Chapter Text
“Hi!” the boy says, before proceeding to bow in a perfect 90 degree angle. “My name is Midoriya Izuku! Can someone show me where the demons are?”
Eijirou stares at the stranger of a boy standing in front of the dorms’ door. And then he stares at his phone where it shows that the pizza delivery guy has not actually arrived yet.
Eijirou looks at Kaminari who is standing next to him (and looks somewhat dejected by the lack of pizza). Kaminari looks back at Eijirou.
Both of them look at Jirou, the only other current occupant in the living room currently slouching on the sofa.
Jirou, feeling the other two handing the responsibility of The Man of The House to her, sighs and stands up from her seat. “The what?” Jirou says, and then, with a raised brow: “Hang on, who are you?”
“Midoriya Izuku,” the guy repeats, sounding somewhat both cheery and patient. He doesn’t look miffed by the lack of reception.
“Never heard your name before,” Jirou says, rather bluntly. “You from the Gen department?”
Midoriya Izuku blinks, eyes comically huge and cartoony. How old is this guy, anyway? He is shorter than both Eijirou and Kaminari. Looks a bit like an overgrown elementary schooler, honestly. “No,” he says, slowly. And then a thoughtful “hmm,” as he puts down the biggest backpack Eijirou has ever seen. In front of all of them, he crouches and proceeds to ransack his bag for a full minute.
Eijirou thinks the boy ought to elaborate a little more before, um, do his business like that, but—
“Aha!” Midoriya Izuku exclaims as he pulls out—a … a remote?
“Is that a first gen nokia?” Kaminari, forward as always, blurts, leaning forward a little to get a better look.
“Yep,” the boy answers amicably as he punches a few buttons on that—thing. Not before he pulls out an antenna out of the device.
Jirou has walked to the porch herself without Eijirou’s notice. “I never saw one,” she says, though there is still a note of suspicion in her voice.
“That thing is like, centuries old, dude!” Kaminari sounds excited now, so Eijirou can glean that this must be a tech geek thing, which should explain Jirou’s mutual interest. “Where did you get that, a museum?”
“Something like that,” the boy chirps at them, before proceeding to talk to the device. “Hello, Principal-san? Yes. Hmm, no. Ah, I see? Alright. Shall I—? Ah, right. Mm. Ok, no problem. No. Right, right.. He wants to talk to one of you.”
Kaminari stares at the device the boy is handing him like it’s the golden globe. “Can I touch it, really?” before he could even make a move, Jirou snatches the device, which at this point Eijirou understands is some kind of an ancient phone or something. “Hey, Jirou!”
Jirou ignores Kaminari’s betrayed yammering, her face suddenly stiff as she talks to whoever it is on the phone. “Right. Of course, Sir. Yes, I understand.” She then hands Midoriya his phone back with a strange look aimed at the boy.
Sir? “Who is it?” Eijirou asks.
Jirou blinks. “Principal Nezu,” she says, and Eijirou’s brows rise to his hairline. “He says to let him in and wait until Aizawa-sensei gets here.”
Eijirou looks at Kaminari. Kaminari looks at Eijirou. Both of them look at Jirou. Jirou looks at Midoriya. “What, you have Principal Nezu on speed dial?”
“I think it’s the other way around,” Midoriya replies.
“Pizza’s here,” says the pizza delivery guy from the intercom.
The atmosphere has been languid and lazy. It's the weekend, so the dorm is fairly empty as the others are doing their own stuff. Yaoyorozu is celebrating her relative’s birthday, Tsuyu is taking Uraraka, Mina and Hagakure to her house, Iida is visiting his brother, Bakugou is doing god knows what, etc. Eijirou is pretty sure that Tokoyami and Ojirou are playing the new VR game upstairs and he wonders if he should call them down, because—
“Thanks,” Midoriya says, and at least he has the sensibilities to swallow before he speaks. He is on his third slice. “I haven’t had one of these in years. I forgot how good they taste.”
Kaminari, bless his heart, pushes a glass of water towards him. Midoriya takes it and gulps it down in one go. The glass is empty. Jirou, bless her heart, fills it in again with some water.
Is this guy starving or something?
“Um, so, Midoriya-kun,” Eijirou says, and he doesn’t really know how to phrase this. “Who are you again?”
Midoriya blinks those huge ass eyes again. “Haven’t I introduced myself?”
He had. It just did not help.
“Midoriya-kun,” Jirou, the one with the brain cell, says. “Are you a UA student?”
“No.”
At this, the three kids sit up straighter. “And they let you in?” Jirou says, something hard slips into her voice. Guarded.
Eijriou feels somewhat tense too, and he knows Kaminari feels the same. Hard not to when you’ve got invaded by Villains twice.
“I wouldn’t say they let me in,” Midoriya says, to make matters worse. Eijirou is suddenly hyper aware of the fact that the three of them idiots just let some guy into their dorms (and gave him pizzas) without any verification of some sort. He glances tightly at the other two. What if the phone call was some sort of Quirk work, or something?
Though Midoriya does look unthreatening. Very, actually—his build is barely any bigger than Jirou, and he looks positively drowned under the oversized, worn out hoodie he sports. Eijirou eyes the faded All Might print on it and then to the mop of wild green hair on top of an undercut.
(Though that big scar at the side of his head is pretty inconspicuous.)
Who knows? And that huge ass backpack he has with him, what if—
But no—they must’ve checked for weapons and anything like it. And his ID too, right?
“Sorry, can I have some of the tissues? My hands are all greasy.”
“Sure, man,” Kaminari says, and Midoriya looks blissfully unaware as the three of them communicate with each other with their eyes. If all goes to shit. I’ll take him on, you take the door. You sure? Yeah. Make it quick. Incapacitate him first. Get help later? Ok.
“You know Nezu personally?” Eijirou prods.
“Sort of? It’s not really personal,” Midoriya replies, rubbing the oil off his fingers. His hoodie is big enough that his hands are barely visible out of the sleeves. “He is paying me to come here, you see.”
The revelation is strange enough to start all three of them out of their vigilance.
“What,” Jirou begins, and then Aizawa-sensei comes in through the door without so much as a knock.
The three kids stare at Aizawa. He stares at them back. Trailing behind Aizawa-sensei per usual is Shinsou, who is not staring at them, because he is currently gaping at Midoriya like he is a dead body come to life.
The dead-body-come to life in question stands up, and amicably says, “Hello! I’m Midoriya Izuku. Can you show me where the demons are? Big fan, by the way,” and then, without a pause, “hey, Hitoshi, what’s up? You didn’t tell me you were in this class.”
It’s a weird day, Eijirou decides. And here he thought it was getting boring around here.
“What?”
“I am not repeating myself, Kaminari,” Aizawa-sensei says, like the grouch he is.
“No, no, hold on,” Kaminari says, looking like he does whenever he’s short-circuiting. “What ?”
Eijirou can sympathize.
“Why?” Jirou demands, sounding incredulous. “Is it because of the incident with Sero’s underwear? That was Kaminari, not ghosts.”
“Hey, that wasn’t me!”
The source of all enigma is currently rummaging his huge-ass backpack in the middle of their living room, on the floor , with the rest of them surrounding him as if they’re watching a zoo animal doing its business. “So, none of you can show me where the demons are, huh? Well, that’s problematic.. Hm,” Midoriya Izuku hums thoughtfully he pulls out content after content out of his bag.
Are those—
“Are those ofudas? ” Jirou says.
He’s putting out ofudas. In the living room. Where they live.
A bunch of them too. What the hell.
Eijirou glances at Aizawa-sensei, who looks like he isn’t inclined to answer any of their burning questions nor elaborate whatever the hell is going on. Eijirou swallows, and says, “so, Midoriya-kun … you are … an … exorcist?”
“Mm. In a manner of speaking,” Midoriya says. He doesn’t even pause amidst his activities. He pulls out a calligraphy brush and a bottle of ink—and starts writing. And then he hands a piece to Eijirou. “Put it on your door later.”
Eijirou honest to fuck does not want to touch it, but he accepts it anyway. Eijirou looks at the talisman. And then does a double take.
“This just says ‘fuck off’ in kanji,” Eijirou says to Midoriya.
“It’s very effective,” Midoriya says to Eijriou.
“What the hell is going on,” Jirou says to the room.
“I’m an exorcist,” Midoriya reminds her, as if it explains everything. “In, you know, a manner of speaking.”
“What does that even mean?”
This time, Midoriya actually does pause at whatever he’s doing—writing fuck off on talismans and what not. “Hm,” Midoriya purses his lips, as if actually pondering Jirou’s question. “Well, do you want me to elaborate on the origins of theism and animism, or should I just skip to the demonology part?”
Before Eijirou can unpack whatever the fuck that was, Aizawa-sensei seems to have decided on throwing away the whole suitcase. “We don’t have the time,” he says, amazingly as straight-laced as always even in this situation. He even looks borderline bored, as if an exorcist in the UA dorms is a tedious thing that’s happening. “Just do your job, or whatever it is Nezu wants.”
“Sure thing!” Midoriya claps his hands together cheerfully. “Okay, let’s start. Can you guys put these on every single door in this place? Including the bathrooms.”
Eijirou feels somewhat helpless and distantly mindfucked as he accepts a bundle of the fuck off talismans.
“Are we going to ignore the demon part?” says Kaminari, who looks legit shaken. “Like, the demons are real and are haunting the dorms part?”
”Is this a prank?” Jirou looks at their teacher. “Demons aren’t real.”
“Arguable,” Midoriya says amiably, pushing a bundle of ofudas to Jirou’s hands.
Aizawa looks unruffled as always, arms folded at the corner of the room. Shinsou has been quiet the whole time after the initial what’s up Hitoshi thing. “Do as he says,” Aizawa tells the kids, who stare back with disbelief. “Just make it quick. How long do you think you can finish?”
“Maybe fifteen minutes,” Midoriya says, handing a very unwilling Kaminari his ofudas. “Or two hours. Who knows? Ah, you help me out too, Hitoshi!” The latter accepts with an indignant and rather helpless huff.
“Right! Get to work, everyone!” and then Midoriya pauses in his tracks. “Wait, what are your names again?”
Eijirou, Kaminari, and Jirou look at each other. Right. They haven’t introduced themselves. Kinda hard to remember basic formality what with all the … the everything.
“Kirishima.”
“Kaminari.”
“..Jirou.”
“Right, right. Oh! Hmmm,” and then Midoriya hounds on Kaminari immediately with a pinched look on his face.
Kaminari, naturally, leans back in a startle from Midoriya’s lack of respect for his space. “W-what?”
“Hmm,” Midoriya scans him up and down, and then suddenly puts both hands on Kaminari’s shoulders in a surprisingly firm clasp. “Electricity? Emitter type?”
Eijirou stares in surprise. He sees Shinsou pinching the bridge of his nose from the peripheral of his eyes.
Kaminari blinks, startled. “Yeah.. How do you—”
“You’re perfect,” Midoriya announces to the room, and does not elaborate. “Kaminari-san, you’re with me. Jirou-san, hmm. Yes, that’ll work. Also with me.”
At this point, Midoriya is talking to himself, a hand over his mouth, circling both Kaminari and Jirou at a fast pace. “Okay, okay, I see. A bit old-school, but should be interesting.. Hm. Kirishima-san together with Hitoshi then! Don’t worry, Hitoshi should know how this works. After all, he’s—”
“I told you,” Shinsou says suddenly, more exasperated than irritated, “I’m not your—”
“—my assistant! Okay, Assistant Kaminari-san, Assistant Jirou-san, follow me!” Midoriya takes two steps before he stops and turns. “Actually, I’ve never been here before. Can someone show me the second floor? Oh, wait, the bathroom first would be great. All the water kinda got to me now.”
When Midoriya and the two finally disappear beyond the stairs, Eijirou turns to Shinsou.
Shinsou, who is the newest addition to their ragtag of a class after Mineta got kicked out (a celebrated occasion). Eijirou thinks he’s Aizawa-sensei’s favorite—not that he’s jealous or anything, it’s just kind of funny to watch the two of them strut around like a pair of gloomy sleeping bags.
He’s a quiet one, and hasn’t really assimilated well with the rest of them in general (what with being a late addition and with, um, what happened at the sports festival with Ojiro). He got along with Eijirou well enough though, or so Eijirou likes to think.
But whatever awkwardness still persists between them should be overruled right now by whatever the fuck is going on with this Midoriya character.
“You obviously know this dude,” Eijirou says. He addresses Shinsou by his first name after all. “What’s his deal? Can you explain?”
Shinsou looks a bit dejected at the situation in general anyhow. “He’s,” he pauses a little. “My neighbor. He lives near me.”
“O-kay ,” Eijirou says. Doesn’t really explain stuff, but he’ll take it. But. “You’re his, uh ... assistant?”
“Hell no,” Shinsou says. “It’s just. Sometimes. I bump into him when he’s doing his shit, and. You know.”
Doing his shit. Eijirou looks at the bundle of fuck off talismans in his hands. The handwriting is a bit messy. “What, vandalism?”
“You know,” Kaminari says as they trot up the stairs. “I’m actually, like, super not great with occult stuff.”
“This can’t be happening,” Kyouka mutters to herself.
“Don’t worry, don’t worry,” Midoriya assures them. From behind, the scar on his head is much more prominent, slithering from the side of his head to the back of it under the curls like a protruding, veiny flesh. It contrasts greatly with his childish face. “It’s all completely safe.”
“I really don’t like ghosts, you know,” Kaminari says.
“I can’t believe Nezu is paying someone to exorcise demons in the dorms,” Kyouka says. “No offense, but what is this, 21st century?”
What she doesn’t understand is why Nezu was the one to engineer all these. Isn’t he supposed to have an unholy IQ count? Why would someone like that believe in the existence of the supernatural?
“Your principal has very good eyesight, you know,” Midoriya tells them, in a note that is both amicable and off-handedly indifferent to Kyouka and Kaminari’s resignations.
“Good eyesight?” Kaminari looks like he’s going to shit his pants with the implications. “What do you mean by that. What did he see.”
Kyouka elbows his ribs, glaring at Kaminari in a get-a-hold-of-it-dude glower. She can’t believe Aizawa-sensei, of all people, is playing along with … this. Isn’t he the one with all that logical ruse shit going on? What part of this is in any way logical?
“Very excellent hearing too, actually,” Midoriya smiles, and this one is directed at Kyouka. His smile is sweet, friendly, if rather childish. “Well, not as excellent as you, though.”
Kyouka blinks. She knows her physical manifestation is a giveaway, but. “How do you—”
“Is it just me,” Kaminari says. “Or the second floor is scary as shit? Why the hell are all the lights off?”
“This is Tokoyami’s floor,” Kyouka reminds him. Tokoyami likes the dark. “And it’s still, like, four in the afternoon, man. Get a grip. ”
Aren’t demons only out in the night, or something? Not that they exist.
Something clatters at the end of the hall.
“Kaminari,” Kyouka says, slowly. “Get off me.”
Kaminari honest-to-god whines. “But … demons—”
“Aren’t real.”
It is sort of dark. The hall is long with a window at the end of it, but the light coming in is dim despite the hour. Must be due to the position of the building, or the trees, or whatever.
“Okay,” Kaminari lets her arm go, but he proceeds to meekly hide behind Kyouka’s back. Which, considering their height difference, really just does not work.
“Hmm,” Midoriya says, mostly to himself. And then he knocks at the door at the end of the hall.
A few beats pass before the door opens and Tokoyami’s head pops out. He looks at Midoriya. And then he looks at Kyouka and Kaminari. And then he looks at the bundles of ofudas in Midoriya’s hands.
“Hello!” Midoriya chirps, as bright as the moment he entered the front door. “My name is Midoriya Izuku. Might I ask your Shadow to rein it in a little? It makes it hard for me to, ah, manoeuvre, you see.”
“Ah,” Tokoyami says, coming out of the room entirely. He still has his VR headgear on top of his head. “My name is Tokoyami Fumikage. Apologies for the hindrance. My Dark Shadow has been especially antsy lately. He isn’t quite used to this domain just yet.”
“Understandable. The Night is quite thick here and I imagine there has been disturbances in the frayed edges of its Fabric. Might I be wrong?”
“You are correct. I suppose it’s a matter of who exactly is the uninvited guest—it gets rather complicated, you see, as there are no Limits nor Border to the silk.”
Midoriya nods serenely. “Of course, as all domains are, intruders have never really been simply distinguished from the Remains. It must have been uncomfortable for your Shadow, I understand.”
Kyouka does not.
“What in the goddamn hell are they talking about,” Kaminari says in an awed whisper behind her.
“Who’s that, Tokoyami-kun?” Ojiro pops his head from the door. He too also has his VR headgear still on his head. “Oh. Hey. Hello.”
“Hello!” Midoriya chirps back.
“Ah, Ojiro-kun, this is Midoriya-san, The One Who Returned,” Tokoyami smoothly introduces them both. “Correspondence of Hell, the Monarch Butterfly, Accursed Archer of the Unmade.” And then he says, ”Midoriya-san, this is Ojiro-kun.”
Something clatters in the hallway again.
“Nice to meet you,” says Ojiro after a lengthy pause. “Um, I’ll just wait inside, Tokoyami-kun.”
The door closes. Tokoyami turns to Midoriya. “Pray tell, Cursed One, what has brought you here?”
“Why of course, I am to provide a Needle by the request of your Principal. It is work, you see.”
“Ah.”
“I thought it’s simply polite to keep notice. I hope you and your Shadow do not mind.”
“Of course. I wish you well. I regret that I am not able to provide assistance, though I am glad to know that the disturbances shall end soon.”
“No worries, I’ll make sure of it. It was a pleasure to meet you, Shadowed One.”
“And I you, Cursed One.”
Tokoyami goes back inside and closes the door. Midoriya, with the casual ease of someone watering a houseplant, puts an ofuda on said door.
“Now that that’s settled, just put it all over the doors. Ah, Jirou-san, can you put it on the window by the end of the hall, too—yes, just like that. Perfect.”
Kyouka wonders if she ate something bad this morning.
“Okay, that’s all of them,” Eijirou says as he puts the last talisman on the front door. And then he says, “I can’t believe I’m doing this. Aizawa-sensei—”
“He went to sleep.”
Eijirou looks at the sleeping bag at the corner of the living room. Of course. “Oh my god.”
“Yeah,” Shinsou says. “Come on, let’s go upstairs.”
“Okay,” he says. And then, “demons aren’t real, right? I mean, I’m not really religious or spiritual or anything, but like.”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah, demons aren’t real, or yeah, demons are real?”
“Just,” Shinsou says, and then pinches the bridge of his nose. A signature move, Eijirou has noticed. “Come on.”
“The others won’t believe this. Mina will freak,” Eijirou says as he follows Shinsou on the stairs. “Actually, Mina will be pissed that she missed this.”
“I bet.”
The second floor is empty, but the talismans are already put up, so they proceed to the third floor. No talismans. “They must be upstairs,” Shinsou says just when they hear Kaminari’s voice from the fourth floor. The dude sounds pretty hysterical. “Let’s put these up.”
“I didn’t know you like this sort of stuff, Shinsou-kun.”
“I don’t. ”
“No shame in that, you know,” Eijirou says, which seems to aggravate Shinsou more. “I mean, people believe in all sorts of things. Like, my grandma still doesn’t let me clip my nails at night and stuff,” he says. “I mean, I think my sister’s girlfriend does witchcraft.”
“..right.”
Shinsou doesn’t seem like he is going to reciprocate the conversation. For a guy so good at riling other people up, he sure is pretty tight-lipped. That doesn’t bother Eijirou though—the guy probably just needs more time to ease in with them. Half-joking, he continues, “I can’t believe I’m assisting an exorcism right now.” Not that he thinks it’s real, but.
To his surprise, Shinsou actually stops and turns to look at him. “It should be fine,” he says, with this nervous, stiff kind of voice that makes Eijirou wonder if the guy is trying to assure him. Eijirou finds, however, the surprising earnesty actually does the opposite. “I know he looks fishy as shit, but Midoriya knows what he’s doing—”
Shinsou trails off when the building starts to shake.
“Don’t worry about the third floor, Hitoshi will take care of that. Let’s go up.”
Right. “You seem to know him well.”
“Hm? Oh, Hitoshi? He’s great,” Midoriya says as he trots upstairs. He sounds like he means it.
“Huh,” says Kyouka. She has no problem with Shinsou, but anyone can see that the guy isn’t capable of being approachable.
“He is one of those guys, you know, ones that have a really Dense presence. The Fabric voids around him,” and before Kyouka can even begin to decipher the string of nonsensical words Midoriya just said, Midoriya continues rather cheerily, “the complete opposite of you, actually, Kaminari-san!”
“Me?” Kaminari looks alarmed at the mention of his name. “What do you mean?”
“You are one of those guys who Attracts. They like you, you know. You must be really good to feed from.”
They reach the top of the stairs. Fourth floor. Kaminari looks like he’s going to pass out. “Feed from?”
“Oh, yeah. They like energy, and you’re basically brimming with it. Tell me, do you feel like you have really bad luck in particular?”
The answer is instantaneous. “Yes, I do,” Kaminari’s face is as white as a sheet. “Oh my fucking god. Jirou. Jirou, I’m fucking haunted.”
“Stop pulling me or I’ll make your ass haunted!” Kyouka snaps, trying to get Kaminari’s grip off her. “This is ridiculous.”
“Isn’t it?” Midoriya hums, putting a talisman on Uraraka’s room, and moves to Shoji’s.
“What do I do?” Kaminari says to no one in particular. “I don’t want to die young.” The dumbass actually believes that shit. Kyouka would tell Kaminari to use his brain if he had one.
“Hauntings won’t kill you,” Midoriya assures him. He’s at Kirishima’s door now. “Only curses do.”
“Okay,” Kaminari says, even though his tone says it’s absolutely not okay. “So I’m not cursed, right?”
“No,” Midoriya puts the last one up on Bakugou’s door. He stares at the door for a little while, hand still on the polished wood, palm spread. “Hmm. At least I thought not..”
“Oh my fucking god,” Kaminari says.
Kyouka rolls her eyes. “You aren’t haunted or cursed, you’re just a dumbass.”
Midoriya takes his hand off Bakugou’s door, smiling that guileless smile at them. “Shall we go up?” he says.
And then the building starts to shake.
Kaminari yelps, “what the—”
It’s not big, but it’s noticeable—a dull thrum and puts her skin on edge. Kyouka’s first thought is earthquake. And her second thought is—
“Oops,” Midoriya says, as if he just accidentally spilled some milk. And then, calmly, he squats and pulls out something from the pocket of his hoodie: a marble.
He puts the marble on the floor.
It does not move.
“It’s not an earthquake,” Kyouka says, feeling cold at the bottom of her stomach. It’s not. The vibrations are strange—or rather, there are no vibrations. Her Quirk is never wrong. “What the fuck. ”
Midoriya slips the marble back into the folds of his hoodie, and then he stands near the staircase. Kyouka thinks he’s going to go down, but then Midoriya leans down and yells out “Hitoshi!” somehow, it’s a surprise to hear him raise his voice—doesn’t really fit his looks.
No answer.
The thrum is still there, as if they are on some park attraction—or a shaky paper-mache floor—
“I see,” Midoriya says, to himself, and then he looks at them both. “Well, no worries! Let’s go upstairs.”
The shaking stops as soon as it begins.
“Oh,” Shinsou says, after a pause. “It began.”
“What began?” Eijirou says, a little panicking. “Wasn’t that an earthquake? We gotta tell them—”
“Kirishima—”
Eijirou is already upstairs in a flash.
No one is there.
They’re probably on the fifth floor, Eijirou thinks, but something odd twists in his stomach. “Kaminari?” he calls out to the stairs. “Jirou?”
No answer.
Now, isn’t that weird as fuck?
Maybe they’re on the roof, Eijirou thinks. Maybe—
“They’re not here.”
Eijirou whirls around. “What do you mean?”
Shinsou looks like he doesn’t really know how to explain either. “They aren’t here, here. Or maybe we are the ones not there. Man, I don’t really know how this works either—listen. The Fabric is Folding. We—or they—are on the Other Side for a while. At least that’s how he calls it.”
Eijirou looks at Shinsou like he’s lost his mind. “What the fuck?”
Shinsou sighs. “I know.”
“What the fuck?” Kyouka says. Fabrics? Folding? Other Side ? What the hell is this guy talking about?
What in the goddamn Harry Potter shit is this?
“Alright, all set up,” Midoriya says, putting the last ofuda on Tsuyu’s door. “Here, for you, Kaminari-san.”
Kaminari, despite looking like he’s about to piss himself, catches the thing thrown at him. It’s a small protection charm you can get at the shrine, beet red. “An—omamori?”
“Yaku yoke, just in case,” Midoriya says. “I told you, you’re nice to feed on. They like you.”
“Oh my fuck,” Kaminari says.
The weird, non-existent vibration is still there. Kyouka doesn’t like it. She doesn’t like that she could feel it but she can’t sense it. She doesn’t like feeling something that Does Not Exist. And there is something weird in the air—as if—as if—“What the hell is going on? Is this your Quirk?”
For the first time in the whole evening, Midoriya actually looks surprised. “No.”
“Bullshit,” Kyouka says, even though Midoriya’s steady heartbeat tells her otherwise. “Stop it—whatever this is—”
“I can’t,” Midoriya says, plainly, but not kindly. “Not yet. Where is the roof hatch?”
“You—” Kyouka grits her teeth. Something is fundamentally wrong, her Quirk tells her. There is nothing in the air, nothing in the walls—it’s like they are suddenly teleported to a cardboard box in space. “I can’t feel it. I can’t feel the building. Where did you take us to?”
What kind of insane Quirk is this? One that can alter dimension and space —
“I don’t have that kind of Authority,” is Midoriya’s answer. His eyes: big and somewhat dull. He repeats, “where is the roof hatch?”
“It’s here,” Kaminari says, and from the look in his eyes, he’s as shaken as Kyouka is.
“This should work. Let’s go.”
Kaminari and Kyouka look at each other.
Midoriya sighs—that fatuous smile slipping off his face for the first time since he arrived. “Listen,” he says, voice not unkind, but unbearably neutral to the point of coldness. “You can stay here in an uncharted territory all by yourself where I can’t guarantee your existence, or you can follow me where I can. This is all completely safe, you know. Your principal is paying me to do this.”
A silence follows, in which Kyouka realizes he’s waiting for an answer.
Guarantee your existence. What in all the ominous hell is that even supposed to mean?
“Fine,” Kyouka says, finally, trying to ignore the alarm telling her that something is wrong, wrong, wrong. “But aren’t you going to explain anything?”
The smile returns. “If that helps you sleep at night.”
Midoriya opens the hatch with little struggle. He helps Kaminari up to the roof, and then Kyouka.
Kyouka hears Kaminari’s bitten off “Holy fucking —” as she raises herself up. And then she—
She’s been to the roof before; they hosted a BBQ night the first weekend they got to the dorms. They could see the whole of UA from there, and even the station where she usually transits to go to her folks. They could even see the mountains.
Now, there is absolutely nothing beyond the edge of the roof.
It’s Void. There is no other way to describe it. It’s not even black—it’s Colorless. Something her brain can’t comprehend. It’s just Nothing.
As if the building—as if they—are a glitch in a game.
“Oh, good,” Midoriya says, pleased. “The ofuda works.”
“I don’t get it,” Kaminari says, sounding dazed. “I don’t..”
“I had to cage it,” Midoriya explains, easy, as if he's talking about the the weather. “Or it won’t show itself.”
Before Kyouka can say anything, Something happens.
Kyouka calls it Something because she can’t comprehend what it is that’s happening.
But there is a beat, and the vibration stops—and then there is a gaping hole in Kyouka’s soul that tells her that something is fundamentally wrong with Everything. Like she is a drop of oil in a bowl of water. Like she is a single dot of error in the metric code of the Universe. The knowledge reverberates inside her like the most desynchronized music whose notes etched down on the print of her skin.
And then It appears.
(Demons aren’t real.)
It slithers down the Nothingness up to the roof. Everything It touches crumbles and falls apart like a deleted pixel on the web—gone into Nothingness, the Void that once was the building and the structure of the dorm, eating brick and brick apart until nothing is left but the smithereen of a plane Kyouka, Kaminari and Midoriya are standing on.
And Kyouka knows, somehow, that It isn’t wrong. It being Here isn’t wrong. Everything Falling Apart isn’t wrong. Because this is Its Domain, Its Place, and kyouka is nothing but an intruder. a faulty code. a wrong existence and she should just disappear because this is Its place and Its plane and kyouka should not be here and she should not exist and she should just—
“Hello,” Midoriya says, stepping between them and It and the sea of Nothingness all around. “My name is Midoriya Izuku. I apologize for forcing you to come out like this.”
And then Midoriya shifts his foot, and moves to the side. It takes Kyouka a while to understand what he’s doing. Midoriya’s hands are empty, but his left arm is raised into a fist in a parallel line in front of him.
(As if he’s holding something.)
And Midoriya’s right hand is raised to pull a non-existent bowstring.
For a moment, Kyouka thinks she hears It speak. Something indecipherable. Something her eardrums unable to catch and her brain unable to compute.
“Ah, but you see,” Midoriya replies to it. “We exist. You don't.”
He lets go of the arrow that is never there and reality folds in itself like silk.
“You know?” Eijirou repeats. Shinsou shrugs, almost helplessly. “What is that supposed to—you know what—”
Eijirou turns and races up the stairs to the fifth floor and—
“Oof,” Midoriya looks surprised, coming from the top of the stairs. “Careful there. Almost didn’t see you.”
Eijirou blinks.
“It’s over?” Shinsou asks, behind him.
“Yep,” Midoriya says, airily, walking past Eijirou. “Right then, my job’s done.”
Eijirou’s eyes move to Jirou and Kaminari behind him.
They look like they just saw a ghost.
“I think I’m gonna throw up,” Kaminari says, brushing past Eijirou—presumably going to his own room on the third floor to do just that.
“What—what happened?” Eijirou asks, confused.
Jirou stares at him for a while. “I don’t know,” she finally says, sombrely. “But that was the most fucked up thing I’ve ever seen.”
“What?”
Jirou does not elaborate. She goes downstairs calling out, “Midoriya! Wait!”
Eijirou can’t help but feel that he missed out on something really big there. He turns to Shinsou.
“Wait a minute,” he says. “Are demons actually real?”
“Don’t look at me,” Shinsou says. “Dude, trust me—you’d rather not see it. You have the better end of the deal.”
Eijirou runs downstairs immediately.
He finds Midoriya packing up his bag in the living room and Aizawa-sensei standing near the door looking like he’d rather be anywhere but there. Jirou is—well, it looks like she is bothering Midoriya as he packs.
“Hold on,” Jirou says, and Eijirou does think she looks somewhat deranged. “You promised to explain everything.”
“I did, didn’t I?” Midoriya says, calm as a pond. “The plan worked, it’s gone, I get paid. Tadah.”
“What plan?”
Midoriya glances at her strangely, as if she’s being deliberately obtuse. “Well, couldn’t have done it without you and Kaminari-san, you know. Where is he, by the way? Should really thank him.”
Jirou stares at him. “But we did nothing.”
Midoriya stars blankly at her—huge dull green eyes. “But you did. Oh, Kaminari-san. Thanks for the help.”
Kaminari stumbles from the stairs looking a little green. “You,” he tells Midoriya. “You bastard. That was the worst thing I’ve ever experienced. And I’ve had almost died, you know, twice. But that, that was—that was the absolute worst thing..”
“What was?” Midoriya asks.
“Are you kidding me? That, the—” Kaminari trails, pauses. “The..”
Midoriya smiles mildly. “Don’t worry,” he says. “You’ll forget.”
“Forget?” Jirou repeats. “How could—” she stops. “What the fuck.”
Eijirou can’t take this anymore. “Hold on, what happened back there? Was there actually a demon? What the fuck?”
“There was—” Jirou stops, and sits down on the sofa. “There was … I think? Why—”
“Your brain can’t handle it,” Midoriya says. “Or rather, it can’t process it. So what happened did not. It’s a way for your subconscious to protect itself—so the experience is trauma-free! In theory, that is. No worries!”
Jirou stares at him with something like awe and fury. “I don’t understand a single thing you’ve ever said to me,” she says.
Midoriya shrugs. “It’s all for the best. Thanks for the help, though. Especially you, Kaminari-san! Great job.”
“Me?” Kaminari looks confused for a moment, and then, “wait, hold on. You said something. Something about—feeding..”
“Oh right,” Midoriya says. “It’s your Quirk.”
“What?”
“Your Quirk. Electricity. Energy. They feed on it. That’s why they like you.”
You’re perfect, Midoriya had said. Kaminari seems to catch on immediately. “You used me,” he blurts, in horrified realization. “I was ... bait ?”
“Good ol’ fish and hook, you know,” Midoriya shrugs. “Works like a charm.”
“What—”
“I still don’t understand!” Eijirou cuts in, which gets promptly ignored.
“The ofudas!” Jirou says, standing up again. “Did they even mean anything?”
“Of course,” Midoriya says. “The ofudas were a lock, you see—they were … prison bars. So it can’t escape. It’s much more simple to keep it outside than inside.”
“What’s it?” Eijirou says, desperate for anyone to fill him in on whatever the fuck happened.
Midoriya stares at him for a while. “Oh, right,” he says again, a bit slowly, like he forgot to mention it. “You guys aren’t haunted, you guys are cursed. I’ll discuss this with Nezu later, don’t worry.”
Silence.
“What,” Eijirou says, because how the hell does Midoriya keep producing answers that only raise more questions?
“I think I figured it out, actually,” Midoriya continues, like he’s explaining a physics problem. “You see, Nezu thought it was the location. The building. He’s wrong.”
“Wait, so what was this ... it you guys were talking about?”
“Hmm. You could call it a demon, if you want,” Midoriya says. “More accurately, it’s a manifestation of your curse. One of them, anyway. I just got it to shoo off, is all.”
Kaminari is starting to become greener again. “So that’s—that’s over, right?”
“Oh, no,” Midoriya says, and then looks at Kaminari like he’s dumb. “It’ll come back, you see. Or rather, it’ll remake. That wasn’t the problem, that was the symptom. The problem is you guys.”
“Us?” Jirou repeats. “Specify us. Like, is it Kaminari? Kaminari and me?”
“Hey!”
Midoriya shakes his head. “It’s all of you. You and all of your classmates. Class 1-A. All of you are cursed.”
Silence.
“No,” Jirou says. “No way.”
“Oh, yes. Let’s see,” Midoriya says with an almost motherly quality, as if he is a doctor diagnosing a patient. “Have you been in any or more than one life-threatening situation in the past six months?”
They stare at each other. And then Kaminari says, softly and with feelings, “fuck .”
“But we are hero students,” Eijirou says, somewhat incredulously. “Right? It’s normal to—to—”
“Almost die?” Shinsou says drily. “Several times? Sorry to break it to you, but your experiences are not universal.”
“Hold on, if 1-A is cursed, then doesn’t that mean you are included?” Kaminari says, and they all look at Shinsou, who in return immediately looks at Midoriya.
Midoriya stares at Shinsou for a while. “Hmm. Hard to tell. Maybe you should give it time.”
“Give it time to what, infect me?” Shinsou looks like he is about to physically step back. “Hell no. Maybe I should go to 1-B or something.”
“Curses don’t infect people,” Midoriya says, as if it’s supposed to assure him. “Well, I should be going now. Thanks for the pizza.”
“Hang on!” Kaminari sputters. “What, you’re gonna just leave ? What about our curse and shit? Are we going to die?”
“You said curses are lethal,” Jirou says, her voice tense. “Didn’t you?”
“I did say that,” Midoriya agrees, packing up his brush and ink. “But they’re not always lethal, they just could be lethal. And anyway, having a guy like Hitoshi around will help a ton, so I’m sure you’ll be fine.”
“Don’t look at me,” Shinsou says awkwardly, and to Midoriya, he hisses, “stop that.”
“It's true! Like I said, Hitoshi is real Dense, see—”
“Don’t call me dense!”
“—if you stick around with him, it kinda, hmm, cancel bad things out, I guess? Well, I’m sure Nezu is going to do something about it, so no worries.”
“Hold on just a second,” Eijirou pleads. He looks at Shinsou, and then at Aizawa-sensei who seems to find the conversation only slightly more stimulating than watching grass grow. “So is this real? Curses and demons exist? This is too big of an existential crisis for Heroics, don’t you think? If this is a prank, if you guys are pranking me, I’m begging you, humiliate me right away.”
Midoriya tilts his head to look at him. For the first time, Eijirou doesn’t see a smile on Midoriya’s face. “I see the problem, Kirishima-san,” he says. “Why don’t you think of it like a Quirk? Someone with a Quirk has an intent to destroy you all. And this Quirk manifests in metaphysical ways that you might not have the capability to comprehend,” the smile returns, as if by a flip of a switch. “There, is it all better?”
Eijirou doesn’t know where to even begin with that.
Aizawa-sensei sighs from where he stands.
“We don’t have time for this,” Aizawa-sensei says flatly. “I will escort Midoriya back. You may share this information to your classmates if you wish, or you may not—we will provide you full information by tomorrow. And of course, we intend for absolute safety to all of our students and we will accomplish it,” a pause. “If you are having an existential crisis, or some questions regarding things like afterlife and god, please, please, please, do not come to me and call your parents or guardians instead. That is all.”
The four of them stare.
“Well, it was nice to meet you all,” Midoriya hauls his huge backpack on, waving cheerfully at them. “See ya!” door slam.
A beat passes. “That was so fucked up,” Kaminari says. “That was so fucked up.”
“Well,” Shinsou awkwardly announces, turning tail, “I’m going to bed—”
“Oh no you don’t,” Jirou hisses, pulling Shinsou by the back of his shirt. “Tell me everything you know. Stat .”
“Tell us,” Eijirou says. “I literally have no idea what the fuck you guys are on about.”
“I feel like I’ve experienced something so terrifyingly fundamental to the nature of the Universe,” Kaminari says, emptily. “And I don’t even remember any of it. I feel like I forgot to save the game before fighting the final boss. Do you know what this feels like? Absolute agony.”
Shinsou sighs. “Whaddaya want to know?”
“Everything.”
“What the fuck was it that I saw?”
Shinsou rubs the back of his neck. “What do you remember?”
“The stairs,” Jirou frowns. “And then—the—the hatch—and then—”
“The Unmade,” says Kaminari.
“The Colorless,” says Jirou.
“The Thing That Was Never There.”
“The Place That Will Not Be.”
“What the fuck,” says Eijirou.
Shinsou sighs again, harder this time. “Yeah, you saw it, alright,” he says. “You won’t remember it. You can’t. It’s like—trying to pour the ocean into a teacup, or, or trying to install the newest Final Fantasy into a 4GB RAM computer.”
“Okay,” Eijirou says, a little irritated, “I get that you guys experienced some sort of cosmic horror, etc, but seriously. Is this real?”
Jirou, Kaminari, and Shinsou look at each other.
“I don’t know,” says Shinsou.
“Maybe it is,” says Kaminari.
“Maybe it isn’t,” says Jirou.
“This fucking sucks,” says Eijirou.
“Hey guys!” Mina says, as she barges into the living room a few minutes later. Behind her, Tsuyu and Uraraka follow. “Whoa, what’s with the mood?”
“You won’t believe what just happened,” says Eijirou, who is currently lying down on the floor.
“We are cursed,” says Kaminari, who is lying down beside him.
Jirou is non-responsive, lying face down on the sofa.
Mina blinks. “What?”
“What are these papers on the doors?” Uraraka says, confused. “Ofudas?”
“This just says ‘fuck off’,” Tsuyu reads.
“So there you have it,” Nezu ends his informational speech. “You guys are in great mortal danger. But worry not, for we will ensure your safety no matter the cost. Are there any questions? Yes, Sero-kun?”
“Is this a joke?”
“I’m afraid not. Next, Iida-kun?”
“May I ask what grounds have led you to believe that this hypothetical non-natural force would place us in peril, because according to the physicist Horace Barlow, ‘If it is true that the human brain can receive messages and control things in ways that cannot be explained normally, then this undermines the belief—’”
“You can come to my office if you wish to discuss this matter more, Iida-kun.”
“Yes sir.”
“Anyone else? Yes, Koda-kun?”
“Can I still keep my pets in the dorms?”
“Yes, you may. Well, if the rest of you are still too engrossed in a state of disbelief to gather your wits, I shall introduce the newest temporary member of your class. He is appointed by none other than myself to aid UA in ensuring your safety.”
“Oh my god,” Shinsou Hitoshi says from the back of the class.
“Hello everyone, I’m Midoriya Izuku! Anyway, as per Nezu’s request, I’ll be hanging around you guys until maybe the end of the semester? Who knows, but let’s get along till then.”
“Deku?”
“Oh hey, Kacchan,” Midoriya says, a permanent smile on his face. “Long time no see.”