—1—

JUNE 13TH, 2005 / IRUSU, JAPAN

Deku peddled down Ori Road towards town. His bike, silver, rolled once it got going, but actually getting it going was a job in-of-itself.

Deku came to a downhill stretch and began to peddle faster, standing up on the peddles and leaning over the handles, urging himself to go faster.

He and Kirishima had lowered the seat as far as it would go, and it now bumped and scraped against the small of his back as he worked the peddles. A woman digging weeds in her flower-garden shaded her eyes to watch him pass. She smiled a little. The boy on the huge bike reminded her of a monkey she had once seen riding a unicycle on TV when she was a child.

'He's apt to kill himself, though,' she thought, turning back to her garden. 'That bike is too big for him.' It was none of her problems, though.

—2—

Deku had had more sense than to argue with the older kids when they broke out of the bushes. Kirishima, however, had rashly opened his mouth and Shigaraki Tomura had unloaded on him.

Deku knew who they were, all right; Shigaraki, Twice, and Kurogiri were just about the worst kids in Irusu Schools. They had fought with Bakugo ("Kacchan") Katsuki, who Deku and Kirishima sometimes hung out with, a couple of times. The way Deku looked at it, this was partly Kacchan's own fault; he was not known as "Trash Mouth" to the rest of the school for nothing.

Back in May, Kacchan had said something about their collars as the three of them passed by in the schoolyard. The collars had all been turned up, the three of them had clearly been trying to make their standard school uniforms look "cool." Deku, who had been sitting against the building nearby and kicking a ball back and forth lazily with Kirishima, hadn't really caught all of it. Neither did Shigaraki and his friends... but they heard enough to turn in Kacchan's direction. Deku supposed Kacchan had meant for them to hear it, as he had given the three of them a cocky smile and "what're you gonna do about it?" Look when they locked eyes.

"What'd you say you little loud-mouthed freak?" Kurogiri had asked cooly, his dark purple eyes narrowed.

"I said that the three of you look like brain dead losers." And then, almost as if he couldn't help himself, he had added. "You oughta dig that wax out of your ears, fuckwad- I think I've got some q-tips in my bag I could lend you."

They had stared at him incredulously for a few moments, before taking after him. Kacchan had stood his ground, even seemed to enjoy it a little, but Deku had known from the start that the fight was unequal and that it wouldn't end well for him. By the end of it, Kacchan had managed to bust Twice's nose and leave Kurogiri with a nasty black eye- but he himself had ended up with a busted lip, a horrible bruise on his cheek, and scraped up knees.

Deku had only had minor problems with them. They made fun of his stutter, of course. Occasional random cruelty came with the jibes; one rainy day as they were walking through the courtyard to get to lunch, Twice had knocked Deku's lunch bag out of his hand and had stomped it flat with one engineer boot, squishing everything inside.

"Oh, juh-juh-gee!" Twice cried in mock horror, raising his hands and fluttering them about his face. "suh-suh-sorry about your l-l-lunch, fuh-huh-huck-face!" And he had strolled off down yard toward Kurogiri, who was leaning against the drinking fountain outside the gym's door, just chuckling in between puffs of his cigarette. That hadn't been so bad, though; Deku had cadged half a plate of Kare-Raisu off Kirishima Ejirou, and Kacchan was happy to give him his Ika Sashimi, which his mother packed in his lunch about once a week and "something as disgusting as this would be eaten by someone like you."

You just had to stay out of their way- become invisible, and they wouldn't bother you.

Kirishima had forgotten that rule, so they saw him.

He hadn't been too bad until the older kids went downstream and splashed across to the other side, even though his nose was bleeding like a fountain. When Kirishima's handkerchief (which his mother had insisted he bring with him to school every day) was soaked through, Deku had given him a Kleenex from a pack he'd brought to school himself to deal with his allergies and made him put a hand on the nape of his neck and lean his head back. Deku could remember his mother getting Eri to do that because Eri was prone to lots of nosebleeds -

Oh, but it hurt to think about Eri.

It wasn't until the sound of Shigaraki and his gangs buffalolike progress through the Barrens had died away completely, and Kirishima's nose-bleed had actually stopped, that his asthma got bad. He started heaving for air, his hands opening and then snapping shut like weak traps, his respiration a fluting whistle in his throat.

"Shit!" Kirishima gasped. "Asthma!"

He had reached for his inhaler then, and when he pulled the white plastic holder out of his pocket, his red-eyes had widened in horror. It had been cracked, most likely when he'd fallen after Shigaraki broke his nose, and was leaking the medication all over his hands.

His arm fell then, loosely holding onto the ruined inhaler. The stream continued to chuckle on, not caring that Kirishima Ejirou couldn't breathe. Deku thought randomly that Kurogiri had been right about one thing: it had been a real baby dam. But they had been having fun, and he felt a sudden dull fury that it should have come to this.

"Tuh-tuh-take it easy, Eh-Ejirou," he said.

For the next forty minutes or so Deku sat next to him, his expectation that Kirishima's asthma attack would at any moment let up gradually fading into unease. By the time Sero Hanta appeared, the unease had become real fear. It not only wasn't letting up; it was getting worse. And the Center Street Drug, where Kirishima got his refills, was on the other side of town. What if he went to get Kirishima's stuff and came back to find Kirishima unconscious? Unconscious or-

('don't- please don't think that-')

'-or even dead', his mind insisted implacably.

('-like Eri. dead like Eri')

'Don't be like that! He's not going to die!'

So he sat there, knowing he ought to go, he couldn't do Kirishima any good staying here, but not wanting to leave him alone. An irrational part of him was certain that the moment he left Kirishima alone, he'd die, and he'd be responsible for (another) his death.

Then, he'd looked up and saw Sero Hanta- bloody, bruised, and in horrific shape himself- lying in the stream. Deku had known who he was, of course- everyone knew all about him and how his mother didn't want him and how she claimed his father was some rich doctor that left her when he found out she was gonna have him. Deku had learned it from his parents, who had whispered about it worriedly to one another one night when they thought he was in bed- and he assumed that that was how most of the kids in their school knew- Sero himself certainly never talked about it. He was in the other grade five class, and Deku usually saw him hanging out with the short blonde kid who lived on one of the only farms left in Irusu.

Looking at Sero now, Deku thought that he looked worst then Shigaraki Tomura- as hard as that was to believe. Deku could not begin to imagine the cataclysmic fight these two must have been in. Sero's hair stood up in wild, dirt-clotted spikes. His school uniform was a matted ruin, smeared with a sicko mixture of blood and grass. His pants were out at the knees and were more sickeningly red then Khaki tan. Deku could smell the iron-scent of his blood drifting towards him in nauseating ripples.

Sero gave him a tired, dead-eyed look, barely supporting his own weight as he pushed himself up.

Deku put his empty hands up in the air, palms out, to show he was harmless. "W-W-We need some huh-huh-help."

Sero pushed himself up some more, and after two failed attempts, managed to get to his feet, rattling back and forth a bit. "Are Shigaraki and the other two gone?"

"Yuh-Yes," Deku said, nodding feverishly "Listen, cuh-han y-y-you stay with my fuh-friend while I go get his muh-medicine? He's got a-a-a-a-"

"Asthma?"

Deku nodded again, shooting him a grateful look.

Sero came all the way down to the remains of the dam and dropped painfully to one knee beside Kirishima, who was lying back with his eyes mostly closed and his chest heaving.

"Ah-" Sero sucked in a sharp breath, before settling down beside Kirishima. "-Sure... need... need to sit down for a bit anyway... dizzy... which one got him?... Shigaraki?"

Deku nodded, beginning to worry for Sero now too- making a mental note to ask for some gauze while he was in the drug store as well.

"Figures... go ahead... like I said, I need to sit down anyways..." as he said this, Sero fumbled around a bit with the remains of his jacket and produced a pack of cigarettes, scooting a little farther from Kirishima, he lights one up.

"Thuh-thuh-hanks."

"don't thank me," Sero said, smoke swirling out of his nose and mouth. "I'm the reason they landed on you in the first place. Go on, I wanna go home and take a shower."

Deku left without another word. It would have been good to tell Sero not to take it to heart- what had happened hadn't been Sero's fault any more than it had been Kirishima's for stupidly opening his mouth. Guys like Shigaraki and his buddies were an accident waiting to happen; the little kids' version of floods or tornadoes or gallstones. It would have been good to say that, but he was so tightly wound right now it would have taken him about twenty minutes or so, and by then Kirishima might have-

He trotted downstream, glancing back once. He saw Sero Hanta grimly collecting rocks from the edge of the water. For a moment Deku couldn't figure out what he was doing, and then he understood. It was an ammo dump. Just in case they came back.

—3—

The Barrens was no mystery to Deku. He had played here a lot this spring, sometimes with Kacchan, more frequently with Kirishima, sometimes all by himself. He had by no means explored the whole area, but he could find his way back to Kanazaki Drive from the Shibui with no trouble, and now did. He came out at a wooden bridge (the very same wooden bridge Sero had pushed himself off of, and had seen the clown) that crossed one of the little no-name streams that flowed out of the Shibui into a pond. Silver was stashed under this bridge, his handlebars tied to one of the bridge supports with a hank of rope to keep his wheels out of the water.

Deku undid the knots, and threw his leg over the bike as quickly as he could- pushing himself towards Ori Road as fast as he could- he had to hurry.

And as always, once he was on Silver he became someone else.

—4—

If you were to ask Deku if he had a death wish, he'd respond with an astonished "uh-uh-of cuh-cuh-hourse n-not!"

He was shooting down Kanazaki drive, right passed the Beechwood Subdivision. Streets crossed frequently here but they were all stop-signed in Deku's favor, and the possibility that a driver might one day blow by one of those stop signs and flatten him to a bleeding shadow on the street had never crossed Deku's mind once. It is unlikely he would have changed his ways even if it had. He might have done so either earlier or later in his life, but this spring and early summer had been a strange thundery time for him.

As he made a harsh, sharp turn onto Ori Road, he rapidly approached the section nicknamed "up-mile hill." Deku took it at full speed, bent over Silver's handlebars to cut down the wind resistance, curly hair blowing back from his head in rippling waves, the click of duplicate Pokémon cards that he'd shoved into his bikes spokes getting louder and more intense as his speed grew more and more.

Silver flew down the hill, and over the concrete and asphalt canal bridge. His feet lost contact with the pedals. He was freewheeling, now wholly in the lap of whatever god has been appointed the job of protecting small boys. He swerved into the street, doing maybe fifteen miles an hour over the posted speed of twenty-five.

It was all behind him now; the depressed and dead-eyed look of his parents. Eri, going out in her yellow raincoat with the boat he had made for her. Mr. Shimano carrying her lifeless one-armed corpse wrapped in his jacket up the small hill to their house. His mother's agonized shrieks as she cradled her in her arms, Yagi's wide and fearful eyes as he tried to keep him from coming down the stairs to see what had happened-

He raced on, bent over the handlebars. He raced to beat the devil.

Deku barley dodged a truck turning onto Ori from Ukiyo Park Drive, coming so close to hitting it that he could feel the warmth coming from the chugging engine against his left side. The driver rolled down his window to give Deku a piece of his mind, but Deku and silver were already long gone.

He nearly gets his head taken off by a car's driver's side mirror, before slowing down a bit- going uphill once more. All at once, he could feel the memories beginning to force themselves back. He could feel them settling into their accustomed places, their feverish bodies jostling each other. 'Gosh! Wow! Here we are inside Izuku's head again! Let's think about Eri! Okay! Who wants to start?'

'You think too much, Izuku.'

No-that wasn't the problem. The problem was, he imagined too much.

He pulled into the parking lot of the drug store with a screech of his tires, practically jumping off of his bike and running inside.

—5—

Before Eri's death, Deku would have simply told Mr. Aizawa what he needed. The druggist wasn't the nicest person in Irusu by any means, but he was one of the most patient. But now Deku stuttered, and he didn't have time for patience on anyone's part today.

So, When Aizawa yawned out a tired "Hi Deku, what do you need?" Deku wasted no time grabbing a pen and a flier from the stack in front of the plexiglass screen that separated Aizawa's side of the counter from Deku's and scribbling down: 'Kirishima Ejirou's inhaler broke and he's having an asthma attack. Can you give me a refill on his inhaler? And some gauze.' and slammed it against the plexiglass screen anxiously.

Aizawa read it, mouthed "and some gauze?..." before looking back at Deku's nervous emerald eyes and saying. "Sure. Gauze is on the third aisle next to the first-aid kits."

Deku raced towards the aisle, and with shaky hands, took a couple of rolls of gauze from the shelf- having no idea if this is what Sero actually needed, just that he saw it used a lot in TV shows.

When he got back to the glass-top counter, Aizawa was still in the back. Deku shifted nervously from foot to foot, twirling the gauze rolls around his fingers anxiously.

Finally, after what felt like eons, but in actuality was only five minutes, Aizawa returned with one of Kirishima's white inhalers. "There. That should help."

"Th-th-th-thanks," Deku said. "I don't h-have a-any m-m-muh-muh-"

Aizawa waved him away tiredly, looking as if he were about to fall asleep standing up. "I'll put it on Akemi's tab... I'm sure she much rather have a charge on her card then a dead kid."

Deku, much relieved, thanked Mr. Aizawa and left quickly. Mr. Aizawa came around the counter to watch him go. He saw Deku toss the inhaler into his bike-basket and mount it clumsily.

'Can he actually ride a bike that big?' Aizawa wondered. 'I doubt it. I doubt it very much.' But the Midoriya kid somehow got it going without falling on his head, and peddled slowly away. The bike, which looked to Aizawa like somebody's idea of a joke, wobbled madly from side to side. The inhaler and gauze rolls moved back and forth noisily in the basket.

Aizawa grinned a little. If Deku had seen that grin, it might have gone a good way toward confirming his idea that Aizawa was not exactly one of the world's champion nice guys. It was sour, and a little wild- the grin of a man who has found much to wonder about but almost nothing to uplift in the human condition. Yes-he would add Kirishima Ejirou's asthma medication (as well as the gauze) to Kirishima Akemi's bill, and as always she would be surprised-and suspicious rather than grateful-at how cheap the medication was. "Other drugs are so much more expensive," she said. Akemi, Aizawa knew, was one of those people who believed nothing cheap could do a person much good. He could really have soaked her for her son's HydrOx Mist, and there had been times when he had been tempted... but why should he make himself a party to the woman's foolishness? It wasn't as though he were going to starve.

Cheap? Oh my, yes. HydrOx Mist (Administer, as needed, typed neatly on the gummed label he pasted on each plastic inhaler shell) was wonderfully cheap, but even Akemi was willing to admit that it controlled her son's asthma quite well in spite of that fact. It was cheap because it was nothing but a combination of hydrogen and oxygen, with a dash of camphor added to give the mist a faint medicinal taste.

In other words, Kirishima Ejirou's asthma medicine was tapwater.

—6—

It took Deku longer to get back because he was going uphill. In several places, he had to dismount and push Silver. He simply didn't have the muscle power necessary to keep the bike going up more than mild slopes.

By the time he had stashed his bike and made his way back to the stream, it was ten past five. All sorts of black suppositions were crossing his mind. The Sero kid would have deserted, leaving Kirishima to die. Or Sero could have been far more injured then either had anticipated and had bled out while Kirishima sub-combed to his asthma. Or the bullies could have backtracked and beaten the shit out of both of them. Or... worst of all... the man whose business was murdering kids might have gotten one or both of them. As he had gotten Eri.

He knew there had been a great deal of gossip and speculation about that. Deku had a bad stutter, but he wasn't deaf-although people sometimes seemed to think he must be, since he spoke only when absolutely necessary nowadays. Some people felt that the murder of his sister wasn't related at all to the murders of Hado Nejire, Asui Tsuyu, Shimano Katsuma, and Hagakure Toru. Others claimed that Eri, Hado, and Asui had been killed by one man, and the other two were the work of a "copy-cat killer." A third school of thought held that the boy had been killed by one man, the girls by another.

Deku believed they had all been killed by the same person... if it was a person. He sometimes wondered about that. As he sometimes wondered about his feelings concerning Irusu this summer. Was it the aftermath of Eri's death? The pain of watching his parents grieve? A combination of the two added on to the other murders? The voice that sometimes seemed to speak in his head now, whispering to him (and surely it was not a variation of his own voice, for this voice did not stutter-it was quiet, but it was sure), advising him to do certain things but not others? Was it those things that made Irusu seem somehow different now? Somehow threatening?

He didn't know, but he believed-as he believed all the murders were the work of a single agency-that Irusu really had changed, and that his sister's death had signaled the beginning of that change.

But when he came around the streams bend, everything was fine. Sero Hanta was still there, sitting beside Kirishima. Kirishima himself was sitting up now- long black hair brushed out of his eyes, T-shirt stained with bloody blotches. He was still wheezing.

Sero looked up. "Oh. That was fast."

"G-G-Gotta fa-fa-hast b-bike," Deku said, a little bit of pride welling in his chest. For a moment, he and Sero looked at one another warily, before Sero popped another cigarette into his mouth and gave him a lop-sided smile. Deku smiled back kindly. The kid was skinny, but he seemed pretty cool. He had stuck around- which must have taken some guts with Shigaraki and his gang still prowling around.

Deku turned to Kirishima, who was looking up at him with wide, admiring eyes. "Here, Ejirou." He smiled, tossing the boy the inhaler. Kirishima plunged it into his mouth, pressed the trigger, and let out stuttering, gasping breath as he slumped forward tiredly.

"He's really got it bad, doesn't he?" Sero laughed a little, taking another draw.

Deku nodded, smiling.

"I was scared there for a while," Sero said in a low voice. "I was wonderin' what to do if he had- like- a convulsion, or something. I kept trying to remember the stuff they told us in that Red Cross assembly we had in May. All I could come up with was put a stick in his mouth so he wouldn't bite his tongue off- figured he had more of a chance than anyone else with those teeth of his."

"Th-thats Eh-eh-epileptics."

"Oh." Sero looked thoughtful for a moment, before shrugging good-naturedly. "Guess my dad wasn't a doctor after all."

Kirishima let out a weak, pained laugh at that, getting to his feet- inhaler still clutched tightly in his hand. Deku helped him steady, laughing himself.

"Thank you for going to get my inhaler, man." Kirishima smiled, clapping a hand onto Deku's shoulder. "I owe ya one."

Deku shook his head no. "No no... it's fine- you'd of done the same for me- oh! Sero, I got you something as well-"

Sero raised his eyebrows at that but grinned gratefully when Deku thrust the gauze into his free-hand. "Thanks, dude- you didn't have to-"

"-It's fine- neither of you has to thank or owe me anything- I'm just happy to help."

Sero and Kirishima both looked at one another, before shrugging a little. Sero moved to sit down on a rock and began to bandage his arm- covering up a large, deep, gash. Deku and Kirishima winced.

"Man, what even happened to you?" Kirishima finally asked, breaking the silence that had fallen over the trio. Sero let out a small, bitter, laugh.

"Didn't let Shigaraki copy off my exam. Shigaraki had a knife."

Deku's eyes widened, "Oh- Are you- do you need to go to the doctor or something? Because my bike has a thing on the back you could stand on and I could ride you over-"

Sero waved him away, finishing the wrap around his arm. "No, I'm fine." He smiled, it was laid-back and easy, despite the horrors he must have gone through earlier this afternoon. "Uniform is ruined though... doubt my mom will pay for another one so I don't really know what I'm gonna do on that front... but- anyways- uh... Ejirou?..."

Kirishima nodded.

"-Ejirou- you feeling better? I guess it must have started when Shigaraki busted your nose, right?"

"Actually, it didn't start until I started thinking about my mother." Kirishima shrugged, he seemed a little embarrassed- though Deku didn't really know why. "But- uh- yeah, I'm feeling better now- thanks for asking... I'll probably end up in the hospital waiting room tonight though."

"Why?"

Kirishima shrugged. "Mom's just like that- she's gonna freak when she sees the blood on my shirt. She'll think it's broken and that the pieces will move up in my brain and kill me or something."

"...can that happen?" Sero asked curiously, though he sounded slightly amused.

"Pruh- pruh- probably not." Deku chimed in. "H-His m-mom's just l-like that."

Kirishima nodded.

"And I thought my mom was weird." Sero laughed a little, smashing out his cigarette.

"Y-Y-You're Seh-Seh-Sero Han-Han-Hanta, r-right?"

Sero nodded. "Mhm, and you're Deku."

Deku smiled happily. "T-That's Kiri-K-Kiri-"

"-Kirishima Ejirou." Interrupted Kirishima helpfully.

"Well, it was nice meeting you both I guess." Sero shrugged, he suddenly seemed like he didn't really know what to say- as did Kirishima- as did Deku.

Silence fell among the three of them.

"... so... You guys play in the barrens a lot?" Sero finally asked, he pulled out his cigarette pack again, but put it back into his pocket without getting another.

"S-S-Sure. It's n-neat. M-Mostly n-nobody b-buh-bothers u-us down h-here. We guh-guh-hoof off a lot. Shig-Shig-Shigaraki and those uh-other g-guys don't come d-down here eh-eh-anyway."

"You and Ejirou?"

"-Buh-Buh-Buh-" Deku shook his head. His freckled face went bright red when he stuttered, Sero noticed. "Bakugo!" Deku exclaimed now, paused a moment, and then went on. "Bakugo Ka-Katsuki usually c-comes down, too. But h-him and his d-dad were going to clean out their ah-ah-ah-"

"Attic," Kirishima translated and tossed a stone into the water. Plonk.

"Yeah, I know him," Sero said.

"Pretty sure everyone does by now... he's super manly, taking on Shigaraki and his guys," Kirishima said, the admiration and... something else... Deku couldn't quite place, in his tone obvious.

"You guys come down here a lot, huh?" The idea fascinated Sero-and made him feel a stupid sort of longing as well. Kaminari would be forced to help out on the farm all June... which meant Sero wouldn't be seeing much of him for quite a while.

"Puh-Puh-Pretty much," Deku shrugged. "Wuh-Why d-don't you c-c-come back down tuh-huh-morrow? M-Me and E-E- Ejirou were tub-trying to make a duh-duh-ham."

Sero could say nothing. He was astounded not only by the offer but by the simple and unstudied casualness with which it had come.

"Maybe we ought to do something else," Kirishima said. "The dam wasn't working so hot anyway."

Deku watched as Sero observed the dam from the rock where he sat, grey eyes thoughtful and somewhat calculating.

"You ought to have some boards," Sero finally said. "Get boards and put em in a row... facing each other... like the bread of a sandwich."

Deku and Kirishima were looking at him, puzzled. Sero pointed at the seldom remains of the original dam. "Look," he said. "Boards here and here. You stick em in the streambed facing each other. Okay? Then, before the water can wash them away, you fill-up the space between them with rocks and sand-"

"Wuh-Wuh-We," Deku said kindly.

"Huh?"

"Wuh-We do it."

"Oh," Sero said, a small flush burning across the bridge of his nose. "Yeah. We. Anyway, if you-we-fill up the space in between with rocks and stuff, it'll stay. The upstream board will lean back against the rocks and dirt as the water piles up. The second board would tilt back and wash away after a while, I guess, but if we had a third board... well, look."

He drew in the dirt with a stick. Deku and Kirishima leaned over and studied this little drawing with sober interest.

"You ever built a dam before?" Kirishima asked. His tone was respectful, almost awed.

"Nope."

"Then h-h-how do you know this'll w-w-work?"

Sero looked at Deku, puzzled. "sure it will," he said. "Why wouldn't it?"

"But h-how do you nuh-nuh-know?" Deku asked. Sero recognized the tone of the question as one not of sarcastic disbelief but honest interest. "H-How can y-you tell?"

"I just know," Sero said. He looked down at his drawing in the dirt again as if to confirm it to himself. He had never seen a cofferdam in his life, either in diagram or in fact, and had no idea that he had just drawn a pretty fair representation of one.

"O-Okay," Deku said, and clapped Sero on the back- Geez he could feel just about every bone in the kid's body- "s-See you tuh-huh-morrow."

"What time?"

"M-Me and Eh-Ejirou'll g-get here by eh-eh-eight-th-thirty or so-"

"If me and my mom aren't still waiting at the Emergency Room," Kirishima said and sighed.

"I'll bring some boards," Sero said. "This old guy on the next block's got a bunch of 'em. I'll hawk a few."

"Bring some supplies, too," Kirishima said. "stuff to eat. You know, like san-widges, Ring-Dings, stuff like that- you need it."

Sero winced a little. "Okay."

"You g-g-got any guh-guh-guns?"

"I got my Daisy air rifle," Sero said. "Denki's mom gave it to me for Christmas."

"B-Bring it d-d-down," Deku said. "We'll play g-guns, maybe."

"Okay," Sero said happily. "Listen, I've gotta get home, you guys- I can't stand the feeling of this sticky blood any longer."

"Uh-Us, too," Deku said.

The three of them left the Barrens together. Sero helped Deku push Silver up the embankment. Kirishima trailed behind them, wheezing again and looking unhappily at his blood-spotted shirt.

Deku said goodbye and then peddled off, giving them both a happy wave.

"That's a gigantic bike," Sero said.

"Bet your shit," Kirishima said. He had taken another gulp from his aspirator and was breathing normally again. "He rides me double sometimes on the back. Goes so fast it just about scares the crap outta me... He's a good guy. Deku is... super manly." He said this last in an offhand way, but his eyes said something more emphatic. They were worshipful. "You know about what happened to his sister, don't you?"

"Vaguely."

"She got killed last winter by some guy. They pulled her arm off like a fly's wing."

"Holy shit-"

"That's when his stutter started. Did you notice that he stuttered?"

"Well... yeah..."

"But his brain doesn't stutter- get what I mean?"

"Yeah."

"Anyway, I just told you because if you want Deku to be your friend, it's better not to talk to him about his little sister. Don't ask him questions or anything. He's all frigged up about it."

"Shit, I would be, too,"

Kirishima nodded solemnly. They had reached the corner of Kanazaki Drive and Maples lane- Kirishima's house was down that way, Sero would have to circle back and cross over the bridge to get home.

"Well, I gotta go." Kirishima finally said, smiling at Sero apologetically. "Gotta try and do some damage control with my mom about the nose thing."

"Wait a sec," Sero said, gently grabbing Kirishima's wrist. "I got an idea if you really don't want to go to the Emergency Room."

"Oh yeah?" Kirishima looked at Sero, doubtful but wanting to hope.

"You got ¥5?"

"I've got ¥10. So what?"

Sero eyed the drying maroon splotches on Kirishima's shirt. "stop at the store and get some chocolate milk. Pour about half of it on your shirt. Then when you get home tell your mom you spilled all of it."

Kirishima's eyes brightened. In the four years since his dad had died, his mother's eyesight had worsened considerably, and she all but refused to get new glasses. Dried blood stains and chocolate milk stains looked about the same. Maybe...

'That might work," he said.

"Just don't tell her it was my idea if she finds out."

"I won't," Kirishima said. "see ya later, alligator."

"...Okay."

"No," Kirishima said, laughing. "When I say that you're supposed to say, "After a while, crocodile."

"Oh. After a while, crocodile."

"You got it." Kirishima grinned.

"You know something?" Sero said. "You guys are really cool."

Kirishima looked more than embarrassed; he looked almost nervous. "Deku is," he said and started off towards the Ori/Kanazaki intersection.

—7—

That night a terrible thing happened to Deku. It happened for the second time.

His parents were downstairs watching TV, neither talking much, both looking miserable and sad. Deku entered the house virtually unnoticed and slinked up the stairs.

Eri's room looked the exact same as it had the day she had died. His mother still washed and changed the sheets on her bed, still opened the curtains every morning, and still dusted and swept. It was eerie and made Deku's chest feel funny.

His heart was beating heavily in his chest, and his legs felt stiff and awkward with tension. He came to Eri's room often, but that didn't mean he liked it here. The room was so full of Eri's presence that it felt haunted. He came in and couldn't help thinking that the closet door might creak open at any moment and there would be Eri among the shirts and pants still neatly hung in there, an Eri dressed in a bright yellow rainslicker covered with red splotches and streaks, a rainslicker with one dangling yellow arm. Eri's eyes would be blank and terrible, the eyes of a zombie in a horror movie. When she came out of the closet her galoshes would make squishy sounds as she walked across the room toward where Deku sat on her bed, a frozen block of terror -

If the power had gone out some evening while he sat here on Eri's bed, looking at the pictures on Eri's wall or the dolls on top of Eri's dresser, he felt sure a heart attack, probably fatal, would ensue in the next ten seconds or so. But he went anyway. Warring with his terror of Eri-the-ghost was a mute and grasping need-a hunger-to somehow get over Eri's death and find a decent way to go on. Not to forget Eri but somehow to find a way to make her not so fucking gruesome.

He missed the kid- her laughter, her hugs- her timid demeanor- her eagerness to have him explain everything he did to her... he missed it every day.

He crossed the room to Eri's closet, and, after a deep breath - he opened it, emerald eyes averted away from the closet's contents as he reached blindly for Eri's photo album. After a few moments, he found it, and shut the door of the closet quickly, pressing his back against it for good measure.

He hadn't looked in Eri's photo album since January.

Now, on the night after meeting Sero Hanta, he brought it over to Eri's bed- and with shuddering breath and shaky hands, opened it.

'MY PHOTOGRAPHS', the gold script on the title page read. Below, Scotch-taped on (the tape was now slightly yellow and peeling), were the carefully printed words TOSHINORI ERI, AGE 6.

His heart was beating heavier than ever. He couldn't tell what had made him get the photograph album down again. After what had happened in January...

'A second look, that's all. Just to convince yourself that it wasn't real the first time. That the first time was just your head playing a trick on itself.'

Well, it was an idea, anyway.

It might even be true. But Deku suspected it was just the album itself. It held a certain mad fascination for him. What he had seen, or what he thought he had seen -

He opened the album now. It was filled with pictures Eri had gotten their mother, father, aunts, and uncles to give her. Eri didn't care if they were pictures of people and places she knew or not; it was the idea of photography itself that fascinated her. When she had been unsuccessful at pestering anyone into giving her new photos to mount she would sit cross-legged on her bed where Deku was sitting now and look at the old ones, turning the pages carefully, studying the bright and glossy prints. Here was their mother when she was young and impossibly gorgeous; here their father, no more than eighteen, one of a trio of smiling rifle-toting young men standing over the open-eyed corpse of a deer; Uncle Hisoka standing on some rocks and holding up a squid he'd managed to hook by pure chance; Aunt Suzu, at the Irusu Agricultural Fair, kneeling proudly beside a basket of tomatoes she had raised; an old Buick automobile; a church; a house; a road that went from somewhere to somewhere. All these pictures snapped by lost somebodies for lost reasons, locked up here in a dead girl's album of photographs.

Here Deku saw himself at three, propped up in a hospital bed with a turban of bandages covering his hair. Bandages went down his cheeks and under his fractured jaw. He had been struck by a car in the parking lot of the Ice cream bar on Main Street. He remembered very little of his hospital stay, only that they had given him ice-cream milkshakes through a straw and his head had ached dreadfully for three days.

Here was the whole family on the lawn of the house, Deku standing by Yagi and holding his hand, and Eri, only a baby, sleeping in their mother's arms. And here -

It wasn't the end of the book, but it was the last page that mattered because the following ones were all blank. The final picture was Eri's school picture, taken in December of last year, less than ten days before she died. In it, she was wearing a pretty yellow sundress (despite the temperature- she had insisted) and had her white hair pulled out of her face by a large black bow sporting a sparkly rhinestone in the middle. Her ever-timid smile present on her face.

He looked at the picture, transfixed on it for some time- and was just about to close the book when the thing that had happened in January happened again.

Eri's eyes rolled in the picture and turned up to meet Deku's own. Eri's sweet, shy, smile turned into a horrid leer. She winked: "See ya soon, Izuku. In my closet. Maybe tonight."

Deku slammed the book shut before chucking it across the room, he fell back onto the bed- breathing rapidly.

The book struck the wall and fell to the floor, open. The pages turned, although there was no draft. The book opened itself to that awful picture again, the picture which said SCHOOL FRIENDS 2004-05 beneath it.

Blood began to flow from the picture.

Deku sat frozen, his tongue a swelling choking lump in his mouth, his skin crawling, his hair lifting. He wanted to scream but the tiny whimpering sounds crawling out of his throat seemed to be the best he could manage.

The blood flowed across the page and began to drip onto the floor.

Deku fled the room, slamming the door behind him.