, throwing a rock into the flooded marsh they'd created. "Fuck. That."

Sero nodded. "Yeah- it was... yeah. It even had the face shield... if it weren't for the voice or- or for the suit then I would if actually thought it was her-"

"Th-th-th-the s-suit?"

Sero looked at Kirishima. "A silver suit with big orange buttons down the front."

Kirishima's mouth dropped open. He shut it and said, "If you're kidding, say so. I still... I still dream about that guy under the porch."

"You must have dreamed it," Bakugo said finally. He saw Sero wince and hurried on: "Its nothing personal string bean, but you got to see that balloons can't, like, float against the wind and change into decapitated heads-"

"Pictures can't wink, either," Sero said.

Bakugo looked from Sero to Deku, to Kirishima troubled. There was a clear consistency between the three of their stories, and it was obvious to Kirishima that Bakugo was fighting between whether to believe them or to call their bluff.

"Nothing like that ever happened to you, huh?" Kirishima asked Bakugo.

Bakugo paused, began to say something, shook his head, paused again, then said: "scariest thing I've seen lately was Twice takin a leak in Ukiyo Park. Ugliest dick you ever saw."

Sero said, "What about you, Tenya?"

"No," Iida said quickly, and looked somewhere else. His face was pale, his lips pressed together so tightly they were white.

"W-W-Was there suh-homething, Ten-Ten-Tenya?" Deku asked softly.

"No, I told you-" Iida got to his feet, anxiety is written all over his face, and walked to the embankment, hands in his pockets. He stood watching the watercourse over the top of the original dam and pile up behind the second Watergate.

"Stop acting like a spaz, Four-eyes!" Bakugo called. "Tell us, you aren't being subtle-"

"Shut up!" Iida yelled suddenly, whirling on Bakugo, who stared at him with genuine astonishment. "For once in your life, Katsuki, just shut up!"

"Fine, don't have a fucking aneurism," Bakugo said, and looked down, shifting uncomfortably. He finally looked up at Iida Tenya around five minutes later, mistrustfully. Bright spots of color flamed in Iida's cheeks, but he still looked more scared than mad.

"That's okay," Kirishima said quietly. "Never mind, Tenya."

"It wasn't a clown," Iida said. His eyes flicked from one of them to the next to the next to the next. He seemed to struggle with himself.

"Y-Y-You can t-tell," Deku said, also speaking quietly. "W-We d-d-did."

"It wasn't a clown. It was-"

Which was when the carrying, whiskey-roughened tones of Mr. Torino interrupted, making them all jump as if they had been shot: "God- what have you kids done down here?"