Chapter Text
Hitoshi scowls down at the paper on the counter, like if he could glare hard enough it would light on fire and leave him the fuck alone. It does not. Instead, a small gray spider crawls across the inky text. Hitoshi flicks it away with a poorly concealed shudder. Why are there so many damn spiders in the dorms?
“Hey, Shinsou-kun!” A friendly voice calls out, cheerfully bright. Mirio Togata jogs his way down to the kitchen, sock-clad feet thumping against the stairs. “Me and Nejire are heading out for ice cream, want to—“ he trails off as he takes in Hitoshi’s single-minded focus and general aura of exhausted irritation. “What’chya got there?”
Hitoshi sighs, long and aggrieved, and slumps over the kitchen counter like a boneless noodle. “I have to choose my elective,” he says, and slides the form across the counter without lifting his head off the cool marble.
“Ohh,” Mirio says. There’s a rustling sound as he picks up the paper.
“It’s not even a big deal,” Hitoshi mumbles, voice muffled through a mouthful of kitchen counter. “But it’s like—I have to commit, you know?” He sighs again. “I don’t understand why I can’t just take Aizawa-sensei’s class twice when it starts up.”
It should be weird that Hitoshi is confiding even a little bit in another teenager, but for some reason it isn’t uncomfortable. He’s only been living in the dorms as a ward of UA for two weeks, not even in classes yet, and already he’s socialized more than in all his time in middle school. And Mirio and his friends are really nice, even with how standoffish Hitoshi had been at first.
“Sure,” Mirio responds absentmindedly, like he’s not really absorbing anything Hitoshi has said. “This says Archives?”
The weird tone in his voice is enough to startle Hitoshi into turning his head to the side, peaking out at the upperclassman. Mirio is staring almost as hard as Hitoshi had been at the form, blue eyes narrowed as he chews thoughtfully on his bottom lip.
“Uh, yeah,” Hitoshi says, surprised. He had meant to ask Aizawa-sensei about that but he hadn’t been able to find him. The underground hero was probably sleeping in a storage closet someplace. “I thought it was weird ‘cause it just says that, and nothing else. And it wasn’t on Uraraka’s form.”
Uraraka Ochaco was the other UA ward who’d be in Hitoshis heroics class once the actual school year started. She was probably the bubbliest person he’d ever met. He had spent the first week in the dorms trying to avoid her as best he can, but eventually he’d actually talked to her and realized she was kind of cool.
Her and Hitoshis situations were pretty different in terms of why they were staying at the dorms—Hitoshi as a foster kid and thus automatically under UA’s guardianship once he’d passed the exam and Uraraka as someone who lived out of town and couldn’t afford to commute everyday without monetary compensation—but they both understood having to bleed and claw their way to being taken seriously as a potential hero.
Mirio is already nodding in understanding before Hitoshi has finished his sentence. “Nah, it wouldn’t be.”
“Do you know what that means, archives? Like is it a misprint or something?”
“No, no. He doesn’t really do misprints,” Mirio says, and doesn’t elaborate further on who he might be. The blonde teenager still hasn’t looked away from the electives form, studying it like it’s the most interesting thing he’s ever seen.
“Ok,” Hitoshi says, eyeing the older boy from his spot on the counter. “But do you know what it means?”
“Sure,” Mirio agrees easily. Hitoshi waits. “Oh, you want me to tell you?”
Hitoshi stares at him. “Yes?”
“I just kind of assumed you Knew, ya know? I mean usually you guys do, but I guess since you’re new it’s different.” Mirio smiles, sheepish, and continues before Hitoshi can ask about what the fuck anything he just said meant. “So the Archives isn’t really a class, in the traditional sense. I mean, nothings really being taught. At least, not in a classroom.”
Hitoshi frowns. “But you still get a credit, right?”
“Sure,” Mirio says again. “It’s like yearbook.”
“Yearbook?” Hitoshi repeats.
“Yeah, but like instead of a yearbook it’s the innate and esoteric unknowledge of the universe. Actually, you’d really be better off asking Nejire, she actually takes the class.”
“Ok,” Hitoshi says, feeing thoroughly out of his depth. Unknowledge? What the actual fuck is that supposed to mean? “Uh, who teaches it?”
“Well, like I said, it’s not really a class that can be taught,” Mirio explains patiently. “Technically Aizawa-sensei is the teacher supervisor, but I’m pretty sure the Archivist kind of just does what he wants.”
He had Hitoshi at Aizawa-sensei. “Ok,” Hitoshi says, and grabs the paper from where Mirio had discarded it on the countertop. He checks the box titled Archives. “Thanks.”
“Uh,” Mirio says, staring down at Hitoshi like he’s just signed his soul away and not a form for first year electives. His hands twitch at his sides like he’s just barely keeping himself from snatching the paper away and tearing it to shreds. “Ok.”
“Ice cream?” Hitoshi reminds him, promptly forgetting about upcoming classes in favour of sweets.
~
The next strange encounter with an upperclassman about his class schedule comes a day later, with an incessant knocking on Hitoshis door at 7:00 am.
“What.” Hitoshi says, distinctly disgruntled as he wrenches the door open. He blinks in surprise at the unexpected visitor, forgetting his usual morning crabbiness in favour of surprise. “Hado-senpai?”
Nejire beams at him from the doorway. “Shinsou-kun! I hear you’ll be joining me in the Archives?”
Hitoshi stares at her. “Did Togata-senpai tell you that?”
“Oh, no,” Nejire smiles and says nothing else.
Hitoshi stares harder. “I haven’t decided yet.”
Nejire squints at him. “Are you sure?”
“Yes,” Hitoshi says. “Who told you I was taking it?”
“Oh, the principal mentioned it to me the other day.”
Hitoshi is very confused. “I haven’t handed in the form yet.”
“Ohh,” Nejire says. “The Archivist must have informed him! God, that is just so like him.”
“The Archivist?”
“Yeah! Oh, don’t worry, he’ll meet you soon.”
Hitoshi is not sure wether she meant to make that last part sound so incredibly ominous. “Right,” he says, and starts to discreetly inch his door shut on his upperclassman.
“We’re going to have lots of fun, Shinsou-kun!” Nejire calls brightly through the wood.
“No thank you!” Shinsou calls back, and wonders for the first time wether he is making a very large mistake choosing Archives as his elective, especially knowing absolutely nothing about what it entails. Maybe he should just take band.
~
Hitoshi fiddles with the buttons on his blazer and tries to ignore Aizawa-senseis dead-eyed, unblinking stare, to little avail.
“You want to sign up for the Archives.” The underground hero repeats, speaking for the first time in 3 minutes and 36 seconds. Hitoshi counted.
“Yes?”
Aizawa stares. “Are you sure.”
“Yes.” Hitoshi says again. He adds, after some consideration. “It sounds fun.”
Aizawa looks very tired. “Fun,” he repeats, like he’s thinking off locking Hitoshi up somewhere with padded walls. And then, again, “Are you sure?”
“Yes. Except, um, what actually is it?”
Aizawa blinks slowly, like a cat. “You don’t know?”
“No,” Hitoshi says slowly, a little discomfited with the way his teacher is looking at him like a lamb being sent to the slaughter. “There’s no description on the paper.”
“And you signed it. You signed it, with your name, without knowing anything about it.”
“Um. Togata-senpai said something about yearbook?”
Aizawa-sensei thunks his head against the table. Hitoshi thinks he hears him mumble something that sounds suspiciously like ‘why, god, are you doing this to me. what have i ever done to deserve this fate.’ Hitoshi waits in muddled confusion for the impromptu breakdown to be over. After a few moments, Aizawa-senses stands up, apparently done questioning his existence. “Let’s go,” he says, and marches out the door without further explanation.
“I didn’t know UA had a basement,” Hitoshi says, looking around at the walls of the winding spiral staircase that descends into the ground. There’s a bronze plaque on the door at the bottom of the stairs that reads ‘Archives’, with ‘enter at your own risk’ written in black sharpie right below it. Somebody has spray painted a giant stylized green eyeball on the wooden door, and there’s something about it that sends a chill down Hitoshis spine. Like it’s watching him.
“It doesn’t,” Aizawa says, and opens the door after levelling a suspicious look at the graffiti.
The inside of the room is dimly lit, a soft golden glow emanating from a single lightbulb on the ceiling. The walls are lined with floor to ceiling shelves packed with alternating old looking books and thick black plastic binders, and there are desks scattered throughout the room. Another wall is stacked with cardboard file boxes, some of them practically overflowing with what looks like cassette tapes, like the kind you could find in a museum detailing life before the emergence of quirks. There’s some sort of rock music playing from the far side of the room, but it cuts off abruptly as soon as they walk through the doorway. The place should feel cozy, if not a little bit claustrophobic, but for some reason it gives off a distinct impression of being unnatural. Like a set on a play, every trinket and piece of furniture placed with the careful intention of making it look effortless, but not quite hitting the mark. Hitoshi has to stop himself from looking around for an audience, the unnerving feeling of being watched so intense here.
“Welcome to the Archives,” Aizawa-sensei intones, and if Hitoshi didn’t know better he’d say he sounded uncomfortable.
“Yes, hello!” A chipper voice calls from their left. Hitoshi jerks his head around so fast he’s surprised he doesn’t hear something crack in his spine. He hadn’t noticed there was someone else in the room with them, which seems so incredibly wrong now that he has. It is indescribably clear that the owner of the voice should be the center of attention in every room, if not especially this one. They belong here, in a way not dissimilar to how a spider might belong in their web or a puzzle piece in the middle of a jigsaw. Maybe that’s why they’d been unnoticeable up until that point; the person blended in so perfectly with their surroundings because they were just as much of a fixture of the room as the overflowing box of cassette tapes next to them.
The first thing Hitoshi perceives about the stranger is the eyes. They’re a bright, almost luminescent green, and they stare at Hitoshi like they’re picking apart every piece of him and laying it bare for anyone to see. Hitoshi knows suddenly, in a visceral sort of way, that that is almost exactly what they are doing. He also knows that this intense, abrupt feeling of gut-wrenching paranoia is most likely the work of this person’s quirk, but even that knowledge doesn’t stop him from stumbling under the weight of this all-consuming, ceaseless gaze. He is watched by eyes that stare into him, and stare out of him, and he knows now, (just knows, does not yet Know,) that he will never be unwatched again. Perhaps he never was.
He is not sure how long it is before he comes back to himself, but when he does the gaze is turned away from him, (it is still there, and Hitoshi is still seen, but at least this way he can pretend-) and Hitoshi is sitting down at one of the desks.
“I’m really very sorry,” someone is saying, and they sound sincere. It’s the person from earlier, except now they’re wearing a heart-shaped pair of dark black sunglasses, which looks absolutely ridiculous— especially in the low light of the basement, but Hitoshi can’t help but feel grateful for the way they block out his eyes.
Now that his gaze isn’t immediately wrenched towards the persons own, he’s able to make out that the owner of the eyes is a short, skinny boy who can’t be older than himself, with an unruly mop of silver-streaked green hair. Every inch of tan skin not covered by an ensemble of clothing that would look much more natural on an elderly librarian is dotted with a smattering of freckles and pale pink scars. Above his head, a poster is hanging that reads: ‘Good Archivists do not eat Assistants. (even if they are very hungry)’, with a stick figure drawing of two people holding hands, one with an eyeball instead of a head and the other holding what looks like it’s probably meant to be a file.
“Sorry about that,” the boy says again, now that it’s clear he has Hitoshis attention. He looks sheepish, like he’d just spilled a glass of milk and not been clutching hungrily at the secret terrors of Hitoshis heart. “I wasn’t expecting you so soon. You know, you could’ve called to let me know,” he chastises, like they’re old friends.
Hitoshi stares at the heart-shaped lenses floating in front of his face for a long time, still very much not over whatever just happened to him. “I don’t have your number,” he says finally.
“Really? I have yours.”
Hitoshi glances to the side at where Aizawa is leaning against the wall for help, absolutely bewildered and a little bit frightened.
The teacher just shrugs, looking to all the world like he finds this encounter only a step more interesting than watching paint dry. “Couldn’t you see us coming?” he asks the boy, and it sounds strangely like an accusation.
“I was busy reading a statement,” the boy says, unapologetic. He smiles like he’s about to tell a particularly funny joke. “I only have two eyes, after all.”
“Sorry,” Hitoshi interrupts, though he doesn’t at all feel like it. “Who exactly are you?”
“Ah, right, introductions. I’m the Archivist, Midoriya Izuku. It’s nice to meet you Shinsou-kun!”
“Right,” Shinsou says faintly, and then, “Wait, what?”
Midoriya—the Archivist apparently (and why does that title seem to carry so much more weight than necessary?) gives the impression of blinking in confusion despite the thick black shades over his eyes.
“You’re the Archivist?” Shinsou asks in bafflement, finding himself unable to say the word without giving it the same strange significance.
“Yes,” Midoriya agrees, brow furrowed like he has no idea what Hitoshi could possibly be getting at. “I am.”
Hitoshi glances once again at Aizawa in confusion, but the man has since procured his sleeping bag seemingly from thin air and is currently in the process of zipping himself into its cocoon. Hitoshi feels uncomfortably as though he is being left to his fate. “You’re a kid,” he finally settles on saying.
“Am I?” Midoriya asks, looking for all intents and purposes as though Hitoshi has just accused him of some obscure crime, not dissimilar to brutally beating an old man to death with a pipe. “Why do you say that?”
Hitoshi stares at him. “Because…you are?” Not even a teenager, even though that’s objectively what Midoriya must be. Hitoshi isn’t quite sure what compelled him to say kid in the first place, but now that he’s said it, it’s clear how true that assessment is. The strange green-haired boy does look distinctly child-like, with baby fat cheeks and a toothy smile, and yet at the same time there is something that feels very old about him. Maybe it’s the way his hair is streaked with grey or just the outfit. Whatever it is, it’s strange.
Midoriya seems very interested in this observation. “Really? What do you think makes someone a kid?”
For a moment the words seem to carry a sharp burst of static, like the sound that accompanies the changing of a channel on the television, and something in Hitoshis throat constricts, but then the noise is dispelled as suddenly as it appeared, and he is left blinking in the abrupt and echoing silence. It seems unexpected when he realizes that he hasn’t answered the question yet. “Um, their age? Like someone below the age of 18 I guess.” Hitoshi sends a wide-eyed look towards the yellow shapeless form of Aizawa-sensei on the floor, feeling so very off-kilter by the conversation that if Midoriya suddenly jumped onto a table and started tap-dancing he wouldn’t even be that surprised.
Midoriya nods thoughtfully. “Huh. And I look like I’m under 18,” he says, like he’s confirming something he isn’t quite sure of.
“Yes? Aren’t you?”
Midoriya stares at him. Hitoshi can feel it even through the ridiculous looking sun glasses. “Yes,” he says, a few seconds too late to be any where near natural. “Of course.”
It’s at this point that the door Hitoshi and Aizawa had entered through opens once again, to admit Nejire. She’s juggling another one of those file boxes scattered around the room in her arms, and the lid is slightly skewed so that Hitoshi can see it’s filled to the brim with loose yellowed sheets of papers.
“Oh!” she says, noticing Hitoshi for the first time. She drops the box on a nearby desk with a thud and bounces over to them. “Shinsou-kun!”
“Hello,” Hitoshi says, his voice sounding faint even for himself.
Nejire gets a sympathetic look in her eyes and pats him on the shoulder before turning to Midoriya —who Hitoshi only now notices is perched on the side of the desk—with an expression of slight disapproval. She completely disregards Aizawa in his sleeping bag on the ground. “I thought you were going to wait for me before you explained it to him?”
“I haven’t even told him anything yet!” Midoriya protests.
Nejire blinks, looking back at Hitoshis ashen visage. “What did you do to him?”
“Why do you assume I did soemthing?” Midoriya asks grumpily, exasperated. “Maybe he didn’t eat breakfast. It’s not my fault every time someone faints.”
“He fainted?!” Nejire gasps, whirling on Hitoshi with the frantic look of someone who often has to deal with teenage boys with terrible self-preservation instincts. “Are you ok? Do you need tea?”
Hitoshi answers mechanically that yes, he is fine, but yes he would also like some tea, and oh, do you have black because I didn’t get any coffee yet this morning, to which Nejire replies that yes, they do have black tea, but they also have a pot of coffee she just brewed, which Hitoshi would much prefer.
A few minutes later, he is seated comfortably in an arm chair in the Archives break room with a steaming mug of coffee warming him up from the inside, and so is as such much more prepared when the other teenagers decide to shatter his entire worldview.
“The supernatural is real!” Nejire exclaims with relish, complete with jazz hands and a small ‘tah-dah!’.
Hitoshi does not spit out his coffee. He swallows his mouthful, slowly puts down his cup, and leans back in the chair. “What.”
Nejire repeats herself.
“Is-Is that a metaphor for something?”
“It’s not a metaphor,” Nejire says, before pausing. She turns to Midoriya, who has relocated from his spot on the desk to a slightly higher point a few feet away, where he is seated on the countertop, feet swinging slightly in the air. “Isit a metaphor?”
“Not usually,” Midoriya says amiably.
Nejire turns back to Hitoshi. “Not a metaphor,” she says, shrugging in a ‘what can you do’ kind of way. “I was hoping to break this to you a little more gently, but things sort of escalated.” Midoriya shrugs sheepishly from the sidelines.
“…I don’t get the joke,” Hitoshi says flatly, once it’s clear Nejire is not about to yell ‘just kidding!’.
“What?”
“I dont get the joke. Whatever this is, whatever elaborate fucking prank you’re trying to play, it’s not funny.”
The upperclassman’s brows draw together in confusion, and she looks so god damn earnest that Hitoshi almost falters. “I’m not trying to play a joke on you Hitoshi,” she says, sounding hurt.
And Hitoshi, well, he actually kind of believes her. Maybe he just wants to believe that badly that he’s found a place here at UA, and one of the people who’s started to become something like a friend to him wouldn’t try to bullshit him like this. But something must be going on. Nejire is a little weird, and maybe eccentric in the right lighting, but she isnt delusional . And even if they are playing some kind of messed up prank on him, Aizawa-sensei is right there, not saying anything. Just watching the proceedings with dark, unreadable eyes. Unless Hitoshi has completely read him wrong, Eraserhead is not the type of person to partake in practical jokes that make him look like a crazy person.
Hitoshi is struck by sudden clarity as he whirls on Midoriya, scowling fiercely. “You,” he snaps, “You used your quirk on me. You’re still-you must be still using it. Don’t fucking mess with my mind!” He’s breathing hard now, eyes darting wildly around the room. The thought that what he’s seeing might not be real, that somebody could be controlling his subconscious, is terrifying to him. If there is one thing in this world that Hitoshi is scared of above all else, it is being controlled, especially without being aware of it. Beyond ironic, he knows, considering his quirk, but it’s the truth. Hitoshi is horrified of the thought of being somebody else’s puppet.
Midoriya looks honest to god baffled, like he has no clue what Hitoshi is talking about, and beside him so does Nejire, eyes darting between the two boys. “His quirk?” Nejire repeats, forehead creased in concerned confusion.
“My—Oh,” Midoriya says, realization dawning on his features. “I don’t have a quirk.”
The blatant lie is enough to startle Hitoshi out of his panic. “What,” he hears himself say flatly, for the second time in as many minutes.
“Yeah,” Midoriya nods, completely unconcerned. “I’ve got the toe joint and everything.”
Aizawa seems to find this a good moment to insert himself into the conversation with a heavy sigh, while Hitoshi gapes open-mouthed at the green-haired little weirdo on the counter. He points at Hitoshi. “Calm down,” he says, not unkindly but not exactly comfortingly. “No, Midoriya doesn’t have a quirk, yes, he’s a massive pain in my ass, no, nobody is playing a joke on you, yes, the supernatural exists.” While Hitoshi is wrapping his mind around that influx of information, he turns to Midoriya. “Don’t break my students. This is why I tell you no poaching from my kids.”
“You believe this?” Hitoshi demands incredulously, all instincts towards being polite to teachers thrown out the window.
Aizawa-sensei looks more tired than Hitoshi has seen him in all two weeks he’s spent at UA combined. “Unfortunately, I don’t have to believe him. There’s a reason that on paper I technically teach this class.” He seems incredibly disheartened by this statement, like he’d rather be doing anything else. Hitoshi is starting to relate. Actually, he’s gone far past that point. In all honesty, he would like to go back to bed and forget all about the fact that UA even has a basement, much less that it’s populated by a creepy kid who’s idea of a good time is apparently acting like the antagonist in every horror movie ever made. Can he still change electives? He didn’t think playing the trumpet everyday as a class credit could look so desirable.
Midoriya interrupts his thoughts with a wince. “Ah, I’m afraid that’s impossible,” he says, answering Hitoshis silent question.
Hitoshi stares at him, not sure wether that actually just happened. “What? Did you just—read my mind? I thought your quirk was—“
“I don’t have a quirk, Hitoshi-kun,” Midoriya says patiently, in the kind of tone someone might use to talk to a particularly dull preschooler. Hitoshi can’t quite find it in himself to be offended, considering that’s exactly what he feels like right now. “Remember?”
“I don’t believe you,” Hitoshi says bluntly, but nonetheless decides to move past that for now in favour of more pressing matters. “What do you mean it’s impossible? What’s impossible?”
It’s Nejire who answers, with an expression like someone just kicked her puppy. “You have to be an Assistant now. You signed your name.”
“No I don’t,” Hitoshi says, a little hysterically. “Aizawa-sensei still has the paper, can’t I still change electives? No offense,” he tacks on hastily, because now Midoriya looks like it was his puppy that was kicked, and the expression was really very effective on his baby face.
“It’s fine,” Midoriya says, dejectedly. “Nobody ever wants to work in academia these days. Especially for an eldritch fear god.”
“What?” Hitoshi says.
Nejire interrupts before he can get an explanation, frowning at Izuku in puzzlement. “Hang on. I thought you told me you only liked to hire people who believed in the supernatural already?” Hitoshi is not enjoying how the vocabulary they’ve been using to talk about the Archives has started steadily shifting away from the kind you’d use to discuss a first year elective until it now feels like Hitoshi is signing up to work a part time job for some sort of corporate office.
“Oh, Hitoshi-kun does believe in the supernatural,” says Midoriya. Hitoshi also doesn’t enjoy that the other boy has apparently decided to start calling him by his first name, despite having met less than thirty minutes ago. He ruminates on this for a second before he realizes that everyone is staring at him.
“What?” he says, and then Midoriyas words register. “Uh, no I don’t.”
“Yes you do,” Midoriya says, smiling like Hitoshi is being very silly in his continued denial.
“I really, really don’t.”
Midoriya tilts his head to the side. It would be a cute gesture if it wasn’t so very animalistic. Like a bird of prey, studying its next meal. “Of course you do,” he says simply. “You’ve been marked.”
Hitoshi swallows past the sudden lump of dread in his throat. “Sorry, what?” he asks hoarsely, voice barely more than a whisper.
“Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten,” the Archivist says, lips curving ever so slightly into a smile. His expression has gone placid and bland, like a porcelain doll perched on a high shelf, looking down at them. Always looking, watching, seeing. There are other people in the room, but Hitoshis vision has tunneled until all he can possibly notice is the boy sitting on the counter. His legs aren’t swinging anymore; his entire body has stilled. “Something very scary happened to you when you were very young,” the Archivist continues, nothing more than an observation of fact. “And you knew it wasn’t right. That something about it was very very unnatural. Didn’t you?”
And then he remembers.
Hitoshi knows, suddenly, exactly what Midoriya is talking about. The exact moment everything in his life changed. He thinks he should probably feel surprise at the fact that this boy knows about it, but he doesn’t. It’s how it’s supposed to be. Of course he Knows. Hitoshi never told anyone about what happened, so it’s no surprise that the knowledge rightfully belongs to the Archivist. He still says it though. “I never told anyone.”
“I know,” Midoriya says, not unkindly. “Would you like to?”
This time, when the wave of static coats the spoken words in a rush of buzzing sound, it doesn’t fade. It stays there, hanging in the air like a thick, choking blanket.
“Don’t—“ Someone says from what must be very far away, distressed. They sound like Aizawa-sensei.
Hitoshi ignores them. “Yes,” he says, and he isn’t surprised when it’s the truth.
The Archivist smiles. Hitoshi isn’t sure how he ever thought it was a boy. That it could possibly be human. The sunglasses have disappeared, and Hitoshi has to force himself to keep his gaze fixed firmly on a freckle on his cheek to avoid the toxic green stare. “Tell me about what happened to your parents, Hitoshi-kun .”
The tape recorder sitting on the table clicks on without being touched. It had almost certainly not been there a moment before.
When Midoriya next opens his mouth to speak, his voice drifts out of the whirring tape recorder just as naturally as it comes from his voice box. “Statement of Hitoshi Shinsou regarding an encounter with a book formerly in the possession of a man named Jurgen Leitner. Statement taken directly from subject, March 5th, 2****.” The Archivist takes a deep breath and closes his eyes, leaning his head back against the cupboard behind him. “Statement begins.”