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May 30th, 2020
Irusu, Japan
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—1—
The telephone was ringing, bringing Midoriya up and out of a sleep too deep for dreams. He groped for it without opening his eyes, without coming more than halfway awake. If it had stopped ringing just then he would have slipped back down into sleep without a hitch; he would have done it as simply and easily as he had once slipped down the snow-covered hills in Ukiyo Park on his Flexible Flyer. You ran with the sled, threw yourself onto it, and down you went-seemingly at the speed of sound. You couldn't do that as a grownup; it'd shatter your body into millions of pieces.
His fingers walked over the telephone, slipped off, climbed it again. He had a dim premonition that it would be Kaminari Denki, Kaminari Denki calling from Irusu, telling him he had to come back, telling him he had to remember, telling him they had made a promise, that Iida Tenya had cut their palms with a sliver of glass Coke bottle and they had made a promise-
Except all of that had already happened.
He had gotten in early yesterday morning-just after 4 AM, actually. He supposed that, if he had been the last call on Kaminari's list, all of them must have gotten in at varying times. He himself had seen none of them, felt no urge to see any of them. He had simply checked in, gone up to his room, ordered a meal from room service which he found he could not eat once it was laid out before him, and then had tumbled into bed and slept dreamlessly until now.
Midoriya cracked one emerald eye open and fumbled for the telephone. It fell off onto the table and he groped for it, opening his other eye. He felt totally blank inside his head, totally unplugged, running on batteries.
He finally managed to scoop up the phone. He got up on one elbow and put it against his ear. "Hello?"
"Deku?" It was Kaminari Denki's voice-he'd had at least that much right. Last week he didn't remember Kaminari at all, and now a single word was enough to identify him. It was rather marvellous... but in an ominous way.
"Yeah, Kam."
"Woke you up, huh?"
"Yeah, you did. That's okay." On the wall above the TV was an abysmal painting of seamen in yellow slickers and rainhats pulling up fishnets full of silver-colored fish. Looking at it, Midoriya remembered where he was: the Shijima Hotel and Sauna on the far end of Ori Road. One block over was Ukiyo park... the Kitsune Statue... the Canal. "What time is it, Kam?"
"Quarter of ten."
"What day?"
"The 30th." Kaminari sounded a little amused. "I let you sleep through yesterday... figured you needed it."
"Yeah. 'Kay."
"...I've arranged a little reunion," Kaminari said, though it came out more as a sigh. He sounded diffident now.
"Yeah?" Midoriya swung his legs out of bed, and stretched his aching limbs- his voice straining slightly. "They all came?"
"All but Tenya," Kaminari said. Now there was something in his voice that Midoriya couldn't read. "Roki was the last one... He got in around 5 AM."
"Why do you say the last one, Kam? Tenya might show up today."
"...Deku, Tenya's dead."
"What? How? Did his plane-"
"What? No... Nothing like that," Kaminari explained, laughing dryly. He sounded tired. "Look- just- I think it should wait until we get together. It would be better if I could tell all of you at the same time."
"It has to do with this?"
"I think so." Kaminari paused briefly. "Yeah, it does. Definitely."
Midoriya felt the familiar weight of dread settle around his heart again-was it something you could get used to so quickly, then? Or had it been something he had carried all along, simply unfelt and unthought-of, like the inevitable fact of his own death?
He fumbled open the mini-fridge underneath the TV stand, and took out an over-priced bottle of beer. He popped the lid, and took a large gulp. He didn't think he could get through today completely sober.
"None of them got together, yesterday?"
"Nope- don't think so."
"And you haven't seen any of us yet?"
"No-just talked to you on the phone."
"Okay," he said. "Where's the reunion?"
"Remember Roki's favorite restaurant?"
"House of Buh-B-Blue Leaves." Midoriya had no idea where the restaurants name came from- the answer had irrupted out of his mouth before his brain was even able to process what he was saying. He blinked, and rubbed his temples.
And he had stuttered.
"You do remember...heh... 'course you do. Wouldn't expect anything less from you." Kaminari was laughing a little, but there was a tinge of sadness in his tone.
There was an awkward pause.
"Deku?"
"What?"
"You all right?"
"Yes." But his heart was beating too fast, the tip of his the beer bottle shaking in his grasp, the yeasty liquid clinking against the dark glass. He had stuttered. Kaminari had heard it.
There was a moment of silence and then Kaminari said, "Just... it's where it's always been- the restaurant, I mean- They have private rooms for parties. I arranged for one of them yesterday. We can have it the whole afternoon, if we want it."
"You think this might take that long?"
"I dunno."
"A cab will know how to get there?"
"Yep."
"All right," Deku said. He wrote the name of the restaurant down on the notepad on his phone. Underneath it were the bullet points of the protagonist of his current W.I.P's personality, which Midoriya Izuku only just now realized was almost a carbon copy of Kirishima Ejirou. "Why there?"
Kaminari started slowly. "It seemed like... I don't know..."
"Neutral ground?" Midoriya suggested. He had felt no sense of dread when he'd said the name of the restaurant- unlike when he'd thought of Ukiyo Park or the Canal, or Irusu itself.
"Yeah. I guess that's it."
"Food any good? I can't remember."
"I don't know," Kaminari shrugged. "How's your appetite?"
Midoriya choked around a drink- half-laughed, half-coughed. "Practically non-existent."
"Yeah," Kaminari laughed tiredly. "I hear you."
"Noon?"
"More like one, I guess. We'll let Roki catch a few more z's."
Midoriya downed the last of the brew. "Shouto... is he married?"
Kaminari hesitated again, a slight hitch in voice. "We'll catch up on everything," he said.
"Just like when you go back to your high-school reunion ten years later, huh?" Midoriya said. "You get to see who got fat, who got bald, who got k-kids."
"I wish it was like that," Kaminari said.
"Yeah. Me too, Kam. Me too."
He hung up the phone, took a long shower, and ordered a breakfast that he didn't want and which he only picked at. No; his appetite was really not good at all.
Midoriya dialed the Big Yellow Cab Company and asked to be picked up at quarter of one, thinking that fifteen minutes would be plenty of time to get him out to Main Street. But he had underestimated the lunch-hour traffic-flow... and how much Irusu had grown.
In 2005 it had been a decent-sized town, not much more. There were maybe fifteen thousand people inside the Irusu incorporated city limits and maybe another seven thousand beyond that in the surrounding area.
Now it had become a city- a very small city by Tokyo or even Asahikawa standards, but doing just fine.
As the cab moved slowly down Ori Road ('we're over the Canal now,' Midoriya thought; 'can't see it, but it's down there, running in the dark') his first thought was predictable enough: 'how much had changed?' But the predictable thought was accompanied by a deep dismay that he never would have expected. He remembered his childhood here as a fearful, nervous time... not only because of the summer of '05, when the seven of them had faced the terror, but because of Eri's death, the deep dream his parents seemed to have fallen into following that death, the constant ragging about his stutter, Shigaraki and Twice and Kurogiri constantly on the prod for them after the rockfight in the Barrens...
...and just a feeling that Irusu was cold, that Irusu was hard, that Irusu didn't much give a shit if any of them lived or died, and certainly not if they triumphed over Pennywise the Clown. The Irusu townsfolk had lived with Pennywise and all his guises for a long time... and maybe, in some mad way, they had even come to understand him. To like him, need him. Love him? Maybe. Yes, maybe that too.
So why this dismay?
Perhaps only because it seemed such dull change, somehow. Or perhaps because Irusu seemed to have lost its essential face for him.
The Ice-cream bar was gone, replaced with a parking lot (BY PERMIT ONLY, the sign over the ramp announced; VIOLATORS SUBJECT TO TOW). The Shoeboat and Mayeda's Lunch, which had stood next to it, were also gone. They had been replaced by a branch of The Hokuriku Bank. A digital readout jutted from the front of the bland cinderblock structure, showing the time and the temperature-the latter in both degrees Fahrenheit and degrees Celsius. The Center Street Drug, lair of Aizawa Shouta and the place where Midoriya had gotten Kirishima his asthma medicine that day, was also gone. The entire strip had been turned into a mini-mall. Looking inside as the cab idled at a stoplight, Midoriya could see an Apple Store, a natural-foods store, and some sort of anime/manga-merch store offering a clearance sale on all things early 2000's.
The cab pulled forward with a jerk. "Gonna take awhile," the driver said. "I wish all these goddam banks would stagger their lunch-hours."
"That's all right," Midoriya said. It was overcast outside, and now a few splatters of rain hit the cab's windshield. The radio muttered about an escaped mental patient from somewhere who was supposed to be very dangerous, and then began muttering about The Hokkaido Consadole's who weren't. Showers early, then clearing. When the man reading off the radio segments began to apologize for the regularly scheduled host not being there for the second day in a row, the driver turned the radio off. "When they'd go up?"
"What? The banks?"
"Uh-huh."
"Oh, late 2000's, early 2010's, most of em," the cabbie said. He was a big man with a thick neck. He wore a nice, tailored, suit, and a shiny black cap was jammed down squarely on his head. The white logo on the front was smudged with engine-oil. "Typical small town stuff... tore down all the stuff that makes Irusu... well- Irusu- and replaced them with banks. There was a lot of talk about how the banks would "revitalize the downtown area"- and yeah- they "revitalized" it alright... If they weren't replaced with banks, they were replaced with parking-lots... And you know you still can't find a fucking slot to park your car in. Ought to string the whole City Council up by their cocks. Except for that Bunko woman that's on it. String her up by her tits. On second thought, it don't seem like she's got any. Flat as a fuckin board."
"Huh." Midoriya found himself smiling despite himself. "You lived here long?"
"My whole life. Born in Irusu Home Hospital, and they'll bury my fuckin remains out in Mount Hope Cemetery."
"Good deal," Midoriya said.
"Yeah, right," the cabbie said. He hawked, rolled down his window, and spat an extremely large yellow-green lunger into the rainy air. His attitude, contradictory but somehow attractive-almost piquant-was one of glum good cheer. "Guy who catches that won't have to buy no fuckin chewing gum for a week."
"It hasn't all changed," Midoriya remarked softly, green-eyes trained on the passing structures outside the window. The depressing promenade of banks and parking lots was slipping behind them as they rode down Main Street. Over the hill and past the Hokkaido Bank Branch, they began to pick up some speed. "The Aladdin's still there."
"Yeah," the cabbie conceded. "But just barely. Suckers tried to tear that down, too."
"For another bank?" Midoriya asked, a part of him amused to find that another part of him was appalled at the idea. He couldn't believe that anyone in his right mind would want to tear down that stately pleasure dome with its glittering glass chandelier, its sweeping right-and-left staircases which spiraled up to the balcony, and its mammoth curtain, which did not simply pull apart when the show started but which instead rose in magical folds and tucks and gathers, all underlit in fabulous shades of red and blue and yellow and green while pullies off stage ratcheted and groaned. 'Not the Aladdin!', that shocked part of him cried out. 'How could they ever even think of tearing down the Aladdin for a BANK?'
"Uh-huh, a bank," the cabbie said. "You're fucking-A, It was the Shinsei Bank Financial Center that had its eye on the Aladdin... Wanted to pull it down and put up what they called a "complete banking mall." Got all the papers from the City Council, and the Aladdin was condemned. Then a bunch of folks formed a committee-folks that had lived here a long time-and they petitioned, and they marched, and they hollered, and finally they had a public City Council meeting about it, and Kaminari blew those suckers out." The cabbie sounded extremely satisfied.
"Kaminari?" Midoriya asked, startled. "Kaminari Denki?"
"Mhm," the cabbie said. He twisted around briefly to look at Midoriya, revealing a round, chapped face and horn-rimmed glasses with old specks of white paint on the bows. "Mechanic. Short guy, blonde. You know him?"
"I did," Midoriya said, remembering how he had met Kaminari, back in the July of 2005. It had been Shigaraki and Twice and Kurogiri again... of course. Shigaraki and Twice and Kurogiri...
...at every turn, playing their own part, unwitting visegrips driving the seven of them together-tight, tighter, tightest. "We played together when we were kids. Before I moved away."
"Well, there you go," the cabbie said. "It's a small fucking world."
"So it is."
The cabbie nodded comfortably, and they rode in silence for awhile before he said, "It's changed a lot, Irusu has, but yeah, a lot of it's still here. The Shijima, where I picked you up. The Standpipe in Memorial Park. You remember that place, mister? When we were kids, we used to think that place was haunted."
"I remember it," Midoriya nodded.
"Look, there's the hospital. You recognize it?"
They were passing the Irusu Home Hospital on the right now. Behind it, the Teshio River flowed toward its meeting-place with the Shibui. Under the rainy spring sky, the river was dull pewter. The hospital that Midoriya remembered-a white woodframe building with two wings, three stories high-was still there, but now it was surrounded, dwarfed, by a whole complex of buildings, maybe a dozen in all. He could see a parking-lot off to the left, and what looked like better than five hundred cars parked there.
"My God, that's not a hospital, that's a college campus!" Midoriya exclaimed.
The cab-driver cackled. "Yeah, it's almost as big as Ohno Memorial down in Sapporo now. They got radiation labs and a therapy center and a couple hundred rooms and their own laundry and God knows what else. The old hospital's still there, but it's all administration now."
Midoriya felt a queer doubling sensation in his mind, the sort of sensation he remembered getting the first time he watched a 3-D movie. Trying to bring together two images that didn't quite jibe. You could fool your eyes and your brain into doing that trick, he remembered, but you were apt to end up with a whopper of a headache... and he could feel his own headache coming on now. New Irusu, fine. But the old Irusu was still here, like the wooden Home Hospital building. The old Irusu was mostly buried under all the new construction... but your eye was somehow dragged helplessly back to look at it... to look for it.
"The trainyard's probably gone, isn't it?" Midoriya asked.
The cabbie laughed again, delighted. "For someone who moved away when he was just a kid, you got a good memory, mister." Midoriya thought: 'You should have met me last week, my friend.' "It's all still out there, but it's nothing but ruins and rusty tracks now. The freights don't even stop no more. Fella wanted to buy the land and put up a whole roadside entertainment thing _ pitch 'n putt, batting cages, driving ranges, mini golf, go-karts, little shack fulla video games, I don't know whatall-but there's some kind of big mixup about who owns the land now. I guess he'll get it eventually-he's a persistent fella-but right now it's in the courts."
"And the Canal," Midoriya murmured as they stopped at the intersection of Taiko street and Main... down and to the right, he could see Kanazaki Drive-which, was now marked with a green roadsign reading MALL ROAD. "The Canal's still here."
"Uh-huh," the cabbie nodded. "That'll always be here, I guess."
Now he could see the Irusu Mall on his right, and as they rolled past it, he felt that queer doubling sensation again. When they had been kids all of this had been a great long field full of rank grasses and gigantic nodding sunflowers which marked the northeastern end of the Barrens. Behind it, to the west, was the low-income housing development. He could remember them exploring this field, being careful not to fall into the gaping cellarhold of the Kanazaki Ironworks, which had exploded on Culture Day in the year 1976. The field had been full of relics and they had unearthed them with all the solemn interest of archaeologists exploring Egyptian ruins: bricks, dippers, chunks of iron with rusty bolts hanging from them, panes of glass, bottles full of unnamable gunk that smelled like the worst poison in the world. Something bad had happened near here, too, in the gravel-pit close to the dump, but he could not remember it yet. He could only remember a name, Himiko Toga, and that it had something to do with a refrigerator. And something about a bird that had chased Kaminari Denki. 'What...?'
He shook his head. Fragments. Straws in the wind. That was all.
The field was gone now, as were the remains of the Ironworks. Midoriya remembered the great chimney of the Ironworks suddenly. Faced with tile, caked black with soot for the final ten feet of its length, it had lain in the high grass like a gigantic pipe. They had scrambled up somehow and had walked along it, arms held out like tightwire walkers, laughing-He shook his head, as if to dismiss the mirage of the mall that was growing smaller and smaller behind him, an ugly collection of buildings with signs that said 'KENTA'S SMART PHONE AND TABLET REPAIR' and 'UNIQLO' and 'AOKI' and ' ' and 'SUSUMU'S GRILL' and 'TOHO CINEMA: IRUSU' and dozens of others. Roads wove in and out of parking lots. The mall did not go away, because it was no mirage. The Kanazaki Ironworks was gone, and the field that had grown up around its rums was likewise gone. The mall was the reality, not the memories.
But somehow he didn't believe that.
"Here you go, mister," the cabbie said. He pulled into the parking-lot of a traditional-looking wood building with pretty, opaque screen windows. "A little late, but better late than never, am I right?"
"Indeed you are," Midoriya said. He gave the cab-driver 800¥. "Keep the change."
"Good fucking deal!" the cabbie exclaimed. "You need someone to drive you, call Big Yellow and ask for Yoichi. Ask for me by name."
Midoriya grinned. "The one who's got his plot all picked out in Mount Hope?"
"You got it," Yoichi said, laughing. "Have a good one, mister."
"You too, Yoichi."
He stood in the light rain for a moment, watching the cab draw away. He realized that he had meant to ask the driver one more question, and had forgotten-perhaps on purpose.
He had meant to ask Yoichi if he liked living in Irusu.
Abruptly, Midoriya Izuku turned and walked into The House of Blue Leaves. Kaminari Denki was in the lobby, sitting in a wicker chair with a huge flaring back. He got to his feet, and Midoriya felt deep unreality wash over him-through him. That sensation of doubling was back, but now it was much, much worse.
He remembered a boy who had been about 4'4, trim, and agile. Before him was a man who stood about 5'6. He was well toned. His blonde hair pulled into a loose pony-tail, his asymmetrical bangs hanging in his eyes. His golden eyes were tired, but they shined just as brilliantly as the sun- just as they always had when they were kids. His goofy half-grin wrinkled his nose. The top half of his oil-stained mechanics jumper was tied loosely around his hips, where his hands were currently planted.
Kaminari took it upon himself to break the silence, leaning up on the tip-toes of his rubber mechanic's boots and comparing their heights- pouting. "Goddammit- don't tell me I'm still the shortest."
Midoriya felt a nostalgic grin grow across his face as he looked at Kaminari- who was a good six inches shorter then he was. "Im surprised too, I was so sure you'd be dwarfing all of us by now."
Kaminari pushed him lightly. "Eh. The universe just knew that if I was over 6 feet no-one else would have a chance... I'd have every man and woman with-in 100 miles at my feet, begging for my attention."
"I imagine that's true." Midoriya laughed, feeling bubbly and nervous. Kaminari was very attractive. "You look a little tired."
"I am a little tired," Kaminari shrugged, "but I'll make it. I guess." His smile widened then, and he lit up even more. In his face, Midoriya saw the boy he had known fifteen years ago. As the old woodframe Home Hospital had been overwhelmed with modern glass and cinderblock, so had the boy that Midoriya had known been overwhelmed with the inevitable accessories of adulthood. There were bags under his eyes, callouses on his hands, knuckles cracked and raw from hard labor- But as the old hospital, although overwhelmed, was still there, still visible, so was the boy Midoriya had known.
Kaminari stuck out his hand and said, "Welcome back to Irusu, Deku."
Midoriya ignored the hand and embraced Kaminari. Kamianri hugged him back fiercely, and Midoriya could feel his hair, fluffy and thick, against his cheek and the side of his neck.
"Whatever's wrong, Denki, we'll take care of it," Midoriya said. He heard the rough sound of tears in his throat and didn't care. "We beat it once, and we can b-beat it a-a-again."
Kaminari pulled away from him, held him at arm's length; although he was still smiling, there was too much sparkle in his eyes. He wiped at them with the back of his white sweater sleeve. "sure, Deku," he whispered. "You bet."
"Would you gentlemen like to follow me?" the hostess asked. She was a smiling woman in a delicate pink kimono upon which a dragon cavorted and curled its plated tail. Her light-blue hair was piled high on her head and held with ivory combs.
"I know the way, Natsumi," Kaminari said.
"Very good, Mr. Kaminari." She smiled at both of them. "You two seem to be well-versed in friendship."
"I think we are," Kaminari laughed, before gesturing towards the stairs to their left. "This way, Deku."
He led him up the wooden stairs, past the main dining room and gurgling koi pond, and toward a door where a beaded curtain hung.
"The others-?" Midoriya began.
"All here now," Kaminari said. "All that could come."
Midoriya hesitated for a moment outside the door, suddenly frightened. It was not the unknown that scared him, not the supernatural; it was the simple knowledge that he was fifteen inches taller than he had been in 2005 and had mildly different haircut. He was suddenly uneasy-almost terrified-at the thought of seeing them all again, their children's faces almost worn away, almost buried under change as the old hospital had been buried. Banks erected inside their heads where once magic picture-palaces had stood.
'We grew up,' he thought. 'We didn't think it would happen, not then, not to us. But it did, and if I go in there it will be real: we're all grownups now.'
He looked at Kaminari, suddenly bewildered and timid. "How do they look?" he heard himself asking in a faltering voice. "Denki... how do they look?"
"Come in and find out," Kaminari said, kindly enough, and led Midoriya into the small private room.
—2—
Perhaps it was simply the dimness of the room that caused the illusion, which lasted for only the briefest moment, but Deku wondered later if it wasn't some sort of message meant strictly for him: that fate could also be kind.
In that brief moment it seemed to him that none of them had grown up, that his friends had somehow done a Peter Pan act and were all still children.
Bakugo Katsuki was rocked back in his chair so that he was leaning against the wall, caught in the act of saying something to Todoroki Shouto, who had a hand cupped over his mouth to hide a smile; Bakugo had a wise-ass grin on his face that was perfectly familiar. There was Kirishima Ejirou- hair a now brilliant red instead of midnight-black- sitting on Todoroki's left, and in front of him on the table, next to his water-glass, was an emergency asthma inhaler. Sitting at one end of the table, watching this trio with an expression of mixed anxiety, amusement, and concentration, was Sero Hanta, a light-pink cigarette hanging loosely out of his mouth.
Midoriya felt his mouth go dry, and his insides begin to squirm. He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his palms, desperately needing to do something with his hands.
That broke the bubble.
Bakugo- he saw, had longer hair. Not nearly as long as Kaminari or Kirishima, but longer then he had worn it as a kid. He had a small, black, ring pierced into the cartilage of his right ear. The tee-shirts and athletic-shorts he'd habitually worn had been replaced by a real leather jacket that hadn't been purchased off any rack- Midoriya estimated that he was looking at 90,000¥ worth of tailor-made fittings. He wore an 'Osaka-Radio' T-shirt underneath, paired with expensive looking Jeans- his shiny ruby-red converse rested on top of the table top, pushing his weight backwards into the leaning chair.
Todoroki Shouto had only grown prettier with age. Instead of the standard "boy's haircut" he had sported throughout his life in Irusu-which was still that curious half/half color it had always been- it was now cut and styled in a fluffy middle part, becoming wavy towards the ends. In this dim light it merely glowed like a well-banked bed of embers. In daylight, even the light of such a subdued day as this one, Midoriya imagined the red would flame and the white would sparkle like snow- especially against the knee-length black jacket he wore. He found himself wanting to touch his hair... just to see if it was really as soft as it looked. He smiled wryly, thinking of his wife, and tore his eyes away.
Sero- well, to Midoriya's delight, had finally gained some weight. No longer would the nickname "Ana" apply to him- nope. Sero Hanta had bulked up- sure, he was still lanky- but in an attractive way. (And judging by his tight shirt, he knew it too.) his hair was shorter now, done up in that purposely messy way that the girls always seemed to go crazy for. His smile as easy-going as ever, the corners of his slightly anxious grey-eyes scrunching up ever-so-slightly... the guy didn't look a day over eighteen as he blew curling streams of cigarette smoke slowly out of his mouth, sitting criss-cross on the long dark-wood bench at the right end of the table.
Kirishima had changed the most out of all of them- his hair was now the same bright red as Todoroki's left side, pulled into a lazy bun that sat bunched up on top of his head. Like Sero, he had bulked up- but his body was a lot broader- more akin to an action stars build and only insinuated by the light pink tank-top and streamlined sweatpants he spotted. His grin was strong and confident, a far cry from the self-conscious ebony Midoriya had known fifteen years prior. An aura seemed to surround Kirishima- a kind, warm, comforting, aura- Midoriya was sure it had been there when they were kids, but it was much stronger now... wanting to draw him in closer. Like a protector of sorts. A red Rolex on his right arm ticked away the seconds as they passed.
There was a moment of silence among the six of them that was beyond description. It was one of the strangest moments Midoriya Izuku had ever experienced in his life. Iida was not here, but a seventh had come, nonetheless. Here in this private restaurant dining room Midoriya felt its presence so fully that it was almost personified-but not as an old man in a white robe with a scythe on his shoulder. It was the white spot on the map which lay between 2005 and 2020, an area an explorer might have called the 'Great Don't Know.' Midoriya wondered what exactly was there. Todoroki Shouto in tight, thigh-length, shorts which showed most of his long legs. Todoroki Shouto in a school uniform, his scar hidden slightly behind his asymmetrical haircut, laying passively in a college dorm-room with a busted lip and bruised neck? Bakugo Katsuki showing his middle finger to someone after a nasty slur was thrown into the face of himself and his high school boyfriend? Sero Hanta doodling plans for an art gallery in Yokohama absentmindedly at the counter of some bar? Was this seventh creature wearing a white sweater with his mechanic's jumper's top hanging loosely around his waist? Was this creature spending weeks upon weeks in the gym, trying to escape a husband that he desperately wanted to love but didn't really know if he ever could? Or was it a young man standing before his mirror, adjusting his tie thirty-minutes before his wedding, more-freckle-y then ever, looking at a pile of composition notebooks on the desk reflected in the mirror, notebooks which held the completed, messy dialogue draft of the first chapter of a manga entitled 'Paper Boats' which would be published a year later?
Some of the above, all of the above, none of the above.
It didn't matter, really. The seventh was there, and in that one moment they all felt it... and perhaps understood best the dreadful power of the thing that had brought them back. 'It lives,' Deku thought, cold inside his clothes. Eye of newt, tail of dragon, Hand of Glory... whatever It was, It's here again, in Irusu. It.
And he felt-suddenly that It was the seventh; that It and time were somehow interchangeable, that It wore all their faces as well as the thousand others with which It had terrified and killed... and the idea that It might be them was somehow the most frightening idea of all. 'How much of us was left behind here?' he thought with sudden rising terror. 'How much of us never left the drains and the sewers where It lived... and where It fed? Is that why we forgot? Because part of each of us never had any future, never grew, never left Irusu? Is that why?'
He saw no answers on their faces... only his own questions reflected back at him.
Thoughts form and pass in a matter of seconds or milliseconds, and create their own time-frames, and all of this passed through Midoriya Izuku's mind in a space of no more than five seconds.
Then Bakugo Katsuki, leaning back against the wall, glared and 'Tched'- just like old times- and said: "And here I was hoping you were run over and left for dead in a ditch somewhere, Deku. God knows the worst thing about this shit is having to see you again."
And Deku, with no idea at all of what might come out, opened his mouth and heard himself say: "Fuck you, Kacchan."
There was a moment of silence- and then the room exploded with laughter (with the exception of Todoroki, of course, who hid a smile behind the collar of his jacket) Deku crossed to them and began to shake hands, and while there was something horrible in what he now felt, there was also something comforting about it: this sensation of having come home for good.
—3—
Kaminari ordered drinks, and as if to make up for the prior silence, everyone began to talk at once. Todoroki Shouto was now Akiyuki Shouto, it turned out. He said he was married to a wonderful man in Harajuku who had turned his whole life around and who had, by some benign magic, been able to transform his husband's simple talent for sewing into a successful fashion business. Kirishima Ejirou owned a fitness company in Nagoya that specialized in celebrity workouts. "For all I know, my husband could be in bed with Ryo right now," he said, smiling mildly, and the room broke up.
They all knew what Deku and Sero had been up to, but Deku had a peculiar sense that there had been no personal association of their names-Sero as an architect, himself as a writer-with people they had known as children until very, very recently. Todoroki had paperback copies of the first volumes of 'Paper Boats' and 'The Dark' in a mini backpack hanging off the back of his chair, and asked him if he would sign them. Deku did so, noticing as he did that both books were in mint condition-as if they had been purchased in the airport newsstand as he got off the plane.
In like fashion, Bakugo (in his own way) told Sero how much he had admired the Orchestra Palace he had built in Osaka some years ago... but there was a puzzled sun of light in his eyes, as if he could not quite reconcile that building with this man... or with the skin and bones earnest boy who had showed them how to flood out half the Barrens with scrounged boards and a rusty car door all those years ago.
Bakugo was a radio host in Osaka. He told them he was known for ripping celebrities apart. Deku groaned, smiling, "God, Kacchan, of course you managed to make a career out of being rude to people."
Bakugo kicked him underneath the table. "Shut up. I have a list of celebrities begging me to tear into them- it's like they get off on it or something."
"I see you're just as crass as ever." Todoroki smiled softly, sipping his water.
"Does your mom still live here?" Sero asked Kaminari.
"No, she moved closer to her sister four or five years ago." He smiled. "She sold the farm and everything."
"No way-" Sero leaned towards Kaminari on the shared bench, eyes wide.
"I know, right? Couldn't quite believe it myself." Kaminari laughed. "I would of taken it over myself but... I had my mechanic shop up and running by then and couldn't afford to do both. A nice couple bought it though, they let me visit."
"What about the library?" Sero asked.
Kaminari took out his phone and showed them a photo of the Irusu Public Library, taken from above. He did it with the proud air of a man producing snapshots of his kids when asked about his family. "Guy in a light plane took this," he said, as the phone went from hand to hand. "I've been trying to get either the City Council or some private donor to supply enough cash to get it blown up to mural size for the Children's Library. So far, nothing. But it's a good picture, huh?"
They all agreed that it was. Sero held it longest, looking at it fixedly. Finally he tapped the glass corridor which connected the two buildings. "do you recognize this from anywhere else, Deku?"
Deku grinned. "It's the animation studio one of my manga's are being animated in." he said, and five of them burst out laughing.
The drinks came. The laughter died. They all looked anywhere but at one another.
That silence, sudden, awkward, and perplexing, fell again. They looked at each other.
"Well?" Todoroki asked in his dull, slightly husky voice. "What do we drink to?"
"To us," Bakugo said suddenly. And now he wasn't smiling. His eyes caught Deku's and with a force so great he could barely deal with it, Deku remembered himself and Bakugo in the middle of Neibolt Street, after the thing which might have been a clown or which might have been a werewolf had disappeared, embracing each other and weeping. When he picked up his glass, his hand was trembling, and some of his drink spilled on the expensive looking wood.
Bakugo rose slowly to his feet, and one by one the others followed suit: Deku first, then Sero and Kirishima, Todoroki, and finally Kaminari Denki. "To us," Bakugo said, and like Deku's hand, his voice trembled a little despite his steely expression. "To the Loser's Club of 2005."
"The Losers," Todoroki said, slightly amused.
"The Losers," Kiridhima said, brushing his hair from his eyes.
"The Losers," Sero agreed. A faint and painful smile ghosted at the corners of his mouth.
"The Losers," Kaminari said softly, grinning.
"The Losers," Deku finished.
Their glasses touched. They drank.
That silence fell again, and this time Bakugo did not break it. This time the silence seemed necessary.
They sat back down and Deku said, "so spill it, Kam. Tell us what's been happening here, and what we can do."
"Eat first," Kaminari said. "We'll talk afterward."
So they ate... and they ate long and well. 'Like that old joke about the condemned man,' Deku thought, but his own appetite was better than it had been in ages... since he was a kid, he was tempted to think. The food was not stunningly good, but it was far from bad, and there was a lot of it. The six of them began trading stuff back and forth- spare pork-cutlets, buns, chicken that had been delicately braised, all kinds of seafood, strips of beef that had been threaded onto wooden skewers.
They began with shrimp cooked on the teppan at the center of their table. They laughed and joked with their chef, and caught flying shrimps in their mouths as best they could. Todoroki lead the table by three.
"I'd eat anything if it were prepared with a teppan." Bakugo remarked when the charade was over, and their main courses had arrived. "I'd eat the shit out of a wooden shingle if it were prepared with a teppan."
"And probably has," Deku remarked. Todoroki actually grinned at this one- so large Deku was almost certain he was actually going to start laughing.
"You know what, Deku? Fuck you."
"Stop it, Katsuki," Todoroki said playfully, pointing his chopsticks at him. "I'm warning you."
"The warning is taken," Bakugo said, holding his hands up equally as playful. "Eat well."
Natsumi herself brought them their dessert- a heaping mound of baked Alaska which she ignited at the end of the table, where Kaminari and Sero sat.
"Flambé." Bakuo said in the voice of a man who has died and gone to heaven. "This may be the best meal I've ever eaten in my life."
"But of course," Natsumi said demurely.
"If he blows that out, does he get his wish?" Kirishima asked her, shooting a teasing look at Bakugo- the tiniest hint of color on his cheeks. Bakugo's smile dropped and he glared, turning away from him.
"At The House of Blue Leaves, all wishes are granted, sir."
Bakugo turned back towards her, that fiery shimmer in his eyes faltering. "I applaud the sentiment," he said, "but you know, I really doubt the veracity."
They almost demolished the baked Alaska. As Deku sat back, his stomach aching, he happened to notice the glasses on the table. There seemed to be hundreds of them. He grinned a little, realizing that he himself had sunk two lemon sours before the meal and God knew how many bottles of Sapporo Premium with it. The others had done about the same. In their state, fried chunks of bowling pin would probably have tasted okay. And yet he didn't feel drunk.
"I haven't eaten like that since... well, I don't think I ever have, really." Sero said. They looked at him and a faint flush of color tinged his cheeks. "I mean it literally. That may be the biggest meal by I've ever eaten in my life."
"Yeah? Then how'd you finally put on any weight?" Kirishima asked curiously.
"Well," Sero said. "I went on a diet of sorts... but, ya know, to bulk up instead to lose weight. 'The Sero Hanta Freedom Diet.'"
"What got you going?" Bakugo asked.
"You don't want to hear all that... " Sero shifted uncomfortably.
"I don't know about the rest of them," Deku said, "but I do. Come on, Hanta. Give. What turned 'Ana' into the magazine model we see before us today?"
Bakugo snorted a little. "Ana, right. I'd forgotten that."
"It's not much of a story," Sero said. "No story at all, really. After that summer-after 2005-I stayed in Irusu another two years. Then, somehow, social services got involved and I was put into the system and moved around a whole bunch... It wasn't so great. Most of the people I ended up with were just as terrible as my miserly bitch of a mom. Lots of them thought I was sick or something and treated me as such." He paused for a moment and took a large chug of his beer.
"Geez, man." Kirishima mumbled.
Sero blushed and turned away. "...Anyway, the country was just pulling out of a recession and my newest foster family was okay-ish. I'd lost about... thirteen pounds from stress by then."
Bakugo whistled. "That would have put you at about-"
"One hundred and Twenty-Two... dangerously underweight." Sero said gravely. "Anyway, I was going to a middle school in some town I can't remember the name of, and the physical education periods were... well, pretty bad. The other kids... well..." he frowned.
"The ragging went on for about seven months, and then one day, while we were getting dressed in the locker room after the period, two or three of the guys started to... to kind of poke at my spine. They called it "anatomy class."- Pretty soon two or three others got in on it. Then four or five more. Pretty soon it was all of them, poking at my spine, my hip-bones, my shoulder-blades, my ribs. I got scared- something deep and primal inside me, I dunno- and it made the others laugh harder."
"You know," he said, looking down and carefully rearranging his silverware, "that's the last time I can remember thinking of Shigaraki Tomura until Denki called me two days ago. The kid who started it was a farmboy with these big old hands, and while they were going after me I remember thinking that Shigaraki had come back. I think-no, I know-that's when I panicked."
"They chased me up the hall past the lockers where the guys who played sports kept their stuff. I'd lost any sense of dignity or... or of myself, I guess you'd say. Where myself was. I was screaming for help. And here they came after me, screaming- and I- I panicked and nearly passed out."
"Sero, you don't have to put yourself through this," Todoroki said suddenly. His face had gone ashy-pale. He toyed with his cocktail glass, and almost spilled it.
"Let him finish," Deku said.
Sero looked at him for a moment and then nodded, and ran his hand along the oakwood bench he and Kaminari shared. "There was a bench at the end of the corridor. I fell over it and hit my head. They were all around me in another minute or two, and then this voice said: "Okay. That's enough. You guys go change up."
"It was Coach, standing there in the doorway, wearing his blue sweatpants with the white stripe up the sides and his white tee-shirt. There was no way of telling how long he'd been standing there. They all looked at him, some of them grinning, some of them guilty, some of them just looking sort of vacant. They went away. And I thought I was going to cry."
He sighed, long and hard. "Coach just stood there in the doorway leading back to the gym, watching me, watching this skinny, Anorexic looking foster kid, with his skin all red from the "Anatomy lesson", watching me stare red-face at the floor, breathing heavily, trying his best best not to cry..."
"...And finally he said, "Hanta, why don't you just fucking shut up?" Sero laughed.
"It shocked me so much to hear a teacher use that word that I did. I looked up at him, and he came over and sat down on the bench I'd fallen over. He leaned over me, and the whistle around his neck swung out and bonked me on the forehead. For a second I thought he was going to kiss me or something, and I shrank back from him, but what he did was jab at my collarbone. Then he took his hands away and rubbed them on his pants like he'd touched something dirty."
"You think I'm going to comfort you?" he asked me. "I'm not. You disgust them and you disgust me as well. We got different reasons, but that's because they're kids and I'm not. They don't know why you disgust them. I do know. It's because I see you wasting that good body of yours into skin and bones. It's a lot of stupid self-indulgence, and it makes me want to puke- which, looking at you, I'm sure you indulge in daily- Now listen to me, Hanta, because this is the only time I'm going to say it to you. I got a soccer team to coach, and basketball, and track, and somewhere in between I've got a swimming team. So I'll just say it once. You're fucked up in here." And he tapped my forehead right where his damned whistle had bonked me. "That's where everybody's fucked up. You put what's between your ears on a workout regime and you're going to get some muscle. But guys like you never do.'"
"What a bastard." Kaminari muttered.
"Yeah," Sero said, grinning. "But he didn't know he was a bastard, that's how dumb he was. He probably thought he was doing me a favor. And as it turned out, he was. Because I thought of something right then. I thought..."
He looked away, frowning-and Deku had the strangest feeling that he knew what Sero was going to say before he said it.
"I told you that the last time I can remember thinking of Shigaraki Tomura was when the other boys were chasing after me for the "anatomy lesson." Well, when the Coach was getting up to go, that was the last time I really thought of what we'd done in the summer of '05. I thought-"
He hesitated again, looking at each of them in turn, seeming to search their faces. He went on carefully.
"-I thought of how good we were together. I thought of what we did and how we did it, and all at once it hit me that if Coach had to face anything like that, his hair would probably have turned white all at once and his heart would have stopped dead in his chest like an old watch. It wasn't fair, of course, but he hadn't been fair to me. What happened was simple enough-"
"You got mad," Deku said.
Sero smiled. "Yeah, that's right," he said. "I called, "Coach!"
"He turned around and looked at me. "You say you coach the swim team?" I asked him."
"That's right," he said. "Not that it's anything to you."
"You listen to me, you stupid stone-brained son of a bitch," I said, and his mouth dropped open and his eyes bugged out. "I'll be out there for the swim team in April. What do you think about that?"
"I think you better shut your mouth before it gets you into big trouble," he said."
"I'm going to run everyone you get out," I said. "I'm going to out swim your best. And then I want a fucking apology from you."
"His fists clenched, and for a minute I thought he was going to come back in there and let me have it. Then they unclenched again. "You just keep talking, Ana," he said softly. "You got the motormouth. But the day you can out-swim my best will be the day I quit this place and go back to picking corn on the circuit." And he left."
"And you bulked up?" Bakugo asked.
"I did," Sero said. "I was running by then, I ran everywhere, and sometimes my heart pounded so hard I felt like I was going to pass out. The first of my mile runs I finished by fainting. Then for awhile I would just get really dizzy. And after awhile I was noticing my close getting tighter."
"I got a paper-route and I ran with the bag around my neck, bouncing against my chest. I started eating better as well- lots of meats and vegetables. The iron made me sick as well, and my stomach was so small from not eating right for so many years that I'd get overly ambitious and get sick then too."
"Fuck," Bakugo muttered, leaning forward on his elbows. "I don't know how you handled it, Hanta."
"I just kept the Coach's face in front of me," Sero shrugged. "I just kept remembering the way he looked after he poked my collarbone in the hallway to the boy's locker room that time. That's how I did it. I got myself some new jeans and stuff with the paper-route money, and the old guy in the first-floor apartment lended me some bigger belts. I think that I might have remembered the other time I had to buy a pair of new pants-that was when Shigaraki pushed me into the Barrens that day and they just about got torn off my body."
"Yeah," Kirishima said, grinning. "And you told me about the chocolate milk. Remember that?"
Sero nodded. "If I did remember," he went on, "it was just for a second-there and gone. About that same time I started taking Health and Nutrition at school, and learned even more ways to balance my meals to gain muscle instead of fat, and sure enough- the slight pudge that had began to form on my thighs and stomach and forearms began to tighten and firm."
"So what happened with the Coach?" Kirishima asked. "did you go out for the swim team?" He touched his inhaler, as if the thought of physical exertion had reminded him of it.
"Oh yeah, I went out," Sero said. "The 800m backstroke and the 800m Freestyle. By then I'd gained twenty-eight pounds and I'd stayed the same height so it showed. On the first day of trials I won the backstroke by eight seconds and the freestyle by ten. Then I went over to Coach, who looked mad enough to chew nails and spit out staples, and I said: "Looks like it's time you got out on the circuit and started picking corn. When are you heading that way?"
"He didn't say a thing at first-just swung a roundhouse and knocked me flat on my back. Then he told me to get out. Said he didn't want a smartmouth bastard like me on his swim-team."
"I wouldn't be on it if the Prime Minister appointed me to it," I said, wiping blood out of the corner of my mouth. "And since you got me going I won't hold you to it... but the next time you sit down to a vegetable fried rice, spare me a thought."
"He told me if I didn't get out right then he was going to beat the living crap out of me." Sero was smiling a little... but there was nothing very pleasant about that smile, certainly nothing nostalgic. "Those were his exact words. Everyone was watching us, including the kids I'd beaten. They looked pretty embarrassed. So I just said, "I'll tell you what, Coach. You get one free, on account of you're a sore loser but too old to learn any better. But you hit me again and I'll try my hardest to get you fired, obviously I don't know if it'll work, but I can try my best. I gained the weight and the muscle so I could have a little dignity. That's something worth fighting for."
Deku said, "All of that sounds wonderful, Sero... but the writer in me wonders if any kid ever really talked like that, especially you."
Sero nodded, still smiling that peculiar smile. "If they had been through what we had they would." he said. "I said them... and I meant them."
Deku thought about this and then nodded. "Alright."
"The Coach stood back with his hands on the hips of his sweat-pants," Sero said. "He opened his mouth and then he closed it again. Nobody said anything. I walked off, and that was the last I had to do with Coach Tetsuya. When my home-room teacher handed me my course sheet for my junior year, someone had typed the word excused next to phys. ed. and he'd initialed it."
"You beat him!" Bakugo exclaimed, slamming his hands on the table.
Sero smiled. "I think what I did was beat part of myself. Coach got me going, I guess... but it was thinking of you guys that made me really believe that I could do it. And I did do it."
Sero shrugged charmingly, but Deku believed he could see fine drops of sweat at his hairline. He also looked a little pale. A little sick. "End of True Confessions. Except I sure could use another beer. Talking's thirsty work."
Kaminari signalled the waitress.
All six of them ended up ordering another round, and they talked of light matters until the drinks came. Deku looked into his beer, watching the way the bubbles crawled up the sides of the glass. He was both amused and appalled to realize he was hoping someone else would begin to story about the years between-that Todoroki would tell them about the wonderful man he had married (even if he was boring, as most wonderful men were), or that Bakugo Katsuki would begin to expound on annoying Incidents in the Broadcasting Studio, or that Kirishima Ejirou would tell them what celebrities were really like behind closed doors... how much they tipped. or maybe offer some insights into why Sero had been able gain weight and overcome his demons while he had needed to hang onto his inhaler.
'The fact is,' Deku thought, 'Denki is going to start talking any minute now, and I'm not sure I want to hear what he has to say. The fact is, my heart is beating just a little too fast and my hands are just a little too cold. The fact is, I'm just about thirteen years too old to be this scared. We all are. So say something, someone. Let's talk of careers and spouses and what it's like to look at your old playmates and realize that you've taken a few really good shots in the nose from time itself. Let's talk about sex, baseball, the price of gas, politics. Anything but what we came here to talk about. So say something, some body.'
Someone did. Kirishima Ejirou did. But it had nothing to do with celebrity gossip or even why he had found it necessary to keep what Bakugo had sometimes called "Shark-teeth's lung-sucker" in the old days. He asked Kaminari when Iida Tenya had died.
"The night before last. When I made the calls."
"Did it have to do with... with why we're here?"
"I could beg the question and say that, since he didn't leave a note, no one can know for sure," Kaminari answered, brushing his bangs from his eyes anxiously, "but since it happened almost immediately after I called him, I think the assumption is safe enough."
"He killed himself, didn't he?" Todoroki deadpanned.
The others were looking at Kaminari, who gulped down his drink and said: "Yeah... Yeah, Roki, He committed suicide. Apparently went up to the bathroom shortly after I called him, drew a bath, got into it, and cut his wrists."
Deku looked down the table, which seemed suddenly lined with shocked, pale faces-no bodies, only those faces, like pale circles. Like pale balloons, moon balloons, tethered here by an old promise that should have long since lapsed.
"How did you find out?" Bakugo asked. "Was it picked up by the news here?"
Kaminari laughed uncomfortably. "No. For some time now I've subscribed to the newspapers and gossip columns of those towns closest to all of you... keeping tabs and all."
"That's fucking creepy." Bakugo's face was sour. "Thanks, legally-blonde."
"It was my job," Kaminari said weakly. "I promised."
"Poor Tenya," Todoroki sighed. He seemed somewhat stunned, unable to cope with the news. "But he was so brave back then. So... determined."
"People change," Kirishima said.
"-do they?" Deku asked. "Tenya was-" He moved his hands on the tablecloth, trying to catch the right words. "He was an ordered person. The kind of person who has to have his books divided up into fiction and nonfiction on his shelves... and then wants to have each section in alphabetical order. I can remember something he said once-I don't remember where we were or what we were doing, at least not yet, but I think it was toward the end of things. He said... he could stand to be scared, but he hated being dirty. That seemed to me the essence of Tenya. Maybe it was just too much, when Denki called... He saw his choices as being only two: stay alive and get dirty or die clean. Maybe people really don't change as much as we think. Maybe they just... maybe they just stiffen-up.'
There was a moment of silence and then Bakugo said, "All right, Blondie. What's happening in Irusu? Tell us."
"I can tell you some," Kaminari said. "I can tell you, for instance, what's happening now-and I can tell you some things about yourselves. But I can't tell you everything that happened back in the summer of 2005, and I don't believe I'll ever have to. Eventually you'll remember it for yourselves. And I think if I told you too much before your minds were ready to remember, what happened to Tenya-"
"-Might happen to us?" Sero asked quietly.
Kaminari nodded. "Yes. That's exactly what I'm afraid of."
Deku said: "Then tell us what you can, Denki."
"Alright," he said. "I will."
—4—
"The murders have started again," Kaminari said flatly.
He looked up and down the table, and then his eyes fixed on Deku's.
The first of the "new murders"-I've started calling them that for distinction- began on the bridge over the Shibiu that bordered the barrens and ended underneath it. The victim was a rather childlike man named Auyoma Yuga. He had been coming home from the gay nightclub down the road from here."
Kirishima's hand stole out and touched the side of his inhaler.
"It happened last summer on July 21st, the last night of the Canal Day Festival, which was a kind of celebration or a... a..."
"An Irusu ritual," Deku said in a low voice. His long fingers were slowly massaging his temples, and it was not hard to guess he was thinking about his sister Eri... Eri, who had almost certainly opened the way the last time this had happened.
"A ritual," Kaminari said quietly. "Yes."
He told them the story of what had happened to Auyoma Yuga quickly, watching with no pleasure as their eyes got bigger and bigger. He told them what the News had reported and what it had not... the latter including the testimony of Atsushi Shinji and Madoka Sora about a certain clown which had been under the bridge like the troll in the fabled story of yore, a clown which had looked like a cross between Ronald McDonald and Bozo, according to Atsushi.
"It was him," Sero said in a sick hoarse voice. "It was that fucker Pennywise."
"There's one other thing," Kaminari said, looking at Deku. "One of the investigating officers-the one who actually pulled Auyoma Yuga out of the Canal-was a town cop named Shimano Mahoro."
"Shit," Deku groaned in a weak teary voice.
"Deku?" Todoroki looked at him, then put a hand on his arm. His voice was full of startled concern. "Deku, what's wrong?"
"Mahoro would have been about ten then," Deku said. His stunned eyes searched Kaminari's face for confirmation.
"Yes."
"What is it?" Bakugo asked, sounding slightly irritated.
"M-Mahoro was the d-d-daughter of Shimano Y-Yori," Deku said. "Y-Yori lived down the street from us back then, when Eri was k-killed. He was the one who got to Eh-Eh... to my sister first and brought her up to the house, wrapped in his jacket... h-h-her brother K-Katsuma was a v-victim l-later on a-as well..."
They sat silently, saying nothing. Todoroki put a hand briefly over his eyes.
"It all fits a little too well, doesn't it?" Kaminari said finally.
"Yes," Deku said in a low, strained, voice. "It fits, all right."
"I'd kept tabs on the six of you over the years, as I said," Kaminari went on, "but it wasn't until then that I began to understand just why I had been doing it, that it had a real and concrete purpose. Still, I held off, waiting to see how things would develop. You see, I felt that I had to be absolutely sure before I... disturbed your lives. Not ninety percent, not even ninety-five percent. One hundred was all that would do it."
"In December of last year, an eight-year-old girl named Kamakiri Kaede was found dead in Ukiyo Park. Like Auyoma, she had been badly mutilated just before or just after her death, but she looked as if she could have died of just plain fright."
"Sexually assaulted?" Kirishima asked.
"No. Just plain mutilated."
"How many in all?" Kirishima pressed, not looking as if he really wanted to know.
'It's bad," Kaminari said quietly.
"How many?" Deku repeated.
"Nine. So far."
"It can't be." Todoroki muttered, narrowing his eyes at Kaminari accusingly. "I would have seen it on the news or heard it on the radio. When that crazy guy killed all those women in Kyoto... and those children that were murdered in Tokyo..."
"Yes, that," Kaminari said, refusing to look at the multi-colored haired male, his face pink. "I've thought about that a lot. It's really the closest comparison to what's going on here, and-" he coughs, and looks at the table again. "Roki's right: that really was coast-to-coast news. The Tokyo child massacre is the one that scares the absolute shit out of me. The murder of nine children... we should have TV news correspondents here, and phony psychics, and reporters from- well- everything!" He laughed again, loud and uncomfortable. "The whole media circus!"
"But it hasn't happened," Deku said.
"No," Kaminari answered, "it hasn't. I mean- there was a piece about it on the Kyodo News Site, and another one on the Shimbun Press's after the last two. A Wakkanai-based television program called "Unsolved" did a segment this February, and one of the experts mentioned the Irusu murders, but only passingly... and he certainly gave no indication of knowing there had been a similar batch of murders in 2004-05, and another in 1989-90."
"There are some "actual" reasons, of course. Tokyo, Kyoto... those are big media towns, and in big media towns when something happens it makes a bang. There isn't a single TV or radio station in Irusu, unless you count the little FM the Speech Department runs up at the high school. Sapporo's got the corner on the market when it comes to the media."
"Except for the Irusu Weekly News," Kirishima said plainly, and everyone grinned- a few even laughed.
"But we all know that doesn't really cut it with the way the world is today. The communication web is there, and at some point the story should have broken nationally. But it didn't. And I think the reason is just this: It doesn't want it to."
"It," Deku mused, almost to himself.
"It," Kaminari agreed. "If we have to call It something, it might as well be what we used to call It. I've begun to think, you see, that It has been here so long whatever It really is... that It's become a part of Irusu, something as much a part of the town as the Standpipe, or the Canal, or Ukiyo Park, or the library. Only- it's not something you can really see. Maybe that was true once, but now It's... inside. Somehow It's gotten inside. That's the only way I know to understand all of the terrible things that have happened here- phenomena's! There was a fire at a gay nightclub called the Hitosashi in 1990. A year before that, a bunch of half-bright outlaws were beaten to death on Taiko in the middle of the afternoon."
"The Satoru Gang," Deku said. "The Police got them, right?"
"That's what the history says, but it's not true. As far as I've seen -and I'd give a lot to believe that it isn't true because I love this town despite all its deadly flaws- the Satoru Gang, all seven of them, were actually beaten down by the citizens of Irusu. I'll tell you about it sometime."
"There was the explosion at the Kanazaki Ironworks during the culture day festival in 1976. There was a horrible series of animal mutilations that same year that was finally traced to Sadow Kei, the grand-uncle of the man who now runs the Goto Farms. He was apparently bludgeoned to death by the three deputies who were supposed to bring him in. None of the deputies were ever brought to trial."
Kaminari produced a small leather-bound notebook from his jumper's pocket and paged through it, talking without looking up. "In 1914 there were four lynchings inside the incorporated town limits. One of them was a priest who apparently drowned all four of his children in the bathtub like they were kittens and then shot his wife in the head with an illegally obtained firearm. He put the gun in her hand to make it look like suicide, but no one was fooled. A year before that four loggers were found dead in a cabin downstream on the Shibui, literally torn apart. Disappearances of children, of whole families, are recorded in old diary extracts... but not in any public document. It goes on and on, but perhaps you get the idea."
"I get the idea, all right," Sero said, he looked even sicker now. "something's going on here, but it's private."
Kaminari closed his notebook, replaced it in his pocket, and looked at them soberly.
"If I were a little smarter, I'd draw you, like- a graph or something. It would show an unusually high rate of every violent crime we know of, not excluding rape, incest, breaking and entering, auto theft, child abuse, spouse abuse, assault... There's a medium-sized city in the states... Texas, I think, where the violent-crime-rate is far below what you'd expect for a city of its size and mixed racial make-up. The extraordinary attitude of the people who live there has been traced to something in the water... a natural trank of some kind. The exact opposite holds true here. Irusu is a violent place to live in an ordinary year. But every fifteen years-although the cycle has never been perfectly exact-that violence has escalated furiously... and it has never been national news."
"You're saying there's a cancer at work here," Todoroki mused softly, his eyebrows raised ever-so-slightly.
"No. An untreated cancer kills. Irusu hasn't died; it's done the opposite, it has thrived... in an unspectacular, unnewsworthy way, of course. It is simply a fairly well-off small, northern, city where bad things happen too often... and where horrific things happen every fifteen or so years."
"That stays true all the way back?" Sero asked.
Kaminari nodded furiously, looking both almost excited and ready to cry- bursting at the seams. "All down the line. 1726-27, 1742 until roughly 1745-that must have been a bad one-1760-61 and on and on. Right up to the present time. I have a feeling that it's been getting steadily worse, maybe because there have been more people in Irusu at the end of each cycle, maybe for some other reason I'm not smart enough to understand- but in 2004-2005, the cycle appears to have come to a premature end- which we were responsible for."
Deku leaned forward, his eyes suddenly bright. "You're sure of that? Sure?"
"Yes," Kaminari said, nodding so hard Midoriya was sure his head would pop off. "All the other cycles reached their peak around September and then ended in a big way. Life usually took on its more or less normal tenor by Christmas... Late April at the latest. In other words, there were bad "years" of fourteen to twenty months every fifteen years. But the bad year that began when your sister was killed in December of 2004 ended quite abruptly in August of 2005."
"Why?" Kirishima asked urgently. His breath had thinned; Deku remembered that high whistle as Kirishima inhaled breath, and knew that he would soon be tooting on the old lung-sucker. "What did we do?"
The question hung there. Kaminari seemed to regard it... and at last he shook his head. "You'll remember," he said. "In time you'll remember."
"What if we don't?" Sero asked.
Kaminari laughed long and hard. "Then we're all royally fucked."
"Nine children dead this year," Bakugo spat. "Fuck."
"Mashiroa Etsu and Shoji Hajime in late 2019," Kaminari said. "In February a girl named Tokoyami Haruhi disappeared. A seven-year old. Her body was found in mid-March, in the Barrens. Mutilated. This was nearby."
He took a photograph from the same pocket into which he had replaced the notebook. It made its way around the table. Todoroki and Kirishima looked at it, puzzled, but Bakugo Katsuki reacted violently. He dropped it as if it were hot. "Shit!- Fuck- Shit, Denki!" He looked up, his eyes wide and shocked. A moment later he passed the picture to Deku.
Deku looked at it and felt the world swim into gray tones all around him. For a moment he was sure he would pass out. He heard a groan, and knew he had made the sound. He dropped the picture.
"What is it?" he heard Todoroki saying. "What does it mean, Deku?"
"It's my sister's school picture," Deku said at last. "It's Eh-Eri. The picture from her album. The one that moved. The one that winked."
They handed it around again then, while Deku sat as still as stone at the head of the table, looking out into space. It was a photograph of a photograph. The picture showed a tattered school photo propped up against a white background-smiling lips parted to exhibit two holes where new teeth had never grown ('unless they grow in your coffin,' Deku thought, and shuddered). On the margin below Eri's picture were the words 'SCHOOL FRIENDS 2004-05.'
"It was found this year?" Todoroki asked again. Kaminari nodded and she turned to Deku. "When did you last see it?"
He wet his lips, tried to speak. Nothing came out. He tried again, hearing the words echo in his head, aware of the stutter coming back, fighting it, fighting the terror.
"I haven't seen that picture since 2005. That summer, the year after Eri died. When I tried to show it to Kacchan, it was g-gone."
There was an explosive gasping sound that made them all look around. Kirishima was setting his aspirator back on the table and looking slightly embarrassed.
"Shark-teeth blasts off!" Bakugo exclaimed weakly- before blinking- seemingly confused- as if he hadn't known where that had come from.
'What is happening?' Deku thought miserably. 'What's going on?'
Kaminari spoke into the silence.
"I'd promised myself after Tokoyami Haruhi's body was discovered that if anything else happened-if there was one more clear case-I would make the calls that I ended up not making for another two months. It was as if I was hypnotized by what was happening, by the consciousness of it-the deliberateness of it. Eri's picture was found by a fallen log less than ten feet from the Tokoyami girl's body. It wasn't hidden; quite the contrary. It was as if the killer wanted it to be found- I'm sure the killer did."
"How did you get the police photo, Denki?" Sero asked. "That's what it is, isn't it?"
"Yes, that's what it is. There's an officer that- well- finds me "charming." Kaminari winked, trying to lighten the mood a little. "We mess around here and there... she leaks me information sometimes... ya know." His eyes shifted to Todoroki for a moment then, and his smile faltered. He looked at the table. "The body of Awase Hoshi was found four days after the Tokoyami girl's in Memorial Park. Eight years old. Decapitated."
"April 23rd of this year. Kodai Makoto. Six. Reported missing when he didn't come home from the park. Found the next day just off the path that runs through the greenbelt behind Roki's old apartments. Also decapitated."
"May 6th. Shiozaki Norio. Two and a half. Found in an upstairs bathroom, drowned in the toilet."
"Oh-" Todoroki cried, covering his mouth. The table jumped, not used to him being so loud.
"Yeah, it's bad," he said, almost angrily. "don't you think I know that?"
"The police are convinced that it couldn't have been- well, some kind of accident?" Todoroki asked, eyes wide and searching.
Kaminari shook his head. "His mother was hanging clothes in the back yard. She heard sounds of a struggle-heard her son screaming. She ran as fast as she could. As she went up the stairs, she says she heard the sound of the toilet flushing repeatedly-that, and someone laughing. She said it didn't sound human."
"And she saw nothing at all?" Kirishima asked.
"Her son," Kaminari said simply. "His back had been broken, his skull fractured. The glass door of the shower-stall was broken. There was blood everywhere. The mother is in the Sapporo Health Institute, now. My... my Police Department source says she's lost her mind."
"No fucking wonder," Bakugo said hoarsely.
Sero nodded gravely, and opened his cigarette pack, coming up empty. Todoroki gave him one before lighting one for himself. Sero lit it with hands that shook badly.
"The police line is that the killer came in through the front door while the Shiozaki boy's mother was hanging her clothes in the back yard. Then, when she ran up the back stairs, he supposedly jumped from the bathroom window into the yard she'd just left and got away clean. But the window is only one of those half-sized jobs; a kid of seven would have to wriggle to get through it. And the drop was twenty-five feet to a stone-flagged patio. Chief Ishihara doesn't like to talk about those things, and no one in the press-no one in the News-has pressed her about them."
Kaminari took a swig of beer and then passed another picture down the line. This was not a police photograph; it was another school picture. It showed a grinning boy who was maybe nine. He was dressed in his best for the school photo and his hands were clean and folded neatly in his lap... but there was a devilish little glint in his eyes.
"Shoda Satoshi," Kaminari said. "May 13th. A week after the Shiozaki boy was killed. Torn open. He was found in Ukiyo Park, by the Canal.
"Nine days after that, May 22nd, a grade two named Tsunotori Sho was found dead out on Neibolt Street-"
Kirishima uttered a slight yell. He groped for his inhaler and knocked it off the table. It rolled down to Deku, who picked it up. Kirishima's face had gone a sickish yellow color. His breath whistled coldly in his throat.
"Get him something to drink!" Sero worried. "somebody get him-"
But Kirishima was shaking his head. He triggered the aspirator down his throat. His chest heaved as he tore in a gulp of air. He triggered the aspirator again and then sat back, eyes half-closed, panting.
"I'll be all right," he gasped. "Gimme a minute, I'm with you."
"Ejirou, are you sure?" Todoroki asked. "Maybe you ought to lie down-"
"I'll be all right," he repeated querulously. "It was just... the shock. You know. The shock... I'd forgotten all about Neibolt Street."
No one replied; no one had to. Deku thought: 'You believe your capacity has been reached, and then Kam produces another name, and yet another, like a black magician with a hatful of malign tricks, and you're knocked on your ass again.'
It was too much to face all at once, this outpouring of inexplicable violence, somehow directly aimed at the six people here-or so Eri's photograph seemed to suggest.
"Tsunotori Sho's legs were gone... both of them..." Kaminari continued softly, "but the medical examiner says that happened after he died. His heart gave out. He seems to have quite literally died of fear. He was found by the postman, who saw a hand sticking out from under the porch-"
"It was 29, wasn't it?" Bakugo said, and Deku looked at him quickly. Bakugo glanced back at him, nodded slightly, and then looked at Kaminari again. "Twenty-nine Neibolt Street."
"Uh-huh." Kaminari said in that same calm voice. "It was number 29." He drank more alcohol. "Are you really all right, Kiri?"
Kirishima nodded. His breathing had eased.
"Ishihara made an arrest the day after Tsunotori's body was discovered," Kaminari said. "There was a front-page editorial in the News that same day, calling for her resignation, incidentally."
"After eight murders?" Sero snorted. "Pretty radical of them, wouldn't you say?"
Todoroki wanted to know who had been arrested.
"A guy who lives in a little shack way out on Route 7, almost over the town line and into Shinri," Kaminari shrugged. "Kind of a hermit. Burns scrapwood in his stove, roofed the place with scavenged shingles and hubcaps. Name's Tengan Hikaru. Probably doesn't see 2000¥ over the course of a year. Someone driving by saw him standing out in his dooryard, just looking up at the sky, on the day Tsunotori Sho's body was discovered. His clothes were covered with blood."
"Then maybe-" Bakugo began.
"-He had three butchered deer in his shed," Kaminari said, smiling apologetically. "He'd been hunting. The blood on his clothes was deer-blood. Ishihara asked him if he killed Tsunotori Sho, and Hikaru is supposed to have said, "Oh, I've killed a lot of people. I shot most of them in the war." He also said he'd seen things in the woods at night. Blue lights sometimes, floating just a few inches off the ground. Corpse-lights, he called them. And Bigfoot. They sent him up to a Mental Health faculty. According to the medical report, his liver's almost entirely gone. He's been drinking paint-thinner-"
"Ugh," Bakugo said.
"-and is prone to hallucinations. They've been holding on to him, and until three days ago Ishihara was sticking to her idea that Hikaru was the most likely suspect. She had eight guys out there, digging around his shack and looking for the missing heads, lampshades made out of human skin, God knows what."
Kaminari paused, head lowered, and then went on. His voice was slightly hoarse now. "I'd held off and held off. But when I saw this last one, I made the calls. I wish I'd made them sooner."
"Let's see," Sero said abruptly.
"The victim was another grade two," Kaminari said. "A classmate of the Tsunotori boy. He was found just off Kanazaki Drive- well, it's Mall Road now- near where Deku used to hide his bike when we were in the Barrens. His name was Tetsutetsu Eiji. He was torn apart. What... what was left of him was found at the foot of a cement retaining wall that was put in along most of Mall Road about ten years ago to stop the soil erosion. This police photograph of the section of that wall where Tetsutetsu was found was taken less than half an hour after the body was removed. Here."
He passed the picture to Bakugo Katsuki, who looked and passed it on to Todoroki Shouto. He glanced at it briefly, and passed it on to Kirishima Ejirou, who gazed at it long and raptly before handing it on to Sero Hanta. Sero Hanta passed it to Deku with barely a glance.
Printing straggled its way across the concrete retaining wall. It said:
"COME HOME. COME HOME. COME HOME. COME HOME. COME HOME. COME HOME."
Six times. One for each that had left.
Deku looked up at Kaminari Denki grimly. He had been bewildered and frightened; now he felt the first stirrings of anger. He was glad. Angry was not such a great way to feel, but it was better than the shock, better than the miserable fear. "Is that written in what I think it's written in?"
"Yes," Kaminari nodded. "Tetsutetsu Eiji's blood."