MAY 28TH, 2020 / TOKYO, JAPAN

"Leave?" Ochako repeated for what felt like the hundredth time, looking at her husband incredulously. Her brown eyes wide and unblinking, a deep sense of unease settling in her stomach.

Tokyo was feeling strangely cold that evening, Midoriya figured it must have been due to the rain that had seemingly come from nowhere- he could hear it pattering against the windows of their temporary Tokyo home- and more than once he had found his mind drifting, beginning to remember how often it used to rain in Irusu during this time of year.

Their home in Tokyo was supposed to have central heating- its what the ad had said- but it didn't seem to be working. Or maybe it was, and he couldn't feel it through the deep chill that had begun wrapping itself tight and snug around him since he had hung up the phone fifteen minutes ago.

"Izuku, you can't just leave, you know that."

"I have to." He responded. Emerald eyes land on a bottle of aged scotch his publisher had bought him after they had closed the deal on adapting his latest manga, "Wilting Flowers", into a two season-long anime a mere three months ago. He put aside the suitcase he had begun packing and poured himself a drink, hissing at the burning sensation that made its way down his throat. He didn't like scotch very much, he decided then. But he kept drinking anyway.

"Who called you, Izuku? What are you so scared of?"

"I'm not scared."

"Oh? So your hands always shake like that, then?" Ochako crossed her arms, a determined fire in her eyes. She wasn't going to let up until he gave her some answers.

Midoriya walked back to the couch, still dressed from work (Kaminari had called him just as he had walked through the door after a late night at the animation studio-), and tried to smile- but it was a poor effort and he gave it up.

On TV, the weatherman was talking about the sudden rainstorms that were beginning to pop up across the country. The first had begun some time ago in Nagoya and had moved through into Osaka (though unbeknownst to the Midoriya's, it had begun pouring there just as Bakugo Katsuki's plane was taking off, and Kirishima Ejirou's train was pulling into the station) Another had popped up over Kyoto, and yet another, separate storm was beginning to bear down on top of the countries Capitol- This one was meant to go all the way to Hokkaido by the time the night was over.

Irusu was on Hokkaido.

"I've been thinking about home a lot lately." Midoriya finally spoke, choking back another gulp of twelve-year-old scotch.

"Home?" She asked, and she looked so genuinely puzzled that Midoriya had a hard time not laughing.

"Poor Ochako- married almost 7 years to a man that you know nothing about..." he did laugh this time but tried to cover it up with another sip of his drink- causing him to cough up half of it as Ochako rapped him hard on the back.

"Izuku..." she began once his coughing fit was over. "...I know that I love you- and that alone has been enough for seven years."

"I know." He smiled at her- the smile was kind, sweet, and scared. "Believe me, Ochako... I know."

"Please. Please tell me what this is about."

She was staring at him again. Her pretty brown eyes so full of warmth that was just begging him to tell her- to let her understand what was going on. She still had one hand on his back, now to starting to rub it soothingly, and Midoriya found himself leaning into her touch. The touch of the woman he had fallen for, and who he had married oh so many years ago... and who he still loved just as strongly as he had then. He tried to look through her eyes, to see what she knew. He tried to see it as a story. He could, but he knew it would never sell.

There he had been, a poor boy from the island of Hokkaido. He goes to the university on nothing more than a whim and has wanted to be a writer for as long as he can remember. Once enrolled in the writing courses, he's overwhelmed- everything must have a deeper meaning- everything- down to a character's speech patterns or the description of the settings.

Midoriya Izuku just wants to write stories. None of his work has any deeper meaning besides that in which is spelled out in the subtle foreshadowing- there is no hidden agenda or message in his work- they are nothing more than stories.

They all come back with nothing more than a C.

Midoriya leaves for a week after a particularly scathing note on one of his returned assignments ("if you're going to write about horror, tie it into something bigger then itself. Make it about politics, misogyny, sexuality, something that's actually real.") but returns- determined to stick it through to the end.

In the time between, he has started creating a single volume manga titled "The Dark," a tale about a small girl who finds a monster in the cellar of her house. The little girl faces it, battles it, and finally kills it. He feels a strong sense of exaltation as he jots down the dialogue on a college-ruled notebook, and begins designing the look of the girl (Small, white hair, red eyes, round face) and even begins to feel as if he isn't creating the story or drawing the panels as much as he is allowing the story and art to flow through him and onto the page. At one point, he puts his stylus down and takes his hot and aching hand out into ten-degree December cold where it nearly smokes from the temperature change. He walks around, green cut-off boots squeaking in the snow and his head seems to bulge with the story; it is a little scary, the way it needs to get out. He feels that if it cannot escape by way of his racing hand that it will pop his eyes out in its urgency to escape and be consumed by the masses.

"Going to knock it out of the park." he confides to the blowing winter dark and laughs a little-a shaky laugh. He is aware that he has finally discovered how to do just that-after ten years of trying he has suddenly found the starter button on the expanse of dead static that took over most of his mind. It has started up. It is revving, revving. It is nothing pretty, this big machine. It was not made for taking pretty girls out to dates. It is not a status symbol. It means business. It can knock things down. If he isn't careful, it might knock him down- it will knock him down.

He rushes inside and finishes "The Dark" at a breakneck pace- creating until four in the morning and finally falling asleep with the drawing tablet still in his hands. If someone had tried suggested to him that he was really writing about his sister, Eri, he would have been surprised. He has not thought about Eri in years-or so he honestly believes.

The story is returned to him with an F slashed over the main character's (Eri's) face. Midoriya frowns.

Midoriya takes the 180-page manga volume over to the stove when he arrives back to his dorm that afternoon. He hovers it over the open flame of the burner and is just about to touch it to the heat when he realizes the absurdity of what he was doing. He turns the stone off and sits down heavily onto his bed, and lets out a quiet laugh. An F? Fine- let it be an F.

He laughs until tears begin to fall steadily down his freckled face.

He emails the file containing the first chapter of "The Dark" off to the Manga Magazine "Weekly Young Jump"- they were having a contest where the person who submitted in the best original manga chapter would have it published in the next week's issue- and despite having no real hope that it would even be read by someone on staff- he won. They buy it off him for ¥20,000 and send over a contract for him to sign, asking him for more chapters.

He drops out of Hokkaido University two nights later, slipping a copy of the contract and the "Young Jump" issue with his chapter in it under his instructor's door before he's gone.

His drop card comes back to him in his new apartment mailbox three days later. The instructor has initialed it. On the space marked GRADE AT TIME OF DROP, the instructor has not given him an incomplete or the low C to which his run of grades at that time would have entitled him; instead, another F is slashed angrily across the grade line. Below it the instructor has written: Do you think money proves anything about anything, Midoriya?

"Actually, I do," Midoriya says to an empty apartment, before beginning to laugh like crazy once more.

Four months later, "Young Jump" requests another story- this time, consisting of several volumes. Midoriya asks them to give him a month to get something together- and they oblige. During the month, he develops the concept for "Black Water Ridge" and after only one published chapter, the man who had once been known as "Deku" becomes a success at the age of 18. Two years later, almost to the day, he'd ascend into even more of a celebrity status when he married what the Tokyo Journal would soon describe as "one of the most talented up-and-coming voice actresses this generation has ever known."

Midoriya had been hired to do a screenplay of his first published work, "The Dark" (mostly due to the fact that the right to do at least the first draft of the screenplay was an immutable condition of sale, in spite of his agent's moans that he was insane), and his draft has actually turned out pretty well. He has been invited out to Tokyo for further rewrites and production meetings.

His agent is a small woman named Tamura Junko. She is exactly five feet tall. She is violently energetic and even more violently emphatic. "don't do it, Zuzu," she teases him, though her yellow eyes are serious. "Kiss it off. They've got a lot of money tied up in it and they'll get someone good to do the screenplay. Maybe even Sion."

"Who?"

"Sion Sono- one of the best horror movie directors in Japan? C'mon now-"

Midoriya only shrugs passively, smiling a bit when Tamura slaps him lightly on the bicep. "I could be a good horror film director too, ya know."

"You're a writer, not a filmmaker- it's not the same thing. If the movie turns out shittily, then so what? Your manga is on the shelf and still selling copies at a steady pace- they can't change the words you've already written."

"Junko-"

"Listen to me, Zuzu! Take the money and run. You're young and strong. That's what they like. You go out there and they will first separate you from your self-respect and then from your ability to write a straight line from point A to point B. You write like a grownup, but you're just a kid with a baby face full of freckles and a curly green mop on top of your head. They'll eat you alive, hun."

"I have to go."

Tamura Junko makes a face, she's five years his senior, and it's never shown more then it did now- her pretty face overcome with worry and a sense of knowing that only experience can give.

"I have to, Junko- I just have to."

"Jesus, Zuzu-"

"I have to get out of Sapporo." He is afraid to say what comes next-it's like mouthing a curse-but he owes it to her. "I have to get out of Hokkaido."

"Why? Why do you ""have"" to get out of Hokkaido?"

"I don't know. I just do."

"Are you telling me something real, Zuzu, or just talking like a writer?"

"It's real."

They are in bed together during this conversation. She's pressed against him, talking into his neck in a soft whisper. Midoriya loves her, but they both know it's not in the way she wants him to. She sits up, her light blue sheet pooling into her lap, and smooths out her short black hair. She's crying, but he doubts if she knows he knows- it's only a shine in her eyes and he doubts it would be tactful to mention it if she isn't. He doesn't love her in the really good way that she wants him to, but he does care a mountain for her.

"Go on then," she says in a dry businesslike voice as she turns back to him. "Give me a call when you're ready, and if you still have the strength. I'll come and pick up the pieces. If there are any left."

The film version of "The Dark" is called "The pit of the demon" and Ochako Uraraka is cast to voice the lead. He hates the title change, but the movie turns out good, and the only part of himself that he had lost in the bustling world of film and animation was his heart.

"Izuku," Ochako said again, bringing him out of his memories. He saw that she had turned off the TV, and out the window, he could see that the drizzle that had begun mere seconds after Kaminari had called him had turned into a steady downpour.

I'll explain as much as I can," he said. "You deserve that. But first, do two things for me."

"All right."

"Fix yourself another cup of tea and tell me what you know about me. Or what you think you know."

She looked at him, puzzled, and then got up to grab the kettle.

"I know you're from Hokkaido." She began, pouring water into the kettle and turned on the burner to get it to boil. She was not from Tokyo, but the slightest bit of the dialect clipped through her tone- most likely as a result of living here for the last seven months due to her having a leading role in the anime adaption of "Wilting Flowers"- which Midoriya had also been brought on as a consultant for. He had been offered the directorial spot as well- but thank god he had shot it down, him leaving now would have screwed up production terribly. He knew what they would all say- "Midoriya Izuku shows his true colors, just another writer. Crazier than a shithouse rat."

God knew he felt crazy right about now.

"I know you had a sister who you loved very much... and that she died when you were children." Ochako went on "I know you grew up in a town called Irusu, and that you moved to Ashikawa a year after your sister died and then to Sapporo a few years after that. I know you graduated from High school and wrote a best-selling single-volume manga while you were in your first year of University, which you dropped out of soon after."

She returned to his side of the room and he saw it in her face then: the realization of the hidden spaces between them.

"I know that you began to write "Black Water Ridge" a few months later, and seven months after that you were approached and asked to adapt "The Dark" into a movie. And the week after production started you tripped over an extension cord and were saved from humiliation by a very excited and overwhelmed girl named Ochako Uraraka who had just scored her very first big-budget Voice-Acting role for one of her favorite single-volume mangas of all time."

"Ochako-"

She was smiling softly now, looking at him fondly. "What's wrong with reminiscing? It's a fairly cute way to have met, after all. I hadn't even realized who you were just yet- just saw you fall and instinctively grabbed for the back of your coat- and then you turned towards me, embarrassed and thanking me rapidly, and my face got so, so, red because I had just realized that the guy who wrote my favorite story of all time was standing right in front of me and he was an adorable little nervous ball of anxiety."

Midoriya felt the corner of mouth quirk up a little, and he reached down to squeeze his wife's hand. "I remember... I was already embarrassed for tripping, but it only got worst when I realized that it had been a cute girl like yourself who had stopped me from face planting."

Ochako squeezed his hand back and brought it up to kiss his knuckles softly. "I kept you from falling then, Izuku... so let me do it again. Let me help you."

Midoriya's chest hurt, and he had the vague sense that he might begin crying soon. He returned the kiss she had given to him to her hand. She was shaking, it made his chest hurt even worst.

"What do I know about you, Izuku? I know that, despite being that nervous ball of anxiety, you also somehow still seemed to have it all under control. I know that you never seemed to be in a hurry to get to the next drink or the next meeting or the next party. You seemed confident that all those things would be there... if you wanted them. I know that when someone really got you talking about your stories or your interest, you wouldn't stop until you were forced too- and you'd speak so fast that you'd stumble over your own words. I know that when you'd get into your writing, you'd begin to mumble under your breath and no one would be able to make out what you were saying. I know that when I looked at you, Izuku, I saw someone who was confident in their abilities- Someone who didn't mind talking to interns or assistants and asking for their opinions on things. Someone who seemed utterly untouched by the hype and hysteria. You didn't lease a Rolls so you could drive downtown with your own vanity plates on some glitzy rental company's car. You didn't have a press agent to plant items in The Tokyo Journal- You were a real person- you were you."

"They'd of never given me a Royce... they'd of thought I was using fraudulent funds with how nervous I would have sounded back then."

He thought Ochako would smile at that, she didn't. "I know that we were meant to meet each other. I could feel it in my bones after you had walked off red-faced and nervous that day. I still feel it now."

She sipped her tea then, her eyes never leaving Midoriya's.

"I know you've been there ever since. And I've been there for you. I feel as if I could grow old with you and still be brave. I know you work too hard and don't get enough sleep; I know that some nights you dream badly-"

He was startled. Nastily startled. Almost frightened.

"I never dream."

She smiled. "so you tell the interviewers when they ask where you get your ideas. But it's not true. Unless it's just indigestion when you start groaning in the night. And I don't believe that, Izuku."

"...Do I ever talk?" He asked her cautiously, his grip on Ochako's hand suddenly tightening. He could remember no dreams. None at all, good or bad.

Ochako nodded. "Sometimes, but it seems you carry that mumbling habit of yours with you to bed because I can never make out what you're saying."

He looked at her blankly. There was a bad taste in his mouth; it trailed back along his tongue and down his throat like the taste of melted aspirin. 'So now you know how fear tastes,' he thought. 'Time you found out, considering all you've written on the subject. ' He supposed it was a taste he would get used to. If he lived long enough.

Memories were suddenly trying to crowd in. It was as if a black sac in his mind were bulging, threatening to spew noxious-

(dreams)

-images from his subconscious and force his waking-mind to acknowledge them. Somehow, someway, he knew that if they all pushed forward at once he wouldn't be able to stand it- that he wouldn't be able to go on with them swirling around in there- so he tried desperately to push them back, and succeeded, but not before a voice floated up through the dark throws of that staticky void: Kirishima Ejirou's voice.

("You saved my life, Deku. Those guys- sometimes I think they really want to kill me-")

"Your Arms-" Ochako's startled voice once again brought Midoriya back to reality.

He looked down, goosebumps had formed on his arms- but not in the form of the little bumps that they usually were, but in huge white humps that reminded Midoriya of insect eggs. They both stared, silently alarmed. They faded away.

In the silence that followed, Ochako said: "And I know one other thing. Someone called you and told you that you had to leave me."

He got up, looked briefly at the liquor bottles, then went into the kitchen, and came back with a glass of orange juice. He said: "You know I had a sister, and you know she died, but you don't know that she was murdered."

He sensed rather than heard Ochako's sharp intake of breath. "Murdered?- Oh, Izuku, why didn't you ever-"

He unintentionally let out a loud bark of laughter. "Tell you? I don't- I don't know." He truly didn't.

"What happened?"

He let out a quiet sigh, swirling the orange juice around in its glass lazily. He needed to do something with his hands. "We were living in Irusu then. There had been a flood, but it was mostly over... only a little bit of a drizzle and the water had mostly receded back into the canal... and Eri... Eri was bored. I was sick in bed with the flu, and she wanted me to make her a boat out of a sheet of paper... she'd seen it on some show or something, I don't know- but I knew how because of some day camp the year before... She said she was going to run it down the gutters of Taiko and Shinrinyoku street because they were still full of water... So I made her the boat and she thanked me and she went out and that was the last time I ever saw my sister Eri alive. If I hadn't had the flu, maybe I could have saved her."

He paused then and ran a nervous hand through his curly locks. His eyes looked right through her.

"It happened right there on Shinrinyoku... almost at the intersection of Taiko... Whoever killed her pulled her left arm off the way a second-grader would pull a wing off a fly. Medical examiner said she either died of shock or blood loss. Far as I could ever see, it didn't make a dime's worth of difference which it was."

"Oh, Izuku!-"

"-I imagine you wonder why I never told you. The truth is I wonder myself. Here we've been married nearly seven years and until today you never knew what happened to Eri. I know about your whole family-even your aunts and uncles. I know your grandfather died in his garage messing around with his chainsaw while he was drunk. I know those things because married people, no matter how busy they are, get to know almost everything after awhile. And if they get really bored and stop listening, they pick it up anyway-by osmosis. Or do you think I'm wrong?"

"No," Ochako whispered faintly, "You aren't wrong."

"And we've always been able to talk to each other, haven't we? I mean, neither of us got so bored it ever had to be osmosis, right?"

"Well," she said, "until today I always thought so."

"Come on, Ochako. You know everything that's happened to me over the last nine years of my life. Every deal, every idea, every cold, every friend, every guy that ever did me wrong or tried to. You know I slept with Tamura Junko. You know that sometimes I get maudlin when I drink and play the records too loud."

"Especially the Grateful Dead," she said, and he laughed. This time she smiled back.

"I think so... But this... " She paused and thought for a moment. "How much does this call have to do with your sister?"

"Let me get to it in my own way, please?... Don't- Don't try to rush me into the center of it or you'll have me committed. It's so big... and so... so awful... that I'm trying to sort of creep up on it. You see... it never occurred to me to tell you about Eri."

She looked at him, frowned, shook her head faintly-'I don't understand'- The movement said.

Midoriya let out another shaky, anxious, laugh. "What I'm trying to tell you, Ochako is that I haven't even thought of Eri in... twelve?... thirteen?... years."

She squinted at him. "But you told me you had a sister named Eri who-"

"I repeated a fact." He interrupted, beginning to pace in front of her now. "That was all. Her name was just a word, it didn't cast a shadow in my mind at all."

"Maybe it cast a shadow over your dreams, then." Ochako pondered. Her voice was very quiet.

"The groaning? The crying?"

She nodded.

"I suppose you could be right," he said. "In fact, you're almost surely right. But dreams you don't remember don't really count, do they?" His voice's pace was beginning to speed up rapidly.

"Are you telling me you haven't thought of her at all?-"

"-Yes, I am."

She shook her head, disbelieving. "Not even about the horrible way she died?-"

"-Not until today."

She shook her head again, eyebrows furrowing together.

"-You asked me before we were married if I had any brothers or sisters, and I said I had a sister who died when I was a kid. You knew my biological father was gone, and that my stepfather and my mother didn't like to talk about her either, and you've got so much family that it took up your entire field of attention. But that's not all-" he had to pause and take in a gulping breath then, his heart beating a mile a minute, head-spinning like crazy.

"What do you mean?"

"It isn't just Eri that's been in that black hole. I haven't thought of Irusu itself in at least 13 years- Not the people I hung out with-Kirishima Ejirou and Bakugo- who I preferred to call Kacchan- Iida, Sero, Todoroki Shouto... " He ran his hands through his hair and laughed shakily. "It's like having a case of amnesia so bad you don't know you've got it. And when Denki called-"

"Who's Denki?"

"-Another kid I used to hang out with after Eri's death. Of course, he's no kid anymore- none of us are. That was Denki on the phone- he-" Midoriya laughs exasperatedly into his hands, and yanks a little at his hair. "-he- he said, "Hello, have I reached the Midoriya residence?" And I said, "You have." And he said "Izuku? Is that you?" And I said yes, and he said: "This is Kaminari Denki."- and it meant nothing to me Ochako- nothing to me at all-"

"Izuku-" she sounded worried now, and she pulled his hands away from his face, stopping him from continuing to pull at his hair.

"-but then-" the threat of tears were back again, but despite this, Midoriya could feel himself smiling, "-but then he said, "From Irusu." And... And when he said that Ochako... when he said that it was like a door opened inside me and some horrible light shined out, and I remembered who he was. I remembered Eri. I remembered all the others. All this happened-"

He snapped his fingers, before pulling away from his wife to start pacing rapidly again.

"-like that. And I knew what he was going to ask me- I knew he was going to ask me to come."

"To come back to Irusu?"

"Yeah." He laughed that sad laugh again, rubbed his eyes, looked at her. Never in her life had she seen a man who looked so frightened. "Back to Irusu. Because "we promised," he said, and we did. We did. All of us. Us kids. We stood in the creek that ran through the Barrens, and we held hands in a circle, and we had cut our palms with a piece of glass so it was like a bunch of kids playing blood brothers, only it was real."

He held his palms out to her, and in the center of each, she could see a close-set ladder of white lines that could have been scar-tissue. She had held his hand-both his hands-countless times, but she had never noticed these scars across his palms before. They were faint, yes, but she would have believed -

And the party! That party!

One week after she had kept him from tripping over that extension cord, the animation studio had hosted a party for all members of the staff to celebrate their first full week of production. It had been very loud, and very drunk- because they had managed an entire week without a single thing going wrong- something that was unheard of in the world of animation.

She was already in love with Midoriya Izuku by then- he had seen her the day before and made a couple of notes on how he wanted her to express a few lines and had kept up the nervous, yet confident, aura the entire time. He was also kind, genuinely kind, not fake- and his gentle smile had made her swoon on more than one occasion.

What was the name of the self-proclaimed palmist? She couldn't remember now, only that she had been one of the sound designer's assistants. She remembered the girl whipping off her blouse at some point in the party (revealing a very filmy bra beneath) and tying it over her head like a gypsy's scarf. High on pot and wine, she had read palms for the rest of the evening... or at least until she had passed out.

Ochako could not remember now if the girl's readings had been good or bad, witty or stupid: it was a long time ago and her thoughts at the time had been clouded with general nervousness about her voice-acting performance and how desperately in love with Midoriya Izuku she was. What she did remember was that at one point the girl had grabbed Izuku's palm and her own and had declared them perfectly matched. They were soulmates, she said. She could remember watching, more than a little jealous, as the girl traced the lines on his palm with her exquisitely lacquered fingernail- there had been something intimate and lingering about that tracery- and her jealously and rage had been immense.

There had been no little white scars on Midoriya's palms then.

She had been watching the charade with a jealous-green lens- and she was sure of the memory. Sure of the fact.

She said so to Midoriya now.

He nodded, beginning to wring his hands together as his pacing paused momentarily. "You're right. They weren't there then. And although I can't absolutely say for sure, I don't think they were there last night, down at the bar- Makoto and I were hand-wrestling for beers again and I think I would have noticed."

He grinned at her. The grin was dry, humorless, and scared.

"I think they came back when Denki called. That's what I think."

"Izuku, that's impossible." But she reached a shaky hand out towards her tea.

"Tenya did it." Midoriya was looking at his hands now, "with a glass coke bottle- that's the only kind they sold at the gas station at the edge of town- I remember how that shard of glass flashed in the sun, so bright I thought I was looking at a distant blaze of fire. Tenya did his own hands last."

"Izuku, don't." This time she held the cup on her lap, her grip on it vice-like. "Scars don't come back."

"So you're saying you've noticed them before?" And there he went pacing again "is that what you're saying? Huh? Is it?-"

"-They're very faint-"

"We were all bleeding," he said. "We were standing in the water not far from where Sero had fallen- literally fallen- in on Kirishima Ejirou and I building the dam- and, well- I guess that had really been the start of it all- when Sero Hanta decided to come back to the barrens and help me and Kiri with that dam-"

"-Sero Hanta? You don't mean the architect, do you?"

"Is there one by that name?"

"Izuku, he built the studio "Wilting Flowers" is being adapted in!"

"Well, I don't know if it's the same guy or not. It doesn't seem likely, but I guess it could be. The Sero Hanta I knew was great at building stuff..." He paused then- everything, his speech and his movements- a thoughtful expression coming over his face. He started up again a few moments later. "We all stood there, and I was holding Todoroki Shouto's left hand in my right and Bakugo Katsuki's -Kacchan's- right hand in my left. We stood out there in the water and I remember I could see the Irusu Standpipe on the horizon. It looked as white as you imagine the robes of the archangels must be, and we promised, we swore, that if it wasn't over, that if it ever started to happen again... we'd go back. And we'd do it again. And stop it. Forever."

"Stop what?" Ochako cried, standing up herself and sloshing her tea across the wood flooring. She was scared, terrified, for him. "Stop what? What are you talking about?"

"I wish you wouldn't a-a-ask-" Midoriya began, and then stopped. She saw an expression of bemused horror spread over his face like a stain. "Pour me another glass of scotch, would you?"

She did. He took a strained drink.

"I used to stutter, too."

"Really?"

"It started after Eri died... Psychologists said something about it being "Psychogenic"- I don't know- had to go to speech therapy for a while."

"Stuttered." She smiled a small smile as if he had told a joke and she had missed the point.

"like I said, it didn't start until after Eri died." He squeezed his eyes shut, already beginning to see words doubling over one another in his mind. His voice came out as smooth as it usually did, but in his mind, he could hear 'Eri' and 'start' overlapping in his mind and becoming 'Eh-Eh-Eri' and 's-start'. "It got really bad after a while- sometimes I couldn't get anything but half-sounds to come out... When we moved to Sapporo, we found a speech therapist that ended up helping me- but what helped the most was leaving Irusu. Because that's when the forgetting happened, in Sapporo. It didn't happen all at once, but looking back now, it took an alarmingly short time... and- and I think the same thing happened to my parents. I think they don't talk about Eri for the same reason I don't- didn't- because the fact that they had a daughter who died is just a fact to them, and nothing more. "

"Izuku-"

"-it took maybe no more than four months. My stutter and my memories faded out together. Someone washed the blackboard and all the old equations went away." He downed the rest of his scotch in one go. "When I stuttered on 'ask' just now, that was the first time I had stuttered in thirteen years."

He looked at her, emerald orbs meeting chocolate brown.

"First the scars, then the stuh-hutter-" his eyes widened in alarm "Do you h-hear it? Do you?"

"...You're doing that on purpose..." She whispered, badly frightened.

"No. I guess there's no way to convince a person of that, but it's true. Stuttering's funny, Ochako, Spooky. On one level you're not even aware it's happening. But... it's also something you can hear in your mind. It's like part of your head is working an instant ahead of the rest."

He was even more restless than before, his eyes wild, exhaustion suddenly obvious. She thought with some unease of how hard he had worked over the last nine years or so, as if it might be possible to justify the moderateness of his talent by working furiously, almost non-stop. She found herself having a very uneasy thought and tried to push it away, but it wouldn't go. Suppose Izuku's call had really been from Makoto, inviting him down to the Plow and Barrow for an hour of arm-wrestling or backgammon, or maybe from the producer of 'Wilting Flowers' on some problem or other? Perhaps even a wrong-number?

What did such thoughts lead to?

Well, to the thought that all this Irusu-Kaminari Denki business was nothing but a hallucination- that all of this had been brought on by some sort of work-related nervous breakdown.

'But the scars, Ochako!' She screamed at herself from somewhere in her mind 'what about the scars? He's right, they weren't there before- but they are now, and that's the truth- you know it is.'

"Tell me the rest." She finally spoke, heart beating in her throat, her hands clammy and cool. "Tell me who killed your sister Eri. What did you and these other people- children- do? What did you all promise?"

He grasped her hands in his again and kissed one softly. "I think I could tell you... I think if I really wanted to, I could. Most of it I don't remember even now, but once I started talking it would come. I can sense those memories... waiting to be born. They're like clouds filled with rain. Only this rain would be very dirty. The plants that grew after a rain like that would be monsters. Maybe I can face that with the others-"

"-Do they even know? The others?"

"Denki said he called them all. He thinks they'll all come... except for maybe Tenya, he said Tenya had sounded strange."

"Well, you're sounding strange to me, Izuku- and you're scaring me- really, scaring me."

I'm sorry," he said and kissed her. It was like getting a kiss from an utter stranger. She found herself hating this man Kaminari Denki. "I thought I ought to explain as much as I could; I thought that would be better than just creeping off into the night. I suppose some of them may do just that. But I have to go. And I think Tenya will be there, no matter how strange he sounded. Or maybe that's just because I can't imagine not going myself."

"Because of Eri?"

Midoriya shook his head slowly. "I could tell you that, but it would be a lie. I loved her. I know how strange that must sound after telling you I haven't thought of her in thirteen years or so, but I loved the hell out of that kid." He smiled a little. "She was a mess, but I loved her, You know?"

And though she had never witnessed it herself, she could tell from the look in his eyes and that sad, distant smile, that he had. "I know."

He looked out the window. It was still pouring.

"I feel like how a bird must feel when fall comes and it knows... somehow it just knows it has to fly home. It's instincts, I guess... and I guess I believe instinct's the iron skeleton under all our ideas of free will. Unless you're willing to take the pipe or eat the gun or take a long walk off a short dock, you can't say no to some things. You can't refuse to pick up your option because there is no option. You can't stop it from happening any more than you could stand at home plate with a bat in your hand and let a fastball hit you. I have to go. That promise... it's in my mind like a fuh-fishhook."

She found herself by his side, not exactly knowing when she had reached it. He had a scary look of determination sparkling beneath the fear and anxiety he was currently expelling, and it made her feel fragile- as if she might break at any moment.

She put a hand on his shoulder and turned him towards her. "Take me with you, then."

The expression of horror that dawned on his face then-not horror of her but for her-was so naked that she stepped back, really afraid for the first time.

"No," he said, and his voice was suddenly very chilling and very authoritative. "don't think of that, Ochako. Don't you ever think of that. You're not going within three thousand miles of Irusu. I think Irusu going to be a very bad place to be during the next couple of weeks. You're going to stay here and carry on and make all the excuses for me you have to. Now promise me that."

"Promise? Really, Izuku?" She was hurt. "Is that what I should do?"

"Ochako-"

"You made a promise, and look what it's got you into. And me as well, since I'm your wife and I love you."

Suddenly he was gripping her shoulders very tightly, pulling her towards him so their faces were mere inches apart- she could feel his warm, rapid, breaths on her face. "Promise me, Ochako. Puh-puh- puh- Prom- promise me."

And she could not stand that, that broken word caught in his mouth- it made her insides squirm. "Izuku-"

"O-O-Oh-" he paused, taking a deep breath, a look of frustration breaking through the horror for just a moment. He let her go, fixing her with a chilling gaze that she feared would haunt her for the rest of her life.

"Ochako, if you follow me to Irusu, I will never forgive you. Do you hear me? Not in this lifetime nor the next- never."

Her words were stuck in her throat, her mouth bone dry. She opted for nodding.

Midoriya kept that horrific stare on her for a few moments more, before allowing it to fade. Moving toward the kitchen and handing her a wine-cooler upon his return. She took a much-needed sip, and slowly sank back onto the couch.

"When do you leave then?"

"Tonight. I'm taking the bullet train. I can just make it if I leave soon. We're supposed to be at the recording studio tomorrow at noon, but you should go there early- around ten- and you don't have any idea where I went, alright?"

She nodded numbly, taking another drink from the wine-cooler.

"I'll be in Hokkaido by midnight, and in Irusu before theh- theh-they'll even begin to suspect that somethings off." Midoriya grabbed the handle of the suitcase he had packed earlier, and leaned down to kiss Ochako softly- he pulled away slowly, and lingered centimeters from her face for a few moments longer, before pecking her lips one last time and heading for the door.

"And when will you be coming back?" Ochako called, wincing at the sound of her own voice cracking. That kiss had made everything so much more real.

Halfway out the door, his head turned back to look at her, that scary, chilling, horrific look was back on her husband's face once more. She cowered away from it, an intense shudder shooting through her.

He closed the door behind him without a word.