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Eri’s night light has burnt out.
It takes her a moment to realize. She wakes often at night, and most of the time just needs to turn over and pull her blankets closer to drift back to sleep.
But tonight she wakes in total darkness. It seems to press in on her, descending as soon as she is aware enough to be afraid. The shadows form shapes, towering over her from the walls and ceilings, inching closer, closer, closer —
She grabs wildly at her nightstand for her flashlight, gasping for air. Her eyes are so wide they almost ache, and yet she cannot see a thing in the pitch dark. She smacks her hand against the flashlight and hears it tumble to the floor, rolling beneath the bed.
Eri freezes.
Outside the door, she hears footsteps. Quiet but growing louder, growing closer. Slowly she reaches down, feeling for the edges of her blanket, and after finding them she pulls it over herself, pressing her body flat against the bed.
Maybe she will be invisible in the darkness, looked over like an unassuming shadow.
The door creaks open, and she lets out a sob.
“Eri?”
But it’s only Aizawa, voice rough with sleep. It doesn’t stop her from trembling, or from letting out another pitiful little sound. He will punish her, she thinks frantically, for being noisy, for being scared —
The bed shifts as he sits. She hears a low click and sees, through the blanket, light.
“What happened to your flashlight?” he asks, kindly. Still under the blanket, she points over the side of the bed. “Ah.”
He leans down, and she takes the opportunity to peek out, watching him. He straightens and holds out her flashlight for her, staying completely still while she thinks about whether or not to take it.
When she reaches out quickly to swipe it from his grasp, he doesn’t so much as flinch.
“The power’s out,” he explains, his face washed in shadow. “It should come back as soon as they switch the generators on.”
“Okay,” Eri whispers. She clutches her flashlight to her chest without turning it on.
Aizawa isn’t going to hurt her, she belatedly remembers, awash with guilt for ever forgetting. He sits there with his flashlight aimed at the wall, content to remain silent. Eri wonders if he’s waiting for her to say something.
“I wasn’t scared,” she says.
“Nobody would blame you,” he says, “for being scared.”
“I wasn’t.”
“I believe you,” he says, nodding. “You’re the bravest kid I’ve met in a long time.”
Pride wells up in her chest, momentarily chasing out the fear. “Really?”
“Yes,” he says, bluntly.
She crawls out from under the blanket and presses close to him, flicking her flashlight on and aiming it at the open doorway to banish any approaching shadow monsters.
He is like a shadow, she thinks: wrapped in darkness, moving silent and unseen — but he does this to protect people. To save them. That’s not scary at all, she realizes. She stares into the dark hallway, and imagines moving through the shadows, shaking their hands as she passes by; what secrets might they whisper to her, if she could befriend them?
“I’ll keep you safe, then,” she says, eager to prove to all the shadows how brave she truly is.