The First Day
Midnight
All I see is black. Then my vision begins to adjust and the darker gray of the ceiling differentiates itself from the deeper gloom of shadows across it, cast by slivers of midnight creeping through the curtains.
I insist on black-out curtains to sleep at night. I need every moment of good, deep sleep I can get since I have a sleep debt that could bankrupt a country. So I know immediately it wasn't a stray light from outside that made me wake so suddenly. It's not any sense so mundane.
I look to my left already knowing what I'll find.
A boy stands in my side of the dorm room. I've seen him before, lurking elsewhere on campus at a distance, but he hasn't said a word to me yet. I know how to be patient, but it's still starting to edge towards annoying. I don't know why so many of them are like this, but I suppose I'll have to learn first hand someday.
He is dressed oddly. It's something like a heavily modified Shiketsu student uniform. The Shiketsu blue blazer is worn open, lapels riveted to lay flat. The bottom edge has three rows of checkerboard pattern, and it has a new bright-red lining. The boy's ears are pierced in at least five places and he has the kind of bottle blond hair that only the most devoted yankī still wear. A military gas mask, shattered and torn, dangles from frayed straps around his neck. His biker boots have dark stains. He has chains and spikes all over himself. A parody of rebellious style.
Details like that would be impossible to see normally in the dimness of my bedroom. But that's the thing about ghosts: they're lit and shaded by their last moment of life. They're visually incongruous with their surroundings, making them easy to spot even if they aren't as heavily injured as this boy is.
He has bloodless punctures all over the front of his body, and his head has the same cracks covering it a broken egg would have if you tried to glue all the pieces back into place. I flex my fingers under the covers to mentally compare to the unshattered shape across the boy's face.
It seems whoever did this had a big hand.
I look at him in silence for a while, wondering if this is when he'll finally speak. He glares at me in the way that says he died in fury, but furious at someone else. A leftover, lingering, misdirected self-righteousness.
A pretty common expression on ghosts, really.
After it's clear he won't be the one to speak first, I look passed him and across the room at the other bed. Maborineko-san is quite still, and the purple tufts of her feline ears aren't twisted in our direction. Thankfully, it looks like she's still asleep.
I whisper to my guest, hoping to hurry this along a little. "If you need to explain, then explain. If you need to confess, then confess. Otherwise, please let me get some rest. My first day of classes is tomorrow."
I mentioned classes on purpose. He's at a school, after all, and it might cause an outburst that tells me something. For a moment, it seems like it might work, as his expression twists into something unreadably complex. Then it turns back to its aggrieved default, and he holds out a hand to the side, where a torn and dented motorbike of some kind or another simply appears.
If it's just a kid upset about a traffic accident, I might actually feel disappointed.
He twists the handle and it accelerates at the wall, pulling him along with it. He smoothly hops up onto some kind of foot peg and balances there on one foot - I'm not impressed, ghosts can fly after all - and his gaze never leaves me until both him and the phantom machine speed silently through the wall. The last thing I see is a twist of chain whipping wildly until it, too, snakes through the solid building and into the open night air.
I could get up and watch where he goes through my second story window. I don't. I roll over in bed to face the wall and make myself go back to sleep.
Q0
"Next is Nowaru Kimi."
Many people in the class have already gone, and I'm sure they're as ready for this exercise to be done as I am. I can't be bothered, so I'll keep it simple. I go directly to the front and write up my name as requested. When I turn around, something catches my eye.
I couldn't see it from the other angles, but from the front it's distracting. The new Korean student's pupils are crammed full of hundreds of wisps. It's like looking through windows and seeing a swarm of fireflies, except they're glowing in the cavern of his brain. A weak string of disgust tugs at me. It's the same feeling as suddenly finding a dead bird squirming with maggots on the sidewalk. It's not the bird's fault, or even the insects', but the reaction is instinctive.
I make sure my look doesn't linger so no one gets the wrong idea. "As he said, I am Nowaru Kimi. I have a hobby of researching psychic phenomena and I like to read."
I look at our teacher to make sure that's enough. He doesn't seem upset or anything, so I retrieve my questionnaire and return to my seat.
Q1: What is a hero to you? What drives you to be a hero? Are there any heroes that you look up to? If not, what are your criticisms of the world of heroes?
A hero intervenes with problems so the world can work more smoothly. Many people only think of the flashy life-and-death kind of issues, and while someone needs to handle those, it's not all there is. Simply being there for people who have no one else is heroism.
Because I think the Hero Ranking System does not give enough credit to people who solve small, common, and frequent issues, I respect the Heroes that make their careers out of that. I intend to model myself on meta-ability detective-type Professionals that I've read about in the news, like Pirolock, Nightwatch, and Forget-Me-Not.
Q2: How do you feel about certain homeroom teachers taking five minute smoke breaks?
Did you know that cigarette smoke doesn't just fill your lungs with scars and tar, it also leaches minerals out of your weakening bones and has even been associated with macular degeneration, which causes blindness as you age. Secondhand smoke exposure causes all the same damages and at practically the same rate as firsthand exposure. Your body only retains a small amount of the carcinogenic toxins when you exhale, after all, so the dosage is not meaningfully reduced in the exhale and medically active levels will linger on the clothes and hands.
I find things like that interesting. Momento mori, but everyone should get to choose their own risks and methods in my opinion. Maybe certain homeroom teachers could chew tobacco gum?
Q3: Which of your fellow classmates do you think you'll get along with the best, and which do you think the worst? Don't forget why! This will not change your seating arrangement.
I'm satisfied with my roommate. From repeated exposure alone we'll likely be closer at the end of the year than when we started. I am curious about Romero-san but am making no judgements. I expect Mitarai Atsuko will have too much energy for me. I don't have strong feelings one way or another about anybody.
Q4: How do you feel about your quirk? Do you enjoy using it? Do you dislike it? Is there anything about it you would change? What about fighting? How do you feel about fighting? With or without your quirk? How does it make you feel to engage in fisticuffs with another being?
I will pass on talking about my quirk. It seems to cause issues, between a certain kind of modern cult in Japan and a certain strain of older cult of thinking. No matter how much I say to either party that I only take the evidence of my own experiences and my own senses, it feels as if what they want to talk about and act on is a set of symbols they cover me in.
It is what it is and I am what I am.
Anyway, my quirk is useless for fighting except in truly extraordinary circumstances that I hope I never encounter. But I would not bother with choosing this career path if I were defenseless. I have been training in self-defense methods for several years and think that I have developed a dependable system that is a synthesis of successful, practical martial arts. I welcome your tutelage and expertise in this matter and will incorporate your advice, but it is my honest opinion that practice time is my only real barrier now.
How does it make me feel to be in fights? I hope you don't take this the wrong way. It makes me feel nothing at all. It takes focus, there is danger, it is necessary in some contexts. Just a thing that has to be accomplished occasionally, like washing the dishes, but with more consequence for all involved parties.
Q5: If you were to schedule your perfect day tomorrow, what would it look like?
After brunch, I would read a book cover to cover that sweeps me away, with not a single interruption. I'll picnic in my loveliest clothes. Then I'll change so I can walk up the mountain and wait for the stars to come out, enjoying the solitude of an overnight camp and the beautiful little curios I bring to keep me company. I've never had a day like that, but it sounds calming and free.
Unrelated, but did you know the dorms are built on a graveyard?
Q6: What is your most cherished memory? Did you share it with others? Or was it in a moment of quiet introspection? How did it affect you as a person? Is it painful to look back on now?
No, my most cherished memory is not painful. I'm not sure I could describe it in a way that would let other people understand its significance. Because of it, I know that I can withstand all the highs and lows, the difficulties of the life I want to lead.
I've always been close to my maternal grandmother. She was doting when I was small, and after my grandfather passed - who was a pleasant man but not particularly affectionate, and that made me unfair to him in my childhood memory - she came to live with us. She was blind from birth, you see.
Being from a small mountain village in a less stable era, they looked to the old ways so she would not be treated as a burden. For one reason or another, they worked well enough, and she was accepted in not just that village but others nearby as an advisor and a medium. She told me many stories, and though I don't believe all of them in the way she did I always enjoyed the way she told them.
I love my grandmother very much. It is in her honor that I chose my Hero Name, and I know she approves. I told her about my feelings and my intent on the last day I got to speak with her, in that long conversation where we kept each other company and let go of many of the secrets that come up between generations and family members. She was funnier than I knew.
Getting her blessing was what I needed, and it turns out that she had been worried about my future. Speaking plainly with her let her know I was forging my own way. When her spirit dispersed, I was able to grieve for her properly, and my parents held no discomfort about the manner in which I had attended her funeral.