iii.

Three days. Three days had passed, and Mirio's world had shaken itself from an anaesthetized stupor.

Suddenly, with the vivid clarity of watching life in reverse – a bright series of failures; a fantasy or horror sharpened by the urgency of the hours as they passed – Mirio recalled the smell of his own blood from that day years ago. Metallic through his skull. A prickling at the tips of his fingers as though they still dripped with crimson. And every night, he'd woken with the terrible sense of his own ghost slipping from his chest. Just as Eri had slipped from him. Through his fingers and out from his reach.

He'd woken every night crying Eri's name.

And now he paced the hotel room up and down and around, the world outside black in starry obscurity. He took larger-than-necessary gulps from his sake and his shochu. He waited, waited anxiously for Nighteye's call. Yes, obviously Mirio had told him – he'd just about sprinted home from the market those days ago, heart frozen in his chest and head spinning with a sick horror and excitement. Eri! Oh, Eri! Just as he'd done in all his nightmares, he'd almost wept when saying her name over the phone to Nighteye.

Everyone had been shocked, though perhaps not with the same numbing quality as Mirio. He'd gotten a message from Aizawa-sensei within hours, and a message from Midoriya-san to whom he hadn't spoken in years, and phone calls from Neijire and Tamaki – all of them telling him the same things. The same awful things which clanged between the walls of his skull with an animal rage.

Stay calm.

Stay calm.

It wasn't his fault.

Stay calm.

But how could he stay calm when Eri had been right there? Right there: eyes the colour of apples; lips quivering in new terror. And how beautiful she'd been! How grown-up and beautiful! As though the child in Mirio's memory hadn't ever existed – indeed, that child seemed to waver and fade with the iridescent quality of spirit-drunk dreams. She withered, she faltered, and she was replaced with the lingering silhouette of a woman. One tall and willowy, breezing through the half-conscious states of Mirio's sleeplessness and intoxication in an ethereal glaze. The prickle of her cheeks' shape in his palms. The simmering emotion like acid in his throat.

She'd been stolen from him once. By that man. Overhaul, in the plague mask and the bloody-black hands. She'd been stolen from him once more, now by a face Mirio didn't know. A face he couldn't place no matter how he ripped through the recesses of memory.

Breathing hard, certain his legs were about to cave, Mirio leaned his hands against the windowsill and shuddered. His phone was still and silent in his pocket – there was no use checking it again, there would be no new notifications since the last time.

The air whipped humid against his face. The alcohol webbed itself through his veins. For a long time, Mirio stood helpless and limp until–

A ring! Shrill and clear. Mirio thrust a quivering hand into his pocket and, with a jerking quickness, brought it to his ear. "Sir! Sir, do you have any news?"

Silence greeted him across the line, one tight and tentative, making his ribs turn in on themselves and stab through his lungs. He could barely venture to breathe, struck suddenly by a horrifying sense of foreboding. Holding the phone to his ear with harsh force, he twisted his head upon his shoulders to find a place to sit down – though as things stood, to simply fall backwards into the ground and to let it consume him whole seemed an appetizing option. Overcome, he leaned more deeply against the windowsill.

"Sir?"

Then.

There came a thin, fragile voice like the chime of an angel. 'Lemillion-san?'

Breath knocked itself from his lungs. Mirio could hardly choke out the syllable, the sound, the stress as it formed upon his tongue in bitter sweetness. God, she sounded so strange. It made him feel so strange to hear her like this – had he really expected her to call? No, he couldn't have. Not if he found himself stumbling, flailing clumsily for the safety of his futon as he willed her name from his heart, the weight he'd carried as a not-so-secret, agonizing secret for so long.

"Eri-chan?" he mustered at last, lowering himself in an unending descent towards the futon. "Oh my god, Eri, is that you?"

As it happened, Eri was allowed one phone call a week on Chrono's cell. To Russia. To Anya-chan. To the only woman – really, the only person – she'd ever gotten to call a friend. And though at first it had been dictated that Eri could only speak under Chrono's listening ear or with Kai at her side, nowadays it was much easier to slip away into the soundproofed sanctuary and prison of their bedroom for a more private conversation.

All she had to tell them was that she needed to ask Anya a question about the female body.

Chrono and Kai left her alone quite willingly then.

And it was never exactly a lie because Eri did ask questions about the female body – her female body. How it grew sicker and more terrified with each passing day.

How her insides seemed to tear themselves apart in hatred whenever Kai came anywhere near her, though she could do nothing to flee.

Why it was that at the age of twenty – at least, that's how old Kai and Chrono told her she was – her bones felt hollow like paper and her heart held the same thirst for life as a corpse.

Sometimes, Eri would cry over the phone. Miserable, painful sobs ripping themselves from her chest, and Anya-chan would tell her again all the tricks to making it through another soul-destroying episode of Kai's hips between her legs and Kai's lips on her skin in places Eri didn't want his lips to be and Kai reminding her in hot, wet, breathy moans that she was his, only his.

Just look up. Look up and count the cracks on the roof. Pretend that Kai wasn't really Kai, and she wasn't really Eri, and that the nauseating explosions inside of her stomach weren't pain but were instead the fluttering, burning, exciting pleasures she'd read about in books.

Eri had learned to read in Russia, both in Russian and Japanese. It had been a liberty granted to her like a small candy: to read, but not to write. The family (they called themselves a family even though Eri knew they weren't) they'd lived with had gifted her a copy of Anna Karenina. Anya-chan, when Eri had grown into a teenage body, had snuck her books in which the men and women did things she hadn't understood. Things strange and tender, like magnifying the sweetness of eating a fruit. Finding in skin the endless excitement of something similar to pain but… not pain.

Besides books though (and, of course, besides watching the Russian men and the Russian women they'd lived with manhandle each other) Anya-chan had been Eri's primary source of education for the things which otherwise made Chrono cringe. And so Anya had remained, a sliver of the normality, the freedom, the womanhood which should not have seemed so vastly foreign.

Eri held the phone in her hand, legs crossed beneath her upon the bed.

However, she didn't so much as look for Anya's number. Not this time.

Instead, she held in her quivering fingers the card – Togata Mirio's card – and gazed at it for a long time with a confused sense of fear and longing.

She'd managed to fit herself away like this so many times before and it had never felt wrong. Hiding had never felt wrong. But now, as Eri hesitated over the digits upon the card, dialing them in with a heavy slowness, she could not help but be absolutely terrified. Kai could walk in at any moment. She could forget to erase the number, or say something compromising. With this, she could send everything spiraling back into the chaos which had left Lemillion dead in her mind for years.

Eventualities presented themselves like items up for auction; and before them, Eri was but a helpless watcher.

Still, she had to know. Or perhaps she did already know. In which case, she had to hear his voice again. Just one more time, for the way it made her pulse run smooth.

Eri entered the number. She dialed.

And within moments, a breathless slur of a voice answered in a stunning string of words straight out of Eri's nightmares. 'Sir! Sir, do you have any news?' A pause, overflowing. Eri's mind went blank. 'Sir?'

"Lemillion-san?" His name still felt so unreal. Oh, but no, that wasn't his name. His name was Mirio and for a long time, he was quiet.

'Eri-chan? Oh my god, Eri, is that you?'

"Yes," Eri whispered, and a long-closed bloom peeked itself out from her heart. Tears she hadn't realised were welling began a messy descent down her cheeks. She stuttered against them, the sound wet and stupid. "Yes, yes, it's me. Hi. I– I'm sorry. I don't know why… what I'm doing…"

'I can't believe it. I can't believe it! This is… I thought…' Lemillion – Mirio – made a short sound like a gasp, a laugh. 'It's so good to hear you. Your voice. There's so much – so, so much I've wanted to say to you.'

Why did it feel so calm? So soft and tender like everything once lost falling back into place, coming back to Eri in slow throbs like heartbeats. Her grasp on the phone tightened while her free hand closed into a limp fist in her lap. Words dammed themselves up in a battle to escape her, crowding in her throat into her ribcage and lungs until all the things she too wanted to say began to suffocate her. He was still a ghost in her mind. Lemillion-san: a voice from beyond the grave. Bringing with him all the relief and terror. All the awful, inevitable grief.

Now was not the time to be crying. Her soul should not have wrenched itself from her body and flung itself about as it did just then. But Eri could not help the whimper that escaped her, overcome as she was by the tremendous turmoil of emotion both good and bad. Something stabbed at her deep inside as she heaved a sighing breath. Everything smoldered before her vision behind the silvery blur of tears she willed not to break. "Lemillion-san–"

'No, please, Eri-chan,' he said, sounding happy. Did he smile like he did all those years ago? 'Please call me Mirio.'

Until that moment, she hadn't spoken it aloud. Mi-Ri-O. Abstract and removed, now suddenly carrying all the weight in the world. All the hope which had never existed in Eri's vocabulary. All the regret which she lived upon like daily bread. "Mirio," she murmured, and buried the syllables inside of her. Into her mind, into her heart like a prayer. Then she gasped against a sob. "Mirio. I'm sorry."

'Oh! Don't be sorry… You couldn't have known my name before my now.'

"No," Eri muttered. "That's not–" A shudder came over her, and for a moment she thought perhaps she would pass out. "I thought you were dead."

She couldn't see him, but the air seemed to change.

'Did Overhaul tell you that?'

Eri said nothing. Only touching her quaking fingertips to her lips. Only banishing the sordid image of that body – the blood as red as his cape upon her shoulders, the blonde head dangling and drained. And the smile that never faltered, the smile that never failed as he'd looked her straight in the eye. Blue eyes like skies and oceans, blue eyes of all the world meeting her red ones. Red like his blood. Red like everybody's blood spilled because of her.

'Where are you, Eri-chan?' Mirio questioned softly. 'Tell me where you are. I have to see you.'

"You can't."

'Are you– I mean, are you still in danger?' he was whispering now, and sounded odd. Off-balance. 'Overhaul… Is he still–'

"No," Eri said, too quick to be convincing, she thought. "It's not like that. It's just…" Eventualities. Eventualities coated in skin and stained in blood. "It's just that now isn't… umm… not a good time. It's not a good time now."

'Please, Eri-chan,' Mirio breathed. 'I can't let you go again. I'll find you. I promise I'll–'

"I'll come to you."

What was she doing?

When he spoke again, he too sounded rattled. 'You can?'

"Yes," Eri choked. "Just not tonight. Not tomorrow either, but the night after – it'll be late though." Every inch of her body beat against her. The cold air clawed down her skin in new fierceness; the walls closed in around her. But most of all, her mind. Her mind created images anew of heroes storming in from the roofs and windows, and of all of them being ripped to shreds. What was she doing? "Promise you won't try and find me. Just… give me until then… the night after tomorrow. I'll – tell you everything."

No, she wouldn't. But she'd go to him. The opportunity played itself out before her in golden, sky-eyed promise.

"Promise me."

He hesitated, but at last he promised and told her the name of a hotel. A hotel Eri knew. A hotel mere streets away. Everything inside of her fluttered.

"Thank you, Mirio-san–"

'Just Mirio.'

"Mirio." Just Mirio. Mi-Ri-O. Daydreams. Clouds in blue, blue, sky-blue eyes. Suddenly shattering. "Don't use this number. Ever."

And in a rush back to reality, back to the chemical-and-sex-and-perfume-scented bedroom with sterilized bedsheets and a dressing table full of pretty, Russian things, Eri hung up. She shut for the moment the door now unlocked, and reeled against the giddy numbness which overtook her. She'd just done something stupid. So stupid! But oh, did it feel like ecstasy. With the sense of floating, she fell back onto the pillows. She held her breath so as to not catch the sneaking scents of Kai. She closed her eyes and replayed, replayed, replayed the sound of his voice. Lemillion. Mirio. His voice and the ghosting smile which before had haunted but now thrilled her.

The fantasy was fleeting though. In a scurry, she rushed to delete the number's existence from Chrono's phone. Double and triple checking. Hoping, praying, pleading that Chrono trusted her enough not to go digging. Then, fingers still shaking, breath still hitching vilely and deliciously in her throat, Eri called Anya-chan as she was supposed to.