—1—

MAY 30TH, 2020 / IRUSU, JAPAN

Kaminari had taken his crime scene photo's back. He had assumed that Deku would ask for Eri's last school picture, but Deku did not. He put them in his jumper's pocket, and when they were out of sight, all of them-Kaminari included-felt a sense of relief.

"Nine children," Todoroki was saying softly. "I can't believe it. I mean... I can believe it, but I can't believe it. Nine kids and nothing? Nothing at all?

"It's not quite like that," Kaminari said, still feeling bashful around Todoroki after all these years- the schoolboy crush coming back in full force despite the terrible reasons surrounding their reunion. He felt shame beginning to swell up in his chest, and choked it down. "People are angry, people are scared... or so it seems. It's really impossible to tell which ones really feel that way and which ones are faking."

"Faking?"

He sighed. "Roki, do you remember, when we were kids, the man who just folded his newspaper and went inside his house while you were screaming at him for help?"

For a moment something seemed to start in his heterochrome eyes and he looked both terrified and aware. Then he only looked puzzled. "No... I don't... at least I-... hm."

"Never mind. You'll remember eventually, haha... All I can say now is that everything looks the way it should in Irusu. Faced with such a grisly string of murders, people are doing all the things you'd expect them to do, and most of them are the same things that happened while kids were disappearing and getting murdered back in '05. The Save Our Children Committee is meeting again, only this time at Irusu Elementary School instead of Irusu High. There are sixteen detectives from the Attorney General's office in town, and a whole lotta Public Security Intelligence agents- I don't know how many, and although Ishihara talks big, I don't think she does, either. Schools have closed indefinitely. The curfew's back in effect-"

"The curfew. Right." Sero was leaning over the table, cigarette hanging loosely out of his mouth as Todoroki lit it with a white BIC lighter. Somewhere in the back of Kaminari's mind, he remembered that white BIC lighters were meant to be bad luck. He had to suppress a dark giggle. "That did wonders back in '05. I remember that much."

"-The News has gotten over two thousand letters demanding a solution in the last three weeks alone. And, of course, the out-migration has begun again. I sometimes think that's the only way to really tell who's sincere about wanting it stopped and who isn't. The really sincere ones get scared and leave."

"People really are leaving?" Bakugo asked, his voice was flat, but his mouth quirked upward in grim amusement.

"It happens each time the cycle cranks up again. It's impossible to tell just how many go because the cycle hasn't fallen squarely in a census year since 1850 or so. But it's a fairish number. They run like kids who just found out the house was haunted for real after all."

"Come home... come home... come home..." Todoroki trailed off softly. When he looked up from his drink it was Deku he looked at, not Kaminari. "It wanted us to come back... Why?"

"It might want us all back," Kaminari shrugged- sounding a little cryptic. "sure. It may. It may want revenge. After all, we beat It once before."

"revenge... or just to set the record straight..." Deku mused, staring at a fixed point above Kaminari's head instead of directly at him. He almost looked as if he were in a trance. "...even the score..."

Kaminari nodded quickly, his hair beginning to come loose. He brushed the strands behind his ears hurriedly. "Things are out of order with your own lives, too, you know. None of you left Irusu... er... clean?..." He shot an apologetic smile over at the empty chair next to Bakugo as if trying to communicate to Iida beyond the grave- tell him he was sorry he had spent his life dirty, only believing he was clean.

"What do you mean?" Kirishima asked, and- though it must have just been a trick of the light- Kaminari was almost sure he could see the roots of his ebony hair starting to peak through the red.

"Well..." Kaminari coughed and looked at each of their faces one by one. "...All of you forgot what happened here, and your memories of that summer are still scattered and stuff... And then there's the fact that you're all rich."

"Oh, fuck off." Bakugo spat. "That's hardly-"

"Hey, hey-," Kaminari said, holding his hand up and smiling faintly. "I'm not accusing you of anything, just trying to get the facts out on the table. You are rich by the standards of a small-town mechanic who makes just under 5 million Yen a year after taxes, okay?"

Bakugo shrugged the shoulders of his expensive jacket uncomfortably and glared into his beer stein. Sero, with a pink flush across the bridge of his nose, appeared deeply absorbed in tearing small strips from the edge of his napkin. Todoroki frowned and looked to the left. Kirishima coughed and covered his face a little with his hand. No one was looking directly at Kaminari except for Deku.

"None of you are at the top of top or anything-" Kaminari paused, furrowed his eyebrows. "Well- I guess Tenya was because of his and his wife's combined income- but- anyways- you are all extremely well off. We're all friends here, so fess up: if there's one of you who declared less than 9 million Yen on his 2019 tax return, raise your hand."

They glanced around at each other- even Bakugo seemed embarrassed, which surprised Kaminari immensely. Deku felt his freckled cheeks coloring and was helpless to stop it. He had been paid 1 Million more than the sum Kaminari had mentioned just for doing the first draft of the "Wilting Flowers" screenplay. He had been promised an additional 2 million each for two rewrites if needed. Then there were royalties... and the hefty advance on a renegotiated contract with Young Jump that he had just signed... how much had he declared on his 2019 tax return? Just about 83 Million Yen, right? Enough, anyway, to seem almost monstrous in light of Kaminari Denki's stated income of just under 5 million yen a year.

'So that's how much they pay you to keep the lighthouse, huh?' Deku thought. 'I'm sorry. I wish I could help- I can help- but would you accept it? Something tells me you wouldn't.'

Kaminari smiled dorkily, and lifted a chopstick, pointing it at whoever he was addressing: "Midoriya Izuku, a successful Mangaka in a society where there's a new one on every street corner- you've even broken out into the animation world. Almost every single one of your works has been adapted into a movie or anime, and you've started to direct. RokiDoki, in the fashion industry- which by the way, I never saw coming- a field to which more are called but even fewer chosen. He is, in fact, the most sought-after designer in the country right now- even designing for the Prime Minister's wife."

"Oh, it's not me..." Todoroki said so quietly, the rest of the table could barely hear. He was hiding behind the collar of his coat once more. His wavy hair was falling into his eyes, and he wasn't bothering to fix it. "It's Koji... Koji's the one... Without him, I'd still be relining skirts and sewing up hems. I don't have any business sense at all, even Koji says so. It's just... you know... Koji... always has been." His face was very red now, and he kept his gaze trained on his lap.

"Ugh." Bakugo rolled his eyes, but there was a weird look in them that Kaminari couldn't quite place. "Will you stop with that already?"

Todoroki whipped around quickly in his seat and gave him a hard look, his face flushing, looking as if he would burst into angry flames. "Just what's that supposed to mean-" he paused, scrunching up his eyebrows, before finally finishing: "...Trash... mouth?... yeah- Just what's that supposed to mean, Trashmouth?"

Bakugo rounded just as quickly, his eyes blazing just as hot. And at that moment, Deku could see with an eerie clarity the boy he had known; he was not just a superseded presence lurking under Bakugo Katsuki's grownup exterior but a creature almost more real than the man himself. "I'm saying all that bullshit about your husband is annoying. Does he make the clothes?"

Todoroki's look got harder, and he leaned closer to Bakugo. "What does-"

"Does. He. Make. The. Fucking. Clothes?"

"No, but-"

"Well, there ya fucking go!" Bakugo threw his hands up in exasperation and let them crash down on the table. "Now take some goddamn credit for your work... I hate that shit."

Todoroki was silent for a long time, before finally turning away and whispering under his breath coldly: "You're impossible, Katsuki."

"Yeah? Because I get tired of you talking like that?"

"You ought to grow up," Todoroki replied nastily. His hands were curled into tight fists, and it was only now that the others noticed the black leather gloves on his hands.

Bakugo looked at him, his piercing glare fading slowly into uncertainty. "Until I came back here," he muttered under his breath, turning to stare at the wall, "I thought I had."

"-...Kats," Kaminari finally sliced through the tension, chuckling uncomfortably. "You're probably the most successful radio show host in Japan. You've certainly got Osaka in the palm of your hand. On top of that, there are two syndicated programs, one of them a straight top-forty countdown show where you make your opinions on the countries music preferences very, very clear, and another one where you tear celebrities, Internet personalities, and even politicians to shreds live on air."

Bakugo only gave him a 'Yeah, no shit Sherlock.' Look before turning to stare at the wall again. Kaminari's awkward smile only widened as he continued.

"Ejirou, you've made a living out of getting celebrities and other high paying clients their ideal body- as well as a commercial line of protein shakes, bars, and a collaborative deal with ASICS."

Kirishima thumbed his inhaler and looked at Bakugo instead of Kaminari. "Yeah... well..."

"Sero, you're probably the most successful young architect in the world."

Sero opened his mouth, probably to protest, and then closed it again abruptly. He tore up another napkin and shifted a little away from his childhood best friend. Kaminari threw an arm over his shoulder and pulled him back, grinning wildly.

Still hugging Sero close to him, Kaminari turned to the group again. "I don't want to embarrass anyone, but I do want all the cards on the table. There are people who succeed young, and there are people who succeed in highly specialized jobs-if there weren't people who screwed over the odds successfully, I guess everybody would just give up and die or something- so if it was just one or two of you, we could pass it off as a lucky coin flip. But it's not just one or two; it's all of you, and that includes Tenya, who was the most successful young accountant in Fukuoka... which means- I mean- it's insane. My conclusion is that your success stems from what happened here fifteen years ago. If you had all been exposed to asbestos at that time and had all developed lung cancer by now, wouldn't you assume the same?... Do any of you want to deny this or?..."

He looked at them. No one answered.

"All except you," Deku finally said. "What happened to you, Denki?"

"Isn't it obvious?" He grinned and pulled Sero so close the taller male's chin was resting on top of his head. Sero let out a little yelp. "I stayed here."

"Ah- you- would you let go already?- you 'Kept the lighthouse'," Sero said, trying to pull himself out of Kaminari's grip. Deku jerked around and looked at him, startled, but Sero was staring hard at Kaminari and didn't see. "That doesn't make me feel good, Denki. In fact, it makes me feel shitty."

"Agreed," Todoroki said, his tone softer.

Kaminari shook his head patiently. "You guys have nothing to feel guilty about. Do you really think it was my choice to stay here, any more than it was your choice-any of you-to leave? Geez, guys, we were kids. For one reason or another your parents-" he glanced at Sero and elbowed him good-naturedly "-or government officials- moved you away. My mom stayed. And was it really their decision-any of them? I don't think so. How was it decided who would go and who would stay? Was it luck? Fate? It? Some Other? I don't know. But it wasn't us guys. So quit it."

"You're not... not bitter?" Kirishima asked timidly.

"I've been too busy to be bitter," Kaminari winked, leaning backward on the bench. "Work. Sex. Watching. Waiting. I was watching and waiting even before I knew it, I think, but for the last five years or so I've been on what you might call: red alert." He made an arc with his hands, eyes sparkling, and almost fell backward off the bench. "Since January I've been keeping a journal. And let me tell you- writing is a lot of work. Oh! and I've been thinking too- I know, big surprise there- but it's true. Seriously. Me. Writing and thinking."

"Never thought I'd see the day," Bakugo muttered, but there was the faintest hint of a smile on his face.

Kaminari laughed. "Right? Well- anyways- one of the things I've spent time writing and thinking about is the nature of It. It changes; we know that. I think It also manipulates and leaves Its marks on people just by the nature of what It is-the way you can smell a skunk on you even after a long bath if it lets go of its bag of scent too near you. The way a grasshopper will spit bug juice into your palm if you catch it in your hand."

Kaminari slowly leaned forward, huddling everyone in close and glancing towards the beaded curtain. He rolled his sweater sleeve up, revealing three long, puckered, scars slashed into his forearm. "Or... the way talons leave scars," he said, before dropping the sleeve and standing up, lifting his sweater, revealing shallow marks in his chest before letting his shirt drop back down. "Or claws."

"The werewolf," Bakugo almost moaned, finally facing the table again. "Fuck, Deku, the werewolf! When we went back to Neibolt Street!"

"What?" Deku asked. He sounded distant, almost tired. "What, Kacchan?"

"Don't you remember?

"No... do you?"

"I... I almost do... " Looking equally confused, scared, and pissed, Bakugo subsided.

"Are you saying this thing isn't evil?" Kirishima asked Kaminari abruptly. He was staring at the spot on Kaminari's chest where the claw marks had been as if hypnotized. "That it's just some part of the... the natural order? That- that It's meant to be here?"

"I mean... maybe? But even if it is- it's not apart of anything we understand or condone," Kaminari shrugged, plopping back down beside Sero, "and I see no reason to not act on the one thing we do understand: that It kills, kills children, and that's wrong. Deku understood that before any of us. Do you remember, Deku?"

"I remember that I wanted to kill It," Deku said, and for the first time (and ever after) he heard the pronoun gain proper-noun status in his own voice. "But I didn't have much of a world-view on the subject if you see what I mean-I just wanted to kill It because It killed Eri."

"And do you still?"

Deku considered this carefully. He looked down at his spread hands on the table and remembered Eri in her yellow slicker, her hood up, the paper boat with its thin glaze of paraffin in one hand. He remembered how she had kissed his cheek before she went out, and how he had warned her to be careful... as if- somewhere deep down- the both of them had known that that was the last time they would ever see one another. He looked up at Kaminari.

"M-M-More than ever," he said.

Kaminari nodded as if this were exactly what he had expected. "It left Its mark on us. It worked Its will on us, just as It has worked Its will on this whole town, day in and day out, even during those long periods when It is asleep or hibernating or whatever It does between Its more... more active periods."

Kaminari raised one finger.

"But if It worked Its will on us, at some point, in some way, we also worked our will on It. We stopped It before It was done-I know we did. Did we weaken It? Hurt It? Did we, in fact, almost kill It? I think we did. I think we came so close to killing It that we went away thinking we had."

"But you don't remember that part either, do you?" Sero asked.

"No." Kaminari's smile grew apathetic. "I can remember everything up until August 15th, 2005 with almost perfect clarity. But from then until September 4th or so, when they decided it was okay for school to start again, everything is a total blank. It isn't murky or hazy; it is just completely gone. With one exception: I seem to remember Deku screaming about something... something- something called the dead-lights."

Deku's arm jerked convulsively. It struck one of his empty beer steins, and the heavy glass shattered on the floor like a bomb.

"Did you cut yourself?" Todoroki asked. He had half-risen.

"No," he said. His voice was harsh and dry. His arms had broken out in gooseflesh. It seemed that his skull had somehow grown; he could feel-

(the deadlights)

-it pressing out against the stretched skin of his face in steady numbing throbs. He could feel everything all at once- every twitch of his hair, every bit of dust that landed on his skin, every eyelash, every blood cell flowing in his veins under the surface of his skin-

"I'll pick up the-"

"No, just sit down." His voice had taken on that foreign cold, authoritarian, tone again. He wanted to look at Todoroki. He wanted to apologize for his tone- but he couldn't. He couldn't take his eyes off Kaminari.

"Do you remember the deadlights, Izuku?" Kaminari asked softly.

"No," he said. His mouth felt the way it did when the dentist got a little too enthusiastic with the novocaine.

"You will."

"I fucking hope not."

"You will anyway," Kaminari said. "But for now... no. Not me, either. Do any of you?"

One by one they shook their heads.

"But we did something," Kaminari said quietly. "At some point, we were able- able to do something- something as a group. At some point, we achieved some special understanding, whether conscious or unconscious." He stirred restlessly. "Geez, I Wish Tenya was here. I have a feeling that Tenya, with his ordered mind... he might have had some idea."

"Maybe he did," Todoroki said darkly. "Maybe he did and that's why he killed himself. Maybe he understood that if there was magic, it wouldn't work for grown-ups. Maybe he understood that we're too old now. Maybe he understood that we can't do anything."

"I think we can, though," Kaminari said. "Because there's one other thing we six have in common. I wonder if any of you have realized what that is."

It was Deku's turn to open his mouth and then shut it again.

"Go on," Kaminari said. "You know what it is. I can see it on your face."

"I'm not sure I know," Deku replied, "but I think w-we're all childless. Is that ih-it?"

There was a moment of shocked silence.

"Yeah," Kaminari grinned. "That's it. Good job, Deku. You've always been observant."

"That doesn't mean anything!" Kirishima spoke up indignantly. "What- what does that- what does that even have to do with any of this? What gave you the idea that everyone in the world has to have kids? That's nuts!"

"Do you and your husband have children?" Kaminari asked suddenly.

"If you've been keeping track of us in all the ways you've said, then you know goddam well we don't. But I still say it doesn't mean a damn thing. Besides- it's not like it's just something that can happen naturally considering-" Kirishima's face went a little pink "-ya know-"

"Have you tried adopting? Or signing up for a surrogate program?"

"Of course we have." Kirishima's cheeks were flushed almost as red as his hair. "It just so happens that adoption takes a long time- and a good surrogate is hard to come by-and Echii... he's... picky... when it comes to that sort of thing- so-"

"Don't have an aneurysm, shitty hair." Bakugo sighed, though his tone was soft- almost soothing. He leaned toward him, raising an arm to sock Kirishima's bicep.

"Don't call me Shitty hair and don't you dare punch me!" he cried, rounding on Bakugo. "You know I hate that! I always hated it!"

Bakugo recoiled, blinking- and- for just a moment- he looked hurt.

"Tch... Whatever... sorry I guess..." His voice got quieter and quieter until it trailed off completely. "...fucking... shark-toothed bastard..."

"Roki?" Kaminari asked, and he really had to fight to keep himself sounding amused. "What about you and Koji?"

"No children," he said softly. "...I want kids... and- so does Koji, of course," he added hastily, glancing around at them quickly. Deku thought his eyes seemed overbright, almost the eyes of an actor giving a good performance. "But- just like Ejirou said- adoptions a long process and- well- Koji says that a surrogate is a no-go so..."

"Why's that?" Deku asked, suddenly very curious about this supposed "most wonderful man in the world" Todoroki was married to.

"Just- reasons... um..." Todoroki wrung his gloved hands together nervously. There was a long silence as Todoroki continued to fumble over his words

"What about you and your wife, Deku? Since you seem to be one of the few here eligible for a happy accident?" Kaminari asked.

They all looked at him curiously... because his wife was someone they knew. Ochako was a fairly well-known voice actor who had had parts in quite a few modern classics- she was also the spokesperson of a fairly popular cruelty-free make-up line that advertised fairly heavily during prime time. She was a stranger whose lovely face was known to them. He thought Todoroki looked particularly curious.

"We've been trying off and on for the last three or so years..." Deku said, pulling bashfully at his shirt collar. "For the last eight months or so it's been off, because of the anime- "Wilting Flowers" it's called."

"You know, we run a little entertainment syndic every day from five-fifteen in the afternoon until five-thirty," Bakugo said suddenly. "seein" Stars, it's called. They had a feature on that fucking anime just last week- 'Husband and Wife Working Happily Together' kind of thing. They said both of your names and I never made the damn connection... Weird, isn't it?"

"Very," Deku smiled. "Anyway, Ochako said it would be just our luck if she got pregnant while we were in preproduction and she had to do ten weeks of strenuous work while being morning-sick at the same time. But we want kids, yes. And we've tried quite hard."

"Had fertility tests?" Sero asked.

"Uh-huh... yep... um..." Deku coughed, and averted his eyes from the table, feeling fairly self-conscious. "Um... two... two years ago... in Osaka... actually... um- The doctors discovered a very small benign tumor in Ochako's womb... and they said it was a lucky thing because, although it wouldn't have prevented her from getting pregnant, it might have caused a tubal pregnancy or... yeah- She and I are... are uh- both fertile, though... yeah..."

Kirishima repeated stubbornly, albeit slightly weaker: "It doesn't prove a goddam thing."

"Suggestive, though," Sero murmured.

"No little accidents on your front, Hanta?" Deku asked. He was shocked and amused to find that his mouth had very nearly called Sero 'Beanpole' instead.

"I've never been married, I've always been careful, and there have been no paternity suits," Sero said. "...Which has always been fine with me... because I never particularly wanted children... but- yeah- beyond that I guess there isn't really any other way to know..."

"And you, Kats?" Kaminari asked.

Bakugo glared. "What do you think, Idiot?"

Kaminari only shrugged. "Just askin'"

"I guess it's safe to assume you don't have any, then?" Todoroki asked Kaminari softly.

"Heh... no... Hey- wanna hear a funny story?" Kaminari asked. He was smiling, but there was no smile in his eyes.

"Sure," Deku said. "You were always good at the funny stuff, Denki." 'Yes,' Deku thought to himself. 'Kam's humor really had rounded out our little group... Denki had-

(Closed the circle)

-been the missing piece.'

"Him? Funny?" Bakugo snorted, rolling his eyes. "Try annoying as living fuck-"

"Beep-beep, Katsuki! Beep-beep! Beep-beep!" Sero suddenly interrupted, cutting through Bakugo's words.

Bakugo blinked and closed his mouth. Looking angry and confused.

"Oh, man!" Kirishima said. He collapsed back in his chair, laughing so hard he was almost crying. "We gotcha that time, Trashmouth. Way to go, Sero!"

Sero was smiling but he looked a little bewildered.

"Beep-beep," Todoroki said, amused. "I forgot all about that. We always used to beep you, Katsuki."

"Just shut up already, will you?" Bakugo said, but he wasn't able to mask the smile in his voice in time. "That was one of your little contributions to the Losers' Club, wasn't it, Skeletor?"

"Yeah, I guess it was."

"And to think you could of spent all the time you took coming up with that one trying to gain some weight-"

"-Beep-beep, Katsuki," Sero said solemnly, and then exploded laughter. "Wow...I didn't realize how much I missed your bullshit until just now."

"You guys want to hear this story or not?" Kaminari asked. "I mean, no big deal one way or the other. Beep Kats away if you want to. I can take abuse and neglect. I mean- you're talking to the guy that accidentally outed himself to the whole town."

"Tell it," Deku said. He glanced over at Bakugo and saw that he looked happier-or more at rest-since the luncheon had begun. 'Was it because he saw the almost unconscious knitting-together that was happening, the sort of easy falling-back into old roles that seldom happened when old friends got together?' Deku thought so. And he thought, If there are certain preconditions for the belief in magic that makes it possible to use the magic, then maybe those preconditions will inevitably arrange themselves. It was not a very comforting thought. It made him feel like a man strapped to the nosecone of a guided missile.

Beep-beep indeed.

"Well," Kaminari was saying, "I could make this long and sad or I could give you the Blondie and Dagwood comic-strip version, but I'll settle for something in the middle- The year after I graduated from high school I met a girl, and we fell pretty hard for each other. Started living together. She was on the pill at first, but it made her feel sick almost all the time. She talked about getting an IUD, but I wasn't too crazy about that-the horror stories about how they might not be completely safe I heard were... well- even after all I'd seen as a kid they made me shudder."

"We had talked a lot about kids and had pretty much decided we didn't want them even if we decided to legalize the relationship. Irresponsible to bring kids into such a shitty, dangerous, overpopulated world... and blah-blah-blah, babble-babble-babble, let's go out and put a bomb in the men's room of one of the new banks and then come on back to the crashpad and smoke some up and talk about the difference between Capitalism and Death if you see what I mean."

"Or maybe I'm being too hard on both of us. Shit, we were young and reasonably idealistic. The upshot was that I got my wires cut, at the newly built Irusu Hospital. The operation went with no problem and I had no adverse aftereffects. There can be, you know. I had a friend whose balls swelled up to roughly the size of the tires on a 1959 Cadillac. I was gonna give him a pair of suspenders and a couple of barrels for his birthday-sort of a designer truss-but they went down before then."

"How thoughtful," Sero grinned, and Todoroki smiled behind his hand.

Kaminari offered a large, sincere smile. "Thank you, Hanta, for that necessary comment- I sincerely appreciate it."

"You know, sometimes I think you have less tact than Kacchan." Deku smiled softly.

"Haha," Bakugo said mockingly, shooting a look over at Deku. "The word "fuck" was used two hundred and six times in your last completed series. I counted."

"Beep-beep, Kacchan," Deku said solemnly, and the five of them laughed while Todoroki hid. Deku found it nearly impossible to believe they had been talking about dead children less than ten minutes ago.

"Press onward, Denki," Sero yawned. "The hour groweth late."

"Aoi and I lived together for two and a half years," Kaminari went on. "Came really close to getting married twice... but... something... always kept me from fully committing... uh- anyways- As things turned out, I guess we saved ourselves a lot of heartache and all that community-property bullshit by keeping it simple. She got an offer to join a corporate law firm in Tokyo around the same time I got a call saying the owner of the space I wanted to buy for my mechanic business accepted my offer. She told me it was her big chance and I had to be the most insensitive male chauvinist oinker in Japan to be dragging my feet, and furthermore, she'd had it with Irusu anyway. I told her I also had a chance and things weren't that simple. So we thrashed it out, and we trashed each other out, and at the end of all the thrashing Aoi left."

"About two years after that I decided to try and get the vasectomy reversed. No real reason for it, and I knew from the stuff I'd read that the chances were pretty spotty, but I thought what the hell."

"You were seeing someone steadily then?" Deku asked.

"No-that's the funny part of it," Kaminari said, frowning. "I just woke up one day with this... I dunno, this- This need to get it reversed."

"You must have been nuts," Kirishima said. "General anesthetic instead of a local? Surgery? Maybe a week in the hospital afterward?"

"Yeah, the doctor told me all of that stuff," Kaminari replied, waving him off. "And I told him I wanted to go ahead anyway. I don't know why. The doc asked me if I understood the aftermath of the operation was sure to be painful while the result was only going to be a coin-toss at best. I said I did. He said okay, and I asked him when-my attitude being the sooner the better, you know. So he says hold your horses, kid- the first step is to get a sperm sample just to make sure the reversal operation is necessary. I said, "Come on, I had the exam after the vasectomy. It worked." He told me that sometimes the- whatever it's called- reconnected spontaneously. "Well fuck!" I said. "Nobody ever told me that!" He said the chances were very small-infinitesimals, really- that was the exact word he used- "infinitesimal"- but because the operation was so serious, we ought to check it out. So I popped into the men's room with my phone and-"

"-Beep-beep, Denki," Bakugo said, causing Sero and Kirishima to laugh.

"Yeah, you're right," Kaminari said. "The part about the phone was a lie- the signal is way too spotty there. Anyway, the doc called me three days later and asked me which I wanted first, the good news or the bad news."

"Gimme the good news first," I said.

"The good news is the operation won't be necessary," he said. "The bad news is that anybody you've been to bed with over the last two or three years could hit you with a paternity suit pretty much at will."

"Are you saying what I think you're saying?" I asked him.

"I'm telling you that you aren't shooting blanks and haven't been for quite a while now," he said. "Millions of little wigglies in your sperm sample. Your days of going gaily in bareback with no questions asked have temporarily come to an end, Denki."

"I thanked him and hung up. The good news was that only about half of my partners could of gotten pregnant. The bad news was that I was gonna have to call Aoi."

"Denki!" she says to me," and Kaminari's voice suddenly became the voice of this girl Aoi whom none of them had ever met. It was not an imitation or even a likeness, exactly; it was more like an auditory painting. "It's great to hear from you! I got married!"

"Yeah, that's great," I said. "You should have let me know. I would have sent you a blender."

"She goes, "Same old Denki, always full of gags."

"So I said "Sure, same old Denki, always full of gags. By the way, Aoi, you didn't happen to have a kid or anything after you left Irusu, did you? Or maybe an unscheduled d and c, or something?"

"That gag isn't so funny, Denki," she said, and I had a brainwave that she was getting ready to hang up on me, so I told her what happened. She started laughing, only this time it was real hard-she was laughing the way I always used to laugh with you guys like somebody had told her the world's funniest joke. So when she finally starts slowing down I ask her what in God's name is funny. "It's just so wonderful," she said. "This time the joke's on you. After all these years the joke is finally on Funny man Kaminari. How many bastards have you sired since I went to the Capitol, Denki?"

"I take it that means you still haven't experienced the joys of motherhood?" I ask her.

"I'm due in July," she says. "Were there any more questions?"

"Yeah," I go. "When did you change your mind about the immorality of bringing children into such a shitty world?"

"When I finally met a man who wasn't shit," she answers, and hangs up- and I'll admit- that one stung a bit."

Deku began to laugh. He laughed until tears rolled down his cheeks.

"Yeah," Kaminari grinned. "I think she cut it off quick so she'd really get the last word, but she could have hung on the line all day. I know when I've been aced. I went back to the doctor a week later and asked him if he could be a little clearer on the odds against that sort of spontaneous regeneration. He said he'd talked with some of his colleagues about the matter. It turned out that in the three-year period between 2012-14, the hospital here in Irusu had only logged twenty-three reports of spontaneous regeneration. Six of those turned out to be simply botched operations. Six others were either hoaxes or con-guys looking to take a bite out of some doctor's bank account. So... eleven real ones in three years."

"Eleven out of how many?" Todoroki asked.

"Twenty-eight thousand six hundred and eighteen," Kaminari said, eerily calm.

Silence around the table.

"So I went and beat Irish Sweepstakes odds," Kaminari said, "and Lemme tell ya- I was real busy those two years after Aoi left- I'd probably slept with half the town around six months in- and yet- there's still no kid to show for it. How about that one, Ejirou?"

Kirishima began stubbornly: "It still doesn't prove-"

"No," Deku said, "it doesn't prove a thing. But it certainly suggests a link. The question is, what do we do now? Have you thought about that, Kam?"

"I've thought about it, sure," Kaminari said, shrugging a bit "but it was impossible to decide anything until you all got together again and talked, the way you've been doing. There was no way I could predict how this reunion would go until it actually happened."

He paused for a long time, looking thoughtfully at them.

"I've got one idea," he said, "but before I tell you what it is, I think we have to agree on whether or not we're actually gonna do this thing. Do we want to try again? Do we want to try to kill It again? Or do we just divide the check-up six ways and go back to what we were doing?"

"It seems as if-" Todoroki began, but Kaminari shook his head at him. He wasn't done.

-"You have to understand that our chances of success are impossible to predict. I know they're not good, just like I know they would have been a little better if Tenya was here, too. Still not real good, but better. With Tenya gone... well- the circle we made that day is broken. I don't really think we can destroy It or even send It away for a little while, as we did before, with a broken circle. I think It will kill us, one by one by one, and probably in some extremely horrible ways. As children, we made a complete circle in some way I don't understand even now. I think that, if we agree to go ahead, we'll have to try to form a smaller circle- one without Tenya- and- I'll be perfectly honest- I don't know if that can be done. I believe it might be possible to think we'd done it, only to discover-when it was too late-well... that it was too late..." he trailed off and took an awkward slurp from a cocktail near him- having no idea if it actually belonged to him or not.

Kaminari regarded them again, eyes jittery and anxious. He swallowed loudly. "...so I think we need to take a vote. Stay and try it again, or go home. Those are the choices. I did the other thing I promised to do back then. I got you here, but I can't make you stay- it'd be worst that way, even... if you didn't stay because you wanted to, I mean..." he darted his eyes away again, suddenly nervous.

He looked at Deku eventually, and in that moment Deku understood what was coming. He dreaded it, was helpless to stop it, and then, with the same feeling of relief he imagined must come to a suicidal man when he takes his hands off the wheel of the speeding car and simply uses them to cover his eyes, he accepted it. Kaminari had gotten them here, Kaminari had laid it all neatly out for them... and now he was relinquishing the mantle of leadership. He intended that mantle to go back to the person who had worn it in 2005.

"What do you say, Deku?"

"Before I do," Deku started, hesitating a little as he looked at each of them one by one, lingering on Bakugo for only a moment longer than the rest- just long enough to see that ever-familiar spark beginning to ignite in his eyes. "d-does everyone understand the question? You were going to say something, Sho."

Todoroki shook his head.

"All right; I g-guess the question is, do we stay and fight or do we forget the whole thing? Those in favor of staying?"

No one at the table moved at all for perhaps five seconds, and Deku was reminded of auctions he had attended where the price on an item suddenly soared into the stratosphere and those who didn't want to bid anymore almost literally played statues; one was afraid to scratch an itch or wave a fly off the end of one's nose for fear the auctioneer would take it for another million or so yen.

Deku thought of Eri, Eri who had meant no one any harm, who had only wanted to get out of the house after being cooped up all week, Eri with her rosy, round, cheeks, her newspaper boat in one hand, snapping the buckles of her red rubber boots, their mother buttoning up her yellow rain slicker. Eri thanking him... and then bending over and kissing his fever-heated cheek...

"Thanks, Deku. It's a neat boat."

He felt the old rage rise in him, but he was older now and his perspective was wider. It wasn't just Eri now. A horrid slew of names marched through his head: Hado Nejire, found frozen into the ground, Asui Tsuyu, fished out of the ocean and Shibui in pieces, Shimano Katsuma, torn from his tricycle, Hagakure Toru found in the storm drain, Izumi Kota, all the others, and God only knew how many of the missing.

He raised his hand slowly and said, "Let's kill It. This time let's really kill It."

For a moment his hand hung there alone, like the hand of the only kid in class who knows the right answer, the one all the other kids hate. Then Bakugo sighed loud and dramatic, and raised his own hand, and said: "What the hell. It can't be any worse than living next to you for eleven years."

Todoroki raised his hand. His face was as blank as ever, but his eyes shined brightly with tremendous excitement and mind-numbing fear.

Kaminari raised his hand, smiling softly.

Sero raised his.

Kirishima Ejirou sat back in his chair, looking as if he wished he could actually melt into it and thus disappear. His face, suddenly pale and delicate-looking, was miserably afraid as he looked first right and then left and then back to Deku. For a moment Deku felt sure Kirishima was simply going to push back his chair, rise, and bolt from the room without looking back. Then he raised one hand in the air and grasped his inhaler tightly in the other. "It wouldn't be very manly to bail, I guess..." he gave them all a weak, half-hearted, grin.

"Just don't piss yourself," Bakugo mumbled, but actually managed to give Kirishima a legitimate smile. Kirishima's grin grew stronger, and their gazes lingered for just a moment before they both turned away.

"Beep-Beep, Katsuki." Kirishima smiled softly.

—2—

"So what's your one idea, Kam?" Deku asked. The mood had been broken by Natsumi, the hostess, who had come in with a complimentary plate of red-bean Manju desserts. She looked around at the six people who had their hands in the air with a carefully polite lack of curiosity. They lowered them hastily, and no one said anything until she was gone again- all feeling quite awkward-looking it too.

"It's simple enough," Kaminari said finally, his cheeks tainted a light pink, "but it might be pretty damn dangerous, too."

"Spill it," Bakugo sighed, rubbing his eyes. He sounded like he was in pain.

"I think we should split up for the rest of the day. I think each of us ought to go back to the place in Irusu he remembers best... outside the Barrens, that is. I don't think any of us should go there... not yet, anyways... Think of it as... a walk down memory lane."

"Why though?" Sero asked.

"I'm not entirely sure. You have to understand that I'm going pretty much on no sleep and four cans of RedBull-"

"-But you just have a feeling that this is the right thing to do, right?" Bakugo asked.

The others smiled. Kaminari did not; he nodded instead. "That's pretty much it. I'm just going on pure intuition. Using intuition is a hard thing for grownups to do, and that's the main reason I think it might be the right thing for us to do. Kids, after all, operate on it about eighty percent of the time, at least until they're fourteen or so."

"You're talking about plugging back into the situation," Kirishima said.

"I suppose so..." Geez- the roots of his hair really did seem to be getting darker and darker as time went on. It made Kaminari frown. "...Anyway, that's my idea. If no specific place to go comes to you, just follow your feet and see where they take you. Then we meet tonight, at my shop, and talk over what happened."

"If anything happens," Sero said.

"Oh, I think things will."

"What sort of things?" Deku asked.

Kaminari shook his head. "No idea- though I doubt it'll be pleasant. I think it's even possible that one of us may not turn up at my shop tonight. No reason for thinking that... except that intuition thing again."

Silence greeted this.

"Why alone?" Todoroki asked finally, crushing a cigarette on the table, not even bothering to find the ashtray. "If we're supposed to do this as a group, why do you want us to start alone, Denki? Especially if the risk really turns out to be as high as you think it might be?"

"I think I can answer that," Deku said, staring pointedly at the subtle lotus design on Todoroki's gloves.

"Go ahead, Deku," Kaminari nodded, giving him the floor

"...It started alone for each of us," Deku reminisced to Todoroki. "I don't remember everything-not yet-but I sure remember that much. The picture in Eri's room that moved. Sero's balloons that turned to heads. The leper that Ejirou saw under the porch on Neibolt Street. Denki finding the blood on the grass near the Canal in Ukiyo Park. And the bird... there was something about a bird, wasn't there, Denki?"

Kaminari nodded grimly and touched his scarred arm.

"A big bird?" Sero asked, seeming to recall it briefly.

"Yes, but not as friendly as the one on Sesame Street." Kaminari shrugged.

Bakugo snorted a little and brushed the hair out of his eyes. "Fucking... always trying to be the comedian, aren't you? Some things never-"

"Beep-beep, Katsuki," Kaminari said, and Bakugo subsided.

"For you, it was the voice from the pipe and the blood that came out of the drain," Deku said to Todoroki, who nodded solemnly. "And for Kacchan... " But here he paused, puzzled.

"I must be the exception that proves the rule, freckles," Bakugo yawned, kicking back in his chair once again, arms behind his head. "The first time I came in contact with anything that summer that was super fucked- and I mean, really, shitty, crazy, fucked-was in Eri's room, with you. When you and I went back to your house that day and looked at her photo album. The picture from the '30s by the Canal started to move. Do you remember?"

"Yes," Deku said. "I do... But... are you sure there was nothing before that, Kacchan? Nothing at all?"

"I-" Something flickered in Bakugo's eyes, and they went scarily dull, before igniting once more. He said slowly, "Well, there was the day Shigaraki and his friends chased me-before the end of school- and I got away from them in the toy department of Aizawa's Drug Store... I went up to Ukiyo and- and I thought I- I thought I saw something that I convinced myself later had to of been a dream..."

"What was it?" Todoroki asked.

"Nothing," Bakugo said, almost brusquely. "A dream. Really." He looked at Deku. "I don't mind taking a walk, though. It'll kill the afternoon. Views of the old homestead."

"So we're agreed?" Deku asked, running a hand through his hair.

They nodded.

"And we'll meet at Kam's mechanic shop tonight at... when do you suggest, Denki?"

"Seven o'clock. Just bang on the garage door if you're late. I close it up at seven on weekdays."

"Seven it is," Deku said, and let his eyes range soberly over them. "And be careful. You want to remember that none of us really knows what we're d-d-doing. Think of this as reconnaissance. If you should see something, don't fight. Run- I'm talking to you, Kacchan."

"Yeah yeah..."

"Well... we might as well head out now..." Sero said. A small smile pulled up the left corner of his mouth. It was more bitter than amused. "Although I'll be damned if I could tell you right this minute where I'm going to go if the Barrens are out. That was the best of it for me-going down there with you guys." His eyes moved to Kaminari, held there for a moment, moved away. "I can't think of any place else that means very much to me- except for the farm I guess- but it'd be sort of weird for me to just show up there if your mom doesn't own it anymore... Probably I'll just wander around for a couple of hours, looking at buildings and stuff..."

"You'll find a place to go, stringbean," Bakugo said. "Visit some of the other restaurants around here- experience what it would of been like to eat normally as a kid."

Sero laughed, before placing a hand over his stomach. "Actually... I feel sort of sick... must of eaten too much."

"Well, I'm all set," Kirishima said, and moved to stand.

"Wait a sec-!" Todoroki suddenly called as they began to push back from their chairs. "The manju buns... besides their soba, these were always my favorite."

"Didn't you hear lanky-Lou over there?" Bakugo asked, jabbing his thumb at Sero. "He feels sick. I don't want him barfing all over the place and somehow making this day worst by ruining my jacket."

Sero sighed, smiling, looking at the buns. "Oh... for old times sakes... I used to eat these things all the time."

They smiled, shrugged, and Kaminari passed the little plate of steamed buns to Bakugo, who took one and then sent it on around the table. Deku noticed that no one took a bite until each had one; they sat with the little red-bean paste filled balls either in front of them or held in their hands, and even as Todoroki, still smiling softly, picked his up, Deku felt a cry rising in his throat: 'No! No, don't do that, it's part of it, put it back, don't bite into it!'

But it was too late. Todoroki had already sunken his teeth into the dessert, Sero was doing the same to his, Kirishima was tearing his in half, and just before Todoroki's smile turned to a grimace of horror Deku had time to think: 'We knew, somehow Ejirou and I, because neither of us just bit into ours like the other's did. That would have been the normal thing to do, but neither of us did it. Somehow, some pan of us still remembers... everything.'

And he found that insensate underknowledge somehow the most horrifying realization of all; it spoke more eloquently than Kaminari could have about how surely and deeply It had touched each one of them... and how Its touch was still upon them... because, even for those that had bit in, a knowing like flashed in their eyes- they had known as well- just a second shorter then he and Kirishima had.

Thick, dark, clot-filled blood dribbled from Todoroki's mouth and chin onto the dark wood table. The Manju in his hand oozed grossly with it, like an open wound. His eyes widened, and he dropped it onto the table, splattering hot blood onto Bakugo's cheek- who didn't even seem to notice. He was too busy staring horrified at his own bun, which he had chucked half-way across the table in fright- his chest heaving.

An eyeball, with a decent-sized chunk taken out of it, blinked rapidly in the middle of the table, rolling out of Bakugo's manju with a sickeningly wet noise- a milky liquid trailed after it. The same liquid that currently fell from the corner of Bakugo's mouth.

Kirishima Ejirou uttered a strangled cry and pushed himself away from the table with such a sudden look of disgust that he nearly tipped backward. A huge bug, its chitinous carapace an ugly yellow-brown, was pushing its way out of his halved manju like a cocoon. Its obsidian eyes stared blindly forward. As it lurched onto Kirishima's finished dinner plate, thick bean-paste dripped from its wings so tantalizingly slow that Deku felt as if a hundred years had passed when it finally stopped. It was then that he heard a noise so clear and so haunting (which would come back to haunt his dreams when he slept for a while later that afternoon) As it freed itself entirely. The bug rubbed its thin rear legs together, producing a dry reedy hum, and Deku realized it was some sort of terribly mutated cricket. It lumbered to the edge of the dish and tumbled onto the table... still weakly rubbing it's back legs together, making that horrid noise.

"Oh- fuck-!" Bakugo managed in a choked voice. "Oh fuck- Deku- it's an eye- I bit into a goddamn eye!-"

The blood from Todoroki's manju still sludged out, pooling on the table now, filling their private space with the thick scent of iron. Todoroki still looked totally shellshocked, slowly beginning to take off his blood-soaked gloves, revealing missing fingernails on one of his hands.

Sero Hanta coughed the bite he had taken back up into the palm of his hand- eyes watering. He dropped the remaining manju onto the ground, and it rolled underneath the bench. In Sero's hand, Deku could make out two teeth, black and rotten, their roots dark with clotted blood.

Kirishima turned away, his breathing heavy, he looked like he was going to be sick. Sero stared at the teeth in both utter disbelief and a profound sense of knowing.

Kaminari was coughing harshly, and he didn't stop until Deku leaned over and rapped him harshly on the back. He coughed something up onto the table. His breathing thin and ragged, tears of effort falling down his face- and finally, Deku was able to make out what the saliva-drowned objects were: Bird feathers.

"Don't eat feathers, guys..." Kaminari mumbled weakly, wiping at his eyes. "...ugh... They're... -shit- they're very hard to swallow."

Deku looked back at Todoroki and saw, to his own horror, that he was hitching in breath to scream. His eyes were fixed on the thing that had crawled out of Kirishima's torn up bun, the thing that was now kicking its sluggish legs as it lay overturned on the table. That thing had done it- that horrific creature had been the thing that finally broke the ever-stoic Todoroki Shouto.

Deku got moving. He was not thinking, only reacting. 'Intuition,' he thought crazily as he lunged out of his seat and clapped his hand over Todoroki's mouth just before he could utter the scream. 'Here I am, acting on intuition. Denki should be proud of me.'

What came out of Todoroki's mouth was not a scream but a strangled "Mmmmph!"

Kirishima was making those whistling sounds that Deku remembered so well. 'No problem there, a good honk on the old lung-sucker would set Kiri right. Right as fucking rain-' and Deku wondered-not for the first time-why a person had such weird thoughts at times like these.

He glanced around fiercely at the others, and what came out was something else from that summer, something that sounded both impossibly archaic and exactly right: "Quiet! All of you! Not one sound! Just shut up!"

Bakugo wiped a hand across his mouth, ridding it of that murky goop. Kaminari's complexion had gone pale and sickly, but he nodded at Deku, still coughing into his hands every so often. All of them moved away from the table. Deku had not bitten or torn into his own steamed dessert, but now he could see its sides moving slowly in and out-bulge and relax, bulge and relax, bulge and relax-as his own party-favor tried to escape.
"Mmmmmph!" Todoroki said against his hand again, his breath tickling his palm. Deku felt his stomach churn as the blood around Todoroki's mouth and chin began to soak into his palm.

"Shh, Sho," he said softly and took his hand away.

Todoroki's face seemed to be all eyes. His mouth twitched. "Deku... Deku, did you see... " His pretty, mismatched, eyes strayed back to the cricket and then fixed there. The cricket appeared to be dying. Its reflective eyes stared back at him, and tears began to well in Todoroki's eyes.

"Quh-Quh-Quit that," Deku said grimly. "Pull back to the table."

"I can't, Izuku, I can't get near that thing. It's too much- all of this- I can't-"

It was only then that Deku realized what was really happening to Todoroki. It wasn't just the bug- yeah, that had been the catalyst point- but that's not why he was panicking- not really. No, Todoroki Shouto was panicking because every emotion he had hidden behind that blank facade for the past 27 years was boiling over. That bug had broken him- it had cracked through his walls, and once he let that fear through the whole dam had burst.

Todoroki yanked harshly at his own hair, and uttered a shaking sob, his breathing even shallower then Kirishima's. "I can't- Izuku I can't- don't make me do this-"

"You can! You h-have to!" Deku heard footsteps, light and quick, coming up the stairs down the short hall on the other side of the beaded curtain. He looked around at the others. "All of you! Pull up to the table! Talk! Look natural!"

Todoroki looked at him, eyes pleading, and Deku shook his head. He sat down and pulled his chair in, trying not to look at the manju bun on his plate. It had swelled like some unimaginable boil that was filling with pus. And still, it pulsed slowly in and out. 'I could have bitten into that,' he thought faintly, his head beginning to swim a little as his own panic tried to set in.

Kirishima triggered his inhaler down his throat again, gasping mist into his lungs in a long, thin screaming sound. It made everyone at the table jump in their skin. Kirishima didn't bother to look apologetic this time.

Finally, Todoroki closed his eyes, and the table watched, mystified, as the tears began to dry. He took a shaking breath, wiped at his cheeks, and suddenly his expression was placid once more- as if the panic attack hadn't even happened. When all evidence of tears and emotion were wiped from his pretty face, he folded his hands on the table's surface politely- looking extremely proper. His eyes were closed.

"What a freak," Bakugo muttered quietly, but there was an undertone of mild concern that the entire party picked up on.

"So who do you think's going to win the national high school championship?" Deku asked Kaminari, smiling insanely, slamming his elbow on the table and resting his chin on his hand. Natsumi came through the curtain just then, her face politely questioning. Out of the corner of his eye, Deku saw that Todoroki had pulled up to the table again, and was smiling softly, looking as if he were interested in his and Kaminari's conversation 'Good boy, he thought.'

"Ya know... I think Irusu actually might have a shot this year," Kaminari replied simply, kindly.

"Everything all right?" Natsumi asked.

"F-Fine," Deku said. He cocked a thumb in Kirishima's direction. "Our friend had an asthma attack. He took his medication. He's better now."

Natsumi looked at Kirishima, concerned.

"Better," Kirishima wheezed. "Feeling more manly than ever."

"Would you like me to clear the table now?"

"Very shortly," Kaminari said and offered a large false smile, his voice sounding fake and cheery.

"Was it good?" Her eyes surveyed the table again, a bit of doubt overlaying a deep well of serenity. She did not see the cricket, the eye, the teeth, or the way Deku's fortune cookie appeared to be breathing. Her eye similarly passed over the blood pool and the wet feather's on the table without a hint of trouble.

"Everything was very good," Todoroki said, and smiled-a more natural smile than either Deku's or Kaminari's. It seemed to set Natsumi's mind to rest, convinced her that if something had gone wrong in here, it had been the fault of neither Natsumi's service nor her kitchen.

"Did you like the manju?" Natsumi asked. "It was made fresh."

"Well," Bakugo said, "I don't know about the others, but I for one got a real eyeful of filling." Deku kicked him harshly from under the table. Bakugo glared at him fiercely and kicked him right back.

Deku heard a low tearing sound. He looked down at his plate and saw a leg poking blindly out of his bun. It scraped at his plate.

'I could have bitten into that,' he thought again but held onto his smile. "Very fine," he said.

Bakugo was looking at Deku's plate. A great grayish-black fly was slowing birthing itself from the collapsing remains of his dessert. It buzzed weakly. Yellowish goo flowed sluggishly out of the confection in place of bean-paste and puddled on the tablecloth. There was a smell now, the bland thick smell of an infected wound that mixed nauseatingly with the iron already clouding the air.

"Well, if I can help you in no way at this moment..."

"Not right now," Sero said, eyes also on Deku's fly. "A wonderful meal. Most... most unusual."

"I leave you then," she said and bowed out through the beaded curtain. The beads were still swaying and clacking together when all of them pushed away from the table again.

"What is it?" Sero asked huskily, looking sicker than ever.

"A fly," Deku said, running a shaking hand through his hair. "A mutant fly. Courtesy of a writer named George Langla-han, I think. He wrote a story called "The Fly." A movie was made out of it-not a terribly good one. But the story scared the mess out of middle school me. It's up to Its old tricks, I guess. That fly business has been on my mind a lot lately because I've sort of been planning this new series- insecticide, I've been thinking of calling it. I know the title sounds p-pretty stupid, but you see-"

"Excuse me," Todoroki said distantly, his eyes glazed over. His hands still folded politely in front of him. "I have to vomit, I think."

He was gone before any of the others could rise.

Deku shook out his napkin and threw it over the fly, which was the size of a sparrow. Nothing so large could have come from something as small as a manju bun... but it had. It buzzed twice under the napkin and then fell silent.

"Shit..." Kirishima said faintly.

"Let's get the fuck out of here," Kaminari said, standing, not really seeming to know what to do with himself. "We can meet Roki in the lobby."

Todoroki was just coming out of the men's room as they gathered by the cash register. He looked pale but composed, walking with a graceful stride. Kaminari paid the check, and then they all walked out into the dull drizzle.

"Does this change anyone's mind?" Kaminari finally asked. Now that they were all standing, Kaminari's shortness had become extremely apparent.

"I don't think it changes mine," Sero sighed. "I wish it did though."

"No," Kirishima shook his head.

"Of course not," Bakugo said, glaring at everyone as if daring them to challenge him. No one did.

Deku shook his head and then looked at Todoroki.

"I'm staying," Todoroki said. "Deku, what did you mean when you said It's up to Its old tricks?"

"I've been thinking about writing a bug story," he said. "That Langlahan story had woven itself into my thinking. And so I saw a fly. Yours was blood, Sho. Why was blood on your mind?"

"I guess because of the blood from the drain," Todoroki said at once. "The blood that came out of the bathroom drain in the old place, when I was eleven." But was that really it? He didn't really think so. Because what had flashed immediately to mind when the blood spurted into his mouth and dribbled onto his gloves and the table had been the bloody footprint he had left behind him after stepping on the broken perfume bottle. Koji. And

("Shouto, sometimes I worry about you")

his father.

"You got a bug, too," Deku said to Kirishima. "Why?"

"Not just a bug," Kirishima shuddered. "A cricket. There are crickets in our basement. Custom built, 2 million yen, house and we can't get rid of the crickets. They drive us crazy at night. A couple of nights before Denki called, I had a really terrible nightmare. I dreamed I woke up and my bed was full of crickets. I was trying to shoot them with my emergency inhaler, but all it would do when I squeezed it was make crackling noises, and just before I woke up I realized it was full of crickets, too."

"The hostess didn't see any of it," Sero said. He looked at Todoroki. "Like how your brother never saw the blood that came out of the drain, even though it was everywhere."

"Yes," he said.

They stood looking at each other in the fine spring rain.

Kaminari grabbed Kirishima's arm and looked at his Rolex. "There'll be a bus in twenty minutes or so," he said, "or I can take four of you in my car if we cram. Or I can call some cabs. Whatever way you want to do it."

"I think I'm going to walk from here," Deku said, shoving his hands into his jeans pockets. "I don't know where I'm going, but a little fresh air seems like a great idea about now."

"I'm going to call a cab," Sero said.

"I'll share it with you if you'll drop me off downtown," Bakugo said.

"Okay. Where you going?"

Bakugo shrugged. "Not really sure yet."

The others elected to wait for the bus.

"Seven tonight," Kaminari reminded. "And be careful, all of you." They agreed to be careful, although Deku did not know how you could truthfully make a promise like that when dealing with such a formidable array of unknown factors.

He started to say so, then looked at their faces and saw that they knew it already.

He walked away instead, raising one hand briefly in farewell. The misty air felt good against his face. The walk back to town would be a long one, but that was all right. He had a lot to think about. He was glad that the reunion was over and the business had begun.