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Cornfields greet Katsuki as he turns down another dirt road. His teammates are in the back sleeping like rocks, not once budging from the back seat to switch so Katsuki could get some sleep himself. He’s used to long road trips, but with winding back roads and no cell phone service, the drive was becoming more of a drag with every hour that passes.
He spots a gas station up ahead and calls it good timing for a quick break. They’re close enough to where they need to be anyways.
“Oi, we’re stopping here.” He calls over his shoulder and the redhead jolts in his seat, wiping the drool from his mouth. He shoves the other team member’s shoulder, and he mumbles, trying to hide in the seat.
“Kami, get up. Bakubro’s stopping for a bit.” Kirishima shakes Kaminari again and the blond groans before opening his eyes, squinting at the road.
“We’re really in the middle of bumfuck nowhere, aren’t we?”
“Yep, the perfect place for disappearances. No one’s around for miles.”
Katsuki pulls into the gas station, the red truck creaking to a halt. Katsuki leads the way inside, looking for a restroom and something to keep the hunger down. He gathers his things and heads to the front to check out. A small, old lady smiles at him and takes his things.
“Y’all don’t look from around here.” She states as she scans his orange juice.
“Is it that obvious?” The woman’s smile widens, and she looks up at him before shaking her head and chuckling.
“You can practically smell the city on ya! Plus, everyone knows everyone around here, so we know when there’s an outsider.” She bags his things, and he slides to the side while she checks Kirishima out. “Passing through?”
“Something like that, we’re researchers. Anything weird happen recently?” Katsuki keeps it vague, not wanting to alert the woman.
“Heh, oh there’s something to look at, that’s for sure.” A booming voice from the back of the store carries over to them and they whip their heads around to see a taller, older man walking up to them. “Y’all hear about the murders?”
“Murders?” Kaminari’s voice trembles.
“Honey, we aren’t sure if they’ve been murdered or if they’ve just disappeared. Let’s not wish death on anyone.” The older lady says, bagging up Kaminari’s things.
“Either way, it’s that damn town up the road. The whole place is cursed, ain’t no one come out of that town in one piece. They’re always yellin’ about Déjà vu, and some disappear altogether! It’s the well water over there, I’m telling ya.”
Katsuki takes a mental note about the man’s comment, wanting to shift through it and compare notes when they get back in the car.
“What about Déjà vu?” Kirishima asks. The lady gives him a look before she sighs.
“There have been some…weird things happening in that town. It’s been on and off for years, but I’d probably say in the last year or so there have been more and more people disappearing. Ya know, one of my friends lives up there, and she said one of her neighbors kept screaming all night, every half hour or so. When my friend finally went over to the house, the woman said she kept hearing her baby crying over and over again.”
“So, she was…sleep deprived? I’m sure a newborn will do that to you.” Kaminari says in between his crunching. The woman looks away, wrapping her arms around herself.
“Well, the thing is…her baby died in a car crash a couple of years before that.” The men startle and Katsuki takes in a sharp breath. “She was a lovely woman before the incident, lived there all her life, and never caused problems. But after that, it rocked her world. My friend helped her out and left, but when she went to go visit her the next day, she wasn’t there. Weird thing was, she kept saying the word “Deku”. We tried looking it up but couldn’t find anything about it.”
Katsuki perks up; he remembers that word. When he was first assigned to the case and heard ‘Deku’, it felt familiar, and a piece locked into his brain that he didn’t know he was missing. Despite the awful events connected to it, he was drawn to the case, fighting to stay on it to see it resolved. It’s been a year since then, and he’s finally ready to face it.
“Thank you for your time, miss, I appreciate it. We’ll be leaving now.” Katsuki eyes his teammates before jutting his head toward the truck. They all climb in, a somber mood taking shape, and Katsuki speaks first.
“Hey, I’m gonna drop you both off at a diner a little ways ahead. Grab some information, alright? I just want to scope out the town first and I’ll pick you both up in a bit.
“Sure thing, man! Maybe they can give us some insight on this ‘Deku’ thing.”
Katsuki drives a couple of miles ahead while Kirishima and Kaminari chat in the back. He picks up on their theories and tries to commit them to memory. He chimes in with his own quips, and they write it down to look at later. The sandwich on his lap has been eaten and his body is churning with energy, fingertips bouncing up and down on the steering wheel.
When Katsuki hits the town welcome sign, a weight settles in his stomach and the energy becomes stronger. His body is reacting to something, and he mentally jots it down, not wanting to alarm his companions just yet. He drives by the diner and drops them off with a quick wave before heading down the dirt road once more, this time swinging a right and driving down a side road of houses.
There’s a row of houses somewhat close to each other, a white picket fence neighborhood, and Katsuki parks on the side of the road in front of a green house. A dull, clearly abandoned orange house sits across from it, paint chipping away and gutters falling off the roof. He takes his phone, tape recorder, and pocket knife before he bumps his car door closed. Katsuki crosses the street and when he steps foot on the lawn of the orange house, his body, for some reason, knows what to do.
He feels a pull and his feet immediately guide him to the front door. When his toes knock against the front of the stairs to the front porch, the air becomes hard to breathe, but he chalks it up to the anticipation. Even though he’s never been close to this town, or this house, in his life, it welcomes Katsuki like he’s an old friend, comfort clinging to the edges of his psyche and taking over piece by piece.
His fist connects with the front door and suddenly there’s a shooting pain in his head. It feels like his brain tries to pull away from his skull and his eyes flutter shut in pain. Somewhere, he visualizes a small figure with blond hair, bright red eyes, and a red face open the door, yelling without volume before slamming the door shut. The pain is agonizing, and he falls to his knees, clutching his head. When the door shuts in his head, the pain floats away, pressure no longer living in his temples. He heaves in breaths, trying to bring his blood pressure down to a lower level.
When he had heard about the case before, he had a feeling that whatever was causing the disappearances was something cognitive, but he did not expect a physical aspect to be paired with it. Whatever, or whoever, he’s making contact with has extreme capabilities.
He pulls himself up and brushes off his jeans before reaching for the doorknob, pushing the door open with little force. His head throbs as he looks around the living room, surprised to see a dusty floral couch and a coffee table over to the side. He sees a flow of energy and he makes it out to be the same blond-haired, red-eyed boy again, running with a toy airplane. He blinks hard before opening his eyes, mystery boy no longer present. He walks towards the dusty staircase on his left and reaches for his tape recorder.
“It’s Katsuki, 3:22 pm. There’s a strange sort of presence in this house. Headaches and delusions are happening on the premises. Will continue to update.”
He walks through the living room and kitchen entryway to the sliding door in front of the backyard. As he reaches for the knob, he hears a voice.
“Kacchan.” Katsuki whips around, looking over his shoulder and hand on his right hip, looking for his pocket knife. He tries the name that’s been on the tip of his tongue since he first stepped into town.
“Deku? Is that you?”
“Yes Kacchan, it’s me.” The voice is close, and he turns back around to the door, red eyes meeting green. A lanky man stands in front of him, face gaunt and eyes sunken in. Freckles are painted on his skin, giving the illusion of being sun-kissed. His lips are decorated with cracks and Katsuki can tell his hair is thin with the way it’s plastered over his forehead. His white button-up shirt and black slacks hang off his body.
“Who are you?” Katsuki asks, taking a step back. His arms are tense at his sides, and he stays alert, looking for signs of malicious intent. The man, “Deku”, cocks his head to the side and takes a step forward, an arm stretched out to reach Katsuki.
“You don’t remember me, Kacchan?” Katsuki pushes the hand away before taking another couple of steps backward.
“Who’s ‘Kacchan’? Do we know each other?” The pitch of Katsuki’s voice lifts and he feels his pulse quicken. The pulsing in his temples grows the longer he looks at Deku. Deku sighs and takes a second look at Katsuki before looking at the floor, making himself small.
“You don’t remember anything, do you?” Deku heaves another disappointed sigh before turning, sliding the glass door open and walking through it.
“Wait, Deku!” Katsuki shouts. Idiot. He should have gotten closer, not pushed the man away. He has a hunch that Deku plays a bigger role in these disappearances than he thought, and he needs answers. He runs through the door and into the backyard. At least, that’s what he should have been met with. Instead, he’s in front of a…house? A green house, specifically. And he looks across the street to see the orange house he was just in.
Katsuki spins around, doing a double-take between the houses. They’re the exact same houses, but this time, they look more put together, lived in. There’s a car in front of the orange house, and he sees that his car is no longer in the spot he left it in front of the green one. He checks his pants for his pocket knife, but the on-edge feeling grows when he realizes it’s not there.
In fact, nothing is the same as it was before he left the house. He looks down and notices that he’s not wearing the same jeans and boots he was wearing before, and his body is…smaller. Almost as if he’s a kid.
Katsuki doesn’t remember much of his childhood. He had faceless blobs for his parents before he was adopted at age 6. He heard they were drunks, opting to party more than to look after him. He was told he was an outspoken child, but without the pictures or videos to back it up, he only goes off stories from 7 and up. To have a visualization of him being younger than that is odd, and he struggles to understand why it’s happening now, in the middle of his hunt for Deku.
He runs across the street to the orange house, little legs trying to carry him as fast as they can. He reaches the door of the orange house, and it flies open, a gust of wind pushing him through and shutting the door behind him. He spins around, startled at the shift of the room. It’s alive, tv on and furniture in pristine condition without a speck of dust. The floorboards don’t creak under his feet when he walks and the sun shines through the blue curtains. Katsuki hears a knock at the door and his body unwillingly moves to open it.
His limbs are tethered, string moving them across the room as if they’ve done this before, and Katsuki’s helpless, stuck inside his head and a prisoner in his body. He panics, trying to will his body to move in the opposite direction, to go up the stairs or into a different room, but it drags his soul to the door, hand on the knob. He’s powerless, watching his body move like a puppet to turn the knob and pull.
The door swings open and there’s a boy with bright green hair and speckled freckles on his cheeks. Sweat lives on his brow and he looks tired, but happy to see Katsuki.
“Kacchan! Do you want to come out and play? I heard your mom got you the new All Might figure, I thought we could play heroes!”
Confusion shocks Katsuki’s system, unsure of how to respond. This boy looks like a miniature version of Deku, but healthier. Happier. Based on the nickname he just called Katsuki, it must be him. But is this delusion? Or is it a memory? Katsuki doesn’t want to hurt the boy, so he has a hunch to play the part, hoping to get more information on what’s going on. He opens his mouth, but words fly out before he thinks.
“Stupid Deku, I told you I don’t want to hang out with you anymore!” He yells, then clamps his mouth shut. That wasn’t what he wanted to say, not at all. He planned to tell Deku ‘yes’ so he could learn about the boy and stop all of this from happening. But instead, his mind is tied up, ropes upon ropes latched around his brain and pulling, leading it in one direction. The words fumble out of his mouth naturally, even if his brain doesn’t process it first.
Deku seizes up, a look of hurt flashing across his face before he gives Katsuki a wobbly smile, tears threatening to leak from his eyes.
“O-okay, Kacchan. I’ll see you tomorrow, then?”
Katsuki fights to say that yes, he’ll see Deku tomorrow, and in fact, he changed his mind and he can hang out now. But instead, he says:
“Get out of here, Deku! No one wants to be your friend. There’s a reason why you’re all by yourself. You’re a loser. So just leave me alone!” Katsuki yells, and he slams the door in Deku’s face. He turns around and puts his back against the door, sliding to the floor. His eyes are wide, and he puts his hands to his face, blood pooling in his cheeks.
Katsuki squeezes his eyes shut when another wave of painful throbbing smacks his temple.
“Do you remember yet, Kacchan?” He hears a voice from far away and pushes himself up quickly, looking for the source of the voice.
“Deku? Is that you?” He frantically looks around the room, racing into the kitchen looking for Deku.
“Kacchan, I’m here. I’ve always been here.” He sounds tired, hopelessness ringing in his tone and Katsuki pinpoints it as sorrow. He feels another pull in his head, in his whole body, and he wants to find Deku to fix the pain.
“Let me out of …whatever the hell this is, Deku.”
“You told me to leave you alone. I’m leaving you alone, Kacchan.” And the voice is gone.
Katsuki walks to the sliding back door and opens it, stepping outside. He’s decided that he’ll hop the fence and take a different way, hoping to find Deku there. But as he jumps the fence, he sees…the orange house. Katsuki looks behind him only to see the fence no longer there, and instead, he’s in front of the green house again. He looks down and sees his body is still the same as it was a few seconds earlier, and he almost gives himself whiplash by how hard he throws his neck to look up.
He slaps his face a few times, hoping he’s just seeing things. But instead, he sees a blurry orange house. Katsuki looks around before slowly approaching the house again. He reaches for the knob but before he can make contact, the door swings open, pulling his body in just like the last time. It shuts behind him and he looks around to see the house perfectly intact.
He takes a slow, shuddering breath, hoping to calm himself down. He counts back from 100, but before he can get to 91, he hears a knock on the door. Katsuki tries to force his body to move in the opposite direction, but instead, he sees his hand reach for the doorknob, and the door frame shakes, flying open for Deku, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.
“Kacchan! Do you want to come out and play? I heard your mom got you the new All Might figure, I thought we could play heroes!”
That can’t be right. He said it the exact same way, the exact same motions, arms flailing about like before. Katsuki tries to step backward, tries to move, or do anything differently than he did before. But instead, his body lurches in the same fashion it did last time, and he says:
“Stupid Deku, I told you I don’t want to hang out with you anymore!”
It must be a dream. There’s no way he can experience the same exact thing, it’s mathematically impossible, right? Katsuki can only stand in his mind and watch the same conversation play out as it did before, only to see the door shut, the look of despair etched in young Deku’s face. Katsuki turns around and runs to the sliding glass door in the back of the house. He opens it, running towards the fence and deciding to jump the right side, hoping for a better outcome.
His feet reach the ground, grass tickling his legs, and he looks up and has the picture of that damn orange house right in front of him. When he looks back, the fence is no longer occupying the space, but instead, he’s left with a green house.
Katsuki feels his breath quicken, his shoulders jumping with anxiety. He needs to calm down and think things through.
Katsuki makes a note of the repetition of the conversation he had with young Deku, and how he couldn’t snap his body out of it. He also recognizes that the headaches he has are only when he’s on the property. He thinks about the visualization he had of the blond child earlier. Deku mentioned remembering something, and although Katsuki can’t be too sure, his gut tells him that he and Deku knew each other at one point. Possibly when they were kids.
His brain spirals, trying to work through different theories about what’s happening to him and how he can get out of this.
“Deku?” His voice rises with urgency, and he runs down the porch steps of the green house again, coming face to face with the man on the lawn. He gulps in breaths, hands on his knees and back crouched over.
“Do you remember now?”
“Deku, I don’t…I don’t know what I’m supposed to remember! Please, just…let me out of whatever this is.” Deku shakes his head.
“Kacchan, I can’t. Not until you remember.” And then he’s gone and Katsuki’s left with the air around him. He runs across the street as fast as he can and instantly, the pounding fills his head and the door swings open, welcoming him into the loop once again. He’s seasick, the waves of motion pushing and pulling him in every direction.
He looks at the sliding glass door, another dreadful conversation with Deku finished, and he decides to walk through the gate. He thinks he’s broken it for a moment until he looks around and space shifts, morphing into the orange house across the street. He starts marching towards the house and starting the cycle again.
Katsuki tries moving to the kitchen, only for his body to carry itself to the door when he hears the knock. He knocks over a vase but watches it spring back into its original position when Deku comes to the door. He tries running up the stairs, turning on the tv, even standing in front of the house but not going in. But no matter what, it always ends up the same. Katsuki’s stumped, frustration piled on top of his already worn-out mind, headache in full force from the multiple encounters.
“Deku!” He yells to the Earth in front of the green house, his home base. “Just…c’mon, I don’t even know what to fix, how am I supposed to fix it?” Katsuki’s exhausted, puffing out breaths. “I know that’s you, and I…think that’s me that keeps yelling at you. But I don’t even remember that! I don’t apologize for shit I don’t remember, but I’m sorry. Just please, let me out. Let me go.”
It’s his 47th round, and he’s ready to call it quits. Katsuki has an urge to lay in the middle of the living room floor and watch his body waste away to nothing. He waits for a response from Deku, waits for him to pop up and speak to him like he’s done 46 other times before, but instead, it’s silent, the wind whistling in Katsuki’s ears and causing tinnitus. Katsuki goes through the cycle and walks through the backyard again, feeling the shifting of his background to the same two houses. But instead, he sits on the front porch of the green house and waits.
And waits.
And it comes to mind that the only solace of peace that he’s had in the hours of going on this carousel is when he sits by this house. It welcomes him in like a hug, his true safe space. It’s familiar but in a ghost of his past kind of way, and although he didn’t feel the connection before, he certainly feels it now.
Katuski takes a leap of faith and decides to see what happens when he turns toward the green house, holds the knob in his hand, and opens the door.
Inside the home is Deku. Not ghostly pale and sickly Deku, and not young and tortured Deku, but the real one. He’s older, as old as Katsuki, but his hair is vibrant, taking shape in curly q’s and spirals. His freckles are splattered across his skin but accent his slightly chubby cheeks, and he fills out his shirt and pants. Deku’s bright green eyes are the objects of Katsuki’s affection, though.
They make eye contact and Katsuki’s memory inches its way into place, the final piece of the puzzle in his brain. He remembers the childhood he had with Deku, spending every moment from sunrise to sunset together for the first several years of life. He also remembers the part where he pushed Deku away, ostracizing him from everyone he was friends with and bullying him until Deku stopped coming around. He remembers the sleepovers, the tv marathons, the birthday parties. But most of all, he remembers that his name is-
“Izuku.” Katsuki watches as Izuku’s eyes glisten with tears and a dazzling smile of relief forms on his face.
“Hi, Kacchan. You remember now, don’t you?” Katsuki sighs, a slight smile forming on his face.
“Yeah, I think I do.” He takes another two full steps forward with his now older body, worried that Izuku could slip away at any moment, but he plants his feet. “I remember this is where you used to live. And I remember I used to live across the street with my drunken birth parents. I remember our conversation. Our last one, when I told you to leave me alone.” Another thought clicks in his head. “When I first got here, I saw myself yelling. Was that-”
“It was my memory, you’re correct, Kacchan. I didn’t mean to startle you.”
Katsuki hums, processing the information. He gives Izuku another once over. He doesn’t understand how the last several hours of his life happened, and he doesn’t know where to start.
“How did you get this way? Are you…are you dead?”
“It’s a bit more complicated than that, but I’m not dead. It’s more like I’m floating between planes.” Izuku gestures to himself. “Katsuki’s eyebrows pinch inward and a small frown forms on his face. He goes to grab Izuku’s hand.
“So, you can’t leave here with me?” Izuku grows a somber smile on his face.
“I’m tethered here, Kacchan. This town is my home.” Katsuki takes in the words, and he lets out a huff of disbelief.
“Stupid Deku, always getting yourself into trouble.” It rolls off the tongue so naturally, and Izuku lets out a surprised giggle. Katsuki joins him, and he basks in the familiarity. Katsuki eventually calms down, and his face shifts to one of concern.
“Are you going to continue to hurt people with your power?” It’s Deku , but he needs to be stern. Katsuki doesn’t want anyone else to be hurt for his past mistakes. Izuku is quick to shake his head, panic written on his face.
“They’re not hurt!” He yells, sweat gathering on his brow. “And they don’t die either. When I meet people, it’s because they regret something. Most of the time, they’re stubborn about their decision and they just try to forget about it because it hurts too much. I don’t hurt them or make them go through anything they don’t want to, though! Usually, they start it because they want to address the issue.” Izuku takes a step forward, hand reaching out. “For some people…when they finally get through the cycle and do that one thing differently, it helps them forgive themselves. Some of them choose to stay, and others choose to go with me.”
Katsuki’s comforted that all the disappearances aren’t people dying, even if he doesn’t quite understand where they’re going or what’s going on. After sitting with his newly found memories though, he realizes that he sorely missed Izuku. They were best friends and Katsuki doesn’t know how he’s going to move through life knowing that the closest person to him can’t be with him.
“So all of this is because of me?”
“No, not at all!” Izuku furiously shakes his head. “I’m not sure why this happened to me, but it’s not you. Otherwise, it would have broken right when you got here. Please, don’t blame yourself.”
Katsuki still holds guilt in his heart for whatever happened to Izuku after he left. He especially feels it though, for hurting Izuku after all these years. Katsuki bites his lip, looking away.
“…I-Izuku, I don’t know what to say. I-”
“Kacchan,” Izuku says, tears streaming down his cheeks and a wobbly smile on his face. “I know. I always have. I forgave you a long time ago.” A sniffle. “Even when you go, we’ll have this. Our memories too! And…y-you can always come back, okay?” He lets out a sob and Katsuki rushes to meet him in the middle of the room, embracing him. Katsuki rubs Izuku’s back, shushing his cries.
“Always such a crybaby,” Katsuki whispers into Izuku’s hair, hand cradling his head.
They stand there for a few minutes and eventually Izuku pulls away, wiping the remaining tears off his cheeks with the back of his finger. Katsuki steps back and gives him space, thumbing his eye to wipe away his own tears.
“Izuku. If you ever figure out a way to get out of this, you come find me, alright? I…I’ll look for you, I promise.” The smile he receives is as bright as the sun, and Izuku nods.
“Of course, Kacchan.”
Katsuki turns away from Izuku and opens the door to the green home. A gust of wind blows him out the door and he brings an arm to his face, shielding himself. When he opens his eyes, he sees that he’s outside the now-abandoned green house, car parked in front just as he left it. His tape recorder, phone, and pocket knife are safely in his pants just as he remembered. Katsuki checks the time on his phone: 4:22 pm. When he looks across the street to the orange house, it no longer pulls him toward it.
When he gets in the car, Katsuki takes one last look at the neighborhood, memories of running through the yards and playing with toys at the neighbor's now settled in his mind.
“See you later, Izuku.” He says to himself before driving away, ready to retrieve his colleagues.
The drive back to the desolate diner is short and Katsuki prepares himself for the barrage of questions when he sees the grinning men.
“That was quick, did you see anything, dude?” Kirishima asks, climbing into the back seat with Kaminari.
Katsuki smiles to himself before straightening out his face, looking ahead at the road. They don’t need to know.
“Nope. Looks like an empty lead. We’re done here.”
He turns on the radio and drives away from the town, feeling more whole than he did when he arrived.