My scars were gone.

I woke in a tangle of white sheets, limbs still heavy from a deep, blissful sleep. Sunlight shyly waved through the muted gray curtains in a gentle hello.
Feathers crinkled in my pillow as I turned away; a few more minutes couldn't hurt.

And then I noticed my arm.
Odd. Hadn't there been some sort of mark there once? A ghost's soft mouth breathed against my flesh, kissed the crook of my arm, and I shivered. Probably just a lingering dream.

"Oh, you're awake."

Shota stood in the doorway, smiling softly at my mussed hair and, more than likely, the remnants of slobber still glistening on my cheek. I swiped at my face before combing through the long tangle of my hair, pulling it over one shoulder. Something prodded at my conscience again; I prodded back, only to find a vacancy of reason.
Why doesn't his face look right?

The bed shifted with his weight. I ran my fingers across his cheekbones, much to his amusement.
"Didn't you- Wasn't there a scar here, or something?"
"Mm, no?" He halted my search and kissed my fingertips, smiling when my nerves bounced like pinballs at the action. I shook my head, stubborn.
"A birthmark, then? Maybe, I don't know, a bad papercut?"

"Are you still asleep, Chiyo?" He pinched my cheek. I hissed at the abrupt pain, only slightly lessened by his floppy smirk. "No? Well, then, you better get up- the hero licensing exam is coming up, and I'm sure you want to drill them on ethical codes of conduct for several more grueling class periods before we throw them into the pit."

I leaned into his chest and groaned. "Why do I have a sinking feeling that Bakugo will fail if civilians are involved?"
"All the more reason to get a move on," He pressed a kiss into my hair before leaving me to dress. Instead, I fell into the blankets with another dramatic sigh.

My additional snooze left little time for more than a quick change of clothes and a heated argument with my hair until we came to a soft-curled agreement, primped and mostly polished by the time I stepped out to find Shota already waiting on the couch. An ebony crown of fur purred around his head; the other could barely be seen poking between his scarf, fast asleep. I checked my phone for the time.

If we're late, we can just peg it all on Mineta somehow.

I joined my little family on the couch in a giddy sort of delinquency. An arm slid open and a welcoming purr warmed my temple before we all fell into an early-morning daze, lazily tuning in and out to the television playing on the outskirt of our bubble.

"Another eventful night for the world's number one hero, All Might, as he saves thirty businessmen from a conference-gone-wrong in Fukuoka-"

"That can't be right," I argued without thinking. Thin eyebrows questioned my outburst. "All Might- He..."

"All Might...what, Chiyo?"

My brain felt like a desperate dandelion seed, the last of its kin still holding on as a whirlwind raged through. What about All Might? What was I going to say?

"It's...It's nothing," I relented, suddenly mad at myself.

The scruff of Shota's face tickled across my cheek as he turned. I ignored him with a disdainful sniffle, only enticing him to pester me further. Endo stretched, waltzed out from between us just as a hand skirted my dress, trailed up the length of my thigh.

"If you drive us to work," He murmured against my skin, "It'll only take us ten minutes."

I wondered why we bothered to get dressed to begin with.

The kids were abnormally astute today.

Even Mineta seemed to grasp the importance of treating based on the severity of injury before biased preference- something I never foresaw the little pervert abiding by if having to choose between a gun-shot man and a bodacious blonde with a splinter.

There was a boy-shaped hole in a front row seat, though no one seemed to notice but me. I tried to shift through the fog- who sat there?- before the burn of someone's gaze pulled my attention out the door.
The instructor across the hall looked away quickly, his florid neck apparent event from this distance, and the question of the missing student returned to dust.

The morning passed pleasantly uneventful. A yellow caterpillar cocooned itself in my classroom and slept through my prep period, conveniently blooming into a lanky-armed man when Toshinori showed up with lunch.

"I couldn't remember who preferred soba to curry, so I picked a little of each,"
Too large for my circle chairs, Toshinori settled onto the carpet beside the stirred Shota who, unlike the bulging man beside him, I suspected avoided the chairs due to the aesthetic demands of his aura.

"Toshi, why are you wasting your energy in that form?" I laughed, succumbing to peer pressure and placing my tray catty-corner to theirs. Towering above them would've been fun until they realized I couldn't completely hear their mutterings; in an instant they would've doubtlessly devolved into snarky, gossiping teenagers, analyzing everything from my curriculum to whether my eyebrows matched one another.
Probably.
...Hopefully.

"Er, what?"
"You don't need to stay buff for our benefit." Where was my thermos? A loud suck drew my attention to a flat-eyed man holding the object in question, cheeks hollowed with the force. I snatched it away with an overly-offended glare before addressing Toshinori once more. "Aren't you down to only a few minutes after that last battle?"

Toshinori looked to Shota for answers. He shrugged.
"She's been like this all morning. I figure she's finally overcooked her brain and this is just the aftermath."

What?
My stomach felt like I'd spent the last hour on a tilt-a-whirl, slicked on all sides with yellow bile. Why were they acting like this? Why are they staring at me like I've lost my mind?

"Toshinori, stop playing around."
"Chiyo, I don't know what you're talking about," His voice sounded correct; gentle, hesitant to offend. But why didn't he look right?

What did I expect him to look like?

The same muscles as always, yellow suit large enough to serve as a circus tent for anyone else, rabbit-ear hair just as golden as his soul.
I angled my chin and a skeleton appeared, blinked at me under heavy lids. The chiseled muscle melted down to gaunt bones. His hair drooped, fried and exhausted. Every water particle in the vicinity quivered with my gasping reaction.

"Maybe you should take her home," All Might said, concern clear. Even Shota had stopped picking around his curry to watch me. The wrinkling of his brow only made me feel more embarrassed.

"I-I'm fine. Sorry, you're probably right- I've just been focusing too hard on work these past few days, what with the licensing exam coming up." The lie that should've felt bitter in my mouth pushed out enough pent-up anxiety to actually make me feel lighter. My muscles ebbed out of their tense position; I wanted to believe myself.
The students were fine. My friends were alive, happy, and healthy. Quit psyching yourself out over nothing. Everything is normal...isn't it?

The afternoon roster seemed to have been tampered with- a plume of lavender hair entered with the other half of class 1-A. Shinso looked tired as ever but a half smile greeted me when he noticed me watching him, settling in beside Todoroki without fuss. No one in class showed any signs of surprise; this was a normal occurrence.

"There's a four o'clock showing of that ridiculous rom-com you wanted to see. Wanna go?" Shota asked after the final bell.

We sat in the perfect middle row, surrounded by no one at the odd hour. Halfway into realizing the movie was more cheese than story I turned, only to find his crinkle-eyed smile already watching me.
So we kissed away the rest of the early evening, until my lips felt salted and his cheeks were flushed with a healthy glow and we couldn't meet the eyes of the smirking teenager waiting to clean up the theater as we walked out.

Life was perfect.
So why did I feel so out of place?

"You're doing it again."

I startled, pulled up from the nest I'd made in the crook of his arm, Nasu warm between his side and my abdomen. Shota continued to watch whatever droning game show we'd chosen as background noise- napping in silence at this hour felt too sinister.
Charcoal drew a slow arc across my face.

"What's really bothering you?"

I feel like an impostor living on a film screen. The script I have doesn't match the set. I think I'm losing my mind.

But I wasn't losing my mind. I knew I wasn't.
The scars. Toshinori's health. Even the sidewalk outside our home once riddled with cracks.
The imperfections of my life, no matter the size, had been taken away.
This isn't real.

So what's the worst one? The hardest to erase?

A thorn, blackened in age, pricked my barren earth.

"Chiyo?"
It was the only way; the worst Unspeakable, the one to show me reality from irenic falsehood.
He had risen with me, legs together over the edge of the couch.
Hand comforting my back, patience and worry frowning his lips, eyes soft-lit on mine when I looked at him.

It's the only way.

"I- I think we should have a child."

A parade of elephants stampeded between his ribs, beat into my own pulse as surprise widened every single one of his features.

If he mentioned Yokohama, surrogates, regenerative quirks, then I'd know; this was reality.

A hand rifled through ebony hair, face filtering into something beautiful.

And with it, my eyes opened.

My scars- the physical ones- had been simple enough to erase.
They hadn't thought to check for internal ones.

I raised a hand to my throbbing temple. My mouth and throat felt as dried up as my heart. How much time had passed?

My body was lost in a night sky, meaning no one had bothered to change my clothes. Could it still be the same evening? Where am I?

What was the last thing I remembered?

Sara. Azakuku, a puppet on strings, high on the cure. The cure, being Rozu's quirk-produced substance. The party. A parade of men- their next batch of victims.

Shota.

I was in some sort of bedroom without a single restraint. They probably didn't expect me to break out of the trance.

"Toro?" I whispered. Upon a quick grope I found the mic still strapped inside my dress. "Toro, where am I? Where's Eraser Head?" My concentration split between my current predicament and the end of the dream. His hopeful face. I shook myself, hard. "Sara and Rozu- they're the real masterminds. This is their organization."

Crickets. I guess the audio only worked one way.

My body felt frightfully heavy, as if someone had rested boulders across my chest and limbs. I groaned with the effort of sitting upright.

They had planned to take every last man from that room tonight. Sara had said some women came to witness their "justice", which meant I probably had very little time to act. Shota.

"Toro, I don't know if you can still hear me, but-" It nearly killed me, shredding the skirts of my beautiful gown until they barely covered my thighs. The starlit cape wasn't meant for heroism, either; off it came, a puddle of midnight on the floor. "I'm going after them. This is my fault; I have to make it right." I have to save him.

I stood in tatters, chest rising with the deepest inhale I could manage around the pain of fear and betrayal and loss; of friends, of what I could never have, of a shy, boyish smile and the three words he'd continued to press into my skin until I knew them to be true.

I crossed my wrists, golden bracelets vibrating, and slammed them into my heart.

It felt like swallowing ice as the aqueous suit unfolded, dripped across my skin like a tide, swallowed my remaining clothes until I was fully submersed in its living embrace.

I pressed my palms to the freshly-vacuumed carpet and focused.

Finding him was like searching an ocean for a single grain of salt.
But I knew his heartbeat, the flow of his blood, as if it were my own.

"He's- Eraser Head is less than a mile away. North-west," I said out loud, just in case Toro was still listening in. Maybe they're already there; maybe Shota's already safe.

I wasn't taking any chances.

No one stood guard outside; nevertheless I slipped through the window without a sound. The sneering moon had taken to lower ground, drawn by the earth's swirling melody. My footsteps left no mark as I leapt across rooftops on stepping stones of water, speeding to reappear just as my foot fell.

Something must have happened in the ballroom. I hoped more than anything it was a simple knockout gas. Maybe whoever pressed their icy hand into my spine had done the same to them? So long as his life pulsed in my ears, I knew he was- at the very least- alive and not under particular duress. He seems to be unconscious.

I tried to connect all the dots as I scaled across the skyline, my worried mind frantic for a task.

Jamon Azakuku, known greatest by his illegal cannabis empire, had started to dabble into a new territory: heroin laced with the cure, a substance produced by Rozu Nishin at the request of Sara. This hybrid drug was then used to attract domestic abusers found by Sara's empath quirk, doped up by the initial invitation and then used for mule work until they OD'ed or were picked up by the police, too far gone to be of any help in unraveling the syndicate. The majority of the product was being sent exclusively to the wealthy, elite sectors of the United States, where Sara believed the world's true enemy resided.

Had they found a way for the substance to only affect men? If that's the case, what had just happened to me? Can they control who it effects individually?

Sara was a psychiatrist who had seen one too many cases, deciding to take justice into her own hands; Rozu, the producer of said cure, was drawn in by Sara's message of righting the world. Somehow, Rozu had used her quirk to bewitch Jamon into being their mover and taking this plot off the ground.

The third Grace- the one who had knocked me out cold- what was her power? Unconsciousness? Confusion? As soon as they touched me- No, not they. It had felt too cold to be actual skin. Some sort of gel?
"The third Grace, I think she...secretes something," The wind swallowed my voice, permeated a strange, familiar odor around me, from where I had been touched. Did Cure or the third grace's quirk cause the mules to forget everything once initiated?

The facility looked like every other business factory this side of town; grey and indifferent, with high barbed fences and clean-cut grass. I pressed my palms to the cold cement of a nearby rooftop.

They were in there. All of them.

"Chiyonex."

He must be able to slow his heart and blood flow- there's no other way I wouldn't have detected Toro's near-translucent figure just a few feet away from my own. I crouched beside him, surveying the building before us.

"How long was I out?"
"About two hours."
"What happened?"
Toro's eyes, usually so haunting, looked more alive than I'd ever seen them. The wet pupils were sharp enough to cut as they took me in.
"Sara 'Sokonashi' stepped in and made a riveting speech about the poison of society and how they'd found a cure. After, whatever rendered you unconscious happened to the filled room- save the women, based on the sounds Eraser's mic continued to pick up. They were then transported here."

So they can control who it impacts. Could it have been in the champagne? "Did you hear anything on my end after...?"

Toro hesitated. Eventually he swiveled to stare ahead, rather than face me. I ignored the nerves jostling against one another in my chest.

"They seem keen on having you join their operation. Actually, we gained more intel on how this all works when they took you; the three Graces are Fidelity, whom we now know is the ringleader, Sara Sokonashi, Euphoria, known for her addictive quirk ability and therefore Rozu Nishin, and Irenic, the one with the noxious gas. Her identity is still unclear. When combined, they are able to place an individual- or a group- into a comatose state for an extended period of time. Were you aware of anything, while under?"

"I was in a dream state. Like my current life, but...Without the flaws."
"How did you break out?"

It was my turn to hesitate. Toro's dilated eyes noticed in their periphery and he nodded, just slightly.

"You don't have to tell me. I think I have a pretty good understanding of what happened."

Shit, had I talked in my forced sleep?
Now's not the time.

"We need to get in there. It's only a matter of time before she- they- inject the cure to create their new workforce. I don't believe they're aware of Eraser being part of a larger organization. Is there more support coming?"
"Just us."

Fine. That was just fine. I took a breath, listened to the circulatory movements of the building.

"Sixteen guards; ten of them have raised arms, meaning they're more than likely carrying weapons. The highest concentration of beings is in the basement of the building." My skin crackled like embers as I stood. "Surround and conquer; you enter from the back, I'll go through the front. We'll take out the vanguard and work our way towards the middle- Toro?"

He still wasn't looking at me. I stared until his skin cooked like fried fish under my gaze, forcing his recognition.

"Are you compromised?"
"Excuse me?"
Toro took a breath. "You had a confession from Sara; she practically fed you the entire operation, wrote her name in red ink. You could have taken her down then and there, and yet you didn't. So I'll ask you again, Chiyonex: have you been compromised?"

Early this morning, a knock on my apartment door had roused me grumpily out of bed. Behind that door had stood Rozu, pink-cheeked and grinning, a messily-wrapped parcel in her arms.

"I know you thought it was too much, but you looked like such a femme fatale in the black dress that I went back and bought it for you. I...I wanted to do something to show you how much I've appreciated your friendship these past few weeks. One day, I hope we'll be able to go out and own the night together in these Sin City outfits!"

I had been drowned in happiness and sorrow, my heart a crushed flower between the two.

Rozu. Sara. My friends. The women who took me in, cuddled down with blankets and popcorn. Giggling at old kid movies and painting my nails until I became the Milky Way.
Who had known pain by the hands of cruel men, and wanted to make it so no woman felt such wrath again.

Let me rebuild that house, with you. Let's build a house together.

"No," My voice was a quiet knife, sure of its aim. "No, I have not been compromised."

Toro's face shined in the crescent light like moonstone.

"Then let's go end this."

The night wore a liquid sheath of darkness.

I moved with the sureness of a panther, my touch just as lethal.
So long as I stuck to the shadows, timed my movements well, they never even experienced pain.
Hallway after hallway, room to room.
A walnut of musty doubt sat in the pit of my stomach as I cleared another floor.

None of these heartbeats are his.

I'd never asked Toro about the abilities of his quirk; watching him dissolve the front-facing guards proved a surprising delight. In one instance he stood in plain sight- the next, nothing but a distortion of light, capturing fascination more than alertness until it was too late.

A duo of women stood before us, backs turned as they concentrated on a plain, unmarked door, where two pulses quietly waited within. A prickling poked air holes through my lungs.

For standing next to Rozu was a familiar, voluptuous figure, her green skin dewy in the low-light.
I'd always admired that aloe scent of hers.

Jushina.

The plant-based quirk woman from counseling who had bellyached day in and day out over her boyfriend. Of course- of course they would've sank their teeth into her all-too-willing membrane, if only they listened to her unjust woes.

I wanted to scream. To permafrost her cacti skin, watch it wither from the vine and leave her looking like the pruney, browned stub she was on the inside.
Certainly, there would be time for that later.

Toro caught my attention. I nodded, just once.

Rozu's gasp didn't breathe out until my fingers were already wrapped around her neck.

"Where's Sara?" A calm, quiet question- one to keep her jumping nerves steady. I bled into her system, just to make sure. She relaxed in my arms like a wilted flower.

"Don't say a word!" Jushina snarled. The usually-oozing succulent now displayed all the viciousness of a jumping cholla. She seemed wholly unafraid of the angler-like man holding her captive, spitting in his waxy face when he addressed the situation to her in his severe, haunting tone.

"Rozu," Her eyes were still the same golden honey; the color of summer, of laughter and sun-lit lemonade. My grip loosened to its own accord. "Rozu, where is she? Where's she taken Shota?"

Tears slid across her high cheekbones like runaway brides. I felt my heart take on another fracture.

"Sh-She cares for you so much, Akua- we both do. This is for the best- Don't you want to be with us?" Her voice, hardly more than a whisper, barely lasted before she began to weep. I steadied my own pulse, swallowed the emotions screaming through my rib cage.

No matter the horror, the misguided righteousness, I loved her; I loved Rozu.
But my heart was already sewn into someone else's chest, and all I could hear was its panic.

"Do you remember when we saw that crazy movie and after, when we went to Sara's, I fled to the bathroom and you came and comforted me? We talked about a divided society, and how some people deserve happy endings more than others," Her eyes were fearful moons, on the brink of collapse. I bit my lip to stop my own destruction from happening. Slid my hands from threatening to tenderness, curved around her anguished face. "Rozu, if you take him away from me, I will never get a happy ending. He is my happy ending. Some...Some men are truly terrible, but not all of them. He's not the villain in my story."

"He's your damsel," Rozu finished, guttural laugh inflecting the comment with humor. I breathed out a tense chuckle.
"Yeah. This time, I guess he is. So please, where has Sara taken him?"

She had done her research.
Sometime between landing in my arms and sleuthing the internet for Shota's address, Sara had put together the pieces- of who I really was, what the media knew of my quirk- and devised a way to negate my prowess.

I retraced my steps, pinned the code Rozu had whispered to me into a lead-based door, and entered the hidden office of Sara "Sokonashi" Lewis.

Sara's eyes shone like coal. She shook her head in unsurprised dismay.

"I knew, in the end, your clever tongue would be enough to break Rozu to pieces."

"My clever tongue?" Where is he? I feel him; he's here. "Do you honestly believe you've had Rozu's best interest in mind through this? You destroyed her-"

"I gave her a choice!"
I could barely comprehend Sara over the blood pounded in my head; a continuous cadence of the same thought over and over again: Shota. Shota. Shota.
"Before I met her Rozu jumped from place to place, determined to start anew but always- always- she returned to that mongrel. And now look at her: free. Safe-"
"You think you've rescued her by virtually murdering a man?"

A glacier would be envious of her chipped-ice demeanor. "You know, just as well as I, what sort of man he was."
Was.
"I know Rozu's been hurt- we've all been hurt-"
"Don't attempt to feed me some hostage-situation narrative, Chiyo," She said with a sigh. "I know you. I've felt your pain firsthand." Sara brushed her fingertips across her temple. Indigo irises watched me beneath their shade. "Look at me. Look me in the eye and tell me you can't understand my objective."

The problem wasn't that I didn't understand, but that I did.
Not even All Might could save everyone; countless assaults took place every minute, every second, every day. Were there people I believed the world would be better off without? Of course I did.

Sara shifted, encourage by my silence, and a dark tumble of disheveled hair appeared over one side of the desk behind her. A chill fell over my flesh. He had been so handsome before; did he struggle, when they took him?

Sakamata's deep, resonating voice argued in my conscience, demanded calm in the face of my acidic fury. With each breath the poison dripped further, deeper, until I thought my pores would open and melt this place to ash.
Those people. Their families. Rozu.
Shota.

"It's over, Sara."
His heart beat steadily behind her. Calm. Unalarmed.
"You think you've really won, don't you?"

An emptied syringe dangled between two of her graceful, slender fingers, and my lungs forgot their purpose.

"What did you do?"

Sara smiled; a venomous, unhappy curve. "They are the disease, Chiyo. How can you be so blind? They run our governments, dictate our choices, and then believe themselves as commendable when we're given the scraps. Their brutality must be brought to an end. This...This is the only way."

She dropped the needle, dared a few feet closer to me. The ivory of Shota's face appeared with the movement, peaceful in slumber, and oxygen at last re-entered my body.

He's alive. He's okay.
Toro said all three worked to settle me into the blissful comatose; because they wanted me, cared for me.
What emotions had Sara filled Shota's unconscious body with?

"Join us, Chiyo. We can right the balance. With your power, think of what we could accomplish."

"The difference between you and me," I said quietly. "Is that I choose justice over revenge."

Her eyes flashed like blood marbles, writhing in my grasp when I caught her wrists and brought them behind her. The sash of my dress- a dress she herself had bought me, claiming me the weaver of night in such a celestial gown- now acted as her restraining bonds, tying her hands together. The last stars fell from my eyes in streaking lines of silver.

"Sara Lewis, you are to be taken into custody. You will be tried for your crimes in a court of law. Do not attempt escape or resistance- doing so will only further indict-"
"We could've done it! We could've made this world better!" The tethers of her calm facade broke loose, screaming as she struggled against me. "You were one of us! You could have changed everything!"

Police stormed the building. EMTS and investigators alike probed the slowly-wakening victims of Sara Lewis and Rozu Nishin. Later, Jamon Azakuku would be found in a coma as well.

Upon waking, his first question would be the whereabouts of one Tsurai Sasu.

Only one victim had not awakened.
Shot with a liquid dose of Rozu's addiction oil eddied in the particle form of Jushina's confusion substance, Shota Aizawa was placed in a sleep so deep not one of the instigators themselves could pull him out of it.

And, with no better option, I took him to the Aizawa household.

His parents lived right above the animal shelter; any father away, Mr. Aizawa claimed, and the animals would suffer from separation anxiety.

I marveled at the angsty punk-band posters on his boyhood walls, the happy blue sheets of his twin-sized bed. A surprising set of Shojo manga sat on his bookshelf.

Midnight turned into the quiet of late night, then the rising dawn, and still Shota Aizawa did not stir.
Mysteriously, the Hopper brothers found their way into the house, along with a ghostly ocean creature hidden in the shadows.

But still he did not wake.

In a new nervous habit I rubbed the back of Shota's ring, twisting around the band until I could press my thumb against the smooth, almost liquid sapphire. I asked it to somehow send aid, to awaken its master, until watchful grey eyes made me self-conscious and I hid my hands in the tattered folds of my dress.

What would he think, seeing us- me, Toro, his friends, his parents- all crowded together in his adolescent room like this? Would he laugh? Groan until we all left him in peace?
I didn't know.
I wanted to know.

Sunlight spilled into the room like someone knocking over a bag of sugar. It brought on the realization of how truly ghastly I must look, hair tangled from the night's events, dressed in the aftermath of what looked like a stepsister's attack. The horror of what his parents must think of my appearance was only eclipsed by my steadfast worry over their son.
All of this- every last happiness and breath- it would all be pointless, colorless, if I lost him.

"Didn't that, um, Sara- Didn't she say something about quirks not working in some circumstances?" Ichiro was pulling at straws. Jiro visibly perked, began the search as well.
"Yeah, yeah! Remember, when you guys were talking? She said- You mentioned some tailor shop, and she said-"
"That the Boss couldn't go back to the tailor shop, because of somebody named Sasu?"

I was tired. So, so tired.
But seeing the sudden hope in their faces sparked a flicker of light in mine, too.

"You think...The addiction can be undone?"
"Like in those fairy tales, you know?" Jiro was full-on exuberant now. "True love's kiss! Just like in Cinderella-"
"Idiot, that was Snow White. Cinderella was the one with the glass kicks-"
"You want to go track down my son's significant other?" Mr. Aizawa snorted at such an absurdity.

A distinct awkwardness quieted the room.

He looked to his wife, a hand raising to smooth back his hair, uneased by the temperature change. "Shota lives in Musutafu- that's hours away from here. We don't even know where she is. Right? ...Right?"

Four sets of eyes suddenly burned my body cherry, finally joined by the eldest Aizawa's surprised gaze.

"All men, Chiyo," Sheru Aizawa said flatly.
"Eh?" Said her husband.

Shota slept on, completely oblivious to what surely would've given him a heart attack.

Maybe Ichiro and Jiro were right; Sara had said Rozu's quirk had limitations. If Sasu was Jamon's weakness, did that mean I could act as Shota's?

As far as I knew, Jamon and Sasu only ever talked- that was their bond.
What was ours?

Clever banter, secret looks across the hall. Lunches and quick, breathless kissing between bells, groaning through training and playing silly games of tag during runs. Lethargic nighttime television and snuggled catnaps, the sound of his soft breath as he slept, the feel of his mouth skimming over every single imperfection on my skin, laughing at me when I squirmed under his tender gaze.

My hand burrowed under his shirt until I felt my heart beating between his lungs.

I closed my eyes and told her to wake up.

His dream was the hardest to break from.

Because it was simply his life, almost exactly the way it already was.

Her soft head of hair, brushing against his chest as they slept. That chipped-tooth smile grinning at him when he surprised her with pancakes and strawberries. Listening to her babble on about whatever newest social media post had crawled under her skin as they drove to school, never needing to say much more than a scoff or noise of agreement to keep her happy.

Her body, the curve of her legs to all eighteen freckles, completely accounted for each morning, noon, and night.

He could live in this dream forever.

It was only when he was buried into her, somewhere between waking and drowsing, that he noticed her heart didn't beat in a melody he recognized.
The slight irregularities of everything outside of her embrace- Hizashi's quieter disposition, Nemuri's sudden tendency to wear modest clothing, Toshinori's business elsewhere- felt like small grievances in comparison to what he did have.

He didn't care. She was happy, so he was, too.
But why didn't she have a heartbeat?

And then one night he heard it.
A soft, known melody, pattering like children's feet in the hallway.
The sound drew him from bed, out of her arms.
An echo of something so familiar his heart ached, leading him into rooms he didn't recognize, through darkness as thick and weighted as fog.
The sound vibrated through the air, to his very marrow.

He lifted one hand to his chest.
The soft, small fingers of someone else's lay waiting.
Light burned like a halo around her.

"Hello," His love said, smile like the sun.

"Chiyo," He breathed. Tears spilled out of her blue-green eyes as she laughed. He carefully brushed them away, fingers lingering on the curve of her face. Why was she crying? He glanced at the rest of her, trying to puzzle it together, coming to only one reasonable conclusion. "Chiyo, it's okay, we can buy you a new dress-"

She laughed again; even in the morning-after light, hair a bird's nest of pins and flyaway tufts of aquamarine, she was almost too beautiful to look at directly.

"Did you get lost?"
Her question shouldn't have made sense, but somehow he knew.
"I followed your voice. It led me back."

A wet sniffle prodded against their protective bubble.

The sight of two idiot brothers sobbing in the doorway of his childhood bedroom- a room filled with video games and dirty, too-small sneakers and toys his mom always threatened to give away if he didn't come collect but never actually did- was only defeated in the value of surprise by the familiar faces of his smiling parents, seated just on the other side of his bed.

The grey eyes of his mother churned his stomach and for one truly bizarre moment he worried over the fact that a girl- the girl- was in his bedroom, on his bed, as if his mother's wrath extended well past adolescence.

"You have terrible aim." Sheru Aizawa said to her son.

No one knew why his face reddened like a candy apple, save him and the mother quickly shooing herself and the visitors out the door. His father tried to remain seated, stubborn in the face of leaving after such a short reunion, before his wife mentioned something about de-worming day and then he, too, was out of the room, leaving just the couple.

Chiyo busied herself with smoothing out her hair, smiled when he looked over to her.

"Would it-" He licked his lips, as if tasting the hopeful inquiry already.

"Would it be out of the question if we took a quick nap?"