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When he looks back on it ten years from now, Oboro will think that the first domino in the long, winding, elaborately-set line that ended with Shouta flinging his hero certification back in the Commission’s face and striking out on his own, lawless and license-less—that first domino was this moment, right here, when he almost didn’t stop.
First year. September. The streets of Musutafu are still summer-warm.
Oboro grew up in the countryside, where everyone notices everything, but in his defense, he’s been spending a lot of time in Musutafu since starting at UA. The city is big and busy and everything tends to blur together in a wash of color, sunlight glinting off windows and faces rushing by. You have to tune some things out in order to hear yourself think. Holding a conversation while navigating the busy streets is a circus act on a high wire.
This particular wire runs between UA and the new sushi place Oboro had discovered online and immediately resolved to visit as soon as possible. Dragging Shouta along anywhere is easier now than it had been in May, or even in July—either he’s warming up to Oboro, or his resolve is getting weaker. Either way, it had only taken a little needling on Oboro’s part to convince him to tag along, and he doesn’t even seem to mind that the walk is way longer than the maps app had led them to believe, although Oboro has mostly surmised this from the fact that he hasn’t turned around and started walking back yet.
He's not very talkative, Shouta. A lot of being his friend is surmising.
The first indicator that something is wrong arrives about a block before they figure out what, exactly, that is. There’s a shift in the air—at first, Oboro can’t put his finger on what’s changed, but then he realizes that the scattered, separate focuses and conversations of the pedestrians around him have consolidated into hushed mumblings, backwards glances all thrown in the same direction. No one is making eye contact. He sees three different people look apprehensively to the sky.
A sidelong glance tells him that Shouta has noticed it, too. He eyes a passing couple warily, both staring resolutely forward, not speaking a word between them. Oboro is struck with the sudden impression that something incredibly awkward has happened in full view of everyone on the sidewalk, and no one is sure how to react, but when he looks, he can’t find the source of the tension.
“What the hell is going on,” Shouta mutters.
Oboro shrugs helplessly. As they come to the next intersection, he cranes his neck around the corner and sees an old woman conferring with two young men farther down the street. The sidewalk is otherwise deserted—less-traveled, Oboro wonders, or deserted in a hurry?
They’ve already been walking for longer than he’d planned, and he’s kind of hungry. Whatever is going on, no one looks to be hurt. On his phone screen, a blue line tells him to continue going straight.
But.
Oboro turns left instead.
“Shirakumo,” Shouta says, a note of confusion in his voice. Oboro doesn’t have to look back to know he’s following him anyway; he’s gotten really, really good at that whole ‘surmising’ thing.
“Terrible little thing, really,” he hears the woman saying as he gets close. “He might be sick. Or something.”
“Should we call someone?” One of the men asks. As Oboro watches, he leans forward to peer at the face of the building they’re clustered in front of. “The police?”
“What he needs is a hero,” says the woman, flapping her hand. “There are a lot of pros in the area, what with the school and all. Let one of them take care of him. He’s a child, isn’t he? Isn’t that what UA is for?”
An ugly feeling settles in Oboro’s stomach, which he summarily flattens enough to paste a smile over it. If someone needs a hero, they’re in luck.
“Excuse me!” He says loudly. Behind him, Shouta hisses, “Shirakumo.”
The assembled trio pivot to look at him. Mostly confused, remarkably unimpressed. He sees the moment one of the men clocks his UA uniform and looks a little interested, at least, which, hey. He’ll take it.
“What seems to be the problem?” He asks. The first thing they’d learned in rescue training is that reconnaissance is key: the more you know about a situation, the more you can help, and the less chance you have of accidentally making something worse. He doesn’t know much about this particular situation yet, but what he does know—possible sick child, heroic assistance required—sounds like a rescue.
The look the three civilians fix him with is flatter than an altostratus. He can almost hear Shouta’s eyeroll behind him and spares a moment to wonder if he should have gone with something more casual.
“There’s a kid,” one guy says. He can’t tell if he’s speaking slowly because he isn’t sure himself of what’s going on or because he thinks Oboro is an idiot. “’S got something wrong with him.”
So he hadn’t misheard the sick kid comment. “Is he hurt?” he asks.
“I don’t know.”
Oboro looks to the others, but neither offers any further information. The other young man has taken out his phone and is frowning down at the time.
“Okay, well, where is he?”
“He went that way.” The guy points toward the building, and Oboro realizes that he hadn’t been looking at it at all. He must have been peering down the narrow space between this building and the next. It’s cramped and dim, barely wide enough to be called an alley. “Kind of stumbled down there and sat down.”
The old woman chimes in, with a thin smile, “Honey, just let the heroes handle it. That’s their job.”
“We’re actually training to be heroes,” says Oboro with his most confident smile. “Maybe we can help.”
“I can see that,” the woman says, the corners of her eyes crinkling. “But you’re just children. This is really something pros should be doing.”
“Maybe you’re right,” he says. “But I’d still like to have a look.”
The old woman shrugs and waves him by. When he glances back at Shouta, he can see her shuffling steadily up the street. Both men have already vanished.
“Can you get your phone ready to call an ambulance?” he asks. “Just in case the kid is hurt?”
“I don’t even know if there is a kid,” Shouta grumbles, but he pulls his phone out and unlocks it as he falls into step with Oboro. “The way they were acting, you’d think they saw a really messed-up looking raccoon.”
Oboro laughs, louder than he means to and mostly out of surprise. The sound bounces off the alley walls, fades into the cool shadow of the buildings that fall over them. In the close space, the noise from the street is a distant rumble, almost unreachable.
The kid is so small, Oboro almost misses him. The laughter dies in his throat.
He processes the scene in pieces. One, there is a child hunched against the wall of the alleyway. Two, he’s young—maybe four or five, at most. Three, his wavy, unkempt hair is blue-gray. His head is hanging so that the tangles obscure his face.
And he’s scratching, not the way someone does when a stray hair tickles their nose or they’ve been bitten by some harmless insect. Even from here, Oboro can make out the faint sound of nails grating across skin. It looks painful. It sounds painful.
He takes a step forward, but Shouta catches his arm. His gaze is locked on the miserable heap of a kid.
“Wait,” he says, voice low. “Maybe we should get a pro after all.”
“From where?” Oboro whispers back. “Do you have some kind of signal you can beam up into the sky, or something?”
Now that he thinks about it, that would actually be a great idea.
“No, but the police could send someone.”
“Then call them. I’m going to go say hi.”
He leaves Shouta casting about for a hero to flag down, somehow failing to see that there is one directly in front of him and another even closer than that.
As low as they’d kept their voices, his and Shouta’s approach hadn’t exactly been stealthy. Still, the kid doesn’t seem to have noticed their presence. He doesn’t uncurl from the little ball he’s coiled himself into. And the clawing doesn’t stop, not even when Oboro crouches down to his level.
Oboro clears his throat. The kid doesn’t even glance in his direction. Vaguely, he’s aware of Shouta coming to stand over his shoulder.
“Hey,” Oboro tries. “You okay?”
Silence. Well, not silence. Scratching. He ignores the way his stomach turns.
“Hey, kid,” he tries again. “You’re going to hurt yourself.”
In the half of a heartbeat between ‘your’ and ‘self’, the kid freezes—statue-still, with one hand on his face and the other on his neck. Oboro doesn’t even think he’s breathing. Then, his head snaps up just enough for him to peer at Oboro through the scraggly fringe of his hair. One red eye, bloodshot and glassy, fixes on him, and okay, Oboro can admit that this does not look good—and not just because the kid’s face and neck, and the visible portions of both arms, are crisscrossed with angry red lines. Some of the scratches are deep enough to bleed. Rusty, dried blood is crusted under his nails, along with dark crescents of what Oboro assumes is dirt. How long has he been out here?
This is rapidly proving itself to be a pro hero situation, but he’s already decidedly involved, and all he can do is remind himself that he and Shouta are pro hero material.
For a long, silent moment, no one moves. Oboro becomes acutely aware that his smile has dropped at some point, and he rushes to remedy that. It’s the least he can do, confronted with—whatever this is.
“Hi,” he says. The kid stares.
“My name is Oboro,” he tries. “This is Shouta.”
He waits with bated breath for Shouta to back him up—and he does, even if his “Hi,” is barely out of shocked-whisper territory. Pro hero material, he reminds himself, and his nerves settle a marginal amount.
“Do you want to tell me your name?” he prompts, angling his head to get a better look at the kid’s sunken eyes and pale, blotchy face. He’s really done a number on himself; there are clumps and patches missing from his eyelashes and brows, skin peeling where the damage is worst. “If you don’t, that’s okay, too. But it might make it easier for us to talk, ya know?”
Resounding silence. Okay then.
“Nice little spot you’ve got here,” Oboro says. At least when he’s talking, the kid is looking at him, even if his gaze is distant. He’s responsive. Ish. Oboro can work with responsive-ish.
“It’s cozy,” he says. “I’m more of an open-concept hideout person myself, but I can see the appeal.”
He chances a glance at Shouta, who has moved from staring at the kid to looking at Oboro like he’s lost his mind. He hasn’t raised his phone yet, which means that there are no police or pros on their way. That could be a good thing—they don’t know yet if seeing Shouta call for help will spook the kid or not.
Speaking of the kid—
“Tenko.” His voice is oddly raspy. “My name’s Tenko.”
Oboro smiles a little wider at that. “Hi, Tenko. It’s nice to meet you.”
Tenko mutters something indistinguishable, but it sounds kind of like an agreement, so Oboro rolls with it.
“You look like you maybe got hurt,” he says, keeping his voice light and breezy. There is no ‘maybe’ about it, but Tenko isn’t panicking yet, and there’s no sense in pointing out just how badly he’s scratched himself up. “Do you want to tell us what happened?”
Tenko stares at him. Then he stares at his own hands. He says, “It was an accident,” but he doesn’t sound sure. Something about the tone of his voice sends a chill down Oboro’s spine.
“It was an accident,” Tenko repeats suddenly. “It was an accident, I didn’t…” He trails off again, staring at Oboro. Something about the glassiness of his eyes brings Oboro back to another lesson from rescue training. Acute stress disorder, his mind supplies. Shock.
“It’s okay,” he says. “We can talk about it later, okay? Right now, let’s just focus on making sure you’re alright.” Tenko’s hands are drifting back towards his neck, and Oboro reaches out instinctively to stop him from doing any more damage.
Tenko snaps out of whatever daze he’s fallen into—or maybe he sinks farther into it. He flinches back so hard his head hits the wall behind him. He’s off-balance, falling sideways, catching himself on one hand in a way that looks painful before Oboro can reach him. The noise he makes is somewhere between a scream and a sob as he wrenches his hands back against his heaving chest, squeezing his eyes shut and curling away like he expects—something.
Oboro is frozen, one hand still hovering in the air between them. The ensuing silence is broken only by Tenko’s muffled sobs.
“Okay,” Oboro says. Tenko’s eyes fly open. He looks at Oboro like he’s seeing a ghost, but for the first time, Oboro is certain that he’s seeing him.
Tenko’s eyes fall to his own shaking hands, balled into fists against his chest. Then, oddly, to the ground. Back at Oboro. And finally, over Oboro’s shoulder. His eyes grow impossibly wider. Oboro turns and sees that Shouta’s eyes are red, his hair fluttering around his shoulders.
“It’s okay,” Shouta says, only a little awkwardly. “I erased your Quirk. Whatever it is you’re afraid of, it’s not going to happen.”
Something clicks into place in Oboro’s head a beat late. Tenko’s stiff, curled posture. His age. The careful way he holds his hands. It was an accident.
Tenko is still just staring at Shouta. Then, so, so slowly, as if he’s afraid one of them is going to reach out and slap his hands away, he brushes his fingertips against the ground. His hands are shaking badly enough that he can barely make contact. When nothing catastrophic happens, he presses both hands more firmly against the filthy asphalt and sits still and silent at the sight of them.
And then he begins to cry.
“Oh,” says Oboro, something twisting painfully in his chest. “Tenko, it’s okay—” He reaches out again before thinking better of it, but Tenko lunges at him, slams into his chest hard enough to knock the wind out of him and clings, burying his face in Oboro’s blazer. Oboro wraps him in a hug reflexively, rubs his shaking back and shushes him in between half-mindless reassurances. It’s okay, he tells him, even though it’s probably not. You’ll be okay, which he’s going to make sure of.
At some point he looks up at Shouta and sees the discomfort on his face as he fights against blinking, and Oboro quickly pulls away from Tenko under the guise of looking him over. He keeps his hands on the kid’s stick-thin arms, pressing them gently but firmly to his sides. Tenko holds himself scarily still, fingers splayed and stiff, while Shouta blinks furiously before activating Erasure again. Tenko must have figured out the correlation between his hair and his Quirk, because he slowly raises his hands and touches Oboro’s sleeves before turning to look up at Shouta like he commands the sun to rise, hung the moon, and arranged every single star in the universe.
Oboro grins at the kid’s starry-eyed expression. “Shouta’s Quirk is pretty cool, huh?”
Shouta glares, but doesn’t take his eyes off Tenko. Tenko, mystified by Erasure, doesn’t even flinch.
“Shirakumo,” says Shouta. “Maybe you should call that ambulance.”
“Oh, right.” It’s probably best for Shouta specifically to stay focused on Tenko for now. Oboro pulls his phone from his pocket.
Tenko asks, “Am I going to get in trouble?”
Oboro frowns, thumb hovering over the keypad. “Why would you be in trouble?”
Tenko looks back at his hands. “I think I did something bad.”
Oboro frowns. “You’re not in trouble, Tenko. Whatever happened, I’m sure it wasn’t your fault. It was an accident, right?”
Tenko, eyes still downcast, doesn’t answer.
Later, when Oboro and Shouta have both spoken to the police and paramedics have completed a preliminary exam right there on the sidewalk, Tenko is loaded into the back of an ambulance. They’ve given him a pair of chunky, strange-looking gloves, and covered the worst of his scratches with squares of gauze. He doesn’t look great by any means, but he looks better.
Oboro asks if he and Shouta can ride along in the ambulance. After a moment of hesitation and a sidelong glance at Tenko, fidgeting with the fingers of his new gloves, one of the paramedics acquiesces.
Tenko looks up when Oboro settles onto the seat next to him. He seems a lot more present now than he did in the alleyway, like the more people have spoken to him, the more he’s slowly started to wake up.
“Are you okay?” he asks, wide-eyed.
Oboro laughs. He’s surprised enough that it’s almost genuine, even if seeing Tenko’s clawed-up skin and sunken eyes from this close again makes his chest tight with concern. “I think I should be asking you that, buddy.”
Tenko blinks. “You’re in the ambulance.” He articulates this last word with the carefulness of a kid who’s only learned what something was called recently enough that he’s still questioning it. “They said it’s going somewhere that will make me feel better.”
Oboro puts his hand on his chin, considering. “That’s true! Do you mind if Shouta and I go, too? I think it would make us both feel better.”
Tenko is already nodding. “Yeah, okay. If it makes you feel better, you can go.”
Oboro beams. Tenko still doesn’t smile back, but the corners of his mouth twitch like he’s trying to. “Thanks, Tenko!” He raises his hand, and when the kid doesn’t react, settles it on top of his head. “You’re my hero.”