Inazuma Raika rarely thought about her first middle school but when she had gotten into a hero school, several of her former classmates had immediately reached out on social media, eager to be close to someone who might become famous. She had answered them but had also kept her distance, acting out of politeness instead of a real desire to reconnect with them. The only exception had been a girl with a cat quirk whose mother had remarried with a high executive of Detnerat.
This girl happened to know all the gossip, which was very useful to someone like Raika for whom reputation was everything.
Rin 3: [Have you heard about Mr. Kazuhito?]
Her former homeroom teacher from Aldera had met a spectacular fall from grace. Rumor had it that he had not only stolen money from his wife's elderly aunt but he had also accidentally sent pictures of his mistress and him to his wife's father. His divorce had been finalized a few weeks ago.
And then, after his wife had left with the children, his house had gone up in flames, with him inside. No one was sure if it was an accident (after all, he was known to be a heavy smoker) or if he had ended his life to make his wife regret leaving him.
Raika herself didn't particularly care.
Me: [I heard about it! It's awful! I know he made mistakes but he didn't deserve that. His poor children…]
Rin 3: [I so agree with you! What a horrible way to go!]
Rin 3: [Are you going to the funeral?]
And get contaminated by whatever jinx is hanging above that place? No, thank you.
Her former PE teacher, the one in charge of the quirk training, had broken both legs three months ago and wouldn't be able to ever walk without pain again. Matoi had run away and his parents were beside themselves, claiming that their kid was as innocent as the newborn lamb, even though everyone who had ever known him was aware of his habit of pulling stupid and dangerous pranks. There was a rumor that the freaking principal was about to be arrested for money laundering.
And honestly, Raika didn't need to keep in touch with a subpar middle school. If she wanted a narrative of diamond in the rough emerging from a shitty school, her high school was adequate enough.
Not that she would be here next year. She had several letters of recommendations and an interview to get into Shiketsu.
Me: [I can't.]
Me: [I have a quirk week at my hero school and if I miss even a day, I will be disadvantaged. I regret it but I know that Mr. Kazuhito wouldn't have wanted me to miss this opportunity. He always believed that I could be a hero.]
Rin 3: [Of course. Don't blame yourself, school is important and hero courses are especially demanding.]
Rin 3: [Love you.]
Me: [Love you to 3]
Suzano hugged Raika from behind just as she was putting her phone back in her pocket, pressing her cheek against her shoulder and asking her what she thought about the latest fun subject of conversation: Anyone.
An organization of vigilantes, with members powerful enough to fight pro heroes and even to escape the number 1 hero. Even if people (well, nerds) had known about it before the harbor incident, this name had spread through Japan like wildfire and everyone was curious about them.
However, even if people were happy to explain what Anyone was and to claim that they were aware of it long before this name had spread through social media, no one ever admitted being part of it.
In truth, Raika thought that they were pretty cool. She was aware that pro heroes were forced to deal with a lot of paperwork and rules of conduct. The idea of not having to justify herself to do her future job appealed to her. However, as a hero student, she was too smart to admit it, especially at school.
So she told her friends what she had to say, explaining how there might be well-meaning people but pro heroes were the ones who were trained to handle dangerous situations and that encouraging vigilantes to do what they wanted would lead to unrest.
They kept chatting around their lunches, happy and laid-back.
And as they did, Raika watched Sorano from the corner of her eyes. The eel girl was eating alone, wearing an ill-fitting PE uniform. She looked small and timid.
Raika felt some calm satisfaction at this. In a sense, she was doing Sorano a favor. Better to make her quit now, in high school, than for her to waste years of effort only to realize that she wasn't cut out to be a hero.
It wouldn't take much before Sorano finally realized the truth.
Not that Raika would do it herself.
After all, she had learned from her mistakes.
The harassment got worse. At first, Naru's stuff was displaced, to the point where she really wondered if the stress and the fatigue wasn't messing with her memories. It was only when she started to find her books trashed and gum at places where chewing gum had no place to be that she realized that it wasn't her brain dysfunctioning
It was what urged Naru to check social media. She even created several social media accounts just for the occasion.
She found several photos of herself online. She hadn't noticed when they had been taken, which wasn't surprising since everyone in school always had their phone in hand, but they weren't flattering and the comments under them… It hurt. It made her feel miserable and self-conscious.
It would have been easier and probably better for her peace of mind to stop obsessively going through all of her classmates' feeds. But she couldn't help herself.
And she took screenshots of every photo and every comment.
"Sorano, why were you late today?"
"No one told me we weren't training outside but in the gymnasium, Sensei."
"Sorano… Can't you make an effort to get along with your classmates? You need to know how to make friends if you want to be a hero."
"There is this girl at school."
Mr. Nisena waited for Naru to continue, a hand on his coffee, relaxed and patient. He didn't look distant and vaguely frustrated like her homeroom teacher when she hinted that something was wrong with her classmates. He didn't have this look of concern and empathy that she imagined her family members would wear on their faces if she wasn't lying to them about school.
No, instead, he looked like the stranger that he was, someone who wasn't involved in the situation.
Maybe it was why it was easier to confide in him than in anyone else.
"She is simply amazing," Naru smiled. "She is beautiful, talented, her quirk is so strong and everyone loves her. But she just… doesn't like me. And I understand that not everyone can get along, but everyone who loves her follows what she wants… And school has been really hard."
She realized she was reducing the paper napkin she was holding in her hands to shreds. She stopped before her skirt was covered in paper.
"I thought I could go through high school alone, without even one friend but… they all hate me. I can feel it."
She waited for him to assure her that not everyone hated her. She waited for him to tell her to speak to her parents about it, even though it would worry them and they would feel bad because they wouldn't be able to do anything. She waited for him to advise her to ask help from his homeroom teacher, as if he wasn't all too happy to ignore everything his star student was doing and probably considered her a bother for not managing to fit in with the class.
Embarrassment made her blush. She was already regretting ever opening her mouth. She probably would have to stop coming to this café now.
But the white-haired-man simply took a sip from his coffee and thought about it.
"That girl… How do you feel about her?" he asked.
Naru was so taken aback by that question that for a moment, she couldn't say anything, just stunned.
She knew the answer to his question, of course. Every time one of Inazuma's followers pushed her around, she froze. They thought it was because she was afraid. But she knew the truth. She knew what it was.
Pure, raw, white-hot and festering hatred.
She hated every single one of them. This had gone beyond anger because they hadn't just made her life miserable: they had turned her into someone she didn't recognize. She used to be liked, to be the one her classmates relied on. She used to be a protector. She had never imagined it was possible for her to be bullied. But now, because of them, this bright and beautiful being she had been was just a vague memory.
And every time she had to deal with their bullshit, every time she was yelled at or ignored or treated like she was nothing, she stayed still and didn't say anything, she kept herself from reacting, kept this hatred and this frightening need to tear them apart in check, because the slightest sign of anger would be used again her to paint her as someone who couldn't control herself.
Because bullied people weren't allowed to lose their cool. Because bullied people weren't allowed to fight back, for it would be used to crucify them.
And it was doubly true for people with heteromorphic quirks like her.
"I hate her," she said, and just admitting it made her feel like herself for the first time in months. "She has everything. Why does she go out of her way to make my life miserable? How dare she torture me like that?"
It was unforgivable.
A light of approbation brightened Mr. Isena's piercing grey eyes, as if he was happy that she sometimes entertained thoughts about snapping a classmate's scrawny neck.
"What kind of quirk does she have?" he asked, once again giving her whiplash.
"Electricity," she answered anyway.
"You look like an electric eel so I am going to assume that you also have electricity-based-powers?
Naru nodded.
"Then, you have your answer. She wants you out because you're a threat." He ignored Naru tilting her head in pure incomprehension and continued. "Heroes are dime a dozen and they shine through their uniqueness. Beautiful heroes with elemental powers are common."
"Her voltage is twice as powerful as mine!" Naru cried out before looking around, embarrassed because she had raised her voice.
And if it was only that… Inazuma was perfect. Beautiful, popular, and with the strongest quirk in the entire hero course.
But Mr. Isena obviously didn't look impressed.
"… Good for her. It's still completely useless for a hero. Fighting villains while using too high of a voltage will kill them, which was still frowned upon in the hero industry last time I checked."
Naru blinked.
"Two students from the same school, both of them having an electricity quirk. Who do you think people will recognize more easily?" Mr. Isena asked. "Who is the physically strongest of the two, with a quirk actually adapted for hero work instead of a quirk whose super move stops hearts?"
He drank more of his coffee while she put into perspective her entire high school experience.
He's wrong, isn't he? He is just saying that because he doesn't understand the full situation?
She had never tried to compete with Inazuma. At first, it was because she wanted her high school experience to be full of friendship and solidarity. Then, it had been because she knew she didn't stand a chance.
"If you're reduced to talking with me about your problems, I can only assume that your teachers have failed you," Mr. Isena spoke the truth and nothing but the truth. "People in authority do have a tendency to forget their responsibilities when it's inconvenient to them. Fortunately, as someone in the hero course, a place where people fall in line with the ones who have the strongest quirk even more than usual, you have a very simple way to make things better for yourself."
"And what is that?" Naru hoped for a real solution.
"Excel at what you do," this man had the audacity to say like it was easy. "Prove that you aren't just a victim but someone worth investing in. People will always compare the two of you and once they realize that they might have been backing the wrong horse, they will stop antagonizing you. It's human nature at its finest. Your teacher, especially, won't want a potential alumni to badmouth his teaching methods."
Naru opened her mouth to gently explain to him that it was easier said than done.
She closed it as she realized that… she hadn't exactly been giving her all in her classes until now. Not when she was investing so much of her energy into being unnoticeable, in the hopes that things wouldn't get worse.
"What if I fail?" she quietly asked.
"Can your situation get any worse?" he asked back, a note of mockery in his voice.
"… What if they hate me even more?"
Until now, the face of her interlocutor had stayed pretty neutral. A hint of a smile here, some light mockery there, a glimmer of interest, but nothing more. Naru appreciated that. Hesitation, doubt and the awkwardness of not knowing how to answer would have paralyzed her.
It was why the pity she saw on his face hurt her so much, shocking her to the core.
"Oh my dear, they did you a disservice," he said softly. "They taught you to be less than you are."
Naru became eerily still, the words resonating with something inside her.
"They taught you to shrink so others wouldn't feel little. They taught you to muzzle yourself so others wouldn't feel threatened. They taught you to be weak and tame and worse, they lied to you and claimed that it would make the others accept you when we both know that it never changed a thing. It just taught the people who should have feared you that you are prey. So tell me, Sorano Naru, why bother to continue?"
Naru couldn't breathe, pinned down by his sheer presence and the realization that maybe, just maybe, she had wasted most of her life trying to please people who would never accept her.
She tried to think outside of those words, feeling the sheer force of his man's will rewriting how she perceived the world and her life.
Her saving grace came in the form of a waiter who made a little "Wow" sound as he looked at the TV in the corner of the café.
In the next moment, the pressure was gone and they were both looking at the TV that was showing something happening in Dubai. For that to be aired on a Japanese news channel, it either meant that a Japanese hero was involved or that the situation was really out of the ordinary… Yep, it was the latter.
Mr. Nisena looked at it for a couple of seconds, annoyance coming from him in waves. He apologized to Naru and went outside to make a phone call but since he let the door open, the hero student had no trouble picking up on what he was saying.
"Where are you?"
A small moment passed and whatever he was hearing, Mr. Isena wasn't convinced.
"You seriously expect me to believe you are just chilling at home?" he asked in the tone of a parent who was done with their child. "It's better not be a helicopter I am hearing right behind you… Do not hang up on me!"
The last sentence was said with an intensity that made Naru want to curl into a ball and to pretend that she was invisible. A passerby who got too close ran in the other direction. Another customer too close to the door hid behind his comic as if it was Captain America's mighty shield.
But apparently, Mr. Nisena's son was braver than all the top 5 heroes combined
The terrifying DC fan walked back into the comic café, paid his bill and said something to the waiter that sent him running. He then stopped in front of Naru, apologizing for cutting their conversation short for he had to go (Naru assumed he was on his way to ground his son for the next decade) and gave her his card, insisting on the fact that if she needed to talk, she was free to call him whenever she wanted.
Ten minutes later, the waiter was bringing Naru a tiramisu, ordered and paid by Mr. Nisena in the hopes of making her feel better, which was adorable.
Hawks, who had relocated to Dabi's apartment while waiting for his feathers to grow back because his loft was at the very top of the building and there was no working elevator due to some necessary sabotage so his handlers wouldn't come and bother him at home without a very good reason, received an alert on his phone. Lounging on the couch with one chicken tender in one hand and his phone in the other, he raised an eyebrow and threw the phone away. It was way out of the country so there was nothing he could do.
"I do not envy people in Dubai right now," the currently grounded number 3 hero muttered before swallowing the piece of chicken covered in hot sauce.
Both Dabi and Shouto stopped arguing at once (something about how Shouto needed to go home because Dabi tolerated only one freeloader in his place – Hawks wasn't sure of who he was talking about - and Shouto ignoring him and arguing about Dabi needing him for groceries) and they looked at him with almost identical eyes.
"What?" they both said as one.
Hawks showed them his phone.
"A kaiju is currently attacking Dubai… Why are you looking at me like that? Who do you know in Dubai?"
Then it hit him.
One member of the dream team was absent.
The hero student who had jumped head first into joining a vigilante organization ran to the large TV bought with Hawks' money and turned it on, revealing the news report showing very disturbing images.
Horrified, Hawks, Dabi and Shouto watched the news reporting that not only was a giant sea monster emerging from the sea to attack Dubai but it was also showing a helicopter not affiliated with any local hero agency and what suspiciously looked like someone dangling from a rope to get closer to the beast.
"It's not possible," Dabi whispered. "It has to be someone else."
Shouto facepalmed so hard that it was a miracle he didn't knock himself out.
Snowdrift
[What did you do?]
Snowdrift
[Answer me, please.]
Snowdrift
[What happened?]
Snowdrift
[Why am I hearing that there is now a blackout affecting Dubai?]
SmallMight1541
[I discovered how to use the new quirk. :D]
David Shield choked on his orange juice as he read the news and how a villain had stolen a device to communicate with quirked animals and used it to provide a demonstration to his future buyers by luring a giant electricity-eating sea beast out of the depths by promising it a meal. Fortunately, the crisis had been averted, even though the vigilante who had convinced the beast to leave peacefully and who had apparently kicked the villain into a coma was nowhere to be found (which was surprising as Dubai, like the rest of most countries in the middle east, had Good Samaritans laws).
But what left him coughing his lungs out wasn't the very interesting technology but the fact that the villain who had been arrested, Wolfram, had an uncanny resemblance to the actor he had hired to steal his prototype.
Good thing I haven't sent him the plans to break into I-Island yet…
Inazuma Raika raised her hands to her hair and pulled it in a high ponytail, the kind that complimented her height and her face. Then, she looked at her classmates, both her subjects and her burdens.
She worked hard to be liked, because her profession necessitated her to be popular. She remembered the names of most of the people she met, she remembered what they liked and disliked, and she had learned to notice the shifts in the class dynamics. She paid attention, gave the impression that she cared about those people, and in return, they followed her example.
It was why she immediately noticed the slightest changes.
It wasn't much, of course. Only a couple of days had passed, after all. But the hypersensitivity born from what had happened in high school confirmed that her classmates were wary. Worse, she could feel a note of doubt in the more neutral members of the class.
And this change could be traced back to Sorano Naru.
She held her head higher. Instead of anxiously looking around during breaks, hoping for someone to pay attention to her, she had her eel nose in her school books. And today, during the physical assessment test, she not only finished in first place but also by a huge margin.
It wasn't surprising for someone with a heteromorphic quirk, for whom enhanced strength and athletic abilities were a given, but last week, Sorano hadn't been putting so much effort in her training. She had just tried her best to be as forgettable as possible.
If only you had shown that kind of ambition earlier…
After school, Raika once again refused her classmates' offer to hang out and she went straight to an expensive gym that allowed its members to use their quirks. Unlike the place in Deika, there was nothing to tell her how much voltage her strikes accounted for but it wasn't like she needed it.
She put the timer on and went to work, lightning crackling from her fingers and striking the metal target with such power that it sent it swinging back and forth under the impact. Raika didn't wait for the target to be still again as she aimed and aimed again, touching it every time.
Raika had always known that she would become a hero because, no matter how unfair it was, only heroes could use their quirks and she couldn't imagine a life where she wasn't allowed to use something that defined her.
She hit two targets fifty two times in one minute, leaving only traces of fuming metal where the targets had once stood. Her aim was perfect. Her power was growing stronger and stronger.
And she was exhausted.
There was a limit to how much electricity she could produce. She was pushing her limits every day, making her electricity production more substantial little by little, but others had access to more just because of how their quirks worked.
Same thing went for her stamina. She ran every morning, before school even started. She trained after school. She invested so much time and effort into being at peak strength, while knowing perfectly that she couldn't compete with people who didn't put a tenth of her efforts into growing stronger.
It was what had enraged Raika when she had first seen Sorano. A stupid goodie two-shoes who took her abilities for granted.
Urging her to reconsider her career choice had been a kindness. Better now that after she had been injured on the job. If she couldn't get through high school, being a hero was out of the question.
But now, Sorano was waking up too late, trying to catch up. Worse, her renewed but futile efforts were a problem because she would be riding on Raika's coattails. Her brand would be affected by another hero student, especially as Sorano's appearance alone would catch people's interest.
They would be compared and that was why Raika didn't only need Sorano gone. She needed her to disappear from the heroic scene. History had proven that one grain of dust could mess up the whole thing and she wasn't taking risks anymore.
She gritted her teeth, pain throbbing in her head at the memory of Midoriya. There wasn't a day she wasn't regretting what she had done to him.
After all, she had lashed out one time in her life and it had almost destroyed everything.
The little quirkless freak had latched on this excuse to suck her whole family dry, blackmailing them so he wouldn't pulverize Raika's chance at being a hero.
It had taught her to be more careful.
Raika grabbed her phone, unlocking it by drawing a lightning, and she went to the one place where she allowed herself to vent. She went through her lists of online friends, selected three carefully, and threw the same message to all of them, like bottles to the sea.
Bluelightning
[There is this person… She could harm my future career with her antics. And I know that she will crash and burn eventually, so technically, I don't have to put my foot down.]
[I could just let her end in her mediocrity but I would have to live with that for years.]
[Or I could end it in one move, at the risk of passing for the bad guy.]
[What do you think?]
Since she wasn't the kind of person who kept their eyes glued to their screen until someone answered them, she left her phone and trained some more, blowing some steam and anger and sheer annoyance.
When she came back, she had received an answer and it was from someone who had really helped her those last couple of months.
Dumas:
[Sometimes, to succeed in life, you have to be ruthless.]
[Don't let anyone stand in your way or you will regret it your whole life.]
Of course, this simple message wasn't enough to convince Raika to take a decision. She might vent and listen to advice, but in the end, she was the one who decided.
She considered her options as she walked home, her mind more focused than it had been in the last week.
She came to the decision on her own: Sorano had to go. Raika had the means to get rid of her. Waiting would only lead to more problems in her life.
She had many friends who could help her, even if they weren't fully aware of what she was asking of them. Suzano, though, wouldn't hesitate to help her kick Sorano out of their school.
Her first idea was to frame her for theft. It would be child's play to find someone else's phone or jewelry in Sorano's bag.
But theft wasn't enough to be immediately expelled.
On Friday, Naru almost had a heart attack as Inazuma of all people told her that they needed to talk and asked her if she didn't mind meeting her on the roof after classes. Naru explained that it was her turn to clean the class but Inazuma told her that she didn't mind waiting until she was done.
She spent the rest of the afternoon vaguely anxious but also hopeful.
Inazuma had been slightly smiling and had talked to her nicely. The simple fact that she had stopped ignoring her was already huge in itself.
Wasn't that the sign that things were getting better? That maybe, Inazuma wanted to bury the hatchet?
Raika waited about five minutes before she admitted to herself that she had no intention of waiting an hour on the roof with the sun pressing on her and threatening to make her melt in a puddle of potential and talent. She fled the sun and the school altogether, crossed the street, walked into a store, and bought an ice cream in order to help her wait.
As she walked out, fighting with the packaging to get access to the iced treat, she saw the man going from the opposite direction too late (despite his height) and they bumped shoulders, their naked arms brushing against each other and the ice cream almost escaping her hands.
"Sorry, sir."
She caught the ice cream in extremis.
"Not, it's my fault," the man wearing a fedora said. "I apologize."
Raika had just finished her ice cream when she heard Sorano running up the stairs, so eager to meet her that walking simply wasn't enough. She emerged from the staircase and was still half running right until she stopped in front of Sorano like an overeager puppy.
"Sorry for making you wait," Sorano apologized. "The other girl that was on cleaning duties got hurt during training this morning so I told her that I didn't need help and it took longer than usual."
"No problem," Raika assured her. "I will be quick. I just had to tell you something."
Sorano almost stood to attention, which would have been cute if it hadn't once again proven that she didn't have the shoulders to be a hero.
So she took a single step to breach the distance between them and she told her the truth no one had the mercy to offer her until now.
"You're not hero-material. I hope you would realize it on your own but someone has to tell you: you will never become a hero. You're simply not worthy."
Sorano's nervous smile disappeared and where Raika had expected some tears or for her to look like a kicked puppy, she was pleasantly surprised to see the eel's eyes turn cold. Tension left her body as she looked at Raika, something akin to a warning coming from her.
Raika was almost proud of her.
"That's not for you to decide," Sorano said.
But she didn't leave. She could have walked out and decided not to pay attention to what Raika was saying. But either because she knew, deep down, that it was the truth, or because she wasn't strong enough not to listen to someone's opinion of her, Sorano Naru stayed.
"You're right," Raika said, barely paying attention to the words coming from her mouth. Some gleeful energy was coursing through her. It was about timing. And if Sorano had any kind of recording device, she would need the right voltage to destroy it. "It's for everyone to decide and anyone who ever looked at you has already come to the obvious conclusion."
Because by Monday, Sorano would be expelled for attacking a classmate.
Sorano looked at her, exhaustion coming from her.
"Why do you hate me so much, Inazuma?" she asked, and there was a tiny note of childish hope that maybe she was wrong, maybe she could fix herself in order not to be disliked so much.
Raika wasn't without mercy so she told her the truth.
"Because you keep standing in my way," Raika declared just before her arm lashed at Sorano, her palm connecting with the girl's chest a moment before she called upon her quirk to shock the eel.
Time stopped as Naru understood what was going to happen, all the ramifications from tonight, while being completely powerless to stop it.
Inazuma's plan was simple. She was going to shock her with an electricity quirk that was more powerful than Naru's but in the end, Naru would be fine because of the substance she secreted during stressful situations. It wasn't something she could control, a stress response that worked to keep her alive, no matter what her decisions were.
She had a very similar reflex when it comes to the electricity-producing-part of her quirk. If she was in danger and someone touched her, she would shock them.
It wasn't something she could control.
She had given several static shocks to her friends in the past, and just because they had startled her.
But she knew what Inazuma was capable of. She knew what kind of damage she could inflict. And Naru's body was already producing a devastating charge in an effort to protect itself.
She would strike Inazuma. She would look more hurt than her (though her resistance to electricity would protect her from the worst of it). It would be Naru's word against her. The element who disturbed the class would be expelled for attacking the star student.
And Naru couldn't do anything to stop it.
Naru's quirk sprang free, inflicting havoc on a fellow electric predator under the misguided hope that it would be enough to break free, to save itself.
But Inazuma's own attack never came.
Instead, the blue-haired-girl tried to take a sharp breath but it never reached her lungs as all her muscles were locked into place by the electricity coursing through her, in a way that wasn't supposed to happen to people like them. Her hair stood on end, her hand gripped at Naru's chest in a way sure to leave a bruise, and for a moment, she looked so surprised that it was almost comical.
But as the slime drenched her uniform and severed the flow of electricity between them, Inazuma managed to let go of her. Though it might not have been the right word, as it didn't look like she had decided that on her own.
The girl who had bullied Naru all year dropped to the ground.
Naru just looked at her, too stunned to do anything else. She didn't understand what had happened. None of what was happening made any kind of sense and the incongruity of the situation left her mind blank.
Fortunately, training took over, pushing the panic back long enough for her to hear the instructions of her teachers when it came to first aid. She fell to her knees thanks to Inazuma, touching her neck to take her pulse. Electricity tried to course through them once again, the residual charge of her own attack, but it bounced harmlessly against her.
Inazuma had no pulse.
Naru's hand immediately went to her phone. She had to call the paramedics and start CPR. She had to call for help. Students were gone but a teacher might still be here or even a hero. She…
She would lose everything while she did that. Even if they managed to save Inazuma, no one would believe it had been an accident… no, a set-up. She didn't know the statistics for how disciplinary hearings ended for people with heteromorphic quirks but she didn't need to. Inazuma's plan would work, one way or another.
She… She couldn't think. She could barely breathe. She didn't know what to do.
In the end, Naru grabbed her phone and made a call.
"Calm down and tell me what happened… I see. Don't move. Don't do anything. I am coming."
Five minutes later, Mr. Nisena found her still doing CPR on Inazuma. She had felt ribs breaking under hands but she hadn't stopped. If Inazuma's heart started beating again, she would hardly complain about a couple of broken ribs.
Actually, she would, Naru acknowledged. She would be sure to tell everyone how I broke her ribs after I attacked her unprovoked.
Naru had discovered that it was possible to hate someone and to still want her to be alive, which was a novel experience she could have lived without.
"Unless you plan to put even more of your DNA on the crime scene, I suggest you stop," Mr. Nisena said, completely unbothered by the dead teenager on the roof and the other one on the edge of a nervous breakdown.
Naru didn't stop. If she stopped, it meant admitting that she had… that she had…
She stopped, looking at her trembling hands, then at Inazuma's corpse.
"She's dead," she finally admitted. "I… I killed her."
Mr. Nisena didn't say anything. He didn't even look like he cared about what was happening, and part of her wondered about who was the man she had befriended at that comic café. But this question currently ranked last in her list of priorities.
"I… I have to tell someone. I have to call the police… I have to explain them what happened-"
"If you do that, your life is over."
Naru gritted her teeth, refusing to admit it.
She wished she had it in her to be horrified about Inazuma's death itself. She wasn't nice, she was cruel and petty, but it was still a life wasted.
And yet…
"No one will believe in my innocence," she said out loud, her voice strangely flat despite the despair at the sheer unfairness of the situation raging inside her. "They will think I'm a villain. Even if I manage to prove my innocence, this will be in my file. I will never escape the stigma of what happened. And it will affect my family."
All because Inazuma had decreed that Naru was in her way.
In this moment, Naru discovered two things about herself. Two things she had suspected but it was only at her lowest point that the realization fully hit her.
She wasn't as nice as she thought she was, something she had suspected because someone truly good wouldn't have to make so much effort in order to be nice.
And she didn't really mind. Being nice was exactly what had put her in this situation. If she hadn't made so many efforts to appear good and unthreatening and to try to be accepted, her life wouldn't be over.
The heteromorphic girl looked up at Nisena, studying the face of the man who had answered his phone call in the second, of someone who didn't seem bothered by dead bodies, and that looked like he was waiting for her to make a decision.
"What can I do?" Naru asked.
She wasn't asking what was the right thing to do. She was asking if he had a solution for her to get away with what had happened.
The slightest smile lifted up a corner of Nisena's mouth and something brightened his gaze.
It was pride.
"You leave right now," he ordered. "You go home and you don't say anything about what happened tonight. Destroy the clothes you're wearing. You don't have an alibi so if anyone interrogates you, I suggest you to say that you were training in order to be a brave little hero. You will never tell a soul about what happened tonight. You will pretend you don't know anything. I will take care of this."
Naru didn't hesitate. She stood up, wiped her hands on her sweatpants and bowed deeply, because that seemed like the thing to do, and she walked to the roof access, ready to follow faithfully each and every of Nisena's instructions.
But she paused right in front of the door, her hand hovering above the doorknob.
She turned and looked at him.
"Who are you?"
Nisena Hajime smiled.
It wasn't a nice smile but in this moment, Naru was convinced that this was the realest thing he had ever shown her.
"You can call me a concerned third party, I suppose," the man she didn't know anything about told her.
On Monday, Naru came back to school like nothing had happened. Oh, she was convinced that from any moment from now on, the police would come and arrest her but Inazuma had done a wonderful job when it came to teaching her how to repress her emotions and she made sure to use every single one of her lessons.
Two days later, her homeroom teacher told them that Inazuma was nowhere to be found and that her family was extremely worried. That if anyone had any information, they had to tell him or the police.
She found an excuse to wander on the roof but she found nothing. No sign that Inazuma had died there. No sign that the place had been cleaned. It was as if she had dreamed the whole thing.
Several days later, Naru received a phone call from a police officer asking him routine questions. She made the right noises, staying calm and collected.
Maybe it was a sign that something was wrong with her. That something had broken that night on the roof. But deep down, she did feel guilty for what she was putting Inazuma's family through. The problem was that her relief was stronger. Now that Inazuma was gone, she could breathe again.
Once she came back from the summer break, several classmates started to invite her to hang out. Now that Inazuma was gone, scurrying for her favor made no sense. Several of them apologized. Her homeroom teacher suddenly found himself more attentive to her needs.
Because what Naru looked like, what she wore, her social standing, all of this would have mattered in any other type of setting but she was in the hero course, which privileged quirks above all.
And now that Inazuma was gone, no one in the hero course had a quirk stronger than her.
Naru had come back to the comic café the next day, though. She has sworn to herself that she wouldn't let anything show on her face when she would see him again.
But no matter how many times she came back there, she never saw him again.
As if his job was done.