Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Everything that happened immediately after Shou’s father blasted him off the top floor of the Culture Tower was a bit of a blur.

The storm of telekinetic power Pops unleashed hit everyone indiscriminately—Shou and Serizawa, the fake psychic Ritsu’s brother called his master, and a whole slew of Pops’ unfortunate underlings. They fell, and for the third time in a few minutes, Shou thought that was it, his time was up, he’d be dead and his father would try to take over the world like the idiot he was, and nothing Shou had tried to accomplish would matter.

But he didn’t die. None of them died. Ritsu’s brother shielded them from the blast, and for some unfathomable reason, Minegishi commanded his plants to catch them before they could hit the ground and break every bone in their bodies.

High above, Ritsu’s brother remained in the tower. Naive as he was, he hadn’t wanted to fight at first, but something changed after Pops attacked his master. An unhinged energy came over him, like someone had flipped a switch in his brain, surgically removed the soft and quiet parts of him and replaced them with a viciousness and self-assurance that was frightening in its intensity.

It didn’t even faze him when Pops ripped the tower in half. They simply continued their battle in the air, the onslaught of psychic power that rolled off both of them barely comparable to the faint hum that would usually alert one esper to the presence of another.

In all honesty, Shou felt stupid for ever believing he could harm a hair on his father’s head. Like the rest of the speechless audience, he stood on the ground and watched, not fully comprehending the danger of his father’s unrestrained, raw power until Ritsu’s brother left the center of the commotion to tell everyone to run.

For a second, the blinding light that had consumed Pops swelled in perfect, surreal silence, and then the ground shook like a bomb had dropped. The following shock wave leveled every building that had survived the fight between the two espers. Even several hundred meters from the source, the massive discharge of psychic energy sent everything flying; people and debris alike. Shou landed hard on torn-up asphalt, scraping the skin off his palms when they broke the fall. He barely had time to flatten himself against the ground before a sizable block of concrete hurtled right past his head.

He coughed, trying to get the concrete dust that was coating everything out of his mouth. It hung thick in the air, made the surroundings look washed out and gray. He rolled onto his back and couldn’t even see the sky, just more dust and black smoke, weighted with the smell of metal and burnt plastic.

Everything was deathly still. Shou wondered if it meant the battle was over; if Pops was the one who’d been blown into little pieces in the end. It would have consequences, he already knew that. Big ones. Too big to assess while his thoughts all turned to static; shapeless and impossible to hold on to.

And he realized, during all the time he’d spent planning, all the time speculating on how to take his father down, he’d never really thought about what would happen in the event that he succeeded.

A small avalanche of rocks and dirt came down on him as the hill of rubble at his side suddenly collapsed. Ritsu stood on top of it, making a weird, strangled noise as the foundation shifted out from underneath his feet. He was hunched over, clenching the front of his frayed hoodie while his head whipped back and forth, searching for something. Shou tried to call out to him, but it only resulted in more coughing.

Ritsu did a double take when he saw him. He immediately bounded down the hill, dropping down next to Shou to fervently shove away the debris that covered his entire right side.

He was saying something, but Shou was just so happy to see that he was still there that he forgot to listen. Ritsu’s face was caked with dirt, but he looked fine. Somehow, there wasn’t so much as a scratch on him.

“Suzuki!” Ritsu leaned over him, shouting in his face.

Shou blinked. “What…?”

“Are you okay?”

Shou didn’t understand why he looked so scared. He slowly sat up while Ritsu leaned back on his haunches, staring at him imploringly.

“Yeah, I guess,” Shou mumbled, dusting off his dirty varsity jacket.

Ritsu grabbed both of his wrists and pulled him to his feet. As soon as he’d confirmed that Shou could stand just fine on his own, he let go and continued in the direction he’d moved before. He didn’t seem okay at all. He sounded like he had trouble breathing.

When Shou followed him up from the valley of rubble he’d landed in, it was to the sight of a gigantic, ominous mushroom cloud rising from the center point of the explosion. The cloud dissipated, revealing an equally mushroom-shaped excrescence that had emerged from the ground. The greenish-brown stem, almost like the trunk of a massive tree, was growing at a steady rate. Ritsu was practically pulling his hair out looking at it.

In front of him, his brother’s master, the same guy who’d stupidly tried to shoot Pops, was watching it too. There was blood running down his face, but he didn’t seem to notice, just stood there, eyes fixed on the spot where Pops had self-destructed. Shou could only assume he’d finally realized how far in over his head he was.

Ritsu clambered over the remains of smashed buildings and torn asphalt, quickly covering the distance between him and the man. It dawned on Shou why he was freaking out: he couldn’t see Ritsu’s brother anywhere. Shou wasn’t even sure if he’d run away with the rest of them.

“Nii-san went back in there,” Ritsu yelled, clamping onto the man’s sleeve to spin him around. “He went back! Reigen, we have to do something! We have to find him! What if he’s hurt? What if he’s dead?!”

Ritsu looked more afraid than Shou had ever seen him, even though he’d seen him be afraid plenty of times in the extremely short time they’d known each other. The man—Reigen—seemed taken aback, too. He reached out as if to put a hand on Ritsu’s shoulder, but withdrew it before it could actually land there.

“We don’t know that,” he said. It didn’t sound very convincing; there was a disheveled edge to his voice. Maybe he could hear it himself, because it was gone with his next sentence. “It’s Mob. If anyone can survive that, it’s him.”

Reigen bent sideways to put a hand on something that was once a building, supporting himself while he shifted his feet out of the rubble. He waved his free hand up and down in front of his chest. “Here, take a deep breath.”

As if Ritsu needed a demonstration, he followed his own advice and sucked in a lungful of air. Ritsu tried and failed to take a deep breath and instead started crying. While awkwardly straightening his tie, Reigen pressed his lips together, watching the boy for a couple of seconds before he turned to scour the rugged landscape instead.

“We have to check on everyone else,” he said. “Teru and—”

“No, we have to find my brother,” Ritsu shouted like Reigen had utterly betrayed him.

He stepped away, nearly tripping over a chunk of concrete behind him. Reigen grabbed him by the arm, half to keep him from falling over, half to prevent him from running away.

“Ritsu, you stay here,” he snapped to Ritsu’s apparent shock. It startled him right out of crying.

Reigen stood up straight and cleared his throat. He pointlessly attempted to dust off his suit, looked at the ground, looked at the green thing in the distance, looked at the ground again, then finally back at Ritsu.

“He wouldn’t go back for no reason. You have to trust he knows what he’s doing.”

Ritsu was about to say something, but Reigen held up a hand to stop him.

“You won’t be able to see anything until the dust has settled. Let’s make sure nobody here’s hurt first, then we can go find him.”

“Leader!” someone yelled from right behind Shou.

Fukuda came out of nowhere, dropping to his knees in front of him. Out of sheer reflex, Shou nearly kicked him in the face, but Fukuda barely flinched, just grabbed both his arms, frantically inspecting him for injury.

“Are you hurt?” he demanded, turning Shou back and forth. “Are you okay?”

Shou slapped his hands away only to realize that despite the beating he’d gotten from his father earlier, nothing hurt. Even the scrapes on his palms had closed up, looking like he got them yesterday rather than a few minutes ago.

“Your hands,” Fukuda gasped, sounding almost relieved to have something to heal.

Shou grudgingly let Fukuda fuss over his bloodied palms and took the time to look around. One by one, the people who’d been within the blast radius worked their way out of the rubble. He knew many of them, knew they were Scars, but the actual scars that used to signify their status were gone.

He wrung his right hand free to point at one of Division Seven’s former cadres who used to have a big gash on one side of his face. Sakurai—the guy who thought a ridiculous plastic sword was a good medium for his curses.

“Did you do that?”

Fukuda looked up from his work, releasing Shou’s other hand. If you ignored the blood, both palms looked like they’d never been scratched up to begin with.

“No,” he said, sounding just as puzzled as Shou felt. “Everyone I walked past on the way here was fine.”

“Why did you even ask if I was hurt, then?” Shou asked.

Fukuda looked at him with something too close to pity for Shou’s liking. “You were hurt.”

“I just fell,” Shou mumbled.

Fukuda raised his eyebrows at Shou’s choice of words, but refrained from looking at him. He slowly stood up, trying to brush the dirt off his turtleneck sweater before he folded his hands in front of himself. Behind him, Higashio came into view from behind a partially demolished wall, walking straight toward Shou with wide eyes and his hands in his messy, dust-ridden hair.

“We did it!” He held out his hands like he wanted to pick Shou up, but returned them to his hair before he was close enough to do so. “We actually did it!”

Ootsuki was right behind him, arms in the air. He victoriously clutched his slightly dented paper fan in one hand, grinning at Shou like they had something to celebrate. “You slayed the dragon!”

Shou didn’t know how he felt about having caused his father’s downfall, but it definitely wasn’t joy. It wasn’t relief or sadness or anything else he had imagined he’d feel. After all, it wasn’t even him who’d slain the dragon. Maybe he should feel some sort of way about that, too.

In reality, he felt nothing at all.

For some reason, Ootsuki didn’t stop at an appropriate distance like Higashio did, instead taking Shou’s silence as a cue to tuck his fan under his belt and wade right into his personal space. He bent down, determinedly pulling Shou closer until he was squished against his chest.

Shou didn’t know what to do with his arms. None of them had ever hugged him before, and even if they’d tried, he’d never let them do anything remotely like this while a bunch of Claw goons and Ritsu and everyone else could stare at them.

But right now, if that was what Ootsuki needed to do, then so be it. Shou just stood there and hoped he’d get it over with quickly.

When Ootsuki finally let go, he backed off, seeming vaguely uncomfortable. His face was always hard to read, obscured by his long, dark bangs.

Shou raised his chin, regaining his composure while he studied the three lackeys his father had let him keep like they were nothing more than stray dogs. They had risked their lives to hinder Claw however they could, just because Shou had asked them to. Just because he believed it could be done.

It struck him how strange it was for these men—Ootsuki almost twice his age and the others much older—to have humored his childish delusion that he could pull that off.

He’d put them all in danger. It’d been a last-minute resort to barrel through Pops’ defenses and go straight for the man himself. It wasn’t supposed to go down like that, it was too risky. The four of them demolishing the core of Claw’s organization in one afternoon was absurd. It was pure luck that Shou hadn’t ended his short life as a bloody smear on the ruins of the Culture Tower.

He didn’t know why, because he’d been fully prepared to go down with his father if he had to, but now the idea of simply not existing anymore made him a little nauseous.

“What do we do now, Leader?” Fukuda asked. Unsurprisingly, he was the first to ask for instructions, still waiting for Shou to bark orders and tell their small team what to do.

Ootsuki shrugged. “What do you mean? Suzuki’s dead.”

“There’s plenty to be done that has nothing to do with that,” Fukuda said. He mulled over his own words for a bit, watching the crater that had been carved into the landscape before he added, “I don’t think Suzuki-san is dead...”

The statement sounded more ominous the more Shou thought about the possibility that it might be true. Whether Pops was dead or alive, both options seemed equally abstract and equally problematic.

“Fukuda…” Higashio frowned at him. “Look at it. How can anyone survive that?”

He gestured at the crater, but the conversation was cut short by Reigen’s voice, loud and clear as it bounced off the surrounding ruins.

“Okay! Everyone! Can I have your attention?” he hollered. He’d climbed on top of a pile of debris where everyone could see him, clapping his hands a couple of times for good measure. It was completely unnecessary; the entire area was eerily silent.

Maybe everyone was looking for direction after the chaos they’d just survived, because it wasn’t hard for Reigen to persuade them to listen. Shou recognized all the people who were quickest to gather around the improvised podium: the former Scars from Division Seven, Ritsu’s brother’s pet spirit and that blond kid he was apparently friends with, the group of middle schoolers who escaped with Ritsu when he was kidnapped, Ritsu himself.

More tentative, not to mention farther away, were the scattered selection of Claw grunts and Antenna Team crew who had escaped the Culture Tower before Pops tore it to pieces. Shou spotted a few Scars from the other subdivisions as well.

The only person who was in no way paying attention to Reigen, was Serizawa. He sat on a block of concrete, stiff as a statue, tears streaming down his face as he stared at the still expanding growth in the middle of the crater. Minegishi was talking to him, likely attempting to snap him back to reality. Hatori hovered near them too, anxiously pacing back and forth, likely torn between wanting to leave and wanting to stick around to gain some sort of clarity about the situation.

“Is anyone hurt? Is anyone missing?” Reigen scanned the crowd, visibly easing up with each familiar face he spotted.

Koyama, another cadre from Division Seven, stood at the foot of his pile of debris, telling him something Shou couldn’t hear.

“Mukai?” Reigen queried. “Has anyone seen Mukai? Little girl, red hair?”

Farther away, Tsuchiya—the only woman who used to have any influence in their group—lifted their youngest member up above her head. The girl gave a little wave. Everyone from the defunct Division Seven had done a better job of sticking together than Shou would ever have expected from upper-level Claw members.

One of Pops’ underlings nervously raised his hand like a schoolboy waiting to get his teacher’s attention. Reigen looked right at him, waiting for him to speak, but the grunt only lowered his hand a little.

“Yes?” Reigen prompted.

“We got some people who’s hurt,” the man replied, gesturing feebly at a few of his fellow Claw members behind him.

One of them had a nasty-looking head wound and another an arm that was definitely broken. The strange healing power that seemed to have been released with the explosion hadn’t been enough to save them from falling wreckage.

“Are they responsive?” Reigen asked. “Can they walk?”

The grunt looked behind him like he had to double-check. “Um… Yes?”

“Then they can walk themselves to a hospital.”

Reigen clearly wasn’t concerned with the well-being of the people they’d just spent the whole day trying to stop. However, another guy with far more of an attitude came forward. He was young, barely more than a teenager, and he didn’t even have to say anything before Shou knew he would be insufferable to listen to.

“Sorry, who are you again?” he asked, arrogantly looking Reigen up and down.

“Reigen Arataka, greatest psychic of the twenty-first century,” Reigen rattled off, quickly and with a dismissive twirl of his hand, like he’d recited that exact sentence so many times that everyone should’ve heard it by now.

A woman wearing a ridiculous antenna hat stood up from the rubble she’d been buried under, clutching her head. “What happened...?”

“Your boss exploded, that’s what happened,” Reigen exclaimed with increasing irritation.

He promptly turned his back on her to address his own group. “We’re just missing Mob, then…” He distractedly wiped his forehead with his sleeve, making a face when it came back bloody. Tearing his eyes away from the stain, he took in a breath and gestured at the flattened expanse the blast had created. “He has to be down there somewhere. Can’t be too difficult to search the area.”

“What the hell should we care about that kid?” the grunt from before asked. “He just ruined everything!”

“Does it look like I’m talking to you?” Reigen spat over his shoulder.

“You think you’re gonna get away with this?” The grunt laughed defiantly. “So maybe you defeated the Boss, maybe he left us for dead, but we already own this city. There’s a lot of us. A lot more than you.”

“You better back off if you don’t want me to come over there and kick your ass,” Koyama threatened him, always quick to start a fight.

“Yeah? Why don’t you try it, asshole,” the grunt replied, even stupider than Koyama. He looked behind him expectantly. “Are you guys with me or what?”

He didn’t actually have that many people to back him up—maybe twenty who weren’t injured or still lying unconscious on the ground. The few smart ones looked on with apprehension, trying to gauge the situation since they were, after all, up against a considerable number of natural espers.

Annoyed by their reluctance, the frontman did some kind of dramatic display with his arms like he was trying to conduct telekinesis, but nothing happened.

“Wait, what?” He stared at his hands like someone had mercilessly robbed him. “What happened to my powers?!”

Several of the others seemed to come to the same conclusion he did. Shou couldn’t help but laugh.

“You think this is funny, you little shit?” the man hissed.

Shou raised an eyebrow at him. “What’s the matter, didn’t you want a fight?”

The man pointed at him threateningly, but failed to come up with any words to accompany the gesture. “I’m—” he tried. “Even if we leave now, you haven’t seen the last of us!”

“Then leave already,” Reigen groaned. “There’s nothing keeping you.”

Nothing keeping them? They had just taken part in trying to usurp the whole city. They had sworn loyalty to Suzuki Touichirou, the cruelest man Shou knew. They were partly responsible for the ruins they were all standing in. They had plenty of things that should keep them.

The grunt huffed like he found Reigen’s attitude deeply offensive, but he stuck to glowering spitefully at all of them before he turned to walk away. Without thinking, Shou leaped onto Reigen's pile of debris and shoved him aside. Reigen did not see this coming and nearly fell off.

“Hey!” Shou shouted.

The volume made the grunt duck like somebody had shot at him. He ducked even lower when Shou tore a huge slab of concrete out of the ground and dumped it in his path, small scraps of debris hailing down on him as he stumbled backward.

“You're just gonna run away after what you’ve done?!” Shou demanded.

The man kept his hands in the air as he slowly turned around, but the moment his eyes fell on Shou again, they widened with realization, all fear Shou had managed to instill in him, gone.

“Wait, I know you! You’re that little fucking rat at HQ who kept getting people in trouble!“
His head whipped around, glancing expectantly at his fellow underlings. “You guys know who this is, right? That’s the boss’s son!”

The others frowned at Shou with varying degrees of confusion. Their frontman was wrong, almost none of them knew Shou. He’d been to nearly every branch and subdivision of Claw, but always while pretending to be someone else—an intern, or somebody else’s kid, or a new recruit freshly picked up off the street. Even at Claw’s headquarters, he usually made a point of avoiding his father when anyone else was around.

Most of these people probably didn’t even know their boss had a son—they were lucky if they’d ever been informed of Pops’ name and appearance.

Shou should’ve kept his mouth shut. He didn’t do this. He never let anyone know who he was if he could help it, it just made him an easy target. It would have before, and now Pops was gone. Pops was gone and Shou was out here with who knows how many stragglers who’d be looking for someone to take their anger out on.

“You’re seriously gonna give us shit for leaving?” the main grunt asked. “If you have such a big fucking problem with the boss, shouldn’t you have done something about that a little earlier?”

In his periphery, Shou could see Fukuda stare at him intently. He should back out of this, he knew that. He should stop talking, but the same burning anger from before pushed the words out from his chest too fast for him to stop them.

“I was the first one in the tower trying to stop him from carrying out his stupid plan,” he yelled. “Taking over the world sounds like something a little kid would say, and you just went along with it, thinking you had any kind of say in what was happening? How dumb are you?”

He’d wanted to scream these things at every Claw member he’d ever met, and apparently today was the day he finally did it.

“Your powers?” he went on. “Guess what, you never had any powers! It was all him. He lent them to you just so he could have a bunch of backup foot soldiers. You have no idea what he's like. He—”

For a moment, Shou lost track of his thoughts. He had no idea either. He never knew how thoroughly lost his father was in his own conceited bullshit.

“He almost killed me, you got that?” He paused. Let it sink in. “He tried to kill that kid who just saved your life. That's the kind of person you've been supporting. What do you think would’ve happened to you? You’re lucky you’re still here!”

The frontman only scowled at him, slowly inching his way around to the back of the concrete slab.

“If you have a conscience at all, you stay here and help clean up,” Shou said to all of them, hoping he could rally some last shred of decency. “Help everyone who’s hurt. Take some responsibility. Don’t run away like a bunch of cowards!”

"No way, if the boss is still alive, I'm not sticking around," another grunt piped up.

“Well, somebody has to,” Shou snapped at him.

Beside him, Reigen leaned in, only talking loud enough for him to hear: “Maybe you should let them go. We have enough people who can help.”

“Shut up,” Shou snarled, “this is none of your business!”

It was pissing him off that Reigen was still standing beside him. As if Reigen picked up on this, he nodded to himself and jumped down from the pile, faltering for a second at the considerably larger man who had walked up to them.

“Shou-kun…” Serizawa’s voice came out distant and uneven. At some point while Shou had been busy yelling at his father's underlings, he’d checked back into reality and approached the rest of them. “I'll help,” he said, wiping his runny nose on his sleeve. “I'll help you find the President.”

Shou grew quiet, staring at him incredulously. "You will?"

Serizawa looked him right in the eye and nodded.

Maybe it wasn’t so surprising. Nobody genuinely cared about Pops’ well-being as much as Serizawa. In the last few years, nobody had spent as much time with him as Serizawa. He had been Pops’ bodyguard, after all.

What Shou didn’t see coming, and what made no sense to him, was that Minegishi followed right after him.

“I’ll go with you,” Minegishi said in a tone like he was agreeing to pick up groceries with them.

Shou gave him an incredulous stare too. He’d been following Serizawa around like a shadow ever since he fell from the tower. Minegishi was an inherently self-absorbed and self-righteous person, Shou couldn’t imagine what had moved him to show concern for another human being now. It was already suspicious how quickly he’d turned on Pops.

Minegishi glanced over his shoulder just in time to catch the last of the present Super Five members discreetly trying to stalk away.

"Hatori," he said, voice was flat and emotionless, but definitely implying a threat.

Hatori reluctantly turned to face his former associates, forcing a nervous smile. “Sorry, but I really don't want to be here when the feds show up.”

Any of Pops’ underlings who had been on the fence about leaving suddenly seemed in a terrible hurry to do so. Hatori had nothing more to say either, just walked away, squaring his shoulders like he was afraid one of the others would attack him from behind.

Shou let him go. He let all of his father’s subordinates go. Hoped he was watching the foundation of Claw crumble as they headed off in different directions. That they wouldn’t just regroup later and find a new person to put on top of the pyramid. Someone like Hatori or Shibata or Shimazaki. He didn’t even know where Shibata and Shimazaki were.

It wouldn’t be the same, but Shou knew lesser espers had done far more damage in Claw’s lifetime than his father had done today.

He turned around to find that Fukuda was still watching him.

“Shall we go, or do you want to wait for the other group?” he asked as Shou was about to hop down from the debris. He let one hand hover near Shou’s arm, ready to catch him, as if he expected he might fall on his face like a three-year-old.

Shou had a hard time gathering his thoughts. He knew there was still a lot to do that they’d actually planned for, probably a lot they hadn’t planned, too, but breaking it down was overwhelming.

Fukuda was quick to come to his aid: “Where are we going after this? To the apartment?”

Shou glanced out at the surrounding ruins. The workshop they’d used as a second stakeout definitely wasn’t standing anymore.

“Yeah,” he concluded, sounding strangely resigned to his own ears.

“And you want all of us to join you in finding your father?” Fukuda asked.

“I guess.”

Fukuda looked at him. Really looked at his face, like he was searching for something. Shou didn’t know what he wanted from him. Enthusiasm? He was a bit short on that right now. Thankfully, it only lasted a few seconds before he went on with his to-do list.

“You need to talk to Ritsu-kun about his house.”

“Right,” Shou said.

“And we have to decide what to do with those two.”

Fukuda pointed at Serizawa and Minegishi. They’d gone to check out the crater they’d have to trek across if they wanted to find Pops. Serizawa looked less like a ghost now that he was up and about, distracted by the task at hand.

It was a little easier when you had it all listed like that. Sometimes, Shou didn’t know what he’d do without Fukuda. Looking after his boss’s son was a prison sentence for him, it was never something he signed up for, but Fukuda had believed in him from the first time he started talking about a rebellion. He had no obligation to stay now that he’d no longer have Pops breathing down his neck, and yet he was still there. Still helping. Still making sense of everything.

Shou didn’t know what else he’d expected. Maybe that everything else in his life would unravel along with Claw, but standing in the chaos and rubble his father had left in his wake with Fukuda watching him so patiently, Shou was filled with an overwhelming thankfulness he didn’t know any way of expressing.

He smiled tiredly and hoped Fukuda understood. He usually did.

Behind them, Reigen was arguing with his own group. He was sending most of them home, as far as Shou could tell. Few of them were happy with that; Ritsu’s brother apparently meant a lot to these people. If Shou had room for any more feelings in the incomprehensible vortex that already made it hard for him to think, he might have felt bad for involving him in all of this.

Ritsu had left the group to stand by himself, staring out at the horizon. Just like his brother, he wouldn’t have been here if it weren’t for Shou.

It was hard to explain why he’d decided to recruit Ritsu in the first place. Before Shou spirited him away and set his house on fire, they had only met once, and yet, he just knew Ritsu was someone he could trust. Something about the relentless way he’d stood up to Shou despite his badly underdeveloped powers. Something about how nervously he acted around his brother.

Ritsu had clearly spent his life in the shadow of someone he was ultimately powerless against. Like a tree forced to grow at a strange angle to reach sunlight, it had bent him out of shape in ways Shou could recognize from himself. He just knew Ritsu would get it. Or, he thought he’d get it. By now, he wasn’t so sure.

Ritsu didn’t even notice that Shou had walked up to him until Shou waved a hand in front of his face. He blinked, glaring at him before directing his attention straight ahead again, squinting like he didn’t trust that his eyes were working right.

“It looks like a giant broccoli,” he said.

Shou hadn’t really paid attention to it, but the green growth in the middle of the crater had stopped growing. It was as tall as a forty-story building, the top branching out into a huge crown that spanned a diameter nearly equal to its height. Shou had deemed it to be a tree, but the top was composed of big, dense-looking heads, not at all like leaves. It really did look like a giant broccoli.

“Just… what,” Ritsu eloquently said.

“Pretty weird,” Shou agreed.

Ritsu sniffled and dragged a hand across his face, wiping off some of the dirt and dust that outlined the tear tracks on his cheeks. Shou hoped he wasn’t about to cry again.

“Do you think they’re still alive?” he asked, looking at the ground instead of Shou.

As far as Shou was concerned, that was a bridge they could cross when they got there. It was a waste of energy to get emotional over it in advance.

“I guess we’ll find out,” he said. “I don’t really see the point in worrying about it.”

Ritsu pressed his lips into a thin line and nodded. Shou couldn’t tell what he was thinking, just that he was upset. He wished he had some bold and encouraging thing to say, but nothing came to him.

Ritsu composed himself, facing Shou with a strange, cold look on his face. “Did your dad really try to kill you?” he asked, going straight for the money. Straight for the jugular.

Shou didn’t feel the need to repeat himself, so he simply glared. Almost immediately, Ritsu seemed to regret asking and went right back to looking crestfallen and lost.

“I’m sorry I let you go into the tower by yourself,” he said.

“Why?” Shou asked. “You just did what I told you.”

“No, I didn’t. You told me to go home.” Ritsu frowned at him, but his usual sharpness was missing as he went on. “I could have—I mean—What are you going to do when you find him? What if he tries to attack you again?”

“Sorry,” Fukuda interjected. Shou could hear his boots trudge through the rubble as he walked around him, raising a hand in front of Ritsu as a sign for him to stop talking. He’d clearly been listening in on the conversation.

“Leader, are you sure you want to go over there?” he asked Shou. “We can take care of it without you.”

Shou glanced at the broccoli again. There were a lot more “what ifs” compressed into that question. What if Pops wanted to kill Shou on sight. What if he wanted to kill all of them on sight. What if he tried to escape. What if he was badly injured. What if he was dead.

What if he was dead and not in little pieces?

They couldn't very well call the cops or an ambulance without anyone asking questions. It might be tricky to pull off, but Shou supposed they could bring his body to the woods outside Seasoning City and bury it there. That, or burn it.

The irony of watching Pops go up in flames the day after Shou had set fire to the replicas of Ritsu’s parents didn’t escape him.

“Leader?” Fukuda asked again, sounding even more apprehensive than before.

“I have to be there,” Shou decided. He had started this, and he intended to follow it through all the way to completion.

***

There was no point in splitting up, so everyone ended up walking toward the broccoli as one collective troop. It was a much smaller group after Reigen had shaken off everyone but the blond kid—Teru—and their ugly, green amoeba of a spirit.

Shou couldn’t help but frown upon the fact that none of them had bothered asking how Ritsu was doing. Reigen was definitely keeping an eye on him, but he kept his distance, so Shou made sure to stick close to Ritsu as they walked side by side.

He knew it was a poor consolation, but Ritsu didn’t seem in the mood to talk. Even with his eyes locked determinedly on the center of the crater, he looked tired more than anything. It didn’t help that the way was uneven and littered with rubble. Ritsu’s psychic powers were still so new to him that it was more effort than it was worth to use them for assistance.

Shou was tired too, but it felt very far away. Not important.

Past a few more crumbled remnants of the district that had surrounded the Culture Tower, the terrain evened out. The explosion had completely blown away everything in close vicinity, making the enormous broccoli appear even taller.

Shou glanced over his shoulder at Fukuda and Ootsuki. They were hanging back behind the rest of the group, whispering to each other, but both of them stopped talking the moment they noticed Shou watching them. They’d been acting cagey ever since Pops threw him out of the tower. Cagey like they expected Shou to blow up too if they made one wrong move.

At least Higashio was focusing on something else. He walked in front, chatting with Reigen and the Teru kid. He was good at that—luring information out of people through casual conversation—but with the way Reigen physically blocked Teru off from answering any of his questions, he wasn’t having much luck today. Eventually, Reigen loudly excused himself and herded the boy away. Higashio looked on tiredly as they fell into step with Serizawa behind him.

Serizawa might as well be sleepwalking, mindlessly shuffling along while a tear leaked from his red-rimmed eyes ever so often. Reigen kept glancing at him with an increasingly troubled frown. As they came closer to the broccoli stem, he started clearing his throat, leaning toward Serizawa as if to catch his attention, but Serizawa saw nothing but the puffs of dust his crocs were kicking up.

“Hi, excuse me,” Reigen said, stepping right in front of Serizawa, forcing him to stop. He straightened his back, pointing a thumb at himself. “Reigen Arataka. You kind of saved me and my student’s lives back there?”

Reigen moved as if to hold out his hand for Serizawa to shake, but changed his mind halfway through the motion and almost seamlessly redirected it into crossing his arms. Shou guessed that Serizawa’s dazed stare threw him off, because he was looking at Reigen like he’d never seen him before. Like he was some foreign entity that had dropped down from outer space and landed right there in his path.

“Hi,” Serizawa croaked, another stray tear clearing a path through the dust on his cheeks.

The exchange had brought the entire group to a halt, everyone watching him and Reigen curiously.

“Yeah, so,” Reigen muttered awkwardly. “Thank you. For that.” He quickly flailed his hand, as if to distract himself from his discomfort. “Listen, it seems like you’re in a bad spot, so I was thinking, if you need any help after this, give me a call and I’ll see what I can do.”

Reigen reached into his tattered suit jacket and pulled out a business card.

“Here,” he said, offering it to Serizawa. “Call it a special one-time offer.”

Serizawa took the small piece of cardstock, holding it with both hands like Reigen had gifted him a precious relic.

“Thank you,” he said in a very small voice.

Behind him, Minegishi peered around Serizawa’s shoulder, his face the same impassive mask as always. “Don’t I get a business card?” he drawled at Reigen. “I saved your life too.”

Reigen blinked with astonishment before he reluctantly reached for another card, holding it out to Minegishi. “I guess you did.”

Minegishi inspected it, turning it back and forth between his fingers. He didn’t look very impressed, but then again, he never did.

“You know an awful lot of powerful espers for someone who exorcizes ghosts for a living.” He met Reigen’s cautious frown. “Are you planning a world takeover as well?”

“Not exactly,” Reigen said, morphing the bewilderment on his face into an expression almost as flat and unreadable as Minegishi’s.

“So this isn’t you recruiting a new follower?” Minegishi asked. “It would be ironic if Serizawa just changed hands from one delusional megalomaniac to another.”

He held Reigen’s gaze for a while longer before he hummed noncommittally, dropped the business card into one of the breast pockets on his jacket, and started walking again.

The rest of them picked up their pace as well, but Reigen stopped in his tracks when he noticed Shou watching him. Shou hadn’t saved Reigen’s life, but for a moment, his hand hovered over the front of his jacket like he was contemplating handing him a business card anyway. Shou hoped his best mean-spirited glare did a good enough job of communicating that he didn't want one, and sure enough, Reigen let his hand drop to his side and went on ahead.

Again, he easily picked up on what Shou was thinking. It was kind of unsettling.

Shou elbowed Ritsu in the arm. “What is that guy’s deal?”

Ritsu followed Shou’s line of sight as Reigen returned to Teru’s side, one hand in his pants pocket to appear more casual than he probably felt. “Reigen?”

“Is he just stupid or what?” Shou asked. “He keeps going for the most dangerous person in sight. He’s not even an esper.”

Ritsu made a weird face like he wanted to laugh, but couldn’t force it out through the dread and exhaustion seemingly consuming most of his brain capacity.

“Nii-san is...” Ritsu sighed, laying his head back to glance up at the broccoli’s massive crown. “I don’t know. He means well enough, don’t worry about him.”

“Just saying, how is he not dead yet,” Shou muttered.

Now that he’d lost interest in messing with Reigen, Minegishi was staring at the broccoli too. The main bulk of the plant rose several meters above ground, supported by massive roots that had pushed up the remains of the surrounding asphalt. There were crevices in between the roots, so big a person could easily walk through.

Minegishi’s usually so impassive face was painted with unease when he walked up to it. He stepped through one of the openings, brushing a hand over the pale surface of the stalk. Curious, Shou followed him to the entrance, squinting into the darkness. The roots had created a labyrinth of passageways, but it was hard to tell where they went, if they went anywhere at all. The sun outside was close to setting, letting only narrow beams of orange light in through the cracks in the plant material.

“Do you think they’re in there?” he asked once Minegishi came back outside.

“Possibly,” Minegishi said.

“Well, can’t you do something about it? Make it move out of the way or something?”

“No,” Minegishi said, letting a good twenty seconds of glowering at the stalk pass before he elaborated: “It doesn't listen.”

Shou turned to Higashio instead, giving him a questioning look. He was already crouched next to one of the roots snaking out from the plant, touching it as he tried to analyze the problem.

“Even apart from the fact it’s a couple hundred meters tall, there’s definitely something strange about it,” he agreed.

For a while, Teru experimented with blowing a hole in the stalk with his powers. It didn't tear through the plant like Shou would’ve expected, just made a slight dent, a bit seared at the edges. Teru looked more angry than defeated—he clearly intended to get through this vegetable even if it was the last thing he did.

Meanwhile, all the steam had gone out of Ritsu. He was drooping like all he wanted was to lie down on the ground and pass out, and yet he stubbornly continued trying to think. “If they’re in there, how are we going to find them?” he asked. “We don’t even know if they’re conscious.”

Higashio had been frowning thoughtfully at the broccoli ever since Shou asked him about it. “We can dig through it,” he suddenly suggested. To demonstrate, he drove the heel of his derby shoe into the root by his feet. It left more of a mark than Teru’s telekinesis had.

Eager to make himself useful, Teru volunteered to find something to dig with, heading for the nearest hardware store that hadn't collapsed in on itself. It didn't take long before he returned with both shovels and flashlights so they could actually see what they were doing.

The large, open expanse right inside the crevice they went in through branched into several narrow corridors. Rubble had been swept up with the roots when the broccoli first emerged from the ground. It was embedded into the plant material, but so porous that it was crumbling apart. The occasional, dull sound of concrete hitting the ground was all there was to listen to in the cavern-like space. The stalk absorbed all noise from outside.

“I know where the President is,” Serizawa said, peering intently down one passageway.

Pops’ aura had never been easy to trace, and Shou assumed his father was knocked out pretty hard since he hadn’t escaped on his own. With the noise from all the other auras around them, Shou wasn’t able to pick up on it at all.

“You sure?” he asked.

Serizawa nodded, looking both determined and relieved at the same time.

Next to them, Ritsu weighed one of the shovels in his hands, watching as Teru paced back and forth between the other paths, theorizing about which one they should try. Maybe some of his energy had rubbed off on Ritsu, because he’d perked up a little now that a potentially happy ending to this disastrous day wasn’t so far out of his reach.

Well, maybe not happy, but at least one that didn’t involve his brother being dead.

“I guess this is where we split up,” Shou said.

The words felt weird leaving his mouth. They’d only been together for a day and a half, but it had been an intense day and a half. Shou still hadn’t fully understood that their job here was done. He didn’t know what came next, but he felt a little more alone and uncertain knowing that whatever it was, it probably wouldn’t involve Ritsu.

Ritsu opened and closed his mouth a few times like he wanted to say something, but in the end, all that came out was, “Our house...?”

“Oh, shit, you’re right,” Shou blurted out. Even with Fukuda’s reminder earlier, he’d still forgotten. “Can you give us… I don’t know, three days to recover?” He pointed a thumb at Higashio. “We already stored all your valuables somewhere safe. This guy can repair your house if he tries hard enough.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Higashio stare at him like that was a completely unreasonable request. Shou was pretty sure they’d already talked about it.

“I know it’s a long time,” he added when Ritsu already seemed to worry about how he was going to pass the next three days, “but your parents won’t get back until then anyway. You got somewhere else to crash, right?”

“I’ll figure something out,” Ritsu said, shaking his head tiredly.

“Okay, good. I’d offer for you to come back with us, but eh…” He let the sentence die out, gesturing vaguely at Serizawa and Minegishi. “Yeah, so, I’ll call you when you can come home.”

Shou felt like there was a lot more he should say, but he didn’t know where to begin.

“I’m sorry,” he managed, “about your brother, I guess. You were right, he’s really… Yeah. I didn’t get it at all. We’d probably all be dead if he hadn’t shown up.”

Ritsu smiled faintly. “I’ll tell him you said thanks.”

The seconds ticked by as they stood there in silence, neither of them taking the initiative to actually leave.

“I have to go find my brother now,” Ritsu said and continued not to move.

Shou wasn’t good at goodbyes. Usually, he just left, skipping the goodbye part altogether. The best he could think of was to stick out his right hand and wait for Ritsu to shake it. It seemed like an appropriate gesture.

Ritsu had a strange frown on his face like he expected Shou to pull some kind of prank on him, but with some hesitation, he did shake his hand. Carefully. Only moving exactly close enough so he could reach.

“I’m really glad you gave me a chance,” Shou admitted, letting go, for Ritsu’s sake as much as his own. Obviously, neither of them were very comfortable with this.

With a quick wave, he snapped around and went to find Serizawa, making sure not to look back. It was time to find Pops and get the hell out of there. Teru’s chattering quickly faded into the background as his and Shou’s groups headed their separate ways.

Serizawa led them through the narrow passageways like a bloodhound following an animal trail, his forehead wrinkled in concentration, oddly calm and focused now that he had a job to do. Almost as if their roles had reversed, Minegishi trailed close behind him, shoulders tense and a scowl on his face worse than his usual, default scowl. Shou couldn’t figure out if he worried Serizawa would freak out when they found Pops, or if he intended to use him as a meat shield in case Pops attacked them, or if the broccoli just weirded him out that much.

Fukuda walked next to Shou with a death grip on his shoulder. Occasionally, the path would get so narrow that they had to fall into a single line and Shou could almost physically feel the anxiety radiating from him. Fukuda kept glancing up at the debris embedded in the roof of the strange vegetable cavern. Shou was sure he was imagining five hundred different ways any of them could have their head smashed in by a block of concrete, so he let Fukuda hold on to him even though it kind of hurt.

Behind them, Shou couldn’t avoid noticing Ootsuki, doubling over to keep from laughing at Fukuda. He nearly smacked Higashio in the head with the pair of shovels he was carrying over his shoulder.

Up ahead, Serizawa stopped so abruptly Minegishi nearly walked into him. He fervently pointed at a spot at the base of the wall they were trailing. “Here!”

Ootsuki’s grin faded as he lifted the shovels off his shoulder. “Inside the wall…?”

“Yes, I’m sure it’s him,” Serizawa urged like he was in a hurry. It had already been hours, Shou didn’t see how a couple more minutes would make any difference.

Serizawa shoved the flashlight he’d been carrying into Minegishi’s chest and held out an open palm to Ootsuki. “Give me a shovel.”

He didn’t take his eyes off the spot where Pops was supposedly buried. Ootsuki handed Serizawa one shovel and kept the other for himself so he could help dig. While the two of them worked their way through the dense plant material, everyone else could just stand back and wait. Fukuda’s grip on Shou’s shoulder grew so tight that Shou had to pry his hand off.

“Wait, I think I can see him.” Ootsuki had to stop Serizawa from taking another chunk out of the broccoli. He broke a few more pieces off the plant to reveal what unmistakably looked like a human shoulder. Shou didn’t know how his father hadn’t suffocated from being buried like that, completely encapsulated in the green stalk.

After a few more minutes of digging, Serizawa was able to pull Pops out. He carefully lowered him onto the ground in front of the jagged hole they’d excavated.

Serizawa had been so focused ever since they set foot inside the broccoli, but now he just looked distressed. Distressed, but not nearly as distressed as one could have feared. Serizawa wouldn’t be a problem right now, and apparently, neither would Pops. Nobody was attacking each other, nobody’s powers were about to blow up again. It certainly seemed to calm Minegishi down, and even Fukuda eased up a fraction.

Shou stepped a little closer. His father didn't look like somebody who had taken part in an epic battle just a few hours ago, more like the gigantic broccoli had absorbed him while he slept. The explosion had healed him like everyone else; his badly torn suit was the only evidence of the damage he’d sustained.

However, his complexion was unhealthy and odd; the skin almost translucent, leaving the blue of his veins clearly visible. He looked thinner—harrowed, like he’d gone without food and water and sleep for weeks. It made sense that spending twenty years’ worth of energy in half an hour would do that to a person.

They all stood in a circle around the unconscious man, quiet and contemplative. It was muddled to Shou why he was doing this, why he was bothering to rescue his father, and maybe it was a bit late to think about it now. He wanted him to be held responsible for what he’d done, but it felt wrong to leave him for the cops or the government agents, and it would likely result in more dead people anyway.

What happened to Pops was Shou’s responsibility, now more than ever. He’d just have to figure out the best course of action.

Fukuda cleared his throat, breaking everyone out of their own thoughts. “We can’t take him through the city looking like this,” he said. “It’ll raise attention.”

He had a point. There was barely anything left of Pops’ shirt.

“Can you make him something to wear?” Shou asked Higashio.

Higashio scratched his hair, analyzing the task at hand the same way he did with any other job Shou gave him. “If you give me something to make it from,” he concluded.

Without a moment’s hesitation, Serizawa took off the ratty-looking hanten he’d been wearing and held it out to Higashio. “Can you use this?”

Higashio wordlessly accepted it, running the fabric through his fingers, trying to get a feel for it. Shou didn’t remember if he’d ever seen Higashio use his powers on clothing before, but with a bit of trial and error, he merged the front of it, rearranging it into a sweater. The fibers he’d manipulated looked all stretched-out and wrong, but it was better than a bare chest.

“I guess I can float him out so you guys don’t have to lug him around,” Shou said after the others had gotten his father into the sweater and all that remained was the logistical challenge of hauling the adult, deadweight man across the crater outside.

“Don’t worry, I can do it,” Serizawa said. Without asking for permission first, he picked Pops up. His jittery, purple aura lit up the insides of the vegetable stalk, casting strange, flickering shadows everywhere around him.

He was imposing again, and Shou had the bitter, smoldering feeling he was doing it on purpose. He hadn’t asked for Serizawa’s help, and yet he’d repeatedly yanked every opportunity for Shou to do something out from right under his nose.

Shou was also well aware that it would sound really weird to make a fuss about not getting to levitate his unconscious father, so he kept quiet and stepped out of Serizawa’s way. Nobody else seemed to have a problem with him taking charge of the rescue operation. Not even Fukuda. He only looked relieved to have Serizawa in front, keeping Pops at a distance.

Maybe Shou was just overreacting. His father had definitively proven that his son meant nothing to him, so he didn’t know why he cared. Making sure Pops didn’t kill or extort any more people didn’t mean he personally had to watch him for the rest of his life.

Maybe there were people better suited for that job. Just like there’d been people better suited for taking him down in the first place.

Shou stayed close to Fukuda as the glow of Serizawa’s aura pointed them outside. He might have done his part to set all of this into motion, but he felt more like a little kid than he had in years.

Chapter Text

The way out of the broccoli crater was just as rugged and barren as it had been going in. The sun had already set, only a faint light reaching over the horizon that did little to illuminate the way ahead.

Shou nearly tripped over a stray chunk of concrete and considered if it would be easier to levitate himself the rest of the way out of the blast zone. He was tired, though, and it didn’t seem like Fukuda would appreciate him moving out of his reach.

Serizawa had taken the lead of their small group, determinedly trudging through the rubble with Pops hovering in front of him. On the other end, Minegishi trailed after them at a distance. Occasionally, he would stop and glower at the gigantic vegetable behind them like he was still trying to figure out what exactly was so wrong about it.

It was a long way to the apartment that had acted as Shou and the others’ base of operations for the last few weeks. At the pace they were going, it would take hours to reach on foot. They couldn’t risk anyone seeing Pops floating around when he’d just broadcast his face to the entire city earlier in the day, so everyone agreed it was best to drive the rest of the way.

There were plenty of abandoned cars outside the crater, but most of them had been smashed by rubble or flipped over by the shock wave from the explosion. Higashio walked ahead into something that looked like it used to be a parking lot, scanning the graveyard of vehicles for anything useful. Shou didn’t know exactly what he was looking for, but they definitely couldn’t fit seven people into a regular car.

Higashio lit up at the sight of a battered, rusty van that must have been barely functional even before it was exposed to the explosion. Shou wandered after him, watching as he bent the lock on the driver seat door, morphing it under his fingers until it stuck out in an unnatural, twisted shape.

“Can this thing even drive?” Shou wondered, walking a circle around the van.

A tree had fallen onto the hood, effectively crushing one side under its weight.

“What’s wrong with that one?” He pointed at another van just a few meters away, far less battered and not buried under any trees.

Higashio didn’t even look, already preoccupied with breaking off the plastic covering under the steering wheel. “I can actually hot-wire an old piece of junk like this,” he explained.

“I thought you were good at this stuff,” Shou muttered.

“Give me a break, I haven’t had to steal a car without a key in twenty years. It’s not as easy as they make it look in the movies.” He glanced over his shoulder, waving Shou away. “Do you mind? How about you move that tree instead of staring at me.”

Shou absentmindedly lifted the top end of the tree and let it drop down next to the van. “Maybe you can teach me sometime.”

It was probably a good thing to know how to hot-wire a car. Higashio knew how to do a lot of useful things. Not just for breaking and entering, either.

“Sure.” Higashio gave him a brief smile before sitting in the driver’s seat. He fiddled with a couple of wires until they gave a spark, waking up the engine.

Shou let Fukuda take the passenger seat, so everyone else had to file into the back. The van creaked like some essential part of it had been knocked loose, and the engine stuttered, but it held together. It was a bumpy ride until Higashio steered them farther into the city where there were no more pieces of crumbled buildings strewn across the roads.

There wasn’t much space in the backroom. Shou sat pressed against Ootsuki so he didn’t have to be any closer to Serizawa or Minegishi than necessary. They could hear sirens outside from ambulances and police cars making their way to the disaster area. The flashing red lights seeped in through the uneven frame of the back doors, occasionally illuminating Pops as he lay there on his back, still and lifeless, encircled by the rest of them.

Shou zoned out while studying his father’s face and thought about the fact that he couldn’t remember if he’d ever watched him sleep before.

He realized he’d dozed off when Ootsuki lightly shook his shoulder. The van had already come to a stop and everything seemed oddly quiet without the struggling engine providing background noise. Higashio opened the back doors with a loud clunk, letting the dim light from a street lamp spill into the load compartment. Shou followed the others outside while rubbing his eyes, trying to adjust to it.

The street outside the apartment was sequestered and poorly lit, the neighborhood largely free of shops or anything else that would attract people. It was a little shady, but that was fine. Maneuvering Shou’s unconscious father up the stairs wasn’t the first shady-looking thing they’d done during their stay.

To avoid any trouble, Shou had asked Fukuda to find a stakeout where they wouldn’t raise attention. It was the type of place usually rented out to tourists who stuck around longer than it would be reasonable to pay for a hotel room, or people passing through for contract work. When they would eventually leave as quickly as they’d arrived, no one would question it.

Higashio leaned on the van with one hand at his side, contemplating Pops like he was a piano or a particularly large cupboard. He was still lying unconscious in the middle of the back compartment; one point eighty-five meters tall and all deadweight.

Serizawa thoughtlessly let his aura reach out to pick him up again.

“No telekinesis,” Higashio scolded him. “You just walk around in public using your powers? We’re keeping a low profile here.”

“I don’t know,” Serizawa mumbled, self-consciously tugging at his sleeves as his aura shrunk and faded. “I don’t walk around in public much…”

Higashio waved him over to help carry Pops instead. It had been wise of him to veto against levitating anything, because the moment they’d dragged Pops out of the van, a woman came out from the apartment building.

She froze on the doorstep, suspiciously eyeing them all, leaning against the door with one hand tightly clenched around the handle like she wanted to maintain the option of running back inside.

It was fair. They probably did look rather suspicious. One kid in dirty clothes, five grown men in various states of disarray, a run-down, sketchy looking van, and of course, the unconscious guy in the hideous sweater Higashio had assembled.

“Had a bit too much to drink,” Ootsuki commented, patting Pops on the chest like passing out drunk was a silly thing he did all the time.

The woman stepped down from the doorstep, careful not to take her eyes off them. When she finally turned away, it was with hurried steps, her heels clicking loudly against the sidewalk. She looked back at them over her shoulder several times before she disappeared down a side street.

Higashio let out a breath through his nose that sounded bitterly resigned. He repositioned Pops’ arm that was slung over his shoulder and motioned for Serizawa to follow him.

Carrying Pops up to the third floor wasn’t too difficult with no one else out on the stairs. Shou ran ahead so he could let the others in, holding the door open while Higashio and Serizawa dragged Pops inside the combined kitchen and living room that made up the primary space of the apartment.

Considering how cheap the rent was, the place looked fairly neat. Plain, basic furniture, hardwood floors, unassuming white walls decorated with a couple of prints of generic, abstract paintings. Neat but dull. It barely looked lived in. None of them had a lot of time to spend there—until the last couple of days, Shou had mostly been forced to stay where his father could see him to avoid raising suspicion.

“Where should we put him?” Higashio asked, looking around the room for a suitable spot.

Fukuda went down the short hallway that led to the bathroom and three separate bedrooms. “I’ll get one of the spare futons.”

“Yeah, but where should we put him?” Higashio asked again.

Fukuda didn’t reply before he came back with a rolled up futon, a pillow, and a blanket, all stacked on top of each other. “In here where we can see him,” he said.

Higashio eyed the blanket with disdain. “Really?”

Fukuda defiantly looked him in the eye while he dropped the bedding, pulled off the bands keeping the futon together, and let it unroll onto the floor. He threw the pillow onto one end and made a sweeping motion with his arm, gesturing for the others to go ahead.

Ootsuki was leaning casually on the kitchen table across from them. “So we’re really just gonna have Suzuki Touichirou lying around on our floor, huh?”

Nobody said anything. Pops lay against the wall in the threshold between the kitchen and living space where he wouldn’t get in the way. He was impossible to overlook from anywhere in the room; an unpleasant reminder that they still had plenty of loose ends to tie up.

Higashio scratched his unruly hair, leaving it even messier. “Honestly, I wouldn’t care if we had the Prime Minister lying on the floor, I’m starving.”

He unceremoniously turned around and went to search through the kitchen cabinets.

On the other side of the room, Serizawa had backed up, studying his hands like they were curious, foreign objects. Even from a few meters away, Shou could see how badly they were shaking.

“I met the Prime Minister today,” Serizawa mumbled, only talking to himself. “I didn’t even know what he looked like…”

“Do you people want something to eat or what?” Higashio pulled a single red bell pepper out from the fridge, leaving nothing behind on the shelves except what looked like a bottle of wine.

Anyone who’d had the misfortune of sharing a kitchen with Higashio knew that he was an absolutely dreadful cook. Possibly the worst cook Shou had ever met. When he wasn’t haphazardly mixing ingredients that were never, ever, meant to go together, he went about a kitchen like he’d lost all ability to focus—forgot to remove plastic packaging, left the oven on too long, mistook salt for sugar. Anything that could go wrong, usually did.

But Fukuda just nodded at him as Higashio went to fill the rice cooker on the counter. Shou was too tired to stop him, and apparently, so was everyone else.

Ootsuki sat down on the kitchen table, idly redoing his ponytail while he watched Serizawa and Minegishi. Minegishi had been so quiet, Shou almost forgot he was there.

“Not to kick you guys out or anything, but where’re you gonna go now?” Ootsuki tilted his head, his tone very much implying that he did intend to kick them out.

“I don’t know,” Serizawa mumbled.

He’d already been unkempt at the start of the day, but now the dark circles under his eyes and concrete dust in his hair and the frayed and dirty shirt he was left with after donating his hanten coat to Pops, only made matters worse. Shou knew the rest of them didn’t look much better, but Serizawa just had that air about him like someone who’d lost everything and given up on getting any of it back.

“I don’t think I have anywhere to go,” he concluded with hollow resignation.

Fukuda looked at him with so much sadness in his eyes that Shou was filled with overwhelming dread he would do something stupid like offer Serizawa to stay with them. Fukuda was born with an unhealthy amount of compassion. He could take pity on even the worst human beings if they looked sad and regretful enough.

“Didn’t that guy Reigen say he would help?” Shou blurted before Fukuda could get a word in.

Serizawa furrowed his brow, staring at the floor like he was having trouble remembering who Reigen was.

It had been a strange exchange between them; Reigen so readily offering his help to someone who’d been an enemy just a few hours earlier. Of course, Serizawa had saved his life. He’d put himself right in the line of fire to do so. Reigen was just repaying a debt.

He’d saved Shou, too... Pops sent him away, but he came back.

Why did he come back?

Shou retraced the events on a loop in his mind and felt more sick with each iteration. Serizawa didn’t come to rescue some man he’d never met before. He didn’t come for Ritsu’s brother, who must’ve barrelled straight through him moments earlier.

He had come back for Shou.

“Reigen-san…” Serizawa mused to himself.

Shou couldn’t hear his own thoughts over the blood rushing in his ears. He never wanted Serizawa’s help. He didn’t want to think about how the most dim-witted person in all of Claw had turned out to be more resourceful than him.

“... Yeah, he did say that.” Serizawa sounded defeated. His gratitude when Reigen handed him his business card couldn’t make up for the uncertainty of his situation, nor the idea of having to count on a complete stranger for a place to sleep.

Shou didn't care. He didn’t want to care. He couldn’t stand the idea of having to look at the man, having his festering, nervous energy hanging in the air for who knew how long.

It was a relief to hear Minegishi speak up. “I know a few people in town,” he said. “You can come with me until we find out what else to do.”

Higashio barely let Minegishi finish his sentence before putting another offer on the table.

“It’s better if you stay here,” he said. “Nobody’s likely to come looking for a culprit this far away, and we have the apartment until the end of the month.”

Shou glared at him warningly, but Higashio only raised his hands in defense.

“You’re the boss, but he helped us out. I think we owe him one.” The reasoning was oddly empathetic coming from him. It made more sense when he nodded his head in Pops’ direction. “Remember who else is staying over.”

Shou hadn’t even thought that far.

Higashio was right. They didn’t know what would happen when Pops woke up. If he was angry, if he tried anything again, Shou was painfully aware he could do nothing to stop it.

Grudgingly, he shifted his glare to Serizawa. “Can you stop my pops if he attacks us?”

There was no way he could, Shou just wanted to hear what he had to say for himself.

“I won’t let anything happen to you,” Serizawa replied with a surprising amount of self-assuredness. “I’ve been the President’s bodyguard for three years. I’m good at this.”

Shou seriously doubted Serizawa was good at anything that didn’t involve someone constantly giving him direction, but he wasn’t one to boast with nothing to show for it either.

He took in a long breath and exhaled for even longer, despondently covering his eyes with one hand. “Okay, so your new job is to guard everyone else against Pops. If you do that and shut up and don’t get in the way, you can stay.”

“Of course,” Serizawa nodded fervently. “Thank you, Shou-kun, I won’t let anyone hurt you, especially not the President, I promise!”

He was getting teary-eyed again, so relieved to be sure to have a roof over his head.

“Don’t cry about it,” Shou snapped at him.

Serizawa straightened up, wiping his eyes with hands that were still shaking uncontrollably. Shou didn’t find it particularly reassuring that this man was potentially all that stood between him and his father.

Behind him, Minegishi leaned off the wall he had stood against and put his hands in his pockets.

“I see you don’t need my assistance, then,” he said. It came out sounding snide, but as always with Minegishi, it was hard to tell.

“You’re just gonna walk away?” Shou asked, frowning at him critically.

“Are you about to stop me?”

It wasn’t like he owed them anything. For a while, Minegishi simply looked at him, and Shou found no clues to what he was thinking in the impassive, blank look on his face.

“You’re a clever boy, Shou-kun, but maybe you should remember that’s all you are.”

“Maybe you should drop the cryptic bullshit and get out of here,” Ootsuki spat.

Minegishi slowly turned his head, silently staring Ootsuki down, his expression flat and unnervingly cold. “Didn’t I already shut you up once today?”

Fukuda urgently bent over in a stiff bow, trying to defuse the situation. “Thank you for your help, Minegishi-san.”

“He didn’t even do anything,” Ootsuki scoffed.

Ignoring him, Minegishi pointed his permanent scowl at Serizawa. “Good luck,” he said.

Serizawa opened his mouth like he wanted to say something, but Minegishi had already opened the front door and walked into the hallway. Serizawa ran his hands through his hair in distress, fingers snagging on the tangled curls. Abruptly, he rushed outside. Shou tried and failed to grab onto his shirt, following him onto the landing.

Minegishi had only made it down the first flight of stairs. He looked scared for his life when Serizawa came bounding down after him, but his expression instantly switched to flat annoyance when the much larger man wrapped his arms around him and lifted him up in a crushing hug. Shou stayed by the threshold to the apartment and watched them. It felt like intruding, but he didn’t want to let Serizawa out of his sight.

Eventually, Serizawa put Minegishi down and resigned himself to sob into his hands. Minegishi didn’t move away, just stood there, impassively watching him cry, his arms limp at his sides, his face as emotionless as ever. It went on for a long time. Shou started to worry about the neighbors.

Serizawa let his legs give out and dropped onto the stair step behind him, clawing at his hair with trembling fingers.

“Soon enough, you’ll realize this is good for you,” Minegishi said in a low monotone.

He lingered for a while longer before he turned his back on Serizawa and continued down the stairs. His parting words were cold comfort; Serizawa curled further in on himself, holding his arms above his head like a shield, as if he feared the whole world would come crashing down on him.

“Can I...?” Fukuda had appeared in the doorway behind Shou. The question was hesitant, like he expected a no.

Shou stepped out of his way and didn’t know how to feel about the implication that Fukuda thought he was so cold that he’d outright forbid anyone from trying to console Serizawa.

Fukuda went down the stairs and sat down next to Serizawa, putting a comforting hand on his back. Shou tried to swallow the bitter taste in his mouth as he went back inside.

Maybe he did have a problem with anyone pitying Serizawa. Maybe he did, but what did Serizawa have to cry about anyway? Everyone had treated him with more kindness than he deserved. All he had to do was look like a lost puppy and people were falling over each other trying to help.

Fukuda came back in with a hand on his arm like Serizawa would get lost if he had to find the couch on his own. Shou glowered at them while Fukuda gently coaxed him into sitting down. Serizawa looked like he’d been to hell and back. Shou wondered if he should order him to stop crying again, but he wasn't sure it would help this time.

“Shouldn’t the rice be done by now?” Ootsuki asked, completely indifferent to the weeping man on their couch.

If possible, Higashio was glowering at Serizawa with even more disapproval than Shou, his arms tightly crossed over his chest. He distractedly glanced at the rice cooker on the kitchen countertop. “It’s still cooking.”

Ootsuki looked suspiciously at the small LED light on it, still glowing undeterred. “How much water did you add?”

“Enough,” Higashio grouchily retorted as he went to flip the lid on the rice cooker open. “Ah,” he said and switched the machine off entirely. “Well. It’s not too bad.”

Shou wasn't sure what not too bad meant. He waited with apprehension while Higashio poured up rice for the four of them, sprinkling the humble amount of bell pepper he’d chopped earlier on top. Halfway through the task, Fukuda walked over to the counter and stared at him reproachfully. Higashio stared back as he picked the bowls up two at a time and put them on the kitchen table.

Obstinately, Fukuda filled a fifth bowl, fished an extra pair of chopsticks out from a drawer, and brought them to Serizawa. He placed both on the coffee table in front of the couch, so gently it barely made a sound. Shou tried not to let it irritate him, instead took a seat and tried to focus on the lump of mushy rice Higashio had put in front of him.

“You should eat something,” Fukuda said behind him. Shou peered over his shoulder and Serizawa didn't look like he was planning to eat anything. He barely took notice of the food.

Fukuda soon gave up and joined everyone else around the kitchen table with a disheartened sigh. Disheartened was perhaps a word that described all of them; no one had anything to say.

Their dinner was overcooked and over-salted, but it was edible. As Shou willed himself to gobble it down, he glanced to the side where Pops was still lying on the floor, tucked in like they were having a sleepover, and suddenly everything about the situation seemed so absurdly funny that he started laughing and nearly choked on his rice.

Fukuda gave him a look, his chopsticks lifted halfway to his mouth.

“It's nothing,” Shou said between coughs. He hid his face in his hands, too tired to explain.

Another uncomfortable silence fell over them. Ootsuki barely endured it for a minute before he slammed a hand down on the table and made everyone else flinch.

“We won, and you’re just sitting here all sad and quiet,” he proclaimed. “You know what we need? Something to drink!”

Ootsuki got up with a start and went to the refrigerator. He pulled out the bottle of wine that was the very last thing in there, almost as if he’d prepared it for this very situation.

“You put red wine in the fridge?” Higashio asked, as if Ootsuki had committed a crime against humanity.

Ootsuki returned to the table with four regular drinking glasses. He flipped one the right end up, placed it in front of Shou, and unscrewed the cap on the wine to pour some in.

“He’s thirteen, Ootsuki-san,” Fukuda muttered.

“Whatever,” Ootsuki said and poured up wine for the rest of them. He raised his glass, looking around expectantly at everyone else at the table.

“A toast to saving the world!”

Shou sipped at his drink. It was strikingly bitter with a strange, artificial aftertaste. He didn't have any concept of what good or bad wine should taste like, but judging from the look on Higashio's face as he picked up the bottle, skeptically reading the label, this was a bad one.

“Cheers, Serizawa,” Ootsuki jeered, overly loud and scornful. Serizawa jumped a little at hearing his name. As he raised his head, Ootsuki held up his glass in greeting. “Just making sure you’re still with us.”

Ootsuki downed his whole glass in one go and slammed it back onto the table with a grimace so disgusted that it set Higashio into a laugh.

“Where did you get this stuff?” he chuckled.

“The grocery store?” Ootsuki wiped at his mouth like he hoped to get rid of the taste that way. “Sorry, but I plan on sleeping for the first time in, like, a week, and if I have to drink a bottle of disgusting wine by myself to make it happen, then trust me, I will.”

Higashio placed both the bottle and his own full glass in front of Ootsuki. “Knock yourself out.”

“Exactly.” Ootsuki tipped the glass at Higashio before he gulped down the contents as quickly as he had with the first one. He stacked it on top of the other one and pointed at Shou’s next.

“Will our dear leader actually have a drink with me, or do I have to take care of that one as well?”

Shou managed a lopsided smile. “Just take it.”

Ootsuki was doing his best to lighten the mood, and Shou would gladly welcome it, but it was hard to cheer up when Fukuda’s eyes were boring into the side of his face. He was worrying, and he had every reason to, Shou just wished his worrying didn’t transfer to him so easily.

Ootsuki seemed to catch on as well, because he didn’t ask for Fukuda’s glass after he emptied Shou’s, just slid his arms off the table and crossed them self-consciously.

“Leader, we have to decide what to do with your father,” Fukuda said.

Shou had already tried to think about it—really tried to examine their situation as a logical problem they had to fix, but it was all muddled by disappointment and other emotions he didn’t care to think about. His father hadn’t even met his lowest expectations. It had thrown Shou off and made it impossible to predict what would happen next.

“I didn’t picture it’d go down like this,” he mumbled.

Fukuda’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “What did you picture?”

“That I’d be dead, and it’d be up to you guys to figure it out?” Shou laughed, but he was the only one who did. The others didn’t even look at him.

He knew what he’d expected, but it was childish and embarrassing to acknowledge it. Still, he always told the rest of their small squad that he wanted them to be honest with him. Shou didn’t want to be that much of a hypocrite.

“I guess… I thought if I could just prove how much stronger I’ve gotten, he’d get that I’m not a little kid anymore. And then maybe we’d talk, and... he’d see I know how things work now, and maybe he’d think my opinion actually matters.”

The room was completely silent, making Shou even more unsure than he already felt. “I already know I sound stupid,” he shrugged avertedly.

“Well, yeah...” Higashio said, like he wasn’t sure where his sentence was headed yet. The truth kind of stung when it was thrown in your face by somebody else and not just reverberating around in your own skull. “... but it’s fine to be a little stupid. You’ll never get anywhere if you aren’t willing to take some risks.”

Higashio frowned and pushed his half-empty bowl of rice away so he could rest his arms on the table. “Sometimes people need someone who’s stupid enough to believe in them. Other times they’ll let you down. You can’t always predict how it’s gonna go.”

“But I should know,” Shou said. “He’s my dad. I’ve known him my whole life.”

Ootsuki poured another fill of wine into the glass that was originally Shou’s. “Buddy, I think Serizawa knows him better than you do.”

“No, he doesn’t.”

“He doesn’t?” Ootsuki gave Shou a knowing look through the bangs that were always obscuring his eyes. “You’ve barely seen your dad since I first met you.”

In half a day, Serizawa had apparently convinced everyone of how heroic and well-meaning and knowledgeable he was. It was all wrong; he wasn’t any of those things. He’d never been. Shou wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if he turned on them the minute Pops woke up. He could barely exist without somebody smarter to cling to.

Shou spun around in his chair. Their unwelcome guest sat hunched over on the couch, once again preoccupied with staring at his shaking hands.

“Serizawa!” Shou barked at him.

The man shot up to sit ramrod straight. He immediately started sweating upon the realization that everyone else in the room had their eyes pointed at him.

“Since you know him so well, what do you suggest we do with Pops?” Shou asked.

Serizawa ducked his head a little. “I—” he started, and then nothing more came out.

“What was the plan anyway?” Shou demanded. “When you were done taking over the world. What did he promise you?”

“Nothing,” Serizawa fumbled, “I—”

“So when you were ruling over the world, you’d be fine still being his bodyguard, just doing everything he said?” Shou felt one step closer to boiling over with rage with every word he spoke. “I mean, is that it? Is that all you know how to do?”

Serizawa cautiously glanced up at him. “Is that so bad...?”

Shou didn’t even know what to say, just turned back to the others, gesturing at Serizawa with one hand to wordlessly accentuate that yes, it was in fact really bad.

It threw him off guard when Serizawa spoke up behind him. Shou hadn’t actually expected him to respond with so much as a coherent sentence.

“There was a man who said he was from the government.” Serizawa’s tone was low and the words slow and meandering. “The President hired him as a mercenary, but he turned on us…”

Shou stared at Serizawa, leaning on the back of his chair. This was news to him. “Who?”

“Joseph. I think that’s his name?” Serizawa’s eyebrows quirked like it took a lot of effort for him to think. “Yeah. A foreigner. Joseph.”

That did ring a bell. Shou had seen him around HQ a couple of times in the last weeks. “The guy who was smoking all the time, right?”

Serizawa nodded vigorously. “I think the government’s been investigating Claw. I think… I think we should give the President to them.”

Serizawa only seemed confident in his own proposition for a second, then the weight of Shou’s stare became too much. His shoulders sank, eyes lingering anxiously on the floor.

“I’ve been thinking and…” He met Shou’s gaze, the eye contact only lasting a second. “I’ve… Those things he said to you. It wasn’t right. Someone talking like that to his own son, it’s just… It’s not right. He’s not right.”

Serizawa shook his head, mumbling like he was only talking to himself at this point.

“He can’t go free. He’s dangerous.”

It had taken Serizawa three years to grasp what he should’ve realized within the first week of meeting Pops. Shou wondered what it was like to be that incredibly thick-headed, but he couldn’t even begin to imagine what had been going through Serizawa’s mind for all that time. It was still a mystery what had made him snap out of it today.

“You think Joseph can help with that?” Higashio asked, sounding skeptical. “How should we contact him?”

“I don’t know…” Serizawa picked at the skin on his hands, still deep in thought. “The President would know.”

Of course he’d only been capable of independent thought for two minutes. Shou lost all interest in what more he had to say.

Ootsuki poured himself yet another glass of wine. “Can’t we just hand him over to the police and let them take care of it?”

“Give him to a bunch of powerless cops?” Higashio eyed the wine bottle like he was considering confiscating it now. “That’s gonna work out great when he comes to and blows everyone the hell up.”

“Right.” Ootsuki threw back his drink with no enthusiasm.

Serizawa was looking straight at Shou now, or maybe straight through him, absentmindedly shaking his head. “I don’t think you should be here. It’s not fair.”

What did that even mean? Shou had always been there. This had been Shou’s life since he was eight and his mother left and Claw grew into something more crooked than it’d already been. It had been his life three years ago when Serizawa first showed up, and he had never done anything, never said anything, never told Pops that what he did and said and expected of his only son was unfair.

“Well, I am here,” Shou hissed.

He hated this man. He hated him in a way that was not at all like how he hated every other Claw member who’d hurt him or turned their back on him.

Serizawa could’ve done something. He could’ve cared, but he chose not to. Serizawa was one of the most powerful espers Shou knew, and somewhere behind all the stupid, Shou knew he was observant. He was smart when he wanted to be. But he didn’t want to, he never did. He’d spent his entire life doing nothing, closing his eyes to the rest of the world and letting everything go to shit.

“I’m sorting things out,” Shou continued, “maybe you should be a little grateful for it.”

“You shouldn’t have to take care of all this,” Serizawa said. “I said some horrible things too, I didn’t even know. It’s not right. I’m so sor—”

“Don’t tell me you’re sorry, I don’t care!”

Shou stood in the middle of the room with his hands clenched into fists and his powers flaring up of their own accord. Fukuda got up too, the legs on his chair screeching against the floorboards. He put a hand on Shou’s shoulder, to stop him or calm him down or say that he was overreacting, Shou didn’t know, he didn’t want it there. He ripped the hand away and Fukuda actually looked afraid. It was just for a second, but it was definitely there.

Serizawa didn’t look afraid at all, he just looked sad. Calm—calmer than he’d been all day, and Shou hated him so much he couldn’t contain it.

He should be afraid. He was stronger than Shou, but he was slow and unprepared. Shou could hurt him; bash his head into the coffee table and crack his skull, bring the whole building down and crush him like he should’ve been crushed by his beloved President, he could—

Shou flinched when the wine bottle behind him shattered and collapsed in on itself, letting the last of its contents spill onto the kitchen table. He hadn’t even realized the abnormal pressure he was exerting on the apartment.

Fukuda stepped forward again. “Shou-kun, you have to stop.”

He didn’t even raise his voice. Fukuda never called him by his name, but Shou understood. He was no leader at this moment, just a spoiled child throwing a tantrum, stirring up conflict for no good reason.

Shou raised his chin, turned on his heel, and walked between Fukuda and his father without seeing either of them, willing himself not to set into a run as he made his way around the table and escaped to his bedroom.

He shut the door behind him with as much courtesy as he could muster and simply stood in there, trying to breathe.

He had brought this on himself. If he’d just been more provident, if he’d been smarter, today would never have happened. He’d been rash and impatient and naive. It wasn’t Serizawa’s fault. It wasn’t anyone’s fault but his own.

The others left Shou alone, and he was grateful for it. For a while, he allowed himself to sit down on the double bed and do nothing. He could faintly hear Ootsuki talking in the kitchen, but the building was so quiet. He wasn’t sure if they had any upstairs neighbors. If they did, they didn’t draw much attention to themselves. Shou knew so little about anyone here. He and the others would leave soon, so it didn’t matter.

Even though they had stayed in the apartment for a couple of weeks, none of them had bothered unpacking much. Shou shared the bedroom he was sitting in with Fukuda, and they still had most of their stuff packed in a suitcase and a large duffel bag. After traveling all over Japan for the majority of the last two years, flitting from one Claw division and esper sighting to another, they had become good at packing light.

Whenever there weren't enough rooms or beds for everyone, Shou would usually sleep next to Fukuda. He didn’t like admitting it because he wasn’t eleven anymore, but he preferred it that way. He’d slept next to Fukuda in so many odd and unfamiliar places that he just felt more at ease that way. The backseat of a car, an airport at four in the morning, abandoned houses and shady hotel rooms, police stations a few times—as long as Fukuda was within viewing distance, Shou could sleep anywhere. When he wasn’t, he would wake up at every little sound, panicked and confused, and get no sleep at all.

The biggest thing Shou brought wherever they went was the hamster cage. Right now, it sat on the dresser next to the door. Its tiny resident was huddled in the corner looking a little spooked. Shou hoped his powers hadn’t affected the hamster too; she was so small and fragile and Shou wasn’t the most gentle person. For a long time, he’d been afraid to even pick her up.

He opened the lid on the cage and reached out for the tiny animal. He was relieved that she didn’t bite him, just let herself get scooped up, a perfectly round ball of gray fluff.

Shou sat back on the bed and held the hamster to his chest. He was glad she didn’t know the next thing about everything that had happened. She had likely slept peacefully all day, buried in the wood shavings in the bottom of her cage.

Fukuda politely knocked on the door before letting himself in. Shou had drawn his legs up onto the bed to sit with his feet crossed in front of him, fencing the hamster in so she could run around a bit.

“Serizawa-san will stay up and watch your father,” Fukuda said softly. “I think the rest of us should get some sleep. It’s been a very long day.”

Shou nodded.

“You should take a shower,” Fukuda said.

“I have to feed Nezumi.” Shou laid his hand flat on the bed and let the hamster climb on top of it.

Fukuda sighed. There was a hint of irritation to it. “Okay, then I will take a shower in the meantime,” he said.

He went to find some nightclothes in his suitcase and left the room. Shou put Nezumi back in her cage. He wished he’d thought to save some of the bell pepper for her, but she would have to do with just pellets today.

He had only just filled the hamster’s food bowl and packed away the bag of rodent pellets when Ootsuki poked his head in through the half-open door.

“Hey, Shou, hey—” He slinked inside the bedroom, closing the door behind him, all while he conspiratorially pressed a finger to his lips. It was a strange gesture considering Shou wasn’t saying anything.

“Since Fukuda won’t ever ask you anything like a normal person, I’m gonna do it instead.” Ootsuki took in a breath like he was preparing to make a speech, then exhaled through his nose. “Are you okay? Like… Are you good?”

It was a useless question. Okay compared to what? Shou was exhausted, the thought that he almost died kept lurking in the back of his mind, he didn’t know what was going to happen to any of them, and for the first time in a long time, he didn’t have a plan.

Still, everything considered, he could’ve been feeling a lot worse. He settled for a noncommittal shrug.

Before he had a chance to dodge, Ootsuki reached out and placed a hand on either side of Shou’s face. It startled him to have the much taller man standing over him, his face suddenly very near Shou’s own.

“You know we care about you so, so much, right?” Ootsuki asked. “You know that.”

Shou tried to lean away. Ootsuki smelled like concrete dust and cheap wine and he was too close.

“You might be calling the shots and all, but you’re like... our kid, man. You know? You—”

Ootsuki looked a bit woozy as he removed his hands to support himself on the dresser. “Hm,” he said and decided to lower himself to the floor, his back against the drawers. He held up a placating hand. “Don’t worry, I’m not gonna barf on the carpet.”

Shou let out a quiet, shaky laugh, relieved to have him out of his personal space. Ootsuki hung his head, peering up at him through his overlong bangs. He smiled so softly and so unlike himself that Shou wondered if he was doing it on purpose—if he’d made it his mission to make Shou as uncomfortable as possible before heading to bed.

Ootsuki’s smile faltered. “You’re the bravest guy I know, and your dad doesn’t deserve you,” he said. “If he makes one wrong move once he wakes up, I’m gonna kill him myself.”

Shou didn’t know where to look. “Thanks,” he forced out. It didn’t sound like much, but he wasn’t very good at remembering to say thanks, so he hoped Ootsuki knew he meant it.

Ootsuki studied him thoughtfully, his elbows rested on his knee, chin propped up on one of his hands.

“I don’t think you’re okay,” he said. “You can tell us, you know. Me, or Fukuda. Or Higashio. It doesn’t matter that you’re the boss, you can still tell us.”

He let his words sink in, and when it was clear Shou wasn’t going to reply, he lifted his head from his hand.

“Well,” he sighed, “I said I was gonna sleep.” Ootsuki scrambled around a bit, seemingly having trouble actually getting up from the floor. “I am—” he grabbed the top of the dresser and hoisted himself up, “—a little bit drunk.”

He unsteadily made his way to the door, and when he opened it, Fukuda was standing right on the other side. Ootsuki simply stepped around him, patting him on the shoulder.

“There, I fixed it for you,” he said.

Fukuda leaned away from his touch and stayed like that until Ootsuki disappeared into his own room. As he slowly straightened up, he wrung his hands, looking like he was bracing himself for a difficult conversation.

“I don’t want to talk about it, it just makes it worse,” Shou said before he could get started.

Fukuda slowly nodded even though it didn’t look like he agreed. He walked around the bed and sat down, back turned and his hands folded in his lap. “I’m sure everything will look a little brighter in the morning,” he said. “We can figure out what to do then.”

Shou wasn’t sure it would be that simple. He’d left too many loose ends. Miscalculated too many times.

“I messed everything up,” he said.

Fukuda turned his head to frown at him. “There’s nothing holding Claw together without your father. We’ve all come back safe.”

Shou looked down at his feet. They nearly hadn’t.

“I’ve… I never thought I’d get to leave.” Fukuda bowed his head. He didn’t really sound happy that this had changed. Tentatively hopeful at best. Mostly kind of shell-shocked. “You did that. You made all of that happen.”

“Ritsu’s brother made it happen,” Shou said. “You guys made it happen. I didn’t do anything.”

“None of us would’ve been there if it weren’t for you,” Fukuda countered. “You let everyone play their part. Isn’t that what a leader does?”

When Shou didn’t reply, he pulled one leg onto the bed so he could turn to scrutinize him again. “I’ve done everything you’ve asked of me, so will you listen to me this once?” Fukuda said, so insistent he almost sounded angry. “We made it through, so take a shower. Sleep. You’ve done more than enough today.”

Shou didn’t know what to say; he just stood in the middle of the room while Fukuda turned his back on him and got under the covers. Maybe Shou should thank him too. He deserved it more than anyone else, but he couldn’t get the words out.

Shou took a shower.

Shou went to bed.

Fukuda was already asleep when he came back. He’d been exhausted, too.

Shou really wanted to sleep; just forget about everything and be dead to the world for a little while, but it quickly became clear it wasn’t going to happen.

He stared at the ceiling for a long time and kept thinking about how he almost died. It was so self-absorbed for him to be preoccupied with that when he didn’t have any idea how many civilians were killed or gravely injured while half the city center got torn down. Average people who had nothing to do with Shou or his father or terrible terrorist organizations.

So many others had risked their lives finishing Shou’s job for him. Even someone like Reigen who had no powers and no place in the middle of an esper war. He’d stayed calm and collected, even at the worst of times. It didn’t matter if it was just a facade; he acted more like a leader than Shou ever had.

Reigen had been there too. Reigen had stood entirely defenseless while Pops pointed his powers at them with every intent to kill. He almost died too, and he hadn’t made a fuss about it.

Shou gave up on sleeping; he didn’t want to stay in a quiet room with his own thoughts any longer. In the dim light from the street outside, he changed into a clean set of clothes, then quietly slipped out into the hall.

Serizawa hadn’t moved from his spot on the couch in the living room, only a vague silhouette in the darkness now. Shou didn’t know why he hadn’t turned on the light, but he had no intention of starting a conversation.

He’d almost reached the front door when Serizawa spoke up behind him, barely more than a whisper.

“Shou-kun, where are you going?”

Shou already had one hand on the door handle. “Out.”

There was a pause before Serizawa spoke again. “I know you’re angry, but I just want to help… I don’t want anything bad to happen to you.”

His voice cracked halfway through the sentence and Shou knew rage would overcome him again if he had to listen to one more word from that useless idiot.

“A lot of bad things already happened to me,” Shou said.

He was in the hallway before Serizawa had a chance to reply, silently closing the door behind him.

Chapter Text

At two in the morning, Shou felt like an alien wandering the cold, deserted streets of Seasoning City. There was nothing familiar about the place—not now where it was torn to shreds and left in a state of emergency, but not before then, either. Up until the last couple of weeks of pretending he wasn’t planning to stab his father in the back, he’d only been there a few times.

He hadn’t noticed it while Higashio drove them back to the apartment, but multiple sectors of the city had their power cut. The drop in light pollution left the stars overhead visible, making the evacuated area feel even emptier. Quiet, like the eerie silence after the explosion had crept out and infected everything else.

Shou’s feet took him back the way he came just a few hours earlier—the same way everyone else seemed to have gone. Long before he could see them, he could hear the sea of people and honking cars that had gathered at the border of the scar Pops had carved into the city. He kept his distance as he passed by the horde of citizens, all demanding answers from the soldiers and police officers attempting to guard the area.

Shou discreetly slipped past the blockades surrounding the crater, zipping up the hoodie he’d thrown on over his t-shirt. The noise from the crowd faded behind him, replaced by the haunting wind sweeping over the ruins.

Distant ambulance sirens wailed while he climbed the stairs of a rickety office building. On the top floor, the steps had collapsed, so he levitated himself the rest of the way to the roof. He sat there for a long time, mesmerized by the way he could look at the jagged remnants of apartment blocks in the distance and think of the people who’d been squashed inside and not feel anything at all.

The giant broccoli stood in the middle of it all like some kind of bizarre joke; looming over everything, ominous and imposing in the darkness.

Ever since he attempted to go to bed, Shou had fought to stop thinking about his father, lying around in the apartment like another disaster waiting to happen. Maybe it had been a mistake to bring him along. Honestly, none of the rushed and chaotic events Shou had set into motion in the days before Pops announced his world-takeover had been well thought out.

He’d planned to play the subdivisions out against each other. Seed some paranoia, start some fights, maybe even convince the more reasonable Scars to revolt against HQ. Only then, when he’d picked it all apart, he would confront his father and knock some sense into his head. Maybe there’d still be a fight, but Pops wasn’t dumb. He would probably have seen reason when his life’s work went up in flames.

Except Shou had underestimated how little his father cared about the organization he’d wasted most of his life building. Shou didn’t even know how many years. Twenty? Thirty?

Now, none of it would be about him anymore. Fukuda was wrong—Claw didn’t need Pops to function. To most of the organization, he was just some mysterious figurehead. The subdivisions had managed themselves just fine. Most of them had followed their own agendas, more concerned with that than whatever HQ demanded of them.

There was no way it’d all dissolve overnight. There’d be a target on Pops’ head from now on, and by extension, a target on Shou and anyone who dared to help him. It wasn’t just his father’s stupid, aura-less grunts who were angry.

He grabbed his phone from his pocket as it suddenly struck him that he didn’t even know if Ritsu had made it through the night okay. The blinding screen told him it was half-past-three in the morning when he sent him a text. He waited, stared at the broccoli for a while longer, but never got a reply.

It was good. Probably meant one of them actually got some rest. Definitely nothing to worry about.

He buried the nagging feeling of dread in his chest and pushed himself up, knowing he had to go back to the apartment whether he felt like it or not. On the way, he took a detour into an abandoned grocery store so they didn’t have to spend time restocking food later. It was a strange experience fetching groceries in pitch-black darkness, lighting his way through the store with his phone while he haphazardly tossed whatever wasn’t already half-spoiled by the lack of refrigeration into a couple of plastic bags.

He followed the same route back to the apartment, soon lugging the food he’d scavenged up the stairs, a bag in each hand. He worked the door open with his elbow, stepping into the living room to find that the only person who was awake was Serizawa. He was sitting on the couch in the exact same spot where Shou had left him, jolting a little when he realized he wasn’t alone anymore. His reaction time was strangely slow.

Serizawa shakily lifted a hand in greeting and Shou put the least possible amount of effort into nodding in return. The lights were on and a glass of water had appeared on the table in front of Serizawa, so he must’ve gotten up at some point. Shou didn’t really care, ignoring the way the man’s eyes followed him to the kitchen.

He hadn’t even emptied the first shopping bag before Serizawa cleared his throat, voice hoarse and weird. “Shou-kun…?”

Shou stood on the tips of his toes, shoving a bag of rice onto the middle shelf of the cupboard. He didn’t bother answering. If Serizawa had something to say, he could just say it.

“Can I… Can I maybe take a nap?” Serizawa asked. “Just for a little while.”

Shou turned to take a proper look at him. He really did look incredibly exhausted. Pale, too, like he was about to come down with a fever. While anxiously awaiting Shou’s reply, he lifted the glass to take a sip of water, and his hand shook so badly it was impressive he didn’t spill it all over himself.

He probably wouldn’t make the best bodyguard running on no sleep and no food.

“Yeah, sure,” Shou decided, offering the bag of sliced toast he’d been about to put away. “You want something to eat?”

“No, thank you,” Serizawa mumbled.

He shifted just enough to pull up his legs and lay down on the couch, facing the backrest. It took him all of two minutes to fall asleep. Shou stared at his back and wondered if he should’ve told him good job or something, just to keep up morale.

He should eat something himself, but the food he’d brought back all seemed too heavy or too demanding. He wasn’t sure how long he’d stood there when he caught himself zoning out, staring blankly at the counter. It wasn’t even close to being light outside and he was already regretting staying up all night.

Shou made himself a meager breakfast consisting of a cup of instant coffee and a plateful of grapes. He sat down on the floor across from his father, his back against one leg on the kitchen table.

How long could you expect someone to stay knocked out from a giant psychic explosion? Another hour? A week? Shou popped a couple of grapes into his mouth and extended his foot to prod his father’s shoulder, granting him absolutely no reaction. No matter what, he’d better find out what to do with him soon. Him, and everything else going on.

Suddenly, there was a clatter from the bedroom, and a moment later Fukuda came out. He hurried into the kitchen, glancing around the room in a panic.

“Hey,” Shou said through a mouthful of fruit.

Fukuda placed a hand on his chest like he’d narrowly avoided a heart attack. “You were gone. I thought—” He went quiet as his attention traveled from the grapes to the assorted food items Shou had left on the counter. “You went out by yourself?”

“Yep.”

Fukuda frowned at him deeply. He frowned even deeper when he noticed Serizawa sleeping on the couch.

“I told him he could sleep,” Shou said. “I think he’s sick or something. I don’t know if it’s gonna be a problem.”

Fukuda quietly crossed his arms, lingering for a moment before he retreated to the bedroom, probably to change out of his pajamas. Shou still didn’t get what his problem was. It wasn’t like he’d done anything out of the ordinary.

Early morning changed into less early morning, the sun slowly rising outside, evaporating the odd fog that clouded Shou’s mind after too many hours roaming around in the darkness with his own thoughts.

Fukuda sat across from him at the kitchen table, lips thin and his hands primly folded, watching him empty his fourth cup of coffee. Something about it grated on Shou’s already jittery, caffeine-charged nerves. Fukuda didn’t need to turn to him for orders anymore. In fact, all of them should get out of this apartment. Whether it’d be Claw or the government, someone was bound to find them if they stayed put.

On a sudden impulse, Shou slid his coffee mug away in disgust and got up, marching to the far end of the living room. He resolutely grabbed the remote for the TV and pressed the power button. As soon as the screen flickered on, he could tell it was just as he’d feared: a nonstop stream of breaking news about his father and all the destruction he’d caused.

The broadcast showed an aerial view of the broccoli. The surrounding crater looked like a nuclear wasteland where nothing should be able to thrive for the next fifty years, and yet the plant itself had settled on a lush, green color. A perfectly healthy broccoli, as absurd and out of place as it was. Shou had seen enough of the giant vegetable to last him the rest of his life.

The footage switched to some kind of press conference from earlier in the morning. A stout, middle-aged man who was apparently the mayor of Seasoning City was busy assuring the crowd of journalists that everything was under control. Shou only had to watch for a couple of minutes before he started denying that he’d ever heard of Pops before yesterday.

“Have they said anything yet?” Ootsuki asked from the kitchen. “I mean, there’s no way they can cover this up.”

Shou glanced at him over his shoulder. Ootsuki had exited the bathroom with a towel in one hand and his wet hair clinging to his face, already dressed in a plain t-shirt and jeans. He shrugged and returned his attention to the TV. The government had done an excellent job of covering up big, esper-related incidents in the past.

The mayor was blatantly ignoring a series of critical questions about the soldiers that had been brought in the day before, gesturing toward another man beside him. “Yes, alright, I think Asahi-san can take over,” he said, flusteredly taking a very long swig of water from the glass in front of him.

The other man was all sharp edges with his stiff, black suit and cropped, gray-streaked hair. He steepled his fingers, glancing over the journalists with a level of ice-cold professionalism the mayor could only dream of.

“This is a case of domestic terrorism and will be treated as such,” Asahi said. “As you can tell from our efforts since yesterday, it’s being dealt with swiftly and efficiently. I’m personally overseeing the task force the government has assembled in response to the attack. We’ve already arrested nearly fifty people we believe to have been involved. You can expect the military to stay present for the next few days. After that, my team will cooperate with the local police to round up any stragglers.”

“These people are clearly dangerous,” one of the journalists spoke up. “Isn’t it true you’ve hired espers for this task force?”

“Yes,” Asahi said.

“How can you guarantee they aren’t a threat?”

“I assure you, if any of them were, they would be apprehended in the same manner as any of the terrorists,” Asahi said. He calmly turned away from the journalist, letting his eyes skim the rest of the crowd. “Although the situation is under control by now, we still encourage the public to report any supernatural phenomena they’ve witnessed since yesterday. Every lead we can gather is valuable.”

Under control? Didn’t they realize the scale of what they were up against? Assuming the fifty people arrested included the low-level underlings who’d probably been causing trouble, that was nothing. The old Scars weren’t so stupid they wouldn’t talk to each other. They might very well have gathered to regroup, maybe even plan another attack. If Pops’ collection of actual espers had an attitude that was anything like the grunts Shou had yelled at the day before, why wouldn’t they?

“You can’t keep pretending you haven’t looked into Suzuki Touichirou,” a new journalist said. “Several dozen people were killed by the explosion he caused. With his following, you must have known of him already. There’s records of him having connections to several businesses and religious—”

“Suzuki Touichirou is presumed dead,” Asahi firmly cut her off. “That’s all I can say for now.”

Shou’s fingers tightened around the remote. Did they really believe he was dead? His body was missing from the crater. If they’d found the hole where Ootsuki and Serizawa dug him out of the broccoli stalk, they could surely put the pieces together. Pops was the only person the news reporters were sure they could pin the blame on. It’d be catastrophic for the entire government if they couldn’t prove what happened to him.

The clip from the press conference ended, replaced by a news anchor talking over the footage of Pops announcing his world domination plan. After the destruction everyone had witnessed, it didn’t sound as ludicrous as it had yesterday.

“Still can’t believe he went there,” Higashio scoffed, entering the kitchen with one sleeve of his blazer on. “Like some kind of movie villain.”

Shou turned off the TV, frowning at the dark screen. “I gotta do something about this.”

He didn’t even have to look at him to know Fukuda would object. Worried about all the wrong things like usual.

“You have to be more careful now,” Fukuda said, exactly as expected. “This won’t end anytime soon. You don’t have to get involved.”

“Of course I do,” Shou said, turning around. “You think that guy sounded like they actually know what they’re doing? They’re gonna go around arresting every random esper they find, they don’t even know what they’re looking for.”

“Leader…” Fukuda awkwardly wrung his hands, eyes flickering to Pops on the floor. “Don’t you think you have enough to worry about?”

Shou dropped the remote on the coffee table next to Serizawa. He hadn’t moved a millimeter since he fell asleep. If Shou didn’t know any better, he’d assume he was dead.

“First of all, stop calling me that,” he said.

“Calling you… what?” Fukuda asked.

“I’m not your leader,” Shou said. “I don't decide what you should do anymore, Pops doesn’t own you guys anymore, so you don't have any reason to stay.”

He took in a breath.

“I'm letting you go. I only need Serizawa to take care of Pops.”

The three others stared at him with complete incomprehension. Apparently, Shou hadn’t made himself clear enough.

“You're all fired,” he declared.

Serizawa’s deep, slow breaths were the only sound softening the silence that had befallen the room. Shou tried to ignore the cold, paralyzing sensation creeping down his spine as he, too, felt the implications of what he just said sink in. But it didn’t matter how he felt about it. They deserved better than this, and the only thing Shou had to give was the option to walk away.

“What have I done to make you think I would leave like that?” Fukuda asked.

His voice was only audible because everything else in the apartment was so unnaturally still. He looked hurt—mortified in a way Shou had only seen from him in much worse situations. Life-threatening ones. Or that time Shou had broken his leg so badly the bone stuck out.

He completely lost track of everything else he wanted to tell the others. Like thank you, or maybe an explanation, or a tentative hope this wasn’t the last time they’d all see each other. On the other side of the table, Higashio ran a hand over his mouth like he had to physically prevent himself from speaking up.

“Okay, Shou,” he said anyway, pronouncing Shou’s name in a tone that was all spite and no familiarity, “who the hell do you think you are?”

Shou tore his attention away from Fukuda. “What…?”

“How long has Fukuda been looking after you? Two years? Two years following you all across Japan, taking care of everything for you, making sure you didn’t end up dead in a ditch somewhere.”

Fukuda hunched over, covering his face with his hands like he mostly wanted to disappear.

“And you tell him he’s fired?” Higashio leaned forward with one hand flat on the table and the other pointed furiously at Fukuda. “I don’t care what you think of the rest of us, but he is not some lackey you can dispose of as you please, you ungrateful—”

Higashio gritted his teeth, biting off the rest of the sentence, then turned on his heel and strode off to his room.

“That’s not what I meant,” Shou yelled after him. “I don’t want you to stay here if you don’t want to. I’m trying—”

Higashio came back just to cut him off. “If I didn’t want to be here, I would’ve faked my own death and bailed a long time ago. Don’t you think we can think for ourselves?”

“I do,” Shou said, “that’s why—”

“You’re thirteen years old!”

Higashio didn’t quite shout, but his voice was loud enough that it made Shou flinch. He gave up on trying to defend himself, opting simply for keeping his head down. Higashio could be angry if he wanted. That was only fair.

“You can’t do this on your own,” Higashio said. “You can’t settle the bill on this apartment, can’t drive anywhere, can’t repair the Kageyama kid’s house. Where do you plan to go after this? Are you gonna sleep in the street? Does that sound like a good idea to you?”

“It’s not your problem,” Shou muttered.

Higashio turned his head away, trying to compose himself. “This is the most idiotic thing I’ve ever heard you say.”

Again, he walked off to his room. Ootsuki had been standing quietly in the background, leaning on the kitchen counter. He fidgeted with the towel in his hands like he was gathering his thoughts to say something, but Higashio was back before he could open his mouth.

“I have a house to fix.” Higashio slid his wallet into the inner pocket of his coat and dropped a set of keys on the table in front of Fukuda. “I’ll get rid of the van. Take the car if you’re going anywhere.”

Higashio slammed the door behind him when he left. The sound woke Serizawa up with such a start he banged his elbow into the coffee table and nearly fell onto the floor in his haste to stand up.

“What—?” His eyes darted back and forth between everyone else in the room, his hair standing on end, hands clenched in front of him like he was ready for a brawl.

“Higashio left,” Ootsuki said, only to be met with more confusion. “He’s pissed. He’ll get over it.”

“Who’s Higashio?” Serizawa asked with a wild, disoriented look in his eyes.

Ootsuki bowed his head, placing a hand over his eyes in sheer exasperation. He let it drop to his side, pointing his other arm at Serizawa. “If you want me to leave you alone with this guy and your dad, you’ll literally have to throw me out.”

“I could do that, you know,” Shou sniped. And maybe he should—he asked them to think of themselves, and all they did was talk about him. Maybe he should kick them out, maybe it was better that way. Better than watching them get hurt or die or be thrown in jail as soon as that Asahi guy and his task force found them.

Fukuda slowly scooted his chair out from under the table and stood up. “You'll have to excuse me,” he mumbled, shuffling off to the bedroom.

Even though there was plenty of space, Ootsuki stepped out of his way. He self-consciously dropped the towel on the counter, stuffed his hands in his pockets, and didn’t speak until Fukuda had made it down the hall and closed the door behind him.

“Good job making everyone upset,” he said.

Shou narrowed his eyes doubtingly. “You’re upset too?”

Ootsuki stood in silence like he was thinking it over, then completely avoided answering the question. “So, what do you wanna do about all that stuff?” he asked, pointing at the TV.

Serizawa slowly lowered his fists. “What stuff?”

Shou sighed, wondering briefly if it’d turn Serizawa into a bigger wreck to know there was still trouble. “I’m not even sure the government’s bothering to look for Pops, and I bet everyone from the subdivisions are regrouping by now,” he said. “I wanna know if I’m right.”

“Oh…” Serizawa perked up a little as an idea occurred to him. “Can I help? Maybe—”

“Your job is to watch Pops,” Shou snapped, not in the mood for any more of Serizawa’s useless ideas. “If you wanna help, do what you’re told.”

Serizawa seemed a little affronted, but he complied easily enough, sitting back on the couch. At least keeping him in line was straightforward—give him an explicit order and he wouldn’t push the subject any further.

Shou returned to the kitchen table, listlessly resting his elbows on the surface as he glanced at Pops. It was just as uninteresting a sight as the last time he’d looked at him.

“I don’t know how many of them fled, but Pops brought a lot more than fifty people here,” he said. “They’re probably hiding out in the area the army blocked off so there aren’t a ton of civilians around to spot them.”

“So we go take a look, and then what if we find them?” Ootsuki asked.

Shou plucked one of his leftover grapes from their plate and dropped it, letting it bounce lightly off the table. It was a good question. If they found them, at least they’d know exactly who and where and how many they were, but as far as stopping them, Shou wasn’t sure if they stood a chance. Shou was stronger than most of the Scars, but Ootsuki was on the same level as them at best. If they were all gathering in the same place, ultimately, Shou would be on his own against a squadron’s worth of other espers. It just wasn’t feasible.

“I don’t know,” he concluded, dropping the grape again.

“But what about Joseph?” Serizawa had his shoulders drawn all the way up to his ears, bracing himself for a reprimand. “If you can talk to someone from the government, maybe you won’t have to do so much by yourself. He was already trying to arrest the President when I… Uh…”

A blank look clouded Serizawa’s eyes. Shou didn’t know exactly what had happened to Joseph the day before, but if he’d walked up to Pops and tried to apprehend him, Pops probably hadn’t taken it well.

“He might be a little bit injured, but I’m sure he’ll still help,” Serizawa said, nodding as if to reassure himself.

Ootsuki irritatedly rubbed his face. “I know you didn’t hear the TV earlier, but are you that stupid? The guy the government’s put in charge of this talks like he’s gonna eradicate every esper they get their hands on.”

“We don’t know that,” Shou said. He picked up the grape again, lobbing it at his father’s face in a nice arc. He only missed by a couple of centimeters. “He said they hired espers too. They obviously hired Joseph.”

Ootsuki grudgingly crossed his arms. “Okay, so let’s say we find some government people investigating the crater or whatever. What’re you gonna do? Walk up and tell them we got your dad?”

If they were to go around addressing a bunch of government agents, no one was going to share information with a thirteen-year-old. Higashio was out, and Ootsuki had a pathological aversion to interacting with anyone who resembled an authority figure, so they weren’t an option either.

“Fukuda can do it,” Shou said.

Ootsuki pointed down the hall to the bedrooms. “Sorry, did you see him just now?”

“He’ll be fine,” Shou muttered. “He always gets like that, it’s his own fault. I know he’s mad at me and he won’t even say why.”

Ootsuki huffed out a bewildered, disbelieving laugh. “He’s not mad at you, he’s worried.”

“Is Fukuda that nice man in the sweater?” Serizawa curiously interjected.

Ootsuki turned his head toward him. “Yeah, great work figuring that out. Nobody’s talking to you right now.”

Serizawa only frowned at him for a brief moment before he fixed his eyes on the coffee table. “Sorry… It’s just, I don’t even know your names.”

Ootsuki unfolded his arms to fidget with his ponytail for a moment, then let out a loud, exasperated sigh. He walked around Shou to stand in front of the table.

“I’m Ootsuki,” he said in a tone like he was talking to a two-year-old child. “The blond guy with the nose is Higashio. You know, the one who slammed the door.” He pointed his arm at Shou next. “You hopefully haven’t forgotten Shou’s name.”

“No,” Serizawa simply replied. Somehow, he didn’t seem particularly affected by the condescension Ootsuki was throwing his way, just watched him thoughtfully. “Have I seen you before…? Did you work at HQ?”

“Is that a serious question?” Ootsuki asked. “You’ve seen all of us, because we've sure as fuck seen you.”

Serizawa ducked his head a little.

“I was there until half a year ago,” Ootsuki went on. “You don’t remember that? You were in the room when Suzuki kicked me out.”

Kicked out was an understatement—Ootsuki would’ve been dead if Shou hadn’t asked his father if he could have him. They had transferred him to Claw’s headquarters because his ability to manipulate airwaves was rare. He had potential, Pops said. That was always what he was most preoccupied with. Potential. Pops had a habit of collecting rare espers like other people collect insects, neatly pinned up for display. It wasn’t so important if they were actually useful as long as there was a good story to them. Something interesting to study.

Not to say Ootsuki wasn’t useful, but he was untrained, and the arrangement hadn’t made him any stronger. He’d gotten in a fight with every single esper they tried to make him work with and then insulted all of them to Pops’ face. On one of his more forgiving days, Shou thought his father might have found it just as hilarious as he did, but on that particular day, he did not.

“If you paid any attention, you would’ve seen Fukuda too,” Ootsuki continued. “Everyone knows who Fukuda is, he’s the only healer in the entire fucking organization. And Higashio used to be all over the place, traveling around, right?” He glanced at Shou for confirmation.

Shou nodded and threw another grape at Pops. It bounced off his forehead. “It used to be like, if you needed something forged or you needed something fixed, you’d just call Higashio.”

“Then just like me, he did some things the boss didn’t like, and he was put under Shou’s watchful eye,” Ootsuki said with a scornful snort. “Just a little too useful to get rid of.”

It sounded so resentful. Shou retracted his hand from the plate of grapes. He’d just given Ootsuki the opportunity to walk away. All of them were mad at him and they still didn’t leave, it didn’t make any sense.

Serizawa looked between the other two expectantly. “Was that what happened to Fukuda-san too?”

“No, he’s been with Claw since forever.” Ootsuki waved a hand dismissively. “Suzuki actually thought he was too scared to stab him in the back, it's pretty funny.”

Shou glared at him warningly. It wasn't any of Serizawa’s business what Fukuda was like. Ootsuki seemed a little flustered by it, immediately shutting up.

“Yeah, uh,” he awkwardly crossed his arms again, turning to Shou. “If you’re so sure he’s fine, maybe you should do something about him so we can get going.”

“Fukuda!” Shou promptly yelled, loud enough that the neighbors across the hall could probably hear it.

It only took Fukuda two seconds to rip open the bedroom door and bound back into the kitchen. “What happened?” he asked breathlessly, staring first at Pops and then at Serizawa.

“Why are you mad?” Shou frowned at the remaining grapes as he picked them off their stalk, leaving the plate empty. He held one of the fruits between his fingertips and carefully took aim, hitting Pops right on the nose.

“What are you doing?” Fukuda blurted, sounding nothing less than appalled. “Give me those.”

He demandingly held out his hand. Shou rolled his eyes and dropped the last two grapes into his palm. Fukuda resolutely picked up the rest of the impromptu projectiles from the floor and threw them in the trash can under the kitchen sink.

“Why are you mad?” Shou asked. “Stop avoiding the question.”

Fukuda had that look on his face again, like Shou had deeply hurt his feelings. Instead of answering, he made a weird, bewildered noise and glanced helplessly at Ootsuki. Ootsuki turned his back on him and walked around the coffee table.

“Fukuda,” Shou persisted, harsher this time. “Just say what you’re thinking. Why do I always have to waste my time on this?”

Fukuda tried for a consoling smile, but it turned out strained and unnatural. “I’m not mad. I’m just… worried.”

“See?” Ootsuki said. He dropped onto the couch next to Serizawa, one leg crossed over the other and an arm slung over the backrest, taking up an unnecessary amount of space. Serizawa looked uncomfortable, leaning away slightly, slouching like he was trying to occupy as little space as possible.

“I don’t want you to leave, I just said you could,” Shou said, managing to hold Fukuda’s gaze the whole time.

Fukuda shook his head, looking altogether miserable. He was so frustrating to be around when he got like this. Shou knew something else was wrong.

“That’s not…” Fukuda paused, apparently not sure what he wanted to say. He just stood there with his hands awkwardly folded in front of himself. “I don’t want to leave, Lea—” he instantly raised a hand to his mouth, “—Shou-kun.”

“Just Shou,” Shou told him. “Why does everyone always have to be so formal?”

“Shou,” Fukuda corrected himself.

“Shou-kun, if you’re going out, what am I supposed to do?” Serizawa asked.

It took an effort for Shou to keep his reply somewhat civil. “How many times do I have to repeat myself? Your job is to watch Pops, that’s it!”

“Wait, where are we going?” Fukuda interrupted them, his forehead wrinkling with a brand of worry that was much more familiar, but no less irritating.

Shou brushed him off with a dismissive wave of his hand. “We’re scouting for government agents.”

“But you just heard the…” Whatever Fukuda had wanted to say fizzled into nothing.

On the couch, Serizawa had turned pale again. “Shou-kun, does that mean I’ll stay here alone?” he asked.

Shou didn’t know what else Serizawa had expected, but it seemed to take his last shred of dignity not to pull his feet up on the couch and curl up completely. He looked like he was feeling sick.

“Is that gonna be a problem?” Shou asked. “We don’t have time to sit around and hold your hand.”

“No, of course not,” Serizawa mumbled.

Ootsuki leaned forward to rest his arms on his thighs, tilting his head to the side. “Isn’t being alone something you’re really good at?”

Serizawa didn’t look at him, just took in a sharp breath, clutching the fabric of his dust-ridden pants. Ootsuki got up from the couch, sending him a blatantly patronizing smile.

“Well, you’re not completely alone. You can have fun with your dear, sweet president,” he said, patting Serizawa on the cheek in an impressive display of condescension. “I’m sure you miss sucking his dick.”

Serizawa jerked his head away and outright glared at him, almost like a normal person with a normal amount of self-respect.

“Ootsuki, shut up and get your things,” Shou snapped, pointing at the hallway to the bedrooms. “Don’t be gross.”

Ootsuki merely sneered as he walked back around Shou, disappearing into the small guest room he’d slept in to find his backpack. Once he was out of sight, Serizawa did his best to straighten his back.

“What am I supposed to do if he wakes up?” he asked, nervously clasping his hands together between his knees. “Or if... If something else happens?”

“Fukuda, give me your phone,” Shou said.

He held out his hand expectantly. Fukuda had collected the hoodie Shou had thrown over the back of his chair earlier in the morning, clutching it to his chest. He looked perplexed, but did as he was asked, placing his aging but perfectly well-kept smartphone into Shou’s palm.

Shou tossed it to Serizawa. “If anything happens, call me right away, then we’ll get back here as fast as we can.”

“Why are you taking my phone?” Fukuda asked, sounding vaguely offended.

“You’re always hovering over me anyway, it’s not like you’ll need it,” Shou said, snatching the hoodie out of Fukuda’s hands. He pulled it on as he marched out into the hallway.

***

It was barely past eight when they took off in the scuffed, gray sedan Fukuda usually drove Shou and the others around in. Like so many other things they spent money on, the car’s greatest quality was that it had been cheap.

Pops hadn’t exactly kept a close eye on Shou’s budget, but they’d needed funds for things that had to go under his radar, and usually how that worked was that they bought cheap crap and then Fukuda got creative with the numbers.

“I’m not sure we should’ve left Serizawa-san alone,” Fukuda said, glancing at the side-view mirror. “Maybe I should’ve stayed behind.”

In the backseat, Ootsuki looked up from his phone. “Buddy, you are so obsessed with babysitting this guy.”

“He isn’t well,” Fukuda mumbled.

“So?” Ootsuki asked. “Why do you care how Suzuki’s favorite little henchman is feeling?”

Shou restlessly tapped his fingers on his thighs, feeling strange and overly wired. No sleep and a high dose of caffeine had been a bad idea when he didn’t even usually drink coffee.

“Serizawa’s gonna be fine,” he said. “He just needs a job to do and he’ll keep it together.”

“Yeah, he’s a complete doormat,” Ootsuki agreed, swiping his thumb across the map where he’d been searching for a low-risk route to the crater.

For a moment, Fukuda pursed his lips like he wanted to reply, but then he slipped back into the same irritating, apprehensive quiet he’d been stuck in all morning.

“I told him to sit on the couch and watch Pops, then call me if he wakes up,” Shou snapped. “That’s literally all he has to do. You can’t go back anyway, we need you to do the talking.”

“Me?” Fukuda did a double take at Shou. “Why?”

“You just look so trustworthy,” Ootsuki quipped, reaching around the driver’s seat to pat Fukuda on the arm.

Fukuda leaned away from the touch. “Can’t this wait until Higashio comes back?”

“It takes too long,” Shou said, leaving no room for argument. “Pops isn’t gonna be passed out forever. I already let you sleep all night, don’t complain.”

Fukuda didn’t object, but his brow was deeply furrowed at the red light on the other side of the intersection in front of them. “Even if we find an agent, they won’t talk to a civilian walking up to them in the street,” he said.

“Sure they will,” Shou replied. “We’re not civilians. We got intel. We can trade information.”

The light switched to green. Fukuda let the sedan roll forward a couple of meters, waiting for another car to pass so he could make a turn. “Such as?”

Shou thought about it for a few seconds. “Tell them about Hatori.”

Ootsuki dropped his phone into his lap and sat up straight. “Yeah, tell them about Hatori. They should be hunting down all of the Super Five if they aren’t already on it.”

“He hijacked their helicopters yesterday, they’re definitely gonna be interested in hearing about that,” Shou added.

If he was a little smart about it, Hatori was one of the most dangerous espers you could put in a modern, electricity-driven city, but he was also an impulsive idiot. Shou wasn’t too worried he’d act on his own, but Fukuda didn’t have to tell the agents that.

They had to abandon a few of Ootsuki’s route suggestions before they found a road into the disaster area that wasn’t blocked by police or armed soldiers, but once they got inside, they could pass through unhindered by anything but scattered rubble.

Shou let his eyes drift over dull factory buildings as Fukuda drove around an industrial area. They turned a corner, and suddenly something else caught his attention. Up ahead, a very large man stood in the middle of the street.

Fukuda let the sedan roll to a stop, squinting his eyes. The man in front of them had entirely suppressed his usually fluid, silvery aura, but Shou recognized him immediately. It was about time they ran into another decent human being.

He rolled down his window, rotating the handle at record speed, and leaned outside, supporting himself with his hands on the sill.

"Iida!"

Only after he'd called the man's name did it occur to Shou that he perhaps shouldn't assume anyone from Claw was on their side anymore. Not even someone who used to be one of the good guys.

Iida turned, head held low in a lumbering posture, scruffy as always with his long, gray hair and coarse beard. He was both tall and broad-shouldered enough to lug around a set of unusually large, meaty hands. Right now, one of them held on to the little girl from Division Seven. Mukai.

"Let go," the girl shouted, pointlessly trying to rip her arm free. "I’ll make them pay for this!"

Shou couldn’t spot any of the wooden dolls she used to control. Without them, she was just an average, puny eight-year-old. She wasn’t alone, though—Tsuchiya stood behind her and Iida, frowning at the sedan with her brawny arms crossed over her chest.

The girl abruptly changed tactics, lunging for Iida’s hand to clamp her teeth down on it. Iida simply picked her up, carrying her under one arm like she didn’t weigh a thing. She continued to yell angrily as he trudged toward the sedan.

Iida did not look surprised to see Shou, but he also didn’t look happy. Shou slowly retreated to his seat as he approached, stopping right outside. Iida placed his free hand on the roof of the car with enough weight to make the front end dip, then bent down, glaring in through the open window.

In the backseat, Ootsuki reached for the paper fan he’d stored in the side pocket of his bag. Iida definitely noticed, offering Ootsuki a nod of acknowledgement even though they’d never met before. His eyes briefly landed on Shou next, then finally found Fukuda’s nervous gaze.

"Iida-san," Fukuda mumbled. He politely bowed his head, but his fingers were clenched around the steering wheel like he was ready to speed off at a moment’s notice.

Iida didn’t return the greeting. He couldn’t have been anywhere near the explosion and its strange healing power yesterday, because the massive scar that marred one side of his face was still there, stretching from his nose to his mouth, as if it existed to emphasize his grim frown.

"You should leave town," he said, gaze settling on Shou instead. "There’s police everywhere this side of the crater, and espers on the other. Not to mention the stragglers from your father’s little army."

Mukai was still struggling to free herself, kicking and screaming, but Iida barely took notice of it. Specks of rusty, coagulated blood had dried into the front of his worn army jacket. It was strange. Iida wasn't a fighter. He was a practical man who did practical tasks. He had some mediocre, telekinetic ability, but Shou had barely ever seen him use it. His main skill was to be really, really good at sensing auras.

Just like you’d call Fukuda to heal people, or Higashio to fix things, Iida was the one to summon when you wanted to track down someone who didn’t want to be found.

"What’re you doing here?" Shou asked.

Iida exhaled through his nose and straightened up. He took a step back, exactly far enough that Shou could crack the door open and slip outside.

"I'm escorting espers out of the crossfire," he explained, pointing at Mukai.

Mukai let out a furious, shrill scream. "Tsuchi, do something!"

Tsuchiya didn't do something, just frowned wistfully at the cracked asphalt. Shou wondered if they’d met Iida before or if he’d only singled Mukai out because of her age. He didn't really look the part, but he was genuinely the nicest person Shou knew from Division Two. They only took in esper kids who had nowhere else to go, it wasn't like Division Seven and their kidnappings.

Mukai continued to thrash and scream until Iida sighed good-naturedly and set her down. “Run back to onee-san, then,” he said.

She immediately darted out of his reach and whipped around, glaring viciously—not at him, but at Shou. "This is all your dad's fault,” she shouted. “He’s so mean, everyone from Claw should just die already!"

It was so indignant that Shou couldn’t help but scoff. The Scars from Division Seven had fled without ever having to own up to what they did in the past. Whatever weak attempt they’d made at fighting back against the rest of Claw didn’t change the fact that they deserved every bad thing they had coming.

But… Mukai was really small and really upset. Shou folded his arms, turning away from the angry tears welling up in her eyes.

"How’re you gonna kill anyone if you don't have your dolls?" he snapped at her. “We're about to get rid of my pops, so give me a break. Just go home or whatever."

“We can’t go home!” Mukai took in a lungful of air and held her breath, but it didn’t stop the tears from overflowing, trickling down her cheeks. “You told your dad we did bad, and he burned my trees, and our house got blown up, and nobody likes us anymore! I thought you were nice when you lived with us, but you’re just a big liar!”

How could anyone call a cold, gloomy bunker run by a bunch of self-important kidnappers home? He didn’t know how long Mukai had lived at the base. How much time they’d spent brainwashing her. When Shou was eight, he didn’t even know what Claw did.

“Your father is with you?” Iida asked before Shou had a chance to defend himself.

Shou watched as Mukai stomped away. Tsuchiya held out a hand, as if asking her not to run off again, and after a moment of deliberation, Mukai took it, letting the woman pull her close to her side. Shou took his eyes off of them and nodded.

"We're trying to find someone from the government who'll talk to us about it,” he said. “It's important."

Iida gave him a long, pensive look before he raised his head, nose in the air like a wolf trying to catch a scent.

“The agents I’ve seen were either fixating on the crater or busy arresting anyone they can get their hands on,” he said after a few seconds, confirming what Shou had already expected. “I’ve sensed a few espers come around this way in the last couple hours, but after they broke into the army’s supplies, your father’s foot soldiers are a greater problem.”

Shou shrugged his shoulders uncertainly. “What does that mean for us?”

Iida looked back down at him with a stern frown. “It means all you’ll find here is trouble.”

For someone who must’ve been dodging all those same people while roaming the area for espers to rescue, Iida seemed very calm and collected. Like this was all something he’d planned for beforehand.

“Do you intend to tell them who you are?” Iida asked. “Do you not think they know already? That they’ll be prepared to hold you up?”

Shou’s eyes flickered to Fukuda, still maintaining a death-grip on the steering wheel. “Well, we kind of had a different plan.”

“You should leave town, Shou-kun,” Iida repeated.

“But—” Shou flusteredly gestured in the direction they’d come from. “Somebody has to take care of Pops, and the government’s been investigating Claw, right? This guy named Joseph was stalking around at HQ trying to capture him, so they gotta have a way to neutralize espers.”

“Joseph?” Iida asked, tilting his head a fraction. “How long was he there?”

“A month, I think? Ever since Pops brought in those other mercenaries.”

“Describe him to me and I’ll find him for you,” Iida said with the same confidence as the hundreds of other times he’d been sent to find someone. Pops had even sent him to find Shou sometimes.

“But it’s not just that,” Shou said. “We don’t know anything about what's going on. I have to get an overview—”

He flinched when Iida placed one of his massive hands on his shoulder, firmly pushing him away from the car door. He bent down so he could glare at Fukuda again. “Why are you here?”

Fukuda didn’t quite meet his eyes, focusing on the front of Iida’s jacket instead. “It’s… It’s like before. We’re trying to do what we can to help—”

“If you want to help, you drive the boy out of here,” Iida interrupted him. “He did what he meant to do. Now all of you ought to step back before you get yourselves hurt.”

“Hey, who the fuck do you think you are?” Behind Shou, Ootsuki kicked his door open and got out, clutching his paper fan. He moved in front of Shou, forcing him to back up. “You think you can tell us what to do when you weren’t even around yesterday?”

He pointed at the scar on Iida’s face with the closed fan, then spread it out with a practiced flick of his wrist. Iida calmly watched the weapon, waiting as if inviting Ootsuki to keep talking. Not a lot of people bothered listening to what Ootsuki said, maybe that was why he got all quiet, raising the fan to his chest in an unsure, defensive stance.

“It’s good you’re skeptical,” Iida said, “but I’ve known Shou-kun for a long time. I wouldn’t tell you to leave if I weren’t convinced you’ll make things worse if you stay.”

Even though he’d removed it, Shou could still feel the weight of Iida’s hand on his shoulder. It was true; Iida didn’t usually try to order people around. He didn’t come and tell you what to do unless he had a good reason.

Even during the time where it was a monthly occurrence for Shou to run away from home, Iida had never told him to stop. Pops would order him to pick Shou up from whichever corner of the country he’d ended in, and then they'd sit together on the train back to HQ, and Iida would list all the mistakes Shou had made that’d made him easier to track. No blame. No annoyance.

Sometimes, when Shou had felt particularly reckless, he'd told Iida why he ran. He never got all weird about it like Fukuda did if you told him anything bad. He never told Shou to get over it like Pops would, either.

“We’re just hearing him out,” Shou said, glancing at Ootsuki.

“Hearing him out about what? That it’s dangerous?” Ootsuki pointed a hand at the open window. “Fukuda’s been telling you that all morning, and you didn’t give a shit about that. It’s irrelevant anyway when we’re still trying to get rid of Suzuki fucking Touichirou.”

“If you think this Joseph will listen to you, I’ll find a way to contact him,” Iida said again.

Ootsuki scoffed, letting his arm with the fan fall to his side. “Okay, and do you just want us to trust you on that and sit around and wait for the next week? Because that’s not an option we have.”

“Deliver him to the police if you want a different option,” Iida said, repeating the exact same suggestion Ootsuki had drunkenly made the night before. “That will surely get you an audience with someone from the government.”

“But…” Ootsuki glanced at Shou uncertainly. “Then he might wake up and kill somebody. Right?”

“Have you not seen what he’s capable of first-hand?” Iida gestured in the direction of the crater behind him. “It doesn’t matter who holds him captive, the only safe solution to your problem is to kill the man, and if that is what needs to happen, you should leave it to the authorities, because handling it yourselves can and will be held against you.” He paused for a moment, sighing. “Whether or not you seek them out yourself, Shou-kun is sufficiently high profile to be targeted by their agents. Don’t give them any more reason to persecute you than they already have.”

“Persecute us for what?” Shou asked. “We haven’t done anything wrong.”

“It doesn’t matter.” Iida tiredly shook his head. “You can’t trust these people. Why do you think I’m risking my hide tracking down espers here?”

On the other side of the sedan, the driver seat door opened with a soft clunk. Fukuda got out, turning to face them. “Iida-san…” He kept his eyes on the roof of the car, closing the door just as carefully. “I think it will look better. Being discreet... They don’t like the public to know.”

Shou had never really understood what Iida’s problem with Fukuda was, but the way he looked at him now was different. Something about the stern lines on his face softened as he nodded in agreement.

“Tell me where I can find you and wait there,” he said. “If you must be out searching for anything, it should be sedatives.”

Sedatives? Would they have to keep Pops drugged up on the floor for days? Iida was very good at his job, but he’d never met Joseph before. He wouldn’t be able to pinpoint his location from his aura.

“We can’t just sit around and wait,” Shou said. “We should be helping you or something.” He pointed at Mukai and Tsuchiya. “Where’re you even taking them? Did you find anyone else?”

“Do you trust me to know what I’m doing?” Iida asked, ignoring the questions.

Tsuchiya had sat down on the ground with Mukai in her lap, her arms wrapped around the girl. She didn’t seem nervous about whichever fate awaited them, just resigned. Shou nodded.

“Then trust what I’m telling you now,” Iida said. “You can look around if you must, but keep your distance. Keep your guard up. These people will look at you, and no matter what you say or do, all they’ll see is Suzuki Touichirou’s son.”

Shou idly slid one sneaker over the gravel littering the asphalt while Fukuda walked around the car. He jotted down the address for the apartment in a small notebook Iida had kept in his pocket.

“You need to put yourselves first now,” Iida said, taking the notebook back once Fukuda had shared what little they knew about Joseph.

“I need to stop Claw,” Shou muttered, glowering up at him. “It’s not over yet. I know it doesn’t fix everything just because Pop’s gone.”

“You’re not the only one who knows,” Iida said. “You can trust me on that, too.”

He turned away, ambling back to Mukai and Tsuchiya while the rest of them filed into the sedan. Shou strapped on his seatbelt while frowning at Iida’s broad back. He was gesturing away from the crater, prompting Tsuchiya and Mukai to follow him.

“Are you seriously gonna do what he told you?” Ootsuki asked. “Who is he even?”

"A friend," Shou mumbled.

“Oh, I see.” Ootsuki irritatedly threw his paper fan at the door on the opposite end of the backseat. “Let’s go find the nearest vet and get some horse tranquilizer, then. Great plan.”

Shou turned in his seat to look at him. “Shut up. We’ll look around, okay? See what happens.”

Fukuda silently started the engine, driving around Iida without looking at him. They quickly made it out of the industrial zone, the large lots and abandoned trucks replaced by a residential area with buildings tall enough to block their view of the broccoli. Windows lay shattered on the sidewalk, chunks of rooftops in the street, mixed in with tree branches and crumbled metal that had probably been blasted a long way from their source.

The car abruptly stopped as Fukuda stepped on the brake. He flusteredly switched the gear to reverse, driving back behind the shop fronts they’d just passed. Shou had seen it too—a police car was parked at the end of the street they’d been about to drive by.

“I don’t like this,” Fukuda said. “We should go back. They’ll pull us over if they see us.”

“Let’s go around to the other side, then,” Shou said. “Iida said there’s only espers there.”

Fukuda distractedly nodded to himself, adjusting his grip on the steering wheel. He took in a breath before he drove past the side street, eyes glued to the police car, but whoever had been patrolling in it seemed to have left.

He returned his eyes to the road, then practically jumped in his seat as a resounding boom rattled both the ground and the window panes of the sedan. Shou quickly unbuckled his seatbelt and sat up on his knees where he could better see around Fukuda, but the street outside was still and empty.

“Was that someone’s powers or like… a grenade?” Ootsuki asked, staring in the same direction.

The question was more or less answered when a series of gunshots followed. Somewhere in the direction they’d driven from, a police siren started blaring, speeding by on one of the adjacent streets. Shou shoved his door open and heard more sirens, closing in from another direction.

“No,” Fukuda started.

“We should check it out,” Shou urged, waving Ootsuki along.

Ootsuki gave a quick nod, stuffing his paper fan back in the pocket of his backpack. Fukuda opened the driver seat door, stumbling outside.

“Shou, no! It’s not just me—Iida-san told you to keep your distance.”

“I will, I just wanna see what’s going on,” Shou said, squinting at a plume of black smoke rising up in the distance. “Someone’s blowing stuff up, that seems pretty important.”

“Why?” Fukuda frustratedly leaned forward, holding a hand to his chest. “You said we were looking for government agents, this has nothing to do with us.”

Ootsuki got out of the sedan, shrugging on his backpack. “If we’re stuck in this shithole for the next week, I think it’s pretty relevant to know what’s happening.”

Fukuda stared at his back as he started walking. He pointed a hand at the car even though Ootsuki couldn’t see it. “Then at least let me drive you there. What if you get hurt?”

Shou went around the sedan too, walking backward. “The car’s gonna draw too much attention. Find somewhere to park and wait there. I promise, we'll be back in half an hour, tops.”

Fukuda anxiously wrung his hands, staring after them both with a helpless look on his face.

“Wait,” he gasped, “I don't have my phone!”

Shou’s sneakers skidded to a halt. He quickly fished his own phone out of his pocket and doubled back. “Here, just take mine.”

Fukuda reluctantly took the device, holding it to his chest. “See, I don't always hover over you...”

Shou grinned at him and turned around, jogging to catch up with Ootsuki’s long strides.

They followed the sound of several more rounds of gunfire, some too rapid to come from the handguns the police usually carried. The cloud of smoke had only grown denser, rising from the point where all the sirens had stopped. They reached a narrow alleyway where they could hear voices on the other side. Ootsuki cautiously spread out his fan again, but Shou grabbed his sleeve, pointing at a fire escape on the side of the building next to them. The roof seemed like a safer vantage point.

As they climbed the stairs, someone yelled, the words hard to make out after reverberating between the scuffed buildings. Shou jogged up the last few steps and snuck across the roof, the stark smell of burning rubber filling his nose as he peered down at the scene below.

A man sat on his knees with his hands in the air, staring down a small horde of police officers, most of whom had their pistols drawn.

“Stay on the ground,” one of them ordered, gesturing aggressively with the muzzle of his gun. One of his colleagues busied herself snatching what looked like an assault rifle from the ground next to the man, adding it to a pile of other weapons. All of them looked like they belonged to the military, but the soldiers had apparently left the officers to defend this part of the city by themselves.

Five other men were already lying flat on their stomachs, their hands resting on the back of their heads. They’d had the foresight to change out of their ugly, Claw-branded jumpsuits, but there was no doubt in Shou’s mind that they had all been among his father’s underlings.

“You should be thanking us,” one of them ground out, raising his chin off the asphalt. “These freaks are gonna try and take the whole city, we have every right to defend ourselves!”

Shou let his eyes drift down the street. Someone else was lying on the asphalt, but flopped over on their side, a dark pool of blood forming a circle under their torso. Several of the surrounding buildings had caught on fire, one featuring a gaping hole in the facade that could only be the result of a telekinetic attack.

“Shou,” Ootsuki whispered, nudging Shou’s shoulder.

He pointed in the opposite direction where a dark, expensive-looking car was sitting in the middle of the road, flames licking up from the hood and in through the shattered windshield. One of the front tires had been blown off by the same force that had painted a dark circle of soot on the ground in front of it.

“Isn’t it that government guy who was on TV?” Ootsuki kept pointing, not at the car but at two men standing next to it.

The shorter of the two was flusteredly pouring water from a plastic bottle onto a handkerchief that was already red with blood. Unlike every other person at the scene, he was an esper, his aura crackling from stress, but he wasn’t the one Ootsuki was talking about.

The other man watched Pops’ underlings with obvious resentment, accepting the wet handkerchief so he could dab the skin around a cut on his forehead. He had the same sharp, square features and gray streaks in his hair as the man Shou had watched on TV before they left.

Asahi dropped the handkerchief back in the esper guy’s hands, saying something as one of the officers walked up to him. No matter how much he strained his ears, Shou couldn’t hear the conversation.

The esper guy kept looking around like he was trying to locate a bad smell. Shou straightened up to back away from the edge of the roof, but as if the guy had somehow sensed him move, his eyes shot up to stare directly at Shou’s face.

“Hey!” he shouted.

Shou snapped around, grabbing Ootsuki’s wrist. In front of them, the surface of the roof separated from the rest of the building and coiled like the lid of a tin can. Shou charged straight through it, dragging Ootsuki along to the other side of the building.

Ootsuki didn’t get a chance to protest with any more than a startled yelp before Shou jumped off the roof. Even though Shou’s powers took most of the fall, Ootsuki’s landing was uncharacteristically clumsy, knocking him off-balance.

“Shou—” he huffed, stumbling back on his feet, “—we should get back to Fukuda.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Shou said distractedly.

He pulled Ootsuki down an alley, bending the light that filtered down between the walls until his powers had rendered them both invisible, cursing himself for not doing the same while they were on the roof. Nobody was supposed to see him. Especially not the head of the special ops team the government had sent here.

He waited, holding on to Ootsuki while a couple of cars drove past and the voices of the remaining officers faded.

“Shou.” Ootsuki swatted him on the arm, hitting him at an awkward angle that made it clear he had no idea what he was aiming for. “Let go of me, I can’t see my phone.”

Shou released him, letting them both flicker back into view. Ootsuki shook his hand like Shou’s grip had hurt him, unlocking his phone with the other one so he could call Fukuda.

The waiting tone beeped over and over while Ootsuki paced back and forth. The police weren't even what worried Shou the most. If there were more of his father’s fake awakened espers in the area and all of them had rifles and hand grenades and who knew what else, he didn’t know what they’d do if they found Fukuda. He had no powers to defend himself with. He didn’t even have a weapon.

The beeping stopped, playing the automated response instead. Ootsuki despondently let his arm drop to his side. “He’s not gonna pick up.”

They couldn’t stand around and wait any longer. Shou poked his head around the corner, checking both ways before cautiously wandering out into the street. They quickly found their way back to the place where they’d left Fukuda, but neither he nor the car were anywhere to be seen.

“This is the right place, right?” Ootsuki asked, wandering around the empty streets. He repeatedly checked his phone, eventually circling back to Shou’s side while he frowned at the screen. Still no texts or missed calls.

“Maybe he drove somewhere else?” Ootsuki suggested, not sounding convinced himself.

“He would’ve called,” Shou said, trying to think without any nagging premonitions clouding his judgment.

There weren’t any signs of a struggle, so it was unlikely he’d been attacked by anyone who wanted him dead. The most likely scenario was that the police had found him and he’d said something stupid and gotten himself arrested. If that was the case, at least he’d be out of the lockdown zone.

Ootsuki jumped a little at a clattering sound from one of the ruined buildings behind them. There was nothing there except the wind, but he started walking anyway, uneasily glancing over his shoulder. “We should get out of here. Let’s go back to that road we came in through.”

Shou grudgingly followed him, but he’d only taken a couple of steps when the phone in Ootsuki’s hand started vibrating.

“Oh.” Ootsuki quickly swiped a thumb across the screen. “Hey, we’re looking for you, where did you—”

Ootsuki stopped talking and looked increasingly bewildered by whatever was being said on the other end. He handed the phone to Shou. “Uh, it’s Fukuda.”

“What’s up?” Shou said as soon as he’d raised it to his ear.

“Leader, everything is fine. I’m fine,” Fukuda stressed instead of explaining himself.

“Okay, nice, but where are you? The car’s gone.”

Somebody took the phone from Fukuda. There was a rustling sound before another man spoke.

“Shou-kun!” he exclaimed in a jovial voice. Shou couldn’t place it, but it was vaguely familiar. “As you can hear, we have your healer.”

Shou sighed, knowing full well this guy was going to ask for some sort of trade. “Why do you have my healer?”

“I hate to do this, but we know you took off with your father yesterday and we want him back,” the man said.

“Uh-huh.” Shou placed a hand over the microphone, holding it at a distance. “They kidnapped Fukuda.”

“Put it on speaker,” Ootsuki urged, voice hushed.

“We want to take him off your hands,” the man elaborated at Shou’s lack of response. His voice sounded scratchy through the phone’s speaker.

“What do you mean you want him back?” Shou asked. “He doesn’t want you back, didn’t he make that pretty clear?”

“I think we’re speaking past each other,” the man replied with a condescending little chuckle. “We don’t want him back in charge, we want him dead.”

Shou didn’t know what he’d expected. Not for anyone to be so forward about going after their former boss, at least.

“If you’re planning to attack him, he’s gonna kill you first,” he bluffed.

“Well, he’s injured, isn’t he?” the man said evenly. “A handful of people saw you drag him out of there. Half-dead, I was told. We’d best take advantage of it while we can.”

Of course someone had seen them. You couldn’t exactly hide in the middle of a giant, flat crater.

The man kept talking: “This is nothing personal, but wasn’t this what you wanted too? I’d go so far as to say we owe you a favor.”

Shou took in a breath. It wasn’t at all what he wanted, but he might as well humor the man. “What’re you gonna do with him?”

“Mostly, we just want him gone, but while we’re at it, we might as well make an example of him. He deserves a public execution. Maybe we can broadcast that too, hm?”

“Harsh,” Shou muttered.

“Is it? Nobody goes against Claw unpunished, Shou-kun. You know how it is.”

Shou huffed incredulously. “Is that a threat?”

“Let me put it like this. Right now, you’re in good standing. As I said, we owe you one. If you continue to help your father, that will change. If you bring the government into this, it will definitely change. No one likes a snitch.”

Shou stared at the phone bitterly.

“If you want your healer back, we’ll be waiting at the gas station on Rice Porridge Drive,” the man said. “The road’s blocked, but you can drive past the barriers. Bring your father here within the next three hours or it will have consequences.”

“You took our—” Shou started.

The man hung up.

“You took our car, asshole...”

Ten seconds of burning hatred for everything that was left of Claw was all Shou allowed himself before he tossed the phone back to Ootsuki and started plotting how they could get Fukuda back.

“How many people do you think there’ll be?” he asked. He shut his eyes tightly, trying to remember. “I’ve heard that guy’s voice before.”

“Me too,” Ootsuki said. “It has to be someone from HQ, so they know you can fight at least.”

“Yeah, with telekinesis.” Shou had taken a leaf out of his father’s book by making sure not to give away every power he had. Nearly no one knew he could turn himself invisible; even fewer that he’d been teaching himself to store psychic energy.

“I don’t know, I’d say five people at most?” Ootsuki estimated. “Maybe some without powers, if they haven’t all joined those losers playing with firearms.”

“We can take out five guys.”

“Honestly, if they’re Scars, I don’t know if I can keep up with that many,” Ootsuki said, picking at his hair band with an almost forlorn expression.

Shou started walking, course set for the outer edge of the restricted area. “If you can keep them off me, I can take out five guys by myself.”

Ootsuki hurried after him. “You don’t even know what their powers are. Shouldn’t we at least call Higashio?”

“He’s all the way over on the other end of the city and he’s already busy,” Shou said. Not to mention that he was most likely still pissed.

“Serizawa?” Ootsuki proposed, bringing up the last resort.

“No!” Shou glared at him like he’d gone insane. Ootsuki scrunched up his face like he was thinking the same thing.

They went back through the industrial area while Shou’s mind churned to come up with a plan. Iida, Mukai, and Tsuchiya were gone, leaving just the large, open lots surrounding the factory buildings. Shou crushed a chain-link fence around the closest one, clearing a direct path to a trafficked road.

“Whether you can take them or not, we can’t just charge in there,” Ootsuki said, stepping over the flattened steel mesh. “If you want to avoid them blowing Fukuda’s head off or something, you gotta be sneaky about it.”

“We get another car, drive where they told us, and pretend we got Pops with us. Then we can get close before we strike.” Shou made a fist with one hand and slammed it into the palm of the other with an audible smack.

Ootsuki hesitantly crossed his arms. “You know I don’t have a license, right?”

Shou stopped right in front of him, staring incredulously. “That’s what you’re worried about right now?”

“No.” Ootsuki ran a frustrated hand over his face. “What I mean is, I don’t have a license because I don’t know how to drive.”

Shou surveyed him critically, nodding with newfound understanding. Shou knew how to drive, but that didn’t help them much when he looked no older than the thirteen years he was. If one of all the cops circulating the area saw him in front of the wheel, they’d definitely pull them over.

For a moment, he considered calling Higashio after all. It was him who’d taught Shou the basics of driving so he could help move the sedan out of the way now and again, or drive short distances. Higashio had been really angry, though. Shou wasn’t sure if he’d ever seen him that angry before. He wasn’t one to yell and slam the door. Usually, he was more level-headed than the rest of them combined. It was best not to count on him for anything from now on.

“Don’t worry, I’ll teach you,” Shou decided, briskly picking up his pace again. “It’s not that hard.”

If Higashio wasn’t there to act as driving instructor, then Shou would just do it instead.

“How’re we gonna find another car?” Ootsuki asked, sounding a little skeptical.

“We steal one, of course.” Shou already had his sights set on a convenience store by the road up ahead. Whoever owned it had opened up shop despite the enormous hole in the roof that was only covered by a tarp.

Shou easily pilfered a key from the first person leaving their nice, new station wagon in the parking lot outside the store. As soon as the owner was out of sight, he grinned triumphantly at Ootsuki, waving for him to get in. Shou sat down beside him in the passenger seat, glancing around the car’s interior.

“It’s your lucky day, it’s got auto-shift,” he informed Ootsuki, wiggling the gearshift. “So, you pretty much just pull the stick toward you when you wanna drive, and back if you wanna go in reverse.”

He leaned over to put the key in the ignition, then pointed down at the pedals. “Break’s on the left, gas pedal’s on the right. Really, that’s all there is to it.”

“You know, this isn’t the first time I’ve looked at a car,” Ootsuki mumbled, irritatedly fastening his seatbelt.

“Well, just drive, then,” Shou huffed.

He crossed his arms behind his head, leaning back in his seat as Ootsuki very slowly backed the station wagon out of its parking slot. He was right in the middle of the two rows of cars when he slammed his foot on the brake.

“Am I too close?” he asked, eyes glued to the rearview mirror. “I’m gonna hit the car behind us.”

“What?” Shou crawled over Ootsuki so he could push the driver seat door open. “Look! You’re really far away.”

Ootsuki stuck his head outside, shoulders slumping at the two meters of free space behind them. He carefully navigated as close to the other cars as he could get, constantly double checking the distance through the open door. With slightly improved confidence, he shifted the gear to drive and rolled them toward the exit at an infuriatingly slow crawl.

“Can you check where that street they mentioned is?” he asked, grabbing his phone from his pocket to hand it to Shou. “I don’t know my way around this city.”

Shou opened up a map and typed in the street name. “It’s not that far from here,” he said. “Like a ten-minute drive.”

“Well, we can’t show up yet if you want it to look like we actually went to pick up your dad.”

Ootsuki waited for a chance to turn out onto the road, then haltingly drove down the street to search for another parking spot where they could sit and wait. He kept glancing at Shou every so often.

“What?” Shou asked. “Maybe if you kept your eyes on the road, you wouldn’t have to drive so slow.”

Frowning, Ootsuki focused straight ahead. “Have you thought about the fact that we could really go pick up your dad and just, you know, hand him to them? Then he wouldn’t be our problem anymore. Even if we give him to the government, that guy Iida made it sound like he’ll be as good as dead anyway.”

Shou pointedly looked out the window.

Ootsuki had his head fully turned in his direction now—right until one of the station wagon’s wheels hit the curb and he instantly lifted both feet away from the pedals.

He leaned back, breathing out like he was recovering from something far more dramatic than a small run-in with the curbstones. A car behind them honked before swerving around the station wagon, the driver glaring daggers at them as he passed.

“I’m sorry.” Ootsuki hung his head, letting his hands drop into his lap. “That was shitty of me to say.”

“You can park over there.” Shou pointed at a parking area wedged in between two office buildings.

With a bit of difficulty, Ootsuki maneuvered into a free space, then simply sat there lost in his own thoughts, engine still running. Shou leaned over to shift the gear to park and turn off the ignition.

“Shou, I’m sorry,” Ootsuki repeated. “It’s easy enough for me to say he should be dead, I barely even know the guy.”

“He’s not worth knowing.” Shou leaned forward so he could rummage through the glove compartment. Among an actual pair of gloves, various receipts, and a set of headphones, he found a couple of candy bars.

“Oh, sweet!” He lit up with a grin, handing one of them to Ootsuki and keeping the other one for himself.

“Thanks,” Ootsuki mumbled. He slowly peeled off the packaging once Shou had done the same. “So uh, you don’t seem very worried about Fukuda.”

“Nah.” Shou took a bite out of his chocolate bar. “Those people don't have any reason to hurt him and it’s not like it’s the first time this has happened. He’s just…”

“An easy target?” Ootsuki suggested.

“Yeah.”

“You should teach him some of your wrestling moves instead of only ever throwing me around. You know, so he can defend himself.”

Shou burst out laughing. He had a hard time picturing Fukuda wrestling anyone.

Ootsuki smiled that weird, soft smile just like the night before, except this time there wasn’t any alcohol involved. He took a bite of chocolate, chewing on it for a bit.

“I didn’t really sleep last night,” he said, staring down at his lap. “I’ve just been thinking a lot since yesterday and… I’m glad I met you guys.”

Shou was glad he met them too. It was nice to have someone around who wasn’t old enough to be his dad.

Ootsuki had changed a lot since he first joined them. He’d been hostile and mistrusting of everyone and everything back then; especially Shou. Shou didn’t really blame him. He knew how it had looked—the boss’s rude brat had claimed him like he was a rabid dog they’d put on a leash.

He still wasn’t sure if Ootsuki trusted him. He would usually follow orders, but it was nearly impossible to pry any personal information out of him, like how he’d ended up with Claw, or what he did before. Whenever he tried, Ootsuki would deflect his questions or jokingly tell him a new bullshit story.

Whatever he’d done, Shou figured he wasn’t proud of it.

Maybe because Serizawa had reminded him of it earlier, Ootsuki started reminiscing about how awful the few weeks he’d spent at HQ were. Shou leaned his head on the backrest and watched people pass by on the sidewalk, going about their business like it was any average day, uncaring about the fact that Shou’s life was even more of a chaotic shitshow than usual.

It didn’t matter that Fukuda had been kidnapped, or that some vengeful Claw member had given Shou an elaborate death threat. In situations like this, you just had to keep moving.

Life always went on, whether you were ready for it or not.

Chapter Text

“Shou.”

The hand barely brushed Shou’s back before he slammed the assailant into the opposite side of the car. He pressed himself against the door beside him, clumsily scrabbling for the handle. He had to get out immediately, as fast as possible—

“Shou, it’s me!”

Ootsuki was clutching his ribs, half-standing with his back against the side window. He quickly shot forward to grab Shou’s arm before he could fall backward out of the open door.

“What the hell?” he breathed, standing over Shou.

Shou shoved him away, maybe harder than necessary, because Ootsuki raised his hands like he expected to be attacked again and promptly dropped into his seat.

Clutching the door handle, Shou pulled himself back inside. His thoughts felt fuzzy around the edges, unnaturally slow to make any sense of the situation. Ootsuki was there. That was okay. Ootsuki and the station wagon they’d stolen, the last things he remembered, just like it should be.

He let his feet fall to the floor so he could sit upright. He squinted against the midday sun spilling in through the open door and could barely recall what they’d been doing.

“Where are we?” he asked.

“You fell asleep,” Ootsuki said. “We’ve only got twenty minutes until the deadline. We have to pick up Fukuda.”

Shou closed the door with a low clunk. He buried his hands in his hair and bent forward, willing the feeling that his skin was crawling to go away.

It was quiet and hesitant when Ootsuki continued: “It should be right up there.”

Shou raised his head to see him pointing at a blocked off side-street in front of them.

“Is it far?” he asked.

Ootsuki sat with his arms crossed, mouth settled into an apprehensive frown. “No.” He turned his head just a fraction. “Are you sure this is a good idea?”

Shou felt even more tired than before he nodded off. He dragged his hands down his face, leaning back in his seat. “It’s the only idea we got, right?”

Ootsuki reluctantly started the station wagon. It jostled a little as it bumped over the curbstones, continuing across a patch of grass to circumvent the cement blocks placed at the turn. The road beyond was clear. It was hard to tell why it’d been blocked at all.

“When we’re close, slow down so we can get a look at them first,” Shou instructed.

“You better hide before they get a look at you,” Ootsuki said, leaning toward the windshield like it’d help him see around the curve in the road.

A gas station came into view, two cars parked haphazardly in the middle of it. One of them was their own gray sedan, the other a minivan with tinted windows which Shou didn’t recognize. Fukuda stood against the minivan, five other people surrounding him.

Shou turned himself invisible as Ootsuki brought the car to a halt, just close enough that they could study the people gathered at the lot.

“Ohh,” Ootsuki said with a dawning realization. He pointed at one of the figures in the distance—a heavyset man with a black beard. “That guy on the phone? He’s the one who used to get all the new espers checked in.”

Shou knew him too; he’d been around HQ for a long time. He definitely had a better grasp of their abilities than the average person. Still, Shou was confident he didn’t know of his invisibility trick.

“You can take him,” Shou said.

“Yeah, he only does pyrokinesis.” Ootsuki rested his arms on the steering wheel with nonchalant disinterest. “I don’t think he’s much of a fighter to begin with.”

He leaned forward, observing the rest of the group. They had clearly noticed the car, they couldn’t wait around for much longer.

“The one next to Fukuda has a gun,” he noted. “That other guy, too.”

“Probably not espers then,” Shou said.

“I don’t know about the last two, though.”

Two people Shou was fairly certain he’d never seen before stood between the bearded guy and the armed men guarding Fukuda. From a distance, they didn’t look very threatening, but that was the thing with espers; you could never judge a book by its cover.

Ootsuki turned his attention to the spot where he assumed Shou’s head was, only getting the angle slightly wrong. “That’s four people you have to take out on your own,” he said, like he’d suddenly taken it upon himself to channel Fukuda’s eternal worrying.

“Just keep them distracted,” Shou told him.

Ootsuki grudgingly drove them the rest of the way, parking the station wagon just inside the paved rectangle that made up the gas station. Fukuda’s kidnappers looked on with tense suspicion as he got out of the car, the guard next to Fukuda readying his handgun.

Ootsuki casually leaned on the open door, making space for Shou to slip out behind him. “Looks like you got our healer,” he drawled.

Fukuda had turned pale at the sight of him. His eyes darted around like he was trying to scope out where Shou was, undoubtedly well aware of what they were planning.

The bearded man took a step toward Ootsuki, regarding him skeptically. “Ootsuki-san, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. Sorry man, I don’t remember your name,” Ootsuki said in a snide, obnoxious tone. He clearly couldn’t be any less interested in changing that.

“It’s Koga,” the man informed him anyway. Ootsuki’s impassive face didn’t shift at all and it set him into a low, scratchy laugh. “You’re just as rude as I remember.”

“You’re not giving me any reason not to be,” Ootsuki said.

Fed up with the aimless banter, Koga spread out his arms, gesturing at the surrounding lot. “Where’s Shou-kun?”

“He didn’t want to come here,” Ootsuki said, putting on a solemn voice as he finally decided to start acting.” It’s his dad, you know?”

Koga nodded to himself, absentmindedly running a hand over the jagged scar on his bald crown. “We would’ve liked to thank him, is all. As I told Shou-kun, we got nothing against you people as long as you don’t get in our way.”

Ootsuki tilted his head and smiled, doing a poor job of concealing how strained it was. “I’ll let him know.”

“Well then, let’s get on with it,” Koga said, making a sweeping gesture to the station wagon.

Shou made his way to the other cars, keeping his footfall silent. Bending the light to his will wasn’t the difficult thing about invisibility—what really took skill was staying aware enough of himself and his surroundings to become truly imperceptible, masking every little sound and fluctuation of his own aura.

He went around Fukuda and tapped him on the arm. Fukuda made a miniscule movement, turning his head ever so slightly. It was enough for Shou to know he understood he was there.

The man with the handgun stood right next to him, the other guard a few meters away by the kidnappers’ car. The two espers stayed in the middle of the lot with their backs to Shou, fully focused on Koga and Ootsuki.

“We put him in the back here,” Ootsuki lied. “The blast really knocked him out, he’s been unconscious since yesterday.” He gestured for Koga to follow him, glancing uneasily in Fukuda’s direction. He had no way to tell how far along Shou was.

Shou circled the gunman, taking a moment to look at him. Like everyone else, he had his eyes on Ootsuki. He held his handgun loosely at his side, finger off the trigger. An easy target, really.

With a quick and precise motion, Shou twisted the man’s wrist and forced his arm up, elbow in the air where he could only point his gun at the ground. The man didn’t even have time to react before he was thrown over, landing hard on his side where Shou could easily tear the weapon out of his grasp. He let it fall to the ground and held on tight to the man’s wrist with both hands, yanked him up by the arm, and brought it down over his knee.

The guard’s humerus snapped with a disconcerting crack. He howled, horrified by the attacker he couldn’t even see. As soon as Shou let go, he rolled over on his side, dragging the broken arm with him.

Shou swiftly kicked the gun to send it skidding across the pavement, halting right in front of Fukuda. With one foot, Fukuda swept it out of sight behind him and flattened himself against the sedan, pretending to be just as surprised by the guard’s sudden injury as the guard was.

Koga had spun around, baffled by all the noise. “What on earth is happening?”

The other guard was gaping at the state of his associate, too. Everyone was too distracted by the screaming to pay any mind to the sound of Shou’s footsteps. He ran to the guard and slammed the root of his hand up into his jaw. It threw him off long enough for Shou to rip the rifle he was carrying out of his hands and jab him in the face with the butt of it so hard that he nearly fell over, clutching his now broken nose.

The others would piece together what was happening now, there was no reason for Shou to conceal himself any longer. He dropped the rifle behind him, let it curl up under the force of his telekinesis, and bashed the guard who’d been carrying it into the ground.

The first guard had gotten up, stumbling to make a run for it while the three enemy espers all had their eyes on Shou. He could almost see the gears turning in their heads as they tried to process the situation.

The two closest to Fukuda didn’t look as sturdy as their leader. One was a spindly woman with long, lifeless hair, the other a short young man so outlandishly average Shou had a hard time believing he was a member of Claw.

Shou extended his powers around him to reach all of them, covering most of the lot. Ootsuki stepped out of proximity and Fukuda hurried around to the other side of the sedan, both of them catching on quickly.

Shou pressed down, rapidly increasing the weight of gravity. The powerless guard immediately fell flat on the ground and the woman fared little better—slammed face-first into the pavement. On the other side of the parking lot, Koga’s legs gave out from under his already heavy body. He caught himself with his hands splayed out on the asphalt, fighting against the pressure that threatened to flatten him.

The strangely ordinary guy was different. He was clearly terrified, but he barely seemed affected by Shou’s powers. There was a strange flickering around him, like some kind of barrier. It didn’t dissipate until Shou let go of them all.

Ootsuki gave Shou a firm nod. He targeted Koga before the man had a chance to stand, making a slashing motion with his paper fan. It sent forth a flurry of air, focused and sharp like a blade, cutting into Koga’s skin and knocking him over entirely.

The woman was still face-down on the ground, her thin limbs quivering with the effort to push herself up. Shou decided to take the other guy out first.

In a flash, he was right in front of the esper, one arm already raised to make an amplified blow to his chest. In the split second it took for Shou to do this, the man had already raised a solid, unmistakable barrier around himself. It didn’t even crack when Shou’s fist connected with it; rather bounced back the impact, sending a horrible, sharp jolt of pain through Shou’s entire arm, so violent it was amazing his elbow didn’t pop right out of its socket.

The esper took a step back, dropped his barrier, then made a new one big enough to surround both of them. It wasn’t like the barriers Shou could form; it felt isolating, muffling the noise from outside and blocking him off from sensing the other espers’ auras. The man looked scared. Shou had no idea why he would trap them both in this cage death match of a situation.

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the woman stand up, bent over with one hand on her bloodied forehead, and the other supported on her knee. The light blue dome surrounding Shou vanished as she raised her hand, pointing right at him.

The whole world lurched like the ground and sky were spinning independently of each other. Shou fell, but it was impossible to tell what was down and what was up and how his legs were positioned in relation to it all. He hit something, and he had to assume it was the ground.

He scrambled to align himself in some logical, comprehensible way, but his sense of direction was no more reliable than a compass spinning wildly atop a magnet. His heart was racing. Someone shouted and Shou couldn’t even make sense of it, just knew he had to get up, knock that woman out as fast as possible.

His hands couldn’t seem to find the ground. Overwhelmed with nausea, he attempted to lift them to his mouth instead, but even that seemed impossible when he had no sense of where his hands were, or his face, or whether they were still attached to the same body.

There was the sound of a gunshot and a loud yelp, and suddenly Shou understood where his limbs were again. He understood just in time to avoid getting vomit all over his clothes as his stomach upended itself, discarding the sickly sweet chocolate and bitter remnants of the grapes he’d eaten this morning.

“Stop it,” Fukuda cried out, sounding mildly hysterical. “Whatever it is you’re doing, stop it!”

“I already stopped, you fucking psychopath!” the woman screeched.

Shou stayed hunched over on the ground, trying to spit the bile out of his mouth. Everything was still spinning. He pressed his fingers into the pavement so hard his arms were shaking, holding on for dear life to keep from falling over again.

He could make out that the woman was sitting on the ground too, her back pressed against a gray blob he assumed was the sedan. She had her hands pressed against her leg, just above her knee, and when she lifted them to gesticulate angrily, they were red with blood.

“I can’t believe you shot me,” she raged like it was Fukuda’s fault they’d brought firearms into this.

The barrier guy seemed at a loss for what to do. Shou stumbled to his feet and took one step toward him. Despite the fact that he was still encapsulated in his blue-tinted bubble, he instinctively flinched away. Maybe all this guy knew how to do was barriers.

Ignoring him, Shou squinted, trying to point his hand at the woman, but it was difficult when it looked like there were three of her and Shou had to use his other arm for balance, touching the ground with his fingertips because he kept involuntarily leaning to the side.

When he managed to take aim, he slammed her head into the car so hard it left a dent in the passenger seat door. She slumped forward, then keeled over to the side, thoroughly unconscious.

The barrier guy backed away with his hands raised protectively in front of himself. He kept glancing back and forth between Shou and Ootsuki, well aware that he wouldn’t stand a chance if he did anything other than sustain his barrier.

Ootsuki had already made short work of Koga. The asphalt around him was scorched, but his pyrokinesis hadn’t done him much good when Ootsuki could just blow the flames back in his face. He lay face down, his suit jacket ripped to shreds by Ootsuki’s attacks.

Shou straightened up with only a slight wobble. “We know there’s more of you,” he said. Where’re all the others hiding?”

The barrier guy shook his head and took another step away, ducking his head like he was trying to retreat into his bright blue, padded jacket.

“If you don’t tell us, I’ll find a way to get through that barrier and kill you.” Shou fixed him with an icy glare, hoping the guy couldn’t tell that he still couldn’t focus his eyes.

“N-no,” he stammered, “let’s not—let’s not do that.”

He swallowed, briefly glancing at the abandoned convenience store behind him. If he went much farther, he’d trap himself against the wall.

“There’s a big outlet mall not so far from here.” He pointed at a crossing further down the road with a shaky hand. “It’s easy enough to get there, just turn left in the intersection and follow the main road until you get to another closed off area. They’ve been gathering people there.”

“How many people?” Shou asked.

“Everyone.” Barrier guy seemed surprised that Shou didn’t already know this. “I mean, nearly everyone. From HQ at least. People are really angry. You kind of…” He swallowed again, eyes flickering to the ground and back to Shou. “You’re kind of making a big mistake, if you ask me.”

Shou didn’t really catch the last part. The dizziness was coming back with a vengeance, he felt like he was going to pass out. He bent over to lead the blood back to his head, but all it did was make him lose his balance. Stumbling forward, he barely broke the fall with his palm.

Fukuda hurried to his side. “Leader—”

“Shou,” Shou corrected him. He pushed himself into a sitting position, feet firmly planted on the asphalt.

“Shou, what did she do to you? Are you okay?” Fukuda whispered, crouched down to be as close to eye-level with him as he physically could. Shou didn’t answer at first because he was nauseous and worried he’d throw up again.

“Shou, can you hear me?” Fukuda’s voice was taking on that hysterical edge again. “We have to go, I can carry you—”

“No.” Shou held onto Fukuda’s shoulder with one hand and put the other on the ground, trying to ignore how much it hurt to put pressure on it. “I’m just dizzy,” he mumbled hazily.

Fukuda put his hand on Shou’s back and rather forcefully steered him across the parking lot. “We have to go now, get in the car.”

Once he’d dragged the unconscious woman out of the way and put Shou in the passenger seat, he went around the vehicle, waiting with his hand on the frame of the open door. “Get in the car, Ootsuki-san.”

Ootsuki kept his eyes on the barrier guy, walking backward until he could shut himself in the backseat. As Fukuda joined them, Shou rubbed his face with his uninjured hand in the hope it’d help clear his senses.

“What did she do to you?” Fukuda pulled Shou’s arm down and grabbed his chin. “It looked like you were having a seizure.” He forced Shou’s head up, inspecting his face like he expected whatever damage the woman had done to be visible from the outside.

Shou shoved his hand away and elbowed Fukuda in the chest, pushing him out of his space. “I said I’m just dizzy.”

Of course Claw would bring someone like that woman—with no means to block out her powers, she’d be able to immobilize anyone, no matter how powerful. He didn’t want to think about what would’ve happened if he’d run into her by himself. He didn’t want to think about the possibility that Koga had lied and planned on taking Shou with them, too.

Fukuda looked at him helplessly until he noticed his own hand in his lap and seemed almost surprised to find that the gun was still there. He quickly placed it on the dashboard, stared at it for two seconds, then changed his mind, moved it to the glove compartment, and slammed the cover shut. He looked kind of out of it.

“Did you know Ootsuki couldn’t drive?” Shou asked, blearily trying to focus on Fukuda’s face.

“Yes.” Fukuda’s expression was carefully blank as he turned the key already sitting in the ignition.

Shou shifted, grabbing his seatbelt so he could strap it across his chest. “Well, I taught him how to do it. You know, in case you need a break.”

“I could see that.” Fukuda gave no indication of wanting to switch places. He set the car in reverse, turning to look out the rear window.

In the backseat, Ootsuki was running his fingers through his bangs and looking rather uncomfortable. “Uh, so are we checking out that mall or what?”

“No,” Fukuda said, already driving away from the intersection the barrier guy had pointed them to.

“Turn around!” Shou smacked him on the shoulder, making the mistake of using the hand he’d already injured.

Fukuda obstinately continued toward the blockade at the end of the road. “Not when you can barely even stand.”

“Again, seems like it might be important to know what’s going on over there,” Ootsuki hesitantly spoke up.

Fukuda glared at him in the rearview mirror.

The throbbing pain in Shou’s hand spiked every time he so much as flexed his fingers, it was hard to focus on anything else. The knuckles were bruised after ramming them into the barrier guy’s barrier and both the palm and backside looked swollen and weird.

Shou pursed his lips. “I think I broke my hand.”

Fukuda slammed the brake, bringing the car to a halt with a loud screech.

“Give it to me,” he snapped, and when Shou didn’t hold it out fast enough, he grabbed the hand himself, sandwiching it between his palms.

“Ow,” Shou protested.

“I don’t know what you were thinking, picking a fight with five people on your own,” Fukuda muttered under his breath. “Why didn’t you at least get Higashio?”

Shou only scowled down at his own knees, so Fukuda turned to Ootsuki instead. “Why didn’t you?”

“He told me not to,” Ootsuki said, shoulders drawn up to his ears.

Fukuda all but glared at Shou. “I thought you were done telling us what to do.”

“Why’re you acting like it’s such a big deal?” Shou said. “I took out fifty guys by myself yesterday, this was nothing.”

“You shouldn’t have to—”

Fukuda stopped himself, swallowing whatever he was about to say. When he let go of Shou’s hand, he was a lot more gentle than when he’d grabbed it.

“Is it better now?”

Fukuda’s healing power had left Shou’s hand feeling warm and overly pliant, like he’d melted the bones in order to put them back together. Shou shook his arm to get rid of the weird sensation.

“It’s better. I’m fine now.” He pushed himself up until he sat straight in his seat and focused on looking as healthy as possible. “Now turn the car around.”

He’d just needed to sit down for a couple of minutes, but Fukuda still stared at him. As had been the case many times in the last day, Shou couldn’t decipher if he was angry or upset or scared or something else entirely. Whatever he was, Shou stared right back.

“Turn around, or me and Ootsuki will walk there ourselves.”

“Shou, please,” Fukuda pleaded, “think about what will happen if they catch you. You attacked them. They know you’re against them now. That boy with the barriers will warn the others, you have to realize that.”

Shou sullenly stared out the window, arms crossed over his chest. It was dangerous to go near them if the entire main branch was actually holed up in that mall, but as far as Shou was concerned, not knowing what they were up against was more dangerous.

“You always worry too much,” he muttered. “I’m not gonna attack a whole mall full of espers by myself if that’s what you think. I actually know what I’m doing.”

Fukuda sighed, placing his hands on the steering wheel. “Of course you do.”

In the end, he started the car again and turned it around, not saying a word. They drove past the gas station. Predictably enough, the barrier guy was gone, along with the car the kidnappers had brought themselves. He’d left the rest of his team behind—only one of the guards was sitting up, trying to recover from his head injury. His broken nose had bled all over his face.

Fukuda glanced at the lot out of the corner of his eye. “Can you at least promise me you’ll keep your distance?”

“I will,” Shou grumbled. “Stop fussing.”

“We’re not supposed to bring attention to ourselves,” Fukuda continued. “That’s… That’s what Iida-san told you, remember?”

Ootsuki had been unusually quiet, simply observing them from the backseat, but he suddenly put a hand on Fukuda’s seat, pointing out through the windshield. “Wait, is this the place?”

Ahead of them was the second floor of a long building, reaching up behind the townhouses. There were signs on the facade advertising various shops. It had to be the mall they were looking for.

Fukuda slowly made his way around the building, anxiously on the lookout for any more Claw members. A few twists and turns later, they reached the parking lot outside the front entrance, and as soon as Shou laid eyes on it, the breath caught in his throat.

A cacophony of bright green plants covered half the parking spaces. Vines and oversized flowers had burst from the decorative plant beds lining the mall’s outer walls. Spindly branches and lush vegetation had torn through the asphalt and crawled along the facade, in through the revolving door.

“Oh no,” Fukuda breathed.

Shou kicked his door open, bolting out of the car before Fukuda had stopped it. It had to be Minegishi. No one else could wield chlorokinesis at that scale. It had to be him, but it didn’t make any sense. What was he doing here? Had he rallied all the other espers?

It’d be just as Shou had feared—the remnants of the Super Five would pick up where Pops left off, secure their place at the top of the food chain, and it’d be even more difficult to control when it wasn’t just one guy in charge anymore. Without his father, Shou didn’t have any special privileges; no access to critical information, no access to anything. He’d just made everything worse.

Except… Shou ran past several people who’d been knocked out in the parking lot, some of them still ensnared by vines and various other plants, exotic and foreign in appearance. Whatever had happened, Minegishi was fighting against these people, not with them.

In a distant corner of his mind, Shou registered someone calling his name. Ootsuki sprinted past him and turned around, one hand outstretched to slow him down and the other clutching his paper fan.

“Shou,” he gasped, “don’t run off on your own, you don’t know who else is in there.”

As if on cue, fast approaching footsteps sounded from around the building. Two men turned the corner, racing toward Ootsuki with terror plain on their faces.

“Don’t just stand out in the open, he’s coming back,” one of them yelled. He quickly slipped through the shattered dividing walls of the revolving door. The vines passing through it had thoroughly immobilized it.

Ootsuki confusedly glanced between the entrance and the corner the men had come from. There was the sound of footsteps again, much heavier this time, and right as Shou let himself vanish from sight, another of the former Super Five came barreling into view.

Shibata seemed even more massive than usual, eyes wild and furious. There was blood trickling down from his temple; someone must have gotten a good hit in on him. He stopped for a second to locate the men he’d been chasing, but all he saw was Ootsuki standing by the entrance. Apparently, he was just as good a target, because Shibata started running again, charging at him with all the momentum of a freight train.

Ootsuki ducked right before the man smashed one of his huge fists through the frame of the revolving door, right where Ootsuki’s head had just been. The glass walls of the surrounding facade shattered into tiny pieces and rained onto the ground.

With nowhere else to run, Ootsuki rushed into the foyer, Shibata right on his heels. He flicked open his fan, turning to make a sweeping motion. The wall of compacted air knocked over the café tables and info signs lining the inside of the facade, but did little to slow Shibata down. Ootsuki made a sharper jab at him, but Shibata blocked it with his arm and barely seemed to notice the deep gash the attack cut into his flesh. He lurched forward and ripped the fan right out of Ootsuki’s grasp.

Ootsuki stared at his empty hand for a split second. Then he turned around and ran.

Shibata was heavy, but he was really tall, he could still cover a lot of ground quickly. Ootsuki had to put his all into it to stay ahead as he sprinted out onto the open walkway on the other side of the foyer.

Shou ran after them, quiet and invisible, forcing himself to keep his cool. Shibata and Minegishi were definitely working together, and if they were together, there was no telling if Shimazaki and Hatori were here, too.

Outside the foyer, shops were divided into two parallel two-story blocks with the walkway between them. Shou hurried to the left wing and took the stairs to the second-floor balcony two at a time. The balcony on the other side was completely covered in greenery, engulfed to the point where it had undermined the structure and crumbled sections of both the platform and the storefronts it led to. Shou could see people ensnared in the growths and couldn’t tell if they were dead or just immobilized.

He glanced down at the walkway just in time to see Ootsuki disappear into one of the only shops without a security gate blocking their entrance. Shou didn’t know if he had a plan or was about to trap himself in a dead end in a panic, but Shibata went right after him.

There was a loud clatter from the store below, like something big was thrown against the wall. If Ootsuki was trying to hide, Shibata would likely tear the building apart to find him.

Shou blasted through both the security gate and door of a small shoe shop, directly above the one the others had entered. He ignored the clerk who’d been trapped inside, cowering under a table full of discounted boots, and stopped in the middle of the floor. He crouched, trying to listen, trying to focus on Shibata’s aura. Shibata wasn’t exactly trying to hide, it wasn’t difficult to map out his movement. Shou stood up and took in a breath, bouncing on his feet a little. Then he jumped.

His heels connected with the vinyl under him, driving enough force into the impact to knock a hole in the floor, sending splintered floorboards and ceiling panels cascading down into the other shop. The rubble crashed down on Shibata, burying him. Shou landed on top of the mess and ran toward the entrance, scanning the room for Ootsuki.

Bookshelves segmented the interior of the ground floor store, half of them knocked down, covering the space in novels and comic books. Behind Shou, Shibata was already hastily freeing himself of the rubble, looking around for whoever was responsible.

“What’s this little rat that came down from the ceiling?” he said, his voice a rumbling growl.

Shou checked over his shoulder, and the gargantuan man was glaring right at him. He couldn’t just leave Ootsuki behind, but he had to get out of there. Shou set his eyes on the front door, ready to make a flash step out of the building, but Shibata threw an entire bookcase at the doorway. Shou flinched, instinctively jumping in the opposite direction. Before he could think of blasting through the bookcase, Shibata had circled around him to block the way out.

Ootsuki emerged from the shelves he’d been hiding behind, flanking Shibata with an open paperback in his hand.

“Just get out of here,” he yelled to Shou, making a slashing motion with the book. It was no fan, but it was enough to create a shock wave that knocked over the few display stands that were still standing and launched a flurry of scattered books at Shibata. The unexpected blow threw him onto his side and sent him skidding a couple of meters across the floor.

Shibata laughed, low and rumbling and with good humor like Ootsuki had told him a joke. “What was that, a slight breeze?” He put a hand on the floor and pushed himself up, grabbing a massive tome of a book from the pile around him as his eyebrows lowered into a dark and humorless scowl. “I’ve had it with you.”

Shibata chucked the book at Ootsuki with the purpose of an Olympic shot putter. It hit him square in the face, knocking him over backward. Shou stood still exactly long enough to make sure Shibata wouldn’t stick around and murder Ootsuki before he leaped back through the hole in the ceiling.

He ran past the clerk who’d left the display table in favor of inching her way along the wall to the exit and continued out onto the balcony. Below him, he could hear Shibata smash through the bookcase he’d blocked the door with, wooden splinters scattering on the tiles outside. He wasted no time in loping up the stairs to the second floor, closing in on Shou at an alarming speed.

Shou darted past the shops and knocked over a rack of shirts, a large sign, anything that could make for an obstacle. It did nothing to trip Shibata up; he barreled straight through all of it.

Shou only had to lead him far enough away that he could double back and get Ootsuki, he just had to keep running. Ahead of them, the balcony made a ninety-degree turn where the walkway split in two, turning the mall into a T-shape. Instead of following the path, Shou jumped, using the balcony railing for leverage to propel himself out of reach, levitating above the net of roots that had overgrown a fountain below.

He didn’t even have time to turn before Shibata flung a metal trash can off the balcony and hit him hard in the back. He dropped to the ground, the plants below doing little to break the fall. Shibata didn’t hesitate to follow, tearing a piece of the railing down with him. He landed so heavily that the tile around his feet cracked.

Shou stumbled back on his feet and sprinted down one branch of the mall, skipping across the vines and incapacitated Claw espers lying all over the walkway. Shibata gained on him, one arm outstretched, fingers so close they could nearly grab his hoodie. Shou had to put his telekinesis to use to stay ahead, skipping forward in a zig-zag pattern.

He darted through a cluster of plants that had emerged from the middle of the walkway, dense like a jungle. Once he reached the other side, he turned his head to check on Shibata, but from the corner of his eye, he saw someone else as well.

Minegishi stood on top of a writhing mass of roots, staring impassively like he’d been expecting Shou all along. Shou flinched, tripping on the tangled plants on the ground.

Half a second of inattentiveness was all Shibata needed to catch up. He drew back his arm and hammered his fist into the ground with a furious roar, punching straight through the tile and into the foundation underneath. If Shou hadn’t telekinetically yanked himself out of the way, his head would’ve been squashed like a melon.

Shou flusteredly got up and started running again, but Shibata didn’t pick up the pursuit. Dark-green tendrils had shot up from the hole he’d punched in the ground, ensnaring his arm all the way up to his shoulder.

“What’re you doing, I almost had him,” he bellowed.

One of the roots carrying Minegishi coiled like a snake, then lunged at Shou, whipping around his leg. Shou fell flat on his stomach, his midsection scraping against the ground as it dragged him backward.

“No!” he yelped, twisting onto his side to point his powers at the root. A slash of energy hit it, shredding it in half, but more roots instantly replaced it, slamming into Shou’s back to knock the wind out of him.

“No—” The roots moved to cover his mouth and upper body, yanking him up by the leg until he was hanging upside-down. Shou thrashed, trying to free his arms, but it only made the plant tighten around his chest and neck. He felt lightheaded, not enough air passing through his nose. He couldn’t seem to find his powers, the plant somehow draining the energy out of him.

Minegishi hopped down from his self-made podium, looking up at Shou with the same unflappable expression he always wore. Behind him, Hatori was fishing a wallet out of the pocket of one of the men who’d run past Ootsuki earlier. The man’s entire upper half was wrapped in vines as well, just as hopelessly stuck as Shou.

“Shibata, have you gone blind?” Minegishi asked.

Shibata tried to pull his arm free, but the plants pulled back, dragging his whole torso down. “What’re you talking about?”

Minegishi didn’t reply to Shibata’s question, merely held out an arm, gesturing impassively at Shou. Shibata raised his head, scrutinizing the boy dangling in front of him.

“Shou-kun?” he said, surprise in his voice like Shou had only now materialized in front of him. “What’s he doing here?”

“If he stops squirming, he can tell us,” Minegishi said. “I knew he’d come snooping around here.”

Shou couldn’t seem to get his lungs under control. If they were going to kill him, what would happen to Ootsuki? What would happen to Fukuda? He’d know something was wrong. He’d come in here. He’d come in here and it’d be Shou’s fault that he hadn’t listened to him from the start.

“Calm down,” Minegishi said. “You’re not calming down. I can tell.”

Shou forced himself to stay still even as every muscle in his body was tense and ready to flee. Minegishi experimentally removed the root that had locked his jaw in place and Shou immediately took in a big, staggering breath.

“Leave me alone, I’ll get out of here,” he said very fast. “I won’t tell anyone I saw you, I swear.”

“Yes, you will,” Minegishi said, still staring him right in the eye. “Because we’ll ask you to.”

Shou stopped thrashing for a moment. “What…?”

The roots around Shou’s leg uncoiled, making him drop gracelessly to the ground. The rest loosened as well, letting him rip his arms free and stagger back on his feet, chest heaving for air.

“We’re cleaning up,” Minegishi said, gesturing at the catastrophic mess he’d made of the mall like it should be obvious. “Isn’t that what you wanted?”

“This load of idiotic, second-rate espers don’t know when to quit,” Shibata weighed in.

Hatori finished rifling through the wallet he’d taken, extracting a couple of plastic cards before tossing it back at its owner. It hit the vines still ensnaring him, flopping sadly to the ground.

“Trying to find out who half these guys are, too,” he said, plopping down on the base of Minegishi’s roots. He pulled a laptop he’d balanced behind him into his lap and started typing, occasionally squinting at the cards through his thick glasses. “Not exactly everyone who used their real names and stuff.”

Shou didn’t know what to say. Minegishi had listened to what he’d asked? And not only that, but involved Hatori and Shibata in it too? What did he even mean cleaning up? Did they plan on murdering everyone here?

Shou slowly backed away the way he came, walking sideways so he didn’t have to take his eyes off the three men..

“Okay, you do you,” he mumbled. “I’m gonna go now.”

“I’m not done talking to you,” Minegishi said.

Shou walked faster. It didn’t matter what they were doing, he just had to get Ootsuki.

“Hey, you can let go now,” Shibata said. He was still bent over, waiting for Minegishi to release his arm.

Minegishi ignored him, following Shou at a casual stroll, not unlike a serial killer in a horror movie. Shou turned away and set into a run. Before he made it around the corner, he saw Shibata rip the massive roots holding him in place out of the ground with a frustrated growl.

Shou sprinted to the bookshop, wading through the pile of wooden splinters and torn books at the entrance. Rays of light streamed in through the large windows, illuminating the dust particles in the air.

Ootsuki lay exactly where he’d fallen when Shibata knocked him out. Shou shuffled closer, awkwardly crossing his arms. Ootsuki was just unconscious, he knew that, but he couldn’t get himself to bend down and check for a pulse, just to be sure.

“He isn’t dead, is he?”

Shou nearly slipped on the books scattered around his feet when he snapped around. He didn’t know how long he’d been standing there, lost in his own thoughts, but Minegishi had appeared in the doorway.

“Leave me alone,” Shou said again, positioning himself in front of Ootsuki to shield him from view. “I’ll take him and leave, that’s all.”

Minegishi’s lips quirked with a faint, condescending smile. “Do I scare you all of a sudden?” he asked. “Not that I’m complaining. It suits you to be less of an arrogant brat.”

Shou kept his eyes down, well aware of the vines that had crawled inside the bookshop the same as everywhere else. A series of shonen manga had spilled all over the floor by his feet, colorful illustrations of some unyielding hero on the covers.

“Where’s Shimazaki?” Shou asked.

“I don’t know,” Minegishi said. “Far, far away where he won’t have to deal with his problems, I assume. The rest of us aren’t so lucky.”

Shou shifted his weight on his feet. He couldn’t retreat any further without stepping on Ootsuki. “What d’you mean?”

“Once we’re done here, we’ll alert the police and wait for them,” Minegishi said like it was just a simple fact. Like he didn’t feel any way about it. “I’d say the majority of HQ’s espers and everything we know about them is a decent peace offering.”

Shou raised his head. “You’re giving yourself up…?”

“What else can we do?” Minegishi said. “Run?”

“That’s…” Shou’s hands curled into fists. “That’s bullshit! Everyone else is trying to get Claw back together, why would you fight them when you could take over the whole thing?”

“Do you want me to stop?” Minegishi asked.

Through the windows, Shou could see the vines that were wrapped around the balcony on the other side of the walkway retreat, releasing two of the espers there. They were quick to scramble away, one of them already gawking in Minegishi’s direction, raising his hands like he was about to unleash his powers.

“What’re you doing?” Shou blurted out. “Stop!”

“I can let the rest of them go as well if you wish,” Minegishi said.

“No! I’ll hear you out, okay?”

Minegishi didn’t even look as his vines crashed back down on the two espers, binding them to the balcony floor once more. “First, you tell me why you came here,” he said. “You clearly hadn’t heard about us yet.”

Shou scowled at him. “Me and Ootsuki were just looking around. We heard a bunch of people from HQ were hiding out here, same as you.

“Several of you left your father just to look around?” Minegishi asked. “I don’t believe that. If he’s still with you, you must have a plan by now.”

In the middle of all the turmoil, Shou had almost forgotten about Joseph. Iida may have put himself on the task of tracking him, but as it was right now, they were no wiser than when they set out in the early morning.

“We’re gonna turn my pops in to the government,” Shou said. “Except they don’t get how strong he is. We gotta talk to someone who knows what they’re doing, so I got a friend out looking for that guy Joseph.”

“The one with the cigarettes?” Minegishi asked flatly. “I assure you, he does not know what he’s doing.”

“Well, it’s better than the rest of them who don’t know anything about Claw.” Shou threw out his arms. “I mean, if they did, why haven’t they infiltrated them ages ago?”

For a while, Minegishi stared blankly ahead. Farther inside the shop, one of the broken ceiling panels creaked, then fell to the floor with a loud clatter. He barely reacted to it.

“It sounds like you’re doing what you can, so here’s what’s going to happen next,” he said. “Once you hand over your father, their agents will want to talk. You and Serizawa have a lot to share, so they’ll listen to you. You put in a good word for the rest of us, and in return, we’ll do the same for you.”

“What?” Shou blurted. “No! And I’m not going with Serizawa, what’re you even talking about?”

Minegishi continued with a scornful huff, eyes falling back on Shou. “What is it about him that offends you so much?”

The entire conversation was setting Shou on edge. All he could focus on was the fact that Minegishi was still blocking the doorway.

“What do you think?” he shot back. “He’s a coward.”

“Why?” Minegishi asked.

Shou threw out his arms in frustration. “Because he never stands up for himself! He never thinks. Everything bad that’s ever happened to him is his own fault, even before Pops found him. All he does is cry. He’s like thirty years old, what does he have to cry about? You don’t see me crying!”

“And what would someone who isn’t a coward do?” Minegishi queried, tilting his head like he found Shou’s frustration endearing.

“Get his shit together! Fight back! Especially someone powerful like Serizawa. He should be saving people, he shouldn’t be the one waiting to be saved.”

“I see,” Minegishi said. “Life is difficult for him, he needs help, he would have nowhere to turn if he didn’t follow orders, so clearly, he’s a coward. But you, for example, freely traveling around to do the boss’s errands for years, you’re not a coward?” He nodded at Ootsuki. “Your little guard dog, all bark and no bite, isn't a coward?”

“Of course not,” Shou yelled at him. “We were working behind my pops’ back the entire time! You don’t even know us!”

Minegishi gave a single, slow nod. “I think you should remember this conversation.”

Outside, something clattered onto the tiles, followed by a loud, shaky voice. “Stay where you are!”

Without thinking, Shou shoved past Minegishi and ran out the broken door. Fukuda stood in front of the foyer, the gun he’d taken from the kidnappers in his hands, pointed straight ahead.

“Dude, take it easy.” Hatori backed away from the entrance to the bookstore with both hands raised in surrender. He’d dropped his laptop on the ground next to him.

“Fukuda, it’s okay, we’re just talking right now,” Shou called out.

Fukuda’s eyes panickedly flickered from Hatori to Shou. He walked sideways, taking one hand off the gun so he could hold it out to Shou in a plea for him to grab it. “Come on, we have to leave right now.”

“Why?” Shou frowned at him confusedly. “What happened?”

Fukuda grabbed his hand himself, squeezing it too tightly. “We have to leave,” he repeated.

“But Ootsuki,” Shou said, pointing at the door to the bookstore.

A terrified expression crossed Fukuda’s features. He forgot all about Hatori, not even waiting for a reply before he bounded inside the store. He nearly stumbled back outside when the first thing he saw inside was Minegishi, but he shakily raised the handgun again, pointing it at him this time.

“Please stay there,” he mumbled. “We have to go, it’s important.”

As requested, Minegishi didn’t move, just watched Fukuda with mild interest. Fukuda walked a large circle around him, but completely forgot his resolve to hold him at gunpoint once he spotted Ootsuki on the floor.

He dropped down on his knees next to Ootsuki, discarding the gun on the floor so his hands were free to carefully cradle Ootsuki’s head.

“Oh no,” he whispered to himself, “I’m not good with concussions...”

Shou stared at him indignantly as he put a hand on Ootsuki’s forehead, palm glowing with his faint, turquoise aura. “What happened?” he demanded. “Is it Pops?”

Fukuda gave Minegishi a wary glance over his shoulder.

“Forget about him, just tell me!” Shou was doing his best to keep every catastrophic scenario that immediately played out in his mind at bay.

“I… I was going to call Higashio,” Fukuda stammered, his words wobbly from stress and anxiety. “I hadn’t looked at your phone since the other espers made me call Ootsuki-san, I forgot they put it in the glove compartment.” He let go of Ootsuki to clasp his hands together in his lap, bowing his head in apology. “You had several missed calls from Serizawa-san. I tried calling him back, but it didn’t go through.”

Shou had to restrain himself not to sprint out the door. “When did he call?”

Fukuda turned away a little, avoiding Shou’s horrified face. “Over an hour ago...”

“Let’s just go!” Shou yelled.

Fukuda raised himself up on his knees, looking down at Ootsuki. He carefully worked one arm under his neck and the other under his knees, moving to lift him off the floor.

“No, I’ll carry him, just get the car,” Shou snapped. “Hurry up!”

Shou floated Ootsuki out of Fukuda’s arms. With a rigid little nod, Fukuda bent down to grab the gun, averted his eyes from the others, and marched past Hatori who’d been lurking in the doorway.

Minegishi was standing in the shadow from the wall between the door and windows, watching as Shou followed, hovering Ootsuki outside. He grabbed Shou’s arm when he passed by.

“You never gave me an answer,” he said. “Do we have a deal?”

Defiantly, Shou looked him straight in the eye. “Maybe if my pops doesn’t kill all of us first,”

Minegishi held his gaze for a few seconds before he let go. “If he tries anything like that, let Serizawa handle it.”

Hatori was still leaning on the doorframe, one eyebrow raised like he found the entire scene utterly ridiculous. He flinched when Shou shoved him in the chest, sending him stumbling backward.

The moment Shou got outside, he kicked off the ground and levitated toward the parking lot, holding on to Ootsuki’s arm so he wouldn’t float away. Before they made it across the foyer, he glared back over his shoulder.

Standing in the middle of the walkway, Minegishi glowered at them ominously. The net of vines and strange foliage he’d summoned stretched out in every direction, coiled around the mall and the majority of Claw’s main division, covering everything in green.

Chapter Text

Fukuda wasn’t one to defy traffic regulations, but they had to get back to the apartment, and they had to do it fast. Shou dug his nails into the window frame beside him as their battered, gray sedan careened around a corner, forcing an oncoming station wagon to slam on its brakes.

Fukuda sped down the busy highway, weaving in and out of traffic while checking the mirrors for imaginary police cars. He kept muttering apologies to his fellow drivers, to Shou for forgetting about his phone, sometimes to no one in particular. Shou wished he would shut up; he was trying not to panic and Fukuda’s yammering was breaking his concentration.

In the backseat, the rough bouts of acceleration had stirred Ootsuki out of unconsciousness. He propped himself on his elbow and let his legs drop down from the seat, only to be sent bumping into the door beside him by another sharp turn.

“What’s going on?” he groaned, clutching his head.

“Put on your seatbelt,” Fukuda said, too distracted to register the question.

Shou leaned around his seat so he could see Ootsuki. “Serizawa tried to call,” he said, and it was all it took to shift the expression on Ootsuki’s face from an incredulous sneer into one of understanding.

Fukuda slowed down once they neared their apartment block, cautiously peering down the road. Shou had been prepared for chaos and destruction, but everything was just as they’d left it—no shattered walls, no crumbling buildings.

Instead, a small group of people had gathered on the sidewalk outside, one of which Shou recognized as the woman who’d seen them haul Pops inside on the evening before. Next to her, an elderly man was sweeping together a pile of broken glass. Shou looked up to find that the windows of their own apartment had been blown out, as if there’d been an explosion.

He kicked the car door open the moment the sedan pulled up to the sidewalk, but Fukuda launched himself across the passenger seat and grabbed his arm, stopping him with one leg out of the car.

“You do not go up there by yourself,” he said.

It wasn’t a statement that was up for negotiation. Fukuda stared at him, features strained with the same dread that Shou was trying to suppress. He glared at the ground while Fukuda scooted over, exiting through the passenger seat door so he could keep his vice grip on Shou.

“Now hurry up,” Shou urged, putting his weight into dragging the much larger man along.

Ootsuki groggily opened the back door and swung his legs outside, bent over with a hand on his forehead. Shou left him behind, ignored that the neighbor woman was trying to approach them, and towed Fukuda into the building.

Shou felt way more out of breath than he should from climbing a few flights of stairs, but he kept going until he could see the third floor landing and tell that the front door had been knocked off its hinges, leaving the apartment wide open. He ripped his arm free of Fukuda’s grip and sprinted up the last few steps.

Inside the apartment, Serizawa sat curled up on the couch where they’d left him, staring at Shou with terror in his eyes. The couch was the only part of the room that looked the same; everything else was in ruins.

Shou stared at his father—still unconscious on the floor—before he registered that Reigen was sitting across from Serizawa on one of the kitchen chairs. Reigen gaped at him for half a second before he shot up from his seat.

“Hello!” he exclaimed, just a little too loud, quickly stepping behind the chair as if it were a shield and not a flimsy piece of furniture.

“What the fuck?!” Shou’s chest heaved as he threw out an arm, gesturing at the apartment in general. Fukuda came barging in after him but stopped dead in his tracks, glancing around at the mess with his mouth agape.

Serizawa covered his face with his hands, shaking his head back and forth in distress. “I’m so sorry.”

“What’re you doing?” Shou yelled at him. “You called us! We thought Pops woke up, I thought you were dead!”

Serizawa hunched over and kept muttering about how sorry he was like it made any difference. All it did was fuel the rage welling up in Shou.

“I gave you one, simple job and you can’t even do that?!” he shouted.

In a spineless attempt to shield himself from Shou’s wrath, Serizawa covered his head with his arms. On the other side of the broken coffee table, Reigen raised his hands, nearly abandoning the cover of his chair.

“Wow there,” he said, “how about you calm down and give him a chance to explain himself?”

“Leave!” Shou roared.

He focused his erratic aura long enough to form a wall of psychic energy, shoving Reigen toward the door, the chair toppling over as it was dragged along with him. The chair hit the doorframe, unlike Reigen who was launched into the hallway. He nearly knocked over Ootsuki who had just dragged himself up the last step to the landing.

Ootsuki’s hand immediately shot out to grab the collar of Reigen’s shirt. “Where do you think you’re going?” he snarled, managing to loom over the man even though there wasn’t much of a difference in height between them.

Reigen had a guarded look on his face, making sure to keep his voice level. “I wasn’t trying to go anywhere.”

Shou turned his back on them, kicking one of the broken legs from the coffee table out of the way so he could stand directly in front of Serizawa, glaring at his arms still locked in place over his head. “Are you gonna tell me what happened or what?”

Serizawa whimpered into his knees. “You were gone for a long time, and I know I shouldn’t have, but I started thinking about everything, a-and it’s too big here, I don’t know what I’m doing, I don’t know what’s going to happen to us. I tried calling you, but you didn’t pick up, so I just…”

He uncurled enough to peek out at the surrounding chaos, gaze landing on the scattered scraps of plastic and circuitry on the floor that used to be Fukuda’s phone. The only sound that came out of him after that was a strangled wheeze.

Behind Shou, Ootsuki was dragging Reigen back inside, still holding him by the front of his shirt.

“I just told him to leave,” Shou said, pointing furiously out into the hallway.

“He knows where we’re staying now,” Ootsuki protested.

“The whole block’s gonna know what happened, what does it matter?!”

“Can I just—” Reigen tried to interject, pointer finger raised.

Below them, a door slammed shut. Shou could recognize Higashio’s hurried footsteps running up the stairs before he appeared in the doorway.

“Are you kidding me?” Higashio blurted, burying his fingers in his bangs like he couldn’t believe the scene in front of him. His eyes darted to Pops. “Suzuki did this?”

Fukuda subtly shook his head, then nodded in Serizawa’s direction.

Higashio didn’t even spare Serizawa a glance, instead started pacing back and forth, analyzing the state of everything, peering out the broken windows, kicking at the mostly intact chair Reigen had sat on.

“It’s not as bad as it looks,” Reigen said, trying to pry Ootsuki’s fist out of his shirt. “I already told your neighbors you picked up a highly aggressive poltergeist. I exorcized it, of course. No problem for the greatest psychic of the twenty-first century.”

He flashed Shou an obnoxiously self-assured smile like he expected a pat on the back for his resourcefulness and added, “You’re welcome.”

Higashio stood in the middle of the floor, shaking his head with the most despairing face he’d made since Shou first decided to go through with his plan to attack Pops. “Yeah, thanks a lot. Now we can’t even try to cover this up.”

The smile vanished from Reigen’s face as everyone stared at him judgingly. Ootsuki let go of him only to shove him farther into the living room.

“I really didn’t mean to make things worse,” Reigen assured them, chin held high as he smoothed out the front of his ill-fitting suit jacket. “I assume you don’t want anyone to know you left your boss on your kitchen floor.” He gestured at Pops like all of them weren’t already painfully familiar with the fact that he was there. “I had to do something to keep people out of your apartment.”

Reigen was right. Anyone could have walked in and seen him. Anyone would have been able to recognize him.

“He’s your dad, right?” Reigen was looking at Shou now, studying him with that strange, analytical precision he slipped into just as easily as his over-confident, slimy salesman persona.

He said something more—Shou could hardly hear anything over the deafening rush of his own blood, concentrated with a substance that felt more like poison than adrenaline. It had been a long time since he’d trusted anything good would come from his father, but Shou wasn’t afraid of him. He’d never been afraid of him before.

Higashio bluntly cut off Reigen’s monolog. “There’s nothing for you to do here, so how about you shut your big mouth and get out.”

Reigen recoiled slightly, shutting up with an offended little sniff.

“Your hand,” Serizawa suddenly breathed, still peeking out from his arms. Now that he mentioned it, Reigen was holding his arm at an awkward angle, his hand tucked close to his chest. His ring finger was bent in the wrong direction.

Reigen surveyed it like he didn’t know what Serizawa was talking about. “Ah, it's nothing.”

It clearly wasn’t enough to convince Serizawa; every muscle in his body looked to have turned rigid and unmoving. Fukuda eyed him uneasily as he stepped forward, extending his own hand to Reigen.

“I can heal it,” he said when he only got a confused look in return.

Reigen’s eyes mistrustfully flickered between Fukuda’s hand and his face. He slowly reached forward; the rest of him turned away like he’d daringly stuck his hand inside the mouth of a crocodile and didn’t want to watch if it decided to clamp its jaws shut.

He yelped when Fukuda yanked his finger back into the right position. “What the hell! You call that healing?”

Fukuda just continued his work. Reigen was startled again when he focused his powers on the broken bones. He tried to pull away from the strange sensation, but Fukuda held on with a firm grip.

Reigen took a couple of steps back as soon as Fukuda released him. He raised his hand, rotating it back and forth for Serizawa to see. “There, all better,” he announced. “Now, can we go outside real quick?”

He gestured for Shou to follow him, not waiting for an answer before he headed for the door. Shou hadn’t noticed it before, but there was an umbrella leaning on the wall next to the doorway. Reigen picked it up when he passed. Shou followed him outside and watched him carry it halfway down the first flight of stairs before he turned around and held it out to him.

“I think you should take this,” he said seriously. “Just in case.”

Shou only frowned at the umbrella, so Reigen backtracked a few steps, leaning forward to press it into his chest.

“He said he didn’t want it, but he’s really not doing well,” he said. “You can see that, right?”

“He’s tired and upset like everyone else.” Shou yanked the umbrella out of Reigen’s grip and dropped his arm to his side, letting the top of it clack against the floor. “He’s always been useless at controlling his powers.”

“The guy had a panic attack,” Reigen persisted, flailing a hand in Serizawa’s general direction like it was a personal affront to him that he had to deal with this situation. “He called me, maybe an hour and a half ago. He sounded completely out of it and you just left him here.”

Shou didn’t like Reigen’s reproachful tone. As if he knew anything about what they were dealing with and how unimportant Serizawa’s overly sensitive feelings were in comparison.

“When I got here, he had everything flying,” Reigen continued. “I could barely get through to him. You saw my hand, you saw what he did to your place.”

“It’s my fault,” Fukuda spoke up behind Shou. Shou turned to look at him as he absentmindedly reached for a door handle that was no longer there.

It didn’t matter if Serizawa could hear them, he already knew how badly he’d messed up, but Shou still let Fukuda herd him and Reigen down the first flight of stairs where they were out of earshot.

“He said he would be okay,” Fukuda continued, stiffly clasping his hands together. “Of course he wouldn’t. As far as I know, he’s rarely been by himself in the time he’s been with Claw.”

They could hear the door on the ground floor open and shut again. The woman who had attempted to talk to Shou outside scaled the stairs until she reached the landing below them, nodding politely at Reigen. For some reason, she held a bag of table salt in her hands.

Reigen gave her his best customer service smile, pressing himself against the railing so she had room to pass. Fukuda discreetly grabbed the back of Shou’s hoodie and backed up to the landing in front of their open door so he could position himself very squarely in front of it.

“I don’t mean to intrude,” the woman assured them, “but I just wanted to say, on behalf of everyone, if you get in trouble with the owners, half of us can testify there was definitely a spirit here.”

She walked up to Fukuda, handing him the bag of salt. “I know Reigen-san already exorcized the spirit, but you can never be too careful.”

Shou had no idea what this woman was talking about, and judging from the way Fukuda frowned bewilderedly at the bag, neither did he.

“That’s very thoughtful of you,” Reigen told her with impeccable enthusiasm. “You’re a quick learner! Regular table salt is the easiest and cheapest way to keep evil spirits at bay.”

Shou had never heard of salt keeping anything more threatening than garden snails at bay.

The neighbor smiled kindly at all of them before she continued to the floor above, locking herself into the apartment right above them. Reigen’s smile disappeared along with her. He fixed Shou with an impassive stare.

“That woman was talking about calling the cops when I got here,” he said. “Said she was sure you had something to do with the terrorist attack. So again, you’re welcome.”

“We have it under control,” Shou sneered.

“Honestly, I thought about calling the cops myself,” Reigen added. “I don’t know what you think you’re doing here, I mean—”

“Thank you, Reigen-san,” Fukuda said, harshly and with none of his usual courtesy. “Thank you for your help, but it’s best if you leave now. You have other people who rely on you.”

Reigen faintly shook his head. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Shou bared his teeth at him. “If you talk to anyone about this, I’ll find out where you live and make sure the place gets burned to the ground just like your office.”

It was barely noticeable, but for a second, Reigen looked taken aback. “Right,” he muttered, but he still stayed where he was.

"Are you stupid or something?" Shou spat. "How many times do I have to tell you to leave?"

With some reluctance and a stray glance at the wall to the apartment, Reigen started down the stairs, stiffly shoving his hands into his pockets. “Serizawa still has my card, in case you need anything,” he said over his shoulder.

Shou didn’t bother to reply. He was frowning at the umbrella in his hands. It wasn’t Serizawa’s own, of course—the one he’d clung to ever since Pops lured him out of the room he’d imprisoned himself in for longer than Shou had been alive—but it was close enough.

It had been a lifeline for him. It was the one thing guaranteed to ease his suffering, but he’d still refused it, finally recognizing it for the crippling vice it was. Shou didn’t know if that was smart, and it definitely wasn’t worth destroying their apartment over, but all that aside, it was kind of admirable.

In his own aimless way, Serizawa was trying.

Fukuda had already gone back inside when Shou broke out of his stupor. He was meandering around the apartment, mourning each piece of broken furniture with the bag of salt cradled in his arms like a baby.

Shou dropped Reigen’s umbrella by the door and stood in the middle of it all and didn’t know what to do with himself. What could they do about the place if everyone already knew all their stuff had been trashed? Even if the neighbors backed them up, he doubted the people renting out the place had insurance for property damage caused by evil spirits. Shou had made sure they had money saved, but it wasn’t a fortune. They didn’t have enough to squander on repairing and refurbishing an entire apartment. Not on top of already repairing and refurbishing Ritsu’s house.

They could run from it. It was probably best if they did that anyway. There was way too much attention on them now. It really was a miracle somebody hadn’t walked in and seen Pops. He would be difficult to move, though. Serizawa too, probably. Maybe they should just leave Serizawa behind. He was shaping up to be more of a liability than he was worth.

For a moment, Shou caught himself wishing he could leave all of it behind. Every single thing—just leave by himself, catch a plane somewhere and never look back. Then he stashed that thought away, far, far in the back of his mind where it belonged.

Next to him, Higashio had crouched down to work on the doorframe, carefully straightening one of the bent hinges. “Fukuda, help me with this and then we’re going for a walk,” he called out.

Serizawa’s powers had shaken several of the doors on the kitchen cabinets loose. Fukuda was in the middle of inspecting them, checking if the plumbing under the sink was still intact. He bumped his head when he raised it from inside the cabinet space.

“A walk?”

“Don’t pretend you don’t know what it’s about,” Higashio said.

Fukuda’s expression froze with alarm like Higashio might as well have announced that he planned to assassinate him.

“Is it about Ritsu’s house?” Shou asked. He didn’t know what that would have to do with Fukuda, but it was the only issue that came to him through the haze that made thinking feel increasingly like trudging through a pool of mud.

“No, no, that’s going alright. Don’t worry about that.” The way Higashio said it suggested that there were other things Shou should definitely worry about.

Despite how nervous he acted, Fukuda did as he was asked; went to pull the front door upright and helped Higashio lift it back on its hinges. Higashio kept his back turned as he fixed the broken lock, aligning the bolt back to where it ought to be. It wasn’t exactly an invitation for conversation.

Satisfied that their front door was functional again, he went back inside the living room, gesturing for Ootsuki to get up from the floor.

“You’re coming too,” he said.

“I don’t feel great,” Ootsuki mumbled. He hadn’t said a word since Reigen left, sitting against the wall, holding his head with both hands. The pained expression on his face was barely visible through his fingers and hair.

Fukuda walked closer, crouching down in front of him. “I’m sorry. You have a concussion, I didn’t have time to take a proper look at you earlier.”

Ootsuki didn’t respond. With a sigh, Fukuda reached for one of his wrists, wrapping his fingers around it to tug his arm down. Ootsuki promptly smacked his hand away, bumping the back of his head as he leaned into the wall.

“Sit still,” Higashio scolded him. “Let Fukuda take a look, it’s not your first time.”

Ootsuki mutely lowered his arms, tucking them close to his chest. He averted his eyes as Fukuda carefully brushed his bangs out of his face.

“Look at me,” Fukuda instructed, taking the following brief moment of eye contact to check Ootsuki’s pupils. His forehead furrowed with concern as he let the hair fall back into place. He reached out, gently touching either side of Ootsuki’s head, his steady, turquoise aura illuminating his palms with a soft glow.

Ootsuki didn’t usually have any issue with physical contact, but he looked massively uncomfortable. When Fukuda leaned a little closer, he abruptly pulled away, getting up before Fukuda could grab him.

“You know what, it’s just a headache, it’s fine,” he said with a small, flustered laugh, glancing uneasily in Serizawa’s direction. “Pretty stupid way to get knocked out.”

“Fine, then off we go,” Higashio said, slapping a hand onto Ootsuki’s back to push him out the door.

Both of them headed down the stairs while Shou remained in the middle of the room, feeling increasingly confused.

“Fukuda, what’s going on?” he asked. “Can’t you just talk about whatever it is here?”

Obviously displeased to have been robbed of an opportunity to do his job, Fukuda slowly got up. He gave Shou a strained, apologetic smile like he was heading off to war and didn’t know if he’d come back, then followed the others outside.

Shou shuffled over to the broken windows, making sure not to step on the splinters of glass that had fallen into the apartment. He glowered at the three of them as they walked by on the sidewalk below, Fukuda lagging behind the others.

Despite what Shou had said about being fine with it if they wanted to leave, despite the fact that he really meant it, he couldn’t help but hope that Higashio wouldn’t try to drag the other two with him. He didn’t actually know what he’d do if they left him alone with Serizawa. He couldn’t even stand there for two minutes before he was feeling overwhelmingly uncomfortable having to be in the same room as him.

Serizawa still sat curled up, staring emptily at the broken coffee table in front of him. Shou stood there for several minutes, trying to come up with something constructive to say, but only succeeded in looking just as blank as him. Instead, he went to the bedrooms. No one had checked them for damage yet. It’d be nice if they at least still had a place to sleep.

He opened the door to his and Fukuda’s room, and the first thing he saw was Nezumi’s cage balancing dangerously on the edge of the dresser. Shou forgot to breathe for a moment, lunging forward to push it back against the wall.

Both the dresser and every other piece of furniture in the room had shifted a little, knocked out of place by the outburst of Serizawa’s powers. The cage looked like a miniature representation of the destruction in the rest of the apartment. The little wooden house Nezumi usually slept in had been knocked off the platform it stood on and the remainder of her food was scattered all over the place, lost in the bedding that was dislodged into a heap on one side of the enclosure. The hamster stood against the back wall, stiff and frozen in place with her beady black eyes pointed at Shou.

Shou frowned at her as he found her smaller travel cage tucked away in a drawer. He halfway expected the hamster to bite as he reached inside the bigger cage to scoop her up. Instead, she darted up his hand and tried to worm her way into the sleeve of his hoodie. She gave a startled squeak when Shou managed to grab her and drop her in the travel cage.

Nezumi did the same thing as before: pressed herself against a wall and stared at Shou like he was the one responsible for ruining her home. This had to be better than staying where she was, though. He just needed to find something she could hide under.

He brought her into the kitchen where he could keep an eye on her, shoving aside the neighbor’s bag of salt and a heap of broken plates and assorted kitchen tools to make room for her on the counter.

He rummaged around the jumbled contents of the cabinets until he found a box of Fukuda’s matcha tea. When emptied, he only had to squeeze it a little to fit it into one end of the cage. Nezumi immediately scuttled in there, pressing herself into the back corner of her improvised cardboard house, as far out of sight as she could get.

“What kind of animal is that?” Serizawa croaked, peering at Shou from his spot on the couch.

“A hamster,” Shou said. He filled the water bottle hanging inside the cage, just in case Nezumi wanted to come out anytime soon.

“I didn’t know you had a pet,” Serizawa said. “I had a cat once… When I was little.”

“You almost knocked her cage onto the floor. She could have died.”

Serizawa fell quiet. When Shou glanced at him, he looked so dejected Shou regretted saying anything. Serizawa’s eyes slowly shifted to the floor, face blank like he had completely shut down. This wasn’t helping.

Shou pushed off the kitchen counter and marched over, placing himself in Serizawa’s line of sight. “You broke all our stuff. Are you just gonna sit there and sulk about it?”

It was an invitation for him to help, to make amends, just do something, but Serizawa didn’t even give any indication that he’d heard what Shou said.

With a tired sigh, Shou threw himself onto the couch next to him, leaning his head on the backrest. A couple of massive cracks stretched from one end of the ceiling to the other. It was lucky Serizawa’s rampage hadn’t been bad enough to make it cave in; that woman upstairs could have died, too.

Leaning his head back was a mistake. The couch was way too soft and his eyes kept going out of focus. “I’m sorry I yelled at you,” he said, rubbing his face irritably. “It wasn’t your fault I didn’t pick up. I promised you could call me.”

The cool autumn air blew in through the shattered windows with a faint whistle. Shou detachedly watched it nudge the fallen leaves from an overturned potted plant across the floor. His body twitched at the sound of Serizawa’s voice when he finally responded.

“I thought something happened to you and I’d be all alone with the President,” he mumbled.

“Yeah, that would’ve sucked.” Shou turned his head, letting it loll on the backrest as he studied Serizawa. “Why do you call him that?”

Serizawa didn’t seem to understand.

“Pops,” Shou said. “Why do you call him President? He was never president of anything.”

“That’s just what I’ve always called him,” Serizawa said.

“Well, you should stop,” Shou decided. “It sounds like he’s someone who can tell you what to do. He can’t.”

Serizawa raised his shoulders a little, almost a shrug. “No, now it’s you telling me what to do instead.”

Shou slowly lifted his head, gaping at him. He didn’t expect much of Serizawa in general, but he definitely didn’t expect backtalk. He turned, pulling his feet up onto the couch so he could sit cross-legged, leaning forward inquisitively. “So when we’re all done here and I’m not giving you orders anymore, what do you wanna do?”

Serizawa glanced at him out of the corner of his eye, his expression hollow and unsure. “I don’t know.”

“You didn’t take Reigen’s umbrella,” Shou pointed out.

Serizawa shook his head, picking at his sleeve. “I’m better now. I can make it without it.”

Shou decided not to mention that it didn’t seem like Serizawa was doing better at all and grinned at him instead. “Okay, cool.” He leaned even further forward, tapping a finger at his temple. “Now you’re thinking independently.”

“I am?” A faint glimmer of hope manifested in Serizawa’s eyes.

“Yeah! What else?”

Serizawa’s eyebrows pulled together like he was remembering something deeply confounding. “Reigen-san offered me a job.”

For a moment, Shou wasn’t sure if he’d heard him right. “A job?”

Serizawa nodded earnestly, looking at Shou with wide eyes. “He said he needed another esper at his agency, and then he said he’d help me find a place to stay, and when I’m feeling better, I can come and work there.”

Shou squinted at him. “You don’t think that’s a little suspicious?”

“No?”

“You want me to explain why it sounds really, really suspicious?” Shou asked.

“It’s not.” Serizawa shook his head with unwavering conviction. “He’s a good person.”

Shou was baffled. Serizawa had just talked about making it on his own, and yet there he was, just as easily swayed by a little bit of kindness as when Pops had found him.

“You literally just met him yesterday,” Shou said. “How do you know that?”

“Kageyama-kun showed me with his powers.”

Shou had no idea what Serizawa was talking about and Serizawa fell quiet like he wasn’t actually sure either.

“Ritsu’s brother specifically told you this guy’s a good person?” Shou said flatly.

“I don’t know who Ritsu is,” Serizawa mumbled.

Shou groaned in frustration, burying his fingers in his hair. “Forget about all that! Do you even want this job?”

Serizawa hesitated, his posture tensing up again.

“Wouldn’t you be doing the same thing all over again if you go with the first guy offering you a place to stay?” Shou asked.

Serizawa pulled at the end of his sleeves, staying quiet for so long Shou began to think he wasn’t going to answer.

“What else am I supposed to do?” he finally mumbled. “What are you going to do? Once the President’s gone?”

“We’re not talking about me,” Shou brushed him off. “Do you really not have somewhere else you can go? Some family or something?”

Serizawa shrugged despondently. “There’s my mom, but she’s probably happy to be rid of me. I don’t want to go back there.” He absentmindedly tugged at his hair, getting his fingers stuck in one of the tangled knots.

Even shortsighted as he was, it seemed Serizawa had come to the same conclusion as Minegishi. Trying to run or go back to the way things used to be was impossible.

The spark of positivity Shou had dragged forward was gone. He decided to let it go. He was too tired for this. Serizawa kind of had a plan, he kind of had someone to help him, someone who could take him off Shou’s hands when he didn’t need him anymore. It was good enough for now.

“No offense, but you stink and you look awful,” Shou said, changing the subject.

Serizawa peered down at himself and then back at Shou, distressed like he hadn’t considered this was a problem until now.

“You know what you should do?” Shou asked. “Take a shower. Shave. You’ll probably feel better.”

Serizawa’s eyes widened. He shook his head and tugged his knees closer to his chest, wrapping his arms around them. “I can’t.”

“What do you mean you can’t?”

Serizawa eyed the bathroom door and got that look on his face again, like there was nothing but empty air inside his skull. “I’m scared,” he said, voice faint and drained of emotion.

“You’re scared of taking a shower?” Shou asked incredulously. No wonder the man always looked like such a mess.

“Of moving,” Serizawa said.

Shou raised his chin a little in understanding. “You think your powers are gonna go out of control again.”

Serizawa hummed quietly in confirmation, clearly embarrassed to admit it.

Well. It was about time somebody dragged Serizawa out of the spot where he’d sat frozen since yesterday. Shou didn’t have much desire to get up either, but he slid off the couch and extended his hand in an offer to help. Serizawa just needed someone to give him a little push.

“You’re not by yourself this time, so it’ll be fine,” he said. “Come on.”

Everything about Serizawa’s body language was pleading for Shou to leave him alone, but they wouldn’t get him anywhere with that attitude. Changing tactics, Shou grabbed Serizawa’s arm and pulled. The arm itself was limp and unresisting, but the rest of him was heavy like a boulder. Even when Shou put his weight into it, he could only shift Serizawa forward enough that he had to uncurl and put his feet on the floor to avoid falling off the couch.

With a bit of telekinesis, Shou got him standing, but he might as well have been dragging a sack of bricks. Serizawa did absolutely nothing to help, just dug his heels into the floor. He emitted a strange, high-pitched noise and bent over, curling in on himself with a hand clutching his chest.

“What’s wrong with you?” Shou snapped. “You just have to walk a few meters, it’s easy!”

Serizawa looked ill. He was still making that weird noise, but there was literally only five meters to the bathroom. He could sit down and recover once he got there, there was no point in giving up halfway through.

When Shou pulled again, it felt like something came loose. Serizawa’s powers unfurled, pouring out at an alarming rate like water through a broken dam, reversing gravity on everything in proximity. His aura was heavy and suffocating. Shou wanted to let go of him, but he’d never been one to give up easily.

“Shou!”

Fukuda’s voice sounded from the door, strident with alarm. Shou dropped Serizawa’s arm like it had burned him. The pieces of furniture levitating around them immediately fell to the floor.

Fukuda made a beeline to Serizawa, crouching down at his side. Serizawa had collapsed onto the floor, trying to take in breaths that sounded rattling and painful as he miserably clawed at his hair. He broke into a sob when Fukuda put a hand on his back. It was quickly withdrawn.

Fukuda turned his head, holding Shou’s gaze with stern disapproval. “You can’t do that,” he said, each word enunciated in a tone that was grave and completely unfamiliar.

Shou wasn’t even sure what he’d done wrong, but Fukuda acted so disappointed, he must have really messed up. He just stood there, stiff and awkward with his hands clutched to his chest while Fukuda talked Serizawa into breathing properly.

“You have to get some rest,” Fukuda murmured. He gently coaxed Serizawa into standing up, careful not to touch him again as he led the man to the bedroom. He didn’t stop to ask if Shou was okay with putting him on their bed—dust and filthy clothes and all.

Ootsuki lingered at the front door where he’d followed Fukuda inside. He scoffed as he walked inside, surveying the damaged furniture that had gotten even more scrambled by now.

“What a fucking mess,” he muttered and proceeded to lie down on the floor in the middle of it.

Shou shuffled closer to glance down at him. “The couch is right there.”

“Can’t you see I’m dying?” Ootsuki wallowed dramatically, digging the heels of his hands into his eyes.

He always did this. Tried to distract from the problem at hand with theatrics and snarky jokes. Shou didn’t know if he should call him out on it or be grateful. He wasn’t even sure if Ootsuki did it on purpose.

“Have you really been gone for half an hour and Fukuda still hasn’t healed your head?” he asked instead.

“Oh, he tried again, but then he started talking about how brains are complicated and how he didn’t know what he was doing, so he can keep his hands off me, thank you very much.”

“I’ve had concussions before and he didn’t scramble my brain or anything,” Shou informed him.

Ootsuki removed his hands, making a skeptical face.

Shou let him be, wandering back to the kitchen counter to check on Nezumi. She was peeking out from her cardboard box. Maybe she hadn’t been quite as scared as Shou first thought. He opened the lid of the cage, slowly extending a hand to her. The hamster hesitantly ventured out to sniff at his fingers and then climbed on top of his palm.

Ootsuki lifted his head off the floor, peering up at Shou. “Is your rat okay?”

Shou walked back to the living room, cupping the hamster in his hands. “Yeah, I think she’d just like to chill for a while.”

“Tell me about it,” Ootsuki mumbled, letting his head drop back onto the floor.

Shou kicked aside a scattering of splintered wood and sat down next to him, stroking Nezumi’s back. He had mostly kept her in the bedroom while they’d been staying here. The unfamiliar space probably seemed a bit overwhelming. She didn’t move around much.

Shou could feel Ootsuki’s eyes on him, examining his face. “Are you okay?” he asked.

Shou laid down next to him, letting the frigid breeze from the windows rustle his hair. His eyes slid shut all on their own while Nezumi scurried back and forth on his chest, hesitant to leave the cover of his hands.

Everything still felt like it was spinning. Like the floor was shifting from underneath him. That esper with the balance-scrambling powers had really done a number on him, he just hadn’t had time to think about it until now. It felt like all that happened eons ago.

“Is Higashio gonna leave?” Shou asked, his own voice sounding dull and far away.

“What?” Ootsuki turned his head toward him. “No, that’s not what that was about.”

“Then what was it about?”

He didn’t actually care what it was about, because no matter what, it was probably bad and he was too tired to take it in. He was too tired, but he couldn’t sleep now—everything was falling apart and he wasn’t sure if there’d be anything left when he woke up. At some point since they got back to the apartment, his hands had started quivering. He felt jittery and uneven and a little bit unreal.

“I don’t think you should talk to me about it,” Ootsuki said and Shou had already forgotten what he was talking about. “I don’t even know why Higashio thought I should hear it.”

Ootsuki abruptly stopped himself, voice suddenly worried. “Hey—”

With a start, Shou sat up and dropped Nezumi on Ootsuki’s chest. Ootsuki made a strangled noise, clumsily trying to catch the tiny animal while Shou scrambled to his feet and sprinted to the bathroom. He slammed the door, fumbling to lock it behind him. Two more steps and he was doubled over the toilet, heaving painfully.

There was nothing to throw up—all that came out was bitter, watery slime. Tears welled up in his eyes from the strain, streaking down both sides of his face to meet under his chin. Shou held on to the porcelain rim with shaky, clammy hands and tried to spit the bitter taste out of his mouth. It stuck to his lips, stringy and disgusting.

If Serizawa was sick, was it about to take him out, too? Or maybe he was still dizzy. Yeah, he was definitely dizzy. He just needed a moment before it’d go away and he could get on with everything.

“Shou?” Fukuda knocked lightly on the door. “Can you let me in?”

The handle rattled as Fukuda tried to turn it. Shou let go of the toilet with one hand to scrub at the tear tracks on his face. He was supposed to keep it together. They already had enough to worry about.

“Shou,” Fukuda repeated, more insistent this time.

Like some kind of pathetic loser, Shou couldn’t get his legs to move. He reached out his aura to unlock the door, and then he was heaving again, his entire midsection cramping up.

Fukuda quietly stepped inside the bathroom, closing the door behind him. His face was devoid of emotion as he got down on his knees next to Shou, patiently waiting for him to stop retching. Shou angled his face toward the wall, raising the back of his hand to wipe away the string of spit dangling from his mouth. Fukuda reached over him to grab a wad of toilet paper, offering him that instead.

“Do you think you can stand up?” he asked.

Shou didn’t know, but he nodded despite the fact that every one of his muscles shook when he put any weight on them.

“Okay, come on,” Fukuda said. He placed a hand under each of Shou’s arms and pulled him to his feet. “You have to get some rest. I don’t know when was the last time you slept properly, and I don’t think you do either.”

“I’m not gonna sleep now, it’s the middle of the day,” Shou mumbled as Fukuda steered him out of the bathroom.

Right outside, Ootsuki was gesturing helplessly toward the living room. “I can’t find your hamster, I think it hid under something.”

Nezumi must have bitten him. There was blood smeared on his hand.

“You have to lure her out,” Shou instructed, making a turn toward the living room himself.

“No.” Fukuda grabbed the back of his shirt and held him in place, pointing Ootsuki to the bedroom where the hamster’s wire cage still stood. “Put some of her food out on the floor. She’ll turn up eventually.”

Shou twisted around, freeing himself from Fukuda’s grasp. “Serizawa’s in there. How am I supposed to sleep when you put Serizawa on our bed?”

Fukuda ran a hand over his short-cropped hair, visibly frustrated. “Ootsuki-san, can Shou borrow your bed?”

“Yeah, of course,” Ootsuki mumbled.

Fukuda promptly pushed Shou into the small guest room Ootsuki had claimed and made him sit down on the unmade bed.

“You can’t just force me to go to sleep,” Shou protested, staring at him indignantly.

“You stay here,” Fukuda said.

He strode out into the kitchen with long, determined steps. Ootsuki turned after him, acting uncharacteristically meek as he said something too softly for Shou to hear. Fukuda just walked past him, returning to the small room with a glass of water in his hand and a grim look on his face. He shut the door in Ootsuki’s face.

“Drink,” he said, forcing the glass into Shou’s hand.

Shou awkwardly gulped down the water while Fukuda watched him like he expected him to try and cheat his way out of it. He took the glass back the moment it was finished, placing it on the dresser behind him, then wordlessly knelt down to remove Shou’s sneakers. He pulled at the sleeves of Shou’s hoodie next, right until Shou pushed him away, irritatedly shrugging it off himself.

“I don’t have time for this,” he muttered, shoving the hoodie into Fukuda’s chest.

“You have time,” Fukuda said, dropping it on the floor next to the sneakers. “You’re exhausted, and the only way to stop being exhausted is to sleep.”

Shou kept glancing at the door blocking the only exit out of the small, poorly lit room. He was breathing too fast, and he didn’t even know why. “But we have to figure out what to do about the apartment, and—”

“There’s nothing we can do right now,” Fukuda interrupted him. “Ootsuki-san and I are here to keep watch. I’ll wake you up if anything happens.”

There were plenty of things Shou could do, there had to be. He leaned forward to push himself off the bed, but Fukuda stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. Shou tore it away, stomach churning like he was about to be sick again and head filled with nothing but static. Static, and the certainty that whatever he did, he should definitely not lie down.

“Shou, please.”

Fukuda sounded like his patience was running thin. He leaned in, reaching for both of Shou’s shoulders as if to hold him down and he needed to get the hell away from him, he needed to get his hands away, he needed to stop—

Fukuda’s hands never touched him. He stood frozen at an uncomfortable angle, bent over halfway with his arms raised and locked in place, his form shimmering with the fragmented orange of Shou’s aura.

“Can you let go?” he asked, his voice carefully even.

Shou released him, and Fukuda’s knees buckled. He managed to sit himself down on the floor instead of falling over, taking in a deep breath to refill his lungs with the air Shou had squeezed out of him. He slowly brought a hand up to his ribs, eyes fixed on the carpet. Shou could tell he was in pain.

“I’m sorry,” he said when he finally looked up, slowly raising his hands in surrender. “I forgot. That was my fault.”

Shou couldn’t stand looking at him

“I know it’s not the best timing, but everything will look so much clearer if you rest for a little while,” Fukuda prattled on.

“Why are you sitting on the floor, just stand up!” The last half of Shou’s sentence dissolved into a wet, wretched sob. He stumbled off the bed, covering his face with his hands. Fukuda made a sharp, disapproving noise, quickly getting up to block the path to the door.

“Listen to me,” he said, far too bluntly to conceal how exasperated he was. “You’re making yourself sick. You just threw up, that’s your body telling you to slow down. Your first priority is to sleep, it’s very simple.”

“I don’t have time for this,” Shou cried.

Fukuda’s arms dropped to his sides as he let out a weary sigh. He took a step forward, making sure to keep his voice soft and steady as it usually was. “Please, will you sit back on the bed?”

Shou sat down just to avoid giving him a reason to try and touch him again, trying to stop the sobs that kept wracking his entire body. He couldn’t leave anyway. He couldn’t let Ootsuki see him like this too. He should turn himself invisible; vanish entirely so no one would have to look at his disgusting, snot-covered face.

Fukuda sat down on the floor in front of the bed again. Why couldn’t he just give up? This was ridiculous. Fukuda was going to talk to him like a three-year-old, and the worst part was that it was really the only form of communication Shou could process right now.

“Why don’t you think you have time?” Fukuda asked in his most patient voice.

Shou was crying too hard to get a word out. He just shook his head miserably, keeling over until he was lying down after all. He didn’t need to sleep, he needed to lie down and die and disappear from this world because there was no coming back from this. His dignity was a finished chapter at this point.

“We’ll figure out what to do with the apartment, and we already have a plan for how to deal with your father,” Fukuda reasoned. “Ootsuki-san will be fine, I’ll convince him to let me heal him. Serizawa-san just needs rest, too. You will be fine, Nezumi will be fine, it’s all working itself out.”

It wasn’t true. Things were falling apart in all the places Shou hadn’t seen coming. He pulled his legs onto the bed, lying on his back. His hands couldn’t contain the flood of tears that poured out of him, running into his ear and dripping onto the wrinkled sheet beneath him.

“This isn’t even—” Fukuda started, “—okay, maybe it is the worst situation we’ve ever been in, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible.”

Shou’s breath hitched painfully, words coming out as a garbled wail. “Higashio’s gonna leave!”

Fukuda simply stared at him, forehead wrinkled with confusion. “No, he’s not leaving. He’ll be back soon, he just had to talk to some people.”

Shou twisted away, digging his head into the mattress. He didn’t believe him. What reason did Higashio have to stay? What reason had any of them?

“Shou, nobody is leaving, I promise.”

All of them should just get it over with and leave. It was better that way. They’d split up anyway as soon as they got rid of Pops, it wouldn’t make any difference.

Fukuda carefully tugged one of Shou’s tear-stained hands away from his face and wrapped it in his own. He rested it on the edge of the bed and just sat there, quietly holding onto him. It was too much like the first time he’d met Fukuda—he didn’t want to remember that. It was the last thing in the world he wanted to think about.

He hadn’t even been hurt. None of the blood had been his, and by the time his father arrived, he could almost stand on his own. But Fukuda had been there. Fukuda had examined him. Maybe Shou had cried then, too. Afterwards, his father had picked him up and carried him home like the stupid little kid he was, and then he left, harboring more cold animosity than Shou had ever felt from him.

They didn’t know each other at all, but Fukuda had still sat at the side of Shou’s bed all night and held his hand, just because there wasn’t anyone else to do it.

Shou hated himself for not having changed one bit since he was ten, but he didn’t pull his hand away.

Chapter Text

Sometimes, sleeping was okay. Like sinking a thousand meters into the Pacific Ocean, suspended in oblivion where everything was quiet and simple. Where nothing really mattered much. Shou wasn’t ready to leave, but someone had been calling his name several times now.

His spine ached as he uncurled from under the duvet, every part of him sore and drained of energy. He ran his hands over his face, faltering at the crusted tears in his eyes.

He swallowed, trying to resist the urge to curl back up and hide under the covers for the foreseeable future. It took a great deal of determination to raise his head and peer over his shoulder.

Ootsuki stood on the other side of the room with his arms crossed and his back hunched uneasily, his figure only illuminated by a light from the kitchen.

“Don’t freak out, but your dad woke up,” he said.

Shou slowly propped himself up on his elbow. “What…?”

“Your dad,” Ootsuki repeated.

Hesitantly, Shou threw the duvet aside and let his feet drop to the floor. Ootsuki took a step back, his shoulder nearly touching the wall.

Shou dragged his feet across the floor. He’d fallen asleep fully dressed in his jeans and t-shirt, but as he stepped into the hallway, a chill crept down his spine, seeping in between his ribs and settling in his chest like it belonged there.

His father sat slouched on one of the kitchen chairs, right in the middle of everything. He didn’t react to the sound of Shou’s footsteps, simply stared off into the middle distance like he still wasn’t fully awake. In the dim light, he appeared ghoulish and pale—more of a ghost than a person. With the shadows obscuring his face, it was impossible to gauge his state of mind.

Shou released a shaky breath. He turned his head, wondering if he had dreamed that the kitchen table was broken, because it wasn’t now. A bedside lamp from one of the other rooms was placed on top of it; the only thing illuminating the apartment.

He belatedly noticed Fukuda, pressed into the dark corner between the back wall and kitchen counter, as far away from Pops as he could get. He only met Shou’s eyes for a second, fearfully glancing between him and his father. Fukuda was an anxious man, but he was rarely afraid of anyone. Not like this. Never to a degree that drove him to hide in a corner.

Shou frowned at the unlit ceiling lamp. He reached for the light switch on the wall behind him and flipped it to no avail.

“Serizawa blew all the light bulbs out,” Higashio said.

Shou flinched and snapped around to gape at him. Higashio was leaning on the wall adjacent to the hallway, perfectly calm and collected.

He really did come back.

“Yeah,” Higashio muttered, adding a weird, aimless hand gesture, like he knew what Shou was thinking and didn’t consider it worth spending any more time on. He pointed at Pops, directing the attention back on him. “We got him to sit.”

Shou blinked, following Higashio’s finger until he was facing his father again. “Has he said anything?”

“Nope,” Higashio replied, tiredly running his fingers through his hair. Ootsuki had stopped next to him, keeping his arms crossed with a cautiousness that didn't suit him at all.

Shou shuffled a little closer to his father, braving the last few steps so he could angle himself to stand in front of him. “Hey,” he said, leaning into Pops’ line of sight. “Aren’t you gonna say something?”

Shou snapped his fingers right in front of his father’s face, but he didn’t even twitch. Maybe he hit his head. Maybe the broccoli explosion couldn’t fix brain damage the same way as everything else. Fukuda always said brains were complicated.

Shou’s shoulders slumped as he took a step back. Pops looked dreadful; his features sunken, eyes dull, his torn dress pants mismatched with Serizawa’s hideous yellow hanten that Higashio had merged in the front. His bushy eyebrows stood out even more than usual next to the fine, gray dust still stuck in his hair. At least they were familiar.

Slowly, the blank expression on Pops’ face subsided and settled into a frown. He tried to clear his throat, forcing out a cough that sounded outright painful.

Careful not to turn his back to him, Fukuda reached for a glass among the clutter in one of the cupboards and filled it with water. He approached Pops like a zookeeper would approach an angry rhinoceros they weren’t sure had been properly tranquilized. The gesture actually captured Pops’ attention. He took the glass, draining it in two long, languid swigs.

“Can I take it back?” Fukuda asked, holding out a hand.

Pops didn’t make any move to give it to him.

“Do you want more water?” Fukuda tried nervously.

With a faint shake of his head, Pops blinked several times, trying to clear his senses.

“That boy—” It came out as little more than a hoarse whisper. He had to clear his throat again. “What happened to that boy?”

Pops’ voice was gravelly and weird from disuse and dehydration. He locked his eyes on the glass as if he was hoping to find an answer there, idly turning it back and forth in his hands.

“He survived, too,” Fukuda said, since nobody else took the initiative to reply. “That’s all we know.”

Pops held out the glass, offering it back to him, and nodded to himself. “We survived.”

Shou stared at him in disbelief. “You’re worried about him?” he asked. “You tried to kill him! If he was anyone else, he’d be dead!”

Pops’ eyes finally met Shou’s, and they held none of their usual sharp intensity. The blue seemed washed out, the pupils unfocused. “I know,” he said. “That’s why I asked.”

The feeling that welled up in Shou so fast it left his ears ringing was not one he was familiar with, nor one he had any name for, and he wished it’d stay that way, he wished this would be the first and only time it’d ever hit him because it was an ugly and crushing thing.

His father finally woke up, and all he cared about was Ritsu’s brother.

“I traveled the world to find an esper who could pose a threat to me,” Pops monologued like Shou wasn’t even there. “All along, he was right here in my hometown. Just some dull-looking child.”

He shook his head, almost wistfully, like the whole thing was a peculiar new memory he’d acquired—a funny story to tell when he was old and stuck in a nursing home somewhere: That time Kageyama Shigeo stopped him from taking over the world.

Shou punched him in the face.

Pops’ head was knocked to the side. He didn’t put up a barrier, didn’t do anything to defend himself, just straightened back up, staring at Shou like he’d forgotten how to blink. Gradually, his features calmed and smoothed out, taking on that cold edge that seemed so much more at home on his face.

“There’s no point being upset he outdid you,” he said. “Your powers can’t even begin t—”

Shou lunged at him, smacking his head down. He locked an arm around his throat, pushing down far enough that he knew his father wouldn’t be able to breathe, because having the life choked out of him was really all he deserved, and maybe Shou couldn’t compare to Ritsu’s brother, but if his father wasn’t fast enough to counter this, he didn’t need powers to block his windpipe.

Behind him, Fukuda made a distressed noise as Shou put his weight into the assault. He wrestled his father halfway off his chair before he threw Shou across the room.

There was no real force behind it, just the psychic equivalent of swatting away an annoying insect. Shou fell to the floor with his heart hammering in his chest and every fiber of his being set on destruction, because if that was all he thought he was, if that was the level of caution his father thought he warranted, Shou was going to prove him wrong.

He clambered to his feet, socks skidding on the varnished floorboards, charged forward, and ran straight into Ootsuki’s back.

“Stay away from him,” Ootsuki barked, holding out an arm to fence Shou in behind him.

He was so stupid sometimes. What did he even intend to do? His paper fan was gone and he had nothing else to enhance his powers with.

Shou made a grab for his arm, but he’d practiced throws like this on Ootsuki too many times—he saw it coming, raised it out of Shou’s reach and twisted away, gaping at him with something almost like outrage.

Pops was coughing, bent over his arm, his face scrunched up in pain as if the measly charge of psychic energy he’d thrown at Shou had backfired tenfold. It was nowhere near the corpse-like, translucent complexion he’d had when they found him inside the broccoli, but his skin was clammy and pale. He wasn’t in any condition to fight. At this rate, Shou actually stood a chance. A chance of what he didn’t know. He just wanted him to hurt. He just wanted his father to look at him and know he was someone who could make him hurt.

He shoved Ootsuki aside, bounding forward once more, and then Shou was dragged to the ground himself, slammed into the floorboards so forcefully it squashed the air out of his lungs.

Gasping, he sunk his nails into the floor and tried to pull his arms underneath him to gain some purchase to push himself up, but he could barely lift his limbs.

Even shocked as he looked, Ootsuki kept his distance as Pops stepped closer, peering down his nose at Shou. Pops’ jaw was tense from grinding his teeth together, his mouth a thin line, but he stood up straight, towering over Shou with the light from the table lamp casting strange shadows on his face.

“Did you bring me here with no one to protect you?” he asked like Ootsuki and Higashio and Fukuda were nothing to him.

All that escaped Shou was a strangled whine. It’d take no effort for his father to flatten Shou’s ribcage and snap his spine. Panic was drowning out his ability to do anything other than thrash uselessly, mortified by the noise that came out of him, like some kind of pathetic, small animal caught in a snare, ready to chew off its own leg if that’s what it took to flee.

Indifferently, Pops let his eyes wander to everyone else in the room—gliding past Ootsuki with complete disinterest, faltering briefly at Higashio’s calm composure, then finally landing on Fukuda.

Fukuda had inched his way around the kitchen, almost passing behind Higashio to reach the bedrooms. He froze under Pops’ gaze, pressing himself up against the wall, eyes fixed stiffly on the floor.

Just like Shou, Fukuda had reported to Pops on a regular basis while they’d been on the road. They had all been in the same room plenty of times, but Shou had never seen Fukuda this terrified of his father.

“I ask you to look after my son, and this is what you do?” Pops said in a cold, foreboding voice. “Enable his foolish ideas?”

“Well, it worked, didn't it?” Higashio sniped, shifting Pops’ attention onto him instead. “Right down to that kid who beat you.”

“It was all me, they didn't plan any of this, they just did what I told them,” Shou rambled, the words stumbling over each other as he forced them out from his constricted chest.

Pops turned his head, dissecting him with one of the icy, cutting stares he so often directed at other people. Maybe the reason Shou hadn’t fully understood why everyone was so afraid of his father before was that, until barely two days ago, he’d never looked at him like that. Not with that kind of detached indifference.

“Like good little lackeys,” Pops concluded, giving Ootsuki another disdainful glance. He stood exactly where Shou had pushed him, teeth gritted with animosity. “You could have been an outstanding leader, Shou. I didn't raise you to be this stupid.”

“Shut the fuck up, you didn't raise him at all!” Ootsuki shouted.

“I thought some responsibility would teach you to use your head, but you haven't learned a thing,” Pops spoke over him. “Now, are you done?”

He was addressing Shou like a little kid he had put in timeout. Shou couldn’t get an answer out through the lump in his throat. His father was right, he was an embarrassment. He already knew the last couple of days he’d done nothing but make himself look like an idiot in front of everyone.

The hold on Shou’s body dissipated, and he didn’t waste a second in getting back on his feet, his arms tucked protectively close to his chest like it would make any difference at all.

“You could have gotten yourself killed,” Pops said while Shou stood there dumbstruck with his heart pounding in his chest and couldn’t even meet his eyes. “Nothing has changed since the last time you had the idea to go against me. You're still weak and you still don't know your limits. Again, somebody had to come in and rescue you.”

“But it was you,” Shou muttered. The words felt all scrambled, like they just toppled out of his mouth before he could think about putting them in order. “You did it. You were the one trying to kill me.”

“You attacked me, Shou. What did you expect?”

What did he expect? A lot of stupid, impossible things. Of course he should’ve known it’d go down like that. Shou had been prepared to kill him, too. He would’ve done it if he had to. He would’ve done it if he’d in any way been able to. Of course Pops wouldn’t just stand there and take it. Of course he’d fight back.

Shou’s face felt too hot, probably turning just as red as his hair.

“And what did you expect now, bringing me here?” Pops demanded.

Shou didn’t know how to reply. His whole plan had rested on the presumption that his father would listen to him. Why would he listen when Shou’s every action was so incredibly, impossibly stupid.

“President…”

Serizawa stood in the entrance to the kitchen, looking just as haggard as before he went to sleep with his dirty clothes and disheveled mess of hair. Fukuda was hiding in his shadow, arms wrapped around himself in an effort to hold in the anxiety that had entirely contaminated his aura.

A look of understanding came over Pops’ features and then morphed into a frown. “You look awful,” he said, eyeing Serizawa up and down. He really wasn’t one to talk, but of course, he hadn’t seen himself.

There was no fear in Serizawa’s posture, no bashfulness at Pops’ scornful words. He simply shuffled across the kitchen floor, stopping right in front of Shou where his large frame shielded him from his father’s view.

“Are you hurt?” he asked.

Shou hid his burning, flushed face in his palms and shook his head no. The room was unbearably quiet as Serizawa took his hand, his much broader palm easily wrapping around Shou’s fingers.

Shou was too baffled to protest as Serizawa pulled him around to the living room. He could feel the others’ eyes on the back of his neck as they left the apartment, but he didn’t think to question Serizawa until he’d led him all the way outside and halfway down the street.

“Where are we going?” Shou asked.

Serizawa stopped. Almost dazedly, he turned to peer back at the shattered windows to the apartment. “I promised I wouldn't let him hurt you.”

“He didn't,” Shou said, retracting his hand. “I'm fine.”

Serizawa’s forehead wrinkled in confusion, but he didn’t say anything. Shou kept his eyes on the sidewalk.

“You forgot your shoes,” he mumbled.

Serizawa stared down at his bare feet.

“Oh,” he said. “So did you.”

True enough, he’d dragged Shou outside in socks and a t-shirt and the weather was nowhere near warm enough for that. Shou shrugged and crossed his arms, squinting against the light from the streetlamp overhead.

“Now what?” he asked.

Serizawa glanced over his shoulder, taking a long look at the end of the street where it connected to one of the main roads leading out of Seasoning City. “You don’t have to stay,” he murmured.

When he turned his head back around, Shou glared at him warningly. “You don’t get to use me as an excuse to run away.”

Flustered, Serizawa flailed both of his hands. “No, that’s not—”

“I’m not running away,” Shou said, taking his turn to peer back at the windows. From this angle, he could barely see the light from the lamp inside. The place just looked vacant. “He’s not gonna attack us,” he continued. “I started that. He didn’t even try to hurt me, he was just trying to figure out—”

He didn’t get to finish his sentence before a sudden commotion sounded from the apartment. Shou could hear someone yelling, and then a moment later, Ootsuki stuck his head out through one of the empty window frames.

“Watch out, your dad’s coming down,” he shouted.

Shou set off running toward the entrance as his father threw the door open and strode outside, walking straight ahead without even noticing him or Serizawa. Fukuda had hurried down after him, but he stopped in the doorway, hands nervously clutched in front of his chest as he sent Serizawa a pleading look.

“Pops,” Shou yelled, trying to get his father’s attention. “Pops!”

He gave no indication that he’d heard Shou as he continued down the narrow side street.

“Dad, wait!”

Shou sprinted after him, reaching for his shoulder. When his fingers connected with the fabric of Serizawa’s hanten coat, it sent a jolt through him, piercing like a hook had been sunk into his very essence—the same internal well he would extract his powers from. It pulled, and for a moment, Shou was afraid it would tear the life out of him altogether.

Almost instantly, Serizawa was behind him. He wrapped an arm around his chest, hauling him away. Shou wasn’t sure if his father had ever tapped into his powers before, he didn’t know what it felt like, but he was pretty sure it wasn’t supposed to hurt. It was an instant relief when the distance severed the connection between them.

Shou squirmed out of Serizawa’s hold and dropped gracelessly to the ground. Pops had turned around, openly shocked by whatever he just did. He looked down at his own hands like he didn’t even recognize them.

“You can’t go out here,” Shou said, still on his hands and knees, too lightheaded for anything else. “Everyone knows what you look like. Claw wants you dead. The government’s already telling everyone you are dead.”

His father stared at him with a look so empty Shou wondered if there was anything going on in his mind at all.

“You wanna see what you did?” Shou guessed, forcing himself to stand. “If you wanna see it, I can just—” He patted down his pockets and found both of them empty. “If you come back inside, I can show you on my phone,” he said, trying to keep his voice steady. “It’s been all over the news, you really don’t have to walk there yourself.”

Shou took a few wobbly steps backwards, waiting for his father to follow him. Pops didn’t move until Serizawa approached him, carefully reaching out for his arm, the rest of him leaning as far away as he could get. Nothing happened when he finally prodded him with the tips of his fingers.

“President, I think you should go inside too,” Serizawa said, obviously relieved.

Pops gave a barely discernible nod. Haltingly, he followed Serizawa to the stairs. Fukuda was still standing in the doorway, observing the scene with a harrowed look on his face.

“Are you okay?” Fukuda whispered as Shou slipped past him. Shou dodged the hand he was about to place on his back and continued up the stairs.

On the third floor, Ootsuki was waiting outside their door, and Shou just knew it was him who’d sent Pops storming off like that.

“Are you seriously gonna let him back in here?” Ootsuki protested.

“Keep your voice down,” Shou hissed, shoving him back inside. As if they weren’t already in enough trouble with the neighbors—it was almost guaranteed somebody had seen Pops now.

Shou stuck his head back out through the door. “Fukuda, do you have my phone?”

“I put it with your shirt,” Fukuda replied, more preoccupied with making sure Pops and Serizawa were still following them.

Shou hastily made his way to Ootsuki’s room. He grabbed his phone from the dresser where Fukuda had left it on top of his neatly folded hoodie. When he turned on the screen, the first thing he saw was a preview of a text Ritsu had sent him. He unlocked it, scrolling back through an overwhelming amount of text until he reached his own message from the night before.

He should’ve checked his phone earlier. What if the government had rounded Ritsu and his brother up with all the Claw espers? What if something happened to them? Shou didn’t even know where Ritsu was.

Shou
Yo never got to ask if you found your brother. Hope youre not staying anywhere near the city center bc shit theres a lot of people probably best to stay away

Ritsu
We did. Sorry I haven’t replied until now. One of Nii-san’s friends took us to his grandmother’s house. It’s outside the city, so I don’t know much of what’s been going on, just what they’re saying on the news. They’re not even saying much on the news, it’s a little creepy. Nii-san’s been exhausted. I could barely wake him up just now. Is that normal? It makes sense he’d be tired, but I don’t know if I should do something or—

Shou’s eyes went out of focus. The wall of text Ritsu had sent him went on for much longer, he couldn’t concentrate on the rest of it. He slowly exhaled, shaking his hands one at a time to stop the weird, nervous tremors rattling his finger. Ritsu and his brother were okay. They had gotten away safely. That was all he needed to know right now.

He resolutely closed the message history and went on to search for a video summarizing all the destructive mayhem his father had pulled off. Serizawa had already led Pops into the kitchen by the time he left Ootsuki’s room.

Higashio took the chair Pops had been sitting on earlier and turned it to face the table, gesturing for him to sit down.

“I destroyed the Culture Tower,” Pops said, furrowing his brow at the tabletop like that was the only event he could dig out of his memory.

“You destroyed a lot more than that,” Shou said, settling on a news report from yesterday. “Look.”

Pops sat down and took Shou’s phone, staring at the small screen with a face that was nothing but a blank slate. Shou watched over his shoulder as a compilation of all the major events flashed by: The televised speech, Shimazaki kidnapping the Prime Minister, someone’s poor, handheld footage of the army setting in, the city center laid in ruins, the explosion.

The news reporter’s tinny voice was the only sound filling the apartment. In the background, Ootsuki leaned against the kitchen counter with a strange, tense grimace on his face. Higashio had positioned himself between him and Pop’s chair, blocking him off with a warning glare.

“Why did you bring me here?” Pops asked, his voice too monotone to convey any emotion. He lowered the phone onto the table, turning his head so he could see Shou. “Where are the rest of the Super Five? The division leaders? If they’re still alive, you could have left this to any of them.”

“I just told you, Claw wants you dead,” Shou reminded him. “They tried to make me hand you over.”

Pops watched him with that unsettling intensity, like he could see right into Shou’s soul. “So why didn’t you?”

Higashio finally took his eyes away from Ootsuki and turned around. “Last you were awake you were raving about ruling the world like a maniac and trying to wipe out the whole city,” he said. “Your son thought you were too dangerous to hand over to anyone else.”

Pops was quiet, looking at Shou judgingly. “You thought I was too dangerous…”

It wasn’t a very good plan, Shou already knew that. Pops could just as well have gone on another rampage as soon as he woke up.

“What do you intend to do now?” Pops continued. “You must have thought farther ahead than simply keeping me here.”

“We, um…” Shou fumbled, wondering if there was any point in trying to hide the truth. “We wanted to give you up to the government.”

Pops nodded slowly. "How long have I been asleep?"

Shou looked to Fukuda for an answer. He seemed lost in his own thoughts, it took a moment before he noticed.

"A day and a half, I'd say," he murmured, only glancing up at them for a second.

"And in all that time, you didn't find a chance to hand me over?" Pops asked.

Shou frowned at him. "Aren't you gonna fight back or something?"

"They'll come for me anyway,” Pops said. “As I am now, I wouldn't be able to stop them."

The finality of that statement was jarring. Defeat wasn’t something that happened to Pops often, but when it did, he always found a way to turn it into a victory or just plain ignore it.

Like when Shou’s mother left. They never talked about it, it just happened, and Pops took it as an occasion to pull Shou out of school; away from everything that wasn’t tailored to the kind of education he thought was befitting of his very psychic son. Everything that in any way reminded him of Mom.

Of course, this was different. Even the most impressive mental gymnastics couldn’t frame what had happened as a success, and ignoring it wasn’t an option either. All of them were still neck-deep in the fallout from what he’d done.

Shou circled around the kitchen table, taking the chair across from his father. Pops was still watching him, waiting for him to explain himself.

“You’re still here because we didn't know who to talk to,” Shou said. “Serizawa told me about that mercenary guy Joseph you hired. He’s supposed to work for the government, but I met Iida and he said all their other agents are out arresting people, so we can’t just walk up to them."

“Iida?” Pops asked. “Iida Yoshito?”

“Yeah, him,” Shou said. “Guess what, he thinks you should die too, but at least he agreed to help. He’s trying to track Joseph down.”

“Good,” Pops said. “In the ten years I’ve known that man, he’s never failed to get a job done.” He let his eyes drift across the room, taking a moment to stare at Serizawa again. Serizawa stared right back.

“I ran into Minegishi as well,” Shou continued. “Him and Shibata and Hatori. They’re out beating up all the Scars, I think they took out most of the main division. HQ are the ones who wanted me to give you up so they can execute you or whatever.”

Shou searched his father’s face for a hint of betrayal or any other predictable reaction, but there was none. He’d already made peace with the idea that anyone might turn on him. Even the main division, full of people he’d known for ages. Even his own son.

Shou apprehensively crossed his arms, leaning back in his chair. “Minegishi wanted me to tell the government to leave the Super Five alone.”

"So you plan to talk to them?" Pops asked. “Not only Joseph?”

That wasn't really something Shou had decided yet. He’d barely thought about it. Iida had acted like he thought it was a terrible idea.

“You should,” Pops advised. “And you should take any deal Minegishi has offered you."

Shou frustratedly threw out his hands. "But what if—"

“Against Claw and against these agents, any of the Super Five will be on your side,” Pops cut him off. “You have your enemies in common. They’re valuable assets if you can win their favor."

“So what?” Shou blurted out. “They don't deserve to be let go!"

Pops gave him a cold, flat look. “What does it matter what they deserve? You’re too old for these ideas."

“If I didn’t have ideas, we wouldn’t be sitting here right now!”

“We’re sitting here because you’re very lucky,” Pops said like this was a simple, unshakeable fact. “You take too many risks. Your plans are unrealistic.”

“Right, because taking over the world was so realistic,” Shou scoffed. “I don’t even get what you were thinking. Claw actually had power and you’re just throwing it away. Don’t you care what happens to them?"

Pops impassively glanced off to the side, slumping like the conversation was starting to wear him out. “What's left of them have taken what's mine. You can burn the whole thing to the ground for all I care. I trust you to do that much.”

For a moment, Shou couldn’t believe his own ears. Then he remembered the indifference in his father’s voice when they had stood in the Culture Tower and he’d described every one of his underlings as nothing more than spare batteries.

Pops didn’t care about anyone, but he respected Shou’s abilities enough to let him knock down what he’d spent a lifetime building. Despite everything, he trusted Shou would get this done. He trusted him. Just like he had when he left Shou behind, only eleven years old, so he could go traveling abroad, assigning Shou with the jobs he usually did himself; like scoping out new espers, or making sure the subdivisions did what they were told.

He didn’t need his father’s blessing to destroy Claw, he didn’t need his blessing for anything, but he had it, and that meant something—no matter how much it made him want to throw up again, no matter how much he hated it, it meant something.

Shou rested his arms on the table, folding his hands in front of him seriously. “Maybe I will.”

Pops gave a faint hum in reply. He looked incredibly tired, supporting his head with a hand on his forehead where beads of sweat had started to form. The video was still playing on Shou's phone.

"Why is there a giant broccoli?" Pops asked, watching the screen with half-lidded eyes. “Minegishi?”

“No, not Minegishi,” Shou corrected him. “I think Ritsu’s—I mean, I think that boy you fought did it.”

“I see,” Pops slurred. “He had the same power as me. Twenty years’ worth of energy, he just absorbed it and channeled it into a…” Shou could tell he was struggling to think of a word that sounded less ridiculous than broccoli, “...plant.”

“I think he healed everyone, too,” Shou added. “He saved your life.”

Pops clenched and unclenched his fingers, fully focused on his hands now, as if it amazed him they were still attached to his arms. For the first time, he looked down his front, taking in the sweater he was wearing. Almost as if in a trance, he stood up and found his way into the bathroom to inspect himself in the mirror over the sink.

Pops gingerly raised a hand to his face, wiping away some of the dirt, squinting to verify that his hollow cheeks and the bruising around his eyes weren’t just a trick of the low light. Distractedly, he ran a hand through his hair. It faltered, then slowly retracted. The other hand followed suit, tugging at the short strands as if making sure they were still attached to his scalp.

As it turned out, they weren’t. Pops urgently marched back into the kitchen, heading straight for Fukuda.

“What is this?” he demanded, shoving a fistful of loose hairs in his face.

Fukuda backed up against the refrigerator, shaking his head nervously. “We didn’t do anything—”

“Why is it falling off?” Pops asked with even more aggressive insistence.

Fukuda shut his eyes, ducking his head until the collar of his sweater swallowed his neck like a turtle. “Stress, most likely!”

Shou stood up on the seat of his chair, ready to break in if he had to. Behind him, Serizawa shifted like he was thinking the same.

Pops had driven Fukuda up against the refrigerator door, ominously leaning toward him. “Stress?” He huffed like he didn’t even know what that word meant. “I haven’t been stressed.”

Fukuda dared to open his eyes, eyebrows arched with bewilderment. “What you did to your body, that was a lot of stress.”

Pops glanced down at himself again, at the hair in his fist. “Something’s very wrong,” he muttered. He experimentally let his aura flare out—not to interact with anything in particular, just expanding it. It felt uneven and strange.

“I think you’re just burnt out,” Shou said, frowning at him from his vantage point on the chair. His father glanced up at him with nothing but confusion. “You know, like when you’ve worn out a muscle, just with your powers?”

“That doesn’t happen to me,” Pops said flatly.

Shou almost laughed in disbelief. “What, you’ve never pulled a muscle?”

“Why would I?” Pops asked. “I’ve had psychic powers since I was born.”

He had barely been up for half an hour, but Pops was sweating. His skin had gone from pale to flushed, and he was looking ill to the point where Shou was wondering if he should tell him to lie down again.

“Do people feel like this all the time?” Pops asked. He staggered away from Fukuda and put a hand on the table for support, a scattered, distant look in his eyes. Nobody had a chance to answer him, because the next moment, his legs gave out from under him and he fell over in a heap on the floor.

“President!” Serizawa burst out, taking two steps before he remembered it wasn’t him he was supposed to care about anymore. He stood perplexed, glancing between Shou and his father, hands raised like he was just waiting for someone to tell him what to do with them.

Shou took the shortest route, quickly jumping over the table. He crouched down next to his father and rolled him onto his back, worried for a moment that he’d up and died.

“It’s alright,” Higashio said, placing a steady hand on Shou’s shoulder, “he just fainted.”

Shou couldn’t recall ever seeing his father get sick before. He never caught the colds everyone else passed around, never got injured, never even seemed particularly tired out by anything. This had to be really bad.

“Well,” Higashio sighed, studying Shou’s face like he was waiting for him to say something, “back to bed with him, I suppose.”

Grateful for the instruction, Serizawa quickly got to work dragging Pops back onto his futon—upper body first, then lifting his legs off the floor. After a moment’s consideration, he picked up the rumpled blanket and draped it over the man.

Once again, Pops was lying on their kitchen floor like he’d decided it was a great place for a sleepover. Who knew how long it’d take for him to wake up this time.

Fukuda still didn’t seem comfortable moving anywhere near him, but he bent down to press the back of his hand against his forehead anyway. “He definitely has a fever,” he mumbled.

“Good,” Higashio said. “Keep it that way. If that friend of Shou’s is as good at finding people as you say, hopefully we won't have to listen to him again before we can get him out of here.”

Shou wasn’t really paying attention, too busy watching how unnaturally lifeless his father’s face had turned again. “Yeah. I guess it’ll be okay.”

“If all he has is a fever, he’ll wake up in a couple hours, and you seriously still want us to sit around and wait for Iida?” Ootsuki asked, loud and viciously angry. “You can’t even be sure he’ll come!”

Shou tore his eyes away from his father. “Even if he doesn’t, Pops just said he’ll give himself up. We’ll find another way to contact them.”

“You don’t know if he changes his mind, the guy’s completely deranged!”

“Sounded pretty reasonable to me,” Shou shrugged. Even if his father was sick and confused and not quite himself, Shou could tell he’d been lucid enough to mean what he said. There was nothing uncertain about it.

“What?” Ootsuki all but shouted. “After all this, you’re just gonna do what he told you? You’re gonna start making deals with Minegishi when he tried to kill us yesterday?”

“Yeah, maybe I will,” Shou said evenly. “They’re not liars.”

“Those assholes don’t deserve shit! Your dad doesn’t deserve shit! You should’ve gotten rid of him when you had the chance!”

It seemed like Ootsuki had gotten over his concussion while Shou had been asleep, but now he lifted a hand to his forehead like the current situation was bringing his headache back in full force.

“He wants Claw gone so he can sit all nice and safe in a prison cell and pretend every esper in the country doesn’t wanna murder him?” he said. “Screw him! Let them be. Hopefully, someone can sneak in and shank him while he’s in fucking jail!”

“Ootsuki-san, please stop.” Fukuda took a step forward, gently reaching out for his arm.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?!” Ootsuki yelled, moving out of his reach. “Didn’t you hear anything he said?” He turned to Shou, pointing an accusing finger at Fukuda. “Is it always like that? He just lets your dad say whatever he wants?”

“You need to watch your mouth and be grateful everyone else here has the sense not to make this worse,” Higashio warned him, once again positioning himself to block Ootsuki off from the rest of them.

Ootsuki furiously threw out both his arms, gesturing at the whole room. “Oh, you think this is okay?”

“You think throwing a hysterical fit is helping?” Higashio retorted. “It doesn’t matter what it is. We talked about it, it’s done, now back to work.”

“Wow.” A short, humorless laugh burst out of Ootsuki. “You are such a hypocrite.”

Shou didn’t have room in his head for all this shouting. Higashio and Ootsuki barely noticed him as he walked around them, hoisting himself up onto the kitchen counter.

Nezumi’s travel cage was still there; somebody had found her and put her back inside. The hamster nearly flattened herself against the bottom at the noise. She crept around to the back wall, just as anxious as she’d been when Shou first moved her from the bedroom.

Ootsuki had turned around, acting like he was expecting Shou to back him up. Shou shrugged, keeping his eyes on the hamster. “Higashio’s right, we still have work to do. If all you’re gonna do is whine about it, maybe shut up and stay out of the way.”

Ootsuki went quiet, gaping at him in disbelief. Shou leaned to the side so he could see around him where Higashio stood glaring at the back of Ootsuki’s head.

“You fixed some of our stuff,” Shou said, pointing at the kitchen table.

Higashio blinked, taking a moment to process the subject change.

“Yeah. I did.” He glanced at the table himself, scratching his hair. “Current plan is I fix the furniture and leave the smaller stuff so it’ll add up with whatever the neighbors say. We’ll probably still get a bill, but it won’t be huge.”

“Okay,” Shou said, trying to get an overview of what was still missing. “Are you gonna do the rest now?”

Higashio tiredly rubbed his face. “Shou, we’re only human. I have to see if I can sleep for a couple of hours. If you want me to pull this off in three days, I have to get back to Ritsu’s house. It’d suit you to stop trying to run everyone into the ground.”

“Right,” Shou muttered. All of them were tired and on edge, but the way Higashio said it just made it feel like an underhanded jab at Shou’s little incident the day before.

Higashio carried on, yawning into his hand. “What time is it?” he asked, glancing at the spot on the wall where there used to be a clock.

Shou sullenly jumped down from the counter to grab his phone from the table. “Almost six,” he said, checking the screen.

“Once the stores open, can one of you go do some shopping? We need…” Higashio languidly glanced around the apartment, straining his eyes to see anything in the dark, “light bulbs for example.”

“Anything else?” Fukuda asked, trying and failing to ignore the amount of hostile energy Ootsuki was radiating at him.

“I’ll write you a list,” Higashio said.

As he wandered off to find something to write on, Ootsuki took a last glance at Pops, gave a barely audible scoff, then stalked off to his room, shutting the door behind him.

Higashio went to bed while Shou and Fukuda spent the next couple of hours assessing damages and cleaning up. Some things were sufficiently intact that they could be fixed without Higashio’s powers.

Serizawa helped here and there, whenever he wasn’t too busy worrying about getting in the way. Shou had been wrong about him. He hadn’t taken Pops’ side at all. He seemed almost optimistic now that he’d gotten some rest and everything suggested he wouldn’t have to defend anyone’s lives against Pops. Actually, all of them had good reason to be optimistic. Shou didn’t know what everyone else’s problem was. They were just picking petty fights at this point.

“If you’re going to talk to those government people,” Serizawa said, in the middle of taping a piece of cardboard over one of the shattered windows, “does that mean I should, too?”

“I guess.” Shou climbed down from the kitchen counter so Fukuda could close the cupboard door they had just gotten back on its hinges. “It’ll probably make them go easier on you.”

“I don’t know what to say, though,” Serizawa mused. “I don’t know what’d help…”

Fukuda had barely said a word while they’d been working, his voice was timid and dull when he spoke up. “You’ve traveled with Suzuki-san. You must know a lot of what he was working on. People he talked to. Things like that.”

Serizawa nodded thoughtfully. Fukuda turned to take a proper look at him, frowning tiredly at the sight. “If you’re going with Shou, you need a change of clothes.”

“Yeah, you’re just gonna make me look bad,” Shou huffed. “It’ll definitely help your chances if you don’t look like a complete mess.”

Serizawa shrugged resignedly, picking at his hands. "I think all my things blew up."

He was probably right. The place where Pops and the main division had been situated in the last couple of weeks hadn't been very far from the Culture Tower.

"I’ll find you something to wear," Fukuda said, trying his best to sound reassuring.

The sun rose, the time ticking closer to noon while they finished cleaning up. The place almost looked like something you could live in again. Shou declared the work done, then shoved the door to Ootsuki’s room open to find his shoes so he and Fukuda could get going.

Ootsuki had fallen asleep, completely buried under his duvet. Frowning, Shou shrugged on his hoodie and picked up his sneakers, dropping down on the side of the bed as heavily as possible. Ootsuki didn’t stir at all while Shou bent down to tie his shoelaces. He didn’t usually sleep this heavily.

Shoes on, Shou jumped onto the bed and yanked the duvet off him. Ootsuki woke with a gasp and scrambled away, ending curled up with his back against the wall.

“God, Shou, don’t do that,” he croaked. He hid his face in his hands, letting his forehead hit his knees.

“I hope you’re done moping, ‘cause we’re leaving you with Pops and Serizawa,” Shou said, dropping the duvet behind him.

Ootsuki uncurled a little, looking up at him. “Why me?”

“Higashio already left, so it’s time you actually do something useful.”

Ootsuki looked so incredibly offended that Shou burst out laughing. He stood up so fast the mattress creaked like one of the bed springs broke and made to storm out of the room. “That’s it, I’ve fucking had it—”

“I’m kidding!” Shou quickly hopped down in front of him, holding him back with both hands on his chest. “Calm down, you should see your face.”

“You think this is funny?” Ootsuki hissed, continuing to plow forward. “I don’t think any of this is funny.”

Shou put his weight into it, pushing hard enough that Ootsuki had to take a step back. “Well, if you’re not gonna be the funny one, somebody else has to do it, and I’m apparently not great at it.”

“Oh, is that what I am?” Ootsuki sneered. “Your court jester?”

Shou sighed and let his arms drop. “No.”

Ootsuki lingered right in front of him, his shoulders tense and fists clenched, looking like someone who’d been driven into a corner and was just waiting to be attacked.

Shou glowered up at him. “Just cheer up, okay? I think everything’s gonna work out.”

Ootsuki seethed with resentment and Shou couldn't even tell if it was directed at him. He didn’t know which strings to pull to make it better, he didn’t even get what had gotten him so upset in the first place.

Shou had expected a fight, too, and yes, it was disorienting that it hadn’t gone down like that, but it was a good kind of disorienting. They were back on track. They knew what needed to happen next. He couldn’t leave Ootsuki like this though—he wouldn’t last two minutes before he and Serizawa would end up killing each other.

What were you supposed to do with someone having a total meltdown like this? Comfort them? Ootsuki was always so casual about touching people. The first thing he’d done after Pops blew up was give Shou a hug.

After taking a moment to steady himself, Shou decisively stepped into Ootsuki’s personal space and wrapped his arms around him. Ootsuki gave a startled little twitch, his rib cage expanding as he took in a deep breath. He’d gone all stiff.

Was he doing this wrong? Shou couldn’t see Ootsuki’s face when he had his head pressed into his chest. He held on a little tighter, patting him firmly on the back for good measure. “There, there.”

Ootsuki’s lungs expanded again, all shuddering and uneven. He held his breath for a couple of seconds before he peeled Shou’s arms off, gingerly but adamantly pushing him away.

“Weren’t you on your way out?” he mumbled, head tilted down so his bangs obscured most of his face.

Shou felt like an idiot for having to ask, but he knew it’d eat him up all day if he didn’t. “Are you mad at me?”

“No, I’m pissed at everyone else,” Ootsuki snapped. “Now go away! It’s fine, whatever, I’ll stay here with Serizawa.”

Shou hesitantly shuffled toward the doorway while Ootsuki turned his back to him. He didn’t seem fine. He seemed more miserable than he’d been in months.

In the kitchen, Fukuda wasn’t faring much better. He was standing next to Pops, staring blankly at his lifeless face. Judging from the worried frown Serizawa had pointed at him, he’d stood there for a while. Everyone was acting so weird. Shou was getting sick of it.

“Fukuda,” he barked.

Fukuda dazedly turned his head.

“He’s not gonna do anything to you, so get over it,” Shou said, trudging into the living room. He stopped with his hand on the front door handle, gesturing impatiently at the exit. “Are you coming or what?”

Fukuda side-eyed Pops one last time before he compliantly mumbled, “Of course.”

He followed Shou outside, distracted and distant. Shou glowered at the back of his neck while he unlocked the sedan and had the sinking feeling that something had changed. Something subtle but significant. Maybe it had always been there, and he just hadn’t noticed.

He remembered in the beginning, while he and Fukuda were still figuring each other out, they had been arguing—it didn’t matter what about; something unimportant, like bedtimes or dinner or the necessity of learning math—and in a moment of pettiness, Shou had declared that if Fukuda didn’t let him have his way, he would call his father and ask to have him executed.

He had been eleven. He’d just been testing the limits of what he could get away with. It was practically a joke, he hadn’t meant anything by it, but Fukuda had gone very quiet.

He acted differently after that. He would weigh every word he spoke. He would keep his distance, only touching Shou if there was a wound to be healed. It was the same apprehension he spoke with now, staring out the windshield like he’d rather be anywhere else.

“Just to be clear, I don’t think it’s acceptable how your father speaks to you,” he said.

Shou frowned at the stiff set of his shoulders. He thought they’d moved past this.

“I get it,” he shrugged. “You’re scared of him. He can say whatever he wants, he’s gonna be locked away soon.”

It did nothing to lift Fukuda’s spirit. Shou didn’t know what he wanted to hear; this was even harder to deal with than Ootsuki. He propped his elbow up on the windowsill, resting his head on his hand.

“Think about it,” he said. “Once he’s gone, we can do things our own way. It’s not like we have to spend all our time on Claw anymore.”

Fukuda nodded distractedly and put the key in the ignition, clearly not even listening.

“Fukuda.” Shou waved a hand in front of his face to get his attention. “You said you’d stick around, right?”

Fukuda only turned his head for a second, but there was something panicked in his eyes. He instantly buried it under a carefully practiced, placid composure that he hadn’t used around Shou in ages.

“Of course,” he said again, nodding to himself.

Shou knew he was lying. He was omitting something. All this time, and Fukuda still didn’t trust him enough to simply speak his mind.

Chapter Text

Shou impatiently tapped his pointer finger on his arm while a steady trickle of cars passed by outside, all searching for a parking spot. “Are you gonna tell me what your problem is or what?”

Glaring expectantly at Fukuda for the full fifteen minutes it took to reach Seasoning City’s nearest shopping district hadn’t gotten a single word out of the man. Fukuda had stopped the car, turned off the engine, and now he was ignoring Shou, pretending to read through Higashio’s shopping list even though his eyes had been stuck on the first line since he unfolded the paper.

Shou was fed up with it.

“Let’s split up,” he decided, ripping the list out of Fukuda’s hands before he kicked the passenger side door open.

This finally spurred Fukuda into action. He stumbled out of the car, following a few steps with one hand outstretched. “Shou, please don’t run off on your own, I thought we talked about this.”

“What, are you worried you’ll get kidnapped again?” Shou scoffed, already on his way out of the parking lot. “Get the other stuff and meet me back here.”

As soon as Fukuda was out of sight, Shou felt like he could breathe again. There was nothing he wanted more than a break from everyone else. No awkwardness. No worrying. It was a perfectly nice day—Shou’s father had agreed to go to jail like he deserved, he had agreed that Shou was doing the right thing, and it didn’t even matter if it was Ritsu’s brother who had convinced him of those things, because everything was going to be okay.

He took his time wandering farther into town, getting lost among the other pedestrians. The items on Higashio’s list weren’t as weird as they sometimes got; just a few tools they were missing for repairing stuff that didn’t require psychic powers and some scraps of wood and metal for replacing parts that had been lost among the broken furniture.

When Higashio made the replicas of the Kageyama family, he had asked for three whole pigs. Shou couldn’t decide if he thought it was funny or fascinating or deeply disturbing when he and Ootsuki came to drop them off and he watched Higashio turn the pigs into people-shaped meat sculptures that looked very much like Ritsu and his parents.

The only reason they had come up with that plan in the first place, was because it was standard fare for Higashio. Dressing up crime scenes and faking dead bodies was just something he did once in a while. Two items in his repertoire of weird, shady things he’d done for Claw through the years.

Sometimes, Shou badgered him about using his powers more offensively. If he could do what he did to those pigs to an enemy, Shou would hardly have needed to do any work to bump up his reputation as one of the most infamous espers in the organization. Higashio always looked like he was going to be sick at the very thought. When Shou imagined doing that to another person, he supposed he understood. It was a long way away from the blunt force trauma he usually went for himself.

The cashier at the hardware store Shou had found gave him a weird look over the assorted selection of wooden boards, screws, and ten lightbulbs he was checking out. Shou just smiled at her, trying not to let the rising tally on the register bother him. Lightbulbs were expensive and Serizawa had busted every single one they had.

Fukuda wasn’t there yet when Shou returned to the car with his haul of supplies. He dropped the bags outside the passenger seat and sat down on the hood, looking out at the park across from the parking lot. He couldn’t help but smile at a flock of small kids chasing around an even smaller dog; all of them looking like they were having a blast. It still amazed him that everyone was moving on so soon after Claw had laid an entire nearby district in ruins.

Shou grabbed his phone from his pocket to check the time, only to find that he’d received a new text from Ritsu.

Ritsu
Sorry if you’ve just been busy, but I’m getting a little worried since I haven’t heard from you since yesterday. Are you okay?

Shou stared at the words. Ritsu was worried about him? Another, much longer message popped up while the phone was still in his hand.

Ritsu
I don’t mean to rush you, but are you still sure you can fix our house before my parents come home? If not, I have to think of something to tell them. I don’t know how I’m going to keep them away from the house, so if you have any suggestions I’m—

—Nii-san has only been up for a couple of hours since yesterday. I don’t like this, what if—

—don’t know if we should stay here at all—

Shou’s eyes skirted across the rest of the text, only reading fragmented pieces of it. Ritsu was worried about his house. Of course he was; he probably just wanted to go home and let his brother sleep in his own room and have everything go back to normal.

“You were quick.”

Shou whipped his head around to find Fukuda standing right behind him.

“Just a sec.” He leaned away, hunched over his phone as he hurriedly typed a reply, assuring Ritsu that he was fine and had everything under control and of course they’d get there on time.

“Is it Ritsu-kun?” Fukuda asked curiously.

Shou slid off the hood of the car and circled around to pick up his shopping bags, then peek into the ones Fukuda was carrying. “What’d you get?”

“A phone for me and a new outfit and shoes for Serizawa-san,” he said, holding one of the bags open for Shou to see. He had probably needed a break as well, he wasn’t acting as distant anymore.

“You got him shoes, too?” Shou snarked. “He owes me like a million yen worth of lightbulbs.”

Fukuda pushed him aside so he could unlock the doors. “Don’t ask me to buy things for you if you’re going to be like that.”

“Okay, sorry,” Shou scoffed. “I guess he needs them.” Letting him show up at some government office in crocs didn’t really seem appropriate now that Shou thought about it.

Fukuda put their bags in the backseat and turned around, fidgeting with his now empty hands. “Before we go back, can we sit down and talk for a bit?”

Shou stuffed his phone back in his pocket with a subdued sigh. Finally, maybe he’d spill what was on his mind. It was probably something bad, but at this point, Shou just wanted to get it over with.

“Maybe if we get some food,” he suggested.

Fukuda looked at him with wide eyes, but the surprise on his face quickly turned into distress. “I can’t believe I haven’t made sure—when did you last have a proper meal? You don’t eat enough as it is—”

“Fukuda, relax,” Shou stopped him before he could rile himself up too badly. “I had omurice like a couple of days ago.”

“Omurice,” Fukuda muttered, miserably shaking his head.

Shou spotted a small curry restaurant right outside the parking lot. They crossed the street so he could peek in through the windows. The place didn’t have room for many tables, but it was still a little early for lunch, so they were free to pick where to sit. Shou scoped out a spot in the corner furthest from the entrance where no one would pass and overhear what they were talking about.

“What d’you want?” Shou asked once they’d sat down, scouring the menu the server had handed him.

Fukuda wasn’t even looking at his own menu, just stared blankly over his shoulder at the server greeting a couple who were waiting to be seated.

“Fukuda.”

Fukuda snapped out of his trance, focusing on the card in front of him.

“It’s my money, right?” Shou said. “Just pick something.”

“You shouldn’t have to pay everything for us anymore,” Fukuda quietly said, sliding the menu away from himself. “I’m not hungry.”

“If I can eat something, you can eat something, too,” Shou reprimanded him.

Fukuda gave him a small, sad smile. Whatever he wanted to talk about was definitely not good.

The server came back with water for both of them. Shou asked for the katsu curry, then glared at Fukuda until he’d found and ordered the blandest dish the place had to offer.

As soon as the server left, Fukuda was wringing his hands in his lap, most likely trying to judge if it was the right time to speak up. The anxious energy emanating from him was making the hairs on the back of Shou’s neck stand on end. He restlessly drummed his fingers on the table, trying to think of something else, and ended up blurting out the first thing that came to mind.

“What’s wrong with Serizawa?”

Fukuda looked up, eyebrows raised in dumbfounded confusion.

“Yesterday, before you put him to bed, he was all out of it and sounded like he was gonna die or something,” Shou explained. “I was just talking to him, and then I said he should take a shower, right? And then he completely freaked out.”

“He was having an anxiety attack,” Fukuda replied with an odd cautiousness to his tone.

“You mean like when he ruined the apartment?”

“Well, yes.” Fukuda started wringing his fingers again. “It’s very overwhelming. It’s not something you can control.”

Shou tilted his head, still not following. “But what does that have to do with him taking a shower?”

Fukuda sighed, letting his hands drop into his lap. “Not everyone is as resilient as you, Shou. People can react poorly to stress. It can hurt them for a long time.”

“But he hasn’t been stressed, he’s just been sitting around,” Shou said. “And it’s not like Pops, he didn’t wear himself out with his powers or anything.”

Fukuda dragged a hand down his face, looking vaguely like he was in pain. “Do you remember when we found Nezumi?” he asked, closing his eyes for a moment, visibly cringing at his own words.

Shou did. They had been investigating an esper who’d been leaking information about Claw to the police. When they broke into her house, she’d already fled and left her pet hamster behind. The hamster must have been there by herself without food and water for days, and even aside from that, she was in poor condition. It would’ve been Shou’s fault if they left her to die in her own filth, so he’d convinced Fukuda they should keep her.

“Remember how she’d bite you every time you tried to pick her up?” Fukuda continued. “We weren’t sure what happened to her, just that she was scared, so you had to be patient with her. It’s the same with people. They can lash out or act strangely because they were hurt, one way or another.”

He was quiet for a moment, staring off to the side like he was thinking about something else. “You have to give them time,” he said. “If you don’t help them on their terms, it’ll only make them worse.”

“I guess that makes sense,” Shou muttered.

“I don’t know much about Serizawa-san, but he was unstable even before all this,” Fukuda said. “I think he’s managing well, all things considered.”

“How is he managing well? He blew up our apartment,” Shou said flatly. “Up until this morning, all he’s done is sit around and cry.”

“Until this morning, but now he got some rest, and he’s feeling better,” Fukuda countered.

He had to take a couple of false starts before he continued, leaning forward a little as if to let Shou in on a secret.

“There’s nothing wrong with crying. Crying can be healthy.”

Shou knew he was referring to his stupid, embarrassing meltdown the day before. He didn’t want to talk about it. It should never have happened in the first place.

“It’s okay to be upset,” Fukuda said and Shou just wanted him to stop talking. “Honestly, I was relieved.”

“You never cry about anything,” Shou snapped with a cold, piercing stare. “You don’t talk about it when you’re upset.”

The accusation left Fukuda at a complete loss for words. He leaned back in his seat, eyes locked on the table between them.

Shou watched the deep, troubled wrinkles on his forehead, trying to figure out why the subject seemed to make him so uncomfortable. Fukuda always wormed his way out of talking about feelings, that was nothing new, but apparently, Shou had struck a particularly sensitive nerve here.

“Were you ever like that?” he asked, a half-formed realization dawning on him. “With the anxiety attacks and everything? How do you know what it’s like?”

Fukuda refused to raise his head; it was starting to tick Shou off. He slid his arms forward, leaning so far over the table that Fukuda couldn’t avoid looking at him.

“Would it make you feel better to sit and cry a little, acting all pathetic like that?” Shou asked. “Because it’s okay to be upset, right?”

He had raised his voice enough for everyone else in the restaurant to be sending them weird looks. Fukuda glanced uneasily over his shoulder.

“Shou, I don’t want to talk about this here,” he muttered.

“Maybe you shouldn’t bring it up, then,” Shou said. “You just feel so sorry for him, don’t you?”

Fukuda hid his face in his hands for a second before he replied: “Yes, I do!” He raised his chin, finally looking Shou in the eye. “I think you’re just looking for someone to be angry at. I don’t like it when you act like this. You’re being cruel.”

Shou retracted his arms, glowering at him. He didn’t like the way Fukuda was acting either; walking on eggshells, nervous and avoidant and quiet even though he obviously had a lot of things on his mind.

Admittedly, he and Serizawa had things in common, but Shou couldn’t imagine Fukuda reduced to a wreck like that. Fukuda didn’t cry; he made it better when other people cried. He didn’t let the anxiety he struggled with stop him from doing what had to be done. He was better than that.

Fukuda had been with Claw for a long, long time. Longer than Iida. Longer than the years Serizawa had spent in self-enforced solitude. He was there back when “awakening experiments” still meant monitoring people naturally developing their powers. He was there as Claw turned into what it was now, and he never had a say in coming along for the ride. Despite never hearing Fukuda talk about it, Shou knew it had exposed him to things most people would be grateful to never witness, and yet he still carried on.

Shou had seen a fair number of dead bodies. It happened. It was an occupational hazard. Didn’t get to him much anymore. However, seeing someone who’d been gutted like a fish or had their head smashed like a ripe tomato, those times had stuck with him. Sometimes, when he least expected it, it’d come back to him in the middle of thinking about something else. Or when he slept, helpless to do anything about it until he woke up startled and queasy.

Fukuda looked at dead bodies like that like they’d never been human in the first place.

Maybe that part was a little worrying, actually. Maybe it hadn’t always been like that. It undoubtedly changed a person to be forced to do Pops’ bidding for so many years. Someone like Fukuda didn’t get to leave. He knew too much, he’d seen too many things that were so vile they weren’t even common knowledge within Claw itself.

To be fair, Serizawa probably wouldn’t have gotten away with leaving either, if he’d tried.

Fukuda gave a barely noticeable twitch when the server came back with their food. He absentmindedly thanked the man, then settled with staring blankly at the plate in front of him.

Shou refused to be the one to break the awkward silence and stuck to shoveling curry into his mouth. He hadn’t realized how hungry he was. What little he’d eaten over the last day, he’d thrown back up.

“I think you should call your mother,” Fukuda said after such a long pause that it felt disconnected from anything else they’d discussed.

Shou looked at him over the spoonful of rice in his hand. “Was that what Higashio wanted to talk about?”

“It was one thing we talked about,” Fukuda somberly confirmed.

“And you just couldn’t do it while I was there? What’s so secret about that?”

Fukuda’s shoulders sank. “It isn’t about keeping secrets, sometimes we just need to talk without—”

“Without me knowing about it.”

“Without you interrupting,” Fukuda said, sounding slightly annoyed.

Shou was wracking his brain for a reason Higashio would care to talk about his mother. None of them knew her. Why bring her into this at all?

“Higashio and I talk all the time,” Fukuda said, poking listlessly at his food, still untouched on the plate. “It’s just that usually we aren’t all stuck in a small apartment together.”

Shou knew that. Despite the vast number of things they disagreed on, Fukuda probably trusted Higashio more than anyone else. Certainly more than he trusted Shou. He could still clearly remember how relieved Fukuda had been when Higashio first joined them and he finally had someone to talk to who wasn’t a twelve-year-old kid.

Fukuda was watching him imploringly now. “You should at least let her know you’re okay.”

Shou took another bite of his curry. In hindsight, this was a situation he should have prepared for long ago, but as it were, his mind was a complete blank.

“I don’t know what to say to her,” he mumbled around the food in his mouth.

Fukuda crossed his arms, grasping his elbows like he was feeling cold. “How much does she know?”

Shou mindlessly twirled his spoon, balancing it on its tip. “I had to tell her I’ve been traveling around. Other than that, she thinks everything’s like before she left.”

Years of reassuring her that everything was fine was definitely going to backfire. There was no way she hadn’t heard of what happened, no way she hadn’t seen Pops’ face all over the news.

“Would it help if I talked to her?” Fukuda asked, folding his hands on the edge of the table.

“No?” Shou frowned at him suspiciously. “Why would that help? She doesn’t even know who you are.”

Why were they talking about this? Fukuda and Shou’s mother had nothing to do with each other; the two didn’t intermingle. Usually, Fukuda refrained from even mentioning her. This was all wrong.

Fukuda barreled on regardless. “I thought maybe it was about time—”

Shou abruptly stood up, bumping the edge of the table hard enough to topple over the glass of water next to his half-empty plate. “I’ll call her myself!”

Maybe it was cold in the restaurant because Shou felt like somebody had dropped a handful of ice cubes down his back. While Fukuda flusteredly tried to dry up the contents of Shou’s glass with a couple of napkins, he pulled out his wallet, hurriedly withdrew what looked like enough money to pay for their meal, and threw it on the table.

“Eat your food so we can go,” he ordered. He quickly stalked out of the building before Fukuda could say anything in return.

There were too many people outside. Shou followed the exterior of the restaurant around to a narrow alleyway. The concrete walls benevolently dampened the sound of everyone going about their day like everything was fine and normal. Like Shou didn’t have to hear his mother’s voice and tell her she didn’t know anything about him at all.

He took a deep breath. He’d known it’d been coming. It was okay. He was well on his way to working everything out. It was an okay time to tell her.

He wasn’t even sure when he’d last talked to his mother. She wasn’t on the list of recent calls on his phone, he had to search through his contacts for her number. Waiting for her to pick up, he restlessly paced back and forth. Farther inside the alley, a crow was hopping in circles, picking at what Shou realized was a dead rat. He wrinkled his nose in disgust, turning away right as the waiting tone stopped and his call went through.

For a while, there was only silence on the other end.

“Shou...?”

His mother’s voice was quiet and reluctant, like she was afraid it would be somebody else answering.

“Hi, Mom,” Shou chirped, keeping his tone bright and lighthearted.

She made a strange, choked sound. “I was so scared. I saw what happened on TV.”

Slowly, Shou’s pacing came to a halt.

“Where are you?” she asked.

Her words barely registered in Shou’s mind. He stared at his feet, nudging the stray pebbles littering the asphalt.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

If she was so scared, why hadn’t she called him herself?

“Yeah, I’m okay,” Shou forced out. “Just sorting some things out right now.”

“Why did you lie to me?” His mother’s tone was unbearably wounded. “You said everything was better now. You said he was better.”

There it was; the big, inevitable question. Maybe he should’ve taken a few minutes to prepare an answer beforehand, because he had no idea what to say.

“I didn’t want you to worry,” he mumbled lamely.

“Well, I am worried,” she said, voice wobbly like she was about to burst into tears. “All this time, I didn’t know. How do you think that makes me feel?”

She sniffled, and for a moment it sounded like she put her phone down. When she spoke again, she was a little more collected. “Where are you? Are you safe?”

He wasn’t sure how much to tell her. On one hand, it was probably best to ease her into things, but on the other, the news had clearly given her a good idea of how bad the situation was.

“Well, I’m not on my own,” he started. “You don’t know these people, but they’re a good team, so I’ll be fine. We have Pops, he’s gonna give himself up.”

“You have him? On TV, they keep saying he’s presumed dead. Does that mean they’re looking for him?” Mom asked. “What about Claw? Are they looking for him?”

Was tapped phone lines something he should worry about? Would she tell anyone? It didn't even matter, right? Pops was going to give himself up; they hadn’t done anything wrong.

“I think it’s best if you don’t know too much, y'know, just in case,” Shou said. “Really, I have it under control, and I don’t think it’ll have any effect on you at all, so—”

“You don’t think so?”

“It won’t,” he quickly corrected himself. “I promise it won’t! A-and I’ll be fine, but I have to go now, bye!”

Shou fumbled so much with ending the call that he dropped his phone on the ground.

“Shit.” He sat down against the wall with his head bowed and his hands in his hair, trying to calm down.

He shouldn’t have called her. It would’ve been better if she assumed he died in the explosion. What if he couldn’t keep that promise? If they handed Pops over to the government, would they drag her into it too? As far as he knew, they were still technically married—maybe there was some legal clause that’d involve her. Shou knew nothing about what the law said about someone like Pops.

When he looked up again, the crow on the other end of the alley had pecked the rat’s stomach open, methodically taking the smaller animal apart. Shou grabbed his phone and scrambled to his feet, hurrying back to the car.

He slammed the door when he got in. Fukuda was already in the driver’s seat, looking at him expectantly. “How did it go?”

“Fine,” Shou said, bouncing his leg uneasily.

Fukuda’s face fell. He slowly leaned back, staring out the window.

“Can’t you just drive?!” Shou snapped, more aggressively than he intended. At the same moment, his phone started vibrating in his hand. He hurriedly flipped it over, revealing his mother as the caller ID.

Fukuda was looking at it, too. “You should pick up,” he said.

Shou swallowed the lump that had lodged itself in his throat. Nothing at all went through his mind as he took the call and mechanically lifted the phone to his ear.

“Are you there?” Mom asked after a stretch of silence. Her voice was softer than before.

“Yeah,” Shou said.

“Is there anything I can do to help?”

“No.” Shou swallowed again. “It’s really best if you don’t get involved.”

Mom spoke slowly and meticulously: “You said you were with some other people. Can I talk to them?”

Shou glanced at Fukuda, waiting patiently beside him. “Why?”

“Because if something happens to you, I have no way of knowing. Please, can you let me talk to one of them? Or just give them my number, or—”

Shou’s head was filled with too much meaningless static to process any of what his mother was saying. It didn’t feel like it was really him operating his limbs when he dazedly handed Fukuda the phone, opened the door, and got out of the car.

He stepped over the low fence surrounding the park next to the parking lot and stopped in the middle of a patch of grass, sat down with his legs splayed out haphazardly in front of him like he was just a rag doll somebody had dropped on the ground.

Mom was not supposed to be involved. Mom was not supposed to sit and talk to Fukuda like they belonged in the same universe. Not when the world already felt like it was collapsing in on itself, crushed into something too small and dense to make sense of.

He didn’t know how long he’d sat there when Fukuda appeared next to him, gingerly handing his phone back.

“I gave her my number,” he said, almost apologetically, “and I told her it’s best if she doesn’t get involved right now.”

“Thanks,” Shou muttered. He stowed the device in his pocket and resumed purposelessly pulling tufts of grass out of the ground.

“I think it went well,” Fukuda added, sitting down on his knees beside him.

“Yeah right,” Shou responded with a dry, sarcastic chuckle. “I feel like shit.”

“Objectively, it went well.”

They sat there until Fukuda decided it was time to go back to the car. He smiled faintly as he helped Shou up from the grass. Shou doubted a phone call to his mother was all he’d wanted to talk about, but at least it had helped him snap out of the weird headspace he’d been stuck in.

They left the park behind, both of them quiet as they got in the car. The traffic had only built up since they arrived and Shou was happy to get away from it. He rested his head on the windowpane, watching the city roll by as Fukuda drove them back toward the apartment.

He could make this work. He hadn’t wanted his mother to know about Claw until he’d made Pops change his mind about everything, but even though it was very recent, Pops had gotten better. Mom should see it for herself. Maybe they could visit him wherever the government would take him.

Fukuda parked outside their apartment building and Shou grabbed both the bags with their purchases once he’d exited the car. His limbs felt oddly heavy as he carried the bags up the stairs, mind still buzzing from the conversation with his mother. His head perked up when he reached the wall to the apartment. Someone was speaking inside, voice too deep and gravelly to belong to either Ootsuki or Serizawa. Shou quickly jogged up the last few steps, throwing the door open.

In the living room, Ootsuki and Serizawa sat next to each other on the couch. As from sheer reflex, Ootsuki sprang up to stand on the cushions, then quickly stepped down onto the floor, pointing at the large, gray-haired man who was seated in front of them.

“He said he has Joseph’s number, so I let him in,” he said very fast, like he was afraid Shou was about to scold him for it.

Iida turned his head, nodding at Shou in acknowledgement. He pushed himself up from the kitchen chair he’d borrowed, one hand clasping his knee as if his back was hurting him. Gawking at him, Shou dropped the plastic bags in his hands, momentarily forgetting that one of them was full of glass light bulbs.

“You found him?” he asked.

“I apologize for taking so long,” Iida sighed, making a sweeping gesture to someplace outside. “He left town for a day and I couldn’t follow.”

“Why not?” Shou asked. “Where did he go?”

“I don’t know precisely. Some facility East of here. He was escorting a handful of the Scars there,” Iida said, thoughtfully scratching his beard, right next to his own scar.

Behind Shou, Fukuda had frozen up in the doorway. Shou quickly slid the shopping bags aside, dragged him inside, and closed the door.

“Does that mean you can find out where they’re taking the espers they catch?” Shou followed up. “Like, you could wait around until he goes there again?”

“I’m not interested in being seen anywhere near their prison camps,” Iida said. “There are things it’s best to keep your nose out of.”

“Okay, but… we can call Joseph now?” Shou asked, looking up at him hopefully.

Iida reached inside his jacket for the small notebook he always carried. He opened it, carefully tore one of the pages loose, and folded in half.

“He’s staying at a hotel near the evacuated area for now,” he said, holding the page out to Shou, pinched between his pointer- and middle-finger. “That’s the address and his personal phone number.”

Shou flipped open the slip of paper, taking in the line of digits that would ensure his father ended in jail where he belonged. While he read it over and over again, Fukuda quietly stepped forward, bending over in a deep bow.

“Thank you, Iida-san,” he said. “I don’t know how we can possibly pay you back.”

“You want to pay me back?” Iida gestured languidly at Pops, still tucked in under his blanket. “Get rid of him before he hurts anyone else. Beyond that, we don’t owe each other anything.”

Iida moved to walk around Fukuda toward the exit. Without thinking, Shou threw his back against the door, blocking him from reaching the handle.

“Wait, are you just gonna leave?” he blurted out. “Where’re you gonna go? Are you still helping people get away?”

Without any sort of reply, Iida put a heavy hand on Shou’s shoulder, pushing him aside.

“What if I need to talk to you?” Shou persisted.

Iida let himself out into the hallway. “If you keep to yourself like I’ve told you, you won’t need to,” he said. “If anything happens that you should know, I’ll find you.”

“But…” Shou lingered awkwardly in the doorway, holding onto the slip of paper Iida gave him with both hands.

Iida had barely trudged down the first flight of stairs before someone grabbed Shou’s elbow, dragging him back inside the apartment. Fukuda firmly closed the door and snatched the piece of paper out of his hands, eyes roaming over Iida’s neat handwriting.

“What’re you looking for?” Shou asked, trying to take it back.

“Why would he come here while you were away?” Fukuda asked. “With his powers, he could easily tell where we were downtown. He could have found you there.”

“You’re worried he’s trying to set us up or something?” Shou huffed. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

Fukuda stared expectantly at Ootsuki, waiting for some sort of clarification, but Ootsuki just stood there in the middle of the room, hands clenched. Behind him, Serizawa still sat on the couch, idly picking at his sleeve.

“Um,” he spoke up, “he asked me a lot of questions?”

Fukuda’s head swiveled toward him. “What questions?”

Shou took the opportunity to rip the paper out of Fukuda’s hand, stuffing it safely in the pocket of his pants. “Yeah, what questions?”

“About where the Pre… Where…” Serizawa squeezed his eyes shut, clearly frustrated with himself. “Where Suzuki-san has been lately. The meetings he attended. Investors and stuff. I… I usually just sit outside, I don’t know—”

“Who cares why he wants to know about Suzuki’s business meetings,” Ootsuki broke in, so sharply it made Serizawa flinch. “We got Joseph’s number, so go on and call him already!”

Fukuda shook his head. “Not until Higashio comes back.”

“Oh yeah, that’s right,” Ootsuki sniped, tilting his head with mock sympathy, “you can’t do anything without Higashio there to protect you.”

Fukuda glowered back at him. “Ootsuki-san, now that we’re back, maybe you’d like to go out for a bit.”

“Why? Am I bothering you?” Ootsuki asked. “Are you gonna throw me out now? I’d like to see that.”

Shou ignored them, staring down at the phone number in his hands again. There was no way Iida would set them up. He’d probably sensed Serizawa’s aura here and thought it was a good opportunity for gathering some information. It wasn’t any of Shou’s business what he needed it for. Iida hadn’t asked for any details about their plans either.

His eyes drifted to his father, just as flushed and sweaty as when they’d left him. It didn’t appear like he’d moved at all. If Pops wanted to give himself up, it felt wrong to let someone barge in and take him away while he was out cold and probably half-delirious from fever.

“What’s Higashio gonna do anyway?” Ootsuki kept going, doing everything in his power to get a rise out of Fukuda. “He can’t save you from this. Will you stand there and watch like a spineless coward again while Suzuki demolishes him, or is it just Shou you got some kind of—”

“Ootsuki!” Shou snapped at him. “Stop it. It doesn’t make Fukuda a coward to know when there’s nothing he can do anyway.”

Taking half a step back, Ootsuki actually went quiet, but the tense grimace on his face suggested it was only temporary.

“We’ll wait for Higashio to come back,” Shou decided, “and I won’t call anyone until my pops wakes up and he can tell what’s happening.”

“Are all of you insane?” Ootsuki said. “Two days ago you were ready to kill your dad with your own hands, and now you’re, what, worried about his feelings? Why?!”

“Because I said so,” Shou muttered, picking up the shopping bags.

Ootsuki barked a scathing, mean-spirited laugh. “Great fucking argument, Shou.”

Shou pushed past him, walking around the coffee table. “You’re being annoying and difficult and nobody cares what you think, so shut up.”

Ootsuki’s mouth slowly closed, whatever new, ridiculous argument he was about to spit out fading into nothing. His posture was oddly stiff and withdrawn as he watched Shou drop down next to Serizawa. He turned to the door suddenly, letting himself out without saying another word.

Serizawa’s head turned with the sound of Ootsuki’s footsteps outside. “I think you made him upset...”

“Whatever,” Shou muttered, retrieving one of the new light bulbs. “You can help me get all the lights working again. And then you really gotta take that shower, ‘cause we got you some new clothes.”

The bewildered expression on Serizawa’s face stayed as he studied Shou for a long moment, but eventually, he nodded and stood up with no help at all.

Serizawa didn’t make a fuss about any of what Shou told him to do, just offered his help as needed and otherwise stayed quiet—not because he was nervous or taciturn like the day before, he just took things one at a time, so pragmatic it actually made Shou feel a little more at ease as well.

Fukuda called for Higashio to come back, then spent most of the time nervously watching the front door, either wishing Higashio would arrive faster, or worrying that Ootsuki would return first.

The moment Higashio stepped inside the apartment, Fukuda grabbed him by the arm, dragging him to the bedroom to discuss something they, once again, didn’t want Shou to hear.

When Higashio wandered back into the kitchen, he acted like he didn’t have time to be there; pacing back and forth or tapping his fingers or feet restlessly as soon as he had an unoccupied moment.

“You thought about what you’re going to tell them?” he asked once Shou had run out of things to do and sat at the kitchen table, aimlessly folding and unfolding the page with Joseph’s phone number. “If you can help them, you should ask for something in return. You know, negotiate.”

There wasn’t anything Shou wanted from them. Claw had to go, but he assumed they were already working on that.

“What if Joseph gets all of us arrested and thrown in jail?” he lamented, letting his head drop face-first onto the table.

“Secret or not, it’s still the government,” Higashio said. “They’re not gonna lock up a minor with a bunch of terrorists.”

“What if they just put you guys in jail?” Shou muttered into the tabletop.

“Well, you better do a good job telling them why they shouldn't,” Higashio said. “That’s what I mean by negotiating.”

Shou propped his head up on one of his hands. “Aren’t you scared?”

Higashio shrugged. “Secret esper jail probably isn’t much worse than the regular kind.”

There were a lot of people Shou didn’t think deserved to go to secret esper jail, or whatever else the government wanted to do with them. Thoughtfully, he found a pad and a pen and started jotting down names one after another, leaving the list for a while and then coming back with five new ones in mind every time. Before long, he’d filled several pieces of paper.

Shou was doing this for them, too. Everyone who’d stumbled into the organization by accident or force and couldn’t make it back out on their own. Everyone who would happily help annihilate it if given the chance.

He carefully jotted down Iida’s name in the middle of the list, retracing the patchy lines from his ballpoint pen a few times. He wondered what he’d think of Shou bringing him up like this. He should’ve asked before he left. Iida hadn’t seemed like he wanted anything to do with the government, but he knew a lot of people. He was good at networking, same as Higashio. He could be useful.

When Ootsuki came back later, he slipped in through the front door with his usually golden, soft aura somehow heavy and oppressing like a dark fog. If he’d left to calm down, it hadn’t worked at all.

He didn’t address anyone else in the room, just walked in and stopped right in front of Pops.

“We’re still waiting, huh?” he said in an icy monotone.

Higashio didn’t look up from the cup of coffee he was stirring at the kitchen counter. “No telling how long he’s gonna stay out this time.”

“He has a fever, he’s not unconscious anymore.” Ootsuki stood over Pops, radiating so much venomous energy at him that it impelled Shou to slide off his chair and prepare himself for the worst.

“Look at him.” Higashio stepped away from the counter, gesturing at Pops with the cup. “Hasn’t moved a muscle since he passed out. Let him sleep it off if that’s what Shou wants.”

Ootsuki silently turned his head, watching Higashio for a very long moment. Then, without any sort of warning, he drew his foot back and kicked Pops hard in his side.

Higashio dropped the cup on the counter and was on him immediately, grabbing the front of his shirt to push him away. Shou had to duck to avoid getting an arm in the face.

“You’re gonna start with this again?” Higashio said, raising his voice.

Ootsuki held up his hands in mock surrender, sneering back at him, “Whoops.”

Higashio pulled him closer, sternly staring him down. “This isn’t about you. You’re acting up like a goddamn teenager!”

In the middle of their scuffle, neither of them noticed that Pops had actually stirred awake. He slowly curled up around the side where Ootsuki had kicked him, opened his eyes, and seemed completely disoriented, eyes darting around the room like he’d never seen it before.

Shou moved to stand at his side, waving a hand to get his attention. “Yo, Pops—”

He almost flinched away when his father reached up and grabbed his wrist. His hand was clammy and unnaturally warm and he just kept it there, holding Shou in place while he studied him like he wasn’t even sure he was real.

Higashio kept a firm grip on Ootsuki’s collar as he turned his head to watch Pops, vigilantly prepared to intervene there as well. Shou sent him a quick, reassuring glance, then carefully retracted his arm.

“I got Joseph’s phone number,” he said, bending down a little to try to make eye contact with his father’s bleary, flickering gaze.

Pops rolled onto his back, staring listlessly at the ceiling. Slowly, everything seemed to come back to him.

“I see,” he rasped.

The piece of paper in Shou’s hand seemed simultaneously heavy and impossibly flimsy and easily lost. He didn’t know why he hadn’t just typed the number on it into his phone yet.

“So,” Shou said, “am I gonna call him, or do you wanna do it yourself?”

Chapter Text

Shou wasn’t sure what he’d imagined government agents to be like, but Joseph was not it. The couple of times he’d seen him before, his callous, sardonic manner hadn’t struck Shou as any different from so many other of Claw’s espers. Apparently, he’d fooled Pops too. Joseph might have utterly failed whatever mission the government had given him, but he’d definitely succeeded in blending in.

It felt different seeing him now, standing in the flattened expanse up ahead, his white jacket jarring against the drab browns and grays of the surrounding rubble. Shou and Serizawa were leading the most wanted man in Japan right to him, and all he did was watch impassively, inhaling a lungful of smoke from the cigarette in his hand.

Maybe he was nervous Pops wouldn't come as willingly as he’d claimed. Joseph could’ve picked literally anywhere to rendezvous with them, anywhere that was easy and discreet to get to, but instead, he’d agreed to Pops’ half-delirious suggestion that they meet in the middle of the deserted ruins, right by the giant broccoli that served as Seasoning City’s new centerpiece. Both of them really had a flair for the dramatic.

Joseph dropped his spent cigarette, extinguishing it under his shoe. Serizawa had told Shou his powers let him manipulate the smoke, expanding and hardening it until it was rigid like steel. It was a strange and impractical power if he was that dependent on a tool, but it probably wasn't the only thing he could do. He had to be at least halfway competent if someone thought he'd have a chance at apprehending an esper at Pops' level—even before Pops revealed that his level shattered any scale Shou had measured espers by in the past.

Pops hadn't said a word since Fukuda dropped them off, simply trudged forward at a steady pace, eyes locked on the ground. Fukuda had done what he could to reduce his fever, and they had even gotten him into the shower and a pair of Fukuda’s pajamas, but he still had the sunken features of someone who’d been deathly ill for weeks.

Joseph produced another cigarette, lighting it with the strange, electric lighter hung around his neck. As he walked closer, Shou could tell his face was littered with bruises and scrapes. He hadn’t been miraculously healed like the rest of them. Probably fled out of range before the explosion two days ago.

“I couldn’t believe my own ears when you contacted me,” Joseph drawled once they were within earshot. “You seemed so into the whole world domination plan, and now you’re just giving up?”

Pops stopped at an ample distance. “Yes,” he said, pulling off a decent imitation of his usual cold stare. “If you have questions, I’ll answer them.”

Joseph simply raised an eyebrow. His attention shifted as he pointed the cigarette between Shou and Serizawa. “And you two are all up for answering questions as well?”

“That’s what I told you,” Shou said.

“It’s just incredible how cooperative you all are all of a sudden.” Joseph held his gaze, eyes narrowed skeptically. “Well,” he said after an unnecessarily long pause, “I already gave you an address. No need to track you down if you’re gonna show up willingly.”

Behind Shou, Serizawa piped up, voice small and unsure. “You won’t put me in jail?”

Joseph frowned confusedly. “Wasn’t that the condition? Suzuki gives himself up and we give you two a chance to explain yourselves.”

“Yes,” Pops said, cutting Serizawa off from asking any more questions.

Joseph released a cloud of smoke, exhaling a low, incredulous laugh with it. “What the hell happened to you?” He watched Pops thoughtfully, scrutinizing him while he took another long drag of his cigarette. “My employer’s looking for that esper who took you down. How about you start by telling me who we’re dealing with?”

Shou sent his father a subtle, pleading look. They had discussed this; he wasn’t supposed to tell them anything about Ritsu’s brother or Ritsu’s family or anything remotely to do with Ritsu.

“Nobody,” Pops lied. “A civilian. I’d never seen him before and I doubt I could pick him out in a crowd now.”

Shou let out a quiet sigh of relief. He still couldn’t believe how much of this he and his father had agreed on. Ritsu’s brother had done the impossible and fully won Pops’ respect.

“Some civilian esper ruined your plan?” Joseph asked doubtfully.

Pops didn’t waver in the slightest. “That’s the truth.”

Joseph gave a small huff. “Man, what do they even need professionals for anymore?” He gestured apathetically at Pops’ hands. “At least let me handcuff you.”

There was no point in handcuffing a man they all knew could easily break free, but Joseph exhaled a dense, purple-tinted shroud anyway, letting it scatter around Pops’ forearms. Shou looked on in fascination as the fumes solidified into a shapeless assemblage of hardened, metallic chunks, merged by a tough, rubbery sealant.

He’d never seen a power like that before. It wasn’t like Higashio, breaking down materials to build something new from the same mass. It wasn’t like Minegishi sprouting plants from nothing but his own aura, either.

“Okay, get moving,” Joseph said. He yanked at a string of the rubbery, improvised handcuffs, forcing Pops to take a step forward.

He was going to walk away; pull Shou’s father along on a leash and parade him out of there to show off to that Asahi guy who kept getting interviewed on TV, and the most absurd part was that Pops just let him.

“What’re you gonna do with him?” Shou asked.

Joseph let out a disinterested hum. “No matter what, he’ll be sentenced severely. The place your old man’s going isn’t a prison. It’s more likely they’ll experiment on him like some lab rat.”

Shou stared after them blankly as Joseph started walking. Pops would be taken to some shady, classified government facility where they’d treat him like he wasn’t even human, and Joseph talked about it like it was no big deal. He’d be strapped down and hurt and violated like all those people he’d sent through the awakening mill. Nobody was going to care and nobody would have to look at him anymore. But that’s just what he deserved, right?

“Don’t ask me, I’m not the one making the decisions,” Joseph finished with an indifferent shrug.

Serizawa made a distressed sound, stepping forward with his hands anxiously clenched. “President—”

Pops stopped, slowly turning his head to pin Serizawa with one of the cutting stares he usually reserved for those who didn’t know their place in the hierarchy yet.

“Serizawa,” he said sternly, “no matter how much you looked up to me, I was never a friend to you. You have no reason to worry about me. Don’t let yourself be manipulated so easily in the future.”

It was almost considerate, like Pops was setting him free. Shou couldn’t recall the last time his father had been considerate to anyone. Serizawa slowly closed his mouth and stayed where he was, letting his arms hang limply at his sides. There should be no need for telling him any of that, but of course, Serizawa actually thinking for himself was a very recent development.

Pops turned his head forward like he was ready to leave, but he didn’t move when Joseph started walking again.

“Shou,” he said, voice hollow and easily lost across the distance between them. “I used to hope I could reunite you with your mother, but I’ve been arrogant. I’ve neglected you.”

He kept his back turned. He didn’t even have the decency to look Shou in the eye.

“We were a family, and I tore it apart,” he said, solemn and regretful. “I don’t know where I’m going or what will become of me. Nobody’s going to look after you from now on.”

What did he even know about that? He hadn’t looked after Shou for years—too busy with his own projects, too preoccupied on the other side of the world to care. Shou had just as many people looking after him as he did before. He had people he actually trusted.

“I am really sorry,” Pops said. There was genuine pain in his voice, like he didn’t see how cruel and meaningless it was to say that now. There was no use for apologies. If he was so sorry, he could shut up and make his amends and maybe come out on the other side and fix everything he’d broken.

“Don’t be,” Shou said. “I meet up with Mom sometimes.”

Finally, his father looked at him, surprise clear on his face.

“I called her this morning,” Shou said, observing him. “She always asks about you. I tried to stop you before she could find out what you were doing. I thought someday we could visit her together.”

There was something harrowed and completely unfamiliar in Pops’ eyes. Mom was the one who deserved an apology. He must have known how much he hurt her, but he’d always acted like he didn’t even care. It just made it worse to know for certain that he did. How much of a coward he was in the end.

Joseph seemingly couldn’t care less about their family issues, seeing as he kept walking until the leash stretched out and dragged Pops along with him.

“You don’t get to decide when this is over,” Shou yelled after his father. “You still deserve to be scolded by Mom!”

Shou watched in silence as Pops’ figure grew smaller and smaller, disappearing against the horizon as he and Joseph made their way to the opposite side of the crater. He watched in silence for a good while after that, too.

“Are you okay?” Serizawa was staring at him with big, worried eyes. He fidgeted with his sleeves, uncomfortable in the blazer and dress shirt Fukuda had bought for him.

“Yeah, why wouldn’t I be?” Shou promptly turned and headed back to the car.

Fukuda was pacing anxiously back and forth on the sidewalk in front of the sedan. He stopped when he noticed Shou and Serizawa, making his way around to the driver’s seat, ready to jump in and take off.

He faltered when he got a proper look at Shou, following him with his eyes as he got into the passenger seat and slammed the door shut. Fukuda slowly sat down behind the steering wheel, watching him warily.

“Are you okay?”

“Can everyone just stop asking me if I’m okay?” Shou snapped.

Fukuda weakly gripped the lower half of the wheel, nodding. “Okay.”

Serizawa quietly settled in the backseat, strapping his seatbelt on before he resumed fidgeting. Nobody said anything as Fukuda drove them away from the restricted area around the broccoli.

“We’re still going to that address Joseph gave you?” Fukuda asked once they were back on the open, trafficked roads.

“Yes,” Shou said.

“Is that where they’ve taken your father?”

“No,” Shou said.

“Um,” Serizawa spoke up from the backseat, “Joseph said he’ll go to some kind of research facility.”

“Research?” Fukuda frowned at him in the rearview mirror, then at Shou.

“Like a laboratory,” Serizawa said, “where they do experiments.”

Fukuda asked no more questions after that. Shou side-eyed him once in a while. He seemed completely lost in his own thoughts.

“Fukuda, you just ran a red light,” Shou said.

Fukuda whipped his head around so he could see out the rear window. “What...?”

“In the intersection.” Shou pointed behind them. There had been no cars to collide with, but it could be three in the morning and the streets completely empty and Fukuda still wouldn’t ignore a red light.

Fukuda briefly raised a hand to his forehead before placing it firmly back on the steering wheel. He made a turn at the first narrow street they passed, pulling up to the side.

“I don’t trust them,” he said, turning in his seat to fix Shou with a desperate look. “They’re exempt from the law, they have no real media coverage. What’s going to stop them from taking everyone else?”

Shou shrugged, glancing out the window at the dull concrete facades that took up so much of Seasoning City. “It’s too late to worry about that now.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know what they were doing,” Serizawa muttered. He kept tugging uneasily at the sleeves of his blazer.

“Doesn’t matter,” Shou said over his shoulder. “We’re gonna talk to Joseph, just like we planned. We don’t have to trust them, but it’s best if they trust us.”

Serizawa nodded compliantly. Fukuda, on the other hand, was still staring. Shou cut him off just as he opened his mouth.

“It’s not your call, and I don’t care what you think,” he said. “You’re here to drive, so drive.”

Fukuda was clearly trying to keep his face neutral, but he looked so hurt Shou almost felt bad. He said nothing more while he drove them the rest of the way, still so absent-minded he probably shouldn’t be driving a car in the first place.

The address Joseph had given them was for an unremarkable two-story building in a row of other unremarkable two-story buildings. It didn’t look residential; there was a small parking lot out front, vacant except for one other car.

Shou slung the well-worn backpack he’d brought over his shoulder and got out of the sedan. He walked closer to the other car to peer in through the windows, but there was nothing of note except a trench coat thrown into the passenger seat; deep navy blue with decorative, oversized buttons. It looked like it belonged to a woman.

When he turned around, Fukuda was waiting next to Serizawa, shoulders stubbornly squared. Shou rolled his eyes and headed for the entrance. If Fukuda insisted on coming along, he wasn’t about to waste his energy trying to stop him.

The door to the building wasn’t locked, so Shou took the liberty to walk inside, holding it open for Serizawa and Fukuda to follow. Inside was a sparsely furnished hall with a long reception desk across from the entrance. In the corner, a ladder stood underneath a spot where some of the ceiling panels had been taken down, exposing the wiring above. It definitely wasn’t a permanent office; the government had probably hijacked the building while waiting to see why Pops was gathering all his espers.

On the other side of the counter, a woman so short Shou could barely see her shoulders turned to glance at them. She was sorting through a stack of papers, holding her phone in place between her ear and shoulder.

“I’ll have to get back to you, Suzuki Shou just got here,” she said.

She put both the phone and the papers down, quickly making her way around to the front while she held out a perfectly manicured hand in greeting.

“Suzuki-kun,” she said, smiling pleasantly, “I’m glad you decided to contact us yourself.”

“We’re looking for Joseph,” Shou said, ignoring her outstretched hand.

The woman’s brow creased ever so slightly. It took all the warmth out of her smile. “Conducting interviews isn’t usually Joseph’s job,” she said. “Didn’t he tell you?”

“We made a deal to talk to him,” Shou said. “Who are you anyway?”

She withdrew her hand to reach into the jacket of her neat, purple suit and pulled out an ID card. “My name is Nagata Sayumi. Same as Joseph, I’m a government agent. I work with national intelligence, more specifically anything that has to do with espers.”

Apparently deciding that Shou had glared at her ID long enough, Nagata slipped it back into her inner pocket. She held out her hand again, putting on the same welcoming smile.

“Nice to meet you.”

Shou stared her straight in the eye, waiting for her to back down. She wasn’t going to decide how this meeting was going to go down if he had any say in it, but Nagata didn’t seem intimidated in the slightest. She was an esper—Shou could tell that much—but her aura was fleeting and barely there, as was often the case for someone who only had a passive ability like telepathy or clairvoyance.

Nagata blinked at him slowly. “Are you going to leave me hanging?”

“Yeah,” Shou said.

“It rarely pays off to be rude,” she remarked, then turned to Serizawa, offering him her hand instead. She had to crane her neck to see his face. “Nice to meet you as well, Serizawa-san.”

Serizawa nodded like he couldn’t agree more and shook her hand with both of his own. There was sweat on his forehead.

Nagata discreetly wiped her hand on her pants as she turned to Fukuda. "And finally, Fukuda-san.” She offered her hand once again despite addressing him with considerably less interest. “You can expect to be contacted within the next couple of weeks, but I have no need to talk to you right now.”

Fukuda stared at her hand like it carried some kind of contagious disease, taking a step back. “I'm with Shou-kun,” he mumbled.

Nagata studied him for a long moment. "If you must, I suppose you can wait here," she said, making a sweeping gesture to a set of couches farther inside the room. "However, we will talk to Suzuki-kun alone."

Fukuda took in an unsteady breath, gathering the courage to say what he wanted to say. “What would have happened if they hadn’t come here voluntarily?” he asked. “How can I be sure you’ll let them go?”

Nagata’s expression darkened, her voice taking on a sharper edge. “Excuse me, but what exactly is your relation to Suzuki-kun?”

Fukuda went quiet. “I’m—” He made a vague gesture between Shou and himself, floundering for what to tell her.

Nagata kept watching him judgingly, as if there was much of anything to gather from his plain clothes and the nervous set of his shoulders.

“I understand that you’re worried, but no matter your connection, you’re just another member of Claw,” she said. “Be grateful you haven’t been arrested. If you can’t accept a simple no, it won’t stay that way.”

“You can’t—” Fukuda blurted out. “He’s a minor!”

“All the more reason not to let any strange man who walks in here speak for him,” Nagata said, confrontationally raising her chin.

Shou pinched the bridge of his nose as Fukuda gasped with outrage.

“Strange man?” he echoed. “Do you have any idea—”

“Fukuda!” Shou barked. He snapped around, ripping the door open with his powers to shove the much larger man backward to the entrance and out into the parking lot.

“I think we’ll be right back,” Serizawa mumbled behind them. He dragged his feet as he followed Shou, closing the door on his way out.

“What’re you doing?” Shou scolded, pushing Fukuda down from the doorstep. “I already planned what I’m gonna say. You’ll ruin it if you piss her off before I can even talk to them!”

Fukuda sounded like he was about to start hyperventilating. “I can’t do it. I can’t leave you alone with them.”

He hunched his back, anxiously clutching his chest. Shou grabbed his arm and dragged it down, forcing him to pay attention.

“Relax! I wanted to talk to Joseph one-on-one, remember?”

“What am I supposed to do if they take you away?” Fukuda rambled.

“They won’t,” Shou said, “and even if they tried, Serizawa’s here.”

Serizawa first nodded, then shook his head seriously. “I won’t let them take him anywhere.”

With his eyes glued to the asphalt, Fukuda stiffly raised his hands, letting his fingers touch over his mouth to silence himself.

“She’s right, you know,” Shou said. “You should go back to the apartment. You’ll just freak out even worse if you stay here.”

Fukuda inhaled, uncovering his mouth to speak. “I think these are very real problems to worry about.”

Shou patted him soothingly on the arm. “I’ll call you when you can come pick me up, it’ll be fine.”

Fukuda continued to stare emptily at the asphalt for a long time before he let his arms fall to his sides. He raised his head, glancing questioningly at Serizawa.

“Reigen-san promised he’d come meet me here,” Serizawa said, looking a little nervous about the arrangement.

Fukuda nodded absentmindedly and turned toward the car. Perplexed, Serizawa took a step forward.

“If we don’t see each other again—” he blurted out, freezing up when both Fukuda and Shou turned to watch him. He fidgeted with the sleeves of his blazer again. “If we... I just wanted to say thanks. For helping, and… I think you’re a really kind person.”

For some reason, Fukuda seemed flustered to hear this. Of course, no one usually told him things like that; it was just such an irrefutable fact that there wasn’t any need to. The sky was blue and one plus one equaled two and Fukuda was a kind person.

“You’re welcome,” he mumbled with an awkward little bow, then hurried the rest of the way to the car. There wasn’t any reason to bow. Serizawa should be the one doing the bowing.

Before escaping into the car, Fukuda stopped with his hand on the door handle, eyeing Shou with more of that infuriating, meek concern. “You’ll call me as soon as you’re done?” he asked.

“Yes, just go already,” Shou said. “I don’t trust them either. I won’t say anything stupid.”

Shou didn’t bother to wait for Fukuda to leave the driveway, but Serizawa stayed behind to watch the car disappear down the street.

The moment Shou stepped back into the reception area, Nagata stuck her head out from a doorway down the hall. “All settled?”

Shou ignored the question and stuck to glaring at her. “When is Joseph gonna get here?”

She walked out into the hall, the heels of her bright orange shoes clacking against the linoleum floor. “Well, he needed to transfer your father first. He didn’t give me an exact time.”

“How far away are they taking him anyway?” Shou glanced around the room. There was nothing to gather from it other than the vague feeling that it reminded him of a dental clinic.

“I don’t know,” Nagata said. “Not my department.”

She walked right past Shou as the door behind him opened. Serizawa came back inside, a little bewildered as Nagata immediately approached him with a kind smile and a gentle hand on his arm. She led him to the couches in the waiting area in the middle of the room.

“I’d like to talk to Suzuki-kun first, so you can wait here in the meantime,” she said, glancing distractedly at a door behind the reception desk. “Is there anything I can offer you? Coffee? Tea? I have some sandwiches if you’re hungry.”

Serizawa haltingly sat down on the couch Nagata had assigned him to, watching as Shou slowly shook his head from behind her back.

“N-no,” Serizawa stammered, breaking eye contact with Shou to focus on Nagata again. He gave her an awkward, nervous smile. “I’m fine. I don’t need anything.”

Nagata turned to Shou with a faintly exasperated look on her face. “How about you?”

“No,” Shou said with as much spite as you could pack into a one-syllable word.

It was aggravating how unaffected Nagata was by his glare. She merely let out a sigh, clasping her hands behind her back. “Suzuki-kun, if I intended to drug you, do you think I’d do it while I’m here all by myself?”

She had practically read Shou’s mind. Even though she didn’t act much like one, it was possible she really was a telepath. They had to be extra careful around her.

“I don’t know,” he shot back. “Joseph was stupid enough to try and fight my pops and the Super Five at the same time. Maybe being an idiot is a government requirement.”

Nagata snorted a laugh that was brief but genuine.

“Fair enough,” she admitted, quickly reducing the crooked grin on her face to her default smile. “We’ll talk in here.” She gestured to the room she had come out from earlier. “Do you care to join me? You can put down your backpack, it looks heavy.”

Shou let his eyes meet Serizawa’s for a second, then curled his fingers around the straps of his bag and followed Nagata inside.

The improvised interrogation room was just as barren as everything else in the building, holding little more than a cheap table with three folding chairs placed around it. The lack of windows only further convinced Shou that this place used to be some kind of doctor’s office. The ceiling lights felt clinical and the cupboards on the back wall looked like something to store medical supplies.

Shou dropped his backpack on the floor and took the seat Nagata pointed him to, side-eyeing a camera standing on a tripod in the back of the room.

“Why's there a camera?”

“It's standard procedure to record interviews so nobody has to sit and write a transcript while we talk,” Nagata explained, leaving the door open before she took a seat across from Shou.

Shou frowned at her. “Why do you need a transcript?”

“It's hard to remember everything you say without it,” she said, tilting her head a little. “We don't want to get it wrong.”

Shou distracted himself by picking at the edge of the table. The surface was coming loose; one of those cheap ones, little more than a prettied-up piece of particleboard.

“I'm very sorry to hear about everything that happened to you,” Nagata said, her voice soft and understanding.

“No, you’re not, you don't even know me,” Shou muttered.

“You should know, I collaborate with the child welfare services,” Nagata went on. “I thought you’d prefer to talk to me rather than a regular social worker, since I’m already familiar with Claw.”

Shou looked up at her. What did child services have to do with anything?

“What, did you infiltrate Claw, too?” he asked skeptically.

“No,” Nagata solemnly said. “You’re not the first child we’ve gotten away from them.”

She folded her hands in her lap, leaning back in her seat. The flimsy backrest creaked a little.

“Do you know why the government started looking into Claw?” she asked. “Two kids, younger than you, escaped after being tortured and nearly killed. To awaken their psychic powers, they said. We linked it to a lot of other disappearances in the last few years.” She studied Shou for a long moment. “Did you know something like that was happening?”

Shou nodded. Kids were usually the easiest to kidnap. And the most impressionable.

Nagata waited for him to speak in patient silence. Shou wanted to ask her about it—where she’d been, who they’d rescued, if it was anyone he knew, but he wasn’t about to disclose anything more to this woman than he absolutely had to.

He didn’t understand why she was looking at him with such sadness in her eyes. She blinked when she realized Shou was staring back at her, quickly snapping herself out of it, then cleared her throat before she resumed her questioning.

“Can I ask where you're staying right now?” she prompted.

Shou crossed his arms, peering out the open door. He couldn’t see Serizawa from where he was sitting, but his aura was there, restless yet steadying in its familiarity.

“I’m not here to talk about me,” he said.

Nagata kept quiet after that. The silence stretched on, turning unpleasant while she searched for something among the neatly stacked paperwork in front of her, full of highlighted words Shou hoped referred to something other than him. He nervously drummed his fingers on his arm. How would she know anything about him anyway?

On a sudden impulse, he pushed his chair backward with a shrill screech, successfully startling her. Nagata watched with her eyebrows raised high as he grabbed his backpack and proceeded to pull out a rumpled selection of notebooks. He dropped the stack on the table with a sound smack before he sat back down and dug the list of names he’d written out of his jacket pocket, placing it on top of everything else with a challenging stare.

Nagata pressed her lips together and nodded like she was impressed, then silently resumed looking through her notes. Shou scowled at her. He could just get up and leave, go back out into the hall and talk to Serizawa until Joseph showed up, but that would be giving up. That’d be giving away that he had felt increasingly uneasy ever since he stepped into this room.

His leg bounced restlessly under the table. She was doing this on purpose. Playing mind games until he slipped up and said something he shouldn’t have. Hell, if she was a telepath, she didn’t even have to wait for him to speak.

“You’re an esper,” he snapped, more of an accusation than a question.

“Yes,” she said without looking up, “I’m an empath.”

She probably didn’t need to be an empath to notice Shou’s dismay when she told him that. Empaths were worse than telepaths. Thoughts could be controlled, but emotions? They only became more obvious if you tried to pretend they weren’t there.

It was pointless, but Shou still did his best to scoff carelessly. “That’s pretty useless.”

Nagata raised her head and smiled at him. “Well, I can’t fight like you do, but I can always tell when someone’s bluffing.”

He glowered at her warily, resolving not to think or feel anything from then on.

It felt like an eternity before they could hear Joseph shove the front entrance open. When he strode into the interrogation room, he was in the middle of fishing a cigarette out of its pack.

“Sorry for the wait,” he mumbled distractedly, letting the door slam behind him.

“You don't smoke in here,” Nagata said without even looking at him.

“I won't, sheesh,” Joseph grumbled, simply letting the unlit cigarette hang from his lips. He took the chair next to Nagata, frowning at the pile of notebooks in front of Shou. “You sure came prepared.”

Nagata got up to turn on the camera, reciting a speech she clearly knew by heart—stating everyone’s names and the date and occasion. At the end, she sat back down and signaled for Joseph to go ahead.

“Well,” he said, gesturing languidly at Shou, “you wanted to talk, so where do we begin?”

Shou took the sheets of lined paper from atop the notebooks and pushed them across the table. “I'll tell you everything I know about Claw if you promise to leave the people on this list alone.”

Joseph looked like he was trying not to laugh. “This is an interview, kid, not a negotiation.”

“Don't call me kid,” Shou warned him.

“Right,” he huffed, plucking the cigarette from his lips to point it at Shou. “How many times do I have to tell you I don't make the decisions? I'm a spy. My job is to investigate and neutralize any threats to this country.”

“Guess I'll leave, then.” Shou snatched the papers off the table and stood up, reaching for his backpack on the floor.

“Wait, let me see those,” Joseph ruefully indulged him, reaching out for the papers.

Shou stopped what he was doing to glare at him. “You’re not even Japanese. What do you care about this country?”

“They pay me a lot of money,” Joseph said, placing the unlit cigarette back in his mouth.

At least he was honest. Shou handed him back the papers.

“This is a long list,” Joseph commented. “Your own guys of course,” he nodded, scanning through Shou’s cramped scribbles. “I don’t know any of these other names.”

“They’re everyone I could think of who aren’t involved,” Shou explained, sitting back down.

“Not involved?”

“Like they joined Claw by force, or they were kidnapped. Kids…” He gave Nagata a brief glance. “Just people I know are alright.”

Joseph shuffled through the other pages, quickly skimming through them until he paused at a name midway through. He turned his head to Nagata, narrowing his eyes questioningly. “Iida Yoshito?”

“Division Two,” Nagata replied. She quickly searched through her own paperwork, jotting down a short note on one page. “He was an informant.”

She didn’t act on it, but there was no way she didn’t pick up on Shou’s surprise. He knew Iida had tipped off the authorities sometimes, but not that he’d go so far as to spy for the government. Pops struck down hard on that sort of thing.

Joseph hummed in response to Nagata’s explanation and continued reading. Shou felt disoriented. What did she mean was an informant? Was this why he’d seemed so suspicious of the agents who’d been posted around the crater? Why he had warned Shou about them? Something happened to make him lose faith in them?

“Serizawa,” Joseph said once he reached the last page. “Depends on what he has to say for himself. I mean, the guy is strong, but he’s also dumb as shit. Not one to act on his own as far as I’ve seen.”

As if the sudden bout of confusion hadn’t been enough—Shou really didn’t expect the spark of anger that flared up in him at Joseph’s description. It was enough for Nagata to narrow her eyes at him suspiciously.

“How well do you two know each other?” she asked.

Shou knew he’d already put himself on thin ice. He shrugged carefully before he answered. He just had to stay calm and stick to the truth as much as possible. It wasn’t him who’d done anything wrong, it was everyone else.

“Serizawa’s been following my pops around for the last three years, but I almost never see my pops, so...”

“You never had anything to do with the Super Five, then?” Joseph asked.

Shou shook his head. “You should ask Serizawa about them. He knows them a lot better than I do.”

“Okay then,” Joseph said flatly. He once again removed the cigarette from his lips, picked up the final sheet from Shou’s list, and pointed at the last three names. Shou had written them with a different pen since he hadn’t decided to add them until the last moment before he left the apartment.

“Do my eyes deceive me, or are these three more of the Super Five that you’re asking us to spare?”

Shou wasn’t happy about having to defend Shibata or Hatori or especially Minegishi either, but a promise was a promise. “They actually stuck around and helped keep the situation under control,” he said bitterly. “I said I’d let you guys know.”

“Not one, but four out of five of the espers from your dad’s inner circle just happened to talk to you, helping us all out of the goodness of their hearts?”

“If you hadn’t been busy being unconscious or whatever the hell you were doing, maybe you would’ve noticed they turned on my pops,” Shou sniped. “They want to stop Claw, too. Why else do you think Serizawa would come here?”

Joseph cocked his head. “You seem awfully defensive of these people.”

“No, I'm not, I'm just trying to make sure you don’t make everything worse!” Shou gestured frustratedly at the list. “What’s so weird about giving them a chance? There’s no way you don’t already know they took out a ton of espers from HQ. I think you’d get a lot more out of making them do the work for you than locking them up.”

“Oh, now you know exactly what they’ve been doing, too?” Joseph huffed.

Shou fixed his eyes on the notebooks in front of him and did his best to take in a deep, steadying breath. He was letting Joseph rile him up. It wasn’t smart.

“I want to help,” he said.

“All I’ve heard from you so far are demands,” Joseph drawled.

“I wanna help fight them.”

Joseph glanced at Nagata again, shaking his head amusedly. Nagata didn’t look amused at all.

“When you said you’d tell us about Claw, what exactly did you have in mind?” Joseph asked, humoring Shou after all. “We’ve already done our research.”

“All you’ve been focusing on is HQ, but like I said, HQ's done for,” Shou said. “It's the subdivisions you have to worry about. I know more useful things about them than even my pops.”

“Is that so,” Joseph said in a highly doubtful tone.

“I know their bases, I know the Scars and what powers they have, I know their agendas, I even know who's been sponsoring them, where they get their supplies, which of your government buddies have been helping them—” Shou's voice grew louder the longer he went on, but Joseph's stoic face didn't change at all, "—it was my job to keep an eye on them and I was planning on tearing the whole thing down myself, so I have a lot of notes, okay?”

He shoved the pile of notebooks forward for emphasis. The top ones slid off, revealing loose pages covered in Shou’s scribbled handwriting and random doodles.

“It was your job, huh.” Joseph gave a slow nod, like he was entertaining the play-pretend fantasy stories of a little kid. “You'll have to be more specific than that,” he said. “Tell me about one of your divisions.”

Shou nodded at the list. “Do you promise to leave those people alone?”

“I can’t promise that,” Joseph shrugged. “My word isn’t worth much in the first place.”

“If you give us good reason to trust your judgment, then I’ll see what I can do,” Nagata broke in.

She didn’t plaster it in smiles and polite gestures; she actually sounded both truthful and interested. Shou looked between the two of them skeptically. He could just hold out an olive branch—if he told them about one subdivision, he’d still have the rest left as leverage.

“Pick a division, then,” he said.

“Division Four,” Joseph decided with a sweep of his hand.

Division Four. Shou couldn’t tell if Joseph was actually being smart about this or if he’d just made a lucky pick, but as far as eradicating the subdivisions went, number four was a good place to start.

Shou quickly unearthed the notebook he needed from the rest of the pile. Apart from HQ, Division Four had the most connections to people outside the organization—various businesses, contractors, black market dealers, and most importantly, state employees who could be paid to look the other way while Claw did their thing. They didn’t have many powerful espers, but they brought in the money and they actually did it well.

Shou flipped through the pages as he talked, trying to focus on the details that the government couldn’t possibly know already, occasionally showing Joseph a crudely drawn floor plan or a newspaper clipping wedged in between the pages.

The notes were probably difficult to make sense of for anyone who wasn’t Shou—lines scribbled haphazardly in every which direction, ordered by theme rather than date of entry, accumulated across the few visits he’d given the division in the last two years. He didn’t need a neat logbook anyway, he just needed to remember stuff.

Joseph broke in with a question here and there, but Nagata listened in silence the whole time. Occasionally, she would jot down notes of her own and it made Shou freeze up every time, momentarily forgetting what he wanted to say.

He tried not to feel self-conscious about the number of personal notes and sketches that were strewn out across the pages. Random life drawings. Stupid caricatures of the resident Scars next to Shou’s notes about them. Tiny doodles of Nezumi in the margins. A grumpy-looking Higashio from shortly after Pops put him under Shou’s watch. Seagulls from one time he and Fukuda had gone out to the coast in the middle of a storm.

Joseph didn’t look as stoic by the time Shou had finished talking. “Okay, you’ve done your homework,” he admitted.

“Yeah, I have.” Shou shut the notebook, placing it on the top of the others. “So, are you gonna let me help now?”

“You could just keep talking. It’ll be plenty useful to have you on hand for more information. Identifying people. Stuff like that.”

“You know that’s not what I meant,” Shou said, glaring at him.

Joseph leaned forward, pointedly tapping the tip of his cigarette on the table. “You’re not going to fight anyone, got it? Believe it or not, the government has standards. How old are you? Eleven? ”

“Thirteen,” Nagata supplied.

“I’m not gonna advocate we recruit a thirteen-year-old, and even if I did, nobody in their right mind would approve it.”

“Why not?” Shou asked. “What does it matter how old I am?”

Joseph exasperatedly closed his eyes. “I don’t even know where to begin.”

Shou pointed at him accusingly. “You had a mission to bring Claw down, right? You didn’t do anything at all! I was the one who made everything come together so they couldn’t take over the city. I was the one who made sure my pops gave himself up. I’m better at your job than you are!”

“I think you’re giving yourself a bit too much credit there,” Joseph huffed.

Shou got up from his chair, seething with anger. “If you don’t let me in on what you’re doing, I’m not gonna tell you another word!”

Joseph eyed the notebooks for a moment, then shook his head. “It’s not gonna happen, kid. Don’t waste your energy.”

“Then what am I supposed to do?” Shou shouted, leaning over the table. “I can’t just sit and do nothing!”

“That’s what I’m here to help with,” Nagata said. “Please sit back down, Suzuki-kun. I think it’s time we talk about that.”

Shou ignored her, keeping his anger on Joseph. “Did you just lie about protecting all those people on my list?”

“Nagata already told you she’ll see what she can do,” he replied.

Shou gritted his teeth and straightened up. It was okay. He was just letting himself get riled up again, making himself look bad. He’d gotten what he came for. Hopefully, no one he cared about was going to jail or a laboratory or anything like that.

Joseph kept his eyes on Shou until he rigidly gave in and sat back down.

“Officially, Suzuki Touichirou died in the explosion,” he stated with the same careless indifference as when he’d told Shou they would henceforth use his father as a lab rat. “That means you’re without a legal guardian.”

Shou didn’t know how to respond. “Can I talk to him at all…?”

“No,” Joseph said.

Nagata was rifling through her papers, bringing forth a few sheets printed with forms and official-looking text. “I’ve read through your personal documents, but there are no medical records and nothing stating that you’ve been in the education system since you were eight. Nothing else written about you since then. Does that sound right?”

Nobody had given this woman permission to pry into his life like that. Shou clenched his hands into fists and nodded, hoping she wasn’t trying to catch him in a lie and would immediately conjure up something from after he was eight. A lot of things had happened since then. Illegal things. Some of which he wasn’t exactly proud of.

“Your mother,” Nagata prompted, the change of subject curt and disorientating. “She changed her name, didn’t she? Have you been in contact with her?”

Shou frowned at her. “Why?”

Nagata shifted back to her gentle, understanding, utterly fake demeanor. “I think the most natural step for you right now would be to move in with her.”

“Who says I want to do that?” Shou muttered, head turned toward the door and Serizawa’s aura behind it. He didn’t plan for this. This wasn’t what he came here to talk about.

“As long as you’re a minor, you need to stay somewhere with adult supervision,” Nagata explained. “If your mother or someone else with a close relation to you isn’t an option, usually what we’d do is find a foster home.”

Shou’s mind felt like it had short-circuited. He clenched his fists so tight his nails dug into his palms.

“Suzuki-kun, I’m here to help you,” Nagata said softly. “You don’t have to decide anything right this moment, I’m just trying to understand your situation. Can I ask you again where you’re staying?”

Shou realized he didn't even know what to call the others.

“With some friends,” he mumbled.

“Like Fukuda,” Nagata concluded.

“All of them are on the list.” Shou gestured weakly at the pieces of paper in front of Joseph. “So I guess whether they’re even free to go is up to you.”

“I see,” Nagata sighed. “Maybe you can give me Fukuda’s phone number?”

Shou propped his elbows on the table and buried his face in his hands. Like giving Fukuda’s number to Mom hadn’t been bad enough.

“I still think it would be a good idea to talk to your mother as soon as possible,” she continued. “If you can tell me her new name, that would help a lot.”

“Are you gonna drag her into Pops’ trial?” Shou hollowly asked. “She doesn’t want anything to do with Claw.”

“There won’t be a trial,” Joseph said.

Of course there wouldn’t be a trial. What a stupid question. But Shou wasn’t supposed to tell anyone about his mother. He’d promised her that. He’d promised himself that.

“As I said, it’s either this or I will start making arrangements to find a foster home for you once we’re done with these interviews,” Nagata reminded him.

Shou usually appreciated when people were blunt and quick on the trigger, but this was overdoing it. Maybe that was why he answered. She simply wasn’t giving him enough time to consider the consequences.

“Her name’s Koshiba Kaiko.” It came out as a weird whisper. He immediately regretted saying anything, but it was too late to backtrack. Nagata had already written it down.

“And a phone number?” she requested.

If Nagata had decided to find his mother, she was going to find her whether Shou helped or not. He found the number on the contact list on his phone, wordlessly showing her the screen.

“What about Fukuda?” she asked again. “Or maybe you can give me an address instead?”

“If anyone from Claw finds out I’ve told you all this, they’re gonna hunt me down,” Shou huffed despondently.

“I know,” Nagata said. “We’ll be watching you, in case something like that happens. For now, you can make this easy by telling me the information I ask for. Otherwise, I’ll have to pry until I can find it out myself.”

Shou bitterly found Fukuda’s number, showing her that as well. “I’m not just gonna let them do whatever they want.”

Nagata wrote down the number, put down her pen, and looked at him calmly. “You’re Suzuki Touichirou’s son, undoubtedly a powerful esper, and you just told us at length about your involvement in your father’s terrorist organization. We can’t let you do whatever you want.”

“Then let me help so you can see I’m not on their side!” Shou yelled at her, slamming his hands onto the table hard enough to make the whole thing rattle.

Nagata didn’t seem very affected by the outburst. “You’ll stay out of it,” she said. “I understand you haven’t been used to anyone setting boundaries for you, so I’m being very lenient, but none of this is up for negotiation.”

Every instinct was screaming at Shou to flee. Nagata couldn’t fight and Joseph supposedly wasn’t much of a threat either, it’d be easy.

Nagata cut right into his train of thought. “If you’re thinking of starting a fight, it’ll only make matters worse for you. I really am trying to help you. Don’t do something stupid like running away.”

“Or what?” Shou sneered.

“Or I can’t promise I can get away with treating you like any ordinary child.”

Shou didn’t know who to direct his anger at anymore, so he just stood there and seethed while Nagata observed him.

“Suzuki-kun, do you have any questions?” she asked. “If not, we’ll take a break and then we’ll talk to Serizawa-san.”

Shou furiously grabbed his backpack from the floor and reached for his notebooks, but Nagata shot up from her seat and planted a hand on them, dragging them toward her.

“We’ll be taking these.”

Shou stared at her, outraged. “No, you can’t just take my stuff!”

“Will you be keeping information from us simply because we won’t let you have your way?” she drilled him. “If that’s the case, I have to question how serious you are about ending Claw.”

Shou didn’t even know what to say, so he just stood there helplessly.

Nagata straightened the notebooks until they lay in just as neat a stack as her other documents. “Will Fukuda drive you back to where you’re staying?”

Shou flusteredly slipped on his backpack. It took him a couple of seconds to process that he was being talked to. “I guess,” he mumbled hazily, steering for the door.

“Wait.” She made her way around to block the exit. “Before you leave, call him and tell him to come pick you up.”

Again, Shou could only glare at her in disbelief.

“Cut him some slack, Nagata,” Joseph huffed, scooting his chair out from the table. “What’s it been, an hour and he already hates you.”

Nagata only narrowed her eyes at Shou. “I will call your mother and I will check up on you, both later this evening and tomorrow.”

“Whatever.” Shou shoved past her into the hall, nearly walking into Serizawa’s chest.

Serizawa raised his hands, letting them hover near Shou’s shoulders. “I could hear you yell,” he whispered, ducking his head when he noticed Nagata. “Is everything okay?”

Shou grabbed his arm and dragged him along to the couches in the middle of the hall, coaxing him to sit down. Serizawa watched with wide eyes as Shou dropped into the seat next to him, leaning toward him conspiratorially.

“Joseph thinks you’re too dumb to act on your own, and that lady Nagata’s gonna eat it up if you just talk about how much they manipulated you,” Shou said. “She’s an empath, so make sure to feel really sad and regretful.”

Serizawa blinked at him confusedly. “But I am really sad and regretful.”

“Good.” Shou leaned in closer, never breaking eye-contact. “Don’t tell them any more than you have to. Anything bad Pops made you do that they won’t be able to prove, it didn’t happen, okay?”

Serizawa squirmed to free himself of Shou’s grip. “I thought the point of coming here was to tell them everything we know,” he whispered back.

“I tried being honest and now they’re just gonna use it against me!”

Serizawa’s gaze dropped to his hands in his lap. “I don’t want to lie,” he murmured, picking at the skin around his fingernails.

Shou irritatedly forced his hands apart, bringing Serizawa’s attention back on him. “Do you want to be put in a lab and experimented on?”

“No,” he said, barely audible.

“Then do as I say. You’re just a poor, naive shut-in who got picked up by a bad crowd and couldn’t leave because you were afraid of the consequences. That’s not a lie.”

The resolute clacks of Nagata’s heels alerted Shou to her presence before she made it across the hall.

“Suzuki-kun,” she said sharply. Shou turned to find her squinting at him suspiciously again. “I nearly forgot, in case you need to get a hold of me.”

She held out a plain, white business card. Shou reached for it, but she didn’t let go.

“Don’t do anything stupid,” she insisted once again. She released her card, raising her head to smile at Serizawa. “I’ll just get a cup of coffee and then you can come with me, Serizawa-san.”

Nagata disappeared into the kitchenette behind the reception desk while Joseph sauntered outside to finally smoke his cigarette. Shou turned the business card over to find Nagata’s name and phone number printed next to the logo of the National Police Agency. It seemed to have very little to do with child services.

Next to him, Serizawa had started sweating again, his face turning pale, his hands trembling. “I’m not good at lying,” he muttered. “I think I did some really bad things.”

It was a terrible time to come to that realization, Shou hoped he wasn’t about to break out into another anxiety attack. He tried to remember what Fukuda had done last time. He couldn’t put Serizawa to bed, but he could calm him down.

“It’s not lying, you’re just omitting a few details,” Shou argued while Serizawa tried his best to keep his shaking hands under control, clinging to the fabric of his slacks. “Focus on the good things. You got that job with Reigen and you’re ready to start over and become a better person or whatever. Reigen’s good at talking bullshit like that, right? He can back you up when he gets here.”

Serizawa sniffled, breaking into a watery smile. “I know you don’t like me, but thank you for helping so much. I don’t deserve it.”

Shou averted his eyes as he stuffed Nagata’s business card into his pocket and stood up. “Well, I don’t think you deserve to be locked in a lab either.”

It didn’t take long before Nagata and Joseph were ready to get back to work. Shou lingered by the front door while they led Serizawa into the interrogation room. He raised his hand to wave a wordless, awkward goodbye to the man. Serizawa looked sweaty and miserable, but he waved back.

Shou went outside, pondering his options. It was completely absurd that they wouldn’t let him help. He knew more than them. He was probably at least as strong as any of their government-employed espers. Dismantling Claw was something he started; it was only by chance they’d joined the resistance in the middle of Pops carrying out his world domination plans.

Judging from what each of them took an interest in, Joseph and Nagata didn’t normally work together. Nagata only focused on the victims while Joseph was busy looking for targets, scoping out who was still a threat. He might be an idiot, but he was far more useful overall. Iida had seen him transport several of the old Scars out of the city, practically confirming that he was regularly involved in taking the espers they caught to jail.

Shou glanced over his shoulder at the window-less stretch of wall where the interrogation room must be. He wasn’t sure about Joseph or Nagata, but Serizawa would definitely notice if his aura stuck around too long or abruptly disappeared.

He set off down the street they had come from earlier, walking a couple of hundred meters before he felt his phone vibrate in his pocket. He exhaled an irritated sigh when he checked the screen. Of course it was Fukuda.

Shou sent him a quick text saying he didn’t have time to talk, just so he wouldn’t freak out again, worrying Nagata had kidnapped him or that he was dead or something. Fukuda could go really overboard with his worrying when he had a day like today, but Joseph was more important right now. Shou silenced both the phone and his aura completely, turned himself invisible, and doubled back.

He sat down on a bench across from the office and waited. The number of cars and pedestrians traversing the street had dwindled while he’d been inside. Most people were home eating dinner around this time.

Maybe Joseph would go back to the facility where he’d taken Pops once he finished questioning Serizawa. Or maybe he’d go to the hotel where Iida had found out he had a room. There might be some information to dig up among his belongings.

Shou’s fingers were icy cold by the time Reigen walked up to the government office. He watched him open the still unlocked door, sterile, white light spilling out into the parking lot. Shou tucked his hands under his armpits, watching his breath form small clouds of vapor, escaping the veil that bent the light away from the rest of him. He had to work on that sometime.

Reigen must have needed his persuasion skills because it took a long time and a lot of strange fluctuations of Serizawa’s aura before they came outside. Shou wondered if Nagata and Joseph would even have let Serizawa go if it weren’t for him. Serizawa looked so tired and grateful when they walked away, nodding along while Reigen animatedly explained something.

Shou kept waiting until a cab pulled up to the side of the road in front of the building. Joseph came out, lighting up a cigarette that the driver would surely tell him to put out a moment later.

A cab probably meant Joseph would stay in the city for now. Fine. He would’ve liked a clue on where their esper jail was, but Shou doubted he could keep up with a car driving at highway-speed while remaining undetected. Trying to contain your aura and levitate at the same time was like thinking in two opposite directions.

He didn’t have to follow the car for long. The driver stopped in front of a small, anonymous hotel to drop Joseph off. Shou followed him inside, silently slipping in next to him as he entered the building’s elevator. He was already picking out another cigarette. The guy had a serious nicotine problem.

The elevator arrived on the fourth floor and Joseph went ahead to unlock the door to his room with a keycard. Shou followed his movements, making his way inside like a second, invisible shadow.

Joseph discarded his jacket as soon as he’d shut the door, throwing it over the back of a chair tucked under a small desk. He flicked open the lighter hanging from around his neck, holding his cigarette to the small electric spark it emitted. Shou observed carefully, stretching to see around Joseph’s shoulder as he took out his phone and unlocked the screen. He skimmed through a text message—something about someone being dead—then threw the phone on the desk with a frustrated huff of smoke.

Shou nearly didn’t step away in time when Joseph turned around and walked into the bathroom, shutting the door behind him. Shortly after, the shower was turned on. He’d counted on waiting until Joseph left again or fell asleep or something, but this worked, too.

He picked up Joseph’s phone, quickly repeating the code he’d entered a moment earlier to unlock the screen. Shou grabbed his own phone from his pocket, faltered briefly at a notification telling him he had seven missed calls, then hurriedly navigated through Joseph’s emails, text messages, and photos, taking pictures of anything that seemed useful at a glance.

There was a locked suitcase on the floor—just a padlock, but Shou had nothing to pick it with. Carefully, he reached out his aura to shift the pins inside, only releasing exactly the small force that was needed. He nervously glanced at the bathroom door behind him as the lock sprung open.

Among several cartons of cigarettes, there were a few binders inside the suitcase: profiles on various espers, reports, even some of what looked like Joseph’s own notes. Shou took as many pictures as he could before the noise from the shower stopped. He zipped up the suitcase, made sure everything else lay exactly as Joseph had left it, then silently let himself out into the hallway.

Shou hurried out from the hotel, keeping a brisk pace as he realized he wasn’t even sure where he was. He found his phone again and was confronted with the fact that it was past ten in the evening and the missed phone call counter had ticked up to eight.

Most of the calls were from Fukuda, a few from Ootsuki. Had Nagata talked to them? It’d been a long time since Fukuda dropped Shou and Serizawa off at the government stakeout. They were probably just wondering where he went, it didn’t have to mean anything bad happened.

He came to a halt next to a bus stop shelter with a map of the city on the back wall, distractedly looking it over while he waited for Fukuda to pick up.

“Shou?” It was Ootsuki’s voice on the other end, slightly out of breath, like he’d run to the phone.

“Where’s Fukuda?” Shou asked. Hopefully, they hadn’t tried to murder each other while he’d been away.

“Where’s—” Ootsuki made a disbelieving noise. “Where are you? That government lady called Fukuda and asked if he’d picked you up. She said you left hours ago!”

Ootsuki was interrupted by unintelligible squabbling as the phone was taken from him. Shou didn't even allow Fukuda to speak before demanding, “What did you tell Nagata?”

Fukuda sounded too tired to work up any noteworthy amount of distress. It was a stark contrast to how he’d acted when he left in the afternoon.

“I told her you were with us,” he said. “What else was I supposed to do? Where have you been?”

“Joseph wouldn’t tell me anything useful or let me help with their investigation or anything, so guess what, I just followed him back to his hotel,” Shou laughed scornfully. “I took a bunch of pictures of his phone and some documents he had. I don’t know if we can use it for anything, but we can look through it. Maybe I can find out what they’re doing with Pops.”

Shou faltered at the silence he got in response.

“Are you coming back here now?” Fukuda asked.

“Yeah, I’m already on my way,” Shou said.

More silence.

“Did something else happen?” Shou asked. “You sound weird.”

“Just be careful,” Fukuda replied with no emotion to his tone whatsoever. “I’ll see you soon.”

He hung up. Shou slowly lowered his phone, staring blankly at the screen. Something was very wrong. Really, really wrong.

He took a bus back to the other end of the city, idly swiping through the pictures from Joseph’s room to distract himself. Emails and reports went by in a blur. He couldn’t focus on any of the words.

When he reached the apartment, Fukuda and Higashio were sitting across from each other at the kitchen table. Ootsuki had been relegated to the couch, slouching with his arms crossed and a sullen frown on his face. All of them turned their heads when Shou opened the front door.

“Hey,” Shou said, a little weirded out by the undivided attention.

Nobody replied. Nobody even made eye contact with him. Fukuda turned to face Higashio again, supporting his forehead with his hands.

Shou irritatedly shut the door and threw his backpack on the floor. “Is anyone gonna tell me what’s going on?” he snapped. “I mean, sorry I’m late and I didn’t answer my phone, but I actually had shit to do.”

Higashio stared intensely at Fukuda. They had been talking about him again. Of course they had. That was all they’d done these last few days. Talked about him instead of telling him whatever was so secret to his face.

“What is it?” Shou demanded. “What’s the fucking problem, just tell me already!”

Higashio leaned forward, trying to get Fukuda to look him in the eye. “Do you want me to stay here?” he asked, weirdly soft-spoken.

Fukuda didn’t look up, just shook his head listlessly.

“Okay.” Higashio abandoned his chair and went to pull Ootsuki up from the couch by the back of his shirt.

For half a second, it looked like Ootsuki was about to start another fight, but in the end he only shoved Higashio’s hand away and followed him willingly. He gave an apologetic shrug before he joined Higashio in the hallway, leaving Shou and Fukuda behind to stew in an unbearable silence.

Fukuda made a weak gesture to the chair Higashio had just left. “Will you sit down?”

“Don’t make a big scene out of it, just tell me what’s wrong,” Shou said, marching around the table.

Fukuda watched him with an unsettling, hollow look in his eyes as he waited for him to settle down.

“Do you know why I wanted you to talk to your mother?” he asked.

Shou threw up his arms in exasperation. “Why does everyone keep talking about Mom? Nagata kept saying I have to move in with her because it’s the most natural step or whatever.”

“I know…” Fukuda rested his elbows on the table, supporting his forehead on his hand, avoidantly focusing on the box of screws Higashio must have been using to fix something or other. “...That’s what I think as well.”

“What?” Shou stared at him incredulously. “You told Mom she shouldn’t get involved yourself, and we’re not done yet. I don’t want to put her in danger. Moving in with her would be a really bad idea!”

Fukuda clasped his hands together, straightening up with a face that seemed more suitable for discussing battle tactics than whatever this was. “Let’s be realistic,” he said. “Where else would you go?”

“What do you mean?” Shou shook his head confusedly. “We’ll just stick together. You don’t have anywhere to go either, don’t you wanna help with this?”

There was something broken and hopeless in the way Fukuda’s expression softened. “No, Shou,” he said. “I think we’re done now. I think we should let somebody else take over.”

Shou stared at him, mind completely blank as his lungs started convulsing erratically, like he’d forgotten the proper steps involved in breathing.

“What if I don’t want to stay with my mom?” he asked. He was feeling strange. Dizzy and short of breath. “All Nagata said was I need to stay with an adult. Why does it have to be her?”

Fukuda had hunched in on himself, eyes trained on his hands in his lap. He shrugged once, and then once more before he opened his mouth again.

“We aren’t family,” he said, and it was so wrong. It was wrong! He was more like family than either of Shou’s parents had been since he was in kindergarten.

The rush of blood in Shou’s ears drowned out everything else. He needed to leave. He needed to get out. He stood, circled back around the table, only to walk right into Fukuda.

“Don’t go,” he pleaded, “we have to figure this out.”

Shou recoiled when he reached for his shoulders, but Fukuda just stepped closer, letting his hands hover right by his arms, ready to grab him.

“Claw already has it out for you,” he said. “If you keep bringing attention to yourself, they'll come for you and they’ll do their best to hurt you, you know that.”

“Get out of my way,” Shou warned him.

“You don’t have to think about this anymore,” Fukuda kept blabbering. “You did what you planned for, now you have to go and live your life.”

“Move or I’ll pick you up and do it for you,” Shou growled at his chest.

“I just want you to be safe, that’s what’s most important,” Fukuda said. Shou couldn’t stand listening to any more of it.

He was lying. All he wanted was an excuse to leave. Maybe that was what hurt the most—that Fukuda wasn’t honest enough to say it like it was. That he was tired of always having to solve Shou’s problems, tired of babysitting him, tired of having to deal with a teenager he never signed up for dealing with in the first place. Shou knew he could be difficult sometimes, even irresponsible, but he honestly thought Fukuda liked him.

Fukuda’s arm quickly shot out to wrap around Shou’s collarbone when he tried to shove past him.

“You said you wouldn’t leave,” Shou shouted, struggling to free himself. Fukuda took a step back when he ripped his arm away, cowering like he expected Shou to attack him.

Deep down, he knew Fukuda had always been afraid of him. Right from the first day they met. This was just how he'd always seen him: irreparably damaged, a ticking bomb waiting to blow up in his face, and always, always his father’s son.

“If you want to leave, just say so! I already said you could. If you hate me so much, you don’t have to explain, you can just go!”

Fukuda had a horrified look on his face, but he didn’t move any closer. “I never said that. I don’t—”

“Stop lying and say what you mean!” Shou screamed at him.

Fukuda’s back hunched. He fixed his eyes on the floor, empty like his soul had left his body.

“Fukuda, just say it!” Shou ordered him.

“Can’t you see everyone’s been using you?” he blurted in a terrible, wounded tone.

Just like that, sheer confusion zapped all the fear and anger out of Shou. “What?”

“All of us knew your father wouldn’t listen,” Fukuda said. “I knew, and I still let you go on for all that time, plotting and putting yourself in danger. I let you go up against him when you didn’t even think you were ready.”

He rested a hand on his head again, fingers digging into his scalp.

“All because I wanted to believe it’d work out in the end, like some fairytale. That we could finally do something else with our lives… That I could finally do something else with my life.”

Shou threw out his arms. “What are you talking about? Good! That was the whole point!”

“What if he’d killed you?” Fukuda asked. “Then what?”

“Then too bad! You’d figure something else out. Since when do you decide what I should do?”

“All those things I let you go through.” Fukuda shook his head, staring hollowly at the floor. “Made you go through, sometimes...”

Shou had no idea what he was even referring to. “You didn’t make me do anything, I was the one in charge.”

Fukuda wasn’t listening, he just kept talking. “And you had to get this from us?” He gestured between himself and the door Higashio and Ootsuki had left through. “With the… With the upbringing each of us has had? I know what that kind of neglect does to a child, and I still let it happen to you.”

“You’re not making any sense,” Shou snapped. “I was the one who made you guys do stuff. I was responsible for you!”

Fukuda slowly brushed his hand over the top of his head. It was quivering slightly.

“I could have taken you,” he muttered. “We could’ve left the country. It would’ve taken at least a week for anyone to notice. We could have been long gone by then.”

“I wouldn’t have let you,” Shou harshly reminded him.

“I could have tried,” Fukuda said.

“Why?! To make yourself feel better?”

Shou stared at him furiously, but he knew it was a cruel thing to say. Fukuda always worried if he was being selfish, even though he never did anything for himself. He buried his face in his palms, and for a moment, Shou thought he’d made him cry, that this would be the first time he’d ever seen Fukuda cry, but there were no tears when he lowered his arms. There wasn’t even the usual worry, only steely determination.

“You’re right,” he croaked. “It was never my place to tell you what to do, but I can’t go on with this.” He let his arms drop to his sides, stubbornly avoiding Shou’s stare. “It’s not good for you to stay with me. Serizawa-san was right. You should’ve never had to do everything you’ve done. I wish I could start over, but I can’t.”

“Even if you could, I would’ve done the same thing again, so stop acting so weird,” Shou yelled at him. “Everything’s turned out fine and you’re ruining it!”

Fukuda put on a strange, wobbly smile. “I think I ought to leave you with someone else now. Your father’s gone, so you don’t need me anymore.”

Why wouldn’t he understand that he did? Shou did need him. Who else would put up with him waking them up in the middle of the night because he couldn’t sleep? Who else would bear with him for acting petty and mean when he was having a bad day? Who was going to know when he was sick or sad or scared?

For once, Shou thought there was someone he could count on, but it was just like he’d predicted from the start. Everyone always said they wouldn’t leave, and then they always did.

“If you care about my opinion at all, my opinion is you should stay with your mother,” Fukuda said with a finality that made it clear that all the yelling and screaming and reasonable arguments in the world wouldn’t change his mind. There was nothing more to do.

Shou charged past him, and this time, Fukuda didn’t stop him.

He flung the door open to find that Higashio and Ootsuki were still standing on the stairs right outside. They had undoubtedly heard at least Shou’s half of the conversation.

Higashio grabbed Shou's sleeve when he rushed past him. Shou deftly smacked his hand away and caught his forearm, squeezing it hard enough to bruise.

“Do you want a broken arm?” he said warningly.

Higashio straightened his back, regarding Shou with the same cold composure he would use around Pops. “No. I don’t.”

Shou let go of him, continuing down the stairs with his heart in his throat and a lightheaded feeling that wouldn’t go away no matter how much he blinked or rubbed his face or tried to shake it off.

Before he knew it, he’d wandered off to a part of the neighborhood he hadn’t seen before. He stopped in the middle of an empty playground and sat down on the edge of a worn-down merry-go-round, barely touched by the light from the surrounding street lamps. He hid his face in his hands, willing his head to be quiet for once. He could work things out if he could only hear himself think for a second.

He flinched when Ootsuki’s voice suddenly sounded right next to him. “Did you want me to follow you?” he asked. “You’re not usually this obvious with your aura.”

Shou raised his head, eyes flickering briefly to Ootsuki’s face and then to the ground. The best answer he could come up with was a shrug.

“I’ll leave if you want,” Ootsuki told him.

He never got a response, so in the end, he sat down next to Shou, wedged in between the bars of the merry-go-round, so close Shou had to tuck in his elbows. Shou side-eyed him, considering if he should shove him off, but it wasn’t like he was doing anything. He just sat there in companionable silence, absentmindedly rotating the disk they were sitting on back and forth with his foot, making it squeak every time it turned.

“Thanks,” Shou mumbled eventually.

The squeaking stopped and Ootsuki let out a soft, bemused huff. “For what?”

Shou picked at the weathered flecks of paint coating the bar he was leaning on. “Not asking if I’m okay.”

Ootsuki pulled his legs up onto the platform and wrapped his arms around them, glancing up at the pitch-black night sky with a pensive hum.

“Yeah,” he sighed, “since when have any of us been okay.”

They sat there until the biting autumn wind turned Shou’s fingers numb again. His head was still buzzing with half-formed solutions for what had to come next. He didn’t want any of it. All he wanted was to disappear and never come back.

It was lucky Ootsuki was there to lay an arm around his shoulders and tell him it was time to go back inside. After all, Shou never ran away from anything.

Chapter Text

Shou glowered at the battered apartment door. Higashio had done a sloppy job of fixing it; there was still an ugly crack where Serizawa had blasted the lock open. He must’ve been exhausted to overlook such an obvious mistake.

“Shou, come on,” Ootsuki sighed.

Several minutes had passed since Shou stopped on the third-floor landing. He knew he had to go inside, but he really didn’t want to. If he dragged it out just a little longer, maybe Fukuda would go to bed so they at least wouldn’t have to look at each other.

Ootsuki made a soft, frustrated noise, reaching for Shou’s shoulder with the same caution one would show a wild animal. Shou vehemently shrugged his hand off and flung the door open.

In the living room, Higashio turned his head, glancing at Shou with tired, unfocused eyes. He sat crouched next to the couch, leaning into Fukuda’s downcast field of view in what seemed like an attempt to capture his attention. Fukuda had taken the seat Serizawa used to occupy, looking every bit as miserable and detached from the world as Serizawa had before.

Higashio had placed a hand on his arm. It was weird—Fukuda didn’t like when people touched him. When he was this upset, it was best to let him zone out by himself until he was ready to go back to normal. Higashio should know that, but the frown on his face was so blatantly worried that maybe holding on to Fukuda’s sweater sleeve was more for his own comfort than anything else.

Ootsuki’s fingertips graced Shou’s shoulder again, prompting him to walk around the kitchen table. Out of habit, Shou continued down the hallway toward his and Fukuda’s bedroom, but Ootsuki looped an arm around him and turned him the other way, pointing to his own room.

“Maybe it’s better if you sleep in here again,” he mumbled.

Shou silently agreed. His mind was heavy with a level of exhaustion that’d take more than a single night’s rest to cure, but there was no way he could fall asleep lying next to Fukuda—or on the couch where Serizawa had sat so long his misery had soaked into the cushions, lingering there like a malignant curse.

Ootsuki kept hovering nearby while Shou found a change of clothes. Shou wished he’d stop fussing over him. It was getting increasingly difficult to fight down the tears clouding his vision, and he would not cry on Ootsuki’s bed again.

“It’s okay if—” Ootsuki tried to say.

Shou slammed the bathroom door in his face so he could brush his teeth in peace. He stood in there for a long time, tracing the grooves between the floor tiles with his eyes while his toothbrush hung forgotten from his mouth.

Everything was all wrong. Ever since Shou had declared he wasn’t the leader of their weird, rag-tag team anymore, it was like everyone had forgotten their place. Ootsuki was far more clingy than usual, and Higashio no longer cared to downplay that his loyalty lay only with Fukuda.

Meanwhile, Fukuda had just given up. It was him who wanted to leave, and now, instead of making plans or doing anything useful, he’d succumbed to sitting around, grieving mistakes that shouldn’t matter anymore

Shou pulled the toothbrush from his mouth and glared at his listless, teary-eyed reflection in the bathroom mirror. He wasn’t about to fall into the same trap as him. He could keep it together.

When he returned to Ootsuki’s room, Ootsuki sat perched on the edge of the bed with his arms anxiously wrapped around himself. He quickly stood up and stepped away, giving Shou far more space to pass than necessary. Shou irritatedly laid down on his side and threw the covers over himself, scowling at the wall.

The foot of the mattress dipped a moment later. Ootsuki stepped over Shou’s legs, pausing as if to wait for any objections. Shou pulled the duvet over his nose and said nothing, so eventually, Ootsuki leaned on the wall and slid down until he sat with his knees drawn up to his chest.

Again, he just stayed there, keeping Shou company while expecting nothing in return. Shou quietly let out the breath stuck in his throat. Maybe it was better not to be alone right now. His head felt so heavy and it always gave him nightmares when he knew he couldn’t count on immediately jolting awake if he needed to.

After a while, Ootsuki subtly cleared his throat and asked, “What’s your mom like?”

“She’s nice,” Shou mumbled. He closed his eyes, trying to think of what else there was to say about her. “I mean, she forgets stuff a lot, but it’s okay.”

Ootsuki huffed a laugh that sounded strained and insincere. “Nobody’s perfect, right?”

“Mh,” Shou hummed, already half asleep.

He woke up later with no clue how long he’d slept. In the dim light filtering in around the doorframe, he could see Ootsuki, still curled up at his feet like a shaggy, faithful dog. He’d fallen asleep with his head resting on his knees, his loose hair obscuring most of his face. He never quite looked himself without his ponytail.

Shou groggily propped himself up on his elbows, his lungs feeling increasingly constricted as he watched the slow rise and fall of Ootsuki’s chest. He pushed the bedcovers away with a frustrated sniffle and stood up. This bed was just as cursed as the couch.

He edged his way into the kitchen where the light was on. Thankfully, only Higashio was up. He sat at the table, separating a heap of yen notes into several piles of varying size. He looked even scruffier than usual, probably running on even less sleep than the rest of them.

“There goes all our money,” Shou said.

Higashio irritatedly raised a finger to silence him. “I’m counting.”

Shou walked around the table, nervously holding on to the backrest of the chair in front of him. He waited while Higashio methodically picked up each bundle of money, tapped it against the tabletop until the notes were all aligned, then stowed it into a separate envelope.

“I’m sorry I said I’d break your arm,” Shou mumbled.

Higashio’s eyebrows rose as if an apology was the last thing in the world he’d expected. The look was short-lived, his eyes soon back on the last couple of envelopes. His face settled into a serious frown as he sealed them shut and placed them on top of the others in a neat stack.

“Sorry all this stuff with your mom had to drag out into some dramatic thing,” he said, pushing the envelopes aside. He rested both elbows on the table, wearily rubbing his forehead.

Shou distractedly brushed his fingers over the wooden frame of his chair. “Fukuda was really upset.”

Higashio nodded, holding his head up with one hand. “He’ll live,” he said, words muffled by the palm covering his mouth.

Shou wasn’t sure how he felt about Fukuda right now, but he hoped he’d do a little more than live.

“You promised Ritsu we’d have his house ready today,” Higashio reminded him. He peered into the half-empty coffee cup beside him before he picked it up and pushed his chair out from under the table.

“Oh.” Shou looked up at him. “Well, is it ready?”

“Almost. Missing some detail work, but I figure we can pick Ritsu up first and then...” The sentence trailed off as Higashio went to open the fridge, mug in one hand as he blankly stared at the shelves inside.

“What’re you doing?” Shou asked warily.

“You should eat something,” he said, pulling out a carton of eggs before he continued: “We pick the Kageyama kids up and then you help unpack their things while I work.”

Shou left his chair to walk to Higashio’s side, inspecting him critically as he put the mug down and went to fill the rice cooker.

“I know how to cook some rice, Shou,” he grumbled.

“No, you don’t, you’re adding too much water again.” Shou wrung the measuring cup out of his hand before he could empty it completely.

Higashio stepped away with a grouchy huff, letting Shou manage the rice cooker.

“How about you call Ritsu so we don’t have to wait for them to pack up,” he said, rifling through the cupboards for two bowls and a bottle of soy sauce instead. “I don’t have all day.”

Shou nodded and went back to Ootsuki’s room to grab his phone. Ootsuki hadn’t moved at all; he was going to wake up with a bad crick in his neck like this. Shou considered waking him up, but then he’d have to talk to him and he’d come out of his room and Higashio was there. They’d just get in another fight, it was better to leave him be.

He softly shut the door behind him while he dialed Ritsu’s number. The call was answered almost immediately.

“Did something happen?” Ritsu blurted out, not even bothering to say hello first. Despite the panicked, disoriented edge to the question, Shou was a little taken aback by how nice it was to hear his voice. A small reminder that there was still a world outside this apartment.

“Higashio finished your house,” Shou replied. “We’ll come pick you up, so pack your stuff.”

“Oh.” He could hear Ritsu breathe a subtle, relieved sigh. “Sure. It’s just… really early.”

“Is it?” Shou squinted at the clock on the kitchen’s back wall—it was barely past five in the morning. “Well, whatever, it sounds like you were up anyway.”

“I have to wake my brother up,” Ritsu mumbled distractedly.

“Yeah, It’ll probably be like an hour ‘til we get there.” Out of the corner of his eye, Shou could see Higashio shake his head. “An hour and a half?” Higashio put down the bowls of rice in his hands and gave him a thumbs-up this time. “Yeah, an hour and a half.”

He let Ritsu get on with waking up his brother, trying not to dwell on the way the brief comfort of talking to him only took an instant to evaporate.

“Eat your breakfast,” Higashio said, sliding one of the bowls across the table.

Shou walked around him and sat down. Higashio had cracked an egg over his rice, but thankfully hadn’t drowned it in soy sauce the way he’d desecrated his own meal.

Shou picked up his chopsticks, listlessly prodding the egg yolk until it punctured and bled into an uneven shape, seeping into the grains below. This was all very strange. Usually, Fukuda had to remind Higashio to eat at regular intervals just as often as he did with Shou.

“Since when do you care if I eat breakfast?” he asked, frowning at Higashio.

“Since now.” Higashio took another bite of his soy-soaked rice, chewing on it for a bit. “If you ate your three meals a day maybe you wouldn’t be such a little twerp.”

Shou couldn’t help but let out a snort, but the amusement was just another short-lived feeling, draining out of him as quickly as it had arrived.

Higashio didn’t let him leave the table until he’d emptied his bowl. Afterwards, Shou followed him outside, carrying the bag Higashio had stashed the money in over his shoulder.

Higashio stopped when they reached the sidewalk, frowning at the huge, human-shaped dent in the sedan's side with obvious disapproval. “Never got to ask. Did you do that?”

“Yeah, I guess,” Shou shrugged, taking the passenger seat. He had to slam the misshapen door twice to get it to shut properly.

Higashio merely shook his head before he got in and started the car.

The house Ritsu and his brother had been staying in was placed by the foot of a mountain, well out of Seasoning City. Beyond the highway, the narrow roads were cold and damp with early morning mist, rendering the landscape pale and dream-like.

Neither Shou nor Higashio had said anything since they left. While he had no trouble talking to people, Higashio wasn’t the chattiest person. Usually, Shou liked that about him, that it never felt like you had to come up with something to say, but the silence that had fallen over him now was strained and unpleasant.

Shou peered out the window without seeing the washed-out trees pass by. It wasn’t just the silence; Higashio was acting weird in general. He’d been very stern with Fukuda lately, but now he only seemed concerned. Concerned like he only ever was when it was him who’d made Fukuda upset—always over matters both of them refused to share, no matter how much Shou badgered them about it.

It was a slow and anticlimactic revelation when he realized what it’d all been about. In hindsight, it was so obvious.

“You told Fukuda I should move to my mom’s place, didn’t you?”

Higashio slowly exhaled through his nose, eyes firmly locked on the road ahead. “Yes.”

Maybe he was waiting for a reaction, because it took several seconds before he continued.

“It’s something we agreed on a long time ago,” he said. “If you need anyone to hate for that, it should be me.”

Shou leaned his head on the cool pane of glass in the side door. “I don’t hate you,” he mumbled.

“Then don’t hate Fukuda either.”

“I don’t hate Fukuda.”

“Good,” Higashio said, quiet and clipped.

Shou didn’t know what more to add. He didn’t want to have this conversation and everything suggested Higashio didn’t either. He raised a hand to his mouth, like he was trying to bite back what he wanted to say next and Shou knew it’d be harsh if he had to think about it that much.

“You know it’d never work out to stay with him,” he finally said. “What do you want him to do? Adopt you? All of us are practically wanted criminals, it doesn’t work like that.”

He frowned at Shou’s lack of reply, lips pressed into a thin line.

“You’ve literally been his boss for two years. He’s always treated you like you were his boss. Even now, you’re still ordering him around. You sure as hell don’t talk to me like that. You don’t even talk to Ootsuki like that.”

“I talk to Fukuda the same way as to everyone else,” Shou muttered, shrugging one shoulder.

“You’re listening right now.” Higashio leaned toward him, demonstratively pointing at his own ear. “You don’t want to hear any of this, and you’re still listening to me. If I were Fukuda, I guarantee you would’ve told me to shut up by now.”

“It’s not my fault if he gives up when he has something to say,” Shou scoffed.

“No,” Higashio cut him off, “this is on you, too.”

“You just have it all figured out, huh,” Shou sniped at him.

“I’m not so overly emotionally invested in you that I can’t see the problem, that’s what.”

Shou shifted in his seat, pointedly looking out the window again. Higashio gave him another brief glance, then shook his head ever so slightly. His voice was softer when he spoke again.

“You don’t like to be talked to like a little kid, so I’m not gonna sugarcoat this for you,” he said. “The way you act around each other is disturbing. It makes me genuinely uncomfortable sometimes. With the things that come out of your mouth, you sound like your old man. It’s unhealthy for you and it’s unhealthy for him. Better to split you up if you ask me.”

Shou leaned off the window, clenching his fists in his lap. His first impulse was to snap back at Higashio—tell him he was wrong, tell him how much of a hypocrite he was when he constantly tried to tell Fukuda what to do, too. But he knew yesterday wasn’t the first time he’d hurt Fukuda’s feelings. He didn’t mean to, but it happened all the time. Okay, maybe he did mean to sometimes when Fukuda was acting especially stupid and fussy.

He could feel tears prickling at the corners of his eyes again. He blinked them away and sat up straight, determinedly staring straight ahead.

“I’m not gonna be sad about this anymore,” he declared. “It’s not a bad thing if I can stay with Mom. That’s what I wanted, right? Kind of. And Pops can’t hurt anyone anymore, we get to give Ritsu his house back on time, and just because I move away, I can still talk to you guys.”

Higashio was side-eyeing him with a pensive look on his face. “True,” he agreed.

They drove the rest of the way in the same uncomfortable silence as before. The GPS on Shou’s phone pointed them down a secluded, winding path. At the end of it was a neat but old-fashioned house, big enough that it could be mistaken for a typical ryokan.

Ritsu was waiting in the driveway outside, dressed in the garishly orange hoodie he seemed to favor when he wasn’t in his school uniform. Shou wasn’t sure if he’d ever felt more relieved to see anyone in his life.

He couldn’t spot Ritsu’s brother anywhere, though Instead, a squad of five impressively muscular boys stood in a half-circle around him. Ritsu flinched when the biggest one gave him a friendly slap on the back, nearly knocking him over.

Ritsu walked away stiffly, holding on to the strap of the duffel bag he’d hung over his shoulder. He turned his head when he was halfway to the car, raising his hand in a vague, awkward farewell as the other boys waved enthusiastically.

“Hi Ritsu!” Shou blurted as soon as he opened one of the back doors.

Ritsu didn’t so much sit down as he exhaustedly flopped over into the backseat. “Please get me out of here,” he breathed, harrowed like he’d suffered three days of intense torture.

“Who are those guys?” Shou asked. He was sitting on his knees, inquisitively leaning over the backrest of his seat.

“Just some of my brother’s friends,” Ritsu said.

“Seriously?” Shou ducked his head to take another look at the boys. He couldn’t picture Ritsu’s usually anemic, soft-spoken brother hanging out with some of the buffest teenagers he’d ever seen. The more he found out about the boy, the weirder he got.

“They’re nice enough,” Ritsu said. “Nii-san always talks about them. They’re just very…” he struggled to find an appropriate word, “...intense.”

“Your brother didn’t want to come with you?” Higashio asked, glancing at Ritsu over his shoulder.

Ritsu stiffened like he’d forgotten that he and Shou weren’t alone. “I tried to wake him up, but he could barely keep his eyes open,” he explained. “The others said there’s a bus going back to the city, though.”

Higashio nodded in acknowledgment, turning his attention to the windshield as he started the car. Ritsu slowly relaxed his shoulders, somberly glancing out the window instead.

“He’s been sleeping most of the time, ever since the explosion happened,” he added darkly.

He’d clearly had way too much time to brood over this. When you thought about it, it wasn’t strange that someone would need a few days to recover after expending the insane amount of psychic energy Ritsu’s brother had done.

“My pops was out cold for like two days,” Shou said. “And then he got a fever and his hair was falling out and stuff. I guess that’s just what happens.”

Ritsu fiddled with the strap on his bag. “Where is he now?”

“Locked up,” Shou said. “The government’s got him.”

“Sit down and put on your seatbelt,” Higashio interrupted them, tugging on Shou’s arm.

“Okay, Fukuda,” Shou heckled, slapping his hand away. “What’s with you today?”

“Don’t know about you, but I’d rather not get pulled over by the cops.”

Ritsu realized he hadn’t buckled up either, quickly strapping his own seatbelt across his chest. With an annoyed groan, Shou threw himself back in his seat, planting his shoes on the dashboard. His heel connected with the top of the glove compartment, making the cover spring open, nearly spilling out the mess of papers, odd tools, and—

“Oh.” Shou dropped his feet to the floor, reaching forward to pick up the handgun Fukuda had stowed away in there. “I forgot we still have this.”

The car swerved a little as Higashio’s head snapped toward the gun. “Where the hell did you get that?” he asked, openly outraged.

Shou shrugged uncertainly. “Fukuda shot some lady who attacked me.”

“What?” Higashio blurted. In the backseat, Ritsu was watching them with wide eyes and an increasingly nervous demeanor.

“In the knee,” Shou said. “He didn’t murder her or anything.”

Higashio squinted at the gun, uncomprehending. “Was this one of those Claw espers who kidnapped him?”

“Yeah, sorry, I think everyone just forgot to tell you about it,” Shou said.

Higashio muttered some unintelligible curse under his breath. “You need to get rid of that, I don’t want it in the car.”

“You get rid of it,” Shou countered. “Melt it or something.”

“Do I have to fix absolutely everything for you?”

Despite his complaints, Higashio slowed down the car, searching for a place to park. Shou peeked around his seat so he could see Ritsu, twirling the hand he was still holding the gun with.

“Higashio’s just nervous around guns ‘cause this one time, I got him to shoot at me, and then Fukuda found out and got so mad he slapped him.”

“Why would you want him to shoot at you?” Ritsu asked, a mix of confusion and concern on his face.

“Practice,” Shou explained. “I had to find out if I could block the bullets.”

“In my defense, it was a perfectly reasonable thing to want to practice,” Higashio said, bringing the car to a halt on a patch of gravel by the side of the road.

He roughly twisted the gun out of Shou’s hand and released the magazine, muttering, “And he calls me irresponsible.”

He grabbed either end of the gun, folding it in half like it was nothing but a lump of cookie dough. It contorted into an ugly, uneven ball between his palms.

“Was that so hard?” Shou whispered, breaking into a wide grin when Higashio glared at him in return.

He crossly tossed the ball into Shou’s lap before he gave the ammunition the same treatment, then pointed a stern finger at the dashboard. “Drop those back in the glove compartment, and then you put on your seatbelt so I don’t have to get slapped again.”

The grin slipped from Shou’s face as he quietly did as he was told. Normally, Higashio didn’t mind anyone joking around at his expense, but Shou knew he’d already worn his patience thin. He wouldn’t push his luck; not with Ritsu in the backseat. Higashio hadn’t been shy about stating his honest opinion earlier.

He tried to think of something to say to lighten the mood for the rest of the trip, but in the end, it was Ritsu who broke the silence, awestruck as Higashio pulled up to his newly restored house.

“Oh,” he breathed, “it looks just like before.”

“Of course.” Shou beamed at him as they got out of the car. “Didn’t I tell you Higashio could do it?”

Telling Ritsu that Higashio could fix his house had been a bit of a simplification. In theory, he probably could, but it’d look very suspicious to the neighbors if the Kageyama residence magically mended itself without help from any construction workers.

The truth involved a lot of weighing of resources, calling in of favors, bribery, and coordination, and maybe Higashio’s greatest skill was to make all of those things come together, but it just didn’t sound as good as letting him go down in Ritsu’s memory as that guy who could single-handedly ruin your life and put it back together again.

As forthright as someone who had lived there for years, Higashio pushed open the metal gate outside the house and went ahead to unlock the front door. Shou followed him into the narrow entrance hall with Ritsu close on his heels. You couldn’t even smell that the place must’ve been covered in soot just a couple of days ago; the room simply had an air about it as if somebody had done a very thorough round of housecleaning.

“Some of your stuff’s already unpacked,” Higashio said, handing the key to Ritsu once they’d filed into the narrow entrance hall. “Wasn’t sure where the rest was supposed to go.”

Ritsu nodded, eyes traveling across the towers of moving boxes that stood stacked against the wall. He looked a little lost as he wandered farther inside the house, circled through the living room, and then back to the kitchen. He stopped to squint at one of the cupboard doors, inspecting the blemishes that made the wood indistinguishable from the material that had hung there before.

“How did you get it so accurate?” he wondered out loud.

“We took a lot of pictures,” Shou said, pointing a thumb at Higashio. “Plus, this guy’s practically got photographic memory. He’s been doing stuff like this for like five hundred years. Used to be an art forger, right, Higashio?”

While he never boasted, Higashio took a lot of pride in his work when given time to do it properly. Shou figured he could use a compliment.

“Mhm,” Higashio hummed disinterestedly, already at work fixing up the details on the small cupboard standing in the genkan.

He was making it increasingly hard to maintain a positive atmosphere. Shou turned back to Ritsu, grinning at him regardless. “He’s a pro. Got that eye for detail.”

Ritsu watched Higashio skeptically, slowly folding one arm over the other. He was hard to impress.

As soon as he’d finished the cupboard, Higashio went on to inspect the rest of the house, carefully scrutinizing his own work. Shou spent the time helping Ritsu carry the moving boxes to where their contents belonged. Ritsu was so distracted by marveling at the near-impeccable state of his house that he repeatedly forgot where he was going.

“It wasn’t some kind of trick, right?” he suddenly asked, in the middle of hanging his parents’ clothes back inside their bedroom closet. “You really burned the whole house?”

“Yeah,” Shou shrugged. “Ask your brother if you don’t believe me.”

Ritsu pulled out another couple of shirts from the haphazard jumble of fabrics in the box beside him, frowning like that wasn’t a conversation he wanted to turn into reality.

“I’m sorry I had to freak him out,” Shou admitted, leaning on the doorframe. “We had to think fast and it just seemed like the best plan at the time.”

“Claw would have burned it down anyway,” Ritsu said reasonably. “Just like they did with Reigen’s office.”

Shou looked around the bedroom—simple but homely with the knick-knacks returned to their old places—wondering if it was a good time to tell Ritsu about the bodies. His brother had to tell him eventually; it was better if he heard it from Shou’s own mouth while he was still around to defend himself.

He watched Ritsu meticulously straighten one of his mother’s dresses and couldn’t come up with any graceful way to phrase it.

“Do you think he’s mad at me?” he asked instead. “I’d be mad at me.”

After emptying the box of one last pair of pants, Ritsu shut the closet doors and turned around. “Usually, Nii-san doesn’t even get angry at people who deserve it,” he stated matter-of-factly.

Shou didn’t know if he’d still think he didn’t deserve it if he knew the full story. Maybe they went a little overboard by staging the deaths of his entire family. Maybe it would’ve done the trick just fine if they were simply missing while the house went up in flames.

When Ritsu closed the door to the bedroom, satisfied that nobody would notice any change to it, Higashio was already going through the unusually sparse room that belonged to Ritsu’s brother. He and Ritsu were so different, even with something like this. Ritsu’s room had furniture covering every section of the walls and enough moving boxes to take up half the floor.

“For now, let’s take out everything my parents will see at a glance,” Ritsu said, bending the flaps of the nearest box over backward to reveal a mound of books. “I should put them back in order, but can you split up my school books from the others?”

“If you’re worried about time, I don’t think sorting them is a priority right now,” Shou said, grabbing a jumbled stack of novels and textbooks.

Ritsu looked on uneasily as Shou crammed the armful of books onto the top shelf of his bookcase. He had to stand on the tips of his toes to reach, nudging them into place with a touch of telekinesis.

“What do you need so much stuff for anyway?” He glanced at all the boxes Ritsu hadn’t even checked yet. Ritsu himself stood around uselessly in the middle of them, a pensive frown on his face.

“If your dad’s in prison, where are you going to go?” he asked.

Shou picked up the remaining pile of books, not bothering to use his hands this time. “Everyone says I should move in with my mom.”

Ritsu made a surprised noise, brow creased ever so slightly with confusion. “I thought something happened to your mom.”

Shou dumped the new load of books onto Ritsu’s shelves and looked at him over his shoulder, eyes narrowed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I don’t know,” Ritsu fumbled, “it’s just, it seemed like you had to deal with your dad all on your own.”

He averted his eyes when Shou kept staring at him, then went to find the belongings that used to sit on the desk on the other side of the room, leaving them both to tidy up in silence.

It took a while before Ritsu dared to speak up again. “Where does your mom live?” he asked.

“In Sturgeon Bay,” Shou said, folding up the box he’d just emptied. “I think it’s like two hours from here, out by the coast.”

“That’s not that far,” Ritsu pondered. “I was thinking… I was wondering if we should meet up sometime? After this.”

It took a moment of dumbfounded silence before Shou lit up in a grin. “Yeah! That’d be cool. I’d like that.”

Ritsu exhaled like he’d been holding his breath, shoulders sinking a little. Although faint, there was a genuine smile on his face. It looked strange on him. Foreign.

“I’m gonna miss you,” Shou said, the words falling out of his mouth with no forethought.

Ritsu’s smile became unsure, pulled into a lopsided grimace.

“I’m serious,” Shou insisted, “you’re the only good thing that’s happened lately.”

The smile faded completely. “Defeating your dad wasn’t good?”

Shou nudged one of the remaining boxes with his foot. “He’s not really going to jail,” he muttered. “They’ve locked him up in some research facility. I’m probably never gonna see him again.”

Shou lost track of his thoughts, gazing out the window at the quiet, mundane neighborhood enveloping Ritsu’s house. For some reason, a laugh came out of him.

“I thought he’d try to kill me again,” he chuckled. “Everything’s kinda…”

Kind of what? The last few days bled together into an indistinct, viscid pool of terrible experiences. All of Claw probably wanted to murder him by now and Serizawa had ruined the apartment and almost killed Shou’s hamster, Shou had broken his hand, everyone kept fighting because of him, and he threw up, crying himself to sleep like a little kid. He felt so sick and tired all the time. It shouldn’t be possible to feel this sick.

He wondered if Ritsu would finally find a reason to be mad at him if he threw up on his carpet.

“Are you okay?”

Shou looked up to find the boy staring with a disconcerting intensity that almost matched the looks Shou so often gave people. Like some kind of merciful, rescuing angel, Higashio appeared in the doorway.

“How far along are you?” he asked, preoccupied with reading something on his phone.

“Almost done up here,” Shou quickly replied.

His chest felt tight as Higashio took a moment to study him. He leaned inside Ritsu’s room, scanning it for any leftover inaccuracies, then made a circular motion with his hand, gesturing at the house in general. “I’ve done what I can and we have people to pay and things to do, so can we get going?”

Shou reluctantly glanced at Ritsu, waiting for his approval. Ritsu was still watching him with equal parts worry and skepticism.

“I guess I can unpack the rest myself,” he said. It was all the permission Shou needed to slip past Higashio and hurry downstairs.

“Sorry to ditch you, but these people are a pack of hyenas,” Higashio explained behind him.

“What people?” Ritsu stalked after them down the stairs. “I thought it was just me helping you. Did something new happen? Are you—”

He stumbled backward, supporting himself on the wall as Higashio turned around to point a finger sharply at his face.

“Listen,” Higashio said, “if you notice anyone following you, if anyone comes here asking questions, you don’t get involved, you don’t tell them anything, you just contact one of us.” He peered down at Shou. “He’s got my number already?”

“I gave him everyone’s number,” Shou mumbled, bent down to tie the laces of his sneakers.

Ritsu still clung to the wall, staring at Higashio with wide, fearful eyes. “You think anyone will come looking for us?”

Higashio sighed, scratching his hair as he thought it over. “I figure Claw’s plenty preoccupied with avoiding the government right now, but I don’t know how many of them knew about your brother. Just... don’t be stupid about who you talk to. Already had people track Shou down.”

After shooting Shou another horrible, worried look, Ritsu nodded obediently. He cast his eyes down and carefully passed by Higashio, rounding the staircase so he could see the clock hanging on the wall in the kitchen.

“When do my parents get back?”

Higashio trudged down the last few steps, glancing at the clock as well. “Should be about two hours,” he estimated.

Ritsu’s face froze like he’d just been told a comet was approaching, about to wipe out all life on Earth.

“You can handle the rest, right?” Shou asked, not sure what to make of the reaction.

He felt bad about leaving the scattered boxes that remained in the hallway, but with a bit of effort it shouldn’t be impossible to empty them in two hours.

“If you don’t make it in time, just tell them you cleaned the whole house or something,” he suggested. “They’ve almost been gone for a week, they probably don’t even remember what everything looks like.”

Ritsu snapped out of his all-consuming terror to fix him with a stare that was bordering on murderous. “They have lived here for fifteen years!”

“Okay, well, there’s nothing we can do about it now,” Shou said, raising his hands in defense.

“No matter what you say, it’ll sound more believable than that your house was burned down and rebuilt in a few days, trust me,” Higashio said unsympathetically, moving toward the door.

“Wait—what about the neighbors?” Ritsu neatly skipped any attempts at keeping his cool and arrived right at hysteria. “What if they talk about the fire?”

Shou frustratedly dragged his hands down his face, eyeing the front door. He’d rather not admit this was one thing they’d forgotten to think about.

“Just tell them I did it,” he decided.

“What?” Ritsu blurted. “But—”

“Your parents know you hang out with other espers, right? Tell them I was showing you some neat pyrokinetic tricks or whatever and I accidentally set something on fire and the neighbors are just exaggerating about how bad it was.” Shou shrugged, throwing out his arms. “I don’t know, Ritsu. You’re smart, figure something out.”

Ritsu seemed at a loss for words, helplessly glancing back and forth between Shou and Higashio.

“Well,” Higashio said, a hand already on the front door handle, “thanks for the help, kid. If you ever need anything, don’t be a stranger.” The phone in his hand started vibrating. He sighed tiredly before he walked outside. “Just not today.”

“Is it okay if I go?” Shou asked, pointing over his shoulder. “You’re kinda giving me mixed signals here but, you know, we shouldn’t be here when your parents get back.”

“It’s fine,” Ritsu snapped, not sounding like it was fine at all. “You’re busy.”

“Okay, talk to you later I guess.” Shou backed up, raising his hand to wave. Ritsu didn’t even look at him, just shut the door the moment he’d stepped over the threshold.

Shou lingered in front of the perfectly restored facade, a strange, uneasy feeling settling into his joints. He slowly turned around, closing the metal gate behind him as he left, trying not to dwell on the sensation.

When he got into the sedan, Higashio was already in the driver’s seat with his phone to his ear, listening to someone talking loudly on the other end.

“Maybe if you didn’t constantly interrupt me, you’d get your money a lot sooner,” he argued, rolling his eyes. “Uh-huh. My mother’s long dead so that’s gonna be a little difficult, buddy.”

The squabbling went in circles for several minutes before Higashio managed to end the conversation. He wordlessly slipped his phone into his pocket and started the car.

“Is it bad?” Shou asked.

“Nah.” Higashio didn’t sound entirely convincing. “The carpenters who helped me out got a new foreman since the last time I dealt with them. Never worked with him before, never working with him again.”

Shou took a last look at Ritsu’s house before Higashio drove them around the corner, out of sight. It didn’t take him long to navigate the narrow streets into the bustling traffic at the center of the city.

“Should I drop you off back at the apartment, or what’s your plan for today?” he asked.

Shou knew he had to talk to Fukuda. If nothing else, then to ask him to drive him across the region one last time. Out to the coast. Nagata would call soon and everyone was right—between living with some government-assigned stranger and moving in with his mother, his mother was the obvious choice.

He had to talk to Fukuda, but he didn’t want to.

“Can’t I come with you?” he asked.

Higashio tiredly brushed his hair out of his face. “All I’ll be doing today is money transfers and more pointless arguments. Half these people aren’t even here in town.”

“Please?” Shou tried. “It’ll be like a road trip and I’ll be your backup in case that carpenter guy tries anything.”

Higashio let out a lengthy sigh. “Fine.”

Shou already felt a little lighter. It helped to have someone else’s permission to bide his time. He turned, crawling onto his knees again to peer out of the rear window as the tall buildings of Seasoning City made way for fields and forest once more.

From this angle, you could sense the crater scarring the city. The green crown of the broccoli poked up behind the tall buildings, towering over all but a few skyscrapers. It still looked bizarre—laughable even, if you didn’t know the circumstances that had put it there.

“Shou.” Higashio snapped his fingers, pointing at the passenger seat.

Shou obediently sat back down and put on his seatbelt, glancing out the window beside him instead. With nothing to do, the strange sensation that had lingered since he left Ritsu’s house was hard to ignore. It seeped into his bones, leaving him painfully aware of every phalanx and vertebra, like a puzzle made up of pieces that didn’t quite fit together.

“So,” Higashio suddenly said. “Ritsu.”

“What about him?” Shou asked. He could barely gather his thoughts to respond.

“He seems like a good kid. Smart. A little naive maybe, but still.”

“Well, obviously,” Shou muttered.

“Just saying, maybe you should hold on to him. You could use a friend your own age.”

Shou’s leg bounced restlessly; he had to grind his fingernails into his knee to get it to stop. “We already talked about keeping in touch.”

“And you’re gonna follow up on that?” Higashio sounded skeptical. “You think I couldn’t tell how much of a hurry you were in to get out of there?”

Shou didn’t want today to be the last time he talked to Ritsu, but what other choice did he have if the boy was going to look at him like that? Staring into his soul like he had any right to infringe on the Suzuki family tradition of doing just that.

“He’s gonna ask questions,” he mumbled.

“Then tell him you don’t want to answer them,” Higashio said like it was the simplest thing in the world. “If you’re upfront about it, most people respect that. If they don’t, well,” he gave an exaggerated shrug, “you don’t want to talk to them anyway.”

Shou turned his hands over in his lap, looking at them with detached abhorrence. Palms up, palms down, fingers spread out as far as they would go, then back together, curling until his hands were fists. It was the same no matter how he posed them: they were shaking. Quivering. Straight up trembling.

“Higashio?”

Higashio gave a short hum in response, leaning toward him slightly.

“I don’t think I’m okay...” Shou raised one of his hands, held it out in front of him, fingers spread so Higashio could see the tremors too. “Look at this, it’s just like Serizawa.”

Higashio really did look, taking his eyes off the road for far longer than anyone should while driving. “Yeah. I can see that,” he said in a carefully monotonous voice.

Shou slowly lowered his hand to tug at his seatbelt. It was strangling him. Higashio was sitting right there—the only person who had yet to see him break down like the pathetic failure he was.

His eyes flooded with the tears he’d tried to hold back all day. He held his breath, burying his face in his hands before any noise could escape him, and leaned into the door, curled up to occupy as little space as possible.

It was just like Serizawa. He was already attempting to procrastinate his problems away like a coward. Next, he would be sitting on that stupid, cursed couch, sobbing and refusing to speak to anyone.

He really was a disease, that man. No matter how much he wanted to be something else. He was a disease, and Shou had caught it. If anyone had ever held any respect for him, it was surely gone by now.

Higashio leaned over to open the glove compartment. He found a pack of paper tissues under the remains of the handgun, offering it to Shou. Shou blindly took it, trying to shake out a tissue with one hand while refusing to remove the other from his face. He could barely hold on to the packet with his shaking fingers; it slipped from his grasp and dropped to the floor.

An ugly whimper escaped him. He couldn’t even keep quiet so they could pretend this wasn’t happening.

Higashio made a frustrated noise, pulling the car in by the side of the road. He was going to leave Shou here in the middle of nowhere. He was going to leave, and Shou couldn’t blame him if he’d finally had enough.

But the door never opened. Instead, Higashio leaned down to rummage around for the tissue package at Shou’s feet. When he found it, he deftly unfolded a piece, holding it out for Shou to take.

“Come on,” he said gruffly, “I thought you said you wouldn’t be sad anymore.”

Shou’s breath hitched as he replaced the clammy palm covering his eyes with the tissue. Tears rapidly bled into the paper. He’d never been so embarrassed in his life, but then, that was a thought that’d crossed his mind so often in the last few days it barely held meaning anymore.

He flinched when Higashio placed a hand on his shoulder and instinctively ducked away, pressing his head into the door.

“Are you sure you don’t want to go back?” Higashio asked.

The hand stayed where it was, heavy and steadying and awful. Shou nodded vigorously, trying to hold his breath again. It didn’t work, just forced a strangled gasp out of him.

“I can’t bring a crying kid around with me,” Higashio mumbled.

When Shou didn’t reply, he mercifully let go and leaned back in his seat, but Shou still didn’t dare to uncover his face. He couldn’t predict how Higashio would look at him or what he’d say. If he had more harsh truths to offer, Shou probably deserved them.

Eventually, he lowered his soaked-through paper tissue into his lap, pointedly staring at his hands. They were still trembling just as much as before.

Higashio produced another tissue, holding it out for him. “Blow your nose,” he said when Shou merely glanced at him in confusion, bleary-eyed and so, so tired.

Hesitantly, Shou took it, wiping away the worst of the snot and tears that had collected on his face. He straightened his back, trying to regain some level of dignity even though the tears kept pouring out of him at a slow trickle, dripping into his lap. He could feel his cheeks turn more unnaturally hot the longer he sat there, but Higashio only spoke when Shou finally made eye contact with him.

“If you could make it through this godforsaken disaster of a week, you can make it through whatever comes next,” he said, slow and clear.

He sounded so certain, but even through the tears blurring his vision, Shou could only look him in the eye for a second. Higashio brushed his messy hair away from his face, glancing out the window at the drab, naked trees lining the road.

“This has probably been the worst week of your life,” he said. “And I know you’ve had a few. Anyone would crack if they were in your place, it's nothing to be ashamed of.”

He turned his head back to Shou, watching him thoughtfully. “Believe me, I know what it’s like to have everything you know ripped away from you. I know what it’s like to be completely on your own. But you know what?”

He leaned forward, staying there until Shou gave a barely noticeable shake of his head.

“You’re not on your own,” he said. “You really aren’t.”

Shou didn’t know what to say, merely squeezed the sodden pieces of paper in his lap. “What about Fukuda?”

Higashio shook his head a little, an exasperated look on his face. “What do you mean?”

“What’s he gonna do?”

Higashio frowned at him incredulously. “He’s a very grown man, I don’t think you have to worry about that.”

But he did. Shou worried about that a lot, actually. Fukuda wasn’t used to having to decide everything, and he couldn’t defend himself, and—

“There it is again,” Higashio interrupted his train of thought like he could tell what Shou was thinking. “You’re patronizing and disrespectful and you need to stop.”

“But—” Shou started.

“No,” Higashio snapped, “Fukuda has a perfectly good head on his shoulders and he’s not on his own either. If nothing else, I’m still here. How about you give me a little credit for once?”

Again, Shou found himself speechless. It was true, Higashio had done a lot for them. There weren’t many people you could ask to rebuild a house in three days and who did it without so much as complaining. Honestly, he didn’t know where they’d be without Higashio. Locked up by the police, most likely.

“You’ll help?” he asked meekly.

“Of course I’ll help!” The frustration was clear on Higashio’s face. “I’ve been stuck with you two for a long time, too. You talk like you don’t even know me.”

He didn’t know where it came from, this expectation that Higashio would inevitably walk out on them. Leave and disappear from their lives forever. He’d tried once, shortly after Pops had assigned him to Shou’s team, but that was almost two years ago. A lot had happened since then. All of them had changed so much.

“I’m sorry,” Shou’s voice warbled, “I didn’t want you to leave, I don’t know why I said that. I’m really sorry.”

“Yeah, I think everyone got that right away,” Higashio mumbled, handing Shou a third paper tissue.

Shou sniffled into the paper, wiping at the endless stream of tears with his free hand. “I keep thinking, maybe everything was better the way it was before.”

Higashio simply sat back in his seat and checked the mirrors, glancing over his shoulder before he turned the key in the ignition, bringing the sedan’s engine back to life.

“It wasn’t,” he said, steering them back onto the road. “Trust me.”

Chapter Text

Shou was twelve years old when he learned his mother’s new name. Higashio handed it to him on a scrap of paper one morning, smiling with a warmth he rarely offered back then. It wasn’t something Shou had asked of him, but with such valuable information in his hands, he was too stunned to ask where it came from.

Shou read the three short lines over and over; etched them into his mind so he’d never forget:

Koshiba Kaiko
Scallop Lane number two
Sturgeon Bay

The name meant nothing to him and he had to look up the town on a map. For days, he lay awake at night, wondering if Koshiba Kaiko was anything like the woman who’d put Shou to bed four years earlier and then left without so much as a goodbye.

In the first few weeks after it happened, Pops insisted she’d come back, but she’d barely brought any of her things, she hadn’t talked to anyone, she didn’t answer her phone. She was just gone. With time, he stopped talking about her. As if she never existed in the first place.

Shou knew it’d be unfair to wrench himself back into his mother’s life when he had yet to succeed at anything he’d sworn to do. What if she turned him away? What if she couldn’t even recognize him? But in the end, he was selfish and went to see her anyway.

He stood outside her small townhouse for a long time before he gathered the courage to ring the bell. His mother cried from the moment she opened the door, and then for the entire day he was there. Shou didn’t know what to say to comfort her. There was no reason to cry for him—he was managing. He was setting things into motion. He was stronger and smarter than the eight-year-old boy she’d left behind.

She only cried more when he told her that, bent over on one of her pastel kitchen chairs, sobbing into her hands like Shou had never seen an adult do before.

At the end of the day, he couldn’t stand staying in her house for one more second. When she went to the bathroom in her twentieth attempt to collect herself, Shou simply slipped out the front door and walked away.

There were no tears the next time he visited her, or any of the times after; both of them made sure of that. Every few months, they’d spend half a day catching up before Shou departed from her life again. Never once had she asked where he was going. It was better if she didn’t know; they had silently agreed on that, too.

She knew now, though. Most of it.

“Are you sure you have everything?” Fukuda asked for the third time, bent down to look in through the open door to the backseat of the sedan.

“Yeah,” Shou mumbled. He shifted the travel cage in his lap, looping his arms around it. Nezumi sat at the bottom, stuffing sunflower seeds into her cheeks.

Fukuda nodded to himself and closed the door. He turned his back to the car, anxiously crossing his arms, too much of a coward to be alone with Shou for five minutes. Only after Higashio came down from the apartment and shut himself in the passenger seat did he get in as well.

Higashio tore a bag of cashew nuts open, popping a couple of them in his mouth before he held it out to Fukuda. Fukuda gave it an unfocused, fleeting glance like he didn’t even understand the gesture.

“You want me to drive?” Higashio asked, withdrawing his hand.

The faux leather of the steering wheel was peeling after who knew how many years of use. Fukuda gingerly brushed his thumb over the frayed surface. “I‘m fine.”

Higashio’s eyes lingered on him for a long moment before he turned in his seat, offering the cashews to Shou. “You hid your money like I told you?”

Shou took a small handful of the nuts, plopping one of them through the bars on the side of Nezumi’s cage. “It’s in my bag.”

“Don’t tell anyone else about it,” Higashio lectured him. “Not even your mom. When you get to her place, you pack it with a set of clothes and anything else you need to make it a few days. That’s your insurance if you have to run.”

Shou nodded. When Higashio gave a direct order, you followed it. He was rarely wrong about these things.

Fukuda’s hands slid off the wheel and into his lap, interlocked like he needed someone to hold on to, even if it was only himself. Higashio’s eyes flickered to him again, then back to Shou.

“Not trying to make you paranoid, but it’s better to be realistic than optimistic.”

Shou watched Nezumi cram the cashew into her already bulging cheek and gifted her another one. “I know.”

They waited for Ootsuki to come down. He’d been really quiet all morning, watching from a distance while Shou packed his things. He hadn’t even found any excuses to make backhanded comments about Fukuda.

He was tying his hair back in his usual ponytail when he exited the building. As he got into the backseat next to Shou, Higashio nearly presented the bag of cashews to him as well, but it was obvious Ootsuki was in the kind of mood where it was wisest not to interact with him. Higashio rolled up the bag and deposited it in the glove compartment.

The stuttering hum of the engine accompanied them on the way out of Seasoning City. Shou picked at the blemishes on the door beside him, wondering if this would be the last time the sedan would live to drive him anywhere.

A few kilometers down the highway, Ootsuki abruptly stopped bouncing his leg and snapped into something like the personality he used to have before the circumstances drove everyone to act so weird. The one that’d never let them spend the entire trip in silence like they were on their way to a funeral.

“So what’s the first thing you wanna do once you get settled at your mom’s place?” he asked.

Shou shrugged, wishing he had an answer you could start a conversation about. “I don’t know. There’s not a whole lot to do there.”

“There’s gotta be something new you want to get into,” Ootsuki said. “We’ve spent so much time driving around and plotting Claw stuff, don’t know about you but I’m sick of it.”

Shou tried to think of activities that didn’t involve traveling, or plotting, or simply staying alive, and came up blank. He let his head flop lethargically onto the backrest. “It’s gonna be so boring.”

“Learn something new,” Higashio said with no sympathy whatsoever. “Find some people to talk to, go exploring, there’s plenty to spend your time on.”

“If it’s so easy, what’re you gonna do now?” Shou sneered at him.

Higashio raised his shoulders in a careless shrug. “Your old man won’t be putting food on the table for us anymore. Time to find another way to make a living.”

Ootsuki leaned toward Shou, talking in a pretend whisper: “He’ll go back to swindling money out of people.”

“I never swindled anyone who could tell the difference after losing a few hundred thousand yen,” Higashio retorted.

“Uh, still swindling.”

Higashio just talked over Ootsuki. “I was thinking about investing in something perfectly mundane and legal for a change—”

Ootsuki coughed into his hand with a poorly concealed laugh.

“What is this? Did you turn into a model citizen overnight?” Higashio chided him, then frowned at the side of Fukuda’s face with exaggerated indignation. “What are you smiling at?”

Fukuda took one hand off the steering wheel to hide the amused quirk to his lips. “Nothing.”

Despite the mock offense, it left Higashio with a somewhat flustered smile, too. He quickly glanced over his shoulder to address Shou. “You don’t have any faith in me either?”

Shou didn’t see why it was so hard to imagine Higashio having a regular job. He knew how it worked. He knew how to do a lot of things.

“You’re good at fixing furniture,” he said.

“See, that’s not a bad idea,” Higashio replied, running his fingers through his hair, leaving one tuft sticking into the air. “Plenty of stuff out there that needs fixing.”

The highway cut through a stretch of flat fields. A row of transmission towers stuck up in the distance, rigid and alien. Ootsuki had gone quiet again, pensively alternating between picking at his fingernails and glancing outside.

“I think I’ll go see my parents,” he said suddenly. “They probably think I’m dead.”

Shou gaped at him. This was the first time he’d even heard of him having any family. Fukuda looked surprised too, staring at him in the rearview mirror instead of keeping his eyes on the road.

“Sounds like a good idea,” Higashio said without missing a beat. “Where do your folks live?”

“Down south.” Ootsuki gave a vague shrug. Nothing more came out of him after that, he simply stared out the window, back hunched a little under the weight of the others’ eyes on him.

Higashio let him be, shifting his attention to Fukuda instead. He waited for him to merge with another car, presenting the perfect, opportune moment to ask: “You made any decisions yet?”

The smile had long since faded from Fukuda’s face. “I’ll take one day at a time,” he said in a detached, emotionless tone. A long-practiced answer he didn’t have to think about.

“First things first, you’ll need a place to live,” Higashio said.

Fukuda glanced at him. “So do you.”

Higashio huffed with a dismissive wave of his hand. “I’m fine staying homeless until I know where life takes me next.”

A massive semi-truck crawled along the road ahead. There was no one behind them, but Fukuda still peered over his shoulder before driving around it. “I was thinking of staying in Seasoning City.”

Shou peered up at a frontier of dark clouds in the distance; right the way they were headed. Higashio had gone dead quiet, subjecting Fukuda to a long, disapproving stare.

“You don’t have to do that,” he said.

“No, but I want to do that,” Fukuda replied, curt and clearly annoyed.

Higashio turned his head away. Shou didn’t have to see his face to know he was rolling his eyes.

The silence was oppressive and it didn’t seem like Ootsuki had any intention of clearing it this time. He was discreetly side-eyeing Fukuda from underneath his hair, waiting for him to explain himself.

“Somebody has to stay in the loop,” Fukuda said, defensively squaring his shoulders. “We know some of the Scars will stay, and I don’t trust anyone the government has sent here. Covering everything up like it never happened, it’s suspicious.”

His grip on the steering wheel had tightened. Higashio gave a hum in response and crossed his arms, communicating that he agreed but wasn’t happy about it.

Shou could recognize the landscape now, even though he’d usually traveled by train when visiting his mother. The dark clouds lined the sky over Sturgeon Bay like a woolen coat, isolating the area from the rest of the world. The rocky shore ran parallel with the road into town, the ocean billowing restlessly with white-crested waves.

Shou fed Fukuda directions as he navigated through the narrow, winding streets up the hill to Mom’s house. It looked the same as usual, modestly perched on the corner of two rows of townhouses. Apart from a small patch of garden, it looked the same as the surrounding buildings; weathered and old-fashioned with wide eaves and a low roof that always struck Shou with the impulse to climb on top of it.

Even though it would make it difficult for other cars to pass, Fukuda parked by the side of the road instead of using the small driveway in front of Mom’s house. The hedge surrounding the property had grown shapeless over the summer, new branches sticking out everywhere. The once-colorful potted plants by the entrance were drowning in too much rainwater. It wasn’t like Mom to neglect her things like that.

“Hey, are you coming?”

Ootsuki already had one leg out of the car. Shou snapped himself out of his stupor and got out with him, leaving Nezumi behind on his seat. He determinedly clenched his hands as he crossed the street, steeling himself for ringing the bell.

His mother opened the door before he could reach it. She stepped outside in her worn-out sandals, mouth slightly open as she stared at Shou. For a second, her eyes flickered to the three strangers waiting right outside her property, then she overcame her hesitation and grabbed Shou’s shoulders, pulling him closer.

“I’m so glad you’re okay,” she whispered, cupping his face in her hands. “You’re okay, right?”

Shou wasn’t sure what to do, so he simply stood there and let the fact that he obviously wasn’t hurt speak for itself.

Fukuda had stopped right at the edge of the driveway, waiting for permission to come any closer. He raised his hand in greeting when Mom noticed him, mumbling a quiet, “Hello.”

Mom let go of Shou, both her tone and posture hardening. “You’re Fukuda?”

“Yes,” Fukuda said. He pulled a folded envelope out of his jacket pocket, nervously fidgeting with it before he held it out to her. “I would like you to have this.”

She studied him for a long time, eyes occasionally shifting to Higashio and Ootsuki. Shou didn’t know what she read from the way Fukuda’s gaze didn’t quite meet hers, or how his usually exemplary posture fell apart under her scrutiny, but whatever it was, it compelled her enough to step forward and take the envelope.

Fukuda seemed surprised that she complied without even asking what was in it. “It’s—These are things I think it’s important you know about,” he stammered awkwardly.

“What things?” Shou asked. “Can’t you just say it out loud?” Neither of them replied, so he walked in front of his mother, staring at her confusedly. “Aren’t you gonna invite them in or something?”

Mom pensively turned the envelope over in her hands, but in the end, she simply looked up at Fukuda. “Thank you for taking care of him.”

Fukuda floundered for a proper reply. “He’s a very… We care about Shou-kun a lot. All of us.”

Mom sent Higashio and Ootsuki another skeptical glance. Ootsuki radiated at least the same amount of distaste while Higashio gave little clue to what he thought of the exchange, just waited calmly with his hands in the pockets of his slacks.

“Fukuda, what things?” Shou demanded, turning to his mother next. “Mom, you can’t tell them to leave when they just came all the way here.”

Fukuda cleared his throat, motioning for Shou to follow him. “Come, let’s get your luggage.”

Shou trudged after him as he hurried around to the back of the sedan, retrieving Shou’s jam-packed backpack from the trunk at a speed like it was an emergency.

“I think it’s best if we leave,” he whispered, holding the bag out to him.

Shou blinked. Everything was going so fast it felt unreal. “Don’t you wanna talk to her?”

“I think it’s best, Shou.”

Fukuda really couldn’t wait to be rid of him. Shou ripped the backpack from his grasp, bitterly shrugging it on so his hands were free to carry the rest of his belongings. If everyone was so ready to get this over with, he wasn’t going to hold them up.

He took Nezumi from the backseat, placing her small travel container inside her regular wire cage. Before he could pick it up, Ootsuki bumped into his shoulder, shoving him out of the way so he could grab it instead.

“Ootsuki-san,” Fukuda protested.

It was a pointless attempt to stop him. Ootsuki didn’t wait for permission before he stomped into the driveway. Mom was moving one of the drowned plants inside the genkan so it could hold the door open. When she turned around, Ootsuki was standing right behind her. She smacked the back of her head into the doorframe as she jolted and stepped back.

“Where can I put this?” Ootsuki said over the frame of the cage, an impressive amount of venom in such a simple question.

Mom pressed her back against the door, sliding along the surface until she’d circled around Ootsuki to the safety of her front yard.

“In the hallway,” she replied with resentment all over her face.

Ootsuki brazenly strode inside the house. He took his time to look around, peering up the staircase to the second floor and scrutinizing what little he could see of the kitchen and living room through the doorways in the long hall that was meticulously painted with color-blocked, geometric patterns.

He put down the cage before he disdainfully raised his chin and walked back out. “How long have you been living here again?”

Mom scowled at him from under her heavy bangs. “A while.”

Ootsuki took another half-step forward, making Mom raise her arms, clearly bracing herself for a physical confrontation. Higashio pulled his hands out from his pockets, but Shou acted before him, quickly hauling the duffel bag with his clothes out from the trunk. He jogged over to grab Ootsuki’s wrist before he could do something stupid.

“It’s fine,” Shou assured him. “You can go.”

Ootsuki seemed a little flustered as he stepped back toward the street. After standing there with his head bowed for a while, he smiled sadly at Shou and held out his arms.

Shou glanced at his mother and the disapproving, mistrustful way she was still watching Ootsuki. He stepped forward, raising his arms without quite daring to initiate a hug himself. With a frustrated sigh, Ootsuki pulled him against his chest.

He held on like it really meant something. Shou thought about how strange it was that in the last week, this had become a thing they did now. Ootsuki hugged him sometimes.

Hesitantly, Shou dug his fingers into the back of Ootsuki’s coat. He held on for a second too long—long enough to give Ootsuki pause when he pulled away. Shou clumsily stepped out of reach, focusing very intensely on the tips of his scuffed sneakers instead of the way his face was heating up. The others hadn’t even left yet, and he already felt so alone standing by his mother’s doorstep with her watching him with eyes hard and judgmental of everything he came from.

Ootsuki crossed his arms and walked backward to the car. Higashio grabbed his sleeve, speaking in a voice too quiet for Shou to hear. Whatever he said, it definitely wasn’t kind. Ootsuki only nodded before he quietly shut himself in the backseat.

Higashio stepped up to the driveway and made a face, dismissively waving a hand at the car. “Don’t take that personally, he’s bad with new people.”

Mom had folded her arms tightly, standing halfway turned toward the safety of her home. “What was your name again?”

“Higashio.”

She looked him up and down appraisingly. “And what did you do? For Claw.”

“Fraud,” Higashio said without even blinking. It was difficult how to pass all this new information to Mom, but it seemed he had decided on uncompromisingly blunt honesty.

“And him?” Mom nodded at Ootsuki in the car.

“Just a regular attack dog.”

Mom stared Higashio down so relentlessly that he was eventually forced to break eye contact. “I think you should take your attack dog and leave,” she said.

Fukuda flusteredly bent over in a deep bow. “I’m so sorry, Koshiba-san, I didn’t mean for us to impose, we just wanted to be here to say goodbye.”

The rigidness slowly bled from Mom’s features. She fixed her eyes on the tile path to her door and stepped aside as if to make room for Shou to go ahead. Shou didn’t know what to say. He’d spent nearly every day of the last couple of years with these people, and now they were just going to leave. And although that seemed like something that should be pretty significant, at the moment, Shou didn’t know what he felt other than hazy confusion.

It snapped him back to attention when Higashio leaned down to take his right hand, giving it a firm shake.

“You can do this,” he said. “Just keep your head up.”

He didn’t let go right away. Shou’s eyes wandered from the skinny fingers holding on to his, to the unfamiliar, kind smile on Higashio’s face, and the only response he could come up with was a vague nod.

Before returning to the car, Higashio clapped Fukuda on the back, hard enough to startle him out of his thoughts. He fumbled for something to say, gesturing at himself.

“I know you think I worry too much, but can I get you to text me these first few days so I know you’re alright? I mean, of course you’ll be alright, but… Will you do that?”

“I guess,” Shou mumbled.

“Okay.” Fukuda looked back and forth between Shou and his mother. “If you need anything at all, you can always call me.”

Mom still refused to look up, but she did give a faint nod.

Fukuda fidgeted with his hands, unsure of what to do with himself. When he finally spoke, it was in a quiet, hoarse voice.

“I hope this isn’t the last time we see each other, but if it is, that’s okay,” he said. “I just want you to know that you’re… You…” He had to pause. “You’re very special to me. You’re a very special person and you deserve better than what you’ve had. If you can’t forgive me for how I’ve acted, then I understand. All I want is for you to be well. Especially after everything… everything that’s happened.”

He grew quiet, stood there for a long time like he was waiting for something. Shou knew it took a lot out of him to express himself so honestly. He should say something in return, but his mind was blank and his body weirdly stiff and numb.

“Okay,” Fukuda said, so quietly it was barely audible. Reluctantly, he turned away and started toward the car. Shou followed him with his eyes and felt nothing at all. Strange, really. Not what he expected.

“Shou!” his mother blurted in a shrill, wounded voice. She pushed him in Fukuda’s direction, wiping at her tear-streaked face. “Say goodbye!”

Shou stopped right in front of Fukuda and looked up at him.

“Goodbye,” he said dutifully. It was hard to keep eye contact, so he dropped it. “If you think I hate you, I don’t, but you’re just as much of a liar as everyone else.”

He wasn’t sure what more to add. How to keep going from that sentence.

“I don’t know if you’ve ever really meant anything you said. You didn’t change at all, you just got better at acting. How am I supposed to know you didn’t just stick around because Pops told you to?”

“I don’t know, Shou,” Fukuda murmured. He looked strange when his forehead wasn’t lined with deep grooves. All emotion and personality had departed from his face, leaving it a blank mask.

He lingered for another long moment before he nodded to himself, turned around, and continued toward the sedan. Higashio quickly got out from the passenger seat, guiding Fukuda to take it instead.

“See you, Shou,” he said before he took the seat behind the steering wheel and started the car.

Shou watched it disappear around the corner; everything that had been his life for the last two years gone. Maybe Pops had broken him back when he beat him up in the Culture Tower, because apparently, he couldn’t feel anything about anything important anymore.

“Come in and put down your things,” Mom said. She was still wiping at her cheeks with her sleeve as she walked ahead, waiting with a hand on the front door. Shou tore his eyes away from the curve in the road and followed her.

Mom closed the door behind him once he’d kicked off his shoes in the genkan. She distractedly left him by the staircase, studying the envelope Fukuda had given her as she wandered into the living room. She left it on a shelf of her bookcase that was already cram-full with novels, art books, and odd knick-knacks.

“I wanna see what it says,” Shou said, dropping the duffle bag next to Nezumi.

“I’ll look at it later.” Mom returned to the hallway, a puzzled frown on her face.
“Is that really everything you have?”

“I got some things at Pops’ place, but I don’t need them,” Shou said. He didn’t feel up for raiding his father’s house. At this point, he’d probably need government clearance to go anywhere near it anyway.

Mom helped him carry his belongings up the stairs, opening the door to a room Shou had barely been inside before. It was a lot less colorful than the rest of the house: plain, white walls and nothing but an anonymous-looking closet and a few storage boxes to occupy the floor space.

“I haven’t moved all of my things yet, but keep what you want, do whatever you want with it, this is your space now.”

Shou went to set the hamster cage down on the wall-to-wall desk mounted under the window on the far end of the room. He had to nudge away a couple of potted succulents and a stack of paper and markers to make room.

A PC monitor stood against the left wall, above it an old-fashioned cork notice board entirely covered in pictures. Patterns and textures. Prints of abstract art. Photos of odd insects and plants so colorful and foreign they’d put anything Minegishi could create to shame.

“Isn’t this your office?” Shou asked.

“Yeah, but I don’t work from home much anymore. I don’t need it,” Mom said.

She looked around, sizing up the room with her hands at her sides. “Maybe you’ll need another closet or dresser or something for your clothes. I wanted to get you a bed, but then I thought it was probably best if you came with me to find one yourself. I hope you don’t mind sleeping on a futon for a few days.”

Shou pulled out a swivel chair from under the desk and sat down with Nezumi’s travel cage in his lap. Every little action was exhausting. All he’d done for the day was sit around in a car, but he felt more like he’d spent the time trying to solve the world’s hardest puzzle.

His mother stopped talking about furniture when he took off the top half of the cage and scooped the hamster out.

“Oh, can I see her before you let her go?” she asked, excitedly stepping forward with her hands outstretched.

Shou let the hamster climb into her palms.

“She’s so tiny,” Mom cooed, stroking her on the back with one finger. “Why do you call her Nezumi? She doesn’t look like a rat at all.”

Shou shrugged. “Ootsuki kept calling her a rat, so it just stuck.”

“Ootsuki?” All the excitement drained out of Mom as she carefully released Nezumi into her bigger cage. “The one with the ponytail?”

“Yeah.” Shou shifted uncomfortably. “He’s actually not—”

But he was. He was rude. He was downright insufferable sometimes. And Shou wasn’t always great at picking up on people’s boundaries, but anyone could see that his mother had been scared of him.

“It’s a bit small, isn’t it?” Mom commented, watching Nezumi scamper up the ramp to her little wooden house, then back down into the wood shavings in the bottom of her cage, circling the enclosure as if to check if everything was as she remembered it.

Shou stared blankly at the cage. “Is it?”

Was it too small? Too sparse? Shou had done his best to read up on hamster care and find a cage that had room to run around but was easy to move. If possible, he took Nezumi out and let her roam freely on the floor every day. But he didn’t really know. He could have found someone to ask; there were tons of message boards online with pet owners happy to help. He could easily have asked someone.

“Well, it’s not bad,” Mom quickly backtracked, “there just isn’t much for her to climb around on. Maybe she could use a new room too, you know?”

Shou didn’t answer. His mother looked at him searchingly for a long moment before she knelt down in front of the chair and pulled him into a hug. It forced him to bend forward at an awkward angle. Maybe it was just over-exposure after already being hugged once, but he could barely get himself to wrap his arms around her in return.

“You look so tired,” she murmured, resting her head against his. The words sounded far away, even when spoken right into his ear. He wondered if this would be the part where she started asking questions.

She leaned back to sit on her heels, tilting her head to the side. Her bangs parted above her eye, allowing a rare glimpse of one concerned eyebrow. “Is there anything you feel like doing?”

Shou gave a weak shrug.

“Have you eaten anything today?”

He shook his head. “Not really.”

“Me neither.” Mom pushed herself up from the floor. “That’s a thing we can do. Go grocery shopping and then cook some proper dinner.” She glanced at Shou, still sitting hunched over on the chair. “Or you can stay here and take a nap.”

“No, I’ll go,” Shou mumbled, standing up with all the vigor of a slug.

Even on a Friday afternoon, Sturgeon Bay wasn’t exactly bustling with activity. Most of the residents either had ties to the fishing harbor or had moved here for the scenery. Glancing from the dark sea to the old, sturdy cedar trees towering behind the town, Shou could understand that.

Mom smiled at him over her shoulder. “You should go up there sometime. It’s a gorgeous forest, it’s just easy to get lost. I’ve heard people say there’s a spirit in there, messing with your sense of direction.”

Maybe he would. Apart from the green blob Ritsu’s brother kept as a pet, it’d been a while since Shou had last encountered a proper spirit.

The local grocery store was flanked by a bike shop on one side and a row of wooden townhouses that could easily be a hundred years old on the other. Usually, Shou didn’t mind sticking out in a crowd, but he was already feeling out of place and it didn’t help that every person they passed on the way through the sliding doors stared at him. He followed close behind his mother while she navigated the aisles. From how razor-focused she was at finding the ingredients she needed, he could tell she’d noticed too.

“You’re right, it’s good weather for something spicy,” she said, hurriedly picking out a couple of chili peppers from the vegetable section, dropping them in the plastic bag in Shou’s hands.

Suddenly, a cheerful voice sounded behind them, easily cutting through the background noise from distant conversations and whirring cooling units. “Kaiko-san, hi!”

Mom ducked her head like she’d been caught in a crime. The woman who’d called her name looked even more out of place than Shou with her stylish, bright green dress and flawlessly wavy hair. The rest of her was stocky and unremarkable, but she carried herself like she’d stepped right out of a photo shoot.

“What are you doing here in the middle of the afternoon?” she asked. “I thought you guys were still swamped with deadlines.”

“I took a few days off,” Mom mumbled. Her eyes kept flickering in the direction of the cash registers.

The woman pushed her half-rimmed glasses up her nose, squinting a little when she noticed Shou. Although the corners of her lips were upturned, she was obviously puzzled. Mom reluctantly turned her back on the line of people blocking her escape route and adjusted her bangs over her eyes; the only defensive measure she had at hand.

“This is Hasegawa-san,” she told Shou. “We work together from time to time.”

Hasegawa nodded enthusiastically, eyes still not leaving Shou. Mom reached around his back to pat him on the shoulder, much like a used-car salesperson trying to pawn off a questionable ride.

“This is my son, Shou.”

Hasegawa’s face contorted with surprise, but at least not the negative kind. “Why have you never told me you have a son? You must be Himiko’s age!”

Before Shou could reply, she gasped, pointing between them.

“Wait, are you visiting, or is this a permanent thing?”

Mom sent Shou a desperate look. “He’s moving in. I’m sorry, he just got here and everything’s a little chaotic right now. We’re really—”

“My dad died,” Shou said.

The smile slowly slipped from Hasegawa’s face, leaving a genuine, sympathetic frown in its place. “I’m very sorry,” she said. “Don’t let me hold you up, I understand if you just want to get home.”

It seemed to be the last thing Mom had expected from her. She flusteredly took the plastic bag with the chilis from Shou’s hands, tying a knot on it.

“Thank you, I’ll talk to you later,” she mumbled politely, quickly stalking off toward the meat section without making eye contact.

“Kaiko,” Hasegawa called after her. “You let me know if there’s anything I can help with, alright?”

Shou stayed a couple of steps behind his mother on the way back from the store. She had packed the groceries and walked off with the bags before Shou could offer to help, so he let her carry them on her own.

Judging from the encounter with Hasegawa, she hadn’t told anyone here about Shou. People were going to ask her questions, too. Or stay quiet and make assumptions. He didn’t know which was worse.

“Mom?”

She twirled around; a startled look on her face.

“I already thought about it a lot,” Shou said. “Telling everyone Pops died is the easiest explanation. It’s pretty good for shutting people up.”

She looked crestfallen, shoulders slumping like the weight of the shopping bags would drag her to the ground. “I don’t know what to do. What am I supposed to tell her when she asks about you again?”

Shou stopped at her side and held out a hand, offering to take one of the bags. “We’ll come up with a cover story. It doesn’t matter what it is as long as we keep it consistent.”

They walked back to the house in silence. The moment Mom unlocked the door, the sky finally gave up on holding back the rain that had loomed overhead since Shou arrived. He sat on the doorstep, watching it drip off the overhang until his mother asked him to help chop vegetables.

They sat down at the kitchen table to eat. The interior of the house had its own odd aesthetic that only felt balanced because it was so consistently chaotic. Every chair was a different second-hand model, all upholstered with different pastel patterns. The kitchen counters were painted a light pink, contrasting the stark marine blue wall behind them, and most of the utensils and decorations in the room were in bold primary colors.

Shou raised a spoonful of curry to his mouth and thought of the times they’d eaten dinner together in the past. Back when Pops was there. Sometimes. It’d been nothing like this—the walls had definitely been white, and the food not thrown together in half an hour.

Mom took one bite of the curry and scrunched up her face. “It’s not great, is it?” she said, scrutinizing another spoonful as if she could identify what was wrong that way.

Shou swallowed his food before replying, “I think it’s good.”

“You’re just saying that because it’s too spicy,” she snorted. “Remember when you were little, you’d always ask me to make curry? I’ve never met another little kid who liked chili so much.”

“No kidding, I still do,” Shou grinned at her. “And Pops still hates it.”

Mom faltered at the mention of him, resting her spoon on the rim of her bowl. “Nagata-san was here yesterday. You know, that government agent? I talked to her about how to approach… Well, everything. She said the same thing as you, that we should tell everyone your father died. If you want a cover story, we should run it by her first.”

Shou dropped his own spoon, sending specks of yellow sauce splattering onto the table. “She talked about me?” he blurted.

“Of course,” Mom said, confusedly. “Well, she mostly answered my questions. About Claw and you—”

“Why would you ask her? Just ask me about it!”

Slightly annoyed, Mom leaned back in her chair and gestured at the rest of the room. “You weren’t here to ask, Shou. She said they’ll make sure we’re safe here.”

“They’re gonna keep tabs on us, so watch what you tell her. If anyone comes after me I can take care of it myself,” Shou spat.

Mom planted her elbow on the table so she could prop up her head, returning the scowl Shou had directed at her. “This is my house and I don’t want you to, got it?”

Shou gritted his teeth and stayed quiet. She didn’t want to be involved, he knew that. It was his own fault for talking so openly to a couple of government employees.

But how much did she know? Did she know Pops had tried to kill him? Did she know how long Pops had left him by himself? And what Shou had been doing? He hadn’t told Nagata all of that to have her pass it on without even asking him first.

He couldn’t get himself to ask about it. Not while he helped clean up after dinner, not while his mother kept up a one-sided conversation to which he only responded with “yeah” and “no”, not as she parked him in front of the TV in the living room, and certainly not when she started asking if he was okay.

“Shou.”

He flinched when his mother sat down next to him on the couch and grabbed his hand. She recoiled a little at the reaction, immediately letting go of him.

“You’re shaking,” she said softly. “Maybe you should just go to bed.”

Shou stared at his hands. She was right. They were shaking again.

He didn’t know how his mother expected him to sleep at nine in the evening, but he didn’t resist as she led him up the stairs. He stood around uselessly in the office while she found a futon and made a bed for him, and was only spurred into motion when she instructed him to dig out a toothbrush and a spare t-shirt he could sleep in from his duffel bag.

When he came back from the bathroom, his mother had wandered off. He put his clothes on the office chair and sat down on the futon with the quilted blanket she’d found for him thrown over his legs, staring blankly at his hands again.

Still shaking.

“Is there anything I can do?” Mom asked when she came back, leaning on the doorframe. “You don’t look well.”

“I don’t think I can sleep,” Shou mumbled. He buried his hands under the blanket where he couldn’t see them, only the patchwork of brightly colored fabric.

His mother made a thoughtful noise as she walked closer. She plopped down next to the futon, back against the wall and her long, yellow skirt splayed out on the floor around her. “If you don’t want to be alone, I can stay here. Or you could sleep in my room instead.”

Shou hid his face in his hands so she couldn’t see how his cheeks flushed at having to admit that he hadn’t been able to sleep in a room by himself for the last three years.

“It’s embarrassing,” he mumbled.

Mom leaned forward, wrapping her arms around her knees. “It’s not embarrassing. We all have weird… things. The first two months I lived by myself I had to keep a knife next to my bed to fall asleep.”

Shou slowly uncovered his face. “Why?”

“I guess I was afraid someone would come murder me in my sleep,” she said with an awkward little laugh.

It quickly faded, leaving her to stare blankly at her feet instead. She snapped herself out of it after a few seconds, peering out through the half-open door, thinking.

“Do you want a knife? Would that help?”

It sounded like a terrible habit. Just like Serizawa with his umbrella. Shou laid down heavily and pulled the blanket up to his chin. “I don’t need a knife, I have powers.”

Staring at the veins in the wooden ceiling boards got boring after a while. Shou glanced at his mother. Even with her brow furrowed under her bangs, she looked so young. Of course, she was much younger than Pops, but his serious, unapproachable manner made the difference even more evident.

She hesitantly raised her head. “Did you ever have to use your powers against anyone?”

“Don’t you already know that if you’ve been asking so many questions?” Shou muttered, letting his eyes linger on the ceiling again.

“And your father knew about it?”

“It was kind of my job. Somebody had to keep all the other espers in line.”

He ventured another glance at his mother. She had her hand on her forehead, face turned away.

“Are you angry?”

“I don’t know what I am,” she said.

She was definitely angry. And a load of other things that were harder to decipher.

“I’m sorry,” Shou said. “I thought I could make him better, but I was too late.”

The words left his mother with a strange, astonished look on her face. Her entire demeanor changed so fast it startled Shou when she replied with an almost aggressive sternness. “Even if you thought he was better, I never want to see him again. Do you understand that?”

“But we used to be a family,” Shou fumbled. “I thought, maybe you could talk to each other. You always ask about him and he wanted to apologize—”

“We were never a family,” Mom cut him off. “He’s a leech. He drains the life out of everyone around him. When I left, I thought it was just me there was something wrong with, but I don’t think he ever cared about anyone in his life!”

The response that came out of Shou’s mouth all on its own was, “Yes, he does.”

“I wasted ten years trying to make him change, it can’t be done! How can you think he cares about you after what he did? Just forget about him!”

“But—”

Mom stood up, her long skirt billowing as she hurried out into the hallway.

“I’m sorry, I can’t do this,” she choked out, closing the door behind her in a clear sign that Shou shouldn’t follow.

He slowly laid back down, tracing the same veins in the ceiling over and over. Not even a day had passed and he already knew with paralyzing certainty that he’d messed up. Maybe irreversibly so.

Hours later, he was still wide awake. He admitted defeat and left the futon to sweep his mother’s art supplies aside, clearing a space for him to sit in front of the window. He pulled the curtains open, revealing that it was still raining steadily outside. Shou watched the drops break against the glass and felt more out of place and unwelcome than he’d ever felt anywhere. It took all his willpower to quell the desire to climb out the window and walk away. He couldn’t do that to his mother, or to Fukuda, or anyone else who had agreed this was where he lived now.

The light from his phone was cold and harsh on his eyes. He kept returning to Fukuda’s number. He’d promised to text him, but he could call instead. Fukuda wouldn’t be mad about Shou waking him up in the middle of the night; he did that all the time.

The only problem was that he couldn’t get himself to press the call button. There was no logical explanation, he just couldn’t do it. So, on complete impulse, he texted Ootsuki instead.

Shou
Hey

It didn’t take long before he got a reply.

Ootsuki
Hey yourself

Ootsuki
Is something wrong?

Shou stared at the screen until it went dark. He wasn’t even sure what he wanted to talk about. Honestly, he’d just wanted to make sure the rest of the world still existed.

The phone started vibrating, Ootsuki’s name appearing as the caller ID. Shou hesitated for a moment before he took the call.

“Hi, Shou.” Ootsuki said. He didn’t sound like he’d been sleeping either. His voice was almost chipper; trying too hard to convey some sorely-needed optimism.

“Sorry,” Shou mumbled. “It’s late.”

“Well, what’s going on?” Ootsuki asked. “How did your first day at your mom’s place go?”

Shou fidgeted with one of the markers lying by his feet, pushing it around in circles. “It’s been fine, I guess.”

Ootsuki’s attempt at positivity didn’t last long. He waited for Shou to elaborate for about five seconds before snidely retorting, “Okay, bye then? Good talk.”

Shou’s fingers tightened around the phone. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do here. We went grocery shopping and everyone was staring at me.”

“Yeah, you kind of stand out,” Ootsuki said, deadpan.

It was stupid for anyone to have to listen to this. Shou wanted to hang up. So what if people stared at him? They didn’t matter, and what could Ootsuki do about it anyway? He’d been in a bad mood all day, Shou knew he’d be like this.

“Can I say something really honest?” Ootsuki’s voice cut right through the stream of anxious, pointless thoughts.

Shou groaned, planting a hand on his face. He already knew what it would be about. Ootsuki hadn’t exactly approached his mother with kindness and understanding, and he could never shut up about it when he disliked someone that much.

“Just say what you wanna say,” he muttered, just to get it over with.

Surprisingly, Ootsuki did not blurt out the angry rant he must’ve built up all day. His voice was even and deliberate. He’d thought about this.

“I don’t know if you actually want to stay with your mom or if you’re just going along with it because everyone tells you to, but if I were you, I’d hate her,” he said. “She ditched you for years. She couldn’t even pick up her phone and call you after everything that happened. You had to do that, right?”

Shou followed the drops of rain trailing down the window glass, refracting the light from the streetlamps outside. “She doesn’t like you either.”

“Wow, go figure,” Ootsuki scoffed, his calm falling apart fast. “If she thinks I’m rude, how about she consider showing a little gratitude when we deliver you to her doorstep in one piece! She acted like she was ready to call the cops on us. I’m sorry, but anyone who fucks Suzuki Touichirou and leaves their kid with him to run off to some fishing village in the middle of nowhere does not get to be that fucking arrogant.”

Shou leaned over until his forehead hit his knees. “Ootsuki—”

“No, let me finish,” Ootsuki snapped. “Even despite all of that, you know what I think?”

Shou wasn’t exactly in the mood for listening to him shit-talking his parents any more, but the silence felt too loud now that his tirade had ended. He draped his free arm over his head, steeling himself for whatever would come out of Ootsuki’s mouth.

“What?”

Ootsuki exhaled for so long it had to empty his lungs entirely.

“I think you should give it a chance,” he said. It sounded so sincere. Not snarky or flippant, as Ootsuki usually was when he was upset. Sincere. And a little defeated. “It’s like Higashio said. Go find some new things you like to do. Maybe make some friends who aren’t a decade older than you.”

Shou kept his forehead firmly planted on his bare knees. “I think I already ruined it. I made my mom really upset. What if she throws me out?”

There was an odd, lengthy pause before Ootsuki huffed into the receiver. “Come on, she wouldn’t do that."

“You don’t know that.”

“If she does, I’ll personally come pick you up and then I’ll kick her ass. But I mean, no matter how little I like her, there’s no way she’d kick you out.”

Who knew what Mom would or wouldn’t do. Shou didn’t know her well enough to tell, and Ootsuki certainly didn’t either.

“Did all of you go back to the apartment?” he asked, changing the subject.

“Yeah, but I’ll leave as soon as I can catch a train out of here,” Ootsuki said glumly.

Shou straightened his back, shifting so he could sit with his back against the cool window glass and glower at the rest of the dark office. “You’ve told Fukuda, right? He’s gonna worry if you just vanish.”

Ootsuki scoffed like it’d been a funny comment. “So what? Both of them hate my guts.”

Shou frowned to himself. “No, they don’t.”

“Trust me, they do,” Ootsuki sneered. “Why do you even care about Fukuda? You figured it out yourself, he’s full of shit. I’m sick of Higashio covering for him like he’s never done anything wrong in his life.”

All the sincerity was gone; the usual defenses back in place.

“Ootsuki, they don’t hate you, you were just being a dick.”

“I’m not talking about today,” he snapped. Shou could hear him let out a long, measured breath. “Whatever. It’s not your problem. Are you gonna be okay? I’d like to try and sleep for a couple of hours.”

Shou lowered his phone to check the time. It was past three in the morning.

“Sure,” he mumbled. “Sorry if I woke you up.”

Instead of hanging up, Ootsuki made a frustrated noise. “You can text me anytime, okay? Or call or whatever. I mean that. I think I just need to get away for a while.”

Shou let him go. Once again he was left with just the sound of rain and Nezumi skittering around in her cage. He placed his phone on the desk and opened the window, sticking an arm outside to feel the cold raindrops on his skin.

The window was large; easy to climb out of and onto the roof below. If he ever decided to leave, he’d have an exit right at hand. For now, he only sat there in the darkness, invisible to the rest of the world as he let the rain pour over him until his shirt was soaked through and his teeth were chattering.

After quietly making it to the bathroom to dry his hair and change his clothes, he actually fell asleep. It was a short-lived thing, but better than nothing. He jolted awake at the unfamiliar sound of his mother walking down the stairs. Sometimes he’d wish everyone had an aura; that way he could gather at least a vague idea of what kind of mood she was in.

When Shou worked up the courage to go downstairs, she sat at the kitchen table, chewing her way through a plain, buttered piece of toast. She didn’t look well; her hair was a mess, and she had dark circles under her eyes, frowning gravely at a few pieces of paper lying in front of her.

Her head snapped up when she realized Shou was standing in front of the fridge. She slowly lowered the toast onto a plate sitting halfway on top of one piece of paper.

“Did you get some sleep?”

“A little bit,” Shou told her, awkwardly stepping closer.

He pulled out the chair across from hers and immediately noticed that the papers she’d been reading were dense with a brand of freakishly neat and uniform handwriting that Shou knew very well.

“That’s the letter Fukuda gave you?”

“Yes,” Mom mumbled, sweeping the sheets off the table to place them back in their envelope.

“I want to see it,” Shou said.

She went to place the envelope under a stack of other letters at the far end of the kitchen counter like that would put it out of sight and out of mind. “We’ll find a time to talk about it later.”

While she moved on to rummage through one of her cupboards, pulling out a loaf of sliced bread, a chill spread down Shou’s back. What did Fukuda write that was so serious they needed time specifically allocated for talking about it?

“Eat some breakfast,” Mom said, placing a cup of tea and a plate with two pieces of toast in front of him.

Shou didn’t touch the food. “I want to see the letter.”

“No, I need to say this,” Mom snapped, raising her hands for emphasis. “I’m sorry about yesterday. Of course you can talk about your father, I can’t tell you to forget about him.”

Shou had not had enough sleep to delve into another conversation about his father. He decisively pushed past her and crossed the room. Mom sighed in defeat as he retrieved the envelope and tore the letter out.

He hastily skimmed through the overly polite intro. Nothing special there, just Fukuda trying to explain the situation without actually explaining anything at all—exactly the way Shou would’ve told him to do it. Then, as expected, a plea not to share the letter with Shou, and then finally, a list.

...Shou has trouble sleeping when no one is with him. Usually, it’s enough to stay until he falls asleep. Don’t touch him if he’s having nightmares, he can react violently…

...won’t tell if he’s injured or ill unless it’s very serious. If he complains that he’s in pain, you should call a doctor…

...please understand that he is not used to people having his best interests in mind...

It went on—complicated issues that Fukuda had never even discussed with him written down in bullet points.

Was this how Fukuda saw him? Just a bunch of items on a checklist. Like a pet, parked here until its rightful owner returned from vacation. Just like the lists Shou had sometimes composed when he had to leave Nezumi in Fukuda’s care for a few days.

“You know what?” Mom snatched the letter from his hands. “Let’s forget about this. We can make our own list where you tell me what goes on it.”

She promptly tore the sheets in half, then into quarters. Shou watched the pieces scatter on the floorboards before his mother grabbed his shoulders, guiding him back to the untouched breakfast waiting for him on the table. The thought of stomaching it right now was impossible, but he still sat down. The worst part of all this was that nothing Fukuda had reported was untrue. Repeating it on a new list was pointless.

“Now then,” Mom said under her breath. She went to fetch a notepad and a pen from the living room before she returned to the table. “Let me start. I have a few rules for you as well.”

Shou looked up at her with apprehension. She’d never made any rules for him when he’d visited her before.

“First one.” Mom held up her pointer finger. “Be patient with people. Me included. You’ll probably get a lot of stupid questions, but asking stupid questions is better than making stupid assumptions.”

Shou nodded faintly.

“Second. If you go anywhere, you have to tell me where you are. You don’t have to ask for permission to leave, but I want to know.”

Another reasonable request. Shou nodded again.

Mom tapped the pen on the paper a few times like she was considering something more. In the end, she put down the utensil and crossed her arms. “There.”

Shou raised his eyebrows. “That’s it?”

“Yes,” she said, smiling at him. “So, what would you like me to do?”

Shou took a moment to think it over. All he knew was that he didn’t want to fall back into their old routine of never talking about anything important. Not when he knew how hurt and upset his mother was under the surface.

“Don’t lie to me,” he said. “About anything.” He looked her straight in the eye. “If you don’t want me to live here, you should get it over with and say so. I can take care of myself, you don’t have to feel sorry for me.”

Mom stared at him like he’d slapped her across the face. He flinched as her arm shot across the table, grabbing his wrist.

“I’m talking to you right now to figure out how to make you feel at home here. Do you think I’d do that if I didn’t want you to stay?”

Her fingers dug painfully into Shou’s skin. He kept his eyes on his lap, mumbling, “You’ve been upset since I got here.”

“Of course I’m upset! Until a few days ago, I didn’t even know what was happening to you!”

She seemed to realize she was holding onto Shou very tightly and let go, self-consciously leaning back in her seat.

“Honestly?” she said, glancing off to the side. “I don’t know what to do with you. The last time I had to take care of you, you were just a little boy. I don’t know anything about what you’ve been through, so you have to help me out here.”

Shou kept both his wrists close to his body, far out of grabbing distance.

“If there’s anything you want to tell me about, I’ll listen,” she said. “No matter what it is, I won’t cry or yell at you again, I promise.”

A blatant lie. She definitely would. She got upset very easily, after all.

“And you can ask for help, too. It’s not embarrassing.”

Even though his mother’s face held no sign of resentment or dishonesty, he didn’t want to tell her anything; he wasn’t ready for that at all. But she was giving him a chance to move on from how things used to be, and it felt like a major disservice to both of them if he didn’t take it.

He eyed the toast, his stomach churning with both hunger and nervousness, and slowly lifted one piece to take a bite, trying to think of a harmless but constructive place they could start. Only one thing came to mind.

“Can you help me build a new cage for Nezumi?”

Mom’s entire face lit up with a radiant smile. She clapped her hands together in excitement like it was the best idea she’d ever heard.

“Of course,” she said. “That sounds like fun!”

Chapter Text

The old lady living across from Mom glowered at Shou from her living room window. Shou didn’t know what her problem was; he was just minding his own business, searching through the small utility shed connected to the side of his mother’s house. The rain drummed a steady rhythm on the roof while he shuffled around a pyramid of paint buckets, finally spotting the tarp he’d been sent to fetch, crammed into the back corner.

Frayed scraps of cobweb drifted to the floor as he dusted off the plastic sheet. He placed it on top of the wooden boards he’d already gathered, balancing it all on his arms as he went outside. He kicked the door to the shed shut and sent the old lady his best ominous glare on the way back to the house. It was all it took to make her flusteredly draw her curtains closed.

Annoying neighbors aside, Shou couldn’t complain. He’d barely lived with his mother for a week and they’d already settled into some sort of mutual agreement on how things worked now. Shou didn’t feel like he was constantly stepping on eggshells anymore, and so far, his mother had kept her promise and refrained from crying or yelling at him a single time.

He liked her. Of course, he’d always liked her—she was his mother, after all—but she was surprisingly easy to get along with. She kept things lighthearted, and she was funny, and she’d listened when Shou asked her to be honest, to a point where she addressed everything with a level of bluntness that reminded Shou of Higashio.

“Did you find it?” she yelled from the kitchen as soon as he’d closed the front door behind him.

“Yep,” Shou said, dropping the woodworking supplies in the hallway next to a sheet of plexiglass and a bucket of screws.

His mother would probably like Higashio if they were to ever have an actual conversation, but that was just one thing they didn’t talk about—just like Shou didn’t mention that he’d been texting Ootsuki every day, or that Fukuda had persistently tried to get a hold of him just as often.

Just as Fukuda was trying to do right now, in fact.

It had happened every day around ten in the morning, so by now, Shou had learned not to check his phone. Every time he saw Fukuda’s name light up on the screen, he felt like someone had clamped their ice-cold hand down on his neck, and he was not about to deal with that when he had a hamster cage to build.

He ignored the buzzing in his pocket and started up the staircase, heading toward the closet in his mother’s office. Standing on the tips of his toes, his fingers could only grace the case for the power drill on the top shelf. His eyes flickered to the floor, hesitating for a second before he expanded his aura to nudge the case over the edge. The phone started buzzing again at the same moment, and Shou nearly dropped the drill on the floor.

He should stop being so jumpy. He should block Fukuda’s number. What did he want, anyway? He was the one who wanted Shou to leave. He was the one who’d left him here and driven off. If he was so concerned, he could grow a spine and call Mom instead.

A bottle of glue and a box of assorted craft supplies joined the power drill before Fukuda gave up. Shou took in a breath, staring blankly at all the shirts and pants folded and stacked on the lower shelves of the closet.

Before he came here, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d bothered to unpack his clothes. His mother kept telling him he could do whatever he wanted with the office, but even with the addition of the bed and dresser he’d picked out himself, it was just a room. That sort of thing could be taken away easily.

The only thing that put him at ease was the knowledge that his battered old backpack was squashed against the back wall of the closet. He’d stowed his share of the money Higashio insisted he keep in there, tucked underneath a pair of jeans and a couple of t-shirts, just in case he’d need it someday.

Shou carried the haul of supplies downstairs and wandered into the living room. He nudged the coffee table up against the couch to make room to spread out the tarp, moving everything on top of it where it wouldn’t scratch up the floorboards.

His eyes went out of focus again, glancing over the assortment of cage-building supplies. Ever since he arrived in Sturgeon Bay, he couldn’t go more than a few minutes without something to do before he started feeling antsy and weird.

“You can pull up a chair and sit down,” Mom said from the kitchen. She sat at the table with her back turned, focusing on the monitor that used to be in the office.

Shou quietly picked up the mint-green chair across from her, placing it where he could see what she was working on. She was making adjustments to an intricate floral pattern, critically tilting her head back and forth every time she’d drawn a new stroke on the tablet lying in front of her.

“This is way too romantic for my tastes,” she said, letting the tablet pen dangle carelessly from her fingers. “I don’t know how we ended up working on a wedding dress line, of all things.”

She was one of two graphic designers at the studio where she worked. Her boss had called her the day before and demanded she come back to her post. Shou didn’t know what she’d told him about what happened, but she bargained her way into working from home for the rest of the week. Just for Shou’s sake. He felt bad about occupying the only proper desk in the house with nothing more suitable than Nezumi’s old cage.

He pulled his feet up on the seat of his chair, resting his arms on top of his knees. Mom switched tracks, assembling a few photographs of models in western-looking wedding gowns until she’d built up the resolve to look at the pattern again.

Her life was so mundane now. It was strange to think about the fact that she’d ever been involved with the leader of Claw.

“Why did you and Pops even get together?” Shou thought out loud.

He knew it was a bad topic the second the words left his mouth—anything to do with Pops was a bad topic—but to his mother’s credit, she only froze up for such a brief moment that it probably wasn’t noticeable if Shou hadn’t looked for it.

“Did neither of us ever talk to you about that?”

Shou shook his head, expectantly propping his chin up on his arms.

Mom’s eyes drifted back to the screen. “I wasn't very old when we met. Twenty, I think? Everyone treated me like I was a ditzy little girl because I had a sense of humor and wanted to paint instead of going to business school.”

She sighed like the memory alone was enough to tire her out.

“But your father treated me like I was worth listening to. You know how he is, not the chattiest person, but he talked to me and I guess I liked that.”

She undid the last few changes to the floral pattern with some unnecessarily aggressive button presses.

“Of course, he already had his issues back then,” she continued in an even voice, rolling her eyes at herself. “God, I was so stupid. People don't change, Shou. It’s best to learn that from early on.”

Shou studied the side of her face, unsure of what to say. “The eyebrows never scared you away?”

She burst into a bright laugh, ruining the elegant, swirling line she was drawing. “You can say a lot about your father, but I always found the eyebrows charming.”

“You have really bad taste in men.”

“Yeah, I guess I do.” Mom smiled solemnly to herself as she undid the failed stroke and saved her file, closing the lid of her laptop with a soft clack. “This can wait. Let’s start on that cage instead.”

With a little help from the internet, it’d been easy for Shou to find instructions for a do-it-yourself cage, but his mother only skimmed through the measurements before she took charge of the operation. She kept coming up with modifications to the design, enthusiastically teaching Shou how to use her power drill, how best to glue wood together—how best to do all sorts of things.

“This is fun, right?” she said, bent down to fasten the last screw holding the plexiglass front of the cage in place. “Especially when we’re building it for the world’s most adorable hamster.”

Shou grinned at her from the floor. He was assembling a ramp that was supposed to go between the two levels of the cage. Specks of superglue had stuck to the tips of all his fingers at this point.

“Speaking of something less fun—” Mom dropped the drill on the tarp, brushing her long hair away from her face, “—I’ve been meaning to talk to you about school.”

She was trying to pass it off as a casual conversation topic, but Shou could tell she was nervous, restlessly shifting her weight from one foot to the other.

“Is the government threatening you to do that?” he drawled, focusing on the little wooden steps he was attaching to the ramp.

Mom scrunched up her nose. “Well, yes, but Nagata said you can wait until after the winter break if you need to.”

Shou carefully pressed down on one of the tiny pieces of wood until the glue hardened. His mother sighed and sat down in front of him, her legs tucked under her.

“When I go back to work on Monday, you’ll have to spend a lot of time by yourself.” She tucked her hair behind her ears, then folded her hands in her lap. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”

Shou frowned at her. “Why not?”

She gave him a look like he should already know perfectly well why. “I don’t want you to get in trouble.”

“Why would I get in trouble? I can find stuff to do on my own.”

“Okay,” Mom said, clearly unconvinced. “I still think it’d be a good idea to start school earlier than January. It’s not about the classes, it’s more that you’d be around some other kids your age.”

“I don’t need to go to school to find people to talk to.” Shou screwed the cap back on the bottle of glue and tossed it with the rest of the tools they’d finished with.

His mother crossed her arms, holding up her head with one hand. “I promised not to lie to you, right? Well, I have a new rule and it’s that you don’t lie to me either.”

Shou glared at her. He’d done nothing to deserve all these accusations.

“I won’t lie and I won’t get in trouble,” he said. “You don’t have to tell me that.”

He brought the nearly finished hamster cage up to the office to fine-tune the last pieces by himself. It took a lot longer without his mother there to give directions, but it turned out alright in the end. Nezumi took a little while to warm up to it, but then she was scampering up and down the different platforms, eager to explore all the new space.

Shou hoped she felt at home because he still didn’t. It wasn’t just the office—as soon as his mother wasn’t present to remind him why he was there, her whole house felt like some vacant building he’d broken into.

That evening, he stared out at the rain again, watching thin streams of water form on the slanted, empty street. He really shouldn’t complain, but he’d barely slept since he moved in. If he dozed off, it was only to wake up soon after, confused about where he was.

He might have panicked a couple of times, realizing Fukuda wasn’t there with him. He might have started crying one of the times that happened. He tried not to dwell on it.

Spending every night stuck in a room until it was an appropriate hour to get up left him with a lot of time to think. It was a problem when all he seemed to think about were the things he shouldn’t:

The past.

His father.

Psychic powers.

His father… Trapped in a laboratory, all by himself.

Shou slammed the side of his head into the window so hard the pane of glass vibrated. He couldn’t do this anymore. He had to talk to someone about it or he’d explode. In an act of desperation, he grabbed his phone from beside his bare feet and texted Ritsu.

Shou
Do you ever think itd be better if you never knew your brother

He immediately regretted sending the message. Ritsu was the one who’d suggested they keep in contact, but it was also Ritsu who’d kicked Shou out of his house and then said nothing for a week.

It was barely five in the morning. Shou certainly didn’t expect his phone to buzz just a few minutes later, two messages coming in right after each other.

Ritsu
No.

Ritsu
Is this about your dad?

Shou scowled at the last line. Did he have to be so direct about it?

Shou
Really you never think about how everything would have been less complicated if you hadnt grown up with him? Like maybe you wouldnt be so jumpy and suspicious about everything

Ritsu
Why are you even talking to me?

The scowl faded from Shou’s face, his thumbs hovering over the keyboard. He didn’t have a good answer. Frankly, he had no idea.

Shou
Guess i wanted to talk to someone whod understand

Somehow, that was the right thing to say because Ritsu kept texting him until he had to leave for school, updating Shou on what had been going on since the last time they saw each other. Apparently, it was a normal thing for him to be up at five in the morning, which was great since it was usually around that time Shou gave up on trying to sleep.

Ritsu was considerably wordier in text than he was in person. After a few days of cautious politeness, he repeatedly went off into long monologs about completely inane topics, only to scold himself for it afterward. He didn't have to feel bad; it was nice. It put things into perspective. Other people's lives were horrendously boring, too.

What was more alarming about Ritsu was that he asked a lot of questions. At first, it was only surface-level curiosity about Shou’s new home, but then he kept getting nosier; asking about Shou’s mother, why he hadn’t lived with her before, what it entailed that he’d been under his father’s care instead.

At one point, Shou told him, in less than kind terms, to mind his own fucking business. He didn’t hear from Ritsu again until the next day where he sent a very long, very formal apology. It was annoying. All it did was feed the tiny, irrational voice in the back of Shou’s head, suggesting that perhaps he should answer some of his questions.

But no. Shou was supposed to find new people to talk to. The only problem was that he had no clue what to talk to them about. He didn’t know what trivial things regular teenagers concerned themselves with, and apart from Ritsu, he’d barely interacted with anyone his own age since his father pulled him out of elementary school.

Maybe he just wasn’t built to socialize with regular suburban middle schoolers. In some awful, absurd way, he could pass by the students walking home from the school down by the harbor and find that he missed Claw. The organization had been rife with terrible people, but at least they were the kind of terrible people he knew how to act around. At least they were espers.

Five years of suffering his father’s scathing glances every time he used his powers for anything quote-unquote unbecoming had drilled it into Shou not to brandish them for no reason, but it was still starting to grate on him not to use them at all. His aura just sat there under his skin, tense with restless energy.

He kept hearing mentions that the forest stretching into the sloping landscape behind Sturgeon Bay was haunted. Allegedly, people had gotten lost there in the past and never returned. It sounded like a typical urban legend, but if it was true, Shou might as well do everyone a favor and exorcize the spirit responsible. On Monday, he said goodbye to his mother before she left for work, and then he headed out himself.

As it turned out, the forest outside Sturgeon Bay was the most un-haunted place Shou had ever visited. There was no trace of ghostly activity, no matter how far into the wilderness he went. It was almost eerie how quiet it was.

He kept wandering anyway, making his own path between the trees where only wildlife had gone before, reveling in the fact that he didn’t have to worry about anyone watching him. At first, he was only using his powers to avoid stepping in the many piles of mud, but soon he found himself shifting fallen trees just to make the terrain a little easier to traverse.

Shou laid his head back, trying to glimpse the overcast sky through the branches of the old, gnarly cedar trees that stretched far into the sky. His sneakers sank into the soft moss coating the ground like the forest would swallow him alive.

The vast stretches of greens and browns suddenly made him feel dizzy. Shou slowly turned on the spot, realizing he had no idea where he was or which direction he’d come from. The forest was a huge, uncharted block of gray on the map on his phone, only helpful for pointing out the general direction to the coast. He glanced up again, deciding it was more useful to fly himself above the treeline.

Sitting on a branch at the top of the tallest cedar, he could see the winding layout of Sturgeon Bay in the distance, drab and insignificant compared to the dark sea behind it. He snapped a picture and sent it to Ootsuki, idly kicking his legs while he waited for the unstable internet connection to transfer the file.

Shou
Bet i have a cooler view than you

Ootsuki replied a few minutes later with a picture of a grimy-looking alley where somebody had vomited on the ground.

Ootsuki
Uh, yeah, I think you do

Shou snorted amusedly at his phone. He’d found out more about Ootsuki in the last week than in all the rest of the time they’d known each other. For example, the parents he’d gone to visit weren’t really his parents, but a foster family he’d lived with for a few years before he went off to do whatever got him into Claw.

He had a lot of siblings, but Shou couldn’t keep track of who was who and whether or not they were really related—except one little sister he mentioned a lot. She was studying to become a veterinarian, he said. Shou would definitely like her, he said. It was nice to know Ootsuki was around people he actually got along with.

He looked down in surprise when his phone started vibrating. Ootsuki’s name lit up on the display.

Shou quickly took the call. “Hey, what’s up?”

“I just have to ask you something—”

Ootsuki’s voice was hard to hear over the wind, so Shou hopped off the branch he was sitting on and floated himself to the ground.

“—did you hear two people down here in Chugoku were straight-up mauled? You should look it up. One of them’s one of the Scars from Division Three, and I think the other’s one of your dad’s old board members?”

The only news Shou had been keeping tabs on was what was happening around Seasoning City, not on the other end of the country. “What do you mean, mauled?”

“Like somebody cut them up. Really grizzly, and they were just left out in the street. The news keep calling it a bear attack, but what kind of bear gets into the middle of a city, kills people, and gets away with no one seeing it? It’s definitely an esper.”

“You think it’s someone from Claw?” Shou asked, trampling through a pile of dead leaves. “The second division’s base is in Chugoku, but nobody from there’d go out murdering people.”

“Well, it’s either that or the government’s assassinating us now,” Ootsuki said. “Should I be worried? I still can’t get over that they reprimanded me for leaving Seasoning City. They never said we couldn’t leave! I even noticed one of their guys stalking me yesterday—”

“Yo, calm down,” Shou stopped him. “If the government was behind this and you already did something wrong, they’d have killed you already.”

Ootsuki let out a sigh that sounded mildly annoyed. “Just saying, you should keep an eye on this.”

Shou trekked back to his mother’s house, thinking about it the whole way. It couldn’t be the government killing old Claw members out in the open like that; they were way too secretive. But then who? Some other group of espers trying to take Claw’s place? A former victim playing vigilante? Claw itself?

Whoever did this wanted to be noticed. They were making a point.

The condescending, bearded asshole who’d been responsible for getting Fukuda kidnapped popped into Shou’s mind. Koga was from the inner circle of the main division. He’d been the one raving about letting no traitor go unpunished.

It had been a mistake to leave him and his two esper minions at that gas station. After Minegishi and Hatori and Shibata defeated everyone at that outlet mall, it was possible Koga’s group was all that was left of HQ. It would’ve been safer if they’d wound up dead.

Shou locked himself inside the house with the new key his mother had made for him. He kicked his shoes off in the genkan and made a quick detour to the kitchen to fetch a glass of water. He hurried up the stairs, escaping his mother’s color-blocked walls and eccentric furniture, shutting himself in the office where everything was comfortably white and anonymous.

Lying upside down with his head hanging off the side of the bed, he checked the news. The initial panic after the chaos in Seasoning City had already died down, and he couldn’t find much media coverage of the so-called bear attacks beyond what Ootsuki mentioned.

That was how it always was with Claw, though. If you wanted to know something, it was a safer bet to count on the conspiracy theorists strewn out across the country, stubbornly working to prove that the organization existed in the first place.

Nezumi darted back and forth around Shou as he moved to the floor, scrolling through a message board that was usually good at reporting esper sightings. Long ago, when he first found out about the site, he tried to help with their investigations, but the regulars quickly picked up on him being an insider and had too many questions he didn’t feel were safe to answer.

His thumb hovered uncertainly over the button to create a new thread. He’d learned his lesson back then, but this had to be more efficient than trawling the internet on his own. He pressed the button and made an offering: confirmation that the two bear victims were related to Claw in exchange for information about any esper groups that had been mobilizing in the last week.

Nezumi scuttered out from under the desk to put her front paws on Shou’s knee, standing on her hind legs with her nose raised curiously in the air. He scooped her up, and out of nowhere, it hit him like a brick to the back of the head that he’d never examined the pictures he took in Joseph’s hotel room.

Holding the hamster to his chest, he quickly found the photos tucked away in a password-protected folder. He pressed the first one on the list—a formal-sounding letter from Joseph’s suitcase, sent from an embassy in the USA—nothing addressed to Joseph directly. Shou could read the English text well enough to gather that they were striking up some kind of deal. Something about research results and an exchange of personnel.

He swiped through the following pictures, skimming through more letters and briefs; some from abroad, the rest from the Japanese government. None of it seemed specific enough to be useful.

Many of the photos of Joseph’s phone screen had been rendered blurry and unreadable by Shou’s haste to get through as much content as possible. He irritatedly deleted them one after another until he came to a vaguely threatening reprimand, insisting that none of what happened in Seasoning City should get through to the media.

Nezumi was already getting restless from being confined to Shou’s palm. He absentmindedly put her down, continuing through several email conversations with people whose names he didn’t recognize, but a couple of them had signed off with police titles.

Some of the correspondences were from months before Pops announced his world domination plans. One mentioned the bar Division Four had occupied for the last couple of years, another reported on the cult activity Division One had been responsible for. If the government had kept tabs on them all this time, why hadn’t they stopped them long ago?

Shou slowed down when he came to a series of profiles labeled "potential candidates". He recognized several of them—some former Scars, others people who’d simply worked for the subdivisions—but a photo on the last one made him stop completely.

He knew the imposing, gray-haired man frowning back at him very well. Iida was looking straight into the camera, the deep scar outlining one side of his mouth grim as ever. It wasn’t a new photo; he still had strands of black in his long hair and beard.

Shou zoomed in on the text accompanying the picture. It was nothing in-depth, just basic information: Iida Yoshito, age fifty-seven, powers including aura tracking and telekinesis.

He wondered where Iida had gone after he’d handed over Joseph’s phone number back in Seasoning City. Nagata mentioned he’d been an informant, but this report said nothing about what he’d done for the government or his connection to Division Two. Shou had written Iida’s name on the list of people he wanted to be spared, but he could see how he’d be useful for sniffing out anyone who’d evaded capture.

Whatever Iida was doing now, Shou hoped he was okay.

He returned to the message board. All the active members had flocked to Shou’s thread like seagulls on abandoned french fries, trying to wheedle it out of him how he knew anything about the bear attack victims.

Shou scrolled through the useless replies, regretting his decision to post anything. Halfway through the thread, he nearly overlooked one person politely mentioning that they had a friend at the police station near Division Four. Shou quickly wrote them a direct message, asking for more information.

“Okay, so my friend’s just a secretary, but yesterday they brought ten people into the station and told everyone to be quiet about it,” they wrote. “There’s a couple of streets near that bar someone else mentioned that are still blocked off. Apparently, some government people have been going in and out of there, but I don’t know why. Sry”

Shou was about to write them thank you when another message popped up.

“Ssooo, are you really the guy who solved that kidnapping case last year? In case you’re interested, a few of us have been talking about meeting up. If—”

Shou aborted the thank you and closed the browser with a frustrated huff.

He dropped his phone beside him and slumped over on the floor, watching Nezumi run laps around the space under his bed. Ten people? Unless those included all the Fourth Division’s Scars, that was a laughable number. It had almost been two weeks since Shou told Joseph that eradicating the subdivisions should be their first priority. They had all his notes, so what were they waiting for?

He slapped his hands onto his face, groaning in agony. What was he doing? He wasn’t supposed to think about any of this. All he needed to know was if he or Ootsuki or anyone else were in impending danger of getting murdered; the rest was out of his hands.

He got up, aimlessly sorting through his few belongings until he found his worn-out sketchbook, hidden away in the new dresser. He thumbed through a series of doodles of characters from whatever stupid manga he’d been reading. Most of them had been drawn in the backseat of the sedan where he’d spent so many hours with Ootsuki passing commentary from the seat beside him, or Fukuda and Higashio bickering in the front. Back when Shou didn’t have to sit around uselessly in a room he didn’t belong in.

He flung the sketchbook back in the drawer and checked the news again. He wasn’t supposed to check the news. He considered calling Fukuda. He shouldn’t—just the idea of it made him feel sick.

Once more, he ended up sitting on the desk by the window, his thoughts racing in all the wrong directions. He wasn’t supposed to think about Pops. Why couldn’t he stop thinking about him? About the way he’d looked at Shou when he stirred from his fever haze back in the apartment. Like he’d found something he’d lost. Something that mattered.

Maybe he hadn’t tried to kill Shou at all. Maybe it had been an accident somehow. A misunderstanding.

He didn’t know why he cared. His father was gone. It’d never matter again because Shou would never see him again. It made no sense for his aura to turn so strange and unstable as he thought about what the government was doing to him in their secret lab.

He pressed his nose into the arm he was resting on top of his knees, watching the undulating, orange cellular pattern that surrounded him. The polar opposite of the systemic, hard lines that had manifested around his father in the Culture Tower. Shou had never seen his aura before then; only its faint radiance. That was how efficient Pops had been at concealing his powers.

Would Shou ever be capable of the same feats as him? Storing energy for twenty years to destroy everything around him. Stealing other espers’ psychic powers to use as his own.

His aura kept expanding, washing over his mother’s potted succulents on the far side of the desk, shifting the rubbery leaves like a mild breeze. Transferring energy wasn’t the only thing Pops had demonstrated. He’d directed several powers at Shou that Shou had never seen him use before—like capturing him in solid ice.

The orange shroud of energy folded around the leaves of the closest succulent. According to Fukuda’s tedious physics lessons, temperature decreased when molecules slowed down. To do the same, Shou supposed he just needed to make the air still.

Instead of affecting the space around the plant, a white coat of frost crept out from its core. It looked nothing like the impressive blocks of ice Pops had created, but when Shou uncurled to touch the plant, its surface was stiff and cold.

He took the pot and hopped down from the desk, placing it on the floor where it would make less of a mess if it broke. He’d been so focused on storing energy to prepare for his face-off against Pops that it’d been a long time since he had the freedom to experiment.

Ice required water. Shou walked a circle around the succulent, critically looking it over. His eyes fell on the half-empty glass he’d left on the floor. He picked it up, pouring the remaining contents over the plant.

His second attempt at cryokinesis appeared just as unimpressive as the first, but when he crouched to prod one of the leaves, it was so rigid it snapped off from the light touch. This wasn’t just useful for stopping power like how Pops had used it—if you applied this directly to the insides of a person, it could definitely kill them.

Behind Shou, the door opened with a faint creak. He shot up, stumbling as he spun around. His heel connected with the pot, the frozen leaves shattering all over as it toppled over and hit the floor.

Mom stared at her broken succulent from the doorway, looking just as startled as Shou. The pieces of frost-covered plant material were already melting into the carpet, glistening in the light from the ceiling lamp.

“Will you take that outside, please?” she said.

She retreated into the hallway. Shou waited until he could hear her reach the bottom of the staircase before he went down himself, searching for a sweeping tray in the closet in the hallway. He didn’t fail to notice the way she side-eyed him from behind the open refrigerator door.

She called him in for dinner after he’d swept up the remains of the succulent and deposited them in the trash bin outside. Shou ignored how uneasy and quiet she was acting, focusing on slurping up his ramen noodles as his mind churned with theories, trying to piece together the scattered scraps of information he’d collected.

No one had clarified exactly how the government planned on incarcerating so many espers. Was that what was slowing down the process? What if Pops hadn’t stayed as docile as he’d been when Joseph took him away?

“Shou.”

Shou looked up, realizing his mother had been trying to talk to him.

“What’s the verdict?” she asked. “Is the forest really haunted?”

She could barely meet his eyes. Shou monotonously tapped the points of his chopsticks against the table, channeling a bit of the agitation bubbling up in the back of his head into the action.

“Just a regular forest,” he mumbled.

Mom had forgotten her meal in favor of frowning at the table. “I’m sorry if I seemed a little startled. It’s just… You’ve mentioned before that the espers you used to be around were dangerous, so I understand if you’re scared, but you’re not there anymore—”

“I’m not scared.” Shou stabbed the chopsticks into the tabletop. Both his mother’s hands twitched before she swiftly pulled them under the table. “I could crush most of those people like it was nothing.”

“Well...” Mom leaned back in her chair as if to put more distance between them. “Nagata says we don’t have to worry about them. They have it under control.”

“And you believe everything she says?” Shou asked. “Are you so slow you haven’t noticed everyone from the government’s been lying and covering stuff up ever since Seasoning City was attacked?”

Mom squirmed uncomfortably in her seat. “I don’t know what made you so upset, but if something happened, you should tell me. That was the deal.”

“I’m not upset.” Shou clapped his chopsticks together and grabbed his bowl to throw out the leftover noodles. His mother didn’t try to stop him as he went to pull on his jacket, slamming the front door behind him as he left the house.

The streets of Sturgeon Bay emptied out early. Shou hardly passed anyone, cars or people, while he trudged down to the harbor. He followed the lights from the tall projector lamps illuminating the outlines of fishing boats and warehouse buildings. The wind was harsh, flinging specks of seawater onto the dock. It was too close to winter for the thin, worn fabric of Shou’s varsity jacket to keep him warm.

He was going to go insane if he didn’t find out what was going on with the Claw investigations, but apart from Nagata, the only person he knew was involved was Joseph.

Shou glanced up at the pitch-black sky, realizing that cold drops had started falling from there as well. He turned to one of the old wooden buildings the local fishermen used for storage, forcing the lock open with his powers to peek inside. The large room was dark and smelled overwhelmingly like fish, but no one was there.

A rain shower started pounding down right after Shou shut himself inside. He sat down on a stack of crates by one of the dirt-specked windows, pondering his next plan of action.

Maybe he could do something. The government was terrified of their affairs getting any media attention, so if nothing else, threatening to contact a few journalists could be an effective trump card.

He exhaled, steeling himself before he selected Joseph’s name in his contact list and lifted his phone to his ear.

The call was quickly taken, followed by a curt, “Joseph.”

Shou stiffened, his reply coming out awkward and overly formal: “This is Suzuki Shou.”

Joseph sighed tiredly. “I should’ve changed this number, shouldn’t I?”

“Why have you only raided Division Four? Couldn’t you use all my notes?”

He was just blurting out the first the best question he’d been pondering, but it actually gave Joseph pause.

“You already know I can’t tell you about that,” he said.

“I wanna know what’s going on,” Shou demanded. “I heard about those Claw members who were killed, too.”

“Weren’t you supposed to stay out of this? Wasn’t that the deal?”

“I’m—”

“If you need someone to talk to, call Nagata,” Joseph said. “Go to bed, kid.”

He hung up before Shou could tell him it was barely eight in the evening. Shou lowered the phone, angrily re-dialing his number.

“What did I just say?” Joseph asked, a hint of irritation to his ever-casual drawl. Shou could hear other people talking in the background.

“Shouldn’t you be a little bit worried about me and my mom getting murdered over here?”

“Nah,” Joseph said with complete disinterest, “not my problem.”

“I’m not even asking you to tell me much, just like your progress?” Shou said. “Is it going well? Just something.”

“You’re not very good at listening, are you?”

“You really think I’m gonna do what you say and be quiet about this?” Shou snapped, skipping right to the trump card.

“No, that seems like another thing you’re not very good at.”

Shou had to grit his teeth not to throw back an insult. “I know you’ve been recruiting a bunch of people from Claw. What’re you using them for? More of your creepy experiments? Some kind of hit squad?”

It was a gamble; he was not at all sure that’s what was happening, but all he could do was keep talking.

“I told you to leave some of those people alone,” Shou reminded him. “You can’t just force them to work for you! Don't you think it's a little more important that the rest of the subdivisions are probably scattered all over by now? Or that civilians are getting picked off on the street where everyone can see it?”

The chatter in the background faded away before Joseph replied, “How the hell do you know all that?”

“Maybe if you let me help, I'd have a reason to tell you.”

“Those civilians were your old friends from Claw, and in all likelihood, so is the culprit,” Joseph sneered. “If they want to go off killing each other, that's less work for us.”

Shou huffed indignantly. “They're not my friends.”

“Then there's no reason to worry about them, is there?”

Shou scowled at the mud tracks on the floor, deciding to switch tactics. “If you’re doing experiments on everyone you actually bother arresting, you're breaking every human rights law in the world. You aren’t any better than Claw. I could bring this to the media—”

“You don't want to get involved in this, kid,” Joseph interrupted him, suddenly sounding a lot less exasperated and a lot more harsh. “Stay out of it.”

“Stop calling me kid!”

Joseph hung up. Shou angrily took the phone from his ear to re-dial his number once again. The first call was immediately declined, and so was the second one, but on the third, Joseph actually took it.

“I’m blocking your number,” he said flatly.

“Then I'll just call you from a different phone, dumbass,” Shou sneered. “I'm gonna keep this up until you listen to me. If you don't have time to investigate the subdivisions or the murders, wouldn't it make sense to let me do it? I have plenty of time.”

“I’m done with this. If you call me one more time, I’m passing it on that you’re meddling.”

An immediate surge of panic hit Shou square in the gut. “I’m just asking questions, I haven’t done anything!”

Joseph sighed deeply. “Look, I get it, you’re scared—”

“I’m not scared!”

“Sure,” Joseph said. “You seem like an alright kid. I don’t want to get you in trouble, so cut it out. We got it under control.”

It was the same bullshit lie Nagata had apparently fed to Mom. Shou had to restrain himself from hurling his phone through the window when Joseph hung up on him yet again.

He had no other choice but to stop. Joseph would tell Nagata if he didn’t, and Nagata was the last person in the world he wanted to involve in this. When it all came down to it, he didn’t know what the government would do to him if he didn’t follow orders. For all he knew, she could have him arrested, and she’d definitely tell Mom about it the first chance she got.

He only let himself feel defeated for a few moments before he headed back to the house, deciding it was time for a new plan. If nobody would tell him about Claw, he’d just have to investigate on his own.

In the morning, he had breakfast with his mother before she had to leave. Shou ate his rice, pretending to listen to her forcibly optimistic suggestions for what he could spend the day on. He didn’t plan on doing any of that; he was going to Seasoning City.

He checked the train timetables on the way to the station, carefully counting on his fingers. If he took off now, he should have a good four hours before he had to head back to be sure to get home before his mother.

Shou secured himself a seat in the back of one of the train carts, hiding his bright red hair under the hood of the hoodie he wore under his jacket. He watched the forest pass by outside, wondering if the government had taken it to heart what he’d said about recruiting the Super Five.

If they’d made a deal, chances were that Pops’ favorite henchmen would know what had happened to the rest of Claw. The problem was, Shou didn’t know where any of them were located. He didn’t even know if they were still in Seasoning City. Well, except for Serizawa. He must’ve started working for Reigen by now.

He found the address for Spirits and Such on a website so plastered in multi-colored text and animated clip art that it looked like it’d been cobbled together by an elementary schooler twenty years ago. The office Reigen had rented after Claw set the old one on fire wasn’t far from the central station; just a couple of stops on the subway.

Once the train arrived, Shou took in his surroundings as he walked the last few blocks, making sure his hood stayed in place. Seasoning City looked like itself, densely packed with both people and buildings, carrying on like always, even with the giant broccoli still looming behind the skyscrapers.

The sign on the facade outside Reigen’s office spelled out “Spirits and Such” in nondescript, black lettering—totally at odds with the man’s flashy way of doing business. Shou could feel a spike of Serizawa’s anxious energy the moment he stepped inside the building, glancing up through the gap between the flights of stairs. He checked a list of company names on the wall, confirming that the office was on the fourth floor.

He made it to the second landing before a door opened above him. By reflex, Shou blinked out of sight, pressing himself against the wall as a middle-aged man with a relieved smile trotted down the stairs, oblivious to his presence.

Shou peered over the railing, waiting for him to go outside. He didn’t know why he was feeling so high-strung. It was best if nobody saw him here, but some random, gullible client of Reigen’s wouldn’t report him to the government. He turned away, took one step up the next flight of stairs, and froze.

Another man stood at the top, looking right at Shou’s invisible form, eyes wide with confusion and something a little like fear. It took a second for Shou to comprehend that the man was Serizawa.

Shou popped back into view, staring in disbelief. “What the hell happened to you?”

Serizawa barely looked like the same person he’d last seen sweating outside Nagata’s improvised interrogation room. He was wearing a suit—fitted and everything. He was wearing a tie! His mess of hair was gone, he’d shaved, he even carried himself differently.

Or at least he had until it sunk in that Shou was standing in front of him.

“Oh…” Serizawa reached out to support himself on the railing, his voice taking on a dazed quality that Shou had only heard long ago; before Serizawa taught himself to respond to everything Pops made him do with blind obedience. “I… I got a haircut,” he mumbled, reaching up to pat himself on the head like he still wasn’t used to the short strands. “Do you... Is it okay?”

Shou squeezed his eyes shut, forcing himself back on track of why he was there. “Nevermind. Do you know where Minegishi is?”

Serizawa slowly let go of the railing to fold his hands awkwardly in front of him. “Why do you want to know?” he asked. “We aren’t supposed to see each other anymore. I heard you moved in with your—”

“I asked you a question,” Shou said.

Serizawa’s eyebrows lowered into a frown. “Well, I asked you a question, too.”

Along with the suit and the haircut, it seemed he’d acquired a bit of an attitude.

“You know where he is,” Shou pressed, glaring at him until he skittishly averted his eyes.

Serizawa took a step closer, whispering like he believed someone might’ve bugged the hallway. “I’m not supposed to tell anyone about government business.”

“So he is working for the government.”

Realizing his mistake, Serizawa made a frustrated noise, anxiously smoothing out his suit jacket.

Shou narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “Are you working for them too?”

Serizawa shook his head, picking at his hands. “They said I was unstable.” His eyes briefly met Shou’s before he asked again, “Why do you want to talk to him?”

This was taking too long and Shou was getting more irritated by the second. “Why do you think? I wanna know what’s going on with Claw. Nobody else will tell me anything.”

It surprised him when Serizawa’s shoulders slumped, the tense lines on his face smoothing out as he looked at Shou with solemn understanding. “You heard about the attacks.”

If he was referring to the murders, it was only part of what Shou had heard about, but Serizawa was already dodging his eyes again, clearing his throat.

“Do you have a map?” he asked.

Shou unlocked his phone before handing it to Serizawa. He quickly found the street he was looking for, zooming in on it to show Shou.

“He works here.” He tapped his fingernail on the screen. “I think he’ll be there at this time of day.”

Shou took his phone back, studying him. “You keep in touch?”

Serizawa shrugged, once again glancing around the empty hallway like he expected someone to be lying in wait to arrest him if he said anything wrong. “A little…”

It made sense. Minegishi had proven to be quite resourceful, eradicating some of Claw’s most dangerous espers, and now apparently keeping himself and his old colleagues out of jail.

Shou wasn’t sure if the friendliness extended the rest of the Super Five as well. He didn’t get a chance to ask—he could hear the door above them open and close, followed by what had to be Reigen quickly making his way down the stairs.

“Pretend I wasn’t here,” Shou whispered, fading back into invisibility right before Reigen came into view.

“Were you talking to someone?” Reigen asked, stopping beside Serizawa. “I told you, you could just go ahead.”

“No, uh—” Serizawa was already sweating, his aura flaring up again. He really was a terrible liar. “I mean, I thought I’d wait for you, I suppose.”

Reigen nodded patiently, as if he understood perfectly well what Serizawa’s predicament was. He continued down the next staircase, waving him along. “Let’s go. These spirits don’t exorcize themselves.”

Serizawa followed him with only a brief glance in Shou’s direction. Shou waited for them to leave the building before he headed down himself.

The street Serizawa had pointed out wasn’t far away, but Shou still kept his eyes peeled on the route his GPS pointed out for him. When he arrived at the building where Minegishi supposedly worked, his first thought was that Serizawa had duped him and pointed out a random place just to get rid of him.

It was a flower shop. A small, quaint flower shop with colorful bouquets and cute-looking garden ornaments out front.

An old-fashioned doorbell chimed over Shou’s head when he entered. His eyes skirted over shelves crammed with potted plants and buckets brimming with freshly cut flowers until they landed on a familiar young man in glasses and an ugly, bird-print sweater.

“Wow!” Hatori practically leaped behind the far end of the counter, pointing dramatically at Shou. “Wow, no! Is he supposed to be here?”

A mirthful grin was already spreading on Shou’s face, but then he looked to the side, and there was Minegishi, surrounded by flower arrangements and illustrated greeting cards, just as sullen and drab as he’d always been.

Shou sputtered and doubled over with laughter, grasping for the edge of the counter to have something to support himself on.

Hatori stared at him with open bewilderment. “What’re you laughing at?”

There was a cheerfully colored sunflower on the apron Minegishi was wearing. It was too good to be real. It was possibly the funniest thing Shou had ever seen in his life.

“Are you done?” Minegishi asked in the same toneless drawl he always spoke in.

“No,” Shou wheezed, tears in his eyes.

He broke into full-fledged howls of laughter again when a customer came in behind him, giving them all a perplexed look. Minegishi’s lips pressed into a thin line as he marched around the counter, grabbed Shou by the arm, and dragged him into the back room.

He forced Shou onto a stool between two shelves. A creeping fig shattered its pot as it grew to an unnatural size, spilling out all over the floor, quickly snaking around Shou to cover his mouth and fix him to the stool.

“Shut up,” Minegishi said in a harsh whisper. He stalked back to the storefront to deal with the customer, leaving Hatori to linger in the doorway.

Shou frowned at the fig’s roots, sticking out uselessly from the clump of soil it was planted in. He focused his powers on it, freezing the base solid, and this time, whole chunks of ice formed around it, looking considerably more impressive than his last attempt at using this newfound ability.

“Have you always been able to do that?” Hatori asked, protectively crossing his arms over his chest.

The vines slackened enough that Shou could tear them off with his hands. He shoved his hood off his head and couldn’t stop a crooked smile from creeping back on his face. “Seriously, do you work here too?”

Hatori avoidantly shuffled closer to the doorway. “No. I got a job, but I’m not starting until next week.”

“Oh yeah?” Shou asked. “What kind of job?”

Hatori self-consciously pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “Tech support.”

Shou’s smile stretched into a wide grin. “Let me guess, Shibata’s a fitness instructor now?”

“Actually, I think he’s still—”

“Enough small talk. What do you want?” Minegishi angrily closed the door to the store behind him, turning to find Shou standing in the remains of the dead fig.

“I already know the government’s making you work for them,” Shou said, kicking the vines aside. “I think you owe me some info.”

“I don’t owe you anything,” Minegishi sneered in his most venomous tone, gesturing stiffly at the shelves. “You’re half the reason I was forced into this dead-end job. I don’t even like plants!”

Someone entered through a backdoor farther inside the room, dragging their feet down the aisle that cut through the middle. Minegishi quickly shoved past Shou to slide the mess of fig branches under one of the shelves before an elderly man with glasses and a patient demeanor came into view, carrying a box full of potted chrysanthemums.

“Is this another one of your friends, Minegishi-kun?” he asked, studying Shou curiously. Shou could barely stop himself from breaking into laughter again.

“Yes,” Minegishi said bitterly.

“Of course.” The man smiled, placing down the box in a free spot on the shelves, then pointed at the fig. “Will you clean that up, please?”

He shuffled past Hatori into the shop right as another customer made the doorbell ring.

“Tell me what you’ve been up to, Minegishi-kun,” Shou heckled. “Then I’ll leave you alone.”

Minegishi looked like he’d rather sink into the floor. “I have no reason to tell you anything.”

“If me and Serizawa hadn’t vouched for you, the government would’ve dumped you guys in the same place as my pops,” Shou said, pointing a thumb over his shoulder. “Since you put up with this, I’m pretty sure you already know that.”

Minegishi sighed in frustration, pushing a strand of his lifeless hair behind his ear. “They made me assist with more cleanup. The first division's base was cleared out. Apparently, you made that very easy.”

With how little information Shou could find about it, that didn’t make any sense. “How have I not heard about that if the whole place was raided and you were there? You leave a giant mess every time you use your powers.”

“Their agents might be useless at catching espers, but they know how to keep their secrets,” Minegishi said. “I don’t know what they did to the place after they ushered me out of there.”

Shou glanced at Hatori. “Did you come along too?”

“Hatori is a liability anywhere outside the city,” Minegishi answered for him. Hatori looked mildly offended. “Both of us have been picking off troublemakers, though. There’s a rather big faction teaming up to get revenge for all the injustice they believe has been done to them.”

Shou frowned thoughtfully at the floor. “Do you know Koga? He was from HQ. Kinda fat with a big beard and a scar on top of his head,” Shou said, pointing at his own crown. “I got a feeling he’s got something to do with it. He’s like one of the old fanatics, you know?”

“If he was from HQ, why did I not see him at the mall with everyone else?” Minegishi asked like he already knew the answer.

Shou crossed his arms, feeling increasingly certain he’d made a horrible misstep. “Me and the guys ran into him. I kind of let him go.”

Minegishi continued to stare at him flatly. “All I can tell you is that these people are out for blood. Turning your back on Claw seems like reason enough to be targeted. They’ve jumped me twice already. I know they’ve been after Serizawa as well. Stupid as they are.”

He glowered at Shou for another long moment.

“If I were you, I’d keep a low profile,” he said. “To put it mildly, you’re not popular.”

Shou carelessly shrugged one shoulder. “I can take them out if anyone jumps me.”

“Can you?” Minegishi’s voice was cold. “How about your mother? How about your guys? Fukuda and Higashio, is it? If they frequented the subdivisions as often as you, I’m sure both of them are well known.” He blinked, thinking. “And what’s his name, the one with the ponytail?”

“Ootsuki?” Shou offered.

“Definitely not popular.”

Shou grabbed his phone to check the clock on the lock screen, feeling slightly disgruntled. It was almost time to go, but he wasn’t much wiser than when he’d arrived.

As he interrogated Minegishi and Hatori for a little longer, it was clear they knew even less than those people from the message board. Minegishi wasn’t sure where the off-shoot faction of Claw that’d targeted him was situated, or what happened to the espers he’d helped the government catch. Neither he nor Hatori knew what happened to Shimazaki or anyone else who wasn’t out to attack them. They hadn’t even heard what’d been going on with Division Four.

Despite himself, Shou thanked them on the way out of the flower shop. There was still a lot to uncover, but at least they had cooperated.

On the way back to Sturgeon Bay, he went over the clues he’d gathered, jotting down a few notes on his phone. He crossed his arms, sinking into the worn, discolored train seat. If someone directly involved in their work knew this little about what the government was doing, and if Joseph refused to talk to him, who did he have left to ask?

As planned, he made it home before his mother, somehow in a much better mood than he’d been for the last two weeks. Mom didn’t fail to notice, smiling at him bewilderedly while she set the table for dinner.

“What did you end up doing today?” she asked once they’d both sat down to eat.

“Not much.” Shou shrugged, stuffing his mouth with rice. “Just wandered around, talked to some people.”

It wasn’t a lie, but Mom’s eyebrows still furrowed skeptically under her bangs.

Shou pondered if it was possible to lure any hints out of Nagata without giving away the fact that he was meddling. Maybe if he gave her his most childishly fearful act. It wasn’t like an empath’s powers worked over the phone.

He took another bite of his dinner, realizing that his mother was still staring at him like she was waiting for him to speak. He drew a circle in the air with his chopsticks, swallowed his food, and asked, “What about you?”

Chapter Text

Shou mashed his pillow onto his face until he couldn’t breathe, wondering if it was possible to smother himself for long enough to fall unconscious for the rest of the night.

It had been hours since he went to bed and he still couldn’t stop thinking about Seasoning City. Within three weeks, Serizawa had transformed himself to look nothing like the oblivious, spineless mess he used to be—and it wasn’t just him—everyone else had something new to do. Everyone was getting along, busy moving on while Shou kept tossing and turning in a room that’d never feel like his own.

He angrily threw the pillow at the wall across from the bed, digging the heels of his hands into his eye sockets instead. He had to think of something else. Anything else was better. Minegishi, for example, in his sunflower apron, stuck in that quaint little flower shop where he so obviously didn’t belong.

A chuckle escaped Shou’s throat. He clapped a hand over his mouth and sat up with a start, nearly tripping over his duvet in his haste to stumble out of bed.

What the hell was wrong with him? There was nothing comforting or funny about Minegishi. Minegishi was an evil piece of shit, and so was Hatori, for that matter.

He had to be going crazy. Two days on his own, fumbling for somewhere to invest his energy, and he was already losing his mind. He quickly got dressed in the same jeans and shirt he’d left on the office chair, shoved his phone in his pocket, and left the house as fast as he could without waking his mother.

He speed-walked to the old end of the harbor, beyond the piercing glare from the floodlights. It was the most sequestered place in town; not even the fishermen seemed to use it.

There was something soothing about the sea, stretching into the dark horizon where you couldn’t tell where the water ended and the sky began. Shou filled his lungs with the ocean air—salty and smelling unmistakably like spoiled seafood, but grounding in its own way.

The waves sloshed against the algae-slathered dock at a harsh, steady rhythm. Shou wandered out onto one of the piers, past a ramshackle fishing boat that had likely outlived whoever used to own it. He walked until he couldn’t go any further without plummeting into the pitch-black water.

For a moment, he considered jumping in. The cold could snap him out of all the nonsense that kept churning in his head; give him something else to think about, like going back to the house before he died from hypothermia.

Instead, he sat down with his legs dangling over the edge of the creaking walkway, resting his head in his hands.

He couldn’t run away from this feeling that ate away at him every day. He didn’t want to be here. He missed driving around, never having a day that was anything like the last. He missed Higashio’s good advice and Ootsuki’s company. He missed using his powers with no one judging him for it.

He missed Claw and there was nothing he could do about it. It was horrible and sick, but it was the truth. And even more, he missed Fukuda. Just knowing he was there. Just being able to count on him to make everything a little less complicated.

Shou buried his fingers in his hair, raking his nails across his scalp. It wouldn’t be that weird to call him now, right? Fukuda would understand. Shou had been unfair to resent him so much for leaving him with his mother. Fukuda hadn’t abandoned him—it was Shou who’d refused to take the helping hand he’d held outstretched from the start.

Before he knew what he was doing, he had his phone to his ear. It became more and more difficult to sit still with each persistent beep of the waiting tone. He’d ignored Fukuda for two weeks. He didn’t even deserve for him to answer. He was waking him up for no good reason. This was pathetic and needy. He was too old for this—

Shou’s breath caught in his throat when Fukuda’s voice answered, muddled enough to betray that he’d just woken up.

“Oh god, are you hurt?” he blurted, shuffling sounds in the background like he was already on his way out of bed.

A hesitant, wobbly smile tugged at the corners of Shou’s lips.

“Shou, please tell me you’re okay,” Fukuda said, a note of panic in his voice.

“Hi,” Shou mumbled, bringing up a hand to wipe at his nose.

Fukuda sighed loudly. In relief, Shou hoped.

He lowered the phone, burying his nose in the sleeve of his jacket so it wouldn’t leak snot everywhere. Everything he should’ve felt when Fukuda left him in his mother’s driveway was hitting him now like a sack of bricks.

As if he could tell, Fukuda waited until he was ready to listen again before he gently prompted, “Was there something you wanted to talk about?”

“Sorry, I don’t know why I called,” Shou said.

“It sounds like you’re outside. I think you should go back home, but if you can’t sleep, don’t go back to bed,” Fukuda said, somehow knowing exactly what the root of the problem was. “Try doing something else for a while. Read a book or draw something, perhaps. Whatever you feel like.”

Shou turned at the sound of an approaching pickup truck. He raised an arm to shield his eyes from the bright glare of its headlights. It parked further down the dock. Probably someone who’d come to ready their boat.

“I’ll try,” he promised.

A moment ago, his mind had been a whirlwind of questions to ask and things to be said, but now they were all wiped from his thoughts. His chest just hurt.

“I’ll go back now, so goodnight,” he said, rushed and awkward.

Fukuda didn’t question it at all. His voice was so gentle. “Goodnight,” he said, and then, “I’m glad you called me. Thank you.”

Shou ended the call, clutching his phone to his chest as he stiffly got up. He let himself blend in with the darkness, passing by the truck unnoticed to head back up the hill to his mother’s house. He hadn’t walked far before the phone buzzed in his hand.

Fukuda
You can always call me, for any reason at all. I’m sorry everything has been so difficult. We miss you.

We? He’d been so dumbstruck he hadn’t even asked about Higashio. They were sticking together, then, just like Higashio promised. Shou nearly walked into a street lamp, so distracted perusing the message over and over, and then another one popped up.

Fukuda
I’ve forgotten to tell you, I’m staying in Seasoning City. I found an apartment here, I’ll move there at the end of the month.

Fukuda sent him the address, assuring him he was welcome there anytime. As if his mother would ever be okay with him going there. Even if she was, he had a government order not to leave Sturgeon Bay.

He slipped through the front door just as quietly as he’d left, discarding his shoes in the genkan. How long would he have to put up with other people trying to control where he should go and who he should talk to? He didn’t belong in this town, he became more sure of that with each passing day.

He wondered what it’d take for Joseph and Nagata to start taking him seriously. If there was anything left of them, he could clear out one of the subdivisions by himself. That’d definitely raise attention. Six would be an easy target. Or maybe Division Two—then he could investigate the source of those murders while he was at it. He wondered if Iida had gone back there, too. If nothing else, it was in the area where Ootsuki lived now. Shou could find him and they could go together. Ootsuki could introduce him to the sister he talked about so much—

Shou closed the door to the office with a soft click. His head was churning again. He couldn’t do this all night, he had to distract himself.

Drawing. He could draw. Just like Fukuda suggested. He grabbed a pencil and dug his old sketchpad out from the dresser, making himself comfortable on the bed with his back against the wall.

At first, the pencil skirted uncertainly across the blank page, shapes turning into random faces and figures. A couple of them turned out alright. He tried to focus on cleaning up the outlines, adding shadows, giving the shapes depth and texture, but the task didn’t require enough of his attention to drown out the dreadful, alien feeling swelling in his chest like a balloon.

A quiet rap on the door startled him out of his thoughts. His mother opened it and poked her head inside the room.

“Hi,” she said. Her tired smile faded when she noticed Shou was fully dressed. “Were you outside?”

Shou shifted uneasily. “You can’t sleep either?”

She shook her head and stepped inside the office, sitting down next to Shou on the bed. He pulled up his legs, hiding the sketchpad against his stomach before she could get a proper look at his scribbles.

She grinned at him in surprise, trying to peek around his knees. "Are you drawing something?”

Shou removed the sketchbook entirely, placing it face-down on the end of the bed, far out of her reach. “Just stuff,” he muttered, stretching out his legs again.

Mom mirrored his pose, pushing herself onto the bed until her back touched the wall and her feet dangled over the edge of the mattress.

“Why have you never told me you like to draw?” she asked, studying his face curiously.

Shou crossed his arms. It wasn’t like she’d caught him doing anything bad, but his face felt flushed and no amount of willpower could make it go away.

“If you want to show me sometime, I’d love to see it,” Mom said. “You could be the worst artist in the world and I’d still think it’s great you made something.”

Shou clenched his teeth and reached for the sketchbook again, passing it to his mother. Even while he pointedly avoided looking at her, he could glimpse the delight on her face from the corner of his eye. She flipped open the cover, paging through the first few sheets until she slowly came to a halt.

“Shou, these are really good.” She was staring at him now, completely astonished. She turned over another page, pointing her hand at the scribbly life drawings there. “Especially your figure drawings. They look so lively. I can’t believe I didn’t know about this. You know you can just use all the old markers and stuff I have stowed away in here, right? I mean, wow, did you teach yourself all this?”

“Yeah.” Shou shrugged, faltering for a second. “Higashio helped sometimes.”

He knew it’d happen before he’d said anything—his mother’s excitement immediately morphed into that distant, disapproving expression she wore every time he mentioned anyone or anything to do with Claw or psychic powers or anything else that had been the norm for half of Shou’s life.

It was there for an instant, and then it was gone. She laughed to herself, quickly changing the subject. “I think all I could draw when I was thirteen were magical girls.”

Shou snatched the sketchbook from her hands and hugged it to his chest. “Do you always have trouble sleeping, or is it just since I got here?”

Mom gave him a sidelong glance, scrunching up her nose like she always did when there was something she didn’t want to say but knew Shou would see right through if she lied. “Just since you got here.”

The edge of the sketchbook was digging into Shou’s fingers from how hard he was holding on to it.

“It’s not your fault,” she said. “There’s just a lot to think about. I can’t really… turn it off. The thinking.” She twisted her hand as if rotating a dial next to her head.

They sat in silence for a while, Mom glancing around the office with a thoughtful frown on her face.

“This room is boring,” she declared suddenly.

Shou shrugged. “It’s just a room.”

“You know what’d be cool? If you painted one of the walls. This whole wall—” Mom pointed at the one across from them, “—and then we just squeeze the dresser in at the end instead.”

“Like a different color?” Shou asked, not seeing the point.

“No, I mean really paint it. Like a mural!”

Shou stared blankly at the plain white currently coating the room and tried to imagine it. He couldn’t recall having held a paintbrush in his entire life.

“I don’t know how to paint,” he mumbled.

Mom sprang up with her hands at her sides. “Since when did you become such a quitter? It’ll be fun! You can do whatever you want with it, and then you have something to do when you can’t sleep.”

“I guess,” Shou said.

Mom was already on her way out the door like she was ready to buy paints in the middle of the night. “Think about it. I think it’s a great idea!”

She disappeared around the corner, only to come back a few minutes later, looking much more somber.

“I didn’t want to ask, because it didn’t seem like you wanted to talk about it, but if you’re upset or don’t want to be alone, you can still sleep in my bedroom,” she said.

Shou wanted to laugh. How was he supposed to tell her that she was the problem?

“It’s not embarrassing,” she continued. “It’s just like... tactically battling sleep deprivation.” She grinned at him awkwardly, hanging onto the door handle. All the brightness drained out of it when Shou didn’t smile back.

It was her making him feel weird and wrong all the time. She hadn’t asked because she didn’t want to know why he’d been up every night since he got here. She didn’t want to understand.

Mom stared at her bare feet before padding back to the bed, leaning down to plant a kiss on top of Shou’s head.

“Goodnight,” she said before she turned to leave.

“Mom?”

She stopped in the doorway, looking over her shoulder in surprise.

“Why do you hate them so much?”

She paused. “Hate who?”

She knew perfectly well who Shou was talking about. “Higashio, just now. And Ootsuki and Fukuda.”

She slowly turned to face him, arms crossed. “Fukuda has been helpful.”

“Yeah, but you don’t like him,” Shou said. “Every time I mention one of them, you change the subject and pretend like it didn’t happen.”

His mother’s stance turned defensive, her back hunching ever so slightly. “All of them let you stay in that place for years.”

That place.

For so long, Shou had kept himself from thinking about what she did. She was his mother. She’d never hurt him or forced him to do anything bad. She let him stay at her house. She was nice about it. He knew she was trying, but he just couldn’t do it anymore.

Maybe he’d hit some kind of breaking point, trying to contort himself into something he wasn't.

It felt like watching someone else when he put down his sketchbook. He stood, clenched his hands, and answered with nothing but cold certainty in his voice, “So did you,” and he knew instantly that there was no coming back from this.

“I didn’t know,” Mom rushed to defend herself. “You were lying to me the whole time. How is that my fault?”

She’d lied just as often as Shou did, and both of them knew it. There had been so many times she was about to ask him what was going on and then backed out at the last moment.

“You didn’t even call me after you heard what happened with Pops,” Shou said. “You didn’t help at all. Guess who had to do that.”

“You told me not to get involved,” Mom countered, her voice growing in volume. “You wouldn’t tell me where you were. What was I supposed to do?”

“Stop looking at me like I committed some kind of crime for talking about the people who did help!”

“They’re the criminals!” Mom retorted. “Decent people don’t let a teenager fight a gang of grown-up terrorists.”

“Decent people don’t leave without saying goodbye,” Shou yelled at her. “We actually did something important!”

Mom shook her head, her dismay quickly turning into bitter anger. “You want to know why I left?”

She didn’t leave enough of a pause for Shou to answer.

“I couldn’t stand seeing your father raise you to look at the world the same way as him,” she said. “I tried everything, and you were still hanging on to every word he said, even when he was never there! All his speeches about espers, all his absurd, arrogant ideas—You turned out exactly like he wanted, talking about hurting people and breaking the law like it’s nothing. That’s what they did to you! I’m just trying to fix what I can.”

Shou could feel his vision blur around the edges, making his mother’s form bleed in with the background, unfocused and distant. She might as well have kicked him in the stomach; her words had knocked all the air out of him.

“You wanted me to be honest, right?” she asked, voice shrill enough to cut through the fog rapidly overtaking Shou’s thoughts. “Or did you change your mind about that when you started lying to me again?”

Her posture only grew more hostile when he didn’t reply.

“It’s not my fault what happened to you,” she said, and she meant it so genuinely that there was nothing to say in return.

The door slammed, muffled by the rushing in Shou’s ears. Above his head, the lightbulb extinguished with a sharp clink, leaving the office in darkness.

Deep down, he’d always known what his mother thought of him. It was about time he faced reality and accepted it. If he was so much like his father, why should he even try to change? Too much time had passed. He was too old to grow into something completely different from what he was. He’d tried to live up to his mother’s expectations, and it hadn’t worked.

Moonlight filtered in around the edges of the curtains, illuminating the furniture enough to let Shou navigate the room. He ripped the closet door open, shoving a stack of shirts onto the floor so he could reach the getaway bag he hid when he moved in. He telekinetically forced open the window, slipping outside with no chance his mother would notice him in the hallway. From the driveway, He silently unlocked the front door to grab his tattered varsity jacket and sneakers, and then he was off.

The steep, winding street outside Mom’s house was so quiet it made Shou’s entire skull ring. He scaled the fence blocking off the railway that cut through the back end of town, jumping onto the tracks on the other side where he could follow them to the station.

The frigid air gnawed its way through his jacket as he paced back and forth on the single platform, holding out until the morning commuters started to arrive. The first train came in, wheels screeching as the aging carts came to a halt. Shou hurried inside, collapsing on the seat next to the closest heater where he could warm his freezing hands.

It wouldn’t help to travel all the way to Division Six or Two if he wanted to find out what was going on with Claw. Potentially, the government’s esper-catching squad hadn’t even been there yet. He could check out the fourth division’s base instead—it was easy to get to from here, and if it’d been cleared out, he could search for clues about where they took the people who’d been stationed there.

He only had to switch to another train once, but it was still a long ride. Shou huddled up with his shoes on the seat in front, curled up around his phone to check if he could gather any intel from the local news. They were just as useless as the last time he checked.

The purple beginnings of sunlight crept above the horizon while he watched a blur of hills and forests pass by outside. His mother should be out of bed by now, getting ready for work. She was probably too much of a coward to attempt to talk to him. She probably hadn’t even noticed he left.

He let his feet fall to the floor and stored the phone in his pocket, hugging his backpack to his chest instead. What did it matter? He wasn’t planning on going back. It was about time he returned to focusing on things that were actually important.

At some point, he dozed off and wasn’t startled awake until someone announced his stop over the train’s speakers. He quickly squeezed past a heavyset lady who’d sat down beside him, hurrying outside a second before the doors closed.

Shou tiredly rubbed his face as he walked from the station, thankful he didn’t have to go far. The fourth division had made their home under a bar in the more shady end of town. The bar itself was just a regular establishment where anyone could walk in to buy a drink, but if you made it past the huge bouncer they kept in the back, there was a small speakeasy on the floor below that served as the face of the subdivision’s primary operations.

He turned a corner and was stopped in his tracks by a roadblock. The decoy bar was up ahead, beyond a string of unusually quiet shops and offices. Shou peered through their windows as he walked around the blockade. Most had their lights turned off, empty of any people.

The fourth division’s plot was surrounded by strips of yellow police tape. Shou cautiously advanced, ducking under it to reach the facade of the building. He pressed himself up against it and peered around the corner. Nothing there except a pair of trash containers and the back door, taped up like the one in the front.

He couldn’t sense any auras from inside the building, but the base went quite deep into the ground. He had to be careful, but really, the ideal situation would be if he wasn’t alone. He could gather more information from someone who used to frequent the place than from a deserted building.

Besides, he hadn’t come all the way here to turn around now.

With a small touch of his own aura, Shou let himself inside, putting the police tape back in place behind him. On the ground floor, the bar looked the same as usual. Several glasses stood abandoned on the tables, but there was nothing to indicate that there’d been a fight. The cops or government agents or whoever had been in charge of the raid had probably thrown out any patrons at the scene.

Shou stopped in his tracks. The lights were on in the long, windowless hallway that led to a flight of stairs at the back of the building. He followed it down, listening for footsteps or any other activity before he poked his head around the entranceway to the basement-floor area.

It was just as deserted as the one above, but the room reeked of alcohol and a stark, iron-like stench Shou could only identify as blood. There had clearly been a lot of commotion; half the tables were smashed or flipped over, one wall had taken a blow, and the bottles that used to sit on the shelves in the back lay shattered behind the counter.

There was a crusted, dark red outline on the floor where it looked like someone had been lying for a while. Shou wrinkled his nose at the smell as he passed it, stepping over the pool of liquor flooding the far end of the room.

He continued past the kitchen to a heavy steel door that used to separate the public part of the division from the underground complex that had housed its more high-standing members. It had a huge dent in the middle, barely hanging on to its hinges.

Shou walked around it to another staircase, frowning confusedly at a pair of rubber boots that had been tossed carelessly on the steps halfway down. He understood what they were for when he reached the bottom: the way ahead was flooded with several centimeters of water.

Someone had brutally ripped out the water pipes running along the inside of the hallway, the twisted metal still dripping into the pool below. Shou took a moment to admire the handiwork. Unless they’d picked up someone new since the last time he visited, none of the Scars here could do hydrokinesis. Maybe the government’s espers weren’t completely useless after all.

Apart from the dripping, it was deathly quiet, and the musty air was freezing after days with the heat turned off. The cold water seeped through Shou’s sneakers as he ventured down the long corridor, peering through the knocked-down doors on either side. No signs of life, just wet furniture.

The path soon split in two, and Shou silently cursed Nagata for confiscating his notes. This place was a labyrinth of crossing hallways and all the walls looked the same. He didn’t remember the layout very well.

He hadn't been to the base many times. It wasn't a very kid-friendly place, so it was hard to come up with an excuse for showing up there. Not that any place Claw occupied was kid-friendly, but where several of the other divisions had a habit of hunting down child espers, Division Four went for other kinds of easy targets: addicts, homeless people—commoners who had little to lose and were readily swayed by the promise of stability or easy money. Their small group of Scars didn’t really need more espers to rake in money from illegal trading.

Shou stopped in front of a large pile of rubble. The wall on his left had been smashed outward, leaving the room inside wide open, but the doorway a little farther ahead was completely blocked by an uneven, cement-like mass that bulged into the hallway, only leaving enough distance to the opposite wall that a person could barely squeeze through.

Shou leaped over the rubble to investigate, determining that the material felt more like iron than cement. Was this Joseph's? Except for that stuff he’d handcuffed Pops with, Shou had never seen his powers himself.

He backed up a few steps, tightening his grip on the straps of his backpack. So maybe the government had a pretty good team for catching espers, but they should still have let him help.

He sighed, glancing into the darkness of the smashed-up room. If he went through to the other side, he might find something of interest in the Scars’ personal quarters. He exited through a door leading into the hallway around the corner. The curved path up ahead was battered as well; part of the ceiling torn down and the remaining overhead lights flickering.

Shou clambered on top of the remains of the ceiling, then skidded to a halt, freezing up at the sound of voices reverberating between the walls.

"Are you done wasting my time?" a woman griped. There was a loud sloshing sound, like someone kicking their foot through the water. "You told me they hadn’t cleared the building yet. There’s nothing here, my things are gone, and my shoes are ruined."

"With all due respect, Kawasaki-san, you could've taken the boots I offered you," a man answered in a somewhat familiar, deep, and considerably more subdued voice.

Kawasaki? Last Shou heard, she didn’t even come here anymore. He slowly backed up, reeling in his aura completely, confused why the other two sounded to have stopped as well.

“Hang back, there’s someone else here,” the man warned, so quietly Shou could barely hear it.

How did he know that?

Shou jerked his head around when something stirred up the water behind him, right inside an open door by the intersection to the path Joseph had blocked off. A sudden, violent spell of dizziness made his knees give out. He barely glimpsed the attacker’s long, stringy hair before he fell over, not even managing to catch himself with his hands.

Multiple sets of echoing footsteps splashed through the water. Shou blindly scrambled to find his footing, but only succeeded at ramming his head into the wall. When he opened his eyes, the man with the deep voice had moved close enough that Shou could make out his broad frame. He knew who they were now—Koga and his vertigo-inducing minion. The assholes who wanted to execute Pops.

Koga snapped his fingers and cried out, “Make sure he doesn’t get up!”

Although wobbling badly, Shou had propped himself up on all fours. The last time he encountered the woman with the vertigo powers, she hadn’t given him a chance to escape, but this time the effect was fading like she was moving away from him.

His mind raced with half-formed ideas for escaping the impenetrable barrier he knew came next, but while there was a third person next to Koga and the one who had to be Kawasaki, their aura was all wrong. Instead of forming a barrier, their blurry silhouette lit up in a bright flash, and Shou was struck with burning, all-encompassing pain.

“Jiro, what are you doing?” Kawasaki’s voice cut through the agony. “I know him!”

The pain dissipated from one moment to the next. Shou gasped for air and opened his eyes again, sight restored well enough to make out that the man who had attacked him was definitely not the guy with the barriers. He was considerably taller, bald, and sporting a geometrical net of tattoos that sprawled up his neck. Both he and Koga were wearing tall rubber boots, unlike the young woman between them in her pair of once-white stilettos.

Shou shakily stood, letting his shoes slide down the pile of rubble and into the water. He raised his fists, readying himself for another attack. Kawasaki only wielded standard telekinesis, and this guy named Jiro just gave away that he was electrokinetic. If both of Koga’s better assets had abandoned him, Shou could take on these three by himself.

“Hey buddy, are you alright?” Kawasaki asked, bending at the knees like she was talking to an adorable puppy.

Koga grabbed the sleeve of her posh camel wool coat. “Kawasaki-san, please keep your distance. This is Suzuki’s son.”

She ripped her arm free, glaring at him with such blatant disgust that Koga took a step back, placatingly raising both hands. Slowly, Kawasaki turned her head back to Shou, putting on a smile that was at the same time saccharine and resentful.

“You’re the Boss’s son?”

The inside of Shou’s mouth tasted like blood; metallic and nauseating. “Didn’t you already know that?” he asked. “Weren’t you in Seasoning City?”

Kawasaki’s smile made the scar across her eye crinkle. The fact that it was still there was evidence she’d been nowhere near the Culture Tower, but Koga had his, too, and he’d supposedly just kept out of range.

“I had plans, personally,” she said.

Despite the fact that he’d shuffled halfway behind Kawasaki’s back, Koga lifted his bearded chin and demanded, “Why are you here? We were about to leave, we don't want any trouble."

Shou raised an eyebrow. "You're not leaving until you've answered some questions."

Koga narrowed his eyes. "And then what? After we’ve answered your questions?"

"Guess you'll have to find out,” Shou said. “Maybe I should execute you live on TV. Isn’t that how you usually roll?”

Sweat had started trickling down Koga’s bald crown. How could such a useless idiot think he could take over where Shou’s father left off?

“Really though,” Kawasaki said, “we’re out of here.”

“No, you’re not,” Shou calmly told her.

Seconds ticked by as they continued to stare each other down, competing for who could look the most unimpressed. Eventually, Kawasaki tilted her head to the side.

“You know, you really do have your daddy’s eyes,” she said. “I don’t know why I never thought about that before. Guess it’s hard to imagine that stuck-up psychopath knock up some poor woman.”

“Shut up,” Shou warned her.

“I couldn’t really avoid hearing about what you did,” she said. “Dragging him out of the literal hole he dug for himself. Bargaining with the government like the little rat you are. You sure know how to fuck things up for everyone.”

“You fucked things up for yourself,” Shou said. “All of you deserve to get locked up.”

Kawasaki smiled again. She tutted at him, speaking in her most mockingly girly voice. “I see. You’re no fun anymore.”

The floor under Shou only rumbled for a split second before Kawasaki pushed up a solid block of the foundation at breakneck speed. He barely dashed off the platform before it smashed clean through the ceiling.

Kawasaki gave a surprised yelp as Jiro wrapped an arm around her middle and lifted her out of the water. He deftly stretched out his hand, channeling his crackling powers into the flooded floor, lighting it up with blinding, high-power electricity.

Three weeks with no powers, no focus, and very little rest were not how you stayed in shape. Shou didn’t make it out of the water before the current hit him. He fell back onto his hands and knees, violent cramps forcing his body to curl in on itself as his entire nervous system screamed for him to make it stop.

Maybe it was panic, or maybe it was his confused, hazy state of mind allowing him to access some kind of untapped intuition, but out of nowhere, the current rerouted itself the same way one would a lightning strike.

It felt like flipping a switch; like something fundamental had clicked for him. The energy was dispersed, passing through his system with no resistance as sparks of lightning erupted around him, skittering up the walls and across the surface of the water.

He stumbled to his feet, staring down at his wet clothes in disbelief. His limbs were buzzing and his skin felt like he’d been on fire, but he’d just done the same thing as his father—no—the same thing as Ritsu’s brother when he fried that creepy bastard Muto’s brain back at the seventh division, turning his illusion powers back on himself.

“What the hell?” Jiro mumbled in English, shaking his arm like he’d been zapped in Shou’s place.

Kawasaki struggled free of his grip. With an angry growl, she grabbed the edge of the broken ceiling with her telekinesis and tore down an even bigger section. Some load-bearing structure above collapsed, debris crashing down with enough weight to make the floor tremble.

Shou coughed, shielding his face from the dust with one arm as he dissolved the barrier he’d formed above him. He couldn’t let them get away; it was bad enough that the vertigo lady had most definitely fled the building.

He pulled his arm back, then smashed his fist into the blockade hard enough to blast a hole through it, pieces of the crumbled ceiling flying out on the other side.

He dashed through the opening. On the other side, Koga’s legs were trapped under the pile, leaving him scrabbling around in the water. Judging by his pained groans and the panicked look on his face, he wasn’t going to get free on his own.

Shou sprinted after the other two, stopping briefly at the first intersection to listen for their feet kicking up water, determining which way they’d run. He spotted them on the other end of a long hallway, about to slip out of view again.

His eyes flickered to the shallow water as he focused his powers in front of him. The rippling pool froze in place, the effect spreading like a spider web across the surface, picking up speed as it branched off into odd spikes and lumps, crawling up the walls to leave everything covered in a rugged layer of ice.

Jiro glanced over his shoulder and had good enough reflexes to jump when the cold shot by him. Meanwhile, it caught Kawasaki’s stilettos, nailing them to the floor—she stumbled out of them and fell on her stomach with an undignified screech.

Jiro nearly slipped as well as he hooked an arm around her elbow, trying to find purchase on the slippery floor. It wasn’t frozen through; his rubber boots broke the surface and pushed up the water. Looking slightly panicked, he flexed his other arm, directing his powers there.

“Nonono, wait,” Kawasaki gasped, staring wide-eyed at the pool covering her bare feet. She blew down the door next to them, dragging Jiro along with her.

Shou ran after them. When he reached the doorway, Kawasaki had crawled on top of a table in the office inside. Jiro was waiting in front of her, standing with his shoulders tense. Shou already knew they’d try to bury him again as Kawasaki tore down the wall above the door frame. The debris crashed down on top of his barrier, leaving him blinded for a moment. Jiro was right in front of him when he broke free of the mess, crackling like a high-voltage cable again. He reached for Shou’s head, but Shou caught his arm halfway there.

Startled, Jiro sent a shock wave of electricity through Shou’s hands. Shou fought back against the pain, struggling to concentrate on the way Jiro’s aura leaked into his own. He just had to flip the switch again. Push it back where it came from.

The blistering feeling in Shou’s arms stopped as sparks of electricity sprung from his hand, sending a violent jolt through the other esper. Jiro fell into the water as Shou stumbled to the top of the pile of dry rubble, lightning continuing to channel through him and back into its owner.

Jiro was convulsing weirdly, the collar of his leather jacket starting to smoke, and it occurred to Shou he had to stop, or the man was going to die. The current lashed back when he broke it off, leaving his entire arm tingling.

Kawasaki stared down at her companion, wide-eyed and shellshocked. She transformed the mute horror on her face into a smile and raised her hands, jutting out her hip in a childish posture. “Okay, I surrender.”

Shou grabbed Jiro by the back of his scorched jacket, hauling him onto the table as well. He groaned and raised a hand to his face, smearing the blood trickling out from his nose.

“Tell me what you’re doing here,” Shou commanded.

Kawasaki stared at Jiro again. She took in a sharp breath, producing a pack of soggy tissues from the pocket of her coat to drop it on his chest.

“Start talking if you don’t want me to hurt you even worse,” Shou said.

“I wanted to make sure I didn’t leave any of my things here, okay?” Kawasaki snapped at him. “I haven’t been here since before all the world domination nonsense, and Jiro has nothing to do with Claw. Just clearing my tracks.”

Shou glared at her. “So you don’t know what happened at all?”

Kawasaki threw out her arms, quickly regaining some of her arrogant, bitter poise. “We probably know as much as you do. The government shut the place down days ago. Some kind of special ops team, pretty dramatic.”

Jiro was still on his back, squeezing his eyes shut. Kawasaki cautiously took a step toward him, crouching without taking her eyes off Shou. She pulled him into a sitting position that he could barely maintain on his own, then adjusted her skirt and sat down next to him, letting her bare legs dangle from the edge of the table.

“It’s been a big mess since they took Suzuki,” she said, crossing one leg over the other. “Really, why would you turn him in? As far as I’ve heard, he’s been selling people out ever since he got arrested.”

“My pops turned himself in,” Shou told her. “What’re you doing with Koga? Where’s that little guy with the barriers?”

“I don’t know who you’re talking about,” Kawasaki said with a tilt of her head, back to her spiteful, condescending mannerisms. “Probably bailed like so many other people. Koga contacted me. Said he had an offer, so I thought I’d hear him out.”

Shou stuck his hands in the pockets of his sodden jacket, frowning at her. “An offer? In exchange for what?”

Kawasaki touched her pointer finger to her chin in mock thoughtfulness. “You need a lot of funds to reboot a terrorist organization.”

“What funds?” Shou scoffed. “Didn’t your dad disown you after he got you out of that assault charge?”

She smiled at him sweetly. “Koga doesn’t have to know that, does he?”

The smile faded, and she rolled her eyes instead, ruffling the short hair at the nape of her neck. “That old pig offered me shares. I’m actually insulted. Their entire network’s ruined and Claw was a joke even before that. An army of clueless, middle-aged men who all duped each other into believing your daddy’s pyramid schemes.”

Shou had never really found out why Kawasaki associated with Claw in the first place. He knew she hated Pops, but then, a lot of people did. It was possible she’d had nowhere else to go after her family kicked her out.

The few times Shou had talked to her in the past, they’d been kidding around at the boss’s expense. To be completely honest, Shou had thought she was fun, too. The idea had even crossed his mind to pull the same move as Koga and ask for her help.

“You think they’re a joke, but you still came here,” he said. “Why?”

Kawasaki shrugged, bending forward so she could support her elbows on her knee. “I was kinda hoping they’d put someone in charge who can do the math and isn’t a narcissistic lunatic.”

“Like who?” Shou asked. “You?”

Kawasaki smiled at him crookedly, fluttering her long eyelashes. “You don’t think I’d make a good mob boss?”

Beside her, Jiro carefully wiped the blood from his nose with the tissue he’d succeeded in unfolding.

“What did you mean your boss turned himself in?” he asked in the odd accent of someone who hadn’t been used to speaking Japanese in a long, long time. “Doesn’t he know what they do to espers?”

Shou faltered, slowly pulling his hands out from his pockets. “What do they do?”

Kawasaki let her head loll to the side, glancing expectantly at Jiro. He sniffed, discarding the blood-stained tissue on the table.

“It’s been going on for long enough that even I know about it,” he said. “The ones their guards can’t handle have a bomb implanted.” He made a rolling motion with his hand, searching for the right words. “To keep them in line.”

Kawasaki let her head flop onto her other shoulder, watching Shou now. “There’s a lot of rumors,” she said. “Science experiments. Using people for tissue samples. Wouldn’t be surprised if they start sawing everyone’s heads open so they can dig around in there. Really find out what makes an esper tick.”

“Just like that awakening program Claw was running,” Jiro added.

Kawasaki hummed knowingly. “I’d put my stakes on them either gathering an army of their own or selling espers as mercenaries.”

A chill had crawled down Shou’s spine while they’d been talking. He couldn’t let himself be swayed by Kawasaki’s pathetic attempt at manipulation, but what if it was true? What if all that had already happened to his father?

He frustratedly ran a hand through his slightly wet hair. So what if it had? Pops deserved all of what was happening to him.

“I don’t care what they do with you,” he said, turning away from Kawasaki’s dark, calculating eyes. “The government’s getting rid of everyone who’s a threat. When they’re done, maybe the rest of us can have some peace for a change.”

From the corner of his eye, he could see her touch her fingers to her lips, putting on an exaggerated, pitying expression.

“Oh honey, don’t be stupid. They don’t care about any of us.” She leaned forward, lowering her voice to a loud whisper. “You know what they care about?”

Shou turned his head, watching as Kawasaki extended her hand, rubbing her thumb against her index- and middle finger.

“Money,” she said.

He glowered at her, reaching for his phone in his pocket. Kawasaki immediately straightened, raising her hands.

“Wow, wow, who’re you calling?”

Shou scrolled through his contact list, bringing up Joseph’s number. He had to know where everyone else at the base was taken. There’d been some decent people here, too. He had to know if any of these rumors were true.

“Someone from the government,” he said.

“You’re actually working for them?” Kawasaki started cackling loudly. “I thought it was a one-off thing. I mean, the government? Did you miss ratting people out that much?”

Shou turned his head. “What d’you mean?”

Kawasaki pretended to wipe away a tear from her eye. “Come on. Every time you showed up, the biggest prick in the complex would go missing. Did you think you were being subtle?”

Shou glared at her.

“Here’s a word of advice, since you made living here tolerable,” Kawasaki said, falling into a more serious tone. “If anyone from the government pretends they want to help, they’re grooming you for their anti-esper squad. In a few years, they’re gonna make you an offer, and you won’t be able to say no because whatever you did, they’ll know.”

She held his gaze for a long moment before she put on another one of her pleasant, fake smiles. “We should help each other out. If you’re worried about someone who used to come here, we can ask around for them.”

The phone felt heavy in Shou’s hand. In a way, he wanted to hear her out, but he couldn’t let her go. It would be the same thing as with Koga; she’d run right out and start plotting against him. Or worse, plotting her own attempt at reviving what was left of Claw. He didn’t get why, but she was clearly showing interest in the idea.

Underneath all her theatrics, Kawasaki was analytical and cunning, and worst of all stubborn. She was dangerous. Maybe whoever was behind those so-called bear attacks had the right idea. Shou could kill her. Or all of them. Koga lay incapacitated in one of the corridors outside, Jiro was holding a new blood-stained tissue to his nose, and Kawasaki had long since let her guard down.

It’d be easy. No one would have to know about it. It was what he should’ve done to Koga and the vertigo lady and the little guy with the barriers from the start.

It would be easy. They wouldn’t be able to hurt anyone anymore.

He blinked. The screen of his phone still displayed Joseph’s name. He pressed it, fixing Kawasaki with a flat glare as he raised it to his ear. “Nice try.”

Kawasaki’s face settled into a murderous scowl. Shou turned his back on her. He only had to wait through two beeps of the waiting tone before Joseph picked up, his words curt and gruff as he answered, “This better be important.”

“You didn’t do a great job of cleaning up Division Four,” Shou said.

A pause. “Don’t tell me you went out there by yourself.”

Shou glanced at the two espers still sitting on the table—Kawasaki glaring at him darkly and Jiro blankly watching his rubber boots. “I caught a couple of Scars and their sidekick. You should come pick them up.”

“Pick them up?” Joseph scoffed. “I’m not exactly in the area.”

Shou irritably threw out an arm. “Well, I can’t just leave them.”

Joseph muttered something under his breath. “Hand them over to the cops. They have a couple of espers assigned to deal with leftovers like this. They should still be in town.”

“If you tell me where you put everyone else, I could take them there myself.”

“Clever,” Joseph said with obvious sarcasm. “I already warned you if you kept meddling, I’d pass it on. Guess what’s going to happen now.”

“I’m helping,” Shou protested. “Why won’t you let me help? This doesn’t cost you anything!”

“Bye, kid,” Joseph said without a trace of sympathy. “You better hurry home. If I know Nagata well enough, she'll pay your mom a visit real soon.”

Joseph hung up and Shou defeatedly let his arm drop to his side, clutching the phone so hard he had to restrain himself from crushing it. He turned toward the two other espers. “We’re going outside.”

Kawasaki hopped down from the table, sauntering toward the ruined doorway. “If you plan on calling the cops, I think not.”

Shou promptly slammed her head into the wall. She staggered backward with her hand over her forehead, right above the scar that already adorned her eye. The skin had split, bleeding down her face.

“Shut up and do as I tell you,” Shou said.

Kawasaki looked both shocked and outraged. “What is your problem? I haven’t even been in Japan for months!” She gestured furiously at Jiro who was making an attempt at standing up. “We just bought an office in Florida. I can give you the number for the real estate agent if you don’t believe me.”

Shou forced her out into the hallway with a push of telekinesis. She nearly slipped on the chunks of ice again, then straightened up, raising her chin defiantly.

“You know what?” she asked, stretching her lips into a rigid, dangerous smile. “Fine. Let's see what they can do. If they try to hold me up based on nothing but month-old witness accounts, I'll sue this entire fucking country."

Shou ushered both her and Jiro back the way they’d run so he could pick up Koga. He was still helplessly stuck under the rubble, so Shou floated the heavy chunks of concrete off of him, then dragged him across the floor until he stopped whining and got up, hobbling after the rest of them.

They made it to the driveway outside the back entrance, where Koga immediately collapsed onto the ground so he didn’t have to put more pressure on his probably broken leg. Shou wrapped his arms around himself, bracing against the wind while they waited. Kawasaki had to be freezing even worse with her bare legs and her stilettos still stuck in the ice inside. She stubbornly tried to look dignified even while her teeth were chattering.

“Remember what you told me?” Jiro softly asked her, speaking English again. He’d stayed quiet ever since Shou slammed Kawasaki’s head into the wall, handling the situation with a lot more calm than her.

Kawasaki nodded, smoothing out her wet skirt. “I’ll get us out soon enough.”

Three police cars arrived a few minutes later, sirens on and everything. The officers came around the corner with their guns raised, as if Shou hadn’t already told them he put the espers in their place. As if firearms would do any good when Kawasaki was decently adept at telekinesis and both Jiro and Koga had long-range powers.

The three of them were split up. Kawasaki kept her head high as one of the agents the cops had brought put some kind of psychic bind on her, forcing her into the backseat of the closest car. Shou wondered if most of the espers the government hired specialized in restraint techniques.

One cop pointlessly made Shou repeat everything he’d already told them on the phone, then left to take care of Koga, ignoring his ramblings about revenge and esper superiority. In the cop’s stead, the other government esper approached Shou—an unusually tall, thin man with a dark beard considerably more well-kept than Koga’s.

He said something; probably introducing himself. Shou rubbed his face and wished all of them would stop asking so many questions. The fact that he hadn’t even had the two hours of sleep he usually managed was getting more and more apparent.

When he removed his hands, the agent had crouched down in front of him, watching him with a kind smile. “I’ve been asked to drive you home,” he said. “If you could come with us to the station, we can take my car from there.”

Shou frowned at him. “Seriously?”

Nagata didn’t waste any time. It couldn’t be more than an hour since Joseph contacted her, and she’d already arranged this.

It made sense they’d put him in the passenger seat of the car where Kawasaki sat, considering he was the one who’d apprehended her, but the way she stared at him the whole way, a calculating smile on her face, was unsettling.

“See you around, Suzuki-kun,” she said, sing-song, when he opened the door to get out.
She was not enough of a threat to justify how much it creeped him out, but he grabbed his backpack and left as fast as possible regardless.

The tall government agent waited while Shou was in the police station’s bathroom. He sullenly peeled off his wet clothes, stuffing them in a plastic bag. When he reached for a spare t-shirt, his fingers graced the roll of slightly water-damaged yen notes at the bottom of his backpack. He stared at them before moving them to a dry compartment. He hadn’t intended to go back home, but now he didn’t even have a choice.

The agent walked Shou to his car—a practical, beige minivan, all round edges that in no way matched the sharp, black suit he was wearing. He drove them out of town, softly humming along to the music on the radio, slightly off-key and grating on Shou’s nerves.

Once in a while, the agent glanced at the backpack sitting on the floor between Shou’s legs. “Were you planning on staying away for a while?” he asked. He waited for an answer that never came before continuing, “Are things not alright at home?”

“Aren't you gonna scold me for trying to help?” Shou mumbled.

The man kept his eyes on the road, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel in time with a pop tune Shou wasn’t familiar with.

“No, I get it,” he said. “You’re not the only one who’s worried. I don't want anything to happen to my family or friends either. Makes you want to get up and do something.”

Shou wrapped his arms around himself. His jacket was wet, too, leaving him nothing but the t-shirt to keep him warm.

“But,” the agent added, reaching for the dashboard to turn up the heat, “I’m also a dad, and I know I’d be scared out of my mind if one of my boys went out to fight wanted espers all by themself.”

Shou despondently leaned back in his seat. If his mother cared where he’d been, it’d only be because it would get her in trouble.

“I don’t even think my mom noticed I left,” he said.

The agent didn’t try to contradict him, just frowned. He’d probably never overlook it if one of his boys ran off.

“Are they espers?” Shou asked, voice flat and hollow. “Your kids?”

“No,” the agent replied. “Not yet, at least.”

“Good for them.”

The agent turned his head, once again watching him with his eyebrows drawn together in concern. “What makes you say that?”

“Just doesn't feel like a great time to be an esper these days.”

The sun was setting, making the yellow lights from a distant town stand out in the twilight. With the subdued radio chatter droning in the background, Shou had to fight not to doze off. He might not believe half the rumors Kawasaki and Jiro were spreading, but he wasn’t stupid enough to fall asleep next to a government employee.

“Were you there when Division Four was raided?” Shou asked him, just to give them something to talk about. Something to keep Shou alert.

“Sure was,” the agent said.

Shou hadn’t expected that. This guy seemed way too benign to violently tear down a Claw base. “Who ripped out all those water pipes? The whole place was flooded.”

“That would be me,” the agent told him.

“Really?” Shou gaped at him in surprise. “It looked brutal. That's a good power.”

The agent smiled at him. “Great for flushing out bad guys.”

Shou didn’t know how to reply to the odd quip, so he frowned out into the darkness for the rest of the trip. When they finally reached Mom’s house, none of the lights were on. She’d most likely had to work overtime again.

“You go on inside,” the agent said. “I’ll wait here until your mom comes home.”

Shou exited the car with a sinking feeling in his stomach. He bent down so he could see the agent. “Seriously, are you gonna put me under surveillance?”

The agent shrugged. “I was just told to keep an eye on you until you were home and safe.”

Shou turned away, dragging his feet to the front door. What was he even going to say?

After stuffing his wet clothes into the washing machine, he went to take a shower. He’d forgotten how much it sucked to be injured. There were no wounds or broken bones this time around, but his head hurt, his whole body felt strange, and the water stung as it hit his cold skin. He still stayed under the showerhead for a long time, mind blank and fuzzy from fatigue.

He was in the middle of redressing when he could hear his mother enter the house, dropping the messenger bag she always brought to work with a heavy thud.

“Shou,” she called. She didn’t sound happy at all.

Shou pulled his clean shirt over his head and reluctantly left the bathroom, inching his way into the hallway. He physically jolted, seeing his mother standing in the genkan with Nagata right behind her.

“Hello, Shou-kun,” Nagata said.

To his surprise, she didn’t look angry, but Mom on the other hand glowered at him with a foreboding mix of fear and reproachfulness.

“What did you do?” she asked, voice low.

As if it was her who owned the house, Nagata took off her bright turquoise heels, hung her coat on the rack next to the door, and headed to the kitchen, suitcase in one hand.

“Come with me,” she said as she passed Shou. She placed her suitcase on the kitchen table, pointing at the closest chair. “Can I sit down here?”

Mom looked like she’d rather want her out of her house as quickly as possible. “Yes,” she said anyway. “Do you want tea?”

“Sure, thank you,” Nagata smiled pleasantly.

Shou lingered in the doorway, unsure what to make of the situation. If Nagata wasn’t here to yell at him, why did she even bother showing up? What had she said to make Mom this unfriendly toward her—she hadn’t seemed to have a problem with her before.

Nagata gestured for Shou to sit down across from her. He glanced at his mother, but she was leaning over the sink to fill the electric kettle, intently avoiding eye contact. He reluctantly shuffled closer, pulling out the chair on the other side of the table.

“You know why I’m here,” Nagata said, “but I have to ask, how have you been? Are you settling in? When I first talked to you about moving here, you weren’t so happy about it.”

Shou glowered at her. What was she trying to say? Was she about to blame this on his mother? As upset as Shou was with her, it had been his own choice to go off to investigate.

“I’m good,” he settled with.

Nagata opened her briefcase, pulling out the stack of notebooks she’d taken from Shou the last time they saw each other.

“I owe you these back,” she said, sliding them over to Shou’s side of the table. “The subdivisions are breaking up fast, so it has left us at a disadvantage, but your notes have been very useful. Invaluable, even.” She held his gaze, serious and imploring. “You wanted to help, and you did.”

Shou dragged the topmost notebook closer, peeking at a random page to confirm that it was indeed his handwriting and his stupid doodles.

“Recruiting the Super Five was another smart suggestion,” Nagata added.

Shou kept his eyes on the notebook. Did she know he’d gone to Seasoning City? Had Serizawa told her? Or Minegishi?

“But you were already aware of that, weren’t you?” Nagata tilted her head knowingly, and it occurred to Shou that maybe no one had told her; he just gave himself away by fretting over it. He kept his mouth shut and tried to focus on not feeling anything.

“I’m just wondering,” Nagata said, “why is it you still don’t think you’ve done your part? You’ve done more than enough. You’ve already made a tremendous difference.”

Mom cut her speech short, heavily placing a teapot in the middle of the table. She sat down next to Shou, poured Nagata a cup, and pushed it in front of her.

“Can you tell me why you’re here, please?” she said stiffly.

Nagata took the cup, calmly wrapping her fingers around it. “Are you aware of where your son has been today?”

“You just saw me come home from work, so no.” Mom kept her gaze low as she poured tea for Shou and herself as well.

“Shou-kun decided to investigate the base of one of Claw’s former subdivisions,” Nagata said. “Not only that, but he thought it was a good idea to start a fight with a few espers who’d had the same idea.”

“I didn’t think it was a good idea,” Shou protested. “They were there and they attacked me first, so I had to do something about them.”

His mother turned her head, staring at him with subdued consternation. Nagata watched her, then spoke up again.

“I have explicitly told both of you that Shou-kun is to stay out of any affairs concerning Claw. That was an agreement we made.”

“You should’ve arrested them with everyone else,” Shou snapped. “I was making sure they didn’t get away!”

“It’s not your job to deal with it anymore,” Nagata said.

“That’s just something you decided!” Shou nearly knocked over his tea as he leaned over the table. “How do you expect me to settle in when I don’t know what’s going on or what’s happening to any of the people I told you should be safe?”

Nagata pressed her lips together, taking a moment to stare darkly at her tea.

“Maybe I didn't make it clear enough the last time we spoke, but I have personally been sticking my neck out for you,” she said, meeting Shou’s eyes with piercing, stern intensity. “I’ve been sticking my neck out for several of the people you wanted excused, too, including those three who at least had the decency to look out for you. None of them are as innocent as you’d like us to believe.”

Shou clenched his hands, banging them onto the table. “Then why haven't you told me about it?”

Nagata sighed and brushed a hand over her hair, settling on the band tying it together in a loose ponytail. “You're right,” she admitted. “I should have done that.”

“Kawasaki said you’re maiming all the espers you take in. You're taking them away without even putting them on trial or anything. Why should I believe you aren't torturing them or something? I can’t even talk to my pops so I know he's still alive!”

Nagata looked off to the side for a painfully long moment, like she had to work through a heap of mental calculations to find a suitable reply.

“If I can arrange for you to see that he's okay, will you stop?” she finally asked.

The rant Shou had been ready to throw at her died in his throat. She could do that?

“Y…” He cast his eyes down, shoulders sinking with defeat. “Yes.”

“Then I’ll see what I can do,” Nagata said.

So far, Mom had been completely silent, frowning at the table with a haunted look on her face. Nagata took a sip of tea, studying her.

“Next steps,” she said. “I know what I said about waiting to start school, but I think we should initiate that as soon as possible.” She paused, putting down the cup. “In fact, I insist.”

Mom glowered at her from under her bangs. There was something defiant about her posture. “I'll see what I can do,” she parroted.

“I mean within the week,” Nagata said. “I’ll call you Friday, and I expect you to have an agreement with the middle school here by then.”

“That's…” Mom hesitated. “That’s a very short time. I have other things to take care of as well—”

“Other things?” Nagata’s eyes widened in disbelief. “I don’t know how to make it any clearer that your son is in serious trouble. You're his mother. I suggest you start acting like it.”

Mom's eyebrows lowered into a scowl.

Nagata continued to stare her straight in the eye as she continued. “Since Shou-kun is so susceptible to getting restless, I'll have someone posted here to keep an eye on him until he can start school.”

“You're going to put my house under surveillance without any kind of clearance?” Mom asked.

Nagata looked like she wanted to roll her eyes. “I can get you a piece of paper if that makes you feel better.”

“It would, actually,” Mom said. “You people don’t care to document much of anything, do you?”

“What else would you like documented?” Nagata asked, unable to hide the snide tone in her voice.

Mom seemed to get angrier by the second. “How can you blame a teenage boy for acting out when you strip his father of his basic civil rights and take him away to who knows where?” she asked. “I figure that isn’t on record anywhere either.”

Nagata gave her an incredulous smile. “Your husband is a self-proclaimed terrorist responsible for the deaths of hundreds of people and the torture of children even younger than your son.”

“My husband?” Mom let out a bitter, scornful laugh. “Get out of my house.”

Shou had never seen her so angry. Not even yesterday when it was him she was aiming this icy bitterness at. He shrunk in his seat, trying not to bring attention to himself, but it didn’t stop Nagata from staring at him like she expected his support.

She stayed in her seat, sharply pointing a hand at him. “I agree, nobody can blame him, but you have to try harder than this.”

The legs on Mom’s chair screeched across the floor as she stood up. She marched across the room, pointing into the hall.

“Get out,” she repeated.

Nagata graciously picked up her briefcase, walking past her to grab her coat and slip on her shoes. She stopped in the open door, meeting Mom’s scathing glare.

“I’m not your enemy in this. I’m simply warning you, if something like this happens again, Shou-kun will not be allowed to stay here.”

“You’ve made your point,” Mom sneered.

Nagata moved onto the doorstep outside. “I’ll call you Friday,” she said. “Sooner, if I can make a deal regarding Shou-kun’s father before then.”

Mom slammed the door in her face. She stayed in place for a few seconds, a hand clenched tightly around the handle, then abruptly turned around. “Are you hungry?” she asked.

Shou just stood in the doorway, baffled.

“I think I have some ramen. We have to talk about this.” She walked right past him, heading for the kitchen cabinets.

“I won’t do it again,” Shou mumbled.

“Who does that bitch think she is?” Mom slammed a cup of instant ramen onto the counter. “I’m doing my best. Has it been that terrible staying here? Don’t you think I’ve been trying my best?”

Shou really didn’t know what to say. Maybe? He wasn’t sure what his mother’s best was.

“Go sit down,” she commanded, pointing into the living room.

Shou obediently sat on the couch with his hands pressed together between his knees, feeling weird and jittery. When he leaned back, he could see Nagata and her colleague through the living room window. Nagata was gesturing at the house while she talked, straining her neck to see the much taller man’s face. He met Shou’s eyes for a second, brow furrowed with concern. Shou quickly leaned forward, focusing his attention on the edge of the coffee table.

“You haven’t eaten anything today, have you?” Mom placed a bowl of minimalistic ramen in front of him with a stern clack.

Shou shook his head.

“Then eat,” she said, sitting down with her own bowl raised to her chest and her feet drawn up under her.

Shou haltingly worked on slurping up his noodles while his mother’s scowl bore into the side of his face. She didn’t touch her own ramen.

“If you want me to understand what’s going on in your head, we should get everything out in the open,” she said. “Everything you’ve been thinking about since you got here.”

Shou glanced at her uncertainly. She didn’t look angry anymore, just very insistent. “Where do you want me to start?”

“From the beginning.” Mom gave a frustrated shrug. “Why didn’t you want to come here? Why did I have to find out everything about you from a man who only took care of you because your father ordered him to? You’ve been here for two weeks and you haven’t told me anything.”

Her face contorted into a strange, strained smile.

“I don’t know anything about you. I was trying to give you space, but clearly, that was the wrong thing to do.”

“Every time I try to say something, you get all weird about it,” Shou said, dropping his chopsticks in the broth the noodles had been soaking in.

“Okay, I’m sorry.” Mom put down her bowl, placing a hand on her chest as she imploringly leaned forward. “I’m sorry if I do that, it’s not on purpose. It doesn’t mean I don’t want to listen.”

“Yes it does,” Shou muttered.

“Try me, then! Tell me about Fukuda, or your father, or anyone else you want. It’s your pick.”

She didn’t care. She could sit and pretend all night that she did, but it wouldn’t change anything. Shou set down his own bowl and moved to get up from the couch, but his mother’s hands shot out to grab both his arms, forcing him to stay.

“I can’t help you if you don’t talk to me,” she ground out, stubbornly keeping eye contact.

Shou shoved her hands away with enough viciousness to make her flinch. “Why don’t you just give up?! Why don’t you let the government take me somewhere else? Then you can forget about me again.”

“I never forgot about you,” she murmured, like he’d said something terribly unfair. It was her who was unfair. Everything she’d ever done was unfair.

“Fuck you,” Shou said.

Mom’s face was completely blank. She stood up, bringing the ramen bowls with her into the kitchen. Shou could hear her continue to the staircase, then cross the hallway upstairs. She didn’t come back down.

He laid on the couch, staring at the ceiling. This was it, then. She would officially throw him out and everyone would probably be happier for it. The thought was more comforting than anything else he’d thought about in the last couple of days.

If he gave everything up, maybe he could finally sleep.

He woke later to find a blanket draped over him. The woolen fabric felt wrong against his tingling skin. His mouth still tasted like metal.

He could hear Mom in the kitchen, sniffling and then breaking into an unmistakable sob. Shou rolled onto his side, blearily watching the edge of the coffee table until the noise became too much. He pulled the blanket over his head and curled in on himself.

The crying didn’t die down. In fact, it got worse. Eventually, Shou gave in, wrapped the blanket around his shoulders, and stood up, padding to the kitchen with careful steps.

His mother was flipping through one of the notebooks that had been forgotten on the table. She looked up when Shou stopped next to her, tears streaming down her face.

She hadn’t asked for permission to sift through his things, but what was the point in scolding her now? Everything was already ruined. Shou hadn’t seen her cry like this since that day two years ago when he first showed up at her house.

“I left you with all this,” she whispered. “Can you ever forgive me?”

Shou tucked the blanket closer around himself, trying to blink the sleep from his eyes. They had promised each other to be honest.

“I don’t know,” he said.

Chapter Text

Shou was used to adapting. He’d been infiltrating Claw bases since the age of eleven, traveled across Japan to deal with all manner of weirdos, and even orchestrated an emergency attack plan on his father in little more than a week. Yet at no point had it induced the same nauseating anxiety he was feeling now, standing outside the gate to his new school.

Beside him, his mother burst into a laugh.

“Your homeroom teacher just wants to introduce herself, it’s not a court hearing,” she said, placing a hand on his back.

Shou couldn’t blame her for laughing. He knew he was acting ridiculous.

He followed a step behind her as she went through the gate. By the bicycle shed on one side of the courtyard, a few students in matching, gray uniforms turned to stare at them. Shou kept his head high, focusing on the faded characters above the entrance, spelling out Sturgeon Bay Middle School.

Mom walked through the double doors to the entrance hall, holding one of them open for Shou. The low afternoon sun pierced the windows in the facade, exposing the wear on the interior. Light had discolored the wooden wall panels and the linoleum floor was littered with dull patches where decades of shuffling indoor slippers had worn it down.

They left their shoes in the wide genkan, continuing past a group of students chattering by the lockers in the middle of the room. Half of them stopped to stare as well. Shou didn’t know why it bothered him so much. They were just average kids, getting ready to go home and get on with their average little lives. They couldn’t hurt him if they wanted to.

Straight ahead was a staircase to the second floor. Mom waved uncertainly as a thin, young woman descended the steps, adjusting the strap of the satchel bag on her shoulder.

“Koshiba-san?” the woman asked.

Mom nodded and greeted her with a quick bow. The woman had to be the teacher they were supposed to talk to, but when she looked directly at Shou, he pulled a complete blank on what to say or do.

“I’m sorry, I think Shou is a little out of it today,” Mom said. The optimistic smile she’d worn on the way here had dissolved into a pitying frown by now.

“That’s nothing to be sorry about,” the teacher said, keeping her eyes on Shou. “I’m Miyagi. I’m the homeroom teacher for 1-B. I can already tell you that’ll be your class.” She gestured down one side of the corridor that branched off from the entrance hall. “Come with me, we can talk in here.”

She led them inside a room furnished with a few round tables and a small kitchenette. A man and a woman, probably more teachers, were leaning on the counter, talking to each other. When they noticed Shou, they were quick to tell both him and Mom hello and welcome, then filed out of the room, leaving them to talk in peace. Shou could feel the tension in his shoulders ease now that there was a wall between him and the students loitering outside.

Miyagi pointed them to a sofa arrangement on one end of the room, offering Shou and his mother two chairs by a small coffee table. She went to pick up a stack of papers from a cabinet by the back wall before she joined them, sitting down on the tattered, ocher-colored couch on the other side of the table.

“I’ve already been told a bit about your situation, but I’d like to hear what you think about starting school here,” she said, placing the papers on the table so her hands were free to tuck her short, mousy brown hair behind her ears.

Shou looked helplessly at his mother, failing to come up with an answer to even the simplest questions.

“As I told the principal, Shou hasn’t been in school since second grade,” Mom answered for him. “He’s had some tutoring, though. From a… well, private teacher I suppose we can call him.”

She crossed her arms, just as reluctant to acknowledge Fukuda’s existence as she’d been two days ago when Shou brought up the fact that Fukuda was the only reason he’d done anything remotely like school in the last few years.

“What sort of things did he teach you?” Miyagi asked, still watching Shou. Her voice was really soft. Disarming. She waited patiently even when it took Shou a long time to gather his thoughts.

“I don’t know,” he shrugged. “All kinds of stuff. Made me read books. Talked about, like… physics and history. Math, kind of. And English, but I taught myself most of that.”

Miyagi pushed her glasses up her nose and grabbed the stack of papers again. “I’d like to know how far you are in our curriculum, so I gathered a copy of the first years’ most recent tests. You can try to fill them out if you like, but mostly, I’d just like you to read through the assignments. Maybe mark down anything that looks unfamiliar to you.”

She held out the papers. Shou hesitantly took them, eyes skirting over the text on the topmost sheet, but taking none of it in.

“Don’t feel bad if you don’t get through all of it,” Miyagi said with a small, reassuring smile. “It’s not a test, it’s just a starting point so we can talk about what you need help with.”

Shou thumbed through a few pages, already feeling discouraged. So many questions. One of the first tests had types of math problems he’d never even seen before.

“We can apply for a teacher's aid if you need it,” Miyagi continued. “If you think of any other accommodations that might help you, please let me know. I’m thinking we can see how it goes with your classes for a few days, and then we can talk about it again.”

Shou nodded. He zoned out for the rest of the meeting, leaving his mother to react as Miyagi explained about school customs, uniforms, clubs, and so many other things he’d never had a reason to think or care about.

“Have you met any of the other students yet?” Miyagi asked him directly. Shou raised his head, the question not quite passing through the fog clouding his mind.

“We’re actually having some friends over tonight so Shou can meet their daughter,” Mom said. “Hasegawa Himiko? She’s a first-year as well.”

So far, Miyagi had expressed nothing but kindness and patience, but at the mention of the girl’s name, troubled furrows appeared on her forehead. “I see,” she said. “Well. It’s nice to have a few familiar faces while you’re still new here.”

Miyagi soon exhausted all her practical information. She looked tired as she dug a calendar out of her bag, flipping through several pages that were all crammed with text. She settled on calling Shou in again on the day before he was supposed to start his classes, giving him a little over a week to look through the tests.

The second she let them go, Shou mutely hugged the papers to his chest, left the room, and marched outside as fast as he could. The sun had already been swallowed by the restless sea on the horizon, taking the remaining students with it.

The streetlights guided Shou past the old warehouses blocking the view to the harbor. Halfway to the intersection between the school and the center of town, he could hear his mother’s footsteps behind him, jogging to catch up. She slowed down once she was at his side, keeping pace beside him.

“She was nice, don’t you think?” she asked.

Shou shrugged and glared at the asphalt.

With a frustrated noise, Mom stepped in front of him, forcing him to stop. “Why are you upset?”

Shou’s fingers tightened around the stack of papers. “I’m gonna look like an idiot.”

“So what if you don’t know the curriculum?” Mom asked, planting her hands at her sides. “They’ll help you as much as they can. I know Nagata was weirdly insistent about keeping you here in town, but if it’s completely terrible, I’m sure we can look for another school that suits you better.”

It didn’t matter which school they sent him to; Shou’s problems would be the same.

Mom sighed, loud and exaggerated. She snatched the stack of papers from Shou’s hands, tossed it on the ground next to them, and reached out to pull him into a hug. Shou swerved around her and continued across the intersection.

He couldn’t hear his mother follow him this time. Glancing over his shoulder, Shou could see her stamp her foot down on one of the tests before the wind could carry it away. She picked up the remaining papers and tucked them under her arm, lingering to watch the school building for a bit.

She caught up again at the foot of the hill leading up to her house. For a while, she was quiet, brushing away her hair every time the wind blew it into her face, but Shou could tell she wanted to say something.

“Fukuda did a lot of things for your sake, didn’t he?” she asked.

Of course he did. Shou had caught him reading through history books and middle school math problems many times, sometimes looking just as lost as Shou felt.

“I still think it’d be nice if you told me about him,” she said in the kindest voice she could muster. “If you don’t want me to comment, that’s fine. I can shut up.”

She’d been trying to be more accepting in the last few days, she really had, but her interest was so obviously fake. All it did was remind Shou how much she loathed Fukuda and everyone and everything else she kept badgering him to talk about.

Thankfully, she dropped the subject when Shou didn’t reply.

“Your teacher didn’t seem very fond of Himiko,” she said instead, awkwardly adjusting her bangs. “I guess she’s a bit… forward. Like her mother.”

Officially, Mom had taken the day off from work so she could make it to the meeting with Miyagi, but she’d spent most of it frantically cleaning her house, as if her life depended on making it appear as effortlessly spotless as possible.

She tilted her head a little, scrunching up her face. “Maybe you’ll get along just fine. I mean, we’re kind of weird, too, aren’t we?”

“Why do you even talk to her mom if you don’t like her?” Shou asked.

Mom stared tiredly off into the distance. “You know how there’s some people you just keep running into?” she asked. “She’s a big deal in advertising circles. I used to work with her back when I was doing freelance, so she’d come over sometimes. Bring Himiko along while she was too little to be home alone.” She tilted her head at a steeper angle. “But the real reason is she likes to gossip.”

Shou nodded in understanding. “It’s better if she hears it from us.”

Mom’s house came into view once they reached the top of the hill. So did the ugly, beige minivan with the government agent who’d driven Shou home three days prior. Nagata had been serious about keeping tabs on Shou—the guy wasn’t there all the time, but he’d come by several times a day, keeping watch for a while and then leaving again. Often enough that they never forgot about him.

As Mom rummaged through her coat pocket for her keys, the agent waved at Shou, smiling in a way that was very warm and genuine for someone who was practically keeping them under house arrest. Without really thinking about it, Shou waved back.

Mom narrowed her eyes at the agent, clutching the keys in her fist as she crossed the street. He looked a little surprised, getting out of his car to hear what she had to say. When standing right in front of him, Mom had to crane her neck to look him in the eye.

“As you can see, we didn’t skip town, so you can leave now,” she said harshly. “We’re having guests over in a couple of hours. I don’t know how interested you people are in advertising you’re roaming around here, but I think it’s bad enough my neighbors are asking questions.”

The agent simply nodded, making no objections. “I didn’t forget,” he said. “I’ll be on my way. You have a good evening.”

Mom pivoted toward her front door without another word. Shou followed her, watching as the agent got back in his car and drove off. Even if he had other business in the area, Shou felt kind of bad for him. Everything suggested that Nagata intended to keep him posted here for the entire week until Shou had to start school. Shou had done stakeouts before and it was the most boring thing in the world.

As soon as they’d gotten inside, Mom handed the tests back to Shou and continued her housekeeping where she left off, aggressively vacuuming the living room. Shou concluded he was least likely to get in the way if he went upstairs to take a look at everything Miyagi had collected for him.

In the office, he poured Nezumi a new fill of her rodent pellets before he sat down by the desk to sift through the tests. He could immediately tell English was going to be ridiculously easy—just grammar and basic phrases. There were a few kanji in the Japanese tests he didn’t recognize, but apart from that, it seemed straightforward as well. Science, history, and social studies looked like he’d at least heard of all the topics involved.

But then there was the math.

He knew Fukuda had struggled to teach him, he knew both of them hated it, but until now, Shou hadn’t realized how far behind he was. Even the very first question was throwing him off.

If Akane buys 20 apples for 1,800 yen and sells them for 130 each, how many apples does she have to sell to make a profit?

Shou buried his fingers in his hair. Why couldn’t Akane figure it out herself? Just trying to separate the numbers was giving him a headache. He grudgingly grabbed a pencil from the tray of art supplies his mother had left in the office, tapping the tip against the paper until he’d littered the margin with little dots.

The problem was about multiplication, he could tell that much. Or division? Something like that. The more he looked at it, the more it drowned his thoughts in the same anxiety he’d felt while visiting the school.

If he didn’t want to show up on his first day looking like a complete moron, he needed help with this. The problem was that his mother had already told him math was her worst subject when she was in school, so who else was there to ask? It was no use bothering Fukuda to make another attempt at teaching him this stuff.

Higashio was really good at numbers, but Shou hadn’t talked to him since he moved in with his mother, and he’d definitely laugh at how bad Shou was at this. He’d done so before. Repeatedly.

Out of nowhere, Shou’s mind lit up with a revelation: Ritsu. Ritsu was good at school. Great at it, in fact. As far as Shou had gathered, he was an honor student.

Before he could think about it too much, he sent him a text.

Shou
Ritsu how good are you at math

Shou
I got these tests my new school wants me to look at i dont even know half the words on them

Shou
Just thought maybe you could help

Shou
If you want

Shou
No big deal if you dont

The tests crinkled as Shou shoved them against the wall under the windowsill, making room to rest his head on top of his arms. Ritsu wouldn’t laugh at him, he was too serious for that. Shou didn’t know why he still got nervous about contacting him. They’d kept a steady correspondence since Shou left Seasoning City, and sure, sometimes they spoke past each other, but apart from that, it’d been fine.

Minutes ticked by. Shou was about to give up and go downstairs when his phone buzzed against the desk. He raised his head, peering down at the preview of the message Ritsu had just sent him.

Ritsu
Sure. I help Nii-san with math sometimes.

That was way easier than Shou had thought it’d be. Another message came in. Shou unlocked the screen to read it.

Ritsu
It would be easier to do in person than over the phone, but you told me you’re not allowed to go anywhere?

Shou pushed himself up, supporting his head with a hand on his forehead. He’d almost forgotten about that part.

Shou
Guess i can try and convince nagata its important. Shes really hyped about me going to school it should be doable

Ritsu
The government lady?

Shou
Yeah shell definitely call your parents though

Ritsu
That’s fine. I already had to talk to my parents about you.

Shou
You did?

Ritsu
You told me to say you set our house on fire, remember?

Shou groaned, shifting his hand until it covered half his face.

Shou
Are they mad at me?

Why had they never talked about that, anyway? Ritsu didn’t forget things like that.

Ritsu
They thought it was responsible of you to have the damage fixed before they came home.

Shou
Seriously?

Ritsu
Accidents happen. When we were little, Nii-san used to break things with his powers all the time.

It baffled Shou that Ritsu’s parents were so lax about the fact that both their sons and several of their friends had psychic powers. Mom had knowingly married an esper, but the few times Shou had broken something by accident, she’d been upset.

Ritsu
By the way, your dad owns a travel agency. I had to explain how you could send them off to that onsen.

Shou blinked at the new message.

Shou
What? Ritsu you cant make your own cover stories without asking me first! Me and mom have a whole thing lined up we’re telling everyone hes dead. What am i supposed to say if they ask for a company name or something they can look that shit up

Ritsu
You’re smart. Figure something out.

Shou dropped the phone, staring at it with his arms crossed over his chest until the screen went dark.

He leaned back until the office chair creaked and suddenly couldn’t help but huff out a laugh. He could still remember the panic on Ritsu’s face when Shou told him the exact same thing, leaving him in his newly repaired house.

Maybe he deserved that one.

Shou
Touche

He pocketed the phone, fighting down the smile on his face as he headed back downstairs. He found his mother with her head inside the refrigerator, gathering everything she needed to prepare for dinner.

“Can we go over our cover story again?” she asked, tossing a pack of sliced beef on top of the vegetables already on the kitchen counter.

“Sure,” Shou said.

He walked around her so he could hop up to sit on the counter. Mom closed the fridge and raised her hand to count on her fingers.

“Your father died of a sudden heart attack,” she started, unfurling one finger. “You haven’t been with me because he kidnapped you when you were eight and threatened me to back off.” Two fingers. “He was in debt to some bad people after involving himself in several cases of investment fraud, that’s why the police are worried about our safety, and also why you kept moving around.” Three fingers. “He pulled you out of school because he was an anti-social, anti-government nut job. I mean, that part’s just the truth, but—”

Mom abruptly let her hand drop to her side, her shoulders slumping despondently.

“All of this makes us sound so shifty,” she lamented. “Isn’t there a less crime related story we can use?”

Shou idly kicked his legs. “How else are you gonna explain the government agent circling your house?” he asked. “Just be as vague as possible. You said people are gonna back off if we tell them it’s a sensitive subject.”

“Is it really better to let them come to their own conclusions, though?” Mom asked, aimlessly rearranging the ingredients in front of her. “I feel like I already messed up when I talked to Hasegawa on the phone. I told her it’s best not to ask you too many questions, and then she started asking me questions. I think I made it sound like your father kept you completely isolated from the rest of the world.”

Shou’s legs slowly came to a stop. “Okay, well… The best way to lie is to stick as close to the truth as possible.”

His mother gave him a strange frown. Maybe she was thinking the same thing Shou was: he’d done a lot of lying. He should know.

Even with the cover story in place, Mom seemed increasingly nervous as the clock ticked closer to seven. Shou helped her prepare what they needed for sukiyaki, feeling the same apprehension sink its teeth into him. What was he supposed to talk to this Himiko girl about? He had a hard time imagining they had anything in common.

Mom’s head snapped up when the doorbell rang. She dropped the knife she’d been chopping cabbage with, quickly wiped her hands, and took a moment to steel herself before she went to open the front door.

From the doorway to the kitchen, Shou could see the woman they’d met at the supermarket the day he moved in. She looked even flashier than she had then, dressed in a bright green cocktail dress.

“Kaiko-san,” she exclaimed with a huge, excited grin, “it’s always so good to see you!”

Mom attempted a smile as she made a sweeping gesture to the hallway. “Please come in.”

Her smile became more genuine when Hasegawa’s husband followed her inside, carrying a baby on one arm.

“Yosuke-chan has gotten so big,” Mom cooed, reaching for the boy’s tiny, chubby fist. He leaned away, looking between her face and hand almost as if offended.

“He’s not quite the attention hog Himiko was,” the husband chuckled.

Mom seemed less stressed out by him, but he only acknowledged Shou with a nod, fleetingly looking him over before he focused on working off one of his jacket sleeves.

“Oh, Shou-kun,” Hasegawa called out, quickly lining up her high-heeled shoes in the genkan. “It’s so nice to get a chance to meet you properly! I’m sure you and Himiko will get along great.”

She gestured distractedly toward the last person standing outside—a short, stocky girl with a bored look on her face. Flanked by her mother’s eye-catching dress and her father’s upscale polo shirt, she looked out of place in her faded windbreaker and jeans.

Himiko languidly stepped into the genkan, closing the door behind her as she kicked off her sneakers. She freed one of her braided pigtails from the hood of her jacket and turned toward Shou, studying him through the glasses that covered half her face.

“Hey,” she said.

Shou peered over his shoulder. Their parents had already moved to the kitchen where Himiko’s mother was complimenting Mom’s impeccable housekeeping and creative interior design with boundless enthusiasm.

When he turned back around, Himiko raised an eyebrow at him.

“Hey,” Shou replied.

Himiko’s eyebrow rose even higher, as if she expected him to say something more. Shou rarely had a problem talking to strangers, but today, his ability to speak kept malfunctioning completely.

“So is this like the first time you’ve been here?” she asked, nodding at the neatly color-blocked pattern Mom had painted on the wall. “This last week?”

Shou felt overwhelmingly out of place all of a sudden. “More or less,” he said.

“Okay, it’s just my mom says she didn’t even know you existed,” Himiko replied. “Sounded kinda weird.”

She unzipped her windbreaker, revealing a t-shirt with an overly complicated logo that probably belonged to a metal band. She hung the jacket on top of her parents’ outerwear on the coat rack. Being even shorter than Shou, she could barely reach.

“I guess I’m starting at the same school as you,” Shou gracelessly told her.

“Yep.” Himiko stepped up from the genkan and planted one hand on the wall, leaning on it casually. “Everyone’s already gossiping about you.”

Shou took a step back. “Before today...?”

“Considering there’s a cop watching your house or whatever, does that surprise you?” Himiko asked like it was an incredibly stupid question.

It wasn’t just the neighbors down the street who’d heard, then. Who knew what else Himiko had picked up on. She kept looking at him as if he was some bizarre, newly discovered animal.

“Cops or not, whenever a new kid gets enrolled here, it’s a school-wide announcement,” she said, tilting her chin up a little. “You’re a special needs student, right?”

Shou wasn’t sure what that meant, but she made it sound like an insult.

“Like you’re a little behind or whatever,” she said, tapping her pointer finger at her temple. “I don’t get it. There’s a middle school in the next town over who actually has a class for kids like that. Why aren’t you going there? Every teacher at our school’s so overworked they don’t have time to give a shit about you.”

Had Miyagi already told her students how unfit he was for a regular school, or did you only have to take one look at him to tell? Before he could ask, Mom stuck her head out from the kitchen to tell them it was time for dinner. Himiko walked past Shou, sauntering down the hallway like someone who felt way more at home than he did.

Mom had managed to make room for five people, the baby, and a big pot of sukiyaki at her small dinner table. She took the chair closest to the kitchen counter, leaving the last two seats by the opposing wall for Shou and Himiko to sit down across from each other.

When Shou accidentally made eye contact, Himiko grinned at him slyly, showing off her crooked teeth. One of her incisors was chipped, leaving what remained of it looking like a snaggle-toothed fang.

Shou flinched when Himiko’s mother leaned over the table and put her hand on top of his, patting it fondly.

“It must’ve been such a big change moving here,” she said. “How do you like Sturgeon Bay?”

Shou pulled his hand away, taking a moment to recover, and even then the reply was lame and awkward. “It’s quiet, I guess. In a good way?”

Himiko’s mother beamed at him like he’d uttered the most inspirational words in history. “I know! I’m from the city originally, but I think the quiet here is really healthy, and people are so open to talk—”

Shou doubted people here were more open than anywhere else. It was more likely they were too polite to interrupt her. She prattled on, either oblivious or indifferent to the fact that everyone else was more preoccupied with picking out food from the hot pot than listening.

“Where did you live before?” she asked, sending Mom a fleeting glance as if to check if it was an appropriate question.

“We moved around a lot because of my dad’s job, so I haven’t really lived in one spot these last few years,” Shou replied, keeping it vague.

“Oh, I bet you’ve seen a lot of interesting places,” Himiko’s mother chirped. “Met a lot of people.”

Shou shrugged, plopping a piece of beef in his mouth. “He was pretty strict about what I should spend my time on.”

Himiko’s father was busy separating the baby’s food into bite-sized pieces. He gave Shou a knowing, sidelong glance. “I’m assuming that’s why you didn’t see your mother.”

Mom nervously cleared her throat, clutching her hands in her lap. “Uh…”

“Look, I’ll just come right out and ask what we’ve been wondering about,” Himiko’s father said, handing his son the child-sized fork he'd brought so he could attempt to stuff his carrot slices in his mouth himself. “This was a case of parental kidnapping, right? Because as far as I know, that’s the usual strategy. Grab the kid at a young age, isolate them, then antagonize the other parent.”

Mom looked subtly mortified to have to talk about this just fifteen minutes into the visit. She cast her eyes down, mumbling, “It was complicated, but… yes, you could say that.”

Himiko’s mother glared at her husband from across the table. “We’re having a nice dinner, don’t pressure the poor woman into talking about that.”

Honestly, it was reassuring if they had already made the same conclusions Shou and his mother had planned to hint at, but he knew Mom would do a terrible job of lying when she was this distraught. Shou decided it was time to shut down the conversation.

“I don’t feel like talking about it, if that’s okay,” he said, making sure to sound just the right amount of upset. Upset, but moving on. “I don’t think Mom does, either.”

“Of course it’s okay,” Himiko’s mother assured him. “It’s important to set boundaries. You’re doing great.”

She promptly changed the subject and resumed chattering at a speed and volume that left little space for anyone else to butt in. Looking simultaneously relieved and shaken, Mom drank the entire glass of water in front of her in one go. Shou tried to appreciate the sacrifice she’d made by inviting the Hasegawas over.

Across from him, Himiko had propped her chin up on her hand, squinting like she was trying to figure out the answer to a complex puzzle. Even when Shou glared her straight in the eye, she just kept watching him, doing that thing with her eyebrow again.

“Kaiko-san, can I use your bathroom?” she suddenly asked.

“Of course.” Mom seemed grateful for the brief interlude and pushed her chair out from the table like she was ready to lead Himiko there herself. “Do you remember where it is?”

Himiko nodded and slid down from her chair. Shou watched her as she left the kitchen. The door to the bathroom was right outside in the hallway, but he didn’t hear it open or close. Instead, he could swear he heard the staircase creak.

He discreetly got up, too, and moved to check the bathroom—unlocked and vacant as expected. He hurried up to the second floor. The door to the office was open. Shou marched the last few steps to find Himiko standing in front of the closet, her hand reaching for the handle.

Shou panicked. In a flash, he’d shoved Himiko away and slammed his back against the closet door.

“What’re you doing?” he snarled.

Himiko merely blinked at him, then nonchalantly folded her hands on her back. “Oh,” she said, “guess I didn’t remember where the bathroom was after all.”

Everything Claw-related Shou had kept was jammed somewhere in that closet. He should’ve burned all the notebooks as soon as Nagata returned them to him.

“Get out,” he ordered. Under normal circumstances, he would’ve broken her nose, just to put some weight behind his words, but he knew that wouldn’t go over well with any of the people sitting downstairs.

Unimpressed, Himiko leaned to the side as if to see around him. “Why? Do you keep anything secret in there?”

She rolled her eyes at his lack of reply, proceeding to take a tour around the room as she demonstratively studied Shou’s belongings.

“Cute hamster,” she noted, peering into Nezumi’s cage.

Shou glared at her until she left the room. He stalked after her down the stairs, making sure she couldn’t snoop into anything else. Himiko stopped at the foot of the staircase, hanging on to the railing so Shou wouldn’t be able to pass.

“My mom can talk forever if you let her,” she drawled. “We should go outside.”

Before Shou could protest or decide on a plan of action, Himiko grabbed his wrist with one hand and her windbreaker with the other, dragging him through the doorway to the living room where there was a direct view to the dinner table.

“Mom, me and Shou-kun’ll go out so I can show him around,” she yelled.

“That’s great, sweety, you do that,” her mother yelled back. She didn’t even turn to look at Himiko, continuing the story she’d been telling the others in the same breath.

Shou gave his mother a pleading look, but she waved him away, mouthing, “Go,” and then what Shou could only decode as, “Save yourself.”

Himiko waited with her hand on the front door handle while Shou flusteredly pulled on his varsity jacket.

“You’re kinda shy, aren’t you?” she commented, her crooked grin coming off equal parts condescending and mischievous.

No one had ever called Shou shy in his entire life. He didn’t even know how to react other than to make an affronted face at her. “No, I’m not.”

“Sure,” Himiko said and swung the door open, “then I guess you’re only scared to talk to me ‘cause you and your mom are full of shit.”

Shou pushed past her on the way out of the driveway, walking at a pace quick enough that Himiko had trouble keeping up.

“See, now you’re running away,” she huffed, already slightly out of breath.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Shou snapped at her.

“You know, at first I assumed your mom was just trying to make your dad look bad so people would forget the part where she ditched her estranged kid or whatever—but the cops watching you, that’s for real, right? Like some kind of police protection?”

Nagata had instructed Shou to refer to her and her fellow agent as police, and as Mom had argued in the last few days, dishing out terms like police protection sounded serious enough that it’d get people to back off. He might as well lean into it.

“I can’t really talk about it, but yeah,” he muttered.

Unlike her mother earlier, Himiko, unfortunately, did not back off.

“Let me guess, your dad beat you guys up,” she said.

Shou slowed down to simply stare at her.

“I'll take that as a yes,” she said like it was a totally normal thing to assume about people. “I bet he isn’t even dead. I mean, why’d you need protection if he was? Always thought there was something weird about your mom, but I guess you get along alright, so I don’t believe she’d just leave you with someone like that. Does that mean you were seriously kidnapped and held against your will and shit?”

She absentmindedly nudged Shou’s elbow, directing him down a street he knew led to the center of town, and continued so seamlessly it could rival her mother.

“I’m not trying to be an asshole calling you out on it, but like, dude, you don’t have to lie about it,” she said. “Like, I’m just saying this in confidence, don’t tell anyone else, but I have a friend who’s kinda the same, right? Totally messed up family, except it’s her mom always saying all these fucked up things to her and locking her up and maybe hitting her, I’m not sure, but her dad doesn’t help since he’s always away on business trips or whatever—”

She just kept talking. Was this a normal thing? Why did she talk about it like it was a normal thing?

“—and I’m always like, you can just talk to me, but I guess if it’s as bad as I think it is, child services would take her, and I get it, or I get that I don’t get it, but anyway, my point is maybe it’d be cool for you too if you—”

“I just said I can’t talk about it,” Shou interrupted her.

Himiko blinked at him. “Right. Sorry.” She kept quiet for all of a minute, then reached into her pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. She flipped open the lid, offering it to Shou.

“You want one?”

“No,” Shou said. He didn't want anything this girl was offering.

Himiko took a cigarette for herself, holding it between her teeth while she stuffed the packet back in her pocket and replaced it with a lighter.

“Really. Sorry,” she mumbled, trying to get the lighter to spark a flame. “I just think boring small talk’s a waste of time. Seriously, what do people ask about? School? What's your favorite subject?” She gave a snort. “Stuff like that. Waste of time when you got real shit to worry about, am I right? You can just ask me stuff, too, you know.”

“What's your favorite subject?” Shou asked out of sheer spite.

Himiko cackled loudly. “Okay, Shou, good one. I don't know, math probably. What about you? If you’re a special needs student, I guess school’s been hard for you?”

“I didn't go to school,” Shou said.

“Isn’t that, like, illegal?” Himiko pondered this for a couple of seconds, taking a drag of her cigarette. “So your dad never let you leave at all? I thought my mom was exaggerating. But okay, I guess that’s why all the teachers are whispering about you like you’re some fragile snowflake.”

“I’m not—” Shou stopped himself and burrowed his hands in his pockets. No matter how much it bothered him, he knew it was in his best interest to sound like a victim. “He didn’t lock me up or whatever you’re imagining…”

Himiko was momentarily distracted by the corner store they were about to pass. Using the hand she was holding the cigarette with, she pointed through the window at a young woman standing behind the counter.

“Now that you’re a free man or whatever, if you need smokes or beer, that girl can usually get them for you, but she’s a bitch and makes you pay double the price, just so you know.” She pointed down the street at a larger building with a small lawn in front of the entrance. “The library down there’s chill if you just need somewhere to go, and then there’s a supermarket and some other shops, you probably know that.”

Turning away from the shopping area, Himiko placed her cigarette back between her teeth and continued her questioning: “What’d your dad do since you had to move around so much?” She glanced over her shoulder, narrowing her eyes as she interrupted herself with another stray thought: “By the way, have you been on TV or something? You look kinda familiar.”

Instantly, Shou could feel cold sweat forming on the back of his neck. Everyone had seen Pops on TV. Everyone always made sure to point out how much Shou looked like him.

“My dad kept switching jobs a lot, that’s all,” he quickly countered, steering them back to the first of Himiko’s questions. “He didn’t hold me hostage or beat me up or anything like that.”

Usually, anyway.

Himiko scrutinized him for a few additional seconds, clearly not believing him. He knew she was going to keep digging until she came to a conclusion. Maybe he should stop being vague, but he had a feeling she’d look into it if he started coming up with imaginary fraud cases on the spot.

“Those jobs were definitely a crime thing,” Himiko drawled. “Some… big… organized thing.”

Maybe it was the tormented look on Shou’s face that egged her on, because she only paused for half a second before she gasped dramatically, sucking in the smoke from her cigarette and setting herself into a coughing fit.

“Is your dad working for the yakuza?!” she choked out.

Shou stared at the ground and tried desperately to think of a way out of this conversation.

“He is!” Himiko exclaimed, completely convinced her assumption was true. “Cool!”

But… This was manageable, right? Maybe it deviated a little from the story Shou and his mother had agreed on, but yakuza? Sure, okay. They were involved in fraud sometimes. Himiko had guessed correctly that something illegal had been going on, and this was better than her prying until she made a connection between Shou and the attack on Seasoning City.

“Hellooo?” Himiko leaned in front of him. “You’re spacing out.”

Shou snapped himself back to the present, glowering at her. “Don’t just make assumptions. Again, I can’t talk about it, and I don’t want to either.”

“I don’t hear you denying the yakuza part, so I’m obviously right.” Himiko bent down to snuff out her cigarette, mashing the ashen end onto the asphalt. She whipped her pigtails back over her shoulders when she straightened up.

“You know what I think?” she asked. “I think school’s gonna be hell for you if you’re this defensive and secretive all the time. Everyone’s just gonna think you’re even weirder than you already are. I mean, so what if you’re a little traumatized and your family’s a little shady? I bet you have some wild stories. Middle schoolers love shit like that.”

She was talking like she hadn’t just demonstrated that she was exactly the kind of middle schooler who loved shit like that. Shou hoped he wasn’t wrong about her being the weird one here. Everyone their age couldn’t possibly be this tactless and naïve.

“Don’t worry, though,” Himiko went on, plopping the half-smoked cigarette back into its pack, “I’ll help you out. You’re kinda clueless, so if there’s something you don’t get, I can translate. Make sure you don’t screw yourself over too badly.”

She gestured at a weather-worn playground by the side of the street.

“Take this place,” she said. “Some of the high schoolers hang out here a lot. If they try talking to you, honestly just ignore them, they're creepy. I mean, you're a boy so you probably don't have to worry about it too much, but you never know.”

She turned around to walk backwards, thoughtfully raising a hand to her chin. The next moment, her eyes opened wide as she appeared to have another one of her epiphanies.

“You should come hang out with me and my friends!” She threw out her arms, gesturing at the entire town. “We’ll get you acclimated to how we do things around here, and then you’ll know some more people before you start school!”

“I guess,” Shou said. He had no idea what kind of friends someone like Himiko would have. It seemed you’d need a lot of patience to tolerate her for extended periods of time.

She brought out her phone, frowning at a calendar app. “I’ll have to check if everyone’s free, but how about Friday? The first?”

Shou zoned out again. The first of December...

“That’s my birthday,” he mumbled.

“Are you serious?” Himiko blurted with a gigantic, toothy grin. “What the fuck, that’s perfect! We’ll throw you a party!”

“Uh…” Shou said. The only parties he’d ever been to were with his eight-year-old friends in primary school, or fancy business dinners he’d spent testing how rude he could get away with acting around the other guests.

“Oh my god, it’s gonna be fun, I promise,” Himiko loudly proclaimed.

In between pointing out a few more places of interest around town, she chattered about how great her friends were the entire way back to the house. Shou wondered if she intended to invite the girl she’d talked about earlier. For some reason, she seemed really eager for her and Shou to meet.

Himiko reverted to her quieter self once she was in the vicinity of her parents again. It had gotten late, and the Hasegawas had to excuse themselves soon after. On her way out, Himiko’s mother gave Mom a hug and wished Shou good luck with school several times.

Himiko tossed Shou her phone before she went to put on her shoes. “Text yourself so I have your number.”

She lit up in another grin when she got the phone back, waving excitedly as she stepped backward out the front door. Shou didn’t know what to make of her complete change in attitude, but he supposed it was better than the condescension she’d directed at him when she first arrived.

Mom shut the door and bumped her forehead into it tiredly. “I forgot how much Hasegawa talks when she’s nervous.”

“She was nervous?” Shou asked.

“Everyone’s acting so awkward talking to me at the moment,” Mom sighed. She turned around, leaning her back on the door. “Seems like it went alright with Himiko, though?”

“She said she’d throw a party,” Shou mumbled. “On Friday. On my birthday.”

Mom lit up in a smile almost as excited as Himiko’s, clapping her hands together. “That’s great!”

“Is it?” Shou asked. A small part of him had hoped she’d tell him he couldn’t go.

“Of course!” She grabbed his face with both hands, grinning at him. “Aw, my little boy is making friends.”

Shou flusteredly freed himself from her grip. He wondered if Nagata would be just as enthusiastic about this. He was socializing, after all. Getting to know new people, whether he liked them or not. Maybe it’d be enough to convince her he could go visit Ritsu.

With an amused smile, Mom headed back toward the kitchen, but she only made it halfway down the hall before the doorbell rang. She jolted and twirled back around, sending Shou a fleeting, confused glance before she went to open up.

It wasn’t one of the Hasegawas waiting outside. Instead, Shou’s designated government agent stood on the doorstep.

“Good evening,” he said, pulling his hands out from the pockets of his slacks. “I didn’t want to intrude while your guests were here, but Nagata-san called me about Shou-kun’s father. It’s a bit urgent.”

“What happened?” Shou blurted out. He shoved his way in front of his mother, a thousand catastrophic scenarios immediately flooding his mind. Had he escaped somehow? Had he attacked someone? Was he coming here?

The agent stepped down from the doorstep, raising his hands. “Nothing bad, don’t worry. He’s leaving the country for a while, but if you still want to see him, you’ve been cleared to meet him at the airport tomorrow morning.”

Shou stared at him, taking a moment to process the new information. With everything else going on, he’d honestly forgotten about Nagata’s promise. Again, she was incredibly fast at making things happen. Too fast.

“Where’s he going?” Shou asked.

“I can’t say,” the agent told him. “There’ll be things you won’t be allowed to ask him, but you’ll have a chance to see he’s in good health.”

Everything to do with Shou’s father was supposed to be over. He didn’t know how to reply.

“Nobody’s going to blame you if you’ve changed your mind,” the agent said, watching him patiently.

Shou knew he had to go. He’d already spent too many sleepless nights worrying about what had become of his father. He had to see for himself that Kawasaki was wrong and he hadn’t been brainwashed or tortured or chopped into pieces.

Mom put a hand on Shou’s shoulder, moving closer to him. “Do you mean you’ll let him be alone with Shou?” she asked. “If he’s going anywhere near that man, I’ll come too.”

She sounded so determined. Shou turned his head, watching her with astonishment, but the agent acted like he’d been expecting the request.

“No problem,” he said. “The facility Suzuki belongs to wouldn’t leave him unsupervised, and I’ll be there the entire time, but if you want to join us, you can.”

Mom’s grip on Shou’s shoulder slackened a little, hesitating now that it seemed to be sinking in what she was signing up for. Maybe this would be good for her, too, though. To see him one more time. Say whatever she needed to say.

“Tell them I’ll come along,” she decided, letting go of Shou. All Shou could do was nod in agreement.

“Alright,” the agent said. “If we leave at six tomorrow morning, we should be able to catch him before his plane takes off.”

Both Shou and his mother lingered by the door while the agent left for the second time that night. Mom glanced at Shou with the same hollow, lost expression he was sure he was wearing himself.

Tomorrow? How were they supposed to pass the time until tomorrow?

Chapter Text

Mom sank her spoon into her miso soup, slowly lifting it only to let the murky broth trickle back into the bowl. Her routine layer of subtle makeup couldn’t hide the dark circles under her eyes. Just like Shou, she clearly hadn’t slept a wink all night.

She raised her head, gesturing listlessly at the half-eaten oyakodon in front of Shou. “Eat your breakfast, okay?”

Shou glowered back at her, her heavy bangs casting a shadow over her eyes as she focused back on the soup.

“You don’t want to go,” he said.

“I already called in sick,” Mom replied, her voice faint. “I promised I’d come with you.”

“Just say it like it is,” Shou said. “You don’t want to go.”

For a moment, his mother’s face took on a pained, miserable grimace. She pressed her lips together, staying like that for a long time before she shook her head. “I don’t want to go.”

“Then don’t.”

Mom looked at him, tilting her head to the side. “I can’t let you deal with all that on your own,” she said. “I can’t let you be alone with him.”

“Why?” Shou’s tone was hard and unrelenting. “You’ve left me with Pops a hundred times before. You can do it again when I tell you to.”

She broke eye contact. Her voice shook a little as she whispered, “Wow…”

Shou shoved his food away and got up from the kitchen table. He knew it’d been suspicious how easily she agreed to meeting up with Pops. He knew it from the moment Nagata’s government agent asked if she wanted to come along.

He marched to the genkan to put on his sneakers. He grabbed his varsity jacket from the coat rack, faltering as he ran his fingers over the tattered hem, worn from all the battles it had lived through. It had survived Pops before. It could do so again.

“Shou,” Mom said behind him. He could hear her bare feet traverse the hallway. “Shou, please come here.”

He shrugged on the jacket and turned around, keeping his eyes on the floor. His mother hesitated before she reached out, gently brushing a hand over his hair and down the side of his face. Her fingers were cold against his skin.

“I’m so sorry,” she said. “If he says anything you don’t like, you can just leave. You don’t have to put up with him anymore.”

Shou pushed her hand away and grabbed the front door handle. His mother silently wrapped her arms around herself as he stepped outside.

There was still half an hour until the agent had said he’d show up. Shou sat down on the doorstep, listening to the leaves of the neighbor’s large evergreen rustle in the wind. He could handle his father by himself. That’s the way he’d expected it to be anyway. That’s how it had always been.

He watched the clock on his phone as the minutes ticked by. The government agent showed up five minutes early, his ugly, beige minivan rolling up to Mom’s driveway. Shou hoisted himself up, legs stiff from the frigid stone he’d been sitting on.

“Good morning,” the agent said as Shou got into the passenger seat.

“‘Morning,” Shou mumbled, glancing around the interior. He’d been too exhausted to take notice of it the first time he’d sat here, but just like Nagata and her car, the agent had made sure there was nothing interesting inside. Just an empty dashboard, clean floors, neatly kept seats.

“Is your mom ready to go?” the agent asked, watching the house.

“She isn’t coming,” Shou said.

The agent turned his head. Shou folded his icy hands between his knees and refrained from making eye contact.

“Alright,” the agent said, making no further comment, “then we might as well be on our way.”

He picked up the smartphone lying in his lap. It already had a navigation app open. He carefully entered a set of coordinates, not an address, then clicked the device into a holder mounted on the windshield.

“Haven’t you been to this airport before?” Shou asked.

“Nope.” The agent started the car, glancing over his shoulder. “I’m not usually involved with the military.”

“But you’ve been working with Joseph,” Shou said. “Doesn’t he do military stuff?”

“We’re pretty busy right now,” the agent replied. “I work with Nagata more often than not, but we don’t have that many espers. We have to go where we’re needed.”

He maneuvered around the narrow corner at the end of the street. The morning news droned quietly from the radio speakers, occasionally interrupted by the GPS, blurting out instructions. It led them onto the main road, in the opposite direction from Seasoning City. The forest soon closed in around them, swallowing Shou’s view of Sturgeon Bay.

“If you’re busy, why’s Nagata so obsessed with spending time on me?” he asked. “She told me herself you’re having trouble after the subdivisions broke up. Shouldn’t you be out dealing with them?”

The agent frowned at him like the answer should be obvious. “You’ve been an important asset. She’s worried about you.”

Shou folded his arms, watching the crooked beech trees leaning over the road. “How did she even set this up in a couple of days? Isn’t everything to do with my pops supposed to be top secret or whatever?”

The agent chuckled. “Let’s just say she isn’t one to take no for an answer.”

He smiled to himself, making a turn by a sign pointing to the nearby freeway. The smile faded as a default-sounding ringtone started chiming from his phone. A photo of a little boy had appeared on screen, smiling brightly, a gap where one of his front teeth had once been.

The agent reluctantly reached out to decline the call.

“Shouldn’t you take that?” Shou asked.

“I’ll call him back later,” the agent said.

Shou could only assume the boy was one of his sons. He didn't look very old in the picture. Six or seven, maybe. Too little to take care of it on his own if something bad happened.

“What if it’s important?” Shou asked.

“Then his mom is there to help.” The agent idly scratched his beard, hardly eager to discuss the topic. At least not with Shou. “He likes to call me in the morning and tell me what he’s doing for the day,” he explained. “That’s all.”

Shou didn’t recall the last time he’d called either of his parents just because he felt like it. It had always been a game of strategy to figure out when it was the right moment to talk to his father, and sometimes when he’d talked to his mother on the phone, he could tell she wasn’t listening anyway.

“Joseph made it sound like you’d been hanging out by Division Four for a while,” Shou said, sinking deeper into his seat. “Again, if you’re short of espers, I still don’t get why you got such a huge problem with anyone else chipping in.”

The agent glanced at him again, as if considering something. “Nagata told me how much you wanted to help,” he said.

Of course she did. Next after bossing everyone around, Nagata’s favorite pastime seemed to be handing out personal information about Shou to anyone who asked.

“I know it doesn’t change anything right now,” the agent said, “but if you still feel that way when you’re older, I’m sure you’d be guaranteed a job with us.”

Something about the phrasing made the hairs on the back of Shou’s neck bristle. He slowly turned his head, watching as the agent adjusted his sharp, black necktie with one hand, still so at odds with the rounded, harmless features of his minivan.

The GPS said there was over an hour until they reached the airport. Shou’s mouth felt dry.

“Everyone has unique skill sets, so it varies what we do,” the agent continued. “Nagata and I mostly collaborate with law enforcement. Helping civilian espers. Getting the ones who need it out of trouble. Or at least that’s how it was before everything got so big.”

The road split in two, the agent following the branch that connected to the freeway. A hefty tanker truck was closing in on them, impatiently trying to goad the minivan into picking up speed.

“What can I say,” the agent sighed. “It isn’t a job you take for the money or security. I think most of us feel the same way you do. You do it to make a difference.”

Kawasaki was right. They were already trying to bait Shou into their ranks. He discreetly angled himself away from the driver’s seat to stare out the window, but from the corner of his eye, he could see the agent frown at him.

“I’m sorry,” the agent said. “This isn’t the time to talk about that. How about this meeting? Do you have a plan for what you want to ask your dad?”

Shou watched the morning sun part with the hills in the distance. Yesterday, he’d agreed to this meetup with no forethought, and now, hours later, he still had no idea what to expect. No idea what kind of mindset his father would be in.

He’d told Nagata that if even Claw’s former leader was being treated alright, maybe he could believe the rest of what she’d told him, but…

It wasn’t really about that.

That wasn’t really what’d kept him up every night.

“I expected your mom to join you,” the agent said, “but Nagata told me she’s had a hard time talking about Claw in general. People have different ways to cope with these things, but I hope you know there’s nothing strange about wanting to meet with your dad, or if you think about him often, or even miss him—”

“What?!”

Shou’s entire torso snapped to face the agent. The last part had his pulse skyrocketing so fast it made him dizzy.

“He’s the worst person I’ve ever known, of course I don’t miss him!”

Looking vaguely startled, the agent raised one hand from the steering wheel in apology. “It was an example.”

“I don’t miss him, okay?” Shou snapped. “What do you even care what I wanna ask, just drive so I can get this over with!”

The car suddenly felt overwhelmingly claustrophobic, the radio chatter grating on Shou’s ears. The tanker truck was still close behind them.

“Okay, let me stop the car,” the agent said, swerving toward a rest stop by the side of the road. The truck made the same turn, but found a chance to overtake them when the agent rolled onto the plot in front of a small gas station.

“What’re you doing?” Shou snapped as the agent continued to the parking lot outside. “I don’t have time for this!”

There wasn’t even anything reasonable to be freaking out over, but Shou couldn’t stop the way his breathing was rapidly turning strange and shallow. This’d be just like that time in the car with Higashio. He’d be forced to sit here and embarrass himself, and—

“It’s okay,” the agent said. “We’ll stay here for a bit and take a break.”

At least that other time, Shou had wanted to stick with Higashio. He hadn’t been sitting next to some fucking government agent. He slammed his fists onto his thighs in frustration. “Why can’t you just drive?”

The agent simply took his key from the ignition and got out of the car. He walked around to the other side, opening Shou’s door to let a cold gust of wind sweep into the cabin.

“Come on,” he said. “You can go for a walk. You just come back when you’re ready.”

Shou squinted up at him, utterly confused. The doorframe blocked his view of the agent’s face; all he could see was his hand, beckoning for Shou to come outside.

“But—”

“Let me worry about the time,” the agent said, pointing a thumb at a small convenience store behind the gas pumps. “I’ll buy us something to drink. Is there anything else you’d like?”

Shou dumbly shook his head. He watched through the windshield as the agent crossed the parking lot. Inside the store, a woman and her toddler walked out from behind the shelves stocked with snacks and colorful toys. The agent briefly stopped to let them pass before he disappeared inside.

Shou’s eyes drifted down to his lap. He slowly unfurled his hands. They didn’t shake like they’d done back with Higashio. At least not as badly. His door was still open. He swallowed, sending the asphalt a sidelong glance.

Several minutes passed and the agent still didn’t come back. Shou grudgingly turned in his seat, letting his legs dangle outside the cabin. With a steadying breath, he grabbed the door handle and pulled himself up.

He tucked his jacket closer around himself and left the car, shuffling past a couple of long-distance trucks to a patch of grass. The entrance to a restroom that was attached to the store opened to let out a burly-looking man. Shou watched him stride toward the same truck that had followed the minivan here, getting in to start the vehicle.

The grass was squishy and waterlogged under Shou’s shoes. A cluster of trees stood at the edge of the patch, their naked branches creaking in the wind. It was barely audible over the drone of the cars zooming by on the freeway, but staring up at them, Shou could almost ignore the noise. He could almost forget why he was there. Just for a moment.

He wasn’t sure what the agent expected him to do, but somehow, it helped a little. Just standing there. Remembering that everyone else was on their way to start their own day. Deal with their own troubles and insecurities and difficult family situations.

He wiped his nose on his sleeve and glanced back at the car. The agent had returned, standing by the open door to the driver’s seat with his phone to his ear and two plastic bottles clutched under his free arm. He gave Shou a smile, uncurling his fingers from around the phone to wave.

Shou lingered for a while longer. His shoulders felt lighter as he walked back. The agent didn’t say anything, just sat down and clicked his phone back in the holder. Shou gratefully accepted the bottle of cola he’d bought for him, opening it with a mumbled, “Thanks.”

“I didn’t mean to assume anything,” the agent said, resting one hand on the steering wheel. “If all you want is to see that he’s there and then head back home, we can do that. I just thought I’d give you the option to talk about it.”

Shou turned the bottle over in his hand, picking at the label stuck to the back. Everyone always wanted him to talk, and on the rare occasion he actually did, they stared at him like he’d said something horribly wrong.

The agent started the car again and drove them back on the freeway, leaving Shou to peer out the window, taking a sip of his cola once in a while. He’d mindlessly scratched off the label by now, discarding the soggy scraps of paper in his pocket.

“I…” His mouth just opened all of a sudden, words forming before he could think of what he was about to say. “I wanna know if he even gives a shit about what he did to me.”

He waited for the inevitable, disapproving backlash. For being told that, obviously, his father didn’t, but the agent stayed quiet.

“I mean…” Shou swallowed, screwing the cap back on the soda bottle. “Does he ever think about it? Does he feel bad?”

Did he still worry more about Ritsu’s brother?

The agent nodded. “I think that’s a good question.”

The GPS guided them off the freeway, through the outskirts of a small city. On the other side, unfamiliar cliff sides and patches of forest rolled by until, in the middle of some featureless road cutting through the trees, the agent's phone announced that they’d reached their destination.

He turned it off, scanning the treeline until he spotted a side road leading into the forest. They didn’t have to drive far before a secluded gateway came into view. The agent pulled out an ID badge from his suit jacket, showing it to a man standing guard out front. The guard pointed them to a large, paved area where Shou could make out a cluster of buildings.

The air base was huge, the empty landing strips stretching on forever. The agent parked outside a wide hangar, its rounded, white roof shining in the sunlight. A mid-sized passenger plane stood nearby. Shou wondered if it was the one his father was supposed to get on.

The agent waved him along to the gaping entrance to the hangar. Inside, machine parts and storage equipment took up the floor by the walls, framing the large space in the middle. Shou froze up when he spotted his father, sitting hunched over on a stepladder by a free section of the wall, staring at his hands in his lap.

He was wearing an ugly, green prison jumper, and his hair had been cropped very short. The spots on his scalp where it must’ve been falling out were still visible, but compared to his condition when Joseph had taken him away, he looked fine and well. Thinner maybe, definitely exhausted, but healthy.

Joseph was leaning his shoulder on the wall behind Pops, acting his usual impassive self with a lit cigarette hanging from his mouth. He merely glanced at Shou, then lifted his hand to greet his colleague.

"Suzuki," Joseph said, muffled through his teeth, clamped down on the end of the cigarette.

Pops' head snapped up. He straightened his back, shifting his hands to rest on his knees. Joseph hadn’t even bothered to put him in handcuffs; it was only the lungful of purple-tinted smoke he exhaled that suggested he still considered the man a threat.

Shou peered over his shoulder. The agent had stopped on the threshold to the building with his hands folded behind his back, pointing a subtle, encouraging nod in Pops’ direction.

Shou cautiously shuffled closer until there was only a few meters’ distance between him and his father. Pops stood up at a glacial pace, as if not to scare him away.

"You’re safe," he said, hoarse like he’d done very little talking lately.

It wasn’t clear if it was a question or a statement, but Pops stared at him with what might be relief, and it made a tingling, unpleasant feeling stir in Shou’s chest.

Shou took a step back, dragging the sole of his shoe across the smooth floor. He’d seen him now. His father was in one piece and seemed neither brainwashed nor particularly traumatized. He could just leave. Take the agent’s offer to drive him back to his mother right away.

But he had questions to ask. Stuff he needed to clear up.

He took in an uneven breath, gesturing at the airplane outside. "Where’re you going?"

Pops glanced at Joseph. Joseph shook his head and pushed off the wall.

“Abroad,” he answered, squashing his spent cigarette under his shoe only to pick out a new one from a pack in his jacket pocket. "He’ll be back. It's just a temporary arrangement."

Shou’s fingers curled at his sides. Somehow, Kawasaki had gotten this right, too. Joseph didn’t need to elaborate. They’d been deploying Pops’ powers like he was nothing more than a tool, and Shou didn’t know if it was out of regret or apathy or something else, but apparently, Pops just let them.

"Is it true you got a bomb implanted?" Shou asked, carefully watching his father’s face.

The cold, sharp edge to Pops’ gaze had dwindled to almost nothing. Wrinkles that Shou didn’t remember seeing before outlined his features. He just looked like a tired, old man. Like he’d aged twenty years since Ritsu’s brother defeated him.

Once more, Pops glanced at Joseph, but Joseph merely tapped the tip of his shoe against the floor this time, utterly disinterested.

"Yes," Pops confirmed.

“So if you try to run away, they’ll blow you up?” Shou asked. “Just like that?”

“That’s the idea.”

"Did they hurt you?" Shou asked after a moment of hesitation. He wasn’t sure how he’d feel if that rumor was true as well.

"Not in particular."

What did that even mean? Pops sounded so indifferent. So matter-of-fact, like he’d completely given up.

“Did they or didn’t they?” Shou pressed.

“Next question,” Joseph said with a snap of his fingers.

“Oh, you don’t want me to ask about that?” Shou sneered at him. “That’s suspicious.”

“It takes force to restrain an esper who doesn’t know how to behave,” Joseph said, exhaling another cloud of smoke. “Don’t you agree?”

He was definitely referring to what happened at Division Four. As if whatever the government had going on in their creepy esper prisons compared to Shou defending himself against people who attacked him first. He scowled at Joseph, then at his father.

“What about everyone else who’s been locked up?” he asked. “Is it true they’re doing experiments and stuff?”

“I’ve only seen a few of the Scars,” Pops started.

“Suzuki, change the subject, please,” Joseph interrupted him.

Pops responded with a small, obedient nod. “You live with your mother now,” he said instead, once again addressing Shou with something in between a question and a statement.

Shou shrugged. “She doesn’t want me to tell you anything about her.”

His father’s eyes sank to the floor, letting the already halting conversation fade into silence. He looked pathetic in his jumper and plain, white sneakers, none of which he would ever have been caught dead in before.

“Joseph told me what you did,” Pops said without looking up. “That he had to intervene.”

Shou crossed his arms, watching the shelves by the back wall of the hangar, various spare parts cluttering the shelves. “I know what I said about stopping Claw,” he said. “I just don’t know how I’m supposed to finish it. Some of the old Scars are teaming up to do their own thing. They’re scattered all over the place and I’m stuck in some town in the middle of nowhere where nobody lets me do anything, ”

“You will stop,” Pops said. “You live in your mother’s house now, so you live by her rules.”

Shou stared at his father, his arms slowly falling back at his sides. “What…?”

“Will you be starting school?” Pops asked, like what had come out of his mouth a moment earlier wasn’t completely absurd.

Shou peered over his shoulder again, at the agent still standing in the bright sunlight pouring in through the entrance. He only replied to Shou’s disbelieving stare with a faint shrug.

“Yeah, so what if I’m starting school?” Shou asked, turning back to his father. “What do you mean I’ll stop?”

“There’s nothing to be nervous about,” Pops droned on. “You have more experience in life than most of your peers. It’ll be a new challenge for you.”

“What’re you talking about?” An odd lump was taking hold in Shou’s throat. “Experience? The only thing I have experience with is being a terrorist! I don’t know how to solve fractions, I don’t remember how to make friends, I can barely figure out how to live in one place anymore!”

Even while staring Shou straight in the eye, Pops acted so meek. So concerned. It was all wrong. He was supposed to say something horrible and mean like always. Pile too many expectations on him. Berate him for talking back, at the very least.

“I’m sorry,” Pops said instead. “This wasn’t the life I tried to prepare you for.”

A smoldering anger was eating up the anxiousness Shou had struggled with all day, replacing it with something far worse. “You never prepared me for anything,” he shouted. “All you ever did was try to make me more like you, but you didn’t do any of the things I’ve done! You went to school! You have a fucking university degree, you didn’t go around the country beating people up when you were thirteen!”

He stubbornly held his father’s gaze, waiting for him to say something. Anything. It was pointless—judging from the way Pops’ eyes had clouded over, he had checked out of the conversation.

“You’re a stupid piece of shit, you know that?” Shou said. “You should’ve known it’d turn out like this. Mom hates you so much she couldn’t even stand the idea of coming here to look at you. You’re never gonna see her again. You’re probably never gonna see me again!”

Pops didn’t respond. He wasn’t looking at Shou anymore.

“I just called you a stupid piece of shit, aren’t you gonna say something?!”

He’d take anything over this silence. Pops could hit him for all he cared. Pin him to the floor again to tell him how naïve and childish he was, just to give everyone a reminder of why he was held up here in a prison jumper with a bomb under his skin.

“I will make amends for what I’ve done,” Pops said instead. “When it happens, I hope you will hear of it.”

It was the most self-important, bullshit repentance Shou had ever heard, but he had no doubt his father meant every word. Despite the fact that Shou’s aura had started billowing uncontrollably, despite how Pops would’ve scolded him for it any other day, his father continued in a voice softer than Shou had ever heard from him before.

“Listen to your mother, Shou,” he said, his ridiculous, bushy, stupid eyebrows settling into a resolute frown. “I’ve said a lot of things, and few of them were any good. You’re not responsible for fixing my mistakes.”

Shou’s vocal chords had completely locked up, just as rigid as his shoulders. He spun around, hurrying out of the hangar as quickly as he could without starting to run.

There were tears welling up in his eyes by the time he reached the government agent’s car. He stopped in front of the passenger seat door, angling himself so he couldn’t see his own reflection in the window.

Behind him, he could hear the agent’s shoes approach, slowing down as he came closer. “Should we leave or do you just need a moment?” he asked.

Shou kept his back turned, hiding his face in his quivering hands, but the agent simply walked around him.

“He can’t tell me that,” Shou cried, his voice breaking at the end of the sentence. “What am I supposed to do?”

His entire body was shaking. The agent took a step closer and gently placed a hand on his arm. Shou didn’t know why, but he didn’t back up like he should, even though his father was just a few dozen meters away. Even though he could probably see all of it.

“Oh buddy, come here,” the agent sighed.

He leaned down and wrapped his arms around Shou, the texture of his beard prickling against Shou’s cheek. The physical contact left him shellshocked for two seconds, then it was like a dam had burst. A whimper clawed its way out from Shou’s throat, followed by an embarrassingly loud, wretched sob.

He clung to the agent’s back, wailing into the front of his suit jacket, and the agent just embraced it, steady and unafraid of the onslaught of emotion.

“Sorry, I’m gonna throw out my back like this,” he mumbled suddenly, pulling away so he could kneel down instead of standing completely bent over.

As soon as Shou’s face was no longer buried in his shoulder, the horrifying reality of the situation crashed down on him. What were they even doing? Pops was right there behind them, and Shou was crying his eyes out on a complete stranger like a lost little kid.

“It’s okay, I’m sorry,” the agent said, trying to herd Shou back into his arms.

Shou pulled in the opposite direction, sobbing, “I don’t even know your name.”

The agent’s face contorted with a mix of mortification and amusement before he broke into a soft, incredulous laugh.

“Haven’t I told you?” He withdrew his arms, taking Shou’s right hand instead. “Hi,” he said, “Okura Eito. How’re you doing?”

Shou let him shake his hand. In between his stuttering breaths, an uncertain laugh escaped him as well.

Okura held on to him with a light grip. “Are you good, or do you want another hug?”

Shou wondered if he did this sort of thing for his own sons all the time, and if so, why he would share it with someone who’d done nothing but land him two weeks on a boring surveillance task, away from the family he should actually care about.

He did want another hug, though. He really, really wanted another hug. It just seemed like a lot to ask for, so he stood there paralyzed, feeling the heat slowly rise to his cheeks.

“Okay,” Okura murmured. With a kind smile, he let go and stood up, brushing the dirt off his pants.

Shou’s face burned with embarrassment. He sniffled as he stared at the asphalt, his vision blurry from the tears still welling up in his eyes. Okura rummaged through the glove box in his car to find a tissue for him.

His hands shook as he tried to dab the tears away from his face, braving a glance back at the hangar. Pops was standing in the middle of the floor, staring right at him, just as detached as earlier. Shou couldn’t sense his aura at all.

“I have to go back in there,” he mumbled, folding the tissue into a soggy ball.

“You don’t have to do anything,” Okura said. “If you want to leave, we leave.”

Joseph had strolled into the light in front of Pops, motioning for Okura to come closer. Just the idea of looking his father in the eye right now made Shou feel like he was about to faint. His heart kept racing and his neck and cheeks felt like he’d stuck his head inside an oven.

“I want to leave,” he said very quietly.

With a simple nod, Okura held the door to the passenger side of his car open, waiting for Shou to get in.

“Give me a moment,” he said. “I’ll talk to Joseph, then we’re out of here.”

Shou sofly shut the door once he’d sat down. He clutched the tissue in his lap, his chest tight with the lingering pressure from where Okura had held him.

Across from the car, some guy in a yellow, reflective vest made his way inside the airplane. Who knew how long Pops would be gone. It wasn’t his own decision now, but it felt just like every other time he’d traveled abroad, leaving Shou behind.

He barely registered it when Okura got in beside him. He said something as he shifted the car into gear and drove off. Shou merely glanced over his shoulder, catching one last glimpse of the hangar before it was obscured by the trees surrounding the airfield.

He hadn’t asked what he wanted to ask. He hadn’t even said goodbye.

It was early afternoon when they made it back to Sturgeon Bay. Mom wasn’t home. Maybe she’d gone to work after all. Maybe she’d gone to talk things through with one of her friends. She did that sometimes, even though she had to lie about all her real problems.

Despite how apprehensive he was about stepping foot inside Mom’s house, Okura walked Shou into the living room, sitting down next to him on the couch. They sat there for a long time, watching the black television screen in front of them.

“I don’t think it went exactly how you’d hoped, but do you feel you got the answers you were looking for?” Okura eventually asked.

Pops hadn’t mentioned a single thing that happened the last few times they saw each other. He’d just bowed out of Shou’s life, leaving every responsibility he’d barely concerned himself with in Mom’s hands.

Shou could’ve forced himself to return to the hangar, but it wouldn’t have made any difference. It wasn’t Shou who should ask the questions. He wanted his father to do the asking. To ask how Shou felt and whether he could forgive him for ruining his life and trying to kill him. He wanted him to ask so Shou could say there was no guarantee and know that it hurt at least a fraction of how his father had hurt him. A fraction of how the same uncertain answer had hurt his mother.

But even though Pops hadn’t put it in the same direct words as Mom, the question had been there between the lines. He knew he’d hurt Shou, even if he didn’t understand the extent of it.

“I wish he didn’t care,” he said. “Then maybe I wouldn’t…”

Wouldn’t what? It made him sick to consider the answer.

“I don’t know what to do,” Shou said, feeling the tears well up again. “I don’t know how to do anything that doesn’t have to do with Claw.”

“You’re barely fourteen years old,” Okura said. “I promise, you have plenty of time to learn.”

Shou mutely shook his head, wiping at the corner of his eye.

“You know,” Okura continued, “everything you were good at while you were with Claw, you can figure out how to use for something else. Nobody says you have to change into a completely new person.”

He placed a comforting hand on Shou’s back. Shou wondered what he had to do to make Okura offer him another hug, but any attempt to ask out loud died in his throat. He just nodded, letting a tear drip off his chin and soak into the fabric of his jeans.

Okura stayed with him, filling the silence by musing about school and plans for the future and other things just a little too optimistic for Shou to take in. When Mom came home, she wasn’t happy to find Okura in her living room, but perhaps she understood the necessity when she found out she had to repeat everything thrice to get it to stick in Shou’s mind.

Later, they sat down to eat dinner, and even through the white noise filling his skull, Shou couldn’t help but notice the harrowed look on his mother’s face. Even worse than it’d been in the morning.

He understood now. Why she didn’t want to come along to see Pops. It hurt, and maybe this awful ache he’d left behind only grew the longer you were apart from him. The longer you had to accept that you were never truly going to forget about him.

Mom stared silently at her dinner, not even attempting to eat it. It wasn’t supposed to be like this anymore; both of them shutting each other out. Maybe Okura had a point about saying this stuff out loud. Shou did feel a little better after the few sentences he’d conveyed to him.

“What’s the worst thing Pops ever did to you?” he asked.

Mom slowly raised her head. To Shou’s relief, the question didn’t seem to anger or shock her. Her eyes just drifted to the side, staring into the open space in the middle of the kitchen.

“Compared to how he treated you, he never did anything particularly terrible to me,” she said. “It was always small things. Often, it was what he didn’t do.”

She blinked, meeting Shou’s eyes with a trace of a solemn, regretful smile on her lips.

“The day after you were born, he left on a business trip for a week,” she said. “I think it scared him that he cared about you. Because he did. Maybe he still does, in his own disturbed way. You know that best.”

She was quiet for a long moment.

“I genuinely never thought he’d hurt you. Me, maybe, but not you.”

There was a lot she was leaving unsaid. What had made her think Pops would hurt her? What exactly had he said or done to drive her to sleep with a knife by her bed for months after she ran away?

Shou felt like he owed her a truth in return. And maybe he really wanted to tell her this one. Just to tell someone. Just to get it over with.

His jaw felt locked in place. He could feel his cheeks flush with shame before he’d even opened his mouth.

“I think I miss him sometimes.”

His mother’s face was so blank it was impossible to tell what she was thinking.

“So do I,” she said.

Chapter Text

Himiko flicked the butt of her cigarette into the waterlogged grass lining the pavement. “You know how to pick a lock, right?”

“Why?” Shou asked. “Weren’t we going to your friend’s house?”

“Change of plans,” Himiko said, stuffing the phone in her other hand into her messenger bag. “If you can get us in, I know where we can go instead.”

Shou braced against the wind sweeping up from the hill to the harbor. It had brought in flecks of snow during the afternoon, his mother couldn’t have planned a better day to give him a replacement for his old varsity jacket. The new one was both padded and water resistant.

“Whatever,” he grumbled, “I’ll figure it out.”

Himiko clapped him on the back. “Of course you will.”

Shou wasn’t sure why he was going along with this, but his mother had been so eager to shove him out the door that he didn’t feel like he had a choice. She’d been giving him advice all day, acting like he’d never spoken to another teenager in his life, which, for the record, was only almost true.

It had been a weird day, all in all. Shou hadn’t done anything special for his birthday since he was a little kid, but his mother had insisted they celebrate, taking him out for dinner as soon as she made it home from work. Apart from the jacket and a heap of things she thought he needed for school, she’d given him several buckets of paint, still convinced that turning the bare wall in the office into a mural would somehow help him settle in better.

And it wasn’t just her—Okura had wished him a happy birthday before checking out early. Fukuda had called him, and while it’d been a very short conversation before Shou felt so weird he had to hang up, it was nice of him to care. Shou might off-handedly have mentioned the occasion to Ritsu and Ootsuki as well, and despite how busy Ritsu was with boring student council duties, and how weirdly unresponsive Ootsuki had been lately, both of them had actually remembered.

He missed Ritsu. Thanks to Okura offering to drive, Shou only had to wait a few days until he could go to Seasoning City and see him again, but he still missed him. Even at his nosiest, Ritsu wasn’t in the same league as Himiko—all she’d done since Shou gave her his number was to interrogate him, and now she was dragging him along to spend the evening with her friends who might be even worse.

Himiko made a turn toward her school. Shou followed a step behind her, peering up at the plain, off-white building. All the lights in the classrooms were off, the place clearly closed up for the weekend.

In front of him, Himiko slowed down, muttering under her breath, “Are you fucking serious?”

Shou followed her line of sight. Outside the brick wall surrounding the school grounds, a girl in a gaudy faux-fur jacket was chatting with a boy who looked too old to be a middle schooler, but they were not what made Shou freeze up on the spot.

Next to them, leaning on a pillar marking the gate to the courtyard, was another girl. She stood stock still, staring back at Shou with her mouth slightly agape as if a ghost had appeared in front of her. There was something ghostly about her, too. She was pale and thin, and her huge mess of curly hair caught the glow from the street lamps, so fair and wispy it looked unreal against her black, oversized scarf.

Shou only had to take one look at her to know she was an esper.

“Fuck off, Ikeda, you’re not invited!” Himiko jeered beside him. She picked up a rock from the side of the street and flung it at the boy, successfully hitting him right above his temple.

Ikeda nearly dropped the cigarette in his mouth as he ducked and snapped toward Himiko, glaring at her with outrage. He twisted back to the girl with the jacket. “You’re just gonna let her do that?!”

The girl with the jacket only laughed. She plucked the cigarette from Ikeda’s mouth, placing it between her own lips before she shoved him down the street. “Bye, Ikeda,” she said, lifting one hand to wiggle her fingers. “Maybe I’ll see you tomorrow.”

The boy shuffled away with his hands in the pockets of his hoodie, sending Himiko the evil eye before he disappeared behind one of the ramshackle warehouses across from the school. The girl with the jacket ruffled the back of her short, bobbed hair, took a long drag of his cigarette, and turned around.

“Look who it is,” Himiko exclaimed. Both of her hands shot out to point at Shou like she was introducing a long-awaited celebrity.

“The birthday boy!” The girl with the jacket pinned the cigarette between her teeth so she could wave with both her hands.

Shou was too distracted to respond. The esper girl must be able to tell he had powers—he’d done nothing to hide his aura on the way here, and hers was shimmering with teal and blue like clear water. She wasn’t newly awakened; she felt like someone who knew how to use her powers.

“Don’t be weird, Satsune,” Himiko said, gesturing for the esper girl to join the rest of them.

Satsune jolted and took her weight off the pillar. “Sorry. Hi…”

Himiko linked her arm with hers, keeping Satsune in place beside her. Satsune’s shoulders were tense as she continued to stare at Shou, turning paler by the second. What was up with her? Did she know about Claw? Did she somehow know who Shou was?

“Yeeeah, so, this is Satsune, and that’s Tachibana,” Himiko said, pointing at each of the girls.

“Yuka,” the one with the jacket corrected her. She discarded her cigarette on the ground, squashing it with the heel of her sneaker.

“Yeah, yeah,” Himiko said. She let go of Satsune, gesturing at Shou with a twirl of her hand. “Anyway, this is Shou or Suzuki or whatever.”

“Just Shou,” Shou said.

“Okay, Just Shou,” Himiko drawled obnoxiously, “are you and your lock-picking skills gonna get us in or what?”

“Oh, good,” Yuka laughed, grabbing a heavily loaded backpack that’d been leaning on the entrance pillar. “I thought you wanted to break a window or something. I’m not doing that again, just saying.”

She pulled on the backpack and she and Himiko took the lead, wandering across the dark courtyard. Shou followed them, glancing over his shoulder. Satsune still had her eyes on him, her arms stiff at her sides.

“You better keep your mouth shut,” Shou hissed at her, too quietly for the other two to hear.

Satsune nodded, eyes wide.

The main school building comprised a pair of intersecting two-story blocks, standing slightly offset from each other, but on the other side there was a lower building—probably a gymnasium—attached to the back.

“Sorry we couldn’t go to my place, by the way,” Yuka told Himiko. “Dad’s out, but Natsuki brought her boyfriend home and they’re like… loud.”

“Ugh,” Himiko muttered, making a disgusted noise, “can’t blame you if you’re counting the days until she moves out.”

Yuka only gave a little shrug in response.

They stopped in front of the entrance to the walkway between the two sections, stepping aside so Shou could inspect the lock on the door. It was new, didn’t look very easy to open.

He glanced at Himiko, expectantly holding out his palm. “I can’t pick this without something to pick it with.”

“I got you covered,” Himiko said, rummaging through the inner pockets of her messenger bag. She pulled out a pair of bobby pins and plopped them into Shou’s hand.

He glowered at them. “This is a proper door lock. You can’t just wriggle those around until you get lucky.”

Himiko tilted her head, pouting at him disappointedly. “So you can’t do it?”

Exhaling through his nose, Shou unfolded one pin. The truth was, he wasn’t any good at picking locks. He knew how to do it, Higashio had taught him, but usually there wasn’t any reason to mess around with bobby pins when he could just use telekinesis.

He decided to give it a shot anyway, bending the small string of steel until it was slightly hooked at the tip. He folded the other one in half and placed it in the keyhole. Even while bending down to listen, the wobbly shape of the pick would only push the first two pins inside into position.

Himiko leaned on the wall next to him, bending forward until she blocked out the already sparing light from the lamp above the door.

“Yeah, I don’t think you can do it,” she sighed sadly.

“Is this really the best place you got?” Shou asked, gritting his teeth as he had to reset the lock yet again. “Isn’t there an alarm on the door?”

“I know the code,” Himiko nodded sagely. “I do my research.”

“Just not on locks,” Shou muttered.

“Nah, I have you for that now.” Himiko’s grin was too wide for her face. Shou couldn’t help focusing on that crooked, chipped front tooth of hers.

He pretended to fiddle with the bobby pins for a bit longer before he decided Himiko wouldn’t be able to tell if he used telekinesis anyway. Considering she hadn’t spoken a word since she said hello, Satsune didn’t seem interested in advertising her powers any more than Shou did.

The lock opened with an unmistakable click and the alarm pad inside started beeping. Himiko pushed off the wall with an excited holler, squeezing past Shou so she could enter and punch in the code.

“Nice,” Yuka said behind Shou. “Where’d you learn to do that?”

Shou sent Satsune another subtle, warning glance. She didn’t even notice, just stared at the hand where he’d focused his powers.

“I know a lot of people,” he said.

“See?” Himiko stuck her head out from behind the door. “He definitely has a criminal vibe, I called it.”

By the time the rest of them had gone inside, Himiko had already produced a pocket-sized flashlight from her bag and skipped ahead to a set of doors leading into the school’s main building.

“Hey, do you know which class you’re gonna be in?” she asked, shining the light directly into Shou’s face.

He squinted, raising a hand to shield his eyes. “1-B, I think.”

“Same as Satsune,” Himiko gasped, like this was an amazing coincidence. As far as Shou knew, there were only two classes for each year. It was a fifty-fifty chance.

Satsune looked disoriented as Himiko doubled back to link her elbow with hers again, dragging her through the double doors, all while declaring, “We should find your homeroom!”

Himiko led them through the school building like a deranged tour guide, pointing out everything she thought it was vital for Shou to see. The teacher's rec room which should be avoided at all cost. A fire escape leading up to the roof, perfect for people watching and pranks. A quiet, old art room, cluttered with student works, or as Himiko put it: hilarious garbage.

She held onto Satsune the whole way. Occasionally, Satsune glanced back at Shou, always with the same bewildered look. Shou really didn’t know what her problem was; she didn’t appear scared or resentful. She’d be scared or resentful if he knew where he came from, right? Maybe it’d just been a while since she’d run into another esper. After all, Shou hadn’t encountered any others around town.

The homeroom was on the second floor. Himiko kicked the door open with as much dramatic flair as she had with any of the other rooms.

“Here we are,” she announced, flicking on the ceiling lights. “Now you don’t have to get lost on your first day!”

Shou looked around the room. It wasn’t much different from how he remembered elementary school. A lot of tables and chairs, a wide blackboard behind the teacher’s desk, crude, handmade posters from various student projects on the walls. He stepped closer to the row of windows facing the yard behind the school. The gravel was marked up with the outline of a soccer field.

“One of your teachers said she’d show me around,” he said.

“Miyagi, I assume?” Himiko scoffed. “Good thing we got to you first, Miyagi sucks.”

“Miyagi’s a precious angel, shut up, Hasegawa,” Yuka said. “You have the worst taste in teachers.” She dropped her backpack on a desk in the center of the room, making whatever was inside clink together loudly. “You wanna stay here? The cleaning guy comes in on Fridays sometimes.”

“It’s better than freezing our asses off down at the warehouses,” Himiko shrugged. She dropped her own bag and jacket on the broad windowsill and sat down there, restlessly kicking her legs. She frowned at Yuka who was already at work extracting several bottles of liquor from her backpack. “Did you steal your sisters’ entire stash or what?”

“You said we were having a party,” Yuka said, producing a stack of plastic cups before she shoved the empty bag onto the floor. “You can drink, right?” she asked Shou.

His mother hadn’t really mentioned anything about that.

“Uh,” he said. “I guess?”

“You don’t have to drink anything,” Satsune piped up, slowly unwrapping her scarf from around her neck.

“Wow, no,” Yuka said, shaking both hands. “I’m not trying to pressure you into anything, it’s just,” she grabbed a bottle of umeshu from her collection, pointing her hand at it, “free booze.”

With a practiced hand, she poured a fill of the umeshu into a plastic cup and took a sip. Himiko brought out a bag of chips, some lemon juice, and a bottle of soda from her own belongings and hopped down from the windowsill. She dropped all of it on the same table as Yuka’s bottles, shoving the juice forward until it was right in front of Yuka.

“Pour me a drink, Tachibana-senpai,” she said, leaning over the table so she could prop her chin up on her hand, batting her eyes up at Yuka.

“Shut up,” Yuka snorted, but she did pick out a bottle of shochu, mixing a considerable dash of it with the juice Himiko had brought. She looked at Shou next, wiggling the bottle from side to side. “You want one?”

“Sure,” Shou found himself saying.

Yuka lit up in a grin, quickly pouring him the same mix she’d given Himiko. Satsune had sat down on a table near the door, clutching her scarf and coat in her lap. Yuka didn’t ask her if she wanted a drink, just held out a cup of plain soda with a kind smile.

“Why’re you so far away?” Himiko asked, crunching on a handful of the chips she’d brought. “Come over here.”

She threw a single chip at Satsune, who easily caught it in her hands. Satsune popped it into her mouth and slid off the table, leaving her outerwear behind. Careful not to look at any of them, she accepted the soda from Yuka and sat down on a chair beside her.

“So, what do you guys wanna do?” Himiko asked, offering the bag of chips to the rest of them.

Shou took a handful and raised his cup to his lips to have a taste. The alcohol was barely noticeable through the disgustingly sour, tingling taste of lemon.

“Birthday Boy needs to tell us about himself,” Yuka said.

“Shou,” Shou corrected her.

“Shou my dude, you need to tell us about yourself,” she said instead, lazily leaning back on her elbow, tipping her cup at him. “Hasegawa’s made you sound all mysterious.”

“You’re not gonna get anything out of him if you ask him directly. I’ve tried for like, three days,” Himiko said matter-of-factly. “I was thinking we should play the Ousama game or something.”

Yuka made a disinterested noise.

“No,” Himiko immediately changed her mind, getting that maniacal glint in her eyes she had every time she thought she’d come up with something brilliant, “the one with the questions we played with your sisters!”

Yuka narrowed her eyes. “Truth or dare…?”

“Yes!” Himiko clapped her hands together. “The best of both worlds!”

Yuka sat up properly. “Okay, I guess that’s a good get-to-know-each-other game. You know the rules?” she asked Shou.

From the way Himiko looked like she was about to laugh at him, Shou assumed it was something he should know. The problem was that, in fact, he wasn’t sure he did.

“Of course he doesn’t know the rules.” Himiko shook her head sadly. “I told you, he might as well have grown up in a cave.”

Yuka didn’t make a big deal out of it, just quickly went over the objectives of the game. It was exactly what Shou had feared from the name—all he could think about was that he didn’t want to be put on the spot and asked a bunch of personal questions.

“Can you pick dare all the time?” he asked.

Himiko scrunched up her face in disapproval. “Technically, you can, but the proper etiquette is to switch.”

Yuka spluttered a laugh and had to spit a mouthful of umeshu back in her cup. She closed her eyes, touching her thumb and index-finger together like someone complimenting a fantastic meal. “Clearly, there’s etiquette to this game.”

“What if there’s something you don’t want to answer?” Shou asked.

Himiko sighed loudly. “Okay, I’ll give you an out. If you don’t answer or do a dare, you have to chuck this really gross drink I’m gonna mix right now. This goes for everyone,” she looked pointedly around at the rest of them, ending with Satsune, “except Satsune, but Satsune’s a badass who never chickens out of anything, so it doesn’t matter.”

Satsune shrugged, a crooked little smile pulling at the corner of her lips.

“I can start so you’ll see how it works,” Yuka offered while Himiko got to work pouring a bit of every single liquid Yuka had kept in her backpack into the same cup, adding a very large dose of straight vodka to the mix.

“Satsune, queen of dares,” Yuka said, raising her cup to Satsune, “what do you want?”

“Truth,” Satsune said.

Yuka gave her a bewildered look. “Really?”

Satsune’s eyes flickered to Shou for half a second. “If we’re playing this to get to know each other, doesn’t it make more sense to do truths?”

“Fair point.” Yuka took a swig of her umeshu and gave a loud hum as she tried to think of a question. “Okay, Umi always asks this one. Who would you murder if you could get away with it with no consequences?”

“Ikeda, if he keeps hitting on you,” Satsune replied without even having to think. “It’s creepy.”

Yuka let out an awkward little laugh, tussling the back of her hair. Even though Shou had first met her less than an hour ago, it seemed really uncharacteristic of her.

“Your turn,” Yuka quickly gestured to Satsune.

For a second, Satsune glanced at Shou like she was about to pick him, but then she turned to Himiko instead. “Himiko, truth or dare?”

“I have a head-start on knowing Shou, so dare,” Himiko said. She was sitting on her knees on a desk now, lightly bouncing up and down.

Satsune glanced around the classroom, less cautious now that she’d focused her attention on something other than Shou. “Since you like Miyagi so much, I think you should draw her portrait,” she said, pointing at the blackboard.

“You know I can’t draw for shit,” Himiko groaned, even though she was already crawling down from the table. She went to find a piece of chalk, tapping it against the clean, black surface a few times.

Himiko scrawled a tiny, lopsided bust in the bottom corner of the board, its only identifying feature a pair of narrow-framed glasses. Yuka laughed when she added a gigantic speech bubble next to it, filling it out with a ramble about the importance of constructive dialog.

“Yeah, okay, accurate,” Yuka admitted. She thoughtfully raised a hand to her chin. “This is very specific. Is it a direct quote?”

“Yes,” Himiko said.

“Remember to sign it,” Satsune added, pointing at the drawing.

Himiko groaned again. “She’s gonna hunt me down on Monday and give me an even longer speech.”

“You can’t back down from a dare,” Satsune reminded her with a slow, merciless shrug.

Himiko grumbled as she wrote her name next to Miyagi’s wobbly form with the tiniest characters possible. She dropped the piece of chalk into a tray under the blackboard and went to empty her cup.

“Okay, truth or truth?” she asked Shou, slamming the cup onto the table.

Shou looked at her helplessly.

Himiko rolled her eyes. “I’ll be nice.”

“Truth,” Shou grudgingly replied. He’d have to do it sooner or later.

A gigantic grin spread across Himiko’s face. “Let’s do another classic. Who’s the last person you had a crush on?”

It wasn’t exactly a dangerous question, but Shou didn’t know how to answer. A crush? He wasn’t even sure what that was supposed to feel like.

Yuka let out an amused snort. “Okay, you’re thinking really hard. Can we move this along?”

“Yeah,” Shou finally answered. “No one, I think.”

Himiko once again did that sad, solemn headshake. “Fourteen years old and has never had a crush.”

“Just ignore her,” Yuka said. “It’s your turn.”

“Truth or dare?” Shou offered her.

“Truth,” Yuka demanded, emptying her second serving of straight liquor. “Give me a tough one.”

Shou glanced around at the three girls, trying to think of something he actually wanted to know. “What’s the worst thing about everyone here, including yourself?” he asked.

“Okay, smart way to get dirt on everyone right out of the gate,” Yuka laughed. “Let me think for a second.”

She unscrewed the cap on a bottle of whiskey with a demonstratively contemplative look on her face, then poured herself a fill. Himiko eagerly held out her own cup, prompting Yuka for a refill. Like before, Yuka turned to Shou next, wiggling the bottle. “Shou?”

Shou wasn’t sure if it was a good idea to drink anything more. She hadn’t given him much of the shochu, but his senses felt weirdly dull and he didn’t particularly like it.

“Seriously, you’re wimping out already?” Himiko complained before stuffing a new handful of chips in her mouth.

Shou hesitantly held out his cup. “Okay, just give me a little.”

Yuka skeptically looked him in the eye as she poured just a tiny amount, then screwed the cap back on the bottle.

“Worst thing about Hasegawa is she can’t live for more than five minutes at a time without someone acknowledging her existence,” she said, calmly taking a sip of her whiskey.

“Yes, I can,” Himiko said.

Yuka ignored her again, moving on. “My biggest problem is that I put up with Hasegawa.”

“I’ve known you since you were four years old,” Himiko continued to argue. “I let you sleep in my bed like every other weekend, why do you betray me like this?”

Yuka simply tipped her cup at Shou, then turned her head to Satsune. “Satsune never asks for help, even though it’d make her life a lot easier.” Finally, she looked at Shou. “And you? I can already tell you think way too much and you don’t know how to relax.”

Shou didn’t understand where she got that from. He was good at keeping his cool, it was always him having to tell everyone else to relax, but Yuka moved the game along before he could ask what she meant.

They kept taking turns, picking truth most of the time. The girls did it, so Shou felt like he had to, too. It didn’t feel too risky anyway; everyone was okay with interpreting the questions creatively when there was something they didn’t really want to answer.

It had actually been a good idea on Himiko’s part to play this game. How else would he have picked up so much information on these girls in just a few hours? Like the fact that the weirdest place Satsune had ever slept was a well she fell into when she was little, or that Yuka once convinced her whole primary school class that her dad had caught a mermaid on his fishing boat, or that Himiko had chipped her tooth by running face-first into a wall and hadn’t gotten it fixed because she was terrified of dentists.

He had no idea what to do with any of that information, but he felt like he already knew these people a little. It was… nice.

This was actually really nice.

“Shou,” Himiko barked, snapping him out of his daze. “Truth or dare?”

“Truth.” Shou emptied his cup of the leftover liquor he’d kept from drinking for a few rounds now. His entire body felt strangely warm.

Himiko grinned excitedly. She’d been making an attempt at keeping up with the honestly unsettling amount of alcohol Yuka had ingested and it had only made her louder and more tactless.

“What’s the most... just... cringy, embarrassing thing you’ve ever done?” she asked with a dramatic sweep of her arm, nearly knocking over one of Yuka’s bottles.

The warm feeling in Shou’s chest instantly dissipated. In the absence of any other thoughts, his mind flooded with vivid memories of breaking down crying on Okura’s shoulder like a little kid, of his father holding him down like it was nothing, of making himself look like an idiot to everyone he knew over and over again. It wasn’t even what Himiko asked—she was just fishing for something to laugh at.

“Can you give me another question?” he hazily got out.

“No, rules say you have to answer,” Himiko reminded him.

“Ask me something else.”

Himiko rolled her eyes. “Don’t be so fucking boring, Shou. You’ll barely drink and now you won’t even play the game. Just tell us a story, nobody can tell if it’s really the worst one.”

Boring? Nobody had ever described Shou as boring in his entire life. He pointed at the cup of liquor Himiko had mixed earlier, standing untouched on the desk behind her.

“I’m not gonna answer, so give me your gross punishment drink or whatever.”

“Seriously?” Himiko started cackling. “I take it back, you’re not boring anymore.”

She reached for the drink, holding it out to Shou.

“Wow, there.” Yuka snatched the nearly full cup out of Himiko’s hand. “Are you crazy? We don’t wanna send anyone to the hospital.”

She walked over to open a window and carefully poured the liquid onto the gravel outside until there was only about a third left.

“Hope you can drink this without throwing up, my man,” she said, handing the cup to Shou.

This was probably a mistake, but it was too late to backtrack now and Yuka at least seemed like she knew what she was doing. Shou stared into the pale brown liquid. Fukuda would be so mad at him if he knew about this.

He threw down the drink in one go. It didn’t even matter how it tasted, all he could focus on was how the liquor burned all the way down his throat, making his eyes water and sending him into a coughing fit.

Himiko was cackling so hard she nearly fell off her table. “Oh my god, you’re going to regret this,” she wheezed. “Okay, okay, you’ve earned a better question.” She wiped the tears away from her eyes before continuing. “If you get embarrassed so easily, tell us the last really cool thing you did instead.”

Shou groaned into his hands. That wasn’t any better than the previous question. He couldn’t tell them about all the fights he’d been in or everywhere he’d gone, and he definitely hadn’t done anything cool since he got to Sturgeon Bay.

“Oh, I know,” he realized, dropping his hands into his lap. “My pops had this IT guy working for him, I suplexed him one time.”

“What?!” Yuka blurted out and set into a loud laugh.

“Like the wrestling move?” Himiko asked in disbelief.

Shou had a hard time keeping down the grin creeping onto his face. “Yep.”

“But why?” Himiko asked. “What’d he do?”

Shou shrugged. “He was in the way.”

“No way,” Yuka said, dramatically turning her head to the side. “You can’t suplex anyone, you’re tiny.”

“Not the biggest guy I’ve ever suplexed,” Shou said, nonchalantly crossing his arms.

“Seriously, I wanna see that before I believe it,” Yuka said.

“Oh! Oh!” Himiko frantically pointed at her. “I dare you to wrestle Tachibana!”

“Why me?” Yuka protested with a hand on her chest. “You just had your turn.”

Shou hopped down from the desk he’d been sitting on to grab Yuka’s hand. “Come on. If you want proof, I’m gonna give you proof.”

Yuka dug her heels into the floor as Shou dragged her to the open space in front of the entrance. She was laughing hard enough that she had to double over.

“Nooo, Birthday Boy’s gonna kill me,” she whined.

Shou positioned her so they were facing each other. “I’m not gonna throw you for real, ‘cause it’s gonna hurt on this floor,” he said. “I’ll just do a basic takedown, okay?”

“I’m scared,” Yuka squeaked, raising her hands protectively in front of herself.

Using any sort of actual wrestling move on someone who didn’t know what they had coming to them seemed a little excessively violent, so instead, Shou went for one of the tai chi takedowns Ootsuki had taught him whenever they’d been sparring.

He grabbed Yuka’s arm, swiftly pulling it out to the side while his other hand went to her jaw, pushing her head up and away. The girl had no concept of how to defend herself, so with her off-balance position, it took no effort to sweep one leg out from under her. Yuka landed on the floor with a loud, startled shriek, and then she was howling with laughter. As was Himiko. Even Satsune laughed, although she was more subdued about it.

“Oh no, I’m dead,” Yuka choked out, throwing her arms out to the sides.

Shou stood over her, extending his hands in an offer to help her up. “Sorry, did it hurt?”

Yuka sputtered gracelessly as she took Shou’s hands and let him drag her upright. “Hasegawa, where did you find this guy?” she asked. “I love him.”

The girls kept chattering, asking Shou all kinds of martial arts-related questions. After a while, he started spacing out and had to excuse himself to the bathroom down the hall.

He simply stood in there with a hand on his chest. The room was quiet except for the distant sound of Himiko cackling. He was feeling really weird. It almost hurt, but not in a bad way. Maybe people always felt like this when they were drunk—light and relieved and kind of… happy.

Ever since they broke into the school, he hadn’t been thinking about anything else, hadn’t been speculating or feeling guilty, he’d just been there. He hadn’t expected these girls to be so easy to get along with. He actually really liked them. Maybe this was how normal people made friends, just hanging out, having fun. Maybe he wasn’t a completely lost cause on that front after all.

Once he felt ready to go back, he opened the door and found Satsune standing in the dark hallway right outside the bathroom.

“Are you feeling sick?” she asked. Her hair covered half her face so only one of her pale green eyes could watch him.

“I’m good,” Shou said.

She fidgeted with the overlong sleeves of her sweater like she wanted to say something, but Himiko stuck her head out from the classroom down the hall.

“Do we have to call an ambulance or what’s taking so long?” she yelled.

Her eyes lingered on Satsune, sending her a strange frown before she disappeared back inside. Whatever Satsune had wanted to say, she dropped it, turned, and walked back to the classroom.

They continued their game of truth or dare, even though everyone was forgetting to take their turns at this point. It hadn’t been that noticeable while he was in the bathroom, but now Shou felt weirder with every passing minute. His senses were clouded and fuzzy and he had to focus very hard to understand what everyone else was saying.

Whenever she wasn’t distracted by something else, Satsune stared at him again. She was bolder about it now, more deliberate despite how she kept fidgeting. Himiko kept glancing between the two of them with her eyes narrowed suspiciously. Shou couldn’t guess what she was deducing. Probably some new, far-out assumption. She was so weird, but so was everyone else Shou associated with, so he supposed he couldn’t hold it against her.

Satsune dared Himiko to do an impression of her own mother that was uncannily accurate, and then Himiko threw the ball back to her.

“Truth or Dare?” she asked, pouring a rather large amount of vodka into her new fill of soda.

“Dare,” Satsune predictably said. She had stopped picking truth after the rest of them had gotten too drunk to come up with any good questions.

“I dare youuu—” Himiko screwed the cap back on the vodka bottle “—to give Shou a kiss.”

Satsune stopped picking at her sleeves. She sent Shou a brief, distressed glance before turning back to Himiko. “I don’t want to do that.”

“Too bad,” Himiko shrugged. “You have to do it. That’s the rules.”

“You don’t even know if he’s okay with it,” Satsune said, feebly gesturing at Shou.

“It’s one little kiss and you’ve been gawking at him all evening,” Himiko sneered. “It’s either that, or I’ll make another gross drink and watch you drink it.”

Satsune looked kind of hurt. Something was going on here and Shou was too disoriented to figure out what.

“Just do it so she’ll shut up,” Yuka sighed, lying down on her back on the desk she’d been sitting on.

Satsune mutely brushed a lock of her hair behind her ear. After a long moment of deliberation, she got up, walking to stand in front of Shou.

“Sorry,” she muttered before she bent down and gave him a quick peck on the cheek.

“Come on, that’s cheating,” Himiko said. “You know I meant on the mouth.”

“You never said that,” Satsune said, glowering back at her.

“It was implied. Why else would you make a big deal out of it?”

Shou dumbly touched his fingers to the spot where Satsune had kissed him. She was still standing really close, the proximity made Shou’s skin crawl and it didn’t help when Himiko started chanting, “On the mouth, on the mouth,” in the background.

Satsune didn’t warn him this time, just bent down, pressing her lips against his for what felt like a very long moment. Their noses were squashed together, and she was quite forceful about the way she leaned into him. Shou’s hands rose from his thighs out of reflex even though he had no idea what to do with them. Mostly, he wanted to push her away.

Satsune finally broke it off, keeping her eyes glued to the floor as she turned away, her hair obscuring half her face again.

“Aww, adorable,” Himiko gloated, a mean-spirited grin on her face.

Yuka propped herself up on her elbows, frowning at Satsune as she silently returned to her chair. With an exasperated sigh, Yuka pushed off the table. “You know what I think this is about?” she asked. “I think Hasegawa’s too shy to ask for a kiss herself.”

“Stay away from me,” Himiko immediately warned her, raising her arms like she was ready to physically defend herself.

Yuka kept advancing, making obscene kissing noises as she tried to uncover Himiko’s face from underneath her arms. Himiko shoved her away, peering around her torso at Satsune who was staring angrily at her boots.

“Oh my god, if it’s such a big deal, why did you even do it?" Himiko snapped. "Don’t be a bitch about it.”

Satsune abruptly stood up. She strode across the room to grab her coat, muttering, “I’m going home.”

Himiko stared after her, dumbfounded, then she sprang up, too. “Satsune, wait, I didn’t mean it!”

Both of them disappeared down the hallway, leaving Shou and Yuka behind.

“Yikes,” Yuka deadpanned, taking another sip of her drink.

It didn’t seem like she counted on the others to come back, because she started cleaning up; collecting their cups and placing all the liquor back in her backpack. Shou’s head was spinning. He felt like he should help, but aside from clumsily getting off his table, it didn’t really move him to do anything.

Yuka stopped to check her phone, typing out a message. “My sister’s at her friend’s house like ten minutes from here,” she said. “I think I’m gonna go find her. You can come with if you want.”

Shou shook his head. He hadn’t realized how badly his vision was swimming before he’d stood up.

“No, I feel weird,” he mumbled.

“Aw man,” Yuka pointed a thumb out into the hallway. “If you have to throw up, you better go to the bathroom. Don’t make me clean it up.”

Shou thought about it. Did he have to throw up? It didn’t seem like that was the problem. It was more the fact that his mind lagged half a second behind everything that happened around him.

“I’m leaving,” he decided, steering toward the exit at a trajectory that didn’t seem entirely straight.

Yuka quickly strapped Himiko’s messenger bag across her chest and put her backpack on before she walked up beside him, placing a hand on his shoulder with a barely suppressed snicker. “You want me to follow you home?”

Shou tried to brush her hand away only to miss by several centimeters. “It’s okay.”

“You can ride on the back of my bike. It’ll be faster,” Yuka offered, holding him in place.

Somehow, Shou ended up sitting on the carrier of Yuka’s rusty old bike. It swayed dangerously from side to side and Yuka was laughing so hard she drove into a hedge at the side of the street twice before she gave up on pedaling. They settled on walking instead, Yuka dragging the bike beside her.

“Is this the first time you’ve been drunk?” she asked, smiling at Shou’s attempts at zipping up his jacket.

“Yeah,” Shou said, finally connecting the two halves of the zipper only to fumble and have them break apart again.

“Drink some water or you’ll wake up with a killer headache tomorrow,” she advised. “And uh, I hope Himiko didn’t bother you too much. She’s always trying too hard.”

“It’s fine,” Shou mumbled. Himiko was weird more than anything. It wasn’t a big deal.

The light in the living room was on when they reached Mom’s house.

“Oh, your mom’s home?” Yuka side-eyed him. “Good luck with that.”

She turned her bike around and swung her leg over the middle tube, glancing back at Shou over her shoulder. “See you around, dude! It’ll be fun when you come and crash our school.”

She waved enthusiastically and Shou waved back, a little confused about how they even got here. Had he told her where he lived? Maybe he’d just walked on autopilot.

Shou opened the front door as quietly as possible, peeking into the hall for any sign of his mother. He vaguely remembered promising her he’d call if he stayed out later than ten o’clock. It was definitely later than ten o’clock by now.

He didn’t know if it was the faint sound of the door opening or his footsteps that gave him away, but his mother came storming out from the living room the moment he stepped inside.

“Do you have any idea how worried I've been?” she scolded too fast for Shou to process it. “I told you to pick up your phone. You can't just stay out late at night without telling me where you are! I called Hasegawa and she couldn’t get a hold of Himiko either.”

Shou was too focused on kicking his shoes off without falling over to formulate a reply. His mother made a frustrated noise as she roughly went to help him out of his jacket.

“Really?” she said. “You’re not just drunk, you’re this drunk?”

“Sorry, it just kind of happened,” Shou mumbled.

“Sure it did. You're going to bed, we'll talk about this in the morning.”

She grabbed him by the arm and dragged him to the bathroom, then squeezed a blob of toothpaste onto his toothbrush, forcibly placing it in Shou’s hand. She glared at him until he stuck it in his mouth.

“I met some of Himiko's friends,” Shou said around the toothbrush.

“I think Himiko and her friends are a bunch of troublemakers,” Mom said.

“I don't know…” Shou sloppily brushed his teeth, then spat the toothpaste into the sink. “They were kinda weird, but I liked them.”

Gradually, Mom’s scowl crumbled. For a moment, she fought to hold down a smile, then she burst out laughing.

“What?” Shou asked, a little offended.

“This is the most normal thing that’s happened since you got here,” she chuckled as she left the bathroom. “Go upstairs and change your clothes. I'll get you some water.”

Shou made it to the office and managed to pull off his pants and change into a nightshirt before he dropped onto the bed. His mother came in with a full glass of water, holding it out for him. Shou took it with a strange feeling of déjà vu, hesitantly lifting it to his lips.

“Can I sleep now?” he asked once the glass was empty. He handed it back to his mother and laid down on his back. His eyes wouldn’t even focus on the veins in the wooden ceiling that he’d spent so many restless hours studying.

“You better,” Mom said.

Shou buried himself under his duvet, trying to ignore the way the mattress felt like it was rotating underneath him. He could hear his mother leave, softly closing the door behind her. Maybe he fell asleep for a while—he must have, because next thing he knew, he was woken up by his heart hammering at a speed he didn’t even know was possible.

Panicking, he untangled himself from the sheets, his legs nearly buckling under him as he made it off the bed. How could he have fallen asleep in the state he was in? His senses were all muddled; anyone could attack him and he’d be a ridiculously easy target.

He stumbled out of the office, finding his way downstairs while trying to force his lungs to expand enough to take in a mouthful of air. His chest hurt like someone had grappled his ribcage far too tight.

He kicked the door to the bathroom shut and supported himself on the sink, clutching his chest. Sharp jolts of pain shot out from his racing heart. For a few minutes, he seriously worried if he was going to die. Then his heart rate finally slowed, the pressure lifting off his lungs until they felt like nothing had been wrong with them in the first place. It left him very aware of the fact that he was still drunk. Somehow more drunk than he’d felt before he went to sleep.

Sweat had soaked through his shirt, leaving his back cold and clammy. He shakily let go of the sink and crouched down next to the toilet—half because he was worried he’d throw up after all, half because he didn’t want to put more distance between himself and the floor than necessary.

What if he couldn’t even use his powers right? He wouldn’t be able to defend himself. Anyone could break into the house and he wouldn’t be able to do anything.

Shou glanced up at the shelf hanging above the sink. He reached out his aura, aiming for the cup holding his and his mother’s toothbrushes. Instead of successfully picking it up, he only grazed the side of it, knocking it off the shelf. He frantically tried to catch it mid-air, but only had time to break the fall, letting the cup hit the floor with slightly less of a clatter.

He sat curled up, listening for any sign that he’d woken his mother. Only when he was sure he hadn’t, he made a distressed noise, clambering across the floor to pick up the toothbrushes. He nearly knocked the cup over again when he tried to place it back on the shelf with his hands.

He flung the door open and walked to the kitchen with rigid strides, making sure not to stumble down the single step to the kitchen floor. The block holding his mother’s kitchen knives sat on the counter.

“This is so stupid,” Shou whispered.

He grabbed the biggest one, pulling it free so he could weigh it in his hand. He understood why it had put his mother at ease to sleep next to one of these in the past. Stabbing someone was easy. The knife was light and precise, and it’d stay that way no matter how lightheaded you felt.

It was comforting enough to make Shou shuffle back to the office with a little more composure, lying down on the bed with the weapon clenched firmly in his hand. He could do this. If someone came for him now, he was prepared.

He’d only just thrown the duvet over himself when a sharp noise made him flinch, his breath catching in his throat again. Somebody was knocking on the window. This was it—they’d found him. Somebody had come to kill him. Probably his mother, too.

He scurried off the bed, every muscle in his body tense as he listened to the increasingly loud knocking. Slowly, he crept closer to the window, angling his torso so the knife couldn’t be seen from the front but was ready to strike if need be. He reached for the curtain, steadying himself before he flung it aside to confront whatever was on the other side.

Himiko sat crouched on the overhang, the hood of her windbreaker flipped up to protect from the drizzling rain. She lit up in a grin and pointed at the handle on the inside of the frame.

Shou just stared at her, baffled.

“Let me in, I have to tell you something,” he could hear her yell, muffled through the windowpane.

If she kept hollering like that, it’d definitely wake Mom up. Shou twisted the handle, pushing the window open so Himiko could grab the frame from outside.

“Oh phew, I wasn’t actually sure I remembered which one was your room,” she said, setting into a fit of giggles as she clumsily dumped herself onto the desk inside. She wasn’t exactly the most athletic person; it was impressive she’d managed to climb onto the roof in the first place.

“Why haven’t you gone home?” Shou asked. “I think your mom’s looking for you.”

“Who cares,” Himiko snorted, waving a hand like it was a silly thing to worry about. She grabbed Shou’s arm to have something to support herself on as she slid down from the desk, then grabbed the other one, shaking her wet bangs out of her face.

“I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable or whatever,” she slurred, trying to focus on Shou’s eyes. “I just wanted to say that.”

Shou frowned at her confusedly. If anyone needed an apology, it was Satsune, not him. Before he could say anything, Himiko patted him on the chest.

“You’re alright, Shou,” she said. “You’re, like, a stand-up guy.”

She let out a loud, exaggerated sigh as she trudged across the room. All Shou could focus on was that her shoes were dragging mud all over the carpet.

“We were supposed to sleep at Yuka’s place, but Satsune ditched me,” she lamented. “She never has her phone anymore, I can’t even call her. She’s gonna be in so much trouble if she actually went home in the middle of the night. D’you think she hates me that much?” Himiko asked, fumbling to unzip her jacket. “She should hate me, I always say all this weird shit, I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

The jacket was haphazardly tossed onto the floor. Himiko threw herself on the bed heavily enough to make it creak, lying on her back with her legs halfway off the mattress.

“You know, all that stuff I told you when your mom invited us over?” she continued, draping an arm over her face. “Please don’t tell her I told you that. Like, really, that was confidential. I was just thinking you’d get along, you know? No, I don’t know what I was thinking, it was a stupid plan. I’m a stupid idiot. I’m the worst friend ever, Shou. Do you think I’m the worst friend ever?”

Shou’s brain finally kicked back into action. “Don’t lie on my bed!”

Himiko slowly turned her head to squint at him like he was being completely unreasonable. Her eyes fell on his right hand.

“Yo, why do you have a knife?” she asked. She closed her eyes, rolling her head to face the other way. “That’s disturbing.”

Shou had momentarily forgotten about the knife. It hadn’t protected him from anyone breaking in. Himiko was there. Himiko was dragging mud onto his carpet and hijacking his bed, spouting nonsense at him in the middle of the night.

“Get off my bed,” he repeated.

“Man, give me a break, I’m exhausted,” Himiko yawned into her hand. “I’ll just rest my eyes for a moment.”

Shou climbed onto the mattress to stand over her. He could kick her onto the floor, but it’d undoubtedly result in enough noise to wake his mother up. No matter how he tried to move Himiko, it’d get a noise out of her. She was very loud like that.

“Himiko, get up!” he hissed, glaring at her furiously.

“Nah.” She grabbed the half of the duvet Shou wasn’t standing on and carelessly draped it over herself, rolling onto her side.

What was wrong with her? How could she sleep when Shou was standing right there with a knife in his hand? She deserved to be stabbed just to learn a lesson, but that was the problem with this town—you couldn’t use violence to solve anything, even when it was the most reasonable solution.

Himiko started snoring softly, hugging the edge of Shou’s duvet. With a frustrated groan, he jumped down and grabbed his phone off the desk, texting the only person in his contacts who might know what to do in this situation.

Shou
This girl fell asleep on my my bed i dont know w to do

Considering it was the middle of the night, Ootsuki replied very fast.

Ootsuki
What?? At your mom’s place?

Shou
Yr

Shou
Yes

Ootsuki
Are you drunk?

Shou barely had time to read the last message before Ootsuki called him. He groaned, nearly flinging his phone across the room before thinking better of it. He let it buzz until Ootsuki gave up.

Ootsuki
Shou call me.

Shou
Your gonna yell me at me

Ootsuki
Who’s the girl? How old is she?

Shou had a hard time seeing how that would help him solve this situation.

Shou
13? like a freind i guess

Ootsuki
Is anything actually wrong or are you just mad she took your bed?

Shou
She super annoying!!

Ootsuki
Kick her out or find somewhere else to sleep, buddy. It’s not that complicated

Shou scoffed at his phone. What a help he was.

The floor kept feeling like it was spinning, so he carefully staggered onto the bed again and slid his back down the wall until he was sitting curled up next to Himiko.

Her head was halfway hidden under the duvet, perfectly peaceful. It was bizarre. Shou rested his chin on top of his arms, watching her chest slowly rise and fall. Somehow, it was calming enough that he could feel himself doze off as well.

If anyone with more murderous intentions actually came to jump him, now at least he wasn’t alone.

Shou woke up with a start when someone rapped on the door to the office. The first thing he saw was the chef’s knife still clenched in his hand. He looked around in a panic and ended up simply throwing it onto the desk beside the bed a second before his mother stepped inside the room.

“Time to get up, Sh—” She faltered when her eyes fell first on Himiko’s jacket on the floor, then on Himiko herself. She marched over to the bed, pointing at her. “When did she get in here?”

Himiko had wriggled around in her sleep so much she’d ended up lying with the top of her head pressed into Shou’s thigh. He leaned away from her, shrugging uncertainly.

“She crawled in through my window and passed out on the bed and I didn’t know what to do,” he mumbled.

Mom had a disbelieving look on her face. She threw out an arm, pointing it toward her bedroom. “I was right next door, you didn’t think to wake me up and ask me?”

Shou kept his head down. He honestly hadn’t even considered that.

“Himiko,” Mom said sharply.

She grabbed Himiko’s arm to pull her out of bed, but the moment Himiko opened her eyes and saw Mom, she set into a shrill scream. Startled, Mom let go of her.

“What in the world is going on?” she asked. “Do your parents know where you are? I have to call your mother again—”

“No, please don’t tell my parents!” Himiko blurted out

Out of nowhere, she burst into tears. Shou and his mother watched with equal bewilderment as she continued to beg Mom not to tell anyone, tears rolling down her cheeks.

Mom looked horrified. With a wary glance at Shou, she wrapped an arm around Himiko’s shoulders and led her into the hallway.

“Can you tell me what happened?” she asked softly. They continued downstairs where Shou couldn’t hear the reply.

It took almost twenty minutes before Mom sent Himiko home. Shou watched from his window as she left. Before turning down the street, she glanced up at him. Even from the second floor, Shou could tell her eyes were puffy, but her face split into one of her customary grins. She touched her thumb and index finger together in an OK sign and then went on her way like nothing happened.

Shou could hear his mother quickly scale the stairs again. He hurried back to the bed, sitting curled up as before. He didn’t dare look her in the eye as she walked in and stopped right in front of him.

“I tried to make her leave,” he said quietly. “I know she was supposed to go home.”

Mom knelt down in front of the bed, clutching the edge of the mattress. When Shou hesitantly looked at her, she opened her mouth, then shut it, taking a moment to find her words.

“Shou, I’m so sorry I have to ask you this," she finally said, "but if something did happen and I didn’t ask, it would be so much worse.”

“What do you mean?” Shou said, wrapping his arms around his knees.

His mother squeezed her eyes shut like she was in pain. She looked to the ceiling as if asking the heavens themselves for strength, then back at Shou. “Did you touch her?”

Shou could feel a chill crawl down the entire length of spine. He let go of his knees, straightening up until the back of his head hit the wall. “What?”

She didn’t really need to elaborate. Shou knew what she was asking him. If he’d groped her. If he’d assaulted her. Why would she think that? Was that the first conclusion she’d jumped to?

“Did you—” Mom started.

“No!” Shou said. “Why would I do that?”

She looked at him searchingly. “Are you sure? You were very drunk, too.”

“Why are you asking me that? I didn’t do anything!”

“I found her sleeping in your bed, she was very upset and very embarrassed about it, and she said she doesn’t remember what happened,” Mom said. “Again, I’m sorry, but I have to ask.”

Shou didn’t know how to respond anymore. Upset about what? What had Himiko even told her?

Mom awkwardly retracted her hands and stood up. Her eyes fell on the knife still lying on the desk. She knew perfectly well what it was for, but she still presented it to Shou in a wordless question.

“I’m making breakfast and then we’re having a talk,” she said softly. She left the room, taking the knife with her.

Shou’s head was pounding. He felt shaky and nauseous as he pulled on the same clothes he’d worn the night before. Once he worked up the nerve to walk downstairs, Mom had made omelets for them both and he didn’t know what to make of that either. She never had the peace of mind to cook when she was mad at Shou or anyone else.

“Himiko said it was her fault you got so drunk,” Mom said as she put a plateful of the omelet in front of Shou’s usual seat at the kitchen table.

“Yeah,” he mumbled, sitting down. “I’m not doing that again.”

Mom gave him a half-hearted smile. “I guess you learned your lesson.” She sighed as she sat down across from him, skewering a piece of her own omelet. “Himiko told me about her friend, too. Yuka? I thought you said you’d met her friends, plural, but okay.”

Shou frowned at his eggs. Hadn’t Himiko mentioned Satsune?

“Honestly, I think it’s great if you have some girls to hang out with,” Mom kept talking. “But… I don’t know. When a boy and a girl your age sleep in the same bed—” She cut herself off, rubbing her face with both her hands. “I’m really sorry. I’m being blunt because you always ask me to be blunt.” She placed her hands back on the table as she insistently leaned forward. “I don’t want to accuse you of anything, but I’ve never seen Himiko act like that. I have to make sure.”

“I’m not like that,” Shou said, turning his head toward the counter. His mother had put the knife back in the block he grabbed it from.

“No,” Mom sighed. “I believe you. Of course you aren’t.”

She sounded like she was mostly trying to convince herself. The smell of fried egg made Shou’s stomach turn, he just wanted to leave. Maybe his mother did, too. For a while, she simply sat there, repeatedly stabbing her omelet instead of eating it. She leaned back in her chair, eyes briefly reaching the ceiling again.

“Now that we’re already on the extremely unpleasant subject, has anyone ever sat down and talked to you about this stuff?” she asked. “Puberty and sex and all those things?”

She kept dumping so much on Shou he couldn’t keep up. “What’s there to talk about?” he asked. “It’s not that complicated.”

“Fukuda never talked to you? Or your father—” Mom interrupted herself with a strangled wheeze, quickly covering up her face again.

“What now?”

“Can you imagine Touichirou having this conversation?” She slid her palms down until she could peek at Shou over her fingers. “Shou, I’m—” She removed her hands, abruptly pushing her chair away from the table. “I think I need to go away and think about how to do this for a moment. You stay here and eat your breakfast, okay?”

She left her food on the table and walked into the hallway, scaling the stairs with quick steps. Shou wolfed down his breakfast so he could get out of the house—far, far, away from his mother and her accusations and bizarre mood swings—but when he marched to the front door, he could hear her exit her bedroom.

“Shou, you’re not leaving,” she called from the top of the staircase, “we’re talking about this!”

“Yeah, well, maybe I need a break, too,” Shou said.

He grabbed his jacket and shoved the door open, but he didn’t even make it off the doorstep before something stopped him in his tracks. Satsune was standing right outside the driveway.

“How do you know where I live?” Shou asked, far more harsh and accusatory than intended.

Satsune took a step back, self-consciously trying to brush her hair behind her ear. It immediately slid forward again. “Himiko told me,” she said. “I didn’t ask her to, she just…” She shrugged listlessly. “Just so you know, I think she thinks I have a crush on you.”

“Oh,” Shou said. One more time being confronted with crushes and kissing and whatever the hell else everyone was so concerned with, and he was going to snap.

Satsune tried to say something, pulling at her scarf like it was strangling her. If she was about to confess her love to him or something, he’d rather turn on his heel right now and go back inside with his mother.

“I’m—” she stuttered. “I think I’m an es—I’m….”

“Yeah, obviously,” Shou said. “I already know you’re an esper.”

Satsune looked at him with wide eyes. “I don’t know how, but when I saw you yesterday, I knew you were, too.”

She pointed at him vaguely.

“I don’t even think I have a power I can use, but I mean, you’re—” she gestured to herself next, “Can you see that I’m blue? Or, it’s not a color, it’s…” She looked down at herself, trying to find the right words.

“You mean your aura?” Shou asked. She didn’t know what an aura was? Her own was just as bright and clear as yesterday. If Shou had still been scoping out espers for Claw, he would’ve marked her down as someone with potential.

Satsune looked more ghostly and pale than ever as she pointed at a spot above the roof of Mom’s house. “Can you see those?”

A small cluster of wispy, luminescent orbs were drifting over the ridge. They weren’t really spirits, more like scraps of leftover energy, so common Shou rarely noticed them any more than he would a leaf blown around by the wind.

“The orbs?” he asked. “What about them?”

When he looked back at Satsune, her eyes were overflowing with tears. “You can really see them?” she whispered.

“Wow, why’re you crying?” Shou took a step closer. “Your powers would have to be really weak not to see those.”

Satsune bent down with her head in her hands and her giant, fluffy hair entirely hiding her face. The practical thing about auras was that they could usually clue you in on how other espers were feeling. Satsune was definitely upset, but she didn’t seem miserable or hurt; more like she was just really overwhelmed.

She sat down on the asphalt, uncaring about the fact that the old lady living across from Mom was spying on them through her curtains.

“Have you never met another esper before?” Shou asked, crouching down in front of her.

Satsune’s face emerged from her hair. She weakly wiped at the tears on her cheeks. “No,” she sniffled. “Have you?”

Sometimes, Shou forgot that most espers were not like him. Whether or not they took advantage of their powers, most espers grew up in their own little bubble of ignorance. Being alone was hard. It hadn’t even been a full month where Shou had to hide his powers—he could barely imagine what it must be like to do that your whole life.

“I’ve met a ton of espers,” he said. “I don’t know much about school or party games, but I know everything about having psychic powers.” He stood up, shooting her his best optimistic grin. “With the kind of aura you have, you’re definitely stronger than average. You just gotta figure out what you can do.”

Through her tears, Satsune smiled up at him earnestly. Shou understood. She wasn’t alone in this town anymore, and now, neither was he.

Chapter Text

December had only just begun, yet Seasoning City was already draped in Christmas lights. Decorations in glittering green and red adorned the storefronts, almost complimenting the giant broccoli looming behind the skyscrapers.

The engine of Okura’s minivan idled while Shou watched a flock of pedestrians cross the intersection ahead, all steering toward a market on the other side of the road, a garnished fir tree in the center. He picked his phone up from his lap to check the screen. Still no reply from Ritsu.

“Do you think it’s okay if I show up early?” he asked. “Ritsu said there’s some festival at his school.”

“If it’s an open house event, I don’t see why not,” Okura said, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel.

He shifted the gear stick as the traffic light switched to green. Shou twirled the phone in his hands. Ritsu had been weirdly avoidant talking about the festival, but it was probably fine. They’d planned to meet up days ago, after all.

It hadn’t been easy setting up the arrangement. Even after Shou had presented his very best arguments about what a completely ordinary civilian Ritsu was, what a model student, what an incredibly talented teacher of math, he was pretty sure Nagata had only allowed him to go because Okura offered to drive.

“You asked what the policy is after you start school,” Okura said, picking up a thread from an earlier conversation. “I talked to Nagata, and honestly, I agree with her. It isn’t safe for you to leave Sturgeon Bay on your own right now.” He absent-mindedly scratched his beard, falling into line behind a queue of other cars. “I’ve lost count of how many assault cases we have at this point. Murders are still happening, too. I don’t think anyone buys that they’re bear attacks anymore.”

Shou kept his eyes on his phone. He didn’t like thinking about the fact that Okura was only going to stick around for a few more days. Not because he was worried about getting assaulted—as long as he didn’t get absolutely wasted again, he could handle that himself.

It was just…

Okura was…

Shou tried not to think about what he was.

The phone suddenly buzzed against his palm. He flipped it over, frowning at the message preview that had popped up on the screen. It still wasn’t Ritsu. Instead, Ootsuki had texted him.

Ootsuki
Hey have you talked to Higashio lately?

Ootsuki hadn’t so much as mentioned Higashio ever since he ditched him and Fukuda. Not to mention, he barely bothered to respond to any of Shou’s messages anymore. Shou sullenly opened his message history to type a reply.

Shou
No only fukuda

Shou
Kinda

Shou
Why

Ootsuki
Nevermind, just wondering if you know where he’s at

What did he care where Higashio was? He’d been acting like he never wanted to see him again.

Shou
Fukudas renting an apartment in seasoning so hes probably there. I think they live together or whatever

Shou
Why dont you ask him yourself

Ootsuki didn’t reply. Shou glanced out the windshield at the late afternoon sun, outlining the broccoli’s crown like a halo. He knew Fukuda’s place was close to the crater. He could send Ootsuki the address, but seriously, if he was going to be this cagey and unresponsive, he could figure it out on his own.

“Is everything okay?” Okura asked, glancing at the phone.

Shou stuffed it in his pocket and leaned back in his seat. “Sure.”

It didn’t matter if Ootsuki was acting weird or Okura was about to leave, because for the first time in a long while, Shou was feeling pretty good about everything. The last couple of nights, he hadn’t been able to sleep—not out of regret for the past or the usual nagging premonitions some former Claw-member would make an attempt on his life—but because he felt almost… giddy.

It was such a relief to have people around who didn’t constantly remind him how awful everything was. Yuka was surprisingly easy to talk to, and while Shou still wasn’t sure what he thought of Himiko, she kept texting him about anything and everything that came to her mind, so at least it seemed she’d decided they were going to keep in touch. She was distracting. In a good way, Shou supposed.

And Satsune, well… It was nice to have another esper nearby. Shou felt kind of useful again, answering her questions whenever she worked up the nerve to ask, but she was hard to figure out. At no point had she brought up why she’d broken down crying when Shou confirmed he was an esper, too, and at no point had she brought up the fact that she kissed him—but as for the latter incident, that was just because it wasn’t a big deal. At least nobody else acted like it was. It wasn’t important.

Right now, Shou was going to see Ritsu again, this time with no life-threatening events unfolding at the same time, and it was going to be great.

***

The last time Shou had seen Ritsu’s school, he’d been gathering intel on him and his brother, so he knew it was usually a sleepy neighborhood, not a lot of traffic on the narrow streets. However, today the sidewalk was packed with parked cars. A hand-painted sign hung above the gate to the school grounds, announcing the Salt Middle School Cultural Fair. The Christmas decorations hadn’t spread here to the outskirts of the city—the students had plastered colorful balloons and streamers all over the boring, white facade instead.

“You might as well go in and take a look while I find somewhere to leave the car,” Okura said, peering up the street.

Nodding, Shou got out of the minivan. He passed a pair of old ladies crossing the courtyard to head home. It was late enough that the festival must be about to wrap up, but it was still swarming with students and visitors inside, shuffling from classroom to classroom or clogging up the hallway chatting with each other.

Shou steered away from the off-key orchestra music coming from one end of the building, glancing into the classrooms he passed by. The students had arranged all kinds of attractions: little booths and food stands, an improvised cinema, even one class who’d put together a tacky-looking haunted house. The paper sign taped to the wall outside had come loose in the middle, drooping sadly.

There was no sign of Ritsu and so much noise Shou couldn’t pick up on his aura. He reached the end of the hallway and had to turn around and head back toward the screeching excuse for music. He passed by the haunted house again, then stopped dead in his tracks.

The boy in front of him had stopped as well, watching him with an unsettling, utterly blank expression. Shou didn’t know why it felt like such a shock to see Ritsu’s brother here, at the same school he knew he went to every day, but he had to remind himself to breathe.

He was impossible to read. Was he angry? In the Culture Tower, when he said he wasn’t, there’d been a lot of stuff going on. He couldn’t possibly mean it—Shou had tricked him, led him to believe he’d witnessed his entire family burn into charred husks. Should he run? Plead for forgiveness? Say thanks? Thank you, thank you, thank you for saving everyone, for finishing the job Shou couldn’t, for making things right and asking nothing in return.

Ritsu’s brother smiled a tiny, miniscule smile that somehow lit up his entire face. “Are you looking for Ritsu?”

No sound came out of Shou’s mouth at first. He tried again, only managing a small, dumbfounded, “Yeah.”

“His homeroom is upstairs,” Ritsu’s brother said. “I’m sorry, I don’t have time to talk.”

His arms were full of tape and paper craft supplies, as were the arms of the boy standing next to him, skeptically eyeing Shou. He was no taller than Ritsu’s brother, with blond hair parted unflatteringly in the middle and eyebrows like the markings of a Shiba Inu. He followed Ritsu’s brother to the classroom hosting the haunted house, leaning in to whisper loudly, “Who is that?”

Shou’s heart was pounding. He started walking again, the crowd around him a blur in his peripheral vision. He spotted the stairway to the second floor. He just had to head upstairs. Squeeze past the group of girls blocking the first landing. Upstairs. Find Ritsu. That’s what he was here for.

He weaved through the festival guests at the top of the stairwell, only looking up to check each classroom. Halfway down the hall, he stopped, then took two steps back to the doorway he’d just passed.

The boy standing in his line of sight had his back turned, his aura darker and better contained than usual, but with his chaotically spiky hair and hostile body language, there was no doubt it was Ritsu.

For reasons not immediately obvious, he was wearing a dress.

Shou stepped inside the classroom, only to flinch when a boy next to the door hollered, “New customer!”

The boy was also wearing a dress. In fact, every boy waiting the tables in the makeshift café were clad in the same frilly, black and white maid uniforms.

Ritsu turned away from the two giggling girls he was serving, sporting that impressively dead look he slipped into whenever he’d mentally checked out of a situation. It took him a second to process who he was looking at, then his eyes widened with a mixture of terror and outrage. Shou didn’t even have time to raise a hand to wave at him before Ritsu had snapped back around, head ducked and shoulders squared.

“Yo Ritsu, what’re you wearing?” Shou called out.

Ritsu glared at him over his shoulder, shaking his head warningly.

"Kageyama-kun, can you take this one?” one of the other boys said as he passed Ritsu, carrying a tray full of empty glasses. "Don't be rude to the guests, we talked about this."

Ritsu looked like he wanted to die as he rigidly left the girls and pointed Shou to one of the café tables filling most of the room.

“What can I get you?” he ground out, putting on an absolutely murderous smile.

Shou had no idea how anyone had managed to rope Ritsu into this. It took a moment for him to tear his eyes from his slightly rumpled apron and shiny patent shoes and focus on the small menu card lying in the middle of the table. Every item had a cutesy name that made it hard to decipher what exactly was in it.

“I don’t know, this one?” he said, pointing at the first drink in the list.

Ritsu turned on his heel, his frilly skirt billowing around him as he marched to the other end of the room where a couple of desks were pushed together to compose a counter. Every other patron in the café was a girl, and half of them were stealing glances at Ritsu, far more interested in him than their drinks and desserts.

“Have you been here all day?” Shou asked when he came back, placing a glass of toxic-green soda in front of him with enough force that the whipped cream on top nearly splattered over the edge. “Do you want me to bail you out of here?”

“Your drink,” Ritsu declared.

A teddy-bear-shaped cookie had dislodged itself from the whipped cream. It sank to the bottom of the glass in a shroud of carbonated bubbles.

Shou frowned up at Ritsu. “I don’t know what you’re so mad about, it’s not like you look bad in a dress.”

A hollow, unsettling laugh burst out of Ritsu. He bent forward, discreetly gesturing at the rest of the café guests. “Everyone’s staring at us.”

True enough, all the girls who’d been ogling Ritsu before were now watching both of them. Actually, they were mostly watching Shou, eyeing him with the same skepticism as the boy who’d been following Ritsu’s brother.

“Can you just disappear until I’m done with this?” Ritsu sneered. “I told you to meet me after school.”

It stung a little, the way he said it. Shou had been looking forward to seeing him again, but Ritsu was acting like he was some pest he needed to get rid of as fast as possible.

“Okay, whatever,” he mumbled, getting up from his chair. “Keep your soda, then.”

Ritsu said nothing as Shou walked to the door, and that stung a little, too. Shou kept his head down, nearly bumping into Okura who’d appeared right outside the classroom.

“There you are,” Okura said, directing a brief, bewildered look through the door.

Shou kept walking. If Ritsu hated the idea of him showing up here so much, he could’ve picked up his phone and said so, he didn’t have to be an asshole about it.

“Shou-kun,” Okura called out.

If even being seen with Shou was so awful, Ritsu could—

“Shou-kun.” Okura easily caught up to him, walking beside him. “What happened? He wasn’t happy you came here early?”

“He told me to disappear,” Shou said. “I don’t want to be at this idiotic school anyway.”

A few students who’d gathered by the top of the staircase frowned at him. Okura pointed at a set of double doors across from them.

“Come here for a moment,” he said.

He pushed one door open, waving for Shou to follow him into what looked like the school library. Rows of book cases took up most of the room, the spines of hundreds of novels and textbooks forming jagged, colorful sequences on the shelves.

The door slid closed, reducing the noise from the hallway to a faint buzz. Shou glared through the frosted glass at the silhouettes of Ritsu’s school mates.

“Everyone’s staring at me like they can tell something’s wrong with me,” he muttered

“Right now, if anyone is staring, I think it’s because you’re clearly in a very bad mood,” Okura said.

Shou’s eyes drifted to the floor. They’d been staring from the moment he walked into the building. Random people in the street in Sturgeon Bay stared, too. Even if he knew a few of the students now, it’d be the same thing when he started school there.

“Maybe you should drive me back home,” he said.

Okura sighed and put his hands at his sides. “What did he say to you? Did he ask you to go home?”

“No, he told me to wait, but you didn’t hear the way he said it,” Shou replied.

“I don’t know what the maid thing is about, but have you considered he’s a bit embarrassed to be seen like that?” Okura asked. “A bit upset, even. Just like you are right now.”

Shou didn’t reply, so Okura turned around, stepping past a sign announcing that the library was closed for the day. He glanced around the room as if to confirm that no one else was there.

“If he wants you to wait, we can stay here until the festival wraps up,” he said.

Okura wandered off to browse the bookcases, leaving Shou to seethe by the entrance. Grudgingly, he crossed the floor and threw himself onto a couch standing by the far wall.

What was he even doing worrying about Ritsu? If Shou went to his house, if his brother was there, that was the real problem. Were they supposed to sit there and pretend nothing happened? Because what could Shou even say? Sorry I made it look like Claw murdered your entire family? You couldn’t apologize for something like that.

“Shou-kun…”

Shou flinched at the hand touching his back, right above his shoulder blade. Okura had sat down next to him.

“I asked if you’ve had any other pets than your hamster,” he said. There was a book in his lap, the open page a collage of cat pictures.

“Um,” Shou said. Okura removed his hand, but he could feel the warmth it’d left behind creep up his neck. “My mom had a cat when I was really little, but it got run over.” He glanced at the book again. “Are you getting one?”

“My oldest son is allergic, but he keeps begging to get a kitten,” Okura said. “Just checking our options.”

He flipped to a new page in the book. More cat pictures. Maybe Shou should be grateful Okura had snapped him out of his spiraling worries about Ritsu’s brother, but now his head had flooded with white noise. The flush kept spreading up his neck. It was definitely noticeable. From the corner of his eye, he could see Okura frown at him.

It wasn’t the first time it had happened. Some fucked up impulse that maybe Shou didn’t want Okura to take his hand away. Maybe he wanted him to put it back, even though it was a sick thing to think about. He’d barely known the man for two weeks and yet every time he directed any kind of attention at Shou, he couldn’t stop thinking about that day where he’d asked if he wanted another hug.

Okura didn’t acknowledge it, just flipped another page.

“There are those hairless cats, of course,” he said, “but I know I’ve heard of a few other hypoallergenic breeds.”

“Oh,” Shou said.

His eyes drifted back to the floor. It was still a mystery why Okura cared to sit here and talk to him. All he ever seemed preoccupied with was his family. He was going back home to them in a couple of days; he didn’t have to talk to Shou at all. He definitely didn’t have to drive him all the way here.

Shou folded his hands in his lap, interlocking his fingers. “Okura, are we friends?”

Okura gave him a long look. “No.”

“Oh,” Shou said again.

With a quiet sigh, Okura closed the book, frowning at the litter of kittens on the cover. “When someone spends time with you out of obligation, take your time before considering them a friend,” he said. “I think that’s a good rule of thumb.”

“So if it wasn't your job, you wouldn't give a shit about me?” Shou mumbled.

“It's the other way around,” Okura replied. “If I didn't care, this wouldn't be my job.”

Shou unfolded his hands so he could pick at the hem of his shirt. “Is Nagata your friend?”

“Nagata is my boss,” Okura said.

“But how do you know?” Shou turned to look at him. “Like, how can you tell if someone's your friend or not?”

“That’s a good question.” Okura leaned back on the couch cushions, drumming his fingers on the book. “If you ask someone else, they might have a different take, but I’d say, if you feel better when you’re around the person in question, and feel safe sharing things that are personal to you, then there’s a good chance you can call them a friend.”

Shou watched the blurry shapes of a pair of students heading down the staircase outside the library. That seemed like a lot. He couldn’t even say either of those things about his mother.

“I don’t think I feel better when I’m around you,” he concluded.

Okura smiled at him. “There you go,” he said. “Then we’re not friends.”

Shou nodded, but a weird cacophony of energy had diverted his attention. Until now, Ritsu’s aura had only been a smoldering hum in the back of Shou’s mind, blending in with the sound of voices from the hallway, but it had suddenly grown in intensity. Shou could feel it pass by the library, coiling in every direction like some kind of malevolent, eldritch horror.

He pushed himself up from the couch and started toward the exit.

“Shou-kun—” Okura said.

“I’ll meet you outside, I have to ask him something,” Shou cut him off, shoving one of the doors open.

Ritsu’s aura had already moved to the floor below. Shou followed him down the stairs, taking two steps at a time. His right foot touched the bottom step, then stopped, frozen in place. Ritsu’s brother was there again, standing by the main entrance. The gang of loud body-builder types Shou knew were his friends surrounded him and the blond boy from earlier. Ritsu’s brother looked almost energetic talking to them. Not at all like the flat look he’d given Shou.

His mouth felt dry. With a quick glance down the hallway to make sure nobody was watching, Shou blinked out of view and continued in the opposite direction.

He followed the trace of Ritsu’s aura to the back of the school, stopping in front of the door he must have entered. It opened without a sound, revealing a locker room furnished with rows of identical cabinets, wooden benches placed in the aisles in between.

Ritsu was the only person there, reaching into a locker to pull out a duffel bag. He placed it on the bench behind him, balanced his gakuran and white sneakers on top, then bent down to unbuckle one of his patent shoes.

“Ritsu, I have to ask you something,” Shou blurted out.

Ritsu’s entire body jolted backwards. He ripped off the shoe, hurling it in the direction of Shou’s voice. With impressive precision, it hit Shou’s barrier with a loud clack, bounced off, and flew in an arch over his head, clattering onto the floor behind him.

“Ah, sorry,” Shou said, letting his form flicker back into view, “I just wanted to say, I’m sorry if I made you embarrassed or something. Or startled you, just now. Or—you know, I don’t care if you’re wearing a dress! Is that really what you’re so upset about?”

Ritsu looked completely bewildered. “How do you do that…?”

“What?” It took Shou a moment to realize he was probably talking about the invisibility. He held out his arm, letting it fade out of view for a second. “Just bending the light, see? It doesn’t matter—If you’re that scared of anyone seeing us together, you can just tell me to go home. You could just own up to it and tell me not to come here in the first place.”

There was no response from Ritsu apart from that confused, blank look in his eyes. Shou took a step back toward the door.

“Do you want me to leave?” he asked, grabbing the handle. “I’ll leave, Ritsu.”

He had to swallow the lump that had started to grow in his throat. Despite the staring, Ritsu was quiet. Shou pushed down the handle, stiffly turning toward the exit.

“Wait,” Ritsu said, shifting his weight forward to steer around the bench. “What about your math test?”

Shou’s fingers tightened around the door handle. “Why do you even care about that?”

Ritsu’s shoulders had tensed up. Even from across the room, Shou could tell his forehead was turning clammy with sweat.

“Because…”

As if he suddenly remembered he was still wearing it, Ritsu glanced down at his maid dress. He self-consciously crossed his arms over his middle.

“I wanted to ask you something, too,” he said. “Just not in this stupid outfit.”

Shou watched the single patent shoe Ritsu was still wearing. “Yeah, that’s… fair.” He bent down to pick up the other one, walking close enough to hold it out to Ritsu. “See you outside, I guess?”

Ritsu nodded, accepting the shoe. He let his arm drop to his side like it weighed a ton.

***

The times Shou had stalked after Ritsu on his way home from school, Ritsu had taken the broad, open path by the nearby canal, but today, he led them through a series of streets so narrow you couldn’t drive a car through them.

“Is he following you around all the time?” he asked, skittishly glancing over his shoulder. “That agent?”

After handing Shou his backpack with all the math tests, Okura had gone to fetch his minivan, letting them walk by themselves, but Ritsu acted like he was afraid the man would leap out of the bushes at any moment.

“Not all the time,” Shou replied. “Don’t worry about him, though. Okura’s cool.”

Ritsu gave him a narrow-eyed, sidelong glance. “You’ve told me not to trust the government.”

“Okura’s different, okay?” Shou said. “Do you think I’d bring him here if he wasn’t?”

Ritsu didn’t respond. He was just like Fukuda sometimes. Worrying too much.

“If you’re afraid they’ll notice your brother, honestly, it probably helps your case to have someone check in and see you guys acting like regular middle schoolers,” Shou said. “They already know you have powers. For all I know, they’ve background checked every single esper in Seasoning City, but your family’s flying so far under the radar they haven’t even bothered to talk to you, right?”

“Right,” Ritsu mumbled. His body language had closed in on himself, shutting everything out, but his aura was doing the opposite, swelling up around him again.

“You know what you should actually worry about?” Shou said. “Keeping your aura down. If someone who isn’t from the government comes looking for espers, they’ll spot you from a mile away.”

Ritsu frowned down at his hands, shimmering strands of purple and dark blue swirling around them.

“Ask your brother to teach you, he’s even better at it than my pops,” Shou said. “Anyway, hiding in plain sight’s your best option, but if anyone from the government does talk to you, you should still listen to Higashio,” he added. “Call one of us. Don’t try to handle it on your own.”

Honestly, Shou couldn’t guess what the government would do to Ritsu’s brother if they found out what he was capable of, but with the amount of time Nagata had poured into Shou’s case just because he was a minor, she’d probably do the same for him. It wasn’t like it was his fault Pops destroyed an entire district. It would’ve been a lot worse if he hadn’t stepped in.

“So, what was it you wanted to ask me about?” Shou said, stuffing his hands in his pockets.

Ritsu sullenly looked up from his palms, glancing at the broccoli in the distance. It was like no matter where you went in this city, it refused to go ignored.

“Do you ever have… nightmares?” he asked.

Shou couldn’t help but let out a snort. “Ritsu, I literally can’t sleep without getting nightmares. Why do you think I keep texting you at five in the morning?”

“No, but… are you okay with everything that happened?” Ritsu vaguely pointed his arm at the skyline. “There’s still a giant broccoli here and people have already stopped talking about where it came from. Nii-san hasn’t said a word about it, and I don’t know how to ask him. Dimple is barely around anymore, Teru-san is weird, and I’m not going to talk to Reigen.”

Ritsu’s shoulders slumped so much he had to hold on to the strap of his duffel bag to keep it from sliding off. Maybe it was unfair, thinking he was overreacting. He’d spent most of his life in this safe, unremarkable neighborhood with his safe, unremarkable parents. There was just a lot of stuff he didn’t know about.

“If you wanted to talk about that, why haven’t you said anything before?” Shou asked.

Ritsu gave him a flat, exasperated look. “For one, you’re not even answering the question.”

Shou frowned at him. “What do you want me to say? Of course I’m not okay with it.”

“But how am I supposed to know that?” Ritsu asked. “You talk about everything like it’s no big deal. There’s a—” he pointed frustratedly toward his school now, in the direction where they’d split up from Okura, “—there’s a government agent watching you! That’s the same people you said put your dad in some lab. And your dad—you stopped mentioning him after two days, I have no idea what you think about anything that’s going on, and every time I try to ask, you either change the subject or tell me to back off.”

It stung almost as much as when Ritsu told him to disappear. It wasn’t true. Shou had confided in him about several things that made him feel sick with nerves. Asking for help with the math thing. Or letting him know the fact that he couldn’t sleep. He didn’t talk to anyone else about that. He’d told Ritsu all kinds of stuff. Hadn’t he? He’d hinted at them at least.

“I don’t know how you’ve been,” Ritsu added. “I don’t even know what you do all day.”

A cold, paralyzing feeling Shou had become all too familiar with crept down his spine. The same one that seized him every time he considered calling Fukuda. The same one that returned every time his mother reminded him, wordlessly by now, that she didn’t know him. That even when he tried, it wasn’t good enough.

He wanted to talk to Ritsu. He really, really wanted someone to talk to who wasn’t decades older than him, or from the government, or who could never, ever know where he came from. He was so tired of lying and he’d have to do so much more of it once he started school, but what was he supposed to say? That he’d been butting heads with his mother until he made a serious decision to run away? That he’d met up with his father again? That he’d already been to Seasoning City once before, to talk to Minegishi of all people?

Minegishi. Not Ritsu. He really needed to get his priorities straight.

“I haven’t been doing anything interesting,” he mumbled awkwardly.

Ritsu sent him that mildly irritated look again. “What did you do yesterday?” he asked.

Shou could feel his face going red. Why did this keep happening? It wasn’t a weird question. People told each other what they’d been up to yesterday all the time.

“I guess I did… chores, mostly,” he said, dragging each word out from his throat. “Like, helped my mom, and uh…” All of this was so incredibly boring and unimportant. “I had to look at the other tests I was missing, and clean my hamster’s cage—”

“When did you get a hamster?” Ritsu interrupted him. The look on his face was strange; a mix between disbelief and disappointment.

Shou let out a weak laugh. “Who cares about my hamster?”

“Isn’t it a big thing to get a new pet?” Ritsu asked, looking increasingly confused.

“She’s not new,” Shou said. “I’ve had her for half a year.”

That only spurred more questions from Ritsu. He seemed genuinely interested. Maybe this was something they could talk about. A safe topic.

As Ritsu turned down a street Shou actually recognized, Shou indulged him, spending the rest of the walk talking about the lady who abandoned Nezumi, about spending a whole day convincing Fukuda they should keep her, and all the facts he’d learned while reading up on hamsters, because no animal left to die like that deserved any less than the best of care.

Somehow, all of it made Shou feel a little lighter. At least until they made it to Ritsu’s house. While Ritsu pushed the metal gate open, Shou peered up at the small window to his brother’s room. The lights weren’t on. Maybe he wasn’t home yet. Maybe he was downstairs. He could be anywhere; it was impossible to detect his presence.

Ritsu opened the front door, crying out a half-hearted, “I’m home,” as he slipped off his shoes in the genkan.

Shou followed his example, carefully placing his sneakers so they faced the door, quietly placing his backpack down by the wall next to them. When he looked up, Ritsu’s father had poked his head around the doorway to the kitchen, smiling at them both.

“Ah, I was wondering when they’d let you leave the school,” he said brightly.

Shou wasn’t sure what to make of the way Ritsu’s father’s smile dwindled as he came closer. Ritsu had told his parents Shou set their house on fire. A much less dramatic fire than the actual one, but still. He took half a step backward, fixing his eyes on the man’s worn-out slippers as he waited for whatever inevitable, scathing comments he’d make.

Ritsu’s father took in a breath, and Shou stiffly ducked his head, bowing just as deeply as Fukuda always did when he’d messed something up. “I’m really sorry about your house,” he said. “It won’t happen again!”

Ritsu’s father flusteredly flailed his hands. “No, no, I think you have more important things to worry about.”

Yeah, like Ritsu’s brother. Like everything he’d actually done to this family.

“Suzuki-kun, please come in,” Ritsu’s mother said. Shou could see her legs as she stopped next to her husband, sounding a lot more composed than him. “Ritsu told us your father passed away. We’re just glad if we can make things a little easier for you.”

Cautiously, Shou straightened up, sending Ritsu a befuddled glance. Ritsu gave a little shrug, staring down at his socks. At some point since Shou scolded him for it, he’d made the effort to fix the bullshit cover story he’d told his parents.

“I’ll take my things upstairs,” Ritsu mumbled, avoiding eye contact as he quickly headed for the staircase.

“Ritsu, you can’t leave your guest like that,” his mother chided him, but he’d already hauled off with the duffel bag, likely intending to shove both that and the maid outfit inside into the darkest corner of his room.

With a sigh, Ritsu’s mother waved for Shou to follow her. In the kitchen, all the utensils, memo notes on the fridge, and picture frames on the walls had returned since the last time Shou saw the room. His eyes lingered on the stove that had replaced the identical one he’d short-circuited a month earlier. A pair of steaming pots sat on top, puffs of vapor escaping through the open window.

Ritsu’s father pulled out a chair for Shou by their dinner table, waiting for him to sit. “I can’t remember the last time Ritsu brought a friend home,” he said. “He’s always so wrapped up in his school work.”

“There’s nothing wrong with focusing on school, but yes, it’s good to have you here,” Ritsu’s mother said, smiling at Shou over the counter that divided the kitchen and living room.

Shou gave her an awkward, stilted smile in return. He sat down, brushing his fingers over the edge of the dinner table. It was a simple design—probably among the furniture Higashio had recreated from scratch.

Ritsu’s father made small talk, asking Shou about Sturgeon Bay and his mother and the prospect of starting at a new school, conveniently avoiding any talk about his presumably deceased father.

He was nice. The kind of father Shou had gathered most people had. Kind of like Okura, except Ritsu’s father wasn’t even an esper, and yet he didn’t treat Shou like there was anything unusual about him at all.

“Look who cared to join us,” he exclaimed once Ritsu finally came back.

Ritsu had exchanged his gakuran for a pair of washed-out sweatpants and a simple shirt, like he was distancing himself as much as possible from the school day he’d just endured. He still seemed embarrassed as his mother questioned him about the festival and his father apologized they hadn’t had time to drop by.

Shou kept glancing at the door to the hallway while they talked. Once everyone had gathered around the table for dinner, he realized they’d given him the only free chair.

“Isn’t your brother coming?” he whispered to Ritsu.

“Shige is having dinner with his friends,” Ritsu’s mother replied. “Don’t worry, you aren’t taking his seat.”

Maybe he should be relieved, but all Shou felt was disappointment. He’d been steeling himself for nothing. He just wanted the chance to ask Ritsu’s brother how he really felt. Why he was acting like he wasn’t angry. If he wasn’t angry, what was he? You couldn’t move on from something like that like it was nothing.

Ritsu’s father laughed as he talked about some family member of theirs. It was a muddled drone in Shou’s ears. He glanced around the Kageyamas’ living room, taking in the family photographs, potted plants, and mismatched knick-knacks; none of it something Higashio could easily replace. Maybe Ootsuki had packed them away, Shou didn’t remember.

His eyes landed on the stove again. Shou hadn’t stuck around for long after it caught on fire, only until the flames reached the curtains on the other side of the counter and he felt sure it would spread to the second floor.

He flinched slightly when Ritsu reached over him, grabbing a pitcher from the far end of the table. Their eyes met for a second, Ritsu fixing him with a bemused, questioning frown before he poured himself a glass of water. He’d rolled his sleeve up to his elbow, exposing his very normal, smooth skin. Nothing like the lumpy texture of the dummy Higashio had rushed to make in his image.

“Suzuki-kun, are you feeling ill?” Ritsu’s mother asked. “You look a little pale.”

She had placed a bowl of nikujaga in front of him. He hadn’t even noticed.

“Sorry,” he mumbled. “It looks good, I’m just… not hungry.”

Ritsu’s mother looked concerned, but she didn’t press him about it. “Alright, you just eat what you can,” she said.

The rest of the dinner conversation felt halting and awkward, but Shou wasn’t really listening. When Ritsu’s parents started clearing the table, Ritsu nudged his shoulder, instructing him to go upstairs. Shou obliged, leaving the kitchen to scale the stairs in the hallway.

Ritsu’s and his brother’s bedrooms were right next to each other. Shou lingered in front of them, watching the section of the empty, wooden floor he could see through the half-open entrance to Ritsu’s brother’s room. He swallowed, wrapping his fingers around the handle of Ritsu’s door.

Inside, the room looked just like before the fire; the same books meticulously sorted on the bookshelves, the same poster board and school supplies by the desk. Shou dropped onto Ritsu’s office chair, swiveling it so he could peer out the large balcony window. When he leaned forward, he could see Okura’s car, parked on the street in front of the house.

A few minutes later, he could hear Ritsu trot up the stairs. He came in with Shou’s backpack slung over his shoulder and his still full bowl in his hand. He nudged the door with his elbow, letting it shut behind him before he set the bowl down next to Shou with a soft clack, placing a pair of chopsticks on top.

“In case you get hungry,” he explained.

He lingered for a moment, watching the ancient flip-phone he’d left on the desk.

“I’m sorry about earlier,” he said, gesturing at it vaguely. “I didn’t see that you tried to text me.”

He scratched the back of his neck, avoidantly letting his focus shift to the carpet.

“I was just… Everyone’s going to ask about you,” he said. “I don’t really know what to say.”

Shou shrugged. He didn’t really know either.

Ritsu sat down on his bed, dropping the backpack on the floor between them, staring at that instead. The silence made the hairs on Shou’s arms stand on end.

“Is uh…” With the door closed, the otherwise spacious room was feeling very claustrophobic. Shou’s leg was bouncing restlessly. “Is your brother coming home later?”

Ritsu raised an eyebrow. “Yeah. Why?”

“He knew I was coming here, right?” Shou asked. “He hasn’t, like, said anything?”

“Said anything about what?”

Shou bent over, hiding his face in his hands. “Why isn’t he mad at me?” he asked, voice strained. “I don’t get it. How can he not be?”

“Is it about the fire again?” Ritsu asked. “You already fixed that.”

He hadn’t told Ritsu? Hadn’t he talked to anyone about it at all? It made no sense; nobody was that nice and forgiving. But of course—what else would’ve kept Ritsu from throwing a fit? He hadn’t said a word about it either.

Ritsu didn’t know. He didn’t know, and unless Shou wanted to sit there and lie again, he’d have to tell him to his face.

He didn’t want to lie anymore. Not to him.

When Shou raised his head, Ritsu had stood up from the bed, his fingers curled into fists.

“What did you do?” he asked.

He sounded just like Mom, clearly catching on to the fact that whatever it was, it was bad.

Shou raked his fingers through his hair. “Okay, so, you know when I set your house on fire, the whole point was to piss your brother off?” he started. “Really, really piss him off. I mean, the entire plan depended on him at least taking a couple of the Super Five—”

“Suzuki,” Ritsu pressed him.

Shou jammed his eyes shut and decided to get it over with as fast as possible: “I told Higashio to make copies of you and your parents, and then I set them on fire so your brother would come home and think you burned to death so he’d be upset and flip out and destroy everyone in his way.”

“What?” Ritsu stared at him like he didn’t even understand what he’d said.

Shou breathed out a small, nervous laugh. “Yeah, pretty fucked up plan, but it worked, ri—”

Ritsu pushed him so hard he nearly fell off the chair.

“You made him think we were dead?” Ritsu had raised his voice enough that Shou was worried his parents would hear it from downstairs. “He’s my brother, he’s not a weapon!”

Shou clutched the shoulder where Ritsu had pushed him, rolling the chair out of reach. “It was only because that’s how his powers work! You gotta rile him up or he’ll try to reason his way out of everything. Even when he was facing off against my pops, he only started fighting back ‘cause Reigen almost fucking died.”

“He’s—” Ritsu had raised one fist like he was about to deck Shou in the face, but now it unfurled. “But there’s no way he saw,” he said, retracting his arm. “There… There can’t be. He probably saw the fire and knew he had to leave.”

Somehow, Shou had never considered that option. What if he genuinely didn’t? They’d put the dummies on the second floor so nobody else would see them through the windows and bring even more emergency personnel into the situation, and the fire must’ve been at full blaze once Ritsu’s brother showed up.

“Yeah,” Shou said, straightening up. “That’s gotta be it! I know he was all out of it, but didn’t you talk about the fire after you got home? He would’ve mentioned it if he saw.”

Slowly, Ritsu’s eyes drifted to the carpet, unfocused and vacant. His arm had gone limp at his side.

“What, you didn’t talk about that either?” Shou asked, squinting at him.

Ritsu took a step backward. His bed creaked slightly as he sat back down.

“He isn’t angry?” he asked, quiet and hollow.

“I don’t know, that’s why I asked,” Shou said. “He showed up in the tower when I was trying to beat up my pops, and the first thing he said to me was that he wasn’t mad anymore, like he was feeling sorry for me or some shit.”

Ritsu primly folded his hands on his knees. “If Nii-san isn’t angry, then I won’t be, either,” he said. “It was a catastrophic situation and you were doing what you could to minimize the damage.”

Shou stared at him in disbelief. “You people are so fucking weird.”

Ritsu just sat there, silent and unresponsive. Shou’s leg started bouncing again, his hands clasping the edge of the chair.

“Seriously, I’m sorry,” he said. “It was messed up. We had to buy three pigs—” He probably shouldn’t mention that. “—Maybe I could’ve just asked you to—”

“We never talk about anything,” Ritsu said, interrupting him. “That’s how he is. He forgives people and goes on like nothing happened. It’s not just you.”

He turned his head, glancing out his window. Even out here with the sun long set, you could still see the top of the broccoli, lit from below by the streetlights at the heart of the city.

“I get it, you know,” Ritsu continued. “I challenged him once, right after I found out I was an esper. My whole life, I’d been trying so hard to have that one thing in common with him, but when it finally happened, it didn’t matter if we both had powers. There’s no way to be on equal ground with him.”

He unfolded his hands, gaze leaving the window to focus on the faded fabric of his sweatpants.

“I was so awful,” he said. “Before we ended up at that Claw base, I wasted my powers beating up school bullies. Still, when he found out, all he told me was that he was proud of me. I don’t even know what he meant. He gave me a hug later and we never talked about it again.”

Ritsu shrugged, the motion barely noticeable.

“It doesn’t matter if you understand. I was miserable and he made me feel like I didn’t have to be like that anymore. Just like everyone else he’s ever forgiven.” He looked up, his eyes meeting Shou’s. “Isn’t that why you’re so hung up on apologizing? Because you want to do better, too?”

Shou frowned at him, mouth opening even though he didn’t know how to respond. Everything Ritsu just said sounded disturbingly submissive. Even worse than how he’d acted at Division Seven.

“How many times do I have to tell you, he’s not better than you,” Shou said. “You’re talking like he’s never been wrong about anything in his life.”

“He hasn’t,” Ritsu replied like it was a simple fact of nature. “If he forgives you, take it and move on.”

With a quick motion, he snatched Shou’s backpack from the floor, curtly unzipping the main compartment to pull out the crumpled math worksheets Shou had brought.

“It’s these?” he asked, giving the first one a cursory glance.

Shou watched the papers blankly. “You can’t change the subject like that. Didn’t you wanna talk?”

“I just talked.” Ritsu brushed his messy hair out of his face and flipped through the rest of the pages. “You came here to do math, so let’s do math.”

He dropped the tests on the floor and sat down on his knees, spreading them out on the carpet so both he and Shou could read the problems. Shou hesitantly knelt down next to him.

“This is pretty different from strategizing about how to fight a bunch of Scars, huh?” he mumbled.

Ritsu didn’t reply, but despite how off he was acting, he was clearly in his right element here. Shou watched with quiet fascination as he dug around in the backpack for a pencil, then crossed out one of the few solutions Shou had attempted to complete like a practiced executioner, writing the correct answer below in bold strokes. The task seemed to calm him down. At least he stopped wielding the pencil like he intended to stab a hole in the paper.

Out of the few, supposedly simple multiplication problems Shou had completed, Ritsu informed him only one was correct. It got exponentially worse when he began explaining the many, many things Shou hadn’t yet attempted, until, after an hour of breaking down what was apparently basic knowledge about solving equations, Ritsu looked at him the exact same way Fukuda had, right before he stopped talking about equations ever again.

“Suzuki, what’s one-hundred-and-twenty times three?” he asked with the authority of a drill sergeant.

Shou’s hands were clammy. He flexed his fingers slightly, trying to count on them without making it too obvious. Math had rules, he knew it was a really simple question, he just couldn’t keep those two numbers in his mind at the same time.

“Three-hundred-and… thirty?”

He knew it was wrong. He wanted to give up; it was ridiculous for Ritsu to waste his time on this.

“No, it’s one-hundred-and-twenty, so three-hundred-and…?” Ritsu prompted.

“...sixty?”

Ritsu nodded distractedly, and it felt like a ton of weight lifted from Shou’s chest.

“Can I borrow your phone for a minute?” Ritsu asked, holding out his hand.

Hesitantly, Shou unlocked the screen for him, handing him the smartphone. A weird flutter had replaced his initial dread. Maybe the ability to forgive completely insane things just ran in the family—Even if Ritsu insisted he wasn’t angry, Shou had just told him he faked his death in one of the most underhanded moves he’d ever made, but he still hadn’t given up or laughed at Shou or told him he was an idiot.

“Let’s go through these questions real quick,” Ritsu said, skimming through something with a deep, concentrated frown. “Can you read analog clocks?”

Shou made a face at him. “Yeah, I’m not three years old.”

Nevermind that he hadn’t reliably been able to tell the time until after his mother left and he had to take care of such things himself. Nevermind that he repeatedly had to double-check as it was now.

“So you wouldn’t say you easily lose track of time?” Ritsu asked.

“I don’t know.” Shou picked at the hem of his shirt, thinking back on all the times he’d messed up Higashio’s sometimes carefully timed instructions. “Maybe I’m not great at it…”

“Do you have trouble handling money? Like adding up how many coins you need to pay for something?”

“I just give the coins to the cashier and let them handle it, doesn’t everyone do that?” Shou asked. “You can’t expect me to count all that, I’d have to stand there forever. It stresses me out.”

Ritsu faltered at the next one. “Trouble understanding… maps.”

He already knew Shou couldn’t read a map to save his life. They had to consult a bunch of them while planning how to reach the Culture Tower and Ritsu had to take over because Shou was making himself sound like an idiot for even trying.

Ritsu continued frowning at the phone, a tense draw to his mouth like he had to break the news that Shou had terminal cancer.

“Are you diagnosing me with something?” Shou asked. He really was irreparably stupid.

“I know there’s this thing called dyscalculia,” Ritsu said. “It’s a bit like dyslexia, except—”

Shou stared at him blankly.

“You know, dyslexia?”

Shou didn’t know what that meant, and he didn’t like the way Ritsu squinted at him like the fact that he didn’t know was absurd.

“Nevermind,” Ritsu said. “I think you should ask your teachers about it. They’ll know how to help better than I do.”

“So you’re giving up on me?” Shou mumbled.

Ritsu let out an irritated sigh. “That’s not what I meant. I can’t say if you have this, but I think it’s harder for you than most people. Everyone has something they’re bad at.”

“You don’t,” Shou shrugged. “Don’t you get straight A’s in all your classes?”

“I just told you earlier—” Ritsu stopped himself, gritting his teeth. “There’s a lot of things I’m bad at,” he insisted, handing Shou’s phone back. “I’m still mediocre at using my powers, I stress over stupid things all the time, I’m not good at getting to know people—”

Despite how annoyed he sounded, he kept listing all his completely inconsequential failings like he just wanted Shou to feel better, and out of nowhere, a set of words fell out of Shou’s mouth like they always seemed to do when they were together:

“Ritsu, are we friends?”

Ritsu stopped talking, his frustrated frown first turning into a baffled expression, then a pensive one, like he was considering it properly.

“I’ve just been thinking about it a lot,” Shou said, idly twirling his phone before he stuffed it in his pocket. “You know, being friends. What it means, I guess.” He scratched his hair, unsure how to phrase what he meant to say. “I think… If someone wants to help even though they don’t have to, and if they don’t stop caring even when you make mistakes or you’re kinda dumb sometimes, then you know they’re your friend.”

He remembered Okura’s definition. It was pretty good, too.

“And if you feel better when you’re around them,” Shou added. “I mean… I definitely feel better when I’m around you.”

Ritsu blinked, his eyes even darker than usual. Sometimes he was just as hard to read as his brother, but there was nothing visibly positive about the response. Shou’s face fell. He reached for the closest of the math worksheets, all scribbled in Ritsu’s sharp handwriting.

“Again, if you want me to leave, just say so,” he said, picking up the test. “I hate when people don’t say what they mean.”

Ritsu watched from underneath his bangs as Shou gathered the papers in a small, rumpled stack and stuffed them back in the backpack.

“I don’t want you to leave,” he said suddenly.

Shou zipped up the bag. “If you weren’t so obsessed with what your brother thinks, you would’ve kicked me out.”

“But…” Ritsu followed Shou’s movements with his eyes as he pulled one strap of the backpack over his shoulder. “I’ve never told anyone else. About Nii-san… And what I did.”

Shou tilted his head a fraction. “No one?”

Ritsu shook his head.

“But you’re okay telling me?”

After a long, tense pause, Ritsu nodded.

Shou let the strap of his bag slide down his arm until it fell to the floor, all the worry and frustration he’d built up over the day evaporating so fast it left him lightheaded.

“If we aren’t friends, then I think we should be,” Ritsu concluded, looking really serious.

“Nice!” Shou blurted out. He dropped back onto his knees next to Ritsu, the grin on his face growing at a rate that was out of his control.

“But don’t tell me to shut up again when I ask you something,” Ritsu added, leaning away slightly.

“Yeah,” Shou nodded fervently. “Yeah, I promise. I swear, I’m trying to get better at it. Honestly, so many things happened since I moved in with my mom, I don’t know why I get all weird trying to talk about it. Like, I was really nervous about this education stuff, but now you’re saying I’ll be okay, and I was hanging out with three of the girls from my new school, it was actually really fun, I think maybe they’re my friends too.”

Of course, none of the girls could compare to Ritsu, but that was what they were, right? Friends. Regular friends his own age who’d never been forced to work for him and who had nothing to do with Claw, or the government, or anything like that. Who made him feel better.

Ritsu looked at him uncertainly, waiting for him to go on. “Okay…?”

“I didn’t know about everything they talked about, but I think we got along,” Shou continued. “One of them’s an esper and she was just like, staring at me all night and I was thinking what’s her problem, but then I found out she’s never even met another esper before, so I promised to help her find out what her power is because she’s got no clue how it works—”

None of this had anything to do with Ritsu, but now that he’d started talking about it, it seemed impossible to stop. He felt short of breath, yet more words kept flooding out of his mouth too fast to stop them.

“—and we were drinking, ‘cause Yuka, that’s one of them, brought like ten bottles of booze, I’ve never seen anyone her size drink that much, but anyway, Himiko, who’s the one who introduced me to the others because her mom knows my mom, is like, super annoying, and then she got even more annoying ‘cause she was drunk, don’t ever get drunk by the way Ritsu, it fucking sucks, and she practically broke in through my window in the middle of the night and fell asleep on my bed and then my mom found her and freaked out ‘cause it’s really inappropriate to let a girl sleep on your bed or whatever, but I guess Himiko actually felt bad since we were playing truth or dare—Do you know truth or dare?”

Shou paused long enough for Ritsu to reply with a bewildered, “I think so?”

“Okay, we were playing truth or dare, so Himiko dared Satsune, the esper girl, to kiss me, and then she did even though she didn’t want to, it was really weird, and Himiko’s acting like Satsune has a crush on me or something, even though Satsune told me she doesn’t, but I still can’t stop thinking about it, because isn’t kissing someone supposed to be special?”

He finally seemed to have run out of steam, arriving at that one question.

“Isn’t it supposed to be a big deal?” he asked. “I mean, I’d never kissed anyone before. Have you kissed anyone before?”

Ritsu looked very lost. A drop of sweat was trickling down from underneath his dark bangs.

“Um, no,” he said. His eyes flickered skittishly to the floor as he seemed to think about it, actually taking the question seriously. “I guess it’s only special if you already like the person who’s kissing you. Otherwise, aren’t they just… touching your face with their face?”

It was addicting. The fact that Shou could tell Ritsu every stupid thing he’d been worrying about and actually have him listen and reply like it was something worth considering. He liked Ritsu so much it kind of hurt. He wanted to give him a hug—what was up with this fixation on hugging people all of a sudden—he just wanted—there was this urge to tackle him and hold on until some of whatever this feeling was bled over and Ritsu would understand.

Was this what people meant when they talked about having a crush? He’d definitely never felt this way about anyone else—this overwhelming relief that he didn’t have to pretend or carefully weigh his every word or worry for his safety in any way. Ritsu was still sitting there trying to answer his questions. Ritsu just said he trusted him. Shou trusted him too, and he didn’t even feel the need to tell himself it was rash or stupid to do so, because it wasn’t. Ritsu was someone worth trusting.

Without thinking, Shou shuffled his legs until they were fully facing each other, his knees bumping into Ritsu’s. “Can I try something?”

An uncertain frown pulled at Ritsu’s lips. “Try what?”

Carefully, Shou placed his hands on Ritsu’s rigid shoulders and Ritsu just sat stock still and let him do it. Shou tried to keep eye contact while he slowly leaned forward, but it was difficult when Ritsu’s gaze flickered first to his mouth, then to the door, then to nothing as an unfocused, far-away look clouded his eyes.

Shou remembered to tilt his head to the side before he pressed his lips against Ritsu’s. Ritsu took in a weird, sharp breath through his nose, leaning backward at an increasingly sharp angle like he intended to limbo his way out of the situation.

Shou huffed a laugh into his face, twisting his head away. “No, it’s still weird when it’s you.”

He let his hands slide off Ritsu’s shoulders and sat back on his haunches, but Ritsu stayed hunched over, practically flattening himself against the floor like a spooked rabbit. He stared at Shou with eyes even darker and more detached than usual. His forehead was glistening with sweat, one drop painting a slow line from his temple to his jawline.

“Um,” Shou said. He raised himself up on his knees, withdrawing from Ritsu’s personal space. “I didn’t mean anything by it, it just—”

Ritsu abruptly got up and marched to the door, his aura strange and sharp with anxiety. Shou sprung to his feet, following as he rushed into the hallway, turned, and walked the three steps to his brother’s door.

“Look, I’m sorry,” Shou called after him. “I just—”

Ritsu slammed the door in his face so hard the frame rattled. Shou didn’t even have time to consider what to do before Ritsu’s mother called out from the bottom of the stairs.

“Are you boys alright?”

“Uh, yeah,” Shou yelled back.

What had he been thinking? He’d just done the same thing Satsune did to him: given Ritsu his first kiss when he wasn’t prepared for it at all. Ritsu had just said they were friends; maybe it was special to him. He’d expected Shou to come here with his math questions and now Shou was dumping all this shit on him like some kind of asshole, and who knew how many other wildly inappropriate lines he’d crossed in the last few minutes.

He darted back to Ritsu’s room to throw the rest of his belongings into his backpack. He could hear Ritsu’s mother walking up the stairs as he quickly searched the floor for anything he’d missed, then grabbed the bowl of nikujaga on the desk and turned on his heel.

“Thank you for the food, Kageyama-san,” he rushed to say, handing Ritsu’s mother the bowl right as she made it up the last step. He bowed again before hurrying past her. “I’m gonna head home, I’m still feeling weird.”

Ritsu’s mother stared after him, turning to follow him back down. “Do you want me to call your mother?”

“No, I’m good.” Shou quickly grabbed his jacket and slipped on his sneakers, then shoved the front door open. “Thank you for everything, you guys are really nice, bye!”

He didn’t give her a chance to reply before he rushed to the gate and barged out onto the street.

Okura seemed a little startled as Shou ripped the door to his car open and shoved both his overcoat and a collection of leftover food wrappers out of the passenger seat so he could get in beside him.

“What are you in such a hurry for?” he asked, transferring everything Shou had pushed onto the floor to the backseat. “We can stay for a couple more hours.”

Shou frantically shook his head. “No, just go.”

Okura frowned at him for a bit, but he must truly be some kind of saint because he didn’t ask questions, just made sure Shou put on his seatbelt and then started the car.

Everything had been turning out okay and then Shou had gone and ruined it. He didn’t know what was wrong with him; he never dumped all his thoughts on anyone like that or spontaneously touched people with his lips or any other body part unless he was in the process of beating them up. He didn’t do that!

Even though Okura had the courtesy to leave him alone, the trip back to Sturgeon Bay was agonizing. It was even worse once he got to Mom’s house—she spent half an hour trying to force it out of him why he was upset before he managed to shut her out of the office where he could be mortified in peace.

What had he done? He’d never be able to talk to Ritsu again. He’d already been on thin ice before, what wasn’t Ritsu thinking now?

He curled up on his bed, clutching his phone. If he didn’t talk to somebody about this, he’d blow up, so he clumsily typed out a message and sent it to Ootsuki. He’d be awake. He wouldn’t be weird about it.

Shou
I kissed ritsu

Ootsuki didn’t reply.

He wouldn’t be weird about it. He wouldn’t, right? Shou had asked him stuff before, he never made a big deal out of it. He just hadn’t noticed the text, or he’d gone to bed early for once, or—

Shou nearly dropped the phone when it finally vibrated.

Ootsuki
Okay? Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

He was supposed to tell Shou that.

Shou
I dont know

Shou
I dont know why i did it i dont think he liked it

Ootsuki hated texting when it was about something serious, so it came as no surprise that he called a moment later. Except it was a video call. He didn’t usually do that.

Not until Ootsuki’s face showed up on the screen did Shou realize it felt like an eternity since he’d last seen him. He looked… tired. His hair was longer, or maybe it just appeared that way because of how flat and dull it was. He hadn’t tied it up.

“Hey, I just have to see your face so I can judge if it's a good or a bad thing,” he explained in a flat, raspy voice.

He raised his chin a little, studying Shou with exaggerated scrutiny, but quickly dropped it when Shou only stared at him desperately.

“Honestly, you look kinda miserable,” he said.

“I didn't mean anything by it, I just wanted to see what would happen,” Shou said.

“Yeah, well…” Ootsuki shrugged indifferently. “Nobody knows what they’re doing when they’re fourteen. Just tell him what you're telling me. Get it over with before either of you can think about it too much.”

Considering how badly Ritsu had freaked out, Shou doubted it’d help to contact him anytime soon.

He really must look miserable, because Ootsuki made a soft noise, tilting his head to the side. “Shou, come on. I know I’ve barely talked to him, but Ritsu didn’t exactly seem like the most easy-going person. If he literally let you get up in his face and kiss him, he can’t be entirely put off by you.”

Shou hated having to do this over the phone. He hadn’t even known how much he missed talking to Ootsuki in person. He could be mean and spiteful, but he was never awkward talking about things like this. Feelings and stuff.

Ootsuki pressed his lips together like there was something he didn’t quite want to say. “Did something else happen?” he asked. “Why are you thinking about this so much all of a sudden?”

Why was he thinking so much about this?

“Remember that girl who was sleeping on my bed that night when I was really drunk?” Shou asked.

“Mhmm…” Ootsuki’s mouth was still set in an apprehensive line.

“She asked me if I’d ever had a crush on anyone and then she acted like it was super weird I haven’t. Even my mom was… I mean… I don't know. Apparently, everyone just talks about this stuff a lot.”

“Did that girl talk you into getting drunk?” Ootsuki asked, weirdly serious.

“Not really?” Shou thought back on how Himiko would heckle him every time he didn’t drink. “Maybe a little.”

“Don’t let anyone talk you into stuff you don’t want to do,” Ootsuki said. It was strange hearing him sound so strict. “It doesn’t matter how weird they think you are, people are gonna take advantage of you if you try too hard to fit in. Trust me, I had to switch schools a lot of times.”

“But I probably have to stay here for at least three years,” Shou countered. “I don’t want everyone treating me like some alien who doesn’t know how to do anything.”

Ootsuki had fallen quiet, head bowed like he was thinking hard about something. He brushed a lock of his strangely lifeless hair behind his ear.

“You can ask me anything, you know that, right?” he said. “But… I don’t think you want my advice on sticking with anything for very long.” He breathed out a weak, humorless laugh. “If you can’t talk to your mom about it, call Higashio or something.”

Shou made a face at him like he’d gone insane. “First of all, no way, and second, don’t you hate Higashio now? Why do you keep talking about him? Did you actually call him?”

Ootsuki didn’t reply. The lock of hair had fallen to cover the side of his face again. He irritably pushed it away while he put down his phone, propping it up on something in front of him. He leaned to the side, reaching for a hairband to tie it into a sloppy ponytail.

Shou didn’t know how he hadn’t noticed until now, but he could clearly see the yellow and purple splotches of a big, fading bruise blemish the skin around Ootsuki’s jaw.

“What happened to your face?” Shou asked.

Ootsuki faltered, slowly lowering his arms. “Don’t worry about it.”

“No, seriously, did you get in a fight?” Shou asked. “Did somebody jump you? Back when I talked to Minegishi, he said—”

“I said don’t worry about it,” Ootsuki repeated, suddenly guarded and hostile. “Just because you come to me with your inane fucking drama doesn’t mean I have to pour my heart out to a whiny, clueless teenager.”

It had been a long time since he’d snapped at Shou like that. Actually, it had been Shou’s impression he hadn’t snapped at anyone at all since he went to visit his foster parents.

It dawned on him that he wasn’t even sure where Ootsuki was. There were no hints to find on the plain, white wall behind him.

“Yo, do you need help?” Shou asked. “Is that why you wanted to talk to Higashio? I didn’t—”

Ootsuki abruptly hung up on him. Shou stared at his reflection on the screen of his phone. Something was really wrong. No matter how moody and irrational Higashio always said Ootsuki was, he never lashed out for no reason.

He and Ootsuki had been texting each other every day at first. Checking in, keeping each other’s spirits up. Ootsuki had been easy to get a hold of, but in the last week, his replies had been sparing and curt.

Shou had been so busy with the new people in his life that he hadn’t even paid attention. What good was it to make new friends if it meant he couldn’t keep up with the ones he already had?

Chapter Text

Something was up with Ootsuki.

Something was up with him, and he wouldn’t tell Shou what it was. He straight up didn’t reply anymore, not even to be mean. He never passed up an opportunity to be mean when he got like this.

Shou kept replaying the conversation they’d had on the phone in his mind, searching for anything he might’ve said to set Ootsuki off. Maybe it had nothing to do with him. Ootsuki hadn’t mentioned his parents or his sister or any of those people in a while; maybe they were the cause? Or maybe it was both. It was probably both—after all, Shou kept pissing everyone off with the most ridiculous, tone-deaf actions possible.

That’s what he’d done to Ritsu, too. He hadn’t heard a word from him either, and Shou was apparently too much of a coward to break the ice. Get it over with and tell Ritsu he hadn’t meant anything by it when he had the horrible idea to kiss him out of nowhere.

Shou was a fucking coward. He couldn’t even do the responsible thing and call Higashio to ask if Ootsuki had talked to him. Just because he didn’t know how Higashio would react. If he was angry at Shou too, for dropping all contact with him, or for ignoring Fukuda for a month.

“I’m impressed with all the work you put into this,” Miyagi said.

Shou’s head snapped up. On the other side of the teacher’s desk, Miyagi put down the last of the tests he’d completed, adding it to the stack of papers in front of her.

“You are?” Shou asked.

Miyagi nodded, tucking her mousy-brown hair behind her ears. “It looks like you’ve been introduced to most of what we’re focusing on this term. I hope I made it clear I didn’t expect you to fill these out, but it’s great you took the time to do it,” she said. “It’s a good starting point for your other teachers as well.”

A quiet relief settled in Shou’s chest. He’d worried about this, too, but maybe he shouldn’t have. Fukuda rarely wavered once he’d really set his mind to something. He’d decided to teach Shou an entire middle school curriculum on his own, and apparently, he’d succeeded.

Well, mostly succeeded.

“You skipped a few parts,” Miyagi noted. She pushed up her glasses, the pen in her hand skirting over the notes Ritsu had written here and there. “The math assignments in particular. I can see someone tried to help you with them, but you’ve barely solved any of the problems. Did you run out of time, or were they giving you trouble?”

Her voice was so soft. Disarming. Made you want to tell the truth.

“I tried,” Shou said. “I just…”

“Do you not know how to solve them, or is it the numbers?” Miyagi asked, immediately zeroing in on the problem.

“Both?” Shou said, fidgeting with the jacket in his lap. “It’s like… half the time, I can’t even read them right.”

Miyagi gave an understanding hum. “I can ask your math teacher to talk to you about it. Some people just have trouble wrapping their heads around numbers. It’s more common than you’d think.”

It was the same thing Ritsu had told him. She didn’t even say it like it was a big problem, just moved on, offering him a kind smile. “Are you ready for tomorrow?”

Shou glanced around the classroom he’d been assigned to, yellow-tinted wallpaper underneath handmade posters, the cracked window sills framing the view of the barren soccer field out back.

On the blackboard behind Miyagi, the chalk portrait Himiko had scrawled was long gone. It’d been a nice enough place to hang out for an evening while she and Yuka and Satsune had been there. Spending five days a week with people Shou knew he’d have nothing in common with was very different.

“Sure,” he replied. He was not ready for tomorrow.

Miyagi showed him around the school like she’d promised. Shou absentmindedly nodded along to her explanations as he followed her through the empty hallways, not mentioning that Himiko had already introduced him to most of it.

If something had happened with Ootsuki’s parents, or his sister, or any of the other people he’d talked about, if he’d gotten into a fight with them or something, did he have somewhere else to go?

He was still thinking about it when Miyagi let him leave. He pushed open the door to the courtyard, zipping up his jacket. The school grounds felt somber and strange with no one else there. The lights from the entrance could only reach so far, and the street lamp outside the gate had broken, leaving a black void in the middle, only a set of bicycle sheds sticking up from the darkness.

Leaning on one of the gate pillars, Okura stood with his side turned, his phone lighting up his face. Contrasted by his black suit, it looked strangely disembodied, floating there like some evil spirit. Shou had tried to shake him off on the way here, but you had to hand it to the man, he was persistent.

Okura raised first his head, then his hand, greeting Shou with a little wave. “How did it go?” he asked.

Shou crossed the courtyard void, giving Okura a wide berth as he continued out onto the street, focusing intently on the potholes in the asphalt. Behind him, the light from Okura’s phone switched off. He started walking, too, the gravel crunching under his shoes.

“You stalked off before I could tell you goodbye,” Okura said, keeping a little distance between them.

Why did he care? Nagata had only assigned him to stay until Shou started school, this was over with. It was obvious how much he’d missed his family. Shou had overheard him talking to his wife or his kids nearly every day. He’d bet money it was what he’d been doing right now.

Shou shouldn’t care either, but the closer they got to Mom’s house, the more terrifying was the realization that they had to go through some kind of farewell before Okura would get on with it and leave.

“Shou-kun, will you listen to me for a minute?” Okura asked, stopping between his minivan and Mom’s house.

Shou’s face was well on its way to turning beet red. He didn’t know why this kept happening; Okura hadn’t even touched him this time. He’d barely said anything. Shou had to get it together.

He held his breath, turning just enough to see Okura from the corner of his eye. He stood there with his hands resting in the pockets of his slacks like this was a perfectly casual situation.

“You’ll be okay,” Okura said, giving him a reassuring smile. “It’s normal to be nervous. I don’t think anyone in history has enrolled at a new school without feeling at least a little nervous.”

Why did he have to be like that? So absurdly nice and understanding.

“Goodbye for now,” Okura said, taking a step toward his car. “If you feel like things are going awry, call Nagata. I know she can be strict, and she’s busy, so she might not answer right away, but I promise, she wants to help.”

He pulled a bunch of keys out of his pocket, turning to unlock his car. The door opened with a quiet clonk.

“Th…” As if possessed, Shou’s mouth opened all on its own, stuttering a little as he spoke. “Thanks.”

He snapped around before Okura could react and speed-walked to his mother’s door, shoving his way inside. He locked it securely behind him, then continued to the bathroom, opening the tap at full blast.

He avoided his reflection in the mirror while he splashed cold water on his face, staying hunched over the sink until he was certain he didn’t look like a tomato anymore.

He’d be okay.

Maybe.

***

As so many times before, Shou stared at the ceiling above his bed, tracing the veins in the woodwork where a sliver of moonlight had snuck around the edge of his curtains.

If school didn’t work out, who would stop him from doing something stupid again? Seeking out old Claw members. Putting him and his mother in danger. Ruining every relationship he had to people who mattered. How could anyone trust him to make a life here? Miyagi wanted him to introduce himself to his new classmates first thing in the morning, and even that was terrifying. He already knew he’d fuck it up.

He let a wisp of his aura reach out, floating his phone over from the desk. The clock said it was just past four in the morning. He nearly texted Ritsu to ask for advice before remembering they weren’t on speaking terms anymore. He thought of Ootsuki next, but he probably needed some comforting words more than Shou did.

As so many times before, he ended up at Fukuda’s name in his contact list. He could tell him about Ootsuki. Or his new homeroom teacher who was so impressed with everything Fukuda had taught him. Or how Shou still couldn’t stop thinking about that time Okura hugged him, because that was definitely not normal and Fukuda was the closest thing to a doctor Shou knew.

He opened Fukuda’s message history, letting his thumbs hover over the keyboard.

Is it normal—

Shou jammed his finger onto the backspace button. He tried to start over, but no matter how long he stared at the empty input field, only two words came to him.

Shou
Thank you

If he could say that to Okura, he could get over himself and say it to Fukuda. He decisively sent the message, then frowned at the screen a while longer. The thank you just sat there at the bottom, no context, no connection to Fukuda’s previous messages that Shou had ignored.

Thank you. It was a pretty weird thing to say out of nowhere, but he couldn’t think of a good way to elaborate.

He changed the subject.

Shou
I think ootsuki’s in trouble

Who knew if Fukuda was up this early. Shou laid his phone on his pillow and closed his eyes, trying not to think about anything, but only a few minutes passed before it buzzed with a reply.

Fukuda
I know. It’s nothing you need to worry about, Higashio talked to him.

Fukuda
What are you thanking me for? Are you okay?

Shou lay on his side, watching the message. He glanced at the clock again, counting on his fingers.

Shou
Im starting school in 4 hours

It took a little while before Fukuda replied.

Fukuda
Then you still have time to get some rest.

Shou didn’t know what response he’d expected, but this one made a cold slither of rejection creep down his spine. Not even Fukuda was interested in talking to him anymore.

Shou
Is that thing with ootsuki my fault? Did i do something wrong?

Fukuda
No, Shou. Go to sleep.

Shou let go of the phone, pulled his duvet up to cover his nose, and lay there, staring at the floor. He only let himself wallow for a few minutes before he had a violent change of heart, kicked off the bedcovers, and decided he might as well get dressed and go downstairs.

In the kitchen, he dropped onto his usual chair, attempting to tie the tie for his uncomfortably formal school uniform. His phone vibrated loudly on the table next to him, the screen lighting up with Fukuda’s name. It took an eternity before he gave up, and then a text message came in a moment later. Grudgingly, Shou dragged the phone closer so he could read it.

Fukuda
I’m so sorry for being short with you. Of course it isn’t your fault. Please call me back when you have the time, I hope you have a very good first day at school, I’d like to hear about it.

Shou turned off the screen and wiped his nose on the sleeve of his dress shirt. He ripped off the tie and threw it on the floor, scowling at it.

He didn’t know how long he’d sat there, trying desperately to just stop thinking, when his mother appeared in the doorway, still wearing her pajamas. She scratched her bedhead, stopping on the step down to the kitchen floor, squinting at the coffee mug that stood forgotten in front of Shou.

“Don’t know how long you’ve sat here, but I planned on making some breakfast,” she said, putting on a chipper smile.

“I’m not hungry,” Shou muttered.

With a skeptical hum, Mom crossed the floor, bending down to pick up the tie. She crouched in front of Shou and draped it around his neck, then started tying the ends together, slowly enough that Shou could follow her movements, just like she’d done ten times in the days before. He didn’t know why it wouldn’t stick in his brain how to do it himself.

“Okay, stand up,” she said, straightening so she could take a step back.

He sluggishly got off his chair, adjusting the gray sweater vest over his shirt. The tie hung around his neck like a noose.

Mom put her hands at her sides, chuckling. “You look like you’re on your way to be executed,” she said. “Cheer up.”

He tried to cheer up. He really did. It didn’t work; not when his mother forced him to eat some toast, and not now as she was walking him toward the school, rattling off every advice and funny school anecdote she could think of.

They had to part by the intersection in the middle of town so she could head for the train station and go to work.

“You can do this,” she said, smiling at Shou. “You got along with Himiko and her friend just fine, right? And the esper girl, you told me she really wanted to talk to you. Go find one of them if you need a break from your classmates.”

Shou nodded, watching a group of other uniform-clad teenagers who were heading the same way as him, animatedly chatting with each other.

“If you feel like it’s too much, tell Miyagi or call me, okay?” Mom added. “I’ll keep an eye on my phone.”

She waved at him enthusiastically before she left, hurrying up the hill to the station so she could catch her train. Shou clutched the straps of his backpack and carried on.

He skimmed the clusters of students he passed, trying to gather an overview of the people he was supposed to spend the next three years of his life with. A few of them kept glancing his way, so he pointed his attention at his sneakers, working through the mental list he’d assembled of things he could say to introduce himself.

“Shou!” someone yelled in the distance.

Shou looked up. Across from the school gate, Yuka stood on the overgrown plot of land by the warehouses, waving her entire arm to get his attention.

“Oh my god, hi, come over here,” she shouted, muffled by her effort not to drop the cigarette dangling from her mouth.

Four people Shou had never seen before stood around her. He studied them as he trudged closer: all of them looked older than the students who kept gawking at Shou, and all of them were smoking.

“Here he is!” Yuka gracefully slung an arm around Shou’s shoulders, positioning him so the rest of the group could see him. All of them surveyed him like he was some kind of strange animal, the exact same way Himiko had when he first met her.

“S’up,” he mumbled, making sure to glower back at them.

“This is my guy Shou,” Yuka beamed at the others. “I know he’s a first-year, but watch what you say, ‘cause I got first-hand knowledge he can kick your ass.”

A girl with thick, curly hair eyed Shou up and down, removing her cigarette from her lips. “Is it true your dad’s a yakuza boss or whatever?” she asked, unimpressed.

“Yeah, is it true he killed someone?” a boy tall enough to rise a head above everyone else chimed in.

Shou narrowed his eyes at them, but before he could say anything, a jarringly loud laugh burst out of Yuka.

“You know how Hasegawa is, guys,” she said, withdrawing her arm from Shou’s shoulders. “She talks and talks and half of it doesn’t make any sense. Don’t take it so seriously.”

“Didn’t hear it from her, but okay, guess I shouldn’t be surprised it’s her starting shit again,” the unimpressed girl said. She gave Yuka the same scathing, judgmental look she had Shou. “Why do you still hang out with that little goblin anyway?”

“I don’t know, she’s pretty funny?” Yuka said, awkwardly ruffling the short hair on the back of her neck.

“Seriously, try to avoid Hasegawa,” the other girl told Shou. “There’s something wrong with her.” She glanced around at the rest of the group, flicking the ash off the tip of her cigarette. “Remember at the start of the year when she kept targeting Yamamoto from 1-B? Said she was torturing her pets or something.” She scoffed. “As if. Yamamoto never shuts up about her pets.”

Everyone apart from Yuka mumbled their agreement. They were quick to disperse after they’d finished their cigarettes, heading off to their respective classrooms. After accompanying Shou to the entrance hall and changing her shoes, even Yuka scurried off with a hasty, “See you around.”

Maybe it was the fact that Miyagi stood waiting by the staircase, looking right at Shou.

“Good morning, Suzuki-kun,” she said, picking up her satchel bag from the floor once he’d crossed the hall. “Let’s go say hello to the class, shall we?”

Shou followed her up the stairs, fingers still locked tightly around the straps of his backpack. “Do I have to say something…?”

Miyagi slowed down so they could walk side by side. “I think it’d be nice if you tell everyone your name at least,” she said softly. “You can say a few words about what you like to do in your spare time or where you’ve been before, it doesn’t have to be more than that.”

“Sure,” Shou said.

It required all his years of carefully honed nonchalance to glare right back at every student who turned their head when he followed Miyagi inside 1-B’s homeroom. Most of them had already sat down, digging through their school bags for notepads and pencils.

In the middle of the room, Satsune sat hunched over a crinkled worksheet. She looked up, brushing her mess of hair out of her face to send Shou a faint smile. He forgot to keep glaring, forgetting everyone else for one soothing second before someone bumped into his back.

“Oh, sorry!” The girl behind him had raised her hands to her mouth, her fingernails painted a sparkling, misty green. Her eyes widened when she realized who she was looking at. “You’re that new guy, hi,” she said. “You just moved here, right?”

“Please sit down, he can tell you in a moment,” Miyagi said, dropping her bag on the teacher’s desk.

She ushered everyone else to find their seats as well, motioning for Shou to stay by her side. He backed up against the blackboard and crossed his arms over his chest, eyes drifting back to Satsune. She wasn’t looking at him anymore, preoccupied with stuffing the worksheet into her messenger bag, pulling out a dog-eared notebook instead.

“I know most of you have already heard, but we have a new student,” Miyagi said. She pushed up her glasses, gesturing to Shou with a kind smile. “Suzuki-kun, do you want to tell us a bit about yourself?”

“Yeah, uh...” Shou unfolded his arms, shoving his hands deep into his pockets. “My name's Suzuki Shou. I'm fourteen. I've only lived here for a few weeks.”

It wasn’t exactly the first time he’d had to introduce himself to a crowd. He’d even done it in primary school, It’d been exactly like this, there was nothing to be so antsy about.

“It's been a while since I've been to a regular school,” he added with a small shrug. “My dad died about a month ago, so I moved in with my mom...”

He hadn’t even been in the same room as these people for five minutes and he was already lying. That hadn’t been the case in primary school.

“It might be difficult for Suzuki-kun to talk about his father, so please be respectful,” Miyagi told the class.

Shou didn’t know how to continue. He’d forgotten what little he’d planned to say. The classroom was uncomfortably quiet until one boy raised his hand.

“Sensei, can I ask something?” He waited for Miyagi to confirm that he could go ahead before asking, “Where did you live before?”

Why did everyone always want to know that? Shou scratched at his eyebrow, muttering his usual, vague reply: “I traveled around a lot.”

“Because of your dad?” the boy asked. “What’d he do?”

Miyagi gave him a stern glance. “Be respectful.”

On the front row, the girl with the green nails raised her hand next. She didn’t wait to be told she could speak. “Do you have any hobbies?” she asked, fidgeting with her long, auburn hair. “You know, stuff you like to do?”

Shou frowned at the floor. He’d told people about that before. Ritsu. And his mother. Satsune and Yuka and Himiko. If he could tell them, he could tell everyone else.

“I like to draw, I guess,” he said. “I have a pet hamster—”

“What kind of hamster?” the girl asked.

Shou raised an eyebrow at her. Apparently, regular people were just super interested in hamsters.

“Russian, I think,” he replied. “I'm not sure, she's basically a rescue.”

“Cool!” The girl propped her head up on her hands. “I have two hamsters myself. Show me a picture of her later, then I can tell you.”

Shou already felt a little overwhelmed. What more did he usually do? Anything that didn’t directly point back to espers or Claw or Himiko’s stupid yakuza theory.

“I used to do martial arts. Like MMA,” he said, “but not competitively or anything.”

A pair of girls in the back started giggling until Miyagi told them to share what was so funny.

“Tachibana-senpai said you did a takedown on her,” one of them snickered.

Shou had to suppress the grin creeping onto his face, replying with a casual, “Yeah, she didn't believe I could do it.”

More of his new classmates joined in—one boy recommending a nearby kickboxing club in case Shou wanted someone to spar with again, another asking if he’d ever been drawing manga. Miyagi stopped them before they could bombard him with any more questions.

She pointed Shou to the only free desk, right next to the boy who’d asked about Shou’s past living situation and diagonally in front of Satsune. When he glanced at her over his shoulder, she only met his gaze for a second, putting on a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. Her aura was strangely dull and uninformative today. Not the vibrant blue it’d been the other times Shou had seen her.

Miyagi went on to do a roll call. Apparently, Satsune’s surname was Matsumura. Shou quickly gave up on trying to remember what everyone else was called—apart from Satsune, it only stuck with him that the hamster girl’s name was Yamamoto. It had to be the same Yamamoto Yuka’s friends had mentioned.

The first period was Japanese. Miyagi stuck around to talk about a short story she wanted the class to read. Shou couldn’t focus on anything she was saying, instead peering back at Satsune once in a while.

Why was she ignoring him? Was she already fed up with him, too? Two days ago, she’d suddenly abandoned her own attempt to make plans for when Shou could help with her powers, and she hadn’t replied to the couple of texts he’d sent her since. They hadn’t seen each other in person since the day she showed up at Shou’s house, what could he possibly have said wrong?

The next period was social studies. The teacher was a middle-aged man with a thin mustache and an absent-minded demeanor that reminded Shou of Higashio. He seemed nice, even came over to introduce himself, but Shou didn’t hear a word of what he said either.

Sitting still for hours, it was getting harder and harder to keep his eyes open. He’d barely slept in the last few days and it was seriously catching up to him. He rubbed his face, staring down at his desk, the little scratches and marks etched into the aging wood.

He should ask Higashio what was going on. He should ask Ritsu, and now Satsune, too. He should get it over with. If they wanted nothing to do with him anymore, it was better to know for sure.

He clutched his phone in his lap, waiting for the period to finally end. When it did, he was about to ask if it was okay for him to go outside, but he didn’t even make it out of his seat before Yamamoto had planted herself on his desk.

“Hi, Suzuki-kun,” she said, sweeping her long hair over her shoulder. “So, do you have a picture of your hamster?”

He was supposed to talk to these people, too. Perhaps only so he could say something incredibly inappropriate and ruin things all over again, but still.

With a longing glance at the door, he unlocked his phone, opened the photo gallery, then froze up.

In the first few rows of images, he still had the close-ups documenting his progress on cryokinesis—unnatural ice-crystals encasing his mother’s now-dead succulents. Irresponsible. Utterly stupid. He hadn’t gotten rid of the picture he’d snapped from the top of a tree in the forest either. He quickly deleted all of them, steadying himself before selecting a photo of Nezumi he’d taken right after releasing her in her new cage.

He flipped the screen around, showing it to Yamamoto.

“Yeah, it’s a Russian dwarf,” she said, leaning a little closer. “There’s actually two kinds. This looks like a Campbell, but it's hard to tell with the brown coat. Does she turn white?”

“I don’t know,” Shou said, avoiding her eyes. “I guess not, but I haven’t had her that long.”

“Does she bite?” Yamamoto asked.

“If she doesn’t like you, then yeah.”

“Definitely a Campbell,” she laughed.

Next to Shou, the boy from before leaned toward him, raising his hand to his mouth to whisper, “Hey, Suzuki-kun—Why’s everyone talking about how your family’s yakuza or something?” he asked, too loud to be subtle. “Or you owe the yakuza money? Is that why there’s a police investigation?”

Had Himiko talked to everyone in the entire school, peddling her bullshit theories? Sure, it didn’t matter if this was what people chose to believe; it was still as decent a cover story as what he and his mother had come up with. It was just the principle of it.

“If you think I belong with some dangerous, criminal organization, do you think you should be asking questions about it?” Shou retorted.

The boy chuckled nervously. “I know, it sounded pretty stupid. Aren’t you friends with Hasegawa, though? I think it’s her saying it.”

“What?” Yamamoto jumped down from Shou’s desk. “Don’t talk to Hasegawa, she’s nuts!”

Shou slipped his phone back in his pocket, rolling his eyes. “Then why are any of you listening to her?” he asked. “Does she do this with everyone? Just make up insane stories about them? The first time I met her, she kept going on about her friend who’s getting beat up by her mom or whatever. What kind of conversation starter is that?”

“Who knows what’s going on in her head,” Yamamoto huffed. “All she ever cares about is whether you pay attention to her.”

Behind Shou, a set of chair legs scraped across the floor. Satsune walked past him, steering around the handful of students who were busy pretending they weren’t listening in on Shou. Nobody else seemed to notice as she left the classroom, face obscured by her hair.

She didn’t come back until halfway through the next period. The English teacher merely sighed as if it was something that happened all the time.

Satsune kept ignoring Shou, but Yamamoto circled him all day, talking his ear off during every break. He didn’t mind too much. Sure, she was annoyingly clingy, but it was a distraction, it kept him awake, and at least her thought process was solidly grounded in reality. Not like whatever the hell Himiko was doing.

While they helped clean up the classroom at the end of the day, Yamamoto nudged Shou’s arm with the broom in her hands.

“Matsumura keeps staring at you,” she whispered, nodding in Satsune’s direction. “She's so creepy.”

Shou twisted his head, only catching a glimpse of Satsune’s sullen frown before she turned her back on them, standing on the tips of her toes to wipe the top of the blackboard clean.

He didn’t really listen as Yamamoto excused herself to meet up with her volleyball club. Satsune was the only other person left in the room and she was staring Shou directly in the eye now.

She moved to her desk, zipping up her pencil case at an absolutely glacial pace. Shou gathered his belongings just as slowly, carefully sliding the print copies from a book he’d yet to receive into his backpack. Suddenly, Satsune changed tactics, tossed the strap of her messenger bag over her head, and headed for the door. Shou dashed across the room, slamming his hands onto either side of the doorframe to block the way out.

Satsune stopped in front of him, an unreadable look on her face as she wrapped her fingers around the strap of her bag.

“Hi,” she said.

Shou glared at her. “Why are you avoiding me?”

Satsune let her gaze drift off to the side. “You were getting along so well with everyone, I didn’t want to ruin it.”

“Why would you ruin it?”

She raised her eyebrows a fraction. “In case you haven’t noticed, nobody in our class likes me much.”

“So what?” Shou asked, shifting his weight to lean on the doorframe. “You just put up with that? You want me to go around pretending you don’t exist?”

Satsune blinked her giant, green eyes.

“Yes,” she replied. She glanced at Shou’s arm, still stretched out to block the exit. “Can you move? I have soccer practice, so I actually have to go.”

Shou grudgingly let go of the doorframe, lingering for a moment before he let her out. He grabbed his backpack and blazer from his desk, shrugged both of them on, and followed her outside, catching up to her by the stairs.

“Why do you worry about your classmates so much?” he asked. “Everyone’s a lot nicer than I expected.”

“If you keep talking to me, I give it two days before Yamamoto decides you aren’t interesting anymore,” Satsune said, her fingers gliding over the staircase railing. “She’ll find a reason to point out how weird and awful you are every chance she gets.”

“Does she do that with you?” Shou asked.

Satsune simply walked ahead, idly combing her fingers through her hair. Her footsteps echoed slightly, the sound bouncing between the lockers in the vacant entrance hall.

“So uh, have you thought about what your power might be?” Shou asked, trailing behind her. “You stopped replying all of a sudden when I texted you.”

Satsune stopped in front of a locker, opening it. “My mom always says I’m cursed,” she said. “Maybe she’s right.”

Shou’s brow furrowed. “You’re not cursed. I’d be able to tell.”

She replaced her school supplies with a gym bag and a pair of soccer shoes, continuing. “It’s just, sometimes, I think of something bad happening, and then a second later, it actually does.”

“Guess you could be clairvoyant or have extremely good intuition,” Shou said, successfully identifying his own locker. He pulled out his sneakers, slipping them on as he hummed in thought. “Doesn’t really match your aura, though.”

Satsune had hooked her soccer shoes on her fingers, letting them dangle listlessly at her side. “It’s a power to have good intuition…?”

“Sorry to break it to you, but some esper powers are only useful if you’re creative about it.” Shou dropped his indoor shoes in the locker and smacked it shut. “I think the quickest way to figure it out is if we go somewhere remote where we can test out some possibilities.”

Satsune stood in the middle of the floor, thinking about it. “We can go into the forest,” she suggested. “I know a place nobody else ever comes by.”

“Sounds good to me,” Shou said. “Did you wanna go tomorrow? You never replied to that either.”

Satsune nodded. “There’s a big clearing by the path near your house, let’s meet up there.”

She opened her mouth to say something more, but in the same moment, both the entrance doors were thrown open and Himiko barged in behind her. When she saw Satsune, she flinched, stopping so fast the soles of her shoes squeaked against the floor.

Satsune stared Himiko down, silent and ice cold. After a painfully long moment, she turned and walked past Shou, not saying a word.

Himiko was breathing like she’d run to get here, glaring ominously at Shou through her oversized glasses. The second Satsune disappeared down the corridor to the back of the school, she charged forward, slamming her palms onto the locker doors on either side of Shou, pinning him in place. It startled him enough to take a step back, banging his head into the cold metal.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Himiko snarled into his face.

Shou shoved her away, quickly regaining his composure. “I don’t know, what’re you doing?” he asked. “You told the entire school about your idiotic yakuza theory.”

“Don’t push me,” Himiko snapped, shoving him back.

He was prepared this time, it couldn’t move him an inch. Flustered, Himiko backed up a little, gritting her teeth.

“Yeah, I’m so sorry I spared you from talking about all the stuff you’re too embarrassed to tell anyone anyway,” she said, furiously throwing out her arms. “I told you what I said about my friend was private! I told you not to tell anyone, what part of that didn’t you understand?”

“And you don’t think what you know about my family’s private?” Shou said. “How do you know what I’ve talked about?”

“Because that bitch Yamamoto just told me about it to my face,” Himiko yelled. “Did you seriously tell the entire class while she was sitting right there? What’s wrong with you?!”

“While who was there?” Shou asked. “I have no idea what you’re talking about!”

“Satsune,” Himiko yelled even louder. “If I knew you were this dense, I’d never have talked to you in the first place!”

Finally, it clicked into place what she meant. The girl she’d mentioned. Her friend. If she really existed, it had to be either Yuka or Satsune, and as far as Shou knew, Yuka didn’t even have a mother who could potentially beat her up.

“You better make this up to her, or I’ll fucking destroy you,” Himiko growled at him. With her lips pulled back, her chipped tooth looked like an extra canine.

“How about you make it up to her yourself?” Shou said. “She’s mad at you, not me.”

Himiko was seething with rage, puffing herself up as much as she could with her extremely short stature, but out of nowhere, her aggressive body language deflated, her entire demeanor transforming into something calculating and malicious.

“I don’t know what kinda messed up things you’ve done in the past, but your mom doesn’t trust you at all,” she said. “After that night I slept at your place, I barely had to say anything before she jumped to the conclusion you assaulted me.”

Shou looked at her bemusedly. “What…?”

“If I ever need to keep you in check, it’s just such an easy card to play.” Himiko rested her hand on her cheek, eyes wide with a near-perfect imitation of fear. “Oh nooo, Shou-kun molested me.”

“I didn’t do anything to you,” Shou said. “You were the one who barged in through my window in the middle of the night!”

“Um, the way I remember it, you asked me to come over and then you threatened me with a knife,” Himiko retorted.

“Oh, fuck off—”

She yanked Shou’s tie, the fabric digging into the back of his neck. He had to jerk his head away to avoid his nose colliding with hers.

“Don’t go around saying shit about me or my friends, and I won’t go around saying any more shit about you, okay?” Himiko hissed, her crooked teeth mere centimeters away.

She abruptly let go, her pigtails whipping around as she stomped out the doors to the courtyard. They creaked as they closed, sounding far too loud in the empty hall.

With a sinking feeling in his gut, Shou stared after Himiko, her form hazy through the water-stained glass panels.

Everyone else was right. There was something wrong with her. She was dangerous.

***

Saturday morning, Shou trudged through the clammy fog that had consumed Sturgeon Bay, holding his phone to his ear. The waiting tone he was listening to stopped after a few beeps, switching to an automated message, only informing him that Satsune’s phone was unavailable.

He ended the call, frustratedly stuffing the device back in his pocket. What if she’d blocked his number? What if Himiko had talked to her? Told her every new lie she’d come up with.

He kept going regardless, peering in between the tall fir trees marking the edge of the forest. He could only see a few meters ahead and he didn’t know where to search for the spot Satsune had told him to meet with her. A clearing by a path? It was a forest; it was full of both clearings and paths.

He faltered in front of a muddy, overgrown track where a pair of boots had made imprints in the soil. Shou followed them in through the trees, sticking to the grass by the side of the path to avoid soiling his sneakers.

It was faint, but he could sense the trace of Satsune’s aura now. He sped up, soon reaching a clearing so large he couldn’t see the other side through the fog. In the middle of it, he could make out Satsune’s long coat, yellow like the leaves piled on the ground around her. She had her back turned, looking up at something. Shou stopped when he realized what it was.

Hovering in front of her, a huge, translucent fish creature stared at Satsune with one of its sunken, unblinking eyes. A shroud of murky silt billowed from its body, obscuring the bony protrusions running down its back and sides.

Satsune raised her arm, stretching to reach the tip of the spirit’s long snout.

“Hey, uh,” Shou called out, “I don’t think you should go too close to that thing.”

Satsune retracted her hand and turned her head. She frowned at him confusedly, shuffling her muddy combat boots through the dead leaves. “Why?”

The spirit leered at her back, hovering a little closer. It wasn’t really doing anything, but its energy was strange; much denser than the pitiful spirits Shou usually came across.

“It’s gotta be pretty powerful,” he said. “I think we better exorcize it.”

“Why?” Satsune asked again. She stayed in front of the spirit, glowering like he’d said something inappropriate. “It hasn’t done anything to you.”

“Not yet,” Shou said. “You never know which ones are out to kill you.”

“Would you kill a dog because it might bite you?” she countered.

With a lazy flick of its tail, the spirit glided through the mist, swimming a circle around Satsune. Something about the strange, ethereal silt swirling around its body made Shou dizzy. He had to look away for a moment, rubbing his face.

“Well, no,” he mumbled.

Satsune ignored his warning and started walking, the spirit trailing her along the path leading deeper into the forest. Shou kept an ample distance, letting it float between them, silent and unnerving.

“I know it looks like a fish, but you know a lot of spirits are basically dead people, right?” he persisted. “The way it’s staring at you, this thing was probably some stalker creep.”

Satsune only shrugged in response, trampling up a narrow trail covered in so many leaves you could barely tell it was there if you didn’t know beforehand.

“Why don’t you answer your phone?” Shou asked. “I wasn’t sure where you wanted us to meet up.”

Satsune shrugged once more, freeing her oversized scarf from the strap of her messenger bag. “My mom took it,” she said. “Don’t text me again unless you want her to see it.”

“She didn’t want you to go out here, I guess?” Shou asked. He took it as a yes when she didn’t reply.

The fog cleared as they continued up the sloping landscape. Wherever Satsune meant to take them, it was well away from town. At one point, she went completely off the track, hopping over a couple of thin streams. Shou didn’t understand how she found her way.

After what felt like at least half an hour, they arrived at a path wide enough that you could drive a car on it. Or so it would be, if not for the fact that it was completely overgrown, clearly abandoned.

Satsune led them to an old, wooden shrine at the side of the road. The forest had claimed it too, tree branches intertwined with the remains of the partially collapsed roof, thick clumps of moss clinging to the walls.

Shou followed her in through the broken lattice doors. A heap of plastic storage boxes cluttered the side of the room that still had a roof, a camping lamp balancing on top.

“Is this your secret base?” Shou asked, grinning at her.

Satsune lifted the strap of her bag over her head and dropped it on the floor. “Someone might as well use it.”

“Yeah, not a bad place for a hideout,” Shou said. He sat down in the doorway where he could watch the ancient, gnarly beech trees outside. He tried to ignore the spirit eyeing from between the trunks.

Behind him, Satsune approached one of the storage crates. A chunky, threadbare ram plushie sat on top, the white body discolored even though it looked like it’d endured one too many trips through a washing machine. An envelope sealed with a sparkly heart sticker stood on its stubby legs. With no hesitation, Satsune crumbled the envelope in her hands and threw it on the floor. She picked up the ram, staring at it for a long, pensive moment before she gently put it aside.

She proceeded to open the crate the ram had sat on, briefly peering into it before she picked it up, walked to Shou’s side, and turned it upside-down. Two cartons of cigarettes, a hoodie, and a zipped-up backpack tumbled into the mud. Satsune threw the crate as well. It landed right in front of the spirit with a hollow thud, momentarily distracting it from watching Shou.

“Himiko comes here too?” Shou asked, tilting his head to decipher the scraggly band logo on the hoodie.

Satsune just sat down on her knees in the middle of the shrine, rummaging through her messenger bag until she found a plastic container. She opened it, holding it out to Shou. “I brought onigiri,” she said, grabbing a thermos flask with her other hand. “And tea.”

“Oh, sweet.” Shou swung his legs inside, grabbing one of the snacks. Apart from one that sat crammed against the side of the box, they looked too uniform to be homemade.

While Satsune poured tea for him in an aluminum picnic cup, Shou took another look around the inside of the shrine. The smell of rotting wood from the fallen ceiling beams wasn’t unpleasant, just unfamiliar. He glanced over Satsune’s belongings in the corner. Through the clear plastic of the remaining crates, he could make out a stack of blankets and pillows.

“Do you camp out here sometimes?”

“When it’s less cold,” Satsune said, handing him the cup.

Shou wrapped his fingers around it, watching the vapor rise from the surface of the tea. Satsune had gone quiet again. He sighed through his nose, concluding that he had to be the one to speak up.

“I’m sorry I said I’d exorcize your pet spirit,” he said. “And about Himiko… If I knew all that stuff she told me was about you, I wouldn’t have brought it up in the middle of our classroom. I thought she was making it up to get me to talk or something.”

Satsune silently poured a cup of tea for herself, then screwed the cap back on the thermos, putting it down with a firm clack.

“Look, I don’t care if you got problems like that,” Shou continued. “Lots of people do. If you don’t want to talk about it, I’ll forget I ever heard about it.”

“Thank you,” Satsune said. She blew on her tea, finally looking Shou in the eye. “And for the record, my mom doesn’t beat me up.”

Shou couldn’t help a crooked smile from spreading on his face. If the rest of Himiko’s exaggerations were anything to judge by, whatever was going on with Satsune’s mother probably wasn’t a big deal.

“Let’s forget about Himiko,” he said. “We gotta find out what your power is already.”

“Okay.” Satsune put down her tea and folded her hands in her lap, watching Shou expectantly. “How?”

He took a bite of his onigiri, thinking for a bit. “Let me ask some questions, I guess. The first power I learned how to use was telekinesis—”

“You can have more than one power?” Satsune asked.

Shou made a noncommittal noise. “Usually not, I just got lucky. Anyway, telekinesis is definitely the most common one.”

Satsune narrowed her eyes. “When you say telekinesis, do you mean like bending spoons?”

“Bending all kinds of things.” Shou stuffed the rest of the onigiri in his mouth. “If you’re moving stuff with your mind, that’s telekinesis. Even if you’re only moving energy. I’ve seen people come up with a ton of cool ways to use it, it’s really versatile.”

Satsune’s gaze followed the orange glow of Shou’s aura as he reached for the container with the rest of her onigiri.

“You can make stuff fly, like this.” Shou floated the container closer to himself, pointing at it. “Can I take another one? They’re good.”

“Uh-huh,” Satsune said, staring distractedly at the container. “Can I learn how to do that?”

“I don’t know, have any of your things mysteriously moved even though you didn’t touch them?” Shou asked. “Or broke out of nowhere?”

She shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

Shou grabbed the container with his hand to put it back on the floor, picking out another onigiri. “Then you’re probably not telekinetic.” He took a bite, pondering again. “What about fire? Has anything ever spontaneously caught on fire near you?”

“Does that happen to people?” Satsune asked. She hadn’t even touched her own snack, too engrossed in listening.

“Yep,” Shou said. “I’m not gonna test it out in the middle of a forest, but I could probably learn to do fire. I mean, I know how to do cryokinesis, I think it’s just the opposite.”

He pointed over his shoulder at a branch poking in through the roof, freezing it solid, then took another bite of his snack, thinking of other common options.

“Have you ever felt like you were suddenly much stronger than usual? Especially if you were angry.”

Satsune stared up at the frozen branch. Again, she only shook her head.

Shou listed every somewhat common ability he could think of: electrokinesis, illusion, telepathy, energy focus, heightened senses, chlorokinesis, but none of them seemed to fit Satsune.

Meanwhile, the creepy spirit fish was slowly phasing through the wall behind her, staring more intensely than ever.

“What about this spirit thing,” Shou said, pointing at it. “I met a guy once who caught spirits and ordered them to battle for him. Never figured out how that worked. Do all kinds of spirits follow you or is it just this one?”

Satsune peered over her shoulder. “Sometimes I see other kinds, but this one always eats them.” She turned back around to take a sip of her tea. “I don’t want to catch it, it’s been here my whole life.”

“Well, if we try it out and it works, you can just release it once we’re done,” Shou said.

Satsune’s eyebrows furrowed as she considered it. Behind her, the spirit had turned in Shou’s direction. The skin of its smooth underside was slowly splitting open, thin, ink-black teeth coming apart like a zipper. It rose above Satsune’s head, the black shroud surrounding it intersecting with her hair.

“Uhh,” Shou said, raising his hand.

The spirit’s eyes rolled back into its head like a shark about to attack. Its already gaping maw split impossibly wider as it drifted over Satsune’s head, jaws shifting forward like it was about to turn itself inside-out.

With an irritated sigh, Satsune swatted her arm at it the way other people would scare off a pesky fly. “Go outside.”

The spirit’s weird zipper-jaw clicked back together, folding into the body like it’d never been there. Shou gaped at it as it turned away, disappearing through the same spot on the wall where it had come in.

“You just told it what to do!” he blurted out.

Once again, Satsune frowned at him confusedly. “You’ve told me all espers can talk to spirits.”

“Talk to them, not order them around when they’re about to chomp someone’s head off!” Shou quickly took the last, squashed onigiri, stuffing it in his mouth before handing the container and its lid to Satsune. “Come on, you gotta see if you can catch it,” he said with his mouth full.

“In this…?” Satsune asked.

“Hurry up, I wanna see how this works!”

Satsune ran after him out onto the forest path. The spirit hadn’t made it very far, languidly zig-zagging between the trees at the side of the road.

Satsune walked up to it, separating the lid from the rest of the container. Bemused, she looked from it to the spirit, then to the crate she’d thrown earlier. “How do you expect me to catch it? It’s way too big.”

“It doesn’t matter how big it looks, it’s just an illusion,” Shou said, waving for her to continue.

Satsune made a lopsided, skeptical grimace as she simply dropped the container on the ground underneath the spirit. She took a step back, brushing a section of her hair behind her ear.

“Get in the box,” she commanded.

The spirit stopped its slow glide, directing one unblinking eye at the onigiri container. It lowered itself to the ground until it was hovering in the middle of it, phasing through the plastic, far more of its mass outside the small box than inside.

Shou let out an amused snort, but there was no expression on Satsune’s face. She didn’t speak this time, but it was clearly her doing when the spirit lifted back off the ground, floated in a full circle around her and Shou, then continued the way it had gone before.

Satsune’s hands rose to clutch her oversized scarf, burrowing her chin in it. Shou wasn’t sure what to make of the complete nonreaction.

“I don’t know about capturing it, but I guess we found out what you can do,” he said.

Satsune didn’t move until the spirit was so far gone they could no longer see it. She whipped her head toward Shou, brushing both the scarf and her hair away from her face. “Do you think I could do this to a person?”

If she could, it was a perfect power for causing a distraction, or getting the upper hand in a fight where she assisted somebody with better potential for offense. Even if it only worked on spirits, it could definitely be useful.

“You can try it on me,” Shou said, tapping the top of his head. “If it’s a mind control thing or puppeteering or something, I don’t see why it should only work on spirits.”

“Okay,” Satsune said, clenching her fists.

She fixed him with a serious stare and they stood like that for a long time, keeping eye contact while she tried to project a command into Shou’s head or however this worked. Several times, a weird numbness crept up on his mind for a second, and at one point his arm twitched a little, but it was so unremarkable he wasn’t sure if it was her doing. Eventually, Shou couldn’t keep a straight face anymore and cracked up laughing.

“Don’t laugh at me,” Satsune said. “I don’t know how I did it in the first place.”

“Sorry.” Shou wiped the smile off his face. “I can tell you’re doing something. I guess you’re not focusing properly.”

“Why did it work with the spirit, then?” Satsune asked, pointing her hand in the direction she’d sent it off.

“I don’t know, you’ve probably been ordering that thing around for ages without realizing it,” Shou said. “Maybe my defense is better ‘cause I’m an esper, or like, an actual living person with a brain.”

Satsune sulkily folded her arms, dragging her feet as she walked up to an old, rotting tree trunk and sat down on it.

“Most people have to put in years of work before they figure out how to use their powers at all,” Shou told her, hopping onto the end of the trunk. “You’re not gonna turn into an expert after a couple of hours.”

Satsune glanced up at him skeptically. “Did you do that?” she asked. “Spend years on it?”

Shou dug his shoe under a piece of soft, frayed bark, breaking it off. Pops had asked him something like that once. Pummeled him into the ground with an attack too powerful for his barrier and asked if that was all he’d accomplished to learn in the last week. The last month. The last year.

“Yeah,” he said, stopping next to her. “Sooner or later, you’ll have a breakthrough. It gets easier after that.”

Satsune scanned the forest floor, searching for something. “What’s the biggest thing you can lift with your telekinesis?” She settled on a medium-sized boulder wedged into the ground in front of them, pointing it out to Shou. “How about that?”

“A tiny little rock?” Shou laughed with mock offense. “Satsune, please.”

He jumped down from the tree trunk and grabbed her hand, pulling her up. With a loud groan, the tree dislodged itself from the heap of dirt it had sunken into, dark mulch raining down from the underside as it floated several meters into the air, swathed in Shou’s orange aura.

Satsune stared at it in awe. “It’s just like those videos from Seasoning City.”

The self-assured smirk on Shou’s face slipped. Carefully, he lowered the trunk, letting it sink back into the ditch where it had been before.

“Just regular telekinesis stuff,” he mumbled.

“You said you have more powers than that,” Satsune pressed on, keenly interested. “What are the others?”

All the techniques he’d copied from other people. Pops. Other Claw members. The only ability that had ever been his alone was to vanish. It was what he felt like doing right now.

“Nothing interesting,” he said, turning away from her. “You saw the cryokinesis thing, I’m not that good at it.”

“Even if it isn’t interesting to you—”

“You know, maybe we should head back to town,” Shou interrupted her. “We know what you can do now, and it’s kinda…”

He couldn’t even think of a proper excuse. How would she take it if she found out she was alone in the middle of the woods with someone who used to work for a terrorist organization? She wasn’t like Himiko. She wouldn’t be stupid enough to think there was anything cool about it no matter what he told her.

“Okay,” Satsune said.

Surprised, Shou glanced at her. She didn’t even seem puzzled by his sudden change in attitude.

“It’s cold today,” she said simply, “and my mom will get angrier the longer I stay away.”

Shou just nodded, dumbfounded.

Satsune excused herself to jog back to the shrine for her bag. Shou started walking in the meantime, trudging through the undergrowth. Everything looked the same; shrubs and moss and a labyrinth of trees.

He could hear Satsune’s boots behind him, slowing down until she’d caught up. She took the lead, discreetly shifting the direction they were walking, as if not to bring attention to the fact that Shou would be utterly lost without her.

“All those espers you say you’ve met,” she asked while they were still too far from town for him to make an escape, “where do you know them from? Aren’t espers really rare?”

If she found out the truth, would she pass it on to anyone else? Would she find it pathetic that he’d stuck with Claw for years? That he still couldn’t quite let go of it?

What if she’d already figured it out? If she’d studied the recordings from Seasoning City, she’d definitely seen Pops, and Shou knew how much he looked like him.

“Again, just lucky,” he mumbled. “It helps not being stuck in the same town your whole life.”

Satsune gave a quiet hum, seemingly accepting the explanation.

The fog was gone by the time they made it back to Sturgeon Bay. Little holes had poked through the clouds, letting beams of sunlight pour down through the naked tree crowns. Satsune led them out the same dirt path where they’d come in, stopping on the street that ran parallel with the forest.

“Thank you,” she said quietly, combing her hair forward over her shoulder. “I’ve been trying to figure out if I even had powers for so long, or if I was just going crazy...”

“Yeah, no problem,” Shou said, suddenly unsure what to do with his hands. He crossed his arms, hiding them under his armpits. “It was pretty fun, I guess?”

The traces of a smile played on Satsune’s lips. “I think you’d get lost on the way there, but if you ever need somewhere to go, you’re welcome at the secret base,” she said. “I get it. I have things I don’t want to talk about either.”

She knew.

She had definitely figured it out.

The only reason she hadn’t run away was that she clearly didn’t know what it meant. That she thought it was something she should pity him for. It only made everything worse.

Satsune’s smile faded, her attention drifting to something behind Shou. He glanced the same way as her. Down the street, Yamamoto was walking up the hill toward them, dragging a bike next to her. One of the other girls from their class accompanied her, gesturing with her hands as she spoke. She slowed down when her line of sight fell on Shou and Satsune, making a face like they’d done something deeply deplorable.

Shou raised an eyebrow at her. “What’re you looking at?”

“Don’t,” Satsune whispered, tugging on the back of his jacket.

Yamamoto was staring at them too, brushing her long hair over her shoulder. She stopped a few meters before Shou, leaning over the handles of her bike.

“What’re you doing with Matsumura?” she asked, pronouncing Satsune’s surname like it left a foul taste in her mouth.

Shou shrugged. “Why do you care?”

Yamamoto glanced at the other girl whose face was still stuck in the same disgusted grimace, then back at Shou.

“Did you come here and decide to make friends with all the worst people in town or what is this?” she asked, making a vague, dismissive gesture at Satsune. “I know she’s very pretty and all, but I already told you she’s creepy as hell. Don’t waste your time on her.”

Shou gave a disbelieving scoff, glancing back at Satsune. “You’re gonna let her talk to you like that?”

Satsune had turned her back on all of them, her boots leaving muddy prints on the asphalt as she marched away.

“Satsune,” Shou called after her, “what the fuck?”

“See, she’s not even trying to deny it,” Yamamoto laughed.

Shou ignored her, jogging after Satsune instead. She’d already made it halfway down the street to Mom’s house.

“Yo, you gotta stand up for yourself,” he said, catching up with her long strides.

“I’m going home,” Satsune said, hoisting her bag higher on her shoulder. “See you Monday.”

Shou walked faster, trying to step in front of her. “Seriously—”

“I don’t need you to defend me,” Satsune snapped at him, raising her voice. “Leave me alone!”

She continued toward the intersection at the end of the street. Shou moved to follow, but for half a second, his leg dragged behind him, staggering like he’d been about to trip over his own feet. Mindlessly, he stopped and bent over, reaching for his shoelaces.

It took him a moment of staring at his already perfectly well-tied sneaker to realize it was Satsune who’d made him do it.

Chapter Text

Shou leaned into the cushions on his mother’s couch, hugging one of her throw pillows to his belly. The TV across from him was playing the morning news on low volume, a yellow banner scrolling continuously at the bottom of the screen.

There’d been another murder; a middle-aged man cut up and dumped in an alley like he was nothing but trash. Obviously, it was the bear attack person who’d struck again. Whoever they were, their body count was up to eight now. Shou recognized the victim this time; he’d seen him at Pops’ board meetings before.

Like usual, there were no witnesses, and like usual, the authorities were covering it up like their lives depended on it. Some reporter had filmed the ambulance that’d been sent to scrape the dead guy off the pavement, and the cops had practically wrestled her away from the crime scene.

Shou swiped his thumb across the train timetable on his phone. Five hours to Chugoku. If he could come up with an excuse to tell his mother, he could travel there next weekend. Hell, he could travel there today if he didn’t care about the consequences.

He knew the approximate area where Ootsuki had gone after everyone split up. Sure, if he’d talked to Higashio, he might’ve moved to Seasoning City or some other place, but Fukuda could’ve lied about all that. Wouldn’t be the first time he’d lied about things he didn’t think Shou should hear. Even if it had nothing to do with grizzly murders or Claw, Shou knew something bad had happened.

Mom walked in from the hallway, wrapping a long, knitted scarf around her neck. She stopped in front of the TV, watching the reporter from earlier gesturing at a wide, angular building near the murder scene. The facade was all glass panels, the vast offices inside seemingly vacant. Shou was pretty sure Pops used to own the place.

"That's just a couple of towns over," Mom said. "Looks like this guy’s planning on touring the country at this rate."

She glanced at Shou.

"Is this what you're upset about?" she asked, pointing at the screen. "Most of these people have been businessmen in their fifties, it has nothing to do with you, right?"

Shou shrugged. He stuck his phone in the pocket of his slacks and pulled his feet up on the couch, squashing the pillow in his lap.

"Am I completely off the mark?" Mom asked, letting the end of her scarf dangle over her shoulder. "You've been so quiet since you came home Saturday, I wish you’d tell me what’s wrong already."

Everything was wrong. Nobody wanted to talk to him anymore. He was supposed to get ready for school, but if he went, it’d only be to find out how much damage control he’d have to do. Himiko’s usual flood of text messages had completely ceased since Friday, and Satsune had been angry when she and Shou split up on Saturday. Just as angry as she was with Himiko.

“What’s the esper girl’s name?” Mom asked, bowing her head as she tried to remember.

“Satsune,” Shou muttered.

“Is it Satsune that’s got you worried?” Mom asked. “Same as with Ritsu, it’s very hard to help when you won’t tell me what happened, but if you think you made her upset, you have to apologize.” She twirled her hand like this was supposed to be the easiest thing in the world. “You’ll see her at school today. Just walk up to her and say you’re sorry, it doesn’t have to be any grander than that.”

Shou focused on the news banner rotating on the TV again. His mother sighed, tiredly rubbing her face.

“Shou, I have to go, I have a meeting at eight,” she said, dragging one hand down her cheek. “Please put on the rest of your uniform, it won’t help to sit here and mope by yourself.”

She headed back into the hallway, her footsteps continuing to the bathroom. Before shutting the door behind her, she called out with an optimistic, “Don’t give up so easily!”

Give up? There was nothing to give up on, because it’d been pointless to put him in that school in the first place. He’d already pissed off half the people he’d talked to. Surely the rest of his classmates would find a reason to despise him soon enough. If not for figuring out he was an esper, then for something else.

Shou flung the pillow aside and pushed himself up from the couch, glaring at the sweater vest he’d left slouching over the armrest. He pulled it over his head, the neckline catching on his hair. He roughly combed it back in place with his fingers, grabbing the tie that’d been lying under the vest.

Give up—he wasn’t giving up, it was everyone else who wouldn’t give him a chance to figure all this shit out.

His first attempt at tying a knot on the tie turned out completely lopsided. Frustrated, he undid it, straightening the ends of the fabric. He carefully folded one end over the other, pulled the wider one up to begin a new knot, and then froze entirely as a jolt of psychic energy struck him.

The tie slipped from Shou’s fingers. He stared into the darkness outside the living room window, every hair on the back of his neck standing on end. There was a hum at the edge of his awareness, like a noise just above his hearing range. The unmistakable sensation of another esper nearby.

Shou cautiously approached the window, his own reflection blocking out what little he could see in the light from the street lamps. It wasn’t Satsune’s aura—cold and clear like a stream in winter—this one felt sturdier, washing over Shou in deliberate, even waves, a few seconds between each.

He knew this aura.

He knew it well enough that it didn’t instil any fear in him.

Another wave came, stronger this time, and Shou realized who it belonged to.

It was Iida.

Last time Shou had seen Iida, he’d come to the apartment in Seasoning City, delivering Joseph’s phone number with the same curt professionalism he’d displayed in the past, delivering hundreds of phone numbers and secrets and live defectors to Pops.

All Iida had asked in return for Joseph’s contact info was to get rid of his old boss. Have Pops locked up where he couldn’t hurt anyone anymore. Just like Shou wanted. They’d always been on the same page like that.

Shou moved to the genkan, slowly opening the front door. He stepped outside, half-expecting to see Iida’s broad, lumbering form emerge from the twilight, but there was only the wind jostling the leaves of the neighbor’s evergreen.

His toes curled on the icy doorstep as he leaned to the side, peering around the corner at the narrow street leading down to the coast. The signal definitely came from somewhere in that direction.

Had Iida tracked him all the way here? These flashes of energy had to be meant for him—what else was there to find in a sleepy fishing town like this?

“What are you doing?”

Shou whipped around. His mother stood outside the bathroom, in the middle of tying her hair into a ponytail.

“Nothing,” he said.

He backed into the genkan, glancing down at himself. The tie hung limply from around his neck, the half-finished knot just as uneven as the last one.

“I’ll, uh—”

Iida’s aura continued to beckon, persistent and distracting. What did he want? He was waiting for Shou to come to him; it wasn’t like all the times Pops had ordered him to track Shou down.

“—I’ll go meet up with Satsune before school,” he said. “Apologize. Like you said I should.”

Mom frowned at him, reaching around him to grab her coat. “You better not lie to me,” she said. “We don’t do that anymore.”

Shou nodded absentmindedly as he slipped on his sneakers. “Okay, see you later,” he mumbled, snatching the school blazer that’d been hanging under Mom’s coat. “Hope your meeting goes well.”

He pulled on the blazer while he hurried out to the street. Before heading around the corner, he glanced over his shoulder. Mom only had one sleeve of her coat on, scowling at him like he’d just insulted her. Shou could feel her eyes on his back as he kept walking. He fumbled with the tie one more time, then ripped it over his head, stuffing it deep in his pocket.

He’d go find Iida. He’d listen to whatever he wanted to say, deal with it, and then he’d go to school like he was supposed to. If nothing else, then to stop his mother from looking at him like that again.

Shou followed the stretch of forest cradling the edge of town. The beats of psychic energy took him to the intersection between the street to Mom’s house and the road out of town. On the other side, the sun was about to peek over the edge of a slope leading down to the water, a murky, orange glow outlining the lighthouse sticking up from behind it.

Shou let a couple of cars pass before he crossed the road, pushing down the weird flutter of anticipation twisting his stomach. He peered over the ridge, and finally he could not only feel Iida’s aura, but see it too.

At the bottom of the slope, ripples of silvery liquid surrounded Iida, the color an almost perfect match with his hair. He was wearing the same practical, green army jacket he’d worn in Seasoning City, blending in with the dying grass outside the lighthouse. Iida was too big and too severe to go anywhere unnoticed, but coupled with a pair of washed-out sweatpants, the outfit toned it down a little.

Almost cautiously, Iida lowered his head, the ocean gale blowing his long hair against the side of his face. As if he’d unplugged a radio, his aura simply stopped.

“Hi,” Shou said.

Iida didn’t say hello or smile at him or anything, simply stood there, his meaty hands hanging at his sides, the fingers slightly flexed, watching Shou like he was waiting for something.

“I thought you wanted me to find you,” Shou said uncertainly. He stayed at the top of the slope, clutching the ends of his blazer sleeves.

The tense lines around Iida’s mouth softened a little. “I hoped to catch you before school,” he said, nodding at Shou’s uniform.

Shou glanced down at his sweater vest, then back at Iida. “Why?”

Iida’s attention drifted to a car passing behind Shou. He tossed his head, motioning for Shou to join him.

Shou slowly descended the stone steps lodged into the side of the hill. The waves crashing against the shore masked the sound of the morning traffic. They sent up sprays of water, chipping away at the white paint coating the lighthouse.

Iida stole another glance at the road before turning his back on it, pensively staring out at the sea.

“Is anyone after you?” Shou asked, stopping at his side.

“Not right this moment,” Iida said.

“Someone from Claw?” Shou craned his neck to see Iida’s face. “‘Cause I told the government to leave you alone.”

Iida peered down his nose with a look so withering it made Shou’s stomach turn. “Did you now?”

He didn’t sound surprised. He probably already knew about it.

“I…” Shou averted his eyes, suddenly well aware he might’ve made a mistake. Iida hadn’t asked to be excused like Minegishi and the rest of the Super Five. “Did you know they were planning to recruit you? I just thought it’s better not to run if they think you’re that useful.”

Iida smoothed out the coarse beard on his neck, a lopsided, skeptical quirk to his lips. It pulled at the scar on the side of his face. “I doubt I’m useful enough for anything better than a prison cell to await me.”

The wind sprayed up another flurry of sea water. Shou squared his shoulders, bracing against it.

“I was concerned, hearing they got their hands on you,” Iida said. “I didn’t expect them to sink so low as to recruit a minor.”

Shou frowned at him confusedly. “They won't let me help at all. They're forcing me to stay here.”

“So you went to Division Four of your own accord?” Iida asked. “Putting another mark on your back?”

Shou shrugged uncertainly. “I got a couple of Scars arrested. Are you gonna tell me that’s a bad thing?”

How did Iida know that, anyway? Had Koga’s vertigo-inducing minion told everyone about it after she ran off?

“Nagata Sayumi,” Iida said, completely changing the subject. “Is that someone you know?”

Shou let go of his sleeves, slipping his hands into the pockets of his slacks instead. “Well, yeah… She’s an agent. Pretty high ranking, I think. She kinda set everything up so I could move here.”

“And is it your impression that’s something usually within her area of responsibility?” Iida asked.

Shou squinted up at him. “I don’t know. She mentioned she’s got something to do with child services.”

Iida nodded to himself, staring out at the waves again.

“I meant to relocate the younger members of Division Two after what happened in Seasoning City,” he said. “When I arrived, your friend Nagata had already ordered a sweep of the entire base.”

“She’s not my friend,” Shou huffed, tucking in his elbows. “I know you can’t trust those people.”

It took a serious effort not to squirm under the look Iida was giving him. Shou could feel his face heating up. The frigid mist of water in the air bit into his skin.

“These are children down to the age of seven, Shou-kun,” Iida said. “Espers who do not have well-meaning mothers and fathers to be sent home to. Where do you suppose they’ve gone now?”

Shou knew he cared about those kids. Division Two weren’t like the others—they didn’t brainwash anyone, they didn’t take advantage of them or turn them into disposable soldiers. Otherwise, someone like Iida would never have stuck around.

“If you’ve heard all those rumors about the government experimenting on espers, it’s not true,” Shou said. “They let me talk to my pops. He said everyone he’s seen since he got locked up was fine, and those are like the really bad guys.”

Iida continued to glower at him.

“The only reason I went to Division Four was ‘cause they wouldn’t tell me anything, so I had to investigate myself,” Shou said, feeling increasingly like everything that came out of his mouth was rambling.

“Where do they keep him?” Iida asked. “Your father.”

“I don’t know.” Shou pulled his hands out of his pockets so he could cross his arms instead. “They’re making him do some kinda military thing. He told me I should stay out of it and focus on living my life or whatever.”

“Yes, you should,” Iida said.

Shou met his eyes for a second, hit by the same overwhelming lightheadedness he’d felt when it was his father who’d instructed him to let the past go.

“I’m trying,” he mumbled. “I just don’t know what I’m supposed to do here and I keep screwing it up every time I try to talk to someone.” He gestured listlessly toward his mother’s house. “And all this stuff comes up on the news all the time. Like, haven’t you heard there’s some guy going around murdering old Claw members?”

“You have no need to worry about them,” Iida said. “They’re targeting former investors. People who were strategically important.”

He’d definitely been keeping an eye on the case himself. He sounded very calm about it.

Iida thoughtfully removed a strand of hair from his face only for two others to be caught by the wind. “It’s a difficult time,” he said. “There are fewer of us now than ever. If you want to help, the best you can do is look out for yourself and the espers around you.”

He glanced at the rooftops poking up behind the slope.

“Are you in contact with the girl living here?”

Shou followed his line of sight. He couldn’t sense Satsune’s aura from here at all.

“Yeah,” he said. “She’s been here by herself her whole life. I told her I’ll help teach her how to use her powers.”

“Good,” Iida said. “This once, I’ll agree with your father. Focus on what you can do here. Focus on school. It’ll do you good in the future if you learn to blend in.”

He turned toward the road, adjusting his jacket like he was readying himself to leave. That odd, lightheaded feeling returned, cracking down on Shou as fast as a lightning strike.

“Wh—where’re you going now?” he asked, taking a step closer. “If someone’s after you, are you gonna be okay?”

Would it be weird to ask him to stay a little longer? It would probably be really weird. It just felt like an eternity since Shou had talked to anyone who didn’t shy away from the cold facts of what was going on. Someone he didn’t have to explain anything to.

He wanted to hear what Iida had been up to. He wanted to share what he’d been up to himself. It’d be just like all the times they’d gone home together after Shou had run away from Pops’ house.

“I’m an old man, Shou-kun,” Iida huffed. “It isn’t me you should worry about.”

His voice was as dry and gravelly as always, but there was something almost like a smile on his face. Fondness.

“What little remains of Claw will end soon enough,” he promised. “There are already people on the task.”

“Like you?” Shou asked.

“Like me,” Iida said.

He tilted his head in the direction where Satsune’s house apparently was.

“You and the girl look out for each other now,” he instructed. “Keep your secrets. If the commoners here realize who you are, they won’t hesitate to drive you out of town. I’ve seen the same thing play out many times for espers far less prolific or powerful than you.”

He placed one of his enormous hands on Shou’s shoulder, right by the base of his neck where he had a firm hold of his upper body. His thumb rested at the dip between Shou’s collarbones.

“I know how restless you get, but you’re not a little boy anymore,” Iida said. “You’re old enough to understand that sometimes the smartest move is to bide your time. When this is all over, you’ll find a place for yourself, but for now, forget what used to be and consider this town your responsibility.”

He squeezed Shou’s shoulder, then let go, all that grounding weight gone. Shou’s insides writhed like a pit of worms.

“You should head to school,” Iida said. “I only came to say that, if these government agents take an interest in you again, I advise you to turn them down. Don’t speak to them about me or anyone else.” He gave Shou a last, appraising glance. “Nagata Sayumi is a dangerous woman.”

The speckles of seawater had soaked into the side of Shou’s blazer, leaving it cold and clammy. He felt short of breath, watching Iida walk away.

He couldn’t just take off like that. What did he mean Nagata was dangerous? Was she the one targeting him even though Shou had told her she shouldn’t? Did Iida work with anyone else?

Shou climbed the slippery steps to the top of the slope, catching a glimpse of Iida’s back as he trudged into the shadows of the forest on the other side of the road. Shou quickly checked for any pedestrians before he suppressed his aura, rendered himself invisible, and jogged after him.

School could wait. He needed to know where Iida was going. If he was heading to the station, Shou could at least find out which train he was about to get on.

Iida stuck to the dirt path running parallel with the street, effortlessly avoiding the puddles that’d formed in every indent in the ground. Shou took care not to make any noise either, stalking close enough that he wouldn’t lose sight of Iida between the trees.

Iida suddenly stopped by a small clearing. His aura was impossible to trace when he wasn’t using it, but closing in, Shou could sense another esper. He peered around one of the tree trunks, spotting a plain-looking young man hopping down from the boulder he’d been sitting on. His padded, blue jacket was too big on him.

“Sorry, I-I thought it was best if I stayed away,” he stammered, letting Iida tower over him.

Shou remembered where he knew him from the moment he’d opened his mouth. It was the guy. The barrier guy. The same one who’d assisted Koga when he tried to threaten Shou into handing over his father.

"He wasn’t angry, right?" the guy asked Iida, anxiously wringing his hands.

Iida calmly turned his head, looking directly at the spot where he shouldn’t be able to see Shou’s face.

“Perhaps he can tell us how he feels,” he replied. “It would seem Shou-kun still isn’t as stealthy as he thinks he is.”

Shou’s heart was beating out of his chest. He unceremoniously popped into view, making the barrier guy flinch so hard he staggered backward. A transparent, blue-tinted bubble instantly manifested around both Iida and himself, snuffing out any hint of his aura as well.

“What the hell is he doing here?” Shou shouted, pointing at him furiously.

“We’ll only talk,” Iida told the barrier guy, lifting a hand as if to soothe him.

Shou’s own aura was flaring out, shrouding him in an embarrassingly obvious, orange swirl. “He helped that bunch of HQ lunatics who wanted to kill my pops, what’re you doing with him?!”

The barrier guy had withdrawn his neck into the collar of his jacket, his arms raised protectively in front of himself, but despite Shou’s yelling, he obediently dissolved his shield, taking cover behind Iida’s broad back instead.

“As you’re proving right now, one can barely trust you to think before you lash out in anger,” Iida said with just as much level-headed poise as everything else he’d told Shou. “I would not have been able to defend myself if you had reacted the same way to me.”

Iida had been worried he’d attack him? That he wouldn’t even hear him out?

“We all make mistakes,” Iida said, gesturing at the barrier guy behind him. “I found him by the crater and he told me what happened. Beating everyone in your path down to protect your father is hardly a sympathetic action either, Shou-kun.”

Iida gave him a pointed look, and it wasn’t just the hairs on Shou’s neck that bristled anymore; even the ones on his arms stood on end.

“People like him who only do what they’re told are the worst,” he sneered.

“How old are you, Kubo-kun?” Iida asked the barrier guy, tilting his head.

Kubo’s arms were stiff at his sides, his eyes trained on the ground. “Eighteen…”

Iida nodded at Shou. The massive scar beside his mouth made his disapproving frown appear all the more grim. “Not much older than you,” he said, “yet too old to be sent home to mom with nothing but a slap on the wrist.”

Shou gaped at him. “You want me to feel bad for him?”

“I don’t care how you feel as long as you keep the peace,” Iida said. “Will you stand there and tell me no one’s ever pressured you into doing what you were told? Have you ever antagonized me for what I had to do?” Iida made a sweeping, dismissive gesture. “If we're ever to recover from what Claw did, you have to let go of your irrational, petty grudges.”

Shou’s entire spine was taut with rage. Petty grudges? If he’d handed over his father, everything had suggested Koga’s group had planned on taking Shou with them, too. Him and Fukuda and anyone else who got in their way. If Shou hadn’t ambushed them, they would’ve trapped him before he had a chance to fight back.

Iida placed a hand on Kubo’s back, pushing him forward, ignoring how the smaller man dug his heels into the mud.

“I assure you, we’ve all done things we regret,” Iida said. “Perhaps you owe each other an apology.”

Shou continued to stare at him in disbelief. “Are you serious?”

Iida gave Kubo one last nudge, positioning him right in front of Shou. Kubo was still hiding half his face in his collar. They stood like that for a painfully long moment before Kubo took the initiative to extend his right hand.

“I-I'm sorry I helped try to kidnap you,” he stammered, confirming all of Shou’s suspicions.

He glared at Kubo’s hand. Iida stood there silently, expecting Shou to return the ridiculous gesture.

Shou’s lips pulled back, baring his teeth in a warning snarl. “I don’t give a shit how sorry you are.”

Kubo forced a grimace that didn’t quite resemble a smile, slowly lowering his hand. He was so mousy and pathetic compared to Iida, cowering in his oversized jacket, just as round and blue as his strange, impenetrable barriers.

“I… I heard you got Koga-san arrested,” he said, “but they have, like… a network? They’re really hooked on getting revenge. On the Boss. And the boy who beat him. And you.” He swallowed, locking his hands together. “You should be careful. Just saying...”

Shou had to restrain himself not to shove Kubo into the mud. He pointed a sharp, accusing finger at him instead, hissing through his teeth. “Don’t—”

Iida swiftly stepped between them and grabbed Shou’s hand, forcing it down with a painful twist of his wrist.

“Claw is no longer your concern, but showing even a smidge of solidarity for an esper who has nowhere else to turn, is,” he said, roughly shoving Shou’s arm away. “That always seemed like something that came naturally to you, but perhaps I was mistaken.”

Shou’s breath was trapped in his throat. Iida had never talked to him like that before. Raised his voice like he was a kid that needed to be reprimanded. Scolded and put in his place.

Iida gently touched Kubo’s shoulder, prompting him to walk. He didn’t offer any sort of farewell before he followed, turning his back on Shou.

Shou stared after them until he could no longer see them between the fir trees, his fingernails digging into his palms. He unclenched his hands, burying them in his hair instead, peering out at what little he could see of the street.

The streetlamps had turned off. He had to get to school. He grabbed his phone from his pocket, his trembling fingers barely managing to switch on the screen. There was a message from his mother. He swiped it away before he could read the preview, leaving only the clock. Fifteen minutes until his first period began. He could make it in time.

He started walking, cutting through the undergrowth to climb up the ditch by the treeline. How could Iida say that? All Shou had ever done was try to help the people who deserved it. This two-faced, pathetic little—

But he didn’t really know anything about Kubo. He’d never had a conversation with him that didn’t consist of threatening him.

Halfway to the school, Shou realized he’d forgotten to bring his backpack, and then it wasn’t just his hands shaking anymore; it was all of him. Cold sweat coated the back of his neck. His limbs felt weird and numb. He doubled back, heading for his mother’s house, setting into a run as soon as he could see the low, sloping roof. He forced open the lock with his powers and shoved his way through the door, clutching the front of his sweater vest as an awful, stabbing pressure coiled around his chest.

He leaned his back on the door, his legs wobbling under him. Bending over to get the blood back to his head, he watched his mother’s rubber boots by the wall, his zipped-up backpack, and out of nowhere, he laughed.

What was he even freaking out for? He was at home. He was safe. Iida hadn’t changed at all—he was still on top of his game. No one could blame him for worrying a stronger esper like Shou would start a fight, it was only smart to bring backup.

Maybe it was unfair to antagonize someone like Kubo. Shou knew perfectly well how Claw had treated its most specialized members, coercing them into sticking around, sometimes very forcefully so. It was what happened to Fukuda, and Higashio, and so many others who’d since proven they’d turn on Claw the moment they had the chance.

Iida didn’t trust people for no reason. He wasn’t like Shou; holding grudges, listening to the wrong people, letting a couple of fucking government agents coax him into opening up just because they’d been a little nice to him.

His fingers unfurled from his vest as he peered up the staircase. He grabbed the railing, dragging himself up to his room. The bed creaked under his weight when he dropped onto it. He grabbed his duvet and threw it over his head, wrapping it around his shoulders while he sat hunched over, his muddy shoes firmly planted on the carpet.

Iida was taking care of things. Steadfast and sensible as always.

Shou laid down on his side, wrapping the duvet tighter around himself. He could hear Nezumi shuffling around in the bedding in the bottom of her cage, getting ready to go to sleep. The morning light was spilling onto the white wall across from Shou. It was a blank canvas with nothing to focus on right now. Maybe he should decorate it like his mother wanted after all. The cans of paint she’d given him were just collecting dust in the corner.

His eyes had slipped shut by the time his phone buzzed in his pocket. Shou groggily raised his head, grabbing it to check the screen. He flopped back down, accepting the call.

“Hi, Mom,” he mumbled.

“Miyagi called me and said you aren’t at school,” Mom said, sounding torn between worry and impending anger. “Where are you? If something happened, you have to let me know!”

“I’m at home,” Shou said, letting his eyes slide shut again. “I was feeling really weird, so I went back to bed. Sorry...”

“You have to tell me if you’re not feeling well, okay?” Mom said. “I’m really worried about you.”

Whether or not she believed him, the underlying frustration quickly drained from her voice.

“I’m sorry I took off for work,” she said. “I’ll catch a train back as soon as I can. I just don’t know what to make of it when you leave without talking to me.”

She interrogated him about various flu symptoms before talking herself into the conclusion that all his sleepless nights had finally caught up to him. Shou toed off his shoes, letting them drop to the floor. It was nice of her to try so hard, but her words were all blending together in his mind.

“Mom?” he said, interrupting her. “I think everything’s gonna be okay now.”

Chapter Text

Mom drummed her fingers on her tea mug, watching Shou take a bite of the buttered toast she’d put in front of him.

“Are you sure you’re feeling better?” she asked, eyes narrowed. “I can call Miyagi if you need another day at home.”

“I’d rather be at school than hang around here all day,” Shou replied with his mouth full.

He was still groggy after sleeping since yesterday morning, but he felt better than he’d felt in a long time. Clear-headed. Optimistic, even.

Mom kept frowning to herself as she got up from the kitchen table, leaving her half-full mug behind. She shuffled upstairs, then back down to the bathroom, rummaging around in there as she got ready for work. Shou stuffed the last bite of toast in his mouth right as she returned to the kitchen, already wearing her coat and with her messenger bag strapped across her chest.

“Like I said yesterday, call me if anything’s wrong,” she said, lingering in the doorway. “I mean it.”

Shou picked a crumb off his uniform vest and smiled at her. “I know.”

With a small, hesitant nod, Mom turned and disappeared down the hallway, softly closing the front door as she left.

Shou cleared the table, rinsing their used plates and mugs in the sink. He found the tie for his uniform in his blazer pocket and pulled it over his head. It’d gotten a little rumpled, but most of it was supposed to go inside the vest anyway. It’d do.

He got ready to leave, quickly checking that everything he needed was in his backpack. In the same moment he hooked it over his shoulder, the doorbell went off above his head. It kept blaring relentlessly as he shrugged on the other backpack strap, reached for the door, and yanked it open.

Outside, Himiko released the bell button like she’d been zapped. She scurried backward down from the doorstep, quickly stuffed her hands in the pockets of her blazer, and broke into a wide smirk.

“Hello, Suzuki-kun,” she said, catching the end of her newly lit cigarette between her teeth. “Good to see you this fine morning!”

One of her uniform loafers restlessly tapped the pavement. Shou blinked at her. He turned his head, scanning the street for a clue to why she’d show up at his house at eight in the morning.

“Just here to, uh—” Himiko sidestepped him, trying to peek inside the house. “—make sure you don’t skip school again, obviously.”

Shou closed the door behind him, blocking her view. Himiko stretched her fading smirk into a grin, flashing her chipped tooth.

“I promised I’d help you out, right?” she said. “Pretty weak if you’re giving up after one day.”

Shou found his house key and locked the door. Himiko’s smile was becoming increasingly unconvincing. She pushed her glasses up her nose, backing up as Shou walked past her into the driveway. He could hear her falter for a couple of seconds before her footsteps started following him.

“Actually, I wanted to apologize for that thing I said,” she chuckled behind him. “You know, the whole, like… assault story? I mean, it seriously wasn’t okay talking about Satsune when I told you not to, but I didn’t mean to freak you out so bad you can’t even leave your house.”

Right. The last time he’d spoken to Himiko, she’d been threatening to tattle to his mother like a kindergartner. It seemed very unimportant right now. She’d just been angry. Shou had probably said worse things while feeling the same way. Let worse things slide, too.

“Yeah,” he said. “My bad, I guess.”

Himiko caught up to him, staring perplexedly at the side of his face, but only for a second. She loudly exclaimed, “So! Speaking of Satsune, I heard you guys had some big showdown with Yamamoto.”

“I barely talked to her,” Shou said. Another utterly unimportant event.

“Well, that’s not how she sees it.” Himiko rolled her eyes. “It’s great you stopped being a total moron and told her off, but if you think I say a lot of shit, just wait ‘till she gets started.”

Shou didn’t reply, and incredibly, it made Himiko quiet down as well. She discarded her half-finished cigarette well before they reached the school, fidgeting with the front of her pleated skirt instead. Same as Friday, Yuka and the gang of third-year smokers she hung out with were loitering outside the gate. Himiko sent her a subtle little wave. Yuka only responded with a half-hearted smile, barely turning her head.

Himiko dragged her feet as she trudged after Shou to the lockers in the entrance hall, then up the stairs to the second floor. Shou made a left turn to his classroom. He could hear Himiko stop, then abruptly pick up speed. She clamped a hand around his wrist and yanked him toward the girls’ bathroom, shoving him into the narrow aisle between the toilet stalls and the steel sinks on the wall.

“I have a question,” she said as she planted both hands on the inside of the door, shutting out the students in the hallway. “Was Satsune, like, okay with you defending her honor or whatever?”

Shou shrugged indifferently. “No.”

Himiko hunched her back enough to peek at him from under her arm. She scrutinized him for a moment, then pushed off the door with a strange, relieved laugh.

“Okay, good,” she said, paused, then flailed her hands and corrected herself: “I mean, she’s always upset about something, so that’s just normal.”

She ambled around Shou to the first sink, shuffling her bangs like she was suddenly very interested in her own reflection in the mirror.

“You should go to class,” she said. She grabbed the metal rim so she could lean the other way, letting her head flop onto her shoulder. “That’s all I wanted to ask.”

“Okay,” Shou said. “Whatever.”

He turned his back on her, but before he could reach the door handle, Himiko changed her mind and threw herself against the exit.

“I don’t know what to do about her,” she blurted out. “She’s so sad all the time. I just want to, like—” she raised both her hands, fingers flexed in a frustrated gesture, “—hold her hand or something. I just want to hold her hand and make her not sad anymore.”

“Maybe tell that to her instead of me,” Shou said.

“You don’t think I tried that?” Himiko smacked her face into her palms with a miserable groan, knocking her glasses askew. “She used to talk to me sometimes. She used to come over and tell me she didn't want to be at home and then we'd do something else until she felt better, but now it's like, I'll see her in the hallway and she'll stand there with her giant shoujo eyes and her weird fairy hair and shit, looking at me like she wants me dead, and it's just unfair when apparently she doesn't have a problem running around in the woods making out with you—”

“That's not what we were doing.”

“—running around in the woods doing whatever even though you just met, and I know it's bullshit for me to say that when I wanted you to hang out because I figured with your dad and all, maybe you’re fucked up enough that she'd open up to you and—”

The door slammed into Himiko’s back, knocking the wind out of her. She snapped around, glaring at a girl from her class who was peeking confusedly through the narrow crack she’d opened.

“Find somewhere else to take a piss, we're having a conversation,” Himiko barked at her.

She kicked the door shut and spun around to glare at Shou, taking a moment to push her glasses back in place.

“What I’m trying to say is, if she comes around and tells you anything about what’s going on with her, and you do some stupid shit again to make it worse, I'll end you.”

The anger was running off with her again. She was just worried, Shou got that.

“I’m trying to help her too,” he said. “She seems pretty tough to me. You gotta let her deal with her problems herself, how else is she gonna learn how to do it?”

Himiko’s eyebrows dipped far below the frame of her glasses. “That’s not how you help someone like her.”

She kept trying to stare him down, doing her best to be intimidating. Shou reached around her, opening the door. “Guess we’ll see about that.”

In the hallway, the girl who’d tried to enter the bathroom gave Shou a weird look, letting him pass before she inched her way around Himiko. Shou continued to his classroom. Most of his classmates had already arrived, busy unpacking their books and notepads for the first period.

A few of the girls had gathered around Yamamoto at the far wall, one of them sitting on her desk, another lounging on the windowsill. They were whispering to each other, sending Shou variations of the same disdainful look Yamamoto herself was directing at him.

Satsune sat by her desk in the middle of the room. She didn’t look up from the sheet of overdue homework she was working on even when Shou stopped right in front of her. He dumped his backpack on the floor and grabbed his chair, its legs screeching as he dragged it closer and spun it around so he could sit on it backward.

“Hi, Satsune,” he said, loud enough that everyone in the room could hear it. “What an awesome trip we had the other day, we should do that again.”

Satsune’s fingers tightened around her pencil. She gave him a brief, exasperated look, then continued retracing a circle she’d drawn on her worksheet, etching the lead into the paper so hard it was starting to tear.

“Is it my fault you weren’t here yesterday?” she asked quietly.

“No,” Shou said.

Satsune raised one eyebrow like she didn’t believe him, but Miyagi walked in the next moment, ushering Shou to move his chair back where it belonged.

Japanese grammar was just as mind-numbingly boring as every time Fukuda had talked about it, but it was a lot easier to follow along than it’d been Friday. Shou smoothed out the first page in his untouched notebook and picked out a pencil, jotting down the pointers Miyagi was listing. She had her back turned as she wrote on the blackboard, her chalk stub squeaking with each downstroke.

A ball of crumpled paper flew over Shou’s shoulder and landed in front of his pencil case. Confused, he glanced back at Satsune. She gave a barely noticeable shrug.

He unfolded the ball in his lap, revealing the worksheet Satsune had been scribbling on. He flipped it around, squinting to decipher the haphazard handwriting on the back.

Sorry for ignoring you. We should stick together
You were right anyway
I won’t let anyone talk to me like that again

Miyagi was still listing grammar rules on the blackboard. Shou turned his head again, shooting Satsune a bright grin. She met his eyes, making sure he followed her line of sight as she very deliberately shifted it to Yamamoto.

In the front row, Yamamoto’s right arm made a weird, involuntary jerk and threw her pencil halfway across the room. Miyagi stopped in the middle of a sentence, giving her a bewildered look.

“Will you pick that up, please?” she asked.

Yamamoto looked severely weirded out as she slid out of her seat to retrieve the pencil, the entire class watching her. Satsune’s expression seemed almost bored; already so nonchalant about using her rare, newfound power.

In just two days, she’d figured out how to point it at another person. Shou couldn’t help but feel a little proud.

***

On the afternoon before winter break, Shou huddled inside his school blazer, bracing against the frigid breeze. The sketchbook page resting on his thighs was a mosaic of intersecting gesture drawings at this point and his fingers were stinging from the cold. He let go of his pencil and nestled his hands under his arms, leaning back on the outside of one of the window panels lining the walkway between the gym hall and the rest of the school.

Yuka hollered something on the soccer field in front of him. Her team was passing the ball back and forth, circling in on the opponent’s goal. Satsune stood guard in front of it, head hunched like an angry bull. A few strands of hair had gotten loose from her ponytail, hanging in her face.

One of Yuka’s classmates took a shot at the goal and Satsune made a fearless dive for the ball, no concern for the lousy dirt field. She caught it with the tips of her fingers just a moment before the boy who’d been acting as referee blew off the match.

Even though her team had just lost, Yuka cackled loudly and sprinted across the field. She lifted Satsune into a crushing hug and Satsune just sort of flopped over, letting Yuka carry her halfway to the gym hall.

“Shou, did you see that sick catch?” Yuka yelled.

“Yeah, pretty sick,” Shou said, grinning at them.

As soon as Yuka put her down, Satsune preoccupied herself with brushing the dirt off her gloves and knee pads. A few of the other soccer club members praised her as they walked past, one boy patting her on the back, but she only responded with a stilted little smile. She kept saying nobody at school liked her, but at least they could acknowledge she was good at this.

Yuka stopped in front of Shou, holding out an expectant hand. “What’re you drawing?”

Shou glanced down at his sketchbook before he reluctantly turned it around and gave it to her. “You guys, I guess.”

He shifted on the ledge he was sitting on, fidgeting with his pencil while Yuka’s eyes skirted over the quick, faceless doodles of her and her teammates kicking the ball around, Satsune guarding her goal like she was at war, their bored referee pacing back and forth by the bushes at the back of the school grounds.

“Dude, you’re going places.” Yuka flipped through the other pages, showing them to her teammates who’d stopped to peek over her shoulder. “Fucking look at this.”

“Wow,” a boy from Shou’s class said, studying whichever page Yuka had arrived at. “When you said you liked drawing, I didn’t think you were actually good at it.”

“Thanks?” Shou said.

The pencil in his hands settled down. It was weird, but he didn’t really mind Yuka riffling through his sketches. He wasn’t sure why he’d ever minded. Apart from a scathing critique from Higashio now and again, no one ever had anything bad to say about them.

Once she’d reached the end of the sketchbook, Yuka gave it back with a bright smile. She took a moment to step up to Satsune and brush a lock of the hair that had escaped her ponytail behind her ear, then gave her an equally encouraging smile and moved to follow her team to the changing rooms.

Shou tucked the sketchbook under his arm and pushed himself up from the ledge. “Hey, Yuka—” he started. “Do you wanna, like… hang out or something? Sometime during the break?”

Yuka still had that smile on her face, and Shou wasn’t sure what it meant. She was so friendly with everyone, but every time he talked to her, she was gone a moment later.

“Yeah, definitely,” she replied. She’d turned halfway to the glass door, pointing at it. “Can we figure something out later, though? I’m kinda in a hurry.”

Shou didn’t get a chance to ask why she was in a hurry before she’d let herself inside. Satsune moved next to him, her eyes following Yuka as she walked past on the other side of the window panels, wiggling her fingers at them.

Satsune tore the velcro fasteners around her wrists open and pulled off her gloves. “You didn’t have to wait for me,” she said sullenly. “I can figure out how to walk home on my own.”

Shou worked the sketchbook into the backpack beside him. “My mom’s coming home late. Not like I got anything better to do.”

Satsune didn’t respond, just slipped inside the walkway and headed the same way Yuka had. A few of her fellow club members had already changed out of their gym clothes, walking past her to the front of the school. She ignored whatever they were saying, keeping her eyes on the floor.

It’d been weeks, but Shou still couldn’t figure Satsune out. Every morning before school, Himiko came to interrogate him about her mental state, and every afternoon, Shou walked Satsune home, waiting for her to say something. Himiko was definitely right that something else was up with her as well, but it wasn’t the most important part. He was waiting for her to ask. Ask what he knew in his gut she’d already figured out. About Claw. About everything Shou came from.

He wandered around to the front of the school to wait by the bike sheds. A few students who’d stayed to finish up their club projects wished him a nice break before grabbing their bicycles and heading home. Despite Yamamoto’s best efforts to slander him, Shou had talked to most of his classmates and a handful of other people around school with little trouble. It seemed everyone else agreed Yamamoto was kind of obnoxious. Hardly much of a threat to either him or Satsune.

He turned his head as Yuka walked out from the front entrance. She’d left her bag and uniform behind, instead wearing her teal, faux-fur jacket over a simple tank top. Her nose was buried in her phone, too preoccupied to pay attention to Himiko who was right behind her.

“If you don’t wanna be home by yourself, you can just come to my place,” Himiko pleaded, trying to keep in step with the fast taps of Yuka’s ankle boots. “Like, maybe you can show me that movie you talked about?”

Yuka laughed like she’d said something funny. “What’s the matter with you? We’re just meeting up with his friends, it’s not a big deal.” She picked up speed, ruffling Shou’s hair as she passed him. “See you, my dude, I’ll text you.”

She headed through the gate, digging a cigarette out of her pocket. She bounced on her feet as she lit it, then waved excitedly at someone on the other side of the wall. Himiko stopped next to Shou, a dark expression settling on her face. The guy Yuka had talked to that evening they broke into the school had come into view. He was wearing a uniform from the high school up by the train station.

Satsune came out from the main entrance right as Yuka dodged the guy’s attempt to loop an arm around her waist. She stopped at Shou’s other side and glared at Himiko. Himiko glared back, communicating some silent, bleak message Shou wasn’t initiated in.

“I’ve tried talking to her like eight times,” Himiko said. “Why don’t you do something about it for a change?”

Satsune untied her messy ponytail and flipped her curls over her shoulders. She continued to the gate. Shou glanced back at Himiko, but she didn’t even notice, dejectedly glowering at her shoes.

“Hey, what’s that guy’s name again?” Shou asked, catching up to Satsune.

“Ikeda,” Satsune said. She was keeping her distance, but her eyes were drilling into the back of the guy’s head as he and Yuka sauntered along further down the street.

“Why do you guys have such a big problem with him?” Shou asked. “Aren’t he and Yuka friends?”

Satsune gave him a look like it was an incredibly stupid question. “He’s a high-school senior. He’s eighteen.”

“So?” Shou said. “I used to hang around people a lot older than that.”

“Who tried to feel you up every time they talked to you?” Satsune asked.

Shou crossed his arms over his stomach. “Well, no…”

They made it to the intersection at the end of the street. Yuka and Ikeda were heading toward the shopping area at the center of town. Satsune had to take her eyes off them as she and Shou climbed the hill in the opposite direction, settling on scowling at the asphalt at her feet instead.

“So uh… Seems like you’re in a pretty bad mood,” Shou said. “Worse than usual.”

Satsune brushed her hair out of her face.

“Did something—”

Satsune stopped and snapped around, gripping the strap of her messenger bag so tightly her knuckles turned an even paler shade than the rest of her skin. “Can you teach me how to fight?”

For a moment, Shou was so baffled he burst out laughing. “Who do you wanna fight?” he asked. “Ikeda?”

She stared at him so intensely he had to indulge her. He raised a hand to his chin, looking her over. Judging from how well she did as a goalie, she had good reflexes. A natural, athletic grace to her movements. Excellent awareness of both herself and her surroundings. However, with her skinny limbs and frail physique, she was not cut out for getting hit with anything more violent than a soccer ball.

“You wouldn’t win,” he concluded. “If he knows how to throw a punch at all, he’ll knock you out in one hit. He’s gotta weigh almost twice as much as you.”

Satsune gave him an equally appraising look. “I don’t think you weigh more than me and you say you’ve fought people.”

“Yeah, but I cheat,” Shou said, tapping a finger at his temple. “Telekinesis, remember?”

“I can cheat too,” Satsune persisted. “It’s just a different kind of cheating.”

Shou made a doubtful noise. She could consistently get him to move now—at least as long as he wasn’t paying attention—but it still wasn’t an ability very suited for solo combat.

“Not the same,” he said and started walking again.

“Let’s say he doesn’t know how to throw a punch,” Satsune said. “I don’t think he’s ever fought anyone. I’m definitely faster than him.”

“Look, I have a friend I used to spar with,” Shou said, thinking back on all the half-serious practice matches he’d had with Ootsuki. “He mostly does tai chi, and without any powers involved, tai chi’s useless against other martial arts. Like, if you go up against a decent MMA fighter, you’re gonna get knocked out, but I could still never beat him without my powers just ‘cause his arms are longer than mine.”

Satsune stubbornly continued to glare at the side of his face. Shou sighed.

“Okay, if you wanna get your ass kicked so bad, I guess I can teach you some things,” he said. “But I’m telling you, you’ll only get one chance to hurt him, and it better be good, or your best bet is to run.”

They could see Satsune’s house now. It rose up like an alien monolith against the backdrop of old-fashioned townhouses, concrete-gray rectangular shapes conjoined in a way that came off rigid and hostile.

“We can meet up tomorrow,” Satsune said with determination. “I won’t lose to someone like him, I don’t know why you think I’m that pathetic.”

A crooked smile tugged at Shou’s lips. She was more confident in this than the experimental esper training they’d gone through so far. He should’ve known she was the kind of person who needed a clear-cut goal to bring out her full engagement.

“Yeah,” he said. “Prove it, then.”

Satsune nodded. She hesitated for a bit, clenched her hands, then resolutely strode up the tile path to her house. Her mother had made it clear Shou wasn’t welcome, so he stayed outside the property, the tips of his sneakers grazing the razor-sharp edge of the lawn.

Satsune’s mother flung open the front door before Satsune reached it, her high heels clacking against the tiles as she rushed outside. Like Satsune, she was thin and frail-looking. Shou knew she didn’t work at the moment, yet every time he’d seen her, she was dressed in a sleek dress or skirt like she was on her way to a fancy business dinner, her blonde hair gathered in a bun that made her look older than she probably was.

“Where have you been?” she demanded, grabbing Satsune’s arm. She briefly glared at Shou, then back at her daughter, dragging her closer with an iron grip on her elbow. “Your classes ended three hours ago. You come straight home, how many times do I have to tell you, it has consequences if you keep running around wherever you please!”

“I told you I had soccer practice,” Satsune said, defiantly keeping eye-contact. “If you gave me back my phone, you could’ve called me and asked.”

“Don’t start,” her mother warned her. She forced Satsune inside, sending Shou another look like he was nothing but dirt under the heels of the designer pumps she wore around the house.

The door slammed shut. Shou could see Satsune through the floor to ceiling windows in their living room. She’d cast her eyes down now, standing there stiff and unmoving while her mother clearly continued to yell at her.

Shou exhaled through his nose and started walking, heading for his own house. Despite Himiko’s concerns, it wasn’t like Satsune was in danger. Shou had met enough people who’d grown up with abuse to know she didn’t act like any of them. She wasn’t skittish, she didn’t act weird when someone else raised their voice or moved unexpectedly, and all her bruises and scrapes were clearly from soccer practice.

She’d learn to stand up to a bit of yelling soon enough. Really, if Satsune was planning to fight anyone, her mother was the first person who deserved a fist to the face.

***

It was raining the next morning; a drizzle so fine you could hardly see the raindrops. Shou pulled up the hood of his hoodie to keep his hair dry and blearily rubbed his eyes. It was odd how sleeping more than three hours per night made it so much harder to get out of bed.

Satsune was waiting in their usual spot, right at the edge of the forest. She looked up from her dirty combat boots when Shou approached her, then headed in between the trees without so much as a hello.

Shou’s sneakers sank into the mud as they walked, the dirt clinging to the soles. Satsune trekked through the underbrush with practiced confidence, her foothold steady on the slippery, dead leaves. Shou scanned their surroundings for a sign of the giant fish spirit that usually followed her around, but for once there was nothing staring back at him from behind the crooked beech trunks.

He tried to think of something to say. Every other time he’d been out with Satsune, she’d at least brought a bag with a bottle of water and a change of clothes. Today, she carried nothing but her yellow, woolen coat over a short skirt and a pair of leggings.

“I was actually planning on showing you some self-defense moves,” Shou said. “I don’t think you’re wearing the best outfit for it.”

Satsune ignored him and hopped over the ditch leading up to her weathered little shrine. She also ignored the plastic crate she’d abandoned at the side of the road since the first time Shou joined her. Himiko’s belongings had been tossed back in there, soaking in several centimeters of water.

Satsune took off her coat and left it inside the dry end of the shrine. She clenched the ends of her overlong sweater sleeves as she positioned herself in the middle of the overgrown road, waiting to be told what to do.

“Okay,” Shou said, scratching his hairline. “If you don’t care and have no standards, you know you can just kick Ikeda in the dick or something, right?”

“That’s weak,” Satsune said through her teeth.

“Yeah, agreed.” Shou put his hands at his sides. “If you wanna put this guy in his place, you can’t fight dirty. You’re not that much shorter than him, so I think the easiest thing you can do is deck him right in the nose.” Shou poked a finger at the top of his own nasal bone. “If you do it right, you can break it, and even if you don’t, it’s really disorienting for someone who’s not used to it.”

“Okay,” Satsune said, widening her stance a little. “That sounds easy.”

“Maybe.” Shou pointed at his face. “Try and hit me.”

Satsune didn’t even hesitate, just drew her left arm back and launched her fist right at Shou’s nose. He caught her arm before it could connect, sweeping her hand away.

“Your aim’s fine, but you gotta keep your whole arm straight or the blow’s just gonna slide off,” he said, straightening his own wrist and elbow to demonstrate. “Try it again.”

She did, keeping her joints properly aligned this time. Shou caught her arm again, holding it in place. “Okay, nice, but now what’re you gonna do if he blocks you?”

“He won’t.”

Satsune flung her other fist at Shou. He released her, meaning to block the incoming attack, but his arm just fell to his side like a limp piece of meat. He jerked his head back, striking up a barrier in front of himself. Satsune’s knuckles connected with it with a blunt crack. She withdrew her arm and squeezed her eyes shut as she curled up around it.

“See?” she said, gritting her teeth. “I can cheat, too.”

There was blood on her knuckles, the skin scraped off where they’d nearly hit Shou’s cheekbone.

“Yeah,” Shou said, glancing down at the arm she’d momentarily paralyzed. “I guess you can.”

After spending a few hours teaching Satsune every beginner trick he could think of, it became clear that everything she didn’t have in technique, she made up for with sheer viciousness. It worked okay as long as she was on the attack, but Shou doubted her novice grasp of her psychic powers would save her against someone who didn’t stand around and take the blows.

When he tried to teach her how to break free from someone grappling her, the problem with her lack of strategy really showed. She was way too aggressive; constantly forgetting that she was trying to retreat, not struggle against someone she had no chance to overpower.

She grew more and more frustrated each time Shou wrestled her to the ground. He’d lost count of how many attempts they’d gone through when she simply remained sitting in the mud, her jaw clenched and her chest heaving.

“Come on, there’s no way that hurt,” Shou said.

Satsune angrily wiped at her cheek, smearing the mud on her hand across her skin. Her hair hung in front of her face, a few thin twigs tangled in the curls. Her aura was acting weird, folding in on itself to the point where it barely reached her extremities.

“I think we should call it for today,” Shou decided, offering her a hand.

Satsune ignored the gesture and pushed herself up, her boots slipping a little on the wet leaves. She glanced down at herself. The leggings she wore under her skirt were caked with dirt.

“What am I supposed to do about my clothes?”

She had yet to explain why she’d left home without a proper set of clothes in the first place, but Shou could guess her mother would be even more furious than usual if they rubbed it in her face that Satsune had spent all day thrashing around in the woods. With Shou. Again.

“If we go to my place, we can wash them,” he suggested.

Satsune laid her head back, but the translucent drizzle that was still coming down did little to wash the dirt off her face. It’d just turned the thick fabric of her sweater even darker than when they’d arrived. She didn’t say anything, just went to fetch her coat.

***

Satsune’s hair always looked strange when it was wet, draping over her shoulders like heavy, pleated curtains. She’d been in the bathroom for a long time, following Shou’s suggestion to take a shower and untangle all the leaves and twigs that’d gotten stuck in her curls.

Now, she and Shou stood in the small utility room that linked the bathroom and hallway, watching her clothes rock back and forth inside Mom’s washing machine. The water had turned a murky brown since the cycle started.

Satsune stretched out the front of the simple, white t-shirt Shou had lent her, peering down at herself. Coupled with a pair of his old jeans, the outfit looked strange on her as well; too plain and light compared to the thick, oversized shirts she usually wore, and yet she seemed more comfortable in it than her own clothes. Her posture was more relaxed. Her aura calm and even.

“We’re the same size,” she said, letting go of the t-shirt. “I feel like this should’ve gone better.”

“Nah, when you’re starting out it’s not about strength,” Shou said. “The first step’s unlearning all the reflexes that aren’t gonna help you.”

Satsune nodded absentmindedly, watching the machine again. A blob of off-white foam was steadily consuming her clothes.

“I think you put in too much detergent,” she said.

“You dragged in a lot of mud,” Shou shrugged and turned away. “It’ll still be awhile until it’s done, but I don’t think my mom’s gonna mind if you wanna stay for dinner and stuff. She’s told me you can come over a million times.”

Satsune followed him out into the hallway, idly rubbing the bruises on her knuckles. The skin had already turned a faint purple. There were traces of dirt on the floor along the route she’d walked from the front door. Shou let it be and hopped down the single step to the kitchen to search the fridge. He pulled out a bottle of cola, then reached for a pair of glasses in the cupboard, nudging them over the edge with a touch of telekinesis so he didn’t have to stand on his toes.

He filled one glass and held it out to Satsune. She was studying Mom’s mismatched, multi-colored furniture, but it was impossible to deduce her opinion on it. She gingerly accepted the cola and watched the bubbles rise to the surface until they stopped fizzing.

“So,” Shou said, pouring a glass for himself, “I guess we should find something to do while we wait?”

Satsune’s glanced at the arm Shou had channeled his telekinesis through. “Does your mom know about me?”

“About your powers?” Shou screwed the cap back on the bottle. “Yeah, but it’s no big deal. It’s like me, she’s met a lot of espers.”

He faltered, realizing the moment he’d said it that he’d messed up again. It was like every time he and Satsune spent time together, some new, incriminating detail slipped out of his mouth.

Satsune was looking straight at him, tapping her thumb on the rim of her glass. Like all the other times, she knew the implications. She knew.

Shou put the bottle back in the fridge and closed the door, snuffing out the light inside with a quiet thump. This had gone on long enough. Satsune wasn’t going to leave until her clothes were washed and dried and she was clearly waiting for him to say something. He owed her an explanation.

“Maybe I should’ve done this earlier, but there’s something I have to tell you,” he started. “It’s gonna sound bad, so if I’m wrong and you don’t already know, just hear me out—”

“I know,” Satsune said. She’d stopped tapping her glass. “Those espers who attacked Seasoning City… The one who was on TV. Isn’t he your dad?”

She wouldn’t ask like that if she was scared. She would’ve stopped talking to him long ago if she had a problem with it. Shou knew what, but his hand still quivered a little as he reached for his glass.

Satsune’s brows creased. “It’s really obvious,” she said. “You’re an esper. And your name is Suzuki. You look just like him. And sometimes when you talk about what you did before, it doesn’t add up at all.”

“It’s kinda hard coming up with a cover story for your entire life,” Shou mumbled, taking a sip of his cola.

“If you didn’t want anyone to notice, you could’ve dyed your hair,” Satsune said. “Changed your name.”

The washing machine whirred way too loudly, the sound passing clean through the walls, drowning out any thoughts trying to form in Shou’s mind.

“Were you there?” Satsune asked. “When that explosion happened?”

Shou nodded. “I tried to stop him.”

Satsune tilted her head, her flat, damp hair slouching over her shoulder. “How?”

An unsure little chuckle escaped Shou’s lips. “I thought I could fight him. It was really stupid.”

He squeezed past Satsune, leaned his back on the kitchen counter, and raised his glass to his mouth, chugging half his soda to remedy how dry his throat felt. His skin crawled as Satsune moved right next to him, leaning back as well. At least they weren’t facing each other anymore.

“I haven’t told anyone else here, but you can… You can ask whatever,” Shou mumbled. “It’s fair. We’re sticking together and all that.”

Satsune was quiet for a painfully long time, staring into her cola.

“Did you live with him?” she asked.

Shou frowned at a sprinkle of bread crumbs that’d fallen to the floor under the dinner table. “Sometimes.”

“What was it like?”

Of all the things she could ask him, all the esper-related information Shou knew she’d craved from the moment they first saw each other, and now this was what she took an interest in?

“I don’t know,” he said. “Not great.”

He took another swig of his cola, then put the glass down behind him. He restlessly scratched his arm.

“Do you hate him?” Satsune asked.

“I don’t…” Shou folded his hands. “I don’t know.” He unfolded them so he could smooth his hair back. “He did a lot of stuff, but he’s my dad, you know?”

One of Satsune’s short fingernails traced the rim of her glass, scraping the surface. Even after showering, there was still dirt stuck underneath.

“My mom locks me in our basement sometimes,” she said.

Shou turned his head. Satsune’s nail kept sliding over the glass, producing a quiet, high-pitched sound.

“She says I’m embarrassing her,” she continued. “She says a lot of things. I act like a crazy person. I act like a boy. I don’t know how to behave, get bad grades, get along with all the wrong people...”

The noise stopped once Satsune removed her thumb, leaving the impossibly loud whir from the washing machine as the only background noise.

“I think she’s hated me from the moment I was born,” she said in a matter-of-fact drone. “This morning, she told me she can’t stand to look at me, but she’ll still scream at me when I get home because I didn’t stay to be miserable with her.”

She took a sip of her cola, then set down the glass next to Shou’s.

“I wish she was dead.”

Shou frowned at her. “What… about your dad?” he asked. “Doesn’t he live with you?”

Satsune combed her fingers through her hair. It was returning to its usual, wispy state as it dried. “He works abroad. I talk to him on the phone every week and he tells me to stop exaggerating and try not to be difficult.” She smiled bitterly to herself. “Maybe it is my fault. She doesn’t act like that when he’s around.”

“But—”

Satsune glared at Shou the moment he opened his mouth. “I’m not telling you this because I need you to make me feel better,” she said. “It’s my problem and I’ll deal with it myself.”

Shou raised his hands in apology. “Yeah, okay. I get that.”

He lowered his arms, watching Satsune out of the corner of his eye. She continued smoothing out her hair, her head turned toward the window and the single naked tree in the backyard.

Despite what she’d just said, a strange, warm feeling bloomed in Shou’s chest. Some kind of relief, maybe. An affirmation that this was an equal exchange. That it didn’t need to be said that it would stay between them. That Satsune kind of got what he was talking about, and that he kind of got what was going on with her.

“I was gonna kill my pops,” he said.

There was no forethought behind it, it just came out. Sat in the room with them where it was real and tangible.

“It’s not the same as your mom, but I thought it’d be better if he was dead,” he explained. “I thought it’d be easy. I mean, not doing it, but dealing with it. He made me hurt other people all the time.”

Satsune stopped combing her hair. She folded her arms over her stomach. “What did it feel like?” she asked. “Those other times?”

What did it feel like?

Sometimes, it’d been fun. Satisfying to beat someone who truly deserved it until they didn’t move anymore. Exhilarating to stand up to a challenge and win. Other times, Shou had stashed the memory of what happened far, far in the back of his mind where he’d never have to think about it again.

“Not like anything, most of the time,” he replied.

It wasn’t a lie. Maybe that was the worst part. All the times he hardly remembered.

Shou’s hands had calmed down while he spoke. All of this was a little like when he’d talked to Ritsu. He felt lighter. His skin had stopped crawling.

“I don’t miss it,” he said. “I thought I would, but I don’t.”

He gave Satsune a small smile.

“I’m not trying to make you feel better, this is just my honest opinion, okay?”

Satsune nodded very faintly.

“I know your parents are shit and I know it feels awful to be the only esper around, but you’re lucky you grew up here,” Shou said, gesturing at the space around them; the brightly colored walls and odd, second-hand furniture Mom had collected since she left Pops behind. “You don’t have anyone trying to kill you out here. You actually got friends, whether you wanna talk to them or not. You’re really…”

Shou intertwined his fingers, trying to find the right words.

“All that stuff you’re worrying about, it’s just normal problems. You’re just some normal girl,” he said. “Your mom locks you in the basement? So what? I can teach you to pick the lock if you want. What’s she gonna do about it, yell at you some more?”

He leaned off the counter, placing himself directly in front of Satsune.

“Seriously, it’s not that bad,” he said. “I think you’re pretty cool. I know Yuka does, too, and Himiko’s like obsessed with you. Maybe you won’t ever get along with your mom, but if you tried a little harder, I think everyone else would be okay with you.”

Satsune stood there and blinked her giant eyes, seemingly unmoved by the sincerity Shou had just offered her. On the other side of the wall, the washing machine beeped loudly, then let out a dull clunk as the lock on the door was released.

“I don’t think so,” Satsune replied. “But thanks.”

Chapter Text

The stark smell of acrylics tickled Shou’s nose as he cracked open another one of the small paint cans on the floor. The color inside was a plain gray, darker than the misty green and blue he’d already slathered on the wall across from his bed.

He picked up one of the brushes his mother had bought for him; thinner and more pointed than the one he’d left on the newspaper spreads he was sitting on. The two intersecting triangles in front of him looked all wobbly on the textured wallpaper. He didn’t know what he was trying to paint, anyway—his phone had startled him awake earlier, and Mom had told him a million times that, when he couldn’t sleep, it was better to get up and do something else for a while than to lie there and keep trying.

He could hear Nezumi’s tiny paws leave the clutter under his desk and skitter along the baseboard on the wall. Shou hardened his aura in a circle around him to block off the hamster and dipped the brush in the paint, the liquid dripping off the tip in fat globs. Experimentally, he pressed it against the wall and drew a straight, diagonal line. The paint was coated so thick it started running down into the blue shape underneath. He quickly tore a corner off the newspaper and dabbed the excess paint, but it just smeared and left a murky shadow.

He winced as his phone buzzed behind him. Even when muffled by the carpet, the sound felt like nails on a chalkboard. Nezumi darted around Shou’s barrier and curiously sniffed the screen. Himiko’s name had lit up in the middle—calling him this time instead of continuing the series of rambling texts that’d been coming in for the last hour.

The buzzing stopped. Shou relaxed his shoulders and wiped the gray brush properly. He leaned forward, carefully painting another line along the bottom of the blue shape, then flinched as a sharp plink hit his window. He put too much pressure on the brush, leaving another big, ugly blotch.

Another plink. Shou gritted his teeth and stood, scooping Nezumi up from the floor. He put her back in her cage, then shoved the curtain aside and scowled down at the driveway. Predictably, Himiko was glaring back at him, selecting a pebble from the pile in her hand. She lobbed it at the window and hit the glass right in front of Shou’s face.

Shou crawled onto the desk so he could unlatch the window, pushing it open. “What?” he hissed. “Go away, you’re gonna wake up my mom.”

“Why aren’t you answering your phone, dipshit,” Himiko whispered loudly. “It's important!”

She looked like she’d just rolled out of bed, her hair tied back in a messy ponytail instead of her usual braids. She narrowed her eyes at the paint brush Shou was still holding.

“What the fuck are you even doing?” she asked. “Are you painting at two in the morning?”

Shou glanced down at the paint that had stuck to his fingers. “So what if I am?”

Himiko dumped the pebbles in Mom’s hedge and pointed toward the center of town. “You have to come with me, Yuka’s in trouble.”

“What trouble?” Shou asked.

“I’ll tell you on the way, just come on,” Himiko said, waving him along.

She sounded weirdly tense; not like her usual boisterous self. Shou twisted around to throw the brush onto the spread of newspaper on the floor, then frowned back down at her. “I’m not coming until you tell me what’s going on.”

“Shou, I’m serious,” Himiko pleaded. “She’s at Ikeda’s house, okay? She texted me out of nowhere asking if I could come get her and she hasn’t replied since, I’m really worried!”

She kept staring at him insistently, her mouth wobbling like she was about to burst into tears. Shou wasn’t sure what her implications were, but the concern was definitely sincere.

“Okay, give me a moment,” he said.

He closed the window and put the lids back on the paint cans before he quietly went downstairs. He slipped on his sneakers and grabbed his jacket on the way out, locking the front door behind him. Himiko stood in the middle of the street, anxiously shifting her weight from one foot to the other. She started walking as soon as Shou had made it out of the driveway.

“So, what do you think happened?” he asked, stuffing his keys in his pocket.

Himiko’s eyes widened in disbelief. “Are you really that clueless?”

Shou slowly zipped up his jacket. Had Ikeda hurt her? He assumed Himiko was bringing him along as muscle or she could’ve gone by herself. Was this an exception for when it was okay to beat the shit out of someone? Everyone liked Yuka. You didn’t get away with hurting someone like her.

Himiko led them to a narrow townhouse at the end of the shopping street Shou had so often passed through. She peered through the window facing the street, but there was only a dim glow from somewhere inside. She took a moment to collect herself, then jammed her finger onto the doorbell, letting the shrill buzz go on for several seconds.

A lamp flicked on. Himiko restlessly folded her arms as the door opened, letting the distant sound of hip-hop music drift outside. Ikeda peeked around the door like he expected the cops, not the squat middle school girl standing in front of him.

Himiko glowered at him over the rim of her glasses. “Tachibana asked me to pick her up.”

Ikeda opened the door wide enough that he could lean his shoulder on the frame. “Of course she did.”

“Where is she?” Himiko asked, trying to see around him.

“She locked herself in the bathroom,” Ikeda said. “She can come out on her own, nobody's keeping her.”

“Let her in so we can leave, okay?” Shou said, already fed up with his snide tone.

Ikeda scrunched up his face. “Who the fuck are you? Tachibana doesn’t need another little goblin to rescue her.”

A couple other people had appeared by a doorway behind Ikeda. A tall boy with a bottle of beer in his hand shuffled up to him and peeked over his shoulder. “No way, isn't he that yakuza kid?” he asked with a lopsided grin. “So scary.”

Ikeda rolled his eyes and placed his hand on the inside of the door to shut them out. Shou quickly pushed Himiko aside and kicked it open, slamming it into Ikeda's shoulder.

“I said let her in.”

Ikeda clutched his arm like the impact had somehow injured him. A few more of his friends had shown up, frowning at the scene.

“Ikeda, just let them take her home, what the hell is wrong with you?” one girl said, making a beeline for the entrance.

She gestured for Himiko to follow her. Himiko ducked her head as she hurried past the other high schoolers, she and the girl turning around a corner. Ikeda was still holding on to his arm, not really retaliating, just sending Shou disgruntled glances while the rest of his friends stood around uselessly in the background.

Himiko soon came back with Yuka in tow. Yuka was even more adamant about keeping her head down, not looking at anyone. She tried to cover it up with her hand, but her face was flushed and her eyes swollen the way eyes only got after shedding a lot of tears.

Himiko only paused so Yuka could put on her boots, then hurriedly grabbed her hand and dragged her outside. Shou stayed on the doorstep, glaring at Ikeda.

“Stay away from her or I'm coming back here, got it?” he said.

Ikeda finally let go of his shoulder and had the audacity to laugh at him. “Piss off, little boy.”

He slammed the door in Shou’s face. Shou stared at it, the quiet hip-hop beat seeping through the wood. A searing anger welled up in him at a rate he hadn’t experienced in a long time. He could feel his aura roll off his back in big, ominous waves.

"Shou, come on," Himiko yelled behind him.

He turned his head. Himiko had led Yuka a few dozen meters down the street, keeping a firm grip on her hand. Shou glanced at the door one more time, then backed down from the doorstep and followed them.

Yuka was still crying. She stumbled a little on her boots, and as if to steady her, Himiko stopped and wrapped her arms around her in a tight, wordless hug. With the height difference between them, the top of her head only reached Yuka’s chin.

“So classy of you to plant your face right in my tits, Hasegawa,” Yuka slurred and sniffled loudly. Her eyes were all unfocused. Shou had seen how well she held her liquor; he couldn’t guess how much it took to get her this wasted.

“Don’t you know everyone’s really worried about you?” Himiko mumbled into her chest.

“I said, nothing happened,” Yuka replied. She freed one arm so she could wipe her face. Her makeup had smeared a little, painting dark shadows around her eyes.

Himiko craned her neck so she could see her face. “Sure, ‘cause you cry like this all the time.” She let go and held out a hand expectantly. “Give me your phone.”

“No,” Yuka whined, hiding her face in her palms.

“I’m calling your dad, so give it to me,” Himiko said.

Yuka crossed her arms like a scorned little kid. “He can’t turn the boat around for this, that’s stupid.”

“Yes, he can.”

Himiko wrangled Yuka’s phone out of the front pocket of her jeans. She quickly found the number she meant to call, but Yuka shoved her away and started walking again.

“Yuka, no,” Himiko barked.

Shou jogged after her, slowing down when they were side by side. Yuka kept wiping tears away with her wrists.

“I’m fine,” she insisted. “This is so stupid.”

Shou didn’t know what to say. The wind was frigid like always, and if Yuka had brought any outerwear, she’d forgotten to grab it on the way out of Ikeda’s house. She hugged herself, shivering slightly. Hesitantly, Shou zipped down his puffer jacket and shrugged it off. He stepped in front of her, holding it out.

Yuka’s lips wobbled while Shou guided her arms into the sleeves, tears continuing to pour down her face. Himiko caught up to them and slid the phone back in her pocket.

“He’s coming back in,” she said. “He didn’t even let me finish.”

“You’re so annoying,” Yuka sobbed.

“We’re gonna walk you home and wait there, he said it’d be like an hour," Himiko said, grabbing Yuka’s hand again before she started toward the harbor.

Just past the intersection Shou always crossed on his way to school, there was a winding path leading to a few old, overgrown houses. Himiko dragged Yuka up a driveway with long, brown grass poking up between the stone tiles. Old barrels and crates of scrap metal leaned on the facade next to Yuka’s rusty bike.

Himiko kicked a pair of rubber boots off the doorstep while she searched her pocket for a set of keys. She unlocked the door and pulled Yuka inside. Yuka nearly tripped and had to take a moment to recover, planting a hand on the wall like she was dizzy.

“You can go home now,” she mumbled hazily.

“No,” Himiko said.

She held the door open, waiting for Shou to join them. He reluctantly entered the dark genkan and peered down a long, windowless hallway. The floor was a mess of more shoes; colorful sneakers and sturdy boots, a pair of clogs, two platform-heeled pumps. Yuka kept Shou’s jacket on instead of burdening the coat rack that was already plastered with jackets and knitted scarfs, but Himiko distractedly hung up her windbreaker like she lived here too.

Even with the front door closed, a persistent draft swept through the house. Shou rubbed his bare arms while Himiko herded Yuka down the corridor. She flicked on the light inside a room on the left, casting long shadows into the hallway. It would be a little eerie if not for the box of festive paper lanterns on the floor and the occasional faded glitter sticker someone had stuck to the wall.

Inside the room, Yuka slouched over a low table, burying her face in the pillow that had cushioned the zaisu she was sitting on.

“Go home, Himiko,” she groaned into the fabric.

Himiko had continued into an adjacent room, rummaging through a heap of kitchenware by the sound of it.

“Shou, do you want tea?” she shouted.

“Uh, coffee, if there is any?” Shou replied. “Just black.”

Himiko continued rummaging. Shou sat down across from Yuka, legs crossed. He studied the poster board on the wall next to them. It held a collage of postcards, notes, and photographs, collected with no apparent rhyme or reason. In one picture, Yuka was a little girl in overalls, another could’ve been taken yesterday.

Three other girls who were considerably older than Yuka featured in most of the photos. Shou assumed they were her sisters; their faces kind of looked alike. Someone who had to be their father was only present in a few of the shots—a broad-shouldered, sunburned man with a faceful of stubble that had apparently stayed the exact same length for the last ten years.

“Do you think your dad’s gonna be mad at you?” Shou asked.

Yuka propped herself on her elbows with a frustrated whine. Strands of hair were plastered to her tear-streaked cheeks.

“What d’you think, huh?” she slurred.

Shou glanced at the photographs again. Yuka’s father didn’t smile or even look at the camera in any of them. He was a fisherman—it probably cost him a lot of money if he had to turn his boat around. Shou was pretty sure Yuka wasn’t allowed to drink or be out in the middle of the night any more than he or Himiko were.

Himiko returned from the other room, balancing a tray with three mugs, two with coffee and one with tea. She sat down on her knees by the side of the table, handed one coffee to Shou, then sternly smacked the other one down in front of Yuka.

Yuka kept her hands on her forehead, her breath hiccuping a little. “Can you guys do me a favor…?”

“If you ask me to go home again, then no,” Himiko said, wrapping her fingers around the last mug.

Yuka moved one hand a little, peeking out at Himiko. “Please don’t tell Satsune about this.”

Himiko kept her eyes on her tea. “Why’re you telling me? It’s not like I talk to her anymore.”

Yuka glanced at Shou next. He still wasn’t entirely sure what had happened, but considering the death glares Satsune always directed at Ikeda, she’d react poorly to this no matter what.

“Yeah,” he said, pulling his coffee mug closer. “I won’t.”

Startled, his head whipped around at the sound of the front door opening. Someone kicked off their shoes in the genkan before light footsteps approached the living room. The shortest of the young women from the posterboard appeared in the doorway, frowning at all of them.

Himiko waved at her tiredly. “Hi, Umi…”

Umi’s long hair was dyed a pale blue, a bold contrast to the neon-orange eyeliner that almost distracted from the bags under her eyes. She clicked her tongue at Yuka; a quiet, pitying sound. She’d taken off one sleeve of her vastly oversized bomber jacket, letting it drag across the floor as she went around the table. She planted a kiss on top of Himiko’s head, then dropped down next to Yuka and gave her a peck on the cheek.

“I’m sorry, Banana,” she murmured, draping her arm around Yuka’s back. “Why did you tell me you’d be fine by yourself? I could’ve talked to Maiko on the phone.”

Yuka’s mouth wobbled, her voice thick. “You said she was crying.”

“Well, now you’re the one who’s crying,” Umi said. “How’s that supposed to help?”

She got no reply, so she just rubbed Yuka’s shoulder and glanced at Himiko. “Another time, just call me instead of Dad,” she said. “He gets so upset and he’ll call me anyway.”

“She made it sound like you were out of town or something,” Himiko muttered and blew on her tea, the vapor fogging up her glasses.

Umi’s gaze traveled from Shou’s jacket that Yuka was still wearing to Shou himself. She raised a questioning eyebrow. “Can’t believe you’d call in the yakuza kid before your best sister.”

Shou had no idea how much Yuka had told her family about him or whether it was anything good. He’d waded in here even though Yuka had told him and Himiko to leave. She clearly didn’t want them around; her face was flushed red even though she’d mostly stopped crying by now.

“I can go,” he said, flusteredly putting down his mug. “Sorry, I just, uh…” he gestured toward Himiko, the words dying in his throat.

“Come on, dude, I didn’t mean it like that,” Umi said, making that grating clicking noise again. “Drink your coffee.”

Shou nodded. He stared into the dark liquid and didn’t feel like drinking any of it.

“You want to talk to me before Dad gets here?” Umi asked, giving Yuka’s shoulder another squeeze.

Yuka shook her head, so Umi got up from the floor and shrugged off the other sleeve of her jacket. She dug into an inner pocket, finding a pack of the same cigarettes Yuka smoked.

Umi went to open a window and sat down on the backrest of an old couch in front of it, lighting one of the cigarettes. Aside from Yuka’s breath hiccuping once in a while, the room was quiet until a pair of headlights lit up the overgrown driveway outside. Umi shielded her eyes with her palm, wiggling her fingers as the front of a mud-splattered pickup truck pulled up next to her.

A car door slammed shut and a moment later, someone entered the genkan. Footsteps far heavier than Umi’s stomped closer until Yuka’s father appeared, bringing with him an unmistakable stench of fish.

His hands were clenched, the knuckles sea-bitten and red from the cold outside. He only looked at Yuka.

“Come here,” he said, voice low.

Yuka obediently pushed herself up, wobbling a little. Her cheeks were still flushed and her head bowed. Shou glanced at Himiko, but she merely blew on her tea again even though fresh tears were welling up in Yuka’s eyes. Shou stood, forgetting to breathe for a moment as her father raised his arm, but then Yuka walked straight into his chest and he simply embraced her.

“It’s okay, Banana,” he murmured into her hair, using the same odd nickname Umi had. “Come on.”

Yuka kept crying into the front of her father’s overalls, so he put a hand on her back and steered her out into the hallway. Shou couldn’t hear him so much as raise his voice, but his shoulders wouldn’t loosen up and he couldn’t get himself to sit back down.

“Dude, are you okay?” Umi asked, flicking the ash off the end of her cigarette.

Himiko pushed her tea aside so she could fold her arms on the table. “He just does weird shit like that sometimes.”

Umi had the courtesy not to ask any more questions. Shou forced himself back down on the zaisu after a few minutes, staring at the table for a while. His coffee had turned lukewarm by the time he attempted to drink it. It didn’t help his nerves that Himiko just sat there, her glasses pushed askew from leaning her cheek on her arm, studying him in that way she sometimes did. Like she was putting the pieces together. Reevaluating her assumptions.

At least by now, Shou knew she usually had good intentions.

When Yuka’s father finally came back, he was carrying Shou’s jacket on his arm. He nodded at Shou, pointing his thumb behind him.

“I’ll take you to your mother’s place,” he said, then looked pointedly at Himiko. “Are your folks home?”

“Yeah, they know I’m here,” Himiko replied, avoiding eye contact. “I can walk home on my own.”

Yuka’s father stared at her until she draped her arms over her head and mumbled into the table, “My mom’s doing a gallery opening for some sculptor guy up in Hokkaido and it’s super boring and even colder than here and I didn’t wanna come.”

“Stay here ‘till tomorrow,” Yuka’s father decided. “Natsuki’s with her boyfriend for the rest of the week, borrow her bed if Yuka wants to be alone.”

He turned to leave, then faltered, scratching the gray-speckled stubble on his cheek.

“It was good you called me,” he told Himiko. “That was the right thing to do. She’ll be okay, you don’t have to worry about that.”

Himiko kept one arm over her head, waving awkwardly with the other one as Yuka’s father ushered Shou out of the living room. Shou peered down the hallway where the door to another lit room had been left open. Yuka was sniffling somewhere inside, but she didn’t come out to say goodbye.

Yuka’s father waited for Shou to put on his sneakers, then unfolded his jacket, holding it out the same way Shou had done for Yuka earlier. Shou hesitantly stuck his arms through the sleeves, then fumbled with the zipper while Yuka’s father opened the door.

The brisk wind had picked up, whistling through the bushes outside. Shou eyed the pickup truck, but Yuka’s father walked past it and headed out onto the street.

“It’s up on Scallop Lane, am I right?” he asked.

Yuka had apparently already told him the address, so Shou let him take the lead, keeping a few meters distance between them. Yuka’s father glanced over his shoulder, frowning in the same quizzical way as Umi.

“You hang around those high school kids too?” he asked.

“No,” Shou said.

“Good.” Yuka’s father looked ahead again. “Ikeda’s boy ‘n his friends are rotten company. Used to be his brother who couldn't keep his hands to himself…”

“I don’t really know him,” Shou said. “Himiko just said Yuka was in trouble.”

Yuka’s father nodded and rubbed his cheek. “It's nice you kids can look out for each other.”

He glanced out at the sea. The moon was out for once, drawing jagged, horizontal lines on the waves in the distance.

“She hasn't been taking it well,” he continued. “Her mother ‘n me splitting up. My old man passed in September. Two sisters about to move out. Not a bad thing, the last one, just… Hasn't been a good year for her.”

“Oh,” Shou said. Yuka hadn’t mentioned any of those things.

“It’s good to have friends in times like that.” Yuka’s father slowed down and reached out to pat Shou on the shoulder. “You hear something like this happen again, do like Himiko and tell an adult.”

Shou leaned away. “Are you gonna talk to him?”

Yuka’s father gave him that weird frown again and lowered his arm. “Oh yes. Of course I am.”

Shou stuck his hands in his pockets. “Are you gonna tell my mom?”

“She doesn’t know where you're at right now?” Yuka’s father asked.

He shrugged. “I just kinda left…”

“Is that how you treat your mother?” Yuka’s father made a disapproving face. “You tell her in the morning. Tell her to call me.”

They could see Mom’s house at the end of the street, no lights in any of the windows. Shou felt overwhelmingly bad all of a sudden. She’d told him so many times that he could wake her up if he needed help.

Yuka’s father stopped outside the property, studying the unkempt hedge. “Your mother's lived here a while?” he asked. “Don't think I've met her before.”

He glanced back the way they came like he was pondering something.

“You know, me ‘n the girls got something of a tradition sailing out to my old man’s house on New Year’s,” he said. “Guess it’ll be the last time we do that, but Yuka was talking about bringing some friends along. If you ‘n your mother don’t have other plans, feel free to come with.”

Yuka’s father had never even met Shou before, and now he was inviting him and his mother to their family trip like it was the most natural thing in the world. Once again, Shou didn’t know what to say.

“I think it’d cheer Yuka up, so think about it,” her father concluded. “And talk to your mother, you hear? It wears on us old people when you let us worry like that.”

Shou nodded. He watched Yuka’s father walk away before he quietly let himself inside the house and walked upstairs, lingering in the hallway between his and his mother’s rooms.

He could talk to her in the morning. She’d told him to do it so many times, maybe she’d even be happy about it.

***

Mom dragged the washing machine away from the wall, making room to unscrew the drain hose on the back. Murky water trickled out the end, forming a small pool on the floor.

“It was very nice of you to help Satsune, but next time, please wash the worst of the mud off in the shower,” she lectured, attempting to shake the rest of the excess water out of the hose. “And don’t pour in enough detergent for ten washing cycles, okay?”

“Sorry,” Shou mumbled, leaning on the doorframe to the small utility room.

Mom went into the bathroom, rummaging through the cabinet under the sink for anything to unclog the hose with. She only found a pair of tweezers, frowning at them skeptically.

“Did we ever do anything special for New Year’s?” Shou asked, crossing his arms.

Mom hummed in thought, wandering back to the washing machine with the tweezers in hand. “We went to that festival for a couple of years. Do you remember that?”

“No,” Shou said, watching the dirty puddle spread along the gaps between the tiles. “...Was Pops there?”

Mom sat down on her knees and stuck the tweezers into the hose, trying to scrape out some of the dirt blocking it. “No, I don’t think he was…” She twisted her wrist to reach farther inside. “Your grandparents were always very traditional about holidays. I suffered through enough family dinners and shrine visits when I was a kid, I haven’t felt like doing any of it since.”

She raised her head, looking at Shou for a long moment.

“You don’t remember them either, do you?” she asked.

Shou shrugged. He didn’t even remember what his grandmother looked like, and the only vague memory he had of his grandfather was of him yelling at Mom to the point where Shou had been afraid of him. He barely knew anything about his father’s parents either. It had always just been Shou and Mom and Pops.

Mom brushed her hair out of her face, dropping the tweezers in her lap. “I’ve been thinking about whether you want to see them?” she said. “I can try to contact them, if you want.”

“But you don’t talk to them,” Shou said.

“It doesn’t matter what they think of me,” Mom said dismissively. “I’m sure they’d be happy to meet you now that you’re all grown up.”

She was frowning at the washing machine again, Shou couldn’t tell if he was supposed to come up with an answer right now. He crossed his arms the other way around.

“So, um,” he started. “So, I was wondering about New Year’s ‘cause Yuka’s dad kinda invited us to spend it with them? You know, in case you’re not doing anything else.”

Mom squinted at him confusedly. “When did you talk to her dad?”

Shou leaned into the doorframe, mumbling, “Last night…”

Mom took on that ominous tone she used every time he’d done something she disapproved of. ”You went out without telling me again?”

“It was just because Himiko wanted me to go with her and help Yuka out,” Shou defended himself.

“In the middle of the night?” Mom asked. “Help her out with what?”

“I don’t think she wants me to go around telling everyone,” Shou said. “She was really sad, so Himiko called Yuka’s dad. I got his number if you wanna talk to him.”

Mom laid her head back and stared at the ceiling like she was in agony. “I don’t know what I have to do to make you believe that if you or your friends need help, you can wake me up—”

“I know,” Shou said. “I just didn’t… I didn’t think about it.”

The drain hose hung limply from Mom’s hand as she got up. “Sure,” she said. “Send me the number and I’ll call her dad.”

She pulled at the hose, following the length of it with her eyes. Her brows rose up under her bangs like she’d had a brilliant idea.

“Can you unclog this with telekinesis?” she asked, pointing the muzzle at Shou.

Shou blinked. “What…?”

“Telekinesis,” Mom repeated, pointing at her head. “The one where you move things with your mind.”

She’d never asked Shou to do anything with his powers in his entire life. Even before she left Pops, he’d barely been able to mention them without his mother getting all weird about it.

He hesitantly let his aura reach out. The billowing, orange pattern lit up the room with a glow his mother couldn’t see, but she took half a step back when the hose floated out of her hand. Shou pressed along the inside of the plastic until a shapeless, slimy lump slid out from the muzzle and hovered toward the bathroom sink.

“Very practical,” Mom said, all chipper.

She smiled at Shou like nothing unusual had occurred, grabbed the hose from the air, and bent down behind the washing machine to reattach it.

***

The lanterns adorning the food stands on the harbor looked strange and distorted when reflected in the water. Shallow waves rippled the circles of red and yellow light, tearing them apart only for the colors to flow back together.

Shou turned his head, eyes drifting over festive decorations and the crowd meandering in either direction. The sun had barely set, but New Year’s Eve had already attracted more life than he’d ever seen in Sturgeon Bay.

A few steps in front of him, Mom was balancing on the edge of the dock, a plastic bag cradled in her arms. She glanced over her shoulder, then turned around, walking backward for a few paces.

“Is something wrong?” she asked.

Shou gave her a small, confused shrug. “No?”

“You just get so quiet sometimes,” Mom said. “You already know most of these people, there’s nothing to be nervous about.”

“I’m not nervous,” Shou mumbled.

They passed an old truck that had been refurbished into a café booth, a long row of people standing in line in front of it. From the corner of his eye, Shou registered that one of them turned toward him.

“Shou, wait up,” they called out. It was Yuka waving her arm at him, her voice easily cutting through the noise from the crowd.

She abandoned her spot in the queue and jogged closer, careful not to bump into anyone. She was wearing a much more practical outfit than usual; a thick sweater and a knitted beanie secured over her short hair.

“Oh my god, I need to talk to you,” she started, but the sentence trailed off when she noticed Mom next to them. As if out of reflex, Yuka conjured up a bright grin. “You’re Shou’s mom, right?” she asked. “Hi, Shou’s mom. You want something to drink?”

She pointed at the booth she’d just left. A young man was busy handing out hot drinks, puffs of steam rising from paper cups. Mom smiled at Yuka, adjusting her hold on the plastic bag as if to bring attention to it.

“No need, I brought tea,” she said. “It’s good to meet you instead of just hearing Shou talk about you, Yuka-san.”

Yuka let out an awkward little laugh and adjusted her beanie, pulling it down over her ears.

Mom’s brows creased a little. She fluttered her hand toward the boats farther down the harbor. “I’ll go ahead and find your dad, don’t mind me.”

Yuka waited until Mom was out of earshot, then hooked her hand around Shou’s elbow and tugged him toward the back of the line she’d been waiting in, whispering like she was about to share a secret.

“So, I don’t know what happened, but me and Umi and Natsuki came out here hours ago, and Satsune was already on the boat, just sitting there by herself,” she said. “She won’t talk to me, and then Himiko showed up, and Satsune’s just so mean to her.”

“Isn’t that a step up from ignoring her?” Shou asked.

“It’s not like banter mean,” Yuka said. “She’s so—” She let go of Shou to gesture at the air, trying to find words, “—please, can you talk to her? I don’t know what to say anymore.”

They left the café booth once Yuka had finally acquired four cups of coffee. She made Shou carry two of them; one plain black and the other with a swirl of whipped cream on top, smelling so strongly of cinnamon that it overpowered the stench of seaweed that always clung to the harbor.

The fishing boats were lined up at the far end of the dock, right across from the warehouses. Most of them were small, only fit for a crew of two or three. A few of them Shou had never seen leave their spot; so old and weathered it was a miracle they hadn’t sunk.

Careful not to drop the latte in her hand, Yuka pointed out a crane sticking up behind the other boats. It was attached at the back of a mid-sized trawler. The red, metallic hull was chipped and spotted with algae, but a string of paper lanterns and colorful streamers had been strung from the base of the crane and across the deck, bathing everything in an orange, homely glow.

Yuka effortlessly crossed the floating walkway that led out to the middle of the boat. She hopped down on the deck and turned to keep an eye on Shou. The shallow waves made the walkway sway under him. He put his foot on the ridge of the hull and followed Yuka down without spilling any coffee. The rubber matts spread across the deck were slightly sticky, and not even the smell of cinnamon latte could conceal what the vessel was usually for.

Shou could feel Satsune’s aura loom on the other side of the wheelhouse, solid like a block of ice. He couldn’t spot Mom anywhere; only her plastic bag leaning on the wall. She’d taken out her thermos and left it with three used picnic cups.

By the side of the vessel, Himiko sat on the floor with her legs splayed out in front of her. She didn’t react to Shou’s presence, fully focused on untangling a huge bundle of electrical wire in her lap, small light bulbs attached along the length of it.

“Himiko, if they’re that tangled, just leave them, it doesn’t matter,” Yuka said. She glanced through the open door to the wheelhouse, then back at Himiko. “Did Dad go pick up the food?”

“Him and Atsuko and Shou’s mom,” Himiko mumbled, gesturing at Shou without looking up.

“Nice,” Yuka said, then turned and hollered at two young women standing by the back of the boat. “Hey guys, we’re back!”

Umi looked up from her phone and saluted her and Shou with one hand. She was wearing the same bomber jacket as the last time Shou had seen her, but her makeup was completely different; a sheen of glitter spreading from her eyes and down her cheeks, sparkling in the light from the lanterns.

Shou recognized the other one from the photographs in Yuka’s house. She was dressed in a conservative blazer and slacks, but her hair was bleached a copper-brown that was sloppily growing out at the roots, and there was nothing formal about the way she leaned on the railing, smirking at Yuka.

“Did you get the stuff?” she asked.

Yuka held the coffee cups up above her head. “I got the stuff!”

She reached for the cinnamon latte Shou was still holding, carefully squeezing it between the two other cups, but she didn’t take the last one. Questioningly, Shou held it up, glancing at Himiko. He was pretty sure neither she nor Satsune drank coffee.

“It’s for you,” Yuka said with an encouraging little nod. “Black, right?”

Shou stared into the coffee. Had he told her that? He didn’t remember telling her that.

Yuka hesitantly took a step toward her sisters. “Um… She’s at the bow,” she said, tossing her head in that direction. “Good luck.”

Shou glanced at the wheelhouse again, trying to gather any information from the impenetrable slab that was Satsune’s aura. The hot vapor wafted across his face as he took a sip of the coffee and considered his options. It was best to be direct with her. He’d dealt with her moods plenty of times by now, it was just annoying they kept happening.

Himiko had untangled another meter of the cord she was fumbling with, gradually attaching it to the side of the boat with duct tape.

“Hello to you, too,” Shou said as he walked by. “I’ll go fix your problems for you real quick.”

“Fuck you,” Himiko muttered, tearing off another piece of tape with her teeth.

Shou maneuvered around the empty crates and spools of spare rope stacked by the corner of the wheelhouse. Satsune had climbed onto the raised platform at the bow. She sat curled up, leaning on the metal railing with her arms wrapped around her knees. Her hair looked frazzled, blown around every which way by the wind.

She didn’t react as Shou hopped onto the platform, stopping next to her.

“Is it your mom again?” he asked.

Satsune’s eyes didn’t veer from the harbor. Shou sat down next to her, warming his fingers with his coffee cup. Both of them watched the stream of people drift in either direction. A group of primary school boys had broken off from the crowd and headed for the old, quiet part of the harbor, livening it up with their shouts as they playfully shoved each other around in a game of tag.

“I should’ve stayed home,” Satsune said.

Shou leaned forward so he could see her face behind her hair. “Why?” he asked. “Yuka seemed really happy when you said you’d come.”

“The only reason anyone invites me to anything is because they feel sorry for me,” Satsune muttered.

It wasn’t like Shou didn’t know the feeling, but she sounded awfully sorry for herself today. He took another sip of coffee, glancing at her ghostly pale hands. She must be freezing if she’d been here for hours.

“I can go get you some tea,” he offered.

“No thanks,” Satsune said.

“Well, if you’re gonna sit here and sulk all night, you’re not giving people much of a chance to do anything other than pity you.”

Satsune picked at the sleeve of her coat. A few stains of mud from their last trip into the forest had dried into the yellow fabric. She turned her head, finally looking at him.

“Doesn’t it bother you that they don’t even know you?” she asked.

Shou shrugged and put down his coffee so he could rest his arms on his knees. “I don’t think you have to find out everything about someone to know them.”

Satsune studied him. “You don’t mean that. It bothers you.”

Shou breathed out an irritated sigh. “Look, you decided to come along, so get over yourself and go talk to everyone else.”

Satsune pointed her attention at the harbor again, her voice just as icy as her aura. “Don’t tell me what to do. You don’t get to order me around out here.”

“You’re making Yuka upset, okay?” Shou said, throwing out an arm. “You really think she deserves that right now?”

Satsune tucked her hair behind her ear and glowered at him suspiciously, like she could tell something was wrong from half a sentence of poor wording. “What do you mean, right now…?”

Shou pushed himself up from the floor. “She’s just… She’s nice. You know?” He hesitated. “And yeah, Himiko can be fucking annoying, but it’s like I’ve said before, she’s just worried about you.”

He pointed his hand in the direction where he’d left her, then did a double take when he noticed Himiko’s face sticking out from behind the tower of plastic crates. She quickly retreated, but Satsune had definitely seen her, too.

“I know, cowardly behavior, whatever,” Shou continued, sticking his hands in his pockets. “I don’t even know if that’s what you’re still mad about, but she’s not lying about this. The only reason she told me about you was because she thought I could help.” He leaned forward, blocking Satsune’s view of the crates. “But guess what, nobody can help you if all you wanna do is sit here and be a miserable, ungrateful asshole.”

Satsune combed her fingers through her hair. “You don’t get it…”

“Trust me, you’re not that special,” Shou said. “I think it’s hard too, but at least I’m trying.”

She refused to look him in the eye, so he picked up his coffee, turned on his heel, and jumped down from the platform. Behind the wheelhouse, Himiko stood pressed against the wall, the half-untangled loops of LED lights clutched in her hands. Shou grabbed the collar of her windbreaker and shoved her around the corner.

“Go talk to her yourself if you’re so curious.”

He walked around to the middle of the deck only for someone to whistle at him. Inside the wheelhouse. Yuka sat on a patchy swivel chair in front of the helm, slumped so far down in the seat that only the top of her head stuck up above the dashboard. She raised both her thumbs; a question more than a sign of approval.

Shou shrugged as he joined her inside the small, cluttered cabin. “I tried.”

Yuka despondently lowered her thumbs. “Well… Thanks, anyway.”

Shou gulped down the rest of his coffee and placed the cup on a section of the dashboard free of buttons and glass displays. Above it, a small, chipped maneki-neko figurine and a bunch of other odd knick-knacks were placed up against the window. The captain’s chair creaked as Yuka peeked over them, watching Himiko inch her way closer to the platform.

“If they’d just speak two sentences to each other, I’m sure they’d figure it out,” she said.

“It’s not just Satsune’s fault, though,” Shou said, leaning his back on the wall. “It’d help if Himiko learned to speak to people instead of acting like a weird, deranged clown and lying every two seconds.”

Yuka frowned at him. “Don’t talk about her like that.”

Shou raised his eyebrows. “You talk about her like that. You ignore her and call her annoying all the time.”

Yuka sat up properly and pulled off her beanie, holding it in her lap. “Everyone gives Himiko so much shit, but honestly, she’s like my best friend,” she said, fidgeting with the stitches.

“I guess she did come and save you the other day,” Shou said.

She didn’t seem like she wanted to talk about it, simply swiveling back and forth on her chair. Outside, Himiko kept sending Satsune nervous, un-subtle glances. She’d made it to the edge of the platform, standing on the tips of her toes so she could fasten a new stretch of cord to the railing.

“How close do you think she’ll get before Satsune starts a fight?” he asked. “I’ve been training her in hand to hand combat, you know.”

Yuka burst out laughing. “You guys are so fucking weird. You have no business calling anyone else weird.”

Shou looked out the window again. Satsune had turned her head, back hunched, coiling like a snake about to attack. She suddenly flipped her hair over her shoulder and got up. Startled, Himiko took a step back, but Satsune simply crouched in front of her, holding out her hand in an offer to take the cord.

“Yo, look,” Shou said, pointing at them.

Yuka shot up from her chair. A crooked grin spread on her face as Himiko meekly surrendered the cord. Satsune quickly sorted it out, freeing each of the light bulbs before she took it upon herself to continue Himiko’s work and sloppily wrapped them around the railing.

“You see that?” Yuka tossed her beanie at Shou’s face. “I knew Satsune listens to you!”

Shou couldn’t help but laugh, too. He pushed off the wall and put the beanie back on Yuka’s head, dragging it so far down it covered her eyes.

“Come on,” he said, backing out of the cabin. “Better scram before they notice us spying on them.”

Outside, Mom had returned to the boat, now in the middle of easing a box overflowing with snacks onto the deck. She smiled brightly at Shou before turning around, arms outstretched. The last of Yuka’s sisters stood on the walkway, holding out a crate that she’d picked up from the small tower of supplies next to her. She was dressed in all black, her long, elegant skirt billowing in the wind.

“Greetings, newcomer,” she said, bowing politely to Shou as soon as Mom had relieved her of the crate. “Welcome to the annual Tachibana New Year’s excursion.”

Yuka pushed her beanie back in place and squinted up at her. “Why’re you saying it like that? All sarcastic.”

Yuka’s two other sisters had left the crane, strolling over to join the rest of them. The taller one with the bleached hair wrapped her arms around Yuka from behind and propped her chin on top of her head.

“Atsuko just doesn’t get how much we love going to our dead grandpa’s house and remembering how dead he is,” she said.

“It’s gonna be fun,” Yuka said, attempting to twist her neck enough to look at her. “It’s always fun.”

“Mhmmm,” her sister hummed. She lazily turned her head, glancing at the wheelhouse. “Are they making out yet?”

Yuka made a face. “What?”

“She bet me a crate of beer they’ll be making out before midnight,” Umi said, not looking up from whatever she was typing on her phone.

Yuka shoved the taller sister away. “Why are you like this?”

“Yeah, wave goodbye to that beer, it’s not gonna happen,” Shou said.

“High risks, high rewards, little man,” the sister retorted. She held out her right hand. “I’m Natsuki, by the way.”

Shou took it, and she squashed his finger bones together in a very firm handshake. She let go and raised her chin in greeting as Yuka’s father stepped onto the walkway, carrying a pair of heavy plastic bags on his arm.

“Everyone ready to go?” he asked, dropping the bags on the deck so he could help Atsuko and Mom with the last supplies.

Yuka went to untie the boat, working off the ropes like she’d done it a hundred times before while the rest of them helped sort out the food and drinks that’d been brought aboard.

Shou stacked all the drinks next to the wheelhouse. He could hear Himiko’s grating voice before she and Satsune came around the corner. Although she looked highly disinterested, Satsune let Himiko blabber while she fastened the last of the lightbulbs. She grabbed the plug at the end of the cord, dragged it around Shou, and plugged it into a socket on the other side of the wall.

The lights came alive in an aggressively festive chain of red and green and blue, outshining the soft glow from the lanterns. They reflected on Himiko’s glasses. She wrung her hands and flashed Shou an awkward smile, just wide enough to show her chipped tooth.

***

It was hard to see through the cacophony of lights Satsune and Himiko had plastered all over the bow, but when Shou leaned over the side of the boat, he could still make out Sturgeon Bay, a mosaic of lit windows far out in the darkness.

It had started snowing since they left the harbor, broad flakes leisurely drifting down only to be whisked away by the foam whirling up beside the boat.

The deep, chugging noise rumbling the deck stopped when Yuka’s father turned off the engine. The silence rang in Shou’s ears, but then Yuka laughed as her father ushered her out of the wheelhouse. He’d let her steer most of the way, but he insisted on sailing to shore himself.

A cluster of houses stood huddled together by the waterside of the peninsula they were headed for. Yuka’s father went around a dock where a handful of leisure boats were tethered, instead aiming for a steep cliff side where an old, creaking pier jutted out from the shore.

Once the boat was secured, crates and bags and warm blankets were distributed so everyone had something to carry. Shou followed Yuka and her father up an algae-speckled staircase that led to the top of the cliff. Behind him, Mom had struck up a conversation with Atsuko who apparently lived in Seasoning City, while Umi and Natsuki loudly tried to rope Satsune and Himiko into some stupid argument about whether fish had feelings.

At the top of the stairs, an old-fashioned, wooden house overlooked the ocean. Its foundation was raised up on poles, the weathered engawa groaning as Yuka’s father stepped on it. He pushed a wide screen door open so everyone could file inside.

The house felt vacant and quiet, stripped of most of the furniture that must’ve been there once. Shou toed off his shoes and followed Yuka through an empty tatami room, arriving in a small kitchen. It looked slightly more lived in with bowls and cutlery already stacked on the counter. He put down the sodas he’d carried next to them and looked around.

Yuka’s father had stopped by the entrance to the kitchen, wistfully brushing his fingers over the door frame. Natsuki squeezed past him and carelessly dropped a crate of beer on the floor, the cans jostling from the impact.

“Dad, did you actually call the real estate agent, or do you want me to do it?” she asked, pointing at a business card that was the only thing hanging on the fridge.

Yuka’s father meandered past her and slid another door open. A wooden deck was attached to the side of the building. It was the only place that didn’t look recently cleaned; algae and bird droppings had discolored the floorboards, the sparse snowflakes not lingering long enough to cover it up.

“I’ll get to it next week,” he mumbled.

Natsuki rolled her eyes and Yuka frowned at her disapprovingly. She looped her arms around her father, leaning her head on his chest.

While everyone else mingled, Yuka insisted on helping her father filet the fish they’d brought and prepare everything else for dinner. Shou sat down next to Satsune by a kotatsu in another tatami room. She spared him a brief, unreadable look before focusing on Himiko again. She was delivering a very long update on some kind of extended family drama. Shou didn’t recognize any of the names she mentioned.

After they’d helped carry an abundance of food and drinks to the table, Mom and Atsuko settled down on Shou’s other side, still chatting. Not only did Atsuko live in Seasoning City, she’d been renting an apartment in one of the buildings Pops demolished, and yet Mom breezed through the conversation, diverting any dangerous topic changes with jokes and anecdotes. Atsuko clearly found her entertaining, too—she kept supplying Mom with beer and sake every time she ran out, her subtle, mischievous smile growing wider each time.

Yuka spent a lot of time in the kitchen and without her to focus on, her father seemed very distant, dropping in and out of conversation, staring mournfully at the walls the rest of the time. Shou could sympathize—his head was buzzing from the voices around him. It gradually got worse until he couldn’t pay attention to what any of them were saying. He ran his fingers over the tatami covering the floor, frayed and uneven from age, but it did little to distract from the unpleasant, hollow feeling settling in his chest.

He quietly got up to fetch his jacket and shoes and slipped past the others, sliding the door to the deck open.

It was snowing properly now, everything covered in a thin blanket of white. A chunky stone bench stood against the wall. Shou cleared it of the snow with his sleeve and sat down, staring out at the ocean. A few tiny islands stuck up close to the shore, a tree somehow clinging to one of them.

Next to him, the screen door opened and Yuka came out, wearing Umi’s oversized bomber jacket. She approached him with a finger held conspiratorially to her lips and two cans of beer under her arm. With a big grin, she offered one of them to Shou.

“No thanks,” Shou said, leaning away from it.

Yuka plopped the can into his lap and sat down heavily beside him. “You’re not gonna get drunk from one beer, Shou. Get back in the game.”

She hadn’t opened her own beer yet, but she already reeked of alcohol. Shou turned the can she’d given him over in his hands, brushing his thumb over the label.

“Didn’t really have a great time after I got home that night,” he said.

Yuka side-eyed him. “I’m sorry about that. You just dived straight into it, so I kinda assumed it wasn’t the first time you’d been drinking.”

She put her beer on the bench so she could pat down the pockets of Umi’s jacket, apparently not finding what she was looking for.

“Goddammit, she took all her smokes,” she muttered.

She sighed and picked up the beer instead, opening it with her arms outstretched, already expecting the torrent of froth that bubbled up. It trickled down the sides of the can and dripped onto the floor, melting little holes in the snow.

The muffled sound of conversation drifted through the wall behind them. Mom was laughing at something. Loudly.

“This isn't very fun, huh?” Yuka said. She took a long swig before resting her arms on her thighs, letting the beer can dangle between her knees. “Natsuki was right. The whole time we've been here, I've been thinking about how dead my grandpa is.”

Shou glanced at her. “Was he nice?”

A smile tugged at Yuka’s lips. “He was really cool. I used to stay here all winter break and we'd go out fishing no matter how freezing cold it was,” she said. “Like, with fishing rods, not like my dad does it.”

Both of them watched the ocean. It was unusually still today; a big, flat expanse stretching into the darkness. Far off in the distance, someone had set off fireworks, tiny, golden particles silently scattering across the sky.

“Shou, do you want to go fishing with me someday?” Yuka asked. “Nobody else thinks it's any fun.”

“I don't know how to fish,” Shou said.

“It's easy enough. Chill out. Pull up a fish once in a while and knock it dead.” Yuka put the beer can under her arm just so she could mime that she was knocking someone out with a mallet.

Shou nodded, not really seeing the fun in slaughtering random sea life. He could hear his mother laugh again, loud and genuine. At least she was having a good time.

“So, what's up with you?” Yuka asked.

The cold was taking hold on the aluminum can in Shou’s hands, stinging his fingers.

“I don't know,” he said. “I feel weird…”

“You wanna talk about it?”

Shou set the beer down in the snow at his feet and tucked his hands under his arms. Yuka’s breath misted in the air as she exhaled, side-eyeing him again. She scooted closer and reached around Shou, slowly, like she was giving him the option to tell her to back off.

Pressed up against his jacket, Yuka was really warm and the alcohol on her breath was even more noticeable, but somehow, Shou didn’t mind. He watched the tips of his sneakers, discolored and worn at the seams.

“Last year, I spent New Year’s Eve in some shitty hotel room,” he said. “Now I don’t talk to any of the people I used to know back then...”

Yuka tilted her head until it bonked into the top of Shou’s skull.

“I keep feeling like… what am I even doing here?” he continued. “You guys barely know me. If I left tomorrow, it’d take a couple of months and then you’d forget I exist.”

Just like most people did. Even Mom. She’d made a lot of progress since Shou moved in with her. If they were separated again, she’d be fine. She could go back to pretending she didn’t have a son. Laugh and hang out with regular people and not be upset and worried all the time.

“I wouldn’t forget about you,” Yuka said. “I think you’re pretty memorable.”

Her arm was getting increasingly heavy. Shou pushed it away and shifted closer to the end of the bench.

“Why does your family call you Banana?” he asked, just because it was the first question to tumble out of his mouth.

“Because the funniest thing that’s ever happened in history was that I couldn’t pronounce Tachibana when I was like, two years old,” Yuka replied in a flat, sardonic voice.

Shou didn’t know what to say to that. No other questions came to mind, his head was just blank all of a sudden. Yuka smiled at him like she didn’t mind, though. She respected the distance Shou had put between them, quietly watching the sea again.

“Yuka, are we friends?” Shou asked.

Yuka turned her head, looking outright disappointed. “Yeah, dude. Do you really need to ask me that?”

“I don’t know,” Shou said. “I haven’t had a lot of friends, so I can’t really tell, sometimes.” He folded his hands, focusing on the way his fingers intertwined. “I just remembered, this one guy said you can tell if someone’s your friend if you feel better when you’re around them, and… I like talking to you and stuff.”

When he dared to look at Yuka again, the corners of her eyes were crinkling with amusement.

“For someone who’s not used to having friends, I think you’re okay at it,” she said. “What kind of kindergarten bullshit is that to tell you, though?”

Shou frowned at her confusedly. “The feeling better thing?”

Yuka pointed at herself. “If you ask me, real friends are the ones who’ll drag you when you need it,” she said. “The ones who aren’t just gonna gloss over the bad things like everything’s fine. The ones who want you to do better, not always feel better.”

Shou studied her face, nodding. “Like Himiko.”

“Uh, or like you,” Yuka huffed. “You told Satsune off earlier and it actually worked. That’s what I mean, you got the most important part in the bag already.”

She took a large swig from her beer. She still hadn’t said a word about what happened the other day. You could say she was very much glossing over it.

“What’s, um…” Shou brushed off some of the snow that hadn’t yet melted into his hair. “What’s going on with you? All that stuff with Ikeda?”

Yuka grimaced as she wiped off the last drops of foam clinging to the bottom of her can.

“I’m sorry you had to deal with that,” she said. “Seriously, nothing happened, I was just drunk, and…”

She picked at the little metal tab, nudging it around in a circle.

“I was drunk, and like… Have you ever had someone try to talk you into something you didn’t wanna do, but you knew if you told them no, they could fuck you up in so many ways?” she asked. “Because they’re stronger than you, or older, or they have a ton of friends that’d take their side, or whatever.”

She huffed and shook her head.

“I bet you haven’t. I bet every time someone bothers you, you just suplex them and leave it at that.”

The last part was a joke, but it drained all humor from Yuka’s voice, leaving it uncharacteristically dull. The tab snapped off and plopped into her beer. She briefly frowned at the opening, then let it be and continued talking.

“Dad already said something to Ikeda, ‘cause I haven’t heard a word from him or any of the others since. Just lost half my social circle there, so thanks, Dad,” she muttered sardonically, taking another sip.

“Why were you hanging out with him in the first place?” Shou asked. “He acted like he didn’t give a shit about you.”

“He doesn’t.” Yuka gave an indifferent little shrug. “But it’s nice, in a way. I mean, part of the reason I never know what to say to Satsune is that I get how she feels.” She glanced at Shou, searching his face. “Do you ever get that? Like, sometimes I just get so sick of people asking if I’m okay.”

Shou stared at her mutely. Yuka sighed and pushed herself up from the bench. She ruffled her hair, snowflakes fluttering down the back of Umi’s jacket.

“Whatever,” she said. “I’m done being sad now.”

She chugged the last of her beer. The empty can barely made a sound as she dropped it on the snow, took a step back, then kicked it far over the edge of the cliff and into the darkness.

She twirled around, promptly snatching the can at Shou’s feet. “Thank you—”

With a quick motion, Shou grabbed her wrist and stood up, twisting Yuka’s arm behind her so she was forced to bend over.

“Ow!” she yelped.

Shou wrung the can from her fingers and released her.

“Dude, what the hell?” Yuka said, mouth agape.

Shou tossed the beer the same way the empty can had gone. It hit the water at the bottom of the cliff with an audible splash. He glared at Yuka as he positioned himself between her and the end of the deck.

“Stop drinking when you’re upset.”

He couldn’t decode the expression on Yuka’s face. It wasn’t anger or embarrassment or anything so simple. Her gaze became distant, drifting to the screen door they’d come out through. The blurry silhouette of one of her sisters passed by on the other side.

“Let’s just…”

She faltered and nothing more came out.

“Yeah,” Shou said. “If you’re done being sad, maybe we should go back inside.”

***

Yuka acted reserved for the rest of the night, still sticking to the kitchen most of the time, but at least it didn’t seem like she was stealing her father’s beer anymore. Shou left her to think things over. He felt more clear headed himself—the time went by surprisingly fast when distracted by food and conversation and a couple of board games Atsuko had brought.

Once the sun shone a soft, purple light through the shoji screens, Yuka came back to her usual self. She dragged Shou outside on the deck, then went to fetch everyone else, insisting that watching the first sunrise of the year was a very important part of the tradition.

Yuka’s father was chuckling at his three eldest daughters, Umi casually lighting a cigarette while Atsuko shoved a fistful of snow down the back of Natsuki’s blazer. They were all drunk, but Mom was worse off than any of them. She responded to Shou watching her by clumsily connecting the tip of her thumb and pointer finger in an OK sign, her eyes half-lidded like she was more than ready to go to sleep. The corner of Shou’s mouth quirked up as he mirrored the gesture. It was odd to see his mother so comfortable around other people.

He wandered closer to the edge of the deck where Satsune and Himiko had sat down, their legs dangling over the rocks sticking out from underneath the house. He stopped next to them and leaned forward so he could watch the waves crashing into the cliff side below.

He wondered if any sort of New Year’s celebration took place in the jail where his father was kept, or if he was still abroad, somewhere in a completely different time zone.

He wondered if Fukuda was doing okay in his new apartment, and if Higashio had kept his promise to stick around.

He wondered if Ootsuki was with anyone right now. If Ritsu and his family stayed up to watch the sunrise, too.

But it didn’t really matter, did it? Perhaps none of them would ever be in his life again, and what good did it do to cling to what had already passed, anyway?

It startled him when his knee suddenly gave out and he had to stagger to the side to avoid falling off the deck.

“What’re you doing?” Himiko said with a snort. “Maybe don’t die on the first day of the year?”

Shou glared at Satsune, but she just brushed her hair out of her face and gave him the most indifferent look she could pull off.

“What do you want?” she asked.

Shou hesitated before he sat down next to her. He scowled at the horizon where the bottom of the sun stuck to the waves like they were glued together.

“I’m not gonna apologize for calling you an asshole,” he said.

Satsune blinked at him slowly. “If you haven’t noticed, I don’t really care what you think.”

Himiko slapped herself on the thigh and cackled like it was the funniest comeback she’d ever heard. It was loud enough to make Yuka leave her sisters and come over to check on them.

“Have we all learned to get along or what’s happening here?” she asked, hands at her sides.

Satsune shrugged, but Himiko grinned up at her.

“Hey, earlier we were talking about how maybe you could come along to my mom’s next art thing so I don’t have to suffer alone?” she said.

“Hmmm…” Yuka squeezed in between Shou and Satsune, bumping her shoulder into Shou’s side. “Only if Suzuki’s invited. He’s very concerned about my questionable habits, I don’t think it’s safe to travel without him.”

“It’s not funny,” Shou said.

Yuka smirked at him and put her arms around Satsune, burying her cheek in her fluffy hair. She glanced at Himiko over the top of Satsune’s head, sending her a smile that was more subdued, but also more sincere.

“Happy New Year, guys,” she said. “There’s no way it’ll be worse than the last one.”

Chapter Text

For the second time in a few minutes, Shou and everyone else in the gym hall stopped to watch Himiko scrabble for her glasses.

“You hit me on purpose,” she shouted, blindly grasping the frames on the floor. Considering the angry red mark blooming on the side of her face, it was a miracle the temple hadn’t snapped off.

The volleyball that hit her rolled under the net to Yamamoto’s side of the court. She brushed her long hair over her shoulder, picked it up, and rested it casually on her hip.

“Just stop catching the ball with your face,” she said.

Himiko hooked the glasses back behind her ears, seething at her. Their gym teacher’s sneakers squeaked on the varnished floorboards as he jogged across the hall. He ripped the ball from Yamamoto’s hands and pointed at the exit.

“You simmer down or you go join the dance team,” he scolded. “This isn’t a tournament, Yamamoto-san.”

Yamamoto crossed her arms and dawdled to the back of the court. Her teammates were watching passively. This sort of thing was hardly unusual—when Yamamoto wasn’t blabbering about her hamsters or talking shit about Satsune, she loved to target Himiko. At least the only times they were typically in the same room were during the first-years’ gym classes.

The teacher walked around the net to hand Himiko the ball, bending down to get a better look at the injury. “You okay?”

Himiko pushed her glasses up her nose and muttered, “Yeah. Whatever.”

“You put that spirit into playing the game now,” the teacher said.

He gave her a pat on the back for her resolve before backing off the court, urging everyone around Shou’s net to resume playing as well. Satsune picked up their ball and moved close enough to Shou to discreetly pinch the hem of his t-shirt.

“Watch this,” she whispered.

Himiko walked to the back of her court, glaring at Yamamoto the whole time. She did an overhand serve that one of the boys on Yamamoto’s team caught, bouncing the ball right over the net only for it to be countered by one of Yamamoto’s fellow volleyball-club girls. She jumped, slamming the ball back to the other side with a well-placed spike. Yamamoto quickly positioned herself to catch it, but instead of locking her hands together, she bent forward, planting them firmly on her knees.

The ball hit her directly on the nose, knocking her head back with enough force that she fell over.

“Oh no, I’m sorry,” the other volleyball-club girl gasped, clasping her hands over her mouth.

“Maybe you should stop catching the ball with your face, you dumb bitch,” Himiko jeered behind her.

“That’s it, you two are coming with me,” the teacher snapped, angrily gesturing for Himiko to leave the hall.

She flashed Yamamoto a malicious grin as she strolled past her. Yamamoto was still on the floor, propped on one elbow with a startled, distant look on her face. Both the teacher and her volleyball-team friend went to help her up, the teacher grabbing her shoulder to get her attention. She looked at him briefly, then sank back into her mortified stupor, staring down at her own arms.

Shou leaned toward Satsune, whispering back, “Nice.”

Satsune brushed a lock of hair that had escaped her ponytail behind her ear. She took a step back and slammed the ball over the net before anyone on the other side had registered they were playing again.

She’d been doing this ever since they came back from winter break—dishing out vengeance every time Yamamoto bothered someone. Satsune was learning a lot faster from applying her powers to real-life situations like that. Shou still met up with her by the shrine every few days to maintain her physical training regimen, and she actually managed to force him to the ground at least once per session now, just by derailing whatever he was trying to do. Soon, they could start testing if she could keep it up when Shou used his own powers to defend himself.

With the teacher gone, the game on either court continued at an increasingly uncommitted pace until everyone got caught up in chatting with each other instead. Shou turned his head when one of his classmates who’d gone with the dance team hobbled into the hall on an injured ankle.

“Hey, Suzuki-kun,” he called out, holding on to the podium of seats by the wall, “I think it’s your phone that’s been going off for the last ten minutes.”

Shou followed him to the boys’ changing room and could immediately hear it too; his phone buzzing loudly against the bottom of the locker where he’d left his uniform. He opened the door to grab it, checked the screen, and physically recoiled when he saw the caller id.

It was Nagata.

He ignored his classmate’s quizzical look, clutching the phone as he hurried out of the room and down the walkway to the school’s main building. He let himself out through the door in the middle, slamming it shut behind him.

The phone had stopped buzzing. Shou leaned his back on the door, barely noticing the wind biting into his bare shins. He pressed Nagata’s name in the list of recent calls. She picked up almost immediately.

“Good morning, Suzuki-kun,” she said, sounding just as rigidly professional as ever.

“What’re you doing, calling me while I’m at school?” Shou hissed at her.

For a few seconds, he could only hear a hum of white noise on the line. Nagata took a quiet breath.

“I’ve really tried to keep you out of this,” she said. “I apologize, but my superior wants to speak to you. Today.”

Shou frowned at the frosted tufts of grass poking up between the tiles that led around the school. “Why? I haven’t had anything to do with you guys since Okura left.”

“I assure you, I would not take you out of school in the middle of the day if I had any other choice.”

“But—” Shou gestured down at himself even though she couldn’t see it. “I’m standing around in my gym clothes here. I have a math test I actually studied for.”

“Go home and get changed,” Nagata said. “I already talked to your homeroom teacher and I will call your mother in a moment. One of my colleagues is on her way to your house to pick you up. It shouldn’t take more than an hour, she isn’t far away.”

She didn’t let Shou respond, just barrelled on.

“My superior will question you about a case we’re working on,” she said. “For your own sake, please don’t make a scene out of it. Be honest, do as you're told, and you’ll be fine.”

He’d be fine? Fine from what? Nagata told him goodbye before he could ask, leaving him nothing but a mounting sense of unease in his stomach. It only intensified when he turned around and saw Satsune standing on the other side of the door, peering out at him through the glass.

“Who was that?” she asked as soon as he’d gone back inside. She had her hands in the pockets of her shorts, perfectly casual.

Shou stalked past her, mumbling, “Just my mom. Family emergency stuff, I gotta go.”

She knew he was lying. She knew, but at least she had the courtesy not to follow him.

Shou marched to his locker, grabbed his belongings, and hurried home before anyone could ask any more questions.

***

Nagata’s colleague was a young woman Shou had never seen before. She wasn’t an esper, just some kind of cop. She wore a tie and a neatly ironed, light blue button-up, the emblem of the National Police Agency embroidered on one sleeve. Her posture was impeccable, both her hands resting securely on the steering wheel at all times. She hadn’t said a word since Shou got in her car, and the longer they drove, the less he could deny that he found her terrifying.

He fiddled with the zipper on his jacket as he glanced out the window. He could recognize the field of jagged electrical towers in the distance. A large sign zoomed by at the side of the freeway, listing the distance to every nearby city.

Shou cleared his throat. “Um, are we going to Seasoning City?”

“It’s close by,” the driver replied.

A few kilometers from the Seasoning City border, they exited the freeway, driving up increasingly steep terrain. Frost coated the branches of the pine forest on either side of the road, the trees gradually clearing out until they allowed a clear view of a small town. There was a fork in the road before it. The driver steered onto a narrow path that led farther up, past a yellow sign warning trespassers that it was closed to the public.

A solid, gray wall surrounded the area at the top of the hill, the flat roof of a large building poking up behind it. The driver let her car roll up to an automated gate, sliding down her window so she could scan her ID card. Smoothly, the gate moved to the side, letting her continue to a square of parking spaces. A few other cars were already there, but none of them looked like Nagata’s.

The driver removed her seatbelt and opened her door, motioning for Shou to follow. He hesitantly stepped out on the crisp snow coating the asphalt, gawking up at the slab of uniform, windowless concrete that made up the facade in front of them.

Was this one of their prison facilities? It looked like the kind of place where you went in and then never came back out.

“Nagata-san will be here soon,” the driver informed him, walking toward a set of sliding doors that was the only opening in the building.

The doors parted in front of her. Shou could see three people down the long hallway inside, but not feel a single aura. He stopped right in front of the entrance, narrowing his eyes at the strip of bare concrete that stretched along the walls inside, squiggly sigils etched into the surface. He knew what they were for—several of the Claw bases had similar containment rooms.

“Are you gonna arrest me or something?” he asked, glowering at the driver.

For the first time, her perfectly neutral face changed a little, her brows furrowing. “Of course not.” She followed his line of sight, catching on. “You can think of this as a police station. Security measures are necessary.”

It made sense. Okura had told Shou they were short on espers, and even if they weren’t, keeping a bunch of people with psychic powers contained was difficult.

Shou’s breath misted in the frigid air as he exhaled. He stepped over the threshold, his sneakers sinking into the soggy doormat, and then any connection to the flow of energy within him was severed. He’d never gotten used to the feeling—it was like suddenly losing your hearing or your sense of touch; unpleasant and disorienting.

“Did the guy from Division Seven teach you to do that?” he asked the driver, squaring his shoulders. “Sakurai?”

“We don’t hire former Claw associates,” she said.

Shou frowned at the back of her head while she exchanged a few hushed words with a receptionist who sat behind a glass front by the entrance. Either she was more uninitiated than Shou, or it was a blatant lie. They’d recruited most of the Super Five. Joseph’s folder of so-called potential candidates had been full of Claw associates. He already knew they’d cut Division Seven a lot of slack, and Sakurai was relatively harmless on his own. Probably easy to bully into whatever they wanted from him.

The driver returned to Shou, holding out an arm to herd him down the hallway. She made sure he stayed in front, falling into step behind him. Shou leaned his head back, glancing up at the ceiling. Above a security camera pointed directly at the reception area, sunlight filtered down through skylight windows. It felt like being trapped at the bottom of a canyon.

The people farther inside had started walking, too. Two of them were dressed much like the driver, while the third one with his tattered hoodie and rumpled appearance obviously wasn’t one of them. His hands were cuffed behind his back, the officer leading the way keeping a tight grip on his arm.

“What the hell, you bring little kids in here?” the man said, staring after Shou as they passed each other.

The driver just moved to Shou’s side and forced him closer to the wall, shielding him from view as she continued to usher him forward. The doors on either side of them were all closed, muffled voices filtering through here and there, but halfway down the corridor, Shou could hear a woman groan in frustration, loud and clear.

“Can you at least get us something to drink?” she asked, her voice oddly familiar. “How long are you going to make us wait?”

“Something else came up,” a man replied. “It might be a couple hours.”

Shou could see the man’s arm poking out from an open doorway, dressed in the same light blue fabric the driver and the other officers wore.

“So let us talk to somebody else,” the woman griped. “You promised me a phone call!”

“I didn't promise you anything. I told you, if you cooperate for once in your life, Nagata-san might consider it.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” the woman responded with an incredulous, unamused laugh.

Shou bent forward, trying to peer around the driver as she led him past the doorway. The front wall of the room was made of glass; some kind of waiting area. His eyes landed on a row of benches mounted on the back wall, then widened when he realized who he was looking at.

Sitting hunched over with her arms folded behind her, Kawasaki stared back at him with her big, pitch-black eyes. She straightened up like a startled doe, the hateful sneer on her face vanishing in an instant.

She wore the same kind of ugly prison jumper Pops had to carry, looking utterly disheveled with dark circles under her eyes. Her greasy hair had grown too long to maintain the sharp, bobbed cut she’d had when Shou last saw her in the basement of Division Four.

Shou’s eyes shifted to the side. Jiro was sitting next to her. Same jumper, same dead look in his eyes. Both of them had their hands cuffed behind their backs, just like the guy in the hallway.

Kawasaki rose from her seat, her lips parting like she was about to speak, but Jiro subtly bumped his shoulder into her side. Her eyes flickered first to him, then to the floor. She sat back down, focusing on her flat, black shoes, too big and clunky for her.

“Keep walking,” the driver said, pushing Shou forward with a hand on his back. She twisted around to address her colleague. “Nagata-san told me she wants to speak to Suzuki-kun first. Take them to one of the meeting rooms in the meantime, they shouldn’t sit out here.”

The other officer nodded, prompting Kawasaki and Jiro to get up. Shou kept glancing back at them as the man herded the two convicts into the hallway, heading in the same direction the driver was taking Shou. Kawasaki had completely clammed up, her overgrown bangs casting a shadow over her eyes.

The corridor split in two, the driver leading Shou down the opposite path from the others, finally removing her hand from his back. Shou peered over his shoulder one last time as Kawasaki and Jiro disappeared into a room down the hall.

“It has nothing to do with you,” the driver said like she knew what he was wondering.

She took them past a row of more offices, the only open one empty except for a ladder and electrical equipment hanging from the ceiling, as if the building wasn’t entirely finished. She headed down a short hallway next, stopping outside the single door there.

“Please wait here,” she instructed, opening it for Shou. “I’ll come back if Nagata-san doesn’t show up soon.”

Shou cautiously went inside. The driver closed the door behind him with a heavy clunk, abandoning him in a room far too big for a conversation between three people.

He shrugged off his jacket, draping it over the back of one of the leather chairs that surrounded a long conference table in the middle of the floor. Glancing around, at least he couldn’t spot any cameras here, just the indecipherable sigils lining the walls like in every other part of the building.

He wandered around the table, pacing back and forth in front of the wooden paneling on the back wall.

Seriously, what did Nagata’s boss have to talk to him about? He’d done nothing related to Claw for an entire month, he wasn’t even keeping up with the news anymore.

He repeatedly checked his phone, every time finding that only a couple of minutes had passed.

Why was Kawasaki here? It’d been ages since Shou handed her and Jiro over to the cops, they had to be done questioning them by now.

There’d been something all wrong about her. At Division Four’s base, Kawasaki had stubbornly kept her poise even with her clothes soaking wet and blood trickling down her face. Out there in the waiting room, she’d just looked lost. Hollow. Same as Pops.

He dropped into a chair with his head in his hands, restlessly spinning it back and forth. Kawasaki didn’t matter, it was just some freak coincidence she and Jiro were here. Nagata would show up soon and clear everything up and she and her boss would send Shou back home, that was all.

Suddenly, he could hear footsteps right outside. Someone slammed their hand onto the door. Shou shot up from the chair and stood behind it, self-consciously smoothing out his hair and shirt.

The door was thrown open and Kawasaki barged into the room, staring at Shou with her chest heaving and an unhinged look in her eyes. Jiro slipped in behind her, shutting the door with a push of his shoulder.

“There’s my boy,” Kawasaki rasped, a demented grin spreading on her face.

Shou’s back bumped into the wall. Kawasaki had brought her handcuffs around to the front, while Jiro’s had been removed entirely. There were specks of red on the front of his jumper; the pattern pointing to a crude shank in his hand, the bloody, makeshift weapon cobbled together from cloth and a sharpened piece of plastic.

Kawasaki lurched forward, circling around the table. Shou shuffled along the wall until he couldn’t go any further without trapping himself directly between her and Jiro.

There was no blood on Kawasaki’s prison getup, no bruises or scrapes or any other sign of violence, but her usual condescending self-assurance had been replaced by a feral, vicious energy. The scar across her eye was visible through her choppy bangs, reaching all the way to her forehead, elongated by the split brow Shou left her with the last time they saw each other.

“Don’t even think of running away,” she snarled at him. “You’re going to help us.”

“I’m not helping you,” Shou said, glancing at Jiro.

He was a lot bigger than Shou, but even with no powers, it should be possible to sweep his legs out from under him before he had a chance to use that shiv. If nothing else, it’d give Shou enough time to alert the officers outside.

“Is Nagata the one you’ve been reporting to?” Kawasaki asked. “Do you even know who she is? How high that fucking witch is in the hierarchy?”

“I guess high enough to give you a break from the sewer pit it looks like they threw you in,” Shou retorted. He glanced at her midsection. “Did you find out if it’s true everyone gets a bomb implanted?”

Kawasaki cocked her head, putting on a disturbingly chipper smile. “Does that amuse you, Suzuki-kun?”

He moved a little closer to the exit. “Shouldn’t you be worried they’ll activate it any moment now?”

“Nobody wants to clean chunks of meat off the nice interior, trust me,” she said in her most saccharine voice. She pointed at a spot right above her hip bone, one cuffed wrist yanked along by the other.

“It’s sitting right here,” she said. “Nobody listened to me, nobody had evidence I was guilty of anything, they just put me under, and when I woke up, they told me they could blow me up with a press of a button. And you don’t have a problem with that?”

“Not if it keeps you off the street,” Shou said.

He flinched as Kawasaki’s hands lunged out, grabbing the collar of his shirt.

“You did this to us,” she hissed.

She dragged him closer, her teeth bared in warning, but it was the unsettling, desperate look in her eyes that kept Shou from reacting. He couldn’t get himself to lift his arms and shove her away, just stood there, mutely staring back at her.

“You’ll help me,” Kawasaki said, her hands quivering slightly. “Because it’s the right thing to do. And because if you don’t, I swear, I’ll make sure every single esper who’s been locked up with us remembers you for the backstabbing little rat you are.”

She let go to snatch a marker from a penholder sitting in the middle of the table.

“Roll up your sleeve,” she ordered and ripped the cap off with her teeth.

“I’m not gonna help you,” Shou said.

“Has she done such a good job brainwashing you that you honestly don’t believe they’ll turn on you eventually?” Kawasaki snapped.

She grabbed his wrist, forcing his arm up so she could hold it between them. Struggling against her handcuffs, she pushed up his sleeve until it was bunched around his elbow and awkwardly scribbled a ten-digit number on the underside of his arm.

“When you get out of here, call this number and give them my name,” she instructed. “Tell them the way here or anything else they can use to start digging.”

She quickly glanced at the wall separating them from the hallway. It was far away, but someone was shouting.

“When the guards come in here, we’ll all say Jiro tried to attack you and I tried to stop him,” Kawasaki said. “Understood?”

She pulled down Shou’s sleeve without waiting for an answer, then tossed the marker back at the penholder. It hit the edge and clattered onto the table, but she’d already turned toward Jiro. He still stood patiently by the door, neither nervous nor angry, like he’d made peace with whatever would happen to him next. Being accused of attempted murder or whatever he’d done to win them time probably wouldn’t make his situation any easier.

“I’ll get us out,” Kawasaki said softly.

Jiro gave her a small smile, speaking with that odd accent of his. “I know you will.”

Kawasaki pulled Shou away from the wall, rearranging him like he was a prop in their theater performance, and he still didn’t know why he let her. Whoever was yelling had moved closer. Heavy footsteps were running down the hallway.

Jiro glanced at the bloody shiv in his hand, then at Kawasaki. He started walking toward her at the same moment the door was thrown open. The pair of officers who’d been heading out when Shou arrived ran into the room.

“Drop the weapon,” one of them ordered, pointing a handgun at Jiro’s legs.

Kawasaki quickly moved in front of Shou, blocking his view of the officers. All he could see was Jiro raising the shiv.

“Stop, you’re making everything worse,” Kawasaki cried out to him.

Jiro kept going. It didn’t seem like acting when Kawasaki backed up until she bumped into Shou.

“Jiro—”

He roughly grabbed her shoulder and shoved her aside, eyes locked on Shou. Kawasaki bunched her hands in the front of his jumper, but Jiro easily ripped them away. He raised the shiv higher and plunged it into her chest, right beside her collarbone.

A startled squeak came out of Kawasaki and was immediately followed by a gunshot. Shou ducked. His instinctual reaction was to raise a barrier around himself, but nothing happened. He could only stare wide-eyed as Jiro fell to his knees right in front of him.

A pained groan escaped through Jiro’s clenched teeth. The other, bigger officer rushed to force him onto his stomach. He held Jiro down while he wrung the shiv from his hand and locked a new pair of handcuffs around his wrists. Kawasaki stared dumbstruck at the blood gushing from the wound on Jiro’s thigh, oblivious to her own injury. She didn’t move until the officer with the gun grabbed her and dragged her toward the exit, sticking his head outside.

“We’re gonna have to bring in the guys from Seasoning, this is an esper job,” he called to someone down the hall. “Tell them to bring another paramedic.”

Shou slowly stood up while a few more of the facility’s staff flocked to the door, maneuvering both Jiro and Kawasaki out of there. Once the last officer left, his broad back no longer blocking the doorway, Shou found that Nagata was standing right outside.

He took a step back, clutching the edge of the conference table. “I, uh…”

The heels of Nagata’s dusty-pink pumps clacked on the floor as she entered the room. She peered down at the splatter of blood where Jiro had fallen.

“That guy just came in and attacked me,” Shou said, parroting Kawasaki’s story. “What’re they even doing here?”

“You know his name,” Nagata said.

She looked Shou over, and out of some kind of stupid, counterproductive reflex, the arm Kawasaki had written on twitched, shifting behind his back. Nagata didn’t need her empathy powers to notice.

“What did they give you?” she asked.

“Nothing.” Shou took another step back toward the wall. “I didn’t do anything.”

Nagata’s gaze fell on the marker next to the penholder. She walked around the table, closing in on Shou.

“Show me your arm,” she said.

Shou avoided her eyes, staring at the front of her suit instead—a friendly, mint-green color today.

“No,” he mumbled.

“As I’ve told you repeatedly, I am trying to help you,” Nagata said, slowly enunciating each word. “This does not look good for you, so show me your arm and let me see what I can do.”

He swallowed.

Underneath all that unhinged anger, Kawasaki had just seemed really scared. Neither she nor Jiro appeared to have had much of a plan before they barged in here. Jiro stabbing her was probably some last-ditch effort to make Kawasaki seem more credible.

But so what if she was scared? They would’ve attacked Shou for real if he’d put up a fight. Jiro had clearly already stabbed the officer who’d been guarding them. Maybe that part had been the plan from the start. You didn’t bring a shiv if you didn’t intend to use it.

Grudgingly, Shou’s fingers found the hem of his sleeve and pulled it up.

Nagata’s eyebrows briefly knitted together as she read the digits scrawled on his arm. “Whose number is this?”

“She didn’t say,” Shou said.

Nagata turned away, grabbing the marker and a pad of paper from the small stack next to the penholder. She quickly copied the phone number, tore off the piece of paper she’d written on, and put it in her inner pocket.

“I’ll look into it,” she said, plopping the marker back in its proper place. “We’ll go to the bathroom so you can wash it off, and then you’ll forget about it.”

She gestured for Shou to leave the room and he didn’t know what else to do but comply.

The nearest bathroom was in the main hallway, right next to the unfinished office. He could hear Nagata walk away once he’d shut himself inside. There was a lot of commotion by the entrance to the building. Maybe an ambulance had already arrived, or someone who would decide what should happen to Kawasaki and Jiro.

He turned on the tap over the sink, waiting for the water to heat up. The phone number stood out clearly on his skin, the lines shaky like they’d been written by a small child. It didn’t matter how Kawasaki felt. Shou had gotten her thrown in jail for a reason. She was just as cruel and dangerous as any other of the Scars.

The marker lines washed off with relative ease, only leaving little specks of black. Shou dried his skin with a handful of paper towels and unlocked the door. Nagata was waiting outside, balancing a tray with a pitcher of water and three glasses on one hand and holding a wet rag in the other.

“Show me your arm,” she said again.

Shou pushed his sleeve up far enough that she could see the number was gone. “Even if I wanted to call it, did you consider I could just memorize the number?”

“Whether you call it is not what concerns me,” Nagata said.

Was she worried her boss would request to have Shou examined? He followed her back to the same room as before. Nagata carefully put the tray down on the table, then pointed to the chair Shou had pulled out earlier.

“Sit down and take something to drink,” she said.

She dropped the rag next to the blood splatter on the floor and crouched down to scrub it off. Shou settled in his chair and watched the ice cubes still bouncing lightly inside the pitcher.

“Nagata?” he asked.

The faint squeaking from Nagata’s scrubbing stopped. She glanced over her shoulder. “Yes?”

“Why am I here?” Shou asked. “I swear, I haven’t done anything.”

Nagata resumed scrubbing. It only took a few moments before she got up, satisfied that the area was just as spotless as the rest of the floor. She tossed the bloody rag in a trash bin by the door.

“Do you remember the list you gave me and Joseph?” she asked as she turned toward the table, pulling out the chair across from Shou. “The one with everyone you thought deserved a second chance?”

Shou cautiously watched as she picked up the pitcher and poured a glass of water. She placed it in front of him with a firm clack.

“What about it?” he asked.

“There’s an ongoing investigation into one of the people you mentioned,” Nagata replied. “Iida Yoshito.”

Shou narrowed his eyes. “Why? Didn’t he work for you guys for a while?”

“I can’t tell you why,” Nagata said.

She poured a glass of water for herself as well, but didn’t drink from it, just leaned back in her chair, folding her hands at the edge of the table.

“My superior’s name is Asahi Shinobu,” she continued. “He’s the head of the task force I work for. Perhaps—”

“Yeah, I know who he is, that guy’s on the news all the time,” Shou said, feeling increasingly uncomfortable.

“He’s very adamant about this case,” Nagata said. “Once he gets here, he’ll ask you some questions about Iida, and it’s very important that you are polite and tell him the truth about anything to do with him. Do you think you can do that?”

“You don’t have to talk to me like I’m five,” Shou muttered, reaching for his glass.

“I mean only the truth,” Nagata stressed. “We’ve already gathered a lot of information. If you start making things up, there’ll be contradictions.”

Shou merely nodded, holding the glass in his lap so he could stare into the water. It distorted his fingers beneath it ever so slightly.

The room was quiet. Nagata pushed her glass a centimeter to the side like its placement bothered her. She shifted in her seat, folding her hands again.

“As far as I’ve heard, school has been going well?” she spoke up. “I take it you’ve made some friends?”

“Really?” Shou frowned at her. “You’re gonna pretend you care about that right now?”

She sighed tiredly, shaking her head at herself. It was the most human she’d acted since she arrived.

All they could do was sit and endure the uncomfortable silence until, finally, Shou could hear someone new walk toward the conference room, traversing the hallway with long strides. Nagata got up from her chair, urging Shou to do the same.

“Be polite,” she reminded him.

Asahi Shinobu strode through the door like an oncoming thunderstorm. He was wearing a stiff, black suit, identical to the one he’d worn every time Shou had seen him on TV. Identical to the one Okura wore.

Nagata bowed to him, and Shou gathered he was supposed to do the same, but Asahi didn’t so much as glance at him.

“I didn’t request for you to be here,” he snapped, pointing a sharp finger first at Nagata, then the door. “You can assist Tanaka in getting this madhouse under control. Kawasaki is your responsibility.”

Nagata watched him unflinchingly. “Suzuki-kun is my responsibility as well. I think my conversations with several of his contacts are relevant.”

Asahi irritatedly pushed the door shut. He didn’t outright allow Nagata to stay, but he didn’t insist on her leaving either, just walked over and slammed one hand down on the table.

“Suzuki-kun,” he said, pulling out the chair next to Nagata’s, “we meet again.”

Shou had his arms locked at his sides, unsure if he was supposed to sit back down. He shot Nagata a questioning glance that she returned with one of obvious confusion.

“Excuse me, when have you met before?” she asked.

“The boy has been conducting his own little investigations from the day his father self-detonated,” Asahi said. “Is that not right, Suzuki-kun?”

Shou hadn’t even been sure if Asahi or anyone else had recognized him and Ootsuki when they went to snoop around the crater, searching for a way to contact Joseph. But as always, Shou’s bright orange hair made him painfully easy to identify.

“We were looking for a way to talk to you guys,” he replied, eyes flickering between the table and Asahi’s face.

“Sit down,” Asahi ordered him. “That isn’t why I brought you here.”

Beside him, Nagata nodded toward Shou’s chair as well. He reluctantly sat down, scooting it closer to the table.

“You can start by telling me what the hell those two were doing in here just now,” Asahi said, dropping into his own seat, his ankle crossed over his knee.

“Suzuki-kun was the one who apprehended them at the Fourth Division’s compound,” Nagata said, joining them by the table.

“I don’t want to hear you speak for him again,” Asahi interrupted her. “He’s perfectly capable of answering on his own.”

Nagata let out a breath through her nose, subtle but clearly frustrated.

“Well?” Asahi prompted, leaning forward inquisitively. “I’m very interested in hearing what you have to say about this.”

“I don’t know,” Shou said, avoiding the laser focused glare he was being subjected to. “Kawasaki said you’re threatening everyone with blowing them up like you did with my pops, they’re obviously pretty pissed about that. She kept saying it’s my fault.”

It was only partially a lie. Considering she didn’t so much as look at him, Nagata seemed to think it was good enough.

“You want me to believe they put themselves in this situation as some form of revenge?” Asahi asked. “My officers just informed me Kawasaki got herself stabbed trying to protect you. Doesn’t really add up, does it?”

Shou shrugged uncertainly. Nagata heeded her boss’s word and wasn’t coming to his aid, just folded her hands primly on the edge of the table again, focusing on them rather than Asahi.

“Kawasaki Sadashi,” Asahi said. “Four years with Claw. Branded a Scar by your father. Several cases of fraud and selling all manners of contraband. Three separate assault charges, all of which she wriggled her way out of like the cockroach she is.”

He stabbed the table with his pointer finger for each of Kawasaki’s criminal offenses.

“Tatsuno Jiro,” he continued. “Known connections to an organized criminal group overseas. Sets his feet on Japanese soil for the first time since he was ten right around the time when your father started bringing in foreigners for his little army. Do you see what I’m getting at?”

“You don’t have to tell me they’re pretty bad people,” Shou mumbled.

“Pretty bad people who nearly killed one of my staff to get five minutes alone with you. I have to say, you’re very calm for someone who’s just been subjected to attempted murder.”

Shou didn’t feel calm. A thin layer of cold sweat had collected on his back.

Nagata finally broke in. “Asahi-san, I can take him outside to check if you wish, but I don’t need my powers to tell that he knows nothing more than we do. Can we please move on to what you wanted to discuss?”

Asahi glared at Shou. “Fine,” he said. “Iida Yoshito is an acquaintance of yours. I’m sure Nagata has already spilled that we’re looking into his background, so why don’t you tell me when you first came into contact with him?”

Nagata sent Shou a meaningful look, he just wasn’t sure what the meaning was. She’d told him to stick to the truth. Regarding everything other than Kawasaki at least.

“The first time I met him, I was nine,” he replied.

“What happened then?” Asahi asked.

Shou avoided eye contact. “I ran away from my pops’ house.”

Asahi irritatedly twirled his hand, motioning for Shou to keep talking. “Okay, why did you run away? This will be a lot quicker if I don’t have to drag every sentence out of you.”

“I didn’t know about Claw before then,” Shou said. “What they did. I think my pops just started with the awakening experiments around then.”

He absentmindedly scratched the arm Kawasaki had written on.

“They kept it at HQ at first,” he continued. “It was in a different place back then, but anyway, I was just looking around ‘cause I heard someone talking about it, and… I don’t know.”

He hadn’t thought about this in years. It was best not to think about it.

“There was some boy…” Shou’s thoughts trailed off, his mind feeling utterly blank.

“Suzuki-kun, it doesn’t sound very relevant to this conversation,” Nagata said. “Focus on Iida.”

“Yeah, but… They hurt people, you know?” Shou said. “So I guess I was kind of… scared or whatever. And then I ran away.”

“And Iida came to find you?” Asahi guessed. “That was his function back then, too, correct?”

Shou nodded. “He’s really good at it. My pops always sent him after me.”

Really good and really scary when you were nine years old, barely had control over your powers, and had never met him before. Shou had figured out how to turn himself invisible a few months prior, and while he couldn’t yet make his form appear entirely transparent, it had at least consistently thrown other people off.

Not Iida, though. Iida had followed him like he could see Shou clear as day, cornering him in some warehouse he’d been stupid enough to hide in.

“A strange way to make friends with a man in his fifties,” Asahi commented.

“Well, I met him a lot of other times, too,” Shou said. “When my pops didn’t send him out on jobs, he was usually at Division Two, so I’d talk to him whenever I dropped by.”

“Why?” Asahi asked. “From what Nagata has told me, you’ve been very insistent you didn’t mingle with your father’s Scars if you could help it.”

“‘Cause he was nice?” Shou shrugged. “I don’t know. He helped me out sometimes, he wasn’t like everyone else. He did a lot of stuff behind my pops’ back, so I knew I could trust him.”

Asahi narrowed his eyes. “We have other witness accounts saying it was something he did often. Acted very friendly with the kids Division Two kidnapped.”

“They didn’t kidnap anyone,” Shou protested. “None of those kids had anywhere else to go. Most of them weren’t even really kids, they were older than me.”

“If Iida was so intent on helping, he could’ve assisted them in contacting the authorities in the area,” Nagata pointed out. “Division One used a similar tactic, luring people in with the promise to sort out their personal problems. What made Iida’s behavior any different?”

“He was just nice, okay?” Shou said, crossing his arms tightly. “He didn’t hold anyone up if they wanted to leave. He never asked for anything in return when he helped me. You make it sound like he was acting super creepy or something. He wasn’t.”

“What would he help you with, for example?” Nagata asked. Asahi was just watching her at this point, letting her take over the interrogation.

“Like…” Shou aimlessly gestured with his hand. “When me and Fukuda and Higashio were traveling around, sometimes I’d ask him his opinion on something, or he’d help us find people.”

“So in other words, he knew a lot of what you were doing,” Nagata said. “Things you didn’t share with anyone else in Claw.”

“I guess,” Shou said, frowning at her.

He mentally sorted through the last conversation he’d had with Iida, by the lighthouse back in Sturgeon Bay. Iida had barely mentioned his own plans. He’d made it very clear it was nothing that involved Shou, so how was it relevant what he’d told him in the past?

“When did you last see him?” Nagata queried.

Shou hesitated. Nagata’s powers must be completely canceled out just as Shou’s were, but she had that look on her face she got whenever she knew someone was about to lie. He knew she’d told him to stick to the truth, but he couldn’t mention that Iida had sought him out when Asahi was clearly fishing for a way to connect him to Shou better.

“Right before I contacted Joseph so he could pick up my pops,” he replied. “Iida tracked down his phone number, you guys already know that.”

“And did you share anything new with him then?” Nagata asked. “Perhaps some of the same things you told me and Joseph?”

Shou shifted restlessly in his seat, getting annoyed with how vague she was being. “No, I don’t know what you want me to tell you. Why can’t you just say what it’s about?”

“As you know, I read through the notes you took on the subdivisions,” Nagata said. “You often recorded information about the contacts Claw had outside the organization. Benefactors, for example. We have reason to believe several of those people are in danger.”

“Again, what does that have to do with me?” Shou asked. “If I could find out about them, so could somebody else.”

Nagata turned her head, watching her boss as if to communicate that there was nothing more to talk about. Meanwhile, Asahi still glowered at Shou with cutting intensity. He raised his pointer-finger, wagging it at him.

“You have something to do with this, I just know it,” he said.

“How many times do I have to say I haven’t done anything,” Shou said, throwing out his hands. “I’ve stayed put like I was told.”

“A few weeks don’t negate that you were very much not staying put before then,” Asahi said. “Do you want me to list your criminal offenses as well?”

“You wouldn’t say it like that if it was something you could prove,” Shou scoffed.

Asahi leaned forward again, holding the thumb- and index finger of one hand so there was only a millimeter of space between them. “We are this close to tying you to several kidnapping cases. At least one disappearance. Massive amounts of property damage. Theft, fraud, breaking and entering. That face of yours, same as your old man, makes you easy to remember. Can you hear how much this sounds like your two friends who just visited you? And I’m not even getting started on the men your father let you order around.”

Nagata pulled her hands apart, laying them flat on the table. “We have discussed this countless times. He was under fourteen and grew up in a severely radicalized environment. You can’t hold him accountable.”

Asahi leaned back in his chair, giving her an unimpressed look. “This is not some gullible, innocent child we’re dealing with. While you espers are busy covering each other’s backs, I thankfully don’t have to adhere to regular legislation when dealing with domestic terrorism.”

The look on Nagata’s face was the most hostile Shou had ever seen on her. Asahi ignored it, gesturing in Shou’s direction with a wave of his hand.

“You’ll put him under surveillance again,” he said.

Nagata pushed her chair out from the table. “Fine, I’ll put Okura back on the task.”

“Absolutely not. I need to talk to him as well.”

Nagata looked even more visibly enraged. “I have worked with Okura-san for years. You won’t find anyone more trustworthy, and he’s used to handling children.”

“Find someone more suitable and get Suzuki out of here before he finds something new to meddle in,” Asahi said, not even acknowledging her.

“Okura,” Nagata persisted.

“Not Okura,” Asahi said.

“Okura.”

“Is this how we confer now?” Asahi pointed back and forth between them. “No arguments, just the back and forth, like little children?”

“You know my arguments because I’ve told them to you at length,” Nagata replied.

Asahi swiveled his chair to the side and smiled up at her, sharp and unkind. “If I hear of either of them stepping out of line again, I’m holding you accountable. I advise you to remember that.”

Nagata stiffly motioned for Shou to get up. He avoided Asahi’s judgmental gaze as he walked after her, grabbing his jacket on the way.

Like the driver who’d brought Shou to the facility, Nagata made sure Shou stayed in front of her where she could see him. They reached the junction where Shou had been split up from Kawasaki and Jiro earlier. A man was leaning on a cleaning trolley outside the room he’d seen them enter, rubbing his chin in thought as he spoke to someone inside.

Nagata goaded Shou around the corner to the entrance hall where several of her colleagues had huddled together in small groups, murmuring to each other. All of them stopped talking as Nagata cut through the crowd. Shou couldn’t determine if it was her or him they were staring at the most.

It startled him a little when he crossed the doorstep to the parking lot and his powers flooded back to him, loud and clear. He glanced around. If an ambulance had come for the guy Jiro had stabbed, it was already gone, but two espers in suits were loitering next to a police van.

They’d done something to suppress her aura, but Shou could sense Kawasaki sitting in the back of the vehicle. Only her, though. Not Jiro. Shou glanced back at the inhospitable, featureless government building and wondered if he was still in there.

“Are you gonna take Kawasaki back to the same place she was before?” Shou asked, following Nagata to the farthest corner of the parking area.

“That’s not for me to decide,” Nagata said, stopping next to her small sedan. “You will be quiet about this. About her, and about the conversation we had with Asahi-san.”

Shou gave a small shrug. “Yeah, I get it.”

“Then get in. I’ll drive you home myself,” she said. “I need to speak to your mother.”

Shou sat down in the passenger seat, holding his jacket in his lap. The interior of Nagata’s car wasn’t tidy like the last time he’d seen it—stacks of paper and folders were lodged in the backseat next to a small suitcase.

Nagata backed out of the parking lot and left the premises. Shou watched as they passed the sign warning trespassers to turn back. Without really meaning to, he found himself noting the name of the small town down the hill.

“If your boss really found out something illegal I did, you know I had a good reason, right?” he said, glancing at Nagata. “Me and my guys didn’t just mindlessly do whatever my pops said. Neither did Iida.”

“When did you last see him?” Nagata asked, slowing down so she could turn onto the freeway.

“In Seasoning City, like I said.”

“Suzuki-kun, I have my powers back,” Nagata reminded him.

Shou tried not to let her prickling, staticky aura bother him. He hugged his jacket to his stomach, watching the traffic. A pair of fire trucks were approaching on the other side of the guardrail, speeding toward Seasoning City with their sirens blaring.

“Suzuki-kun,” Nagata repeated.

The shrill sound from the sirens faded. Shou frowned at his knees.

“How do I know you won’t report everything I say to your boss?” he asked. “How can you even work for that asshole?”

“Do I need to start interrogating you again?” Nagata asked, ignoring the questions.

Shou scratched his hair, then let his hands drop back into his lap. Maybe it was stupid to assume she cared what her boss said after Shou had just told her what it was like working for Pops. She’d seemed genuinely angry about some of the things he’d said.

“Iida came to see me in Sturgeon Bay, okay?” he gave in. “It doesn’t matter, he was just checking up on me. He didn’t tell me where he was going.”

“Why did he feel the need to check up on you?” Nagata asked.

“Because he was worried you guys were gonna try and manipulate me and threaten me and stuff,” Shou said. “And look at that, he was right.”

Nagata kept her eyes on the road ahead. “Was anyone with him?”

“Just this little guy from HQ,” Shou said. “Kubo, I think. Kinda sounded like he’d wanted out for a long time, so you should probably leave him alone, too.”

“If Iida comes to you again, you need to contact me,” Nagata said. “I’m sorry I have to be so vague, I can tell you consider him a friend, but you should not trust anything that man tells you.”

Shou side-eyed her. “It’s funny, he said the same thing about you.”

Nagata frowned at him deeply before focusing back on the windshield. He could tell she was trying to think of a reply, but she never spoke, just let the rumbling from the engine fill the car. Shou crossed his arms, glancing at Seasoning City in the distance. The sky above was unusually dark, like all the clouds had gathered there for an intense downpour.

Nagata made a quiet, annoyed sound when her phone started ringing. She grabbed it out of her coat pocket and Shou could glimpse Asahi’s name on the screen. Nagata sped down the car, swerving into the emergency lane to park there.

“Was there anything we didn’t clear up?” she answered the call, sounding very diplomatic considering how agitated she’d been when they took off.

Shou couldn’t hear what Asahi was saying, but it made Nagata glance bewilderedly at the city.

“I don’t know, we’re about fifteen minutes away,” she said.

Shou’s own phone buzzed in his pocket. He grabbed it, frowning at the text message he’d just received.

Himiko
Hey watch the news, Seasoning’s getting trashed again. Yuka’s freaking out bc her sister’s phone says it’s out of service, I don’t know what to say to her, help!!

He quickly navigated to the website of one the local TV-stations. There were breaking news banners everywhere, referring to some mysterious natural disaster. Shou looked back at the city, and suddenly he could feel it—far away, but unmistakable—the nauseating hum of someone generating an unfathomable amount of psychic energy.

“I have Suzuki-kun in the car with me, what do you expect me to do?” Nagata argued beside him, anger creeping back into her voice.

Shou stared at the way the overcast sky had started moving in circles, pulling in the surrounding clouds like a black hole.

Nagata dropped her phone on the dashboard with a clatter. “I’m sorry, but there’s some kind of emergency in Seasoning City,” she said. “Nobody can call each other, I have to check up on some of my colleagues.”

“It’s Pops,” Shou said.

“Sorry?”

Shou turned his head, staring at her. “It’s my dad.”

Nagata’s face fell. Slowly, she leaned back in her seat, her hands tightening around the steering wheel.

“We’ll drive a little closer,” she said reasonably. “Look for eyewitnesses.”

If Pops had escaped to make another attempt at overthrowing Seasoning City, Shou wasn’t so sure there’d be any eyewitnesses left.

Chapter Text

Shou carefully nudged the frequency on Nagata’s car radio. Distorted lines kept flickering across the display, but enough static cleared from the newscaster’s voice to make sense of what he was saying.

“—a strange aura surrounding the suspect is making it impossible to capture him on video, but eyewitnesses describe him as a young boy wearing a gakuran. He’s currently continuing through the Salt District, cutting a straight line through a downtown shopping area—”

Shou wrapped his fingers around his seatbelt and stared at the storm clouds that kept swirling above Seasoning City. This made no sense. None of what the local news reported sounded anything like Pops. Now that Shou was close enough to sense it properly, the aura swaddling the area didn’t match him either. It didn’t move in the same rigid, circuit-like patterns. Didn’t have the same alarm-red glow.

“Suzuki-kun, this is clearly not your father,” Nagata said. “Who else could it be?”

This aura didn’t match anyone. It was dark and heavy like lead. Psychic energy wasn’t supposed to feel so solid. Who could even output this much of it? Why make the effort? It’d been going on for an hour, and all this person had done was to tear down one of Seasoning’s busiest districts for no apparent reason, all by themself, with hundreds of people watching.

Nagata stepped on the brake a little too hard. Shou’s eyes snapped to the road. A long line of vehicles was blocking the freeway, cars and long-distance trucks interlocked so tightly no one could move. As soon as Nagata reached the back of the queue, a couple other drivers slowed down behind her, locking them in as well.

Someone impatiently honked their horn. Shou leaned to the side, stretching his neck to see around the other cars. A police officer was making his way closer, holding on to his cap so the wind wouldn’t take it. He looked like he’d just graduated school, round-faced and awkward. Behind him, some other officers had lined up a few orange traffic cones instead of a proper blockade. On the other side of the guardrail, more and more cars were speeding away from the city.

“We don’t have time for this,” Shou said.

“No,” Nagata agreed.

She stopped the engine and grabbed her phone from the dashboard. It’d started ringing a couple times while she’d been driving, but she ignored her call history, swiftly scrolling through her enormous list of contacts.

“I’ll call Joseph, so be quiet,” she said, turning the volume on the radio down with her other hand. “If nothing else, he can clear up where your father is.”

She put her phone on speaker, holding it flat in her palm. Shou crossed his arms over his stomach while they listened to the waiting tone. It stopped in the middle of a beep, static even worse than on the news broadcast crackling over a loud rumble.

“Yes?” Joseph said, clipped and impatient.

“Are you with Suzuki?” Nagata asked.

Joseph made an irritated noise. “Don’t the rest of you talk to each other?” he asked. “We’re already in the city. Got an order to fly him and a handful of other convicts in to take care of this, but we haven’t been able to land with the interference this guy’s causing. Suzuki knocked out the others and jumped from the plane two minutes ago.”

Shou stared at the phone. Pops jumped from their plane? In a different situation, he would’ve laughed at how ridiculously dramatic it sounded, but as far as he knew, his father had complied with everything the government had asked of him after he gave himself up. If he’d run off now, it had to be with a purpose.

“He jumped from the plane?” Nagata echoed flatly.

“Yes,” Joseph said.

Nagata frowned at a truck blocking her view of the horizon. “Why would he do that? He isn’t cleared to go anywhere without supervision. This should have consequences.”

“I’m not gonna push the button on our best resource, if that’s what you’re implying,” Joseph said.

Nagata sent Shou a sidelong glance. “I’m not implying anything, I’m asking you, why would he go alone? Can you at least track him from the plane?”

“Look, I can barely see anything, this aura is unreal,” Joseph said. “I don’t know much more than you do.”

A chill spread from the base of Shou’s skull and down his spine. He knew who this was. Something had happened to his aura, but if the culprit was not Shou’s father, he only knew one other person capable of generating this level of energy.

“It’s not my job to make up theories, but Boss’s still convinced the guy who fought Suzuki is from Seasoning, right?” Joseph said. “Can’t help but wonder if this is about to be round two.”

It was Ritsu’s brother. But why? He wouldn’t smash up his own neighborhood. The newscaster was still mumbling in the background about a bunch of injured bystanders. Ritsu’s brother didn’t hurt anyone if he could help it.

“Asahi wants me to check in with the office by the crater,” Nagata said.

“Don’t bother,” Joseph replied. “Everyone’s already evacuating. Power’s out, nobody’s cars will drive, and this storm’s slinging debris around like it’s confetti.”

“I see…”

Nagata distractedly watched the police officer outside. He’d made it to the car in front of them, waiting for the driver to roll down their window, just like he’d done with all the other people stuck in line. She reached into her suit jacket for her badge.

“I’ll see if there’s anything I can do from here,” she told Joseph. “Talk to you later.”

She hung up and tossed her phone back onto the dashboard. Shou gaped at her.

“We can’t stay here,” he blurted out. “We gotta do something!”

“I need you to confirm who this person is,” Nagata said, turning in her seat.

“Wh—” Shou’s eyes flickered to the mumbling radio. “It doesn’t matter who. My pops’ in there, he’s the one you should worry about.”

If Ritsu’s brother had actually hurt someone, even if it wasn’t intentional, he’d be just as damned as anyone from Claw. If Pops was using this as an opportunity to get revenge, he could probably murder him and the government would shake his hand and thank him.

“I can tell it’s someone you care about,” Nagata said. “A boy in a gakuran, walking through the Salt District…”

She leaned forward as if to pressure him into talking. Shou stared at his lap.

“Is it Kageyama Ritsu?” she asked.

Shou dug his fingers into his knees. It was no use trying to get around it when she was on the right track from her very first guess. The government had records of every esper in Seasoning City; she could sit him down and flip through every one of them until she had her suspect. He knew that was how she worked, it just wasn’t fair.

But Nagata was not her boss. She’d been furious at Asahi after they left their facility. Shou just had to explain how Ritsu’s brother would never do something like this on purpose. He was a kid, he—

“His brother then?” Nagata deduced. Her eyebrows creased, but with something other than surprise. “Reigen’s assistant.”

Shou let go of his knees and sat up straight. “You’ve said over and over that you guys can’t hold me accountable ‘cause I’m a kid,” he started. “So no matter what happened, you can’t hold Ritsu’s brother accountable either.”

“Explain,” Nagata said. “Why would he do something like this?”

“He wouldn’t,” Shou said. “That’s the thing that doesn’t make sense. Only thing I can think of is I’ve seen him lose control of his powers when he’s been in danger or someone knocked him out. Maybe somebody else attacked him. Maybe he got in an accident.”

“If he’s lost control, how long can we expect it to last?” Nagata asked.

“I don’t know—” Shou pointed both his hands at the city. “Stop worrying about that! Even if my pops isn’t about to hurt him, once that plane lands, Joseph or someone else’s gonna try and arrest him!”

“I think I’ve made it clear, I disagree with certain of Asahi’s decisions, but he won’t incarcerate a child without taking the circumstances into account,” Nagata said, eyebrows still creased. “He has standards and legislation to adhere to like everyone else.”

“No, he doesn’t,” Shou countered. “You know he doesn’t! You heard how he talked to me. The government put him in charge so he can round up everyone involved with Claw, they don’t care how he does it. You don’t think he’ll lump Ritsu’s brother in with them?”

Nagata glanced at her phone, her thoughts drifting elsewhere. Shou glared at her.

“Are you gonna let your boss lock up a middle school kid, yes or no?” he demanded. “Are you gonna leave him alone with someone who already tried to kill him once?”

“No.” Nagata snapped out of her thoughts. “But we should investigate. We aren’t sure of the situation yet.”

Outside, the police officer stopped in front of Nagata’s window. He knocked on the glass, bending down to make eye contact with her. Instead of rolling down the window, Nagata held up her badge so the officer could see it, then snapped it shut and returned it to her pocket.

She started the car and put it in reverse, backing up until it graced the grill of the station wagon behind them. The officer flailed his arms in protest as she shifted the gear stick and swerved into the emergency lane. She quickly picked up speed until they’d passed the line of cars, passed the traffic cones, and only the desolate freeway stretched out between them and the city.

***

The flat stretch of land surrounding the freeway had no cover from the wind. It rattled the cabin of Nagata’s car as scraps of shrapnel hit the roof with increasing regularity. The piles of documents in the backseat jostled, one folder sliding onto the floor.

“To my knowledge, your father has never expressed that he wanted revenge,” Nagata said. “He refuses to even talk about the incident.”

Shou had fixed his eyes on the city, searching for a sign of a second aura. Any indication that a fight had broken out.

“The one time I’ve been alone with him, he told me the person we were looking for is a child,” Nagata said. “He asked me to let it go, just like you.”

It wasn’t comforting. There were so many things Shou had been too stupid to consider until now. That his father might not have promised to keep quiet about Ritsu’s brother for benevolent reasons. How unsurprised Nagata acted. How strange it was that she’d never questioned Shou about the mysterious esper who’d stopped his father.

“Why would he take the risk to tell me something so sensitive and then leap in to fight Kageyama now?” Nagata asked.

Shou scowled at her. “You got no idea how many things he never talked to anyone about. Maybe you found the one person who’s enough of a psychopath to get away with lying to you.”

Nagata exhaled and tightened her grip on the steering wheel. She was struggling to keep the storm from pushing them off the road. “I’m only saying—”

With a violent crash, an entire traffic light lantern smashed into the front of the car. Shou flung his arms over his head, a barrier manifesting around the front seats. The lantern scraped the windshield, shattering one side of the glass. Nagata stomped on the brake while it ricocheted off the hood.

The car spun around, tires screeching. All of Nagata’s paperwork tumbled to one side of the backseat. The lantern hit the road behind them, its dented casing rolling a few meters. The car stopped. Nagata clung to the steering wheel, staring at the gaping hole in the windshield. The gale whistled through it while smaller scraps of metal continuously plucked the paint off the outside of the car.

“Okay…” Nagata’s voice was strained. “I don’t think it’s safe to go any farther.”

Shou leaned forward and scanned the sky through the spiderweb of cracks in the windshield. Nothing else big was getting whipped around by the storm. Just a freak accident.

“You can probably get one of those cops to pick you up,” he said, letting his barrier dissolve. “Go interrogate people or whatever you usually do. I can go on without you.”

“There’s no point to this if we aren’t discreet,” Nagata said, glowering at him. “What do you expect me to tell Asahi or your mother if you end up hurt?”

“I won’t get hurt by some random debris, I got my barrier,” Shou muttered, grabbing the door handle.

“You know that’s not what I mean.”

“Why do you always talk to me like I’m stupid?” Shou bumped his shoulder into the door, forcing it open against the hurricane-strength wind.

Nagata grabbed the back of his jacket, holding him in place. “I do not know what to expect from your father either, I do not know what happened, but no matter what, you have to stay out of sight,” she said. “If you rush in there, you’ll create more problems for all of us.”

Shou batted her hand away. He wasn’t about to go home to his mother and tell her he let Pops run amok again. He wasn’t about to ditch Ritsu’s brother if he needed help.

“He’s my dad,” he said. “He didn’t stop being my dad just ‘cause you threw him in jail. I can’t stay out of it.”

Nagata lowered her arm. She rubbed her face, exhausted.

“Do you remember the office where I first talked to you and Serizawa?” she asked.

Shou shrugged. “Yeah.”

“When you’ve found out what happened, go there and wait for me. As soon as this storm dies down, we’ll discuss what to do next.”

Shou put his weight into the door again. “Okay,” he mumbled. “Deal…”

He stumbled a little as he stepped outside, the biting wind tearing around the frame of the door. Bits of gravel hit him like hail. He raised an arm to protect his face, squinting at the buildings at the outskirts of the city.

He moved to close the door, but a faint, creeping uncertainty gave him pause. All of this was so weird. Nagata was barely trying to argue.

He bent down so he could see her face. “Are you setting me up or something?” he asked. “Why’re you just letting me go?”

Nagata turned her car key. The engine didn’t even make a sound, probably crushed like everything else under the hood. She glanced at Shou tiredly.

“What can I do to stop you?” she asked. “I’ve spent far too much time on you to double-cross you now.”

Shou’s eyes fell on the ground, dirt and dead leaves fluttering over the asphalt. “I guess…”

He let the wind slam the door. With a last glance at Nagata’s battered car, he kicked off the ground and cloaked himself with his aura.

From far above the road, he could see more cars rushing away from the city. Regular people escaping yet another disaster they had no power to prevent.

***

Ritsu’s brother had plowed a massive trench into the Salt district. Demolished pavement, torn-up trees, and ruined buildings lay heaped along its edges. Whole facades had crumbled, leaving their interior exposed like dollhouses. The hairs on the back of Shou’s neck stood on end from the crackling energy lingering everywhere.

He kept himself invisible as he flew along the trail of rubble. A team of paramedics were busy evacuating everyone who’d come too close to the mayhem. Two rescuers carried a man away on a stretcher, traversing the ruins on foot. Their ambulance must’ve broken down like all the other vehicles sitting abandoned in the streets.

At least the wind was less intense here, like the eye of an impossibly vast tornado. Shou peered up at a narrow window in the lead-blanket of clouds. Joseph’s small military plane was a silhouette against the afternoon sky, circling the area like a vulture.

Shou still couldn’t pick out his father’s aura, but he had to find him. Two months ago, when Nagata had let them meet at that airbase, Pops had sworn he'd make amends, but to who? The government? The public? If he put the right spin on it, maybe defeating an esper even stronger than himself would make his prison sentence a little less indefinite. Grant him some favors at least.

Shou should've known it was just an act that day. Pops’ sudden concern for his future, changing the subject so he didn’t have to acknowledge what he’d done. The way he'd stood there and let Joseph dictate what he could say. It'd been so unlike him, Shou should've seen through it straight away.

Pops didn't care about Ritsu's brother. He was fascinated by him at best. He’d throw him to the wolves as soon as it was beneficial, just like he'd done with every esper who'd fascinated him in the past.

The rubble became a blur beneath Shou as he picked up speed. He’d hoped he’d never have to witness this kind of destruction again. He’d almost forgotten the smell of concrete dust and the anxiety of knowing you might have to fight for your life. It’d been nice, living with his mother, all safe and uneventful, but it didn’t matter now.

He had to make sure Ritsu’s brother was okay. Shou owed him more than anyone.

He narrowed his eyes at two figures hobbling his way. One of them was gesturing wildly at a convenience store behind them. Ritsu’s brother had carved a giant hole through the outer wall, a heap of refrigerators strewn all over the street on the other side, spilling out bento lunches and dairy products like intestines.

The two men wore equally frazzled supermarket uniforms that matched the logo on the storefront. Without the scars on their faces, it took Shou a second to recognize them. Both Sakurai and Koyama looked so plain compared to their time at Division Seven, they could almost be mistaken for another pair of innocent bystanders.

As if he could somehow sense Shou’s presence, Sakurai glanced up through his cracked glasses. His fingers were curled around a pair of oden tongs like they were a weapon. Shou soared past them. They didn’t matter either. They had clearly been too stupid to get out of the way of either Pops or Ritsu’s brother. It had to mean at least one of them was close.

The strange aura that blanketed the entire district was getting nauseating, intensifying as Shou passed a couple of demolished office blocks. There was a flash of light. Shou’s attention snapped to a ravaged area ahead. He propelled himself forward, flying even faster.

A short, unmoving figure stood in the middle of the clearing. If Shou hadn’t already deduced that Ritsu’s brother was the source of the energy, he wouldn’t have recognized him. His aura cloaked him in darkness, sucking in all light like a black hole. His posture didn’t show a single hint of emotion, as if oblivious to the destruction he’d left in his wake.

For some absurd reason, a colorful bouquet of flowers was dangling from his hand. He held his other arm outstretched, pointing it at something in front of him. The rubble there shifted, someone emerging from underneath, and the moment Shou glimpsed his ugly prison jumper, he knew it was his father.

There was blood streaked down Pops’ face. Before he had a chance to steady himself, the pressure in the air changed. Ritsu’s brother flicked his wrist and a deafening clap resounded through the ruins.

Gravity crashed down on Pops like a hydraulic press. Even from a distance, it knocked the breath out of Shou’s lungs. The attack forced his father to the ground, nearly throwing him over entirely. Pops stared off into the middle distance, teeth gritted and chest heaving.

What was he doing? He didn’t retaliate, only fought to stand back up. There wasn’t a single scratch on Ritsu’s brother. It wasn’t him who’d been taking damage at all.

Ritsu’s brother curled his fingers like he was about to crumble a piece of paper. The air shifted again. Pops didn’t move. Why wasn’t he moving?

The ground shook, long cracks shattering what was left of the asphalt. Pieces of rubble hurtled toward the center where Pops stood, stinging Shou’s skin as they flew by.

His mind emptied of all thought. He forgot to stay invisible and lurched forward. He grabbed the collar of his father’s jumper, yanking him backward a split-second before the ground exploded into sharp, jagged shapes.

Shou’s heart was beating out of his chest. He held on with a death grip, dragging his father well out of reach. Ritsu’s brother retracted his arm while staring directly at Shou; glowing, white pits penetrating the darkness where his eyes should’ve been.

Shou lowered his father to the ground, staring at him incredulously. “What’re you doing?” he burst out. “Why’re you letting him attack you like that?”

His voice was all tight. He had to take a breath, but the air refused to reach the bottom of his lungs. Pops stared back at him, dumbstruck. His face was littered with cuts and bruises, blood and dirt caked on his cheeks.

“Shou…?” he said. “Why are you here?”

He looked so confused. So weak and beaten up. Shou had been completely wrong. There was no evidence he’d come here to hurt Ritsu’s brother.

He landed on a mound of rubble next to his father and rigidly stuck his hands in his pockets. He focused on Ritsu’s brother without really seeing him.

“Does it matter why?” he replied. “The government sent you here, right?”

“Yes,” Pops said.

Shou glanced at him from the corner of his eye. “Well, they have it out for me too, so I guess I’m helping my good-for-nothing dad with his community service.”

Pops’ brow creased with concern. Shou quickly gestured at Ritsu’s brother.

“Why’s he just standing there? You know what happened to him?”

Pops’ head turned, following his line of sight. “He’s lost control,” he said. “Something inside him has broken loose.”

He must’ve completely snapped. He was acting nothing like the quiet, well-meaning boy everyone talked about like he was some kind of saint. This wasn’t even like the unhinged rage he’d pointed at Pops the last time they fought. He was completely still, like an idle machine, massive torrents of energy rolling off of him like smoke.

“What’s the plan?” Shou asked.

“He must be stopped from causing any more damage, so I’ll force him back the way he came,” Pops said. “There’s no way to resolve this situation with kindness.”

Pops had never treated anyone with kindness, but it didn’t seem like he’d taken a remotely aggressive approach so far. Maybe he’d just been getting a feel for what Ritsu’s brother could do. The boy kept staring at them blankly, clearly not recognizing them.

Maybe Shou had been thinking about this all wrong, worrying for Ritsu’s brother’s safety. If it was possible to bring him back to his senses, Shou was pretty sure he’d want someone to do that by any means necessary.

“I’ll help,” he said. “Doesn’t look like you were doing great on your own.”

Pops didn’t reply. Shou could barely make out his aura even when standing right next to him, but he seemed unbothered by his injuries. His icy eyes weren’t dull like they’d been at the airbase.

Ritsu’s brother slowly turned away from them, in the same direction he’d headed before. Pops cracked his knuckles and started walking.

“You didn’t tell me how you’re gonna force him back,” Shou said, jumping down from the rubble. “He was shoving you around like it was nothing.”

“If he continues to release energy at this rate, his stamina will run out eventually,” Pops explained.

Stalling until Ritsu’s brother had depleted his massive reserve of psychic power sounded unrealistic when Pops was already this worn out, but he wiped the blood off his face with his sleeve and kept going.

Pops flitted his hand, raising the scraps of debris around him off the ground. He slung them at Ritsu’s brother. The barrage of projectiles hit him, only to be pulverized into puffs of dust by the darkness that obscured him.

Ritsu’s brother paused, though. Pops had his attention. He raised his arm again, a charge of energy quickly accumulating in his palm.

Shou’s eyes widened. “Uh, Pops—”

It was all he could say before the charge burst forward in a blaze of light. Shou leaped backward and braced himself for the blow, but it never hit.

He stared a few meters ahead. Pops sat slumped over on the shattered asphalt. His body was smoking like he’d been on fire.

“No—” Shou ran to his side, reaching for his arm. “Why do you keep letting him attack you?”

Pops slapped Shou’s hands aside and pushed off the ground, getting up with no help at all. The front of his clothes was scorched and blood still clung to his face and hands, but the cuts and scrapes were all gone.

“Don’t make a scene,” he said. “I can borrow his energy to make up for the power I lost.”

He studied his own palms, strings of psychic energy following them like an afterimage. His body was overflowing with power that was nothing like his own. The circuit-like pattern in his aura had fractured like viewing it through a kaleidoscope. For the first time since he’d arrived, Shou could clearly sense it through the noise Ritsu’s brother was generating.

“Follow my lead,” Pops said.

He began channeling the energy he’d just absorbed into his hands. Shou knew the technique all too well. He’d been ready to kill his father with it back in the Culture Tower.

Flustered, Shou skipped to his side. He held both hands close to his father’s, funneling his own aura into the attack. It kept growing; expanding far beyond what Shou had ever managed on his own. The temperature increased until it was so burning he couldn’t hold on to it any longer. Pops endured it for a second more, then the charge barrelled into Ritsu’s brother, detonating on impact.

A shockwave pushed all of them back, gravel and scraps of concrete pelting down everywhere. Shou stared as the smoke that filled the pit between him and Ritsu’s brother cleared. He couldn’t believe his own eyes.

Ritsu’s brother was still standing. Shou and his father had just hit him with their full power and not so much as a petal on the flowers in his hand had been harmed.

His aura was flickering with red and orange now. Shou felt his stomach drop as he realized Ritsu’s brother had just absorbed all that energy. Stolen and re-adapted it in the exact same way as Pops.

Shou took a step back. Ritsu’s brother’s hand was glowing. Long, eerie shadows stretched behind the remaining ruins, all of them pointing toward the source of the light. He focused on Shou this time, those not-eyes boring into him.

The light exploded. It flooded everything with white, burning into Shou’s retinas. He raised his arms to protect himself as the trembling ground roared beneath him. He could feel the sweltering heat through his jacket.

A shadow moved in front of Shou. The back of a tattered jumpsuit. Every bit of energy the three of them had compiled crashed into Pops with a force that would’ve wiped anyone else from existence.

Shou stared at his father’s back, uncomprehending. Only a bit of smoke had made it around him.

“Why would you do that…?” Shou said. He could barely hear his own voice over the blast still ringing in his ears. White spots were seared into his vision.

Pops collapsed onto one knee. His arms quivered as he struggled to hold himself up, his knuckles firmly planted in the gravel. Ritsu’s brother watched him with the indifference of someone who’d stepped on an ant.

“We have to run,” Shou said, glancing at the ruins behind them. “There’s nothing we can do about this.”

Pops shook his head. “You have to escape by yourself. It’s impossible for me to run with these injuries.”

His face had been cut up again, the skin charred and already bruising. Dirt was practically burned into the front of his clothes. What little was left of his aura felt thin and uneven.

“But what’re you gonna do?” Shou asked.

Pops glowered back at Ritsu’s brother, sizing him up. It was ridiculous—Pops was probably weaker than Shou right now, there was no way he could handle another direct hit.

“There is one way to stop him,” Pops said. “I will do what he did for me. Act as a vessel to absorb his energy.”

“What?” Shou stared at him. “He’ll tear you apart!”

“Then so be it.” With a bit of difficulty, Pops rose and stood firmly on his feet. “If I have to sacrifice myself to stop him, I’m prepared.”

He just… What was he doing? He just saved Shou’s life and now he was about to leave him behind like he always had. For what? So he could redeem himself? He could never redeem himself, especially not by doing something as idiotic as dying.

“How can you say something so selfish?” it burst out of Shou.

He could still barely hear anything, but a ragged, garbled noise forced its way out from Ritsu’s brother’s throat. His body hunched over like he was in pain. One arm clawed at his chest, moving in rigid jerks like something was holding it back. Like he was struggling to regain control.

“He’s losing focus,” Pops said, starting toward him with long, determined steps. “This is my best chance.”

“Wait,” Shou called after him. “What if he’s trying to snap out of it? You said we only had to hold him up!”

Ritsu’s brother stopped convulsing as suddenly as he’d started. The dense, dark energy consumed him again as he lowered the arm he’d fought to lift. Pops continued straight toward him.

He’d get attacked again. He was too worn out to fight anyone. Ritsu’s brother would destroy him. He exceeded Pops’ abilities even when he was at his strongest, Pops knew that.

But he didn’t care what Shou thought. He never had. Shou knew it was hopeless, but he called out again.

“Dad, stop.”

His father took a few more steps. He slowed down, stopping right between Shou and Ritsu’s brother. Incredibly, he peered over his shoulder.

Shou’s hands curled into fists. He refused to break eye contact now that he had it. The determined wrinkles between his father’s brows smoothed out. Something inexplicable changed in his posture. His eyes widened a little, as if something had just clicked for him.

He’d only looked at Shou like this once before. Back when he woke from his fever haze, that day after it’d been him destroying Seasoning City.

“I’m sorry,” Pops said.

It was so quiet. He turned his head to glance at Ritsu’s brother one last time. It wasn’t clear if it was him or Shou he was talking to, but he turned Shou’s way in the end, facing him fully. Not with his typical, stern demeanor, but with simple earnestness.

“Shou, will you lend me your shoulder?” he asked. “You’re right. Let’s run away.”

***

With no one to distract him, Ritsu’s brother resumed his linear march through the city. Shou could still glimpse his washed-out outline. More buildings bowed in his presence, their crumbling remains feeding the cloud of dust that whipped up around him. Right now, there was no trace of whatever had caused him to pause and behave so strangely. He walked with single-minded determination; clutching the bouquet like it was the only thing in the world that mattered.

“What’ll happen to him now?” Shou asked, glancing up at his father. Pops was drooping more and more with every step. The weight of his arm on Shou’s shoulders made it increasingly hard to walk upright.

“No one can stop him,” Pops said. “This will have to run its course.”

And then what? The citizens of Seasoning City must remember their last esper-related disaster all too well. There was still a giant crater just a couple kilometers from here. Joseph’s plane was still flying in slow circles above it. Everyone would want a culprit to hold responsible.

Pops’ breathing was getting labored. Shou maneuvered him through another heap of rubble. He could see the refrigerators from the gutted convenience store he’d flown past earlier. The glass front of the nearest one was shattered into tiny, glittering shards. Shou kicked away the plastic-packaged bentos that’d spilled out on the ground and helped his father sit.

Pops groaned as Shou lifted his arm off his shoulders. He had to support himself with his hands on his knees, his forehead shiny with sweat. Not very long ago, he’d gone through life without sustaining a single injury. Now every bit of exposed skin looked hurt.

“You’ve really gotten old,” Shou muttered. “Maybe you’ll die after all.”

His father didn’t reply. Shou nudged the shards of glass with his sneaker. The only reason his father looked like this was because of him.

Pops had just… jumped right in front of him. Hadn’t even thought about it.

Shou awkwardly wiped his nose on his sleeve. He sat down on the fridge too, his shoulder barely gracing his father’s arm.

His eyes wouldn’t linger anywhere for long. He peered out at the whirlwind that was Ritsu’s brother, at the jagged outline of skyscrapers hiding the crater, at his father’s clunky prison shoes and the bentos scattered next to them.

The plastic covering the bentos was see-through. Tufts of bright green broccoli stuck out from the mess of rice and fried chicken that’d been tossed around inside. Shou frowned at it. He frowned at the skyline. It looked too empty. Overly gray and angular.

“Did the government cut down the broccoli?” he asked.

Pops turned his head a fraction. “What broccoli?”

“What do you mean what broccoli?” Shou pointed a hand at the place where it used to peek up. “The giant vegetable you left in the crater.”

Pops’ eyes narrowed like he had to try very hard to remember. “I suppose they did…”

Shou stared at him perplexedly, but his father’s attention had already moved on to the plane.

“The moment we reached the city limits, I knew it was Kageyama,” he said. “I promised you I wouldn’t talk about him to anyone and I don’t intend to change that now.” He looked at Shou, eyes softer than usual. Tired. “He’s strong. Once this is over, he’ll come to terms with it his own way.”

“What if they question you about it?” Shou asked. “If you ran off and won’t even say what happened, won’t they punish you?”

Pops’ hands shifted until they lay slack in his lap. He nodded as if to reassure himself. “No matter what, at least I got to see you again.”

Like earlier, it was completely earnest. Shou felt strange. Lightheaded.

“Don’t say stupid shit like that,” he mumbled.

Pops watched the storm on the horizon. Ritsu’s brother’s aura was still reverberating in the air, just as unceasing as when they’d arrived.

“Psychic power is a fearsome thing,” he mused. “I realize now, I can’t let anyone take advantage of my abilities anymore, least of all myself. I won’t use them anymore.”

Shou squinted at him. “Like… at all?”

“The most important thing is to live a normal life,” Pops said solemnly. “Your mother told me that long ago, just as she’s told you. I regret it has taken me a decade to listen.”

It was all Mom had ever wanted from him. For him to listen. Recognize his own destructive nature and step away from the path he’d set for himself when he founded Claw. It was all Shou had fought for, too, and yet his mind was blank.

“I really am sorry, Shou…” Pops bowed his head. “I will find a different way to redeem myself. One day, I hope you can forgive me.”

What was he supposed to say? This was what he’d been waiting for. An apology. Recognition. His father had jumped right in front of him. He’d saved his life.

He’d saved his life.

He’d kept his promises.

He’d even listened.

Shou stood up. He ignored the way the blood drained from his head. That empty, airy feeling that had lodged itself firmly at the base of his skull, retaining the white at the edges of his vision. He had to leave.

“I know you’re trying,” Shou said.

It was somehow loud and clear despite the lump that was growing in his throat like a tumor. He had to say it. His father deserved some sort of recognition for improving himself. It was only fair.

“I think Mom would be happy if she knew,” he added.

She wouldn’t. Nothing Shou’s father could ever do would make her happy. It just seemed like a nice sentiment. Made this hopeful little gleam shine in Pops’ eyes, so unlike the cold indifference he’d watched the world with in the past.

“Don’t tell anyone you saw me either,” Shou said, burying his hands in his pockets. “I came here with Nagata. She says she’s on our side, so we’ll figure out what to do about Kageyama once he stops whatever’s going on with him.”

“I’ve spoken to her many times,” Pops said. “If she intends to help, let her. She’s capable and driven. A good asset.”

As if Shou had a choice. He turned away, the orange glow of his aura flaring out as he readied himself to kick off the ground.

“If we don’t meet again,” Pops spoke. “Goodbye… You didn’t give me the chance to say that last time.”

Shou glanced back at him. The noise from the plane swelled as it circled back toward them, but Pops paid it no mind. An actual smile pulled at the wrinkles that’d snuck onto his face while he’d been in jail. Like he was at peace. Like, despite the massive, foreboding loss he’d suffered half-an-hour earlier, everything would be okay.

“Yeah,” Shou said. “Bye, Dad.”

***

At the outskirts of the district, the wind was only strong enough to ruffle Shou’s hair and whistle quietly over the rooftops, but sparks of that dark energy carried all the way from the whirlwind in the distance. Ritsu’s brother’s aura had started fluctuating, growing in strength for a few minutes, then withdrawing. He must be making another effort to reel it in.

Shou rested his arms on his knees. He scraped a clump of moss off the roof with the heel of his shoe. It lost its grip on the tiles and tumbled silently into the parking square below. Last time Shou had visited the small, clinical office where Nagata had instructed him to meet with her, the neighborhood had been quiet. Now, it was completely deserted, cars haphazardly parked wherever their owners had abandoned them.

His eyes followed the street. Odd bits of concrete and glass lay scattered among dented store signs, tree branches, and someone’s empty baby carriage.

What if Nagata didn’t show up? What if she’d changed her mind?

No. When Nagata said she’d do something, she did it, quickly and efficiently. She had to understand that the best they could do for Ritsu’s brother was to make sure everyone left him alone. Let him return to his ordinary life. Talk to Ritsu or Reigen or someone else he trusted and figure out how to overcome all of this.

Maybe one of them was out there already. Maybe they’d get through to him where Shou and his father had failed. It’d been stupid of Pops to—

Shou bumped his forehead into his arms. He had to stop thinking about his father. He’d come here to help Ritsu’s brother, and so had Pops. That was the priority right now.

But…

He just couldn’t get that smile out of his head. Had his father ever smiled at him in his life? Talked to him like that? Like a normal human being?

It made Shou angry.

It was petty and unfair and he couldn’t entirely explain why, but it did. It made him want to scratch his own skin off.

Why did he always react like this? People changed all the time. Not very long ago, all he wanted was for his father to pick him over Ritsu’s brother. Pick him over all the self-absorbed, maniacal shit he used to care about. And yes, that’d been childish and embarrassing, but now that it actually happened, who in their right mind would be unhappy about that?

Something turned the corner at the end of the street. Shou straightened up, relief purging all those other thoughts from his mind. Through the branches of an uprooted tree, he could see Nagata’s mint-colored suit. She was riding an old bicycle she must’ve gleaned on the way here, her jacket fluttering behind her. She swerved around a few of the broken-down vehicles, the bike wobbling. Its front wheel was crooked, squeaking every time it turned.

“Are you okay?” she called out. She was out of breath, looking all ruffled with the collar of her dress shirt flipped the wrong way and bits of dirt stuck in her long hair. “Did you find them?”

Shou nodded and jumped down from the roof while Nagata pedaled the last few meters.

“We were right,” he said. “It’s Ritsu’s brother.”

Nagata stopped the bike at the entrance to the parking lot and got off. Her eyes roamed over Shou as if checking for injuries, then the windows of the empty office, then the mess the storm had made of the street. “And your father?”

“Yeah…” Shou gestured vaguely in the direction he’d left him. “Pops was trying to stall him. He’s hurt, but I got him away from there. He won’t say anything, he gets it.”

Nagata nodded to herself, taking in a deep breath. Shou moved closer, making sure he had her attention.

“Listen, I know what to do,” he said. “I don’t think Ritsu’s brother understands what’s going on right now, but his aura’s changing. He’s about to snap out of it, I know it. All we gotta do is buy him some time. When the storm dies down, Joseph and all your other agents are gonna flood in here, so we gotta find a way to distract them.”

Nagata’s hands stayed locked around the bike’s handlebars. She frowned as if he was speaking gibberish, but Shou kept talking.

“If you told them the description from the news is wrong, would they believe you?” he asked. “You could twist it to sound like somebody else. I passed by two of the old Scars from Division Seven on the way in. They were running off, but they could be a false lead or something. My Pops is waiting to get picked up, but if you talk to him first, he could weigh in, like, give a false witness account? As long as you insist he’s telling the truth, even your boss believes you without asking questions, you gotta take advantage of that—”

“Suzuki-kun,” Nagata stopped him. “Has Kageyama done this before? Did it happen when he fought your father?”

“No, but…” Shou shrugged. “What does it matter? I just told you he’s figuring out how to handle it.”

“Come with me for a moment.”

Nagata turned the bike and pulled it around the office, waiting for Shou to join her. There was a clear view to the ditch Ritsu’s brother had plowed into the ground.

“Look at this,” Nagata said. “How do you think he’ll react to knowing he caused all this damage?”

Shou didn’t need to look. He’d sat on the roof studying it ever since he arrived.

“I drove past a lot of rescue workers on the way in,” Nagata said, gesturing at the ruins. “People have been seriously injured. The rubble here is their homes. Their livelihood. Infrastructure. Things that will take months or years to reconstruct. This is his own neighborhood where he’ll likely have to look at it every day. Do you think he’ll take that well?”

“He’ll get over it,” Shou replied. “You think this is the first awful thing that’s happened to him? He’s gotten over a lot of stuff.”

“I can't leave him alone with this,” Nagata said.

“Well, you have to,” Shou snapped. “You can just—you can make it go away! That’s what you’ve done for me. Hell, you did it earlier today. You lie and you cover stuff up. Wipe it off on someone who actually deserves to get dumped in jail.”

Nagata watched him like she was searching for something.

“If you care as much about kids as you say you do, you’ll listen to me,” Shou persisted. “Otherwise, how’re you gonna explain where you were? How’re you gonna be sure I won’t tell on you? The rest of the people you work with are gonna find out one way or another. They’ll take it to your boss and he’ll say it’s exactly like what my pops did. He’ll fire you so hard and he’ll take Kageyama away and fuck up his entire family and force him to do whatever he wants!”

Nagata opened her mouth to speak, but at the same moment, the wind that’d been blowing for hours ceased in a single, jarring instant. Nagata's ponytail stopped billowing in the wind and fell limply down her back. She blinked up at the sky, then flinched as little bits of gravel rained down on her, no longer suspended by the gale.

The lights flickered on inside the surrounding houses. The heavy blanket of clouds started parting. It was so quiet, Shou could hear his own heartbeat. A new surge of relief welled up in his chest. Ritsu’s brother’s aura had disappeared along with the wind. Either he’d come to his senses or he’d tired himself out so badly he fainted.

“Is it over?” Nagata asked, brushing the dirt out of her bangs.

“Yeah, I think so,” Shou said. “Now—”

"I'll bike over there as fast as I can," Nagata interrupted him. She was already tilting the bicycle, about to get back on it. "You have to leave by yourself. I assume it won’t take you long to fly out of the city."

Shou stared at her. "Didn't you hear what I just said?"

“I can’t decide how best to proceed without knowing what caused this or if we can expect it to happen again,” Nagata replied. “There’s no reason to implicate you any further.”

Shou ripped the handlebars from her grip. With a shrill, metallic noise, the wheels and frame of the bike folded up like a dying spider. The crumbled ball of steel and rubber clattered to the ground.

“Leave Kageyama alone,” Shou warned her.

Nagata raised her hands, otherwise barely reacting.

“Leave him alone, or I’ll…” Shou’s sentence fizzled out. What could he even do? Nothing. Always nothing.

"It’s a mistake that I listened to your father and didn’t investigate the Kageyamas sooner," Nagata said, keeping eye contact. "Let me handle this. He will need someone to talk to."

“He already has people to talk to,” Shou raised his voice. “He has his brother, and his parents, and Reigen—you trust Reigen or you wouldn’t have signed off on him hiring Serizawa.”

Nagata lowered her hands. “I signed off on that because Serizawa needed to be deployed somewhere anyway. Reigen is a patient and well-meaning individual who knows enough about espers not to be frightened by Serizawa’s outbursts. This does not compare.”

“Once Ritsu’s brother hears people talk about him like they want him dead, who do you think he'll listen to more?” Shou countered. “Some government lady, or Reigen who's got his back for years?” He threw out his arms. “They’ve been doing fine. All he’ll want is to go back to normal. It’s the same as me, everything at my mom’s place got so much better after you guys stopped meddling in it!”

Nagata's attention drifted to what had just been the center of the storm, then to the nose of Joseph’s plane. It was pointing down, searching for a flat stretch of ground where it could land.

“I know my pops makes some really awful decisions sometimes, but he wasn’t wrong about this,” Shou insisted. “You keep telling me to stay out of stuff, maybe you should take your own advice for a change."

Nagata turned her head back, scrutinizing him for a long moment.

“How sure are you that someone will come for him?” she asked. “My concern is that he's alone and will go to the wrong person for help.”

“Every other time he’s been in trouble, Reigen’s shown up to rescue him,” Shou said. “Half the people Ritsu’s brother hangs around would straight up die for him. He's not gonna be alone.”

"Okay…" Nagata gave a decisive little nod. “Then you're right, it’ll be a better use of my time to focus on the rest of my department.”

Shou's shoulders slumped with confusion. She changed her mind awfully fast. “I’m not just talking about right now—”

“I understand that,” Nagata said, then promptly changed the subject. “Can I count on you to talk to the police? Make sure our stories match up.”

“What stories?”

Nagata pointed off in the direction she’d come from. “The place where we crashed isn’t far from the city border,” she said. “The police put another control point right where the freeway ends. There was a crowd of people, so I want you to go there and blend in with them. Turn yourself invisible if you need to, the important thing is that no one sees you leave the city. Let them believe you walked there from my car.”

Shou hesitantly nodded.

“Talk to one of the officers,” Nagata said. “Tell them you stayed put until the storm died down, while I continued on my own. Ask them to take you home. One of my colleagues might come to question you, but you let them know you were not in here.” She slowly shook her head, emphasizing her words. “You did not see anything. You especially did not speak to your father.”

Shou narrowed his eyes. “And then what’re you gonna do?”

Nagata reached into her pocket, deftly producing her phone. She attempted to switch it on and the frown on her face faded slightly when the screen lit up.

“I’ll call Joseph again,” she said. She unlocked the phone without looking at it, instead scanning the surrounding cars. “Maybe I can get to your father before him. You can go now.”

Shou would have no influence on what Nagata did once he was gone, but there was nothing more he and his father had to share. Ritsu’s brother had no direct use for him either. Shou had already failed to help him that way once today.

“If I go home, I have to tell my mom what happened,” he realized. “She’s gonna worry about Pops, too.”

“I know,” Nagata said. “Be honest with her. You’ll be less likely to contradict each other.”

Her phone started ringing, Asahi’s name on the screen. Nagata must’ve come up with her plan in the time it’d taken her to bike here. Now she had to put it into effect and yet she didn’t express the slightest hint of nervousness.

She nodded her head in the direction of the freeway. “Let’s do what we can, okay?”

She put the phone to her ear. Behind her, Joseph's plane was diving, casting a shadow on the skyscrapers that had stood clear of the destruction. It was at a decent distance from the point where Ritsu’s brother must be.

“I would’ve told everyone at the office to stay and observe if I’d been able to contact them,” Nagata told her boss, her voice ever professional. “The best I could do was head in here myself.”

She wandered over to the nearest car and tried the handle for the driver’s seat. It didn’t budge.

“I think there’s been some confusion about the descriptions of the culprit,” she continued. “Joseph told me he sent in Suzuki Touichirou, I’ll have to confirm with him. I can see their plane is about to land, so I’ll head there now.”

She moved to the next car, but it was locked as well.

“Of course not,” Nagata said. “I left Suzuki-kun outside the city. I’ll call him in a moment.”

Shou was no stranger to lying, but he knew no one who did it with as much shameless confidence as Nagata. And yet, for the fourth time since she’d forcibly excused him from his morning classes, what else could he do but cooperate?

He watched the remains of the bike at his feet. Even if Nagata found a car she could start, it’d be difficult to drive along the trench when there was so much debris strewn around. He leaned down and grabbed the handle. As he pulled up the bundle of metal, the frame unfolded. The beams at the center straightened, the spokes on the wheels following suit.

Nagata had her back turned, trying her luck with a third car. Shou hovered the bike over and nudged her shin with the front wheel. Surprised, she twisted around.

She kept talking while she grabbed the handlebars with her free hand. She smiled at him, all kind and encouraging.

Her smiles made him feel even worse than his father’s.

Chapter Text

One of the faucets in the boy’s bathroom kept dripping. Each plunk from the metal sink pierced the stall Shou had shut himself in and hit him like a slap over the head. He hunched over on the flipped-down toilet seat, trying to focus on the phone at his ear.

“Why didn’t you call me earlier?” Mom asked. Shou could hear a door close, shutting out her co-workers. “I could’ve told Miyagi you had to leave, you didn’t have to suffer through the whole day.”

“I don’t want to go home,” Shou groaned into his hand. “Okura’s gonna sit in his car and watch me, it’s creeping me out.”

There was something surreal about experiencing the next-most terrifying psychic event you’d ever witnessed and then going to school the next day like nothing happened, but it didn’t matter how chaotic yesterday had been—Nagata had insisted on stationing Okura in Sturgeon Bay, and so Okura had shown up at six sharp in the morning, right as Shou had given up on getting any sleep.

“It could be worse,” Mom said, feigning optimism. “He’s polite at least.”

He was not polite; he was weird. Okura was not the same person he’d been the last time he was in town. He’d barely said anything as he walked Shou to school, and it would likely be the same on the way home.

“Shou…“ Mom paused before tentatively changing the subject. “I know everything’s a bit terrible right now, but I’m so proud of how honest you were with me yesterday, did I tell you that?” she asked. “You and your friends haven’t done anything wrong, I think anyone would see it was an accident if they knew what we do.”

Shou lethargically let his arm fall into his lap.

“What if I asked to speak to Asahi myself?” Mom said. “About you, I mean. Not the Kageyamas.”

“It’s not a good idea to talk to him.”

Mom made a puzzled sound. “But isn’t—”

“Mom, he’s the boss of their entire division and you’re just some nobody who’s not even impartial, he’s not gonna care what you think,” Shou cut her off.

Who knew what Asahi would tell her if she started bothering him. How long he’d spend listing Shou’s criminal offenses. Shou had only informed his mother of the things she might pick up from the news. Not about Iida. Not about Kawasaki and her boyfriend, or whatever he was, shanking some guard just for a chance to beg Shou for help.

“Nagata said she’ll handle it, okay?” Shou said. “People actually listen to her.”

He didn’t want to count on Nagata any more than his mother did, but he’d checked the news once in a while during the day, and considering they’d abruptly stopped mentioning the mysterious boy in the gakuran, it seemed she’d done something.

The school bell warbled in the hallway. Shou raised his head as the other first-years started filing out of their classrooms, shuffling shoes and indistinct chatter passing the bathroom.

“Sorry,” Shou mumbled, getting up. “I know you want to help, but I’m gonna go before he comes in here and drags me out.”

“Try to think about something else,” Mom said, all soft and understanding. “You can call me again if you need someone to talk to. I’ll see if I can get home earlier.”

She was trying so hard…

Shou ended the call and unlocked the stall door. He crossed the floor, grabbing the knob for the leaky faucet. His aura wrapped around it, twisting until the metal squeaked in protest.

It kept dripping.

Shou crossed his arms, resisting the urge to crush the plumbing. He turned to the exit and shoved the door open, nearly hitting Yamamoto who was standing right outside. Startled, she side-stepped and bumped into one of the other girls from their class. She clutched her book bag to her chest, wide-eyed confusion quickly morphing into a revolted scowl, like Shou was something that’d just slithered out of the soil pipes.

“Will you say something to your nasty little minion already?” she hissed. “She keeps doing this!”

She pointed down the hallway. Satsune stood outside their homeroom with Shou’s backpack dangling from her hand and her own bag over her shoulder, watching Yamamoto and her friend impassively.

The friend tugged on Yamamoto’s wrist, urging her toward the staircase. Yamamoto reluctantly turned her back on Satsune, her shoulders all stiff. Her friend hurried down to the next landing like she couldn’t get away fast enough, but Yamamoto only made it a couple steps before she abruptly froze.

For a moment, she simply stared down the gap between the flights of stairs. Then her arms moved, mechanically grabbing her bag, stretching them over the guard rail.

She let go. The bag plummeted through the gap and hit the ground floor with a flat smack. All the blood drained from Yamamoto’s face. She slowly lowered her arms and turned her head to gape at Satsune with an expression that could only be described as avid terror. She bounded forward and practically ran after her friend. Shou could hear her stumble, but he wasn’t sure if it was out of her own clumsiness or Satsune’s ice-cold aura.

“Really?” Shou raised an eyebrow as Satsune ambled closer. “You already made her spill soup all over herself.”

Satsune stopped in front of him, holding out his backpack. “There’s an esper here.”

Even with her novice ability to sense other espers, there was no mistaking Okura’s deep blue aura, looming outside by the gate. Shou shrugged and took the backpack, slinging it over his shoulder.

“Get used to it,” he said. “He’s probably gonna be around for a while.”

“Stop ignoring me and tell me what happened yesterday,” Satsune demanded. “I’m not an idiot. I can guess you were in Seasoning City.”

Shou trudged backward toward the staircase, holding out his arms to either side. “It’s got nothing to do with you, so stop worrying about it,” he said. “Unless you want a government agent tailing you too, maybe stop using your powers in public.”

Satsune glared at him ominously; she was being so needlessly dramatic. Yamamoto was exaggerating when she claimed Satsune’s focus had been on her all day, because Shou had felt her eyes on the back of his head during every one of their classes, staring like she was trying to add telepathy to her growing collection of brain tricks.

“Look, I’ll explain when everything’s less chaotic,” he said, grabbing the stair rail. “I don’t even know what to tell you right now.”

Her glare was so reproachful Shou half-expected her to take a stab at mind-controlling him too, but as he started down the stairs, the strange, numb sensation her powers induced never came.

Satsune marched past the stairwell, her messy curls billowing behind her. The exit at the other end of the hallway led down to the school library. She hung out there sometimes when she didn’t have soccer practice—a quiet place where people left her alone. Not that she particularly seemed like she wanted to be alone right now.

Shou stuck his hands in the pockets of his slacks and trudged down to the entrance hall. Satsune could be upset all she wanted, it wasn’t like she knew any better. She’d avoided government attention so far, distracted with her petty school drama.

It was best to keep it that way.

***

Against the backdrop of rusty warehouses, Okura looked out of place with his pristine, black suit and neatly groomed beard. Yamamoto and her friend craned their necks as they dragged their bikes through the school gate, shooting him puzzled glances.

“Is there anywhere else you need to go?” Okura asked, hands folded on his back as he watched Shou cross the yard.

“No,” Shou muttered.

He walked around Okura. Okura followed, but kept a couple meters between them, unnervingly silent. Shou peeked over his shoulder to find he’d bowed his head, solemnly watching the cracks in the asphalt.

“Did you talk to Nagata?” Shou asked.

“Briefly,” Okura said. Even his voice was different. Tired.

Shou walked sideways, narrowing his eyes. “Did you talk to Asahi?”

“All you need to know is I’m here to make sure you’re safe and stick to your routine,” Okura replied. “We’re just looking out for you.”

He sounded like he was reading from a script. Asahi had probably threatened him just as much as he had Shou.

They trekked up the hill to Mom’s house. Shou didn’t need to watch his feet as they skirted the aging street. Even with the low afternoon sun stinging his eyes, he knew all the potholes and fissures by heart. Maybe that was what made it all the more jarring that something was different. As he reached the peak of the hill, he froze.

There was another aura. Quiet, but so familiar it felt like crashing into a wall.

Behind Okura’s ugly minivan, a nondescript, white van stood parked across from Mom’s driveway. The glare from the sun reflected off the windshield, but Shou could glimpse Higashio’s face through the glass. He’d opened the window to rest his elbow on the pane, a cigarette carelessly pinched between his fingers.

A grin bloomed on Shou’s face. He set into a run, ignoring the disapproving noise Okura made behind him. Higashio noticed, inhaled a last lungful of smoke, and exited the van.

“Figured they’d let you out of school around this time,” he called out, dropping the cigarette on the ground so he could squash it with his dusty derby shoe.

Shou stopped right in front of him, only leaving enough space for him to close the door. He suddenly wasn’t sure what to do with his arms, just stared, the grin faltering.

Higashio was smiling, though. This really warm smile he rarely offered anyone. He pointed at Shou’s school uniform, or maybe just Shou in general.

“Looks like you’ve been doing well, yeah?”

Shou’s gaze traveled to Higashio’s calloused hands, brushing down the front of his clothes like it could wipe off the stench of smoke. He didn’t look particularly well himself. Older and skinnier than Shou remembered. His dark trench coat was too big on him, but at least he’d dressed nicely underneath, wearing one of his usual blazers. He’d found a matching bowtie—the kind of thing he used to wear when he was out to do serious, money-related business.

Higashio nodded at something down the street. “He been here since yesterday, or since you moved in?”

Shou turned his head. Okura was scanning the license plate on the front of Higashio’s van, government badge already in hand. He held it out as he walked closer.

“Okura Eito,” he said, all stern and unfriendly. “Can I ask why you’re here?”

Higashio didn’t look at the badge. “Is there a problem?” he asked. “Your people already questioned me this morning.”

“Like everyone else, you’re under investigation,” Okura said, stashing the badge in his inner pocket. “Please answer the question.”

“I’m making a delivery,” Higashio said, a snide tone creeping into his voice. “I was in the area, so I thought I’d stop by.”

Okura peered through the van’s windshield. “What kind of delivery?”

Higashio put on a razor-sharp smile. “Do you need to inspect my vehicle, Okura-san?”

He didn’t wait for an answer, just turned on his heel and headed around to the back compartment. With a hollow clunk, he opened the doors, pointing his arm at the space inside.

Shou trailed after Okura, hands locked around the straps of his backpack. “He just wants to talk to me, why’re you acting all weird about it?”

Both of them stopped next to Higashio. Inside the back compartment, an ancient-looking cupboard and an upside-down table were fastened to the back wall, carefully padded with blankets and pillows. Save for some tools and a storage crate at the front, the rest of the space was empty.

“Is it to your satisfaction?” Higashio asked, staring pointedly at the side of Okura’s face.

Okura folded his hands on his back and took a step away.