Shouta first met him halfway off a rooftop, his back turned to the world and his gaze stuck on the alley far below.

The kid called himself Turmoil—but the public gave him a million other names that Shouta did not have the energy to grasp or understand. Sob Story, Covet, Bad-Slinger, Malten, Beguile. The boy said none of them were accurate. It was like pulling the shortest straw out of a handful of long ones.

He was small, too short for what he said his age was. Thirteen, but my dad says I’m fourteen but it’s not summer yet so it’s not possible. He gave away things too easily. It was something that no one would do otherwise, but he did. Shouta never gave anything back, not a moment of his time spent divulging information about himself. Turmoil noticed, always gave him a look over it, but never said anything.

Shouta met him when he was about to jump; he had that look in his eyes. It was unmistakable.

The words that came out of his mouth were—

It had been late at night. There had been a few crimes reported—suspicious activity, drunkards wandering too close to flying roads with cars that moved too fast to stop, stolen purses—nothing out of the ordinary. Shouta had done his patrol twice over just to make sure, but had been radioed to a potential jumper on an abandoned building. He had changed his plans to check it out—to see if it was someone jumping or someone just leaning too close over the edge.

Getting up there was not hard. The location was listed and the person informing him had always worked similar cases. The rooftop had been clean, vast. Grey cement with little engravings every now and then.

The kid had been there, just as hinted. Suspicious activity, stolen purses, lost kids, street racing, illegal betting. The boy had bright green eyes, like rusted copper or forest tops. He had looked over his shoulder as soon as Shouta’s feet hit the ground. What he said—

—

“You gonna tell me not to jump?” The kid asked. He nodded to the scarf, the outfit, letting something melt in his gaze. He had no mask—maybe an oversight, maybe a conscious choice to not care—which meant he could see the kid’s lips curve into a self-deprecating smile.

Shouta did not say anything, just watched. He stayed close. Where he had landed, he was already close. In reach.

“What? Got nothing to say?” The boy blinked again, raised his brows further and tipped his head to the side like he was curious. Shouta knew that it was an act, something made of disbelief—he dealt with his fair share of kids testing waters, rebellious or just cautious. No named kid, just a child on a roof at night. Shouta did not waver. By the looks of it, neither did that kid: their eyes glinted. “Are you thinking about it?”

Thinking about what? The expression on his face, the fact he looked ill and sick and somewhere else. Freckles and bruises. Shouta wondered if the kid had dinner. If his parents let him outside, or if they weren’t in the picture. Most kids had parents—most kids didn’t go out alone and sit on rooftops, about to fall off, either.

“Kid,” He said, testing out the word.

That was a name. The Kid. People called him that, too. That was what the operator on the phone said. Eyes might have rolled or squinted at the phone, who knew. There’s a person on a rooftop looking like they might jump. Passerbys said it had been a kid.

“My name is Turmoil,” The kid said, and he tipped his head to the side. He swung his legs back over the edge, drew them up to his chest. Sat down, steadily, with a crisp smile that showed his teeth. He was not halfway off the roof anymore. “Do you have a teapot in your scarf, or is that just for capturing people?”

Shouta gave the kid a once over. He looked small, too young to talk like this and too young to have a name—an alias—and even younger to be out alone.he had thick green hair that curled at the edges, long puffy sleeves that belonged to a deep red coat. The kid’s eyes were bright green. He had a collection of freckles that ran all across his face, scattered over what looked to be heavy bruises.

“There is no teapot,” The hero decided to say with a flat voice. His tone was dry. “Why are you on a roof alone?”

The kid—Turmoil—shrugged again. “Why did you come to the roof?”

Questions for answers. Turmoil was a name that only existed in the underground. The public heard about a child with windswept hair and stars burned into skin, and said that they were too strong—they were too much, so much all at once. Shouta heard of vigilantes in the past. He had worked with some, still actively did. None that he knew about were ever this young.

“Someone called,” He answered after a long moment. Shouta kept his expression solid. “How old are you?”

The kid made no move to jump, no move to wiggle himself off the edge with a backward motion. He just stared, freckles all across his face. The rooftop was empty, a large plain space for someone to lay down on. It was big enough for twenty people to exist comfortably, like apartment parties. The only difference was that this was an abandoned building.

“Thirteen,” Turmoil smiled again, mumbling under his breath—but my dad says I’m fourteen but it’s not summer yet so it’s not possible. He looked up. “Don’t say anything about it.”

His teeth were sharper than what should belong to a child.

Turmoil was young. He had a vicious look about him, something cloaked in heavy smoke. There was no explanation that Shouta could offer. He memorized every detail he could, things he could put into the missing persons’ system when he went to the station or went home. The freckles, the eyes, the hair, the stature. The bruising around Turmoil’s eyes, the sharpness to his teeth and the safety-pin that dangled from his left ear like an earring. The needle marks on his arms that Shouta knew very well.

“Were you going to jump?” Shouta asked.

I’m going to die by summer, Turmoil’s eyes said. He smiled, still. Do you want a lie? Can you take a lie?

“You have no tact,” Turmoil said in reply, his teeth glimmering and his words twisting together. He knocked his knees together, drew himself tighter. His response was petulant. “No. Who would jump off this building? It’s not tall enough.”

Buildings being tall was not normally what someone said. Are you going to jump? Turmoil might. He might not. Shouta didn’t know him, didn’t have a single clue as to who the child was or if his alias came from being a vigilante or being something else. He was too young to qualify for a hero program.

Not tall enough. Turmoil looked at him through dead eyes, unnervingly dead. The boy’s expression turned sour. “What are you looking at?”

Shouta was looking at him.

—

“Are you sure he’s a vigilante?” Hizashi asked, frowning. It was early morning. Both of them had afternoon and night shifts today, which meant they had a chance to just talk before having to work long hours.

“He’s a vigilante,” Shouta shook his head. He took a long sip from his own mug, stared at the chipped paint on their kitchen wall. “Don’t know how or why, but he is.”

—

The vigilante was frustratingly awful some days, sharper than any knife and brighter than any star.

Turmoil laughed with a kick to the beer bottle in the ally, tripping over hsi won two feet. He was wearing red high tops tonight, to match his red puffy jacket. It had the Spanish logo from before. “What are you, my jailer?”

“No,” Shouta replied sternly, coiled up like a snake. He adjusted his scarf and kept walking, already hearing Turmoil come stepping after him in the dark.

“Then what?” Turmoil asked again, popping the bubblegum he was blowing with his teeth. Fangs, really, in place of everything. Not like a mouth of a shark, but like the endless horrors found in movies made with too many dumb college kids and too many killers—ones that sold movie tickets for absurd prices. The kid grinned at him, solid and made of ice. His words were bone heavy. “My teacher? My dad?”

“No,” Shouta said again. None. No. Neither. Not anything. That’s not up to me. He said none of it, changing the conversation with a sharp jerk of his head. “How old are you?”

“Oh, yeah, you’re definitely my dad,” Turmoil laughed, brittle and broken. He blew another bubble and sucked it back in to chew, to devour and swallow down even though eating gum was considered a poor decision. “He doesn’t know how old I am either. He never remembered.“

“Then he is a bad father,” The hero continued. The night was buried in between each building’s roof. He lived with his fair share of poorly developed and poorly mannered people. Strangers in houses, telling him to call them mom or dad or sir or ma’am. Shouta knew what that was like, what it meant to wake up and come back to a house that you wouldn’t be in by the next month. He shoved the thoughts away, kept moving. He always had to keep moving. “I am not your dad. How old are you?”

“It’s summer,” The vigilante said with a shrug. He swallowed the rest of his gum. He had already offered Shouta two sticks—one mint, one bubblegum—which the hero did not accept. “So I’m fifteen.”

Shouta was quiet. “I thought you said you’d be fourteen.”

“Did I?” Turmoil asked with a slow blink, his tongue darting past to push at the sugar blood on his lips. “I could have sworn I said fifteen.”

The silence came back to haunt. Thirteen, but my dad says I’m fourteen but it’s not summer yet so it’s not possible. That was on the first night Shouta met him on the rooftop, dangling off like it was a party trick and not a life or death moment. I could have sworn I said fifteen. Maybe he had, maybe hadn’t. His mind echoed each phrase, each hollow reason. The words came back to him in molasses, disconnected. Shouta had to think that this was the kid’s quirk: this long-lost confusion of memories slipping away when you reach for them, of information being presented in abstract thoughts when no one ever told you, but now you knew.

Hizashi had agreed with him. Whenever Shouta dared to give the information away, dared to speak of it with as much detail as he could muster, his husband listened and waited and asked the right questions. It ached and boiled and twisted into something new.

“Maybe you did,” Shouta said finally, and the two of them parted ways in the alley.

—

“My sister thinks we can get out,” Turmoil said, and he stirred another packet of sugar into the hot black tea he had just ordered. They were in a little twenty-four hour cafe on the side of the road. It was just them and the waiter on duty—and the cooks in the back. Turmoil hummed, “So I always promise her that I’ll try. I don’t think she gets it, how bad we have it. But she’s smart enough to know it’s bad. So she thinks we should get out, and that we can.”

Get out. Get out from where?

Somewhere far. Somewhere different. Somewhere cold and bloody. Somewhere old and rusted, falling down, falling apart. Turmoil never had to tell him the specifics for him to get an image, flashes of color that drowned in his vision. They vanished as quickly as he got them. Placed into his hands, swapped out for porcelain glass and doll eyes and quiet mornings. Shouta knew of the idea. He could hear footsteps, could see the shadows that Turmoil had in his eyes. Too green, too deep. He never knew what the kid was going to say next, he just had an expectation of things—and they almost always came true.

“Can you?” Shouta asked over the steam of the tea, raising his brows.

I never knew you had a sister, Shouta’s face was saying. All quiet, all subtle. Just the slightest change in his expression as he went silent and waited for the kid to say something else.

The vigilante looked back at him, spun sugar, cotton-linked clothes. I never told you. Turmoil dragged a hand down his face and whistled long and slow, perfectly in tune with the song around them. The distant music the diner was playing stayed steady, not loud enough to overpower their voices.

It was late at night again—or very early in the morning, for some. Three was early as much as it was late.

The diner they were in was red and white, themed after something Shouta would rather not comprehend. The kid chose it. He had walked right up to the foggy glass doors and swung the wide open with gloved hands, black and fully covered—the gloves went all the way up to the kids elbows this time. He went in and chose a booth and gestured, said I’ll pay and Shouta had slid into the seat across from him, expression wary.

Turmoil looked at him, blood and sugar staining his lips. He lifted the red mug to his face, shrugging. “I don’t know. I’d rather stay. They have good tea.”

—

“Where are your parents?” Shouta asked.

It was late at night. They always met late at night. The kid had climbed up onto the roof next to him and sat down. He was wearing new shoes—iron-toed, heavy duty boots. His jacket was brand new, too, the old stains of blood and mud gone. Invisible. The threads were all in place. A giant logo in Spanish or another language was printed around the collar. Turmoil muttered Héroe de la Trastienda with a crooked smile; said it meant Backroom Hero, a reference to a hero in Mexico. Shouta didn’t know who the kid was referencing, or what hero was called such a thing, but he didn’t comment and just nodded his head.

“I don’t know,” Turmoil said. He popped another tab of the energy drinks he brought with him. This was the third can, mango and orange flavored. He shrugged. “They left a long time ago. Why would I know where they went?”

“Why didn’t they take you with them?” Shouta kept prying, wondering. To know was to soothe the ache in his chest or cut himself open and feel something else.

A few minutes went by. Maybe he stepped too close, went too far.

“Why didn’t you?” The kid asked him, and there it was—the smile that went sharp and brittle and hateful. Can you take a lie from me? Can you handle it? Turmoil talked in reflections. That was the only way Shouta knew how to describe it. Questions answered in other inquiries, sharp teeth and cracks in the skin; glass and ash and something else.

Shouta looked at him, tried to count the cuts that were all over his nose and cheekbones.

Turmoil smiled back at him, tipped his head down so his bangs would smack into his sweaty forehead. He took another long sip from his drink, knocked it back. “You won’t find me, Eraserhead. Why do you let me hang around you if you know that?”

Wasted time, long nights. Turmoil arrived with his teeth bared in a smile and his expression painted with purple and blue and red. He was too young to have injuries like that. Will you let me take you to the station? And Turmoil was just swallow slit and bile and say do you have tea, or not? Caffeine into veins. The child sitting on the roof next to him, breathing shallowly but talking normally. Shouta could tie him with the scarf and take him to a holding room, somewhere safe, somewhere Turmoil could sleep without getting beat. He could.

But the child looked at him and smiled with too sharp teeth and wrong-footed eyes that sent people scattering and made Shouta pause, the slightest hesitation. Do you want me to bandage you up? But no answer, never an answer.

Colors that moved. The bruises that lasted forever. The fact that others saw this child and fled, bowed their heads and left. You won’t find a body, you won’t find me. That was what Turmoil always said. That was what he never had to open his mouth to say—it was just something that could be heard. Something that anyone could pick apart and understand, let ice drench their backs and run down their spines.

“Did you want me to take you with me?” The hero asked after a long time.

He was always compelled to ask. He was supposed to take the kid in, to put him into the station and hold him there. To ask. To find out. Are you a criminal? Who are you? Where are you going at night? Why? He never did. He let the kid walk away. Shouta did not know how to explain the urge that overtook him; the need to let the kid walk away. All he knew was that he listened, and it happened each time.

They met each other often enough. Shouta would have both the authority and right to take Turmoil to a station, for custody or just to try and contact parents because the kid was out after curfew.

That wasn’t what the kid meant, though. Why didn’t you? Turmoil was on his own a lot. He spoke of his parents often but they seemed absent. Shouta knew what it was like to raise yourself and younger siblings, Fo never have a parent to do it for you. It meant that based on every story this vigilante gave him, he could compare it.

Understand it. Comprehend it.

The night went along with it. Stars burned high above them. The world was awake and alive and he was here in the middle of it. Musutafu was the kind of city to harbor anyone and everyone. Heroes were second to the scene. Villains were fist, almost always, and that meant running quicker and a timing faster.

“No,” Turmoil said. He had not lied yet, not once—he just never gave a direct answer. “I guess not.”

“Why?” Shouta asked. “Why not?”

To ask was to get something or to get nothing. He indulged the questions because he would not turn the child away. He had the time to spare, tonight—he could make that choice and stay to talk. He could stay until Turmoil decided to leave and go back to wherever he lived. The night burned, weighed on them heavily.

The vigilante hummed, long and slow. For his age, he acted like a drugged college student. Turmoil’s sleeves were rolled up to this time around; revealing bruises and old scars. That were red pinpoint all up and down his inner wrists. Shouta had asked about them before, on the wrong night at the wrong time. Turmoil hadn’t answered and hadn’t returned to talk for two weeks afterwards.

“Same reason I didn’t go with my parents,” The kid said sluggishly. He hiccuped once and took one last sip, then shook the can—mostly empty—before crushing it between two palms. He huffed, blinked twice. “You’re too considerate, Eraserhead. I’ll bring you a drink next time.”

“Don’t inconvenience yourself,” Shouta said sternly, quietly.

Turmoil popped his joints and shrugged, gave him that crooked smile that looked like noodles spun about on a fork, way too deep into the guts to remove. “Why would I both with inconveniencing myself just for you?”

—

Turmoil was thirteen. He came in from back alleys with his teeth bared and a jacket pulled over his shoulders. He never did any damage. His words were quick and bitter and most people turned on their heels, they saw and and changed career paths—

Shouta saw him and ached.

Vigilantism was illegal. Shouta knew such a rule quite well, and understood the very foundation of why and when and how. He also knew the argument—why not—because if the whole world was on fire then who should give a damn if a few people want to go out burning, on a rickety pile of flames and ash? Turmoil never used a quirk. He just arrived and it was a droop, a shadowy kind of thing that became tormenting and treading and terribly, terribly alive.

The kid came and went with the rocking of the waves. He had bruises and scars and wounds, needle impressions at his veins from blood draws, had new stitches under his left eye that practically glowed. Turmoil said he wanted to use glow in the dark string but hadn’t owned any at the time of gaining the injury. I would’ve, The boy’s eyes had said without a single breath. If I had the string I would have used it.

Wounds that came from others, inflicted at night or in the day. Shouta did not ask more than once. To balance this strange relationship was to not pry, it was to try and fulfill his legal obligations without chasing the kid away.

“Who gave it to you?” Shouta asked.

“No one important,” Turmoil said, and he popped a piece of gum into his mouth and balled up the little tinfoil wrapped to shove into his pocket. The stitches moved with the motion of his purpled jaw. “I just got it, that’s all. Do you want some gum?”

The underground hero stared at the child. A street lamp flickered nearby. When he did not say anything quick enough, Turmoil merely shrugged and shoved the rest of the package away—the other sticks of gun saved fir another day. His voice echoed lowly, bleached in the night: “Suit yourself, Eraserhead. I was just trying to be nice.”

And he was.

That politeness came from somewhere.

Whether it was an act or not didn’t matter. Shouta had dealt with all kinds of kids—pessimistic, naive, scared, angry, lost, lonely—he had everything, saw everyone at least once. Both as a hero and as a teacher. Then again, as a person in life. Just another civilian passing by. He had seen things and learned to deal with them, how to call them out and how to unravel the pieces of string left behind by someone else’s careless hands.

“Why are you out here?” Shouta asked a new question, kept walking. The alleyway opened up to a desolate street, entirely empty. Lines of street lamps went up and down the road. A few cars passed by.

It was around three in the morning, but he was not about to pull out his phone and check. He knew based on previous patterns. Three in the morning was when Turmoil normally popped up, but the kid would show up whenever he felt like it—sometimes alone, sometimes with a knife in his pocket, sometimes with fresh bruises that had to be recent; within a day or two of being given.

“Why are you?” Turmoil challenged, and the fire returned with it. The street lamp from before flickered violently, twisted solemnly. The child stared him down, red jacket puffed up around his noose-tied throat. “We all have a reason, Eraserhead. I just thought I’d spend my time in your shadow.”

“You’re in the light,” He pointed out, quietly.

Agreeing or rising to the bait never did anyone anything good. It never had. He knew that much, too, tried to prepare himself for it in almost every occasion.

Turmoil stepped aside, blended back in with the dark. He had a long crescent scar above his eyebrow, below his hairline. It blended in with concealer. So did most his freckles, his thick restless circles and angry bruises. He never rose to the bait, either, just played the game of cat and mouse and bared his teeth.

Too sharp, Shouta told himself. They weren’t fangs or canines or anything terrible. They did not belong to any animal he could think of. They were just sharp. Too sharp to be normal but nothing is normal anyway.

“I wanted to see you,” Turmoil said after a few moments. His tone was fast, and he blew a bubble with the gum in his mouth—pink and pale, popping open as he sucked it back in with a shrug. “Heard you were in on something, so I had to go find out for myself.”

Shouta stayed quiet, let the kid speak.

He came with bruises and knives and aches. He came with gum. He came with thick winter jackets in the middle of summer, the begging of heat and humidity. Turmoil came with his hair soaked, wrung-out and held up by hair clips as he spoke of needing to dye it again, needing a trim. Something or another. Never anything easy. Never anything simple.

The kid leaned against a building wall, expression wrong-footed. He tipped his head to the side and blew another bubble just to snap at it with his teeth. His voice was ill, “Yakuza?”

“Don’t talk so loudly,” Shouta replied, sharper than how he should have said anything. He should have been quieter. He should have been easier, less bloodied, less defensive.

Scared kids never went well.

Turmoil did not scare easily, did not waver. He was not scared. Not in any way that Shouta could pinpoint. But he flinched like he expected violence after every sharp word, and when no violence came, the boy looked up with murder in his eyes—like being told that a mistake was made was the enemy, and not the crack of his bones or the blemishes on his skin.

“No,” The kid muttered, and he let his whole face turn tart and lonely. “No one’s here. I would know if they were here, Eraserhead. It doesn’t matter.”

“Turmoil,” Shouta echoed, and he stood still.

To apologize would be to make the kid angry, to walk over broken glass without shoes and expect not to get cut. So he said nothing, could not open his mouth and repeat his words in a softer tone. Turmoil would know what it meant.

Turmoil frowned at him, teeth clicking together like someone chattering nervously. The only difference was that there was nothing nervous in the kid’s behavior. He was here, he was alive; it burned and it broke off in large chunks. The vigilante was not the kind to yield. “If it’s such a big deal, such a wasps’ nest, why haven’t you taken care of it yet?”

His eyes went sharp and bleating, some that bled red and never got found. You won’t find a body. You can’t. Crushed under rubble, except Turmoil was thirteen and not even in high school yet. The story that was told to him: a child who ran and who knew and who couldn’t get caught. I’m not old enough to qualify for anything so I just wait. I’m hiding my time. There was nothing to find. It made everything the more dangerous, made Shouta feel out of his league by letting this child slip by every time.

Shouta did not divulge any of the information to the kid before. It meant Turmoil just knew, already knew. Had known and chose not to bring it up until now, right now. If someone knew about the plan and the base and everything else, maybe just one little detail, it meant there was a data leak.

“Are you involved in it?” The hero asked, and he kept his voice low. He could not soften it the way he would if this were any other case, so he kept himself steady. Doubt filled his body. He already had his answer, had hsi best guess. “The yakuza?”

Turmoil looked at him for a long time. He rolled his eyes. Three in the morning turned to three-seventeen and the kid just shook his head, turned on his heel and left.

“Goodnight,” The vigilante muttered.

Shouta watched him walk away, step back into the alley they just came out of and vanish. It was quiet again.

—

Blank silence, blubbery flesh. He did not stop to get takeout.

Shouta went home, tried to come up with a connection. The world was fuzzy around his hands. His mind told him things he already knew, and every story he could try and piece together came out wrong. Turmoil did not appear in the streets again. The police were given a new lead, though, and Tsukauchi contacted him about the yakuza a short while ago. It was quiet in the back alleys, on that one roof.

“Maybe you should give it a rest,” Hizashi told him quietly, soft with a smile and concerned with all the weight of the world.

Shouta’s burdens quickly became Hizashi’s burdens, theirs.

“He’s out there and he’s alone,” The underground hero bit out. There was no haste and there was no fire, just an ache he could not soothe. Something that rippled and ruptured in his mouth. It tasted bitter and sour. “He won’t accept anyone’s help. He’s involved with the yakuza. What happens if I don’t figure it out?”

“You can create a case,” Hizashi said, and there it was: the soft cream in the wood. His husband placed a hand on his spine, rubbed a circle there. “If he needs help, he knows where to find it. You’ve brought him here before, haven’t you?”

Shouta shook his head, leaned backwards so Hizashi could see his face. “I haven’t.”

“You will, then,” His husband said with the most obvious tone—though it wavered and cracked off into something soft and gentle again, warm around the edges with a shared sadness. “The kid sounds resilient.”

—

“You got tea?” Turmoil asked him, expression tart. “I haven’t had tea in forever. Parents refuse to buy any and the good kind is too expensive.”

“I have tea,” Shouta said. “Nothing expensive.”

Hizashi insisted on buying it, even though both of them preferred coffee. They had chamomile and peppermint and throat comfort—they might have black tea somewhere, but Shouta wouldn’t know where. He didn’t drink tea. That was more of a courtesy for guests, whenever they came over. Which, for him and Hizashi was rare, as they normally met at other locations rather than their own house.

Figured, then, that Turmoil was a guest and asking for tea. Demanding it, maybe, but it wasn’t like Shouta was going to say no. The kid looked like he could use something to drink.

Turmoil shrugged. “Expensive doesn’t matter. You get paid well, you’re a hero. Any tea would be nice.”

The vigilante trusted him enough to come into his house and make demands for tea or the temperature of the apartment to be hotter—it’s cold out, Eraserhead, and I only have two layers, can’t you just turn the heat up—even when it was the middle of summer. When they first met, it was spring. Turmoil had said that his father still existed. After they kept meeting, the boy would talk about his mother and his aunt—voice fading to the background in almost every conversation. He never mentioned anything else.

“Chamomile?” Shouta asked, and made a move to sort through the cupboard where he remembered his husband stashing away a few packages. If it wasn’t in here, then it would be in the pantry on the top shelf. That much he could guarantee.

“Any tea would be nice,” The boy repeated.

Hizashi would be home soon. Late night at the radio station, even later than Shouta. Tonight, at the very least. He was only home because Turmoil showed up during his patrol, hazy and disoriented, and asked for warmth. It was summer, everything was already hot. The night was warm, too, not cold like winter but not chilly either. Warmth could be found under any street lamp as Japan buzzed with heat and flies danced under city lights.

He was here because Turmoil disrupted his plans to patrol. He was here, home early, because a kid came to him after an alleyway scuffle and said do you have internet at your house, because mine doesn’t and would you mind if I went home with you?

Turmoil was not in a legal database. The kid was thirteen, but if he was lying he could be younger. He had an affinity for rooftops and tea, made life a giant joke by constantly wandering too close to the edge. He knew where Shouta lived. He knew how to enter buildings and get past locks—breaking and entering, wandering far away and far too close for anyone’s comfort.

The name was something others knew about, but only in bits and pieces. Shouta had asked a few; underground heroes who worked with vigilantes, informants who knew heavy information—the kind that could wrench someone’s life.

But nothing came up. Virtually nothing.

Turmoil had green eyes and messy green hair that curled around the edges, longer in the back and shorter at the front. He had hundreds of freckles along his face and neck, probably everywhere else too. He had absent or neglectful parents who he thought the world of. He had a benefactor of some kind, someone that supplied him with items that would otherwise be difficult to receive and or buy as a child. His quirk was something Shouta had not pressed on, and seeing as the database had nothing, it meant he would either have to wait to see it in action, or would have to ask at another date.

Turmoil had a split lip and wild eyes. He looked like porcelain on the worst way, som kind of haunted doll you would find in an old lady’s yard sale. He never bit. He bared his teeth in smiles and snarls, made songs out of old paper clips and safety-pins. From one roof to another, each shadow and each picket fence made of chain link; the echo, the ceiling, the floor, the cement under his boots.

Words that spilled open. Got nothing to lose. Thirteen, almost fourteen, but it’s not summer yet so it’s not possible. It can’t be possible. I’m not there yet. Aches and stings and scrapes.

Frowning over dusk and making up stories. Blood rust. Deep lines under eyes, old bruises and older scrapes. Turmoil showed up with a black tongue and lemon-pepper mint gum between his teeth. Are you alive yet—of course I am, of course—you don’t look like it—why don’t I look like it—look at you. Shouta never asked questions like that. It was a heavy weight that lived in the lines of his shoulders, in his trembling muscles. When the kid was here, he could not ask every question. Most the time he could only ask the worst ones, the ones that twisted spines the wrong way—too much, just a little—spines should not be twisted at all.

As Shouta dug around, finding a few packages of different types of tea, he asked another question. “Why won’t your parents buy you any?”

“They’re dead,” Turmoil said flatly—and Shouta nearly dropped the tea cartridge, nearly turned around to look at the boy and fumble. They’re dead. The weight if the words made Shouta falter, hesitate. “They can’t buy anything if they’re dead.”

Dead parents. Turmoil’s parents had been mentioned before, on many occasions in many ways. Shouta had kept himself aware and observant just to keep tabs, to try and understand whatever picture Turmoil painted. A kid like that, talking about adults like they were actually just inadequate children. Shouta knew what anyone else would say if they had to sit on a roof and talk to that kid, listen to the boy say this or that over the newest villain group only to drag his father back into the picture, say something new.

His father had been alive at some point when Shouta knew Turmoil. The vigilante introduced the names in present-tense, said that they lived quietly. That boy had not lied to Shouta. Not yet.

Something ached, moved wrongly in his chest and in front of him.

“Sorry to hear that,” Shouta apologized, keeping his expression as sincere as he could. As neutral. People died. Anyone and everyone knew that, him especially.

Turmoil only looked at him, drumming his gloved hands on the table. His eyes danced over the mugs sent out—one filled with coffee, one with hot water and the bag inside. A smile ticked onto his face, shouldered its way through the plastic he used to hide from others. “Do you make all your tea in the microwave?”

“It’s quicker,” The hero replied. He assessed Turmoil’s expression, the way talking about his dead parents was so easily pushed aside. Tea was more important, apparently. “And I wanted to get the tea to you sooner than it would take if I boiled water.”

“You can always take long,” Turmoil shrugged again, drummed his fingers along the tabletop and kept staring with those dark eyes. He was just a kid. He never raised his voice, never seemed too happy. That was what Shouta noticed in his behaviors—the tapping and moving and talking, always small talk, beer really speaking. Nothing of importance. “Who’s going to stop you from taking all the time you need?”

Shouta hummed. The teabag bobbed in the mug, the scent of chamomile filling the little kitchen. Little was an understatement, as the kitchen was moderate. A few minutes had gone by.

“Why did you come here?” He asked.

“Why not?” The kid asked with a wide-eyed glance. When Shouta slid the mug to him, finally, his eyes glimmered again. “You have tea.”

—

“I had a dad back when I was little,” Turmoil said slowly. “A nice mom, too. But not anymore. They left and I was given to someone else. Turns out it’s worse to be with people than alone.”

Colors that moved, a life that was far away. The kid looked like death, pale and gone and already buried; pulling a vanishing act.

“Do you want tea?” Shouta asked.

Turmoil turned his head, looked at him in full. You didn’t expect that question, Shouta thought pointedly. He tasted blood tonight, too. Felt in run through his veins and arteries in every which way. You didn’t expect me to ask you that. The vigilante ran his hands through his wild hair, tangled, knotted. Then he nodded, spoke quietly.

“Can I have a cup for my sister?” Turmoil asked quietly. He was sitting in the chair at the table, the one neither Shouta or Hizashi used. Like he knew it as saved for him. Like he knew he could have it. “To take to her and then give it back to you, after. When I say hi again.”

Shouta inclined his head, felt his air leak out of his mouth in sputtered puffs. His voice was dry. “Sure.”

—

The suicide rates for quirkless people were astronomically high. The suicide rates for those stuck in villain organizations was even higher. Most would choose death over a loss of autonomy.

Shouta wondered if that was what Turmoil had been debating on.

—

“Were you going to jump?” Shouta asked quietly.

“No,” Turmoil murmured, and he sounded strange. Dejected, maybe—disappointed in something deadly. “I can’t. It doesn’t matter if I want to. I just can’t.”

Shouta did not want to ask why not or why can’t you or do you want to. He could not ask. Not tonight, not so soon. To see the kid again after long weeks of silence—nothing, just nothing—was a chance. It meant something. It was a chance of conversation. Him asking that first question was already too barbed.

The kid knew that, too. The look on his face was visceral and vibrant in comparison to his tone; to his eyes that did not waver, did not blink. Doll’s eyes. Teeth that were too sharp.

Turmoil belonged somewhere, to someone, but that was not anyone or anything good. Nothing good and nothing safe. No one safe. No one good.

“Why?” The kid turned his eyes back to the hero, brows raised. There were stitches—would-be stitches—on his jaw and under his chin and upwards. Up to his eye, curling and curving. They looked professionally done, but also as if someone started clawing at them before they set it—tearing them loose. “Did you expect me to?”

No, Flashed through his mind, bright and dim all at once. The flickering of streetlights and the haunting echo of someone calling out. Yes. You looked like you were going to. You still act like you are going to.

Silence that came in storms, in broken bottles. Shouta had late and unpredictable hours. When he wasn’t patrolling, he was teaching at UA. His students were there, and he recalled some in the inbetweens. They were his students. He knew some of them, and some more than the others. He failed his first years already, expelled the whole lot—Kan still had all his students, but Shouta had already decided not to give hope to the hopeless.

“You said you weren’t going to,” The underground hero said, and left it at that.

Turmoil hummed. He said that he wasn’t going to jump, that he wouldn’t. That was how it first went down: the building is too tall, who would jump off it? “I said that.”

“You meant it,” Shouta echoed. “When you said it, that time.”

It was more of a statement than a fact. He did not know what else to say, how to push at old wounds that could actually be brand new. The kid did not waver and did not run. When he was sacred, if he ever was, he looked at danger head on and whistled between his front teeth, made a puttering kind of noise that one could only describe as a pitying hum. I pity you. I pity your choices. That was what Shouta heard.

“I did,” Turmoil replied steadily, and his smile returned with a flemished fever. Red danced along his face, burned triangles and sunshot words into his skin. “I forgot you took notes.”

“No notes,” Shouta denied. He would lower his voice further if he knew it would help. In this case, he knew it would do the opposite. There was nothing to do when it came down to this kid, a child who almost always had sone kind of sharp object but never used it. He stared, catalogued the new wounds he could not ask about. “I just remembered.”

The boy sniffled, made an obtrude gesture with his hands that meant something Shouta would probably not learn about until a week from now. His voice was scratchy again, flighty. “Of course you would, it’s your job.”

Silence, silence, silence.

The night continued to wander. The rooftop was nothing new. There was nowhere else to go. No matter how many times Turmoil wandered into alleyways to find him in shadows, or how many times they walked unpopulated sidewalks when children should not be out past curfew, none of it mattered. There was nowhere else to go.

The kid always said he had a place to go back to. Nothing good, Turmoil always sing-songed in broken huffs, twisting spirals of his freckles and his teeth and his whistling notes—but it’s home and home is home. Where else should I go? Shouta had no real answer. He had nowhere that was safe, nowhere he might be able to offer. You can come home with me. I will take care of you. We can take care of you. He could not say that. He could not say anything, nothing like that—he could not offer and he could not soothe. Turmoil would only leave and stay silent if he tried.

“Did you believe me the first time?” Turmoil asked, and it was quiet, it was so quiet. He knocked his knees together and pulled his legs up to his chest. Let his gaze turn murky. “When you first met me?”

Shouta kept looking. He followed the path of nearly-torn stitches, the angry string that wound up a child’s face too tightly. It could have healed with scarring, maybe, but now it was set. It was set into stone. It would scar. It would have to, if it healed at all. Some of the kid’s freckles were smeared and tendered by the thread in the skin.

“Think for yourself,” The hero said flatly, after a long moment.

Turmoil spat out a laugh, blubbery and wet, and tipped his head backwards and away from his bruised kneecaps. He choked, sputtered. “I think for myself just fine, Eraserhead.”

“Then you should know,” He replied simply, trying not to let anything slip into his voice. Nothing of kindness and nothing of cruelty. Nothing at all.

The kid was a stranger. He was a runner and a faller. Turmoil always murmured, rolling his eyes and shaking his head—when summer heat rolls around and I’ll be dead—he talked to himself. He made his world its own thing, just a few blocks and a few buildings shoved into a bioluminescent bubble. Red lines on his skin, mottled colors along his face and neck. Pinpricks up and down his arms, not just pigmented freckles.

Turmoil laughed again, turning humorless. “Maybe.”

—

It was a Tuesday night when Shouta saw Turmoil again. The kid was pinned against a wall, thick blood running down his skull; it trailed like neon lights, flashed over pale skin and melted right off.

He barely fought, just let the other man hold him to the wall. Muffled words were exchanged. The hand around Turmoil’s throat spasmed, and there came the look; doll eyes, dead and gone. Turmoil said something, let a smile take a place on his face. You’ll fit right into the collection. He mouthed the words, and the guy shouted something in a different language—

Turmoil laughed, strangled, and smacked both his ungloved hands onto the man’s forearm that was holding him to the wall. He was spasming, too, shuddering like something was wrong with him.

Maybe something was, to let someone strangle him in an alleyway on a weeknight. Who is gonna bother attacking a kid? Turmoil never even asked anymore. Are you going to attack me? A kid? Who is going to bother? Not you. He just looked up with a smile and the questions were so loud, they were written in bright blue chalk and smothered over his tongue. Shouta could hear them as soon as they met one another on rooftops. Every question and every reflection.

He barely got into the alley before the man was reeling backwards and spitting out what sounded like a curse. Turmoil went boneless to the ground, cracking a grin like lost porcelain. Like the whole world was upside down and broken dead.

“He’s going to get you,” Turmoil was laughing bloodily, teeth stained red, too sharp, too sharp. The kid slapped both his hands onto the ground, like clapping, and said the phrase louder. His shirt—an old American band t-shirt that Shouta recognized from the depths of his husband’s closet—was halfway off his shoulder. Turmoil’s smile was too wide. “He’s going to get you for what you did. You know he is.”

Only a few seconds, only a few seconds.

Shouta had the man down onto the ground in that amount of time. He heard the body his the ground, the muffled curse and the sputtering laughter of broken glass. The body—there was no fight, there was only silence after that one swear word. The attacker, a man nearly four times the size of Turmoil’s own body, laid limply on the ground. Shouta stared, analyzed, and moved away after tying the man’s hands behind his back.

Silence in the dark. A Tuesday night. Turmoil came out when Shouta was out, moved through crowds of wine bottles in dead-end alleys and always smiled. Sometimes he had a few sticks of gum. Sometimes he had a gun, locked and loaded, held in one hand lazily—

“Firearms are illegal,” He had said sharply, eyes narrowed.

Turmoil had looked at him, extended the gun in his hands and offered it to him. Glazed eyes, heavy and dark. “I didn’t bring it for me, I brought it for you.”

Turmoil was up on his feet already, sliding down the wall with hiccuping laughter. He raised one hand to smear the redness away from his forehead and back up into his hairline; his bangs stuck to his face. Sweat was clinging to his temples. His shoulders were shaking, and his laughter was cracking down the center like badly predicted canyons.

The kid looked like he was about to walk away—every sign was there. Shouta looked at him, and when their eyes met, Turmoil blinked twice like he hadn’t expected him to be there. The kid did not run.

He was a vigilante by some definition. He knew names and had names. Knew people and knew places.

“Don’t get caught like that again,” Shouta bit out, tightening his hold on his scarf and finally releasing Turmoil’s torso from its length. The hero stared at the kid, looking him over a few times to get a solid picture. Messy clothes, messy face. Blood on his head but no wounds, just a sluggish pulse against his temples. After a third look-over, he swallowed thickly and dropped the scarf entirely—letting it settle back around his neck and shoulders.

There were no bruises, no noose like stains—just the marks of blood and the long cut on his head. The only wounds he could see were the ones that he had seen in the mouth of the alleyway.

“Are you alright?” The hero asked after a moment.

Turmoil pulled his shirt back up into the place it should be. His sleeves were black. Brittle, torn up at the ends. His normal red jacket was nowhere to be found. Around Turmoil’s neck was a necklace looped twice across his skin, with a collection of keys and pins dangling from its center. Based on the sheer amount Shouta could see, it looked like a lot.

Turmoil shrugged again, eyes wide and distant. He smiled, too, let something cloud his vision. Too green, too sharp. “I’m fine.”

“Do you have someone to treat that?” He asked next, and it was sharp around the edges. He kept his eyes narrowed. Red stayed in his vision, flickered until he was forced to blink and let his quirk drop. Turmoil looked back at him, brows raised higher on his face.

“Who wouldn’t?” The kid mumbled, all smiles and skittering laughter.

He said who wouldn’t and smiled and brushed blood rust off his bared sleeves, skin that poked through torn threads that were held together with safety pins. Who wouldn’t, the kid said, and laughed it off with brittle teeth and a sharp grin. Who wouldn’t, Turmoil said as he stood tall despite the blood, the ash, the broken curfew. Anyone like you, Shouta could say. He could say a lot of things. Anyone like you because you’re young and injured and you have no one to make you stay. But he said nothing. Kept the comments under his tongue, deep in his throat and burrowed away in his lungs. Loose change to spare another day.

Turmoil gestured with a long sweep of his arm, where his sleeve clung to his forearm and elbow; the strength that he possessed. “I’m fine. I didn’t realize you were out tonight. I wouldn’t have pissed the guy off if I knew.”

Hizashi was better at understanding kids then he was. It made him feel out of place, nearly every time. You sought out a fight with someone four times your size. You sought out a fight with someone. You sought out a fight. Turmoil was an enigma, someone and something that few would ever get the chance to meet. The kid had the guts and the nerve to do things like this, and somehow had the luck to weasel his way out of it.

Shouta stared at the kid. “You would’ve done it if you knew I was at home?”

“No,” Turmoil shook his head, and blood dripped down his skin—it wasn’t entirely his, it belonged to the man who was knocked out cold on the ground. The kid ran his hands over one arm, feeling up the tension, and the smiling sadly. “It wouldn’t matter if you were out patrolling. I just wouldn’t have done it if you were nearby.”

A few moments passed. He stared longer, squinted, looked him up and down again. He took a breath, let it rumble in his chest like a battled drum. “Will you let me treat that?”

He had to ask, even when he knew the answer.

With a jerky nod to the injury, Turmoil recoiled at the mere offer. His expression was sour, turning downwards faster than Shouta could correct himself. The loops of grey fabric had already been dropped, but as soon as they were fully pulled away, the kid’s eyes whipped upwards to his again.

“Nevermind,” He nodded once, solid. “Are you safe for the night?”

The kid stepped away almost immediately, stretching his arms out with a pop and a crack. His joints crumbled, his limbs shook like dry branches in a windstorm.

“Yes,” Turmoil said. He kicked a piece of broken glass, wiped off his bloody chin. When he looked back to Shouta, he was smiling again. His eyes were just as shadowed as they always were, bleary around the center where his too-green pupil lived. “I’ll be fine. I promised to make my sister dinner tonight.”

The kid always talked about parents and long halls and empty plates. Sometimes he talked about schoolwork, or needing pocket money, or having blown all his money on gum and old video camera footage—there was this new Polaroid camera that I just really needed to have—or dolls, apparently he collected some. The kid always talked about stuff like that. Never siblings, never more than the first time he mentioned having a sister. That was nearly a month ago, on a roof, in the rain.

Shouta looked the kid up and down again, evaluating the stance presented to him. Turmoil always favored his left side. He pushed aside the doubt taht lived in his mind like a pest in the walls of a house. “Don’t burn anything.”

Termites chewing, eating, spitting it all back out.

“No,” Turmoil smiled straighter, widened his teeth and nodded. He did not bow. He was never that formal, not that kind of prodigy child. “I won’t.”

Summer heat rolled around with a coil in its belly. If it wasn’t still colder at night, maybe the kid would shed his thick coat and wear something lighter. Cold sweat was dabbed along the child’s brow, rolling down like water—it was so visible, so painfully there. Shouta knew better than to ask about it. He knew better than to do anything about it.

A few seconds passed. Another round of blood, bright red in contrast to the paleness of the kid’s skin, rolled down his hairline in thick droplets. They clung to his eyelashes and eyelids, smeared across the bridge of his nose—freckles hidden by sleepless nights, by bruises, by the red waterfall.

“Maybe I’ll bring her to you, so you can meet,” He murmured, like it was an afterthought. Then he shrugged and pulled his coat back up to his shoulders. It was the bright red one, its threads more or less abused by anxious nails picking the seams until they snapped and tore open. “See you later, Eraserhead. Don’t stay up too late.”

Shouta tipped his head to show that he was listening, he heard what the kid said. If he answered now, he would not get any kind of response.

Turmoil would slip into the dark and would not come back for some time.

—

Turmoil had laughed with a crooked grin. I’m not going to jump. It’s not tall enough. A lie, a twist of the tongue. Perhaps it had been the truth at the time. The building hadn’t been tall enough to warrant a full-fledged suicide. That was what Turmoil had meant. You would just break some bones, maybe split your skull open. That did not mean death.

Shouta could hear many lies. He knew them when someone told them, could pick them out from crowds and coin pouches. When the kid had said it, he hadn’t heard anything out of line.

It had been odd, startling. He had been there for many rooftops that would have turned empty if the person had not indulged him in a conversation—if they had just decided to jump anyway, to go and dive and split down the center like swan wings.

Turmoil hadn’t.

The kid had looked at him and knocked his knees together and sat up taller, hunched in, smiled like a child about to ask for candy. It’s too tall. Who would jump, anyway?

Shouta did not know how to reply.

What he said—

Colors that moved. Cars speeding far below. He knocked himself together and kept going. One kid was not enough to throw a fit over—the legal world would not understand his urgency. Turmoil was a vigilante by a few people’s definitions; but that kid ran wild, ran ragged. A vigilante that got into fights but did not come out a victor, but never lost, never died. A vigilante with teeth too sharp and smiles that were too brittle. A vigilante who laughed and sputtered and turned sour, went wrong-footed and ill. Vicious and cruel, sharp around every edge—don’t get caught, don’t get cut, you’ll be on the shelf—words out of his mouth, a tongue so very red.

Shouta knew about kids who lied because they were scared. He knew about kids who lied to protect themselves and or others, not because they were scared of something.

When Turmoil talked to him, it was with cold and jittery efficiency.

It was with laughter and causal humor, the kind of thing you’d find in a distant relative at some kind of family reunion; not on a roof with a kid holing a pocket knife and talking about hating blood, hating needles, having to get home because that was what his mom always told him him to do. The kid spoke in reflections and mirrored questions, sung songs in Spanish and grammatically incorrect English. He was certain the latter was on purpose.

There was some kind of disconnect. There was a sharpness to the words, to every phrase spoken between the two of them. Shouta knew it and could not give it a name. It was not lying, it was hinting, it was a windshield wiper swiping against glass. Smearing something away, so you could see clearly again. He did not know what to name it.

The look in those eyes. The dimness, the dark spiral. Turmoil had looked at him and snorted, chuffed like it was a joke. “You have no tact. No. Who would jump off this building? It’s not tall enough.”

No one was there to prove that they cared. There was no one.

—

Absurd things. Absurd timelines.

Shouta received a call from the detective at twelve in the afternoon, and then a voicemail when he did not answer the call. The yakuza case had been given another lead, as well as several missing person cases that were connected to said organization.

Tsukauchi had said that a kid with green hair and green eyes came in to talk, to share something he heard in an alley after he broke curfew—it was an honest mistake, I was out late with my friends and took a shortcut home through an alley and then I heard a few people start talking and I got concerned, so I stayed, and I heard them say—wild green hair, tangled at the edges, with pupils so wide and alive, with a porcelain face and a bloody mouth.

Connections. Lost causes. Shouta looked at all the notes he had been compiling and found that half the information was missing, and he—he couldn’t even find it within himself to be surprised.

—

“I don’t know why they call me all those names,” Turmoil was saying, but Shouta was only half listening. His gaze was stuck on Turmoil’s face, where only one eye remained. The kid kept going, waving one hand. “None of them even make sense. The news keeps calling me an informant, and it’s so wrong. Don’t you think it’s inaccurate? I’ve never even given you crucial information before.”

You have a million names, He thought blankly. But you cannot claim any of them for yourself?

Shouta looked at him for a moment longer, seeing blood and gore live in an empty pocket. Lost, gone, missing, stolen. He frowned, head pounding. “Where’s your eye?”

Turmoil paused, looking back at him. One eye blinked, slow and sticky, and the other stayed vermillion and gone. Why are you calm? Why aren’t you aching? Where is your eye? Where are you? Who did that to you? Shouta could not ask any of those questions. He knew the vigilante before him would vanish.

The kid stared at him, raising both brows. “What eye?”

“The eye you’re supposed to have in your left eye socket,” The hero told him, stern and sharp, twisting the knife in deeper.

The wound that he knew not to touch; sharp teeth, sharp eyes, sharper smiles. Who would jump off this building? It’s not tall enough. Every damned revelation, every damned exception. Shouta was prying it open anyway, snapping a shell in half just to see what was on the inside. The wound on the kid’s face was the worst one he had ever seen—his stomach rolled, threatened to spill. The first threat it had made in a long time, especially when he saw horrible things in his job often.

Turmoil kept looking at him. After a moment, he brought his hand up and smeared the blood away with a slick smile. It squelched. Shouta grabbed his hand, moving closer; he could hear something chittering in the background.

“Oh,” Turmoil clicked his tongue, not pulling away. His teeth glinted. “That.”

It was five in the morning. Shouta’s patrol was supposed to be over an hour ago. Instead of going home or back to his office downtown, he was here at an abandoned park talking with a child. Summer was angry. The kid kept showing up with more stories and more teeth and more blood—too much blood, so much blood.

“You need a hospital,” Shouta said, with some urgency. It bled right into his voice, terribly obvious, something that Turmoil could hear and see.

It was written on his face. It was vile. It was loud.

“No,” Turmoil said, and he shuddered again. Made a little clicking noise and finally pulled away. That. His words did not waver, did not crack down the center. They rarely did that. “I just need my sister. She’ll patch me right up.”

“You said your sister was young,” The hero demurred, and he could feel panic line his shoulders, disbelief and another kind of muttering spectacle. Long ways from home. The kid never said where he lived, but it was far. It had to be far.

“When did I ever say that?” Turmoil asked. He looked wrong, ill. His skin was pale and drained of blood, wavering and flicking. Shouta could see the vigilante’s pulse.

Summer came and introduced a new threat: the yakuza, the kid with his summer doom.

Dead by the summer heat, Turmoil’s face said. He never even had to speak out loud, he just looked the part, played the role. He barely said anything like it and yet Shouta already knew, already heard it. It’s just so hot, I’ll die by it. There would be blood on the alleyway concrete, something loud and angry down by the vending machines. Heroes and police would continue to patrol the city and no missing kids would be found. Missing people would stay missing—runaways, lost kids, kidnapped kids. Turmoil might be one of them, he might be their captor. He played every part. Every and any.

Shouta saw blood, saw nothing in the place an eye was supposed to live and exist within. His stomach rolled again. “You don’t have an eye.”

“Sometimes that happens,” Turmoil murmured with a crooked smile. He shrugged again, smeared more blood away. Turmoil only shrugged again, shook himself off like he was a bird leaving a birdbath. “It’s not gonna be permanent. Trust me, Eraserhead. My sister will put me right back to how I was before I got the injury. I can’t even feel it.”

The hero could not move. He watched.

Turmoil was called many names. Many, many, many, many. There was virtually no limit due to how all over the place the kid was. He was here one minute and gone the next, staring fights and inciting riots in another hour. All at once. One at a time. Only every now and then. Every single minute.

The wind ripples again. The park was still quiet, and the sun was poking itsekf out at the horizon; saying hello. Shouta swallowed the mouthful of bile that had rose. It was acidic. “You need a hospital.”

“No, I don’t need any of that,” Turmoil said, but he pulled out a cotton swab from his pocket and slapped it onto his left eye socket, blood still weeping. Something was candidly wrong with him. “But tea would be nice. Did you know there’s a little cafe that serves the best chai in the world? Let’s go there.”

He held up both his gloved hands—black leather, maybe latex, Shouta could not tell even in the morning light—and he smiled. “I have money, so I’ll pay.”

Tea could not cure a missing eye.

—

Turmoil was a wild card. My mom and dad are gone, they left so long ago. They’re dead. They’re like twelve feet under triple dead. Long gone, so gone, very dead and very gone. What do you do when you’re all alone and without anywhere to go? What do you do when someone offers you a place to stay, for only a few simple things?

“I stayed,” Turmoil had said. “Because they could keep my sister and I in check. Our quirks in check.”

He relied on caffeine, picked fights with people who could kill him. Who almost did, each time—only backing off after the kid said something Shouta could never pick up on. The people backed off and Turmoil walked free, walked with a limp and howled with broken glass laughter.

“What are you thinking about?” Hizashi asked him quietly, across the table.

Shouta looked up, expression flat. Then he looked at his husband’s mostly sugar and milk coffee, more milk than coffee, but something that worked. The table had few scratches on it despite how the both of the, threw so much junk onto its surface. He smiled a little, let the warmth trickle into his head. “Nothing important.”

“You always think about something important,” His husband chided with a furrow to his face, drawn taut, smeared away like watercolors. “Is it the kid again? Or your students at UA?”

There was no easy way to explain it, no simple way to come up with an answer. He was thinking about Turmoil, and thinking about how the yakuza was something that some students might do a work study on. The third and second years. He was thinking about all the ways things could go wrong.

“The kid,” Shouta admitted with a long suffering breath. He took a sip of his own coffee. “And the students.”

—

A girl with white hair and bright red eyes; cherries or bloody teeth. Turmoil was showing her around a neighborhood, pointing out houses that had two floors and places that were on sale or for lease.

Maybe here, Turmoil was saying.

Maybe nowhere, The child replied, and she hugged his leg. Maybe we run.

—

The yakuza was growing in numbers, in panic.

—

“Hey, Eraserhead,” Turmoil said, and he shrugged loosely with the girl still in his arms. Her white hair was down to her waist, messy at the ends but overall well-kept. The kid smiled at him, all teeth. “Do you have some room in there for us?”

At his door stood the yakuza’s two most prized possessions; their weapon and their secret.

Shouta looked them up and down, took in the wild expression on Turmoil’s face, the blood that had been drained from his skin. His teeth were sharp. His eyes were wide. The girl in his arms was no older than six, and here she was, just as awake and aware as her older brother. Red to green, bright and vibrant.

The hero only took one moment to reply.

“I have room,” Shouta agreed, quiet and soft; his hand on the doorknob. He swung it open further. Hizashi would not mind. Something breathed out in relief, rattled like a bad lock. “Do you want tea?”