Irusu (A BNHA x IT AU)

by Seroyonin

It started in the winter of 2004, after the death of Midoriya Izuku's little sister Eri, and it would end almost 16 years later, after Kaminari Denki made his six phone calls. After all, they had all promised that they'd come back. (An "IT" AU with *that* part removed) (Cross posted from Ao3) (Every trigger warning imaginable applies- seriously, proceed with caution)

23. Midoriya Izuku Sees a Ghost

—1—

MAY 30TH, 2020 / IRUSU, JAPAN

Deku did not see Pennywise that afternoon... but he did see a ghost- a real ghost. So Deku believed then, and no subsequent event caused him to change his mind.

He had walked up Shinrinyoku Street and paused for some time by the drain where Eri met her grizzly end on that rainy December day in 2004. He squatted down and peered into the drain, which was cut into the stonework of the curbing. He wiped his sweaty palms on his black vest. His heart was beating hard, but he looked anyway.

"Come out, why don't you," he said in a low voice, and he had the not-quite-mad idea that his voice was floating along dark and dripping passageways, not dying out but continuing onward and onward, feeding on its own echoes, bouncing off moss-covered stone walls and long-dead machinery. He felt it float over still and sullen waters and perhaps issue softly from a hundred different drains in other parts of the city at the same time.

"Come out of there or we'll come in and g-get you."

He waited anxiously for a response, crouched down with his hands between his thighs like a catcher between pitches. There was no response. His breathing stilled, he could feel the hairs on his head twitching.

He was about to stand up when a shadow fell over him.

Deku looked up sharply, almost eagerly, ready for anything... but it was only a little kid, maybe ten, maybe eleven. He was wearing faded cargo shorts which showed off his scabby knees for the world to see. He had a Freeze-Pop in one hand and a Fiberglas skateboard which looked almost as battered as his knees in the other. The Freeze-Pop was a fluorescent orange. The skateboard was bright purple with some sort of fluorescent logo stamped on top.

"You always talk into the sewers, mister?" the boy asked.

"Only in Irusu," Deku answered flatly.

They looked at each other solemnly for a moment and then burst into laughter at the same time.

"I want to ask you a stupid queh-question," Deku said.

"Okay," the kid said, his ebony hair seemed to absorb the afternoon sun.

"You ever h-hear anything down in one of these?"

The kid looked at Deku as though he were speaking in tongues.

"O-Okay," Deku sighed after a moment, "forget I a-asked."

He started to walk away and had gotten maybe twelve steps-he was headed up the hill, vaguely thinking he would take a look at his and Bakugo's old houses- when the kid called, "Mister?"

Deku turned back. He had his vest hooked on his finger and slung over his shoulder. His collar was unbuttoned, his bolo-tie (the metal aiguillette custom-made to resemble the demon that terrorized the children of Usuri in his story "Breathe") loosened. The boy was watching him carefully, as if already regretting his decision to speak further. He broke eye contact, biting his lip, shuffling his feet.

"Yeah."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

"What did it say?"

"I don't know. It talked some foreign language. I heard it coming out of one of those pumpin stations down in the Barrens. One of those pumpin stations, they look like pipes coming out of the ground-"

"I know what you mean. Was it a kid you heard?"

"At first it was a kid, then it sounded like a man." The boy paused. "I was scared. I ran home and told my father. He said maybe it was an echo or something, coming all the way down the pipes from someone's house."

"Do you believe that?"

The boy smiled charmingly. "I did a report on this guy earlier this year- he got music from his teeth. Radio music. His fillings were, like, little radios... I guess if I believed that, I could believe anything."

"Uh-huh," Deku said, blowing a curl out of his eye. "...But did you believe it?"

The boy's smile hesitated... dropped... He reluctantly shook his head.

"Did you ever hear those voices again?"

"Once when I was taking a bath," the boy said, Deku could hear the kids breathing beginning to quicken. "It was a girl's voice. Just crying. No words. I was to scared to pull the plug when I was done because I thought I might, you know, drown her."

Deku nodded again, his expression knowing.

The kid was looking at Deku again, his light-purple irises shining and fascinated. "You know about those voices, mister?"

"I heard them," Deku said, laughing a little, though there wasn't any joy or humor in the sound. "A long, long time ago... Did you know any of the k-kids that have been murdered here?"

The shine went out of the kid's eyes; it was replaced by caution and disquiet. He took a couple of steps backwards. "...My dad says I'm not supposed to talk to strangers... He says anybody could be that killer..." He took yet another additional step away from Deku, moving into the spotty shade of a birch tree that Deku had once driven his bike into fifteen years ago. He had sprained his wrist in that accident, and Bakugo had laughed himself into hysterics.

"Not me, kid," he said. "I've been in Tokyo for the last seven months, and in Kamakura for five years before that... I just got into Irusu yesterday."

"I still don't have to talk to you," the kid replied, his eyes narrowed defensively.

"That's right," Deku agreed, nodding "And I wuh-wuh-won't make you."

The boy paused and then said, "I used hang around with Tokoyami Haruhi some of the time... She was a good friend . I cried," the boy finished matter-of-factly, and slurped down the rest of his Freeze-Pop. As an afterthought he stuck out his tongue, which was temporarily bright orange, and lapped up the sticky mess dripping down his arm.

"Keep away from the sewers and drains," Deku said quietly. "Keep away from empty places and deserted places. Stay out of trainyards. But most of all, stay away from the sewers and the drains."

The shine was back in the kid's plum-colored eyes, and he was quiet for a very long time. Then: "Mister? You want to hear something funny?"

"Sure."

"You know that American movie where the shark ate all the people up?"

"Everyone does. J-J- Jaws"

"Well, I got this friend, you know? His name's Togata Dai... he's super nice, but he isn't that bright... you ever had any friends like that, mister?"

"Yeah." Deku felt himself smile a little. "I have."

"So, you might be able to see where this funny story is going, then... Dai thinks he saw that shark in the Canal. He was up there by himself in Ukiyo Park a couple of weeks ago, and he said he... he saw this fin... He says it was eight or nine feet tall. Just the fin was that tall, you get me? He goes, "That's what killed Haruhi and the other kids. It was Jaws, I know because I saw it." So I go, "That Canal's so polluted nothing could live in it, not even a minnow. And you think you saw Jaws in there. You got toys in the attic, Dai." Dai says it reared right out of the water like it did at the end of that movie and tried to bite him and he just got back in time. Pretty funny, huh, mister?"

"Pretty funny," Deku agreed.

"So, It's like I said- not the brightest... Toys in the attic, right?"

Deku hesitated, and his eyes fixating seriously on the boys own. "...stay away from the Canal too, kid. You follow?"

"You mean you believe it?"

Deku paused. He meant to shrug. Instead he nodded.

The kid let out his breath in a low, hissing rush. He hung his head as if ashamed. "Yeah... Sometimes I think Im the one who has toys in the attic."

"I know what you mean." Deku walked over to the kid, who glanced up at him solemnly but didn't shy away this time. "You're killing your knees on that board."

The kid glanced down at his scabby knees and grinned. "Yeah, I guess so. I blow out sometimes."

"Can I try it?" Deku asked suddenly.

The kid looked at him, gape-mouthed at first, then laughing. "That'd be funny," he said. "I never saw a grownup on a skateboard.'

'I'll give you 50¥," Deku said, not really knowing why he had such a desperate need, he could feel his freckled cheeks burning a little with embarrassment.

"My dad said-"

"-Never take money or c-candy from strangers. Good advice. I'll still give you 50¥. What do you say? Just to the corner of Tuh-Taiko Street."

"Never mind the yen," the kid said. He burst into laughter again-a joyous and uncomplicated sound. A fresh sound that made Deku's heart break. "I don't need your money. I got 200¥ from my mom yesterday. I'm practically rich. I got to see this, though. Just don't blame me if you break something."

"Don't worry," Deku said lightly. "I'm insured."

He turned one of the skateboard's white scuffed wheels with his finger, liking the speedy ease with which it turned- it sounded like there was about a million ball-bearings in there. It was a good sound. It forced through something ancient in Deku's chest. Some desire as warm as want, as lovely as love. He smiled.

"What do you think?" the kid asked.

"I think I'm g-gonna kill myself," Deku said flatly, still smiling, and the kid laughed.

Deku put the skateboard on the sidewalk and put one foot on it. He rolled it back and forth experimentally. The kid watched. In his mind Deku saw himself rolling down Shinrinyoku Street toward Taiko on the kid's barney-purple skateboard, his black vest blowing out behind him, his curly locks becoming messy and windswept, his knees bent in that fragile way snowbunnies bend their knees their first day on the slopes. It was a posture that told you that in their heads they were already falling down. He bet the kid didn't ride the board like that. He bet the kid rode-

(to beat the devil)

-like there was no tomorrow.

That good feeling died out of his chest. He saw, all too clearly, the board going out from under his feet, shooting unencumbered down the street, in a blinding purple streak, a color that only a child could love. He saw himself coming down on his ass, maybe on his back. Slow dissolve to a private room at the Irusu Home Hospital, like the one they had visited Kirishima in after his arm had been broken. Midoriya Izuku in a full body-cast, one leg held up by pullies and wires. A doctor comes in, looks at his chart, looks at him, and then says: "You were guilty of two major lapses, Mr. Midoriya. The first was mismanagement of a skateboard. The second was forgetting that you are now approaching thirty years of age."

He bent, picked the skateboard back up, and handed it back to the kid. "I guess not," he said.

"Chicken," the kid said, not unkindly. His smile was large.

Deku shrugged good-naturedly. "Bok-Bok," he said.

The kid laughed. "Listen, mister, I gotta go home."

"Be careful on that board," Deku said.

"You can't be careful on a skateboard," the kid replied, looking at Deku as if he might be the one with toys in the attic.

"Right," Deku chuckled, shaking his head. "Okay. As we say in the entertainment biz, I hear you. But stay away from drains and sewers... and Ukiyo park if you can... And stay with your friends."

The kid nodded. "I'm right near home."

'So was my sister,' Deku thought, but didn't say.

"It'll be over soon, anyway," Deku told the kid, looking towards the drain solemnly.

'Will it?" the kid asked.

"I think so," Deku sighed.

"Okay. See you later... chicken!"

The kid put one foot on the board and pushed off with the other. Once he was rolling he put the other foot on the board as well and went thundering down the street at what seemed to Deku a suicidal pace. But he rode as Deku had suspected he would: with lazy hipshot grace. Deku felt a sort of parental love for the boy, and exhilaration, and a desire to be the boy, along with an almost suffocating fear. The boy rode as if there were no such things as death or getting older. The boy seemed somehow eternal and ineluctable in his navy-blue cargo shorts and scuffed black keds, his ankles sockless and quite dirty, his medium-length hair flying back behind him.

'Watch out, kid, you're not going to make the corner-' Deku thought, alarmed, but the kid shot his hips to the left like a break-dancer, his toes revolved on the purple board, and he zoomed effortlessly around the corner and onto Taiko Street, simply assuming no one would be there to get in his way. 'Poor Kid,' Deku thought, 'he has no idea it won't always be that way.'

He walked up to his old house but did not stop; he only slowed his walk down to an idler's pace. There were people on the lawn- a mother in a cherry-wood chair beside a matching picnic table, a sleeping baby in her arms, watching two kids, maybe ten and eight, kick around a ball in grass that was still wet from the rain earlier. The younger of the two, a boy, managed to kick the red ball over the older girls head and onto what had once been the Bakugo's driveway, the mother adjusted her sunglasses and called: "Good one, Jun!"

The house was the same light-grey color with its dark grey roofing and balcony-siding. This new family had their clothing hanging from the balcony coming off the master bedroom, just as his own had done... though, his mother's flowerbeds were gone. So, from what he could see, was the cherry-blossom tree with the swing Yagi had built from excess plywood. He remembered the day Eri had jumped off mid-air, trying to copy him and Bakugo, and chipped a tooth. How she had wailed!

At some point during the years between, Bakugo's old place had been painted a pretty sky-blue and the once light-colored shingles had been replaced with chocolate brown tiling. The single-room second story (which, fifteen years ago, had been Bakugo Katsuki's bedroom) had been extended to be an entire floor- no longer would the occupant of Deku's old bedroom be able to slip out his window and jump onto the neighboring roof's to battle pokemon, read manga, or argue about insignificant childhood problems.

He saw these things (the ones there and the ones gone), and thought of walking over to the woman with the sleeping baby in her arms. He thought of saying "Hello, my name is Midoriya Izuku. I used to live here." And the woman saying, "That's nice." What else could there be? Could he ask her if the face he had carved carefully into one of the steps-the face he and Eri sometimes used to throw things at- when he was eight was still there? Could he ask her if her kids sometimes slept on the screened-in back porch when the summer nights were especially hot, talking together in low tones as they watched heat-lightning dance on the horizon? He supposed he might be able to ask some of those things, but he felt he would stutter quite badly if he tried to be charming... and did he really want to know the answers to any of those questions? After Eri died it had become a sad, painful, house, and whatever he had come back to Irusu for was not here.

So he went on to the corner and turned right, not looking back.

Soon he was on Taiko Street, headed back downtown. He paused for awhile at the fence which bordered the sidewalk, looking down into the Barrens. The fence was the same, rickety wood covered with fading whitewash, and the Barrens looked the same... wilder, if anything. The only differences he could see were that the dirty mound of dirt which had always marked the town dump was gone (the dump had been replaced with an updated waste-treatment plant), and a long overpass marched across the tangled greenery now-the turnpike extension. Everything else was so similar that he might last have seen it the previous summer: weeds and bushes sloping down to that flat marshy area on the left and to dense copses of junky-scrubby trees on the right. He could see the stands of what they had called bamboo, the silvery-white stalks twelve and fourteen feet high. He remembered that Sero had once tried to smoke some of it, claiming it was like the stuff the teenagers smoked behind the Aladdin and could get you high. That hadn't been the case.

Deku could hear the trickle of water running in many small streams, could see the sun heliographing off the broader expanse of the Shibui. And the smell was the same, even with the dump gone. The heavy perfume of growing things at the height of their spring strut did not quite mask the smell of waste and human offal. It was faint but unmistakable. A smell of corruption; a whiff of the underside.

'That's where it ended before, and that's where it's going to end this time,' Deku thought with a shiver. '...In there... in the tunnels under the city.'

He stood awhile longer, convinced that he must see something-some manifestation-of the evil he had come back to Irusu to fight. The evil they had all promised to destroy that summer in 2005- but there was nothing. He heard water running, a springlike and vital sound that reminded him of the dam they had built down there. He could see trees and bushes ruffling in the faint breeze. There was nothing else. No sign. He walked on, dusting a faint whitewash stain from his hands as he went.

...He kept heading downtown, half-remembering, half-dreaming, and here was another kid- this one a little girl of about ten in military green high-waisted corduroy pants and a faded pink tank-top. She was bouncing a ball with one hand and holding a Barbie doll by its synthetic blonde hair in the other.

"Hey!" Deku called.

She looked up. "What!"

"What's the best store in Irusu?"

She thought about it, her nose scrunching when her light eyebrows furrowed. "...For me? or for anyone?'

"For you," Deku said.

"Secondhand Rose, Secondhand Clothes," she said with no hesitation whatsoever.

"Secondhand Rose- what?" Deku asked.

"Yeah?" She ceased the basketballs bouncing, and tucked it under her skinny arm.

"I mean, is that a store name?"

"Sure," she said, looking at Deku as though he were inept. "secondhand Rose, Secondhand Clothes. My mom says it's a junkshop, but I like it. They have old things. Like records you never heard of. Also postcards. It smells like a attic. I have to go home now. Bye."

She turned and began her journey up her long, steep, driveway not looking back, still holding the Barbie by her hair.

"Hey!" he shouted after her.

She looked back whimsically. "Wuh?"

"The store! Where is it?"

She looked back over her shoulder and said, "Just make your way to Ori, It's at the bottom of Up-Mile Hill."

Deku felt that sense of the past folding in on itself, folding in on him. He hadn't meant to ask that little girl anything; the question had popped out of his mouth like a cork flying from the neck of a champagne bottle.

He made his way to the base of Up-Mile Hill. The library and community home were both on the other side. He passed the Shijima as he walked along, as well as Irusu Elementary school where he had spent a decent chunk of his professional school life. He saw the bridge where he used to store his bike under- and where Sero Hanta had had his very first encounter with Pennywise the clown. There was a drive-in bank and a bakery where Eagle Beef and Pork had been. And, here, where 'ATSUSHI & SON'S AUTO SHOP' had once stood, was a sign painted in oldfashioned letters which read, just as the girl with the doll had said, SECONDHAND ROSE, SECONDHAND CLOTHES. The red brick had been painted a dingy yellow, and the building itself looked extremely run down- a structure Ochako's father would call "both an eye-sore and a safety hazard."

Deku walked slowly toward it, feeling that sense of deja vu settle over his being again. Later he told the others he knew what ghost he was going to see before he actually saw it.

The show-window of Secondhand Rose, Secondhand Clothes was more than dingy; it was filthy. An eye-sore indeed. The items were strewn in rickrack profusion, heaped aimlessly here, there, and everywhere. Dresses slumped off coathangers. Guitars hung from their necks like executed criminals. There was a box of novelty keychains- 5¥ APIECE, the sign read. TWELVE FOR 55¥. There were kids' outfits and dreadful-looking shoes with a card in front of them which read SECONDS, BUT NOT BAD! 300¥ A PAIR. There were two TVs that looked blind. A third was casting bleared images of some trivia game show where the contestants were punished for answering wrong out toward the street. A box of old manga and graphic novels, most with stripped covers ('2 FOR 10¥, 10 FOR 100¥ more inside, SOME "HOT') sat atop a large radio with a filthy white plastic case and a tuning dial as big as an alarm clock. A shabbily built shelving unit spilling over with used copies of video games, DVD's, and VHS tapes (VIDEO GAMES 15¥ 2 FOR 30¥, DVD's 10¥, 2 FOR 20¥, VHS TAPES FOR 5¥, 5 FOR 25¥) was shoved into the corner of the display, way to large and clunky for the cramped space.

All of these things Deku saw as a chaotic background to the thing his eyes had fixed upon immediately. He stood staring at it with wide unbelieving eyes. Gooseflesh ran madly up and down his body. His forehead was hot, his hands cold, and for a moment it seemed that all the doors inside would swing wide and he would remember everything.

Silver was in the righthand window.

His kickstand was still gone and rust had flowered on the front and back fenders, but he could see the "Deku" that Bakugo Katsuki had scratched into the metal seat support with his father's car keys one winter- it had faded and been painted over a couple of times, but it was just visible under the peeling paint job. The back wheel where he had often ridden his friends double was flat and sagging, causing the giant bike to lean. At some point someone had covered the seat with imitation tiger-skin which was now rubbed and frayed to a point where the stripes were almost indistinguishable.

Silver.

Deku raised a cold and numb hand to wipe away the tear that was running slowly down his cheek. He felt his throat tighten, and was worried he'd begin to sob if he didn't go inside soon.

The atmosphere of Secondhand Rose, Secondhand Clothes was musty with age. It was, as the girl had said, an attic smell-but not a good smell, as some attic smells are. This was not the smell of lemon-scented pledge rubbed lovingly across the surface of old tables or of ancient plush and velvet. In here was a smell of rotting book-bindings, dirty vinyl cushions that had been half-cooked in the hot suns of summers past- dust and rat droppings.

From the TV in display window the audience applauded a correct answer. Competing with them from somewhere in the back was the radio voice of a disc jockey identifying himself as "Yamada Hazashi" promising their usual host would be back soon- as well as free tickets to a King Gnu concert to the caller who could give the name of the voice actress who voiced 'Tsubaki Sawabe' in the anime 'Your lie in April.' Deku knew- it had been his own wife. The first role she had booked after they had gotten married, the first credits to list her as Midoriya Ochako instead of Uraraka Ochako- but he didn't want the tickets. The radio was sitting on a high shelf amid a number of nineteenth-century portraits. Below it and them sat the proprietor, a woman of perhaps forty who was wearing sweatpants and a Hokkaido Consadole jersey. Her pedicured feet were cocked up on her desk, which was piled high with ledgers and dominated by an ancient scrolled cash register. She was reading a paperback novel which Deku thought had never been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. It was called Construction Site Studs. On the floor in front of the desk was a barber pole, its stripe revolving up and up into infinity. Its frayed cord wound across the floor to a baseboard plug like a tired snake. The sign in front of it read: A DYEING BREED! 2500¥.

When the bell over the door jingled, the woman behind the desk marked her place with a matchbook cover and looked up. "Can I help you?"

"Yes," Deku said, and opened his mouth to ask about the bike in the window. But before he could speak, his mind was suddenly filled with a single haunting sentence, words that drove away all other thought:

'He thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghosts.'

-'What the hell?'

(thrusts)

"Looking for anything in particular?" the proprietor asked. Her voice was polite enough, but she was looking at Deku closely, almost wearily.

'She's looking at me,' Deku thought, amused in spite of his distress, 'as if she thinks I've been smoking some of that stuff that kids behind the Aladdin used to.'

"Yes, I was ih-ih-interested ih-in-"

(his fists against the posts)

"-in that puh-puh-post-"

"The barber pole, you mean?" The woman's eyes now showed Deku something which, even in his present confused and almost distressed state, he remembered and hated from his childhood: the anxiety of a man or woman who must listen to a stutterer, the urge to jump in quickly and finish the thought, thus shutting the poor bastard up. 'But I don't stutter! I beat it! I DON'T FUCKING STUTTER! I-'

(and still insists)

-The words were so clear in his mind that it seemed someone else must be talking in, he was like a man possessed by demons- a man invaded by some presence from Outside. And yet he recognized the voice and knew it was his own. He felt sweat pop out warmly on his face, and all his nerves began to tingle at once, his palms in particular burning fiery hot.

"I could give you-

(he sees the ghosts)

-a deal on that post," the woman was saying. "Tell you the truth, I can't move it at two-fifty. I'd give it to you for one seventy-five, how's that? It's the only real antique in the place."

(post)

"-POLE," Deku almost screamed, and the proprietor recoiled a little. Breathing heavily, he wiped the spittle from his chin. "-Not the pole I'm interested in."

"Are you okay, mister?" the proprietor asked. Her mostly polite tone contradicting the expression of hard wariness in her eyes, and Deku saw her left hand leave the desk. He knew, with a flash of something that was really more inductive reasoning than intuition that there was an open drawer below Deku's own sight-line, and that the woman had almost surely put her prettily manicured hands on a weapon of some sort. She was maybe worried about robbery; more likely she was just worried. After all, Deku could see a photo of what looked to be her and her wife on their wedding day on the desktop in the background, and this was the town where they had harassed Kaminari Denki to the point where he had to be taken out of public schooling and, even worst, had given Auyoma Yuga a terminal bath a mere few months before.

(he thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghosts)

...It drove out all thought; it was like being insane. Where had it come from?

(he thrusts)

Repeating and repeating.

With a sudden, monumental naming of effort, Deku attacked it. He did this by forcing his mind to translate the alien sentence into French. It was the same way he had beaten the stutter as a teenager. As the words marched across his field of thought, he changed them... and suddenly he felt the grip of the stutter loosen.

He realized that the proprietor had been saying something.

"P-P-Pardon me?"

"I said if you're going to have a fit, take it out on the street. I don't need shit like that in here."

Deku drew in a deep breath.

"Let's start o-over," he said. "Pretend I just came i-in."

"...Okay," she said, agreeably enough. "You just came in. Now what?"

"The buh-bike in the window," Deku said, trying to breathe. "How much do you want for the bike?"

"I'd take 2000¥." She sounded easier now, but her left hand still hadn't come back into view. "I think it was a Schwinn at one time, but it's a mongrel now." Her eyes crawled up and down Deku's form. "...Big bike. You could ride it yourself."

Thinking of the ebony boy's purple skateboard, Deku laughed a little and said, "I think my bike-riding days are o-o-over."

The proprietor shrugged. Her left hand finally came up again, nails clicking against the butcher block counter. "Got a kid?"

"Y-Yes."

"How old are they?"

"Eh-Eh-Eleven."

"Big bike for an eleven-year-old."

"Will you take a check?"

"Long as it's no more than ten bucks over the amount of the purchase."

"I can give you the two-thousand," Deku said. "Mind if I make a phone call?"

"Go ahead." She shrugged, and began to thumb through her book once more.

Deku, after a quick online search, called the business line for 'Chargebolt: Auto Body & Repair'. After two or three rings Kaminari answered: "Sup? What can I do for you today-"

"-Denki, it's me, Deku."

There was a pause, Deku could hear a song with a heavy bass echoing off Kaminari's walls, muffled only a little through the phone line. "Where are you, Deku?" he asked, and then, sounding nervous: "Are you alright?"

"I'm fine. Have you seen any of the others?"

"No. We'll see them tonight." There was another brief pause. "...Hopefully... What can I do you for, Deku?"

"I'm buying a bike," Deku said calmly. "I wondered if I could wheel it up to your house... or to the shop, if you prefer. Do you have a garage or something I could store it in?"

There was silence.

"Kam? Are you-"

"I'm here," Kaminari said. "...Is it Silver?"

Deku looked at the proprietor. She was still reading her book... or maybe just looking at it and listening carefully.

"Yes," he said, his voice coming out thinly and out of breath. "Yes... it's silver."

"Where are you?"

"It's called Secondhand Rose, Secondhand Clothes."

"Alright," Kaminari said, and Deku could hear the clanking of metal tools being set down on a hard surface. "My place is 61 Omagari Drive. You'd want to head towards my family's old farm-"

"-I can find it."

"All right, I'll meet you there. Want some dinner?'

"That would be nice. Can you get off work?"

"No problem, might piss a few people off, but... Lemme just make a few calls..." Kaminari hesitated again. "... An old flame of mine, Kiku, came in about thirty minutes or so ago to pick up her car... she was a little late, said it was because "famous architect Sero Hanta" had dropped by the library, and seemed to be in the midst of some sort of panic attack."

Deku felt a cold chill make it's way up his spine, he pinched the bridge of his nose. "Shit..."

"Uh-huh... And the bike. That's part of it, too, isn't it?"

"Shouldn't dwell on it," Deku said, looking back towards proprietor, who still appeared to be absorbed in her book.

"I'll see you at my place," Kaminari said. "61. Don't forget."

"I won't. Thank you, Denki."

"No problem." Kaminari sighed through the phone, and Deku heard the music get cut off mid verse. "Be careful."

"You too." Deku hung up. The woman promptly closed her book again. "Got you some storage space?"

"Yeah." Deku took out his checkbook and signed away 2000¥. The woman examined the two signatures with a care that, in less distracted mental circumstances, Deku would have found rather insulting.

At last the proprietor scribbled a bill of sale and popped the check into her old cash register. She got up, long hair swishing prettily, and put her hands on the small of her back and stretched, then walked to the front of the store. She picked her way around the heaps of junk and almost-junk merchandise with an absent delicacy Deku found fascinating.

She lifted the bike, swung it around, and rolled it to the edge of the display space. Deku laid hold of the handlebars to help her, and as he did another shudder whipped through him. Silver. Again. It was Silver in his hands and-

(he thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghosts)

-he had to force the thought away because it made him feel faint and strange.

"That back tire's a little soft," the proprietor said (it was, in fact, as flat as a pancake). The front tire was up, but so bald the cord was showing through in places.

"No problem," Deku said.

"You can handle it from here?"

(I used to be able to handle it just fine; now I don't know)

"I guess so," Deku shrugged. "Thanks."

"Sure. And if you want to talk about that barber pole, come back."

The woman held the door for him. Deku walked the bike out, turned left, and started toward Omagari Drive. People glanced with amusement and curiosity at the 5'11 man in the expensive vest and custom bolo-tie pushing the huge bike with the flat rear tire and peeling, rusty, body- but Deku hardly noticed them. He was marvelling at how well his grownup hands still fitted the rubber handgrips, was remembering how he had always meant to knot some thin strips of plastic, different colors, into the holes in each grip so they would flutter in the wind. Remembering how this bike had originally belonged to his step-father, before being promised to him (when he was old enough to handle it) to gain his favor after he and his mother's relationship had become serious.

He stopped at the corner of Tsuada Lane and Omagari Drive, outside of a Kinokuniya. He leaned the bike against the building long enough to take off his bolo and unbutton his vest and shirt even more. Pushing a bike with a flat tire, especially one that large, was hard work, and the late afternoon sun wasn't helping matters. He wrapped the tie around one of the handles and went on.

'Chain's rusty,' he thought.
'Whoever had it didn't take very good care of-'

(him)

'-it.'

He stopped for a moment, frowning, trying to remember just what had happened to Silver. Had he sold it? Given it away? Lost it, perhaps? He couldn't remember. Instead, that idiotic sentence-

(his fists against the posts and still insists)

-resurfaced, as strange and out of place as an easy chair on a battlefield, a record-player in a fireplace, a row of pencils protruding from a cement sidewalk.

Deku shook his head. The sentence broke up and dispersed like smoke. He pushed Silver on to Kaminari's place.

—2—

Kaminari Denki made a connection that afternoon.

But first he made dinner-hamburg-steak with sauteed onions and gravy with a side of steamed vegetables. They had finished working on Silver by then and were more than ready to eat.

The house was a pretty (but tiny) cabin-like number with a front made up almost completely of windows. The roof was a dark wood, the paneling outside was a cream color, and it was situated on a half of acre of land. Kaminari's mother, Kaori, had bought the home after selling their farm and gifted it to Kaminari when she had moved out of Irusu. Kaminari had just been arriving when Deku pushed Silver up Omagari Drive. He was behind the wheel of an old 1996 Jeep he'd fixed up some years ago and Deku remembered the fact Kaminari had pointed out at the reunion lunch: the six members of the Losers' Club who left Irusu had gotten ahead in life. Kaminari had stayed behind.

Deku rolled Silver into Kaminari's unattached garage, which was floored with oiled dirt and was every bit as messy and unorganized as Deku imagined it would be. Tools, despite having pegs to hang from, were scattered across every surface and even across the floor. A partially disassembled tractor engine sat on a workbench. Boxes of old movies, manga, and school year books littered the shelves in no real order- and for a brief moment- Deku found himself thinking of how Iida would of loved to reorganize this mess.

Shaking his head, heart aching, Deku leaned the bike against the wall. The two of them looked at it without speaking for a bit, hands in pockets.

"It's Silver, alright," Kaminari said at last, sounding both nervous and amused. "I thought you might have been wrong... But it's him... What are you going to do with 'em?"

Deku puffed out his cheeks, before slowly letting out the air. "Geez... I don't even know... Have you got a bicycle pump?"

"Yeah. I think I've got a tire-patching kit, too. Are those tubeless tires?"

"They always were." Deku bent down to look at the flat tire. "Yeah. Tubeless."

"Getting ready to ride it again?"

"Of c-course not," Deku said sharply. "I just don't like to see it si-hi-hitting there on a flat."

"Whatever you say, Deku." Kaminari called, grinning devilishly, and walking backwards towards a box labeled 'STUFF I MIGHT USE' "You're the boss."

Deku looked up him, annoyed, but Kaminari had already turned his back on him and was crouching down to peer into the box. A few moments later, after dumping out half the boxes contents onto the ground, he produced a tin tire-patching kit with a small triumphant cheer. He stood up quickly, hitting his head on a countertop, and grabbed the tire-pump that was shoved into a corner of the room. He handed it to Deku, lop-sided grin brightening his face. Deku looked at the tin curiously. It was as he remembered such things from his childhood: a small tin box of about the same size and shape as those kept by men who roll their own cigarettes, except the top was bright and pebbled-you used it for roughing the rubber around the hole before you put on the patch. The box looked brand-new, and there was a price sticker on it that said 70¥.

"You didn't just have this hanging around," Deku said quietly. It wasn't a question.

"No," Kaminari agreed, his smile slipped for only a moment before he reigned it back. "I bought it last week. Out at the mall, as a matter of fact.'

"You've got a bike of your own?"

"Nope." Kaminari said, meeting his eyes.

"...You just happened to buy this kit."

"Just got the urge," Kaminar agreed, his eyes still on Deku's. "Woke up thinking it might come in handy. The thought kept coming back all day. So... I got the kit. And here you are to use it."

"Here I am to use it," Deku nodded. "But like they say on the soaps, what does it all mean, dear?"

"Ask the others," Kaminari said. "Tonight."

"Will they all be there, do you think?"

"I don't know, Deku." He paused, shrugging, and then added: "I think there's a chance that all of them won't be. One or two of them may decide to just creep out of town. Or..." He trailed off.

"What do we do if that happens?"

"I dunno." Kaminari pointed to the tire-patching kit. "My job was to call you all back, not keep you all here... now, I paid 70¥ for that thing. Are you going to do something with it or just look at it?"

Deku untied his bolo tie from the handle and hung it carefully on an abandoned wallpeg. Then he turned Silver upside down so that he rested on his seat and began to carefully rotate the rear tire. He didn't like the rusty way the axle squeaked, and remembered the almost silent click of the ball-bearings in the kid's skateboard.

"A little 3-in-1 oil will fix that." Kaminari commented, leaning against the far wall, watching as the sky began to turn orange. "Wouldn't hurt to oil the chain, either. It's rusty as hell..."

'...And cards.' Deku thought, nodding to himself. 'It needs playing cards on the spokes. The good ones. It wouldn't be silver without cards... Cards, with the celluloid coating that made them so stiff and so slippery that the first time you tried to shuffle them they always sprayed all over the floor. 'I used to use duplicate Pokemon cards, but playing cards would do just as well... playing cards, sure, and clothespins to hold them-'

He stopped, suddenly cold.

'What in the name of anything and everything are you thinking of?'

"Something wrong, Deku?" Kaminari asked softly.

"Nothing." His long fingers touched something small and round and hard embedded into the rear wheel. He got his nails under it and pulled. A small tack came out of the tire. "Here's the cuh-cuh-culprit," he said, and it rose in his mind again, strange, unbidden, and powerful: 'He thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghosts.' But this time the voice, his voice, was followed by his mother's voice, saying: "Try again, Izuku. You almost had it that time." And the distant sound of a commercial: "Howl's moving Castle, now on DVD and Blue-ray!'

He shivered.

(the posts)

He shook his head. 'I couldn't say that without stuttering even now,' he thought, and- for just a fleeting moment- he felt that he was on the edge of understanding it all...

...Then it was gone.

He opened the tire-patching kit and went to work. It took a long time to get it just right. Kaminari bent over his work bench, fiddling almost unconsciously with the tractor engine, in a bar of orange sunset. The sleeves of his sweater were rolled up, his mechanic's jumper and boots had been traded for a pair of high-waisted corduroy's and faded yellow and black Chuck Taylor's. He was whistling a tune which Deku eventually identified as "Reboot" By Miwa.

While he waited for the tire cement to set, Deku had- 'just for something to do,' he told himself- oiled Silver's chain, sprocket, and axles. It didn't make the bike look any better, but when he spun the tires he found that the squeak was gone, and that was satisfying. Silver never would have won any beauty-contests anyway. His one virtue was that he could go like a blue streak.

By then, he had nearly forgotten Kaminari was there; he had become completely absorbed in small yet utterly satisfying acts of maintenance. He screwed the nozzle of the pump onto the rear tire's valve and watched the tire fatten, shooting for the right pressure by pure guess-work. He was pleased to see that the patch was holding nicely.

When he thought he had it right, he unscrewed the pump-nozzle and was about to turn Silver over when he heard the rapid snap-flutter of playing cards behind him. He whirled, almost knocking Silver over.

Kaminari was standing there with a deck of blue-backed playing cards in one hand. "Want these?"

Deku let out a long, shaky sigh. "You've got clothespins, too, I suppose?"

Kaminari took four from the flap pocket of his pants and held them out.

"Just happened to have them around, I suh-huppose?"

"Yeah, something like that," Kaminari smiled.

Deku took the cards and tried to shuffle them. His hands shook and the cards sprayed out of his hands. They went everywhere... but only two landed face-up. Deku looked at them, then up at Kaminari. Kaminari's gaze was frozen on the littered playing cards. His lips had pulled back from his teeth in a startled grimace.

The two up cards were both the ace of spades.

"That's impossible," Kaminari finally breathed. "I just opened that deck. Look." He pointed at the cellophane wrapper crumpled up on the workbench, "How can one deck of cards have two aces of spades?"

Deku squatted down and picked them up. "How can you spray a deck of cards all over the floor and have only two of them land face up?" he asked. "That's an even better que-"

He turned the aces over, looked, and then showed them to Kaminari. One of them was a blueback, the other a redback. "Good god, Denki, what have you got us into?"

"What are you going to do with those?" Kaminari asked in a numb voice.

"Put them on my bike." Deku shrugged, and suddenly he began to laugh. "That's what I'm supposed to do, isn't it? If there are certain preconditions for the use of magic, those preconditions will inevitably arrange themselves. Right?"

Kaminari didn't reply. He watched as Deku went to Silver's rear wheel and attached the playing cards. His hands were still shaking and it took awhile, but he finally got it done, drew in one tight breath, held it, and spun the rear wheel. The playing cards machine-gunned loudly against the spokes in the garage's silence.

"Come on," Kaminari said softly, standing at Deku's side now. He weakly tugged at the back of Deku's vest. "Come on in, Deku. I'll make us something to eat."

They had scarfed the hamburg-steaks down in record time and now sat drinking beer, watching dark begin to unfold from Kaminari's quaint (and charmingly messy) kitchen.

More than once, Deku found his eyes drifting to the photo's taped to Kaminari's small white fridge. In one, a very young Kaminari Denki and Sero Hanta were riding double on the back of a black and white horse. In another, Kaminari's mother Kaori was dressed in a beautiful sundress, standing ankle-deep in the ocean, smiling over her shoulder, her long golden hair blowing in the breeze. In yet another one, a high school-aged Kaminari was on stage somewhere Deku couldn't place, playing bass guitar and singing into a microphone to a decent-sized crowd.

But there was a forth photo on that fridge: a photo which made his mind stir, his heart ache, and his palms burn. A photo that made black dots frame his peripherals, and tears begin to needle at the back of his eyes.

The photo featured all seven members of the loser's club: They were in the barrens, in the exact spot where Sero and Shigaraki Tomura had fallen that day. Deku himself was at the front, holding the camera with a large grin on his eleven-year old freckled face and dark bags under his forest-green eyes. Behind him and to the right, rail-thin Sero Hanta with athletic's tape wrapped around his forearm smiled widely. Kaminari, looking even tinier than Deku had remembered him being, was on his best-friends shoulders with that same lop-sided grin he sported to this day, flashing two peace-signs. Behind himself and to the left, Todoroki Shouto in his brother's oversized jacket smiled shyly at the lens. A little behind Todoroki and even farther left, Iida Tenya and Kirishima Ejirou (the latter still having his natural hair color and sporting a ruby red cast on his arm) were stuck between trying to smile at the camera, and keeping an irritated Bakugo Katsuki from walking out of frame.

'Good god...' Deku moaned in his mind, eyes impossibly wide. 'We were children... honest to god children...'

(He thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghosts)

Eventually, Deku was able to tear his eyes away from the horrifying window into the past. He took out his wallet, found someone's business card, and wrote upon it the sentence that had plagued him ever since he had seen Silver in the window of Secondhand Rose, Secondhand Clothes. He showed it to Kaminari, who read it carefully, lips pursed.

"Does it mean anything to you?" Deku asked hopefully.

"He thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghosts." Kaminari nodded, lips quirking into a small smile. "Yeah, I know what that is."

"Well then, tell me. Or are you going to give me some more cuh-cuh-crap about figuring it out for myself?"

"No," Kaminari laughed, "in this case I think it's okay to tell you. It's a tongue-twister that became a speech exercise for lispers and stutterers. Your mother kept trying to get you to say it that summer. You used to go around mumbling it to yourself."

"I did?" Deku asked, and then, slowly, answering his own question: "...I did..."

"You must have wanted to please her very much."

Deku, who suddenly felt he might cry again, only nodded. He didn't trust himself to speak.

"You never made it," Kaminari told him, sounding apologetic. "I remember that. You tried like hell but you were never quite able to say it."

"But I did say it," Deku replied, feeling a strong since of certainty. "At least once. I know I did."

"When?"

Deku brought his fist down on the counter hard enough to hurt, his entire being suddenly filled to the brim with fury. "I DON'T REMEMBER!" he shouted. And then, dully, he said it again: "...I-I... I just don't remember..."

Kaminari didn't even flinch at the outburst, instead, simply sighed sadly and patting the green-haired male's head. "You will... eventually... maybe..."

Deku only groaned.