i.

Over the first three or four days in Kagoshima, Mirio rotated through a restless routine without once seeing the city. By day, he flitted with lively energies from meeting to meeting to lunch to meeting – a lukewarm blur of corporate matters and the occasional shot of PR for the Nighteye Agency. By the end of the day, he bided his time by getting to know every inch of his hotel room like a prisoner would get to know their cell. Room service trays with rice bowls and miso. Paper shoji doors and a futon of marvelous comfort. Sakura blossoms in the tokonoma.

Besides spending an unreasonable amount of time flicking through the pay-for-view channels and sipping on shochu from the hotel's very obliging owner, Mirio didn't do much else for the simple fact that after rushing between businesses all day, he was exhausted. Exhausted physically, of course. But also exhausted by the very idea that this would be his life for the next three months: hustling and bustling with Agencies without feeling like he was really achieving all that much.

He didn't complain. He liked the work he did for the Nighteye Agency – and all things considered, he shouldered too much of a debt to Sir Nighteye himself to really say anything otherwise.

But compared to the work he'd dreamed of doing as a child – his cape soaring mighty and red behind him, damsels in his arms and explosions in the background (hah!) – the corporate side of things had always managed to seem rather… bland. Rather passionless. Even after thirteen years. However, pushing through with a smile, Mirio happened to be tremendously good at his job and for the most part enjoyed the stability it allowed him.

More than that, he was glad Sir Nighteye continued to be his mentor and, dare he say it, his friend.

"You should not overwork yourself, Togata-san," Nighteye said that night over the phone. "Go sightseeing. Do something to relax a little."

"Ai, ai, Captain!" Mirio replied, and drank from his shochu. "But don't worry about me – I wouldn't want to give you grey hairs!"

Nighteye made a smooth sort of grunt, and in the background Mirio could make out the popping sound of Bubble Girl – who'd opened her own agency but continued to spend a lot of her time, especially her nighttime hours, at Nighteye's side – laughing heartily. "Too late!" she cried.

Nighteye had turned fifty one little over two months before, and was wildly unimpressed with the new sheen of silvery-white which had begun to rear itself upon his head. And Mirio and Bubble Girl took great pains to tease him about it, about how he combed his hair constantly in a bid to hide the pale strands, about the box of green dye they'd once found in his office. Mirio himself would be turning thirty one in July – and for the most part, the teasing happened to be an effective way of hiding his own looming fear of grey hairs and wrinkles.

"There's a ferry to Sakurajima tomorrow morning. I'm booking you a ticket," Nighteye said, and somehow Mirio didn't doubt him. "You could hike up the volcano."

"No need, no need," Mirio chuckled. "I thought I might head to the market at the bay in the morning and find myself some local cuisine."

"If I have to call the inn to find that you ordered room service for breakfast and spent your time watching more figure skating on TV–"

"I'll even send you photos, Sir!"

"Mmm."

They said goodnight, and Mirio stewed over his dinner of fish cakes and pickles. Outside, crickets chirped shrilly, and it was possible to hear the faint flush of the bay's unsettled waters. It was a warm night, hot for early spring, and the potent mix of alcohol and a tropical breeze made Mirio lethargic as he lazed about the sitting cushions by the television. The television on which, in shimmering silvers of ice and glitter, the world figure skating championship was being channeled.

Mirio hadn't really planned on going to the market, though indeed there was about the city a tempting air of activity and cheer as the sakura came into bloom: school children clattered about the sidewalks in the morning, uniforms fresh and dark as they went flying towards their first days of school; pubs along the streets brimmed with golden light falling about in smoky sheens in the evenings. This was Mirio's first time in Kagoshima – his first time in the entirety of Kyushu, actually – and honestly, it did seem a waste to bask away his days in the minimalist, traditional glory of his hotel room.

He smiled, sipping again at the bitter taste of his drink, and heaved a full-bodied sigh. A new place to know, new faces to see. Tomorrow was his day off, and it didn't seem the worst idea in the world to start it early with a little amble down to the market. A light bite to eat. A little orienteering. It couldn't hurt, and Mirio could be back to his room in no time to watch the figure skating's quarter finals.

The city began its bustle early, and at the hour Mirio left there was already a full bloom of people in the street.

There were even more of them at the market, where the smells of blossoms and of frying fish and the sounds of vendors shouting out their stalls' contents met in a bright burst of sensory delights. Feeling out of place amongst the busy focus – housewives doing their weekly round of organic vegetable shopping and gossiping along the paths, little kids buying sweets and squealing with a thrill much too energetic for the hour – Mirio strolled along with unhurried easiness. He smiled at pretty women. He nodded at the stall-owners who tried to sell him yakitori for breakfast and sweet buns for dessert.

At one spot, he bought himself a coffee in a takeaway cup, though it tasted burned and didn't quite settle the hungry twist about his stomach. At another spot, he chatted for a long time with a guy who couldn't have been much more than a teenager but who was wearing an All Might t-shirt – an old one, or rather, one well-loved.

"All Might was one of my old teachers!" Mirio declared with a thrilled grin.

To which the boy replied, "No way! At UA?"

"That's the place!"

"Did you become a pro, then?"

And Mirio was forced to chuckle and shrug his shoulders, as he'd done so many times before in years past, "Nah. Things didn't quite work out that way."

The boy bought him a cup of udon noodles with pork and spring onions, and they spoke for some minutes more at a table next to the water. A far out stretch of blue with the volcanic island rising out black and imposing a stone's skim away. Mirio lingered there for a long time after the boy left, staring out into the bay as it shimmered crystalline under the white glow of morning sun. Boats and ferries bopped. Seagulls flapped jarringly overhead. And Mirio, with a numb sense of tired contentment, considered how much easier it had become – Nah. Things didn't quite work out that way.

Before, the wound had been one which refused to close. It had bled out onto pavements, into innocent objects and sounds, and like a tearing pain in his chest Mirio had been able to think of nothing else for months afterwards. Months of avoiding Nighteye's gaze, months of telling his teachers and friends he was sorry. Sorry for what? It wasn't his fault, they'd say, and he wouldn't believe a word of it. His heart would skip several beats when he saw new heroes debut on the news. He'd smile hard and die inside whenever Nejire and Tamaki told him about their work – their promotions and patrols and all their heroic deeds.

They'd spent years trying to find a way to fix him with row upon row of experimental procedures, and new quirks which may have helped, and hunt after hunt for answers.

Mirio had been the one to give up. At least aloud, though he'd seen it in everybody else's eyes. They'd all lost hope way before anyone had actually said so, and Mirio – guilty as he already was for having lost everything all those years before – couldn't stomach having to string them along any longer.

And now, all things considered, he was happy enough with the life he'd been handed. Happy enough at least to enjoy small things without seeing in them all the immensity of his failure. The blue of the water, for example, or the colourful blur of peoples' feet as they scurried by in a day-to-day buzz.

A colourful blur of peoples' feet – and amongst that blur, an apple dropped. An apple rolled, glinting red like a precious treasure discarded, and by some instinctual force Mirio jumped up to grab it from its clumsy circling. "Excuse me, Miss!" he called out graciously, spotting the girl with a basket of apples and reaching his hand out to her shoulder. "You dropped–"

The girl froze. She turned.

She turned in a frightened stiffness under Mirio's palm, and he felt his heart sink like the apple dropped from his hand.

"Oh my god," he choked, and barely managed to rasp her name. "Eri-chan."

Red eyes gleamed back at him, frozen in horror as he felt his own face contort. Those eyes! Those eyes bore a hole through his soul, and in a moment of petrified charm Mirio couldn't move, struck by the sinking fear that this was a nightmare with all the vivid lucidity of reality to make it that much more awful. How many times had those eyes plagued him in his sleep? How many nights had the image of her haunted gaze left him gasping her name?

He wouldn't have recognised her were it not for those eyes and the little horn that poked out from her forehead. He wouldn't have known to whom such watery litheness, such an airy loveliness, could have belonged were it not for the terrified expression with which she met him – just the same as all those years ago.

She said nothing, but glanced desperately about herself as though in search of an escape.

Utterly out of his control, Mirio felt his hands rise to her cheeks, their skin burning feverish beneath his palms as they alighted into a magnificent pink. He held her there, staring hard into the features so harshly seared into his mind – a new grace about them, a freshness quite unlike anything Mirio had ever seen – and he could do nothing against the trembles as they danced into his limbs. He repeated her name, a disbelieving poem. He felt his soul sink into the violent blur of bodies and movement around them before it returned like a rushing ghost into his body.

"It's you," he gasped. His face cracked into a grimace or a smile. "Eri-chan! After all this time!"

But she didn't smile in return. She continued to gawk at him with that heartbreakingly familiar look of horror. "Stop," she murmured, rooted to her place. White curls gracing her cheeks. Chest delicately heaving. "Stop. Before–"

There was a basket slung about her arm, full of apples and colourful plant foods like a trove of organic gems. A white vest to cover her arms, a brightly patterned scarf slung about her chest – she glowed like an angel, a youthful image of porcelain smooth flesh and long-limbed beauty. Mirio's heart floundered about his ribcage like a bee caught under glass, and he had to restrain a cry of pain at the way she flinched away from him. Eri-chan! It was her, full and real in exquisite grace!

"But how…?" he whispered, leaning in though she leaned away. "How did you escape? Overhaul. Where did he–"

"I have to go."

Eri spun on her toes, an image of swirling material and curls, and Mirio's body moved with slicing quickness to grab her wrist. "Wait! Eri-chan! I can't believe it. What happened to you?"

"Lemillion-san." His heart shattered. "Please. You can't–"

Out from the crowd with deliberate poise, a hand smacked Mirio's away, and he was confronted by a poisonous glare behind a simple face mask. An unnamed man whose exposed features had about them a sharp femininity like a pale serpent. Mirio didn't know this face, its insipidness only made more glaring by the pointed whiteness of his hair, but the voice was rung with an ominous familiarity. "Excuse me, sir, but I'd prefer if you wouldn't touch the girl," he said in a hiss. Then turning his attention to Eri, touching a gloved hand into the small of her back, the man spoke in a softer lull, "We're done for today, Eri-chan. Let's go home."

The memories replayed themselves in a sickening slow motion – Eri, tiny and silent as she was stolen from him, Mirio, into swallowing darkness; Eri, disappearing and with trails running cold and dead. Mirio trembled, and locked his eyes onto Eri's as she blinked up at him wordlessly. It shook him, how she didn't wince at the other man's touch, how she turned away obligingly and even with a certain relief. Disappearing from him once more – and she was so close! So close he'd touched her! – into the squeezing crowd of people suddenly so suffocating.

Mirio couldn't stop himself. In a dash of brainless movement, his hands were in his clothes until he found what he was looking for.

A business card. His name, his number. Hot in his hand as he shouldered past bodies to keep up with Eri, to drop with desperate hurry the card into her basket so that this time he would be with her. He should have followed. Should have ripped her from the other man's grasp – that gloved hand light and dangling comfortably against her back, making Mirio seethe without explanation – but no. As she glanced over her shoulder at him once more, he could no longer muster the strength into his limbs to move. She watched him as he watched her, an unspoken warning warding him off though his heart pounded after her, tied as his card in her basket.

The sky could have crashed down, the ground could have consumed cities whole. The world could have ended and in that moment, it wouldn't have meant anything. Nothing could have compared to the vivid agony of Eri's face searing itself anew upon Mirio's memory.