Chapter Text
Chapter Ten:
There are Bad Days…
“Miss Hajime…hey…” Rin returned to consciousness with reluctance. For a moment she was confused and could only process that her asthma was acting up. She fumbled beside her, expecting her bedside table and nearly fell off what turned out to be the couch in her living room. She was steadied and pushed gently back onto the couch. “Careful, you passed out!” came the booming voice of All Might.
All Might…damn…so that wasn’t a nightmare.
She heard a brief, muffled cough before he spoke again. “The door was locked so I, er…opened it. I assure you I will pay for the damages. You mentioned an inhaler, be so kind as to impart it’s whereabouts and I will retrieve it posthaste!”
Rin blinked and eyed the room wearily. The big hero was half kneeling beside her, looking strange in contrast to what should have been a normal, familiar and safe private space. This was a secondary thought however, as breathing was her most immediate problem and her aversion to the prospect of relying on All Might was slightly less than that of trying to sit up or move at all. She waved a hand vaguely.
“My bag…” her voice came out in a croak.
There was a change in the air as he left her side. Rin closed her eyes again and then frowned. She could feel the floor shake slightly as he walked around, hell she could hear items rattling gently on her coffee table and countertop. How did this man catch anyone off guard? Even if she were blind and deaf, she would be able to tell that he was there.
Then she remembered the park and the coffee shop. One moment she had been alone, the next moment he was just…there…as if he’d been standing there the whole time. Not to mention at the entrance of the theater. He’d moved both of them out of danger so quickly that her brain hadn’t even been able to keep up, hadn’t been able to register the fact that her body had moved at all until several seconds after it happened.
She’d once read somewhere that All Might could move so quickly that he couldn’t be picked up by the human eye.
Rin’s thoughts were broken up as All Might returned and brandished her inhaler in a massive hand. Rin took it and used it with as much desperation as she was willing to show in front of the man. After, she took several deep breaths.
Did he say he broke my door? Was her first thought as the heaviness in her chest began to dissipate. Rin pulled herself up with a groan and made a brief annoyed gesture to deter him from helping her.
She was once again struck by how strange the whole situation was. This was made most apparent by the fact that the silent film she had been watching when All Might had arrived was still paused on her television. For things to go from normal to…whatever the hell this was in so short a time was staggering.
Rin looked wearily at her front door. It wasn’t removed entirely from the hinges like the doors at the theater, but it was standing ajar and there was a very definite sense of openness about it that suggested it wouldn’t be closing anytime soon. This was mostly due to the fact that the wall the locks would have normally slid into was missing pieces of doorframe and the deadbolt and latch bolt themselves were still visibly sticking out of the faceplate.
“You had me worried for a moment, Miss Hajime,” he said, some relief ebbing into his voice. “You should have told me you had asthma! I would have never suggested you enter a burning building if I’d known!”
“You broke my door,” Rin said in response. In truth she wasn’t all that worried about the door. Now that the weird disconnected feeling was starting to disperse and her inhaler was doing its job on her airways, there were a lot of other larger things that were more concerning to her. The door was just the easiest thing to focus on. Thinking about everything else was something she wanted to do by herself with alcohol…or something, anything that would ground her and force some sense back into the world…but probably alcohol.
“Yes,” he said slowly. “The medics at the theater had their hands full and taking you to a hospital would have required time for an explanation. I thought the quickest way to help you would be to bring you back here…I would still recommend you see a medical professional.”
She had a brief internal struggle. On the one hand he’d saved her life…maybe a couple of times depending on how bad her asthma would have gotten had he not intervened. On the other hand, she wouldn’t have needed it if he’d never shown up to begin with. Everything would be normal, and she’d probably be in bed right now. She hadn’t asked for any of this and the prospect of thanking him for it turned her stomach.
“Please...just leave,” she said, her voice coming out in monotone.
“Miss Hajime, are you certain you’re feeling…”
“Leave…please.”
She hadn’t looked at him in full since waking, possibly out of self-defense and still didn’t as she spoke to him now. Instead she focused on the frozen image of the black and white silent film. She heard something like a sigh and was aware of the change in the air as he straightened.
“All right,” he said. “I uh…thank you for your assistance and your bravery this evening.” There was a brief groan from the floorboards as he shifted his weight and started for the door. He hesitated about halfway and Rin felt a wave of frustration as he turned towards her again.
XXX
Toshinori stifled a cough. He needed to get back to the theater while he still had time in his hero form. Still, there had been something on his mind since he’d become aware of who she was and since she’d already basically made him promise to stay away from her, he didn’t feel as if he’d get another chance to say something. Earlier that day, she'd chastised him about apologizing, but that had been directed at Yagi and he felt she was still owed an apology from All Might. Well…that was the least she was owed.
“I…know now isn’t the best time,” he started, in what would wind up being a massive understatement, “but I wanted to apologize. I uh…I realize you must have gone through a lot after your father’s arrest. I regret my part in any pain it has caused you. I know it doesn’t mean much, but I’m sorry.”
He wanted to say more, but words, which were generally not much of a problem for him, were proving difficult to formulate in the circumstances, so instead he bowed slightly. The room filled with silence, not a comfortable silence, or even an awkward silence, but the ringing deafening silence of the sort that falls before a bomb drops or a secret blade slices through the air.
He risked a look and immediately wished he hadn’t. She had been avoiding his gaze…really for much of the evening. Now she was staring, and her expression was almost impossible to describe. It was as if a lot of different feelings were trying to occupy her face all at once; anger, hatred and exasperation being chief among them. One thing was clear though; she didn’t want his apology. True to what she’d said before, all she seemed to want for sure was for him to not be there.
“Right! Now is a horrible time! Sorry! Leaving!” he said quickly before heading towards the door and cursing to himself in process.
XXX
When All Might returned to the Ukiyo-za he joined the police and the pros as they did a sweep of the building, or what was left of it, while the firemen worked at putting the remainder of the fire out. All Might returned to the theater entrance once it was cleared and eyed the balcony again. The air was still stale and unpleasant, but the room was cleared of smoke and flame and the theater itself was quickly becoming a ruin. When he was certain he wasn’t being watched he stifled a cough into his sleeve. It looked as if there was no one left in the building. If anyone had escaped, they had done so without being noticed.
After some consideration and with the knowledge that it was probably a bad idea, All Might jumped up to the upper floor. There was a moment when the wooden floorboards shifted beneath his feet and groaned with his weight, before they settled. He straightened and ducked under a fallen bit of debris and moved another large piece of what had been a railing. It was hard to spot anything out of the ordinary when everything was so degraded, but he scanned the walkway carefully even so.
Among all the gray and soot and ash, there was a flash of white in the corner of his periphery. It was lying near a wall on the edge of the terrace. As he approached it, he saw that it was a mask, the same make as the others. Unlike the others it was broken in half. The writing on it was the same as the mask he’d received in the package sent to Might Tower; Strength.
As he eyed it, he felt the sudden urge to cough again, as his lung sent him an unpleasant reminder that he was standing in a building, breathing in soot and had indeed been breathing in smoke for the last hour. He coughed in his hand and winced a little at the drop of crimson on his knuckle. He was out of time.
“Are you all right?” Toshinori resisted the urge to jump, appear alarmed, and especially to go into a full coughing fit and start spewing blood at the statement. The young pro he’d met at the Shibuya train station was stepping over some of the rubble and eyeing him from below.
“Ah!” he said with forced cheerfulness. “Young Sumitomo, you startled me!”
“Sorry, sometimes I activate my quirk without thinking,” he said in response.
“Right, the shadow thing! Must be useful for stealth ops,” All Might said as he took the pieces of mask carefully, no longer concerning himself with touching them with his bare hands.
“Not too useful for burning buildings unfortunately. I don’t think I’ve been much help.”
“I don’t know about that!” All Might responded with a grunt as he dropped back to the lower floor. “People can help in a lot of different ways; your quirk may not fit in every situation, but the will to do something can be just as important.”
“That’s…nice of you to say. But I mean…you do so much…”
“Nonsense,” All Might interrupted. He didn’t want to be unkind, but he also needed this conversation to end as quickly as possible. “A lot of people helped out tonight. Now, if you wouldn't mind doing me a favor, this needs to be taken to an officer,” he added as he handled the mask halves.
“Sure…uh what…”
“Evidence. You’re wearing gloves, good. Don’t handle it without them and make sure whoever you give it to doesn’t touch it with their bare hands either,” he said as Sumitomo took the pieces.
“Uh…you’re holding it without gloves?”
“Ah! So I am!” he said cheerfully. “Thank you for pointing that out. From now on, make sure no one else does! I have to find Detective Tsukauchi,” he said while turning away from the youthful pro and heading for the exit.
He found Naomasa outside of the theater. As he headed out of the stale air of the demolished building and into the cold autumn weather, he felt his chest heave slightly. His side was killing him. How many more minutes till he went back to his weak form? One? Two?
Naomasa eyed him as he approached. He had been talking to another officer.
“The building is clear,” All Might said. “Whoever was in there is long gone.”
The younger man nodded wearily and then examined him for a moment before speaking again.
“I appreciate all of the help. It’s a shame about the building, but it could have been a lot worse. If you don’t mind, could I have a few words with you in private,” he added while dismissing the other officer.
“Of course,” All Might said after a moment. He followed Naomasa as the man lead them away from the bulk of the crowd.
“Something wrong?” All Might said.
“No, I just thought you might like a ride home,” he said with the hint of a smile once they were out of earshot. “You’re starting to smoke.”
“My friend, you are a lifesaver,” All Might said gratefully.
Once they were alone, safely hidden inside Naomasa’s tinted car, Toshinori released his hero form, giving in to a brief coughing fit in the process. He fought to catch his breath for a moment and was able at least to resist the impulse to hack up blood on Tsukauchi's car seat. He could tell that he was in for an unpleasant evening.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to drop you off at a hospital or something?” Naomasa asked with some concern.
“Agh…no, I’ll be all right,” Toshinori said, as he leaned back. His hero suit was now hanging loosely over his skinny body.
“Still, it might not be a bad idea to at least have someone look at you. A lot of unpleasant stuff in the air in a chemical fire.”
“I just need some rest,” he responded while breathing in slowly. “Besides…I left my clothes behind in Might Tower…it would be pretty difficult to explain the suit.”
And while this was true, Toshinori had to admit that he was probably making excuses. He had regular doctors appointments that he attended...for the most part, but ever since his injury, the thought of being in a hospital for any length of time frustrated him. It wasn't just the sterile walls or the restlessness of being stuck in a hospital bed when he could be doing something useful, but also that feeling of being helpless...weak...vulnerable. It didn't help that his body was so fucked up now that it was impossible to go into any medical establishment without being reminded of it multiple times. He didn't need to be told that his BMI was off. He had mirrors.
“I suppose,” Naomasa said with a sideways look at his friend.
After returning to his apartment and ensuring no one was around to see him in his hero suit, Toshinori bid Naomasa farewell with a bow. he had learned long ago that carrying anything of importance on him while he was doing hero work was a slight risk. It was too easy to lose things while he was flying over the city or during a particularly active tussle with a villain. Because of this he didn’t carry his keys with him anymore unless he also had civilian clothes on him and he always had a spare hidden somewhere outside his front door. He'd starting doing this after the third or fourth time he'd had to break into his own house after misplacing his keys somewhere in the city.
Currently he was storing his spare key in the small mailbox that hung beside his apartment number. He grabbed for it with slightly shaky long fingers and unlocked his door. Once inside, and out of view of Naomasa or anyone, he braced himself on the wall and coughed, covering his mouth with his other hand. He tasted blood and felt the warm, wet sticky feeling as it coated his palm.
He felt horrible. Granted this was nothing new, but on top of pushing his hero form too far and the inevitable pain and unpleasantness that this caused his body as it shrank back into the withered mess it currently was, he almost felt like he had caught a bad cold. His throat hurt, his chest hurt, his eyes and head hurt, and he could have sworn he could still smell burning.
Feeling slightly lightheaded, he went to his kitchen and ran his hand under the sink for a moment, before grabbing a towel and wiping the remaining blood from his mouth and fingers. He poured himself a glass of water as well, but it didn’t do much good apart from helping to wash the taste of iron out of his mouth. The cold hit his raw throat like a dagger and almost caused him to start coughing again. Sleep, what he needed was sleep. He hadn’t gotten much the night before.
Toshinori struggled out of his hero suit, before pulling a loose t-shirt over his bony shoulders and crawling into bed. He was only in bed for a moment before he realized that sleep was going to be more difficult to obtain then he hoped and it had little to do with his actual level of fatigue. What air he could force into his lung while upright was seemingly completely cut off the second he tried to lay down. He couldn’t breathe.
XXX
Seethe was standing outside of the abandoned office that had become a sort of unofficial base for the small group the mask man had…hired? Bribed? Whatever it was they were. He stepped out to smoke and ironically, get some fresh air. A few rooms on one of the upper floors were cleared out and made almost habitable, but the atmosphere was still one heavy in mildew, dust and rat droppings…and the company was not much better.
Kage and Petra were still working, so that had left him with the other two. His initial impression of the old man was that at first glance he would have easily passed as a kindly elderly gentleman one might see on the bus with his neat haircut, thin bifocal lenses and slightly tacky tweed blazers. After a few minutes in the man's company he began to give Seethe the creeps though. He had an odd smile and was always reading strange old books. He also had an annoyingly cloying voice, almost sweet and soft-spoken but in a way that rubbed you the wrong way. He’d introduced himself as Simon. It was unclear as to whether this was his real name, but given that the older man was clearly Japanese, it was probably not.
As for the girl, who was probably no older then seventeen or eighteen, well, as far as he could recall, she hadn’t said anything. When the masked man was there, she tended to follow him around. When he wasn’t there, it was almost like she shut down. She just sat with a strange faraway smile on her face. Being around both of them at the same time made Seethe’s head creak after a while.
He looked up when he heard the sound of heels on the ground as Petra stomped towards him. Unlike on every previous occasion he’d seen her, she was a mess. Her usually carefully done up hair was undone and in tangles. Her clothing was disheveled, and she smelled of smoke and petroleum. She also had an almost hunted look in her eyes.
“So, you’re back…how uh…how’d it go?” he asked. She glared at him in response.
“It was a fucking disaster,” she said. “Give me one of those,” she added as she pointed to his battered pack of cigarettes. He removed one and handed it to her quickly. When she took it, he noticed that one of her gloves was missing.
“Is uh, smoking a good idea with…well you know, you’re quirk?”
“Shut up,” she said in response as she put the cigarette in her mouth and pulled out a lighter. He winced a little when she lit it. For a moment he thought he saw the flame jump slightly, then it was gone, and he relaxed. “I see your job turned out being the easy one," she added after taking a long drag on the cigarette. "Couldn’t have spread the explosives out a bit to give us more time?”
“Spread them out? I was in Might Tower…do you know how fast All Might is? I was lucky to get out without being seen!” She scoffed but didn’t say anything further on the matter.
There was silence for a moment, and he resisted the urge to fill it. Instead it was broken when the front door opened. Seethe was the only one to turn as Simon eyed the two of them and smiled a toothy smile that twisted his deceptively friendly face in unpleasant ways.
“Evening,” he said as he walked down the stairs in well-worn suede shoes. “I take it by your expression, that your outing at the theater was not a pleasant affair.”
She scoffed again.
“I kept an eye on the news,” Seethe said. “Some…interesting headlines…sounded like things were going how he wanted…what happened?” He added as he moved a little way away from the older man as candidly as he could. So much for enjoying some alone time.
“All Might happened, what else!?” she said. Seethe nodded wearily. He hadn’t had much faith in the plan from the beginning to be honest. The idea of a world without All Might was an attractive one, but at the same time a small part of him cowered at the thought. The hero had been the symbol of peace throughout Seethe’s entire lifetime. The idea of being the one to end that was just…too big. It gave him a stomachache. It occurred to him that as much as Kage terrified him, if staying on the man’s good side meant continuing to go up against All Might, it might be safer to try and get out while he still could.
“Don’t you know smoke is bad for your lungs.”
Seethe jumped and nearly swallowed his cigarette. As if his dark thoughts had called him, Kage was standing nearby, his arms crossed. He hadn’t seen or heard his approach.
“Uh, I guess…never really cared too much about it, though,” he said after a moment, before dropping the remainder of his cigarette on the ground and stomping it out.
“Hah!” Petra said. This time, Seethe noticed that she too had been slightly shaken by his sudden appearance, but perhaps that had less to do with him and more to do with the current state of her nerves. “You want to know how it went, ask him! Or are you going to spout some nonsense about how things are going according to plan!”
“No,” Kage said. “The plan failed.” He followed this with silence.
“Right!” Petra said after a pause, perhaps losing some of her steam in the face of this simple admission.
“I expected him to rush in, but he was warned against it ahead of time. I expected him to go alone, but he went for help and…my quirk does not work on him.”
“Shit,” Seethe said. “So, All Might really is unbeatable.”
“All Might is a man,” Simon said from the stairway. “No man is invincible.”
“Simon is right,” Kage said. “There have been people who were immune to my power before...it had nothing to do with strength or invulnerability.”
“Who were they?” Seethe asked, trying to keep the slight tinge of hope out of his voice.
“Oh no one. Quite unexceptional to be honest. A woman with particularly severe obsessive-compulsive tendencies and a young man whose most notable quality was that he spent several years in extensive rehab for alcoholism.”
“So…you’re saying All Might is…an obsessive-compulsive alcoholic?” Seethe said after a moment, trying to keep up, while also wondering if he should take up excessive drinking. It wouldn't be hard, given his current circumstances.
“…doubtful,” Kage said after a long pause. “It more likely has to do with discipline.”
“Discipline?”
“All Might is the number one hero. He’s one of the most famous people in the country and he’s been number one for a long time. And yet there aren’t any scandals surrounding him, no stories about his personal life, relationships outside of his hero career…no one even knows his real name or what his quirk is. You think it’s because he’s just really good at keeping secrets?”
“…yes?” Seethe said. From the corner of his vision he saw Petra roll her eyes.
“Nah, tabloids would be all over him at the slight hint of a scandal…or a love life,” Simon said from behind him, smiling his creepy smile.
“Invincible or not, the plan didn’t work. I thought you said there weren’t any pros in the city that could counter a chemical fire. Who was that girl?” Petra said.
“Not a pro,” Kage said, coming out of his thoughts. “A civilian.”
“Well she was a civilian who nearly killed me,” she snapped. “I only stayed behind because you said you had things under control. I don’t know what she did, but I felt like the life was being sucked out of my body! If I hadn’t gotten off the second floor when I did…” she shivered. “It’s not an experience I wish to repeat!”
“Like I said, she’s not a pro. I don’t know much about her other than that, but I'll look into her if it would make you feel better" Kage said. "All Might is just a man," he added to himself. "A Man with a very carefully crafted persona. No one can shine that brightly without it being a trick,” he said the last in a near whisper.
XXX
Rin snapped awake for the fourth or fifth time since laying down some hours before and sat up with a brief intake of breath. After a moment, the panic and disorientation subsided. She was safe, lying on the couch in her living room. No one was here. She had been dreaming about something, but she couldn't recall what, except that it had involved shadows and people screaming as they burned and the weird sensation that someone was watching.
Rin looked sideways at the television which was playing an old soap opera and then her eyes shifted to the front door, which she had dragged a cabinet in front of, since closing it properly was out of the question.
For a couple of years after High school, Rin had lived with Kaiya. The other woman had been baffled when she'd spent the first few weeks sleeping on the couch instead of her bed and her reasoning then was, in a broad sense, more or less the same as her reasoning now. She hadn't wanted to be in a room shut off from the exit. Not being able to see it made her uncomfortable and she wasn't able to relax if she couldn't. For the most part these days, she was able to ignore that irrational fear, but after the events of the previous evening, those insecurities came back in full, even after she'd gone through all of remaining alcohol in her fridge.
Rin scrabbled at her coffee table where her phone was sitting. Kaiya had sent her a few texts throughout the evening and she hadn't answered any of them. She skimmed through them again with a frown. They started out pretty casual, but the woman had become more frustrated the longer she failed to answer them.
Do you want to get lunch tomorrow?
---
Are you still angry about last night?
---
Rin, I can see that you're reading these
and ignoring them. A re you doing that
thing where you aren't answering me because
you want to avoid talking about something?
She groaned and fell back onto her pillow. At some point she would have to talk to Kaiya. There was just...so much to say and she didn't know where to start. After a couple of minutes of staring at the ceiling she raised her phone above her head and began to type a response.
I was at that theater that was on
fire because of All Might.
There...that seemed to cover it.
XXX
Since his injury and the time he spent in the hospital undergoing surgery after surgery removing pieces of his broken malfunctioning organs, Toshinori could mostly divide his overall health in good days and bad days. On the good days his cough was mild, he had a relatively normal appetite and the pain in his body was reduced to the ordinary pains associated with his ripening age and a mild ache in his side that he could mostly ignore. On the bad days he was nauseous, coughed up blood the way some people sneezed and endured pain that at times was so intense that it was difficult to think about anything else. More often though, it was some combination of the two. It was amazing how much the human body adapted and he had adapted to pain, had grown accustomed to the taste of iron and the sometimes drastic shifts in his health depending on how active he was during any given time.
Then there were the other days. The days that made the 'bad' days seem pleasant by comparison. There had been a lot of them in the beginning, but nowadays they were fewer and far between and were generally the result of him getting too carried away with his hero work, forcing his muscle form past it's limit...overdoing it. Unfortunately, It was starting to look like it might be one of those days.
Toshinori was coming to terms with the fact that he wasn't going to get any sleep. He had tried various positions, and had even tried to prop himself up so that he wasn't lying completely flat, but it didn't do any good. He was so tired that he could barely keep his eyes open, but the second he managed to even doze off for a second, he'd be shaken back into consciousness, choking, gasping for breath, or coughing. His remaining lung felt like it was on fire and anytime he started to cough he wasn't able to stop for several minutes, which inevitably led to gagging and retching. He was only able to calm his cough down by forcing himself to ignore the desperate impulse to do so and breathe slowly through his nose until the irritation in his throat and chest quieted down a bit and even then this brief respite would last for only twenty minutes or so.
The longest he managed to stay asleep was for maybe twenty minutes in the early morning, just as the light began to creep in through the window. He'd woken up confused and covered in sweat with his head hurting so bad that he could swear he felt his pulse in his temples. He then had coughed up a significant amount of blood on his pillow and after shivering for a few minutes under his blanket abandoned any further attempts at sleep altogether.
Toshinori had to force himself to get out of bed and the action came with a wave of dizziness and nausea, causing him to nearly losing his balance for a moment as he steadied himself against his dresser.
After the lightheadedness subsided a bit, he walked into the kitchen and searched through a cupboard where he kept his prescriptions, as well as over the counter pain killers, first aid supplies and various ointments for pain. He had acquired quite the assortment. He removed one of the stronger pain killers, some icy-hot and another ointment that was a cough suppressant before heading into the living room and collapsing onto the couch.
XXX
Rin’s experience with her previous neighbors had been a test of willpower. The building she lived in didn’t have especially thick walls and Rin’s schedule was such that a loud neighbor could disrupt it easily. She had to go to bed early if she wanted to get any kind of sleep and the last people who had lived below her…hadn’t. As far as she could tell they didn’t sleep at all. She had never been able to discern what their exact relationship was. She wasn’t sure if they were married or siblings…or just middle-aged roommates who really enjoyed shouting at each other, and it didn’t matter because what they definitely were, was annoying.
Rin always had trouble sleeping without some sort of white noise to drown out distractions and perhaps, to a degree her own thoughts…but when they had lived below her, her bedroom had been a cacophony of various noises to obscure whatever they were screaming about. There had even been one or two particularly bad nights where she had glared at her ceiling and had thought treacherously about how easily her quirk could have remedied the situation. Maybe not to kill them, but remove enough air and they would at least pass out, right?
In the weeks since Mr. Yagi had moved in, she was relieved to find that he was a vast improvement in pretty much every way. He didn’t seem to keep any company, didn’t listen to loud music, didn’t watch anything at a volume that permeated his own walls, hell for the most part, she couldn’t even tell he was there. There had been a couple of times over the last couple of weeks that she'd heard him in the early morning, presumably, as he was just getting home. Oh, and occasionally she could hear him coughing, but that was like hearing the occasional car outside or laughter in a distant room. They were sounds that didn’t even register as anything but background noise…giving the world some sort of texture.
Well…it had been anyways. For the past few hours the sound of him coughing had become a great deal more then background noise. Rin had moved back into her bedroom at around six in the morning when the sun started to come up and almost considered returning to the chorus of noise she’d used for her previous neighbors. The coughing was almost more unpleasant then their screaming had been, however, because it was hard not to feel her own throat tighten reflexively.
‘God, it sounds like he’s dying,’ she thought as she turned over on her side and covered her head with her blanket, obscuring one ear with her arm. For a moment she laid still like that with her eyes closed before another thought sidled carefully into her head with as much grace as the final snowflake before an avalanche. ‘Wait…he’s not, right?’
She opened her eyes again and stared at the far wall. She knew Mr. Yagi was sick, but it hadn’t particularly occurred to her until now to wonder how sick he was. Was he so sick that it was possible he might actually be dying in the apartment below her? No…that was silly. She had seen him on the previous day…and he seemed ok.
‘Well, maybe his health took a turn for the worse after he followed you around the park for most of the afternoon,’ Rin scowled and hit the side of her head with the base of her palm. It was unfair how quickly her brain turned against her. It was probably fine. He probably just had a cold or something. She winced a little. A really bad cold…she already had a long list of things to worry about. There wasn’t room to add Mr. Yagi to that list.
Unfortunately, her brain wouldn’t let her drop the matter. The longer she lay there, the more she found herself tensing up every time she heard anything from the apartment below her and a low level of unease began to settle in her stomach. She knew that part of it was that she was already in a skewed enough frame of mind from the events of the last twelve hours, so that any worry was amplified and her paranoia, which already had a tendency to run rampant was allowed to positively thrive.
After her stomach was completely tied in knots and the prospect of relaxing became impossible, she gave up on trying to do so and decided it might be better to just get up and distract herself with something.
So, a few minutes later, she was in the kitchen making a pour over.
What sort of illness would cause someone to cough up blood? She thought as she poured boiling water over a generous amount of coffee grounds. Kaiya is right, it's never a good sign, but what's the worst-case scenario? Whatever it is, it's most likely the reason for how painfully skinny he is as well. So…coughing up blood and severe weight loss.
She was snapped out of her thoughts unpleasantly when scalding liquid poured over her fingers as she mindlessly let her cup overflow. Rin hissed and shook the water from her hand, her brief movements causing her cup to rock slightly and more liquid to spill onto the countertop.
“Shit,” she said as she threw away the filter and tipped some of the excess coffee into the sink.
She took the remainder into the living room and sat it on her coffee table before picking up her phone. There were a couple new texts from Kaiya. They were considerably more excitable then the previous few had been. Rin took a few minutes to answer them before setting her phone back down.
Whatever illness Mr. Yagi had would also be the reason he couldn't drink or have a lot of sugar...or maybe that was just a side effect? So coughing up blood, weight loss and diet restrictions. She could just…look his symptoms up. Otherwise she would just keep wondering about it.
As she started to drink her coffee, she eyed her phone again. After some debate, she picked it up and started doing some cursory searches on the web. Unsurprisingly, this didn’t have the calming effect she hoped for.
She should have stopped after the first site, which had had a symptom checker with a cute graphic where various body parts could be selected, and symptoms could be added. What was less cute was the red flashing blip that had popped up after she had started writing with the message that read;
Warning! These symptoms are an indication of a potentially severe and life-threatening condition, please seek immediate medical attention.
Rin glared at the message for a moment before exiting out of the site and trying another. After about an hour of searching she shut off her phone with frustration and set it back on the table. The two most commonly occurring results she’d come up with were a variety of cancers, with lung cancer being the most likely and tuberculosis. It...probably wasn't tuberculosis. Regardless, it had done nothing for her nerves except to make them worse.
It was for this reason that even though she really didn’t feel like having company and didn’t wish to talk about the previous evening, she was nevertheless grateful for the distraction when Kaiya knocked on her door in the early afternoon.
After she’d hoisted the cabinet out of the way and had made a cup of coffee for the other woman and another to replace the one that had gotten cold while she had been looking at various medical sites they both sat in her living room, while Kaiya rested her chin in her hand and tried to untangle Rin’s confusedly inept account of the last 48 hours.
“Ok, hold on…so All Might was raking leaves in Shizuka Park and then you followed him to a burning theater…why was he raking leaves and...when did he break into your apartment?”
“No, those were different days. The park was two days ago, and I’m still not convinced that wasn’t a fever dream. The fire was yesterday. He broke my door last night.” Rin said as she sipped at her coffee and stared glumly forward. After spending a couple hours the previous night more or less sitting on the ground and having a panic attack and then another couple of hours drinking, she had achieved a state on the far reaches of hysteria where it was difficult to muster any kind of emotion at all because she felt she'd already had all of them.
“So, he broke in…and then...you went to a burning building...with All Might?”
“Technically he knocked the first time…he broke in after the burning building because I didn’t have my keys.”
“I think I need you to start again,” Kaiya said after a moment. “Also…it’s kind of loud in here, do you mind turning down your tv a little?” Rin sighed.
“No,” she said after a moment. “I didn’t actually plan on processing through this today, Kaiya. I was just going to get really drunk and have a quiet mental breakdown.”
Kaiya gave her one of her looks.
“You know that isn’t a real plan, right?”
“Sounds pretty good to me,” she mumbled. “Anyways, I only had enough beer to get kind of drunk…just made it all weirder.”
There was silence, or as much as there could be with a bad soap opera being played at an extremely uncomfortable volume as Kaiya eyed her for a moment. Finally she grabbed at the remote sitting on the top of the couch and turned the television off. Rin winced.
“God, I wish he’d stop coughing,” she said below her breath.
“What?”
“Nothing, listen…just…I don’t want to talk about the theater right now, okay?”
"What about All Might? Would you like to talk about him?"
"Hell no," Rin said.
Kaiya sat back on Rin's couch with a sigh and eyed the ceiling for a moment.
"Are you okay? I mean apart from the drinking and the scheduled mental breakdown?"
Rin gave her a brief uni-shrug.
"Yes...I don't know. I mean, I think fire is bad for my asthma, but it's been mostly fine."
“Well, for what it’s worth, I’m proud of you,” Kaiya said finally before taking a drink of her own coffee. Rin gave her an exasperated look.
“What? Why? What a weird thing for you to say…”
“I mean don’t get me wrong, I’m worried, really I found your texts incredibly upsetting…and I’m probably going to try to convince you to stay over at our house tonight, but I read some of the stories on that fire. I mean…I always thought hero work would suit you.”
Ah, so it was this again. Rin scowled.
“Well it doesn’t, okay?” she snapped back. “It was awful, and I don’t plan on doing it again. I didn’t get any lovely warm feelings…you know apart from the…warm feelings of almost being set on fire and I’m not glad that I did any of it.”
Kaiya watched this outburst calmly before taking another sip of coffee.
“Give me your hand.”
“Kaiya, I swear to god,” Rin started. “I swear to god if you use your quirk on me right now, I’ll…I’ll show up at your classroom and be awkward and curse and stuff in front of your students!”
Kaiya covered her mouth for a moment either out of frustration or amusement. Still the woman relented.
“Relax, I’m not going to do it when you’re this upset, it would be like sticking my hand in a socket.”
“I’m not a hero, Kaiya and before you bring it up…” she added as the other woman started to open her mouth, “when I saved you back in Highschool it wasn’t because I gave a shit…I mean…obviously…I do now…but back then it was just…reflexes…I wasn’t thinking about it.” The woman continued to watch her with that annoyingly calm expression.
“All Right,” Kaiya said after a moment. “We don’t have to talk about it…for now. But...you know where to find me if you change your mind.”
“I know,” Rin said quietly.
They sat in silence for a while. She’d been friends with Kaiya for long enough so that uncomfortable silences no longer existed with her. Rin drank her coffee and tried to enjoy the silence. Eventually, she turned the television back on and they watched horrible soap operas for a couple of hours and Kaiya ordered takeout and practically forced it on her when she learned she hadn't eaten for much of the day.
When it started to get dark, Rin dragged the cabinet away from the door again so that Kaiya could leave.
“So…is there any chance of me convincing you to come over tonight?”
“I’ll be all right,” Rin said after a pause. She always had a horrible time trying to sleep in beds that weren’t hers. Tonight would probably not offer many improvements over the previous night in terms of sleep, but moving locations wouldn’t change that. There was a silence as Kaiya gave her a look of exasperation and she carefully ignored it. Normally Kaiya broke these silences, but this time Rin did so, with something that, as it were, had been on her mind for much of the day.
“How many people have tuberculosis these days?”
Judging by the way Kaiya’s expression changed, this was not a question she’d been expecting.
“Uh…I don’t...know…why?”
“I was just wondering,” she said. When Kaiya continued to stare at her, she sighed a little. “I’ve been hearing Mr. Yagi coughing since this morning...a lot…I mean more than usual. I just…you know…just wondering,” she added the last in a mumble.
Understanding dawned on the other woman’s face.
“Ah,” she said while turning her head to the side a little and eyeing her friend for a couple of seconds. “I mean, if you’re worried about it, just ask him.”
“What, you mean…walk up to him and say; ‘Hey, you seem pretty sick, I was just wondering if you have tuberculosis, or some other horrible illness?’” Rin said sarcastically as she crossed her arms against the cold that was emanating from her open door.
“Well, obviously I wouldn’t put it like that. I meant you could just ask him if he’s all right?”
“No! I’m not going to do that!”
“Your right,” Kaiya said after a moment while rolling her eyes. “Much better to just keep worrying about it.” Rin scowled, but didn’t comment. “Listen, if something crazy or traumatic happens to you again, call me please,” she added while hugging Rin goodbye. “It can be very frustrating when the only time I get an explanation from you is when I’m trying to translate your drunk texts.”
“I don’t drunk text you that often,” Rin muttered. She didn’t add that some of those ‘drunk texts’ had probably been when she was sober and was just bad at articulating something.
“Of course,” Kaiya said as she headed down the stairs. “Normally you just avoid conversation altogether…which is also extremely healthy behavior.”
After Rin dragged the cabinet back in front of the door she headed to the bathroom. She’d taken a shower early that morning when it had occurred to her that she smelled like ten bonfires. Now she filled the bath, hoping that it would help her relax a little and make sleep easier to achieve. She briefly went through a shelf before finding an assortment of bath salts Kaiya had given her in her efforts to 'find things that would relax her, that wasn't just more alcohol.' She emptied a significant amount into the tub and then once it was filled, she turned off the water and laid back, her black hair falling over the colorful tiles and soaking slightly at the ends. The silence was broken only by the remaining drops of water falling from the faucet. She sat like that for several minutes. In that time, it occurred to her that she hadn’t heard Mr. Yagi cough for a while. That should have been a relief…but it wasn’t, it really wasn’t.
Rin opened her eyes and nearly tripped on the side of the tub as she struggled to get out and then did trip on the water that had sloshed over the edge onto the floor due to her hasty exit, which caused her to run into the bathroom door. She righted herself with a groan and began to gather her clothes up, before pulling the stricken garments on with the frustration of someone trying to make something fit properly over wet limbs.
As she exited the bathroom, she grabbed the first pair of shoes she could find, hopping on one foot as she yanked them on and running into furniture in the process. Once they were more or less on her feet, she grabbed her jacket and shoved the cabinet aside again.
XXX
Toshinori blinked and felt a tremor through his body as he underwent the brief sensation of falling that came with dozing off while upright before coming violently back into wakefulness. He was sitting on his couch with a blanket over his shoulders and had been in a state of semi consciousness for the last couple of hours, with his thoughts running from completely nonsensical to mildly rational as his brain weaved in and out of the partial sleep state.
The most recent though he'd had was something akin to; My insides are on fire...best get Miss Hajime to put them out. Then he'd frowned. What? He was certain he was running a fever, but hadn't actually taken the time to find out for sure.
He gazed blearily through his blond bangs. The sun was going down, so the room was mostly dark, with the only light being from his television, which for once was not turned to the news and was instead on a random channel that played old movies. His eyes fell to his coffee table, which was littered with blood covered tissues. In addition to these, there was a glass of water and a cup of tea that had most certainly gone cold by now. Near the table was a wastebasket. At some point in the day he had tried eating and thus far hadn’t been able to keep anything down apart from a few mouthfuls of tea. Everything else had come back up almost immediately.
Toshinori's body shook briefly with a weak cough. It down to a wheeze at this point because he couldn’t muster the energy to do more than that. And everything from his throat down to his absent stomach felt raw. Even this caused a jolt of pain throughout his entire midsection.
Once the pain subsided a bit, he rubbed at his forehead with a shaky hand and then jumped slightly as heard a knock on the door. For a moment he wondered if he’d actually heard it, or if it was just his head pounding. After hearing a second knock, he groaned and started to shrug the blanket off his shoulders.
Not many people knew where he lived, so it was either something unimportant, or very important. Unfortunately, he couldn’t take the risk if it was the latter. Toshinori grabbed a fresh tissue and dipped it in the glass of water, wiping the corners of his mouth to remove any potential remnants of blood that might have still been lingering. He then gathered it and the other tissues on the table and threw them away. He also picked up the water itself and washed his mouth out before eyeing it and throwing the whole thing, cup and all in the trash as well. Afterwards, he got to his feet slowly, bracing himself on his couch in the process and closing his eyes against the wave of inevitable dizziness that followed.
“Coming,” he said hoarsely as he opened them again. On the way to the front door he stashed the trashcan out of sight.
XXX
Rin got all the way down the stairs and knocked on Mr. Yagi's door twice before her panic subsided a bit and rational thought crept back in. It occurred to her that she had no idea what she was actually going to say. Suppose he had just caught a bad cold? Then what? Should she just try to think of an excuse really quickly or go with Kaiya’s suggestion and casually ask after his health? It probably didn’t matter what she decided, as the reality would most likely be her sputtering nonsense and hoping for the best.
On the other hand, what if he didn’t answer? Or couldn’t? Should she risk trying to call for help and hope that Mr. Yagi wasn’t just in bed or something?
This is a bad idea...
Her thoughts were interrupted when she heard someone undoing the locks on the other side of the door and she felt a wave of panic as it swung open.
Whatever excuse, inquiry or string of barely audible words she was prepared to communicate, they died in her throat upon seeing him.
Despite his skeletal frame and sunken eyes Mr. Yagi nevertheless gave the impression of someone with a spark of life in him. Between his smile, his good-natured enthusiasm that somehow wasn't grating and his baffling optimism, his personality was weirdly infectious. None of that was apparent right now. Granted, 'healthy' was probably not a word she'd use to describe him, but at least he generally didn't look as if he were about to fall over.
His eyes were bloodshot and slightly vacant, the dazzling blue of his irises dulled by exhaustion. Some level of bewilderment managed to break through, however as he looked at her.
“Rin,” he said, his voice hoarse and a few octaves deeper than usual. He cleared his throat a little and then grimaced. “Uh what can I do for you?” He sounded out of breath. In fact, she could hear him breathing.
Rin continued to stand there, frozen, as her brain attempted to catch up. In the silence, he shifted a little. He was wearing a loose t-shirt that was falling over one shoulder and exposing a pronounced collarbone as well as a pair of loose sweatpants. Both garments hung from him even more awkwardly then usual due to his current posture.
God, Rin, please say something, she thought as she stood there at his door, with her mouth partially open. Anything...even nonsense would be preferable to whatever it is your doing right now.
“Er…I…I…heard…I mean…I can…hear you…coughing from upstairs,” she managed finally. There was a brief silence as he processed this. He swallowed and grimaced again.
“Oh, sorry,” he said. “I’ll try to keep it down.” Rin stared at him.
“You’ll…keep it down…” she repeated slowly.
"Yes, I didn't realize..."
“I’m not here to complain!” she interrupted him. She hadn't intended to shout, but she'd found the idea that he would apologize for suffering too loudly somewhat exasperating. He started a little, once again eyeing her with bewilderment. “Do you…need…help?” She added awkwardly. A brief pained expression crossed his face.
"Ah...no. I'm...uh, just not feeling very well today."
Understatement, Rin thought. He smelled strongly of sweat and something else that could only be describe as...illness and the more she looked at him, the more apparent it became that the only reason Mr. Yagi was upright was out of sheer willpower. He was pale and his skin had an unhealthy sheen to it and he was shaking ever so slightly with the effort that answering the door had required. She wasn't good at this. Kaiya was much better equipped for this kind of thing. She knew how to treat a situation with delicacy while also maintaining some level of control. All Rin knew how to do was be direct and make people uncomfortable. Nevertheless, she made an attempt.
"Yeah," she said finally. "You uh...maybe you should see a doctor?"
"It's not as bad as it probably looks," he said, while giving her a thoroughly unconvincing smile.
"Well, it looks like you're about to collapse," she snapped back. "So is it less worse then that?"
He started to respond, possibly even to argue but presumably whatever restraint he had been employing up until then in order to have this conversation with her, gave out on him as he started to cough. He braced one hand on the doorframe and covered his mouth with the other. It was not unlike the evening after he’d moved in, when he’d gone into a coughing fit in front of her at the bottom of the stairs. But this was somehow worse, the sort of cough that hurt just to listen to and it only got worse from there as a spray of blood coated his fingers and the front of his t-shirt. Rin recoiled as she felt a few drops hit the side of her arm and then watched him with mounting panic as he struggled for breath.
Apart from that one instance at the park, she hadn’t used her quirk on another person in years. There were too many factors that went into it, too many risks. She might grudgingly ponder using it on her annoying neighbors in the early hours of the morning, but she wouldn’t have actually done it…well she probably wouldn’t have anyways. It was too easy to take a little too much. Her father had only taught her how to take and Rin wondered, in the years after his arrest if it was because that was all he had been able to do. Ultimately, however, her quirk was about moving oxygen, not taking it and at a time like this, well maybe it was better to just not think about it.
So, before she could fully process what she intended to do, she moved towards him again and held her breath as she placed both hands, palm down on his chest. The important thing was to focus, it was just a place to dump the oxygen he was already trying to breath. His coughing gradually ceased, and after it did she felt his chest rise under her fingers. Unfortunately, she made the mistake of locking eyes with him. Even in his distressed state, Mr. Yagi was eyeing her with apparent shock. This cleared, however and was slowly replaced by an expression of relief. She held his gaze for a moment, becoming increasingly aware of the fact that a couple of her fingers were pressed against the bare skin of his collarbone and that she could feel his heartbeat.
She snapped out of it when he blinked a little and nearly lost his balance. Rin removed her hands quickly.
“Sorry,” she said. “Too much.” He’d caught himself on the doorway.
"You can give oxygen too," he said after he seemed to regain some awareness. He was looking at her with a soft expression that made her face feel uncomfortably warm. His voice was still hoarse, but at least he wasn't straining with every word.
"What?" Rin said with a frown.
"Nothing...thank you" he said as he wiped at his mouth and then eyed his hand with some dismay. "I'm sorry I..." he added after a moment. Now that he wasn't focusing all of his energy into breathing, some level of embarrassment was starting to settle into his features. "I'll...uh...get dressed and call a cab."
A cab, not an ambulance, she noted. After he retreated back into his apartment Rin stood there for a moment before finally breaking away and heading slowly back up the stairs. She stopped at her door, which was slightly ajar and after a second of staring at it, closed it as best as she could given the damage, before sighing, heading back down the stairs and sitting on the bottom step.
XXX