Chapter Text
Awareness crept in like a fog. Izuku is sitting up and blinking before he realizes it. A lone figure is stalking away, shaggy black hair bouncing in time with his steps. The sun is setting.
What? Wasn’t it. . .earlier?
“Hello? Sir?” Izuku calls out to the man who is much farther away now. He doesn’t stop, doesn’t even pause. Huh. He must have not heard Izuku calling. He’s tempted to let him go but Izuku isn’t sure. . . where is he? What happened? He’s really confused, but pretty sure that he needs help.
“Hello! Sir!” he calls out with more volume and stumbles off the ground. The man still doesn’t react. Izuku huffs a frustrated breath. Now that he looks a little closer, the figure looks a little. . . weird. Kind of clear? Maybe a mutation quirk. . .
“Um, kid?”
Izuku whips around to look at the strange voice that called out behind him. There’s a young man he’s never seen before, wispy blue-white hair whipping without a breeze. He’s got a strip of bandage over the bridge of his nose. He couldn’t be more than a few years older than Izuku.
“H-hello? Do I know you? What’s going on?’
The man grimaces and scrubs the back of his neck. He’s not meeting Izuku’s eyes anymore. “Oh boy. This is really tough. Do you know what happened to you . . ?”
“Um. . . ” Izuku tries to think and the memories take a moment to surface” I was walking home from school. I was attacked. I thought I was going to die.” He trailed off, remembering the vile invasion of his flesh. Remembering the way the viscous liquid still sat heavy in his body even after leaving All Might.
“But then All Might saved me! Then I made him lose track of the villain.” The memories were coming back quicker and quicker, like watching a film of his final moments behind his eyelids.
“It attacked Kacchan. I rushed in to save him.” Wait what? Final who? “I- It- I got. . . knocked back. It was so hard to breathe already.” Dread pooled in his stomach. “The smoke didn’t help. I got pushed away. I was just trying to help.” Panic clawed up his throat. “I didn’t want to die. Oh god.”
He looked at his hands. He could see the ground through them.
“I. I died. I’m dead.”
The other guy winces. “Yup. Sorry. Sounds like it hurt.” Izuku stood staring at his hands for a moment longer.
“It did.”
Izuku looked away and shook his head “Who are you? Are you dead like me? Where are we? Is this the afterlife? Why am I still on this street? Why-”
“Woah, woah, hold it there motormouth!” The man held his hands up, “One at a time! And they used to say I could talk!” He stepped forward over some rubble and ducked under the caution tape that cornered the rubble off from the street.
“Name’s Shirukumo Oboro, but you can call me Oboro. I guess I’m your senpai? We’re ghosts, I think, and this isn’t The Afterlife, at least, I hope not. Still wishing for some kind of second chance, or golden paradise at least.” He looked a little awkward and kicked at a pebble. It didn’t move.
“We’re not the only ones here. There are others, they just usually don’t hang around places like these. Not intimate enough I think.” Izuku jolted. Other ghosts? What...? “Even if someone dies in the street and happens to. . .linger. They usually go off to be with their loved ones. Or to be at their final resting place or something. I don’t really know actually.”
Oboro still looked a bit chagrined. He kept nudging at the little piece of rubble he couldn’t actually touch.
“Did you. . .want to be with someone?” Izuku’s heart squeezed and he thought about Kacchan. Screaming and explosions rang in the back of his mind. He thought about being pushed backward and tried to remember what happened. Was it. . . ? No, Kacchan was mean but he wouldn’t. . . do that.
“I. I need to make sure Kacchan is all right,” he said firmly, reassuring himself a bit. He cringed reflexively, used to shying away from being assertive, “I literally died to protect him, I think that’s only fair.”
“Alright.” Oboro stood up straight and crammed his hands in his pockets. “Where is he?”
Izuku stared blankly, “Well how am I supposed to know? At home probably?”
Oboro gave him a strange look. Weary and assessing. “If you don’t know where he is, can you feel where is?” Izuku blinked slowly. And then the strangest sensation overtook him.
“He’s. . . This way.” Izuku stood and turned sharply in the opposite direction of the setting sun and stepped forward. He couldn’t be sure, but he seemed to be moving differently than usual. Somehow smoother and uninhibited. He didn’t know why or how but he could literally feel that Kacchan was in this direction. He didn’t question it. Couldn’t really, the dubious hows and whys slipped through the cracks of his mind like sifting beach sands.
They walked for what felt like seconds stretched into an eternity. What was happening?
“Are you feeling kind of sick?” Izuku looked back at Oboro with questions in his gaze. He was feeling weird. Like he was nauseous and floating and falling all at once. “From what I remember,” Oboro continued, “and from what I’ve been able to observe since, feeling sick and disoriented is normal for a while. It’s sort of like a settling period I guess? Your consciousness is getting used to being without something to contain it. I’ve seen some spirits give in to it and sort of. Disperse. Become little floating orbs of feeling, cold spots in corners, or a gust of wind on a calm day. That sort of thing.” Bizarrely, Izuku thought of the dubbed Ghost Adventures series he used to watch with his mom during Obon .
“Spirits can just. . . Disperse??”
Oboro shrugged. “I guess. I think it was because there wasn’t anything solid holding them together.”
Izuku was extraordinarily horrified by the thought. “What does that mean?” he asked in a wispy, trembling voice. He couldn’t tell what expression his features were twisting into but it must have been bad if Oboro’s concerned look was anything to go by.
“Well, I don’t know for sure, but I have a few theories. . . Most spirits linger because they’ve got some kind of unfinished business, y’know, like in the movies ‘n stuff. But like, there’s usually something keeping them here right? Like, in that house there,” he pointed to an old narrow residential building they were passing on the street, “there was the spirit of this elderly woman who loved her house more than anything. When she died she was really worried about a possible property dispute between her children and her spirit was only worried about that too. When her daughter inherited the property she left for good. ‘Moved on’ I guess,” he finished in air quotes.
Izuku walked in silent contemplation. The silent unspoken question was bouncing around in his head. ‘ Am I going to disperse too? ’ Oboro was wincing again beside him. It was obvious he was regretting telling him this.
“Hey, is this it?” Izuku looked up at the Mustafu General Hospital he had brought them to. “I guess so,” he replied. Dread clogged his voice. He couldn’t ask how he knew where to go. He couldn't ask why Kacchan was at the hospital.
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