Archive of Our Own

The world didn't end all at once. It ended in pieces, in the spaces between one heartbeat and the next, in the moments people spent convincing themselves that everything was going to be fine.

Two months ago, Izuku Midoriya still believed that the worst thing that could happen to a person was losing someone they loved.

He had been wrong, of course. He would learn that eventually, in the same terrible way the rest of the world learned it, through the slow destruction of everything that had once made life feel ordinary. He would learn that there were things worse than losing someone, things that made a mockery of the very idea of grief, because grief required a body to bury, a name to say aloud, a memory you could return to when the world became too difficult to bear. He would learn what it meant to watch someone you loved disappear while their body remained standing in front of you, and he would learn that sometimes the most merciful thing a person could do was make certain that the person they had been did not have to witness what came after.

But two months ago, Izuku did not know any of that.

Two months ago, the world was still turning.

The trains still ran through Musutafu every morning, rattling along their tracks with the familiar metallic groan that could be heard from the streets below. Convenience stores still sold warm rice balls and overpriced coffee, and the old woman who owned the flower shop across from the train station still arranged fresh chrysanthemums in buckets outside her door, scolding the neighborhood children whenever they came too close with their bicycles. Television screens still showed the faces of professional heroes, their smiles bright and reassuring, while the news anchors discussed traffic accidents, rising prices, and the latest celebrity scandal with the solemnity of people who believed those were the things the public needed to worry about.

People still complained about the weather.

They still forgot their umbrellas.

They still kissed their children goodbye at the front door and promised to be home before dinner.

The world was full of a thousand little promises, and nobody thought to question them.

At U.A. High School, Class 1-A was having a particularly terrible Monday.

"You're kidding me."

Katsuki Bakugou stared at the worksheet in front of him as though the paper had personally insulted his family, which, considering the expression on his face, it might as well have done. His pencil was balanced between two fingers, tapping against the desk with a steady, increasingly violent rhythm, while the clock above the classroom door informed him that he had already wasted eleven minutes of his life on an assignment that should have taken him five.

Across the aisle, Kirishima leaned over his desk to examine the page.

"What's wrong with it?"

"Nothing's wrong with it, you idiot. It's the fact that we have to do this when we already covered it last week."

"Maybe it's review."

"Maybe you should review how to shut your damn mouth."

Kirishima laughed, completely unbothered, and leaned back in his chair just as Kaminari threw a crumpled piece of paper at the back of his head. It missed, struck Sero's shoulder instead, and triggered an argument that spread through the classroom with the effortless enthusiasm of a fire catching dry grass.

Mina was laughing so hard that she had to put her head down on her desk. Sero was insisting that the throw had been deliberate. Kaminari was insisting that he had been aiming for Kirishima, which somehow made the situation worse, and Iida had risen from his seat with both hands chopping through the air as he attempted to restore order through the sheer force of his moral conviction.

Nobody listened to him.

At the front of the classroom, Izuku Midoriya was bent over his notebook, writing something in the margins of his worksheet. He had been trying to finish the assignment for the past twenty minutes, although most of that time had been spent listening to the conversation around him and occasionally adding a thought to the increasingly crowded collection of notes that had nothing whatsoever to do with the lesson.

He was smiling.

He often smiled like that when he was surrounded by his classmates, a small, unguarded expression that made him look younger than he was, as though some part of him had never quite learned to stop being delighted by the simple fact that he was here. He had spent so much of his childhood imagining what it would be like to belong somewhere that, even now, there were moments when he caught himself looking around the classroom and feeling a little astonished.

His friends were loud. They were ridiculous. They argued over nothing, borrowed his pens without asking, stole food from one another's lunch boxes, and made so much noise that Aizawa had threatened to expel the entire class on at least four separate occasions.

Izuku loved them.

He loved them with the unembarrassed, wholehearted devotion of someone who had spent years being lonely and had finally been given something precious enough to make the world feel worth enduring.

"Kacchan," he said, glancing toward the boy sitting diagonally behind him, "you know, if you finish the worksheet now, you won't have to worry about it later."

Bakugou looked up.

"Did I ask you?"

"No, but-"

"Then keep your nose in your own damn business, Deku."

Izuku's smile widened.

"Okay."

There was something infuriating about that, Bakugou had always thought. The way Midoriya could be told to shut up and somehow come away looking as though someone had complimented him. The way he could take an insult, turn it over in his head, and find something worth smiling about in it. The way he had somehow managed to survive a childhood that should have made him bitter and emerged from it with an almost embarrassing capacity for kindness.

Bakugou had spent years pretending that it annoyed him.

He had spent even longer pretending that it was none of his business.

He would spend the rest of his life wishing he had understood, sooner, how much of that kindness he had taken for granted.

But that was two months ago, and the future was still a place where people expected to grow old.

The first reports appeared on a Tuesday.

A man had attacked three people outside a railway station in a neighboring prefecture. According to the initial news broadcast, he had appeared disoriented and violent, biting one of the responding officers before being restrained. The footage was grainy, taken from the opposite side of the street, and most of it showed nothing more remarkable than a crowd of people gathering behind the police barricades.

The news anchor described it as an isolated incident.

By Wednesday, there were six more.

By Thursday, the authorities had issued a public health advisory, advising people to avoid individuals displaying sudden confusion, extreme aggression, or unexplained physical deterioration. The Ministry of Health insisted that investigations were ongoing and urged the public not to spread unverified information online. Several hospitals had temporarily restricted visitors, although nobody could agree on why, and a video circulating on social media showed a paramedic stumbling out of an ambulance while his partner screamed for someone to help him.

The video disappeared within hours.

By Friday morning, the phrase violent neurological outbreak had begun appearing in headlines.

By Friday evening, somebody had uploaded a video of a man getting back up after being pronounced dead.

The video was only thirty seconds long. It was shaky, poorly lit, and interrupted by the terrified voice of whoever had been filming it. There was no clear explanation for what the audience was seeing, only the image of a hospital corridor, the sound of a woman crying, and a figure rising from a gurney with movements so unnatural that, for a moment, the brain struggled to understand what the eyes were witnessing.

The video ended when the person filming began to run.

Half the internet called it a hoax.

The other half watched it over and over again.

At U.A., the teachers told their students not to worry.

Aizawa told them to stop looking at their phones during lessons, to complete their assignments, and to remember that panic was rarely improved by listening to people who had no idea what they were talking about. Present Mic made a joke about the news reporters needing something dramatic to fill their airtime, and All Might appeared on television that evening to reassure the public that professional heroes were working alongside emergency services to investigate the incidents.

For a while, people believed them.

It was easy to believe that everything would be fine when the world had spent your entire life proving that it usually was.

Then, on a Monday morning, Izuku woke up to the sound of his phone vibrating against his bedside table.

It was 6:14 a.m. The sky beyond his curtains was a dull, colorless grey, and rain had begun to collect along the windowsill in little trembling beads. He reached blindly for the phone, nearly knocked his water glass onto the floor, and squinted at the screen.

A message from Iida had appeared in the class group chat.

Iida: Good morning, everyone. Please remember that attendance is mandatory today, and that recent public safety advisories should be taken seriously. And because most of you went home for the weekend I recommend leaving home earlier than usual to account for possible delays in public transportation.

Kaminari: dude it's monday

Mina: Iida do you ever sleep

Sero: bro probably has a morning routine scheduled down to the second

Kirishima: that's actually pretty manly ngl

Bakugou: IF ANY OF YOU MORONS ARE LATE I'M LEAVING WITHOUT YOU

Izuku: Good morning, Kacchan!

Bakugou: FUCK OFF

Izuku laughed quietly to himself, the sound small and warm in the stillness of his bedroom.

He had no idea that it would be the last ordinary morning he would ever have.

He showered, dressed, packed his bag, and ate breakfast while watching the morning news. There had been another incident in Yokohama overnight, the reporter explained, and authorities were now investigating whether the cases were connected. The footage behind her showed emergency vehicles gathered outside a building, their blue lights flashing against the wet pavement, while a police officer stood in front of the cameras and asked the public to remain calm.

Izuku watched for another thirty seconds before turning off the television.

He had an essay due.

He was going to be late if he missed his train.

There were a hundred ordinary things he needed to do, and the world had not yet given him a reason to stop doing them.

So he put on his shoes, picked up his bag, and left the apartment.

Outside, Musutafu looked exactly as it always had.

That was the frightening part, though he would not understand it until much later. The city had not changed its face to warn them. The streets had not emptied, the buildings had not collapsed, and the sky had not split open to reveal something monstrous waiting behind it. There were still salarymen hurrying toward the station with their collars turned up against the rain, students standing beneath the awnings of convenience stores, and a little girl tugging at her mother's sleeve because she wanted the strawberry bread displayed behind the glass.

The world did not look like it was ending.

It looked like a world that had every intention of continuing.

And that, more than anything, was why nobody ran when they still had the chance.

By the time Izuku reached U.A., the rain had stopped, leaving the pavement slick and the school grounds smelling of wet concrete, freshly cut grass, and the faint metallic tang that always seemed to hang in the air after a storm.

There was an ambulance parked beyond the main entrance.

He noticed it only because it was unusual, a white vehicle with red markings standing just outside the security gate while two members of the faculty spoke with the paramedics. One of them was Recovery Girl. The other was a man from the administration whose name Izuku could never remember, despite having been introduced to him twice. A third figure sat on the ambulance's open step, his head bowed between his knees.

There was blood on his sleeve.

Izuku slowed.

For a moment, he considered walking over to ask whether everything was all right, but the security gate was already open, and a small crowd of students was gathering near the entrance, their conversations blending into a steady murmur. One of the paramedics lifted his head, glanced in Izuku's direction, and immediately turned back to the man beside him.

The ambulance doors shut.

"Deku-Kun!"

He turned to find Uraraka hurrying toward him, her cheeks pink from the cold and her school bag bouncing against her hip.

"Morning, Uraraka!"

"Morning! Did you see the news?" She fell into step beside him, lowering her voice even though there was nobody close enough to overhear. "My dad called this morning and told me to stay home if I could, but I told him we have classes, and he said I should at least be careful on the train. Apparently, there were more incidents last night."

"I saw," Izuku said. "I think the authorities are still trying to figure out what's cousing it. Some of the symptoms sound neurological, but there are reports of people developing them almost immediately after being bitten, which is-"

"Deku."

"Right. Sorry." He rubbed the back of his neck. "I'm doing the thing again."

Uraraka smiled, but it did not quite reach her eyes.

"It's okay. I was just wondering if you thought it was serious."

Izuku looked back toward the entrance.

The ambulance was gone.

"I don't know," he admitted. "I hope not."

They found the others in the classroom, where the conversation had already shifted from the outbreak to whether Aizawa would actually make them sit through a full lesson if the situation outside continued to deteriorate. Kaminari had a news article open on his phone, and Jirou was leaning over his shoulder, reading it with a frown. Todoroki sat by the window, one hand resting against his cheek as he watched the distant street beyond the school grounds, while Yaoyorozu attempted to convince Mina that stocking up on bottled water was sensible rather than paranoid.

"It isn't paranoia if the government literally tells you to prepare for an emergency," Yaoyorozu explained.

"Yeah, but Momo, how much water do you need? Like, three bottles?"

"For an extended emergency? At least several liters per person per day, depending on the circumstances."

Kaminari stared at her. "Several liters?"

"Yes."

"That's so much water."

"You can survive longer without food than without water, Kaminari."

"Okay, well, if we're rationing anything, I'm rationing the amount of information I receive before eight in the morning."

"That's because your brain can't process it," Jirou said.

"That's because my brain is a precious resource, Jirou, and I don't waste it on things that aren't important."

"Like your homework?"

"Exactly."

"You're an idiot."

"Thank you."

Their laughter filled the room.

Izuku dropped into his seat, and for a little while, everything was fine.

Aizawa arrived at 8:02 a.m., carrying his usual battered thermos and wearing the expression of a man who had already been disappointed by humanity before breakfast. He looked tired, although that was hardly unusual, and his hair was pulled back carelessly from his face. He set his thermos on the desk, surveyed the class, and paused when he noticed that nearly half of them were staring at their phones.

"Put them away."

"But, sir-" Kaminari began.

"Now."

Phones disappeared.

Aizawa pulled up the attendance register. "Before we start, the administration has informed us that a member of the support staff has been taken to the hospital following a medical incident this morning. As a precaution, the school is limiting movement between buildings until further notice. Classes will continue as scheduled unless we're instructed otherwise."

A murmur swept through the room.

"Was it one of the people from the news?" Ashido asked.

"I don't have enough information to answer that."

"Is everyone okay?" Sero asked.

"That is also something I don't have enough information to answer."

Aizawa's gaze moved over the class, and something in his expression softened, almost imperceptibly, when he saw how many of them were trying to look unconcerned.

"Listen to me carefully. There is no reason to panic. If the situation changes, you will be informed. Until then, I expect all of you to remain in the classroom and follow instructions."

It was the kind of thing teachers said when they wanted their students to feel safe, and for a little while, it worked.

The lesson began.

Outside, a siren wailed somewhere in the distance.

Nobody paid much attention to it.

At 9:17 a.m., the school's emergency alert system activated for the first time.

The noise was so sudden and so loud that several students jumped in their seats. A sharp electronic tone rang through the classroom, followed by a recorded announcement instructing all students and staff to remain indoors until further notice.

Aizawa stopped speaking.

He looked toward the ceiling, listening to the announcement, and then reached for his phone.

"Everyone stay where you are."

He stepped into the hallway.

For several seconds, the class remained quiet.

Then Kaminari leaned toward Sero and whispered, "If this is a drill, I'm transferring."

"You're not transferring anywhere."

"I'm serious. I'm going to a school that respects my right to have a peaceful morning."

Jirou rolled her eyes, but Izuku noticed that she had stopped smiling. She was watching the door, one hand resting against the jack in her earlobe, her attention fixed on the hallway beyond it.

The emergency announcement repeated.

Somewhere downstairs, a door slammed.

Then came a scream.

It was not the startled, brief sort of scream someone made when they dropped a glass or discovered a spider in the bathroom. It was long and ragged, abruptly cut off in a way that made every student in the classroom go still.

For a moment, nobody moved.

Izuku felt the hair rise along his arms.

"What was that?" Mina whispered.

Nobody answered.

Another scream followed, closer this time, and then the sound of running footsteps, several people moving at once, their shoes striking the corridor in a frantic, uneven rhythm.

The classroom door flew open.

A student from Class 1-B stumbled inside, his face white, his tie hanging loose around his neck. There was blood on his collar, and he was breathing so hard that he could barely speak.

"Lock the doors," he gasped. "Lock the fucking doors!"

Aizawa appeared behind him.

"Everybody away from the entrance," he ordered, and the sudden authority in his voice was enough to make the class obey before they even understood why.

The student from 1-B turned.

Something struck him from the hallway.

He went down so quickly that Izuku did not understand what he was seeing until the figure on top of him lifted its head, its mouth red, its movements frantic and animalistic. The student screamed. The thing bent over him again, and blood spattered across the floor.

For one impossible second, the entire class watched.

Then Aizawa's capture weapon snapped through the air.

It wrapped around the attacker's neck and shoulders, dragging it away from the boy on the floor. Aizawa pulled hard, his expression changing from confusion to horror as the creature twisted in his grip with a strength that did not belong to something so badly injured.

"Get back!" he shouted.

Todoroki moved first.

Ice surged across the floor, sealing the doorway in a jagged wall that reached nearly to the ceiling. Aizawa hauled the injured student backward while Bakugou grabbed Kaminari by the collar and dragged him away from the entrance.

The creature struck the ice.

Once.

Twice.

Its hands slammed against the frozen surface, leaving dark red smears behind.

It did not stop.

It did not seem to feel the cold.

It only kept hitting the barrier, its mouth opening and closing around sounds that might once have been words.

Mina began to cry.

"Oh my God," she whispered. "Oh my God, oh my God-"

"Everyone stay calm!" Iida shouted, though his voice cracked on the last word. "We need to assess the situation before-"

The injured student collapsed.

Aizawa caught him beneath the arms, lowering him carefully to the floor. "Recovery Girl! Someone get Recovery Girl!"

The boy's eyes were wide and glassy. His fingers had closed around Aizawa's sleeve, gripping it with the desperate strength of someone who knew he was dying and had not yet found the courage to say so.

"Sensei," he whispered.

Aizawa leaned closer.

The boy tried to speak again, but his jaw trembled. Blood gathered at the corner of his mouth, and his fingers tightened around Aizawa's sleeve.

"Please."

Aizawa's face changed.

Izuku had seen his teacher angry, exhausted, irritated, and even quietly pleased on rare occasions, but he had never seen him look so helpless. There was a terrible gentleness in the way he held the boy's shoulders, the way he kept telling him to stay awake, to keep breathing, to look at him.

Then the boy stopped moving.

Nobody in the room breathed.

Aizawa pressed two fingers against his neck.

He waited.

The boy's head rolled to one side.

"Sensei?" Kirishima whispered.

Aizawa did not answer.

The emergency announcement began again, its calm, automated voice echoing through the building as though nothing had happened, as though the world could still be reduced to a sequence of sensible instructions.

All students and staff are to remain indoors. Please await further information from the administration.

The thing behind the ice struck the barrier again.

Aizawa stood slowly.

"Nobody touches him," he said.

Izuku stared at the boy on the floor.

He had seen death before. He had seen the aftermath of villain attacks, the injuries heroes carried home, the terrible consequences of people deciding that someone else's life was an acceptable price to pay for their ambitions. He understood, intellectually, that people died. It was a fact he had been forced to confront long before he entered U.A.

But there was something different about watching a person die in a classroom on an ordinary Monday morning, beneath fluorescent lights, with a half-finished worksheet still lying on the desk beside him.

There was something different about realizing that the world had not given them time to prepare.

The boy's fingers twitched.

Aizawa turned back.

"Get away from him!"

The boy's eyes opened.

He moved with such sudden violence that Aizawa barely had time to react. His teeth snapped against the sleeve of the capture weapon as he lunged forward, and when Aizawa jerked backward, the boy followed, his limbs jerking beneath him in a grotesque imitation of movement.

Mina screamed.

Bakugou swore.

Todoroki's ice shot across the floor, freezing the boy's legs in place, and Aizawa stumbled backward as the creature strained against the ice with a strength that made no sense.

It had been dead.

Izuku had watched it die.

He had watched Aizawa check for a pulse, watched the blood stop moving beneath the boy's skin, watched his head fall to one side.

And now it was trying to bite them.

"Out!" Aizawa shouted. "Everyone, out of this room!"

The class surged toward the opposite door, tripping over chairs and one another, their fear erupting all at once. Iida grabbed Mina's hand. Kirishima pulled Sero upright when he stumbled. Yaoyorozu was shouting instructions, trying to keep everyone together, while Jirou stood frozen beside her desk, staring at the creature on the floor as though her mind had simply refused to accept what her eyes were telling her.

Izuku caught her arm.

"Jirou, come on!"

She looked at him.

Her eyes were enormous.

"He's dead," she whispered.

"I know."

"He's dead, Izuku."

"I know. I know, but we have to go."

She let him pull her toward the door.

Behind them, Aizawa was still fighting to keep the creature restrained, his capture weapon wrapped tightly around its shoulders while Todoroki's ice spread farther across the floor.

He looked up when Izuku passed.

For a moment, their eyes met.

"Midoriya!" he shouted. "Get your classmates somewhere safe. Don't come back for me!"

Izuku wanted to argue.

He wanted to say that they could help him, that they could find a way to restrain the thing without hurting their teacher, that they could somehow turn this into another terrible day at U.A. that would eventually become a story they told each other years later.

But the creature lunged again, and Aizawa's attention snapped back to it.

Izuku ran.

He ran until the classroom disappeared behind him, until the screams and the pounding of fists against ice became indistinguishable from the thunder of his own heartbeat, until he reached the stairwell and found the rest of his class huddled together beneath the emergency exit sign.

There were twenty of them.

There had been twenty of them when they arrived that morning, loud and alive and complaining about homework.

Now they stood in a stairwell with blood on the floor above them, listening to the sounds of their school falling apart.

And somewhere beyond the walls, the city was beginning to scream.

They barricaded themselves in a classroom on the second floor.

It was not a particularly good plan, Yaoyorozu was the first to point that out, but it was the only one they had. The windows overlooked the training grounds, where a handful of students were running toward the main building while a teacher shouted at them to turn back. One of the students fell. The others kept running.

Nobody went to help him.

Nobody could.

Todoroki froze the classroom door shut, reinforcing it with a thick layer of ice, and Bakugou dragged two desks across the floor to brace it. Iida paced between the windows and the door, insisting that they needed to establish communication with the administration, while Kaminari sat on the floor with his phone pressed against his ear, listening to the call fail again and again.

"Come on," he whispered. "Come on, come on, come on."

"Is there any signal?" Jirou asked.

"There's signal. The network's just-" He swallowed. "I don't know. It's not going through."

"Try texting."

"I have been texting!"

"Then stop shouting at your phone and try again."

Kaminari looked at her.

For once, Jirou did not have a sarcastic remark ready. Her face was pale, her lips pressed together so tightly that they had almost lost their color, and the hand resting against her knee was trembling.

Kaminari lowered his voice.

"Sorry."

She shook her head.

"It's fine."

It was not fine.

None of it was fine.

Izuku stood by the window, watching the training grounds below. He could see the main gate from where he was standing, although the view was partially obscured by the branches of the trees along the path. Beyond the gate, a line of cars had come to a standstill in the street, their horns blaring in a cacophony that seemed to have no beginning and no end.

A man was running between them.

Another figure chased him.

The man stumbled, fell against the hood of a car, and tried to scramble away, but the figure caught him before he could stand. They disappeared behind the vehicle.

Izuku looked away.

He could not make himself look back.

"Midoriya."

Todoroki stood beside him, his expression carefully controlled.

"Have you heard from anyone outside the school?"

Izuku shook his head. "No. I tried calling my mom, but it didn't connect."

Todoroki's gaze shifted toward the street.

"My father hasn't answered either."

There was a pause.

Then Todoroki said, very quietly, "I don't think this is contained to the school."

Izuku wanted to tell him he was wrong.

He wanted to tell him that the authorities would find a solution, that professional heroes were already responding, that the government would not allow something like this to spread unchecked. He wanted to believe that there was still a system in place to protect them, something larger and stronger than twenty frightened teenagers trapped in a classroom.

Instead, he looked at the cars beyond the gate, at the figures moving between them, and felt the first thin crack appear in the foundation of everything he had believed about the world.

"No," he said. "I don't think it is either."

A crash sounded somewhere downstairs.

Everyone turned toward the door.

There were footsteps in the corridor, followed by a series of sharp impacts that made the ice tremble in its frame. Someone was shouting for help. The voice was distant and muffled, but Izuku recognized it immediately.

"Please! Somebody, please!"

Mina clapped both hands over her mouth.

"That's Sakamoto," she whispered. "He's from the general studies course."

The footsteps grew louder.

Something slammed against the classroom door.

"Help me!"

Another impact.

Then a wet, horrible sound.

The shouting stopped.

Nobody moved.

The silence that followed was worse than the screaming, because it left room for the imagination to become cruel. Izuku could picture someone lying on the floor outside, could picture a hand reaching toward the door, could picture the face of a boy he had passed in the hallway dozens of times without ever learning his first name.

He hated himself for not knowing his name.

He hated himself for thinking about it when there were so many other things he should have been thinking about.

Then came a knock.

Three gentle taps against the ice.

Everyone froze.

"Students?"

Aizawa's voice came from the other side.

Izuku's heart lurched.

"Sensei?"

"Open the door."

Todoroki was already moving toward the barrier, his shoulders relaxing with the first genuine relief Izuku had seen on his face all morning.

"Wait," Bakugou said.

Everyone turned.

Bakugou stood beside the desks, his hands clenched at his sides. His expression was hard, but there was something in his eyes that Izuku had learned to recognize over the years, a sharp, instinctive suspicion that appeared when something did not fit the way it should.

"What?" Kirishima asked.

Bakugou did not answer immediately.

He looked toward the door.

"Ask him something."

"What?" Mina whispered.

"Something only he would know."

"Bakugou, that's our teacher," Iida said, scandalized. "Of course we know it's him."

"Then asking him a question shouldn't be a fucking problem, should it?"

Nobody spoke.

On the other side of the door, Aizawa knocked again.

"Open it. Now."

Todoroki stopped with his hand against the ice.

Izuku swallowed.

"Sensei? Are you hurt?"

A pause.

"Midoriya. Open the door."

The voice was right.

The tone was right.

Even the irritation sounded right, and Izuku felt ashamed of himself for hesitating, because Aizawa was their teacher, because he had told them to find somewhere safe, because he had stayed behind so that they could escape.

Then Aizawa spoke again.

"Please."

It was a small word.

A familiar word, spoken in a voice that should never have needed to ask it of them.

And yet, somehow, it sounded wrong.

Izuku looked at Bakugou.

Bakugou was staring at the door with an expression of such concentrated dread that Izuku felt his stomach turn cold.

"Don't," Bakugou said.

The first scream came from the other side of the door.

It was Aizawa's voice.

Izuku knew it was his voice because he had heard their teacher shout in anger, had heard him bark orders across training grounds, had heard him mutter curses beneath his breath when the class had done something particularly stupid. He knew the sound of that voice as well as he knew the voices of his friends.

And now it was screaming.

The ice shuddered beneath a sudden, violent impact.

A crack appeared in the barrier.

Then another.

Todoroki staggered backward, his hand flying to his mouth.

"No," he whispered.

The thing on the other side struck the door again.

The ice split.

Aizawa's face appeared through the widening gap, pale beneath the harsh lights of the corridor, his hair hanging loose around his shoulders. There was blood on his throat, soaking through the collar of his shirt, and one of his eyes had gone cloudy, its gaze drifting without focus across the classroom.

For a heartbeat, he looked almost like himself.

Then he saw them.

His mouth opened.

He lunged.

The barrier shattered.

Todoroki reacted on instinct, throwing both hands forward as ice erupted from the floor, climbing over Aizawa's boots, swallowing his ankles, and racing upward with terrifying speed. Aizawa thrashed against it, his hands clawing at the frozen surface, his teeth snapping shut on empty air as the ice climbed past his knees.

"Sensei!" Izuku shouted.

He took a step forward.

Bakugou caught him by the back of his uniform and yanked him away so hard that Izuku nearly fell.

"Don't you fucking dare!"

Aizawa's hands reached for them.

Todoroki's face had gone white.

"I can't-" he whispered. "I can't stop it."

"Keep going!" Bakugou shouted.

The ice rose to Aizawa's waist.

His capture weapon dragged across the floor, useless now, and the sound of his body striking the frozen barrier made a horrible, hollow noise that Izuku knew he would hear in his nightmares for the rest of his life.

Aizawa looked at them.

For one terrible second, his gaze seemed to clear.

His mouth moved.

Izuku could not hear what he said.

Then the ice swallowed his chest, his shoulders, his throat, until only his face remained visible, his mouth open in a silent snarl, his one clear eye fixed on the students he had spent years trying to keep alive.

Todoroki stopped.

The classroom went quiet.

He stood with both hands raised, breathing so hard that his shoulders shook, staring at the teacher he had just imprisoned in ice. There were tears running down his face, but he did not seem to notice them.

Nobody spoke.

Nobody knew what to say.

It was Bakugou who broke the silence.

"We're leaving."

Iida turned toward him, his expression stricken. "We can't just abandon U.A. We need to contact the authorities, we need to-"

"The authorities aren't coming!"

"You don't know that!"

"Then where the hell are they, Four-Eyes? Where are the heroes? Where's All Might? Where's anyone who can tell us what the fuck is happening?"

Iida's mouth opened.

Nothing came out.

Bakugou looked around the room, his expression twisted with anger and something much more frightened beneath it.

"We stay here, we're dead. We wait for someone to save us, we're dead. So unless one of you has a better fucking idea, we're getting out of this school before that thing breaks through the ice."

No one argued.

Perhaps because they knew he was right.

Perhaps because, for the first time in their lives, they had realized that being heroes did not mean they were exempt from being afraid.

Izuku looked at the frozen shape of Aizawa one last time.

He wanted to remember his teacher as he had been: exhausted, irritable, wrapped in his sleeping bag, scolding them for being too loud. He wanted to remember the way Aizawa had stood in front of them during the USJ attack, the way he had fought villains despite knowing that he was outnumbered, the way he had always seemed to appear exactly when one of them needed him.

He wanted to remember a man who had lived.

But the thing inside the ice was still moving.

And so Izuku turned away.

They gathered what they could carry.

Yaoyorozu made knives, makeshift clubs, and a handful of small tools from the materials in the classroom, though she admitted that creating anything more complicated would require more food than she had eaten that morning. Todoroki reinforced the doors behind them, freezing the hinges and locking the corridors into place wherever he could. Iida volunteered to scout the stairwell, but Bakugou refused to let anyone go alone, and after a brief argument, they moved together.

They found the first body on the landing.

It was a teacher.

Nobody recognized him at first, because his face had been turned toward the wall, and the blood beneath him had begun to spread across the floor in a dark, sticky pool. When Kirishima stepped forward to check whether he was breathing, the body jerked.

Kirishima stumbled backward.

The teacher rolled over.

His mouth opened.

"Run!" Bakugou shouted.

They ran.

The stairwell became a blur of frantic movement, the sound of their shoes striking the steps mingling with the pounding of their hearts. Something chased them from the floor above. Another creature appeared at the bottom of the stairs, stumbling toward them with its arms outstretched, and Todoroki sent a wave of ice across the landing that swept it off its feet.

They reached the ground floor.

The hallway was a nightmare.

Desks had been overturned. Papers lay scattered across the floor, their edges darkened with blood. A fire alarm rang somewhere in the building, and smoke drifted from a classroom at the far end of the corridor. The walls were streaked with red where people had dragged themselves toward the exits, leaving behind trails that disappeared beneath the doors.

Izuku saw a familiar pair of shoes sticking out from beneath a pile of fallen lockers.

He did not look at the face.

He could not.

They made it to the administrative building by sheer luck, slipping through a side corridor that led toward the storage rooms. The main entrance was blocked by a cluster of infected, their bodies pressed against the glass doors, their hands striking the surface in a mindless rhythm.

Beyond them, the school gates stood open.

The sight of the outside world should have been a relief.

Instead, Izuku could only think about the distance between here and there, about how much could happen in the space of a few hundred meters, about the fact that the people beyond the gates were no longer necessarily people who could be trusted to help them.

"We need supplies," Yaoyorozu whispered.

"We need weapons," Jirou corrected.

"We need both," Yaoyorozu replied, though her voice had begun to tremble. "There should be emergency equipment in the storage room. First-aid kits, flashlights, bottled water, possibly some of the supplies intended for field training."

"Then we get them and go," Bakugou said.

They found the storage room locked.

For a moment, nobody spoke.

Then Yaoyorozu pressed her palm against the door, closed her eyes, and concentrated. A small metal key emerged from her skin, falling into her hand with a soft clink.

"That," Kaminari whispered, "is the coolest thing I've ever seen."

"Please don't make me regret saving your life," she said.

He gave her a shaky smile.

"Wouldn't dream of it."

The door opened.

Inside, they found backpacks, rope, flashlights, water bottles, emergency blankets, a collection of first-aid kits, and several boxes of ration bars intended for training exercises. It was not much, but it was enough to make the difference between having a plan and walking into the world with nothing but their school bags.

Yaoyorozu distributed the supplies with the calm efficiency of someone determined not to let fear interfere with her judgment. She gave everyone a backpack, divided the food as evenly as she could, and made sure that the first-aid kits were packed where they could be reached quickly.

She did not tell them how much creating the equipment had taken out of her.

Izuku noticed the slight tremor in her hands.

He said nothing.

There were too many things they could not afford to talk about yet.

When they reached the side exit, Bakugou stopped them before anyone could open the door.

"Listen up. We don't know how many of those things are outside, and we don't know what happens if they bite us. We saw what happened to that kid, and we saw what happened to Aizawa. If one of us gets bitten, we don't hide it. We don't pretend it's nothing, and we don't wait until it's too late to tell everyone."

Nobody answered.

Bakugou's jaw tightened.

"Say it."

"I understand," Iida said.

One by one, the others echoed him.

Izuku looked at Bakugou.

Their eyes met.

For a moment, Bakugou's expression softened, and Izuku saw the boy he had known for years beneath the fear and the anger, the boy who had always run toward danger because he could not bear the thought of standing still while someone else suffered.

"Got it, Deku?"

Izuku nodded.

"Got it."

Bakugou looked away.

"Good. Let's go."

They opened the door.

The world beyond U.A. was waiting.

The first thing Izuku noticed about the outside world was the smell.

Inside the school, the air had been thick with smoke, blood, and the sharp chemical scent of the cleaning products that U.A. used on its floors. Outside, the smell was worse. It was a mixture of exhaust fumes, wet asphalt, and something sour that seemed to cling to the back of his throat, something he could not identify until he saw the bodies scattered across the street.

The second thing he noticed was the noise.

Car alarms blared from the intersection. Somewhere, a building's fire alarm was ringing continuously. Glass shattered in the distance, followed by the sound of someone shouting for help, and the city seemed to have become a place where every ordinary noise had been turned into a warning.

The third thing he noticed was that nobody was coming to save them.

They moved along the narrow street beside the school, keeping close to the buildings and avoiding the main road whenever possible. Bakugou took the lead, his palms crackling with small, controlled explosions that illuminated the pavement in brief flashes of orange. Todoroki walked behind him, one hand ready to summon ice, while Iida and Kirishima guarded the rear.

Izuku stayed close to Uraraka.

He did not mean to. It simply happened, the way it had always happened during dangerous training exercises, when he found himself moving toward the people he wanted to protect before he had time to think about what he was doing.

Uraraka noticed.

She reached over and squeezed his hand.

"I'm okay," she whispered.

Izuku nodded, though he was not entirely sure whether he was answering her or himself.

They made it three streets before the first of them fell.

Ojiro had been walking beside Sero when they heard the sound of glass breaking behind them. He turned instinctively, his tail whipping around as he caught sight of a figure stumbling out of a narrow alleyway. The infected man was wearing a torn business suit, his shirt soakedd dark with blood, and his movements were so unsteady that Ojiro hesitated for half a second.

Half a second was enough.

The man lunged.

Ojiro shoved Sero out of the way, but the infected caught his arm before he could retreat. They went down together, crashing against the pavement, and Ojiro screamed as the man's teeth sank into his shoulder.

Kirishima reached them first.

He struck the infected across the head with a metal pipe, sending it sprawling, then grabbed Ojiro by the collar and dragged him backward. Bakugou's explosion tore through the alley, filling the narrow space with smoke and the sharp crack of breaking stone.

The infected did not get up again.

For a moment, all anyone could hear was Ojiro's breathing.

Then Sero saw the blood.

"No," he whispered.

Ojiro looked down at his shoulder.

His face went white.

"It's okay," he said immediately, too quickly, as though he could make the words true by saying them before anyone else had a chance to speak. "It's okay. It barely got me."

Nobody answered.

Ojiro pressed his hand against the wound.

Blood seeped between his fingers.

"Guys."

His voice cracked.

"Guys, it's okay."

Kirishima crouched beside him, his hands hovering uselessly above the injury. "We can bandage it. We can-"

"Don't."

Ojiro looked up at him.

There was fear in his eyes, but there was something else too, something quieter and more painful than fear.

He had understood.

They all had.

"Please," Ojiro whispered. "Don't make me do this in front of you."

Kirishima's face crumpled.

"No, man. Come on. Don't say that."

Ojiro swallowed.

He looked around at his classmates, at the faces he had known for months, at the people he had trained beside and eaten lunch with and argued with over things that no longer mattered. His gaze lingered on Sero, who was shaking his head over and over again, tears running down his cheeks.

"I'm sorry," Ojiro said.

Then he pushed himself to his feet.

He did not look back as he ran toward the alley.

Kirishima took a step after him.

Bakugou caught his arm.

"Don't."

"Let go of me!"

"Kirishima!"

"He's our friend!"

"I KNOW!"

The words tore out of Bakugou so violently that everyone went silent.

For a moment, he looked as though he might strike Kirishima, or himself, or anything within reach that could give him somewhere to put the pain. His hands were shaking. His eyes were bright with furious, helpless tears.

Then a sound came from the alley.

A scream.

It lasted only a few seconds.

Afterward, there was nothing.

Sero folded in on himself, both hands pressed over his mouth, and Kirishima stood perfectly still, staring at the place where Ojiro had disappeared.

Nobody tried to comfort them.

There was nothing they could say that would make it better.

They left Ojiro behind because the living had to keep moving, and because the dead had begun to teach them a terrible lesson: sometimes, love was not enough to make a person worth saving.

They had barely reached the next intersection when they lost Aoyama.

He had been quiet since they left U.A., walking with his arms wrapped tightly around himself, his gaze darting toward every shadow and every doorway. Izuku had tried to reassure him, had told him that they would find somewhere safe, that they only needed to get beyond the city center and locate a place where they could regroup.

Aoyama had nodded.

He had even smiled.

It was a small, trembling thing, but it had been a smile, and Izuku had been grateful for it.

Then they reached the shopping district.

The street was blocked by abandoned cars, their doors hanging open, their windows shattered. Several infected wandered between the vehicles, moving slowly until they caught sight of the group, at which point their heads snapped toward them with a horrible, synchronized precision.

"Keep moving," Bakugou ordered.

They tried.

For a few seconds, it worked. Todoroki froze the nearest infected, Kirishima shoved an overturned scooter out of the way, and Iida used his engines to carry two of the slower students past a gap between the cars.

Then a little girl appeared in the window of a nearby convenience store.

She could not have been older than six.

She was crying, her small hands pressed against the glass, and when she saw the group, she began pounding on the window with desperate, frantic movements.

"Mommy!" she screamed. "Mommy, please!"

Aoyama stopped.

Izuku saw it happen, saw the exact moment when the boy's attention shifted away from the infected and fixed on the child, saw his expression change as the instinct to help overwhelmed the fear that had kept him moving.

"Aoyama," Yaoyorozu said sharply. "Don't."

The little girl struck the glass again.

Aoyama took a step toward her.

"Aoyama, wait!"

He did not seem to hear them.

He was staring at the girl, his face crumpling with a grief that had nothing to do with her and everything to do with the fact that there was a child in the world who was frightened and alone, and he could not bear to leave her that way.

"I can get her," he whispered.

Izuku reached for him.

"Aoyama, no!"

But Aoyama was already running.

He crossed the street, slipping between the abandoned cars, and reached the convenience store just as the infected began pouring out of the side alley. He struck the glass with his fist, shouting for the girl to move away from the door, and for a moment, Izuku thought he might actually make it.

Then something grabbed him from behind.

Aoyama screamed.

His hands scrabbled against the glass as he tried to pull himself free, and the little girl inside the store began screaming too, her small face pressed against the window as she watched him disappear beneath the figures gathering around him.

Izuku ran forward.

Bakugou caught him around the waist.

"NO!"

"LET ME GO!"

"YOU CAN'T HELP HIM!"

"I CAN'T JUST LEAVE HIM!"

"HE'S ALREADY GONE!"

The words struck harder than any explosion.

Izuku stopped fighting.

For one awful second, he stood there, watching the place where Aoyama had fallen, listening to the little girl's screams, feeling Bakugou's arms locked around him as though he were the only thing keeping Izuku from throwing himself into the same fate.

Then the girl disappeared from the window.

The screaming stopped.

Izuku could not tell whether she had run away or whether something had reached her too.

He would never know.

They ran again.

By the time they reached the edge of the shopping district, the group had lost two people, and the world had become a place where every decision seemed to end with someone dying.

Mineta was next.

It happened in a parking garage, beneath the flickering lights of a building that had been abandoned so quickly that several cars still had their engines running. They had taken shelter there because the street outside was crawling with infected, and Yaoyorozu had suggested that they use the underground levels to reach a quieter road on the other side.

They were halfway down the second ramp when the infected came out of the stairwell.

There were too many of them.

Todoroki froze the first row, but the others kept coming, stumbling over the bodies of their companions, their hands scraping against the concrete. Bakugou's explosions filled the garage with flashes of light, and Kirishima charged forward to hold them back while Iida shouted for everyone to move.

Mineta froze.

It was not the first time he had been frightened, and it would not have been fair to pretend otherwise. He had always been afraid of getting hurt, afraid of being laughed at, afraid that the world would eventually discover how small and ordinary he felt beneath all the bravado he wore like armor.

But there had always been teachers, rules, and heroes between him and the worst things the world could do.

There had always been someone else who could step in.

Now, there was nobody.

His hands shook so badly that he dropped the weapon Yaoyorozu had made for him. It struck the concrete with a hollow clatter, and when he tried to pick it up, his fingers would not close around the handle.

"I can't," he whispered.

Kaminari grabbed his arm.

"Mineta, come on!"

"I can't!"

"Get up!"

"I CAN'T!"

The infected were getting closer.

Kirishima shouted for them to hurry. Bakugou was trying to keep the nearest creatures away from the group, but every explosion seemed to draw more of them from the shadows.

Mineta looked at the ramp.

Then he looked at his classmates.

His face crumpled.

"I'm sorry," he whispered.

Kaminari's grip tightened.

"What?"

"I'm sorry."

He pulled his arm free.

Then, before anyone could stop him, he turned and ran in the opposite direction.

For a moment, they watched him go.

He disappeared around the bend of the ramp, his footsteps echoing through the garage, and then the infected followed him.

Kaminari made a broken sound.

He tried to run after him.

Kirishima caught him this time.

"Let me go!"

"Kaminari, no!"

"HE'S OUR FRIEND!"

"I KNOW!"

The infected rounded the corner.

They had no choice.

They ran.

They did not hear Mineta scream, although later, in the long, terrible hours that followed, each of them would remember his final words and wonder whether he had known he was leaving them for the last time.

They would remember him as a boy who had been frightened, who had made mistakes, who had often been difficult to like, and who had nevertheless sat beside them in class and laughed at their jokes and dreamed of becoming a hero.

They would remember that he had been fifteen, sixteen, seventeen years old, depending on the calendar and the way they counted the time, and that he had deserved a future just as much as any of them.

And they would remember that, even when the world ended, he had been afraid.

As if fear were something only cowards were allowed to feel.

The warehouse district was supposed to be a shortcut.

It was a sprawling collection of industrial buildings on the eastern side of Musutafu, a maze of loading docks, storage facilities, and narrow service roads that would have been almost deserted on an ordinary afternoon. Now, it was full of abandoned delivery trucks and the distant sounds of people moving behind locked doors.

They entered through a broken gate.

Sato was the first to notice the infected gathering near the far end of the road.

"There's too many," he said.

Tokoyami stepped beside him, Dark Shadow rising over his shoulder in a restless, shifting mass.

"We must proceed with caution."

"Yeah," Sato replied, his voice strangely calm. "I think we've done enough running for one day."

Jirou looked between them.

"What does that mean?"

Sato smiled at her.

It was a tired smile, but a genuine one, and for a moment he looked like the boy who used to bring homemade sweets to class and pretend he had made too many, even though everyone knew he had baked them specifically for his friends.

"It means you should get moving."

"No," Jirou said immediately.

Tokoyami looked at her.

"Kyoka."

"No. Absolutely not. I'm not leaving you two here."

"You are," Sato said.

"Like hell I am!"

The infected had begun moving toward them.

Yaoyorozu reached for Jirou's hand, but Jirou pulled away, her eyes fixed on the boys standing in front of them.

Tokoyami's expression was solemn, but there was no hesitation in it.

"Some battles are not meant to be won," he said. "Only endured long enough for others to escape."

"Stop talking like you're already dead!" Jirou shouted.

For a moment, Tokoyami looked almost startled.

Then he smiled.

It was a small, sad expression, one that seemed too old for his face.

"Then remember us as we were."

Dark Shadow surged forward.

The infected recoiled as the enormous shadow swept across the road, knocking several of them into the abandoned trucks. Sato grabbed a fallen metal barrier and slammed it across the narrow entrance to the loading yard, buying the others a few precious seconds.

"GO!" he shouted.

Yaoyorozu dragged Jirou backward.

Jirou fought her with everything she had, her voice breaking as she screamed their names, but Sato had already turned toward the approaching infected, and Tokoyami stood beside him, Dark Shadow spreading like a living storm.

The last thing Izuku saw was Sato laughing.

Not because anything was funny. Because he was frightened, and tired, and trying to make the ending a little less terrible for the people he loved.

Then the infected swallowed them.

Yaoyorozu fell to her knees once they were out of sight.

Jirou made a sound that Izuku had never heard from another human being, something raw and disbelieving that seemed to come from a place deeper than grief. She pressed both hands against her mouth, shaking so violently that Yaoyorozu had to hold her upright.

Nobody told her to be quiet.

Nobody told her that they had to keep moving.

They all stood there for a moment, listening to the distant sounds of the warehouse district, until Bakugou turned away and began walking.

He did not look back.

They found a pharmacy on their first night.

It had been broken into, its shelves overturned and its glass front shattered, but there were still a few unopened bottles of water behind the counter and enough medical supplies to refill their first-aid kits. Yaoyorozu found a roll of bandages, a bottle of antiseptic, and several packets of painkillers. Iida discovered a box of disposable gloves beneath the sink. Uraraka found a packet of strawberry candies wedged behind a shelf, and for a moment she stared at them as though they were something extraordinary.

"Does anyone want one?" she asked.

Nobody did.

She put them in her pocket anyway.

They spent the night in the storage room at the back of the pharmacy, barricading the door with a fallen shelf and taking turns keeping watch. Nobody slept properly. Every time a noise came from the street, half the group woke with their hands wrapped around whatever weapon they had managed to find, and whenever someone shifted in their sleep, the others watched them with the quiet, desperate suspicion of people who had learned that the human body could betray them without warning.

At three in the morning, Kirishima sat down beside Izuku.

"You think Ojiro made it?"

Izuku stared at the wall.

He knew what Kirishima wanted him to say. He wanted someone to tell him that Ojiro had found a hiding place, that Aoyama had somehow escaped the infected outside the convenience store, that Sato and Tokoyami were still alive somewhere in the warehouse district, fighting their way toward safety.

He wanted to believe that the people they had lost were not really lost at all, that somewhere beyond the reach of their grief, there was still a world in which their friends could survive.

But Izuku had seen the blood.

He had heard the screams.

And he had watched too many people stop moving to lie to Kirishima now.

"I don't know," he said.

Kirishima nodded.

For a while, neither of them spoke.

Then Kirishima rubbed his face with both hands and let out a shaky breath.

"I keep thinking about how stupid it is."

"What is?"

"Everything." He laughed, but the sound was bitter and broken. "Yesterday, I was complaining about having to run laps. I was thinking about what I wanted to eat after school, and whether I'd have enough money to buy a new pair of shoes this weekend. And now I'm sitting in a pharmacy, wondering if my friends are dead, and I can't even remember what I was complaining about."

Izuku looked down at his hands.

"I remember," he whispered.

Kirishima glanced at him.

"Remember what?"

"What I was complaining about." Izuku swallowed. "I had an essay due today. I was worried I'd forgotten to cite one of my sources, and I was thinking about asking Kacchan if he'd finished his worksheet because I didn't want him to get in trouble with Aizawa."

For some reason, that was what broke him.

Not the blood. Not the screaming. Not even the terrible silence that had followed the moment Ojiro disappeared into the alley.

It was the memory of an ordinary morning, of a stupid assignment, of a life so familiar that he had never thought to be grateful for it.

His shoulders began to shake.

Kirishima put an arm around him, and Izuku buried his face against his friend's shoulder, crying as quietly as he could because the infected were still outside, because the world had become a place where even grief had to be rationed, and because he did not know how much longer he could keep pretending that he was strong enough to survive this.

Across the room, Bakugou watched them.

He had been sitting beside the door, his knees drawn up, his hands resting loosely on his thighs. He looked exhausted. There was a smear of dried blood across his cheek that did not belong to him, and his uniform was torn at the shoulder, but he had refused to let Yaoyorozu examine the injury because he insisted it was nothing.

He had not cried once.

Izuku wondered whether that was because Bakugou was stronger than the rest of them, or because he had simply forgotten how.

When Kirishima eventually fell asleep, Bakugou moved across the room and crouched beside Izuku.

"Get some rest."

Izuku wiped his face with his sleeve.

"I can't."

"You can."

"What if someone comes?"

"Then I'll wake you up."

"What if-”

"Deku."

Bakugou's voice was quieter than usual.

Izuku looked at him.

For a moment, Bakugou seemed to struggle with something he did not know how to say. His eyes flicked toward the door, then back to Izuku, and he reached out as though he intended to touch his shoulder before stopping himself halfway.

"You don't have to watch everything," he said finally. "You know that, right?"

Izuku stared at him.

Bakugou looked away.

"You don't have to see every damn thing that happens. You can close your eyes sometimes."

Izuku wanted to tell him that he did not know how to do that anymore.

He wanted to explain that every time he closed his eyes, he saw Ojiro's bloodied shoulder, Aoyama's hands against the glass, and Aizawa's face disappearing beneath the ice. He wanted to tell him that the world had become too terrible to look at and too terrible to turn away from, and that he was frightened of what would happen if he stopped paying attention for even a second.

Instead, he nodded.

"Okay, Kacchan."

Bakugou looked at him for another moment.

Then he reached out and ruffled his hair, awkwardly, as though the gesture had escaped him before he could decide whether it was a good idea.

"Good."

Izuku slept for two hours.

It was the most peaceful sleep he would have for weeks.

The next morning, they learned that the outbreak had spread beyond Musutafu.

The radio in the pharmacy was still working, although the signal crackled so badly that they had to stand close to it to hear anything. A news broadcaster spoke in a voice that had been worn thin by exhaustion, reporting that emergency services were overwhelmed, that several major cities had declared states of emergency, and that the government was advising citizens to seek shelter and avoid contact with anyone displaying symptoms of the infection.

There were no reliable reports of a cure.

There were no reliable reports of a safe zone.

There were no reliable reports of anything except more people dying.

At one point, the broadcaster began listing the names of evacuation centers that had been established in the surrounding prefectures. The list ended abruptly when the signal cut out, leaving only static.

Nobody spoke for a long time.

Then Iida straightened his shoulders.

"We should head toward the evacuation center in the northern district," he said. "If it is still operating, there may be emergency personnel, medical supplies, and information about what we should do next."

"Or a few hundred infected people," Bakugou replied.

"We cannot simply wander the streets indefinitely."

"Never said we should."

"Then what do you suggest?"

Bakugou gestured toward the radio.

"I suggest we stop assuming that every place with a sign and a uniform is going to save us."

Iida looked as though he wanted to argue, but Yaoyorozu intervened before he could.

"Perhaps we can approach the evacuation center cautiously. If it appears unsafe, we can leave before getting too close."

It was not a perfect plan.

It was, however, the only plan they had.

So they packed their supplies, checked their weapons, and left the pharmacy.

The city they walked through that morning was not the city Izuku remembered.

Musutafu had become a collection of abandoned places, each one holding the remains of a life that had been interrupted without warning. A bicycle lay on its side outside a school. A child's backpack had been abandoned on the pavement, its little keychain dangling from the zipper. A delivery truck had crashed into the front of a bakery, and the smell of burnt bread drifted through the broken windows.

They passed a restaurant where the tables had been overturned, the chairs scattered across the floor, and a television still playing a children's cartoon to an empty room.

They passed a hospital whose entrance was blocked by a line of ambulances, their doors hanging open, their interiors dark.

They passed a playground where a swing moved gently in the wind, creaking back and forth as though someone had only just climbed off it.

Everywhere, there were signs of people who had expected to return.

A jacket draped over a railing.

A half-finished cup of coffee on the hood of a car.

A phone lying in the gutter, its screen illuminated by an incoming call.

Izuku stopped when he saw a little red shoe lying beside a storm drain.

He did not know why that was the thing that made him turn away.

Perhaps because it was so small.

Perhaps because he could imagine the person who had worn it, could imagine a mother bending down to tie the laces, a child complaining that the knot was too tight, a family standing at the front door while someone called for them to hurry up because they were going to be late.

He could imagine the life that had existed around it.

And he could imagine how quickly it had disappeared.

"Deku."

Bakugou was waiting a few steps ahead.

Izuku swallowed.

"I'm coming."

He hurried to catch up.

They reached the evacuation center shortly before noon.

It had been established in a municipal sports complex, a large building surrounded by temporary fencing and rows of emergency vehicles. From a distance, it looked almost reassuring. There were floodlights mounted along the roof, a line of barricades at the entrance, and a banner hanging above the main doors that read EMERGENCY SHELTER,  AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.

There were people inside.

Izuku could see them moving through the windows, carrying boxes, speaking to one another, guiding a group of frightened civilians toward the back of the building.

For the first time since leaving U.A., he felt something dangerously close to hope.

"There," he whispered. "Look, there's still people."

Kaminari let out a shaky laugh.

"Oh, thank God."

Uraraka smiled, and for a moment, the expression made her look like herself again.

"Maybe they're helping people get out of the city."

"Let's not get ahead of ourselves," Bakugou warned, although Izuku noticed that he had stopped walking too.

They approached the entrance carefully.

A soldier appeared behind the fencing, raising a hand to signal them to stop. He was wearing a protective vest and a medical mask, and the rifle in his hands was pointed toward the ground.

"Stay where you are!" he called. "Are any of you injured?"

"No," Iida answered immediately. "We are students from U.A. High School. We are seeking shelter and information about the evacuation procedures."

The soldier looked at them.

Something in his expression changed when he heard the name of the school.

"U.A.?"

"Yes."

"How many of you?"

"Twelve," Yaoyorozu said.

The soldier exchanged a glance with someone behind him.

Then he shook his head.

"Keep moving."

Izuku stared at him.

"What?"

"This shelter is at capacity. We cannot accept additional civilians."

"But we're students," Kaminari said. "We don't have anywhere else to go."

"I'm sorry."

"There's got to be somewhere-"

"Move along!"

The soldier raised his rifle.

Not at them, exactly.

But close enough that everyone understood what he was telling them.

They backed away from the fence.

Izuku looked through the windows as they retreated, watching the people inside move between the rows of cots. He saw a woman holding a baby. He saw an old man sitting with his head in his hands. He saw a child wearing a yellow raincoat, swinging her legs beneath a folding chair.

He wondered whether any of them knew how lucky they were to be inside.

He wondered how long they would remain safe.

Then he looked at the soldier standing behind the fence, and the hope that had risen in his chest began to collapse.

"Come on," Bakugou said.

Nobody argued.

They walked away from the evacuation center, and this time, nobody looked back.

They lost Iida three days later.

By then, they had learned to travel in smaller groups, to avoid the main roads, and to never enter a building without checking the exits first. They had learned that the infected were drawn to noise, that fire could be used to create a distraction, and that even a single bite was enough to destroy a person who had been perfectly healthy moments before.

They had learned not to say the word safe unless they were prepared to be disappointed.

Iida had been the one insisting that they keep a schedule.

He made them stop every few hours to check their supplies, took note of the streets they had already traveled, and kept a careful record of the places where they had found food, water, and medicine. He insisted that they sleep in shifts, that they stay together, and that nobody leave the group without telling someone else where they were going.

It was not enough to keep them alive.

But it gave them something to hold on to.

They were crossing a narrow pedestrian bridge when they heard the infected approaching from the road below. The bridge was old, its metal railings rusted, and the wooden boards beneath their feet groaned with every step.

There were too many of them to fight.

Todoroki froze the far end of the bridge while Bakugou cleared a path through the nearest infected, and the group hurried forward, stumbling over one another in their desperation to reach the other side.

Iida was the last to cross.

He had stopped to help Kaminari, who had twisted his ankle on the uneven boards, and by the time he straightened, the infected had reached the base of the bridge.

"Go!" Iida shouted.

Kaminari grabbed his arm.

"No! Come on!"

"I said go!"

He shoved Kaminari toward Kirishima, then turned and ran back toward the railing.

"Iida!" Izuku screamed.

Iida did not look at him.

He drove his engines to full power, racing along the narrow bridge as the infected surged after him. For a moment, he was only a blur of blue and white, his figure disappearing into the grey morning mist, his footsteps so fast that they sounded like a single continuous thunderclap.

Then he reached the far end.

He turned.

And he kicked the support beam.

The bridge shuddered.

The metal groaned.

The entire structotr tilted beneath the weight of the infected, and the boards began to split apart as the railing tore free from its supports.

Iida stood at the edge, his shoulders squared, his hands clenched at his sides.

For one moment, he looked exactly as he had in the classroom, standing in front of the board with his back straight and his chin raised, determined to do what was right even when everyone else thought he was being ridiculous.

He looked toward them.

Izuku could not hear what he said.

But he saw his mouth form the words.

Keep going.

Then the bridge collapsed.

The sound was enormous, a terrible metallic crash that echoed through the streets as the infected fell with it, disappearing into the darkness beneath the structure.

Iida disappeared too.

Kaminari screamed his name until his voice gave out.

Kirishima held him upright, both of them crying, while Izuku stood at the railing with his hands pressed against the cold metal and stared into the gap where the bridge had been.

There was no body.

There was no way to know.

Only the empty space beneath their feet, and the terrible certainty that they had lost another friend.

That evening, they found a small apartment above a closed laundromat and barricaded themselves inside.

Nobody ate.

Nobody spoke.

For hours, Izuku sat by the window, staring at the street below, thinking about Iida's glasses, the way he always pushed them up his nose when he was nervous, the way he had insisted that rules existed for a reason, the way he had always believed that doing the right thing would eventually make the world a better place.

Izuku wondered whether Iida had been afraid when the bridge collapsed.

He wondered whether he had regretted staying behind.

He wondered whether, in the final moments, Iida had thought about his family, his friends, or the future he had once imagined for himself.

He wondered whether he had been thinking about them.

He hoped he had not.

He hoped Iida had been thinking about something beautiful.

Anything beautiful.

Something that had nothing to do with the way he died.

Kaminari did not survive the following week.

They were traveling through a residential neighborhood when the infected cornered them in the narrow space between two apartment buildings. The group had been trying to avoid the main road, but the alleys were crowded with abandoned bicycles and overturned bins, and the noise of their movement had attracted more infected than they could handle.

Kaminari had been limping for most of the morning, his ankle swollen beneath the bandage Kirishima had wrapped around it. He insisted that he was fine, that he could keep up, that they should not slow down for him.

Nobody believed him.

Nobody told him to stop trying.

They were halfway across the alley when a woman emerged from a doorway, moving so quickly that even Bakugou barely had time to react. She struck Kaminari from the side, knocking him against the wall, and her teeth closed around his forearm before Kirishima could pull her away.

Kaminari screamed.

Jirou reached him first.

She struck the infected with the metal pipe she had been carrying, hitting it again and again until it fell to the ground. Todoroki froze its body in place, and Bakugou shouted for everyone to move, but Jirou had already seen the blood.

She looked at Kaminari.

He looked back.

Neither of them spoke.

Then Kaminari began to cry.

"Oh," he whispered. "Oh, no."

Jirou grabbed his wrist.

"We can fix it."

Kaminari stared at her.

"We can find someone. We can get you medicine. Maybe the infection takes longer sometimes, maybe-"

"Jirou."

"Don't."

"Jirou, please."

She shook her head so violently that her hair whipped across her face.

"No. Shut up. We're not doing this. You're not allowed to do this to me."

Kaminari's expression crumpled.

"I'm sorry."

"Stop apologizing!"

"I'm sorry," he repeated, and his voice broke. "I'm so sorry."

She pulled him into her arms.

For a moment, he held her as tightly as he could, burying his face against her shoulder while she pressed her cheek against his hair and cried into it. They had spent months insulting each other, arguing over music, stealing one another's food, and pretending that the affection between them was nothing more than an unfortunate consequence of being forced to share a classroom.

Now, Jirou held him as though she could keep him in the world through the sheer force of her love.

Kaminari drew back.

He looked at the others, at Kirishima's devastated expression, at Yaoyorozu standing with both hands pressed against her mouth, at Izuku's tears, and finally at Bakugou, who had turned away as though he could not bear to watch another person die.

"Hey," Kaminari said.

His voice was weak, but there was a familiar, almost sheepish smile on his face.

"At least I don't have to worry about the math exam anymore."

Nobody laughed.

Kaminari's smile trembled.

"Come on. That was a good one."

Jirou made a broken sound.

Then she laughed.

It was a terrible, wet, disbelieving laugh, and it lasted only a second before she began sobbing again, but Kaminari seemed satisfied. He looked at her with so much tenderness that Izuku had to turn away.

"You're going to be okay," Kaminari whispered.

Jirou shook her head.

"No, I'm not."

"Yeah, you are."

"No, Denki, I'm not."

He closed his eyes.

For a moment, he rested his forehead against hers.

Then he pressed something into her palm.

It was a small, plastic keychain shaped like a yellow lightning bolt, the kind of ridiculous thing he would have bought from a convenience store because it reminded him of himself.

"Keep it," he said.

Jirou closed her fingers around it.

"I hate you."

Kaminari smiled.

"I know."

He kissed her forehead.

Then he stepped away.

He walked toward the far end of the alley, where the infected were gathering in the shadow of an overturned truck, and turned back one last time.

"Don't let Bakugou make all the decisions," he called. "He's a terrible leader."

"SHUT UP, DUNCE FACE!" Bakugou shouted.

Kaminari laughed.

It was the last sound they heard from him before the infected swallowed him whole.

Jirou stood in the middle of the alley, her hand closed around the lightning bolt, and stared at the place where he had disappeared.

She did not move when Bakugou told them to go.

She did not move when Kirishima reached for her.

It was Yaoyorozu who finally took her hand, and together they walked away, leaving another friend behind in a world that seemed determined to make them understand that love could not save everyone.

That night, Jirou sat beside the window of an abandoned apartment and held the keychain until its little plastic edges pressed marks into her palm.

She did not speak.

She did not cry.

She simply sat there, listening to the city, while the others slept around her.

Izuku watched her for a long time.

He wanted to tell her that Kaminari had loved her.

He wanted to tell her that everyone had seen it, that even when Kaminari had been laughing, even when he had been making jokes and pretending that nothing mattered, he had always looked for her first when something frightened him.

He wanted to tell her that she had been his favorite person in the world.

But Jirou already knew.

And sometimes, knowing was the cruelest thing of all.

They lost Sero and Hagakure two days later.

They lost Kirishima the morning after that.

And that evening, Shoji, Mina and Tsu got pulled back by the infected.

By the time they reached the river, only eight of them remained.

Izuku, Katsuki, Uraraka, Yaoyorozu, Jirou, Todoroki, Sero, and Kirishima.

Eight students who had once occupied a classroom with twenty desks, who had once complained about homework and argued over lunch and made plans for a future they had assumed would arrive whether they were ready for it or not.

Eight students who had survived long enough to understand that survival was not the same thing as living.

Sero had been the one to find the river.

He had spotted it on a map in the lobby of an abandoned hotel, tracing the route with his finger while Yaoyorozu explained that they might be able to follow the water toward the outskirts of the city. It was a sensible plan. The river would give them a landmark, a way to orient themselves without relying on the roads, and there were several industrial buildings along its banks that might contain supplies.

For the first time in days, they had something resembling direction.

Sero had smiled when they set out.

"See?" he said, adjusting the straps of his backpack. "We're going to be fine. We're practically professionals at this point."

"You're a professional idiot," Bakugou replied.

"That's still a profession."

"Not a respectable one."

"Hey, I've been doing a great job keeping everyone entertained."

"Nobody asked you to."

"You're welcome anyway."

Izuku had laughed.

It was a small, exhausted sound, but it had been genuine.

He remembered that laugh later, when the world became quiet enough for him to hear his own thoughts again. He remembered the way Sero had looked over his shoulder and grinned at him, the way his eyes had crinkled at the corners, the way he had walked ahead with his hands in his pockets as though he were leading them on an ordinary school trip.

He remembered it because, by the time they reached the river, Sero was dead.

The infected had come out of a drainage tunnel beneath the road, their bodies emerging from the darkness in a tangled mass of limbs and torn clothing. The group had been walking along the embankment, where the concrete was slick with rain and the river moved beneath them in a broad, grey current.

They had nowhere to run.

Todoroki froze the water along the edge of the embankment, creating a barrier between them and the infected, while Bakugou threw explosions into the narrow tunnel to force the creatures back. Kirishima stood beside him, his skin hardened, his arms raised to shield the others from the debris.

Sero used his tape to pull Uraraka away from the edge when she slipped.

He saved her.

Then the railing broke.

He fell.

For a moment, he caught the edge of the concrete with one hand, his other arm stretched toward Kirishima, who lunged forward to grab him.

Their fingers touched.

Kirishima caught his wrist.

"I've got you!"

Sero looked up at him.

There was terror in his face, but he was still smiling, still trying to make the situation seem less frightening than it was.

"Yeah," he said. "You always do."

Then the infected reached him.

Kirishima screamed.

He held on even as Sero's other hand clawed at his arm, even as the infected dragged him farther down, even as the blood began to spread across the concrete beneath his fingers.

Sero looked at him.

His smile disappeared.

"Kiri," he whispered.

Kirishima shook his head.

"No."

"Let go."

"No!"

"Kirishima!"

The infected pulled.

Kirishima's grip slipped.

Sero fell into the darkness beneath the bridge, and the river swallowed the sound he made when he hit the water.

Kirishima dropped to his knees.

For a long time, he stared at the empty space between the railings, his hands still outstretched, as though he expected Sero to reach up and take them.

Then he began to cry.

Nobody touched him.

Nobody tried to make him stand.

They sat with him until the infected began to climb over the broken railing, and then they dragged him away because there was nothing else they could do.

They did not find Sero's body.

They never knew whether he had drowned, whether the infected had reached him, or whether he had managed to crawl onto the opposite bank somewhere beyond their sight.

For three days, Kirishima refused to talk about him.

On the fourth, he told Izuku that he had dreamed about Sero the night before.

"He was complaining," Kirishima said, staring at the floor. "He was complaining that I kept stepping on his shoes, and he was asking me if I was going to apologize or just stand there looking stupid."

Izuku smiled faintly.

"That sounds like Sero."

"Yeah."

Kirishima swallowed.

"I told him I was sorry."

Izuku's smile faded.

Kirishima rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands.

"I told him I was sorry I couldn't hold on."

Izuku moved closer and sat beside him.

For a while, they watched the rain falling through the broken windows of the apartment where they had taken shelter.

Then Izuku said, "I don't think he blamed you."

Kirishima laughed, but it was a terrible, empty sound.

"I know."

He looked down at his hands.

"That's what makes it worse."

Kirishima died trying to save Todoroki.

They were crossing a narrow street behind an abandoned shopping center when a group of infected emerged from the building's loading dock. The group had been moving quietly, keeping close to the walls, but one of the infected had heard their footsteps and stumbled out into the street, dragging the others behind it.

Bakugou swore and threw an explosion into the nearest group.

Todoroki raised a wall of ice.

For a moment, they held them back.

Then the wall cracked.

One of the infected forced its way through, its body twisting awkwardly as it clawed at the frozen surface. Todoroki tried to reinforce the barrier, but he had been using his quirk almost continuously for hours, and the ice came slower than it should have.

He stumbled.

Kirishima caught him before he fell.

"Keep moving!"

"I'm fine!"

"You're not!"

The wall broke.

Kirishima shoved Todoroki behind him, hardening his skin as the infected surged forward. He took the first impact with a grunt, his feet sliding across the pavement, and for a moment he seemed to hold them back through sheer stubbornness.

Then one of them caught his arm.

Kirishima tore it away.

Another caught his shoulder.

He struck it aside.

A third lunged for his neck.

Todoroki froze it before it could reach him, but the movement left him open, and another infected slammed into him from the side.

Kirishima turned.

He did not hesitate.

He threw himself between Todoroki and the creature, taking the bite across his forearm before he could fully harden his skin.

For a moment, he did not seem to understand what had happened.

Then he looked down.

Todoroki saw the blood.

His face went white.

"No."

Kirishima stared at his arm.

Then he laughed.

It was such an ordinary sound that, for one terrible moment, everyone thought he was all right.

"Well," he said, his voice trembling, "that's not ideal."

Todoroki grabbed his wrist.

"We can-"

"No, Shoto."

"We can find a place to treat it."

"Kirishima," Bakugou said quietly.

Kirishima looked at him.

Something passed between them, something that had existed long before the world ended, a familiarity built from years of friendship and arguments and the kind of loyalty that never needed to be explained.

Bakugou looked away first.

Kirishima understood.

He always had been good at understanding things that other people struggled to say.

"Hey," he said, looking around at the others. "Can I have a minute?"

Nobody moved.

Kirishima smiled.

"Please."

They stepped back.

Todoroki did not.

He stood in front of Kirishima, his hands clenched at his sides, tears gathering in his eyes.

"Kirishima."

"Hey, don't do that."

"Do what?"

"Look at me like that."

Todoroki's face crumpled.

Kirishima reached out with his uninjured hand and gripped his shoulder.

"Listen to me, okay? You didn't do anything wrong."

"I should have been faster."

"Shoto."

"I should have-"

"You saved my life."

Todoroki shook his head.

Kirishima's smile softened.

"And I saved yours. That's what we do, right?"

For a moment, Todoroki looked so young that Izuku could barely stand to watch him.

Kirishima squeezed his shoulder.

"Don't waste it."

Then he turned toward Bakugou.

"Take care of them, yeah?"

Bakugou's jaw tightened.

"Don't tell me what to do, shitty hair."

Kirishima laughed.

It was a weak, trembling sound, but it was real.

"Yeah. That's what I thought."

He stepped away from them.

He walked toward the loading dock, where the infected were still gathering behind the broken wall, and turned back one last time.

His eyes found Izuku.

He smiled.

"Hey, Midoriya?"

Izuku could barely speak.

"Yeah?"

"You're going to make it."

Izuku shook his head, tears running down his face.

"Kirishima, please-"

"Promise me."

Izuku's throat closed.

He wanted to promise him anything. He wanted to tell him that they would all survive, that they would find a cure, that the world would eventually become a place where people could walk down the street without being afraid of the shadows.

He wanted to give him something worth dying for.

Instead, he nodded.

"I promise."

Kirishima smiled.

Then he turned away.

The infected swallowed him beneath the loading dock, and the sound of his voice disappeared into the darkness.

Todoroki fell to his knees.

Bakugou stood perfectly still.

Izuku watched the place where Kirishima had vanished and understood, with a terrible clarity, that he had just made a promise he had no idea how to keep.

They buried the things they could.

Not bodies, because there were too few bodies left to bury and too many infected between them and the places where their friends had died. Instead, they collected the little things that remained: Sero's roll of tape, a strip of Kirishima's torn sleeve, the plastic lightning bolt Jirou carried in her pocket, the notebook Iida had used to keep track of their supplies.

They put everything in a small metal box Yaoyorozu created from the scraps of an abandoned workshop.

It was not a grave.

It was not enough.

But it was something they could carry.

They left the box beneath a tree beside the river, where the grass had begun to grow through the cracks in the pavement and the sound of the water covered the distant cries of the infected.

Yaoyorozu knelt beside it for a long time.

Then she placed a single strawberry candy on top.

It was the one Uraraka had found in the pharmacy, the one she had carried through the city without ever opening.

"For everyone," she whispered.

Jirou stood beside her, holding the lightning bolt in her closed fist.

Todoroki stared at the river.

Bakugou looked away.

And Izuku, who had spent his entire life believing that heroes were supposed to save people, stood beneath the tree and cried for the friends he had failed to bring home.

When they finally left, the metal box remained beneath the branches, hidden among the roots and the fallen leaves.

The world continued around it.

The river flowed.

The rain fell.

Somewhere in the city, a car alarm began to ring.

And the dead kept walking.

***

By the time the first month ended, Izuku had stopped counting the days.

At first, he had tried to keep track of them in the little notebook Iida had left behind, marking each morning with a neat line and recording the places they had visited, the supplies they had found, and the number of infected they had encountered. He had thought that keeping a record would help them understand what was happening, that perhaps one day someone would find the notebook and use it to piece together the early days of the outbreak.

Eventually, though, the numbers began to feel cruel.

Every new mark reminded him that another day had passed without rescue, that another morning had arrived without a cure, that the world had continued to exist without the people he loved in it.

He stopped writing.

The notebook remained in his backpack, its pages gradually softening from the rain, its corners fraying where he had handled it too often. Sometimes, when he could not sleep, he would take it out and read Iida's old notes, tracing the careful handwriting with his thumb, and for a few moments he could almost imagine that his friend was still walking beside them, insisting that they maintain a sensible pace and reminding them to drink enough water.

It was a ridiculous thing to miss.

He missed it anyway.

The six of them had become quieter as the weeks passed.

Uraraka still smiled, but less often. Jirou had begun to hum under her breath when they walked, usually songs Kaminari had liked, and Yaoyorozu had taken to checking their supplies several times a day even when there was nothing new to count. Todoroki spoke only when necessary, and Bakugou had become so protective of the others that he seemed to have forgotten how to sit down without keeping one hand close to a weapon.

Izuku was not sure what had happened to him.

He was not sure what had happened to any of them.

They had survived, and survival had begun to feel like a responsibility none of them knew how to fulfill.

They had survived Ojiro, Aoyama, Mineta, Sato, Tokoyami, Iida, Kaminari, Sero, and Kirishima.

They had survived Aizawa.

They had survived the school where they had once believed they would become heroes.

And now they were expected to keep surviving.

Sometimes Izuku wondered whether there was a limit to how much a person could lose before there was nothing left to lose at all.

Sometimes he was frightened to discover that the answer might be no.

They had found shelter in an apartment building on the outskirts of Musutafu, where the windows were still intact and the doors could be reinforced with furniture. The building had once belonged to a family with two children; their drawings remained pinned to the refrigerator, and a pair of tiny shoes sat beside the front door, neatly arranged as though their owners were expected to return from school at any moment.

Izuku had not moved them.

He could not bring himself to.

At night, he slept on the living room floor beside the sofa, his backpack tucked beneath his head and his shoes still on his feet. Bakugou slept near the entrance, where he could hear anything approaching the apartment, and the others took turns watching the windows.

They had developed routines.

They boiled water when they could find fuel. They divided food into portions small enough to last several days. They checked every room before settling down for the night, and they never left the apartment without agreeing on where they were going and when they would return.

The routines were ordinary.

That was what made them bearable.

On particularly bad mornings, Izuku would wake up and spend a few seconds forgetting where he was. He would see the pale sunlight falling through the curtains, hear Jirou muttering at Yaoyorozu about the terrible quality of their breakfast, and feel the brief, wonderful comfort of believing that everything had been a nightmare.

Then he would remember.

He would remember the blood on the classroom floor, the ice around Aizawa, the faces of his friends disappearing into the streets, and the world would settle back into place around him, heavy and merciless.

He had begun to hate mornings.

They always arrived with the promise that something might change.

They never did.

Until the day Yaoyorozu's hands began to shake.

It happened while she was creating a small metal tool to repair the lock on the apartment's back door. She had been working for several minutes, her brows drawn together in concentration, when the object slipped from her fingers and clattered against the floor.

She stared at it.

Then she bent to pick it up and nearly fell.

Izuku caught her before she hit the ground.

"Momo?"

"I'm fine," she said automatically.

Her voice sounded distant.

Izuku helped her sit down on the sofa, and she pressed a hand against her forehead, closing her eyes as though the room had become too bright.

"Have you eaten today?"

She did not answer.

"Momo."

"I had some water."

"That's not what I asked."

Yaoyorozu opened her eyes.

For a moment, she looked almost embarrassed.

"I was trying to save the food."

Izuku stared at her.

"You're saving the food by not eating?"

"When I use my quirk, I need sufficient nutrients to replace the lipids my body converts into material. I know that. I've been monitoring my intake, but I thought if I rationed carefully enough, I could continue producing small tools without-"

"Momo."

He sat down beside her.

"You're going to make yourself sick."

"I know."

"Then why are you doing it?"

She looked at him.

The answer was so obvious that he felt ashamed for asking.

Because they needed supplies.

Because the food was running out.

Because every time they found something useful, someone needed it more than she did, and because Yaoyorozu had spent her entire life being taught that her value came from what she could provide for others.

Because she was terrified that, if she stopped being useful, the others would have one less reason to keep her alive.

She lowered her eyes.

"I don't know how much longer I can do this, Izuku."

He reached for her hand.

"You don't have to do everything."

She smiled faintly.

"I know."

But she did not sound as though she believed him.

They had almost nothing left to eat.

A few packets of crackers, two tins of vegetables, half a bag of rice, and a handful of ration bars Yaoyorozu had divided into portions so small that Izuku could no longer look at them without feeling sick. They had been searching for a supermarket for days, hoping to find something that had not already been looted, and when Todoroki finally spotted a large building with apartments above it, they had almost cried with relief.

It was the kind of place that should have been full of people.

A supermarket on the ground floor, with rows of shelves, refrigerators, and storage rooms; three floors of apartments above it, accessible through a separate entrance at the side of the building. The front windows were cracked, but the doors were still intact, and the parking lot was mostly empty except for a handful of abandoned cars.

There were no obvious signs of infected inside.

For the first time in weeks, they had found somewhere that might actually be worth staying.

They entered through the side door.

The supermarket was dark and silent, its aisles illuminated only by the pale light filtering through the front windows. Several shelves had been overturned, and the floor was littered with broken glass, empty packets, and the remains of food that had been left to rot.

But there were supplies.

Cans of vegetables. Bottles of water. Boxes of cereal. Bags of rice stacked in the storage room behind the counter.

It was not a miracle.

It was better.

Yaoyorozu stood in the middle of the aisle, staring at the shelves, and for a moment Izuku thought she might cry.

"We can stay here," she whispered.

Bakugou examined the back entrance, checking the lock and the windows.

"Maybe."

"We can barricade the doors, clear the apartments upstairs, and use the storage room to keep the food. There's a separate stairwell, so we could secure the upper floors without having to pass through the store every time."

"That's a lot of work," Bakugou said.

"Yes."

"And you're exhausted."

Yaoyorozu looked at him.

"I'm aware."

"Then we're doing it tomorrow."

She opened her mouth to argue.

Bakugou pointed at her.

"Don't start."

For a moment, she looked genuinely offended.

Then she laughed.

It was a small, surprised sound, and the others turned toward her as though they had heard something extraordinary.

Yaoyorozu covered her mouth.

"I'm sorry."

"Don't apologize," Uraraka said immediately.

Jirou smiled.

"Yeah. It was nice hearing you laugh for once."

Yaoyorozu's expression softened.

For a little while, they were almost happy.

They spent the afternoon securing the building, dragging shelves across the entrance, checking the apartments, and moving the food upstairs. Todoroki froze the windows on the ground floor, reinforcing the glass with thick sheets of ice, while Bakugou and Kirishima would have worked together to move the heavier furniture if Kirishima had still been there.

The thought struck Izuku so suddenly that he had to stop what he was doing.

He stood beside a stack of canned goods, staring at the empty space where Kirishima should have been, and felt the familiar ache open in his chest.

He could almost hear his friend laughing, could almost see him hauling a sofa across the floor with his sleeves rolled up, insisting that it was no trouble at all.

For a moment, Izuku could not breathe.

Then Bakugou appeared beside him.

"What's wrong?"

Izuku shook his head.

"Nothing."

Bakugou looked at him.

"Deku."

Izuku swallowed.

"I just thought about Kirishima."

Bakugou's expression changed.

He looked away, jaw tightening, and for a while neither of them spoke.

Then Bakugou picked up one of the boxes.

"Yeah," he said quietly. "Me too."

They carried the supplies upstairs.

That evening, they ate together around the kitchen table in one of the apartments, sharing a tin of vegetables and a small pot of rice that tasted better than anything Izuku had eaten in weeks.

Jirou made a joke about the food being worse than the cafeteria at U.A.

Todoroki said that the cafeteria had been perfectly adequate.

Jirou stared at him.

"Shoto, I once watched you eat cold soba straight out of a plastic container while standing in the rain."

"It was convenient."

"That doesn't make it good."

"It was still food."

Uraraka laughed so hard that she nearly dropped her spoon.

Yaoyorozu smiled, and for a moment, the apartment filled with the familiar sound of people who had forgotten, just briefly, that the world had ended.

Izuku looked around the table.

At Uraraka, whose eyes crinkled when she laughed.

At Jirou, who was pretending not to be pleased that Todoroki had taken her bait.

At Yaoyorozu, whose shoulders had finally relaxed.

At Todoroki, who was listening with the quiet concentration he had always brought to conversations, even when he did not understand the joke.

At Bakugou, who sat with his arms folded and complained about the food while eating every last grain of rice in his bowl.

Izuku wanted to remember the moment exactly as it was.

The light from the kitchen window.

The chipped edge of the table.

The sound of rain beginning to fall against the glass.

The warmth of his friends sitting close enough that their shoulders occasionally touched.

He wanted to preserve it somewhere inside himself, to keep it safe from everything that would happen afterward.

Because, even then, some part of him understood that happiness had become a fragile thing.

And he was beginning to suspect that the world was not finished taking things from them.

The next morning, Uraraka, Todoroki, and Jirou went looking for supplies.

It was supposed to be a short trip.

They had found a pharmacy two streets away on the map, and Todoroki believed there might be medical equipment in the back storage room. Jirou wanted to check the nearby convenience stores for batteries, while Uraraka had suggested looking for a hardware shop where they might find tools to reinforce the building.

Yaoyorozu was too exhausted to go.

Izuku had offered to stay with her, and Bakugou had immediately insisted that he would stay too, although he had pretended that the decision was entirely practical.

"Someone needs to make sure you two don't do anything stupid," he had said.

Uraraka smiled at him.

"You're so sweet, Kacchan."

"Call me that again and I'll throw you out the window."

"See? Sweet."

Jirou had laughed.

Todoroki had looked between them with a thoughtful expression.

"I don't think throwing Uraraka out the window would be an efficient use of your energy."

"Shoto," Jirou had said, "please don't encourage him."

They had laughed.

They had promised to return before noon.

Uraraka had squeezed Izuku's hand before leaving, her smile warm and reassuring.

"Don't worry. We'll be careful."

Jirou had raised two fingers in a casual salute.

"See you in a bit."

Todoroki had nodded.

Then the three of them had walked out the door.

Izuku watched them leave.

He remembered the sound of their footsteps on the stairs, the creak of the front door, the way Uraraka had turned to wave at him through the narrow window before disappearing into the street.

He remembered thinking that they would be back soon.

He remembered believing it.

At noon, they had not returned.

At one, Bakugou began pacing.

At two, Yaoyorozu asked whether they should go looking for them, but her voice was so weak that Izuku could barely hear her from the other side of the room.

At three, Bakugou stopped pretending that he was not worried.

"Something happened."

Izuku stood up.

"We should go."

Yaoyorozu shook her head.

"No."

"Momo-"

"You can't leave me alone here."

Izuku stopped.

He looked at her, at the exhaustion that had hollowed out her face, at the way her hands trembled whenever she tried to lift them, at the food they had carefully rationed because they had been counting on her quirk to help them survive.

Then he looked at Bakugou.

Bakugou's expression was unreadable.

"We'll be back before dark," he said.

Yaoyorozu closed her eyes.

For a moment, she looked as though she wanted to argue.

Then she nodded.

"Please," she whispered. "Please be careful."

They left together.

The streets were quieter than they had been the previous day, the rain having washed much of the dust from the pavement. There were no obvious signs of a struggle outside the supermarket, no broken windows or bloodstains, nothing to indicate that the three students had encountered anything dangerous.

They checked the pharmacy first.

The front door stood open.

Inside, the shelves had been ransacked, and several boxes lay scattered across the floor. There were footprints in the dust, some fresh, some old, and a trail of broken glass leading toward the storage room at the back.

Izuku's heart began to pound.

"Uraraka?"

His voice echoed through the building.

No answer.

"Jirou?"

Nothing.

Bakugou moved toward the back room, his palms beginning to crackle.

"Stay behind me."

They found the first sign of blood beside the storage door.

It was only a small smear, dark against the pale tile, but Izuku felt his stomach drop when he saw it. He followed the trail with his eyes, watching it disappear beneath the door, and for a moment he could not make himself move.

Bakugou opened the door.

The room was empty.

There were overturned shelves, a broken chair, and a small collection of medical supplies scattered across the floor. A bottle of antiseptic had rolled beneath a cabinet, and a packet of bandages lay open beside the wall.

There was no one else.

They searched the entire building.

They checked the nearby streets, the alleys, the abandoned cars, and the small courtyard behind the pharmacy. They called the names of their friends until their voices grew hoarse, and every time they heard a sound from somewhere nearby, they turned toward it with a hope so desperate that it hurt.

They found a trail of footprints leading toward the main road.

They found a broken pair of Jirou's earphone jacks near a storm drain.

They found Uraraka's scarf caught on the handle of an abandoned car.

They found nothing else.

By sunset, Bakugou had stopped calling their names.

Izuku had not.

He searched until the light faded, until the streetlamps flickered on one by one, until the shadows grew long enough to hide the things moving between the buildings.

He searched until Bakugou caught him by the shoulders and forced him to stop.

"That's enough."

Izuku shook his head.

"No."

"Deku."

"No, Kacchan, we haven't checked-"

"We've checked everywhere!"

"Then we check again!"

Bakugou's grip tightened.

"Look at me!"

Izuku did.

Bakugou's eyes were bright with tears.

For a moment, the anger disappeared from his face, leaving only the terrible, naked fear beneath it.

"We can't keep doing this," he whispered.

Izuku stared at him.

Bakugou swallowed.

"We can't keep losing people and pretending that if we just look hard enough, we'll find them again."

Izuku's mouth trembled.

"But they're out there."

Bakugou closed his eyes.

"I know."

"Then we can't leave them."

"I know."

"Please, Kacchan."

Bakugou pulled him into his arms.

Izuku clutched the back of his jacket and sobbed, his face pressed against Bakugou's shoulder, his whole body shaking with the effort of trying to hold on to something that was already slipping away.

Bakugou held him tightly.

He did not tell him that everything would be fine.

He did not tell him that they would find their friends.

He simply stood there, holding Izuku in the middle of an empty street, while the world grew dark around them.

And for the first time since the outbreak began, Bakugou cried too.

Yaoyorozu was waiting when they returned.

She had been sitting on the sofa with a blanket wrapped around her shoulders, her hands folded neatly in her lap. The room was dark except for the small flashlight she had placed on the table, and when she heard the front door open, she lifted her head with an expression of such desperate hope that Izuku almost broke beneath the weight of it.

"Where are they?"

Neither of them answered.

Yaoyorozu stood.

"Where are Uraraka, Jirou, and Todoroki?"

Izuku looked down.

Her expression changed.

"No."

"Momo-"

"No."

She took a step toward them.

"Tell me where they are."

Bakugou shut the door.

Yaoyorozu looked between them, her eyes widening as she understood what their silence meant.

"No," she whispered again.

Then she sat down.

She did not scream. She did not cry. She simply lowered herself onto the sofa as though her legs had stopped working, and stared at the floor with a terrible, hollow expression.

Izuku knelt in front of her.

"We looked everywhere."

Yaoyorozu nodded.

"I know."

"We couldn't find them."

"I know."

"We're going to keep looking."

For a moment, she did not respond.

Then she looked at him.

And Izuku realized, with a coldness that seemed to spread through his entire body, that she did not believe him.

She was not angry.

She was not even surprised.

She looked like someone who had been expecting this moment for a very long time.

"Midoriya," she said softly, "I don't think there's anything left to find."

Izuku shook his head.

"Momo, please."

She smiled.

It was a small, exhausted expression, and it made her look so much like the girl who had once sat beside him in class, who had offered him notes when he missed a lesson, who had created tools and weapons and everything else they needed because she had always believed that there was something she could do to make things better.

"I tried so hard," she whispered.

Izuku took her hand.

"I know."

"I thought if I could just make enough supplies, if I could keep everyone fed, if I could be useful enough, we might actually survive this."

"You have been useful."

She shook her head.

"That's not what I mean."

Her fingers tightened around his.

"I thought I could save them."

Izuku's throat closed.

Yaoyorozu looked down at their joined hands.

"I keep thinking about the first day. About how I was complaining that I had too much homework, and how I told Mina that she should prepare for an emergency because it was sensible, and how everyone laughed at me."

She smiled faintly.

"I wish I could go back to that classroom."

Izuku bowed his head.

"So do I."

For a while, they sat together in silence.

Then Yaoyorozu looked toward the window, where the last light of the day was fading behind the buildings.

"Do you think they're still alive?"

Izuku could not answer.

He wanted to tell her yes.

He wanted to say that Uraraka was somewhere nearby, that Jirou had found a hiding place, that Todoroki was fighting his way back toward them, and that they would hear their friends' footsteps on the stairs at any moment.

He wanted to tell her that the world was not so cruel that it would take everyone from them.

But he had learned what happened when people mistook hope for certainty.

So he squeezed her hand and said, "I don't know."

Yaoyorozu nodded.

Then, very quietly, she said, "I think I'm dying, Izuku."

He looked at her.

"Momo-"

"Not like that." She smiled sadly. "Not from the infection. I'm just tired. I can't keep making things, and I can't keep fighting, and I don't think I have enough left in me to do this anymore."

Izuku shook his head.

"We'll find food."

"There's hardly anything left."

"We'll look for more."

"And then what?"

He stared at her.

Yaoyorozu's expression softened.

"We'll find another place, and we'll keep going, and eventually we'll run out of food again. We'll find somewhere else, and we'll keep going until one of us gets bitten, or until we're too exhausted to move, or until we make one mistake too many."

She took a shaky breath.

"I don't want to die, Izuku."

He bowed his head.

"I know."

"I'm frightened."

"I know."

Her eyes filled with tears.

"I don't want to be alone."

Izuku pressed her hand against his forehead.

For a long time, neither of them moved.

Then Yaoyorozu whispered, "Please don't make me stay."

Izuku looked up.

She was crying now, tears slipping down her cheeks, but her expression was strangely peaceful.

"I don't want to keep waiting for someone to come back," she said. "I don't want to wake up tomorrow and look at the door, hoping to hear their voices. I don't want to keep pretending that I'm going to get better when we both know I'm not."

"Momo, we can-"

"I love you all."

Her voice broke.

"I love you so much, and I am so tired."

Izuku's face crumpled.

Yaoyorozu reached up and brushed a tear from his cheek, her touch gentle and familiar.

"Please," she whispered. "Let me have this one thing."

He could not bear it.

He could not bear the thought of leaving her, of walking out the door and knowing that she would be alone in the dark, listening to the sounds of the infected gathering outside the building.

He could not bear the thought of her dying.

But he could not bear the thought of forcing her to keep living like this, either.

He looked toward Bakugou.

Bakugou stood near the kitchen doorway, his face pale, his hands clenched so tightly that his knuckles had gone white.

He had heard everything.

For a long time, he did not move.

Then he walked over and knelt beside them.

"You're not useless, Momo."

Yaoyorozu looked at him.

Bakugou swallowed.

"You never were."

Her expression crumpled.

"You've kept us alive this long," he continued, his voice rough. "You've done more than any of us. So don't sit there thinking that you're some kind of burden because you can't keep doing it."

Yaoyorozu began to cry.

Bakugou looked away, jaw trembling.

"And don't you dare think we're leaving because we don't want you here."

She reached for his hand.

"I know."

For a moment, he looked as though he might refuse to let her go.

Then he bowed his head.

"Okay," he whispered.

It was the hardest word he had ever said.

They spent the night together.

Izuku sat beside Yaoyorozu on the sofa, holding her hand while she told them stories about their classmates. She spoke about the first time Mina had convinced her to go shopping after school, about the way Kaminari had once tried to impress everyone by cooking and nearly set the dormitory kitchen on fire, about Sero's terrible jokes and Kirishima's habit of offering to help people even when he had no idea what they were doing.

She spoke about Iida's lectures, Ojiro's patience, Aoyama's dramatic entrances, and Mineta's ridiculous attempts to impress girls.

She spoke about Sato's sweets and Tokoyami's poetry, about Jirou's music and Uraraka's laugh, about Todoroki's strange habit of saying the most unexpected things with a perfectly straight face.

She remembered Aizawa's tired expression when they had done something particularly stupid.

She remembered All Might's smile.

She remembered the classroom.

And for a few hours, the apartment was full of people who were no longer there.

Izuku laughed when he could.

Bakugou occasionally muttered an insult, and Yaoyorozu would smile at him, and for a little while, they could almost pretend that the world had not taken everything from them.

Near dawn, Yaoyorozu's voice grew quieter.

She leaned against Izuku's shoulder, her eyes half-closed, and listened to the rain tapping against the window.

"Do you think we'll see them again?" she whispered.

Izuku's throat tightened.

He did not know whether she meant the others, or whether she meant the people they had been before the outbreak.

"I hope so," he said.

Yaoyorozu smiled.

"Me too."

She closed her eyes.

Izuku held her hand until the sun rose.

When the light finally reached the apartment, Yaoyorozu was no longer breathing.

For a long time, Izuku did not move.

He sat beside her, his fingers wrapped around hers, waiting for something that he knew would never happen. He waited for her to stir, to open her eyes, to complain about how uncomfortable the sofa was, to ask whether they had enough food for breakfast.

He waited for her to tell him that she was fine.

She never did.

Bakugou stood behind him, silent and motionless, his face turned toward the window.

Eventually, Izuku leaned forward and pressed his forehead against Yaoyorozu's hand.

"I'm sorry," he whispered.

He did not know what he was apologizing for.

For leaving her.

For staying.

For being alive when so many of their friends were not.

For the world, perhaps.

For everything.

They buried her beneath the tree by the river.

The metal box was still there, half-hidden beneath the roots, its surface weathered by rain. Izuku knelt beside it and added Yaoyorozu's name to the notebook, his handwriting trembling so badly that he had to stop halfway through.

Bakugou stood beside him.

Neither of them spoke.

When they finally left, the tree stood quietly above the river, its branches moving in the wind.

There were no flowers.

There were no candles.

There was only the sound of water, the soft rustling of leaves, and the knowledge that another person they loved had become a memory they would have to carry alone.

***

They were alone.

Izuku had never understood how much silence a world could contain until there was nobody left to fill it.

At first, the silence had seemed temporary, something that would disappear when they found another group of survivors or reached a settlement where people were rebuilding their lives. He had imagined crowded shelters, people cooking together, children running between the tents, someone complaining about the weather, someone else arguing over the radio.

He had imagined a world that was still capable of being noisy.

But the weeks passed, and the silence remained.

The streets were empty except for the infected, who moved through the city in restless, aimless groups. The shops were abandoned. The apartments stood dark behind their windows, their curtains drawn, their doors locked against a danger that had already passed through them.

Sometimes, when the wind blew through the narrow streets, Izuku could hear a loose sign creaking against its frame or a piece of broken glass shifting on the pavement.

Those sounds became familiar.

They became the background of his life.

He and Bakugou left the supermarket three days after Yaoyorozu died.

There was no point staying. The food was running out, and the building had become too quiet, too full of memories. Izuku could not walk through the aisles without thinking about the first evening they had spent there, about Uraraka laughing at Todoroki's terrible jokes, about Jirou complaining about the food, about Yaoyorozu sitting at the table with her hands folded in her lap.

He could not sleep in the apartment where she had died.

So they packed their supplies and left.

They traveled north, following the river whenever possible, hoping to find a smaller town where there might be fewer infected and more supplies. They avoided the main roads, slept in abandoned houses, and moved only when they were certain the streets were clear.

They did not talk much.

There was no longer anyone to talk for.

Sometimes Izuku would turn to make a comment to Uraraka, only to remember that she was gone. Sometimes he would catch himself listening for Jirou's humming or Kaminari's terrible jokes, and the absence of those sounds would strike him so sharply that he had to stop walking.

He began to understand that grief was not something that happened once.

It happened every time he remembered.

It happened every time he forgot.

It happened when he woke up in the morning and reached for a hand that was no longer there, and when he found something funny and turned toward someone who could no longer laugh with him.

It happened in the smallest moments.

And it never seemed to end.

Bakugou noticed.

He did not say anything about it, but he began to stay closer to Izuku, walking beside him rather than ahead, checking his supplies more often than necessary, and occasionally reaching out to touch his shoulder as though he needed to make certain that Izuku was still there.

Izuku understood.

They had both become afraid of looking away.

One afternoon, they found a small house at the edge of a residential district.

It had a garden, although the grass had grown wild, and a little wooden fence that had fallen over in several places. There were flowerpots beside the front door, their soil dry and cracked, and a wind chime hanging from the porch roof that made a soft, delicate sound whenever the breeze moved through it.

Izuku stopped when he heard it.

He stood beneath the porch, listening.

For a moment, he could almost imagine that the house was still occupied, that someone was inside preparing dinner, that the smell of rice and miso soup would drift through the open windows if he waited long enough.

He could almost imagine that the world had not ended.

"Come on, Deku," Bakugou said quietly.

Izuku nodded.

They checked the house, found it empty, and settled inside.

That night, they ate canned soup in the kitchen, sitting across from each other at a small wooden table. The electricity had stopped working days ago, so they used a flashlight to illuminate the room, its pale beam casting long shadows across the walls.

Bakugou stared at his bowl.

Then he said, "Do you remember what you wanted to do after graduation?"

Izuku looked up.

"What?"

"Before all this. What did you want to do?"

For a moment, Izuku could not answer.

The question seemed to belong to another life, a life so distant that he could barely remember how it felt to inhabit it. He thought about U.A., about the training grounds and the classroom, about the way his classmates used to talk about their future careers as though they were already waiting for them somewhere beyond the horizon.

He thought about the hero he had wanted to become.

"I wanted to help people," he said eventually.

Bakugou nodded.

"Yeah."

"I wanted to save them. I wanted to make sure that nobody had to feel helpless the way I did when I was younger."

He looked down at his hands.

"I thought if I worked hard enough, I could become someone who could make a difference."

Bakugou was quiet for a long time.

Then he said, "You did."

Izuku looked at him.

Bakugou shrugged, as though the words were nothing important.

"You helped us."

Izuku's throat tightened.

"I couldn't save them."

"Nobody could."

"I should have done more."

"Deku."

"I should have-"

"Stop."

Bakugou's voice was sharp enough to make Izuku fall silent.

For a moment, Bakugiu stared at him with an expression of such fierce frustration that Izuku almost flinched.

Then the anger faded.

"You can't keep doing this," Bakugou said quietly. "You can't keep taking every single thing that happened and turning it into something you did wrong."

Izuku looked away.

Bakugou leaned forward, resting his forearms on the table.

"We lost them. That's what happened. It wasn't because you weren't fast enough, or strong enough, or smart enough. It wasn't because you didn't try hard enough to save them. They died because the world became a fucking nightmare, and none of us knew how to stop it."

Izuku's eyes filled with tears.

Bakugou swallowed.

"And I'm not saying that because I don't miss them. I miss them every damn day. I miss Kirishima, and Kaminari, and Sero, and all those idiots who used to make so much noise that I couldn't hear myself think. I miss Iida's stupid lectures. I miss Yaoyorozu telling us to be sensible. I miss Uraraka laughing at everything. I miss Jirou calling me an asshole."

He laughed once, bitterly.

"I even miss fucking Mineta."

Izuku let out a broken sound that might have been a laugh.

Bakugou looked at him.

"I miss them," he repeated. "But I don't want to spend whatever time we have left wishing we had died with them."

Izuku stared at him.

For a long moment, he could not speak.

Then he whispered, "I don't know how to do that."

Bakugou's expression softened.

"Neither do I."

He reached across the table.

His hand settled over Izuku's, warm despite the cold room.

"But we can figure it out."

Izuku looked at their joined hands.

Then he nodded.

"Okay, Kacchan."

Bakugou squeezed his fingers.

"Okay."

They sat together until the flashlight began to flicker.

Neither of them moved to replace the batteries.

They were too tired.

For the first time in weeks, Izuku fell asleep without dreaming about the dead.

The next morning, they found a radio in the kitchen.

It was an old portable device, its casing yellowed with age, and it had been left on the counter beside a stack of batteries. Bakugou managed to get it working after several minutes of swearing, and the two of them sat on the floor beside the counter, turning the dial slowly until a voice emerged from the static.

It was a recording.

A woman was speaking in Japanese, her voice calm and measured, announcing the locations of several emergency supply depots that had been established in the early days of the outbreak. She advised survivors to avoid large population centers, conserve their resources, and travel only when necessary.

Then the recording repeated.

There was no new information.

No announcement of a cure.

No promise of rescue.

Just the same instructions, over and over again, as though the world had become a machine that could no longer produce anything except reminders of what people should have done before it was too late.

Bakugou switched off the radio.

"Well," he muttered. "That's fucking helpful."

Izuku stared at the device.

"At least there are still people making announcements."

"Could be an old recording."

"I know."

Bakugou looked at him.

For a moment, he seemed to want to say something.

Then he stood and began packing their supplies.

They left the house shortly after sunrise.

The road north was quiet, and the sky was clear for the first time in days. Sunlight spilled across the pavement, illuminating the abandoned cars and the weeds growing through the cracks in the road.

Izuku walked beside Bakugou, listening to the sound of their footsteps.

He thought about the radio.

He thought about the possibility that someone, somewhere, was still alive and trying to help.

He thought about the fact that they had survived for two months without knowing whether anyone else had survived at all.

And he thought about the people they had lost.

He thought about Ojiro, who had pushed Sero out of the way.

He thought about Aoyama, who had run toward a frightened little girl.

He thought about Mineta, who had been too afraid to keep moving.

He thought about Sato and Tokoyami, who had stayed behind so that Yaoyorozu and Jirou could escape.

He thought about Iida, who had destroyed the bridge.

He thought about Kaminari, who had made Jirou laugh even when he knew he was going to die.

He thought about Sero, who had smiled at Kirishima while he was falling.

He thought about Kirishima, who had promised him that he would make it.

He thought about Yaoyorozu, who had been so tired that she could no longer bear to wait for someone to return.

He thought about Uraraka, whose hand had felt warm in his.

He thought about Jirou's music, Todoroki's quiet kindness, and the way their classroom had once been filled with so much noise that Aizawa had threatened to expel them all.

He thought about the people who had made his life worth living.

And he kept walking.

Because he had promised Kirishima.

Because Bakugou was still beside him.

Because somewhere, beneath the grief and the exhaustion and the terrible knowledge of what the world had become, there was still a small part of him that wanted to see what happened next.

He did not know whether that was hope.

He only knew that he was not ready to let it go.

They found the first infected just before noon.

It was standing in the middle of the road, its back turned toward them, its clothes hanging loosely from its body. It looked almost ordinary from a distance, like someone who had stopped to check a map or forgotten where they were going.

Bakugou raised a hand to stop Izuku.

They stood quietly, watching.

The infected turned its head.

Its face was badly damaged, its mouth hanging open, its eyes fixed on them with a terrible, empty hunger.

Bakugou's palms crackled.

"Stay behind me."

Izuku reached for the knife at his belt.

"I can help."

"I know."

Bakugou glanced at him.

For a moment, his expression softened.

Then he stepped forward.

The infected lunged.

Bakugou moved to the side, driving an explosion into its chest that sent it crashing against an abandoned car. The sound echoed through the street, sharp and sudden, and several more figures began emerging from the buildings nearby.

"Shit."

Bakugou grabbed Izuku's arm.

"Run!"

They ran.

The street became a blur of broken pavement and abandoned vehicles, their footsteps pounding against the ground as the infected poured out of the surrounding buildings. Izuku could hear them behind him, their groans rising into a chorus that seemed to follow them wherever they went.

Bakugou threw explosions over his shoulder, knocking several of them off their feet, but the noise only attracted more.

They turned down a narrow side street.

Then another.

They crossed a small courtyard and scrambled over a fallen fence, emerging onto a road lined with abandoned houses.

For a moment, they thought they had lost them.

Then Izuku heard the footsteps behind him.

He turned.

One of the infected had broken away from the group, moving faster than the others, its body jerking with unnatural speed as it chased them down the road.

Bakugou stopped.

"Deku, keep going!"

Izuku stopped too.

"No!"

"GO!"

The infected lunged.

Bakugou turned, raising his arm to shield his face, and the creature's teeth sank into his forearm.

Everything stopped.

The sound of the infected disappeared.

The road seemed to stretch endlessly in both directions, the sunlight suddenly too bright, the air too thin to breathe.

Izuku stared at Bakugou's arm.

There was blood.

There were teeth marks.

There was no way to mistake what had happened.

"No," Izuku whispered.

Bakugou tore the infected away and blasted it into the side of a house. It struck the wall and collapsed, but he was already looking down at his arm, his expression so still that Izuku felt something inside him begin to break.

"No," Izuku repeated.

Bakugou pulled his sleeve down.

"Keep moving."

Izuku stared at him.

"Kacchan."

"Keep moving, Deku."

Izuku grabbed his wrist.

"Let me see."

"No."

"LET ME SEE!"

Bakugou jerked his arm away.

For a moment, they stood facing each other in the middle of the road, the infected groaning somewhere behind them, the wind moving through the abandoned houses.

Izuku could not stop shaking.

"We can find somewhere," he said desperately. "We can find a pharmacy, or a hospital, or a group of survivors who know more than we do. We can-"

"Deku."

"We can clean it. We can bandage it. Maybe it takes longer for some people, maybe there's something different about-"

"Izuku."

Izuku stopped.

Bakugou was looking at him.

There was no anger in his face now.

Only a terrible, exhausted tenderness that Izuku had never seen before.

"It's a bite."

Izuku shook his head.

"No."

"You know what happens."

"No."

"Deku."

"No!"

His voice cracked so violently that he barely recognized it.

He grabbed Bakugou's jacket with both hands, tears spilling down his face.

"Please, Kacchan. Please don't do this. Not you. Anyone but you."

Bakugou's expression crumpled.

For a moment, he looked as though he might reach for Izuku, might pull him close and tell him that everything was going to be fine, that they would find a way, that the world had not taken everything from them yet.

Instead, he placed his uninjured hand against Izuku's cheek.

"Hey."

Izuku pressed his face into his palm.

"Please."

Bakugou's thumb brushed beneath his eye, wiping away a tear.

"You've got to keep going."

Izuku shook his head.

"I can't."

"Yes, you can."

"I can't do this without you."

Bakugou closed his eyes.

For a moment, his hand trembled against Izuku's cheek.

Then he opened them again.

"You've been doing it for two months, Deku."

"Because you were here!"

The words tore out of Izuku before he could stop them.

Bakugou went still.

Izuku was crying so hard that he could barely breathe, his hands clenched in the fabric of Bakugou's jacket, his whole body shaking with the effort of trying to hold on to the last person he had left.

"You were here," he repeated. "You were always here. Every time I thought I couldn't do it anymore, you were there, and I knew that if I just kept going, if I just followed you, everything would be okay."

Bakugou's eyes filled with tears.

Izuku shook his head.

"You can't leave me."

Bakugou looked away.

For a long time, he did not speak.

Then he whispered, "I'm sorry."

Izuku made a broken sound.

"No."

Bakugou drew him closer, wrapping both arms around him, and Izuku buried his face against his chest.

They stood in the middle of the empty street, holding each other while the infected moved somewhere beyond the houses, their footsteps echoing faintly through the silence.

Bakugou pressed his cheek against Izuku's hair.

For a moment, he let himself imagine that they were somewhere else.

Somewhere warm.

Somewhere safe.

Somewhere the world had not ended.

He imagined them sitting in the common room at U.A., arguing over something stupid while Kaminari and Sero laughed in the background. He imagined Kirishima dragging him into another ridiculous training exercise, Yaoyorozu reminding everyone to clean up after themselves, Jirou complaining about the noise, and Uraraka laughing so hard that she nearly fell off the sofa.

He imagined Aizawa standing in the doorway, looking exhausted, telling them all to go to bed.

He imagined a future.

A stupid, ordinary future in which he could complain about homework and fight with Midoriya and grow old enough to look back on these days as the worst thing that had ever happened to them.

He imagined a future in which he did not have to die.

Then he felt Izuku's tears soaking through his shirt, and the fantasy collapsed.

Bakugou tightened his arms around him.

"I'm sorry," he whispered again.

Izuku shook his head against his chest.

"Stop saying that."

Bakugou swallowed.

"Okay."

They remained there until the infected began to draw closer.

Then Bakugou pulled away.

Izuku clung to him.

"No."

"Deku."

"No, please-"

Bakugou took his hands and held them between his own. His palms were warm. Izuku stared at them, at the familiar calluses, the small scars, the hands that had carried him through the worst days of his life.

He had known those hands for as long as he could remember.

He had watched them make sparks when they were children, watched them grow stronger with every year, watched them reach toward him in moments when neither of them knew how to say what they meant.

He had always believed that, whatever happened, Bakugou would be there.

He had never imagined a world in which he would have to let him go.

"Listen to me," Bakugou said.

Izuku shook his head.

"Please."

"Deku."

"Please, Kacchan."

Bakugou's voice broke.

"Please listen."

Izuku looked at him.

Bakugou took a shaky breath.

"I don't know how long I've got. Maybe it's minutes. Maybe it's hours. I don't fucking know, and I don't want to find out."

Izuku's face crumpled.

"I don't want to become one of those things," Bakugou continued. "I don't want to wake up and forget who I am. I don't want to hurt you."

"You won't."

"You don't know that."

"I'll stop you."

Bakugou stared at him.

Izuku's hands tightened around his.

"I'll stop you if you change. I promise. I won't let you hurt anyone."

For a moment, Bakugou looked as though he might believe him.

Then he shook his head.

"No."

"Kacchan-"

"No, Deku. I'm not making you do that."

He lifted one hand and pressed it against Izuku's chest, right above his heart.

"You've spent your entire life trying to save everyone. You can't keep doing it. Not when it means losing yourself every time."

Izuku could not speak.

Bakugou's expression softened.

"You have to live."

The words were quiet.

They were almost gentle.

And they destroyed Izuku more completely than any scream could have.

"Don't," he whispered.

Bakugou's thumb brushed against his chest.

"You have to live, Deku. You have to keep going, even when I'm not there to tell you what to do."

Izuku shook his head.

"I don't know how."

"Then figure it out."

A broken laugh escaped him.

It was the smallest, most terrible sound.

"You're such an asshole."

Bakugou smiled.

For the first time in what felt like weeks, he smiled the way he used to, with one corner of his mouth lifting higher than the other, his eyes narrowing slightly, his expression full of that familiar, infuriating confidence.

"Yeah," he whispered. "I know."

Izuku laughed through his tears. He wanted to remember that smile. He wanted to remember it for the rest of his life.

Bakugou reached up and touched his face. "You're going to be okay."

Izuku shook his head. "No."

"You are."

"No, Kacchan, I'm not."

Bakugou's smile trembled. "Then be okay anyway."

Izuku closed his eyes.

For a moment, he leaned into Bakugou's hand, holding on to the warmth of it, the familiar scent of his clothes, the sound of his breathing.

He wanted to stay there forever.

He wanted to close his eyes and wake up in the dormitories at U.A., with the sun shining through the windows and Kaminari complaining about the noise and Kirishima asking whether anyone wanted to go for a run.

He wanted to be a child again.

He wanted to be someone who had never seen a person die.

He wanted to be someone who had never learned that the world could end without warning.

But Bakugou's hand was trembling.

And somewhere beyond the houses, the infected were coming closer.

Izuku opened his eyes.

Bakugou looked at him.

"Go."

Izuku shook his head.

"Please."

"Go, Deku."

"I can't leave you."

"You can."

"I won't."

Bakugou's expression hardened, and for a moment, Izuku saw the boy who had once stood in the middle of a training ground and told him that he would never be weak enough to need saving.

The boy who had spent his entire life fighting against the idea that anyone could decide his future for him.

The boy who had always been too stubborn to surrender.

"Izuku," Bakugou said, his voice sharp with desperation. "You need to fucking listen to me for once in your life."

Izuku flinched.

Bakugou immediately looked stricken.

For a moment, neither of them moved.

Then Bakugou reached out and pulled Izuku into one last embrace.

"I'm sorry," he whispered against his hair.

Izuku clutched him so tightly that his fingers hurt.

"Don't make me go."

Bakugou closed his eyes.

"Please."

It was the same word Aizawa had spoken through the classroom door.

The same word Ojiro had whispered before running into the alley.

The same word Yaoyorozu had said when she asked them to let her go.

Izuku had heard it so many times that it had become a sound he could never escape, a word that carried the weight of every person he had left behind.

Now it was coming from Bakugou.

And Izuku understood, with a terrible certainty, that there was nothing he could do to save him.

He had spent his entire life believing that love was something you proved by staying.

He was beginning to understand that sometimes love meant leaving, even when every part of you wanted to remain.

Bakugou drew back.

He wiped the tears from Izuku's face with his thumbs, looking at him with an expression so tender that Izuku could hardly bear it.

"I need you to do something for me."

Izuku swallowed.

"Anything."

Bakugou smiled faintly.

"Keep living."

Izuku's mouth trembled.

"Kacchan-"

"Promise me."

Izuku could not speak.

Bakugou waited.

Then, slowly, painfully, Izuku nodded.

"I promise."

Bakugou closed his eyes. For a moment, he looked relieved. "Good."

He released Izuku's hands. Then he stepped backward.

Izuku stood frozen in the middle of the road, watching the distance open between them.

Bakugou lifted his chin.

"Go."

Izuku could not move.

"Go, Izuku."

The tears blurred everything.

Izuku looked at the boy he had known for almost his entire life, at the boy who had once been his childhood hero, the boy who had spent years pushing him away and somehow become the person he could not imagine living without.

He looked at the familiar red eyes, the ash-blond hair, the stubborn line of his mouth.

He looked at the person who had survived two months of hell beside him.

And he began to walk.

One step.

Then another.

His legs felt as though they belonged to someone else.

He could hear Bakugou behind him, breathing unevenly, trying to keep himself upright.

Izuku did not look back.

He had promised.

He had promised to keep living.

He had promised to do the one thing he had never wanted to do.

He took another step.

Then another.

And behind him, Bakugou said, "Hey, Izuku."

Izuku stopped.

For a moment, he stood perfectly still, his back turned toward the person he loved most in the world.

He could hear the wind moving through the trees.

He could hear the distant groaning of the infected.

He could hear Bakugou breathing.

"Yeah?" Izuku whispered.

There was a pause.

Then Bakugou said, very softly, "I'm glad it was you."

Izuku's heart stopped.

He turned.

Bakugou was smiling.

Not the sharp, arrogant grin he wore when he won a fight. Not the crooked smile he used when he was trying to pretend that he was not pleased about something.

It was a small, exhausted smile.

The kind he had worn when Izuku had cried against his shoulder in the pharmacy, when he had ruffled his hair and told him to get some rest, when they had sat together in the dark and tried to remember what it felt like to be ordinary.

It was the smile of someone who had finally stopped fighting the inevitable.

Izuku took a step toward him. "Kacchan?"

Bakugou raised his hand.

There was a tiny spark in his palm.

For a moment, Izuku did not understand.

Then he saw the tears in Bakugou's eyes.

He understood.

"No."

Bakugou's smile trembled.

"No, Kacchan, wait-"

"I love you, Deku."

The words were quiet.

They were the most beautiful words Izuku had ever heard.

And they were the last.

Bakugou's palm flashed.

The explosion was small, controlled, and horribly final.

For one instant, the world became white.

Then the sound reached Izuku, and everything inside him shattered.

He screamed.

He did not remember falling to his knees. He did not remember the way his hands struck the pavement or the sound of his own voice tearing through the empty street. He only remembered the flash of light, the sudden silence afterward, and the unbearable knowledge that the person who had been standing behind him a moment ago would never speak to him again.

"KACCHAN!"

He crawled toward him.

He did not know what he expected to find. Perhaps some impossible miracle, perhaps a way to undo what had happened, perhaps the chance to reach out and touch Bakugou's shoulder and hear him swear at him for being an idiot.

But there was only stillness.

The explosion had done what Bakugou intended it to do.

There would be no infection.

There would be no moment when he forgot Izuku's name.

There would be no terrible transformation that turned the boy who had spent his life fighting to protect others into something that would hunt them.

Bakugou had chosen the end of his own story.

He had chosen it because he could not bear the thought of becoming something that might hurt the person he loved.

And he had chosen it because he knew Izuku would never have been able to leave him otherwise.

Izuku fell beside him.

He reached for Bakugou's hand, closing both of his around it, and pressed it against his forehead.

"No, no, no, no-"

The words came out in a desperate, broken rhythm, the only things his mind could produce as it tried to make sense of a world that had just become impossible.

He begged.

He apologized.

He told Bakugou that he was cruel, that he was selfish, that he was an idiot for leaving him alone in a world that had already taken everyone else.

He told him that he hated him.

He told him that he loved him.

He told him that he had promised to keep living, and he did not know how he was supposed to do that now.

He told him that he was sorry he had turned around.

He told him that he was sorry he had not been faster, that he had not been stronger, that he had not found some miraculous way to save him.

He told him everything he had never learned how to say when there had still been time.

And Bakugou did not answer.

The street remained quiet.

The wind moved through the trees.

Somewhere in the distance, a loose sign creaked against a building, and the sound was so ordinary that Izuku began to laugh.

It was a terrible, broken laugh, barely distinguishable from the sobbing that followed it, and he pressed his face against Bakugou's hand as though he could hide from the world inside the warmth that remained there.

He had promised to keep living.

He had promised.

He had promised Kirishima, and he had promised Yaoyorozu, and now he had promised Bakugou, and he could not bear the thought of breaking another promise to someone who would never know whether he had kept it.

So he stayed.

He stayed until the sunlight began to fade.

He stayed until the streetlights flickered on.

He stayed until the infected began to gather at the far end of the road, drawn by the noise of his grief.

And when they finally came closer, Izuku lifted his head.

His face was wet with tears.

His throat hurt.

His hands were shaking so badly that he could barely stand.

For a moment, he looked down at Bakugou, at the person who had been beside him when the world ended, the person who had taught him how to survive when survival had seemed impossible.

He wanted to stay with him.

He wanted to lie down beside him and close his eyes and let the world disappear.

He wanted to stop being the person who had to keep going.

But he remembered the promise.

He remembered the way Bakugou had looked at him, the terrible tenderness in his eyes, the quiet relief that had crossed his face when Izuku had finally agreed to leave.

He remembered the words.

I'm glad it was you.

Izuku pressed Bakugou's hand to his lips.

Then he lowered it gently to the ground.

"I'm sorry," he whispered.

The infected were getting closer.

Izuku stood.

His legs nearly gave out beneath him, and for a moment he had to brace himself against the wall of a nearby building. He looked down at Bakugou one last time, trying to memorize the shape of his face, the familiar line of his shoulders, the person he had been before the world became something that could take him away.

Then Izuku turned.

He walked.

He did not know where he was going.

He did not know whether he would survive the night, whether he would find another person, whether he would ever see a world in which people could live without being afraid of one another.

He did not know whether there was anything left to save.

He only knew that Bakugou had asked him to keep living.

So he kept walking.

And behind him, the city continued to rot.

The infected wandered through the streets, searching for the living. The abandoned cars rusted beneath the rain. The windows of the buildings remained dark, and the flowers outside the little house at the edge of the road withered in their pots.

The world had ended two months ago.

Izuku had survived it.

He had survived the school, the streets, the river, the apartment, the supermarket, and every terrible day that had followed. He had watched his friends disappear one by one, and he had carried their names in his heart until the weight of them had become almost unbearable.

Now he carried one more.

Katsuki Bakugou.

The boy who had once told him to get out of his way.

The boy who had spent years pretending that he did not care.

The boy who had stayed beside him when everyone else was gone.

The boy who had loved him enough to let him go.

Izuku walked until the street disappeared into darkness, and when the first tears fell again, he did not try to stop them.

He had spent two months learning how to survive the end of the world.

He had never learned how to survive the loss of the person who made it worth living in.

And somewhere behind him, beneath a sky that had forgotten how to be blue, the last boy who had ever called him Deku lay silent in the middle of an empty street.

The world kept turning.

It had no idea what it had taken.